Origins: Royce MacDungren, The Captain

Much like any writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the origins of my characters. What follows is the beginning of an origin story for the Captain, Royce MacDungren.

Keep in mind as you read this excerpt that it is a rough draft. I haven’t polished any of the language, grammar, or spelling. What follows is as it came out of my brain and ended up on the page.

Even so, I hope you enjoy this never before seen glimpse into the origins of the Captain.

Happy Reading!

~MFHengst

Origins: Royce MacDungren – The Captain

“Do it again!”

“I can’t!”

Royce MacDungren was splayed on the fallow earth. Every muscle in his body screamed for mercy. His forearms under heavy leather armor, were turning an ugly shade of purple from the continued and unrelenting abuse that was being rained down upon him. His mid-length black hair, wavy and fine on the best of days, was a sopping wet mass pasted to his forehead with sweat. The sweat ran into his eyes making them water and burn. Maybe it was the sweat in his eyes that kept him from seeing what was coming.

The tip of the boot caught him just under the ribcage, smashing into the tender flesh just under Royce’s ribs. Pain exploded through him, blasting outward through his body like a fireball. Royce screamed. It was a squawking, raspy sound like a blackbird being stepped on. All the air was gone from his lungs and Royce’s mouth worked, trying to reclaim the lost breath, and failing.

A boy of sixteen, Royce still hadn’t mastered the art of concealing his emotions. Tears burned his eyes just as much as sweat, but he dared not let them fall. If Angus saw him crying, the beating would be worse. So much worse. He wouldn’t allow those tears to fall. Not now, anyway. Later, in the darkness of the barn, Royce would cry as he dressed the wounds that he’d acquired during the day. The sweet, dry smell of hay in the loft and the musk of the animals would sooth his soul as the generous portion of ointment applied to strips of bandage would sooth his body. That was hours off though. For now, he had to fight. No matter how tired he was. No matter how beaten. He had to fight.

Angus brought his leg back for another strike and somewhere deep inside, Royce found the strength to roll away from the kick. Pain made bright white stars bloom at the edges of his vision. He managed to get himself up on his hands and knees and focused on taking a breath. One, single, solitary breath. That’s all he needed. The muscles under his ribs seized in protest and for a horrible moment, Royce was certain he was going to be sick. That was almost as bad as crying. Angus tolerated no sign of weakness. Any indication of the pain and torment Royce was going through was a reason to heap another helping upon him.

Royce swallowed his gorge and forced air into his spasming lungs. He saw a blur out of the corner of his eye and threw himself backward. He expected his knees to buckle, to give way under the stress of the hours they’d spent in this unused corn field. By some miracle, he remained upright, and spun out of the way of the incoming attack.

Angus rounded on him, dragging the tip of his longsword through the unseeded earth. His eyes were hard and black. As hard as the sword he carried and not nearly as forgiving. A sword might occasional strike askance, giving its target the opportunity to live another day. Not so with Angus’s eyes. They always found their mark. They were quick to take note of any flaw, no matter how minor. There was no such thing as a trivial matter to Angus MacDungren.

“I said,” Angus snarled, his lips curling into a feral smile. “Do it again.”

Royce wanted to rush him, to knock Angus to the ground and pounce on his chest and beat Angus’s face with his fists until both his face and Royce’s fists were raw and bloody. There were so many things he wanted to say, but couldn’t. Every word Royce spoke to his father would be weighed and measured. If any were found to be lacking, the full price would be taken from Royce in blood, sweat, and tears.

He didn’t have a choice. Not really. Royce bent down, fighting off the wave of nausea that passed over him as he did so, and lifted his blade. As soon as his palm touched the hilt, fire raced down his arm and settled in his chest like burning embers. As if the battle wounds weren’t bad enough. He was already in agony from the outside. Now the pain in his chest threatened to consume him from the inside out. Royce wondered if the edges of the pain would meet and overlap, becoming a solid mass of misery that would stop his heart from beating and allow him the rest of eternity in merciful sleep.

Royce brought up his other hand and placed it on the hilt, drawing the long blade up in front of him, parallel to the ground. The same familiar burning crept down his other arm to join the conflagration under his breastbone. Another attack would come now, he knew. It was just a matter of time. Angus would make him wait. He would wait until Royce was at the very edge of his endurance and ready to falter before he raised his own blade.

They stood there, in the middle of the field, staring at each other. Royce’s gray eyes locked on Angus’s muddy brown. They watched each other, like two mean alley rats fighting over the same discarded trencher. For what seemed like an eternity, they stood there, judging each other. The tip of Royce’s sword began to waver. Just a fraction. Just a hair. Any normal man might not have seen it. Angus did. He raised his blade and closed the distance between them in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

Royce slipped into the timelessness of the Quintessential Sphere and all the color washed out of the world. The blinding speed with which Angus was descending on him slowed to normal human proportions once again. The brought his sword up to meet Angus’s blade. A terrific clash of metal on metal rang out, not only among the misted memories of the Ethereal Realm, but throughout the physical one as well. One successful defense did not a victory make, and Royce found himself flipping his sword this way and that to deflect the frantic blows that were trying to slice him limb from limb.

There! Angus hesitated. Not a moment, not even a full second, but enough. Royce clenched his hand around the hilt of his sword and smashed it into Angus’s face. There was a satisfying crunch and blood gushed from the older man’s nose. Water sprang up in his eyes and Royce took a savage sort of glee in the face that he had made the old man cry. Even if the tears were an involuntary reaction to the ruin he’d made of Angus’s nose, it was good enough.

Angus stumbled backward, his eyes showing the briefest glimpse of an emotion so rare that Royce had only seen it there on rare occasions. He was surprised and Royce was going to take any advantage given. Royce swung the sword. Angus turned away, but a moment too late. The tip of the blade ripped a shallow furrow in his over tunic, opening the flesh underneath in a neat red line. Royce heard him hiss and stepped in to press the attack.

Angus’s blade swept out in a backhanded strike that Royce ducked under with ease. As the momentum of the swing carried Angus around, Royce kicked out, hard, and connected with Angus’s ankle. It didn’t snap, as Royce had hoped it would, but it buckled and sent Angus tripping over his own feet. He landed on the ground, not far from where Royce had been lying what seemed like a lifetime before.

A quick reverse of his blade and Royce drew it up over his head. He’d waited for this moment for so long. To strike Angus down and put an end to the daily beatings that filled the time between Royce’s other chores. His hand wavered, but only a moment, before he plunged the sword with all his might toward the seam in the chest of Angus’s armor.

It was the perfect killing blow, but his sword was struck aside at the last possible moment. Angus still gripped his blade and had knocked the tip of Royce’s sword away. He grinned up at his son with bloodstained teeth, his face a mask of crimson from the blood that had only just stopped pouring from his broken nose.

“There ya are, lad. I knew ya had it in ya.”

Royce stared at him. All the words he wanted to say seemed to cower in the back of his head. No matter how hard he tried to tell Angus how much he hated him, nothing would come. Instead, the words seemed to creep down into his belly, distilling into a vile poison that grew more powerful with every passing day. He wanted to smash the grin off Angus’s face, but he knew that if he tried, Angus would just punish him that much more.

Instead, Royce dropped his sword beside Angus and walked away. He didn’t know where he was going, nor did he care. All that mattered was that he get away from his father, the training field, and the unmanageable rage that welled up inside him.

“Come back here, boy!” Angus shouted.

Royce ignored him. He trudged the well-worn path from the training field toward the barn. The shouts followed Royce until he was out of earshot. He was tired. No, he was exhausted. But no matter how beaten and battered he was, the state of the farm managed to drive him further into the depths of despair.

Four years ago, the MacDungren family farm had been lush with life and love. Corn and wheat grew as tall as the eye could see in all directions. Cows, sheep, and chicken populated well-tended pastures and coops. Now all of that was gone. The crops had all be harvested, the fields tilled and left barren. The sheep had long been sold and taken to greener pastures. Only a few cows and a handful of fowl were left to remind the few works who remained how far and fast things had fallen.

In those days, Angus had been Captain of the Grand Army of the Imperium. He spent most of his time in Dragonfell, the capital, and Royce liked it that way. He’d never gotten to know his father. His earliest memories of the man were of him coming home on leave, spending a few days inspecting the farm as if it were one of his military units, and disappearing again. Royce wasn’t sure how many times over the years he’d seen Angus, but it couldn’t have been more than a handful. Namedays, Yule, and every other special day on the calendar was marked not by his father’s boisterous presence, but by Royce’s mother explaining, yet again, why Angus had to be away.

Sharyn MacDungren had been everything his father wasn’t. A loving, caring parent who doted on Royce as her only child. For as cold and distant as Angus was, Sharyn was open and engaging. No matter how many times he pondered the question, Royce would never understand how such a perfect woman could wind up handfasted to such an imperfect man. She seemed content with their arrangement, though, and never had an ill word to say about Angus, other than that she missed him terribly and sometimes wished his duties with the Grand Army would bring him closer to home.

It wasn’t as if she was without help. Royce did what he could to ensure the farm ran like a well-oiled Gnomish machine. Then there were the farmhands. Half a dozen strapping young men and a few young women who kept all the moving parts of the farm in perfect working order. They reported to Rand, a man who Royce though was much more suited to his mother than his father had been. Royce had spend the dawning years of his adolescence dreaming of what life would have been like with the strong, wiry blond as his father.

If Rand had ever had an interest in Sharyn beyond that of being her employee, he had never shown it. There was never so much of a whisper of impropriety from the farmhands, who loved gossip as much as they loved their drink. Rand would spend every day, from dawn to dusk, in the fields. He never expected any of his charges to do anything that he, himself, wouldn’t do. There were countless times that Rand had come in from the fields burned pink from his nose to his ears and would go back out again the next morning with a smile on his face and a jaunty whistled tune.

Then Sharyn’s health had turned. It started with a cough that wouldn’t be eased by any medicine the healer could bring. Her skin turned a waxy white, and she wasn’t even able to get out of her bed. Rand spent whole days in the farmhouse with Royce, taking care of her as best they could. They sent a messenger to Angus, who in turn, sent a Cleric of Lyrissa from Dragonfell. The elven woman did the best she could to make Sharyn comfortable, then asked to see Rand in private.

Rand and the cleric stood on the wide porch that wrapped around the farmhouse. It was a spring evening and the sun had just slipped beyond the western horizon. Firebugs danced in the feeble light of the rising moon. The night was warm and still and the air had the smells of springtime, filled with long grass and flowering Nightblooms. It was a perfect night. There was no way that Rand would have known that Royce was perched on the porch roof, enjoying the twinkling of stars that were just beginning to emerge.

That perfect night was when Royce had found out that his mother was dying. She didn’t have much time, the cleric said. The wasting disease had taken hold and spread with the intensity of a wildfire. Even the direct intervention of the Eternals wasn’t likely to save her, the cleric had said, her voice low and sad. Rand told her that he understood, and thanked the cleric for her service. He walked her to a waiting carriage while Royce tried to come to terms with the fact that his life, as well as his mother’s, was ending.

The cleric was right. Within four days, his mother was dead. Rand and the others dug a grave in the family plot. The farm maids dressed her in her finest gown and wove tiny white flowers in her night black hair. Rand sent a messenger to Angus, who replied that he was unable to return at once, but would be there as soon as possible. When the foreman handed him the letter to read, Royce had never hated his father more. Angus hadn’t been there for her in life. He couldn’t be there for her in death.

They buried Sharyn under the apple tree that shaded the family cemetery. Rand spoke a few words. The farmhands bowed their heads and held their wide-brimmed hats in their hands. The maids wept softly to themselves. Then it was over. The house seemed as if it had died with his mother. Royce wandered the empty rooms and tried to remember all the little things she’d done for him over the years. There was the big iron stove in the kitchen where she’d made him oatmeal. Then there was the fieldstone hearth in the common room, where she’d had Royce sit to clean and bandage his skinned knees from rambunctious play.

Never again would he feel her gentle touch, or hear the sweet, lilting sound of her laugh. If someone had to die, why couldn’t it have been Angus? A man who had done nothing for him, for them. Instead, Solendrea had been robbed of a gentle, graceful creature who had never hurt anyone.

Angus returned, but the farm never recovered. One by one, the fields were sold off to surrounding farms. The farmhands moved on. Then the maids. Only Rand remained to help with the rest of the farm duties. Angus isolated himself in his study, only coming out on rare occasions. It was as if Royce were living with a ghost. He didn’t understand why Angus was so devastated by the loss of his wife. He had barely ever seen her.

A breeze stirred across the field, bringing an acrid tang to Royce’s nose and knocking him out of his memories. He glanced up, toward the horizon, and saw a dark smudge hanging there, low over the ground. Thick billows of black smoke were wafting skyward. His pain and anger forgotten, Royce slipped into sphere sight. His spirit raced down the path, faster than his physical body could ever move. There, in the shimmering silver-white of the Living Memory, he saw something that made his blood run cold.

The barn was on fire. He released his hold on the Quintessential Sphere, allowing his spirit to snap back into his body. He ignored the slight nausea. Royce’s fingers tore at the buckles on the armor he wore, bloodying his fingers as he tried to get free of the encumbrance. He ran, shedding pieces of armor as he went, like a snake during molt.

Royce ran with every ounce of strength and power left in him. He pushed back his fear, calling forward memories of swift horses and blowing winds, and used those memories to force the Quintessential Sphere to grant him speed that few other humans could match. The sounds that reached him as he ran were almost enough to break his concentration, but somehow he managed to hold on.

Red orange flames consumed the entire barn. The flames were so intense that Royce didn’t know how the building was still standing. As if in response to his frantic thought, part of the roof gave way, plummeting into the inferno. Animals inside screamed in terror and somewhere in the cacophony, Rand was begging for help.

Copyright 2015 Martin F. Hengst. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication without permission from the author is strictly prohibited.

 

 

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