by Sam Ryder
Amongst the horses in the cavalcade were several guanik, long, reptilian creatures armored with black scales. As they impressively kept stride with the horses, their pink, snake-like tongues flicked between rows of dagger-like teeth. Their riders were the guanero, the royal guardians of Calypso.
While Roan watched the guanik and their hooded riders with narrowly disguised disgust, an authoritative voice suddenly shouted, “Halt!” Like appendages attached to a single creature, the line of horses and guanik reared to an abrupt stop, raising yet another cloud of dust.
When the fog cleared, Roan saw a broad-shouldered man wearing leather riding armor slide from his guanik’s scaly shoulders. His black hair was spiked in a dozen places, held up by some kind of shiny liquid.
Roan knew exactly who he was, and hated him for it.
The shiva, the master of order in Calyp. This man had the authority of House Sandes, the empire’s governing family. Roan had once watched him run down a woman in the street for some crime she’d never had the chance to defend herself from.
And now he was walking toward Roan and the hooded man standing beside him.
“Ho, beggar!” the shiva called.
Roan said nothing, but was dimly aware of the way the stranger beside him tensed up, shuffling back a step.
“You are a stranger to these parts, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I have not once asked for anything,” Roan said. “Therefore I am no beggar. And just because I’m a stranger to you doesn’t make me a stranger to Calypso.”
Regardless of whether he was or was not a stranger, Roan didn’t understand why this man would waste a moment on him. The shiva scowled at Roan. He was garbed from head to toe with leather armor marked with the royal sigil, a silver dragon over a rising red sun. He eyed Roan and the stranger warily, his dark eyes darting between them. “I spoke not to you, but to your companion.”
Roan glanced at the hooded stranger. “He is not my companion. We’ve only just met.” And yet Roan found himself stepping in front of the man, blocking him. Defending him?
“Then move aside.”
Roan didn’t, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because he showed me kindness. Perhaps because he cared.
The shiva sneered at Roan. “What are you going to do, peasant?”
Nothing, Roan thought. Choke on dust. Burn up under the sun. Help no one but myself. Live the only life I was ever offered.
“Oh no. Not again,” the stranger murmured behind him. Confused, Roan looked at the man, who had thrown back his hood and was staring at his gloved hand in horror. The gray glove had a slight tear in it, on the heel of his palm, exposing a sliver of white flesh.
Roan was instantly drawn to the man’s face, which was much younger than his voice had suggested. His skin was the palest Roan had ever laid eyes on, as white as the eastern clouds or the northern snowfields, a physical trait that was extremely rare in Calyp. His flesh was also parchment thin, doing little to mask the bright blue veins running beneath the surface. But more than any of that, Roan noticed the man’s eyes, which were as red as sunrise.
And those red eyes were staring at Roan. “I’m sorry,” he said, stumbling backward, throwing his hood back over his head. He turned to run, tripping over his own feet before catching his balance and darting into an alley.
Odd, Roan thought. Then again, he’d met a lot of strange people growing up as an orphan in Calypso.
“Gods be with us,” the shiva said, jerking Roan’s attention back to the halted procession. The shiva was backing away, scrabbling at his leather breastplate, attempting to yank it over his mouth and nose.
Roan frowned. The rest of the royal guards were backing away, too, the fear obvious in their eyes. “The plague,” someone said. Then, louder: “He’s afflicted with the plague!”
A woman screamed, high-pitched and piercing.
Roan shook his head. What are they talking about?
That’s when he felt it. An itch on his cheek. He reached up to scratch his face and noticed something on his hand. A bump, red and puffy. He inhaled sharply, dropping his hand to rest beside the other. Before his very eyes, dozens of fiery bumps rose to the surface of his skin, seeming to jostle for position.
Roan fell to his knees, still staring at his diseased hands. Beyond him, he could see the shiva’s black boots standing in the dirt.
For some reason, he crawled forward, reaching for the boots, feeling the need to touch them. Maybe my hand will go right through them. Maybe this is a dream. In his heart, however, he knew it wasn’t.
The moment before his fingers brushed the shiva’s boots, a shadow closed in from the side, swinging a weapon of some kind, which thudded against his skull with a vicious crack.
He collapsed, his cheek pressed to the dust, a set of dark eyes materializing overhead. The shiva vanished from sight as he was pulled away by his guardsmen, who created a human wall around him.
Roan’s vision was obliterated as a thick sack was thrown over his eyes.
When Roan awoke it was dark. The sun had long retreated beyond the horizon, and the night held an unnatural chill so foreign to Calypso that he instantly knew he was no longer in the city of his childhood.
But if not Calypso, then where?
Roan tried to think, but it was difficult when his head was pounding. He reached up to feel the side of his scalp, which was bulging and crusted with blood. His ear was badly damaged too, and he wondered if his hearing would be affected. Not that it mattered.
He touched his face to find his once-smooth skin covered in bumps on top of bumps, each filled with heat. He scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand, which was also bumpy and burning. He had the sudden urge to run. To where, he did not know.
As Roan fought weakness and fear to push to his knees, the wind howled over him, and he shivered.
The first strange thing Roan noticed: Even after the breath of wind dissipated, its mournful howling continued like an echo through the night.
The moan was filled with pain, and sadness, and hopelessness.
The nightmarish events rushed back through his mind, pounding away like the throbbing in his skull: the royal procession; the gray-hooded stranger; the unexpected words spoken between he and the shiva; the torn glove; the fear in the eyes of everyone who stared at him.
The plague.
He had the plague, and he knew exactly who had given it to him.
The stranger with the porcelain skin. Not again, the man had said.
Something clicked in Roan’s mind. The plague had been tormenting Calyp for half a decade. No one truly knew its origin, or whether it could be stopped. Some said it was conjured by the Phanecians, a silent weapon in the ongoing civil war that had ripped through the Southern Empire for twelve long years. Others, however, whispered of the Beggar, whose simple touch supposedly transmitted the disease. The most superstitious believed him to be a wraithlike demon, while others said he was simply a man borne with evil inside of him.
Now, after seeing the sadness in the stranger’s eyes, Roan knew the truth: The Beggar was a young man, like him, cursed with something he never asked for. Despite what the stranger had done to him, Roan felt sorry for him.
Something scuffled nearby, and then a heavy force bashed into his side, knocking him off balance. A woman’s hot breath splashed against his face. A foul odor filled his nostrils.
“Help me!” the woman cried, her plea punctuated by the howls of her companions, who suddenly surrounded Roan. They appeared to be Calypsians, all of them, their skin as dark as night. One of them held a torch, waving it around like a sword, illuminating grotesque faces that Roan knew would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Their eyes were bulging from their skulls, their tongues lolling from their lips, their mottled skin dripping from their bones.
Even as he thought the word monsters, he knew it was not true. For they were merely human victims, like him, transformed by the fast-moving disease.
Gnarled hands reached for R
oan, as if to embrace him, but he swatted them away, feeling a burst of energy rush through his blood as something he’d kept hidden for a long time flared from his chest, right over his heart. For there he bore what the southerners referred to as a tattooya—a mark of power. In the west they referred to the very same as sinmarks, while in both the east and north they simply called them skinmarks. One of the southern princesses, Fire Sandes, even had one—the firemark. But he’d heard of a half-dozen others, too, spread throughout the Four Kingdoms.
He was one of them.
But perhaps not for long.
The heat spread from his chest to his face to his torso, flowing outward to his limbs like a ripple in a pond.
This time the heat wasn’t from the plague. This time it was his own curse, the curse that led to his life as an orphan in a foreign land. For once, his curse felt almost like a blessing.
His body healed as he ran, dodging arms and legs and bodies, each more horrifying than the one before. Bodies littered the ground, most unmoving, and Roan tripped on one, his ankle turning sharply. He cried out, but his yell was cut short when he came face to face with a living skull, its teeth rattling as its jaws opened and closed. What was left of the victim moved slowly, reaching for him.
Roan slashed his elbow across the skeleton’s skull, knocking it away.
Should be dead, should be dead, should be dead, he thought, shocked by how long the plague kept its victims alive before eventually turning them to dust. It was unnatural. Then again, so am I, he reminded himself as heat rushed to his ankle, healing his stretched tendons.
He was on his feet again a moment later, winding a ragged path through the corpses, sighing in relief as the wails and moans faded into the distance.
What now? Roan wondered, even as he realized exactly where he was. They called it Dragon’s Breath, an island off the coast of Citadel, the northernmost city in Calyp. The island, located in the glassy waters of Dragon Bay, was once home to a vicious tribe of cannibals, but the Calypsians had decimated them and rebuilt the land to quarantine all plague victims until the disease finished them off.
According to city gossip, the island was surrounded by an immense wall. Victims were dropped over the sides. They should die from such a fall, but the plague wouldn’t let them. The plague held no mercy, only pain and torture to the very end. Roan must’ve been dropped, too, stumbling feverishly across the terrain to where he ended up. If not for the power of his own tattooya, he’d probably already be too far gone.
Roan wheeled about in a circle—a dark shape surrounded him, rising up toward the red, green, and gold stars. The wall is real, Roan thought. Which might mean the other obstacle was real, too, but he chose not to think too hard about that. Not yet. The wall was first, then whatever came next.
Although he could sense the plague all around him, hanging thickly in the fetid air, Roan did not have the plague. Not anymore. He’d used his curse to take care of that little problem.
Unfortunately, healing himself had left him feeling drained and ashamed. All of these people were in need of what he could offer, and he selfishly chose to help himself. But there were too many to help. Even if he wanted to, he would collapse from exhaustion before he could heal them all. And then he would die.
He shook his head, trying to focus. His legs felt like lead, but he forced them forward, toward a part of the ground that seemed less littered with bodies.
Dark shapes stumbled across the open terrain, the living dead wandering without purpose.
What felt like hours later, Roan reached the wall, which appeared to stretch all the way to the heavens. All along the base of the wall were bodies in various stages of decay. They formed a pyramid, not unlike the enormous pyramids of Calypso, except constructed of flesh and bone rather than stone and mortar. At its apex, the ramp reached nearly halfway to the wall’s summit.
Despite its morbid nature, the human pyramid strategy was an interesting one. Plague victims continued to flock toward the wall, climbing the bodies, eventually succumbing to the disease at the top, becoming new building blocks for future victims to climb. For those afflicted with the plague, climbing the wall would be next to impossible, but perhaps for Roan, who still had his strength…
Roan started his ascent, using his hands to steady himself on the unbalanced terrain. His power flared up each time the plague attempted to infiltrate his body, holding the disease at bay. Other climbers noticed his progress, and tried to grab him, their mouths opening to reveal toothless maws. He knocked their disease-weakened arms away and fought onward.
When Roan reached the top of the human pyramid, he was exhausted, his knees trembling, his back sore. Even his bones felt weary, the constant use of his power sapping them of all strength.
Three plague victims were trying to grasp the stone, but their dark skin was slippery with sweat from the fever burning through their bodies. Hearing Roan’s approach, they turned, their lips contorted with pain. “Help me,” one said, his teeth chattering. “Please,” said another. “Please.” The third one only reached blindly for Roan; her eyes were milky and unseeing.
“I’m sorry,” Roan said, trying to dodge around them.
The largest one, a man who might’ve once been as tall as Roan before the plague hunched his back and bent his legs, moved far quicker than Roan thought possible. Like him, he might’ve been a new arrival, not yet fully broken. He grabbed Roan around the neck and slammed him against the wall, his breaths coming hot and quick. Spit flew from his mouth as he demanded, “Give me a boost, boy!”
Roan could feel the plague trying to squirm inside him, the force of his tattooya fighting back valiantly. His vision began to blur from the effort. He had the sudden desire to stop fighting, to give in to the disease, to embrace the darkness and relief it would eventually bring.
His legs wobbled. His heart stuttered. His breath clawed in and out of his throat with ragged gasps.
And then he remembered his mother. Not her, exactly, for he couldn’t remember anything about her. Only what his guardian had told him about her, how strong and good she was. How she’d sacrificed everything so he could live.
Could he really throw away her sacrifice so easily?
He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. “I will help you,” he choked out, feeling the sting of the lie in his throat, even as the man released his grip.
The second he was free, he used the wall for leverage and kicked out, knocking the man down the human hill. He smashed into the blind woman, sending her flying as well. The third victim tripped of his own accord, screaming in pain.
Roan’s stomach hurt from what he had done, but he forced himself to turn back toward the wall.
He had two choices, die or climb, and that was no choice for a man like Roan.
Mustering what strength he had left, he raised his arms and began to climb.
Thankfully, the wall was hastily constructed and eroded by steady ocean winds, and he had no difficulty finding hand and footholds. Still, with his last reserves nearly depleted, the biting wind threatened to tear him from the wall with each inch he gained. Every time he stared up, the apex seemed farther and farther away, an unreachable goal.
He refused to look down at all the poor souls he had abandoned.
He began to growl with each step up, his feet aching, his hands cracked and bleeding from gripping the rough stone. He was no longer capable of healing himself.
But then, like a rocky coastline disappearing into the sea, the wall ended. He sprawled on the broad windswept surface, unable to hold back a sudden burst of laughter. His chest rose and fell. His hands dripped blood. His muscles spasmed and cramped.
And, despite the gnawing hunger he suddenly felt in the pit of his stomach, Roan drifted off into a deep sleep.
Beneath him, just outside the island’s walls, the slumbering dragon’s chains rattled as it began to stir.
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ONE
PROTECTOR
“Protector, huh?” Beat said. “You look like a mafia leg-breaker working for someone named Uncle Guido.”
I couldn’t argue. After receiving my…reward…for leveling up from the Three goddesses, I had the opportunity to take a long look at myself in the clear pool down in the gully while Persepheus, Minertha and Airiel slept.
I was a behemoth. Before, when I’d leveled up to Warrior, I’d thought I was Hulk-huge. If so, now I was Hulk-on-steroids huge. Wearing only a comedically inadequate loincloth, my legs were like marble columns, my arms like cannon shafts, my fists like Christmas honey-baked hams. My chest was a cast-iron pot, except without the tinny echo when you tapped it. And my skin…
Hard. Like stone. It was partly because of the layers of corded muscle beneath, but also because of the effects of the primordial ooze as I marinated within a cocoon for the second time. Previously, I’d been informed by our Finder, Eve, that the ooze was goddess spittle, which should have been disgusting. It wasn’t. Nothing about the three beautiful, dying goddesses was disgusting. I’d learned that firsthand.
“Did leveling up make you deaf and mute, too?” Beat asked.
I hadn’t answered her initial question, my mind on one of those carnival rides that spins around and around until you want to puke up all the hot dogs and cotton candy you ate just before you got on. “You’re not that lucky,” I said, plastering a smirk across my broad face.
I realized other eyes were on me too. Millania, the tall, lanky sea-dweller from a planet appropriately called Oceania. She was the quiet type, but a formidable Warrior in her own right. Though she was out of water, the gills on the sides of her green neck flared from time to time. Her gaze was curious, her head cocked to the side slightly. She nodded and I nodded back, and then she turned away. It was the only gesture necessary to confirm she was with me one-hundred percent.
Lace, on the other hand, stared daggers at me. The sexy cat-woman’s lips were parted just enough to make out each of her fangs. Her lithe body was as taut as a bowstring, her retractable claws shimmering in the bronze light. The first of the two suns hovered high in the sky, which meant we still had hours until the next night, or the Black as it was known on the planet of Tor.