Broker’s confusion hung in the air like smoke—thick, choking, and
bitter in the lungs. It throbbed behind his eyes, a storm pressing at
his skull. He stared at Grant as if he were looking at a ghost pulled
straight from the grave.
Moments ago, the man had been broken. Slumped, gasping, body
trembling like wet cloth left in the wind. Grant had looked
half-dead—beaten in mind, if not in body. But now...
Now he moved like a weapon.
Each step was sharp, focused. Not wild. Not desperate. Precise.
Cold. Violent.
Erskine watched the blows land—fast, brutal, and clean. Too
clean. This wasn’t luck. This was reflex. This was
instinct.
And it burned him. Pride twisted in his gut like a rusted blade.
Grant was supposed to be finished. Spent. Just another wreck crawling
toward death.
But then—
That cursed light.
It had flared silver and white, bright enough to sear the eyes.
Cold and hot at once. Moonlight soaked in wildfire. In its glow,
Grant stood straight again. Whole. Changed. Wrong.
Strength didn’t just appear. Not without cost. Not like that.
This was cheating.
Then came the weapons.
The jagged scraps Grant had clutched before were gone. In their
place—a longsword, glowing like it had swallowed the stars. Symbols
crawled along its blade, whispering in a language meant to be
forgotten. And in his other hand—something worse. Short. Thick.
Ugly. It roared with every squeeze of the trigger, spitting flame and
thunder with no mercy. Erskine didn’t know what it was, but he
knew—it was made to kill men too slow to understand they
were dying.
It didn’t belong here. None of it did.
And yet... it wasn’t the weapons that chilled him.
It was her.
Merlin?
The name clawed its way up from the grave of his memory. Faint.
Like a scar under old skin. He ran fingers across the marks on his
chest—memories carved in blood and ash. He’d forgotten why he
feared her.
Now he remembered.
She stood beside Grant like a storm waiting to fall. Calm. Still.
Watching.
Magic clung to her like mist in a dark forest. Alive. Whispering.
Even the trees bent back, their branches low, cautious. The ground
hushed beneath her steps. When she moved her hands, glowing runes
followed, fading in the air like smoke on winter breath. She didn’t
chant. She didn’t shout. Her silence was worse. The power in her
was absolute.
Had the light come from her?
Was she the one answering his call?
No. No, it couldn’t be her.
Not that Merlin.
Too young. Too calm. Too quiet.
But the weight of her presence—the pull of her magic—it didn’t
lie.
It was her.
And Erskine hated that he knew it.
Merlin wasn’t real. A myth. A bedtime lie. Something old and
dead.
But this woman made the world bend. She didn’t need to
speak to be feared. She simply was.
Erskine had prepared for everything. The Consortium crumbling. The
panic after the Monarch vanished. The betrayals. Even the rumors of
her return.
He had laughed at them.
But not now.
Not with the legend alive, walking beside the one man Erskine had
written off as broken.
This wasn’t a comeback.
This was a reckoning.
Erskine’s fists clenched, sticky with blood that wasn’t his.
Victory had been right there. Ember had bled for it. And now
it was slipping—falling between his fingers like warm oil.
The game had changed.
New pieces. New rules.
And Erskine the Enslaver did not play games he couldn’t
win.
He did not suffer surprises.
A
sharp whistle tore from Erskine’s lips—high, shrill, and cutting
like a blade. It split the silence of the cursed woods. Two fingers
pressed to his mouth, wet with spit and shaking. He waited.
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No
answer.
No
soft thud of paws on leaves. No snap of branches under heavy boots.
Just the wind, whispering through the tall oaks like a dying god
exhaling one last time.
Where
were they?
His
heart hammered too fast. Panic crept in, cold and sharp, like a
needle sliding under his skin. He turned his head—left, then
right—eyes hunting through the murk.
Nothing
moved. Nothing breathed. Just shadows pretending to be trees… and
trees pretending to be still.
The
brutes. Gone.
The
spellbinders. Gone.
Even
the fang-faced trackers—slippery things with too many teeth—gone.
Dead?
No...
maybe worse.
Claimed.
The
thought curled inside him, cold and wet as pond rot. Claimed by her.
That woman. Merlin.
No.
That wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Just a story. A name
pulled from children’s tales and old bard-songs. She wasn’t real.
Couldn’t be.
But
he’d seen her.
Watched
her too long. Too close. Silver light had poured from her fingers
like moonlight bleeding from a wound. And Grant—Grant had glowed
beside her. Holy and terrible. Like a god made of scars and fury.
He
hadn’t noticed when the battle changed.
Hadn’t
felt it.
Blind.
A
shape moved among the corpses. Brown. Lumpy. Familiar.
No...
That
damn potato.
Erskine
stared, his breath caught in his throat. The little thing twitched.
Its stubby root-limbs kicked. One gnoll—barely breathing—whimpered
on the ground. The potato clapped its clawed hands, and vines burst
from the soil, snaring the gnoll like a net of green whips.
The
vines moved—shuddered,
then snapped free, lifting the creature upright in a bounce that
should’ve been funny.
It
wasn’t.
This
wasn’t possible. He’d killed that thing himself. Split it open
like rotten squash.
The
gnoll stood. Then another. And another.
His
men—what was left of them—hauled up by roots and vines, dragged
like meat on hooks.
No.
Like slaves.
Small,
stocky figures—brown, twisted, wrong—stood tall again. Covered in
armor that gleamed at the edges. Bodies like beasts. Faces like
nothing he could name.
The
Smashed Brigade.
Alive.
Or something close to it.
They
were rounding up survivors.
Erskine’s
mouth filled with the taste of rust.
Was
this her doing? Merlin’s cursed hand, calling the dead?
Or…
No.
Something darker crept through his thoughts.
Not
her.
Him.
Grant.
Still
and calm in the chaos, lips moving in a whisper too low to hear. His
eyes weren’t on the fight. They were on her. But the silver
light—whatever it had been—had changed him.
And
Ember? Gone. Burned to ash. Body torn like old paper in a firestorm.
Her soul—wherever souls went—already gone. She used to control
the beasts. Used to pull the strings.
Now
the strings were loose.
And
they still fought.
Not
for her.
For
him.
A
direwolf the size of a cart, snarling, foam dripping from its jaws.
Raccoons—blank-eyed,
silent, too perfect.
Squirrels.
Big as dwarves. Fast. Silent.
Not
wild anymore.
They
moved together. Clean. Precise.
Like
they knew.
Like
they were... thinking.
Erskine
blinked. Could barely breathe.
He
remembered Grant brushing his hand over one of them. Just once.
Light. Thoughtless.
But
something had passed between them. Pressed in—like a thumb pushing
into wax.
That
was it.
Not
magic. Not illusion.
Something
older. Deeper.
He
felt it now. Just under the skin. Like oil on water. Like something
pressing at the back of his mind. Pulling. Bending. A will.
Grant
had touched them—and they had listened.
It
was domination. Not the kind Erskine knew. Not refined. Not clean.
Raw.
Real.
Like
earth and bone and breath.
Like
a wolf claiming its den.
Like
fire consuming dry wood.
Grant
wasn’t weak anymore.
He
was becoming.
Whatever
he was becoming… Erskine didn’t want to know.
His
grin—the cruel one, the easy one—flickered. Died.
This
wasn’t a skirmish.
Wasn’t
even a duel.
Hell,
it wasn’t even fun anymore.
He
was staring at something rising.
Something
he couldn’t break with contracts or blood-oaths.
Something
born of grief and dirt and some cursed gift sewn deep into the soul
of a broken man.
And
for only the second time since taking the name Enslaver…
Erskine
felt it.
Fear.
Real.
Quiet.
Like
a breath held too long.