by Todd Herzman
Huon let out a breath. Escaping when the battle had begun… that seemed like the worst of his ideas. He might get slaughtered before he left the field.
But it was too late to do anything else.
He’d taken too long to decide—his Squad were already leaving through the gate.
Huon faltered as he looked ahead, toward the other army—thousands upon thousands of enemy surgecallers were marching toward the Honourbound. It wasn’t just humans among their ranks, either. There were countless beasts, too. Battle-beasts and bonded pairs, Huon thought. The Honourbound army had very few beasts within it—he hadn’t seen a single Knight with a beast, only those of Legend-level or above seemed to have bonded them.
A roar split the sky. Huon’s gaze snapped up. He knew that roar—he’d heard it far too many times in his life.
But what he found wasn’t what he’d expected. The Immortal of Fire wasn’t here. Another dragon rider was.
A blue dragon, as large—if not larger—than the red dragon, swept through the sky above the enemy army. From this far away, even with his Knight-level sight, Huon couldn’t see the figure riding it. But it had to be an Immortal. Champion Jesalla’s words entered his mind, then: We are not the only ones with Immortals. The battlefield will be full of them. If you see them coming—whoever’s side they are on—hide. That is a command.
It was good advice—advice he would heed if he could.
But his Squad didn’t stop running.
‘Surge-sprint!’ someone ahead of them yelled, in a voice that could only be a Legend’s.
Huon responded instantly. Though he no longer had to listen to the man’s commands—or anyone’s commands—he’d learnt to respond to them over the past few weeks. And besides, if he didn’t, someone would know something was wrong—wouldn’t they?
So Huon sprinted toward the enemy—he was in this battle now. If he wanted to escape, to enjoy the freedom the soul binding offered him, he would have to survive.
Chapter 13
Huon clutched his sword tighter than he ever had. Screams rang out across the open plain. Screams that were often abruptly cut-off.
The blue dragon swept down, bathing the Honourbound army with its flames. Huon glimpsed its rider briefly, though he couldn’t see their face—they were clad in shining, golden armour, and carried the longest lance Huon had ever seen.
The battle was… chaos. Pure, and utter chaos. There were no neat ranks of soldiers marching to reach the enemy, like in the fictions he’d read. This was a mash of surgecallers of all different ranks surging elements all over the place.
The earth rocked. Water was called from the air, ice shards cutting down from above. Flames burst forth this way and that—the scent of burning hair and skin wafted through the mess of men and women fighting. Tornados whisked soldiers off the ground, throwing them ten, twenty, thirty feet from where they’d stood to land on friend or foe.
Huon didn’t know where to look. His Knight-level perception was going insane. He could barely tell enemy from ally. He’d lost sight of some of his Squad, but Jamison was still fighting beside him. The other Knight had more rock armour on him than he’d ever had—a thick layer had permanently formed over his Honourbound plate. Huon couldn’t even see his face anymore, but he knew it was him from the way he moved.
So far, Huon had gotten through the battle without having to kill, and every injury he’d sustained, his Champion-level stamina had quickly healed.
But Champion Jesalla had been right—he wouldn’t survive this.
The Immortal of Earth rode his giant goliath into battle, its massive stone feet stomping through his own ranks and that of the enemy’s indiscriminately. There were other members of the Immortal Seven on the battlefield—the Immortal of Air, Caeli, riding her pegasus, had clashed with the blue dragon rider.
Huon wished he could watch this battle from afar—see the Immortals in action. But more than that, he wished he had escaped back at the camp.
A Champion, wearing red, essence-reinforced martial arts robes and wielding a huge glaive, ran right at Huon, sweeping his blade toward his feet.
Huon surged strength and speed from his pauldron. He’d already used up the sharpness essence imbued in his sword, and the essence he’d had in his core, and he was running dangerously low on stamina.
Huon slapped the enemy’s strike away with his shield and thrust out with his sword, surging fire in a great burst to try and blind his opponent. The man was a Champion, and would no doubt beat Huon in a straight fight.
But Huon wasn’t fighting alone.
Jamison smashed into the glaive-wielding Champion, his massive, rock-reinforced bulk forcing the man to fall to the ground. Jamison moved to stomp on the enemy’s helmet, but the man rolled away, and they were soon fighting someone else.
Run, Huon thought. I have to run. But how? How would he get out of this mass of fighting?
And how could he abandon Jamison?
I’m already going to abandon him—I’m free of my oath, and he isn’t.
All this indecision kept running through his mind over and over as he fought. It all became a blur.
A small part of his mind was wondering if his body felt any different—if his essence felt any different. While he fought, he cultivated—like Danieja had taught him—and he felt that tug on his core. A portion of his essence leaving him, disappearing into nothing.
Not into nothing. It’s going into him—the Celestial.
Huon had bound his soul to the man, and he still didn’t know his name.
There were supposed to be other benefits to being soulbound—benefits that the Celestial had said would reveal themselves. Thus far, Huon hadn’t noticed any.
But he was too frantic to.
At least I’m still alive, he thought, probably for the hundredth time, as he avoided a strike from a red-haired woman wielding two flaming swords.
How was he still alive? He’d faced dozens of enemy Champions, and not one of them had cut him down. Jamison is alive, too. They’d saved each other from what might have been killing blows a half-dozen times now—though Huon was losing count.
As the red-haired woman ran off to engage someone else, Huon frantically looked about for Jamison. The man was no longer within view—and he was easy to spot, clad as much as he was in rock.
The other Knight was nowhere to be seen—none of Huon’s Squad were visible on the battlefield.
There was too much chaos. Too many enemies—or were they allies? Gods, he couldn’t tell anymore!
He breathed hard—he hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t surging breath anymore. He shouldn’t be breathing. He checked his core—but he was completely tapped out of breath.
That hadn’t happened to him since he was a Page.
Was he surging more than he normally would, or had he simply forgotten to recultivate it as he fought?
His mind wasn’t clear—nothing was.
I have to run, he thought. I have to run now.
So he did—he quadruple-surged speed from his Core armour and sprinted back through the Honourbound ranks. He searched the people’s faces as he flew past them—people barely noticed him, they were all too engaged in the battle, and their perceptions must not have deemed him a threat.
He couldn’t see Jamison. Couldn’t see Jesalla, Ellie, Matti, Yilda—none of his Squad.
What does that matter? Huon thought. I’m leaving anyway.
That pit of guilt—the pit he’d had when he’d been back in the Justice Arena, feeling sorry for himself for getting Liona into that mess—reformed. He hadn’t known the rest of his Squad long—and had only just become friendly with Jamison again—but they had been his Squad. They’d formed a bond in that brief time, and he was throwing it away.
A scream rang out. One among many. But this one stopped Huon short—he recognised that scream. He’d caused it before, when he’d broken the man’s leg.
Jamison. He was still alive back there—still al
ive, and by the sounds of it, in imminent danger. Huon looked over his shoulder, toward where he’d just run from. His body surged acute hearing without him even thinking to—he’d barely used it before, but something felt right about surging it. Natural.
He didn’t fear using it, as he should have. The last time he’d used the surge, it had overwhelmed his senses completely—and that had been in a relatively subdued war camp.
Now, he was surging it in the middle of a war zone.
But the surge didn’t catapult Huon with every noise around him—it cut through all of it, focusing sharply on the one voice he wanted to hear, as if he’d been practising with the surge for weeks, instead of only having used it once.
Strange, Huon thought—but he had no time to dwell on it.
Acute hearing helped him identify exactly where Jamison was when he screamed again. Still alive. He’s still alive.
Huon made a choice, then. Though it didn’t feel like one.
His body was moving on its own, surging the pauldron’s essence. He sprinted toward where the scream came from, griping his shield and sword tight.
He didn’t want to be in this battle. Didn’t want to fight this war.
He had no obligation to Jamison—no obligation to the others in his Squad. But leaving like this? It didn’t feel right.
Huon sprinted toward the fight.
Chapter 14
Huon’s gaze scraped over the bodies of his Squad—Champion Jesalla, Yilda, Matti, Vanson, Ellie, Bria… even the new members, the Champion from the Forest City of Landor who’d been bound, forced to fight his own people, and the Honourbound woman who’d replaced Aran, lay dead.
Huon had seen plenty of death that day. But this? This was different—he’d known these people, if only briefly.
‘Jamison!’ Huon yelled.
His Squad partner was barely on his feet. There were massive cuts in his rock armour. And where it had been covered in blood already, now Huon was sure some of that blood was Jamison’s.
Huon sprinted toward the fight. Someone was slashing out at Jamison with questing strikes—strikes that almost looked… bored. Bored, but powerful.
The strikes—the way the person fought… The enemy surgecaller was wearing full plate, silver armour, their head completely covered, face not visible.
But Huon knew who it was. He could tell from the way they moved, because he’d sparred them hundreds of times before.
Legend Danieja.
Huon should not have run back here. For the second time that day, he was regretting his decision not to just escape. Why did he keep making such horrible choices?
Why didn’t he just escape?
Huon couldn’t face a Legend, even his entire Squad was no match for one—they’d found that out when they’d fought Master Inan.
But it was too late to back down—he was already running toward her. Already shouting a ragged battle cry. He’d faced Danieja hundreds of times, and not once had he been able to land a strike. Not once had he been even close to landing one. That had been when he was a Squire. Now he was a Knight, and had access to Champion-level essence through his Core armour, but this?
This was insane.
Danieja snapped her gaze toward Huon. Her shield flashed out, smashing Jamison backward to fly through the air the length of ten strides. Good, Huon thought. He won’t die from that.
When Danieja faced him, when she saw his eyes from the slit of his helmet, she froze mid strike.
Huon—by sheer force of will—managed to stop himself in his tracks just before his sword hit her.
I can’t fight her. Huon dropped to his knees—something he wouldn’t have been able to do, were he oathbound. Something that clawed at whatever little pride he still had left.
‘Please.’ He stared up into Danieja’s eyes and bobbed a head toward Jamison. ‘Spare him.’
Danieja glanced at Jamison, who was struggling to get up—it looked as if the fall had broken something vital.
Danieja looked at Huon. ‘This is war, Huon.’ She pointed her sword at Jamison. ‘Why should I spare him, spare you? Your army marched into our land. We can’t just stop and chat.’ She raised her sword. ‘You’re bound, you have to fight me.’ Her forehead creased, looking at him on his knees.
‘I’m not bound, and I don’t want to fight in this war.’ Huon swallowed. He’d said it out loud. Chaos surrounded them—no one else would have heard. But what if they had?
What did he expect to gain from this?
Another poor decision for his list since gaining free will.
Danieja’s sword fell. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Take me. As a prisoner. Something.’
Swords clashed near them. Someone screamed, then was cut off in a gurgle. A dragon roared overhead—the blue dragon? Huon didn’t look up, didn’t move from this spot. The longer they stayed there, the more likely it would be for them both to get attacked.
But Danieja hadn’t struck him yet.
‘I can’t do that.’ Danieja nodded back in the direction of the Honourbound war camp. ‘Leave.’ She stepped forward, pointed her sword the same way. ‘Now, before I strike you down!’
Huon stood on shaking legs. He looked inside himself, noticing a change in his core—the fearlessness essence, a trickle had been cultivated as he’d knelt there.
That was strange—he would never have considered kneeling, begging, as brave. The other option was to run away, but I came back. I could have run, but I returned.
Yet he was going to run now. He looked over at Jamison, standing on unsteady legs, hefting his hammer. It was hard to see how he felt through his rock armour, but Huon knew the oath binding he had would mean he would try to attack Danieja again—die trying.
‘I can spare him. But that doesn’t mean he won’t die at someone else’s hand,’ Danieja said.
Huon’s head dropped. Another scream sounded nearby. Something smashed into Huon’s back—something sharp and cold that bit into his skin, through his armour—an arrow, the shooter somewhere he couldn’t see. Huon ripped it out, not moving from where he knelt.
Run… run, or fight in a war he didn’t believe in.
He stared at Danieja, surprised she was still standing there. ‘Is Liona here?’
Jesalla stared back at him, then shook her head. ‘We don’t allow Knights on the battlefield—they’re too weak.’ Her posture shifted, her face becoming blank. She sprang a kick into his chest, pushing him back. ‘Run!’
Huon flew through the air. He smashed into another soldier—Honourbound or enemy, he didn’t know. When he was standing again, he glanced back to where Danieja had been—but she was gone.
So was Jamison.
It’s now or never.
Huon turned, and—not for the first time in his life—he ran.
Chapter 15
No one came after him.
He couldn’t believe his luck. He ran through the battlefield, past hundreds—thousands—of people fighting, and no one came after him. He ran with his sword in hand, shield in the other. He didn’t run back to the war camp—he ran adjacent to it. He quadruple-surged every ounce of speed essence remaining within the Core armour, then triple-surged his own until it was all gone, until he was running with his natural speed. He didn’t look back, not until he had to surge stamina to keep his legs moving. Not until his stamina had run out, too.
He ran for maybe three days until he finally stopped, collapsing to the ground, lying on his back. He stared at the sky—night time. Had it been three days? Four? He didn’t know.
He was lying at the base of a mountain—not the Shurin mountains, this one he didn’t recognise. He must still be in the Queendom of Arisalon, but he didn’t know where.
His head hurt. He’d cultivated stamina and speed, cycling through them as he ran, but this was a different kind of pain—the kind of pain that only comes from sleeplessness, the kind of pain that Knight-level stamina doesn’t fully hea
l.
He remembered feeling this pain, all the way back when he’d been a Page, training for days on end without sleep.
Sleep. He needed to sleep. Knights didn’t need as much sleep as Squires. He’d surge marched for a week straight without sleep—but that had been single-surging. Now, his core felt… strained.
He looked back the way he’d come. The battle—it was so far away now. Days had passed. He couldn’t see it, hear it—was it over, already? Had the main armies already clashed?
Had the Everlasting King won?
Liona wasn’t in the fight.
That made him breathe easier. Even if the Everlasting King did win, she would survive. She wouldn’t be slain on the battlefield, with no time for the ‘mercy’ of being bound.
Liona wouldn’t refuse being bound again, not if it was her only choice—would she?
Jamison is probably dead. Dead because I ran—dead because I abandoned him. The man would have escaped with him, if he could.
That thought had kept repeating through his mind as he ran. He tried to use logic to drive it away. What he’d done—running from that fight—had not been cowardice. It had been survival. He alone couldn’t have kept Jamison alive.
And he didn’t want to fight the surgecallers from the queendom. He had nothing against them.
The only people he wanted to fight were those enslaving his people.
The Everlasting King’s realm will only grow, now… if he takes the queendom, if he binds the survivors, his army will only grow.
And it will keep growing.
They stopped him last time…
That thought brought no comfort.
After lying there for what might have been hours, his heart beating rapidly, his breath coming fast, his mind swirling with worst case scenarios, Huon finally slept.
~
Huon woke to something nudging his face.
His eyes sprung open, mind clawing for speed to surge, but he was all out—
‘Shurie?’ Huon sat up in surprise.
The sky-eagle stood over him. She chirped, nudging his face again, wings extending in what looked like glee.