The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 371

Chapter 371

SETH MILVIEW

Standing at the bottom of a long stretch of stairs leading up into the stadium seats, I nearly turned around and gave up. I was so tired…but then, having your bones and musculature stitched back together by magic wasn’t exactly what I’d call restful.

I’d stayed in bed for the entire second day of the Victoriad, which sucked. While everyone else was cheering on the wargames or spending their allowance at the market, I was curled up under about four blankets, shaking and sweating as my body worked overtime to heal.

Still, the doctor had been optimistic as she explained that a fractured pelvis was relatively easy to fuse, and how I’d have been looking at a much longer, more painful recovery if my hip had been broken and not just dislocated. And most of the class stopped by in groups to see me, with Mayla coming back several times throughout the day to check in and drop off cakes and candies to make me feel better.

I thought of that fluttery moment where she’d asked me to stay with her every time she walked in the door, and through the pain-induced haze, I realized something.

I liked her. Like, like liked her. I’d never had a crush before. I’d never been close enough to a girl to have a crush before…

“Seth?”

I flinched, feeling my face grow hot as I peeked at her out of the corner of my eye. Mayla was holding my arm while helping me walk, and I’d just frozen for about thirty seconds. “Sorry, I, uh…”

“We could sit lower if—”

“No, it’s okay,” I assured her, starting up the stairs. “I’ll be fine.”

A hot poker jammed into my side with each step as we ascended about halfway up the stadium to where Brion, Pascal, Yanick, Linden, and Deacon were seated. Most of our other classmates were in private viewing boxes with their bloods as everyone prepared for the main event, the real reason for the Victoriad: the challenges.

“Hail, Seth the Undefeated, Slayer of Giants!” Linden cheered as we shuffled in to sit next to the others.

“We are both honored and humbled by your presence,” Pascal added, a genuine smile creasing the burned side of his face.

I laughed, then winced.

Yanick leaned back and stuck his heavily wrapped leg in the air. “I feel your pain, man. At least you still won your fight.”

With an appreciative smile at my friends, I scooted past a few other people—the stands were almost entirely full now—and slid onto the bench next to Linden. “So, have they announced the challenges yet?”

“No,” Yanick said, pouting down at the empty combat field, which had been cleared of all the smaller fighting platforms. Then he brightened. “But, the rumor back home is that Ssanyu the Stone Eater is challenging to replace Bilal as Scythe Viessa Vritra’s retainer.”

Pascal grunted. “Ssanyu may be a legendary ascender, but everyone knows Scythe Viessa Vritra prefers a certain type of retainer.”

“That’s true,” I said, nodding along with what they were saying. “Have you read The Forging of Scythes by Tenebrous?”

“Oh, I have!” Deacon said brightly, getting a laugh out of everyone else. He looked affronted, pressing his hand to his chest as he said, “Well excuse me for being well read, you barbarians.”

“In the newest version, Tenebrous mentions that Scythe Viessa Vritra prefers to train up her retainers personally,” I continued, adjusting myself on the hard bench to try and get comfortable. “Her last retainer, Bilal, was a wartime appointment, but he’d been her ward since he was a kid.”

“Right!” Deacon said. “Him and his siblings. Bilal, Bivran, and…Bivrae, right? The Dead Three?”

“Dead Three?” Mayla echoed, looking confused.

I winced as I turned toward her. The sun gleamed off her auburn hair, which framed her face and accentuated the slight roundness of her cheeks. She was…

Clearing my throat, I said, “Three little kids, eight or nine years old, who were found alone in their home. The building had been completely destroyed by some kind of explosion, and everyone else inside was killed. But somehow the triplets survived.”

“Whoa,” Brion said. “I’ve never heard that story.”

Linden leaned forward, chiming in for the first time. “I wonder if—”

But he was immediately interrupted by a series of magical gong noises echoing throughout the stadium. It was like someone had created a sound barrier as the audience suddenly went completely silent.

Into that silence marched a Vritra-born man in dark plated armor, a purple cape trailing behind him, striding purposefully toward the center of the combat field. Horns jutted out of his short-cropped black hair. He had a serious face, and wherever his red eyes focused, the crowd seemed to tremble

There was no announcement to tell us his name or list his accomplishments. Everyone already knew who he was: Cylrit, retainer of Sehz-Clar.

When he reached the middle of the field, he turned toward the high box, his posture straight as a sword, and then bowed deeply. I could just make out Scythe Seris Vritra move to the front of the balcony, and I was glad I was already sitting down. The sight of her—her hair glowing like liquid pearl in the sunlight, her battlerobes shining like black diamonds—made my knees tremble.

She stepped back into the shadows of the high box just before a second figure appeared, marching toward Cylrit.

Although completely focused on the woman, I found it really hard, almost painful, to look at her. My gaze kept wanting to slip off, like turnshoes on an icy path. Her figure was indistinct, sort of ethereal…shadow made real. Plain black robes hung from her thin frame, but they seemed to drift and move, collapsing back into nothing around her ankles, like they stopped being robes and just became darkness.

She seemed to float over the ground, carried on a wind of black mist. No horns sprouted from her head, but her short white hair, which practically glowed in contrast with her midnight black skin and robes, was styled up into straight, sharp spikes.

Mawar, the Black Rose of Etril…

Stopping beside Cylrit, Mawar also bowed to the high box.

Another woman stepped out onto the balcony, raising her hand toward her retainer. She was a lot like Scythe Seris Vritra, and, at the same time, almost her opposite. The woman’s silvery-gray skin wasn’t painted, and she wore no ornamentation in her bright white hair. Unlike Seris’s delicate horns, this woman had two pairs of thick black horns that curved away from her scalp, dark and heavy.

She wasn’t wearing a dress or battlerobes, but was clad in armor made of white scales: larger, slightly darker plates at her shoulders, neck, and hips had an organic look to them, almost like bone, while smaller, arrow-shaped scales meshed together over the rest of her body.

Scythe Melzri Vritra…

She stepped back, and retainer Mawar straightened.

The ringing of gongs made the entire audience jump. Yanick cursed as Linden slipped out of his seat. I let out a groan of pain, having flinched so hard it felt like I’d cracked a rib again.

A deep voice spoke, coming from the air all around us. “No challengers have stepped forward to face Cylrit of Sehz-Clar. Would any prospects now offer challenge?”

As one, the entire audience, several tens of thousands of people, all focused on the combat field, waiting breathlessly. But no one stepped forward.

“Cylrit goes unchallenged,” the voice boomed.

Bowing again to the high box, retainer Cylrit marched stiffly from the field.

“No challengers have stepped forward to face Mawar of Etril. Would any prospects now offer challenge?”

Again, the call for challengers went unanswered.

“Mawar goes unchallenged,” the voice boomed.

Following Cylrit’s lead, Mawar bent into a fluid bow, then floated from the combat field.

When she was gone, the voice spoke again. “Scythe Cadell Vritra of Central Dominion has elected to refuse any and all challengers to retainer Lyra of Highblood Dreide, who remains in the land of Dicathen, helping to settle our new sister continent and bring peace to its citizens.”

There was some muttering from the crowd at this, but it quieted immediately when the voice continued to speak.

“In times of war, even the strongest soldier may fall pursuing the will of the High Sovereign. The world is vast, and its perils are many, which is why Alacrya needs the High Sovereign to watch over us, protect us, and make us strong. We honor the dead for their sacrifice. Retainers Uto of Vechor, Jaegrette of Truacia, and Bilal of Truacia. Their names, like their deeds, will be remembered so long as a single Alacryan heart still beats.

“But where one falls, another rises. Four of Alacrya’s champions have stepped forward to challenge for the position of retainer of Truacia under Scythe Viessa Vritra. Sovereign Kiros Vritra welcomes and invites to the field: Ssanyu the Stone Eater—”

“Hah, told you!” Yanick whispered, grinning ear to ear.

“—Aadaan of Named Blood Rusaek, Kagiso of Highblood Gwethe, and Bivrae of the Dead Three.” _{free𝑤ebnovel.com}

As their names were spoken, the four challengers appeared from one of the many entrances and marched toward the center of the field to the spot that Cylrit and Mawar had only just vacated. They stood side by side in a line—Bivrae standing well away from the others, her face an ugly mask of disdain—and bowed as one to the high box.

“Would any other prospects offer challenge?” the voice said.

A moment passed. No one moved.

The voice boomed again, deeper and more grandiose. “Then bow before Sovereign Kiros of Vechor, and let the challenges commence.”

A suffocating presence washed over the coliseum. It felt as though someone had flipped the world upside down and I was standing under the weight of the entire continent, waiting for it to fall and crush me to nothing.

The shadow of a large being appeared at the edge of the high box balcony. All around me, people were already looking down, staring at their feet or their laps.

Clasping my hands together, I kept my eyes on my interlocked fingers, not daring to look anywhere else. From the top of my vision, I could just see the four challengers, each facedown in the dirt, prostrate before the Sovereign.

When he spoke, the Sovereign’s voice boomed with blood-stained thunder and white-hot power, scorching my ears and stealing my breath. “Prove yourselves, challengers. Show the depth of your mettle and the range of your desire. Bring pride to your bloods and your Sovereigns. Let no weakness creep in upon you, but claim every eager ounce of strength from your bodies.”

Then the force of his presence was gone. I waited, afraid to look up and accidentally meet the Sovereign’s eye. But the crowd began to shuffle, and I could hear a few whispered conversations, and finally Mayla’s hand was resting on my forearm.

“Seth, you can—”

I glanced up, meeting her eyes. “That was…” But I trailed off, unsure how to describe what I’d just felt.

“I know.”

The projected voice of the unseen announcer came again, this time grating on my frayed nerves, making it feel like someone was standing right behind me, shouting into my ear. “Challengers Kagiso and Aadaan, please remain on the field. All others, return to your staging area.”

Ssanyu and Bivrae left in opposite directions, the former striding proudly, the latter slinking along in a way that reminded me of the creatures in horror stories my mother read to me as a child.

The two men remaining on the field bowed again to the high box, then to each other.

Aadaan was tall and lean, with arms and legs that looked like they’d been stretched on a rack. He was clad in rune-inscribed leather armor, the dark brown nearly the same color as his skin. He wore a clever grin, and his eyes never left Kagiso.

Kagiso made a show of stretching, his mane of tawny hair bouncing around his shoulders with each movement. The tips of his black horns were just visible through his hair, and he had one blazing red eye and one jet black one. His armor was a mesh of leather and chain in a deep red that matched his eye, with silver runes glowing from the pauldrons, chest, and down either side of his exposed back.

“Dang, that’s a lot of runes,” Linden muttered, but I could tell he wasn’t talking about the armor. The man’s spine was marked with at least a dozen emblems, and even a couple of regalia. “Does anyone know anything about him?”

“Only that he was fostered by Highblood Gwethe and he’s a solo ascender,” Deacon answered. “He fell out of the public eye when he manifested his Vritra blood.”

Pascal grunted and scratched at his scarred cheek. “I heard they do all kinds of crazy experiments on any of the Vritra-blooded that manifest.. That’s why there are so few of them.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Brion said, earning a glare from Pascal. “There are so few of them because it’s super rare for even someone with even a lot of Vritra blood to be able to use their asuran mana arts. For the few that do, the High Sovereign takes them all to Taegrin Caelum and has them trained to fight the other asuras.”

Linden laughed. “Man, even total badasses can’t fight asuras. Scythes maybe, but only after they’ve been strengthened with elixirs and stuff. I bet the High Sovereign has some secret weapon against the other asura. That’s why he’s never been afraid of them. I mean, think about it. They decided to blow up half the other continent instead of attacking us here. Why would they do that if they weren’t afraid of Alacrya?”

Pascal rolled his eyes. “Linden, bud, you’ve been watching too many broadcasts…”

The conversation was interrupted by the ringing of gongs, announcing the start of the fight.

Except the combatants didn’t move. Kagiso and Aadaan were standing thirty feet apart, weapons summoned to their hands. Aadaan wielded a long, thin silver spear, while black iron gauntlets formed around Kagiso’s hands, sharp claws extending from the knuckles.