A few weeks later the Thorne clan gathered in the shrine of the Sword. During the previous weeks Derek had been happier than any time that he could remember. He spent some time practicing in the guest house’s yard and some time assisting his master in packing his belongings to move the forge. He was surprised when he heard his master’s intent to move to Windreach with them but this too made him happy.

What made him happiest, though, was that he was able to spend much more time with his mother. He would either sit in a corner of the room to listen to her lecture Alicia or he would lay with his head in his mother’s lap while she prepared his schema for the ritual. She would use those moments to give Alicia practical experience in schema manipulation and though Alicia was not as skilled or intimate with Derek’s body as his mother, she was quickly growing more so.

Getting to spend this time with his mother cooled his one sided rivalry with her apprentice quite a bit and the household really was quite harmonious for those few weeks. He got to know his grandfather and learn more about Windreach and the House’s expectations for Derek from him. Apparently in families dominated by mages sixteen did not mean adulthood. They intended for him to join the Windreach Academy of Arcana and Runic Studies to further improve his understanding of magic.

Only when he graduated there would they consider him an adult. Once he found out that Nicholas intended to secure positions for his mother and grandmother at the Academy he did not mind the idea of going there at all as it would allow him to be near his family for a while longer.

During the wait he also spent some time with the Prince and his knights. They would spar or go riding in the mountains or discuss horses, hunting, falcons, and battle strategy at their guest house. Derek truly admired Kylin and his older knights as they reflected the virtues of the knight errant in many ways and it inspired him towards errantry. They got along quite well and over that time they developed a deep friendship.

During those few weeks Derek also got to spend some time with Belany and Hector. The two had recovered quite well and their appreciation for Derek had grown quite high. They even convinced Derek to meet with Elton and Feros; whose attitudes had changed completely. The danger they had faced shoulder to shoulder with Derek had changed their opinions of him. They also felt great shame for their father’s behavior; they had tried to convince him not to continue to try to persecute Derek but had failed and been grounded to their home during the trial that night.

The night of the ceremony, the five of them wore penitent’s clothes of their clan’s colors of white and gold to the chapel. The clan, their guests, and the important people of Redwyrm all gathered in the chapel for this ceremony. It really was the most important ceremony of the year. Five new Demon Warriors of the Thorne Clan would be born that day. Even more importantly, it had been spread that these five had gathered strong enough demon hearts that they could all use a true demon heart or better. The blessings on these children would truly be great.

The five of them gathered in a circle beneath the Sword while the other participants gathered behind them. This ritual had similarities to the common ritual of the Sword but the chants had deeper meanings and the formulas completed were greater. Furthermore, this ritual consumed tremendous amounts of mana from the crowd of participants and the five children would have to consume a demon heart at the moment before the vision descended.

This vision would not be like that of the normal sword ceremony. No it would be much more profound. It was generally the most powerful vision received during the life of the clan members that received it. The memories shared were profound and bitter. For one that had never experienced the visions before, this one could shatter their minds or send them into a crushing despair. The fanaticism and zeal of the Thorne clan was legendary. It was born of these terrible visions.

As they stood there the ritual started. They chanted their lines and felt great magical power begin to gather in the room. The circles of the seal began to spin and holy light descended on the five youths. When the last circle began to spin they lifted the demon hearts in their right hands and bit into them. As they devoured the demon hearts blood dripped from them but was incinerated within the holy light and the crowd’s chanting built to a crescendo.

With the last bite of the hearts they whispered their responses to the chanting, the ancient oath of the clan’s Demon Warriors, “We are the blood of Thorne. Where there is darkness; we will bring light. Where there is chaos; we will bring order. Where there are demons; we will bring wrath. In the name of the clan, by the blood of Thorne, and before the Sword of the Ancestor we swear this.”

As they spoke the last word of the oath and the crowd completed the chant, the holy light around the five grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding. The five of them felt themselves float from the ground into the center of the circling rings. As they did so they felt a warmth, at first soothing, but gradually more and more scalding, grow within them. When that heat seemed to reach its apex a vision descended upon each of them.

Derek was resisting the urge to scream. The warmth they all felt was the power being released from the demon hearts. It was proportional to the power of the demon itself. While the others’ pain could be considered great, having each consumed the heart of a true demon, Derek’s pain could be said to be on a whole different level. A greater demon was considered to be on par with a tier ten hero and he had consumed that thing’s heart. The power washing through him was incredible, but so too was the agony wracking his body.

As that pain swelled his sight changed. Through the visor of a helm he saw a burning castle on a hill in the background. The city below it was also burning and screams could be heard on the wind drifting from that place. The wind blew wafts of smoke across the battlefield below the city. The wounded moaned in pain on the ground among the corpses that covered the scorched earth like a carpet. In places the bodies mounded up to ten feet tall, creating hills and valleys on what was a plain mere days ago.

Here, the Grand Alliance had stood against the demon horde and their heretic foot soldiers. The city had been a strong point in their line, while the Alliance cycled army after army onto the field to stem the tide of the enemy. Before, there had been strategy and finesse in how the forces were applied. Even the demonic generals were unwilling to take losses that would cripple their armies.

But that was at the beginning of the battle. As it raged on, madness had seeped in. Now, the city was in ruins, the armies were annihilated and the mad slaughter continued as the survivors of both sides threw themselves at each other as if to please some primal god of butchery.

In has hands was the ancestral blade of the Thorne clan. It and the armor he wore were covered in gore and blood. Some was his own, some was that of friends, and some was that of his enemies. There was a band of Alliance warriors and mages with him as he advanced through the smoke.

Suddenly an eddy in the wind caused the smoke to clear, revealing a pitched fight before them. On one side were the standards of five of the Kings of the Alliance with at least four hundred surviving soldiers. On the other were a couple hundred heretics backed by over a hundred demons. All demons were terrifying but among these there were five greater demons standing fifty feet tall.

A greater demon was normally terrifying enough but these wore a dark red armor, the symbol of the demon lord’s personal guards. These were the strongest of greater demons; the vilest and most ancient, they had been selected to personally protect their master. Even more terrifying was the implication of why those guards were there. Standing among them and slaughtering the humans before him was the Demon Lord himself.

It stood at seventy feet tall, with a lion’s head that sprouted the horns of a bull. Its whole body was a black that glistened like obsidian. Its massive bat wings spanned over a hundred and fifty feet from tip to tip. Its legs were those of a goat and its arms were massive like those of a gorilla. In its six arms it wielded an axe, a sword, a spear, a whip, and a bow as it slaughtered wantonly about it. These weapons were said to have been forged in the pits of hell. Anyone unlucky enough to be struck by one and live would die of an incurable festering disease.

When Derek saw the Demon Lord his wrath and zeal boiled within him. He charged down towards the fight. The others with him came as well. They shouted a mighty warcry as they hurled themselves into the enemy forces. They struck from behind, instantly throwing the heretics and weaker demons into confusion. The warriors cut their way viciously through the confused enemies while the mages blasted out with wide ranging attacks that left huge gaps in the enemy lines.

The battle quickly turned against the enemy. Derek cleaved and smote the enemy around him as his mount trampled the weak foes and knocked aside the stronger ones.

Thunder, the celestial charger, was a truly majestic beast. Under its heavy barding was a lustrous silver mane and coat. Its blue eyes emitted an intelligence truly worthy of a king of its kind. With every step a peal of thunder could be heard and this is where it got its name. Even the demons recoiled in fear of this king of horses from a celestial realm.

Derek cut directly through to the Demon Lord and shouted his challenge to it. His power soared from the enchantments that the mages and his mount cast upon him. He lashed out with his mightiest holy magic and the Demon Lord swung both its axe and sword to block.

The force of the block knocked both horse and rider back. They were unharmed and Derek maintained his saddle as Thunder charged forth again. The Demon Lord had been knocked off balance by the attack and had been momentarily blinded by the flare of power from the holy magic colliding with its weapons. The axe and sword had both shattered.

Knowing that it was disadvantaged, the Demon Lord called its guards to assist it and as they crowded in Derek was forced to fight them. The Demon Lord fled the battlefield towards its keep in the Gate Spire mountains. Denied his target, Derek lashed out at the greater demons around him slaying them all.

As the battle finally came to an end the four surviving kings surveyed the battlefield. It was a truly sad sight. The Alliance had fielded over half a million soldiers and heroes here. Now, as the surviving demons quit the field, the horrifying truth of this battle was revealed. Of those half a million soldiers, almost four out of five had died. Of the survivors only one out of every twenty could march after healing. Of the ten kings and queens of the alliance only the four still alive in this place remained and one would be a cripple for the rest of her life. Their army of half a million, the strongest force the Alliance had ever fielded and the pride of the ten kingdoms, had been reduced to a little over five thousand soldiers and heroes.

Their only solace was that the demons had been defeated. Their casualties had been just as high and the routing cultists were unlikely to reform as a military force. Fewer than a thousand demons had fled the field. The surviving kings were already plotting the assault on Gorgon keep that the Demon Lord had fled to.

Derek dismounted and cleaned the sword before sheathing it then patted the horse. He heard his ancestor’s voice speaking to the horse, “Almost, this time we almost got him. Next time we must not let him get away.”

Thunder looked at his frustrated companions face and he answered through their mental connection, “Indeed, I will push harder next time…”

As they spoke, the kings and queens approached with their guards, “Derek Thorne, you are a warrior worth an army!”

As he heard that the vision began to end. Derek felt that scalding pain yet again, but now that battle’s hardships had etched into his memories. The loss and rage that his ancestor had felt at the over four hundred thousand dead, the zeal and wrath when facing the Demon Lord, the pride and confidence of hearing himself praised by his compatriots; all of these had been added as if he had experienced it himself. This pain, it was nothing next to the heartbreak of watching yet another human city burn at the hands of the demons so he endured it.

After a time he felt another searing pain start to come in from the outside. He sensed that this was the holy energy surrounding him interacting with the power of the demon flowing within him. It was burning away the impurities of that demonic power, and enabling it to fully merge with his own. After what seemed an eternity the scalding heat seemed to have been fully subsumed by the searing heat and after a moment that searing heat reduced to the soothing warmth of holy power.

After the pain he had been through this soothing warmth felt like the embrace of a mother. He felt the fatigue that had been gathering from resisting it drift away and he felt the internal injuries suffered from that scalding heat start to heal as well. When the last bit was healed he felt a surge of power as he advanced into the next tier, then the changes his mother had prepared in his schema unfolded like a mandala, and the essentia stored in the overflow catch basin began to assign to his attributes.

This process was rapid and the essentia continued to assign until after he had already reached level two of his second tier. When he checked his status it revealed some startling changes. The tier up benefit for his class, Demon Warrior, had granted him an additional three attribute points in strength and mind, two in body and agility, five in dark and chaos, two in order and light, a greatly expanded essentia pool, the ability to sense demons and demon marked cultists, as well as the heightened essence sensing abilities of a demon, and the ability to mask his essence.

The essence sensing ability not only allows demons to sense where strong sources of various magical essence types are located but it is also used by demons to judge the status of their targets without even having to cast a spell. The ability to mask essence, on the other hand, allows demons to hide their powerful essences from scrying techniques or to fool status magic. It takes truly powerful spells to counter this ability, usually those of at least two levels higher than the chaos casting ability of the user.

Normally, some attributes are expected in this tiering up process. Depending on the strength of the demon heart consumed it can have different results. A least demon heart will only grant one or two basic attribute points and a one or two point boost in dark and chaos. The order and light boost comes from augmenting the ritual with the seal and sword’s power so the heart’s strength has no effect on that.

The heart’s strength will affect the boost in essence pool, the strength of the demon sense, and whether the participant even gains masking. Masking only comes from true or better demon hearts with a better chance from greater demons, while the utility of demon sense can be very limited if gained from a weak heart.

Thus, Derek’s benefit was extremely good. Even the boost to dark and chaos magic helped him as he normally might not use those but he will still be more resistant to them due to this boost. He was most excited to see how he can use his masking ability. He could already think of a few uses for it.

As the ritual finished, the many people there inspected the five new adults of the Thorne clan. The growth of all five was fantastic and they could all be expected to be pillars of the Thorne clan when they were older. Derek was even more terrifying than the others. While they had just entered tier one, he had hit tier two. Not only that, but his attributes were competitive with many low tier three people in the room.

Furthermore, his magical affinities were stellar and everyone estimated that he would have no trouble casting level six spells of any type. In this clan, to say that of order or light spells would be within reason. But to say it of every element? That is just too tyrannical.

After completing the ritual the clan hosted a feast to celebrate these newly made adults. They knew that their guests would be leaving in the next few days and even some of their clansmen so they made extra effort to make merry. Derek was no exception.

Derek Thorne-

Class

Demon Warrior

Elemental Attribute

Elemental Affinity

Point Value

Spell Level

Tier

2

Order

Supreme

22r2 + 7

Peak 6 (59)

Level

2

Water

Supreme

15r2 + 7

Low 6 (52)

Light

Supreme

22r2 + 7

Peak 6 (59)

Basic Attribute

Point Value

Wind

Supreme

15r2 + 7

Low 6 (52)

Strength

22r2

Chaos

Supreme

20r2 + 7

High 6 (57)

Body

23r2

Fire

Supreme

20r2 + 7

High 6 (57)

Agility

19r2

Dark

Supreme

20r2 + 7

High 6 (57)

Mind

22r2

Earth

Supreme

20r2 + 7

High 6 (57)

Essentia Pool

High t3 Mage

Previous Classes-

Magic Warrior, Rune Smith

Permanent Enhancements-

Demon Warrior (Greater Demon Heart), Tier Two: +3 Strength, +2 Body, +2 Agility, +3 Mind, +5 Dark, +5 Chaos, +2

Light, +2 Order, Expanded Essentia Pool, Demon Sense, Masking

Rune Smith, Tier One: +2 Strength, +2 Body, +2 Agility, +2 Mind

Disciple of the God of the Forge: +2 Strength, +2 Body, +5 Fire, +5 Earth

Blessed Child of the Hearth Goddess: +2 Body, +2 Mind, +5 Order, +5 Light

Equipment-

Forge God’s Armor: basic protection low t2, maximum defensive spell level 6

Forge God’s Warsword: basic offensive mid t2, maximum offensive spell level 6

Forge God’s Glaive: basic offensive mid t2, maximum offensive spell level 6

Forge God’s Bow: basic offensive low t2, maximum offensive spell level 6

Talisman of the Forge and Hearth: eight mature sprites +7 to all elemental attributes, other assorted benefits