The Greatest Battle Lies Within

Below is the short story I wrote for the Echoes of Avalon anthology contest hosted by Legend Fiction. Enjoy! ;)

Mist hung around the ancient trees like burial cloths and entwined with the dark leaves to shield the view beyond an arm’s-length away. Branches twice as thick as a man’s torso twisted together above like spider webs, blocking out any starlight that might’ve had a chance.

The knight staggered to a halt. Sucking in labored breaths, he stumbled in the ensnaring undergrowth and caught himself with a hand on the rough, ridged bark of a tree as big around as a castle tower. His other hand pressed against the gash in his tunic and chainmail for a brief moment before coming away sticky and dark. More blood trickled along his brow and slipped down his cheek. But they were mere flesh-wounds, nothing that would keep him from the final trial.

He grit his jaw and straightened. Failure could not—must not—be an option. Not if he wanted to rescue…

Blinking away blood, he scanned the surrounding forest. Nothing but twisted tree limbs, leaves, and mist. Cursing under his breath, he let his hand fall from the trunk and closed his eyes with an inhale. The still air, heavy with the rich, earthen scent of old leaves, stung his nose.

Then the hint of a sweet odor tickled the edges.

His eyes flew open, all senses suddenly on high alert, and his hand went to the cool metal of his sword hilt looming over his shoulder.

A pulsing, violet-tinted glow bloomed through the mist. Eyes fixed on the light, holding his breath and his side, the knight started forward again, slower this time, easing the sword given him by the old monk from his scabbard with a soft rasp.

This time, the twisting vines and undergrowth seemed to part before him, the light growing brighter with every step. He passed a towering tree trunk and stopped, squinting at the source of the glow. Not that bright, but it still stung his eyes after the midnight black of the forest.

A young man, his whole form haloed by the faint violet light, stood a few yards away, illuminated in a rare beam of silvery moonlight that glimmered on his wheat-colored hair.

The knight lowered his sword, sensing no danger with something deeper than his senses, though the whisps of warning and foreboding still whispered through the thick air.

“Sir Dargan of Cloverdale.” The young man broke the silence, his voice not a whisper but still light as a breath, carried on the breeze. Not a shout but deep as the tree roots entangled in dark, rich soil.

The knight took a step forward at his name, the hairs on his arms prickling as the violet glow touched through his sleeves to his skin and glinted faintly on the pocked and worn metal of his vambraces. “Are you the seventh guardian?” His voice cut though the weight of the wood, harsh and gruff after that of the other.

“I am.”

Sir Dargan swallowed and took another step, wincing at the pain in his side, and pushed back his deep green hood to reveal his face, young but rough with a few weeks’ stubble, dark hair long and untamed and sharp blue eyes fixed on the guardian. “Have you come to tell me of the final test?”

The man cocked his head slightly and didn’t answer right away. After a moment, he eased but a single pace forward, out of the beam of moonlight, and his form shimmered and shifted until a unicorn and no longer a man stood before Sir Dargan, still encircled with the same violet glow but white and pure as fresh snow on a hilltop beneath a star-strewn sky ruled by a full moon.

“Sir Dargan.” The unicorn spoke with the same voice as the man, though its mouth didn’t move. It lowered and turned its neck so its eyes, deep wells of mystery, met Sir Dargan’s, peering not simply into them, but through them…down deep to the depths of his soul.

A chill ran through the knight, but he squared his shoulders and held the unicorn’s gaze steady.

After a moment, the guardian spoke again. “I sense your confidence. The quick-wit perfected through trials. Your strength, of both mind and body, the determination to see this quest through to the end. Beware, sir knight.” The unicorn lifted its head, breaking the eye-locked connection while retaining the contact of gazes. “These shall work against you in the trial to come. The foe you shall now face is greater than any before.”

It paused for a lengthy moment, studying the knight as if asserting he’d understood, then its long-lashed gaze flicked down to his blade for a moment. “Keep your sword close at hand, for through it, God shall display His mighty power as in previous trials…in the hand of a humble heart. Come.”

Without further words of explanation, the unicorn turned, silent as a star, and stepped deeper into the forest.

Heaving a deep breath, Sir Dargan tightened his sweat-dampened grip on his sword hilt and plunged limping after, holding his side, struggling to keep a place on the edge of glowing light where the undergrowth and twisted limbs remained parted in the unicorn’s wake.

As they walked, the guardian drifted in and out of dappled moonlight, flickering between its forms of young man and unicorn, until it stopped suddenly and turned, retaining the form of a unicorn, waiting for Sir Dargan to join it.

When the knight reached its side, the guardian turned with a slow flick of its white tail and bowed its head, though in anything but submission as its glowing horn pointed to the forest ahead, sharper than any sword.

The mist parted with a surge of the violet light, and a bridge appeared, crafted of deep brown planks as ancient but living as the forest itself, running across a mist-topped lake to a looming island of dark green. From the fog swathing the island like a cloak, a tower spire rose, stabbing up into the cloud-sheathed sky. No doubt the tower where the maiden the prince sought dwelt. The destination of the knight’s quest.

Sir Dargan stared, eyes almost transfixed as if by some greater power than mere curiosity, and confidence surged in his chest, the pain of his previous injuries fading away, and he found himself straightening and clenching his jaw. He’d nearly done it. He would complete this quest. And—a twinge of bitterness flared—prove himself to the king.

He set his jaw and didn’t look away from the sight ahead until the unicorn turned back to face him, reclaiming his gaze.

It blinked long lashes over its depthless eyes and stepped silently aside, striking the earth and decaying leaves with one glowing hoof as it nodded to him. “God go with you, sir knight.” And with a final flicker of light, the guardian faded into the mist.

Letting out a slow breath, Sir Dargan faced the island. He readjusted his grip on his sword and tugged his hood back in place before taking the first step onto the bridge, heart racing against his ribs for a reason he didn’t know.

***

His boots, even with his shuffling gait, made little sound on the dark, rich earth, unmarred by any undergrowth on the island-side of the bridge. And indeed, sound seemed hardly to exist at all, even his heavy breaths and the soft hissing of the cold breeze seeming muted, as if from beyond the veil of some other word…though the wind’s chill cut through his cloak, tunic, trousers, and even chainmail as if they held no concrete existence.

Sir Dargan gripped his sword hilt until his numbing fingers throbbed in beat with his side, eyes darting around the island. But there was nothing to see save towering, straight trees with no branches, their tops and probably a good deal more of them swallowed up in a fog thicker even than the mist of the outer forest.

The fog beaded across his face, drenching his skin and clothes more thoroughly than sweat, seeming to seep into him like boney fingers, squeezing every bit of warmth from his blood.

He hesitated a moment, throwing a glance back over his shoulder. He’d gone but a few paces, yet the bridge and even any sign of the lake had been swallowed from his sight. Unease prickled along his skin, but he swallowed and pressed himself forward. He was a knight, battle-tested and found still standing by the six previous trials. There was nothing to fear here. His jaw tightened. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Are you well, sir knight?”

The knight whipped around toward the low, silky purr of a voice, his heart slamming against his ribs.

A dark, cloak-swathed figure stood, or floated, on the edge of the fog.

Hefting his sword, Sir Dargan took a step forward and forced his hand away from his steadily oozing wound so as not to draw attention.

But the figure only chuckled, a gentle rumble from his chest, and gestured with a black-gloved hand to the knight’s side. “You appear wounded from your previous trial. Surely, you seek healing before the next.”

Sir Dargan lowered his sword a fraction, but he still hesitated, wary.

“Come now, Sir Dargan.” The man took a step nearer. “You have no enemies here.” He spread his arms, flinging out his cape against the backdrop of white fog like a bat’s wings over the moon, his face still concealed beneath the deep shadows of his hood. “To the contrary, I have eagerly awaited your arrival for a long time. I have been sent to help you reach the tower you seek.”

Sir Dargan lowered his sword, though he remained alert and didn’t take his gaze from the cloaked figure. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“Come. Hurry.” Without a sound, without any implication of force, the man drifted away, merely waving his black-gloved fingers in a gesture to follow.

Waiting for a trap when he didn’t take a step after and triggering none, Sir Dargan breathed a sigh and followed. The guardian, after all—he clenched his jaw—had not even seemed aware of his need.

Pressing his lips together and securing his grip on his sword, Sir Dargan stepped after the cloaked man.

The man wove seamlessly in and out of tree trunks, only visible due to the stark contrast of his black cloak against the fog. Sir Dargan followed, gradually finding himself jogging, then running to keep up.

When the figure finally stopped, the knight found himself out of breath. Panting, on alert, but his throbbing wound as dim now as sound, he scanned their surroundings. They stood in a circular clearing, the dirt replaced by thick grass, springy beneath his feet, and though neither the fog nor the trees had followed them, both created a thick wall around the entire clearing, blocking it from the rest of the wood.

Bringing his gaze back to the dark figure, Sir Dargan eyed him, but curiously, now, and his sword hung limp at his side. “Who are you?” he repeated around gasps for breath when the man remained silent.

A smile flickered on the lower half of the man’s face. “Someone who’s numbed your pain, who knows your deepest thoughts, the darkest secrets of your heart and still searches you out…someone who can give you your greatest desire if you but surrender…everything.” With his last word, the cloaked figure raised a hand.

Images instantly flickered in the surrounding fog.

Sir Dargan’s mouth parted, the air sucked from his lungs without so much as an exhale. He tried to pull his gaze away, pull his attention back to the cloaked figure to ask what was happening, but his eyes seemed held by some power greater than his will.

A high throne raised on a dais, its cushions scarlet as blood…a crown, gleaming golden as if it were on fire, imbedded with jewels glowing like embers in ashes. Objects Sir Dargan had seen before—in possession of the king.

A drop of sweat trickled down his temple as an unease fueled by the lessons he’d learned in previous trials slithered into his stomach. His breath became unsteady, and his feet, the traitors, took a step toward the images swirling before him, filling his entire vision.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself to a stop with all the force of will he could muster, watching shining armies march beneath a banner bearing his crest…crowds chanting and cheering his name…ambassadors from other kingdoms arriving at the castle gates, his castle gates, bearing wagons full of more gold than he’d seen even in the king’s treasury.

Coins started spilling over the sides, lava pouring from a volcano, and Sir Dargan lunged forward before he could think, as if to catch them. For half a moment, he felt their cool weight in his hand…then they faded, and another image appeared.

The knight’s heart stopped beating, his skin icing over.

It was…her.

Clothed in a shimmering crimson dress, low at the top and full and flowing in the skirt, like liquid rose petals…her golden hair falling down her back and over her shoulders in liquid sunlight to match. Her eyes, deep and penetrating…her skin, pale and fair…

The king’s daughter.

Her red lips turned up in a smile…beckoning in a way she never had before, and Sir Dargan lifted a hand, only then realizing both shook like leaves in a gale. And sometime during the visions, he’d dropped his sword. But did that even matter?

His tunic now drenched through with fog and nervous sweat, the hair around his face and the back of his neck damp and curling, he took a step forward. Then another. His hand brushed what should have been hers.

The image evaporated, nothing more than a swirl of fog, and sudden darkness rushed in.

Sir Dargan fell to his hands and knees with a jolt, breath coming in gasps, heart throbbing against his ribs, limbs shaking and tingling. Silence roared in his ears.

Then an eerie light sprang to life behind him, showing him the grass in shades of grey, each blade owning a tiny black shadow, reaching up like fingers to pull him down beneath the earth and the world of the living.

Sir Dargan pushed himself to his knees, then stepped slowly to his feet and turned.

The cloaked figure stood, mighty with height and strength against a pale white glow lighting him from behind, brilliant and other-worldly.

The figure threw out his arm again. “All could be yours…if you but have the courage to stretch out your hand and take it.” He started drifting forward like a wraith, his tantalizing voice hissing and curling around Sir Dargan’s mind like a serpent, more in his head than his ears. “You reached for it once before. You did what you had to…and they called you a murderer for it…disgraced you and your father’s house. I can give you what you want…help you redeem your family’s name ‘til it becomes the most renowned in all the land…drop all the power, honor, wealth, and pleasure you’ve ever dreamed of right in your lap. If you but surrender all to me.”

The figure stopped only an arm’s length away and extended a black-gloved hand, palm down. Waiting.

Sir Dargan swallowed, everything the figure offered—everything he’d spent his whole life chasing—dangling before his face like a bone before a dog. Clammy sweat prickled his arms, itchy beneath his chainmail. He looked up at the man’s face, no more than a shadowed mouth beneath the black hood, then down at the leather-gloved hand but inches away.

The knight’s fingers twitched. His hand moved until the span of a blade of grass was all that remained between the gloved hand and his.

Traitor. Kin-slayer. Disgrace. Coward.

All the words the townspeople, his fellow knights, and even the king had ever thrown at him echoed in Sir Dargan’s mind. He grit his teeth until his temples throbbed. All the unfair accusations, all the cold shoulders, all the leers and lectures and forced labor…all because he’d fallen in love with his cousin’s betrothed.

And he could undo it all now, if he but moved his hand a mere grass-blade’s width more.

The old bitterness, pride, jealousy, simmering anger that he’d slowly conquered one by one with every past trial rose with a fresh vengeance in his chest, tightening like they wanted to crush his heart in on itself from the inside.

He knew it was wrong, deep down in the soul of his being. But darkness crept back in to even his soul now, standing at the door, waiting for only his hand—his one second of permission to let it come pouring in like a poison he’d never escape.

Every fiber of his being tensed and strained—burned, even—with the weight of the choice, the weight of holding him between two otherworldly powers.

Everything he’d ever wanted…or everything he’d gained on his quest that he’d never known he was missing?

Sir Dargan stared down at his own shaking hand, not even sure which direction he wanted it to move.

The foe you shall now face is greater than any before.

The guardian’s warning, echoing in his mind, whispering past on a brief, gentle breeze.

Sir Dargan drew back his hand a fraction. “Why would you offer me this? Who are you?”

The figure seemed surprised for a moment, but then the shadowed mouth curved into a gentle smile. “Ah, Dargan, you need not fear my betrayal. Everything you gain for yourself, I gain. Every battle you win, I win. Every crown you claim, I earn. Every pleasure you take delights me. For, you see”—slowly, one gloved hand reached up, pinched the hood’s edge between its middle finger and thumb, and pushed it back—“I am you.”

The breath left Sir Dargan’s lungs with the icy fist suddenly crushing his chest. He couldn’t breathe. His heart froze for an instant before lurching back to life with the force of a battering ram. He couldn’t move, could only stand there, mouth parted, staring into the face of a smirking, well-built face—handsomely angular, clean-shaven, and young—with long dark hair combed and pulled back with the care of a prince and sharp blue eyes fixed on the knight’s face.

Staring into the face of…himself.

But a perfectly groomed version of himself, no longer wearing the messy scruff and tangled hair too long from weeks abroad in the wild, a version of himself that fit his dreams and visions…and suddenly terrified him down to the marrow of his bones.

The man extended his gloved hand again, cold eyes boring into the knight’s face with an intensity that held no distain, no taunting, no threat. “I’m no enemy, Sir Dargan. I won’t stop you from reaching the tower. I’ll help you more than anyone else can. Join me. Step into who you were made to be. Stop wasting your strength in serving the king, trying to regain his favor and your lost honor, and serve yourself. Surely you don’t want to rescue the maiden only to give her up to the prince.”

Sir Dargan swallowed and averted his gaze, clamping his eyes shut.

But the man kept going, words softening. “Come, sir knight. Complete the quest for yourself and reap its rewards. For yourself. You are the one who has earned it. No one will be greater than us. No one will be able to stop us. Not the king, not the prince, not the other knights.”

Sir Dargan’s heart thundered in his ears. His eyes opened half against his will and glanced up, locking on the hand—his hand—extended toward him, offering him the world.

But then his voice spoke a final sentence. “Not even God Himself.”

The spell snapped. The figure suddenly appeared dark as a demon of the underworld, and the light became not white like the sun, but an unnatural, cold and lifeless white like the spirit of something undead.

Sir Dargan lifted his head, all the crushing weight suddenly gone, and met his own eyes, shaking his head slowly. “No one is greater than God.”

The man’s face—his face—twisted into a sneer, a realization flashing too late in the eyes that he’d gone one step too far. The black-gloved hand reached into his cloak, and Sir Dargan realized what was about to happen just in time to dive out of the way of the flashing sword blade.

He rolled across the grass, gritting his teeth against the tearing pain in his side, out of the way of the next slash—the brief, sharp thought registering in his mind that he could finally breathe clearly again—and scanned the clearing for his own sword. The sword the guardian had told him to keep close. The sword the guardian had told him God Himself would work through. There.

He dove for it, another strike swooshing in his ear. His calf stung, but he ignored it and snagged his hilt with the tips of his fingers, rolling to his feet and solidifying his grip before turning to face his opponent.

The cloaked man, face dark and twisted, stood a few paces away now. Sir Dargan took a defensive step closer, and the man mirrored him. They stalked each other, circling for several beats of Sir Dargan’s heart.

Then he lunged.

The man blocked it, then pulled his own sword around and drew the edge across Sir Dargan’s arm. It cut through his chainmail, warm blood alerting the knight to a wound, and he grit his teeth, striking again.

But—again—his opponent blocked it on perfect cue and countered with a slice that cut Sir Dargan’s left shoulder. The same happened in several more exchanges, and even a few series of faster sequences, until Sir Dargan stepped a few paces back, eyeing the man warily, panting and bleeding from countless cuts, his wounded side hot, while the other stood straight and unnicked without even a hair out of place.

The cloaked man’s mouth twitched in a smirk, and he shook his head slowly, eyes glinting darkly. “You can’t beat me, sir knight. I am you. I know every move you will make, every skill you have ever learned.” His voice softened, almost pleading, almost losing its dark edge. “Think of the power within both our grasps before you throw it away so rashly.” He paused. “I’ll give you another chance to join me.”

Sir Dargan clenched his jaw and tightened his fist around his sword hilt, narrowing his eyes. “Never.” But despair reared its head, trying to snuff out his will to fight. How could he beat, on his own, a foe that could read his every move?

The realization struck him then, suddenly, like a star peeking out from a heavy cloud, and the guardian’s words drifted back to him.

He didn’t have to do it on his own.

…in the hand of a humble heart.

He grit his teeth, blinking blood and sweat from his eyes, and surrendered. God, help me. Please, grant me this victory.

Then he struck again, a hot determination blazing through his veins. This time, a golden-white light—bright with warmth—flashed from his sword, illuminating the clearing…and the man’s cowering, squinting face.

The man brought up his sword in a semi-effective block, but he couldn’t keep up. The dark certainty faded from his face as Sir Dargan drove him back, back…out of the clearing.

With a final screech, ringing in rage across the island, the figure blended into the swirling fog, becoming a dark vision only—then fading away.

The rest of the fog followed and began evaporating, lifting from the hold it had on the forest and floating up into the night sky where the twinkling stars burned it away. Small green shoots began breaking free through the rich soil, some budding into tiny white flowers as branches and leaves sprouted from the trees.

Sir Dargan heaved a deep, shaking breath and wiped his face on his cloak, sliding his sword back into its scabbard over his shoulder. He turned back toward the center of the island…and stopped.

Through the newly blooming trees, no longer obscured by fog, a wooden door set in stone waited, beckoning.

The maiden’s tower.