KRUGÄN - The Secret of Magic

By L. A. Beaver

Four hundred and forty-two years before the Race War, Enan reappears after a year of exile established by the Order of Lärurîth. At the dawn of a new era for the young Arset people, rumors of a mighty army of strange, invincible and unstoppable creatures spread like wildfire. A boy with no name and no memory is in the middle of a war that apparently does not belong to him, but things are not always as they seem, and an indissoluble link joins him to Enan. Everything has already been written or can anyone still decide their own destiny? A story that would have ended over two thousand years later had just begun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. A. Beaver
• Release date: Jul 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9788828355496

Book preview

Flaber.

The Krugän sat thoughtfully.

A doubt tormented him more than any arm could do:

was he really free to choose his destiny,

or his life, his story, or was it already written in a book,

and had he only to leaf through its pages?

PROLOGUE

Sometimes two people’s destinies are so finely intertwined and with such special events, that it seems they belong to a bigger and already prearranged plan. But maybe what we call fate or destiny, is the man’s need to give a sense to the events dominating his life, a justification for violence and an excuse for failures.

The events I am going to tell took place four hundred ninety two years before the end of the Races War: the young populations and the several races of Arset had already got in contact with each other for some decades. In spite of the fact that their relationship was reduced to a minimum, each of them isolated in their own territory and closed in their own interests, news of war were running faster than the wind.

Voices about a powerful army formed by creatures never seen, and landed in the south-west of the continent of Harith, flashed like lightning from mouth to mouth spreading all over Arset.

A story that would have ended over two thousand years later had just begun.

CHAPTER I

THE INVASION

It was a hot evening of the Third Moon of Firstim, a light breeze played with the trees’ leaves and accompanied the crickets’ sing dominating the whole country. Some big braziers were arranged at regular intervals around Meltar walls to increase the night visibility. News came rarely from the neighboring territories. Even if often uncompleted, recently they increased and included always a recurrent term: invasion. It was not clear who were the invaders because there were several versions, more or less credible, more or less fanciful but the king of Meltar decreed the greatest level of alert to not underestimate the situation.

«Have you ever seen an elf?» Jirian asked to his mate.

«Don’t you have better arguments for a discussion?»

«Doesn’t it make you a little bit curious? I mean, men having their body modified in a strange way… everybody talks about it in the city, how can’t you be interested in it?»

«Far populations, exotic civilizations… I have not doubts it could be interesting to know them, and to not talk about it in vain, least of all during a guard duty! A tavern is the right place, with a beer tankard!» he sniggered.

«My dear Naban, you always do a good work maintaing a serious behavior in these moments, or you would be surely surprised fighting with a beer tankard in your hand!» Jirian burst out laughing.

«What are you talking about?» another one asked coming closer.

«Vannel, have you ever seen an elf?» Jirian asked him.

«Me! Of course!» the other ones’ eyes were amazed.

«Nooo, you are kidding us…»

«It’s true, when I saw him I was not so close, but he was just an elf!»

«And where did you see him?»

«It was one week ago, a delegation of foreigners had arrived in the city…»

«Yes, I remember it.»

«Well, I took part in the internal lounges order service, which had been increased for that occasion.

I could see that one of them had his ears pointed and his look was sharp as a blade!»

«It’s just like that! It’s said they have all their body parts pointed, and their limbs stretched out and thin as steaks…»

«Nothing to do with the dwarfs!»

«Yes, those ones are completely different: they are all little and rounded, so full of hair that you don’t see the face of some of them…»

«It’s that you cannot distinguish between males and females!» both burst out laughing.

Naban, on the contrary, went away annoyed by the many nonsenses they were saying, and he just leaned out of the town walls. In front of him, at the level of the street, the line of the burnt braziers lit the darkness up to a hundreds of steps from the town walls. Next to each of those yres, two guards cared about keeping them lit up.

Naban searched more afar, trying to penetrate the darkness of the plain extending in front of the city, with the help of the almost full moon.

– Everything seems calm – he thought – I hope it would be the same on the other side -and he turned towards the city and the mountains – the forest is much closer there.

The black tops’ outline hanged heavily over his soul, and his face got dark.

– Those mountains – he thought – then he got closer the other two -which were still pouring words about the strange gnomes’ dresses or the way dwarfs’ males and females could be distinguished.

«Yellow eyes, sharp and protruding claws, their blood is black, they seem men, but they are also beasts, they devoured their enemies’ bodies, and they took their heads off to show it as a trophy…»

The two looked at him horrified.

«We should think about these creatures, not to the elves or the dwarfs, but to these creatures!»

«What are you saying Naban?» Jirian asked him.

«Last week I met a worn-out man in state of confusion while I was hunting on the mountains…» he paused «he went across the mountains by foot to escape from the hell dominating on the other side of these tops. There the cities are falling one by one, their armies were destroyed by a powerful and irresistible army, formed by these creatures, maybe demons! This is what he related me before dying…»

«You did not tell us about it…» Vannel said.

«Did you inform the seniors?» Jirian asked, Naban nodded.

«They ordered me to shut up, I would have only caused panic.»

The other two did not say anything.

«But I thought you would have to know it… I mean we are soldiers, it’s our job… we should be used to such a thing!»

«Yes, we should…» Jirian shivered «even if fighting against the demons is not exactly our job!»

«It’s better to know who we’ll have to do with… but are you sure they’ll get up to here, too?»

«Unfortunately yes… I saw the terror in that man’s eyes, a terror you cannot escape from. These creatures will invade all the territories up to the extreme North, and then they’ll continue with the ones above the sea. It will be dwarfs’ turn, it will be elves’ one.»

«But you are exaggerating this way!» Jirian interrupted him.

It seemed Naban awoke and he shook his head. «Yes… yes… I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened to me… suddenly a feeling of anguish overwhelmed me…» he breathed deeply trying to send away his fears.

«Hey, look… the fog is coming down!» Vannel said.

The three leaned out of the town walls, and they saw a huge milky white bank of fog, made visible by the moonlight and advancing in the darkness.

«Strange…» Naban said. «A while before, the plain was all empty…»

«You will not have seen well in the dark… above all this is not fog period.»

«I tell you it wasn’t there; such a thing would have been suddenly visible with the moon…»

They remained to stare at the fog in silence, until when, tree by tree, bush by bush, going across meadows and cutting the streets, it did not reach the fire line just below them.

«It stopped…»

«It could not do something else near the fire!»

The fog seemed to hesitate, then it stopped completely, it was unnatural and still. Somewhere among that opaque white sea, they started to hear some powerful strokes resounding towards them.

«Do you hear it too?»

«What’s it?» Vannel asked.

«Drums… big drums: tens of it» Naban said.

The strokes’ power increased and the rhythm got even more pressing.

«Who has fun playing drums in the night?» Jirian said «they are not so good at it!»

«Yes, the theme is too much repetitive!»

«They have not come here to have fun… or maybe yes, but they will do it at our own cost!»

And as it were been a sentence, as soon as he finished to speak, the fog vomited a myriad of strange and aggressive creatures. Like a swarm of wasps, they attacked the few guards around the fires sweeping them away.

«Damn, they’re attacking us! Jirian don’t just stand there, run and play the bell!» Naban said unsheathing his sword.

Along the town walls, Vannel and the others took arches and arrows and started to hammer away their enemies which were reaching the town walls. The mad bell strokes started to be heard from afar, and soon after the other towers’ ones echoed it, suddenly spreading the alarm all over the city.

«Naban! The stairs!» a soldier screamed.

Naban took a long pole with its tip forked.

«Vannel, score the rung and push, hurry up!»

Both pushed with all their strength, managing to put the stairs afar, and making it fall among the screams of those creatures which were going up.

«Arches!» Jirian screamed to everyone who could hear it while he was coming back from the tower; then he took shelter back to the merlons where he waited for the arrows’ burst shoot down.

«Why don’t the defense systems work yet?»

«The posts are still empty» the other one answered indicating the neighboring towers.

«Well care about it!»

«I can’t use any of these bone shakers!»

«It’s easier then what you think, put a wineskin of pitch in the basket, burnt the hanged rag and make the mechanism work… there is a lever somewhere. I care about the other one!»

Jirian ran again toward the tower, he was breathless, but the adrenalin did not make him feel the weakness. He found a group of ogres gathered on a side and he took one of them. He arranged him with difficulty in the basket of the little catapult, and burnt the rag used also as stopper.

– It will be this… – he thought – and, with all his strength, he pushed a lever on one side of the device, which trembled tense after the click, and the wineskin was already very far from the town walls.

It fell into pieces among the enemies, spreading its content all around and suddenly burning it.

«Easy!» Jirian said.

Naban had done the same from the other tower and he was already preparing the next launch. Below them the screams of pain got clear among the confusion of the siege occurring.

The incendiary attack created confusion among the soldiers of those strange creatures, which showed to not be so disciplined. But it was a temporary thing, in fact the troops regained their composure with the same speed they had scattered.

Jirian took another wineskin, but he stopped at the half way realizing he could not put it into the basket of the catapult. -And now how I can put it as before? He did not explain it to me -He looked at the other post, where Naban had made the second shot start, and now he was recharging his mechanism.

«It is so far, I don’t understand how he can do it» he murmured, and just in that moment he saw the end of a stair setting against the borders of the bastions in front of him. He left the wineskin of pitch on the ground and leaned out of the town walls: he saw a row of enemy soldiers climbing on the stair like ants.

Jirian did not think about it twice: he took the wineskin from the ground, he burnt the rag and made it fall from the border of the town walls, just on his enemies’ heads which were going up the stair. The wineskin broke in two on the helm of the first one of the row, which was enveloped by the flames, and he fell writhing for the pain; a rain of fire hit those ones below him, and the entire stair burnt.

«Soldier, come back to your post, we take care of here!»

Jirian turned. «You have got at last!» he said. «The bone shaker is all yours…» and he ran away.

The stairs setting against the town walls increased their number, below them a great crowd of enemies pawed to manage to go up, and even more often some of those creatures managed to reach the bastions. It was difficult to catalogue what was in the front as a real soldier: rather short and thin, it looked substantially like a human being, but its skin was wrinkled and pimply, grey and verging to yellow. Their rough armor was formed by a series of pieces of metal, kept together by some leather laces, and they brandished short swords and daggers which seemed more butcher’s tools than real arms. A pair of few smart eyes and a large sneer of madness hid back to a simple shield of wood decorated with animals’ bones and tribal red and black symbols. They were mediocre, clumsy and reckless, but their huge number and the total lack of prudence made them a good resource in battle.

After that, all the regular troops had taken their position on the walls and the attacks were driven back one by one until any enemy soldier did not manage to go up the bastions. The defense systems which started to work had made difficult and dangerous also coming close to the walls: the massive bursts of arrows and incendiary jars would cause surely death, and soon afterwards the camp in front of the walls was full of bodies and flames. The enemies started to escape in a disorderly way, and the soldiers on the walls exulted for the victory.

«Naban, these soldiers were not that great, if we can define them so…» Jirian said.

«Yellow eyes? Sharp and protruding claws? An army which cannot be halted?» Vannel said a little bit sarcastically.

«Say what you want, you did not see the terror in that man’s eyes!» he said angry.

«Maybe the army he referred to was another one…»

«If that one which attacked us can be called army!» Jirian interrupted him.

«Yes, it seemed that those strange sort of men had saucepans and frying-pans instead of an armor!» Vannel said sniggering. «I don’t understand how they could have thought to attack a city got up like that! Any of those creatures had more or less the strength of a fourteen-year-old boy…»

«They are also easy to kill, gesticulating with those little swords in a just as ridiculous as ineffective way!»

«It’s true, sometimes it seems their heads break on their own!»

«Listen!» Naban said shutting them up. «They re-started to play the drums!»

«Don’t they intend to try it again?»

«If they are so stupid, they’ll get the worst of it!»

«Gubal…»

«What?»

«Gubal» Jirian repeated «in my grand-mother’s village this word was used to call a mad or stupid brainless person!»

«An army of gubals… the name is suitable for them!» Vannel said.

«Strange…» Nabal said.

«What, the name?»

«The name? What name?»

«Gubal… never mind, what were you saying?»

«The drums could be heard for a while, but there still is nobody…»

«Correct… gubal!»

The drums resounded all night, keeping the besiege city awake. The soldiers got to see the first lights of the daybreak without sleeping, with their nerves and muscles tense. They were waiting for a probable attack, but the enemy arm did not show all morning, keeping itself hidden in that unnatural fog which surrounded the city. That exasperating wait would be in their favor, wearing out the souls of the troops defending Meltar.

Even if it was a hot day, the fog scattered showing the enemy camp in front of the city only when the sun got to the highest point of the sky. They were thousands gathering to launch the attack. This time there were not only gubals among the enemy rows, but also taller and more robust warriors: some of them went over the normal human being sizes and they were arranged in close-knit and well disciplined units. That messy crowd of gubals which attacked the night before was the invading enemy army’s vanguard. Thousands of blades shone at the sinister sunlight, ready to stain themselves of red. Now thousands of blades were pointing to the same direction.

«Yellow eyes, sharp and protruding claws, their blood is black, they seem like men, but they are beasts, too…» Naban said among its screams over the walls, while he was looking at the army getting closer «what did I tell you?»

«Now… now I can understand the terror in that man’s eyes…» Jirian was saying while a drop of sweat streamed down his cheek from his forehead.

Some arrows started to whistle around them, and then they increased their frequency as the beginning of a summer storm.

«Prepare yourselves for the worst!» Naban said to the other two.

The enemies got and set tens of stairs and hooks against the walls. The first machines appeared: catapults, onagers and trebuchets were placed at suitable distance, while some battering rams were carried to the city doors to try to beat them down.

The real siege began in that moment.

They set the city defense systems going, too: rocks, red-hot pitch onagers, red-hot jars bulging with pitch, and any kind of things were projected towards the enemy troops with catapults and ballistae; some boiling oil was poured on who tried to climb the walls, and the archers returned the enemies’ arrows with their own ones. The sky got dark because of the quantity of several kinds of bullets the two sides launched against each other, causing death and destruction.

Everything was made more difficult by the summer heat: the wheat and the dust formed a sticky thin layer below the armors and the vestments.

«Jirian, Vannel, come here! They took the tower!» Naban screamed as he saw that the defense post on their right was invaded by the gubals and some other creatures. Some soldiers followed the three to chase the enemies away over the walls; the other ones got from the other side of the tower, while a group of archers concentrated its attacks in that zone. The gubals were the first to attack, and the first ones to die as well, while a bitter hand-to-hand fight began against the other creatures to control the tower. If the last one were left in the enemies’ hands, it would be an access point for the attackers, and this was a mistake the defenders cannot permit to happen.

The stairs the enemies managed to set against the tower were devoured by the fire and they crashed on the ground below the weight of some big rocks launched from the walls. The tower was re-conquested in a short time without the flows of enemies getting there. The last gubals left were countered over the walls by the defenders’ pressure and they fell on their mates who were trying to set new stairs.

«CATAPUUULTS» someone screamed from afar.

Naban looked up and saw some big crumpled metal balls flying towards them. Some banged against the walls, other ones passed over them and hit the buildings in the back. One of them hit the tower where they were, which seemed to be shaken by an earthquake.

«Vannel!» Jirian screamed.

The tower’s floor gave way just below his mate’s feet, and he saw him slide down with the rocks and the rubbles. His terrified eyes stared at him and he screamed a desperate request of help while he was falling into the thin air.

A big dark metal sphere full of protruding points and with an irregular shape came out from the destroyed part of the tower. The sphere moved on its own below the incredulous soldiers’ eyes. Then the sphere opened and two arms, two legs and a head came out from it. Naban leaned out fast from the walls, and he saw that the other spheres were moving, too: those ones which banged against the walls, were climbing them with their arms.

«That thing they launched with the catapult is alive!» Naban said.

«That thing is a hokiran inside a solid armor!»

«A hori what?»

«A hokiran, it is the way I’ve called the other kind of enemy warrior» Jirian said.

«Whatever it means in your grandmother’s dialect, it is enough for me to know it is something which can be killed!»

In that same moment the hokiran gave an incomprehensible challenge scream and it threw itself on the first soldiers which were within his reach. Some big and thick dark metal claws came out from its armor’s gloves which he used both as shield and arm. Soon it covered itself with blood.

Jirian and Naban threw themselves in the crowd, dealing hacks and lunges continuously, but that dark metal seemed to be more resistant than their swords. Each attack seemed vain, unlike the hokiran’s ones, which enjoyed the ease in beating its adversaries down. A sadistic sneer on its animal muzzle and mounted on its helmet’s armor could be glimpsed. Jirian went away in a hurry, picked an arch from the floor and put an arrow in it. He took aim with calm and patience, he followed his enemy’s movements in the crowd, and then he shot. The arrow beat the armor at one span from the hokiran’s neck, and it got nervous. Jirian was annoyed, he snatched an arrow out of a body on his side, and he took aim again. Now the tense string was slippery because of his wheat and he could hear any of its minimum movements on his two fingers.

– Camon – he thought – like in the contests… – he let the string on instinct, and the arrow tracked an invisible line between Jirian’s arch and the hokiran’s neck. The point of the arrow penetrated into the joint between the hokiran’s breast-plate and the helmet and deep down its skin.

«THE JOINTS!» he screamed «HIT ITS JOINTS!»

Naban got the message and after going around his enemy which was staggering because of the stroke, he jumped over it, piercing its enemy’s neck joint with his blade, but on the opposite side. The hokiran fell heavily on the ground and the soldiers exulted and came back to fight. Jirian reached Naban, he pointed his blade between the helmet and the breast-plate, which now were bloodstained, and he levered with it. The helmet got off with a stroke, showing the enemy’s face: it was similar to the gubal’s one, but it was more solid, his teeth were projecting and pointed and its noise was big and flat.

«Do you see? Hokiran: man-beast!» Naban said to Jirian.

«Beating it was hard! Fortunately, they are not all like that!» the other one said. «I do not dare to think what is happening where the other ones landed!»

«It is not the time to think! The siege does not stop at all!» he screamed indicating three ordinary hokirans and five gubals, which managed to go on the terraces on their left.

«CATAPUUUULTS!» someone screamed from the other tower, and another series of assault hokirans were launched in the air by the enemy ranks.

A lightning struck straight one of them, and then other two as it spread. The first one exploded with a boom, the others, red-hot and steaming, fell to the ground.

«The old man!» murmured Jirian which had stopped because of the lightning crash.

An old and tiny man straightened up over the tower where the magic attack had come from. His face was visibly worn-out by the passing of time but, at the same time, he expressed powerful and struck terror. The old man wore few and simple sand clothes, which hugged his body in some tight and large layers. The light and blue magic energy was visible around him.

«At last, he decided to take part in it!» Naban said.

«Well, since the way his followers and him have been treated, his intervention was improbable at all!»

«In fact, I wonder who made him change his mind…»

Jirian jumped over him, and pushing his mate away, he smashed the skull of a gubal which was attacking Naban from his back.

«Don’t lower your guard!»

Just in that moment the war drums, which had filled the air and marked the battle, stopped. Then the drums started to roll in a low and continuous rhythm. A movement among the enemy ranks could be glimpsed, just out of the archers’ range. Such a hum was heard before five fire columns striking the walls in several points. A series of several kind of magic attacks continued to be shot uninterruptedly by a group of about twenty hokirans without armor and covered by runes tattooed on all their body. The walls started seriously to come to harm, and the fights fell in the chaos, because the attacks were striking the soldiers of both sides, and a lot of the besieging troops drew back to not be involved.

Other figures dressed in the same old man’s way appeared on his side. They put their arms up towards the sky, with their palms turned above, and after a while a huge, thin and transparent energy barrier came down like a shutter. It got light and crackled when it intercepted the hokiran group’s magic attacks. The hokirans stopped, annoyed by that answer. Then the army returned to attack, but it had a bitter surprise when the first rows fell electrocuted when coming into contact with the barrier. The gubals and the hokirans started to move nervously forwards and backwards along the barrier’s line. They could not advance, while their mates inside the barrier continued to fight decreasing their number faster and faster.

The troops opened in half to the hoarse music of some horns, letting pass a man on horseback enveloped in a black cloak and with a hood hiding his face. He stopped at the border of the barrier, he seemed to hesitate for a while, and then he continued to advance. When that man went through the barrier forcing it, a heavy cracking, such as that of many little shocks, raged.

Neither his horse nor he came to any harm.

As it came into the archers’ rage, a cloud of arrows were shot from the walls like a migratory birds’ flight. The arrows tracked an arch in the air and then went down towards him. Neither an arrow hit him: more than hundred of it dug in the ground around him. It was like those ones which would have to hit him disappeared.

That man continued to advance quietly up to about thirty steps from the walls, just below the tower where there was the old man.

«Who are you to challenge my barrier with so much impunity?» the old man asked.

«My name is Enan…» the other one answered. His voice was particular, almost female and penetrating.

«I came here to tell you to put your armies down and surrender…» he paused «I’ll take possession of this city whose I’ll become the lord, and you’ll adore me as a god!»

«You’re only a fool!» the old man screamed «Glaleslethr hempo!» and a big fire sphere fell on Enan, and then other ones launched by his followers.

«Ulÿon glalesmyrä hempo» the old man pronounced five times, and five bright spheres, as big as a melon, materialized from his fingers. The old man put it in some precise points around his adversary, which was still enveloped by the flames and the explosions. Then the old man continued: «Nathïlmyrä hempo, ellûn ganâth!» the five spheres joined forming a star. Ten luminous runes appeared two by two between the star’s points and they went suddenly towards Enan, disappearing below him as sucked by the ground.

«Nathïlnyden hempo, ellûn ganâth!» soon afterwards, tens of big climbing lianas sprouted winding themselves round the horse first, which neighed scared and tried to kick away, and then round its knight which, on the contrary, was impassive.

The lianas grew stronger and became trunks, and Enan remained blocked.

«Nathïlthüni hempo, ellûn ganâth!» after a moment of silence, the ground below the wood tangle started to subside: the wood, the knight and the horse sank in a puddle of mud, which was strangely semi-liquid even if the rest of the ground was dry and dusty because of the summer heat.

Enan sniggered sarcastically. «I play with you!» he said before being swallowed up.

The ground got its normal consistency. A gust of wind swept away a little bit of dust on that ground string which separated the walls from the magic barrier, and it seemed the two armies disappeared for a while.

Then the ground started to shake.

The shaking was added by a deep roll, the ground was covered by some cracks coming from the point where Enan had been buried, and they advanced towards the walls darting. When they arrived, the walls started to shake, and the soldiers on the terraces started to panic. Soon afterwards the tremors stopped and the situation got back to calm.

«Stirring is useless…!» the old man said. «That one will be your tomb!»

But he was really mistaken. The rock softened under his feet, and it clawed at his legs. A big elastic and malleable wood tentacle enveloped and dragged him downwards, between the walls’ solid part’s rocks. His five followers disappeared in the same way, swallowed by the rock in front of the soldiers’ anguished looks which were nearby. The ground started to tremble again, but this time the underground passage’s effects of something big appeared on the surface. Six stripes of loose ground, similar to those made only by huge moles, advanced from the walls towards the point where Enan had sank. A crush of an explosion was heard from one of the strips which stopped. The other ones, on the contrary, rejoined coming out as a unique mass made of that strange fluid wood, and it seemed to have been erupted from the ground. Enan appeared from that formless wood mass like a robust germ and he gave to it a structure and a shape. A solid circular platform almost five feet high took shape, and five little obelisks made of twisted wood rose at its borders. Inside it, on the contrary, five columns appeared, and the old wizard’s followers’ bodies emerged from them.

«One is absent at the roll-call!» he said «It will be more amusing…»

He came closer to the five. «Well it was you to keep up the barrier… now there is no more!» he said to them «but don’t worry, we will not tell anybody about it… now!» and he turned towards the walls.

The old man was coming out where the six strings had stopped. He was wrapped by a thin energy patina which made the air ring.

«Oh-oh, he seemed to be angry!» Enan said sniggering. «Your last attack annoyed me a little bit, do you know?!» he screamed to him «Look, it was a good horse, and you killed it… but it was amusing, so I decided to give you a possibility anyway: hit me with your most powerful magic, I’ll stay quite here doing nothing… what do you think?»

«I think you have a damned big head, and your foolishness will lead you to the grave!»

«Why? Did you see someone dangerous around here?» Enan said looking around.

The old man was over furious and started to cast a spell which materialized into a big red-hot flames sphere looking like a little sun coming down from the sky.

«Look, this way you’ll hit them, too… aren’t they your followers, maybe?» Enan said indicating the five young people imprisoned at the five wood columns.

The old man hesitated for a while, then he launched the incandescent sphere towards his adversary, who remained still, waiting for the crush and without batting an eyelid. The sphere broke blowing up into an explosion of fire and flames at four spans from Enan, just at the border of the wood platform. But not a flame came closer to Enan more than those four spans. In spite of the energy stream released, the platform did not come to any harm.

The old man fell on the ground exhausted.

«Poor man… he did not realize there was the barrier, and now he is exhausted!»

«You are not of your word, foreigner!» one of the five prisoner screamed.

«Technically this barrier activated the moment these five pillars erected. I haven’t done anything since I just said I wouldn’t have done anything» Enan said «but how could you speak to defend someone which was killing you, even if he is your master?»

«He… he decided to sacrifice our lives to save the city!» he answered.

«A lot of beautiful words… it is easy when it is other people to die, I bet that in other situations he would have assert that life of a single human being has an inestimable value and it’s more important than the city’s interests» he came closer to the guy and stared at him with his very light-blue eyes.

«It seems to me I have proposed a solution to the siege without bloodshed. Someone did not give a damn about it; someone which, in spite of the possibility to note my power twice, decided to attack me the same number of times, someone which put its own interests, and maybe his proud, over the other people’s and the city’s ones, someone which now is lying in the dust». Then he turned towards the others «After all, you already had a king, a governor, someone you had to obey to, someone to honor… or am I mistaken? And looking at