Touch of Honor

Touch of Honor: A Red Web - Chapter 5

     A bearded man watched intently from the higher balcony. He removed his red hood revealing a bald head, tattooed with runes.

     Spruce took note of his presence, but continued his training in the room below.

     The wooden dummy stood in the center of the makeshift throne room that Gari Sohei formed out of the great hall. Statues of previous grand masters standing thirty feet tall overlooked the lone monk. Their stony and overwhelming hardness reflected their personalities while in the position.

     A fitting tone. Spruce thought.

     Training never took place in the throne room, especially not when the rest of the monastery was burning from the recent siege. With the Takedans marching on the temple grounds and the grandmaster dead, now would be the perfect time for well needed training. Or so Spruce thought. After all, he wouldn't let the red wizard, the statues of his former masters, and their masters, leave without a show.

     He turned from the wooden dummy. He prepared a powerful fist imbued with the most ki he could sacrifice. His nape tingled and a soft darkness enveloped his mind as he shut his eyes. With a deep breath he felt a surge of energy course though his body, starting from the top of his scalp to the ends of his knuckles. He turned in a half stance, his front foot swinging across the stone carrying the momentum of his hips and fist towards the target. The fist would never connect with the dummy.

     A blue spectral hand caught Spruce's wrist. Where the dummy stood just moments ago, now stood a black haired and goateed man in a blue, sorcerer's garb.

     Spruce tried to pull his fist back, shocked at the sight. His fist was locked by the spectral hand that flowed from the sorcerer's own flesh.

     "Are you beat kid? You look like you've seen a ghost." The sorcerer proceeded to crush down on Spruce's wrist.

     Spruce screamed in agony as his wrist was compressed, the claws of the hand growing larger, and digging into his skin, tearing it apart. The monk's hand was slowly torn from its tendons and flesh, then fell to the floor with an echoing, dead, thud. As tears filled his eyes, Spruce fell to his knees. He clenched his wrist and continued to yell. He lost track of where he was, the pain, paralyzing him. He slipped while on his knees in the ever expanding pool of blood. He shot a look of desperation to the wizard on the balcony.

     The wizard smiled down at his agony.

***

     Spruce jolted forward as he gained consciousness, involuntarily grabbing at his hand which was still attached to his wrist. He sat against the wall of one of Phandal's finest jail cells on top of a poorly gathered pile of heigh. He shuffled his rear to sit more upright. At first he had forgotten the setting he found himself in, being so recently freed from his nightmare. Once he heard the continued arguing from Lemli with the guards in the other room as he had several hours ago, he remembered what had happened. He rested his head against the wall. "One of the better ones." He murmured to himself.

     A shuffling of feet and leather armor could be heard directly outside his cell, at the door itself.

     Spruce went to look at what produced the noise as he put his hands behind his back. While he swiftly and effortlessly removed his shackles the moment he was alone, he continued his defenseless and harmless facade. He had bent them so out of shape that they were unrecognizable from scrap metal, as they sat in the other corner of the cell.

     There stood a young guard who stood so close to the cell bars that he could taste them. The guard was facing Spruce, but quickly stopped his staring as the monk noticed him.