Destruction's Children

Cover Credits

Line art by: Paulo Barrios

Colors by: David Delanty

Short Story Cover: Shane Braithwaite

Chronological Order

ARK-007 Betrayal

ARK-010 Awakening

ARK-011 Rebirth

ARK-015 Stalking

ARK-016 Naming

ARK-017 Hunting

ARK-022 Learning

ARK-023 Migraine

ARK-024 Apathy

ARK-031 Inherently selfish

ARK-032 Jarheads

ARK-001 Carnage

ARK-005 Meeting

ARK-006 Family

ARK-008 Alliance

ARK-009 Declaration

ARK-013 Assault

ARK-014 Champion

ARK-026 Heir to Sin

ARK-027 The Brothers Blackblade

ARK-028 Safe Passage

ARK-012 Enemy

ARK-018 Cleaners

ARK-025 Dropping the Gauntlet

ARK-029 Limits

ARK-030 Holy ground

ARK-002 Negotiator

ARK-003 Thief

ARK-004 Collector

ARK-019 Pretender

ARK-020 Superhero

ARK-021 Failure

ARK-033 Fire’s Shadow

ARK-034 In the Dark

ARK-034.5 Bonus Footage

ARK-035 The Black Hammer

ARK-036 Creating Destruction

By Story Arc

Wraith: Year One

Remember that kid in class who looked at you like you weren’t there. This is why you don’t mess with that kid.

ARK-010 Awakening

ARK-011 Rebirth

ARK-015 Stalking

ARK-016 Naming

ARK-017 Hunting

ARK-022 Learning

ARK-023 Migraine

ARK-024 Apathy

ARK-031 Inherently selfish

ARK-032 Jarheads

ARK-041 Civics

ARK-042 History

ARK-043 Humanities

Resistance Revolution Revenge

Sometimes we fight for ambition. Sometimes we fight to defend others. Sometimes we fight for justice. Sometimes it matters. Sometimes we just fight.

ARK-001 Carnage

ARK-005 Meeting

ARK-006 Family

ARK-008 Alliance

ARK-009 Declaration

ARK-013 Assault

ARK-014 Champion

ARK-026 Heir to Sin

ARK-027 The Brothers Blackblade

ARK-028 Safe Passage

ARK-037 Lion Among Wolves

ARK-038 Scarred

ARK-039 Fire and Smoke

Searching for a Symbol

Every army needs a standard, every nation needs a flag, and every legend needs a symbol.

ARK-002 Negotiator

ARK-003 Thief

ARK-004 Collector

ARK-019 Pretender

ARK-020 Superhero

ARK-021 Failure

ARK-033 Fire’s Shadow

ARK-034 In the Dark

ARK-034.5 Bonus Footage

ARK-035 The Black Hammer

ARK-036 Creating Destruction

ARK-045 Fight

ARK-046 The Other Side

ARK-047 The Trick

Stand Alone Chapter

Some stories stand alone.

ARK-007 Betrayal

ARK-044 Legends

ARK-012 Enemy

ARK-018 Cleaners

ARK-040 Falling Scales

ARK-025 Dropping the Gauntlet

ARK-029 Limits

ARK-030 Holy ground

ARK-034 In the Dark

ARK-034.5 Bonus Footage

ARK-048 Everything that has an End

Other Works by this Author

Fantasy

A Rising Knight Volume One: Everything that has an End

He was a killer by fifteen, a warrior by sixteen, a revolutionary by seventeen, a legend by eighteen, he won't live to be nineteen. These are Steps Vlad will take to define his destiny. He will spit at the feet of god and slay his angels.

A Rising Knight Volume Two: Born for War

Welcome to the game. It wants to kill you. Now the stage had been set it’s time for the real show to get started. All three story arcs from volume one are continued in explosive fashion. It’s time to go play with monsters.

A Rising Knight Volume Three: Destruction’s Children

Why do you fight? Why do you pay the price? Destruction’s Children brings the war home for the Knights of the revolution. Jackal is forced to relive his mother’s brutal death while Olga dreams of getting blood on her hands. Vlad reaches a pivotal point when forced to confront reality, there is always someone better. What do you do when you can’t see the way forward anymore? Make one up.

A Rising Knight Volume Four: King's Knight

Wriath is coming and war is coming with him. Vlad has walked three journeys on his path to becoming a Harrower, a King’s Knight. And they have all lead back to the wizard world. To the place he had been an outcast freak, a hated reminder of days gone by and terrifying signpost of things to come. Now its time for him to become something far more dangerous, a man with noting to lose.

A Rising Knight: Eagle

Twenty thousand years before the Blood Ocean and the Fall that came after, the Harrower Knights, the Deathwings, ruled the sky. Sent on a grave mission in the midst of a desperate battle, one Knight will find her moment. With the fate of her legion and a city hanging in the balance will she be able to seize it? In an age of Heroes how do you rise to the top? You do what no one else can do.

ARK-025 – Dropping the Gauntlet

-Death and Destruction are courteous gods. They often let you know when they’re on their way.

September 10th 5:32am(EST) - 2years 2 months 10days since first contact.

68 degrees. Temperatures had recovered the sudden cold snap earlier in the month. Vlad still won’t admit he anything to do with the snap in first place so he will not admit to fixing it either. Katherine and Ethan worked together to heal him the battle in central park with the angel. Theresa Windring has only recently learned of Wraith’s assault on castle Blackblade. She is still weighing the possibility of using him to get her son’s bear. Jack and Olga are attempting to mitigate the damage caused by that mission.

Trails of sweat trickled down the hard planes of Vlad body and matted his hair. He was relaxed, but taught, ready to move. A little shorter than average the lines of his body were in perfect proportion. Not built for bulk he had the long hard muscles of a skater or fencer. Kat always said he was built to give out punishment fast and hard not stand there and take it. His dark brown eyes were relaxed. This was an old routine for him. Something he would have done at home if Ethan were not worried about his injuries from the angel. They tended to fester. In his hands danced a Hydra Spear. One of the twelve weapons every knight was expected to master in his or her lifetime. Its black haft angled downward past his face, with the butt end behind his head. The single edged black saber spearhead was stone still a millimeter off the ground. He was stuck mid-swing while his audience changed to a new playlist.

When her shift was over Kat liked to come down to Ethan’s original training room and watch him work out. It probably had something to do with his habit of training in his underwear. He already had to replace everything he wore hunting more than once. If he had to do it every time he practiced as well there would be no end to it. He would have gone without underwear too. But besides having his personal lace out when was swinging blades being tactically unsound, Kat stared and Ethan’s complained. It made the whole thing prohibitively annoying.

A little taller than himself, Kat wore a elegant dark green dress to match her eyes and set off her straight golden hair as she sat on the dirty floor. Her tongue was caught between her teeth in an old gesture as she concentrated unduly one picking the next song.

Ethan’s training ground was about the same as the one he’d built for himself, just smaller. A fifteen foot disk suspend twelve feet above the floor of the chamber. Unsupported stairs rose up from the floor in a spiral the same diameter as the ring, all the way up to the exit twenty feet above where he stood. Small orbs circled the edges of the room clockwise. They lit the floor below, which was covered in tables full of books, and artifacts and half completed experiments. Racks of weapons cluttered the space between the tables. The main difference was the raised edge that ran all the way around the ring. It marked the boundary of the heavy duty shield that protected spectators from the screw-ups of untrained wizards.

When he was still actively training the Knight, Ethan would stand behind the shields and instruct. Vlad had fond memories of those times.

Remember the Name, started and Vlad began to move again. The spear blade flashed upward, bisecting an invisible enemy. Man and spear both, whirled faster and faster. The black haft a blur of shadow as the Knight spun it around, deflecting blows from imaginary opponents. An army of Demons, Knight Hunters and Angels surrounded him. He danced among them, a flash of steel and flesh. Where he danced enemies died.

He slashed to the left and a saber spearhead cut a Hunter from shoulder to hip. Blood fountained Kill Bill style as he fell back. Stepping back to gain room he thrust backward, burring a triangular spearhead in the face of a Demon. Ash exploded from the wound as the barbed head tore its way out. Smoothly he changed his grip and swung the spear around impaling an angel on the wicked tines of a trident. Three fatal wounds in three seconds without becoming Wraith and tapping into his powers as a Knight. It needed to be faster.

From one stance to another, from one fight to the next, he moved as fluidly as a breath of air. Never still, never in one place too long. As he moved the spear moved with him, a whirling line of death. At the end of that line the spearhead flowed like black quicksilver from shape to shape. Whatever he needed it to be, it became. Whichever end he needed it to erupt from it erupted from. The Hydra Spear, the thousand headed monster.

Two years working with it, and he was finally starting to understand the power of this weapon. The spear demanded conviction. He had to choose the exact right tool for the exact right job. If he did not believe his choice was right the spearhead would lose its shape. Two years and he was starting to understand the kind of master such a weapon might create.

Imaginary enemies fell all around him when he felt them. Three sudden shifts is the fabric of the world. A sensation like putting your hand into a stream as it rushed to a whirlpool. These shifts were what a wizard felt when he was in proximity to another of his kind, power drawing him in closer. One he recognized as Ethan, the only other person who should know of this room. The other two had never come here before.

Instantly Vlad stopped practicing and changed from a roundhouse sweep to a guard stance with the spear leveled before him. The lights around the room dimmed to tiny and distant stars. His mind slipped into the Knight state and he became Wraith. He faced the stairs leading from the only entrance to this pocket dimension. Recognizing someone by power signature was like recognizing someone by sight for wizards. But seeing Jack and Olga at the top of the stairs did not make him release his grip on the Knight state. He had not told them where he got his training and certainly not about Kat and Ethan.

The pair of Knights walked calmly down the unsupported stairs in the dark. Both wore comfortable jeans and tee-shirts under well made coats. Jack's tall, lean form graceful in violet and bronze, night black hair swept away from his face. Olga, pixyish and light in yellow and gray, long blond hair curling loosely down her shoulders. In a wizard city they wouldn’t have been that remarkable. Walking through the streets of New York they probably made every head turn as they passed. Not just because if their odd color choices either. Individually they were attractive, all wizards were to someone raised among humans, together they were gorgeous.

Vlad put up his spear but its head was still in the shape of a wicked halberd. Ethan appeared behind them, displeasure writ all over his face. As tall and dark haired as Jack but with green eyes instead of black and heavier face he walked calmly behind them. More brooding movie star compared to Jack’s pretty boy model. There would be a discussion of this later. Kat’s face was not as transparent but he could tell she was itching with curiosity. Green eyes the same shade as Ethan’s followed trio down the stairs, turning all the way around as she went.

Nearly naked the Knight faced them at the bottom of the stairs like they were the ones sans clothes. Never let the enemy see you sweat as the cliché went.

Power crackled as the three Knights faced off. Like whirlpools in close proximity, the air seemed to churn between them. The tension lasted only moments before the two new comers released their hold on the Knight state and the Reigh. After a moment Vlad did so as well. Better not to make a serious move until he knew more.

How did you find this place? And why they had chosen to reveal that they knew? More importantly could someone else pull the same trick?

Olga spoke for the two.

We knew you had some connection to this city. This embassy is the only permanent wizard presence on the continent. An undocumented hybrid would have to be taught about his powers and about the empire somewhere. The current ambassador is a former Master Instructor whose son was a Knight. We thought it likely you would have a relationship of some kind with the embassy. We surveilled it for months before we were sure that you use it as a base of operations.

This is not a base of operations. Vlad answered her. If he’d successfully lead the hunters off the trail, no one else would believe he had a connection to New York. If he’d been successful. As a precaution he’s been coming in and out of the shop under cloak since the night of his first kill. What are the odds someone else can follow the same trail of breadcrumbs?

Bread- Jack began then thought better of it. Not likely, the hunters did not list this place among their search lists. The Hunter’s follow-up in this city was cursory. We looked deeper because we knew of your deception. Lord Ethan’s family is above reproach.

Then you should be right at home. Vlad answered dryly. A year on and the two men had a sense of familiarity but they still sniped at each other now and again. The Wraith’s assault on Castle Blackblade had helped with that even if it hadn’t helped anything else. Why have you kept knowing about this place to yourselves? Coming here would have been easier than trying to meet on the fly the way we usually do. It’s legal for you to come here with Ethan’s permission.

True, but we didn’t wish to draw any scrutiny here by filing a request for a visitor’s pass. We may be fine to go out in public but there are always eyes. Olga answered this time. It was true, Gaidan Blackblade did not approve of his son associating with the enemy. We decided not to bring it up unless you did. When we come here it is always through unregistered and shielded vortexes. We port in well away from the embassy. It’s your secret to keep and we will abide by that.

And yet your sense of discretion didn’t stop you from surveilling me. Vlad could feel the acid on his tongue.

You have plenty of personal information on us. Why should we not have personal information about you? Jack answered ever so that formal tone of his.

Because I don’t live with the enemy. Vlad looked at him levelly.

Point taken. Olga said Jack could answer and the two of them could take off. Nonchalantly she brushed off her jacket and lifted her shirt over her head. She continued when her head was no longer covered. In the future we will respect your privacy. But you should consider telling us these things yourself. We are your partners after all.

I’ve told you before, we’re not partners. We have a mutually beneficial relationship, that’s all. Not that I’m complaining, but why are you taking off your clothes. Vlad kept one eye on the others and one on Olga’s ever more exposed flesh as she stepped out of her shoes and undid her belt buckle. There were times when the self-discipline a Knight needed just to keep his sanity, really came in handy. It was the only thing keeping his personal lance down at the moment. If this is your idea of an apology for following me, I’ll tell you right now…it’ll work.

You don’t wear clothes while practicing in order to spare them from the effects of your warp field. Why would you assume that I take less care with my own belongings? She hooked thumbs in the waistband of her pants and began to slide them down her legs.

Because that’s what I generally imagine of you noble types. Yet, still I question, why are you taking off your clothes? Vlad let a hint of steel filter into his voice. Do you expect you have to use your warp.

If I’m going to spar with you, then yes. I expect I’ll need it. She stepped out of her pants and began walking around to the other end of the disk suspended in black. Vlad was hoping she would keep disrobing, but she stopped at a pair of black satin boyshorts and a bra. The bra was a surprise. Wizard women only wore them when they expected exercise. Perhaps it was just a matter of taste on