Swords & Heroes Story #27

Another Name for Darkness by Jason M Waltz

Jul 10, 2025

As mentioned last week, this is a special two-fer / double whammy treat from Jason Waltz - back to back stories featuring his new anti-hero, Randuul, a warrior assassin, the last of his kind. These two tales aren’t parts one and two of a whole, just two adventures in an ongoing new series by Waltz. But it’s probably best to read last week’s offering, “An Insufficiency of Light,” before jumping into this one! Fun expriment, like what I did with Mike Chinn’s two stories in Swords & Heroes Quarterly (Q1 2025) and what I’ll do with David Riley’s two tales in Swords & Heroes Quarterly (Q2 2025) later this summer (I’m running behind!). At any rate, here’s some top notch sword & sorcery for your reading pleasure today! + Ed.

Another Name for Darkness by Jason M Waltz

Randuul struggled to regain his senses. Normally his accelerated adrenaline allowed him to spring fully aware without pause, even from the deepest sleep or rare concussion. Now he felt…sluggish. It was a feeling he had never experienced. Not only was he slow to awake, his comprehension of his surroundings and current predicament took time to coalesce. Randuul usually found security in the dark; he did not enjoy this sensation of being bound by the dark.

For some moments he felt as if his mother had just been calling him from sleep. Perhaps, if he simply lingered awhile longer the feeling and her calls would dwindle away.

But that wasn’t possible… His mother had died a long time ago.

He tried flexing his muscles and realized he could not feel his hands. But he could feel a deep strain aching across his shoulders and neck.

Bewilderedly, he struggled to lift his chin from his chest, finally forcing his head backward between his biceps. Head resting on his shoulders, he stared blearily up at his arms, following them higher to find his crossed wrists bound and chained. His gaze continued up the chains to lose them in the darkness of the vaulted stone room that rose above him.

“Ah, you’re coming ’round,” a voice echoed just beyond sight.

So he was a prisoner. He was not concerned; he knew how to escape such bindings. Randuul pulled himself upward, striving to bring his legs up and over his body. Only his legs did not cooperate. In fact, now that he thought carefully about it, they weren’t moving at all. Something pulled against them.

Still lacking the ability to turn his head or even hold it upright, Randuul again forced it forward until it lodged between his arms and allowed him to peer down at his feet. Through blurry eyesight he could see more chains binding his ankles to a ring set in the floor. A wash of anxiety swept over him once he understood he could not freely move.

He snorted a laugh at himself. While self-mockery did not free him, it did send a wave of clarity through his mind. Rapidly he blinked the clouds from his eyes, trying desperately to do the same to those in his head. His vision showed him sunlight on the opposite wall, and he saw a chair between he and it. The chair was occupied. He vaguely remembered a darkened bedroom, then—

Suddenly his mother was there in his mind. Though dead, they conversed almost nightly.

“Randuul. You are not yourself yet. Be careful. They want something from you.”

“Yesssss,” he lisped, his words sticking to his parched tongue. “Moth-er.”

He tried to lick his teeth and couldn’t feel either tongue or teeth. He meant to bite down on his tongue or inner cheek to try and get his saliva flowing again, but suddenly strong fingers grabbed his mouth and would not let it close.

“Oh, no you don’t, Randuul! We know all about your blood now. If you want to be able to eat and talk, you won’t try that again.”

Randuul saw the horse’s bit and bridle held before his face and understood.

“Good. Smart man. Who were you talking to just now?”

“D-d-dre-eam,” he stuttered. “Ma-Moth-er.” This time his tongue wiggled when he tried to lick his lips. “Wh-wha-what, doo-di-id you-ou do to-to to-me?” he ground out.

He felt something pulled from his side. Immediately he felt increased clarity and understanding. He gazed at the mini-crossbolt dangling before his eyes.

“These are coated with a coagulant that slows your blood flow. Enough of them stuck in you and your blood begins to solidify. And you definitely have enough of them stuck in you. And yes, these are your own bolts.”

Randuul glared.

“You’ve been here two weeks now. There is no use in fighting, we’ve taken all the blood samples we want. Yet we know your obstinance and your deadliness. So each day we have taken a single crossbolt out of your body, waiting for you to awaken. Two today now. This was the twelfth one I have removed.” The speaker dropped the bolt to the floor and turned to the chair. Just before sitting he looked over his shoulder at Randuul. “Don’t make me put them back.” The man settled into the chair and watched Randuul’s recovery.

Something about the man’s golden eyes bothered Randuul, but he could not place the reason yet. He could feel his toes and fingers again, however. He strove to hide his gratefulness that they no longer felt imprisoned, though perhaps it was not for the best, as the pain of returning life was tremendous.

Then he realized that same pain accelerated his recovery. He recognized a sensation similar to awaking from a deep sleep. He watched his mother’s image fade along with the invading darkness under the onslaught of his renewing alertness. He clearly perceived the concern in her eyes even as she vanished into his lucidity.

He cocked his head and studied his surroundings. He was not quite up to his normal capabilities, but he could feel his blood flowing and fighting off the somnolence afflicting it. Even with who knew how many…wait…he could feel them. Now it was simply a matter of separating their sensations…yes, there. Six more bolts perforated his body; one in each limb, one in his neck, and one…one in his scrotum.

He looked at his interrogator. “Did you really have to stick one there?”

Randuul let his satisfaction at the man’s startled reaction show. Now they both knew what the other was capable of or at least a hint of it. His host quickly smoothed his face of any reaction, but Randuul’s heightened senses could still identify signs of worry. Primary were the wrinkles at the corners of those golden eyes, but Randuul’s ears could also pick up the increased beat of the man’s pulse. Something odd about those eyes, they seemed to bulge from the man’s face like those of a frog.

“So—why am I still alive?”

“We have what we want, and we’re not the half the killer you are.” He would have continued but Randuul interrupted the rehearsed speech.

“No. Not what I asked. What do you want?”

“Well…” The man paused, then looked up.

Randuul followed his glance and found the well-disguised balcony high in the darkness. Without the gifts of his bloodline, he doubted he would have found the clever aperture let alone seen the dark shape seated within. He knew he would definitely not have caught the brief glimpse of the familiar profile with pale gold eyes that leaned forward to nod at his captor.

Randuul rubbed his raw wrists.

“Thank you,” he muttered, though his grimace revealed he knew he was nowhere closer to freedom. They had agreed to unshackle his hands and allow him to lower his arms. He plucked the crossbolts from his arms and neck as soon as his hands were free. Now they tingled in agony as the blood returned to flowing properly through them.

No longer suspended within the tower, he sat uncomfortably upon its stone floor. His feet were still chained to a ring in that floor, and another large chain securely locked to a metal belt strapped about his midsection led to the wall across the room behind him. Gingerly he probed the bolt between his legs. There was nothing more to it: he had to pull it free.

He closed his eyes and grunted as he jerked it out. Blood flowed, but his accelerated healing quickly staunched it even as his flesh reknit. In moments he simply had another scar on his already well-marked body, though the pain hadn’t lessened. It never did. Quickly closing wounds kept him from bleeding out, but it never diminished the hurting.

“Now what,” he growled. Numerous pains now joined the hunger he felt gnawing at him to add to his irritation at being unable to reach the two remaining doctored bolts in his calves. Accelerated adrenaline required a large intake of food, and he doubted his captors had fed him much of anything. He allowed his head to fall back and closed his eyes, replaying the vision of his mother’s warning.

He awoke to see a figure with pale gold eyes silhouetted in moonlight.

The full, normal advantages of his bloodline still evaded him. He was grateful for his clearer vision, even if darkness still lingered along the edges of his mind. He tried to roll away from the intruder to grab his sword and relearned of his chains. Even as he shook them in frustration the flat of a blade suddenly lay against his cheek. He caught the hiss of his mother’s whispered warning in his mind too late. “Randuul!”

“Lot of good, that,” he grunted as he froze and lifted his gaze upward. Another dark figure with golden orbs stood above him. It raised its non-sword hand and waggled its fingers in greeting.

“Hello, Randuul.”

He groaned. “What do you Crawes want?”

“We watched you watch.”

So they were the eyes he had felt in the night. In many nights.

“We know you’re deadly, but it’s always so much easier when the battlefield is in your favor, isn’t it?”

He felt the mockery he could hear in the words. The Crawes were an old, clandestine sect who did all sorts of things for the highest bidders. Similar to what he did. Their Educators, wearing their notorious golden-lensed goggles, roamed the world pursuing mysteries and procuring oddities. They had long followed him. He knew it was his blood that intrigued them. As the last of his race, his was all they could ever hope to sample. He had eluded, even occasionally killed, a few, but they always seemed to find him again, never letting more than a few months pass between their appearances. Until now, they had kept their distance.

These were not finished with their questions. “Why do you watch? When you could stop so much pain and suffering? Is it because you enjoy watching? Being the watcher from the darkness? We know how that feels.”

“What. Do. You. Want?” he growled. He ran options through his mind. He did not have many.

A sigh from both figures. His ears picked up an echo. Make that three. At least. They meant business this time. There would be pain.

“Your blood, Randuul. A sample would have sufficed, we didn’t mind. But you made it difficult. Too difficult. For some reason the masters appreciate what you do and would rather you contin—”

That was all he needed to hear. They weren’t here to kill him. Randuul flung himself backward and away from the sword. Normally he was good at improvising. Normally he didn’t have multiple chains encumbering his limbs.

They put a fast stop to any creativeness. They brought on a fast start to feeling paralyzed. Sudden pain erupted in his shoulder and then again in his chest. Bolts from his own mini-crossbow throbbed, no doubt covered in that damning blood clotter. Giggles sounded around him as more bolts thudded into his body.

Randuul roared in rage. Unconsciousness beckoned even as he fought against his physical restraints and the swiftly approaching blackness. The drowsing dark reached toward him and called his name and he jerked away, horrified. The dark had been his friend for a long time. Why did it betray him now? Then the shape of an old, familiar face grew in the blackness and Randuul turned to run. He never saw the wall he slammed his forehead against. He fell like a poleaxed bull.

Just before blackness consumed him, Randuul saw his mother’s stretching hands and ran toward them. “Peace,” she murmured. A mournful smile spread across her face.

“Peace,” he muttered back.

“Is just another name for darkness,” they said in unison.

Again, Randuul awoke slowly. Abruptly he thrashed against the overwhelming darkness. Raw panic drove him upright and to wildly seeking a foe or freedom. Whichever didn’t matter, whichever came first, he would gladly embrace. The cold stone abrading his knees calmed him.

Again, he rubbed raw wrists, this time across his face clearing the blackness from his eyes and memories. His mother…

He sprang to his feet, no residue of sluggishness or the delay of confusion slowing his reactions. Instantly, he knew he was naked but also unchained. Immediately after, he knew he was alone.

He stood in the same tower he had first awoken within. No chains surrounded him; no chair sat before him. On the floor lay his possessions: his clothing, supplies, and weapons. Arranged in a neat row behind them were his twenty-one crossbow bolts. Twenty of them gleamed in the morning sunlight filtering through the high windows. He could see from where he stood the last one was clotted with a dark grume. Beside it lay a scroll bound with a black ribbon.

Randuul’s mother rose unbidden behind his eyes, her voice within his ears. “My Randuul. You are not yet yourself. Beware—”

“Hush, Mother,” Randuul interrupted. “I am myself. And I know myself.”

“They took something from you.”

“Yes, our blood.”

“No. Not just that. You are…afraid.”

“I do not fear,” he retorted, even as he looked at the marks of the chains around his wrists and relived a moment of immobilization. He viciously stamped out the remembrance, sending his mother running into his memory’s shadows. Angrily, he dressed and belted on his sword and knives and the mini-crossbow. Tying the pouch of bolts at his hip and snatching up the scroll unread, Randuul strode through the tower door.

No one stopped him. No one met him as he stalked through the corridors. Nothing but silence greeted him within the fortress walls. It was abandoned. He was abandoned. Even his mother had not returned.

Finally, he came to the last threshold. A pair of goggles hung suspended from a dagger thrust into the wooden door. Pinned by the double-edged blade was a piece of parchment with a single command: Read it!

Randuul ripped the dagger from the door. Its pommel was worked in the visage of a Crawe Educator, goggles included. He glanced at the leather goggles still dangling from the blade and saw that its sockets were vacant, the golden lenses missing. The message was not subtle. They knew his secret; he did not know theirs. And they were watching still.

Scroll in hand, he pulled the citadel door open and stared into an empty courtyard surrounded by a crumbling wall. A dry lakebed extended into the distance, an empty village between it and him.

He glanced about, then up at the sun. It was morning, and it hung to his right; he faced north. He dropped the worthless goggles in the doorway and ground them beneath his heel. With a vicious grin, he slipped the dagger into his belt. A fine weapon, and he knew exactly where he would place it when he had the opportunity.

He spat and began to run.

Randuul came from a people with extremely accelerated adrenaline production. Their bodies remained at peak performance every moment. Though no less mortal than other men, his reactions, senses, stamina, and pain tolerance were at the highest levels achievable.

Other unique traits came with his heritage, what others might call magyk. His bloodline provided the almost instantaneous knitting of his flesh after any wound. More dangerous to his foes, when entered into their bloodstream, his blood delivered an overdose of adrenaline fatal to over-worked hearts.

Which is why Randuul often coated the edges of his weapons with his own blood.

He ran through the vacant town and across the former lake. The dust of ages rose behind him, heralding his approach to any who looked. He did not care. Angry, alone, at a loss to where he was, Randuul wanted someone to find him and quickly. As his feet pound out the miles, his mind pound at his memories.

Though she knew she had been murdered, his mother did not know the nature of her horrific death the day after his tenth birthday. He would forever remember the sparks of light that had arced from her eye and the ring on her hand to burn into his own eyes before he collapsed. He thought he had died holding her hand.

When he awoke—hours, days, a week later, he never knew—he could not see, and an immense weight pressed upon him so he could barely move. The taste of blood coated his mouth. Terror crashed over him in a terrible wave and the mouth of dread roared in his head. He discovered his eyes were open and all he saw was pitch blackness. Until Fear assumed a face that sneered from the abyssal night and looked deep into his soul.

Randuul had screamed then, and his mother’s face had filled his mind, overwhelming the leering rictus of Fear. Ever since, she visited him in his dreams.

Suddenly she stood there again, a sad smile on her regal face. “This isn’t your dreams, Randuul,” she said simply. “I am always with you.”

Randuul reached the furthest shore and struck an ancient, cobbled road. His feet pound a hard tattoo against the broken pavement as he relived his resurrection day.

His mother had forced him to remain awake. Forced him to scrabble his fingers until they had shifted enough earth to move his hand. Until his hand had cleared away enough room to bring his arm into the work. She had stood between him and that awful face in the dark, holding her hand in its face, the glint of her ring their only source of light. She had compelled him to claw his way up, up through the dead and the debris and the dirt until his face finally broke the surface of their ignominious grave.

That was also the day Randuul began to hunt men. Starting with the men who had ravaged his village and his….

He sighed. “Hello, Mother.”

“My son,” she greeted him, her long hair blowing in an unseen and unfelt by him wind.

“I am not a savior, Mother. I am an executioner. You know the reason.” He repeated his regular mantra.

“You could be a force for good, though. Your lust for killing is just another name for darkness too.”

He flinched at the word darkness but repeated himself. “You know my reason.”

Her hand reached for him, but he was not willing to listen. He did not save people. He killed people. Often for money…and often not. He regretted none of it. Especially the deaths of his mother’s slayers. Of all those who had killed his people that horrible day and then buried away their deeds. One by one he had finally hunted them all down. But he knew she—and the Crawe Educator—was correct, that he could have averted many tragedies over the years. Thwarted many deaths. Or died trying. He preferred the odds in his favor. He preferred not dying.

“Another name for darkness is also Evil, Mother. And I slay Evil.”

“Death, too, is named darkness, my son,” she whispered sadly. He pretended not to hear, “And the darkest name of all is monster.”

Randuul finally found someone. He ran into the camp of a woodcutting crew who scattered and fled into the woods, frightened of the strange man who suddenly appeared from the wilds. He wanted nothing so much as to smash through them, draw his blades and cut and slice and rend until covered in blood. Yet the smallest bit of his sanity united with his mother and restrained him, chained his bloodlust and brought him common sense in its place.

His body needed sustenance, and he needed directions.

Randuul sat in the dirt and called out. “I am no threat to you.” He raised empty hands high. “I have run from raiders, slavers, and I don’t know where I am.”

Silence.

“Please,” he continued, though now he hung his head and spoke less loudly. “Tell me where I am.” He waited.

Slowly, faces peered from around trees. A few men looked to each other, then hesitantly exited their assumed safety and approached, chopping axes raised defensively before them. One big, bearded fellow said gruffly, “Are you man or deman?”

“Just a man,” Randuul sighed. “A man who is hungry and lost.”

After a pause, the rest of the woodcutters returned, and their foreman spoke again. “We’re cutters from Salzdel, two days wagon ride yonder.” He pointed behind them.

Randuul asked, “And your king?”

“Garmisch, of—”

“Liecht!” Randuul exclaimed. “Of course.” He knew where he was, roughly, for he had collected bounties in Liecht once before. “Thank you,” he said absentmindedly, his thoughts busy on what lie ahead.

“You wish to eat?” the foreman prompted.

“Be kind,” his mother’s voice whispered.

“Ah…yes, yes, anything at all. And if I can sleep here this night…I…I will hunt for you in the morning before I leave.”

“This is good,” said the foreman. “I am Jaque.” He glanced at the sky, then at the others and shrugged. “We eat now.”

Randuul rubbed his raw wrists as he sat alone beneath the small tent-half one of the men had given him. Silence had reigned during much of their meal, but he had been well-fed. The woodcutters returned to their routine, setting night guards and turning in early for their long day on the morrow.

He sat before a small fire, dark thoughts turned inward as his fingers spun the unopened scroll before him. He wanted to throw it on the fire.

Something held him back from doing so.

His mother had not reappeared, but he could feel her concern welling within him. She didn’t want him to unroll it either, but she feared what would happen if he did not. He did not care what happened – or what the Crawes thought would happen – if he did not. He was curious as to why they went to all this trouble to procure his services. And what it was they thought could compel him to serve them now that he was free of their entrapment.

Randuul untied the black ribbon.

He watched a slender fingerbone roll free and fall to the dirt. His gaze fixed upon the silver ring the bone wore, a ring he could never forget. Then he began to read the black words scrawled upon the parchment: We have your mother’s remains…

His mother screamed.

Randuul fell immobile beside his fire.

And the darkness raced toward him, its leering face devouring the light, his light, and slammed him back into the claustrophobia of an abandoned grave.

Another Name for Darkness © 2025 by Jason M Waltz (3800 words). All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and clipart by Gilead, used by permission.

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