Caladin’s Climb—Part 20 (Patreon)

Sorry for the delayed release. A lot on my plate these last weeks. I'm struggling to keep up. I made the decision to split this chapter in half. I hope you will understand why, when you see where it ends.

Once again, this chapter (and the 2nd half that will follow) was brought to you by the Tuan'diath Ushwin, who demanded more of Caladin's Climb.

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          The courtyard Caladin found himself in was boxed in on all sides. Soldiers were crowded in with full battle armor, waiting for their chance to pass through the same teleportation circle he had just arrived from. He struck first. With a wave of his hand, a surge of darkness blasted into the line of soldiers nearest him. A half circle of soldiers dropped dead before they even hit the ground.

          One soldier shot of bolt of fire, which Caladin easily negated. The arrows that rained down from the upper landing were much harder for him to deal with. Despite being the most powerful wizard in the world, Caladin still had limitations. Negating magical attacks was much less mana intensive than erasing physical projectiles before they could hit him. He surrounded himself in a sphere of darkness, but knew it couldn’t last forever. Speed would be the key. The faster he killed, the fewer arrows would have time to reach him.

          The enemy soldiers had no defense against lunamancy. The secret to the art had been scrubbed from the history books, leaving no artificers that knew how to make wards against it. He slashed his hands again and again. Soldiers dropped. Spells splashed into his barrier, arrows dissolved. In moments, the soldiers on the ground were down, leaving only the archers firing down from the second floor of the courtyard. Caladin’s mana continued to drop as projectiles peppered into his barrier. He looked up at the roof line and started firing narrow beams of darkness when he saw archers pop their heads up to fire. The beam just erased whatever it touched, leaving holes in their heads and helmets as they dropped. It wasn’t efficient, but considering he didn’t have line-of-sight, it was better than trying to erase the roofline so he could see them. After killing six archers, he realized he was out of mana. All he had left was the bit of mana in his barrier.

          Caladin had a choice to make: keep his barrier up and try to escape the courtyard, or use the mana in it to kill the last handful of archers still taking potshots at him. The decision was easy. They deserved to die. He pulled the mana from his shield into a fist-sized ball of compressed darkness and waited for the last few archers to stick their heads up. It seemed watching their comrades have their brains deleted had made the cowards less aggressive. An archer stood up. Caladin put a hole in his head before he could even pull back on his bow. Another archer stood up. Caladin slashed across his chest, sending a thin line of void at him. When it hit, this caused the man’s upper half to slide off and tumble over the side of the roof. Then the last two archers stood up at the same time. Caladin fired a blast at one, but as he did, the other got a shot off that struck him in the chest. He killed the last archer before assessing the damage.

          An arrow was lodged in his ribcage on his left side. He tried tugging it out, but it was stuck in the bone. He could have used lunamancy to delete it, but the last of his mana was spent. That was no good. It looked like the wound might be fine for a while, but he still had a king to murder. He needed mana to do that. He wouldn’t let something as simple as mana cost him his revenge! He couldn’t. Even if he had to get his hands dirty.

          Caladin kneeled down and pulled a dagger out of a dead soldier’s belt, then plunged it into the man’s neck. He was an eldrin, so white, glowing blood oozed out. It was still warm… and full to bursting with mana. Caladin lowered his mouth and began to drink. The blood tasted bitter and metallic, but it was well worth it for the power it gave him. Some small part of his mind recognized that it wasn’t normal to drink the blood of your enemies, but the much louder part told him it was the only way for him to gather the power he needed to make them pay. He was in the middle of sucking on the neck of his third eldrin when reinforcements arrived through the teleportation circle behind him.

          Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

          A small contingent of soldiers appeared in a group. Their weapons were already drawn, ready for battle.

          “Gods save us! He’s eating them!” one man shouted.

          “Kill him!” another ordered.

          Caladin formed a cord of darkness in his hand, then brought it around like a whip. It cut the soldiers in half before they even cast their first spells. “Annoying,” he said to himself as he wiped the blood from his lips. Reinforcement hitting him from behind while he was trying to assault the main castle would be a problem. He had no way of knowing how many soldiers this Philipus Haedril had at his command; he had to assume they numbered in the thousands. A quick cursory glance of the runes revealed the quickest way to prevent the circle from working. It only took a drop of mana to erase the most critical runes with his lunamancy. With the teleportation circle broken, his enemies would have to work a lot harder to send reinforcements. A skilled enough vocomancer could still get soldiers to the castle, but he hoped by the time that started happening he’d have reached the man in charge. He didn’t care what happened to him after he got his revenge.

          From the courtyard he was in, Caladin could see the main castle rising before him. In the opposite direction, the trees of a forest marked the limits of Philipus Haedril’s domain. There was no city here, only a castle, alone in the woods. He was not yet in the castle, though. It seemed whoever’d designed the security of the place had made sure the teleportation circle was placed in a defendable courtyard outside the main castle. That was smart. Two massive iron doors embedded with wards blocked further entry without the permission of the occupants. Caladin walked up to them and inspected the runework. It was well made, even being fed mana directly from their mana well. But it carried the same weakness everyone seemed to have: complete ignorance of lunamancy.

          Gathering some of the mana he’d gathered from the blood of his enemies, Caladin wrapped his body is a veil of void energy and walked directly into the warded gate. He passed through with only modest resistance, leaving a man-shaped hole in the iron. They weren’t prepared for him. Nobody was prepared for him. Caladin was the master of the void. It was his to command. He had one goal, one driving need pushing him forward: consume my enemies, consume those I hate.

          Through the gate, Caladin entered a sprawling throne room bristling with more combat-ready soldiers. On the far end of the chamber, rising above the room on a dais, sat an eldrin man on an alabaster throne, with a golden crown on his head. That gold was the only color on him. His skin was anemic, his eyes glowed with magic, the long hair drooping past his shoulder was the silvery color of ash, and even the robes he adorned himself in were made of the purest white threads. Caladin couldn’t tell if he was just always dressed so ridiculously, or if the self-stylized king had put on the outfit when he was warned of the attack, to make a better impression. The man raised a forearm up and called out to the room. “Hold, men.” They obeyed. Throughout the crowd of soldiers separating Caladin from the king, weapons were lowered—combat magics extinguished.

          “Philipus Haedril, I presume?” Caladin called across the throne room. “I’ve been looking for you.”

          “Archmage Caladin,” the crowned man replied. Unlike Caladin, he didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard. Some magic of the room projected his voice clearly. “I was hoping we would meet soon, and here you are. I admit, I’d hoped it would be under better circumstances. Are we not allies, you and I?”

          “Allies?” Caladin sputtered. “You are a murderer! I am here to put you down.”

          “You laid siege to my enemy’s lands, then killed the soldiers that came to stop you,” King Philipus explained. “Does that not make us allies? Why do you call me a murderer? I have ordered men into battle against the Usurper Queen, true, but is that really so heinous a crime? I am fighting a war for the fate of my people.”

          “I don’t care about your fucking war!” Caladin screamed. He walked forward, cloaking himself in more darkness. It protected him, destroying everything it touched. His footprints left behind little craters as he walked forward, but at a gesture from the king, the soldiers parted to let him through. It was just as well. It wasn’t like they could actually stop him.

          “If you do not care about this war, then please. Tell me what you care about,” Philipus pleaded. He still looked calm and confident, but Caladin would see how well he maintained that façade when he was standing right before him. The man still thought he could talk his way out of this. Ha!

          “You killed. My family!” Caladin roared. “For your stupid war. You probably don’t even remember. Humans are just irrelevant to you, aren’t they?”

          “That incident?” Philipus asked. “The camp of humans in the woods?”

          “We weren’t hurting anybody,” Caladin said in a dark voice. As he got closer, finally a soldier tried to step in front of him and hold up a hand to stop him. With a flick of his head, Caladin sent a wisp of darkness to kill the man.

          “Please,” Haedril addressed his men. “Nobody attempt to stop him. Nobody else needs to die for me today.”

          Despite the king’s words, his men grew nervous as Caladin got closer to the throne. He was halfway across the chamber now, with no sign of slowing down. Someone thrust an enchanted spear in Caladin’s back. It dissolved. Caladin turned his head and dropped the soldier who had done it.

          “We weren’t involved in your war.” Caladin said. “We were irrelevant.” He flicked a finger at another soldier that tried to blast him with a kinomancy bolt. The man dropped to the ground. “Tell me. Are we still irrelevant? Do you regret killing my family?”

          King Haedril stood up from his throne, concerned creasing his face. Caladin was his death coming and there was nothing he could say to talk his way out of it. The closer he drew, the more evident that fact became. “Yes!” King Philipus said. “It was a mistake.”

          “Say it,” Caladin ordered. “I want to hear you say you regret ordering the death of my family before you die.” He reached the edge of the raised dais and stopped.

          The king dropped to his knees. “I did not order the deaths of your family. It was a mistake. But I will say it, if you command. Just spare my men.”

          “A mistake?” Caladin repeated. He turned his head to the side and saw another bodyguard positively shaking with fear. A wisp of lunamancy snaked out of Caladin’s veil and dropped the soldier to the ground. Permanently. “Oops!” Caladin said, turning back to the king. “My mistake.”

          The king removed his crown and threw it at Caladin’s feet. “Here. Take my crown. Take the kingdom I am still trying to build, just don’t kill any more of my men. They have already given so much for the dream we share. You must understand: I did not order the deaths of your family! When I found out it had happened, I did everything I could to fix it.”

          “Oh?” Caladin asked him. “You fixed it? So you brought the dead back to life? Truly? That must be a neat trick. I’ll have to tell Necro-King Brorn. You see, he seems to think true resurrection is impossible.”

          “N-no, I—”

          “Explain it to me then!” Caladin roared. “What did you actually do?”

          “I executed the men responsible,” the king said. “I took in the survivors. I treated them with every respect. It was a mistake! Just a foolish colonel that thought witnesses to our advance outpost would be too much of a security risk to be allowed to live. I never ordered him to kill witnesses! I would never!”

          “You can’t just—” Caladin stopped. The words died in his throat. This wasn’t what the evil king was supposed to say. He was supposed to curse Caladin’s name and say he was glad his family was dead and that his only regret was he couldn’t kill him, too. Not… apologize! “Is this really the truth?”

          “Yes!” the king answered, anxiety straining his words. “The events of that day have haunted me for months. I always considered myself to be better than my brother. I vowed that when he died, I would show our people what life could be not living under a tyrant. But… war is messy. It is brutal. And when mistakes happen, sometimes there is no true way to make them right. This slaughter happened on my watch. I am the only one that should pay the price.” Tears glimmered in the man’s glowing white eyes.

          Caladin wanted more than anything to hold on to his anger and rage, but in the face of that sincerity it fled from him as surely as smoke from a candle. Grasping for it did nothing. He was a fool. There was no evil king. There was no bloody vengeance. There was just a mistake that had left broken men on both sides. Caladin was no less hurt by this mistake than the very king he’d sought to punish for it. Looking into the man’s eyes, it was impossible to not see that. He reached up and pulled the silver circlet from his head. He didn’t need it anymore.

          The consequences of what Caladin had just done came flooding back into him. He had killed people. So many people! And for what? What had they done to deserve death? Caladin collapsed to his knees. The blood he’d drank came back up. He gasped and heaved as it vomited out of him into a pile on the chamber’s floor. Exhausted, he collapsed into a puddle of his own filth. As he did, the arrow still wedged firmly in his ribcage was pushed into him. With a gasp, he surrendered to oblivion.

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