Rylan's Rise: Chapter 5

Yeah, I know I said no new chapters on UC today or tomorrow. Apparently, my brain decided that meant that this was the ideal opportunity to push this idea back to the front of my head strongly enough that it woke me up and demanded I write it. And this is where I share chapters of things when i write a handful of chapters that might not otherwise see the light of day. This used to have some absurd but accurate title like "New Maybe Progression Fantasy Thing," so I gave it the slightly easier to remember but probably less accurate interim title of Rylan's Rise. I created a collection for anyone who wants to go back and read the earlier chapters from, like a year ago? Two? I'm not even sure. Anyways, I'm super tired-grumpy, so I'm going back to bed. Enjoy! ~Eric

***

Part of Rylan was exultant. This was what he’d come all the way back here for. This moment. This confrontation. And, if he was being honest with himself, this bloodbath. However, that exultation was pushed back to a far corner of his mind, exactly the way the empire had trained him to do. This was part of what made the empire’s soldiers so frightening. Most soldiers and adventurers relied on emotion to help them push through the dangers they faced. The empire scoffed at that, calling it just one more kind of weakness. To them, battle should be cold. It had taken him a while to figure out why they thought that.

The answer was simple. It was because the horrors from another world they prepared for had ways of manipulating those emotions. A lesson, it seemed, they had learned the hard way all those long centuries ago. Their response was to train their soldiers, their conscripts, and probably their servants to keep those emotions on the shortest possible leash when they fought. Rylan had been a good student, even if it had taken a while. He hadn’t exactly been emotionally stable when the empire conscripted him into their ranks. Admittedly, he probably still wasn’t, except in battle. In battle, he became, as his first imperial instructor had liked to say, the stone and the ice.

When he stepped out of the church and saw the face of Evik Weathers, though, his rage threatened to crack the stone and shatter that ice. It was only decades of experience that let him force that rage back to a place where it couldn’t touch him. He dispassionately eyed Weathers and the dozen people he’d brought with him, hard-faced men and women who looked like they knew their way around violence. At least, they thought they did. They were mistaken about that, even if they didn’t know it yet. Rylan intended to instruct them. He did notice Weathers’s daughter hovering in the back with her bandaged stump. She seemed torn between loathing for Rylan and a deep desire to flee. If she’d been smarter, she’d have gone with that second option.

“You!” screamed Weathers.

The man looked the same, exactly the same, as the day he’d butchered Rylan’s family. He appeared to be a man in his middle years with pronounced crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Although, that was far less noticeable with the man turning an almost apoplectic shade of purple.

“You mutilated my daughter, you worthless trash!”

“You murdered my entire family,” said Rylan in a casual tone. “Considering that, I handled your spawn with far more kindness than she deserved.”

Weathers went to scream something else, only to have Rylan cut him off.

“Don’t worry, though. Since she’s offered herself up on a platter like this, I’ll make sure to finish what I started in that alley.”

While Weathers spluttered, Rylan heard the church door open behind him. He glanced back and saw the boy. Rylan searched his memory. What was that kid’s name, again? Clebin? Something like that, thought Rylan. He’d expected the kid to stay in the church. It would probably have been better for the boy if he had stayed in the church. If nothing else, that would have left him the room to hang on to that fantasy that knights were good and noble. It was complete horse crap, but Rylan didn’t usually make a habit of dashing people’s illusions. They had to get through the day somehow. Who was he to make that harder for them? But this kid was a spellblade. He’d become insanely dangerous if he lived long enough. Far too dangerous to leave in the hands of any king.

“I hope you’re paying attention, kid,” said Rylan just loud enough for…Calvis? Cablin?...to hear.

“Kill him!” bellowed Weathers. “Kill that bastard!”

Rylan ignored the longsword he often favored and drew two short swords instead. They were as black as a cloudy sky at midnight. Another relic from him time in the empire. Anyone who knew what they actually were would offer him a fortune, flee on sight, or try to kill him. Not that he expected anyone in this part of the world to understand what those blades signified. He planted a foot and bent that leg a little. Then, he whispered a phrase to activate the magic.

“Raven’s Wing.”

To everyone standing there, it would have looked like he disappeared from the steps of the church and reappeared in the middle of Weathers’s people. It wasn’t actually teleportation. It was just a spell that vastly enhanced his speed for a few seconds. Of course, his level was so much higher than anyone else’s that the difference became moot. That was particular true for the two people he’d decapitated. By the time anyone realized what had happened, he’d already cut down two more. When they started to focus their attention on him, he whispered again.

“Fury’s Vengeance.”

Power washed out of him and wrapped around everyone within five feet of him. It sank into their bodies. More importantly, it sank in their minds. That’s what the mythological furies did, according to everyone in the empire. They got into your mind, and they drove you mad. He leapt back as the three people in range of the spell went insane and started to attack each other and anything else with a beating heart. He half saw, half sensed someone aim a crossbow at him. He felt their magic gathering around the bolt, no doubt adding some kind of penetration effect to it. Sheathing one of the short swords, Rylan lifted a hand and whispered again.

“Aegis.”

Again, to anyone watching, it would have looked as though Rylan simply blocked the bolt with his hand. It struck his palm and shattered. He didn’t plan to tell anyone that the exact same thing would have happened if it had been aimed somewhere else. Aegis mimicked a tower shield, except his could probably stop a ballista bolt with the same penetrating effect added. His bare palm probably would have been sufficient for the crossbow bolt, but he didn’t see a good reason to take unnecessary chances. Rylan reached to a specific spot on his belt. The spot he’d been trained to keep throwing knives. There was a streak of reflected sunlight before the blade passed through the crossbow wielder’s neck, collapsing his throat and severing his spine.

In the little corner of Rylan’s mind where his emotions were allowed to exist, he gloated at the look of unmitigated horror on Weathers’s face. Between Rylan and the people he’d driven mad, there were only two people left of the dozen Weathers had brought with him. Those two were currently hacking at each other in a frenzied state. Rylan sheathed the second sword. All of the blood had long since run off the magical blade. He started walking toward Weathers. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the man fought or ran. Not that it would make any difference. He was going to die either way.

Rylan remembered that Weathers had kind of physical enhancement as part of his class. It had been obvious when he made murdering Rylan’s every blood relation look easy. It seemed that anger had won out inside the heart of Evik Weathers. Howling in what looked like blind fury, the man rushed at Rylan and threw out what was probably meant to be a killing blow. There was a snap-crack noise of skin striking skin when Rylan caught the other man’s fist and stopped it dead. Weathers stared at his own fist in Rylan’s grip, seeming dumbfounded.

“What the hell are you?” demanded Weathers, turning his eyes to meet Rylan’s.

“Me?” asked Rylan, his tone light. “I’m merely a wayward son, home from far travels, seeking a kernel of justice.”

“Justice!” shouted Weathers.

The man tried to wrench his fist free, only to stare in shock as it didn’t move from Rylan’s grip.

“Well, if I can’t have justice, I’ll settle for vengeance,” answered Rylan.

He closed his hand around Weathers’s fist. There were crackling, popping noises for a moment before those were drowned out by the man’s screaming. While pain distracted the man, Rylan kicked him in the knee. Weathers collapsed to the ground, the obliterated joint in his leg no longer able to support him. The girl from earlier ran over to her still-screaming father.

“Daddy!” she shrieked. “Get away from him.”

Making a serious effort to tone down his strength, Rylan backhanded the girl. She crashed onto the stone street. She was still conscious if only just. He turned his attention back to Weathers. The man had gotten himself under some semblance of control. The glares he shot Rylan promised dire retribution. Rylan shook his head a little at that. There wasn’t going to be any retribution for this. After all, he’d learned an important lesson from this very man. Make sure you finish the job.

“You seem distraught, Weathers,” said Rylan, before bringing his heel down on the man’s other knee, very nearly removing the bottom half of his leg. “I don’t know why. What was it that you said to my father? ‘If you didn’t want this to happen, maybe you shouldn’t have been so weak.’ Well, I happen to agree with that sentiment. Too bad you let yourself be so weak.”

“Stop,” slurred the girl weakly. “Please don’t kill him.”

“You know, I said the exact same to him, right before he murdered my father. So, I’m going to let you experience what I experienced.”

“Don’t you touch her!” shouted Weathers, his voice hoarse with agony.

The pressure building around the man’s undamaged hand said that he was trying to conjure some kind of magic. Well, we can’t have that, thought Rylan.

“Combustion,” he whispered, focusing on where he wanted the magic to go.

There was a flash of light and heat, and everything from Weather’s fingertips to his shoulder turned to ash. For a brief moment, the ashes held their shape. Then, they crumbled away and scattered in the light breeze that moved around them. Staring down at Weathers, Rylan thought about all the things he’d imagined saying at this moment. The things he’d dreamed about saying when he finally killed this man. He said none of them. Instead, he spoke only a single word.

“Pathetic.”

Not wanting to drag things out any more than he had, Rylan brought his boot down on Weather’s chest. There was a brief moment of resistance before the bones gave way, and the man’s heart was crushed. He watched the last vestiges of life leave Weathers’s eyes, even as the girl was screaming hysterically and crawling over to her father’s corpse. Most of what was coming out of her mouth was completely incoherent, but she did eventually lift her face to direct pure hate at him.

“Murderer! You murdered him!”

She might have said more, but the words died on her lips when Rylan drew his longsword.

“I want you to carry those feelings into hell with you,” he told her. “I want you to know that’s what your piece of shit father made me feel.”

“I—” she started, panic bleeding into her face.

He’d never learn what she was going to say next. The girl died swiftly, her head removed from her body. That was the only concession to mercy he was willing to extend her, and only because she was still so young. Rylan took a moment to dispatch the final survivor. The woman was still raving despite suffering from mortal injuries. That was one problem with Fury’s Vengeance. Once it turned someone mad, there was no turning them sane again. Not that he would have expected the woman to thank him for restoring her sanity. It would have been torture in her condition. He retrieved his throwing knife, wiping it clean on the shirt of a corpse before returning it to his belt. Only then did he walk over to where the boy was staring at the carnage. Rylan thought that the kid might puke at any moment, his face was so green.

“That is what knights do in this kingdom for your beloved monarch. Did that look like the honorable and glorious things you imagined?”

The boy shook his head. Rylan couldn’t tell if he was unwilling or unable to speak. He turned to look at Jennalynn. She’d come out of the church at some point. Now, she was standing there with a hand over her mouth. Her eyes wandered over the bodies before her gaze finally landed on him.

“He’s dead, Rylan,” she croaked. “You even killed that poor girl. This is enough. It’s done.”

“It’s not done. Not yet. Don’t worry, though. Once it actually is done, I’ll leave.”

“How? How could you do this?”

He knew his expression was bleak when he answered.

“Jennalynn, this isn’t even close to the worst thing I’ve done. Hell, this was justified,” he said with a shake of the head. “I told you before. I didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge of what I’ve become.”

With that, he turned and walked away. Weathers had a home, and Rylan intended to visit it.