Chapter 6 Judgement
JUDGEMENT
Venrick slowed the cart before the bridge spanning the chasm to the Vermillion Keep.
Red turrets erupted over the outer wall like the thorns of some great beast looking down on him and the rest of Astral City with unblinking judgment.
The beating wings of a dragon coming in to roost pulsed overhead.
Its emerald scales caught the late afternoon sun before its serpentine tail disappeared behind the massive anvil-shaped landing area atop the Keep’s central tower.
This was the moment Venrick had been dreading since he first drew breath in Tel’s service.
How did it come to this? he wondered.
Tel Roan, the pride of Astral City, was dead.
His dragon was missing, their prize Hyalite gone, and worst of all, his Squire had survived.
There was an unspoken rule at the Vermillion Keep, one etched in blood and honor rather than stone.
No Squire succeeded where their superior had failed.
Those who did were branded as cowards, exiled, or worse, condemned as traitors to King and Country.
The weight of that tradition pressed down on Venrick’s shoulders, threatening to crush him beneath centuries of precedent.
In all his years serving at Tel Roan’s side, through countless hours of training and heroic acts performed in the Keep’s name, Venrick had never imagined joining the ranks of the few Squires throughout history who’d made this trek back to Astral City without their Paragon.
An icy shiver ran through him as he grappled with that harsh reality, each breath feeling like a betrayal.
He had survived, while Tel Roan had fallen.
Venrick’s pulse quickened as he clicked his tongue, signaling Thunder and Giant into motion.
The two draft horses moved forward, their hooves clacking over the stone bridge.
As he neared the entrance, his gaze remained fixed on the Vermillion Keep.
Crimson turrets crowned the thick battlements guarding the main portcullis, their surfaces etched with runes that shimmered and shifted in the corners of his vision.
Slotted windows dotted the ramparts like watchful eyes, each one holding shadows that seemed to move with purpose.
A dozen auxiliary buildings on either side of the main entry lined the rising slope, their red slate roofs peaking over the rampart like the scales of some great dragon, echoing the Keep’s majestic design.
Towering over it all stood the Vermillion Keep proper, its thick walls adorned with dwarven runes hosting great power.
The spells here weren’t mere decorations.
They were living things, ancient magics that rendered the Keep nearly impenetrable to outsiders.
Every stone hummed with protective spells, creating a barrier that even the most powerful mages approached with caution.
This fortress was home to the dragonriders of Lamar, the beating heart of the kingdom’s northern defenses. Venrick had dreamed of ascending through these gates on his own his whole life, but never under these grim circumstances.
At the gatehouse, Venrick submitted his weapons.
His nerves betrayed the storm of emotions raging beneath his carefully maintained composure.
Each blade, each tool represented years of training with Tel, memories that cut deeper than any steel ever could.
A guard, broader and more imposing than Venrick’s athletic frame, scrutinized the tattooed insignia on his forearm with predatory intensity.
The emblem of his rank as a Squire smoldered beneath the man’s gaze, each intricate line a testament to promises now broken by death’s intervention.
Venrick could feel the magic in the air as though it were a living thing. His half-elven senses detected subtle currents of power flowing through the stone beneath his feet. Wards wove patterns that his mind could almost grasp but never quite hold. The sensation was both familiar and foreign.
“If you’re a Squire, where’s your Knight?” the guard asked, his words carrying the weight of centuries-old prejudice toward mixed-race ethnicities.
“I wasn’t squiring for a Knight,” Venrick replied, pulling his arm away and replacing his vambrace. The metal felt cold against his skin, a stark reminder of the armor he’d worn that fateful day.
“You, a half-elf, squiring for a Paragon?” The man’s laugh held no warmth.
“I was,” Venrick said, clenching his jaw against the tide of grief and anger that threatened to overwhelm him.
“A dragonrider?” another guard asked, cocking his brow with theatrical skepticism that barely masked his contempt.
“That’s right,” Venrick said, raising his chin.
“Why did you say, I was? Once a Squire, you are a Squire until you get accepted into the Keep’s training academy or somehow skip right over to becoming a Knight yourself. I don’t recall seeing you in this year’s new recruits, and you’re no Knight.”
“My Paragon died.” The words fell from Venrick’s lips, each syllable echoing with finality.
The silence that followed was filled with unspoken accusations, broken only by the distant roar of a dragon. The guards exchanged glances.
“A Squire outlived his Paragon?” The guard’s face hardened, narrowing his eyes at Venrick. “How’d he die?”
A vein in Venrick’s neck began pulsing, each beat a reminder of life that should have been forfeited in service to his Paragon.
He considered, not for the first time, why he’d bothered to return at all.
He could have disappeared into the shadows between worlds, been declared dead, found a fresh start in Gambria, Lamar’s neighboring kingdom to the east, where the weight of the Keep’s tradition didn’t press quite so heavily on his shoulders.
But the truth was, the elves of Gambria, like those of Lamar, didn’t accept him.
The elves viewed his human heritage as a stain that could never be cleansed.
And humans? They never gave him a fair chance, their judging gazes always catching on the slight point of his ears, the otherworldly grace that marked him as different.
The Keep was more than Venrick’s only option; it was the only place he’d ever felt like he belonged.
“Go on, tell us. How did you survive when your Paragon died?” The guard probed, testing Venrick’s resolve.
“I don’t need to explain anything to you,” he replied.
“I reckon that’s why he’s here,” the other guard said. “He’s here to be judged. Usually, when a Paragon is killed, the Squire has either died bravely trying to prevent a superior’s demise or is quickly slaughtered in the aftermath.”
Like a shadow taking form from nothing, someone appeared.
He was a lean man, head-and-shoulders taller than Venrick’s six-feet-two-inches.
The stranger’s head was a mat of slicked black hair shining with oils.
His dark eyes held depths hinting at a wealth of power and knowledge better left unexplored.
His large, gauged ears marked him as someone who had walked the boundaries between conventional magic, being the verbal spell work magi used to shape the energy stored from a Yogo Sapphire or Hyalite, and something more sinister, like the wild powers born from the realm of the fae.
His middle-aged face was clean-shaven, features gaunt and angular to the point of being bird-like.
The stranger moved with a fluid grace that defied natural law.
He fell in alongside the guards, his sudden appearance startling them with its impossible certainty.
Without word or warning, he gripped the brawny guard’s shoulder and pulled him aside with an ease beyond physical strength; a reminder that in this realm of dragons and magi, muscle meant little against the weight of true authority.
The guard’s face twisted into a knot of protest, ready to challenge this intrusion until recognition dawned in his eyes. The change was profound, cold and absolute. Whatever question had lived on his tongue died.
“You’re Tel Roan’s Squire.” The pale-faced stranger’s dark eyes demanded more than Venrick’s attention.
He wore black clothes adorned with ornate patterns of silver leaf and vine filigree.
A high-collared red cloak rested on his angular shoulders, clasped together with a ruby amulet whose surface crawled with runes.
Around his narrow waist, he wore a black leather belt studded with dozens of Yogo Sapphires, each one pulsing with its own rhythm of blue radiance. The stones hummed with stored energy, each gem a reservoir of power that could fuel the mage’s spells.
“Yes, I’m Venrick, Tel Roan’s Squire,” Venrick announced.
“I’ve been waiting for your arrival,” the stranger said.
His dark eyes flickered to the side of Venrick’s head where slightly elongated ears held back his thick brown hair.
The glance lasted less than a heartbeat, but in it, Venrick felt the weight of judgment that had haunted him since birth.
He was too elven for humans, too human for elves, and now perhaps too alive for a dead Paragon’s Squire.
“Nobody told me you were of elven origin,” the stranger continued.
“I wasn’t aware the interrogation would start at the gatehouse, with a mage.
I understand my rights. I will speak on record with a Captain of the Keep,” Venrick said, his words emerging with a strength that surprised even him.
He heard the echoes of Tel’s training: stand tall, speak true, never let them see the doubt that plagues your heart.
“I am no common mage,” the man responded, his lip quivering slightly. “I am Archmagus Hierro De Vonte, or Lord De Vonte to you. Anything you say to me is held in the confidence of both the Order of Paragons and the Order of Magi.”