Free Infamous Reign by Steve McHugh

For some reason Merlin had neglected to hide the boys when they were born, maybe feeling that enough time had passed, or waiting to see what happened. Either way, Avalon was too slow and one of them had been crowned.
    “I’m going to take them away from here,” I told Mordred. “I’d prefer to go through you to get to them.”
    Mordred smiled. “A re-match already.”
    “Where’s Ivy?” I demanded.
    “The psychic girl?” He placed a finger to his temple. “You know, I often forget where I put her. She’s quite easy to misplace.”
    “You will tell me everything I need to know,” I promised.
    “We’ll see, ‘old friend’.”
    I threw a plume of fire at Mordred, who responded by creating another shield of air and diverting the flame into the sea beneath us.
    “Do you really think that magic is going to beat me?”
    “Your choice,” I said and sprinted forward.
    He launched a kick where he thought my head would be, but I’d already stepped aside, grabbing his trousers with one hand and dragging him off balance, punching him in the jaw as he fell.
    Mordred’s head snapped aside, but he regained his balance more quickly than I’d expected and caught me in the knee with his foot. All my weight crashed down on a no longer usable limb, and I dropped to the wooden pier, landing on my knees with a crack. Mordred continued the attack, slamming his foot into the side of my head, knocking me down and then stamping on my ribs.
    I rolled aside, catching a stinging blow to my elbow and kicked out at Mordred’s knee, but he stepped back, putting distance between us.
    I got back to my feet, blood dripping slowly from my nose. “You need to try harder,” I said.
    “You’re the one bleeding,” Mordred pointed out. He quickly stepped forward and feinted with a kick, before trying to catch me in the head with a vicious elbow. Fortunately I saw it coming and blocked it, slamming my own elbow into his nose, which crunched from the force of the blow.
    Mordred staggered back slightly, before snapping forward, his hand covered in dark glyphs as his blood magic activated. He tried to touch me, but I stepped back and drove the arrow I’d been holding into his forearm, causing his concentration to vanish, along with the blood magic he was wielding.
    I kicked Mordred in the chest as hard as I could, sending him flailing back across the pier. He tried to scramble away, but I wrapped tendrils of air around his legs and pulled back with everything I had. Mordred flew across the pier, colliding with one of the docked boats, where I held him in place, hardening the air wrapped around him, as I stalked closer.
    “That silver is making it difficult to use your magic,” I said. “You should practice more with normal magic and less with your blood magic.”
    He reached over to the arrow and wrapped his fingers around it as I reached him. “Are you going to pull it out?” I asked. “Here let me help.”
    I tore the arrow from his forearm and then plunged it into the side of his knee, making him scream.
    “Where’s Ivy?” I asked. “You escaped with her in France, it won’t happen again.”
    “Fuck you, Nathaniel. Fuck you and Avalon and Merlin and anyone else who thinks they can tell me what to do.”
    I was about to say something when a huge crash came from the ocean, and I turned to see a massive creature emerge from the depths near the now visible ship. Its appearance was close to that of a giant reptile. It was sixty or seventy feet long with a massive head and a mouth that could easily swallow a man whole. Its roar reverberated as if I were standing next to it, which, I was certain, would have been the worst place on earth to be. A massive tail whipped across the ocean causing huge waves and it swiped the air with its long arms, each one tipped with a massive claw half as tall as a man. It roared once again and smashed its arm down on the bow of the ship.
    “Leviathan,” I whispered and heard the shock in my voice. I