If he had survived, and Aldrich was still not convinced he had, then that was where he would have washed ashore, either by sinister means or by his own luck and guile.Aldrich had seethed when the seed of doubt had been put in his mind by Vargul's insinuation that Guwayne had not perished after being washed off deck.Then, when those doubts were further confirmed, he had no option.To finish nature's work.
If the boy-prince lived, it was another threat to his fragile regime.Gwendolyn's heir could rally the remnants of the loyalists, turn the tide against the council.No, Guwayne had to die—quietly, far from prying eyes.
But first they had to find him.
Thus, the Shadowed Veil had been summoned.A secretive order from the eastern fringes, where mist-cloaked mountains hid ancient caves, they were no mere cutthroats.They were the stuff of legends, but few had even heard the legends.They lived outside of society, invisible.Though Aldrich, Baron Holt, and Lady Elowen had all called on their services at various times.If they needed someone to exert a little persuasion in a particularly tricky matter of business, for example.Lady Elowen, who had a hard earned reputation for her spies had several times eschewed her own network for the true masters of espionage, sabotage, reconnaissance and assassination, the Shadowed Veil.
Twenty-four strong, handpicked for this mission, they blended the lethal precision of warriors with the arcane artistry of shamans.Clad in form-fitting leathers dyed black, their faces masked by hoods woven with illusionary spells, they moved as ghosts.Each bore tattoos that pulsed with stolen ley energy—marks that allowed them to bend shadows, summon spectral blades, or whisper curses that rotted flesh from bone.Their leader, a tall, athletic woman named Seryth, gripped the prow of the lead vessel, her senses attuned to the island's defenses."The wards waver," she murmured to her second, a hulking brute named Korvath whose shamanistic gifts manifested in earth-shaking stomps."The boy draws power; it thins the veil.Strike swift—capture if possible, kill if not.Aldrich wants proof of the deed."
The boats—three sleek skiffs—beached on the pebbled shore without a whisper.The assassins fanned out, shadows elongating unnaturally as they invoked minor glamours, blending into the twilight haze.The island's terrain was treacherous: craggy cliffs rising from the sea like skeletal fingers, dense thickets of thorn-vines that could cut through hide and skin as if they were silk.Seryth raised a hand, signaling the first wave.Eight assassins melted into the undergrowth, their steps silent as falling snow, daggers drawn and spells readied on lips.They headed for the island’s interior, towards the cave's mouth, drawn by the unmistakable pulse of energy emanating from within.The rest held back, positioning for support—archers with arrows ready, others ready to counter any magical backlash.
Inside the heart-cave, Guwayne froze mid-rite, the silver thread still coiled around his wrist.The chalice of shadow-ink lay empty at his feet, its residue staining his lips black.Calista's warning hung in the air like a blade poised to fall."Intruders," she repeated, her staff flaring as she extended her senses outward.The crystal atop it hummed, vibrating like an alarm.Guwayne's heart hammered.Emotions and raw energy stirred inside of him, a turbulent sea of earth, storm, and shadow that begged for release.
"How many?"he asked, his voice steadier than he felt.
"Too many," Calista replied grimly.She moved to the cave's entrance, her robes swirling as she traced protective runes in the air.They ignited in golden light, forming a barrier that shimmered like heat haze."Assassins, but marked by dark arts.They come for you, boy.We hold here—the cave amplifies our strength."
Guwayne nodded, drawing the dagger from its niche.Shadows danced at his fingertips unbidden, coiling like eager serpents.He stepped beside her.“Won’t the cave act as a beacon?”
“It is too late,” Calista replied, her eyes fixed ahead, searching the ground outside the cave.“They know where we are.Be warned.These are no mere bandits.They carry… a power.”
"I'm ready," Guwayne said, though he had no idea what awaited to confront him, or why they had been sent to track him down.
The first attack came like a whisper of death.Arrows whistled from the thickets surrounding the cave’s mouth, their tips gleaming with void-ink that sizzled against Calista's barrier.The shield held, but cracks spiderwebbed across it as the ink ate at the magic.Then the assassins emerged—eight shadows detaching from the gloom, their forms blurring as they invoked glamours.Guwayne watched as one hurled a spectral blade, a shimmering arc of darkness that slammed into the barrier with a resonant boom.A low chant could be heard, carried on the breeze, and thick tendrils of fog rose up from the ground, pulsing in time with the cadence of the chant.They formed thick rope like fingers that snaked towards the cave entrance.
Calista countered with a sweep of her staff, unleashing a gust of wind that flickered with lightning.The fog dispersed, blown asunder, and two assassins were hurled back, their glamours shattering as they crashed into rocks.But the others pressed on, leaping with inhuman agility.One scaled the cave's outer wall, dagger in teeth, while another, a giant of a man, stomped the ground.The island trembled, loosening stones that rained down toward the entrance, threatening to block them in.
Guwayne acted on instinct.He thrust his hand forward, channeling Vorath's fury through the obsidian dagger, hoping his training would hold, incomplete though it was.The ground bucked under the stomping assassin, a pillar of stone erupting to impale him mid-chant, the intonation changing abruptly to a deafening guttural scream.Surprise flickered in Calista's eyes—her pupil had woven the art seamlessly, without the hesitation of his earlier trials."Well done," she muttered, but there was no time for praise.
One of the assassins who had scaled the cliff face reached the lip of the cave, dropping inside with a roll.Up close, his mask revealed slits for eyes that glowed with shamanistic fire.He lunged, dagger flashing, a curse on his lips that made the air thicken like tar.Guwayne dodged, shadows coiling from his fingers to bind the man's legs.The assassin stumbled, but slashed wildly, nicking Guwayne's arm.Pain flared, but with it came clarity—the Confluence he had been working on, amplifying his senses.He countered with a storm-laced punch, wind howling from his fist to slam the intruder against the wall.Bones fractured, and the man slumped, lifeless.
Outside, the remaining six of the first wave regrouped, their attacks coordinated now.Two archers loosed arrows in unison, while three others wove a net of shadows that clawed at the barrier.The last charged head-on, his body bulging as he invoked a berserker trance, muscles swelling.Calista blasted the net with a bolt of pure energy, shredding it, but the berserker smashed through the weakening shield, roaring like a beast unchained.
Guwayne met him mid-leap, earth-shaping the cave floor into spikes that pierced the assassin's boots.The man howled but swung a massive fist.Guwayne ducked, shadows whipping out to choke him, storm winds pinning him in place.With a final twist, he drove the dagger into the berserker's chest.The body convulsed, then stilled.Calista evoked a whirlwind at the caves entrance, that snatched up the fallen rocks and hurled them ferociously at the archers, flaying them alive.
The remaining attackers fell back, dissolving into the shadows, but not before one hurled a dagger that grazed her shoulder, drawing blood.
The first wave lay broken, bodies scattered like discarded puppets.Guwayne panted, adrenaline surging, his wounds minor but stinging.Power thrummed in his veins—the Confluence no longer a turbulent sea, but a directed torrent.Calista eyed him with a new found respect."You've surpassed my teachings already," she said, binding her wound with a strip of robe."But they come again.Brace yourself."
She was right.The second wave emerged from the shadows—ten this time, led by Seryth herself.They moved as one, chanting in unison, weaving a dome of illusion that made their numbers seem double, treble.The warriors advanced under its cover, blades aloft.Arrows flew anew, exploding on impact, releasing clouds of corrosive mist that ate at the cave's entrance.
Calista raised a counter-ward, a whirlwind that dispersed the mist, but the warriors were upon them.Two slipped through the remnants of the barrier, daggers thrusting.Guwayne parried one with his sword, the impact jarring his arm, then retaliated with a storm-blast that hurled the assassin into his comrade.They tangled, and he finished them with two deadly spikes that rose from the earth.Calista felled another with her staff, the crystal discharging an arc of lightning that chained through three more, their bodies jerking in a mockery of a dance, before they slumped to the floor.
Seryth joined the fray, her form blurring as she swept forward in short bursts, impossible to keep track of.Suddenly, she appeared behind Guwayne, dagger poised for his spine.He sensed her presence and spun round, slashing with his sword.But she was too fast, dodging, appearing two feet to her left and countering with a curse that made his vision swim, doubts flooding his mind:You're no hero, boy.Your father died a fool; you'll join him.Disorientated Guwayne desperately pushed the thoughts away, feeling them sapping his resolve, his energy.He could not see the sword in his grip, the cave pulsing as she interfered with his senses.
He resorted to his training, the old methods useless with neither touch nor sight.He conjured up a boulder, the rock ripping out of the floor in front of him, and flung it at where he had last sensed her.But she was toom quick, only blank space where her lithe form had stood.
He turned as he felt a blade slice his thigh, then twisted, dropped, and rolled out of the way as two bolts of energy whizzed past, missing him by mere inches and filling his nostrils with the acrid smell of ozone.
The battle raged, wave after wave blending into a blur of steel and sorcery.Guwayne's abilities flowered under pressure—shadows forming autonomous tendrils that strangled foes, storms summoning localized gales that disarmed archers, earthquakes toppling attackers as they were poised to strike.He and Calista fought together, comrades in arms.They both saved the other, being their eyes and ears when the other's failed them.Bodies piled at the cave's mouth, but others, after succumbing to a blade or spell, merely disappeared, revealing themselves to be nothing more than a figment of their imagination, drawing their attention from the assassin behind them who was only too real.
Seryth's forces had dwindled, they had taken heavy losses, but they had adapted their tactics, using hit-and-run tactics, feints to draw them out.And Guwayne, despite the energy that still coursed through him, was getting exhausted.He knew they could not keep going for too much longer.They were keeping the assassins at bay, but nothing else.Eventually, one would get through and deliver more than a glancing blow.
Calista was saying something, but he couldn't discern her words over the roar of the storm that he had unleashed in the cave and the cries of the attackers.He crouched, trying to discern where the next assault would come from, when suddenly the world faded, replaced by a chasm yawning wide under a blood-red sky.At the edge, he saw himself, hands outstretched, but he could only watch, mute.
From the chasm, he saw three immense beings begin to rise, while Guwayne's hands, the one he was staring at, moved like a conductor at the front of an orchestra.
Was he summoning them, or sending them back down into their pits?It was impossible to tell in that moment, where confusion and panic reigned.
