A Warrior's Revenge

Book Five

of
The Warrior Kind

Words of Action

Copyright © 2013 by Guy S. Stanton, III.

Published by Guy S. Stanton, III at
Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any
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electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the
author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used
for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living
or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or
locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

Male Cover Model:  Harry Das

Ordering Information:

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Author's Website

A Warrior’s Revenge/ Guy S. Stanton, III. --
1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9910565-4-5

Dedicated to Adam and Eve, the

first couple, from which we all came.

Though we be of different colors and

backgrounds we are all still of one
Kind.

―The Map of the Ancestor’s World

Explosions rocked the night and Loric felt
the air in his chest shudder out, as he was overcome with fear. He
ran with everything he had toward the great Hall ahead of him, as
tears blurred his vision of it in the darkness. A streak of green
fire sizzled out over top of his head and slammed into the ancient
Hall ahead of him. The shockwaves from the explosion picked Loric
up off his feet and threw him flying backwards to land hard on his
back on the icy ground.

Loric looked up to see that the outer stone
façade of the Hall had been shattered and the now exposed great
oaken beams that were centuries-old and centuries in the making
were wreathed in flames. Surging up to his feet Loric screamed out
from the very inmost pit of his being, “No!!!”

More green fire slammed into the surrounding
buildings causing the ground to shake beneath him violently, even
as the night sky was lit up by the corresponding flames of
destruction.

“Loric! What are you doing? You must come
now! There is but one of the ships left! We have to go!” Cried out
Loric’s mother, even as she grabbed him and started tugging him
back down the hill.

“But father! We must bring him with us
mother!” Loric cried out resisting against her hold on him, as much
as a strong seven-year-old could.

“He died Loric! He died yesterday! I didn’t
have the heart to tell you. We have to go now or we’ll miss the
last ship to Assoria!” Loric’s mother said her face awash with
tears and heavy emotion.

Loric followed after her stumbling, as she
led him by the hand through the burning wreckage that had been
their home. Father was dead! It was the only thought that repeated
over and over in Loric’s consciousness. It was so loud that he
neither heard nor noticed any of the carnage that was befalling
what remained of Thunder Ridge.

They ran headlong down the hill toward the
ship docks, but they were too late. The last two airships lifted
into the night sky silhouetted against the embers of Thunder
Ridge’s destruction. One of the airships began to increase in
speed, and the other one started to follow but suddenly exploded
into a giant fireball of falling debris, as it received several
direct hits from enemy ships that had suddenly loomed out of
seemingly nowhere.

Loric and his mother drew to a halt, as they
watched in stunned horror, as their means of escape disappeared
before them. Green glimmering light shafts touchdown repeatedly all
over the burning castle grounds, from the overhead enemy cruisers
as they passed by. As the green shafts of light disappeared Rattan
gunfire began to blaze out, as enemy soldiers infiltrated the
grounds of Thunder Ridge from their beam down locations. Those
still left alive within the castle grounds soon fell prey to the
enemy.

Loric and his mother ducked in and around
buildings in a desperate attempt to avoid detection, but they both
knew that they couldn’t find sanctuary here within the castle,
because the place would be completely destroyed just as all the
southern Valley Lander cities had been destroyed over a week
before.

They rounded a corner and smacked into two
enemy soldiers. Loric’s mother let go of his hand and grabbed a
hold of both soldiers, “Run Loric!” She screamed out
desperately.

Loric turned and ran, as his insides felt
like mush. He’d made it twenty feet, when some greater will then
his fear made him stop. He turned to see his mother screaming on
the ground with one of the men on top of her, while the other one
held her down. Fear was replaced by blind fury, as he yanked the
small hunting knife free that his father had just given him for his
seventh birthday not over a month ago. He ran screaming towards the
two men, who were hurting his mother.

A blow to the back of his head sent him
falling to the ground. Raising his head in a daze of pain Loric
still saw his mother in need of help and he started to crawl toward
her, but a second blow to his head sent him into a world of
nothingness and he let go of the knife and fell into the
darkness.

Slowly, Loric realized the first feelings of
awareness and pain, as he became aware of his surroundings. He
lifted his head up off what he realized was the lap of a girl not
much older than himself. The lighting was dim in the cargo hold
that he and several other children were locked in. They were
probably headed toward the Tranquil Islands even now.

Loric turned his head to look at the girl;
whose lap his head had been laying on. He had never seen her
before.

“My name is Soralee. I come from a small
village further down the valley from Castle Eschol. Where are you
from?

“Thunder Ridge.” Loric responded softly.

There were several gasps among the other
children, but Soralee was the first to respond, “That’s bad! We had
all hoped…… well we hoped that they would hold out. Is Thunder
Ridge gone?”

“Yes, all gone.” Was all that Loric could
manage to say, as he valiantly tried to hold back the tears that
threatened to overwhelm him and reduce him to a blubbering idiot.
This wasn’t the time to be weak. He had to be like his father. Had
been, came the responding somber realization, as he remembered that
his father was dead.

The ship they were on started to descend and
they all knew then that they had reached the Tranquil Islands, home
of the worst traitors ever to be known to this world. Loric pledged
to kill every last one of them. He swore it with every fiber of his
young soul.

Loric was jerked into a small square room
and tied down to a chair by two men. He tried to bite one, but was
sharply backhanded across the face for his efforts.

“You’ve got a live one there Dr. Tagean!”
Said one of the men, as they both made their way out the door.

“Good! That’s what I like to see! The
stronger willed ones fall the hardest and hate the most!” Said a
short baldheaded man, who had stepped out of the shadows of the
back part of the room. The man had a look of calculated cruelty
about him and Loric instantly felt trepidation for what was to
come, as he looked upon the man.

The man spoke, “Well has it been said, that
if you want a soldier you can find one anywhere, but if you want a
warrior than you need look no farther than the Valley Lands. Your
people, boy, were truly a great and noble race of warriors, but
soon all that will exist of your people after we have finished
rounding them up will be you and a few others. You’re only being
spared, because you’re part of a research project of mine. I intend
to make warriors of renown out of all of the boys we’ve caught, who
will be loyal to us and the enlightenment of our cause.”

“Never!” Loric screamed out in defiance.

The man only chuckled evilly in reply, “You
will have no choice in the matter, which is a good thing for you,
as I shall show you.”

The man pressed the button and the wall
before Loric’s chair became clear and revealed a room like the one
he was in on the other side of the glass partition. Sitting in the
chair bound was Soralee. She looked very scared, as two men stood
off to either side of her.

“I had wanted to keep some of the females,
for strictly breeding purposes of course, but my superiors have
deemed it too much of a risk. They fear that allowing any remnant
of your people the ability to create others such as yourself could
prove to be a liability in time. I tried to assure them otherwise,
but they wouldn’t listen. So you see dear boy that you to me
represent literally a once in a lifetime opportunity by which to
perfect my science. Now about your choice. You have the ability to
choose how the girl before you will die.”

One of the men in the other room put a gun
like device next to Soralee’s throat and squeezed off the trigger.
Soralee jerked hard and looked as if she was in great pain for a
moment. The baldheaded man, who was Loric’s tormentor, pressed a
device into Loric’s hand that had a single red button on it.

Loric looked up at the man and then back to
the control in his hand and the man explained, “Press that button
and poison will be instantly released into the girl and she will
die quickly. This is your choice, kill her quickly or watch her be
killed slowly and painfully.” The man said drawling his words out,
as if he wished to savor the moment.

Loric looked up at him pleadingly, as tears
ran down his cheeks, “Please, please don’t do this!”

The man looked away, as if completely
disgusted by what he saw. “Begin.” Was all he said in response to
Loric’s desperate pleading.

The two men on the other side of the glass
lifted whips, which they lashed out at Soralee with. The whips left
thin lines of blood in the wake of every strike.

“Stop! Please! Don’t hurt her!” Loric
screamed out, as he twisted frantically in the chair he was tied
to, the button remaining un-pushed. His tormentor held up a hand
and the butchery in the other room stopped.

“I told you the way of it boy. It is for you
to give her peace. Kill her!”

Soralee lifted her head up and her eyes met
Loric’s through the glass. They stared at each other for a long
moment as both of them cried. She mouthed out one word,
“Please.”

Loric shook his head back and forth in
denial of what she was asking him to do. Dr. Tagean raised his hand
and the two men began to whip Soralee again. Blood ran down Loric’s
face, from where he had bit his lip, in the anguished fervor of his
denial of the hell that was unfolding in his life. Soralee’s bloody
face lifted once more pleadingly to his and he pressed the red
button with his thumb. Soralee briefly convulsed and then she
slumped lifelessly forward in the chair.

Dr. Tagean began to clap loudly, “Well done
boy! So tell me how does it feel to kill? It’s a powerful feeling
isn’t it?”

Loric turned his bloodshot eyes up towards
Dr. Tagean and reached out toward him, as he fought the bindings
holding him chained to the chair, every fiber and muscle in his
young body standing out in strained relief. The boy, who had been
called Loric, growled and snarled in his eagerness to kill his
tormentor, as deranged as any maddened predator could be with the
need to kill.

“I love it! I see hate in your eyes and that
is a very good thing! Hate gives you strength, which you will need
in plentiful supply, if you are to survive my experiments.”