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Ch. 21: Kohen?: Blood Spines
🕑 Added 2025-09-16 22:00:09 +0000 UTCHis master’s Command hit him like a physical force. Like a slap to his face. Like something had slipped into his skin and squeezed his soul.
At his side, Tiador snorted. “As if yelling it louder would make it so.”
He ignored the Jothi nobleman’s words. They were unimportant to his current orders. How did he stop the rhynselks from entering the defensive perimeter? Some part of him still wanted to run, but his body refused to take a step away from this place until he’d ensured that nothing else could get in.
Blood Spines flickered to the fore of his mind. It was a skill that was not his own, but which he knew he could use. A line or two of them along the front wall would stop just about anything of this level from entering.
He just needed to get over there.
The space between himself and the wall was chaos. Beasts rampaged through noncombatants and combatants alike. Their blood rushed through their bodies with the fervor of panic.
Getting through this would be difficult. But that was what he had people for.
“Tiador, Daidyn, make a path for me.”
“Of course,” Tiador said as he stepped in the wrong direction.
“Back to the wall,” he clarified.
“What?” Tiador asked, confused.
“Really?” Daidyn asked, hopeful.
It was a simple order. He didn’t feel he needed to repeat it. He drew his rapier from his hip. The gems along its hilt weren’t attuned properly for his Concepts, but they would serve him well enough for this.
He ran, his blade trailing lightning as he cut through the beasts.
Daidyn roared behind him, quickly overtaking him and notably thinning the herd before him. Good. He’d need to preserve his resources for what needed to be done.
The Jothi nobleman followed in their wake, his head shaking. He was saying something about not falling for the mage’s taunts. This wasn’t about the taunts, though those had stung too.
It was a Command. As necessary as breathing. As natural as bleeding.
A corner of his soul hissed in displeasure. Why should he listen so dutifully to that airhead slyphid? That accursed demon tamer? That nobody?
He was—Well he was sure he was more important than her. He knew that much, even if the specifics escaped him at this moment.
None of this was important right now. Now was the time to prepare his skill. First, to gather all the blood he’d need.
Call of Blood.
There was so much spilt. It was almost a relief to collect it up. It coiled around him, growing with every step. So much unclaimed and his for the taking.
The vargher sliced through another beast, its blood spraying high and wide. He pulled it all into his train of blood; not a drop hit the ground or the vargher.
And like that, he was atop the crumbling wagon wall, a tide of blood behind him. He held his hand out and willed his gathered blood to disperse into head-sized orbs and spread across the wall’s front in three rows. The rhynselk ran through the orbs, properly unnerved by the floating blood, but not smart enough to understand what came next.
“What are you doing?” the Jothi noble asked, the question whispered and breathy.
He ignored him. Instead, he gave the command word for his skill in Kaldish, “Skewer.”
The orbs all simultaneously shot spines, like crimson urchins. The rhynselks amid the orbs were instantly impaled, spines stabbing through organs and eyes. Panic sent their blood pumping. Death stilled the blood of others.
Still, they came running. Most tried to turn away from the sudden spines. Some succeeded. But many had no room to turn away, pressed in on either side by their fellows. Many, many ran directly into the spines, skewering themselves with their own weight and momentum.
He grinned, drawing up the spilt blood of the dead. The dead had no claim on it—and twisted it into another row of orbs.
“Skewer.”
More rhynselks collapsed. They fell in waves, their blood pouring out and joining his wall of spines. It was a beautiful sight.
His master would praise him for this, right? He’d have their approval? This was enough. It had to be.
Surely.
“Ko, what is this?” Tiador whispered at his side.
Kohen blinked.
He opened his mouth to explain. It was his skill. Tiador had seen all his skills. This was—
His blood ran cold as he stared at the field of blood spines before him.
This wasn’t—
This was—
He wasn’t supposed to show these skills to anyone. He wasn’t supposed to use them. They weren’t his. The more he used them, the more he made them his, the harder it would be to fix.
They’d been leaving.
The caravan had been doomed.
Saving it had been so easy.
He stared down at his hands. He could see the blood pulsing within them. Just as he could feel the quickening blood through both Tiador and Daidyn’s veins.
“What is this?” Tiador asked again, louder.
Kohen clenched his jaw. He’d exposed himself. But that didn’t mean he needed to answer truthfully. The truth was what he wanted it to be. “A new spell.”
“A new spell?” Tiador repeated. The man wasn’t stupid. He was anything but. That was why he liked him. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes,” Kohen said, reinforcing the word with his Noble Authority. It washed over his followers. He could feel Daidyn relax. The vargher had no reason to believe otherwise.
Tiador resisted the assurance. He challenged him instead. “What language was that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kohen said, again pressing his authority into the words. He was a son of Veldor. He was Tiador’s lord. He was the honorable son of Thaycer Delim Veldor.
Even outside the limits of Velillia, he should have more than enough Authority to get Tiador to drop it.
And yet, he could feel his authority flexing. Like a muscle about to fail. Like a spinning top running out of steam.
Had losing to Ahryn undermined his authority to this degree? Was it the way his mother had ‘entrusted’ his safety to Tiador? Was it that abyss-cursed mage Cass Commanding him?
“It’s Kaldish,” Kohen added before his authority could crumble completely. “It—” How did he explain it was an ancient language of the vamphellish, steeped in magic and in tune with blood, without explaining how he knew that? How did he even know that? “—was part of my reward from the duchess,” he lied at the last second. “I asked for advanced magic tomes. This was one of the spells.”
Tiador squinted at him.
Was that enough?
“But what about your injuries?” Tiador asked.
Kohen stiffened. That was his mother had told his retainers, that he was badly injured and was struggling with Focus recovery. She had said he was unable to use any of his spells.
“I can handle this much. I’m not some infirm child.” He didn’t need to be babied. Pretending to have been badly hurt had been a mistake. This was an opportunity to cast it aside.
He turned away. This was more explanation than he owed anyone. They should be grateful for this much.
Why did he put up with minders? He didn’t need them. Stupid martials just got in his way. Stupid Jothians made him sick just looking at them.
He wanted to leave.
But he needed to keep these stupid monsters out of their defenses. Some part of him knew that this wasn’t something he had chosen for himself. But it didn’t matter.
He needed to keep them out. It was a fundamental truth. As necessary as inhaling his next breath. As pressing as maintaining his authority before Tiador. As important as becoming his father’s heir.
It wasn’t something he could make himself give up.
Even if he should.
Even if he needed to.
His teeth ground together. “Skewer.”
Why should he give up anything?
The monsters were endless. But this skill cost him next to nothing, as long as there were things to bleed.
He’d always liked this skill for that reason. Oh, sure, it was useless against many constructs. But who really had the resources to raise armies of constructs?
No one he wanted to tangle with—that was who. No, he’d leave messing with powerhouses like the Custodia to fools like—
Pain laced through his head. He put a hand to his forehead. What was that?
What was he thinking about? Who were the Custodia?
What was he—
Stop the rhynselks from entering.
The words rang in his head.
This wasn’t his fort. Why did he need to protect it again?
Stop the rhynselks from entering.
The beasts had pushed their way between the first and second lines of blood caltrops. He set them off with a word of command, “Skewer.”
How had he gotten here?
Erizen had invited him somewhere? And then? Pain spiked between his eyes.
He shook his head. As soon as he was done here, he’d find that abyss-cursed nyxdra and remind him not to waste his time. If the fool was going to ditch him for his mistress—
His vision went white from the pain. His hand pressed against his forehead as he reached for his cane to steady himself. Where was it?
“Ko!” a man shouted in alarm. “Are you alright?”
He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus. The man—Tiador. Who was Tiador? Why did he know his name?—was staring at him, concern worn loud and visible over his face. Tiador’s pulse was fast and frantic.
“I’m fine,” he said. A full second passed before he realized the words had come out in Jothi. A full second passed before he realized the man had spoken in Jothi.
“Are you sure?” the man—Tiador—asked.
No, he suddenly wasn’t. “Where is Erizen?”
The man stared at him, slitted yellow-green eyes widening. “What?”
Did the man not speak Kaldish? Where—? Was he on the Jothi Peninsula? Why would he—?
His head pounded.
Obviously, he was on the Jothi Peninsula. He had been born here. His city was here.
Except no. No, he wasn’t. He was from the Undergarden. He was—
“Kohen, you’re scaring me,” Tiador said. “I don’t think you should use that spell.”
“I’m fine!” he snapped back. He didn’t need to hold it much longer. The herd was dispersing. This would be over soon.
And then he would—
—continue Belden and have his soul looked at.
—go find Erizen and kick his face in for whatever this was.
What was this?
“Are you?” Tiador demanded.
He looked away. No, he wasn’t. None of this was fine.
He’d been unofficially exiled. He was some nobody’s lackey. His head was full of people he didn’t know and places he’d never been. And to top it all off, his head hurt too.
He was broken. There really wasn’t another explanation. He was broken, and he couldn’t afford to let anyone else notice.
