Mages of Avios 2. Battlemage Read online

  by Adam Sea Klein

  - Crescent Roads Publishing -

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  www.AdamSeaKlein.com

  Cover and map created by

  Adam Sea Klein

  Copyright

  - All Rights Reserved -

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  (Book #1 of the Mages of Avios Series):

  Spear of Humanity

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapters:

  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

  10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17

  18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25

  26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33

  34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41

  42 - 43 - 44 - 45

  Newsletter

  “The burdens that arrived were not ours -

  they were the world's.

  Take hold of the strong line forward."

  Adam Sea Klein

  PART 1

  1.

  Sublime ripples lapped across still waters as the soil beneath the lone man’s boots shifted below each cadent step. The pale dusk light reflected a mirror image of a flawless sky against the long, low lake. The man trekked as though time itself had worn a hole straight through his heart. Even while alone, he moved as a man in battle, resting only when his body would not move on.

  As Kanos traversed the vacant lands of the Dunbak Plains, days slipped by and nights settled methodically. The young man, Kanos of Saaverin, sifted memories of the path behind him, a path of vengeance that held memories of a dozen dead — victims of their own lusts for cruel desires. His weathered dark stained clothes barely fluttered in the cool, swift wind. The sky became dark above with evening light, and the sunset pierced the low horizon with blazing orange.

  Kanos’ eyes were tired but fierce, and as he milled through his deep-set losses, he saw faces of adversaries come and gone. With no remorse, Kanos craved more blood. He saw his dire moments of great vigilance unfold, being a man of great integrity forced into brutal ways.

  As the nights rolled in and his thoughts began to drift, he thought of little besides his journey and the swift strikes of battle. He knew each morning he would awake and see the last moments of those slain by his newfound skills. Such visceral blows of death passed often within his rage-enlivened mind.

  Kanos plod onward with no intention to abandon his simple one-way urge. As he trekked beneath the setting sun, he tended a deep wound laid across his upper arm, a slash acquired just days before from an encounter that ran fresh. The deep cut marks only just began to heal. It was a fight against a man of swift vindication — a hairy, beastly man with a beard of stubble so thick his face could not be seen below. The adversary was named Watabi, and he helped hold the invisible chords around the life of Kanos — a spell to tame the vengeance from devastating loss.

  While Watabi played with the effects of magic, he was not a true sorcerer at all, but a rogue warrior of incredible strength. The man held great magic only by spellwork placed upon him; he was a host of sorcery cast by others. In exchange for magic, Watabi forged great weapons for an unjust cause, as he ran a shop in a one-road town called Ravenna.

  Kanos pushed to Ravenna quickly and lingered in that small town for a couple of days. He took a while to assess the true path forward. He felt through the unseen trail of magic that guided him, which led to one place directly. Kanos walked through that doorway and entered Watabi’s dimly lit blacksmith shop. He took one step inside and simply closed the door.

  Watabi banged his massive hammer on a long, hot steel blade with the loudest clanks. Each blow drove the red-hot metal flat. Watabi was not without awareness. He could feel the brutal confrontation that was about to unfold, yet he did not flinch or look away from his project for a single moment.

  Kanos watched for half a minute, sneered and breathed a heavy breath. Watabi’s eye finally moved and caught the deep red stone from the blade in Kano’s hand. Written just below the gruff look smeared upon Watabi’s massive skull was a burly understanding of eminent battle. His eyes grew serious and his shoulders rigid.

  Watabi did not wait.

  He pulled high his glowing blade and sought to run down Kanos — his puffs of hot breath were wide and forceful. His heavy step on silted plank quickly thudded as he approached.

  Kanos swung his enchanted blade and nearly killed Watabi in one swipe. Yet, his thick neck was missed — Kanos struck and sliced off a large, deep chunk of lower jaw meat from the left side of Watabi’s face.

  Watabi snapped free of his illusion of singular strength; his dominance alone could not prevail. He saw his deathly situation with great clarity and knew the cut was so severe it could end his life in a passing moment. Still, he did not dare to flinch or touch his wound.

  Watabi pushed his hot blade to the ground and drew two steel swords from his side, and began to work those swords with meticulous might.

  Watabi zipped the blades like swift levers from every angle — a master swordsman. His arms swung high and low from every side.

  Kanos slipped around his death many times as each curve of Watabi’s blade nearly sheered his limbs. Every swing was dodged or deflected with the shining blade. Kanos’ rigor seemed quite impenetrable. He tucked and turned below a double strike, as his own left upper arm was given a deep filet cut and began to bleed profusely. Kanos gave up his weak side, pulled back his blade from near his hip, and with a falcon’s great precision, he ran it through Watabi’s neck.

  Watabi’s eyes were still. His mouth slowly reeled for air, each breath a dying gurgle. Kanos twisted his blade and carved out at will — back and forth. Back and forth. He sawed and leaned and finally pulled out the blade.

  Watabi’s large body stood locked. Then he slowly arched. He flopped stiffly to the boarded floor below with a deep, hard thud. No gasp was heard. No flailing of the hands. His brutal death was final.

  As Watabi’s body lay stiff and unmoving, face-down on the floor, Kanos felt the binding in his own chest relieved. Watabi had deep magic that reached into Kanos’ existence — for months, it pulled the chords within. With Watabi’s death, Kanos felt a true alleviation as that single spell was relinquished and set him free.

  The blade he carried, the blade of Anoak, seemed by nature, ready to cut and clear the ties of dark magic that wound around him firmly. The blade struck clear and true. It was a weapon beyond forged steel.

  Kanos looked around the shop, understanding his victory could not be taken for granted. He was amazed he could slay a bladesmith of great talent with a dagger little more than a foot and a half in length.

  That dagger had a way of wanting, a way that pulled Kanos from one place to the next.

  2.

  As Kanos fled Ravenna and traversed the doldrum plains, the wind began to rise. He clutched the curved blade of Anoak, his left arm and hand still sticky with his drying blood. He wondered how many times that blade was buried to the hilt as he stared at the faint inscriptions that ran from end to end. As he clutched the handle, he could clearly feel the sensation of enlivenment. The blade was enchanted with the spell of Anoak; it riveted with a subtle vibration and put off faint throws of energy.

  Kanos wondered to himself, “ What is the true nature of such a blade — an object that… helps me finalize my vengeance? He stared into the red crystal embedde
d in the center guard — a red abyss that pulled his mind in the strangest ways. He wondered if other warriors clutched that handle before, pushing through the edge of reason on blood-thirsty paths of treachery and disaster.

  Kanos clasped the blade with the firm strength of a farmer’s hand. He reached with his mind to find the source of the fading light — the past that burned within him, a light he felt guide him forward.

  Kanos walked for many days with his slowly healing wound, a cut that seeped blood if the muscles moved extensively. A deep-set urge drew him toward the distant Ruins of Avermore, where a small cavern chamber was supposedly enhanced by old-world healers, likely a myth of recent times. It was a far-cry plan, but he took the detour in case it could give him back his arm.

  As Kanos trekked to the cavernous ruins, he found his way to the central chamber and gazed upon the four strong pillars carved with runes. He walked forward toward the pool of lighted water in the center of the rock born room — that pool held waters that were said to heal.

  Kanos touched the water slowly with his fingertip in case of poison; he shifted slowly into trust and buried his scarred and bloody arm deep within the pool.

  He felt nothing and, with great frustration, lamented at the forward progress he would lose to his healing arm. He drifted to sleep, and as he awoke, he thought to hold the blade of Anoak in his left hand and again sank the arm deep into the pool. Kanos felt the sting in his arm begin to release and watched the wound’s ragged edges stir. He watched the scabs transform as the wound begin to seal. His own cells were being bound with energy, as the crystal etched with Anoak’s spell met the energy of the pool. In several moments, the fringes of his deep arm cut were healed. The long bloody wound began to set.

  The surge of health unlocked shadows of his morbid past, which flashed the glimpses of dark memories. He saw the torture and discomfort, the slavery and violence discovered to be held over those he loved. He tasted the rage towards those brutal sorcerers who tormented his mind every waking hour.

  Kanos tried to calm his mind and leaned back to rest. He knew the great machine of life inside him would gather power and force him forward.

  He laid back and closed his eyes and slipped into a lightly maddened state of mind. He heard whispers in the dark — he felt the deep impulsive warning signs; he saw subtle, potent visions of the wicked ones who manifested his living curse. His mind reached to know faces he had never seen before.

  Kanos’ own energy was forced into the deepest restoration, the core within him binding with the revenge of ancient mystics. His energy railed against the complex curse made by those who destroyed his world.

  Kanos fell into a deep and motionless sleep. His body lay for 11 hours. When he awoke, he felt quite sturdy. He was prepared to move across the land, a hard-wrought path that must expand the arts of magic, a concept he barely began to understand.

  Kanos arose and stared into the pool of healing waters and read the runes across the large stone rim. Not a single drop could be transported across the spellbound gateway with the expectations of healing wounds. The spell was formed on the pool itself, the water merely a medium to surround that which was submerged.

  Kanos tied up his gear and clutched his bag. He stowed the blade of Anoak and plodded out of the cavern, free and clear — a blood determined man.

  3.

  Kanos left behind the cave of healing waters and moved beyond the ancient shore of the long, thin lake Massie. He traveled northwest into the golden sun and ventured for days through the thickets of orange karacarass — a nettle plant that was edible and sweet. He sucked the pollen from the blossoms, and when possible, he drew his small bow and arrow and shot little fat paridge birds until he had enough to roast.

  Kanos traveled to the distant passage near the end of the Dunbak Plains to extract himself from the curse of yet another source of pain. He needed to break more ties within — cords unknowingly held by a notorious sorceress with more death surrounding her than life.

  As he broke through the mountain passage, there was little to confuse him.

  He pushed on through the clearing and approached an isolated circle of three cabins. He never had to choose which cabin to approach.

  Just as Kanos could follow magic, so Rauak could smell the fate of blood… she was an intuitive woman of great magic.

  Rauak stepped out of her cabin and said directly, “So you have come quite far. Do you come in peace or otherwise, traveler?”

  Kanos held his blade and threw down his bow and arrow clutch.

  Rauak’s face was calm and serene, but changed immediately — her eyes grew large and black, her mouth distended like a beast; she was empowered but disfigured by crude magic of an ancient sort, a magic she worshipped from a primal clan of strange humans from the deep and treacherous lowlands of Thon. The Thonnish people were not like humans, they were often talked about like creatures of the night.

  Rauak didn’t step to battle as Kanos expected — but from her porch, she spilled like a torrent of odd shadows and swept off at a furious pace to take up Kanos directly, as though to devour him.

  Her move was swift, like a massive bird of fluttering ambiguous shapes, enlarged and dark. Kanos did not anticipate such a direct query. She came onto him as though a tiny creature, easy to overcome.

  Kanos was rolled back fiercely, and the swing of his blade missed, as though swinging like an amateur.

  Rauak flew into the air almost as a phantom of dark light. She was a flighty mass. Kanos could hear the sound of giant feathery tendrils and an unsettling gnawing sound like the workings of many large insect mouths.

  Rauak pounded her dark body on top of Kanos and moved him so abruptly his head smashed against the ground almost hard enough to knock him out.

  Kanos began to chant a lowly sound, “ Amno Am — Amno Am,” over and over as he took a merciless pummeling.

  He tried to swing his blade a few times, but no strike would stick into the sorceress.

  Kanos chanted to focus, and a faint mass of energy began to surround his mouth — around his head grew very subtle strings of magic, like a spacious web.

  Rauak’s pounces did less damage, and Kanos’ head moved less and less.

  Rauak was indignant. From her center moved a long beam of dark matter that sought to pierce his entire body through.

  Kanos swung his blade just once and lopped off that large, dark mass.

  He left Rauak standing there, again a human, the black masses congealed and were drawn in. Her face remained distorted, but her abdomen was no longer whole — it was peeled open and drained blood profusely, as though Kanos cut that dark oblong mass straight from her body.

  Again, Kanos felt his gnarled heart lessen its terrible grip in a subtle but profound way. The disfigurement of Rauak gave his spirit relief from her grip of magic.

  Kanos stared into Rauak’s eyes as she gulped and breathed her last. She fell backward against the ground into the cold of death.

  4.

  As Kanos lay in the field, he remembered his past life, his marriage to Esselle of Cavenay.

  They married young, just 18 years old, friends for a lifetime. They had two small kids.

  His life and dreams were fulfilled back then, but as he gazed into the rolling sky, and as he traveled the battle-worn path, he did so as a widower, a man with slayed children.

  His simple life was taken away after his three-month absence on a trip to find strong new seeds for his latest crop. He returned home to a nightmare.

  As Kanos slowly made his way back home with two fully loaded horses, he ran into a disheveled fisherman he knew well, a man named Biron, who shared his town. The man was almost incoherent as he relayed to Kanos the tale that flooded Saaverin.

  Between the broken breaths of Biron, Kanos learned of his family’s death, which involved great suffering, the same fate met by his entire town.

  The vacant looks and tattered words of Biron slipped out in cobbled phrases. “They were slowly poisoned and… ent
rapped… it was a band of magi… they were sanctioned by the magistrate himself… Soverious.” Kanos knew that man as a person of business, who the town slowly came to trust. Biron explained the spellwork laid upon the villagers was not as expected; it ensnared and entombed the villagers within their own minds and bound them in a state of subliminal absence of self.

  Kanos wanted nothing more than to run to his town, but the look in Biron’s eyes was of such deep devastation, Kanos sensed the very worst and almost wished he did not have to listen. “Biron, tell me what happened to my family… do they live?”

  Biron gushed and flubbed as he spoke, “They they they… donot live. They do not live… I’m so sorry Kanos. They are all gone. All of them.”

  Kanos felt the supreme tipping of the brilliant energy that upheld his life. His energy collapsed. His flesh rolled and crawled with the peril of loss so deep he could not yet understand.

  Biron continued to explain through his devastated gasps. “You are the first I’ve seen… Kanos, they were put into a state of torment, tortured in mind, morphed in thought, an experiment … the magi were trying to conquer the human spirit. My wife, Abigail, heard them all. They were made to live as… mental slaves for weeks… she did not remember what occurred beyond the final spell. It only broke when she was nearly dead. She said her mind ached… her mind.”

  Kanos heard more as he stood bound in still-locked rage, “ The Onpier… the Onpier… they called themselves the Magus of Cures… they claimed to be the solution to a sickness that took over the town. The town was in a dire state. They could not eat nor drink. It was a ruse. A fake. A spell of suffering hidden behind some kind of curse. They were made into an experiment — those magi want to overtake the land.”

  Kanos began murmur questions that cut the air in a voice he did not recognize. Biron spilled on, “The Onpier under a guise of good intent, to heal —behind closed doors, they sapped the town with dark magic. They made a plague. We have no magic. They had no way to know what was going on.”