Enemy

You’ve met one half the Twisted in the demons, now it’s time to meet the other half. It’s time for Vlad to face the kind of monster that scares even Wizards. His word will be kept, angels will die and white ash rain from the sky.

Vlad was a killer by fifteen, a warrior by sixteen, a revolutionary by seventeen and a legend by eighteen. He won't live to be nineteen. These are first steps Vlad will take to define his destiny. He will be born in darkness and baptized in blood. He will choose a name and standard. He will spit at the feet of god and slay his angels.

A Rising Knight: Vol1, Issue 9 – Declaration is the ninth issue from the first volume of an anthology short story series chronicling the journey of a half wizard living in New York. The first volume covers the start of the three journeys he will take to becoming the most hunted wizard in history.

Excerpt

His opponent’s first strike against numbed his whole arm. Suddenly nerveless fingers almost dropped his sword. The second nearly pulled his arm from its socket. The third shattered the blade as if it were glass. A piece caught him in the face and laid open a gash in his cheek down to the bone. Blood, hot and wet, splashed down the left side of his face as he stepped back…just ahead of a slash to his throat. Wraith didn’t stop retreating till ten feet of Central Park path separated him from his enemy. It didn’t follow; it stood its ground and measured him with that cold-as-week-old-death stare.

Once, he’d said he’d like to fight an angel. Now he knew why Ethan had called him an idiot.

Wraith had been spending a frigid September night hunting in the east seventies when he’d felt it. Cold hate. No wizard could mistake that feeling. The one monster that haunted the nightmares of wizard children even more often Knights. Angel.

There was no question as to what to do. No Knight, no wizard, could deny that call to battle. Racial hatred boiled in his blood. Vlad masked his presence, headed west and entered the park a little south of the Met.