The Sovereign Chronicles novel Chapter 12

The sequence of savage, predatory strikes was executed with the clean, brutal efficiency of a gale ripping through autumn leaves—erupting without warning and concluding in the span of a single breath. Corin, the Veridian Acolyte, dragged Moria back over thirty feet to secure a safe distance. He leveled his Gilded Bronze Sword at the shadowy figure. The blade pulsed with an icy luminescence, and his aura sharpened into something lethal.

One dead. Two critically wounded. The metallic tang of fresh blood drifted through the forest canopy. The two downed Initiates lay groaning in the dirt, their bodies too broken to even crawl. Every desperate attempt to rise ended in another collapse.

The figure slowly straightened his posture in the gloom. His eyes were as cold as drawn steel, overflowing with killing intent. Wild arcs of lightning crackled across his form, illuminating his features.

"Kaelen? It's you?!" Moria was visibly shaken, completely unable to process the reality before her. She had personally tested Kaelen's strength before. Sure, he was feral, fighting like a rabid beast, but his actual power output had been roughly equal to her own. Tonight, he was an entirely different monster. Looking into those dead, frozen eyes sent a physical chill racing down her spine.

"You're no Phase Three Spirit Warrior!" Corin was equally appalled. The onslaught had been too precise, too ruthless, too fluid. It was as if Kaelen had drilled this exact sequence of murder a thousand times over. Every single movement was laced with unrelenting savagery.

Kaelen stood silently in the dark for a moment before taking a slow step back, retrieving his scattered Throwing Daggers from the dirt. "However you want to play this, I'm game. But understand this: if you don't put me in the ground tonight, I will slaughter every last one of you."

"Arrogant worm! You are nothing. You don't possess the right to bark at me." Corin's face twisted into a snarl. His Aether surged, and the Gilded Bronze Sword began to hum with a crisp, melodic vibration. Lethal sword-Aether bled from the steel, flooding the clearing with oppressive killing intent.

"Kaelen, you have lost your mind! Butchering your fellow disciples? The Azure Sky Sanctum will mount your head on a spike!" Moria finally snapped out of her shock. We haven't even laid a finger on you yet, and you have the audacity to ambush us?!

"Drop the self-righteous act. Don't think a pretty face gives you a free pass to play god. You want my life? You're completely out of your league."

"Stop wasting breath on him! Kill him! Gut the bastard!" The Dual-Blade Initiate struggled to lift his head from the dirt. His once-handsome face was now a mask of agony and pure hatred, glaring venomously at Kaelen in the dark.

"You dug your own grave, Servitor. Corin, do not let him escape." Moria urged the Veridian Acolyte forward. The sheer brutality Kaelen had just displayed made her feel a profound, instinctual threat.

"Corin, end him! What are you waiting for?!" The Dual-Blade Initiate suddenly scrambled upright, desperately trying to put distance between himself and Kaelen.

Without a word, Kaelen exploded off the mark, charging straight at the Dual-Blade Initiate.

The Initiate flinched violently. Abandoning all dignity and ignoring his shattered ribs, he practically crawled toward Corin, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Kill him! Kill him!"

"You dare overstep in my presence? Know your place." Corin intercepted with clinical precision. Moving like a phantom serpent, his speed was breathtaking. He positioned himself between Kaelen and the fleeing Initiate and thrust his sword forward. The blade instantly fractured into five distinct, shimmering afterimages. The technique was vicious and unpredictable, locking onto Kaelen's heart, shoulder, brow, stomach, and throat simultaneously. It was impossible to discern which blade was steel and which was merely lethal Aether.

Kaelen didn't dodge. He didn't even flinch. He met the assault head-on. In a fraction of a second, he reached over his shoulder and drew The Daevan Blade. A heavy, oppressive aura—like the weight of a collapsing mountain—erupted from his core. He swung. The sword-Aether boiled. Everyone present felt a freezing, visceral slash of Aether graze their skin, causing the hairs on their arms to stand on end.

Shhh-slik!

Kaelen and Corin blurred past each other. A spray of crimson painted the air.

Corin's strikes had found their mark, tearing three deep, perilous gashes across Kaelen's flesh.

But Kaelen's ancient broadsword had grazed right past Corin's throat. Kaelen's momentum didn't falter. His blade didn't waver. Completely ignoring his new wounds, he continued his charge. His target: The Dual-Blade Initiate!

The fleeing Initiate snapped his head back in terror. In his final moments, the razor edge of The Daevan Blade expanded rapidly in his pupils.

"No—"

The scream was abruptly severed as the heavy sword cleaved cleanly through his neck. His decapitated head launched into the air, rolling across the forest floor, his eyes bulging in frozen horror.

Dead silence. The dark forest was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. It felt as though even the wind had stopped breathing.

Corin, standing with his back to Kaelen, slowly reached up in disbelief to touch his own neck. Blood? Blood! It was a shallow cut, just a grazing of the flesh, but... he was a Phase Seven Spirit Warrior! How had a filthy Servitor managed to draw his blood?!

The remaining conscious Initiate shivered uncontrollably, dragging himself backward through the dirt. He looked at Kaelen not as a man, but as an apex predator off its leash.

Kaelen stood over the headless corpse. His face was pale, his clothes soaked through with his own blood. The stab wounds on his chest, shoulder, and abdomen were severe, bleeding profusely. Yet, his utterly stoic expression made him look more terrifying than ever.

"Corin! Corin!" Moria shrieked, snapping the Acolyte out of his daze. She summoned twin spheres of fire into her palms, her stance trembling as she prepared for a fight.

"Kaelen, no god can save you tonight." Corin was utterly enraged. Boiling with killing intent, he raised his sword and lunged at Kaelen, holding absolutely nothing back.

Kaelen clamped a hand over the worst wound on his chest. Without rushing, he took two measured steps backward, turned, and melted silently into the pitch-black forest.

"After him! Run him down! Do not let him get away!" Moria commanded the surviving Initiate.

The rugged Initiate glanced at the two corpses of his squadmates, gritted his teeth, forced himself up, and gave chase.

"Don't be afraid! He's bleeding out. He can't run forever."

"He only landed those hits through cheap ambushes. His actual Aether capacity is trash compared to ours."

"Encircle him. Execute on sight."

Moria and the others pursued relentlessly, shouting commands to bolster their own faltering courage.

Kaelen's lips were pressed into a thin white line. Clutching his hemorrhaging chest, he sprinted through the suffocating darkness of the mountain woods. To an observer, his injuries looked fatal. But Kaelen's tolerance for pain was inhuman. He could endure this. Over the past eight years, he had suffered torments far beyond a few stab wounds. He had survived worse; this was nothing but a flesh wound.

………………

Three stalks of Minor Aether-flora. Perfect for replenishing his reserves.

"Combat."

Kaelen froze, instantly tuning his senses to the environment.

It didn't sound like a skirmish between Initiates. It was the chaotic, brutal clamor of a squad engaging a massive Spirit Beast.

The sounds echoed from the forest ahead.

Silently stalking toward the noise, he closed the distance.

Through a break in the dense foliage, he spotted rapid movement. A massive, towering silhouette thrashed against a team of fighters, accompanied by deafening, blood-curdling roars. The intensity of the clash was palpable.

Kaelen vaulted silently into the branches of a colossal oak, navigating the canopy with practiced ease until he had a clear vantage point.

Below, in a fifty-foot clearing of shattered trees and churned earth, a squad of five armed fighters was locked in a desperate melee with a colossal beast. It resembled a tiger, but was larger and far more massive than the Grave-Bear. Its fur was a glossy, midnight black, its crimson eyes burned with feral malice, and its maw was lined with serrated teeth. Two massive, curved fangs extended from its upper jaw, each over a foot and a half long and razor-sharp.

A Saber-Tooth Fiend!

The Azure Sky Sanctum kept a few of these in their beast pens. They were notoriously hyper-aggressive and possessed raw physical power rivaling a high-Phase Spirit Warrior. Its lethal weapons were its claws and fangs, and it fought shrouded in a localized tempest of dark Aether that whipped gravel and debris into a frenzy.

Kaelen observed the fighters. They wore battered, practical armor—clearly a squad of seasoned Mercenaries. Their combat style was gritty, unrefined, but incredibly synchronized. They possessed the kind of synergy forged only through years of bloodshed. At the edge of the clearing, three mutilated corpses lay in pools of their own blood, clearly the fiend's earlier victims.

To call the battle intense would be an understatement; it was a meat grinder.

The Saber-Tooth Fiend had gone completely berserk. Black Aether exploded from its form as it lunged wildly, roaring loud enough to shake the canopy.

The five Mercenaries were barely holding the line. Four of them darted around the perimeter, desperately trying to draw its aggro, while a black-clad warrior—clearly the vanguard—led the main assault. He wielded a massive, six-foot Warblade, executing wide, devastating cleaves fueled by raw, barbaric power.

"Shh-shk!"

Several sword-slashes from the flankers bit into the beast's flank, tearing through its thick hide. The fiend roared in pain. Capitalizing on the distraction, the four flankers instantly retreated. The black-clad warrior surged forward, his Warblade howling through the air as he brought it down in a thunderous overhead strike aimed directly at the beast's skull.

ROAAR! The Saber-Tooth Fiend swiped its massive paw upward, intercepting the descending steel. Sparks showered the clearing with a deafening screech of metal on bone. The Mercenary was sent flying backward by the sheer kinetic force, though the beast's paw was left deeply gashed and dripping blood.

"You up there! Seen enough?! Get down here and help!" The warrior landed heavily, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as he roared toward Kaelen's concealed position.