Vengeance: Beginnings

By Daniel Spurgeon

Caysen Tallis is only a boy when his life in Salinthas is ripped away from him. Caysen is cast into an epic quest to avenge those he lost. But he is not strong enough yet. With the help of his King he flees to the remote town of Palith to complete his education and training. Will he satiate his thirst for revenge and put an end to the menace that plagues his home? Is it possible for a hero to be afraid?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098309268

Book preview

© 2020 Daniel Spurgeon All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other 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.

ISBN 978-1-09830-925-1 eBook 978-1-09830-926-8

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Futility

Chapter One

Tragedy of Salinthas

Chapter Two

Flight and Preparation

Chapter Three

Graduation and Celebration

Chapter Four

The Call to Arms

Chapter Five

Prost, Meeting the King

Chapter Six

The Battle for Prost

Chapter Seven

Mourning the Fallen

Chapter Eight

On the Road

Chapter Nine

Deriton—Striking a Blow

Chapter Ten

Lesson in Futility

Chapter Eleven

Separated Paths—Caysen

Chapter Twelve

Separated Paths—Taran

Chapter Thirteen

The Sword of Divinity

Chapter Fourteen

Acquiring a Higher Power

Chapter Fifteen

Meeting Deyas

Chapter Sixteen

Reunion

Chapter Seventeen

Troubling Tidings

Chapter Eighteen

In Defense of Kelgo

Chapter Nineteen

Settlement, Sentiment

Chapter Twenty

Planning

Chapter Twenty-One

Long-Awaited Homecoming

Chapter Twenty-Two

To Valthos

Chapter Twenty-Three

Last of the Enemy Forces

Chapter Twenty-Four

To the Isle of the Damned

Chapter Twenty-Five

Facing His Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Six

In Sadness,Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my younger brother, Dillon Spurgeon, for being my biggest fan and supporter. Vengeance Beginnings would not have been published without your support. I’d like to thank my closest friends for their support. I love and cherish you all so very dearly. I’d like to thank everyone that chose to help me by donating to my GoFundMe for my preorder offer. Your support is highly appreciated. A big round of applause to my editor at BookBaby, who did amazing work in their corrections to my manuscript. I’d especially like to thank the design team at BookBaby, who provided me with an excellent cover art. I was absolutely thrilled the first time I saw it. I never thought that I’d get this far and I hope that everyone continues to support and love my work with reading it. It certainly has been a journey and I am grateful to have been able to see it through. Thank you! This book is dedicated to my father, Harold Glen Spurgeon, who loved to read and write as much as I do.

[e-mail]

Feel free to email me at anytime for your reviews of my Vengeance Trilogy, good or bad, to get more information on the story itself, the specifics of Divinity, what is in store for Caysen and his friends, anything. Tell me about your own writing ideas and what inspires you. I welcome anything you wish to speak to me about.

Prologue

Futility

Caysen only just managed to dodge one of those menacing broadswords that his enemy was wielding. He blocked the other with his left arm’s buckler. He couldn’t gauge Malice’s mood, and he kept his anger in check as Kira had drilled him to do in their training. He shifted to his left in a feint and swung his sword to the right, but still his attack met with one of the broadswords. He was fortunate that Falin had agreed to refrain from fighting so long as Nelina and Taran did. This was fine by him, as he wanted to keep Nelina far from this desperate battle of his. He didn’t wish for her to become caught up in it as he feared for her life.

Malice had also wanted to fight alone, without the distraction of the others, because of the battle at Prost and the other attention that Caysen had garnered along the path of his quest. Caysen himself had commanded the forces of Prost. He took note of the man who was his enemy, if one could call him a man, with black hair and red eyes and looking just the same as he had over five years ago when Caysen had lay eyes on him during their assault of his home. He didn’t know of a race where red eyes occurred naturally—certainly not the elves with their longevity. Malice was also covered in divinal runes. Caysen could not read them, but he was certain if Taran were given the chance to study them, the answer would be a mystery no longer.

Now, in this fight with Malice, Caysen was learning how strong his foe really was, much stronger than any human should be. Even with his extensive training for his revenge and to save the whole of Terath, Caysen was beginning to tire. He received a gash on his upper left leg and another on his right forearm, just below his elbow—the one area that his buckler did not protect. Neither was life threatening, but the one on his leg hurt profoundly and he could no longer put his full weight on it. He was becoming unduly exhausted and his thoughts now wandered into the realm of failure with the losses of Taran and Nelina. His body was simply beginning to give out.

Kahlis spoke. You can ill afford failure in this endeavor, Caysen. Malice does not yet know it and it is your greatest advantage over him, but he cannot mortally harm you.

Some comfort that is to me. This still hurts. I might better succeed if I did not have a bothersome voice in my head every few minutes. Help me, please.

The aid I can offer you is simply to restore your stamina for now, but I can do nothing else, Kahlis replied.

That would be extremely helpful. Please do it now. I am simply not able to face him any longer without it.

As you wish, it shall be done, Kahlis said. Fight now, hero. Fight for your people, for your world, for your revenge and your love.

Caysen felt his strength return and fought with a renewed effort. He spun right and left blocking with his two bucklers as often as attacking with his sword. In one turn to the left, he swapped the sword from his right hand to his left in an effort to maximize the attack. His strike met another broadsword. It was almost as if Malice knew his attack style, but Caysen knew that was impossible. He’d mostly learned his movement and intuition from his sister. His skill was honed to the perfection it has become by Dalgen, master of the blade and Salk’s personal guard, who accompanied him from Kelgo to Palith after his home was destroyed and his family killed. Caysen blocked a few more strikes, attacking with even his bucklers. He couldn’t keep this pace up.

A moment, maybe two, passed. He recklessly used the time trying to batter Malice into submission, using a combination of strikes so fierce they would have disarmed and scared anyone else—but Malice only grunted and held his ground.

It’s only a matter of time until he uses Divinity. I can’t fight that. I’ve never had the aptitude.

It is true, Kahlis said, that I did not gift your family with its use. The ability will escape you even if someone explains it to you. All is not lost; you are destined for it, that power. There is still a way. One your father saw long ago. Once you are free from Malice, you will travel west and south to the river kingdom of Tellost. There is a town in the southern part called Ferind. The blacksmith there is friend of your father. Meet with him.

Caysen felt a renewed state of mind. Kahlis had now told him that he would survive this and he pressed his assault. He smiled when Malice began needing to take steps backward, and he pushed himself to his absolute limit, and then beyond it. He started to pant heavily, unable to get enough air in his lungs, but his body—unaccustomed to the greater strain he was forcing on it—was becoming exhausted once again. He lashed out with his sword in a wild swing. He was stunned when Malice’s blades flared to life with a black flame. The meeting of the three blades had immediately left him with a broken sword; the other two pieces of the blade were evenly sheared and flew into the grass some few paces away. He recovered quickly, as Kira had pounded into him in their training, and brought his bucklers up in defense. He would now have to rely on only his defense, a trait he stressed anyway, being the only wielder of two bucklers. He’d had to prove multiple times now that it wasn’t for fashion, but because he was truly ambidextrous and could switch sword hands mid-combination, confounding even the most highly trained soldiers. He had been trained to be exceptional, to be absolutely perfect in the art of wielding a sword. Now, he was being bested in the face of this enemy, the target of his vengeance.

Caysen blocked strike after strike, but this was wearing him down even further. He brought both of his hands together and smashed Malice in the face. It hurt badly, feeling something akin to hitting a brick wall. The problem was that he hadn’t actually seen a connection between his hands and Malice’s face. Now, he really wondered what purpose the divinal runes truly served. Malice was hiding something; his father had said as much around the table at breakfast once. Caysen felt certain that Kahlis could explain, but wouldn’t. At least not yet. He believed Kahlis was who he said he was—a god, the Creator of Terath. Not even Divinity allowed one to communicate with the mind as Kahlis had been doing with him for years. He had told no one of Kahlis so far, not even Nelina, the one he loved.

Caysen felt Taran’s and Nelina’s gazes, but there was no time to give them the attention they would need for assurance that he felt this fight could still be won. There came a chance to grab one of Malice’s broadswords, but it turned to be a feint. He felt a searing pain in his left arm as Malice’s blade passed through about a half inch of the muscle. His breath was driven from his body when Malice kicked him in the chest and he hit the ground hard. His vision flickered. He was brought back fully alert by Nelina’s scream: Caysen! No!

Caysen looked over to see Taran beginning to fight Falin, and his friend was holding his own very well. Taran wasn’t someone to underestimate, something he’d found out on a few occasions. Taran wasn’t a fighter by any means, but he was a true divinalist, a master of both Forbidden and Holy Divinity.

Caysen turned his attention to Nelina, the one he was truly worried about. She was a master of Holy Divinity, but lacking in her skills with the sword in comparison to himself. If he had lost, then there would be no different an outcome for Nelina. He reached out, the memory of the dream he’d been having leaping to the fore of his mind and what he’d been fighting so hard to prevent, but he was too far away to stop her, unable to catch his breath to rise from his back.

Nelina!

Chapter One

Tragedy of Salinthas

Caysen Tallis is a boy of thirteen years, and his fourteenth is but days away. He has read hair and green eyes, and lives in the town of Salinthas on the western part of the Kelgonian kingdom with his father, Derrith, his mother, Seena, and his sister, Kira. Caysen has a good friend by the name of Teris Gahl. Teris was the older of the two of them by two years, and had already begun his regiments to join the Kelgonian military as a soldier.

The people of Salinthas led happy lives and felt themselves outside of Falin’s tyrannical rule. The King of Kelgo opposed the oppressor at every step, and as a result, Falin had not been able to extend his rule to the eastern part of Kelthan so far. The tyrant’s influence had been growing recently and the war was beginning to shift in that favor. The people of Salinthas often spent time nursing the soldiers and the knights back to fighting health.

Caysen led a very happy life. He dreamt of becoming a knight and fighting off tyranny, becoming a legend of his time. He mostly spent his days playing with the other children, training with Kira or sparring with Teris. Training and sparring were his favorite things to do because of his aspirations. He felt alive when a sword was in his hand, as if it were an extension of his arm. His family had no aptitude with Divinity, the magic of Terath. Kira had taken him to see divinalists, the wielders of Divinity, to see this power at work. He listened as she explained the two halves, Holy and Forbidden. Holy Divinity was obtained through spiritual enlightenment and worship. It was often seen as good, healing spells and aids. Forbidden Divinity was obtained through reading a divinal, a book or scroll containing the runic Divinity. The use of a spell erased it from your mind and the divinalist had to read the divinal once again for the information of casting the spell another time. The runes were a combination of the common alphabet. It was extremely difficult to learn to read, and he was never able to concentrate hard enough to do so. At this very moment, he was sparring with Teris in the field that the children played in. The other children had gathered around to watch them, as they so often did.

Caysen spun around on his right foot swinging his left out and under one of Teris’ legs. Teris managed to block his strike, just as Caysen had counted on. The distraction of the sword had left Teris unaware of the sweeping kick and the older boy toppled to the ground. He marveled at how quickly Teris was able to recover; he’d known Teris wasn’t exactly balanced or nimble in comparison to himself. He flourished his wooden sword and knocked the stab that Teris had aimed at him to a more favorable direction. He switched his sword to his left hand and struck Teris in the ribs. He became angry when Teris struck him in the back with a particularly quick counter to the switch that he had pulled. He shrugged it off and rolled forward to dodge the next strike. Recovering quickly, he stepped to his left and switched sword hands once again. He pivoted on his right foot toward his right, knocking away a second attack. He used the momentum to make the entire spin back around and struck Teris hard in the back.

Sweet vengeance!

Caysen noticed that Teris was beginning to pant. He felt now that it was indeed time to end this. He shifted his body into a backhand strike and hit Teris in the ribs, kept going with the momentum and spun around with a particularly violent overhead backhand strike, connecting with the older boy’s collar. He reversed his spin at this point and delivered a truly quick and violent stab to the sternum. He traded the practice sword off to his left hand again and then spun to his left, ending the combo with another backhand strike to the other side of the ribs. Teris put out a hand to stop himself from hitting the ground face first. Caysen kicked the hand just at the right moment and smirked as Teris received a face full of dirt and grass.

Caysen started laughing with the rest of the children. Keep that guard up, Teris!

Teris wiped his face off with the back of his hand. Where do you get your skill? You’re as good as Kira is now, I’d guess.

No, she beat me just this morning. I didn’t stand a chance. She keeps telling me to keep my emotions in check. Always something about being able to read me like a book. Caysen laughed again, but on the inside he was fuming. I don’t like to lose. I love Kira, but she picks on me too much.

Well you are an amazing swordsman, Teris replied

Caysen pounded his chest. I know. I’m going to be the best that ever has been or ever will be!

Arrogance doesn’t become you, Cays, Teris stated.

Caysen waved a hand. Just who I am. I’m going to Kira’s to get some food. Are you coming along?

Teris rose to his feet and dusted himself off. Yes, I think I’ll tag along.

The two of them set off toward Kira’s house. They spoke a little of their fight and new combinations that could be used in a fight. Teris laughed. That combo you used on me, I literally couldn’t defend. Are you planning to show that one to Kira later?

Absolutely, but I doubt it’ll do any good, Caysen answered.

Teris slapped him on the back. Don’t worry so much. You’ll do fine.

Caysen smiled. Yes. I’ll just have to do better. I know that I can improve.

Teris returned the smile. That’s the spirit. Race you to the house! GO!

Caysen shoved himself into a sprint with his right leg. He was surprised by the way Teris had suddenly begun running and the hesitation had allowed Teris to gain the lead. He was more than determined to catch and pass the older boy. He drove his legs faster than he ever had, gaining ever more ground on his friend. It took only moments to bring himself even with Teris, but the house was now close and he had to push himself harder to reach the door first. He barely stopped himself at the doorstep and tagged the door, rapping it with his knuckles to let Kira know he was there.

Kira opened the door. Caysen noticed Teris blush, as the older boy normally did when seeing Kira. Caysen and Kira were oddities in Salinthas, being the only two in town having red hair. The predominant hair color was brown or black and there were a few blondes. Kira smiled at him and beckoned them in. Upon entering, he smelled his favorite beef stew. He noticed two bowls on the table, and Kira was already getting a third to accommodate Teris. His sister seated herself at the head of the table, as she normally did.

So, did you two have fun sparring? Kira asked.

Teris piped up in answer. Oh yes, Caysen hit me with this new combo. I couldn’t defend myself at all.

Kira smirked. Is that right?

Caysen gulped. The way she was staring at him was overwhelmingly unnerving. Yes. He hit me in the back just before and I wanted to get him back. I simply thought and acted.

Kira nodded. I’d sure like to see it after the meal.

Yes, sister. Caysen silently ate his food from this point. He was going over in his head of how to stop his emotions getting the better of him so that Kira couldn’t read him as she’d told him just that morning.

Kira finished her bowl of the stew first. Teris was done just after. Caysen finished a minute after and stood, pushing his chair back under the table. Teris and Kira gave him their bowls to clean. He scowled, but had turned so that Kira would not see. His effort to hide it seemed inconsequential as Kira noticed despite it and made a comment that he should change his attitude. Kira stood and grabbed their practice swords, saying that she was going outside to stretch a bit while he cleaned the dishes. Teris followed Kira out and gave Caysen a pat on the back.

I only have to master my action and reaction. She tells me that I can be better than she is, that I am better than she is, yet she beats me every single time. I don’t know. I’m just going to give it all I have. Caysen said to himself. He finished cleaning the last bowl then put them away and walked outside.

Caysen watched Kira finishing up her stretches. Teris was standing a few paces away practicing his swordplay, slashing and parrying his imagined foes. He picked his own practice sword up where Kira had left it leaning against the wall of the house near the door. He worked his grip and gave a few swings with a flourish. He settled into his new frame of mind and grip of his emotions, seeing all that could be accomplished in an instant. He couldn’t read Kira, so he had no instant vision of the fight, just what he could do.

Kira nodded at him as though she approved. He watched her lip curl up into that smirk that he was accustomed to seeing on her face. He held his stance, deciding to allow her the first move. He chose to goad her with his left hand, motioning for her to begin her attack. He smiled, but as soon as he had, Kira was upon him slashing, thrusting and twirling with a repeated combo. He stepped away as quickly as she moved forward, blocking and dodging where he could. He received a couple of bruises, but he shrugged it off and kept his focus on learning the way she was moving. The chance he’d been waiting for had come and he leapt with joy and anger at his moment to counter.

Caysen started with his backhand slash to the ribs, which Kira danced away from. He followed her with his overhead backhand. Kira blocked this, knocking his sword away further from her right, exposing his back to her, which she chose to deliver a sharp and quick stab. He wasn’t able to bring his left arm up in time to prevent slamming