Rylan's Rise (initial chapters)

Okay, as promised in the update post, here's the thing that got in the way of me writing anything else. If you read it, let me know what you

Okay, as promised in the update post, here's the thing that got in the way of me writing anything else. If you read it, let me know what you think in the comments. Is it crap? Should it go in the definitely write more of this later folder? Inquiring minds (mostly mine) want to know. Enjoy! ~Eric

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Prologue

2000 years ago…

Wasteland. That was the only word for it. As far as the eye could see in every direction, there was nothing but scorched earth that still smoldered enough to blacken the sky. Where it wasn’t little more than ash and blasted rock, there were the charred stumps of trees. And, in the vanishingly few places where liquid could still be sustained, it was bloody. Wasteland. A word made all the more painful for the fact this had been a lush, verdant paradise the day before. A cradle of farming that supplied enough food to keep every mouth in the empire fed and fed well. But all of that was gone now. Wiped away in the final confrontation between man and monsters that clawed their way into this world from some other, more terrible place. Wiped away like the lives of so many soldiers, citizens, and so very many children. All that remained to mark their passing was a—

“Wasteland.”

It was more of a cough than a word as it passed his lips. He had achieved victory. He had defeated the enemy. He had fulfilled his purpose. After all, he was the hero. The light in the darkness. The chosen savior. It was almost enough to make him laugh. Almost. If it hadn’t come at so high and bloody a price.

“The chosen savior. What a cruel joke,” he muttered, bitterness etched into every syllable. “They should have chosen someone else.”

He was so tired in body and soul. Wrung dry of strength and will and magic. He couldn’t even stand. Not that he wanted to stand. Not that he deserved to stand. He should be on his knees begging the forgiveness of everyone who had died here. All those people he had so utterly failed. The only thing keeping him upright was that his hands were still locked around the hilt of his sword. That blade, still so unnaturally clean that it shone, had been plunged into the ground. He leaned forward and let his forehead rest against the cross guard. The metal still felt warm, but it wasn’t hot anymore. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there like that, but it had been long enough for the sword to bleed off most of the residual heat from that last, desperate…His mind shied away from the very thought.

He took deep, painful breaths and tried to tell himself that this was still a victory. The world, at least, hadn’t been lost. The empire would fall. Nothing would prevent that now. Most of the imperial family was dead. What little was left of the armies that had valiantly stood off the incursions were scattered. And the empire’s bread basket was gone with only this nigh impassable wasteland where it had one stood, very nearly cutting the empire in half. Society would fracture. Then, it would splinter. It would be the only way to carry on. But the world had not fallen. Humanity had survived. The demihumans had survived. Even the elves had survived. Life of some kind would remain.

Not that he needed to worry about any of that. He glanced down to see the hilt of a cursed blade sticking out of his stomach, a final gift from the monsters. It wouldn’t be long now before he joined everyone else in death. That was an idea that filled him with relief. He would die and, if there was any justice in the universe, be transported to the afterlife where all of the people he’d condemned could take their vengeance on him. If not that, then perhaps he would fall into one of the hells where he so rightly belonged. Whatever it was that came next, he yearned for it. He didn’t want to live. He didn’t want to walk beneath the blue sky or see the green grass. Those things weren’t meant for the likes of him. Not anymore.

Nor did he want to contemplate a life without her. If she had still lived, his beloved Ariana, he might have found a way to convince himself to endure the hateful continuance of his life. The war had stolen her away from him like it had taken everything else. He didn’t even know how she had died on that distant battlefield. Everything had been falling apart by then. The magical lines of communication, once thought inviolable by any force, had been almost completely severed. A mage had spent his own lifeforce to fuel the spell that had carried that brief message.

Princess Ariana has fallen. Our forces have been slaughtered.

Something had died inside of him that day. Something important. Hope, perhaps. He’d never dared to let himself think too hard about it out of the fear it would cripple his ability to act. He just knew that there had been something there one moment, and gone the next. If she had still lived, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to commit to what he had done. Maybe he would have fought harder to find another way. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But none of that mattered anymore. He could feel the curse inside of him, clawing at flesh and spirit. It wasn’t a matter of if, just when. And then, it would finally, mercifully be done. Except, it seemed the world wasn’t quite finished with him. He cursed under his breath as the divine presence appeared beside him.

“Damn you. Go away!” he shouted, even though it moved the blade inside of him and sent agony coursing through every part of his body. “Let me die in peace.”

“Are you at peace?” she asked in a level, neutral tone.

“If not in peace, then let me die alone,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Haven’t we both done enough damage?”

“I had not—” she faltered. “I had not foreseen this.”

“No? You should have. Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, they do. And, sometimes, those desperate things come with consequences.”

Something in the tone of her voice sent a winter chill of apprehension rippling through him.

“What consequences?” he asked, the words slipping out against his will.

“I’m sorry. I held it off as long as I could. I thought, perhaps, if you died beforehand—” she trailed off. “But you didn’t.”

A spark of understanding hit him in the moment before the translucent gray box appeared before him.

You have defeated the Eldritch General and his army.

Enemies slain: 103,267

Allies slain: 72,349

Determining reward…

“No. No! No!”

He screamed as power and life poured into him on such a scale that it felt like every fiber of his being had been converted into molten glass. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind where some shreds of sanity remained, he registered the curse he had been relying on to kill him being snuffed out. The last thing he heard before unconsciousness dragged him under were the sorrow-filled words of the goddess.

“I’m so sorry.

1.

The morning was hot enough that Caleb Feldin felt the sweat pop out on his forehead almost as soon as he stepped out of the orphanage and into the sun. Normally, that would be enough to make him grimace but not today. Today was going to be a good day. It was his birthday. His sixteenth birthday. Even living here on the edges of the Great Waste wasn’t enough to ruin that. It was enough to ruin pretty much every other day, but it couldn’t ruin this day. He would finally receive his class from the goddess. He had been waiting for this day for so long. He knew that Mistress Revan wanted him to get a safe class, but that was true of every orphan left in her care. She sang the praises of the crafters, while any talk of adventuring was met with stony looks from her.

Caleb didn’t know why she despised the adventurers so much. He had personally seen her slap an adventurer so hard that it broke the man’s jaw. The sin that led to such an action? The man had been talking up the adventurer’s life to one of the older boys in the orphanage, Luken, when he’d been about to receive his class. It was only recently that Caleb had started to wonder just how it was that Mistress Revan was strong enough to break that adventurer’s jaw. He’d also started to wonder why it was that the Guild Master had dragged that adventurer all the way to the orphanage to apologize, only for the Guild Master to then issue his own apology. All of it done beneath Mistress Revan’s icy glare.

Part of him understood that she just wanted the children at the orphanage to lead quiet, productive, safe lives. But there was nothing exciting about smithing, farming, or most of the other crafting classes. He thought alchemy might be interesting, but he’d never actually seen it done. There was an alchemist in town, but he was mean and, according to Mistress Revan, an incompetent jackass. She hadn’t actually said that to any of the orphans. He’d just overheard her say it to the baker when they’d been having a conversation. Still, that lack of firsthand experience made it hard to know if he’d like alchemy. In the end, though, Caleb didn’t want to be a crafter. It sounded boring, and he wanted to do exciting things like he heard about in the stories.

He wanted to fight monsters and find treasures. He wanted to be a swordsman. Well, he really wanted to be a knight for the kingdom, but he knew that was never going to happen. He was poor. He was from the Great Waste. He was an orphan. Any of those things could disqualify him. Put all of them together and there was about as much chance of him becoming a kingdom knight as there was for wheat to spontaneously start growing in the endless deserts of the waste. But a swordsman? An adventurer? Those things were in reach. At least, they were if things went well today.

“Please let things go well today,” he whispered in prayer to the goddess.

He was so consumed with thoughts of getting his class, that he’d walked into the trouble before he realized it. Any other day, he would have been watching his surroundings with care. Living in the Great Waste meant that there was always danger nearby. The animals that managed to live in that mysterious, endless stretch of sand and heat were almost uniformly deadly in one way or another. Some were deadly because they were fast and strong. Others were deadly simply because touching them would poison you or your mana or both in a few extreme cases. There was also the problem of monsters.

Everyone knew that there were dungeons in the wasteland, but no one knew where they were. The desert was lethal enough that most monsters from a dungeon break perished there, but not all of them. Some would eventually find their way to the towns that dotted the edges of that scorched land where humanity tried it’s best to reclaim the earth and make it live again. There were always deaths when that happened, but the vigilant could often avoid becoming one of them. Unfortunately, those weren’t the only dangers that a lowly orphan needed to watch out for in town.

“Poor boy,” purred a girl’s voice.

Caleb froze. He’d been looking at the ground, only glancing up occasionally to make sure he was still on course for the church. It took an effort of will to raise his eyes. If he didn’t look, it wouldn’t be real. Not today, he thought. Please, any other day but today. Despite hoping that he’d just imagined that voice, his eyes found Janica Weathers. She was smiling, but it was one of those smiles that was more like a dog baring its teeth before it bit someone. She was a year older than him and already had her class. He honestly didn’t know what she got out of tormenting him. Technically, she’d been breaking the law for the last year every time she’d hit him, not that those laws held much sway in places near the Great Waste.

He might have tried to run, but she had her friends with her today. Jusep, Alland, and Henry were all the same age as her, bigger than him, and they’d run him down if he tried to get away. Caleb’s mind felt like it had been locked in ice. He just didn’t know what he could do or even what there was to do. Before he could come to any kind of a decision, Janica spoke again.

“No bruises. Well, we can’t have that. The poor should look like the wretches they are,” she announced.

The boys with her laughed, and then Caleb was on the ground. The side of his face was on fire. It took him precious seconds to understand that she’d slapped him. By then, Jusep and Henry had seized his arms and dragged him into a dark little alley between two buildings. They threw him into a pile of trash, and he felt something wet seep through the back of his shirt.

“That’s better!” Janica exclaimed in glee. “We’ve taken him back to his real home. Now, we just need to finish making him look proper.”

That was all the warning he got before fists and feet started raining blows down on him. He tried to curl up and protect his head. Just about when Caleb thought it might never end, he heard a voice he didn’t recognize.

“Well, aren’t you all brave. Move. You’re in my way.”

Caleb opened the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, but his vision was blurred. He could only make out the shape of a man in a dark cloak.

“I don’t know who you are, stranger—” started Jusep.

That was as far as he got. There was a sharp crack, and then Janica was screaming. There were two more cracks, so fast that they were nearly one sound, and Janica’s screaming went up a notch.

“Do you know who I am?” she shrieked.

“Yes. And I not impressed. Let’s see now. Oh, an archer class. Well, that should be a lot of fun without a right hand.”

Caleb heard the words, but their meaning was vague, distant, and uncertain. It wasn’t until Janica started screaming in agony that the stranger’s statement came into focus. He managed to turn his head and, after blinking several times, he managed to get a mostly clear look at the scene. His stomach did something that felt uncomfortably like a flip-flop. Jusep, Alland, and Henry were dead, their heads twisted at unnatural angles. Janica was on her knees, staring at the ragged stump where her right hand used to be and screaming. Looming over her like death itself was the cloaked man. He tossed a pale lump on the ground that Caleb realized was the girl’s missing hand. Then, the man slapped the girl hard enough to knock her over.

“Shut up,” he said in an offhand voice before he leaned down and whispered something Caleb couldn’t hear.

Janica shrank back, pure terror on her face, and whispered, “You.”

“One last thing,” said the man, opening a vial and dumping some of the liquid onto the stump.

“No!” shouted Janica as the stump started to heal over.

“Tell your father I said hello,” the cloaked man called out cheerily as Janica stumbled away clutching her injured arm.

Caleb tried to ask a question, but it just came out as a mishmash of sounds. The cloaked man turned to look at him, but a deep hood obscured the man’s face.

“Well,” said the man, “I guess I’ll have to do something about you.”

Caleb feared the man meant to kill him, but he soon found himself hoisted to his feet and being helped along the road. He didn’t know where they were going and wouldn’t have had the strength to not go wherever the man was taking him. It was everything he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Everything hurt so much. Just keep walking, he told himself. One foot in front of the other. Darkness kept trying to close in around he edges of his already blurry vision. It was only the need to keep walking that kept him from sinking into that darkness. Finally, he was stumbling up some steps and then the relentless heat was cut off as they passed into a building.

“Hey! Got an injured man here!” shouted the cloaked stranger.

It felt like an eternity of silent agony for Caleb before a woman’s voice broke through.

“Goddess above!”

Hands pressed against his cheeks. A warmth that threatened to cross the line into actual pain cascaded through his body, and he felt things that had been broken mending. That process came with its own stabbing sensations that pushed Caleb’s teetering consciousness over the edge. As the pain receded and the darkness advanced, he only had enough wherewithal to ask himself one question. Where did that man take me?

2.

“Why are you here?” demanded Jennalyn, her angry gaze trying to pierce through to his soul.

“I liked you a lot better before you became a priestess,” said the cloaked man, ignoring her question while he hefted the limp body of the youth. “Where should I put him?”

“I asked you a question, Rylan. Why are you here?”

“I’d have thought that the grievously injured child I dragged in here would have given it away,” said Rylan with a sad shake of his head. “Oh, my poor nephew.”

Jennalynn lifted an eyebrow and said, “Nephew, huh. What’s his name?”

“Calvern?” Rylan half-asked.

“Caleb,” snapped Jennalynn. “His name is Caleb, and he’s clearly not your nephew. Not that I needed anyone to tell me that.”

“I like to think of myself as an uncle to all the poor, downtrodden youths of the world.”

“Oh really? And just how much have you donated to your poor, downtrodden nephew’s orphanage?”

The playful expression on Rylan’s face vanished and was replaced with something so hard and dangerous that the priestess took a step back from him. An oppressive aura erupted from the man. It largely ignored the suppression that usually happened inside the consecrated walls of the church and forced her back another step. When he spoke, his words could have shattered diamonds.

“What your tone, priestess. While you cowered here in this little town for the last two decades, I went out into the world. I have seen the unthinkable, done the unimaginable, and spoken directly to the goddess you worship. As for that orphanage,” said the man, his tone softening, “not that it’s any of your business, Jennalynn, but I’m the one who keeps it open. You can even ask Mistress Revan about it if you can find the nerve.”

Even after he reined in his aura, the priestess stared at him like he was a stranger. It made him a little sad. They had been like family once, but Rylan supposed that he was a stranger to her now. It took her several long moments to gather herself. When she spoke, she adopted a more conciliatory attitude.

“I was—” she hesitated. “I was thoughtless with my words. I apologize. But it doesn’t change my original question. Why are you here? It certainly wasn’t for poor Caleb.”

“Actually, it was,” said Rylan, glancing down at the limp form still cradled in his arms. “Well, it sort of was. He was more of a side mission.”

“Mission? How can a boy like that be a mission?”

“I had other business here. I mentioned it to an acquaintance. She connected me with, oh, let’s call them an interested party. They enlisted me to look in on the boy and carry out a few tasks for a frankly outrageous fee. It’s a rare day when I’m hired to do anything truly benign. So, I gladly took the job and the money.”

“Other business,” repeated Jennalynn softly. “You mean Weathers, don’t you?”

“And if I do?”

“It was twenty years ago, Rylan—” started Jennalynn.

“It was yesterday. It will always be yesterday.”

“I know he humiliated you. Drove your family out of town. But can’t you let that go?” pleaded Jennalynn.

“Is that the story that’s been going around? I couldn’t give three fucks about being embarrassed by a man twice my age and three times my level when I was a kid. If that was all he did, I wouldn’t be here. I’d just have just sent someone to ruin him. Or forgotten about him entirely. He didn’t drive us out of town after embarrassing me. He drove us out. Then, when we were far enough away, he ran us down and killed us all.”

“Killed you all?”

“Well,” said Rylan with a smile to make demons shudder, “he thought he killed us all. Didn’t quite get the job done with me. So, no. I can’t let it go. Actually, I probably could let it go if I really, really tried, but I don’t want to. I’m going to do to him what he tried to do to me. I’m going to kill everyone he loves, and everyone who supports him.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Oh, I assure you, I can.”

“I mean, you can’t just murder all of those people.”

Rylan blinked at her a few times and, perplexed, asked, “Why not?”

“Because of the law.”

Rylan started laughing.

“Oh, I thought you had a real reason.”

“That is a real reason.”

“Please. If you still think the law means anything here, you are willfully turning your eyes away from the truth. The only law in place like this is that the strong dictate their terms. If you’re very, very lucky, the strong have good hearts. The rest of the time, you get someone like Weathers. And, then, eventually, the people like Weathers get someone like me.”

“So, what? You mean to make this town into your town?”

“Why in the world would I do something so stupid? After Weathers is dead, there’s nothing here for me. The rest of you can sort out what you want this place to be, at least until the next person with a modicum of strength comes along.”

“So, you’ll cripple the town and then abandon it?”

“Just as surely as all of you abandoned this boy,” said Rylan.

“What does that mean?”

“When I found him, he was getting beaten to death by Weathers’s spawn and three other boys. All of them older, all of them with their classes. Four classholders beating an unclassed boy. Where was your law then?”

“That isn’t fair,” said Jennalynn.

“You’re damned right it isn’t fair. For him,” said Rylan.

“But you don’t care about any of that, do you?”

“Not really, but that isn’t the point. You don’t get to lecture me from a moral high ground while turning a blind eye to four classholders flagrantly violating the law in broad daylight. And don’t even try to tell me people aren’t turning a blind eye. Those little shits wouldn’t have dared do something like that if everyone wasn’t just letting it go.”

Jennalynn studied him for several seconds before her eyes went wide.

“What happened to them? The four that were beating him?”

“I killed them, of course,” said Rylan in an unconcerned tone. “After all, they were violating the law. The punishment for that particular violation is spelled out quite clearly. Well, I killed three of them. I only crippled Weathers’s brat. Why should I go to him when I can get him to come to me?”

Jennalynn went pale as she asked, “What did you do to Janica?”

“I removed one of her hands and then, completely by accident, poured part of a healing potion on it.”

“You crippled her for life!”

“Did I? Oops. Not that it’ll matter. She’ll be dead soon anyway.”

“Stop. Why are you telling me all of this?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you any of it, but you asked me.”

“I did, didn’t I?” she murmured. “Will you really kill her? She’s just a child. She could still change.”

“She isn’t a child. She’s a classholder. Besides, she could always run.”

The priestess gave him a look that said she knew full well that he’d just hunt the girl down if she did that.

“Rylan—” Jennalynn started only to be cut off.

“Not that I don’t love a meaningless philosophical debate as much as the next man, but don’t you think we should find Caleb somewhere to rest for a little while?”

Eyes shifting to the unconscious boy in Rylan’s arms, she nodded.

“Come this way.”

Rylan fell in behind her as she led him deeper into the church. There were a few small rooms that seemed to have been designed for letting people recover. She gestured at one with an open door. He carried the boy inside and set him down on a simple bed. It was a testament to how much the beating and healing had taken out of him that Caleb didn’t react at all.

“Why did you bring him here?” asked Jennalynn.

“He was gravely injured and clearly too poor to pay for healing. Where else would I take him?”

“He might not be able to afford healing, but I suspect that the cost wouldn’t have meant anything to you.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Then, why?”

“It’s his sixteenth birthday today,” answered Rylan in soft voice. “I think he was probably on his way here to get his class.”

“You couldn’t remember his name but you remembered his birthday?”

“The interested party made a very big deal of that fact. I had to hurry to get here in time. I still almost missed it. I was,” he paused. “Let’s just say that I was not nearby at the time.”

“Was that the only reason you brought him here?”

“You know it wasn’t. I wanted to see you before everything happens. I’ve missed you.”

“Did you?” asked Jennalynn, her voice sharp. “It would have been very hard for me to know that. You never came back. You never sent messages, even though you seemingly found the time to contact Mistress Revan.”

Looking around, Rylan saw a chair. He walked over to it and sat with a sigh.

“I went to great pains to make sure you never learned anything about me, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t keeping track of you.”

“Why? Why would you hide from me?”

“Because of this,” he said with all-encompassing gesture. “Because I knew you became a priestess. I knew you wouldn’t approve of the person I am now. I didn’t want to burden you with that knowledge. I wanted you to remember me the way I was while you still could.”

She studied him in silence before she shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“You weren’t that great even back then.”

It took a moment before Rylan laughed.

“I guess I wasn’t, was I?”

“You were way too sure of yourself.”

“You’re going to hold that against me? Every boy that age is too sure of himself. Every last one of us is convinced we’ll become heroes of legend or kings or conquer the Great Waste singlehandedly. That’s like holding it against dogs that they bark.”

“I suppose that you might have a point,” Jennalynn grudgingly conceded. “Where did you go, Rylan? All these years, where have you been?”

“It’d be easier to give you a list of the places I haven’t been. When I’d healed enough, I left the kingdom. I didn’t dare stay. At the time, well, let’s just say that I believed that Weathers cast a longer shadow than he actually did. I had nightmares about him finding me and finishing what he started. So, I left to find people to train to me.”

“I take it you succeeded?”

“That’s one way to describe it. I eventually found a ship that carried me to the other side of the continent. That’s where I got most of my training.”

“You’ve been to the other side of the Great Waste?” asked the priestess, her eyes alight with curiosity.

“I have. They’re very different there. There’s still a remnant of the old empire,” he said with a distant look in his eyes. “They’re obsessed with preparing for another great war with the Eldritch Horde. I was conscripted almost the second I arrived. They trained me and trained me well, but those are not experiences that I’d wish on another person.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t care if you survive training. They push and push and push. You either grow stronger or you die. I’m very glad that the Great Waste is between them and us. The training here is a joke. If they ever invaded us, this kingdom would fall within a week.”

“Rylan, just how strong did you get?”

“Are you asking me my level? That’s not a very appropriate question.”

“It isn’t. I was just curious.”

“Let me ask you this. Out of everyone you’ve met, what’s the highest level someone has admitted to you?”

“Upper thirties,” she said.

“Twenty seconds.”

“What?”

“If that person fought me,” said Rylan, “and they were having a very good day, and I was hungover, I’d give them even odds of surviving for twenty seconds.”

“By the goddess,” whispered Jennalynn, putting a hand on the doorframe as if to stead herself.

“Here’s the scary part. I was admittedly above average, but that remnant of the empire has a thousand people just like me and hundreds who are stronger. Their foot soldiers are a match for most of the so-called high-level adventurers here.”

The priestess closed her eyes and shook her head like she couldn’t accept the things she was hearing. She finally walked over and sat down on the end of the bed.

“Did anything good happen to you while you were away?”

Rylan thought briefly before he said, “Yeah, I guess there were some good things along the way.”

As the two childhood friends spoke, Caleb gently snored.