Champion (Short Story)

The magical portal opened, and I was falling. I tried to tuck and roll. I can't say it worked well.

“Ow!” I yelped, landing hard on the pebbly sidewalk.

Cursing under my breath, I scrambled to my feet, glaring at my magic portal as it faded out of sight behind me. Being a hole in the air shimmering with prismatic light, it didn’t return my stink-eye. I quickly checked myself over for any serious injuries. Nope, just a few bruises and a skinned knee that stung like hell.

“I really need to work on getting that spell stabilized.” I grumbled.

As the last traces of the portal blew away on the wind, I pivoted on one heel to try and get my bearings. I had landed right in front of the maternity wing of the hospital. I was lucky to have gotten this close, given how tricky portal magic can be. All I had to do now was find which room the newborn Chosen was in. If I couldn’t manage that, then I wasn’t much of a Champion. I couldn’t really protect the Chosen if I didn’t even know where they were.

Slipping out of the concealed corner I’d appeared in, I was about to step through the nearest door when a man’s voice called out, “Hey!”

I spun to find a uniformed guard of some kind trotting towards me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He demanded, taking in my swords, leather armor, and the collection of amulets around my neck.

“Going inside, what does it look like I’m doing?” I retorted, annoyed.

The guard glared down his nose at me. “You can’t bring weapons into hospital grounds. Hand’em over or leave.”

This guy was clearly going to be a problem. I was about to try to push past him when I heard sirens start blaring. Looking up to find the source of the sound, I saw several formless gray shapes dash along the skybridge towards the maternity wing. I cursed again. “Dustmen. This day just keeps getting better.”

Our seers had been clear that the Chosen was going to be a monster magnet, but I hadn’t expected anything as nasty as dustmen. The guard pulled out a flat, glassy rectangle from his pocket and started frantically tapping it. It was probably some kind of weapon, and I had no time to waste now. I swept his legs out from under him and sprinted for the door.

People around me were starting to shout when I burst through, wondering what the problem was. I saw cars with flashing lights on top pulling up outside, spilling out more uniformed people. I shoved through the crowd and grabbed the woman behind the reception desk. She yelped and struggled.

I sighed. “I’m sorry, okay? Please just tell me which room this baby is in.”

I pulled the sketch our seers had made out of my pocket and showed it to her. She glared at me. “I don’t know! Let go of me, you maniac!”

“And that’s what I get for being nice.” I muttered, letting go of her.

I raced through the hallways, barely breaking stride to dodge around panicking doctors. In a few places I saw thick smears of gray dust on the walls and floor. The dustmen were ahead of me. I sped up. Hopefully I’d get there in time to stop them.

Finally, I skidded to a stop in front of a closed set of double doors. I gave one an experimental shove. Locked. I could pick the lock, but that took time, the one thing I didn’t have right now. So I cupped my hands around my mouth and hollered, “Stand back!”

I held my hands out palm down in front of me, concentration fixated on the spot between them. I funneled all my anger, worry and frustration into that single point until a ball of bluish-purple light formed there, buzzing and crackling with raw power. Carefully, I picked up the ball and lobbed it at the door, which was instantly vaporized in a booming flash of light that left my ears ringing and useless.

Then I was running through the halls again, this time just slowly enough to scan door numbers as I went past. Finally, finally, I saw the dustmen, the last one just slipping through an open doorway. It turned and saw me, if you can call it seeing when they’ve got no eyes.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

I snapped my fingers, sending a bolt of swirling orange fire straight through its chest. The gray dust of its featureless human-shaped body erupted into flames, drifting to the ground as ashes after it was consumed a second later. Luckily I was still mostly deaf from my explosion, so I didn’t have to hear its death screech, which I knew from experience sounded like nails on a chalkboard. I darted into the room and shot a few more fire bolts, taking out the other three dustmen.

Then I spun slowly, surveying the room for any other attackers. All the other humans were knocked out by the dustmen’s soporific dust. Nobody was coming at me, but a fifth dustman was leaning over the plastic bassinet near the center of the room.

I dashed over, drawing my swords. And stopped my blades just in time to keep them from slicing a squalling newborn baby, held up one-handed by the dustman as a living shield. The dustman punched at me with its other mitten-like gray hand. I barely ducked in time, its fist ruffling the top of my curls. In the same motion I brought one sword around in a sweeping arc that cut the dustman’s legs from under it, straightening to grab the baby as the dustman dropped them.

Praying I hadn’t jolted the baby’s tiny neck too much, I held them close and ran for my life. You can’t kill dustmen by cutting them up, just slow them down a bit. With my hands full, I couldn’t make any spell gestures without dropping something. I needed a bit of quick protection.

Stumbling to a stop in front of an elevator, I slammed the button with my swordhilt and ducked inside as the doors dinged open. Thank all the gods, it was empty. I leaned the elbow holding the squirming baby on the railing, breathing hard. Hopefully I’d be able to get another portal open before the dustman reattached its legs and caught up to me. Feeling mentally for the spell, I slashed the sword in my free hand through the air in a circle. Nothing happened. Portal magic is even more tricky when you’re distracted. Three more frantic attempts later, the air split into a shimmering tear in the fabric of the universe. I bounded through and snapped it shut behind me, not caring at this point what waited on the other side.

As it turned out, all there was on the other side was the woodland clearing where I’d left my horse. It was lush with moss and ferns, comparatively serene after the mess I’d left behind on Earth. I sheathed my swords and cradled the baby in both arms, rocking them gently. Probably a girl, I decided, judging by the disgustingly pink outfit she was dressed in.

“Well, that could have gone a sight better.” I said, keeping my voice low and soothing. “But at least you’re safe, so I haven’t failed yet.”

The baby kept crying, tiny mouth wide open as her fragile fingers clawed at thin air. I sighed. “Alright, you need milk.”

It was hard to concentrate on my magic with all that noise, but finally I got the spell working well enough that I could nurse her. She seemed a little confused at first, but latched on to me anyway. She calmed down pretty quickly after that. I cuddled her close, studying her tiny face. It was the first opportunity I’d had to take a good look at her.

She had the wrinkled, goblin-like features and squished-flat nose that all newborn babies have, with creamy brown skin a few shades lighter than mine. I didn’t know what I’d expected the baby who was going to grow up to save my world to look like, but it wasn’t this. She seemed almost disappointingly ordinary other than the swirling dark birthmarks on her hands, the sign of the Chosen I’d been looking for. Just then, she opened her eyes to stare up at me. Her irises were bright, gleaming metallic gold.

I smiled. “I guess you’re not so ordinary after all. You’re a pretty cute little goblin, aren’t you?”

She made some kind of squeaking noise, which completely melted me. It finally sank in that I’d be the one who did the bulk of raising her, preparing her to save the world. I don’t know why it had taken this long for me to realize that. I’d been training for this my whole life, but somehow it hadn’t felt real until now. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I’m Erys, sweetie. You’ll be getting to know me a lot better, pretty soon. Oh, right, you’ll need a name.”

I mulled it over for a while before deciding on Siani. After I’d burped and changed her, I tied Siani to my chest using the sling I’d brought and mounted my horse. She nestled against my collarbone, gurgling contentedly.

“We’re going home now.” I said to her. “You’ll get to meet my family, my friends, all the rest of the Order.”

The Order was the group I’d been raised by, the one dedicated to finding the Chosen and training them for their destiny. It wasn’t easy. We were always on the run from somebody or other, usually one of the warring factions that our world was broken into now. But somehow we had managed to get this far, and with a sleeping baby on my chest and the woods we rode through full of birdsong and sunshine, it was pretty hard not to feel hopeful about our cause.

As we neared the part of the woods where our latest temporary camp was, I saw plumes of dark smoke drifting up from the treetops. My breath caught in my chest. That was much more smoke than any normal campfire could make. Something must have happened while I was gone. I nudged my horse into a trot, nightmare scenarios playing out in my mind. That’s the problem with having a vivid imagination: it picks the worst possible circumstances to start working overtime.

“Calm down, Erys.” I muttered to myself. “It’s probably just that one of Leon’s experiments exploded again.”

Leon is our resident artificer, a mage-inventor who crafts new weapons and potions to give us an edge. His experiments tend to have very interesting side effects. About half the time that includes some type of explosion.

When I arrived at camp, all my attempts at calming down went right out the window. Our tents and treehouses had been completely destroyed, and the ground was churned into bloody mud, in a couple places baked stone-hard by magical fire. The smoke I’d seen earlier hung over everything in a thick, foul-smelling haze. Its source was in the center of the camp, a gigantic pile of half-burned corpses. Even at this distance, I could see that some of them were my friends. I dismounted on shaky legs, scanning the clearing for any wounded that I might still be able to save. There were no signs of life left.

“No. Oh gods, no, no, no.”

My stomach churned, threatening to spew my breakfast everywhere. I swallowed down the bile and tried to think, tried to analyze the situation and figure out what to do, but my brain wouldn’t snap out of shocked denial. Tears stung my eyes.

“I knew you’d come back eventually.”

My head whipped around, trying to find the source of the smug voice.

“I must say, you took long enough about it. Were my dustmen too much for you?”

An older woman stepped out of the trees, her unnaturally pale skin and opulent gown in stark contrast to the carnage around us. She was smirking. The grief inside me turned to white-hot rage as I spun a quick magical shield.

“Actually they were pretty easy to blast. I think I’ll do the same to you.”

She sighed. “Oh, Erys. Don’t you know who I am?”

“I know you’re a cold-hearted murdering pus-face, and that’s about all I need to know.” I snarled.

I decided not to waste any more time talking and slung a sonic explosion at her. She lazily flicked a hand at it and it disappeared. Another hand-flick and my shield spell crackled out of existence. My eyes widened. She was using antimagic. That type of power is rare, and mastering it without dying in the process is even rarer. Whoever she was, this lady was a force to be reckoned with.

I could feel my power draining away sickeningly fast and tried to cut my magical connection to the shield, but it didn’t work. My head began to swim and I could barely stay upright as a wave of pain and exhaustion hit me. My vision started to go dark. I was going to die, I knew that with complete certainty. Then suddenly, the feeling stopped. I was still sore and a bit woozy, but I could function again.

The mystery woman raised one immaculate brow. “Listening now? Good. My name is Lasoriah, and I have two options for you.” She held up a manicured finger. “One, you can give me that disgusting little lump of a baby, leave now, and start a new life for yourself. You wouldn’t have to worry about this pointless struggle ever again. You’d be free of your destiny.”

I rolled my eyes with as much snark as I could muster.

“Yeah, right. Or what?”

“Or you can both die here and join your friends.”

She said it as lightly and casually as if she was talking about trying a new hairstyle. Slowly, I walked towards her, mind racing. I wouldn’t be able to defeat her with magic, probably not with conventional weapons either. I needed to play for time. Everyone has a weakness, but what was hers?

“Okay.” I said. “But what if I joined you?”

She looked slightly confused, then laughed.

“What, hoping to infiltrate my ranks?”

“No. I mean, I hate you for what you’ve just done, but you’re obviously the better side to be on if you’re this powerful. I’ve got a sense of self-preservation as much as the next guy, I’m not going to sacrifice my life for what’s obviously a lost cause.”

She was wearing makeup, I noticed, trying to cover the beginnings of wrinkles around her eyes. Taken along with the rest of her appearance, it could mean that either she was trying to seem younger, she was vain, or both. Either way, playing on it might be my only chance.

Lasoriah’s voice jolted me back to reality.

“You’d be willing to sacrifice the child instead?”

I shrugged, trying not to show my revulsion at what I was about to say.

“Yeah. She’s not mine anyway, and you do what you gotta do, you know?”

I knelt down at her feet, gathering up a ball of mud in the hand she couldn’t see.

“And I bet you could use someone like me.”

She smoothed her velvet skirts, thinking. Which was when my mud ball hit her square in the face. Lasoriah shrieked, spitting mud as she tried to claw it out of her eyes. I yanked her skirt and she went down with an incredibly satisfying splat. Then I ran to my horse, mounted up, and kicked him into a gallop. As we tore through the woods, I could hear Lasoriah’s wails echoing behind me.

“Do you know how expensive this gown is? I’m going to kill you for that!!”

I couldn’t help but smile a little at that through my tears. I guess I'd been right about vanity being her weakness. I hummed softly to baby Siani as she started to squirm and whimper.

“It’s going to be okay, little one. I’ve got you, we’re going to be fine. We’ll find a way.”

That last bit was more to myself, honestly. I knew we had to find a way, a way to keep Siani safe until she was old enough to do what she was born to do. We hadn’t gotten off to the greatest start together, to put it mildly. But if I couldn’t fix that, I wasn’t much of a Champion. And no matter what, I am a Champion.

(Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels)