Heaven's Betrayed King

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: The Slaver’s Toll

Kyran's POV

The stench of stagnant water, sweat and copper filled my nose before my eyes even opened.

My lungs seized, drawing in a sharp breath of dry mineral dust that set off a coughing fit. When I tried to push myself up, my arms shook and buckled. There was no divine buoyancy in this frame and no hum of celestial marrow sustaining the weight of bone and muscle. My limbs felt leaden, hollowed by hunger and bound in stiff dried grime.

A rough leather boot slammed hard into my ribs, flipping me onto my back over sharp shale.

“Get up, Drax!” a voice ordered. “The wagons are rolling in twenty minutes. If your bin isn’t filled with ore by midday, I will skin the soles off your feet!”

Standing over me was a broad thick-necked slave camp overseer in iron mail with his greasy brown beard stained with tobacco juice. In his right hand he held a five-tailed whip tipped with jagged lead beads with the leather dark and stiff from old blood.

I looked down at my hands. The fingers were long, thin and caked in black stone dust and the fingernails split down to the quick while rusted iron cuffs encircled both wrists, connected by a heavy center link that dragged in the dirt.

This was not my vessel! The divine body had burned to ash in the sanctum fire and my soul, preserved only by the stubborn knot of hatred that refused to dissolve had plummeted through the lower firmament and seized the nearest empty shell.. a starved mortal slave who had succumbed to exhaustion on the quarry floor!

“Did you hear me, dog?” the overseer growled, stepping closer and raising the whip. “Or did the morning sun bake the rest of your wits away?”

I slowly pulled my legs beneath me and stood up.

The movement was clumsy with the center of balance entirely foreign. Three centuries of sovereign martial instinct remained carved into my spirit, but the vessel was a rusted and unstrung bow. Yet deep within the hollow cavity where this corpse’s mortal dantian once sat, something else began to stir.

It was not celestial qi. It was not the pure, radiant energy of the Nine Heavens but the unyielding fury of my betrayal... the memory of Cressida’s cold eyes, Morwena’s cauldron and Drustan’s scavenged triumph... coiled inside the empty meridians, condensing into a dense pitch-black seed..

The Primordial Resentment Core.

It fed not on natural mana or the quiet breath of the earth but on the raw hostility burning through my spirit. A searing venomous heat spread outward from my chest, forcing open the boy’s starved and calcified pathways by sheer violence.

The overseer saw the change in my posture, the lack of customary cowering and his eyes narrowed. “Still looking at me like that? Fine. Let us see how tall you stand after five lashes.”

The lead-tipped whip hissed through the air, aimed directly at my neck.

In the old days, a single flick of my sleeve would have pulverized this man into red mist but now I did not have the qi to waste on grand gestures so I relied on the brutal economy of the mortal battlefield.

I suddenly stepped straight into the arc of the strike, closing the distance before the lead tips could build lethal momentum. The leather wrapped across my forearm with a sharp sting, tearing the skin but I ignored the pain entirely.

I clamped my left wrist down over the coiled leather, locking the whip against my body and stepped forward with my right heel planting deep into the dirt.

The overseer’s sneer vanished into confusion as he tried to yank the weapon back but my grip held firm, anchored by the sudden surge of dark mana flooding my forearm.

Before he could drop the handle and draw the short sword at his belt, I brought my right hand up in a rigid open-palm strike, driving the heel of my palm upward directly into the base of his nose.

Cartilage shattered with the dull crunch of dry twigs and the overseer screamed with blood spraying across his beard as he stumbled backward. But I did not let him fall. I caught the front collar of his iron-studded vest with my bound hands, twisted the chain between my cuffs around his throat and drove a knee straight into his solar plexus.

The breath left him in a wet, choked gasp and as he doubled over, gagging on his own blood, I brought both clamped fists down hard against the back of his neck with the weight of my entire body behind the blow.

The overseer hit the shale floor face-first and did not move again.

A dead silence descended over the immediate quarry tier.

Around us, a dozen half-naked and dirt-encrusted slaves froze with their shovels and iron picks hanging motionless in the dusty air as they stared at the unconscious guard then up at me with their eyes wide with disbelief.

From the nearby wooden watchtower forty paces up the path, a metal horn blew two sharp and frantic notes.

“Prisoner revolt at the third tier!” an archer shouted from the platform. “Archers, loose!”

The whistling sound of an arrow split the air but my instincts moved before my thoughts could finish forming. I grabbed the limp body of the fallen overseer by his shoulder straps and hauled him upward just as the iron-tipped shaft struck his iron backplate with a loud metallic clatter.

I reached down to his waist, unhooked the ring of iron keys and snapped the small brass key into the wrist cuffs. The lock gave way with a dry click and the chains dropped to the earth, leaving my hands free.

Next came the overseer’s belt. I unbuckled the strap, sliding out the crude iron short sword sheathed at his side. It was a poorly balanced piece of base metal, thick along the spine and blunt near the tip but it possessed enough weight to cleave bone.

Two more guards came charging down the narrow wooden ramp leading from the upper tier with their boots thudding against the planks and spears leveled straight at my chest.

“Put down the steel, Drax!” the lead guard bellowed with his face red with exertion. “On your knees!”

I did not answer. I rolled my stiff shoulders, feeling the black core in my chest spin faster, funneling dark and hot vigor through my starved limbs.

They were slow and their footwork was clumsy with their center of gravity leaning far too far forward in their haste to skewer what they believed to be a frightened and cornered slave. To my eyes every flaw in their stance was as glaring as a signal fire on an open plain.

The first spear thrust forward, aiming for my gut and I pivoted half a step to the left, letting the iron tip whistle harmlessly past my ribs. Before the guard could recover his balance to withdraw the shaft, I brought the flat of the short sword down hard against the ash-wood haft, pinning the spearhead into the dirt.

Using the pinned weapon as a pivot, I closed the remaining distance in a single stride, driving the iron pommel of the sword straight into the side of his jaw.

His head snapped sideways with his teeth scattering into the dust as his body went limp.

The second guard hesitated with his spear tip wavering as he took in the sudden and calculated brutality of the movement. He opened his mouth to shout for the main garrison but I did not give him the breath.

I stepped inside his guard, caught his spear arm at the elbow with my left hand and drove the blunt iron edge of the sword through the soft leather beneath his armpit, severing the artery in one clean upward thrust.

The guard let out a choked gurgle, dropped his weapon and collapsed to his knees, clutching his side as dark blood pooled beneath him.

I stood over the two fallen men, breathing steadily through my nose. The physical strain was heavy on this frail and malnourished shell... my heart pounded violently against my ribs and the muscles in my thighs burned from the sudden exertion but the Resentment Core absorbed the cold dread hanging over the quarry, converting the hostility around me into fresh fuel to mend the torn fibers of my flesh.

A young man with dirt caked across his hollow cheeks stumbled out from behind an ore cart with his hands trembling as he stared at the carnage. He was barely twenty with his skin covered in fresh whip welts.

“Drax...” the young man stammered with his voice thin with terror. “What... what have you done? If Overseer Malakor finds out...”

“The overseers will find out regardless,” I said, wiping the red grease from the blade onto the dead guard’s tunic. “Drop the shovel, boy. Find an iron bar or a spear.”

The youth looked down at his trembling hands then at the dead guards. “We cannot fight the whole camp. There are fifty armed men in the upper barracks alone and Malakor has beast-hounds. He will feed us to them piece by piece!”

I turned to look up the tiered mountain path toward the stone compound sitting at the crown of the valley. A faint pillar of black smoke rose from the central forge and the alarm bells were already beginning to toll across the valley steadily and rhythmically.

“Then let him bring his hounds,” I said, resting the iron sword against my shoulder as the cold black fire settled into my veins. “I have no intention of dying in a ditch twice..!”