The ground exploded beneath my feet with each step. It felt like my feet were meteors, each one creating a crater from the explosive contact. I felt the power in my thighs, the muscles of the suit straining and contracting. I was an antelope, bounding with speed and agility across the landscape. But I wasn't an antelope. I had the strength and power of dozens of men. I was a buffalo moving like an antelope.

Katya's words preyed on me.

The knife, folded into my armor, was a weight — both a burden and a light.

My thoughts churned with what she had said. The way I let Baltazar bend me. The way Enki had cowed me. Punished me.

A heat rose up. Anger. I wasn't even sure at who. My father? Probably. Enki? Myself?

For gaining this power, and still being a donkey led by a leash.

The anger pulsed, hot and alive — like a fire that could burn down a forest. And maybe, in its wake, something better might bloom.

For a rare and precious instant, the stresses of my role were forgotten, the victories and losses faded, the conspiracies and ambitions deleted. I just ran—truly happy, content, free, and powerful.

The roads here were pitiful. Long gone were the carefully maintained thoroughfares. What I ran on now was barely better than a dirt track, cut deep with wagon wheel ruts. The land around me was the barren expanse of farmland in winter. Lonely tendrils of wheat stubble thrust up through the browning snow. Stands of trees stood naked and frail without their leaves. Cottages and villages swept past me as I blazed forth—no people moving around outside, just stillness and smoking chimneys.

The newly assigned lands of House Bloodsword were far from the city, on the edges of the territory. It was a case of last come, last served. My lands were wilderness, about thirty-five miles from the city itself. The oldest families, like the Oakcrests, had their holdings closest to the city. The newer the house, the further its lands rested from Boston herself.

It was staggering to think that I had been awarded a holding, and the duty to build a castle to defend it, and I had yet to set foot on my own lands. I had a week before I would be required to ferry Griid-trains again. I could use that opportunity to visit Dodge. In the meantime, I was a free agent, to do as I wished. There was so much to attend to. For now, visiting my lands would be enough. It was certainly long overdue—and somewhat essential.

The scale of the lands of Boston was something I had never really comprehended. I had lived my life in my father's house. My early years were dominated by a reality that was bound to my bed, the only view of the wider world what I could glimpse through my bedroom window. When I got better and started to move around, my every day was mapped out by Father. I could still groan thinking back to the rehabilitation training that morphed into physical training and sword skills without a break. Every moment had been dominated by Father's demands.

I had seen the lands from the air, in the Eagle. But I had no sense of perspective on such things. My time in the Eagle had been dominated by my sense of overwhelm. I had been in the air, looking down, unable to decipher the scale of what I was seeing. And I had been tense, sensing Baltizar recruiting me, sensing him trying to place his own lens over my eyes.

As I ran, the land faded from farmland to scrub. Stumps ran in lines around me like soldiers lining up for battle. Snow stuck to them, the ground around them a tangle of intrepid brambles pushing their way up to dominate the landscape. This land had been logged in recent years. I realized suddenly that this was my land. I was running on my own road now, a road that was truly just a beaten mud track.

Ahead of me I could see it. The ground rose before me. It felt like I was looking at a flat-topped mountain. It looked like a poor man's mesa, rising up, almost sheer from the ground, a cliff face falling away beneath it.

My heart pounded. That was where they had started building. That was to be my seat, my throne, the home of House Bloodsword.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

As I erased the distance between me and the rise, I felt my brows furrow. I could see no signs of construction. I knew I shouldn't. I was lower than the rise, and they would have, at most, started work on the foundations. Still, my mind had pictured scaffolds and growing walls. It disconcerted me to just see wilderness.

Then, as I pressed forward, the vegetation to my right melting into my backtrail, I saw the camp. It stunned me. I think I had been expecting to see a few tents. What greeted me was not a few tents. My eyes goggled—there were hundreds of structures there. Tents, yes. But also crude wooden cabins. In the center of the cluster was a large lodge house built from logs. I looked around and saw no real stands of trees. They must have dragged them a great distance to make the lodge house.

It was the camp of the Jaxwulfs. These were Dirk's people. What they were making here was less a camp and more the beginnings of a village. My mind's eye flashed, throwing a sudden picture of the future—Castle Bloodsword, proud and dark and foreboding, nestled in the rise like a waiting bird of prey. Below it, the town of Bloodsword.

I felt a strange chill run through me as I ran. This was Dirk's village, his people. But he would grow old and die. I wouldn't change. Unless something happened to me, I would live to sit in my castle and look down on the town populated by his descendants. It thrilled me and saddened me. I could live through the ages, live to see the future—live to see that future. But I would see everyone I knew fade to their graves. I thought of Dirk, young, fit, wiry, strong. I imagined a wizened old Dirk, probably still wiry and strong to his last breath, but wrinkled, white-haired, withered. I could live to see his great-grandchildren be the leaders of this town. Would it sadden me to remember him, or warm my heart to be able to tell his descendants about the man he was?

I was growing closer and the land was clearer. I didn't know enough about landscapes to understand if it was a natural clearing or one created by the Jaxwulfs—or my people. But as I ran, I could see another cluster of tents further up the slope from the burgeoning village. These were heavy canvas tents, like the tent I met Cassius inside. Tents able to brave the elements—the winter.

I passed the village and made straight for the cluster of tents. I knew this was where I would find the workers. More importantly, this was where I would find him.

I relinquished the Footfield. It had become second nature. Gone was the novelty, the wonder. Now it was just a tool, a vehicle that I drove. Time settled around me. I was bombarded with the sound of the wind, the sense of the coldness. I was back in the real world, enjoying space-time like everyone else did.

There were figures moving among the tents as I continued to propel myself towards them. One drew my eye above all the others. He stood, looking at a sheet of paper held by one of the others. He was pointing toward the crest of the hill, issuing orders. He was in his element here—commanding and organizing. He looked more like himself than I had ever seen him.

One of the figures pointed toward me. My keen suit ears heard the shout, but I couldn't decipher its meaning. All the heads turned. His head turned.

I began to slow as I neared them. Even without the Footfield, I was still moving faster than a galloping horse.

The man at the center—the clear leader of the builders—stepped forward. An older man, but fit and capable, he walked toward me as I decelerated.

I hadn't seen him in so long.

Every time I had come back to Boston, he'd either been away or I hadn't been afforded the chance to visit. I dwelt in the Tower now, not in my father's townhouse. I had tried to see him, tried to make time, but each attempt had come to nothing.

Now I could see him clearly as I closed the final distance. His expression lifted my heart. I could see the way his eyes swept over my suit—the pride and satisfaction there unmistakable. My poor, conditioned mind couldn't help but read that satisfaction as approval. I knew that was my disease. Like a drunk craving his cup, I hungered for that approval. Be it from Father, or Baltizar, or him.

But unlike the others, this man was benign. His approval wasn't a tool to manipulate or steer me.

I came to a jogging halt. I surprised him. I surprised myself. I surged forward and wrapped the man in a sweeping hug, lifting him slightly—but careful not to crush him into pudding as I so easily could.

I let him go, and he pushed me gently back, hands on my chest, so he could see my face.

I let my helm melt and fold back.

I stood before him—not the boy he had known. Not Tiberius the struggling contestant. Not the frail, sickly child. Not the weak and helpless tool of Sempronius.

I was Tiberius Bloodsword. I was the lord of these lands. I was the Sword of Boston. I was the architect of the greatest season the Falling had brought Boston in decades.

Harold looked on me and smiled. His words were so like Baltizar's had been on the night of the parade, but they were softer, simpler. So much less calculated.

His weathered face crinkled into a smile, tears glinting in the corners of his eyes.

"Master Tiberius… it's… it's so good to see you. I'm so proud of you, young master."

This was praise that was worthy of reacting to. But I was nawed at by my true reason for coming. An impulse to cut strings of my dead father from my life. The nawing kept a wall between me and the love of this man who really cared for me.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.