The Chapter of the Ninth Champion

I am Gerren, son of Berren and champion of Jurak. I am the first of the Juris Carn. I have lived for 20 years in our settlement called Jure. I have been taught by my father and sometimes guided by my patron. We are plagued by monsters monthly and amidst these struggles for survival I live in solitude.

“Gerren! I need your help at the forge!” His father called for him again.

My father has been asked to make a war staff for the leader of a Great House. He happens to like this person so he would naturally have asked me to help but since I could do nothing but wait, it mattered not.

My father may know more techniques but I am more talented than he. Which is undoubtedly due to my patron.

He will most likely out live me though. As I left my bed, I paused when I reached the mirror.

I was smaller than my father at 1 meter 80, had pale skin compared to his red tinted one. My ears were what they called “Human” looking and my teeth couldn’t compare with theirs.

Sadly enough, I eat more often than my parents so I usually eat alone.

With a heavy sigh, I leave my room, which is located in the residence wing of the temple. As I walked through the halls towards the greater chamber, the clanging sound of metal unto metal slowly drained out the silence.

“How far finished are you father?” I asked the head priest.

“Good, you are needed soon. I know that as our lord’s champion, you have a small bit of his influence in your soul. When the form of the innick is finished I want you to slowly infuse it into it while I attach the innick to the war staff. After it reached its limit, you can enchant it if you want.

I have already laid out the necessary circuits and shapes so you can finish or add to it if you want” He then continued on the innick.

An innick is the head and sometimes also the covering of a staff. It would be the pommel for a sword or such. The point of it is that while the staff itself can aid you in magic, the innick can do some of them for you. It does slowly disintegrate as it is used though so if you have a bad one you can always replace it when it’s gone.

“Of course father” I would have to wait for another hour or so before I could start so to spend the time, I asked my father something.

“Say, father, could I not go to the hunt tomorrow? I would have you know that I am capable in a fight myself. Not to mention the maintenance I could provide with my…”

“No” he interrupted me. “You belong to the temple and the temple will stand wherever or not a monster nests still lives. Now if they came here, that would be a different story” he explained.

How dare he speak so to me! I am the champion of Jurak!

I bit my tongue in anger until it drew blood. Sadly enough, father was a priest of my patron so harming him is out of the question.

“I am the voice of Jurak on Dalmarck. You wouldn’t speak like that to him would you, father?”

“I don’t know how my god talks to you but I doubt you have ever seen him. Also don’t forget that you are my son, not to mention a priest of this temple. Know your betters boy” He gruffly said to me before continuing his work.

Presumptuous fool! One day father, one day I will burn this accursed temple to the ground along with you! After that I just waited in silence until I could enchant the innick. When that was finished I returned to my room, once more waiting until I would be called.

Once I had been contend with this, then that turned to despair and now it is hate. I have been taken too much from; I will undo this curse upon me. As I slowly fell away from conscious, my body began to move but I was lost to far to notice. ”Ugh, what a disgusting mortal” could be heard from Gerren but this was not his voice. It wasn’t even Gerren himself.

“Ugh, what a disgusting mortal. I really regret choosing him now” I said to no one in particular. It was just that he, a god, felt that it should be said.

For if Asen, or by mortals know as Jurak, couldn’t judge his own people then they might as well die. I waited for my attendant to appear.

The shade came forth from the walls as always, handed me a black and red mask and bowed.

“Lord is back. Shain is servant. Shain waits for order” Shain said. He was one of the few I brought with me here.

The youngest of them we had allowed to change into a source, but the older, more intelligent ones we kept naturally.

Donning the mask, I addressed the shade.

“Prepare the hunt and my armour. After that come to the temple crypt, I will collect a sword there”

“Yes lord. Will be yes done. Will see you in crypt. Bye master” He confirmed with me before stepping through the wall again.

His language skill really is deplorable but he is still the eldest.

As I left the room I went to the temple crypt where I would also wait for the armour to be brought. There wasn’t actually a need for it but when I built this place I made it for the future. Like when this champion would finally die.

I think I will want to rant more about that later.

I entered the crypt, which was devoid of both life and light but with some magic I could see in the dark quite well. It couldn’t compare to my divine body but for a mortal at least it worked.

I passed a lesser watcher as I reached a dead end. They are basically extra eyes or soldiers for the real watchers that stand tall in the city from when I created them.

Moving the statue of the lesser watcher, I walked into the lowest hidden level of the crypt. When I was going through the layers, I started to think that I could maybe install a dungeon mind in here to protect and guard my weapons, not to mention my deceased priest’s bodies.

A necromancer can always use powerful bodies if not their lights as the mana remains in the body until it has decayed enough whereby it spreads to the area. My priests will always remain mine, even after death.

“Hmmm, shall I go with Anorak or Vizier? Though I think I had made Clamat for wyvern hunting. Guess Clamat it is then” As I took Clamat from its rack, I once more looked at the weapon.

It was purely black except for the leather hilt wrapping and was enchanted for speed and structural strengthening. Naturally it also had a node. A node in magical terms is a locational position where you can send your magic from if you are attuned to it.

My power and the hands of this champion made the blade upon this planet. It obviously wasn’t even close to an artefact but since the grail is most likely the only one on this plane, it was still quite powerful for a mortal to posses. Not that Gerren actually has seen it or touched it since I couldn’t trust him with it.

He was actually quite decent in the beginning but after about a dozen years he started to change. It must have been the influence of mine that came with the blessing.

So for any future champions there are hence forth conditions; only make greater species of my race champions like the Puris Carn, wait at least a hundred years for them to create a personality so it will affect them to a lesser degree, find a way for them to die if they are unsatisfactory.

For the last one, maybe I could use the champions of my spawn. Together with the rivalry in obtaining as many main followers as they can, I could see that happening.

After nearly half an hour, Shain returned with my armour. He also helped me don it but that seems trivial. T

he local Houses had decided to start the hunt tomorrow at dawn, which was only a few hours away by now. I even reached them before the sun could be seen which was impressive considering the distance from the temple to the meeting place since that was in the mountains.

When they saw Gerren with a mask on, they knew that it meant that I was present.

“House-Lord, thank you for coming and welcome. It gladdens my heart to see you present” said the hunting party’s leader.

“Yes, wyverns are dangerous enough to want to kill but also to be killed by. I can’t allow that so casually yet” I responded.

“Yes indeed, my god” Walking the rest of the way in silence, we reached the nest.

“I can only use as much power as this body possesses so I will not attack unless to protect you directly. However, I will heal you and prevent your deaths”

“We ask no more, my god,” A Juris Carn said. She was one of the three that had already been born these few dozen years.

Just before we entered, the hunting leader got everyone together to go over the plan again.

“First, we will have two whole local Houses try to sneak in and destroy any eggs the wyverns might have, whereby at about the same time a team will try to either distract the wyverns or try to get the first team safely out after succeeding with their mission. Ready, go!”

As we turned the corner, there was indeed a wyvern but its mate was nowhere to be found. The nest was situated around the corner on a small cliff somewhere on the closest mountain to the settlement of Jure. We hadn’t even looked at it before we went over the plan because if wyverns are mating, they will both always be present at the nest.

They store up lots of food too so that wasn’t even a problem for them.

I can’t really think of any reason that it would need to leave for. The female wyvern also seemed injured so the hunting leader changed plan slightly to also kill the wyvern.

While I stayed at the back, because why would a god possessed champion unnecessary need to tire himself, the party got into position to bombard the wyvern with prearranged spells. Solhok would weep a tear if he saw this. Not one of them branded their swords and only the Juris Carn looked like she could use it at all.

The infiltrating team came in from upwind and actually reached the nest. Wyvern eggs are very resistant towards magic and while their scales are less so, it is still noticeable. There were five eggs in total and soon the first one was broken and whatever was inside killed.

The smell that came from it was terrible and I could smell it from where I stood all the way at the back.

The reason it so did was most likely to alert any nearby wyverns that their eggs were being attacked. It did work I guess. The wyvern’s eyes snapped open and it stood up. With a higher pitched roar than what dragons would produce, she looked upon the culprits.

They were running by now but would hardly ever have made it without the back up the other team provided. Fireballs, earthen spikes and lightning zaps were thrown through the air.

Even with the reduced effect, the fireballs blinded it, the earth spikes hindered its feet and the lightning shocked it.

Running towards it as it started to look bad, one of the first team tripped. Tripping itself isn’t too bad all things considered.

Yet when a wyvern could just about kill you as soon as it saw you, you tend to consider it in a different light. With this mortal body and its limited resources, I could only call unto the wind to push him away from the monster.

‘Thamp’, with a stomp it crushed the space the Carn had been in earlier and you could hear the cracking of the stones and the very fast displacement of the air. As I finally reached the wyvern’s leg, I took out my sword and doled out a decent slash. It turned into a mere scratch upon contact though.

As you know, wyverns are famous for their speed or at least among the divine Houses as not enough sentient races exist for it to be famous here.

So it should surprise anyone that it reacted immediately and so I now crashed into a rock wall. The armour might have prevented me being ripped in half by its talons as it swooped at me but it doesn’t do much against blunt impacts. Least of all stone.

Taking some time to repair this body and take a breath, I could see the Carn trying to lead it away from me. I would really have left this to any of my other spawn but alas; I am the only one with a champion.

Having healed my body, I repeated my charge but this time I will have to try to cut its scales near its heart. Makes incinerating it easier. With only 20 meters to the wyvern, I called out to the others to have them stop distracting the wyvern from me and instead target its wings.

“Stop targeting the eyes! Instead aim for the wings. Try to get it land bound as much as possible!” By this time, their amount of spells were starting to dry up but some started some new spells on the spot so as long as not all of them were empty, they would be fine.

Finally having reached the not-yet-cursed thing, I tried to break the skin, scales and bones surrounding the heart with all the physical strength this body had. Augmented by my magic of course.

With a screech, it shook wildly as it now had an arms long wound to its heart. Immediately after pushing myself away with some very concentrated wind, I could hear the rush of wind not my own as the wyvern lashed out at me between its thrashes.

Why o why is this champion so weak. If I were in my divine form, this would be like blowing out a candle yet this frail body makes it all so difficult. S

mashing into the eggs, I get surrounded into their stink and broken shells. If the wyvern was angry before then now it is burning in rage. Without any regard to its own life, it charged at me.

With a heavy amount of magic in my step, I jumped to meet the thing in its charge. With a clang, my armour and its scales clash into each other.

In the most serene calm, I thrust my sword into the gash in its chest and jumped of.

With a flick of my hand, I used what left over magic I had to burn out its heart using the node. Stumbling as its life was near end, it ran its arm into an earth spike and fell of the cliff following that.

Falling on the ground in exhaustion, the others came towards me.

“That was masterfully done my god. You saved the lives of a few of us. We swear to make an even greater offering to you at your temple”

“Saving your lives was the reason I came here in the first place. And if any offerings you make can become greater then that means something doesn’t it?”

The carn seemed to flinch at that last part and had trouble getting out even one sentence after that.

“Well… I donnnn’t realllly have… anything… worthy? Pl pl please believe…” Then suddenly I felt a corrupted presence.

Not one of magic as that creates a new natural being but rather one of the others. That’s when the party heard a roar in the distance.

“You have to run,” I told them and they all obeyed. As I turned to leave myself, a corrupted wyvern rose up from the valley. I could instantly see that it was either the Carn or I. I had exhausted nearly all of my champion’s mana, so I drew upon the one thing that was left.

As I took hold of that smidge of my power and created a barrier that would hold as long as was needed, I felt my connection with my champion weaken. Gerren dimly returned to consciousness.

When he realized I was there too, his awareness blazed up in hate. That was also the moment the corrupted wyvern crashed into my barrier. With each time it attacked my barrier, the more warped Gerren’s hate became. Then as the wyvern dealt one last blow, Gerren attacked me.

Gerren was gone and what attacked me was a corrupted. I knew he was a lost cause but this betrayal left me in a rage. With the barrier gone as I had lost most of my control over my old champion, the wyvern blazed us both in flames. In Gerren’s screams of pain and mine of frustration, we felt something hit us.

Then only Gerren was left to fall of the cliff and I to my own body, already thinking of retribution.