The Tower and the Test
A Fantasy Short Story
I.
Antev woke. It was a waking without shock and without the grogginess of the tired. He woke with the jolt of consciousness, but his body did not move under the shock. He tried to move, but found his arms bound, hanging above his head, fixed in place by leather and chain. His wrists ached as the braces about them cut in with the pressure of Antev's weight. His feet dangled inches above the stone floor under him. He looked about his surroundings.
There was no light, save for a single candle sitting in the center of the room and a trickle gleaming down from a hole in the ceiling to Antev's left. The left was obscured by something diffusing the light, adding an even dimmer cast to what must be a basement or dungeon. Dank air filled Antev's nostrils, carrying the must and near-death of the rotting world beneath the world. Antev smiled to himself with the scent. Must meant water. Water was life, and he'd gone so far without it as he'd crossed the Shrinking Desert. To his right, the light from above dimmed, coalescing about shapes in the corner. Hanging shapes, but withered. Dead. Like he would be if he did nothing.
Antev let go of his smile and looked at his bindings. He never did nothing.
Iron bolts through stone, held onto bent bars of metal. Leather, thick and worn, but solid, hung through the metal bars above Antev and reached down to his wrists, cutting into them with the sharp slice of hours weighted upon that single point. He couldn't feel his hands unless he shifted his weight onto one arm more than the other.
"You're awake!" came a tiny voice. Antev's attention was ripped from his predicament and searched for the source of the voice. With a blink, the flame of the candle sitting before him winked and left the wick where it had sat. The orange flicker danced through the darkness and up out towards the light coming from Antev’s left.
Now he was on a timetable. He had never seen such magic as that of a speaking flame, moving on its own, but he was in darkness now. His captor knew he was awake. He had to move.
Mustering the strength that remained in his arms, pooled away from his dead hands, he pulled himself up. His dead hands screamed with pain, sharp and prickling. It was as if a thousand knifepoints hit his fingers, like the dancing sand atop a limb that falls asleep magnified a thousandfold with pain. Antev pulled, working his best to ignore the pain from dehydrated and tired muscles. Reaching an apex of his pull up, he pulled forth his right leg and hooked it through his left arm, resting his weight on the new link made with his knee resting atop elbow. His left arm screamed at supporting most Antev’s bulk, but his right arm rejoiced, feeling rushing back into the starved hand on the other end of the leather strap as the pressure of his weight was released.
The leather holding his right hand was slackened and Antev grasped the strap with his hand.
"What are you doing over there?" came a voice from the darkness of the dungeon. The emaciated figure Antev saw mustn't have been dead yet. "The flame is gone and the sorcerer comes now! What are you doing?" cried the voice. It sounded old, weak, and tired. Antev ignored it as he worked.
The leather was strong, fused about his wrist rather than held with a buckle. It was as thick across as three of Antev's fingers, though less dense than one. He saw the cracks of age in the leather. Despite that age though, the keeper of the dungeon had conditioned it. He put the leather to his teeth, gnawing to create a weak point, a breakage, but to no avail. His left hand had ceased screaming with pain and Antev knew that only meant time was running short for the extremity. He looked again at the bolted steel above.
"What are you doing?" cried the tired voice in the darkness. "Be still. The sorcerer comes to drain your life. He won't drain so much if you are weak!"
"Quiet man!" shouted Antev. His voice rang out in the small space of the musty dungeon. He had not meant to shout, but felt justified as he hung in the air. The metal holding the leather straps wasn't burnished. It held burrs. Antev began swinging his right arm and watched as the metal affixing it to the ceiling shaved off dandruff of leather.
It wouldn't be enough. The candle flame had gone to warn this sorcerer that kept Antev, and there would be no time to slowly break the leather. But if it was already weakened through use?
Antev did that which he hated most of all: he hoped. He hoped this plan would work.
Extending his right arm out and towards the ceiling so that the leather was at its most slackened, Antev hoped that his hastily formed plan would work. He kicked out his free leg, unhooking the other from his left arm as he raised his body up, and fell, pushing all of his weight onto his right arm. He hoped and was given the worst reward for such a frivolous emotion that one can get. The reward that makes one hope again. The reward that starts the addiction.
Antev fell, full glorious bulk pulling against the leather strap affixed to his right hand.
The leather snapped against the bar on the ceiling.
Antev fell, lopsided and flipping over himself as he landed, half freed, against the floor. His shoulder did not scream as the ball joint of his left arm popped out of the socket. It whispered a burning pain of the sort that is soon to come, but not here yet.
"Etish above," cried out the old man in the darkness.
Antev held in the yawp of pain that wished to outpour from his lungs as he stood on the ground. Without thought, he straightened his left side as well he could and pulled his body away from his left arm, still held by the leather strap on the ceiling. A crack signaled his joint aligning and Antev thrust his body forward, socketing his shoulder once more.
There was no whisper of pain this time.
Antev screamed with rage as pain flooded through his left side.
"You've been here. What lay about the floor? Knives, stones, edges?" said Antev through the pain.
"What?" asked the old man.
"Useless," said Antev, spotting the candle, yet sitting unlit in the center of the room. With one arm free, Antev worked himself out, stretching arm and rope as he outstretched his right leg, hooking his foot - unshod - about the foot of the small candelabra and pulled it towards him. The thick yellow wax of the candle sat atop a bronze well. A bronze well with enough of an edge for the leather.
Antev slashed against the leather strap on his left arm and continued until he was free, straps of leather still bound about each wrist.
"You did it!" cried the old man. "Come, help me free, before the sorcerer comes."
Antev ran to the old man and with a quick slash of the bronze metal well, freed one of his arms. He handed the man the candle well. he could figure out how to free his other arm. A quick look at the man and the surroundings enshrouded in darkness of the corner revealed the figure who spoke to him was not actually that old. Emaciated, yes, his skin darkened with grime about his unclothed body. His body looked so worn, but his eyes held a drive to them, an intelligence and anger. Antev could use this man once freed. About them hung two other bodies. Corpses, dry and vacant as if their very life had been sucked away through a straw. On the floor lay loose stones and remnants of the clothing that all the men must have worn, tossed in a pile in the corner, rotting in the dank must of the place. Antev grabbed a stone the size of his fist with his right hand and felt its weight. Not much of a weapon, but something. His left hand and arm were both beaten and useless. They would do nothing in the upcoming struggle.
"You will free yourself and aid me?" he asked the man, yet hanging by one arm.
"Yes, yes!" said the man as he struggled to slice through the leather holding him. "But watch ahead for the sorcerer!" cried the man as Antev ran towards the light coming from above.
A stone stairwell filled the far corner of the room. Antev crept up it, silently, bare feet on stone. A cloth draped over the opening atop the stairs, diffusing the light. Antev weighed his options and knew stealth would not last long. That damned candle flame saw to that.
He thrust open the cloth with his lame left arm, fist clutching the stone high, ready to strike.
He froze.
In a room fixed with small comforts of a living space: a bed, a cook space, even a bookshelf half filled, stood a boy.
Zeph.
Antev thought of his son, taken from him. But this boy, though he appeared similar in age, was not his son.
"Oh gods about, you're free," said the boy.
"What is this? Where is the sorcerer?" said Antev, entering the room.
"You've met me, you brute," came a voice behind Antev.
The man he'd freed.
Antev turned and saw the man, yet thin, but with eyes full of energy and menace. He wore a thin robe of shadows, but still his skin was darkened about his body. Antev could see the stains, like grey tendrils, up the man's neck and about his wrists. Not the stains of grime, but those of magic.
"This one is a strong one, Imla of Nowhere," said the sorcerer, looking at the boy. "I shall test you both."
With a flicker of magic that warped the air, the man disappeared in a strike of shadowlight.
Antev felt the world about him warp and change, but their room remained the same.
He looked at the boy, still with him.
"What is this?"
"You escaped his dungeon and now you must survive the sorcerer's test."
II.
Antev looked about the room he had entered as the boy rifled through a stone crate at the foot of his mattress, sitting on the floor.
He had moved away from the doorway where the man - the sorcerer - had come from, and put his back to a wall, looking about the room. It was small, but obviously a domicile. There were two bowls of gruel, one far runnier than the other, sitting next to the cookstove. The scent of burning oil still hung in the air. On the bookshelf lay a few tomes and scrolls, but it was far from full. Papers were open on a sheet of metal that the boy must use as a table while sitting on his bed, for it was strewn aside carefully atop the rough mattress.
"Eat if you must," said the boy, now filling a satchel with items from the stone crate. "Though leave my bowl, I need food too."
Antev went to the two bowls and began eating the runnier of the two. There were fruits atop the counter and he took a bite of one, foreign to him, but quite tasty.
"Where did you find me?" he said. The boy - gods he reminded Antev of Zeph, his son - didn't look up.
"I don't know. I only know I was told to feed you regularly. That's why your bowl was ready there. I didn't expect you to free yourself before your first meal, though!" The boy, Imla was his name. Antev looked at him now. There was a gleam in his eyes, an excitement, that of a boy seeing what a man could become.
"And what is this test?" said Antev, finishing his bowl and looking about the room now for supplies. He still stood unclothed, with leather straps yet about his wrists.
"We must reach the top of the tower," said Imla. "That is all I know." he grabbed the wool blanket off of his bed, shifting the metal tray with his writings to the side and handed it to Antev. "This is the closest thing I have to something that will fit you."
Antev grunted a thanks and shrouded himself in the blanket like a robe. His right arm was free, but he covered his left to keep the makeshift covering on him, loosely draping the cloth over the deadened shoulder. It wouldn’t stay long, but it would do. He could cover his left arm. It would be of no use, anyway.
The boy looked almost done packing, so Antev hastened about the room. He grabbed the striker from the kitchen, which started the oilfires used to cook. The bowls and spoons were carved of stone and useless to him, so he ignored them.
"What can you tell me of this sorcerer who keeps you?" He asked. Antev weighed the pot and lid, both metal, in his hand before discarding them and going to the metal plate atop the bed.
"He keeps those slaves below to feed his magic. There is a town beneath this tower which requests magics done of him for payment and thus he lives. I know not why he took you, but I was to feed you better than the others were. You were special."
"You are his servant?"
Both man and boy stopped as a candle flame whipped through the center of the room.
"It begins!" screamed the flame, a joyful cry as if the fire were excited.
"Oh no," said Imla.
Flames ruptured out of the open stairway as the candle flame flew below them.
"The fire will follow us!" cried Imla.
"What knife do you have for the fruits and your food?" called Antev as he brushed the papers off of the metal plate from the boy’s bed and took it under his robed arm.
"Only a paring one. It sits in the pantry."
The flames took the cloth curtain, which blocked the stairwell to the basement dungeon, and entered the room.
"We must go," said Antev. His massive figure looked comical, robed in the faded blue blanket of a boy with a metal tray in his left arm, obscured by the robe, and a paring knife held in his right hand.
"My work though," said Imla as he looked in horror at the books and papers about his room, messed up further by Antev's search.
"Shant survive," said Antev as he took the boy under his arm. Gods, he seemed so much like his own son. His heart wished to break further, but the flames licked at the pairs’ backs and as the boy grabbed his satchel, Antev pulled them towards the latter up.
They climbed into the sorcerer's test as flames took the room beneath them.
III.
They came to an impossible room.
Imla's basement home above the dungeon had held no windows, lit only by candles and lamps. It was dim, but not compared to the darkness of the dungeon Antev woke in.
It was as dark as the night compared to the brightness of the room that they found themselves in now.
Colored glass windows, each a different shade and huge, some impossible and of colors that Antev had never once witnessed in nature, let in light from all corners of the room.
The fire of the room below had not yet reached them, but smoke rose from the hole in the ground that they appeared from. It was a magical fire and would reach them soon enough.
"What know you of magic, boy?"
"In this room? Color must be the key. I've seen it when the sorcerer casts his magics. There is a color to sorcery."
"You know well, Imla of Nowhere," came a booming ethereal voice without source. It seemed to come from the walls themselves. It was that of the man from the dungeon. The sorcerer.
"I must make this challenge for the both of you."
With the cessation of the voice, shadows moved amongst the falling rays of colored light. They flickered and coalesced into existence, the opposite of the sorcerer's disappearing act. It was as shadow met light that they appeared.
Imla had been right. There was a color to it, thought Antev.
He could not think much more as he saw what the figures were. Masses of shadow and chitin, they appeared to be men constructed of the same shells of the roaches that crossed the shrinking desert.
"Solve the puzzle of the colors," said Antev as he walked between the boy and the creatures. There were four of them, smaller than him, but not small. They appeared unarmed, but he could not know what that chitinous shell could do. They had simply appeared from nothing. All assumptions disappeared with Magic's involvement.
Antev smiled.
There was no hope here. One man against for monsters? Impossible.
Just how he liked it.
Imla set down his satchel and removed tools Antev had never seen before. Antev ignored that. He got to work.
The first of the monsters seemed appalled that a man would rush it.
Its death was quick.
With a shove of his left shoulder as Antev tackled into the chitinous beast, he made it double forward. Its armor was like that of the roaches in the desert. It was segmented. It had gaps, normally covered by overlapping sections. Those didn't overlap when you doubled over. Antev thrust the paring knife into the neck of the folded monster. Thrice his blade struck in quick succession before Antev continued forward, momentum carrying him as the beast dropped to the ground. It did not disappear. These were not constructs of magic, but were more real.
The other three monsters watched him now. Warily, they circled closer to him, unsure of what he would do next. Antev risked a glance to the boy, working with metal trinkets as an orb of color reflected from the windows to the trinkets and onto the floor. It didn't match the color of the light from the window, but was something new, something closer to that shadowlight Antev had seen come from the sorcerer.
At his glance, though, the monsters remembered the warrior was not alone in the room. With a click, they spoke, and one rushed to Antev as the other two turned to the boy.
"Father of giants," swore Antev under his breath before shouting at the boy to move. The child hadn't seen what happened about him, so focused on the lights. So much like Zeph...
Antev ignored his memories and pushed into the second monster, the one coming towards him. Shoulder down as he had with the first.
It did not know Antev fought without hope.
The creature held strong against Antev's shove, having seen what had befallen its fellow. Antev knew it would not work again. That had not been his goal.
He rolled away from the monster. Imla's hands were raised useless and empty as the other two monsters approached him. Fear filled the boy’s eyes.
Rage filled Antev's.
He burst forth with a speed uncomfortable in his worn and bare feet. He shoved into the first of the pair, offsetting its gait and pushing it into the other monster. The boy's eyes brightened with surprise. Antev fell with the pair, all three striking the floor with a stony crash. Antev raised his knife and brought it down on the hard surface of the monster, missing a gap in its armor, but he didn't get another strike as the monster hit the blade from his hand. Antev sprung up, pushing with his able arm against the monster and gaining purchase with his feet once more. He looked to the knife and saw the third monster, the one he'd pushed, back on its feet. His blade in its hand.
Then he saw something he didn't expect.
The monster seemed to shake with a jolt of fear. He turned and saw the candle flame had followed them. It burst forth from the boy's room below and began creeping into the room where they now stood.
"Oil, boy!" shouted Antev, plan forming in his mind before he consciously thought of it.
"What?"
"In that satchel of tools and poultices you have no oil?"
Imla reached down into the satchel and produced a bottle far smaller than Antev would have liked to see. "Here!" he cried, throwing it to the man.
Antev caught it with his right arm and tossed his left arm, still weak and broken at the shoulder, dropping his robe to the ground before shattering the bottle of oil onto the cloth.
He grabbed the bundle of the woolen blanket and ran towards the two monsters he had tackled and had disarmed him. They braced themselves for attack, but Antev didn't attack. He tackled them once more, blunt and brutish. It still worked. He took the pair to the ground as he stretched the blanket about them. They struggled against his weight but he was able to hold them somewhat as he fumbled with his lame left arm. Antev fumbled to produce the flint striker.
He struggled, grappling with the robed beasts as he struck the metal and flint tool, dropping sparks on the blanket. The first sparks landed without fanfare, but the second struck. Immediately, Antev heard the most wretched of cries from beneath him. He was thrown as the beast gave their last struggle for survival, landing on his broken shoulder and feeling the pain spike through his entire body.
Antev watched as the monsters stood, removing the burning blanket to no avail as their chitin and underbellies had already ignited from the flames. They ran and screamed and died without a mercy from water or stone or cover about them. One ran into the candle fire which was moving ever closer.
One remained.
Antev stood, turning with pain to see that it held Imla in his arms, knife to the boy’s throat.
"Damn you, said Antev, rising while the monster watched. It had no eyes to be seen, but Antev knew it locked sight with him now.
"There is no fight with the boy," he said. "Release him and I will let you live.”
Before the beast could create a response, the entirety of it exploded outward in green and brown gore. The boy dropped to his feet.
There was a miasma of shadowlight about his figure, slowly fading into the ether of the world beyond.
"You're not his slave," said Antev.
"Closer to acolyte," replied the boy. His confidence disappeared, though, as his eyes widened to see the candle fire behind them.
"To be discussed, then," said Antev as he saw the flames. "The test is to reach the top of the tower, right? Each floor containing a challenge such as this?" He gestured about them.
"I believe so," said the little sorcerer.
"Then grab your satchel."
The boy looked surprised, but did as he was told. He collected his tools and grabbed his satchel before turning to Antev. "Wait,” he said and Antev almost didn't stop.
The boy began to cast magic then, light and darkness pouring out from his skin into the strange shadowlight that seemed to form about such magics. He did not look as if he struggled but there was a battle in the young man's eyes as he worked the magic.
"What are you doing?" said Antev. The boy's magic stopped then, light fading.
He looked down to see a small piece of cloth, appearing to be that same cloth as the blanket turned robe turned fire, on the ground, though this was sewn.
"Before we do whatever you have planned, can you please put on some pants?" said Imla.
Antev looked back at the encroaching flames as he put on the pants the boy had apparated. They fit well. He was surprised there was no darker feeling to wearing something constructed so, but then there had been no such feeling in the monsters.
"Ready?" he said, turning to Imla.
"For what?"
Antev grabbed the boy in his arms and they jumped forth through the closest of the colored windows.
IV.
Below them, flames roared about the tower.
"Climb to my back!" said Antev. He held onto the edge of the stone window frame with his good right arm. It ached with the effort. He could deal with that.
"What are you doing, though?" said Imla as he struggled about the grown man, grabbing a hold of his shoulders and trying not to choke him.
"Reaching the top of the tower," said Antev.
With the boy fastened as well as he could be, Antev threw his left arm upward to grab the stone wall aside the window.
His hand struck stone without grabbing and his shoulder howled. Pain sliced through his whole left side and he almost lost purchase with his right hand. Imla yelled and Antev grunted as he slowed their near-fall with his feet, toes wedged between grouted stones of the tower.
"What was that?" yelled Imla.
"You're close to my ear," said Antev.
"What?"
"No need to shout. You're close to my ear."
There was a pause before Imla spoke again, voice quieter. "What was that? I thought you said we'd climb."
"My shoulder is broken and my hand is yet dead from the bondage of your master."
"Then why did you jump and put us here?"
"Because your master put me in his dungeon. Why do you take his test, boy?"
Imla was silent at that. He still reminded Antev so much of Zeph.
"I'm sorry, boy," said Antev, quiet. "How can you solve this test?”
"It’s different than that your master planned, but a test it still is."
"Give me a moment," said Imla. Antev felt him shift about on his back and heard the rummaging noises of the boy's satchel.
The first licks of flame touched the stone beneath Antev's feet.
"You have a thought?" said Antev. He kept his voice cool despite the fire approaching his feet. The stones began to make small cracking noises as the heat worked into them.
"Mmmworkingonit," said Imla.
"Are you eating?"
"Ah," said the boy with a swallow. "Yes, this is going to take a bit about of me." He took another bite.
Flames touched the souls of Antev's feet.
"Can you hurry with it?"
"Trying not to die here."
"And me?"
"Quite true. I need you to be ready to jump upwards in a moment. Can you catch us from a fall again?"
"What is your plan?"
"Jump with the wind," said the boy. "Sorry, the flames may hurt a bit."
"Boy!"
"Jump!"
Antev felt a warmth from the boy's body still hanging on his back. Warm though, not hot. It was a comfortable heat on the edge of discomfort, as if the embers of a fire were placed under a tub where he lay. Then the wind came.
Rushing up from under his feet, Antev felt a gust that he never thought he'd feel outside the gales atop the peaks of the Weeping Mountains.
He listened to the boy, throwing himself up with all the strength left in his burned feet, and the wind carried them upward.
Antev felt the flames carried by the wind, fed by the air. They engulfed his legs, but were less full than they had been in the tower’s edge, fed naturally and not pushed by the gale.
Then it slowed and he reached out to the stone walls.
It came again.
Hope.
Hope that his hands would grab the walls, that his feet would find purchase between the gaps of the stacked stone walls.
Hope that he would find his son.
Avenge his pain.
Survive.
That bastard, hope. It filled him, and he hated it.
But his hand grabbed stone and his feet found purchase. The flames fell as the gust left them empty and away from the candle that was their magical source.
Everything in Antev's body screamed now.
But the bastard was right this time.
His body held. Hope fulfilled.
"Etish above," said the boy. "That worked!" he shouted.
Antev winced, but couldn’t help but to smile.
It had worked.
Now where was a window?
"A few more of these and we’ll be at the top. I'm glad I packed some food, that almost took it all out of me."
"A few more?" said Antev. "I don't think my body can take that, boy."
"You're kidding."
Antev was already looking all about for a window or opening. Anything.
He felt his muscles begin to twitch and quake. His right hand could only hold so long on its own before it joined the grave of the left.
This was his reward for hope.
Antev shifted his weight and lifted his dead left arm. There were gaps in the stones and if he could... yes, he found a gap wide enough for his hand, but slimmer than his fist. Jamming the numb hand into the gap, he clenched it tight and pulled on the arm. The wall here was solid despite the gap and though his shoulder screamed, his arm held. He let up, pulling his body closer to the wall.
"Prepare your gust again, boy. I'll see what I can do to toss you with it."
"What? I can't go alone!"
"This test was for you, anyway. You can get up there and you can handle whatever the sorcerer throws at you without me. I only made it harder for you."
Imla seemed without words, hanging on Antev's back.
"Damn that choice. Give me a second."
"Prepare the wind, boy! I don't know how long I can hold you and the fire won't stay below us long."
"I can do a whole lot more than pull the wind, old man."
Antev saw the boy's arm then, outstretched past his head, touching a hand to the stone wall.
"Is your grip good there?"
"Yes."
"Good. Try not to freak out and let go."
Antev felt it again. The warmth of whatever caused the sorcerery, emanating from the boy. Then, no, this was much more than the warmth from before.
"Boy?"
The warmth seemed to be scorching through the very stone wall where the boy's hand touched. Before Antev's eyes, he saw the stone melt. Liquid rock dripped a syrupy glob down past his feet towards the fire below. That heat was approaching, too.
"Imla, what is this?"
Imla spoke through gritted teeth, voice quiet with effort. "Shut up, old man, and let me work."
Antev watched as the stone melted before him, grey walls turning golden orange before falling away before him. His left arm, locked in place, was growing weaker by the moment, and his right could only do so much to compensate.
"If you're going to work, work faster." Said Antev, but there was a smile on his face. There was something astounding about the magic. It horrified him on principle, but there was something so... undiscovered about it. So unimaginable. It reminded him why he had begun travels. At least his travels before he met Sephrinne.
"I think this is large enough," he said and saw the boy's hand recede backwards, away from the stone. But the boy didn't stop there. Antev felt the small body, weak and falling.
“Son!" He cried, turning his body and letting go of the wall with his right hand to catch the boy before he fell. He was unconscious, a grey stain on his hand where the magic had emanated, slowly fading away.
With a heft, Antev hoisted the boy up with his right arm. He heard a crack before he felt it, and with a rush, he lifted the boy over his head and into the gap in the stone that the magic had melted. As the boy landed on the floor before them with a thud, Antev felt his shoulder give out once more. A crack and a scream. Antev fell, body tearing away from his arm as bone failed and muscle was all that was left to carry his weight. On instinct, he brought his right hand down on the hole in the wall, saving his arm and his life.
The scream did not cease as Antev pulled upwards, the last of whatever energy he had within him raging away with the effort of this final pull up into the tower. He smiled through the scream, laughing at himself. He’d called the boy son, hadn’t he? Imla reminded him so much of Zeph.
He rolled over onto the stone floor beside the boy, and finally, the scream within him paused.
"Well done, stranger," said a voice. The man from the dungeon. The sorcerer.
Antev struggled to stand, but he did stand to meet the eyes of his captor.
“Not quite the top, but I could almost be bidden to say that you passed the test," said the sorcerer. He looked at Imla, unconscious on the floor. "Him, on the other hand. I'll just have to work him harder. This test wasn't meant to hurt him. Yet here he is: overdrawn, unconscious. Weak."
Antev felt a stab. It was if this man insulted his son. Zeph. gods above what he would do for his own son.
"Why me?"
"You, Antev? Oh, don't look so shocked that I know your name, you brute. Sephrinne paid me to contain you, of course. Your little chase has gotten her quite uncomfortable. She's worried you'll try to steal her son from her."
The sorcerer's grin made Antev's blood burn hotter than the melting stone.
"You-"
"Me, what? What are you going to do to me, Antev? You're quite broken. I think Sephrinne has gotten more than her money's worth out of our exchange."
Sephrinne. Antev shook, though whether with anger or exhaustion, he did not know. He looked down at the boy, Imla, unconscious on the ground.
With effort, Antev kneeled down, placing his knee on the boy's throat.
"What are you doing?"
"Acolytes can't be easy to come by, are they?" Antev said with Kirad's own grin, evil in his eyes. An honest evil.
"You wouldn't dare."
"You have knowledge of my son and my wife. You don't know what I would do."
The sorcerer thought then. Antev thought he saw true fear crack through for a second, past the confident facade the man held.
Magic shadowlight coalesced around the man, and Antev almost committed to the atrocity he had proposed.
"We shall go then. Enjoy your hunt. Sephrinne is more than a few steps ahead of you, but think how she must feel, hiring a stained man's sorcery?"
The man laughed even as he faded away. Antev felt Imla fade too beneath his grasp. Soon both had disappeared, the tower beginning to disappear with them.
Antev looked about with horror, but was gifted another one of the horrendous prizes of his life. He survived. As the tower disappeared, he landed gently on the ground where it must have once stood. Hope rewarded. Survival once more. He stood with a struggle, bare feet tired after climbing the walls of the tower. As he did, there was a thud behind him. Turning, Antev smiled a true grin. A smile of his own, not evil or calculated, one of joy. his hammer, along with his clothing and bag, fell from where they must have been stored in the tower upon his kidnapping.
A warhammer belonged in his hands, broken as they were.
Antev's smile continued as he turned to face the town beyond the foot of the tower. A town that would abide a sorcerer needed imposition.
He took a step forward and felt the weight of it all on his broken body.
Maybe an imposition could wait. He could fix himself before the town.
Antev walked forward to find a place to rest. For now.
Thanks for giving that a read! It was a ton of fun stretching my pulpier writing muscles and really dive into a larger than life fantasy adventure. My favorite beta-read review was: “This is exactly the kind of thing we’d fail at pulling off in a D&D session.”
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Love ya!
Max