Read The Orphan Wars (Book One) Online
Authors: Shane Rowling
The Orphan Wars (Book One)
The Orphan Wars Book One
By
Shane Rowling
PUBLISHED BY:
Beyond Original LLC and
Shane Rowling
Copyright ©
2012 - 2013 Beyond Original LLC, Shane Rowling. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
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"This battle is just too close to call folks!" shouted Edmund the announcer through his megaphone. "There are only four and a half minutes left in this final round match of the tournament! I think without a doubt we can all call this one an epic match! However, will this fight between Nemeth and Rorok go to the judges?"
"I can't believe that it's come down to this," Nemeth thought to himself. "
How did Rorok manage to score equally with me on everything else for the school year? Is he ever going to run out of mana so I can finish him off?"
Rorok carefully backed away and cast another Dark Bolt spell at Nemeth. The black ball of magic veered its way toward Nemeth
. Once again, Nemeth displayed his speed and agility by performing a backflip out of the way. The black ball of magic collided with the walls of Orelic Coliseum but was quickly dispelled. The crowd erupted with cheers so loud that they drowned out the noise from the collision. This bloodthirsty crowd was composed of thousands of students, as well as professors, staff members and specially invited guests. They had gathered at Orelic Coliseum to see the most talented students battle one another to determine their final class ranking. This was the final match of the tournament to decide the top ranked third-year student at Lord Dragomir's Academy.
"I hope my ca
lculations are correct," said Nemeth quietly. "I think that last failed Dark Bolt spell cast from Rorok pretty much brings his mana to almost nothing. He doesn't stand a chance against me without his magic."
Nemeth
pointed the wooden sword that was in his left hand at Rorok and smirked at him. He screamed loudly and began to charge across the coliseum grounds towards Rorok with his sword held high in the air. Rorok began to enter a defensive position by holding his wooden staff outward horizontally and bracing himself for the attack. Nemeth delivered an intense overhead vertical slash with his sword which connected with the center of Rorok's staff. The impact caused Rorok to fall to his knees. Rorok still maintained a tight horizontal grip on his staff allowing him to block any attacks from Nemeth's sword.
"Look at that folks!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "Rorok is down on his knees! It looks like he's begging for mercy!"
"Did you hear what the announcer just said?" ask
ed Nemeth. "I'm going to break your staff beyond repair. If you value your staff at all, you'll beg for mercy and then surrender the match to me."
"NEVER!" sc
reamed Rorok. "I refuse to surrender to you. I'm going to win this fight and you know it!"
"You've made the wrong choice," said Nemeth
confidently. "You are completely delusion
al if you think you can defeat me. All of the healing spells in the world combined won't be able to help you after what I'm about to do to you now. Not only will your staff will be broken, but your body will be beaten and your spirit will be shattered."
Nemeth
gripped his sword with both hands this time. He continued to attack Rorok with vertical slashes. Rorok struggled to block each attack with his staff but managed to succeed in doing so. Nemeth noticed that Rorok's staff showed signs of damage in the center of it and he knew it was only a matter of time before it finally snapped and became useless.
"THREE MINUTES LEFT!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "Rorok is doing an amazing job stopping Nemeth's sword attacks!"
Nemeth quickly sheathed his sword. He grabbed the center of Rorok's staff
with both of his hands and tried to pull it away from him. Rorok's grip was too tight to allow Nemeth snatch the staff away but Nemeth's efforts managed to lift Rorok back up to his feet.
"Let
go of the staff!" yelled Nemeth. "Let go of it right now! I'm not going to give you another warning!"
Rorok shook his head in disagreement.
Nemeth gave a swift, painful kick to Rorok's sternum causing him to release his grip on the staff.
"Unbelievable!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "Nemeth has put away his sword and has now stolen Rorok's staff from him!"
Nemeth twirled the staff high over his h
ead with his left hand. He then brought it back to a diagonal position and gripped it tightly with both of his hands. Nemeth swung the staff at Rorok hitting him hard in the right side of his rib cage. The crowd began to roar even louder. Rorok moved his hands over his ribs. Nemeth swung the staff at Rorok again, this time hitting him in his right knee cap. Rorok moved his hands from his ribs down to his right knee cap. Nemeth's adrenaline began to flow throughout his body. Nemeth continued a barrage of strikes with the staff all over various areas of Rorok's body.
"TWO MINUTES LEFT!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "The pain Rorok is feeling must be unimaginable folks! Oh and look at that! Nemeth just spun around and smashed that staff into the left side of Rorok's head!"
Nemeth performed three consecutive backflips away from Rorok. He did a 180 degree tur
n and then tossed the staff high into the air. Nemeth unsheathed his sword and gripped it with both hands. As the staff began its descent back from above, Nemeth jumped up and sliced the staff in half. The staff, now split into two pieces fell to the ground below and caused a minor explosion. Puffs of grey and black smoke filled the air and the staff vanished. The crowd in the coliseum erupted once more. Nemeth quickly turned around and looked at Rorok. Rorok had a crestfallen look upon his bloodied face. Rorok's head and body had been severely battered from the battle.
"You should have quit wh
ile you had the chance!" laughed Nemeth. "Now your precious staff is destroyed. Don't worry too much though. I'm not going to kill you with my sword. That would be much too easy. I'd much rather see you suffer…"
"ONE
MINUTE LEFT!" shouted Edmund through his megaphone. "Can Rorok even continue after the beating he's taken? I'm shocked that nobody has stopped this fight!"
Nemeth stared into Rorok's eyes and
saw nothing but a blank stare. Nemeth sheathed his sword slowly. Nemeth clapped his hands twice quickly. He then folded his arms together and then swiftly swung them outward with his palms facing down. The noise level of the crowd became even louder. This wasn't the first time Nemeth performed such odd gestures at his opponent. The crowd recognized these hand gestures as Nemeth's was a way of saying he was going to finish his opponent. Nemeth continued to gaze at Rorok. He saw that his blank stare had turned into an expression of fear. Rorok turned around and tried to hobble away. Nemeth dashed towards Rorok and performed a forward flip over Rorok and turned around to face him.
"Don't think I'm going to let you get away from me now," said Nemeth confidently.
"If I wanted you to leave, I would have given you orders to do just that."
Nemeth gave
Rorok a left jab to his face, followed by a forward kick to his stomach. Rorok bent over with his hands tightly gripped over his abdomen. Nemeth jumped onto Rorok's shoulders forcing Rorok's head to be planted into the hard ground below them. Nemeth sat down on Rorok's back and rotated himself 180 degrees. Nemeth lifted Rorok's head off the ground by pulling on his long black hair from behind with his right hand. Nemeth repeatedly hit Rorok in the side of his head and the back of his head with a series of elbow strikes. Nemeth hoped that Rorok would be knocked unconscious causing Nemeth to win the battle. The attacks were so effective that Nemeth's left elbow wound up becoming drenched with Rorok's own blood. Suddenly, loud horns went off signally the end of the fight.
"AND THAT'S THAT END OF THE FINAL ROUND!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "It looks like this battle's winner will be decided by our judges!"
Nemeth quickly
rolled off of Rorok and sprang to his feet. He then performed two cartwheels to distance himself from Rorok, who was lying on his side on the ground. Nemeth didn't want to lose points from the judges by attacking his opponent after the horns had sounded. Nemeth looked at Rorok lying there unable to get up after the beating that Nemeth had given him.
"Isn't anybody going to help Rorok get up?"
asked Nemeth quietly. "Well, I suppose it's no time for me to start feeling sorry for him now. I gave him an opportunity to surrender and he rejected it."
Nemeth
turned his head and looked at the three judges who were seated near Edmund in the announcer's station elevated high up in the coliseum. The judges were covered in black robes from head to toe and wore black helmets to ensure that nobody knew their identities. There were various rumors about who the judges were for any fight that went on at Orelic Coliseum. The most popular rumor created by the students was that the judges were professors that were being punished by Lord Dragomir's headmaster, Professor Phantas for poor performance. Nemeth had never been in a fight at Orelic Coliseum that required the judges to render a decision as to who the winner was.
"They have to pick me as the winner,"
said Nemeth quietly. "If they pick Rorok as the winner, I'm going to find out who the judges are. I'll do it by any means necessary and expose their identities to the entire academy. Then it will be those who have battled here who place judgment upon them…"
"ATTENTION EVERYONE!" shouted Edmund
through his megaphone. "The results are in from our anonymous panel of three judges. The winner by unanimous decision and now the number one ranked third-year student at Lord Dragomir's Academy is…NEMETH!!!"
The volume level of the crowd reached a shear l
evel of madness. Nemeth raised his hand in victory. He nodded his head at the judges as if to thank them and then turned to look at the body of his defeated opponent still lying there and struggling to get up.
"That's how the battle went down right?" Nemeth mumbled to himself as
he was awakening from his slumber. "But why didn't he forfeit? Why wasn't I able to render him unconscious? I hope I'm not losing my touch. No, that can't be it!"
It must have been the third time that Nemeth had heard the loud ringing of the Central Square Bell. Nemeth stared at the ceiling of his small dorm room, barely half awake. Slowly some of the artwork that he created to decorate the ceiling started to come into focus. He knew that he had to finally get out of bed and face what he assumed would be a very long day. He wanted to go back to sleep with such great desire, but he knew that he had to attend graduation today. Nemeth was only a young boy and that is something that he always wanted to remain. He never wanted to grow up and take on new responsibilities. Graduation meant that new responsibilities would be bestowed upon him sooner than later and to Nemeth sometimes this felt like a fate worse than death.
After some thought about what went
on this past year at Lord Dragomir's Academy, Nemeth blinked his eyes rapidly, rubbed them vigorously and finally arose from his bed. He looked at the large quantities of medals and trophies strewn about the room and his wooden sword mounted on the wall. His stomach growled with hunger pains and he tried his best to ignore them. He hadn't eaten in a few days. He had gone much longer without food before for many different reasons. Some of the time he went hungry it was due to food being withheld from him as punishment for bad behavior. Most of the time he went hungry was because the professors wanted to experiment on him and the other students. Competitions were held to see who could go the longest without collapsing from hunger and thirst. The students were told by the professors that these starvation exercises were designed to strengthen them. Not many believed this to be the case.
Nemeth focu
sed on his awards once again to make him feel better. This was no time to fuss about hunger pains. Besides, today he would be able to eat all the food he wanted. There was always a wonderfully prepared feast before each graduation ceremony. Nemeth began to salivate at the thought of the feast when he noticed that the sun was shining brightly through the tiny windows in his room. He suddenly realized that he was running very late. He grabbed a clean brown towel and a change of clothes from his closet. He then proceeded to make his way out of his room at Justile Dormitory and into the main hallway of his floor. He shut the door quietly behind him. He started walking slowly towards the shower room with his head down. Nemeth didn't feel like seeing anybody who might be walking around on his floor right now.
"You're just waking up now!!!???" shouted a voice. "
Are you kidding me? I can't believe someone as lazy as you managed to rank at the top of the class again!"
"Oh no,"
said Nemeth quietly. "Of all the people to be walking around in the hallway now, it's him. What are the odds?"
Nemeth recognized the voice to be one of his classmates
named Rorok, the same person from his dream earlier. Nemeth and Rorok had started Lord Dragomir's Academy at around the same time. Throughout the years they had most of the same classes together. This year they even lived in the same dormitory and on the same floor. Fortunately, Rorok lived on the opposite end of the hallway. Rorok was an extremely hard worker, but always seemed to come in second place when competing with Nemeth. Needless to say this caused Rorok great jealousy and anger.
Nemeth
was still feeling a bit exhausted, but he knew that he couldn't let Rorok get under his skin right now. He didn't want to get into another fight with Rorok today. Fighting inside the dorms would get them both in trouble and the punishment would surely more severe than normal since it was graduation day. He simply looked at Rorok and gave him a sarcastic smile, one that seemed to pierce through Rorok with greater strength than any sword could. Rorok was dressed in a yellow and blue uniform. His face was still visibly bruised and scarred from his last fight with Nemeth which was only less than a week ago.
"I can't believe that you are going to
get a Guardian Spirit for ranking first and I get NOTHING for ranking in second place!" screamed Rorok. "This is completely unfair to me! It is an absolute injustice!"
"I can't help it if
second place is the first loser," replied Nemeth jokingly. "Now listen and calm down for a second. Since we're the top two third-year students and we both live in Justile Dormitory, I'm sure our dorm will get first place overall."
"Winning as a team means nothing to
me," replied Rorok. "I only care when I win by myself. I deserve a Guardian Spirit as well. The rules need to be changed!"
"
I also don't make the rules around here," replied Nemeth. "You can even try and complain to the professors but honestly do you think any of them are going to care about what you have to say? You want to be in first place so bad but I don't know why. Don't you realize that when you're considered the best you're forced to have more responsibility? Rorok, you should actually consider yourself lucky that you're in second place. You'll have a lot less stress to deal with than me."
"
You know that if you and I were to battle again right now, that you'd have no chance at winning," replied Rorok angrily. "My magical abilities continue to grow stronger each day. I have a plethora of spells I could cast on you right now. I have spells in my repertoire that would ensure you wouldn't even be able to walk out of this hallway."
"Let's get the facts straight," replied Nemeth in a threatening tone.
"You're good compared to the majority of these pathetic kids that we go to school with. But you seem to have already forgotten that I trounced you in the tournament finals. You don't even have a staff anymore, so your spells can do no harm to me. I certainly don't fear you or anyone else for that matter. If you think for even a single second that you stand a chance at beating me at anything ever in your entire life, then you're a complete fool. The feud between us should have ended when I defeated you in the tournament finals."
"The fight was decided by the judges!" exclaimed Rorok. "
You probably know their true identities. You must have bribed them. You act all innocent to the professors here but I've known you long enough to see through your facade Nemeth!"
"
Don't make me have to embarrass you any further because you know that I can and I will," continued Nemeth. "I wish that you could just quit the academy right now. However, we both know that nobody can leave like that. Summertime is here and we'll soon be let out of the academy on a short vacation. Seize that opportunity to run far away from here. Find some uncharted territory and hide there in seclusion for eternity. If you don't, your life will continue to consist of an endless string of humiliating losses to me."
"Are you completely dense?" questioned Rorok
. "You know what horrible things happen to students that try to escape the academy! Surely you remember what happened last year when we were let outside the academy to go on our vacation! That nine year old girl Koralia tried to run away from the group into the woods. Instead of taking the time to stop her and bring her back to the group, Professor Zabat cast a Demonic Inferno spell on her instead. It burned every square inch of her body. I can still remember Koralia screaming in agony before she died moments later. We were told to look away from her charred, dead body and continue walking ahead as if nothing had happened. I'm sure every single one of us in that group still remembers that. Don't you remember Nemeth? I don't want that to be my fate. Although I must say, it sounds like you want to abandon this place Nemeth. Perhaps it is you who should run away and hide. As for me, I'm staying here. I intend on mastering as many skills as possible while I'm here."
"I'm sick of listening to you babble
," replied Nemeth with a confident tone. "I'm sure you can come up with a better approach to escaping than Koralia. Think carefully about what I told you. Now shut the hell up and get out of here. If you don't, I'm going to kick your teeth in and shut you up permanently! Now, did I make myself clear?"
Rorok
was clueless as to what to say back, so he stomped off angrily down the hallway towards the staircase leading downward. Nemeth continued to make his way to the shower room. The shower room was empty and for a very good reason. It seemed that everyone on his floor had already gotten ready and had headed outside for the graduation ceremony. It would have been nice if someone would have knocked on his door and awoken him earlier so he wouldn't have to rush in order to prevent being late. As annoying as the Central Square Bell sounded, maybe he was lucky that it kept ringing after all.
Nemeth removed his
nighttime clothes and took a hot shower. The hot water supplied by the underground hot springs was quite refreshing. While he was taking his shower, he couldn't stop thinking about how quickly the school year went by. Every year seemed to go by quicker than the last. Although there were many more years ahead for him at the academy, his mind raced with thoughts about how his childhood was slipping away. He was still contemplating whether he should escape from Lord Dragomir's Academy in the upcoming days or stay for at least another year. Nemeth believed that he could think of a lot of different intelligent approaches for escaping the academy. He already knew not to try what Koralia did. However, he also didn't want to suffer a fate similar to Koralia's if he were caught escaping. During his shower, he also thought about how exactly having a Guardian Spirit would change his life. Nemeth was not taught much about Guardian Spirits by his professors. Would having a Guardian Spirit help him with his escape? Would it help him stay at the top of the class for the upcoming fourth year? He would soon know because the graduation ceremony was happening in only a few hours.
Nemeth finished showering, dried off and put on
the fresh set of clothes he brought with him. This was no ordinary set of clothes. He was now wearing a crimson colored school uniform with a large gold insignia of the academy's mascot, The Great Phoenix D'hal Natar displayed across the front. This was the uniform that the top ranked student from each grade was to wear to graduation. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and was pleased at what he saw. His spikey blonde hair, green eyes, fair skin and adorable young face stared back at him. The new uniform looked excellent on him. It was much better than the tattered and torn yellow and blue uniform that he had to wear normally. Yellow and blue were the colors for Justile Dormitory which was one of the six dormitories at the academy. There were three dormitories for boys and three dormitories for girls. Each dormitory housed a mix of students from the first year until their final year.
He proceeded to make his way back to his dorm room. Before opening the door, he
examined it and noticed the damages done to his door throughout the year. Mostly, it was hateful graffiti painted on by his other dorm mates who were jealous of his accomplishments. Some hateful remarks were even carved into the door with what appeared to be knives and daggers. The view of the outside of the door alone would make it nearly impossible for anyone to blame Nemeth for wanting to leave the academy.
Nemeth opened the door and
dropped off his old garments into a laundry basket. He opened the top drawer to his desk and looked at some photos of his friends from the academy. Most of them were of him and Bastilone, his best friend since the first day he attended the academy. They had met in Kokinos Nursery, which was a special extended preschool environment that was setup by the academy. Any new orphans from their first day of life up until the age of seven were required to live there. It was an almost completely non-abusive environment. This was very unlike the treatment you received when you were declared a real first-year student and had to move out of Kokinos and into a real dormitory.
Every student knew that he or she was an or
phan from a very early age. There was no hiding that fact. However, the real mysteries were why they were orphans and why they were brought to Lord Dragomir's Academy instead of somewhere more pleasant. The professors at Lord Dragomir's Academy always tried to convince the students that they were their new family and to forget the past. Nemeth was determined to one day seek out and find out if he had any biological family members still in existence somewhere. He wanted to find this information out as soon as possible.
After a few more minutes o
f reminiscing about the past, Nemeth closed the drawer to his desk. He then left his dorm room and closed the door. He looked far down the hall to see if anyone was in the common area, but it appeared to be empty. He contemplated using the Magic Transporter in the middle of the hallway but it had been malfunctioning on occasion recently. Students were getting teleported to the wrong floors of the dorm and he had no time for such nonsense. Instead, he made his way down the staircase from the second floor hallway to the main exit. At the exit stood Crimlore, a tall, middle-aged man with a muscular build and short black hair. Most noticeably, he wielded a giant spear. Crimlore was the head gatekeeper for Justile Dormitory. Crimlore looked curiously at Nemeth.
"Why are you still hanging around the do
rmitory Nemeth?" questioned Crimlore suspiciously. "You've ranked first out of your class yet again. You're only 10 years old but you're so advanced, even more than most of the kids in the higher grades. You really shouldn't mess up an opportunity like the one you've earned by slacking off at the very end. I hate to bring it up, but you have to remember the reason why all of you kids are here at the academy in the first place."