The Willbreaker (Book 1) (35 page)

              One hummed in a deep, low tone. He closed his eyes and concentrated. His hum grew in resonance and started to come from all areas around the group. Edward, Jasmine, and the Guardian looked around into the woods, seeing if there were more men besides One, but the woods were empty of visible life. The deep rumbling sound split into multiple tones as if a hundred men, all deep in voice, hummed in eerie harmony. Edward rubbed his arms as the hair on them stood up.

              Brandon jolted. One increased the hold on his head and the volume of his ghostly song. He jolted again and then again. Edward looked around with worry, ready to pull back the grey robed monk. As Brandon shook, words entered One’s hum but Edward could not understand them. Perhaps they were spoken in another language, or maybe they were so low in tone that he could not distinguish their meanings.

              Brandon’s body rocked violently. One’s mesmerizing song turned into shouts. Edward grabbed One’s arm, “Stop! You are killing him!” One pressed on, fierceness on his face never seen before. “Stop!” Edward yelled.

              With a single final word, One released his arms, and Brandon went still.

              The world spun in a blurry vision, seen through a thick wall of fog. An invisible white light illuminated the circular room around him. Brandon knuckled his eyes, feeling like he had slept for much too long. A few strong blinks and his vision cleared. He laid on a stone tile floor in a circular room not much bigger than his old bedroom back in Greylin. The ceiling, lined in sculpted stone tiles, bore a circular window filled with light.

              A small statue sat in the center of the room on an elevated pedestal. The statue had no features, but the size of the small figure indicated it as a child, though he could not tell its gender. Centered on the pedestal, below the feet of the statue, a blank bronze name plate glimmered against the light.

              A single doorway led out into blackness. Around the rest of the room, six other featureless statues were space equally spaced apart along the outer wall. These statues stood six feet high, nearly twice the size of the small one in the middle of the room. Each stood in a smooth recess of the circular wall. Curious, Brandon looked around the room and then approached one of the statues.

              This statue mirrored the other five; dull grey in color of stone and lacking any features. Brandon examined the statue carefully. It appeared to be made of a single piece of flawless stone and had an odd smoothness to it.

              When Brandon had his fill of examining the figure, he bent over to look at the nameplate.

              Two words were written on the plate, in a simple but elegant writing.

“THE JUGGERNAUT”

              Brandon stared at the nameplate momentarily before his curiosity got the best of him. A quick glance revealed that all the pedestals had nameplates on them. He casually walked towards the next statue. He looked around as he moved, feeling as if someone watched him.

              The next statue, the same as the first one, had a nameplate with different words on it.
The Guardian
. Brandon scrunched his brow.
What does it all mean?

              He moved slowly to each statue, examining and reading their nameplates. The figures were tagged
The Guardian
, then
The Telepath
,
The Archmage
, and
The Child
. When Brandon read the last nameplate, he froze. His face went hot and his heartbeat rapidly increased. It said
The Willbreaker
.

             
He
had been called The Willbreaker before. The words drifted across Brandon’s ears as if spoken by the Bauth’Dok Blademaster himself, memories flooding his mind in a single, wild rush. That creature called him Willbreaker when they fought. Twice.

             
"There will be no escaping today, Willbreaker,"
the king said.
"Die, Willbreaker. Your time has come to an end."

              Brandon asked himself if this could be coincidence.
Is this the reason I am here, because of that name? What does it mean? What is The Willbreaker? My name is Brandon. That is it. Just Brandon.

              Brandon looked around the room. He could not go anywhere else, unless he entered the doorway that led into sheer blackness. He looked upward at the circular window, wondering where the light came from. The brightness and clarity of it did not make it seem like sunlight. The light must have been magic of some kind, he thought. He could not see through the glass, giving him no clues to his location.

              Brandon circled the room many times, searching and looking for anything that might give him options, separate from the doorway. After searching behind the statues, examining each recess, looking high and low, Brandon faced the doorway.

              “Oh, great,” he mumbled, looking into the vast emptiness. His hand went absent-mindedly to his belt where his old short swords used to hang. He sighed when he felt nothing there. With a deep breath, he walked into the darkness.

              Unusually cold air filled the hallway. A dim light on the opposite end of the hallway gave him direction and Brandon increased his step to get out of the chill. He approached the end of the hallway with caution, hugging close to the wall.

              The room opened up into a spacious stone room, not clean or clear like the previous one with the statues. Perhaps in a mountain, the entire room had been carved from rock. It had a high ceiling, even higher than the rooster wind vane Brandon installed on the roof of his house in Greylin. The ceiling seemed supported by the aged stone pillars that stood out from both sides of the walls. Rays of sunlight showed down through small holes and cracks in the rockwork above, beaming through the dust that filled the room. In the center of the room a man sat in a simple wooden chair.

              “Come in, it’s alright, I mean you no harm,” he said.

              Brandon peered around.
Is he talking to me?

              “Yes, I am talking to you, Willbreaker. Please, come in. I wish to talk to you.”

              Brandon’s temper fired. With a puff of his chest and clenched fists, he walked into the room defiantly. “Why is everyone calling me that? My name is Brandon, Brandon Pike. You have the wrong guy. And where are we? How do I get out of here?” He had a thousand questions. “And who are you?” he blurted out.

              The man in the chair wore simple grey robes and had no visible body hair. Smaller than Brandon and a good fifty pounds lighter, his stature foretold that his size did not indicate his wisdom or ability, which made Brandon nervous. As the man rose to catch Brandon’s gaze, the striking green color of his eyes made Brandon lose focus. They looked like blazing emeralds, clear and crisp. Brandon stopped his approach instantly.

              “Who are you?”

              The man in the chair sat casually and smiled.

              “Let us start from the beginning. I will answer all of the questions that I am able. First of all, my name is One. I have been waiting to bring you here my entire life.” He smiled proudly. Confusion replaced Brandon’s anger.

              “I called you The Willbreaker because that is who you are.”

              Brandon interjected. “No! I am not! My name is Bran…”

              “Just because a lion choses to not be called a lion, does not make him any less a lion. So herein, we have a predicament. You cannot leave here until you accept who you are.”

              Brandon opened his mouth to speak but the words failed him.

              “I will continue. You asked where we are. Well, we are in a place that my people call the Umbrasphere, a spirit world, if you will. You are here because you have lost your will, and without it, your physical body will die.”

              “I have not lost my will!”

              “What is the last thing you remember, Willbreaker?”

              It angered Brandon that One called him that, but as he thought back to how he got here or what happened before here, his mind went blank. He could not remember anything. He remembered his hometown and his best childhood friend, Matthew. He knew he left his hometown but he could not remember why, and there was an old man…

              Brandon raised his head, realizing how much absence covered his mind. It filled him with uncertainty. “I… I don’t know…”

              One nodded. “Do not be scared, I found you in time, and hopefully I can guide you to salvation. A person’s will ties them together. It makes them solid. It is more important than you think and does more than give you direction. A person’s will ties them to the three worlds: the world above, the world below, and the mortal world.  It also controls their actions, in conscious and subconscious levels. Some in the mortal world confuse their will with their soul. It is the single most powerful thing a mortal owns.” He paused briefly and then said, “And you gave yours away.”

              “What? I did not! Why would I do that? And how is that even possible?”

              “You did it on a subconscious level; a level powered by need. But giving away your will is not where your power lay, Willbreaker. Many people are able to do it, usually through some traumatic or stressful event. It is centered on the Spirit aspect of magic. I’m sure you are aware of the field.”

              “Yes, I am aware,” Brandon said in a subdued voice. “But everything I have learned about magic, and what I have heard, is that there is no one alive that can control the Will aspect of Spirit. It is extremely rare, and powerful.”

              “Dangerous, and rare, yes. More people can touch Will than you think, but the difficulty in touching another’s will is the ability to keep control and not lose yourself in it. Most who access the power and use it, whether intentionally or not, do not have the power to get their own will back. It takes
your
will to be able to alter or change another’s. If they cannot hold on to their own will, they will soon enter a comatose state and quickly thereafter, perish. There are a few though, through the history of time, which have the power to get their will back. It’s so extraordinary, in fact, that destiny has only allowed two since time has been recorded; Del’Ahgo Durren during The First Age, and Ulra Kingwhisper during The Age of Creation, over a thousand years ago.”

              One stared at Brandon for a long moment, a moment that seemed like hours to Brandon. He felt the sweat bead up on his forehead.

              “And now,” he spoke with precision, “we can add your name to that list. That is why you have been named The Willbreaker. You are the one. You have been chosen to wield the power of that control.”

              “How do you know all this? Where are you getting this information?”

              One stood from the seat and offered it to Brandon. “Sit, you look like you need it.” Brandon, light headed, took the seat. He wanted to talk but his mouth felt as if full of sand.

              “It is a tremendous burden, but destiny has woven its wires around you, and I assure you, you are strong enough to carry that burden.”

              “I don’t want that burden. Let someone else carry it.” Brandon stared at the floor beneath him.

              One nodded with understanding. “The burden is already settling upon you, Willbreaker. The weight of it crushes you, but it is a burden that no one else can carry. Things have happened in your life, forged by fate and pushed by destiny, molding you into the wielder of that power. The reason that you are standing here now, with me, is another sign of your fate.”

              Brandon spoke through gritted teeth. “I am a farmer, and that is it. I do what I want because I choose to, not because someone is pulling my strings. I am Brandon Pike, and that is the end of this conversation.”

              “You may call yourself anything you chose, friend, but as of right now, in the mortal world, your body is dying. Whether you accept it or not, you have pushed your will upon another and rendered yourself very sick. If you do not accept my guidance, you will not have the strength to return to your body. It is the acceptance of your fate that will empower you. It is the understanding that you are a part of a much greater plan. You are more than a simple farmer.”

              “Why do you think you are heading to engage Empress Aurora? Do you think it was just coincidence that the old man found you? Do you think it is just coincidence that the Bauth’Dok captured you, or that Great White was slain by one of the Kella’Dune? These are events that set in motion a whirlwind of destiny, preordained by immortal forces that we cannot understand. We are all tools that serve a purpose, but only those who accept their purpose achieve greatness.”

              Brandon’s mind became a mud pit of thoughts and memories. Bauth’Dok and Great White, the names were so familiar but he could not place them. He gripped his head between his hands, trying to remember anything.

              “King Reinhold’s forces prepare to march to Aurora’s capital city for his final attempt to overthrow her. Why is it that you feel your single presence will make any difference? What difference can a boy, an old man, and a girl possibly make?” Edward questioned.