A Warrior's Journey by Guy Stanton III

one of their governors back!”
    I responded harshly, “Father said nothing
about taking hostages or bounty money! If gaining wealth had been
the goal of this mission do you not think we would not have sacked
the city before putting it to the torch?”
    I abruptly turned from him and headed for
Relentless. The men holding the governor completed the task that I
had ordered.
    As one the men who had come with me on this
wild ride followed me back out of the burning citadel into the city
now well taken with flame.
    I headed for the temple grounds where my
father would be with his men, quickly outdistancing those setting
fire to the city all around us.
    Roric was beginning to give up hope of
finding a way into the underground cult complex. His men had
searched over every inch of the expansive temple in search of an
entrance to the complex that his dying spy had said existed.
    He wasn’t leaving until the job was
completed and his friends avenged. There was little point in coming
so far and risking so much, if he did not destroy the heart of this
new cult’s headquarters.
    Under his breath he whispered, “Lord please
show me the way and enable me to destroy this pit of darkness that
infects the land with blasphemy.”
    Almost instantly a ray of light curled off
the sword in his hand and twisted off through the air into the
temple. Roric followed the light ray stepping over the bodies of
temple priests, prostitutes and worshipers alike.
    The ray of light split into four smaller
tendrils, which arced out to each surround a pillar which formed a
square of space in the center of the main temple hall. Roric stood
in the midst of the four pillars studying each pillar and the floor
around it.
    There was a grooved pattern inscribed on the
floor and going to one massive pillar Roric began to push and
surprisingly the massive pillar shifted quite easily along the path
of one such groove. The same pattern was reflected on the ceiling
as well. Warriors standing around watching quickly worked at moving
the remaining three pillars along their paths. As the last pillar
moved into place there was an audible snap and the floor began to
move.
    Sections of the floor collapsed in
repetitious order and soon a spiral staircase leading downward into
the darkness was visible. A horrible stench wafted up out of the
dark hole filling the heavily perfumed corridors of the temple with
the smell of rotting decay.
    Warriors looked among each other in a silent
dread at having to go down into the darkness, but gamely
straightened to the task willing to follow their leader wherever he
led them.
    Roric gestured them back from the stairway,
“Get out of here. Pull all of our forces from the temple
grounds.”
    The warriors reluctantly started to move
back hesitant to leave their leader they loved to face the darkness
alone.
    I turned to go with them, when my father
called my name, “Zevin.”
    I turned back to him.
    He had a strange look on his face as he
asked me, “Would you like to come with me?”
    How did one answer such a question honestly?
I knew beyond a doubt that I wished to see nothing that the
darkness had in store for us beneath the floor, but I wanted to
make father proud and I certainly didn’t want him to face the
darkness alone.
    He must have read the quandary of decision
going on inside of me, “Will you go with me son?”
    I stepped forward instantly, inwardly proud
at my lack of hesitation to move even in the face of the fear that
I felt at the action.
    Talaric stepped forward too, but before he
had taken a second step the sword in my father’s hand swung toward
him and colored light that seemed to express the anger my father
felt shot out and knocked Talaric backward against a pillar, “You
may not go!” Father spoke more roughly than I had ever heard him
before to any of his children.
    Before a surprised Talaric could protest
father spoke on, “Your spirit is not right before God and your
actions are in defiance of me and what I