Chapter 5. The Strong versus The Grotesque

Avorion stood there looking at his weapon as it was still enveloped in the light, meanwhile the light was so bright, it left Jeremy and the Prince no choice but to cover their eyes from the intense glow. Avorion then slowly reached to grab the weapon that was stabbed into the ground in front of him upon summoning. Once his hand was firmly holding the handle, Avorion pulled it from the ground causing the light that was enveloping it to start disapatting. Finally with the light now gone, both Jeremy and the Prince looked at Avorion to see what he summoned that could’ve caused such an intense glow in the first place. The two of them were awestruck by what they saw, as the weapon that they saw Avorion holding in his hand was unlike anything that anyone in the kingdom besides the King himself would have possessed.

The weapon looked to be a great sword with a handle and hilt being made from the frosted steel found in Fortis Gelu kingdom. The center of the hilt appeared to have the sculpted detailing of women that was praying, with the two arm guards of the hilt looking more like handles than typical arm guards of other swords. These handle-like arm guards were about eighteen inches in length along with the pummel at the end of it being akin to a pair of mini thick hooks made from cobalt and that were facing inward towards the handle. What was most impressive about this great sword was the blade itself. This weapon’s blade was a darker shade of blue, indicating that the materials that were used in the forging of the blade are undeniably cobalt and obsidian.

Both Jeremy and the Prince were shocked by the weapon, with it being so intricate in design as well as the sheer color of the blade itself. The Prince was about to say something but Jeremy quickly beat him to the punch, taking the very words from the Prince’s lips as they both had the same question in their heads.

“Avorion what the fuck is that weapon?! After all these years of knowing you, not once did you ever bring up that sword of yours. What’s it even called?”

The Prince looked towards Avorion wanting to ask the same questions Jeremy tossed his way. The horde of monsters in front of them grew more eager to charge as all of them took a lunging position, while exposing their sharp teeth to the knights that stood before them. Avorion laughed a bit as he found his friend’s reaction to be comical, but he quickly calmed himself before turning to Jeremy.

“Relax Jeremy, I’ll answer your questions later. Focus on the horde of monstrosities that are before us okay.”

“Ah Fine! You better keep that promise.”

The Prince looked at Jeremy and shouted at him.

“Don’t worry whenever Avorion promises something he always keeps it.”

Jeremy looked surprised that Avorion made promises before with the Prince giving the knight a ensuring smile before speaking again.

“Avorion just that kind of man, so lets do our best to live through this”

Jeremy takes a deep breath and nods, before pulling out his standard short sword and joining the the other men in front of them. The Prince looked at Jeremy’s weapon in curiosity as the knight joined the others, seeing that the only noticeable feature of that sword was that both sides leading up to the blade being created. Prince takes a deep breath and firmly grabs the hilt of the sword Avorion bequeathed to him for the time being and pulls it from the sheath revealing the reflective white blade. The Prince was captivated that the beautiful weapon, but was even more surprised by the lightness of the blade itself. Avorion looked at the two of them, seeing they’re both ready for battle, and began to let out his booming voice, as he addressed all of them men that rallied together to help hold off this walking disaster.

“Okay men listen up. I’ll make this short and sweet so that we may start our race to become legends! Take as many of them down with you as you can and let our brother’s souls rest as we free them from their twisted flesh, but most importantly though show the remnants of this ancient evil that the men of Fortis Gelu will never go quietly into the gentle good night! Show it that we will forever rage, show it that though we may take our final breaths that we will never willingly go into that gentle good night!”

The words Avorion spoke left the men inspired, goosebumps covering their skin and their hearts being together like drums of war. Avorion lept in front of them after his speech, and pointed his sword towards the horde in front of them. Avorion and all the other knights were determined to give a good fight, as their beating hearts were all united towards a single goal, one word was said in unison.

“Charge!”

Avorion reeled his right arm back and made sure he held onto his weapon tightly as he held the sword in a reverse grip, with his left in front of his chest. All of the men followed Avorion into the horde, holding their weapons to their sides with each of their non-dominant hands behind the pummel of their swords ready to plunge them into the foul beasts that were once their brothers. The twisted knights lowered themselves so that they were on all fours, before lunging at the incoming knights. One of the twisted knights were about to crash into Avorion, but luckily he used his well honed skills to grab the warped knight by it’s head before listing it up and looking at the twisted thing as it tried to claw at him. Avorion’s body was filled with rage once more as he noticed the body belonged to a female knight that had a merchant husband.

The elite knight couldn’t stand to look at her in this story state any long and quickly turned around to throw her into two other knights that were right behind him. The two knights plunged their swords into the warped female’s body right below her breast and above her waist. The knights that had plunged their weapons into the raving creature before looking at each other and slicing the abdomen into three chunks with her body dropping onto the ground with the entrails spilling from where they cut. The warped female weakly reached up two one of the knights despite being nothing but a head with some arms connected by some flesh, before she was put out of her misery with a strong stab in the head by one of them. The two knights looked down at their twisted sister, feeling a bit of pity for her but before they had a chance to do much else they both had two spears launched into their heads.

The Prince’s eyes widened as he was only a few feet behind the two knights that had their heads run through by the spears. He watched both heads of those knight’s slowly slide down the shaft of the weapon that had decapitated them. The two heads made a disgusting sloshing sound as they slowly slid, coating the shafts of the spears with blood and grey matter as they did so. This scene made the Prince recoil and throw up on the ground in front of him as the smell of putrid filled his nostrils but before he was able to finish, the Prince saw that two more spears were flung right to him with the intention to have him meet the same fate as the other two warriors. Luckily though the training with Avorion wasn’t for nothing with the Prince deflecting the first spear with the sword his master gave him, before quickly grabbing one of the short swords he had acquired before his arrival from his waist and threw it in a manner where the weapon was akin to a throwing knife making the two weapons meet in an elastic collision.

“Tch! You bastard…I’ll make you pay for killing my soldiers!”

The Prince looked and saw the twisted knight on top of one the buildings that were behind the battle that was going on in the street. He also noticed that it was tearing its arm off before using the unknown properties of the black pustule substance coating the flesh of the knight, to have the dismemberment limb forcefully twist itself to a point that is beyond normal. The adolescent lord watched in shock as the metal and flesh became twisted to the point where it stretched out to fine thin staff with a point on both ends. Seeing this sight made the Prince even more vengeful as he started to run through the small battlefield laser focused on that singular enemy.

Jeremy, who was in the middle of the fight, got done with sawing off a twisted knight’s head, with blood gushing all over his helmet. Jeremy grew extremely mad as he saw the Prince, not paying attention to the fact that more knights were throwing themself into unnecessary harm’s way in order to try to protect him. Jeremy shook his head and reached into his back pouch to grab a hand full of small black spheres with a white snowflake on them. He then threw these into the battlefield as small eruptions of ice shards shot up from the ground where they landed, with the force of the attack either launching some of the twisted knights backwards or impaled them.

This however did little to help as the twisted knights were unhinged by their impalement, but at least it gave the Prince a clear path to the enemy on the roof has the Prince used his tiger like boots to dig into that the large slanted ice shaft and run across it before leaping to the rooftop of the same building the spear wielding knight was. Jeremy then started to talk to himself as he looked on at his future lord.

“You better thank me later kid, you may be a our Prince but…Ah fuck it, I’ll tell you myself wheb this is over”

Seeing that the Prince was safe, Jeremy went back into the fray as he picked up another sword from a fallen knight as he ran back into the conflict. Meanwhile Avorion was busy fighting three Dark Harbingers at once, in the middle of the battlefield where the limbs of both side’s casualties lay. When the conflict started he thought that every single one of the twisted knights would be like wild animals, however Avorion underestimated the capabilities of his advocacy. Unlike the other resurrected knights these three had one of their arms replaced with a huge cleaver like appendage made from the hardened pustule substance.

Avorion looked at them as he bled from the cuts he suffered from the start of this. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought back on the situation as he played out the scene in his head. He recalled how he chucked the female warrior at the other men behind him, but out of nowhere these three came at him at once, slicing in a triangular formation. One attack came from the top with the other two coming from both sides, attempting to slice him in a X formation. He blocked the top attack with his left arm guard, but it left the armor on that arm badly damaged. He barely dodged the other two by slamming his sword into the ground and jumped up, using the strength in his right arm to further lift himself up with the two attacks hitting his sword. Avorion slowly opened his eyes to look at these things that used to be his friends and thought to himself.

“I have no choice it seems, I was really hoping to avoid using this in front of everyone. If I don’t though I’ll definitely die in our next clash.”

Avorion was prepared to unleash his secret technique, but was caught off guard by the impatient nature of his darkened foes, with the three twisted knights lunging towards him while getting out a blood curdling scream. Luckily though Avorion was saved by three arrows that were shot into the chest of each of those twisted beings, however the force that shot these arrows being enough to launch the twisted warriors backwards into the wall by the entrance gate.

“Aye if things get this exciting whenever you go out for a walk, try to invite me next time.”

Avorion immediately recognized the voice and looked behind to see his fellow knight of the King’s guard. The knight’s armor was pretty much the same as Avorion’s but the only minor differences were that instead of a tiger shaped helm, this knight had his helmet remodeled into that of a lion’s. The second difference being that there was a line of thick fur outlining around this knight’s collar area, followed by a thick scarlet main protruding from the knight’s helmet with the third and final distinction being that this knights’ armor possessed a thin outline of gold. Avorion shouted at the other knight as he was just shocked that he even showed.

“A-Alcides?! What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be with his Highness?”

Alcides walked towards Avorion’s right, while putting his great bow away on his back, before he lifted his right hand with only his index finger up to Avorion. Avorion looked surprised that his subordinate did such a thing, but before he was about to scold Alcides. The same man quickly turned his head to the left and yawned before looking back at Avorion, now lowering his raised hand so that he could answer Avorion’s questions in a low toned voice.

“I thought it would be obvious, I got bored and requested his Highness that I come be of assistance to you and the others. Knowing that the Prince was with you sir, the King agreed to my request without further question and sent me out to this glorious battle. Besides we both know that if I did come here without his blessing that I’d be running errands for a while as punishment.”

Alcides put his hands on his hips, arching his back before letting out a mighty roar of laughter with a voice that could match the king’s own. The man continued to laugh as the three twisted knights slowly got up from the arrow shots, with gaping holes in their stomachs. If anyone were to look carefully at these holes they’d be able to see their spinal cords that were partially destroyed due the sheer power of Alcides’s shots. However not even injuries like that could slow these menaces down as they launched themselves from the wall near the front gate towards Alcides himself. They lunged at Alcides at such an unprecedented speed with their modified cleaver appendages ready to strike the laughing knight. Unfortunately these foul wretches couldn’t even begin to comprehend the pillar of power that was before them as this was no ordinary knight ever amongst his other contemporaries in the King’s Stride. The Prince cut down the spear wielding harbinger just in time to see it, he saw the three modified monstrosities attempt to attack Alcides only for him to raise his arms up in a X formation and effortlessly block all three strikes. The force behind those strokes would’ve cleaved lesser knights in two before they even knew what happened to them, but all Alcides suffered were mere dents to his gauntlets. This alone left Avorion silent and dumbfounded as he knew Alcides was the most physically powerful amongst the King’s Stride, but this was the first he actually saw the full totality of Alcides’ strength.

Alcides grins widely as his blood roars with excitement, before he opens his arms with such force it shoves the Dark Harbingers back several yards. Usually the three monsters would’ve been launched back into the main gate’s walls with such a force shoving them backwards. However the three harbingers stab their clever appendages into the ground to slow them down to a stop. Alcides looked at them in a way the man would study a beast that perplexed them. His left hand was raised to his armor cladded chin with his index finger under where his chin would normally be and his thumb rested on his cheek.

Alcides opened up his helmet to reveal a white brown eyed man with a scarlet colored goatee. Finally he began to speak aloud to himself as he addressed the potential of these three advocaries.

“I see now, so that’s why Avorion was having such difficulty with you vermin. While sure Avorion might be the leader of the King’s Stride, he’s only a jack of all trades, master of none if you will. Therefore his weapon was the only thing that could’ve made the difference in his bout against you three. I suppose your speed and power were a bit too much for such a man of his caliber, with his armor is paying the price for his carelessness as it's close to breaking as well.”

The Prince hurried his way over to Avorion and the knight who saved him from being sliced to meaty chunks. The adolescent lord took a deep breath as he addressed the strange knight.

“Who are you? I don’t recognize you from anywhere in the kingdom, but your sheer power speaks for itself. Your armor is similar to Avorion’s but it also has a roar of personality to it. Also how are you even still alive? Yeah I expect Avorion to be alive but he’s hurt, so how are you unscathed?”

Avorion opened his helmet before he took a deep breath and looked at his fellow knight then back at the Prince before he began to speak.

“My lord, t-this is Al-”

The knight quickly covered Avorion’s mouth with his right hand before letting out another roar of laughter.

“Haha! You're right my lord we haven’t had a formal introduction! My name is Alcides Ischiyrós. However like Avorion when the king took us into his service my last name was relinquished. So I go by Alcides or my nickname The Laughing Lion.”

Alcides laughed at his lack of creativity before being cut off by the Prince.

“Yeah that’s all well and good but you never answered my other question. Uhm. How Are you alive?! Avorion’s armor is badly damaged yet all I see are those dents!”

Alcides looked at Prince’s surprised demeanor before looking to Avorion then back at the Prince.

“You really didn’t explain that to him, did you Avorion? Fine I suppose I’ll explain it.”

He removed his right hand from Avorion’s mouth to place it in his right hip as he began to speak.

“You see my lord, it’s supposed to be common knowledge that each knight has every piece of their armor custom made to fit like a glove. If you're a knight that’s faster than the average man, your armor was made to be more light so as to not slow you down. However if you’re an individual whose strength is beyond that man’s capabilities like mine, then your armor was forged to be a certain times stronger than normal. At this point though I’m just rambling, but the point is my armor was forged to be ten times stronger than the average knight’s. So for those things being able to dent my armor. They have to be incredibly gifted when it comes to their physical prowess.

The Prince looked at Alcides with a look of curiosity as he asked.

“Do you know anyone that might’ve been that strong?”

Alcides nods and replied with a smirk on his face, as if there was a unspoken hidden pride in his words.

“ Yes I know three individuals actually and related to them. However they’re all incredibly strong in their own right so they odds of them losing are incredibly lower. It’s almost funny really, but I admit that if didn’t know any better I’d say that those three Dark Harbingers were my br-”

Alcides’s eyes widened as he was now connecting the dots, as the three creatures stood up with their armor being damaged to the point where their helmets began to falls apart. The knight's fear was realized, with the destroyed helmets of the three Dark Harbingers falling onto the ground. Their hair was finally released, as each of them had scarlet colored hair similar to Alcides' own. What shocked Alcides the most was that when their faces were revealed they were perfectly preserved. Avorion and the Prince were absolutely shocked because they were really who Alcides claimed them to be. Alcides then looked towards Avorion and spoke with his voice being as cold as ice.

“Avorion, what have you done?"