The Sorcerer's Ring (Book 1) (8 page)

She could barely take in his features when he reached forward and wiped a strange, gooey substance onto the middle of her forehead. It burned on contact and Remi shouted in pain. Kace looked up to see the intruder cock back his fist and punch him square in the face. Kace went flying backwards into Remi’s bed. The intruder reached out for Remi’s throat when a blazing hot blade nearly stabbed his stomach. He moved to the side just as the tip cut into his suit’s fabric and then he turned around and ran down the hall.

“Are you okay?” Olivia asked her as she stared at Remi’s forehead. “Geez, that looks bad.”

“It feels terrible,” Remi said, looking back at the unconscious Kace. “But we don’t have time for this. We can’t let him escape.” Remi began running down the hall, still in her thin clothes as she prepared to unsheathe her eidolon. Olivia followed reluctantly, warming up her blade.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” she asked as they sprinted down the stairs.

“No,” Remi replied, bursting through the inn door. “But whatever happens, you take care of you. Don’t let me hold you back. Even if I faint, you keep up the chase.”

“I’m not going to leave you behind,” she said as they saw the mysterious man running down the street to the right.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Remi said, giving her friend a wink. Olivia gave her a nod and then they both followed the lanky man. Remi grit her teeth as she tried to wipe the strange substance from her forehead. All it did was burn the tips of her fingers. She glanced at it for a second. It looked like a gel, but it had traces of little red squares inside.

What the heck was it? And why had the stranger marked her with it?

“He’s fast!” Olivia shouted as they weaved through the couples on the street. Each pair they passed were now giving them the attention they thought they were going to get earlier. Eyes went wide. Jaws dropped. Fingers started pointing. Shouts telling them to stop running or asking them what was happening. Olivia and Remi ignored them all as they kept their focus on the suited man in front of them, making wide strides and dodging the people he came across with such ease it was like they were stationary.

“What if this is a trap?” Olivia asked aloud as Remi took a deep breath and ignored the ache in her legs. At least she wasn’t cold anymore with all the running she was doing.

“I hope not,” she said. “But it could be. What are we going to do about it? Stop chasing?”

“No,” Olivia said adamantly. “That’s the one thing I don’t want.”

“He went that way!” Remi shouted as she took a quick right turn and followed him to what appeared to be a dead end. The stranger came to a halt as he faced the gigantic brick wall before him, still dripping with clay and mud.

“Looks fresh!” Olivia shouted as he turned to face them. “Didn’t know that was there, did you?”

“Looks trapped,” Remi replied, staying a few feet behind Olivia. She tried to slow her breath as Olivia’s blade now glowed a fiery red, lighting up the alleyway. The stranger squinted his eyes as he reached down and unbuttoned his suit. He whipped his arms to the left and right respectively and then shook them out, preparing for the battle before him.

“We don’t have to fight,” Olivia said, gripping her sword tight. “We just want to know what’s going on.”

“What did you do to me?” Remi asked, and he turned his attention solely to her.

His lips barely parted. “You’ve been marked,” he replied, his nasally voice bouncing off the walls.

“What does that mean?” Olivia demanded.

“It means you’re fair game,” he said. “Cimmerian can kill you without starting a war with Paragon. Don’t you know what marks are?”

“Obviously not!” Olivia yelled. “Why don’t you tell us?”

“No,” he scoffed. “No, I’ll choose to stay silent. You’ve been marked. There’s no use educating the dead.”

“Then we’ll have to force the information out of you.”

“You can’t do that. I’m not marked. That means you can’t touch me.”

“We’re not from Paragon.”

“It doesn’t matter. Cimmerian won’t believe that. Now let me through. I did my job. It was nothing personal.”

“Who told you to mark Remi?”

“I choose not to say. Now let me go before I choose to report this to my superiors.”

“You can’t do that if we won’t let you leave.”

He sighed and relaxed his arms. “Fine. We’ll do this your way…but my superiors won’t like this.” He sprinted forward with his arms straight behind him and Olivia stepped up to swing at him, but before she could even cock back her arm, he whipped both of his arms at her head, slapping her twice and knocking her off balance. She stumbled to the side and her head hit the brick wall. The stranger tried to follow up with a kick to her face but Remi grabbed his ankle at the last second.

He glared at her as her white robes materialized out of thin air and over her body. Her grip instantly got stronger as she felt a surge of energy coursing through her veins.

“You won’t hurt her anymore,” she growled as she threw him back into the alley. He fell onto his back and then rolled backwards to his feet. He studied Remi’s transformed state carefully as she examined her friend’s wounds. Olivia waved Remi away and she obeyed. Remi walked to the center of the alley and faced her enemy. A white hood formed around her head, covering her eyes. She clenched her fists.

“So you are dangerous,” the stranger replied. “That’s why you’re marked. You can transform like the Sages…I thought you said you weren’t from Paragon.”

“I’m not. I was born on Terra.”

A look of horror went over his face. “No…that’s impossible! Since the worlds became one…there has been no more Sages. No one can release their eidolons in the new atmosphere, let alone transform. Only the Deja Sages can still do it.”

“Apparently, that’s not true.”

“Then I no longer want to leave this alley,” he said firmly, standing slowly to his feet. “I must kill you myself. Since you are marked, I’m allowed…and honestly…I will be revered once they find out about you. You shouldn’t have told me your secret. Once the world knows, you will never be safe. Never.”

Remi felt her body shudder.

No! her mind went off in alarm, I’ve been talking for too long in my transformed state! I don’t have too much time left.

“Let’s make this quick,” she said aloud, and the stranger grit his teeth, preparing for the worst. Remi made the first move, her Falchion eidolon erupting from her hand so violently that it lit up the entire alley in a flash of light. The stranger was momentarily blinded and Remi was able to slash him across the chest. Unfortunately, it was a shallow cut, and the stranger was able to regain his footing after being knocked back from the blow.

He punched Remi in the face so fast that she barely had time to recover when a second punch connected. She swung her eidolon but he stepped back and it narrowly missed his throat. She continued thrusting but he was dodging it easily and after each miss, he made sure to hit her again, no matter how weak the hit was. He wasn’t just breaking down her body, but her mind, letting her know that he was the superior fighter in every way.

She grunted and tried to punch him with her free hand but all he did was grab it. She tried to stab him but he leapt over the thrust at the last second and kicked her in the jaw. He let go of her fist as she went flying into the brick wall.

Her vision got blurry as Olivia came to her aid. The stranger wasn’t impressed with her attacks. Olivia was even slower than Remi was, and so he easily dispatched her with a few well-placed kicks to the head. He lifted one of his long legs in the air right over Olivia, preparing to drop it down onto her skull when the lower half of his raised leg was suddenly severed.

He screamed and fell backwards as Remi looked toward their savior.

Scarlet was just putting the tip of her halberd back on the brick floor.

“Looks like the trouble came to you,” she said as the stranger howled in pain.

“You’ll all pay for this!” he screamed. His eyes were so bloodshot that they nearly matched his eye-shadow. “Cimmerian will hear of this!”

“Not if you don’t have a tongue,” Scarlet seethed as Eckard appeared behind her. “You won’t say anything about this.”

“You can’t stop me!” he shouted. Then he pointed to Remi. “She’s from Terra! They have to know!”

“You told him?” Scarlet asked Remi in disbelief. Remi could barely respond as her white Sage robes and her eidolon vanished. Eckard came to her side as Olivia rubbed her head.

“She told me enough,” the stranger said. “And if you think only having one leg will stop me…” he rubbed his hands together. “You don’t even know what I can do yet!”

He pressed the palms of his hands on the bricks and the ground began to shake violently. Scarlet used her halberd to keep her upright as Eckard crouched low to maintain his balance. The buildings around them began to shake and in the distance cries of horror were heard.

“I’ll bring it all down!” he cackled as Scarlet sneered.

“Screw this,” she said. “I’ve survived through worse.”

Using her halberd for balance, she darted across the alley, and in one swift strike—she removed the head of the stranger.

The moment his head was severed, the quaking stopped.

“Scarlet,” Eckard began, but she held up a hand to shush him.

“I know,” she said, staring down at the decapitated stranger. “I know.” The halberd vanished and she sighed heavily.

“What do we do now?” he asked. She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes.

“We wait.”

“You don’t want to run? The Corps will be here any moment. With all of these witnesses, they’re sure to know who’s involved in this.”

“All the more reason to hold our ground.”

“This can’t end well.”

“Neither do I expect it too.”

“Scarlet, you can’t—”

“STOP RIGHT THERE!!!” a stocky man with an impressive paunch boomed as he appeared in the alley. A dozen men were behind him, dressed the same as he. They wore the same attire as any other citizen in Surmount, but the difference was the sash hanging from their shoulder down to their hip with the word “CORPS” emblazoned in red.

“We surrender,” Scarlet replied, holding up her hands.

“Damn right, you do,” he said, turning to his men. “Apprehend them all.”

*              *              *

Remi woke up in a hot dimly lit room. It was bare. There were no windows and there was only one door that had no doorknob. It was made entirely of bricks like the town, but she didn’t feel comfortable here. Not even when her eyes adjusted and she saw that everyone else was with her. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

Kace was sitting up against the wall to her left, hunched over his knees. Olivia stood in the center of the room with her arms crossed. Eckard and Scarlet sat side by side to her right, cross-legged and patient. They had to have known what was going on more than anyone.

“She’s awake,” Olivia said, noticing movement coming from Remi. “Now can you tell us what’s going on?”

“We’re prisoners,” Scarlet said. “Because we broke a universal rule.”

“Which was?”

“We killed someone that wasn’t marked.”

“What does that mean?” Remi asked. Her voice was raspy.

“The war is going to happen, but not yet. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t moves to be made and preparation going on in the background. We live in a time where death means utter annihilation and so everyone’s scared. To ensure that there isn’t all-out chaos, the marking system has been implemented and agreed upon by both Paragon and Cimmerian. Every year, a hundred individuals may be targeted. Cimmerian may target a hundred people from Paragon and vice versa. These hundred are ‘marked,’ and what that means is that they can be killed without repercussions. Usually important people for each side are the ones targeted.”

“Why doesn’t someone just target the King of Paragon?” Kace asked.

“Because someone has to mark you, and no one’s going to make it to the King easily. I’m sure many have tried, but you would have to navigate through all of Paragon to get there. You can be assured that the King of Cimmerian has the same protections.”

“What did they put on me?” Remi asked.

“It’s the equivalent to being branded. The gel is mostly harmless but once it’s applied to skin, it sears it instantly, leaving a permanent mark. It was crafted by a Sage in Paragon so that others couldn’t heal and remove it, no matter how hard they tried.”

“So I’m stuck like this?”

“Afraid so. No one’s going to harm you here in the Corps station. But once you go outside…if anyone from Cimmerian sees you, they might go after you.”

“Special once again,” Olivia muttered. Kace sucked his teeth.

“If I was marked…that means Cimmerian or at least someone from Cimmerian knows about me.”

“I did say that us being watched was possible,” Scarlet said.

“There’s really no way to remove this?”

“Not that I know of. But you never know.”

“So what happens now?” Kace asked. “Now that someone without a mark has been killed?”

The door to the room opened wide with a creak and the man who had first addressed them earlier appeared. He wasn’t wearing his sash anymore, but they recognized him immediately. The large scar running across his face was identification enough.

“This doesn’t look good for you all,” he said truthfully, letting the door close behind him. “Everyone…please sit on the far wall.”

They all stood up and adjusted, sitting next to each other on the far wall so that the Corpsman could face them while maintaining some distance. He cleared his throat.

“My name is Redder, and I’m the chief of Surmount’s Corps. I’ve been part of this squad since the beginning…and I have never had to deal with a case like this. Do you understand what will happen if Cimmerian determines that Surmount was a part of this? If they believe that we’re trying to cover something up?”

“The war begins,” Scarlet said.

He nodded. “Yes. It will be the beginning of the end. And I’m especially cross because Surmount had nothing to do with this incident. It would be different if we had decided on this collectively, but that just isn’t the case. Do you know what this means?”

“There will have to be an exchange,” Scarlet said straight-faced. “Retribution.”

“That’s right. A trade. A life for a life. Nothing less will do. Now, I’m sorry to put you in this predicament, but a decision has to be made, and quickly. I’ll leave you be for a few minutes while you sort out who. I’ll be right back.”

Redder left the room, and once the door closed behind him, Scarlet started chuckling under her breath.