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Chapter 26 – Wrath

Katriny took stock of my deplorable condition and, with a tense expression, drew her ceremonial daggers. She positioned herself in front of me to ensure a stubborn defense. Without wasting a second, she shouted to the two guards posted at the watchtower:

— Stack more crates and timber at the entrance and in the masonry gaps! Quick! Prepare the defenses by any means necessary!

The guards, pale with fright, began scrambling every which way. They piled crates, planks, and stone rubble across the single doorway and the side openings of the north tower. It didn't take long before the scraping of blades and heavy footsteps began to echo from both directions.

I remained slumped on the ground, leaning against a stone pillar. My senses were completely disoriented. My head throbbed with an excruciating, chronic ache from the psychic drain, and I fought with all my strength to remain conscious.

The first impact struck the main entrance. The heavy wooden door buckled with a crash. Fortunately, the guards had scattered a few caltrops over the breached crates, which pierced the boots and dampened the initial momentum of Solano's invaders. But it wasn't enough. More and more soldiers poured through the breach. To make matters worse, I heard a crack coming from the side wall. They were scaling the outer masonry using ropes, swarming the roof from all sides.

My tactical assessment had been completely wrong. We were just three combatants against twenty elite men. I tried to move my small hands, but my body simply wouldn't respond.

***

The Bear's Fierce Defense

Katriny acted with lightning speed. She hurled two of her spare daggers, embedding them straight into the jugulars of the attackers bringing up the rear. Two fell dead instantly, but the tide didn't stop. The two castle guards could barely hold the line. Each used his iron shield to hold off three opponents simultaneously. Numerical disadvantage exacted its toll: the enemy vanguard forced their way through, felling the first guard with an axe blow before Katriny could even disarm the third soldier.

With fluid, nimble movements, the panda-monk delivered a brutal punch that sent a soldier flying right off the tower's parapet. Immediately after, she executed a spinning kick, hurling another invader into the wind. But there were too many. The second fortress guard took a violent sledgehammer blow against his shield and was thrown into the stone pillar, knocked unconscious by the impact. Together, the guards had barely managed to fell a single enemy. Fifteen bloodthirsty men remained inside.

It was at that moment that the bear showed her claws—brilliant and merciless. She leaped behind a soldier, twisted his leg with raw strength, and slit his throat in a single arc. Without hesitation, she embedded her dagger into the eye of an advancing opponent, kicked another in the chest to create space, and drove her steel directly into the heart of the man before her.

She was far, far more ferocious than I had ever been capable of factoring into my calculations.

However, the captain of the traitors, hidden beneath a dark cowl at the rear, ordered three of his elite men to attack simultaneously. They advanced on her flanks. The first attempted to leap and grab Katriny's arms, but the panda used his own momentum to throw him plunging into the abyss beyond the walls. The second delivered a horizontal slash with his steel sword; she dodged by a hair's breadth and drove her blade into the wretch's neck.

Yet the third attacker wielded a short dagger and managed to slice her arm. Seizing the opening, the hooded captain stepped forward and landed a cruel sword blow straight into Katriny's back.

The panda's lifeblood stained her monastic robes. She collapsed to her knees, gasping in pain. The traitor captain flashed a sinister grin beneath his hood and approached her with slow steps, raising his steel blade to deliver the deathblow.

***

Get up... get up right now, you useless piece of flesh!, my mind screamed, echoing inside my skull. Seeing Katriny's blood stain the floor broke something deep within me. It was like the mechanical click of a component forcing itself into the gears of my soul.

Before my logic could even process it, my frail body stood up on its own.

Katriny, gritting her teeth against the wound in her back, thought in desperation: I must protect the young master... even if this is my final cycle beneath the twin suns!... But what is happening?... What is this bluish flame?... Is he floating?!

Every soldier atop the north tower froze, completely struck dumb. A child barely over six years old was levitating in midair. Surrounding my body, a dense psychic energy glowed like an incandescent blue flame. My eyes radiated a scarlet glare of pure fire, and thin trails of blood began trickling from my ears and tear ducts. Around me, the very atmosphere and space turned hazy and distorted from raw power. The sensation that spread next was terrifying.

Like a pulse of pure energy, everyone within the perimeter felt the ground vibrate. It felt like the thumping of a colossal heart, or the rustic sound of a monster egg cracking open its shell. Something terrible was being born right there.

Along the distant battlements, soldiers from both sides lowered their swords, gazing in horror toward the north tower:

— What is that anomaly?... — the guards stammered.

Lord Arl pulled his horse's reins, his heart gripped by anguish:

— Son?... Kaelen?!

Far in the rear, Count Baxter felt a chill run up his spine:

— What kind of heretical sorcery is that?!

Suddenly, the men present did not hear my voice through their physical ears, but as a thunderous roar echoing directly within their minds with overwhelming force:

“YOU DARED INVADE MY HOME TO HURT THE PEOPLE I LOVE... ALL THAT REMAINS FOR YOU IS DEATH!”

A massive psychic blast erupted atop the north tower. The upper stone roof and timber coverings were pulverized into the air, yet the rubble and stone blocks did not fall; they remained suspended around me, defying the planet's gravity tenfold.

The surviving enemy soldiers inside the watchtower fell to their knees, consumed by absolute terror:

— He... he is a demon incarnate! He's a demon! — they shrieked, dropping their weapons onto the stone.

The hooded captain tried to stammer out a prayer or conjure his mystic arts, but his body was completely paralyzed in midair. My Telekinesis held him like an invisible vise.

“You crossed my gates... now you shall perish miserably for touching her.”

With brutal, uncanny force, I manipulated the captain's body in the air, slamming him like an iron ball against a stone pillar, then against another, shattering his bones against the masonry. Next, four steel swords were ripped from the hands of the floating soldiers; the blades whirled in the air and tore through the traitor leader's body, decapitating him and severing his head before his men. Every survivor began to tremble uncontrollably.

“None of you will leave this fortress alive today!”

With a swift flick of my hands, the swords flew like an invisible whip across the chamber. Solano's soldiers trying to scramble toward the breached door or leap through the gaps were sliced in two without the slightest chance of defense. The tower floor drank the blood of the traitors.

I turned my face toward the wounded panda and then propelled my body out of the ruined watchtower, floating into the open air beyond the walls.

***

The scene was utterly surreal. A small child hovered calmly from the top of the north tower toward the outer wall barrier. The castle guards watched open-mouthed: they knew this was Baron Arl's prodigal son, but the dread emanating from my vital breath made them step back. I truly looked like a demon of war.

A desperate enemy soldier attempting to climb one of the siege ladders raised his sword against me in an act of madness. I merely flicked my index finger, and his body was severed into pieces before the steel could even graze my robes.

I set my scarlet eyes upon the crowd of Solano soldiers squeezed into the field below:

“YOU CAME TO EXTERMINATE MY PROVINCE... NOW DEATH AWAITS YOU!”

Suddenly, three ceremonial daggers rose around me. The psychic seed mimicked the cellular structure of metals, and within seconds, a sphere of pure light, a sphere of blazing fire, and a sphere of crystalline ice manifested, spinning at high velocity around my body. The elemental globes began expanding in size.

The fire sphere was the first to burst into hundreds of incandescent shards, raining down upon the enemy infantry like a storm of rustic meteors. Every Solano soldier touched by the embers was instantly incinerated. There was no room for mercy.

Next came the second punishment. The ice sphere halted its rotation in midair and molded itself into countless sharp harpoons and stakes of pure ice. Like a biting gale, the storm swept across the battlefield, leaving dozens of enemies frozen and lifeless in the soft mud of the swamp.

Finally, the third sphere of light came to a stop in the center. An intensely bright and destructive beam of energy shot down from the sky, tearing through the forest floor and carving a deep line in the earth between the castle and the invaders.

“THOSE WHO DARE CROSS THIS LINE SHALL MEET AN END INFINITELY WORSE THAN THOSE WHO HAVE JUST FALLEN!”

It was at that exact moment of terror that the blast of a powerful war horn echoed from the western flank of the forest. It was the reinforcement my father had secretly requested! Hundreds of heteromorphic warriors from the Tigris Kingdom—swift Tiger-Men and colossal Minotaurs wielding battleaxes—emerged roaring from between the trees, flanking and crushing Count Baxter's remaining troops with their bestial vitality.

Back in the rear guard, Count Baxter watched the massacre of his ranks, his eyes bloodshot with rage and cold sweat:

— Has Gália contracted the forces of a demon?! Or is that a dragonewt disguised in the body of a child?! — he bellowed, watching his men incinerated and frozen on the ground.

Seized by desperation and knowing the war of attrition was lost, the general ordered an immediate retreat. He screamed at the top of his lungs for the trumpets to sound the fall-back. Baxter ordered the surviving infantry to use the massive bodies of the fallen Thunder-Lizards as improvised stone-like shields to hold off the arrows, attempting to march back toward the Muddy Swamp to save his own skin.

As he beat a retreat under the fierce roars of the Tiger-Men, hatred consumed Baxter's mind: That damned Baron Kenneth of Thalia assured me Gália was blind and defenseless! He promised me the Port of Tegumo would fall effortlessly! Kenneth either betrayed me or is a complete fool... When my remaining troops step foot back in the Red-Fortress of Sanguis-Fortis, I'll make sure to march against Thalia and burn that traitor's province first!

***

Back on the wall, the effects of the psychic collapse began to exact their toll on my six-year-old body. My vision darkened, and the bluish flame snuffed out all at once. I began plunging toward the stone floor.

Before I hit the ground, Katriny's silhouette came sprinting forward. She caught me gently against her chest, wrapping her small master in her arms. With a choked voice and tears in her eyes, she repeated:

— I'm fine, Kaelen... Please calm down... I'm fine, see...

It was then that the panda realized the gravity of my exertion. My childish features were covered in blood, trickling continuously from my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears from the extreme strain of stretching my psychic limits.

I forced my eyes open one last time, seeing Solano's lines in full retreat and the Tiger-Men commanding the flank. I used my last breath to mutter the words before darkness consumed me entirely:

— Good...

And I collapsed unconscious in the arms of my loyal guardian.

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