Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

The wind howled. It tore away sound, thought, sensation. I was nothing, just a crumbling fragment of debris in the storm’s grip. Siriks and I drifted further and further apart as we were buffeted by warring currents, slammed by slicing torrents of unsettled air.

It seemed to last forever. And yet, the ancient broken ring of the Coloss and its little gray island, like an abstracted eye from this angle, swiftly grew larger in my vision. Siriks shouted something at me. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like “You fool!”

Fair. I ignored him, focusing on the swift encroaching ground. Unfortunately, I possessed no sorceries for flight.

Even as we fell to our deaths, a stray thought wormed through my growing panic. There are ogres in the storm.

A problem for later. My focus went to the clusters of indistinct black shapes scattered beyond the outer ring of the tournament island. Like flocks of birds, only I knew they weren’t birds. Their shapes grew more distinct as we fell, clarifying into stony gray forms with huge wings and gleaming silver eyes.

While I hadn’t exactly expected to need them this way, I felt a surge of relief that Markham had heeded my warnings. I’d told his small council about the Mistwalkers gathering around the city, and he’d released them out in force to guard the tournament.

I focused on the nearest gargoyle, laced my breath with aura, and spoke.

“Catch us.”

My command rang out, audible as any peel of thunder rolling across the storm above. Immediately, the nearest sentinels peeled off from their flocks.

The ground dominated my vision. I could make out the inner ring of statues and spires along the Coloss walls now, the congregated masses on the stands, even the tiny figures of the tourney knights still waiting on the island. I forced myself to relax.

A particularly large beast swiped the air like a diving falcon and caught me, not as gently as I’d have liked. Clawed appendages closed on my shoulders and waist, three separate sets of digits clamping down. If not for my armor, I suspected they would have cut me to ribbons. The gargoyle sported a cherubic face fashioned of gold, like a mask set over its pitted gray flesh, and twin sets of wings carved to evoke the feathered mantle of a seraph. Its body otherwise resembled a chimeric union between a lion and an eagle.

When the contents of my skull no longer felt like jelly, I searched and found Siriks. Two smaller gargoyles had him, each holding a shoulder so he hung suspended between their beating wings. Not the most dignified look, but at least he wasn’t paste.

The bit of metal still embedded into my stomach was agony, but I grit my teeth against the pain and focused on the ground.

“Set us down on the island.”

The gold-masked golem let out a growl, but acquiesced to my order. It dropped me perhaps ten feet off the island’s surface, and I had to roll into the fall. The lance of pain in my abdomen nearly made me faint. I managed to get to a knee, placing a hand against the gap in my breastplate as I caught my breath.

The gargoyles dropped Siriks a moment later. He stumbled, righted himself, then stared at me in something between wariness and incomprehension.

I felt the eyes of several thousand people on me. Ignoring them all, I heaved to my feet and faced the cymrinorean ambassador.

He’d managed to keep his spear. How knightly, to keep hold of his steel even as a death no feat of arms could avert rushed right for him.

And I was weaponless. Even still I faced him calmly, while the storm muttered above and the sea rolled against the island.

“You’re mad,” he told me bluntly.

I shrugged. Siriks shook his head slowly.

“What you said… is it true?”

I said nothing. No telling when the Coloss’s strange magic would make my voice audible to the stands. He seemed to understand.

His eyes drifted to the breach in my armor. “You’re injured. And weaponless.”

I nodded.

Siriks sniffed, pace several steps to his left, then lifted his spear high. Its broken tip gleamed with rain dew. I tensed.

He planted it in the sand, let his hand rest on the lacquered haft a moment, then stepped back. A calmness fell over his youthful face.

“I yield. You fought very well, Ser Sain. I am satisfied.”

He turned and spoke directly to the royal box. “Cymrinor withdraws from this tourney.”

In the tradition of tourney, no fighter is allowed to withdraw from the field until a match is resolved. However, in light of my victory over Siriks Sontae, the Emperor allowed the melee to continue while I observed from the sidelines, immune to the results.

Ser Jorg had already yielded, so he sat with me and chatted, oddly casual after the epic clash he’d just observed. He proved to be a friendly, personable man, the Grotesque Knight. He told me I was blessed, to have earned such mercy from the gargoyles whose resemblance he’d taken for his armor.

I decided not to tell him I’d used my powers to compel them. I felt it might put a damper on his mood.

Siriks stood alone near the edge of the island, arms folded and expression pensive. Whatever he thought, he kept it to himself and didn’t offer me so much as a glance.

He didn’t know. I hadn’t been sure.

Karog waited until every member of his team had lost, then fought both Narinae Tarner and Hendry Hunting at once. He insisted on fighting them together, in fact. Narinae proved shockingly good, fast as a hummingbird and more aggressive than I’d have expected. Hendry was a staunch support, big and solid at her back, preventing Karog from simply overpowering the smaller fighter with sheer aggression.

When Karog slapped the boy hard enough to crack his spine, an angry backhand I suspected was more reflex than intent, I winced in tune with a wave of dismay from the stands. When Hendry just stood up, rubbing at his neck, Karog’s eyes widened.

It was obvious neither of them could beat the ogre. He was too powerful, too fast, too skilled. He seemed to have limitless stamina, not so much as breaking a sweat or pausing for breath as he battered at the two humans.

But Narinae maintained a stoic focus, concentrating on keeping her feet and preventing a situation where she might have to yield, and Hendry kept pace with them both.

“She can’t win,” Ser Jorg said, rubbing at the stylized goatee on his helmet. “What’s the lass doing?”

“Making certain she doesn’t leave empty handed,” I said. The other knight glanced at me, surprised at my sudden verbosity.

Sure enough, I sensed a strange tension from the woman. She threw herself into the fight, the eyes beneath her burgonet shockingly bright. Even after the spectacle between Siriks and me, the crowd grew more and more excited.

Karog lashed out with his cleaver, using it skillfully as an assassin’s dagger, the weapon blurring through the air as he advanced in a relentless barrage. Narinae deflected or dodged every strike, but she was flagging. I could hear her muffled shouts and grunts through her helm, as she poured every ounce of strength she had into staying up, staying in the fight.

The storm continued to swirl, a spiral of clouds centered directly above the island. I found my eyes half lidded, soaking in that feeling. And I kept my attention on the storm, wary of the beasts I now knew lurked in it.

Hendry made a mistake that cost him the fight. Narinae was hurled back by an almost casual swipe of Karog’s blade, one that knocked the sword from her hand. Hendry placed himself in front of her. Gallant, but foolish.

Karog kicked him, hard. Hendry went down on his back in an impact so hard it bounced him. Before he could rise, the ogre stepped forward and planted a boot heavy as a tree stump on his chest, pinning him. I heard his guttural demand for the boy to yield.

Perhaps Hendry’s iron bones weren’t easy to break, but they could still warp. Karog pressed down, and I saw the lad’s breastplate deform. I fought against the urge to intervene.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

No one else heard Hendry surrender, but Karog was close enough to hear, or perhaps just read his lips. The ogre stepped off him.

Narinae found her sword, and dove back into the fight.

It happened very suddenly. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, that moment of awakening, but even still the intensity of it shocked me. Karog roared at his remaining opponent, the sound incredibly similar to the throaty bellow of a lion. He lunged forward, clove down with all his considerable weight behind the blow.

Narinae let out a shout, tinny and high compared to her opponent’s bellow, and shot forward even as she swung her sword. There was a flash, a sense of something unseen and unknown smoldering to sudden life. To my senses, it was like a dim candle that’d always been there in the world suddenly erupting into the intensity of a torch flame.

A chunk of steaming metal fell onto the island, planting itself into the sand. The upper half of Karog’s cleaver, metal warped along the cut. Narinae poised beneath the war ogre, her sword, her body, emitting an unnatural gleam. Whenever she exhaled, all the loose bits of rock and gravel on the ground around her quivered in response.

Karog let out a low growl and closed the fingers of his left hand into a fist, torquing his body for a monstrous blow. Narinae straightened and backed away, white teeth flashing beneath her visor as she grinned nervously. Her voice echoed with aura, sharply clarifying each word.

“I yield! It was a good show, but I’m at my limit.”

She very much wasn’t. Her limbs practically shook with renewed energy, and the glint in her eyes made me think she was high. Even still, a yield was a yield. Karog snorted in contempt, or perhaps disappointment, but he did not strike again.

“Ah,” Jorg said in understanding. “Still, not very knightly to claim your prize and run.”

Perhaps not, but the Tarner woman had made a smart choice in my eyes. Awakening one’s aura is only the first step, and it wouldn’t make her a match for the true Art wielders who’d clash on the second day. There would be other tourneys.

Hendry limped back to me with a sheepish expression. Ser Jorg clapped him on the shoulder, but what he said was drowned out in the sudden uproar of the crowd at the herald’s pronouncement.

Karog of the Kin Fomori would move on to the second day.

So would Ser Sain, as a reward for defending the Accord’s honor against the delegate from Cymrinor.

What I’d set in motion that day would shift the tides of kingdoms.

The sun was setting by the time I returned to my private armory. The cluttered room lay dark, but smelled dry. I lit some lanterns and started stripping out of my armor.

Pulling my cuirass apart was not pleasant. The shard from Siriks’s spear had embedded itself into the breastplate as well my flesh, almost fusing the two together. I separated them cautiously, leaving the evil fragment protruding less than a finger’s width out of a patch of badly bruised skin. My shirt, sticky with blood, proved to be its own struggle. I ended up cutting it off instead of trying to get it over my head.

I sat there on the stool in the middle of the dim room for perhaps ten minutes, drenched in sweat and trying to catch my breath. It was a bad injury, but if I could get the shard out and get it stitched, my magic would prevent infection and heal it within a few days. Fighting would be uncomfortable, but I’d endured worse.

I felt the presence enter the room as a sickly sweet stench, a stirring in the shadows like a disturbance in water, and a prickle along the back of my neck. Tensing, I clutched the knife I’d used to cut my shirt off.

“It’s just me.”

My heart immediately calmed, and I relaxed my grip on the blade. “Catrin.”

She stepped out of the shadows. The dhampir still wore the same outfit she had the night Yith took her. It was ruined with mud and grave soil, and her hair wasn’t much better off. She looked pallid and thin, with deep bruises beneath her eyes.

Worst of all, the wound in her shoulder had gotten worse. The hole from Yith’s stinger looked ragged and huge, with sickly veins of infection spreading around it and smaller perforations deforming the surrounding skin.

Inside the injury, something moved.

A sudden and dark rage made my voice shake. “He said he hadn’t hurt you.”

A weary smile quirked Catrin’s lips. “This is just how it is when I’m hurt, and don’t get blood. It’s what I am, Al. Though, it doesn’t usually happen this quick. That probably is him.”

I shook my head, a tightness forming in my throat. “This is my fault. I dragged you into this.”

“You tried to keep me out of it,” she said sternly. Her eyes, a dull shade of red, went to my injury. “You’re hurt.”

I recognized the eager edge in her voice, though it was tempered with concern.

“I’ve got a fragment of a cymrinorean tiger spear stuck in me,” I said. “Once I get it out, I’ll be fine.”

Catrin nodded. “Let me help.”

I wasn’t certain that was a good idea, but I didn’t want her to vanish into the shadows again either. Without letting down my guard, I agreed.

She washed her hands in the basin by the door, then knelt at my side. She used her sharp nails, which were very much like claws, instead of pliers.

“You’ve done this before.” I winced when she tugged.

“I’ve been around.” She plucked the bit of metal out intact and held it up, tossed it, then licked my blood off her fingers with a shudder. I wasn’t worried about that much. She’d once told me a small taste might give her a stray thought or two, but she needed to drink more deeply to read my memories. The connection was even weaker when the blood wasn’t taken directly from the vein.

“You need more than that,” I said. Not an invitation, just a statement of fact.

“Yes.” She met my eyes steadily. “But you can’t afford to lose any.”

I considered a moment, then decided self-sacrifice wasn’t the right move here, much as I hated seeing her this way. It was worse than she’d been that night at Laertes’s manse.

We cleaned and stitched the wound. Both of us ignored the half-healed injury on my chest, where she’d sunk her fangs in that night at the mansion. I got my armor back on, because I needed to be ready for everything to turn upside down at a moment’s notice and because it would act as a shell between my blood and Catrin’s teeth. By the time I was done, I panted for breath. My injury and blood loss aside, I’d fought hard several times that day. I was out of steam.

I sat against the stone wall at the edge of the room, settling on the thin hay tossed over the floor. Catrin curled up at my side, laying her head against my breastplate. We lay like that a long while. I closed my eyes, trying to put the day’s events from my mind, to focus on the next.

I was content, at least, to have Catrin alive — relatively speaking — at my side, to know there was still hope. I didn’t care she smelled like rot, or that maggots moved in her wounds. I didn’t care that part of her longed to tear into my ribs and drain me.

She wasn’t my enemy. I would save her. And then…

I would decide the after when it came.

“I’m so sorry,” I breathed. “For hurting you.”

“I’m still here.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just—”

“I know.” She shifted, staring up into my eyes. Her brow crinkled. “Yith tried to get into my head about it, make me think you meant to destroy us both. But I know you, Al. I’ve tasted your heart.”

Her fingers lifted to my lips, touching them gently. “I’m not an idiot, and I know the score. I knew your magic didn’t like me, just like I’ve known to steer clear of hallowed ground since I was barely more than an infant.”

“Didn’t steer clear of me, though.” I tried for a smile.

“No.” She flashed her crooked teeth. “Maybe I’m a bit of an idiot.”

She settled back against me. “I saw you fight today. You were awesome.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah. I’ve been listening in on the commons. Lot of speculation about your identity. You know they’ve started calling you the Hyacinth Knight?”

I grimaced. “That’s terrible.”

She laughed softly. “I kind of like it. Besides, you’re the one who took these.”

She reached out and brushed the blue flowers, where they remained tucked into my left pauldron above my heart.

“Just playacting,” I said.

She was a quiet a while, then spoke in a softer voice. “I don’t think so. I think…”

She propped herself up on her hands, staring at me. “I think you were more yourself than you’ve been in a long while down there, maybe ever. I’ve seen it a few times, you know. How noble you can be. I think the helmet let you be more honest to yourself.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You think that prancing cock was who I really am?”

She flicked my nose. “I think that gallant knight is who you want to be.”

Outside, the sun set. Catrin seemed to grow less lethargic, her grip on my arm tightening. The dull color of her eyes brightened, taking on a nocturnal glow. Her nails scraped against the steel over my bicep.

“Are you going to do it?” She whispered.

I sensed the change in her, and knew to be cautious. “Do what?”

“Kill her.”

My eyes opened, staring into the room’s darkness.

“Al?”

“I have a plan,” I said. “The pieces are already moving.”

Catrin curled closer against me, one leg brushing over my thigh. “Will you tell me? I want to help.”

Again, I didn’t answer at first. My senses weren’t just on her, but on the surrounding room. When she’d entered, I hadn’t known it was Catrin at first.

It had felt like the demon.

“I need you to trust me,” I said.

Her voice came out tighter. “He’s not listening.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Are you going to kill her not?” Then, with less anger she added, “I’m scared, Alken. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to stay like this. It hurts.”

Another voice echoed through my memory. Hurts, hurts, hurts, it hurts—

I laced my fingers through her hair, pulling her against my chest. She clutched me tightly.

I wouldn’t fail her like I’d failed Kieran. I wasn’t certain I’d survive it any more than she would.

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “This will all end tomorrow night.”

“What are you going to do?”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell you. I’m sorry.”

Her nails made white marks along my armor. “I thought you trusted me.”

“I do. But you’re not all yourself right now.”

More angrily she said, “I could take it from your blood.”

I nodded. “You could, if I was willing to let you.”

“Yith said you wouldn’t trust me. That you’d choose them. This damned kingdom that’s made you miserable.”

My jaw tightened. “Yith is a parasite.”

“So am I.”

She has stolen every moment she’s pretended to be alive from those who truly are.

I pressed my lips to her hair and spoke softly. “I know it hurts. I know it’s hard. Just endure it one more day.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you just killed that bitch!”

When I didn’t answer, she began to plead.

“Please, Alken.”

“She deserves it. She’s evil.”

“She’s a slaver.”

“A murderer.”

“It hurts, I need it to stop.”

“You promised you would save me.”

“Just kill her. Let the rest of these bastards sort it out.”

“Please. Please please please please—”

I held her tightly, let her rave, and hated myself.

But I did not tell her my plan.

And I did not give in to her pleas.

And I swore to myself that I would send Yith Golonac screaming back into Hell.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!