The Champion's Heir

Thunder rolled through the city, lightning arcing across the skies as rain poured like the tears of those below. The day was finally upon them. A day none of them could have ever prepared for: their greatest champion had fallen. Even the Arena was closed to fights in mourning, the gladiators and warriors who normally battled taking time to respect one of their own.

Down Main Street, a funeral procession rolled. The chariot that carried the casket was being led by the champion’s own mount, Stomper. The metallic horse walked stoically along ahead of its former master, no emotion showing on the robotic face. The person driving the chariot was the champion’s own son, who was too young to fight in the Arena, but old enough to stand for his mother. Ten summers he had lived, his parents nearly six times his age, which was rare even with the advances in the Coven’s Medicine.

The hearse was flanked by three chariots before and after it, the lead held the champion’s husband, who stood proudly at the reins, despite the tears that streaked his cheeks beneath his helmet. He was not as young as he once was, the lines of his face were deep, and the hair hidden by his helm was gray. As the procession entered the Arena, it would be the champion’s last time crossing the threshold.

Standing upon a tall podium, overlooking the cavalcade as it rattled through, was the Emperor. He stood resplendent in his crimson robes, lined with neon red piping that glowed with the ethereal Neo Magic that powered the city beyond the walls. In his hand was the staff passed to him from the ancient wizard who had left the kingdom in his hands. The stands—normally full of raucous cheers and jeers of spectators—were jam packed with admirers of the champion, who were somber and mostly silent as they watched the chariots rolling through the gates.

As the procession came to a halt before the Emperor, the monarch stepped off the podium and floated slowly down to the ground as the champion’s closest friends and family dismounted their chariots and stood around the hearse. The boy stroked Stomper’s mane of coiled wires that draped its neck. The mechequine lowered its head and nuzzled into the boy’s chest, a rare moment of affection.

“Arthur,” the boy’s father said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Looking up into his father’s eyes, Arthur stood tall, and that caused the old man to smile. “You drove well. Your mother would be so proud.”

“Thank you, father,” Arthur nodded solemnly. “It was an honor to carry her to her resting place.”

“Vrain.” The voice was deep and commanding, and as Arthur looked up to see the Emperor approaching, seeming to glide across the dirt, he couldn’t help but marvel at the sight of the land’s most powerful being. He and his father bowed to the Emperor at his approach.

“My liege,” Vrain said softly. “Thank you for blessing us with your presence.” Arthur noticed that, despite the softness of his father’s voice, it echoed through the entire Arena. Magic was amplifying his and the Emperor’s conversation to be heard by the entire audience.

“Lady Victoria was a beloved member of this city,” the Emperor said, smiling. “There was not a soul who disliked her.”

“That is not exactly true, my liege.” Murmurs rippled through the stands as the clouds far above the city swirled and grumbled. Arthur watched with horror as the pouring rain coalesced into the form of a broad shouldered man. Lightning struck from the heavens into the rippling mass and when the blinding flash had waned, there stood before the procession a man in full black armor, Neo Magic veins lacing the darkened metal. A full face mask hid the identity of the newcomer, but everyone in attendance knew exactly who this man was. The blazing red Neo Magic eyes were unmistakable in this regalia.

Vrain stepped before his son, and the Emperor turned slowly to glower at the intruder.

“Envos,” the monarch said slowly. “I wasn’t aware I invited you to be a part of this very intimate ceremony.”

“Forgive me, Usurper,” Envos said. His voice rolled like the thunder overhead, and it was laced with malice and hatred. “How could I miss my greatest enemy’s departure from this plane?”

“Envos,” Vrain snapped. “Now is not the time for this.”

The Black Knight turned to Vrain and Arthur was sure that the man was smiling behind that helm. “Vrain,” the cretin crooned lecherously, “my old friend. How is retired life? Living off your wife’s glory must be exhausting.”

“Enough!” The Emperor slammed his staff to the ground and a wave of energy washed across the gap between himself and the invading knight. The force should have been enough to knock over the average man. Average, however, Envos was not. The Black Knight held a hand up, and the wave of force parted around him and slammed into the guards who had rushed in from behind to flank him.

Quicker than anyone expected, the Knight drew from his scabbard and pointed his sword at the Emperor. The blade, too, was webbed with pulsating red veins, the power emanating from it was as palpable as the rain that sizzled with each drop upon the metal.

“You will join your beloved champion beyond this plane.”

Before anyone could react, Arthur felt his feet moving. He was as shocked as anyone when he put himself between the Emperor and the Black Knight, he who swore a blood oath to destroy the boy’s mother. The Knight’s blazing eyes actually seemed to soften as the boy approached.

“Well,” Envos whispered. “If it isn’t the wretched woman’s offspring.”

“Sir,” Arthur said, a quaver to his voice. “Why is it that you hate my mother so that even in death she still lives freely within your mind?”

Gasps echoed around the stands, and for good reason. The question, seemingly so innocent from the boy, was no less laced with the same malice and hatred that the Black Knight had exhibited not a moment before. The blaze had returned to Envos’ eyes, and the light of his suit’s veins pulsed rapidly.

“Boy,” his voice so low that it was only heard by Arthur and those standing behind him, “our rivalry spans a history much longer than you have even been alive.”

Arthur, no quaver in his voice now, waved his hand dismissively, “Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the tales. How you were too weak to defeat her in the Arena and thought she was a cheat, so you challenged her outside the Arena and she still whooped your behind from here to the God’s Shelf.”

“Arthur!” Vrain let out a strangled exclamation.

“Still thy tongue, child,” Envos hissed, “or I will cut it from your mouth.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Arthur snapped. “Do you think I am afraid of you? The great Black Knight, Envos, who has nothing better to do than crash a funeral, where a son and his father are mourning. Be you gone, lest I lose my temper and send you to my mother for another whooping.”

Several people in the audience laughed aloud, and Arthur couldn’t blame them. What in the name of the Ancients was he doing, antagonizing the greatest foe his mother had ever faced? Someone who had just swatted aside the Emperor’s magic? And yet…

“Should I strike you down now, then?” Envos asked. “Are you so eager to see your mother again, child?” He drew up his sword, which crackled with Neo Magic, and pointed it at Arthur. “Do not say I didn’t warn you.”

He stalked forward, closing the gap between the two of them in the matter of three steps. The Knight towered over Arthur, who had to strain to look up into his eyes.

“You remind me of her, you know,” Envos growled.

“I take that as a compliment, sir,” Arthur said, grinning.

“Why must you draw upon my ire now, boy?” Envos asked.

“You interrupt a day that honors my mother and you dare ask me such a repulsive question?” Arthur squinted at the Black Knight. “What gives you the right?”

“No one gives me such rights,” Envos intoned, “I have claimed it for my own.”

“And now I revoke it,” Arthur shouted, and the voice that echoed from his lips was not that of a scared boy, but a man in his own right. “I renounce your presence and curse you and yours forevermore. You are a small and pitiful man, Envos of Erigo. You believe yourself a force to be reckoned with? You are barely even blip in the eyes of the most important mind in our land: my mother’s. She hadn’t spoken of you once in my ten years of life. I learned of you in the history holos, and when I asked her about you, she merely laughed and told me you were ancient history.”

Envos stumbled away from the boy. “You lie. I was her greatest foe!”

“She had hangnails that irked her more than you,” Arthur boomed. “You were nothing more than a gnat stinging an elephant. She thought of you not at all, so rid her from your mind!”

Envos raised his sword over his head to strike, and Arthur sent a punch into the man’s abdomen, which should not have harmed the Knight, and yet it sent him backwards as if he had been hit by the blast of a cannon. The Neo Magic veins in the armor of the Black Knight flickered once, and then they went out.

“This… isn’t possible,” Envos’ voice was strained as he struggled to hold himself up. Without the power flowing through the armor, he was unable to sustain the weight. “How have you done this?”

Arthur looked at his hand, which glowed with unrestrained power, something no one had been able to do without armor or some other conduit. He looked up at the Black Knight, Scourge of the City of Eden, and then he flicked his wrist and stripped Envos of the armor he had hidden behind for so many decades. Piece by piece, the metal was ripped from his body until he stood, a withered old man, trembling in the rain.

When Arthur looked back at his father and the Emperor, the two men stared in wide eyed wonder at the boy. He looked back down at his hands, which steadily grew brighter and brighter.

“Look upon what your hatred has done, Envos,” the Emperor said, laughing. “Your interference here to spite your old foe… has emboldened her heir.”

“And it shall be the ruin of Eden.” Envos’ voice was less intimidating now that it was not echoing through the magically enhanced metal. He sounded frail and frightened. There was also a twinge of satisfaction. He began to laugh as guards arrived to pull him from the wreckage of his armor. That laughter echoed in the young Arthur’s mind, those last words from his mother’s old foe burning themselves within his mind.

Will I become the ruin of Eden?