Rival Crowns (Challenger's Call Book 7) Read online

  RIVAL CROWNS

  Challenger's Call Book 7

  Nathan Thompson

  Copyright © 2021 Nathan Thompson

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Art Painter

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to the hospital staff who spent over a week battling to save my life as I struggled with a surprise illness. I will forever remain grateful for their hard work.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Founding's Foes

  Chapter 2: Herald of Woe

  Chapter 3: Contested Claims

  Chapter 4: Banners Placed

  Chapter 5: Witnessing Walls of the Past

  Chapter 6: Holding Court

  Chapter 7: Kingdom Advancing

  Chapter 8: Pawns in Play

  Chapter 9: Regalia's Weight

  Chapter 10: Heavy is the Head

  Chapter 11: Scepters Clash

  Chapter 12: Let There Be War

  Chapter 13: From Whence Kingdoms Came

  Chapter 14: The Power of Simple Rest

  Chapter 15: Speak Into Me

  Chapter 16: Signets Clash

  Chapter 17: Nations Tremble

  Chapter 18: What Has Been Unearthed

  Chapter 19: Legacies Aligned

  Chapter 20: The Breaking

  Chapter 21: Rest After Clash

  Chapter 22: Of Giants and Thrones

  Chapter 23: Inheritor's Ears

  Chapter 24: Mastering Kingdoms and Blades

  Chapter 25: Seeking the Shamshir

  Epilogue

  AFTERWORD

  Prologue

  Stell’s Perspective

  Daughter, the quiet voice called in my mind.

  Ignore him, the multitude of frightened old ones demanded in my mind. Run as we have taught you. As you always have. You shameful, useless thing.

  But I have begun to ignore them, something I never learned to do in all the many centuries before.

  Daughter, the voice insisted, you are not who they say you are.

  Ignore him, the frightened multitude insisted, you must ignore him! Many have suffered because you have not always ignored him!

  It was true.

  I had not always ignored the quiet voice.

  He had spoken before, when I was alone, grieving, and hurting.

  I had listened only for a half-moment, because any longer would have been too much.

  But, when that awful moment of sanity and hope had passed, I found that I had finally expanded my consciousness into a second body and somehow claimed the mantle of Stewardship over Avalon and all its sister worlds.

  Such responsibility had always terrified me, but I performed it all the same, because it was the only way to ignore the multitude of frightened, accusing old men.

  Now, it was calling to me again, demanding I lay my gaze on my victories instead of my many failures.

  You are not who they say you are.

  He is wrong, the voices insisted. You have failed. You have lost everything again. Run away—it's all you are good for.

  But I have not failed.

  Not yet.

  My hunter came just as he did before—but stronger than he ever had been, and with an army at his back. This time, I had even more lives to lose, and fewer lives to protect them with. But, despite tragedy after unspeakable tragedy, All Is Not Lost.

  Entire worlds of mine dimmed and disappeared under the weight of tribulation, only to return to me, the lives inside them stronger, brighter, and somehow more numerous than ever.

  Even more surprising to me, my hunter actually found several of my other selves, seeking to prey on them when they were most vulnerable.

  To pursue me, he split himself into a multitude of pieces, each one just as strong as the single massive form that devoured my entire race. He should have claimed my other bodies easily and slain anyone foolish enough to dare protect me.

  However, each time, the same young man who had heard my cries all the way from Earth stood in my hunter's way, and refused to budge until that part of me in danger realized it was somehow strong enough to stand by his side and face my hunter with him.

  Then, those rebel bodies of mine ripped my hunter apart with powers they never should have possessed.

  Those powers and victories were just now resounding through my primary consciousness, and all the frightened old voices in the Expanse now demanded that I ignore these victories as flukes. Stay low, they insist to me, stay where you belong. Broken, evil child.

  You are not who they say you are.

  Power had become me, and I could ignore the quiet voice no longer.

  Because I was not only hunted.

  I was also pursued. Wanted. Needed. Welcome.

  Beloved.

  There were many who felt such emotions for me, but my consciousness now reached out to the one hero who had roared those truths at me over and over.

  I saw that he was constantly battling a frightened multitude of his own, fighting for his hopes and dreams even as he sang over me. His soul now stood in opposition to another ancient being, one more tyrant who felt threatened by the power in my hero's soul.

  The Fiend was an ancient nightmare, a creature of power from a lost age. One who had haunted my people ages before the birth of my race, laying claim to entire civilizations. The Fiend had seen something in my hero's soul that spoke of a familiar, rival power, one that had challenged him untold eons ago, back when the Expanse itself was still young, and beings of talon and claw fought each other for dominion of every world, carving up the galaxies between them.

  But my hero was not concerned with any legacy his enemies spoke over him. He had built his throne upon his desire to protect the weak and prevail for them, and by doing so, had scorned and offended tyrants of every size and epoch.

  As he faced this next evil, who claimed to have an invulnerable form and to have once wielded dominion over dozens of stars, my hero appeared far more weary than impressed. Far more tired than fearful.

  But fatigue is a danger of its own, I realized, as my hero squared his back and faced his power-cloaked foe with a long-practiced stance. The victorious are not immune to fatigue, and triumph can require even more recovery than trauma or defeat.

  But glory was also a contagion, and one person's success often swept over those near to them.

  My hero had made himself very near to me.

  Crown him, the mighty voice said to me, and write love on his arms.

  Power had become me, and I could no longer deny it. My hero had claimed too many victories for my soul to do anything but resound in kind.

  He may well be weary from his own triumphs, but he could still share mine.

  Answer him! I said to my soul as I raised my arms. Affirm his confidence in you, and return it a hundred fold!

  It would be an imperfect act, for despite all my newfound glory, I was far from complete. But that did not change the fact that I still had much to give.

  As I reached for his distant form, one entire worlds away,
I pressed against all the lies and shame that still sought to smother me away from everyone, and pushed.

  Chapter One: Founding's Foes

  Chris' Perspective

  "Welcome back, Master Rhodes," the bored, but mildly surprised portal guard said as I stumbled through the Pathway, growing more alert as he took in my posture. "Are you injured? Do I need to sound the alarm?"

  "Yes. No. Not yet," I said, correcting myself several times in a row as I tried to bring my panic under control. "But I need to talk to Father. Right now. It's an emergency."

  As soon as I had gotten away from that armored demon-thing, I had sprinted like hell through our portal network to make it back to our main base. It had cost me every scrap of stamina and mana I had, but I had managed to make it back to the Dawnlands in the same day.

  "He's currently inside central headquarters," the guard said slowly, and I could tell that he was struggling to work out the proper protocol for my arrival. He was technically one of our elites, but he was currently guarding a location we never expected to be attacked, so he wasn't much more than window dressing in this position, and he knew it.

  He also knew that he was supposed to pass along important messages to his immediate superiors, but that I likely possessed sensitive information that should jump straight to the top of the chain of command.

  Which he would get in trouble for contacting himself.

  "I'll find him myself," I decided, aggressively pushing past him. "Pass a message to the rest of the guards saying that I need to get through to Warren Rhodes immediately, and that anyone who tries to stop me is going to answer to High Command."

  I was making his situation worse, because I technically didn't have any authority over most of the security team, and they were supposed to watch for my abusing my connection to my father. At the same time, they couldn't stop me from using that connection to Dad to ruin their lives.

  But I wasn't concerned about saving his skin; I was concerned with saving mine. There was no way I could meet up with Dad tomorrow and say, "Hey, I didn't tell you before because you were busy, but we just lost another planet, and this time it wasn't to Malcolm." Besides, I had always been smart enough to throw my weight around only when I absolutely needed to, so this wasn't typical behavior for me.

  The guard behind me spoke into a scripted rock that probably served as some new communications system, but that was all the attention I could afford to pay to him. I reached our main headquarters, which looked like it was in the process of being renovated to be an even grander palace than it was before. Ilklings, slaves from various worlds, and strange, golem-like constructs scurried about, carrying stone, lumber, and other building materials.

  I frowned at that. Dad and his staff must still be feeling confident over how things were going, which infuriated me, even though I was technically no longer playing for their team. I could understand why, though, since until now, every world his people had lost were worlds that the Malus Order had exploited as much as they could before tossing them aside. They probably figured Malcolm was losing power and resources by trying to maintain them, because in the fifty or so years they ravaged Avalon's worlds, they never had to deal with a population that had overcome a Trial or Tumult, and were unfamiliar with the powers a world could gain from the event.

  They had only begun paying any real attention when Wes killed a high-value asset as soon as he arrived in the Golden Sands and somehow repelled their second invasion into the Sun-Jeweled Seas with a scriptship fleet of his own.

  But, even then, they had just given the problem to the Horde and said, "Do whatever you want," and I had spent the last month or so accommodating those bastards.

  Fortunately, the guards let me into the main building without any difficulties. I wound my way through several hallways until I reached the room where Dad was having his meeting. Here, the guards finally stopped me, but I had expected that: Dad would want to be the first person to learn this news.

  The guard knocked on the door, causing the murmuring on the other side to go silent.

  "Come in," I heard my father say irritably from the other side. The guard carefully poked his head through the door and whispered that I was back, and that I needed to speak with him privately. I heard the head of my family sigh in annoyance. The guard opened the door wide enough for him and his partner to step through, then they closed the door behind them, leaving me alone out in the middle of the hallway.

  "Well, Chris?" my father's voice emanated from behind me. "What's so important that you had to race three worlds back and disrupt our quarterly budget report? I thought we had asked you to help us out with the Horde by being our Pit Knight envoy."

  "Yes, sir," I said to my father, turning around to face him and trying not to show surprise that he had managed to appear out of nowhere right behind me. Magic, I reminded myself. He's gotta be a high Adept in Earth and some other magics by now. He probably cast a spell to deaden the sound in the hallway, too. "I've done my best at that task, but something major has gone wrong, and I knew you should be the first to know."

  "Chris," my father breathed impatiently, crossing his arms and staring down at me. "I know you're under a lot of stress, but you've recently been performing well enough to merit a good bit of regard from us. Please don't ruin that by telling me that you've somehow let Malcolm kill off both teams of those Pit Knights the Horde were bragging about."

  "The first team may have been able to engage and kill Wes Malcolm by now, but the entire second team is dead. And, though I can't find out now, I'm confident that the first team will soon follow. There's a third party now involved in the Golden Sands, and he tore through those Horde elites like toilet paper."

  My father's annoyance immediately morphed into intense focus.

  "Explain," he commanded flatly. "And clarify whether this is truly a third party, or some upstart Icon asserting their independence."

  "He called himself Steel-Armor Zereh," I said, pulling out the message I had rehearsed in my mind on the way here. "And I don't think he's an Icon. I mean, if he is an Icon, his power signature is different from any of the Light or Dark Icons I've met or learned about. He said that he 'had risen from slumber, and sought to govern what was already his.' Something tells me he may have been sleeping even before the Starsown took up stewardship in Avalon."

  "That's merely a thousand or so years ago," my father said dismissively, "at least as time passes here. But go on. You were saying he broke the Horde's latest toys? How do you know he won't align with Avalon?"

  I blinked, realizing I hadn't really considered that possibility.

  "I don't know that for sure," I admitted, then shook my head. "Scratch that, I'm certain he won't align with Avalon. He might try, because he told me that he was open to negotiations with us, as long as we respected his claim over the Golden Sands and that we didn't represent something called the Breath. But he called himself a Tyrant, and he only let me live because he thought I represented a Tyrant myself, and he wanted to open contact with one. At most, he'll make that same offer to Wes, and Wes will reject it because he's a goody two-shoes that refuses to compromise, no matter how obviously necessary it is for his survival. Then they'll fight, and the winner will get the Golden Sands, because this guy said he was going to close off the Pathways and lock us out for a bit, meaning we probably can't send any reinforcements. But this is assuming that the other Pit Knights weren't able to kill Wes in that ambush Cavus' fragment made us perform." I blinked as I realized that. "Actually, if Cavus is still there, do you think the two will fight?"

  "Our patron's fragment did take part in the ambush as well," my father stated, "but if he's already gotten what he's wanted, he will likely be unavailable for some time."

  It bothered me just how not-disgusted Dad was when he made that comment. Except for a faint hint of irritation, I didn't detect any emotion at all. But my own expression almost seemed disgusted for a moment, which meant that I possibly was indicating that I wasn't on board with all the heinou
s shit we did anymore, which meant that I was probably about to die, so I immediately thought of a cover. "Are you sure he won't get involved? I thought he wanted the worlds, too, not just the girl?"

  "Communicating with our patron has become a complicated matter," my father said carefully, with an...odd note of strain in his voice. "He is insisting that his foremost goal be met before aiding us in other matters, while communicating that he still expects us to conquer these worlds with what aid he's already given us. To pull him away any farther than we already have would cost us concessions that are far greater than anything the Horde currently costs us. But that may be unnecessary anyway, since we already sent several armies to that world just a few weeks ago...unless you are implying that they are already dead."

  "I don't know that for certain," I admitted, shaking my head again, "but...probably. This guy's strong, Dad. It's not just that the Pit Knights weren't able to hurt him at all, no matter what they threw at him. It's not just that he tore each of them apart with only one or two blows. It's that he appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of this giant sandstorm that had erupted with absolutely no warning. He had this army with him, of these weird creatures that looked like golden zombies or skeletons that blurred and shifted whenever our other soldiers tried to attack them. I don't know where exactly to put him on the power scale, but I think he's on the same level as that bloody centaur thing that drove us out of the Sun-Jeweled Seas. In fact," I added, as my synapses made new connections between facts. "He might be the reason that some of those Icons and other targets of note have been disappearing before we can claim them—which means he's probably operating in the same way that Nuckelavee thing did. But that's just a conjecture on my part," I added quickly, realizing that I was thinking about issues above my pay grade. "Especially since I didn't know what happened to that centaur thing, either."

  "Reports are vague," my father mused. "But our intelligence currently suspects that Malcolm was able to resurrect certain powerful and long-dead Icons and use them to win his battles there. Those same Icons were likely the ones who assembled that fleet of his and prevented that trap from closing around the Starsown's Satellite in that region...hmm..."