Chapter Seventeen
Warrior of Magic
THE PASSING DAYS as well lost numbers to Torius through the extent of his imprisonment. Chained to a cold stony wall by the enchanted, mysterious spider-shackles, he had been the subject of much torture, by magic and by whip, as his keepers attempted the extraction of vital information of his Kingship.
And in between such times of torture were the hours or days of silence, the only sound a soft silky whisper the flaming torches outside his cell made. He was undergoing a round of such silence for a day and a night, where he concluded that perhaps the Wizard Syndirin or his underlings had given up on him and simply were plotting his death, either by bloodshed or by neglected starvation in his cell.
But approaching footsteps told otherwise than that silence, and the struggling sounds of a man being forced along with the possessor of the footsteps. Torius listened intently to the struggler’s grunts and wrestlings. Another prisoner?
His cell gate banged open and through it was shoved the bound and bloody unarmored Goodman! His knight!
Wrestling Goodman to his knees before Torius were two larger brutes, and Torius’ eyes locked with Goodman’s, his being wild with confused anger. His mouth was bound, but his eyes told Torius the tale of his tortures he had been through himself.
Behind those three strode Syndirin, his eyes of pure bitterness, no longer veiled by the arrogance from before. “A liar,” he hissed, “you are, Torius. According to your fellow soldier,” he indicated Goodman, “you are no more an outpost guard than himself!” Torius realized that all of his lies he had been telling Syndirin were found to be such lies by Goodman’s data, whom Torius figured in that instant that the likes of Goodman, brave as he was, would tell more toward the truth, even toward his enemy. Though judging by the beaten state of Goodman, he resisted surrendering sensitive data very well.
Torius threw back his head in a thundering laugh. “Aye, I fooled you,” he smiled at Syndirin with gritted teeth, “and being the fool that you are it wasn’t that difficult!”
Syndirin reached beneath his cloak and pulled a long, fiery dagger, displaying its blade to Torius in his bony fist. “I am no longer fooled, knight,” said Syndirin with the dagger still poised. “This dagger is with a cursed blade, which gives wounds that never heal. Let me show you now!” He thrust the wicked weapon into Goodman’s back, Goodman quavering from the blow. “No!” Torius roared, lunging toward Syndirin, the only thing binding him back from attack were his spider shackles. Syndirin smiled again, a smile filled with evil joy as he brought his dagger again down upon Goodman, another unhealing wound in the back. Goodman gazed helplessly at Torius, Torius returning his own powerless, enraged glare, and he watched Goodman’s eyes roll upward into his head as he fell over dead.
“Goodman!” Torius roared. “Goodman!” the veins were rising to the surface of his neck as he roared his companion’s name one final time. Grief gripped him, and his brow hit the prison floor to avoid the vision of the dead Goodman.
Syndirin laughed mercilessly at his two defeated prisoners before him. Then, turning to the live one, Torius, he said down to him, “Let that be his lesson, knight. Yours is soon to come, and pray that it be quick and painless.” He slid the wicked cursed dagger beneath his robes. “For now, I leave you to contemplate your death.”
—
Alone in his prison, except for his murdered soldier, Goodman, Torius dwelled in his own thoughts. He would take lives and more for a chance to avenge his soldier. His tough sword hand instinctively clenched as he contemplated his great sword in it, himself in contemplation face-to-face with the terrible Syndirin, who, in Torius’ mind, deserved no more now than an unworthy slaying.
He edged nearer to Goodman, near as he could manage with his limiting chains, and managed to reach his body. He pulled it toward him across the ground, and when he was close enough, he lifted him so that he was not completely in the dirt, and lied him straight upon his back, with arms crossed upon his chest in a burial position, rather than the crumpled heap Syndirin let him die in. He, with a torn off piece of rag from what he used to be able to call clothing, wiped blood from Goodman’s mouth and body as best as he could. When he accepted that Goodman’s body was prepared, Torius went down upon one knee – a praying position of knights. He knew no other worthy way in his circumstances of an appropriate funeral for Goodman than a common soldier’s prayer that is made prior to a battle:
“May my will hold strong through loss and try;
“May my heart guide on though more I die;
“May my wit stay clear, my arm strike true;
“May I have what I deserve, and my enemies, too;
“May I sate my honor, despite inner fears;
“May I shed much blood, but my people, only tears.”
He rested a hand upon Goodman’s broad but lifeless chest. He looked steadily into Goodman’s forever-closed eyes. “Goodman! Many a fight you have fought, and these fights were indeed fought well. I never thanked you for so bravely saving my blood back at the castle when we first defended against this new enemy. And so I thank you now.
“Goodman – my knight. I was honored to fight along with you, and feel not worthy of the honor of conducting your funeral. But honorable as you are - and forgive me that you rest before me in the prison cell that I am bound to and may die in – you still, though upon enemy ground and still before enemy threat, have a funeral, indeed.
“I know that you are dead, now, Goodman. Be still and dead in peace. You died at the hands of an enemy, but by my sword, and by my name, Torius, I shall be sure that it is not a death in vain!
“So rest and move on, soul of Goodman, and I myself shall finish the final chapter of your life that is your vengeance.”
Torius broke his gaze with Goodman and bowed his head upon the earth. He let go Goodman’s chest, letting go of Goodman in the way that he said of Goodman to let go in death, and rose upon his feet, the chains pulled taut at his wrists. He gazed upward.
“Any of the gods of fire, war or vengeance that exist, who empower me in battle, smile at my victories and laugh at my defeat – hear me if you deem me so worthy of your notice!
“I fought never at your burden but in your honor, with each passing of such victory or acceptance of such passing defeats!”
The impenetrable shackles upon his wrists seemed to grow hot upon his skin, yet he did not notice. Perhaps his own hateful racing blood, he instantly and silently decided, ignoring the phenomenon. He continued.
“Now again I seek to honor the honorable, and Goodman was such a man! Imprisoned I am, most unjustifiably. Imprisoned I was after a capture by outnumbering enemies! Was that not again deserving of your praise?
“Give me the strength – release me of these shackles! Lend me my sword, and I will repay your gifts with gifts of an enemy’s death and a friend’s honor! I plead of you now!”
The shackles were burning noticeably on his wrists. Their metal edges seemed sharp, cutting into his skin. They were becoming painful – Torius began clawing at them to remove them, and they became searing hot and glowed white – not with heat, but, and Torius felt shock – a true magic?
Torius no longer felt alarmed, but that hot familiar feeling of intense rage – as in the heat of a terrible battle – coursed into his heart, chest, his arms, his fists.
He roared and tugged at his shackles, the chains tremblingly pulled taut. The burning, glowing shackles bore into his wrists, which started bleeding.
There was a brilliant gold flash as the shackle on his right wrist exploded in chunks of red hot cindering metal that sprayed throughout the prison, imbedding as glowing dots into the earthy floor and walls. His right fist flew forward, no longer restrained. He looked upon his cut wrist, no longer bound by the shackle!
With renewed strength, he pulled with both hands upon the remaining glowing and burning shackle. It was as though his rage was burning hotter than the
shackle, it glowing white as it was, and the rage seemed to overshadow the hot pain that the burning shackle produced. With a grunt, the shackle in turn blasted into red-hot chunks of metal, another gold flash of magic’s energy.
With both of his wrists no longer restrained, he stood there in his prison, which was to be a prison no more. By what mysterious power, he was free of the dreadful spider shackles!
Be it the gods, be it some other magic, but magic indeed, he was free. With renewed determination, he glared down at Goodman’s body upon the floor. “Goodman, I will try to come back for your body and a decent burial. But at this time, pray in turn for my capability to fight as I now must!”
He started as he heard a terrible cry that was as piercing as scraping glass, which filled the chamber and hurt his hearing so that he winced. He wheeled around to locate the source of the wretched sound, and saw that it was coming from the metal spiders, which were crying in what seemed to be death or pain, Torius could not tell which, and were writhing in the dirt on their backs with their sturdy metal legs clawing at the air.
He watched them, and as he was about to turn his gaze away, the screeching stopped with a sudden silence. One of the spiders rolled over back upon it’s legs, standing poised a couple paces from Torius, and a thin red fiery line formed upon it’s black metal body. The line widened, and opened up fully into a single bright fiery eye, which rolled around rapidly, looking around the room, but steadied its horrible gaze upon Torius. It cried again it’s painful screech, and scuttled back toward the stone wall which Torius was once bound to. It climbed the wall, and a few feet up from the dirt below, it halted. It shuddered, apparently in effort, and one of its thick, short legs plunged into the rock wall. With another shudder, a second leg, a third leg, and finally the forth of it’s short legs plunged into the wall, leaving his body of a glowing, fierce eye sticking out as if the wall had an eye.
Again a screech, only louder and what could be called full of rage, then the very wall shook, and dust of ages fell like heavy smoke from its many cracks and crevices from the quaking. The part of the wall where the fiery eye was fixed actually jutted out, further and further, and the room began to quiver. With a burst of dust and rock, another form jutted out beside the great bulging form of rock that the eye was centered upon. This thinner, sharply pointed form of rock extended further than it, toward Torius.
Torius began backing away to safety at this point, but continued watching in awe, and with the sound of grinding gravel, the pointed rock form halted, and bent down, slamming it’s poited end onto the ground. It bent further like a leg would when towing a body, hauling the great round form of rock from the prison wall, and likewise there came a second pointed rock leg jutting out from the opposite side, bending and stabbing the dirt ground, which also bent further and hauled the great round rock form further out.
Soon the center rock form pulled way out, and separated from the wall, the two rock legs supporting it. Two more pointed rock legs extended out from what would be the backside and pounded down unto the dirt ground, thereby creating four legs, and the formed creature’s massive stone body was overall the height of Torius.
The small red eye glared dangerously and viscously upon Torius, and from below it a stone-fanged gaping mouth opened in a terrible, ground trembling roar.
Torius turned and fled, but saw the second small metal spider scrambling ominously toward that wall, as he escaped the room into the poorly lit prison hallway. The ground beneath his running feet tremored as the great stone spider pounded heavily after him.
Terror alone would cloud a man’s ability to concentrate, but many a time such blinding terror threatened his wit, in his battles and deeds, and each time he learned to suppress it, each of these times more and then more. It again threatened him now, but he suppressed it enough to think. As he sprinted for his life upon the tremoring ground, teachings of magic raced through his mind. The element – the element of the creature would be Earth. Earth’s elemental weakness was the Poison element. Poison, Poison… he had no casting orbs or scrolls, of any kind.
Through his racing mind and suppressed fears, he saw an open metal door with a small barred window, and instinctively turned into it, supposing it to be a hallway, intending to safely shut the monster away behind him. He jumped through the door and wheeled around, slamming the gate closed, which thankfully locked shut. He heard the great stone spider’s thundering come nearer and nearer, and so Torius turned to run, but only into a wall!
He turned to his left and right – walls! He was in another prison cell! He locked himself in – he was trapped!
But completely unbeknownst to Torius, this was the very cell that his brothers were dwelling in only an hour before.
Mustering the courage he could, he turned to the door, awaiting his enemy, feeling much like trapped bate to a predator.
The horrific spider thundered to a halt in front of the prison cell door, and raised its body to see with its single horrible fiery eye through the cell door. Seeing Torius within, it lowered, and crashed into the metal door, it bending badly, and the spider’s head with the eye and stone-fanged mouth protruding through the small created entry. It roared at its victim, Torius, who looked around the room for a weapon or some form of escape.
Torius, seeing no weapon or escape, turned bravely to face the great stone spider. Before he or the great stone spider could act upon the other, the broken lock at the center of the door gave a brief green glow, and with several soft popping sounds, bright green magic darts shot in succession into the spider’s body. The spider shuddered and growled deeply, and Torius noticed that the spots upon the spider’s stone body where the darts struck turned charcoal black as if burnt, then crumbled away into ashy dust.
The great stone spider jerked heavily against the door, trying to get further in to attack Torius, trying to get out away from the lock’s deadly Poison attacks. But the jerky slamming movement reactivated the lock, which again glowed briefly, and popped several times with its deadly darts, striking the spider!
The spider roared terribly, its fiery eye anxiously wheeling around in its stone head, and struggled strongly in its own created trap, shaking the room so that stirring dust clouded chokingly from the walls, ceiling and floor. The dust cloud so thick that the only visibility Torius had of the happenings before him was the glowing red eye and the flying, glowing green darts, which ceaselessly, rapidly fired upon the stone spider.
With a final, deafening roar, the red eye stopped glowing through the raised dust, and the darts ceased firing.
Torius waited, frozen, watching. The dust settled, revealing the spider before him, his whole body a petrified, ashy gray, and the spider eye unlit, but again iron black. The body shifted, and thudded heavily to the ground, and the still metal spider body fell from its place, clinking softly upon the rocky dirt floor.
Torius approached the defeated spider, the petrified, still, stone body. He pushed it, and his hands sunk into its body, which was now ashy dust. He pulled his hand out, alarmed, and his movement unsettled the rest of the spider body, which then crumbled to the floor in a great pile of such ashy dust.
The monster was destroyed!
Torius concluded that the Poison element that was the magic lock’s defense against picking of its lock had destroyed the Earth- elemental spider-like monster. He picked up the small metal spider body upon the ground and pocketed it.
He climbed through the tortured-door-portal over the ashes, and took in his surroundings. His first instinct was to equip himself with a weapon, and any armor or at least any shield that he could find.
Thinking with the datum that in his own kingdom’s design of prison cells, the prisoner’s possessions were locked up in a closet or cell across from the prison, to be given back to the prisoner should he be freed. He did look, but there was no such cell directly across from any of the prison cells, and he recalled none in front of his own cell. He knew that he would not
get his trusty two-handed sword back in his possession. And he dared not any time to search for it.
He located an open chamber down at the end of the hall, unlit. He took a torch from its place on the wall, and raised it above his head, stepping into the chamber. Glittering promisingly in it’s light were the blades of several weapons!
An array of small, thin, curved swords, that appeared dangerously sharp. But this appealed not to his fighting style as much as the halberd lying beside the unusual swords.
He picked it up in his free hand, feeling the well-balanced weapon – he noted that the craftsmanship of the handle was very poor as compared to the magnificent, dangerously beaked sharp axe-and-spear halberd head, as if an amateur had refit the weapon with a new handle.
Torius recognized the halberd head – it was truly a weapon carried by a Beast Slayer! The Beast Slayers, the magic warriors that headed an army, to fend off the enemy army’s larger battle monsters such as wyverns and slave ogres. It was enchanted variously according to the Beast Slayer’s needs, but yet very powerfully.
His wondering contemplation of the weapon went interrupted as the ground beneath his feet tremmored once briefly – then tremmored a second time, a third time. He turned around and saw a second great stone spider charging down the hallway toward him!
Torius cast the torch aside and, wielding the magic halberd in both fists, he likewise charged toward the monster.
The fiery orange eye of the oncoming spider glared at him, and he glared right back with his own two icy-stone blue eyes.
The stone spider roared wretchedly as it neared Torius, but undaunted, Torius drew the halberd back, poised to thrust with its wave-blade spearhead. “For Goodman!” he shouted.
The halberd head flashed a sinister red aura of light just before Torius thrust it with all of his might upon the monster who with full charging speed was but a pace away.
The glowing halberd’s spearhead landed true and center in the glowing eye, and the great stone spider halted right before Torius upon receiving the blow. It opened its black gaping mouth as if to bite or scream, but it was only silent as the stricken glowing eye flashed from orange to white and exploded in a larger flash.
As Torius stood, still holding the halberd firmly, the eyeless body of the stone spider lifelessly unformed and crumbled back into chunks of loose rock and dirt. The halberd’s red glow faded and disappeared, the halberd head again appearing, although wicked in features, mundane.
Torius wheeled around and, holding the mysterious halberd in one hand with the spearhead lowered and pointed defensively in front of him, he charged down the hallway in his continued escape, ready to lay down any enemy that crossed his path.
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