A Promised Vengeance

DATE: IMMORTAL REIGN 1023 MONTH 3 DAY 15

“Dracon filth!”

Cursing, the group of sorcerers spun around, shooting fire and lightning at Naya. The Dracon girl, quickly retrieving her garash, clapped her hands together. Her scarlets horns flashed, transforming the incoming spells into bursts of light.

“Take them out!” she yelled. “I can’t dispel and fight at the same time!”

Bolting out of the bushes, Dramien deftly disarms two men, severing their staves before anyone could react. More enchanters turned on him, but when their spells fizzled into the thin air, they turned and fled.

“Fleeing without fighting,” observed Dramien, shaking his head. “Well, better decorate them with a few bruises.”

Scooping up a fist-sized rock, Dramien sent it whistling at the running men. Before his first target fell, Dramien had already fired off a salvo, striking the sorcerers with frightening accuracy.

“Kill them!” screeched Naya, exasperated. “They’ll bring reinforcements!”

“If I didn’t spare you,” replied Dramien, shrugging, “neither of us would be here today. Besides, those are my countrymen.”

Naya jeered. “What’s the point of all that training if you don’t kill?”

“Not killing,” said Darmien, “is the very point.”

As soon as the fleeing sorcerers vanished over the horizon, Naya sprinted to Ruxian and wrenched the stake pinning him down. She studied the object for a bit before recoiling like a kid who stuck a fork down a plughole.

“Horns, horns…” muttered Naya, trembling. “Get it together, girl, you knew about this…”

“We need to leave now,” said Dramien, sheathing his sword. “And that better be Lord Ruxian.”

“There’s no mistake,” replied Naya. “The magic signature is identical, not that you can feel it.”

Dramien shot Naya a dubious look. “I’d like to trust you but all I see is a demon.”

That’s a bit harsh, Dramien.

Ruxian could feel his vision expanding, as if he had awoken from a long slumber, assuming such a thing was still possible. Testing his faculty, Ruxian shrank his form into a wisp no larger than a parrot. What he did in an instant when crossing the lake now took his dulled mind and leaden body considerably longer.

“Lord Ruxian,” cried Dramien. “What happened to you?”

They took my body. Ruxian seethed, his body flickering as if to tremble with rage. I’m not sure how I’m survived, but it seems they failed to turn me into a drink for emperor. At this point, he realised his macabre form was unsettling his rescuers and calmed his. Good thing you came when those bastards caught – his world went black.

Dramien leapt to his feet. “He just stopped moving. What happened?”

“Probably spent too much magic escaping,” said Naya. “Imperial templars are dangerous.”

“That’s a high praise coming from you.”

“It’s the only one I’ll ever give.”

DATE: IMMORTAL REIGN 1023 MONTH 3 DAY 17

“Dismissed.”

Archbishop Arplis dragged his knackered frame out of the throne room with the support of his sceptre. Having just delivered a report on the meagre harvest this year, the old man wondered whether the Goddess would invite him into her bosom before Emperor Paerawyn fed his carcass to the water serpents.

For five years running, the immortality elixir produced had declined, owing largely to the quantity and quality of their summons. The thought of that wraith escaping had Arplis tightening his grip on his staff. When Lucius sent a promising prospect his way, the man had somehow frustrated the ritual, something even the emperor had not witnessed during the thousand-year reign.

Even worse, the templars he had spent decades reforming, had turned the second layer of Immortrium into a battlefield. According to terrified locals who woke to the sound of clashing steel and exploding spells, a ghost passed moments before his men turned on each other.

Leaning on his sceptre, Arplis groaned. His back was acting up again. The only thing that pained him more was Lucius. How he spoiled the boy, for having never known his father and showing such extraordinary mastery over magic at his young age. To think he’d grow into a drunken, whoring degenerate…

“You need sleep.”

Absorbed in his thoughts, Arplis did not see Kerroth, which seemed impossible given the man’s size and voice. Groaning, the archbishop waved a dismissive hand.

“Surely you didn’t come here for mindless chatter,” said Arplis. “What do you want, Kerroth?”

“Many are saying Dracon assassins released the demon,” replied Kerroth. “This suggests there’s a gap in my defences.”

“Should the general be investigating such rumours?” asked Arplis, lifted one of his white brows. Rumours we are spreading, no less.

Kerroth scratched his chin. “Only when it concerns a Dracon. I still remember the last Blackmoon raid on Immortrium.”

The archbishop grunted in agreement. That was the night Targonian fishermen found the body of his predecessor drifting downstream. The templars had neither the numbers nor the training to contain the horned harlot and her barbaric hordes. Three decades later, Immortrium still flinched at the mere mention of Blackmoon.

“No evidence of the matriarch’s involvement yet,” Kerroth resumed. “I shall oversee the palace and downtown restoration.”

“The Goddess dotes on the devout and diligent,” concluded Arplis. “I best capture the demon lest I lose her grace.”

DATE: IMMORTAL REIGN 1023 MONTH 3 DAY 21

Many days later, Ruxian still found both his body and magic intuitive yet foreign. He could no longer touch or smell. He lost count of how often he tried to reflexively pick up objects. His vision, sharper than ever, was a cone surrounding the centre of his ethereal mass that shrank and expanded at will. He heard things just like he used to, strange given he had no ears.

He needed to know his powers like Palemoor if he hoped to survive. According to Naya, his body was a giant blob of pure magic, making him the midnight sun to anyone with a smidgeon of magical affinity. His first lesson, therefore, was concealment: compressing both his form and psychic pulses until he felt imprisoned within a walnut shell. The mental marathon always left him sluggish, as if someone had reforged his being with bricks.

Tonight, too, Ruxian went in search of subjects. The birds made for the clouds while the rodents scurried for their caves. In the end, he settled for a deer greedily slurping the running water. Ruxian took over the beast, its mind an unlocked locker: easy pickings, limited bounty.

Kneel. Verbal instructions had little effect. Instead, Ruxian projected an image into its head, forcing the deer to its knees. Progress. Last time he did this, he was so tired that he blacked out. Now, it happened as naturally as he breathed – at this point, Ruxian realised how much of his thought still presumed he had his body.

Come here. The creature strolled towards him. Jump. The doe leapt about in circles. Just as Ruxian pondered what to do next, the connection snapped and the deer collapsed on its side, twitching. In that instant, he cycled through every colour of the rainbow. Had he just killed her?

“Breakfast,” said Naya, standing over the paralysed herbivore the following morning. “Lunch and dinner. Nice.”

I was…Ruxian trailed off. I…didn’t mean to hurt it. His vision lingered on the deer which Naya began dismembering with her hunting knife. Did his mental invasion shut down its brain? Looking back, he recalled a templar fainting after a forced psychic connection. The realisation was chilling. He could kill.

“Practising your mind control?” asked Naya, wiping her blade on the pelt. “You do it enough times, you’ll wipe their mind clean. Goddess knows how many Paerawyn broke that way.”

Shouldn’t you have told me that? Ruxian flashed red. Or were you waiting for me to test it on people?

“Lord Ruxian,” Dramien joined in. “Your top concern should be your own safety. Anything else is secondary.”

“No such thing as being too deadly,” Naya sang. “Now, I think you should come with me, Ruxian, to our sanctuary, beyond the empire. What do you say?”

Dramien grunted and pursed his lips at the proposal. “I’ll…ensure your safety, Lord Ruxian, wherever you go.”

“Shouldn’t you go back to your wife?”

“I was entrusted with Lord Ruxian’s protection. That hasn’t changed.”

Naya smirked. “You’ve just betrayed your country, and you speak of duty?”

Dramien faced north and took a deep breath. Thumping a fist against his chest, he struck one final salute before turning away, trembling.

“I just…I need to make things right,” he murmured. “Lord Ruxian, I am yours to command.”

The gesture left Ruxian wondering why he ever doubted Dramien. Here was a man who would never betray him. I want to go home. Ruxian felt his being shrivel as he projected the wish. Wake up. Forget this nightmare. Go back to being me.

“That was my plan,” explained Naya. “I was sent here to intercept any Otherworlder, take them back to the Blackmoon temple, and send them home. But that was before you lost your body.”

Why? Ruxian formed a face and sculpted the brows into a downward slope. At least I’d be safe in a world without magic.

Naya shrugged. “You just answered your own question. Without magic, you’ll cease to be.”

The revelation struck Ruxian harder than the blue hammers. Even if he did recover his body from the bottom of that dungeon, what could he even do with it? The Eternal Empire had taken his everything, robbing him of even a voice to roar in outrage. The mere thought had Ruxian radiating a darkness that devoured even the sunlight.

Paerawyn, I’ll kill you!