Mercenary of empyrea an.., p.1
Mercenary of Empyrea : An Isekai Barbarian Fantasy Adventure, page 1
part #2 of Empyrean Chronicles Series
Mercenary of Empyrea
Empyrean Chronicles: Book 1
An Isekai Barbarian Fantasy Adventure
An entry in the Dukes of Harem BarbarianFest
Copyright 2022 by Michael Dalton. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. References to real people, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older.
Edited by Kate Nascimento
kneditorial.com
Cover illustration by KayaV
https://linktr.ee/kayav
Cover design by Lorelei Basaj
Interior art by Midjourney AI
Interior art editing by Dutch Palmer
Follow Michael at michaeldaltonbooks.com and on Twitter at @MikeDaltonBooks.
I don’t know who I am. I only know what I need to be.
I awoke in a tomb. I had nothing but a big sword and uncertain memories from uncertain lives.
I was a great warrior who wandered this land before being killed by an ageless tyrant wizard-king. I was a warrior of a very different sort, who lived in a city of steel and glass.
In this life, I’m more than I was – stronger, more powerful, more dangerous. But that wizard-king still lives, and he’s still hunting me.
All I have is my sword and my skills. So I’ll gather the gold, weapons, and women I need, and if that wizard gets in my way again . . . our next meeting will be very different from the last.
Mercenary of Empyrea is an isekai fantasy adventure in the theme of classic barbarian pulp fiction, and contains graphic violence and unconventional relationships.
Author’s Note

The interior illustrations in this book were created using Midjourney and NovelAI, with some help from my art editor Dutch Palmer. I’m including them here as a sort of experiment to see if I can enhance my books without breaking the bank. I welcome thoughts about this idea from readers.
Chapter 1

I woke up.
But . . . from what? And from where?
It was dark.
So dark that opening my eyes changed nothing. It was a dark far beyond the night sky. This was the dark of a cavern a thousand feet below the earth. A pitch black where light was nothing but a memory, a forlorn fantasy never to return.
And when I tried to move, I understood why.
I was confined in a very small space, one barely large enough to hold my body. I lay flat on a cold, hard surface. It felt like worked stone, smooth and finished. As I moved my hands, I felt traces of sand under and around me. To either side, less than a foot in either direction, was more stone. When I tried to lift my arms, my hands hit a wall of stone above me.
A word arose in my mind.
Coffin.
A stone coffin. That was what it felt like. I explored the dimensions of my lightless confinement for a few moments. I lay in an empty space that might have been seven feet long, two feet high, and three wide.
But as I gathered this information in my head, something else occurred to me. How did I even know any of this? How did I know the words to describe this thing?
How had I gotten here? Where had I been before this?
Who was I?
Another word came to me.
Cayden.
That was a name. I knew that much, but the name had no context. Who, exactly, was Cayden?
Then another name rose out of my mind.
Khazun.
That name felt familiar as well, though familiar in a different way. A memory.
Except . . . I had no memories. The very fact that I knew I was lying on a slab of stone seemed disconnected from anything. How did I even understand the concept of stone?
Who was Khazun? Was he who I was?
Khazun was not Cayden, yet I felt a connection to the name just the same.
I explored the dark space I lay in, and I realized that I wasn’t the only thing in here. My right arm bumped into something long and cold lying beside me. I realized after a moment that it was a thing of metal, not stone. The end of it, the part against my arm, was cylindrical, but beyond that part, it grew wider, then narrower, long and flat. I felt a sharp edge. Two edges.
I took the cylindrical portion in my hand. It felt familiar as well. Then I finally realized what it was.
A sword.
My sword, a part of me said.
But.
Had Cayden even owned a sword? That didn’t feel right, and the moment I considered the idea, I knew it was wrong.
It was not Cayden’s sword.
It was Khazun’s.
Why was it here with me?
Yet whoever it belonged to, it was of little use to me at the moment.
I felt around the space further, trying to build a mental picture of my surroundings, even if I couldn’t see anything.
There were other things here with me. I was dressed in something, though the fabric felt loose and rotten. Some kind of thick material was around my chest, but when I tried to examine it, to lift it away from me to get some kind of idea of what it was, it came apart in my fingers.
I felt something else around my waist, a sort of belt. On the other side from the sword was another blade, though much shorter. A knife of some sort.
The belt fell apart as I examined it. Whatever clothes I wore were so old and decayed that I might as well have been naked. As I moved around, I felt the fabric on my arms and legs falling apart.
I took a scrap of it in my hand, feeling it slowly. It was coarse, the threads thick enough to roll between my thumb and forefinger, though they turned near to dust as I did so.
The dilemma of my confinement soon rose to the forefront of my consciousness. I could not stay in this space forever. The air seemed to be growing stale already. I might well suffocate long before hunger and thirst became an issue.
I felt around myself again, seeking some kind of exit. All I felt was stone. Below me and around me, it was smooth and featureless. I probed at the corners, finding nothing. I reached up, seeking some kind of opening or leverage. I found nothing.
For a few moments, I began to panic, but something in me stifled the reaction as fiercely as it could. Cayden might panic, but Khazun would not give up so easily.
The dichotomy in my mind stilled that momentary flash of fear. Where had that flash of anger come from?
Was I Khazun, not Cayden?
The other half of me rebelled against that idea. I didn’t know who or what Cayden was, but he was a part of me as well. Was I both of them?
Right now, though, Cayden had no idea what to do here. Khazun did.
I reached up, feeling around the upper corners of the space. Gradually, I realized there was a joint there, one that was not present around the base and corners.
If I was lying in a coffin, did it have a lid?
Hope flared inside my chest. I braced my hands against the stone above and pushed. But just as quickly as it had arisen, that hope began to fade. The lid, if indeed it was a lid, moved not a hair.
I forced myself to remain calm. I focused on Khazun, not Cayden. I slid my arms around my chest, feeling myself. This body felt strange and familiar at the same time, but I also realized something else.
It was a powerful body, one possessed of taut, hard-earned muscle. My arms felt like the roots of a tall tree.
I braced myself again. I needed more leverage. I pulled my legs up, trying to wedge my knees against the lid as well. I took a deep breath, trying to gather all my strength.
Then I pushed.
For a moment, nothing happened. I let out a bellow of rage, refusing to be trapped within this tomb, pushing as hard as I possibly could.
And the lid shifted.
It moved only a tiny fraction of its dimensions, less than the width of a finger. But that movement told me there was a way out of here.
I gathered myself up again and shoved. Adrenaline roared through my body. The knowledge that I had a way out was enough to sustain me.
The lid shifted again.
And I pushed once more, screaming at the slab of stone that kept me trapped in this little space. Little by little, inch by inch, I shifted the lid to the side.
All at once, I felt a draft of air against my face. I reached up, feeling a gap around the lid. I’d shifted it far enough to open a space I could slip my fingers through.
I shoved again, pushing the lid to the side. My arms were starting to ache from the exertion, and I had to pause for a moment to catch my breath. Then I pushed hard against the edge, feeling the lid start to lift. That little elevation was enough to get my knees up fully, to wedge them under it.
With a roar of effort, I shoved the lid upward with my arms and legs. I felt it start to tip to one side, and the prospect of imminent freedom gave me a renewed burst of energy.
The lid slid away, grinding loudly against the top of the s tone coffin. Then it fell to the side, falling with a thunderous boom-boom-boom as it tumbled over and hit some surface outside the coffin, before finally settling on the ground.
I sat up, gasping for breath. The air was cold and dry, and I sucked it into my lungs, trying to clear the stale burn that had built up while I was confined.
I was in some kind of cave. There was a small amount of light, but the details were difficult to make out. The area around me was dimly lit from above through a narrow gap in the ceiling.
I sat inside a stone sarcophagus, which lay on a broad platform in the center of the cave. Beside me was the lid, which had broken into several pieces when it fell off.
I stood up slowly. What was left of the clothes I’d been wearing inside the sarcophagus slid off me. The thing on my chest was a sort of leather breastplate, but it fell to the ground as I stood, the straps long since rotted away. The belt parted, falling down around my legs. I’d had sandals on my feet, but these fell apart as well.
The mere act of standing up had left me completely naked. How long had I been inside here?
I stepped out of the sarcophagus. Some instinct made me pick up the sword. It was a big, heavy blade, about four feet long and two inches wide at the base, with a well-worn grip that could be used by one hand or two. It felt familiar in my hand.
This was Khazun’s sword. I felt that now. This was not a thing from Cayden’s existence, whatever it had been.
I looked down at myself. I was tall, lean, and tightly muscled. Memories of both bodies floated up, and I realized that this body was neither Cayden’s nor Khazun’s. Khazun had been shorter and broader. Cayden had been fit and agile, but he had not been quite this muscular.
I bounced on my toes a few times, then stepped side to side. I was strong, but this was not a body that would be lifting fallen trees. Rather, it was one that could strike like a serpent, fast and agile, killing and moving away before its foe knew what had happened.
My hands and feet were heavily callused, and the calluses on my hands fit neatly around the sword. The grip was not the only thing that was well-worn.
I tossed the sword from one hand to the other. Neither hand felt dominant. I swung it around me, the motions feeling natural and effortless. This was a fine blade, expertly forged and precisely balanced despite its size and weight, and one that had seen many years of service.
The knife was of similar make, with a broad blade that was about a foot long. It too bore signs of heavy use as well, though the edge was still as keen as the sword’s. It felt good in my hand.
Yet as familiar as these motions were, I remembered nothing of their provenance. I might have Khazun’s blades, but I had almost none of his memories.
I set the sword down for a moment and pieced together enough remnants of clothing to make a sort of loincloth. It would have to do for now.
Then I took a closer look at the cave.
On the platform around the sarcophagus was an array of broken pottery and rotten wicker chests, all of them overturned and scattered. I’d thought at first the damage was the result of the lid falling off, but it was the same thing on either side. The collection of containers bore the distinct impression of having been thoroughly ransacked.
As I looked around, I saw footsteps everywhere. Someone, likely many someones, had been in here. In addition to the footsteps, I noticed scrapes and gouges on the sarcophagus, as if someone had tried and failed to lift the lid.
Gradually it dawned on me what must have happened here.
If this was Khazun’s tomb – however I had ended up inside it - grave robbers had been here after he was laid to rest. Whatever had been in these pots and chests was long gone.
That made me wonder why Khazun had been buried with grave goods valuable enough to attract tomb raiders. Who had he been? Who had buried him here?
But there were no answers. The robbers were gone, as were the valuables, and nothing was left beyond the sword and the knife.
That left the question of whether there was a way out. If robbers had gotten in, where had they gone?
I walked around the perimeter of the cave. It was not large. It ended not far behind the sarcophagus in a solid wall of stone. I followed the wall around until I reached an area of fallen rock. Beyond that, the cave circled around again to the back of the platform.
The rockfall had closed off the exit.
I began to dig, shoving the sand and rocks to the side in hopes of clearing the passage. In a few minutes, I excavated the outline of a tunnel leaving the cave. Unfortunately, beyond a foot or two, it was completely blocked by a cave-in, and there was no telling how far it went.
Undeterred, I kept digging until l hit a huge mass of rock. I dug as best I could, but it quickly became clear there was no way around it. The tunnel was blocked by a pile of enormous boulders I could never hope to move.
I stepped back from the cave-in and looked up. The gap in the ceiling where the light was shining in might have been ten or twelve feet above. Could I get up there?
The cave walls were not completely smooth, but they angled inward as they rose toward the ceiling. I tried to climb up, but I lost my grip well before getting close to the opening.
I stared up again. It wasn’t that far, and there was a ledge underneath the gap. With something to stand on, I might be able to jump high enough.
But what could I use?
I searched the cave again. I didn’t find anything useful until I looked along the back of the cave. There, mostly buried in the sand, were two long wooden beams.
I looked back at the sarcophagus. There was a lip around the base of it.
I lifted one of the beams and held it alongside the lip. The beams were long and thick enough that they could have been used to carry the sarcophagus in here. If so, the grave robbers had apparently missed them, focused as they were on the other grave goods.
The beams were old and dried out, and the wood on the surface was starting to decay, but they were still solid. I carried one of them over to the cave floor under the gap and held it up.
It was just short enough not to reach the ceiling when I set it on the floor. I tried wedging it into the gap, but while it held, I was concerned that it would break if I tried to climb up that way, and if it did, my one chance of getting out might be lost.
What to do?
There was no way to lean two beams against each other and have them remain upright on their own. I considered setting them into a pair of holes in the sandy floor of the cave, but when I began to dig, I hit stone only a few inches down.
I looked back at the exit. The one thing I had to work with here was a lot of rocks.
Bit by bit, I piled every rock and piece of stone I could gather around the two beams. I used the rocks from the cave-in that were small enough to move, as well as the broken pieces of the sarcophagus lid. I leaned the beams together to make a rough ladder. When I’d placed every rock I could lift into a foundation around the two pieces of timber, I climbed up the pile and considered how to approach this.
