"You might want to reconsider when you try to extract the oils from that plant into a potency that will cure your sister," Nazurek warned. "That is if you still choose to give her back a chance at a mortal life. I happen to be an expert on tinctures as you can see. Even Igneious has become quite skilled at making elixirs and potions for our harvests."
Aeile pondered over this. They weren't going to let her go without them, and she couldn't risk failing to prepare the mariheema properly. She still didn't trust them. Maybe she could convince him to make the tincture a few miles before the cottage, then lose them before they knew which way she went? "Why would you need any elixirs if you're immortal?"
Nazurek laughed with short breaths through his nostrils and shook his head. "It's not for us, Aeile de Nekros. It's for feeding."
Aeile gasped, her eyes bulging as she realized what he meant. "You hurt people, and then you heal them so you can hurt them again?"
"I believe she's catching on, Igneious," Nazurek said.
"I'll end my own life before I do that," she told him.
"You might find it difficult, but you're welcome to try all you like. I won't stop you. Everyone goes through that stage of de Nekros." Nazurek put his hand on Igneious's golden scaled shoulder. "Don't they Igneious?"
Igneious only nodded with what seemed like sorrow on his face.
"What does it mean, de Nekros?" she asked.
Nazurek's face went to stone. "The damned." Then he turned around and walked away, his staff rasping in the grit of the cave floor after his steps, the skull tumbling in the sloshing green liquid inside its crystal globe. "We should get going if we are to help your sister," he said without turning back. "Come along Igneious. The night won't wait for us."
Igneious stopped writing in a log and began to follow Nazurek. "Has she told you where we might be going? Do I need anything besides my sword?"
"She has not," said Nazurek. "It might be reckless as we proceed, the longer she keeps it such a secret."
Aeile sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Kelawon. We live in a cottage in the woods a few miles north of Kelawon."
"Kelawon?" said Nazurek. "Something tells me that's far from here, because I've yet to hear of it, but I am a foreigner, so I know little of this world outside of places I've dwelt here. You will have to show us the way."
"It's about two weeks south of here on foot," Aeile said.
"Then we may need to find a hastier way to travel," said Nazurek. "Every day your sister rots away a little more."
"Fuck you!" she said.
Nazurek cackled. "Oh yes! That's the spirit. I think you are going to be a good one. Is she not, Igneious?"
"Time will tell," said Igneious. He walked beside her now behind Nazurek. It still unnerved Aeile to hear his hissing breaths, and his scaly arms and legs made creaks and dry scraping noises when he moved. He had only clothed himself in a black leather vest that matched the full body leathers he had given Aeile. "We must see how the side effects manifest. Sometimes they can be good, and sometimes very bad. Everyone who is de Nekros gets attached a little differently." He waved his clawed hand over his gold scaled body, indicating himself. "As you can see. I'm also de Nekros, but my body grew into the shape of a reptilian beast. I have some of their special physiological advantages as well as some weaknesses."
Aeile nodded. "So, I could turn into a--"
"Monster, yes," Nazurek finished for her. "Isn't it delightful?"
"No, it's not," said Aeile. "I'm not well with it at all. I don't want to be a monster. I don't hurt people for pleasure."
"Oh, my dear, you're already a monster," Nazurek said, ignoring her latter sentiment. "Don't worry. Sometimes it takes a few days or even weeks for the side effects to manifest. You have time to get acquainted with the idea."
The three of them stepped through the opening beneath the waterfall and into the night.
* * * *
An hour or so later she had led them up a trail she'd discovered that enabled them to make their way back up the side of the cliff and through the forest where it was ten miles to the road that led to Redfish Town. One thing she could never unlearn is how to find her way in the wilderness, even at night. She did notice something oddly different about the darkness now. She could see as if it were a bright full moon, though clouds cloaked the sky on this night.
She could tell when she passed an animal's den or nest because she could sense their dreams. She heard voices and images swam in her head such as squirrels leaping through trees, birds flying over mountains, snakes needling through the grass on the scent of a rodent. She heard a snuffling boar somewhere near and caught the scent of sweet tubers as strong as if it were under her own nose. The creaking of the trees in the gentle nudge of the wind was so loud it caused the muscles in the back of her neck to tense. Her new body had gained heightened senses and even some kind of mental connection with the forest animals. She kept her pace at a fast walk, distant from Nazurek and Igneious, though they caught up to her every so often.
"I understand that you are anxious to reach your sister, but you should really conserve your energy or else you will need to feed sooner than you might like," said Nazurek. "You're no longer dependent on food or water. But you will need to feed nonetheless."
Aeile stopped in her tracks and turned around to find them both just a few paces behind her. "I don't want you to follow me anymore," she snapped. "Why can't you process the mariheema for me here? Then I'll take it to her."
Nazurek shook his head. "Once the tincture is made, it only has a shelf life of a few hours before its potency weakens. I must at least follow you as close as an hour away."
"Then just show me how to do it," she said, hands on her hips. "I really rather you didn't go with me. As a matter of fact, I really wish you would stay away from me for good. I think I can figure out the tincture thing myself anyways. I've made my own resin before for many things."
"Maybe you could, but the odds of you getting it right on this particular plant on the first few times are low," Nazurek said. "And you're going to need me close by in your first week of de Nekros for certain. When your abilities begin to reveal themselves, I can help you identify them and teach you their strengths and weaknesses. I've been gifting the de Nekros for a long time. You might've already seen a few traces of what it has chosen within you. Have you not?"
An owl fluttered in a flash of gray as it swooped across her field of vision, and, for an instant, she could see a field mouse skittering through the leaves below it from its point of view. "I have," she said sharply. "I'm experiencing things that the animals near me are experiencing. It's really uncomfortable, to be honest. I mean, I was always a good hunter. I had keen senses and felt at one with nature, but this is. . . something else. It's unsettling."
"You'll get used to it," Igneious chimed in.
Nazurek's eyes widened. "This is wonderful!" His tone bled enthusiasm. "You see? Don't you see, my dear? What you are experiencing is just a trickle of what you are capable of, and this is just the first side effect. There will be more."
Aeile turned away and started walking again, the small fallen branches of oak on the ground snapping here and there. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Would you like to know how your sister is doing?" asked Nazurek.
Her heart skipped a beat. "What? What do you mean?"
"You can reach out and see through her eyes, hear through her ears, or someone else's you are close to, even if they are very far away," said Nazurek. He giggled through his nostrils. "However, it must be someone you have loved, and it will cost you a greater expenditure of energy."
A wave of prickling sensations washed up the back of her neck. "I could see her?" she asked, her voice cracking. She didn't know whether to be afraid or excited?
Nazurek came up close to her then, speaking close by her ear. "Indeed." His warm breath brought the scent of stagnant water across her nose.
"When? How?"
Nazurek turned and walked away
, his staff tapping down after each step. "Later. I will teach you, but first, we must make time to reach Red Fish Town before dawn, if that's where we're going. We will need to feed again by then, and we will need to find some horses. Perhaps we can kill two ravens with one arrow. Come along now."
Aeile stared at him with vacant eyes as he went away.
Igneious soon followed.
She waited a moment longer until she heard a faint rumble of thunder to the east before she followed behind them.
21
IVANOS
The earth rumbled his feet from the brigade of horsemen ahead.
With a gleam in his eyes and his longsword held above his head, Ivanos charged the trog alongside the Red Wolf Army. For the first time in many years, he welcomed the racing of his heart in the anticipation of clashing steel, the clatter of blade on wooden shield.
As they neared the fortified stakes and large shield walls, Ivanos caught a glimpse of Velvet as she ran with Sir Kellumvor in her saddle. Ivanos had kept himself updated on her position every so often. This was foolish he knew, a distraction that might lead to a mistake. With every moment as the charge began, Ivanos learned he had become something different than the knight he had once been, the knight these men were now. He had allowed compassion to wedge its way into his oaths of duty and honor. This was a dangerous thing for war.
Still, he glanced to locate Velvet in the line of about two hundred or so mounted knights. Velvet stopped and started. She fought with Sir Kellumvor, trailing farther and farther behind the other horsemen. Ivanos exhaled with some relief. Velvet would be less in danger behind the initial scrimmage. As the line of men on horseback pommeled into the enormous trog shield line with their lances, a clamor of splintering wood and whinnying horses reverberated across the grassy field. Ivanos couldn't help but wince. He kept running with his longsword, raising it higher and running faster. The familiar rush of battle began to overwhelm him again. He was a warrior with a purpose once more. He had waited so many years he had forgotten how long it had been since he charged with an army in battle. It gave him a sense of purpose that they depended on him to help protect the people and serve the king.
As he neared the fighting, he noticed a crudely constructed dais with a strange-looking woman dancing on top. She didn't look trog at all. Ivanos focused on her face and a sense of recognition seemed to drift up from his subconscious mind. She was no taller than any woman outside the trogs he'd come across. She looked as though someone had painted her skin with the deep red color of blood. She wore a black tattered dress and many straps and belts from which hung pouches and daggers. In the noise of battle, she was shouting something and the trog began to shout in unison with her. Ivanos couldn't decipher the language. He knew it was some kind of intimidation ritual, and it did seem to rattle the Red Wolf knights a bit as some of them pulled back a few steps. When the entire trog army had picked up the chant with her, it came at them with the deafening voice of a colossal beast.
The mounted Red Wolf knights began to fall in number. Men screamed and strings of blood slung through the air. Knights crashed into the ground as their horses threw them. Towering trog warriors plunged axes and hammers into their faces and crushed their helmets.
This was his moment to stand brave. Ivanos swung his sword, awaiting the flash of power that made it shear through a tree with one swipe which never came. His sword chopped into the side of the trog's gambeson vest, knocking the wind out of him but only cutting through the first layers of padding.
The trog gasped ending his chant with the others and glared at Ivanos. Sweat drizzled down the trog's face, and he smiled before he chimed back in with the chanting and raised his spiny hammer to swing at Ivanos.
Where was the magic? Why didn't he feel something tingling his fingers? The tiny threads of lightning on his sword? Wasn't he doing what the King of Scion asked of him? He was in an army, or trying to be part of one, where he could gain rank and glory.
The hammer swooped past Ivanos's helmet. He ducked just in time, making a wiser thrust upward with his longsword into the open armpit of the trog's gambeson vest. The trog groaned, his face contorted with one brow raised above his bulging eyes of surprise.
Ivanos twisted his blade up inside the huge man's torso and watched as blood bubbled out from his mouth and over his beard. Ivanos jerked out his blade. The trog plunged into the ground trembling and grabbing at his throat in a frivolous attempt to keep from drowning on his own blood.
Ivanos readied his longsword immediately for the next opponent, eyes scanning the landscape. What he saw then broke all the gusto he had managed to conjure within him. Velvet threw Sir Kellumvor from her saddle, and the knight grabbed her by the reins with his sword pulled back ready to swipe her through her neck.
Ivanos bellowed, "Nooooo!"
KILL HIM! KILL HIM AND THEN KILL THEM ALL!
He ran towards Sir Kellumvor. His hands burned on the pommel of his longsword. The lightning sizzled over the blade.
Sir Kellumvor's sword slashed through the lower half of Velvet's neck, partially decapitating her. Her head dangled and wiggled about spraying blood as her body took off in a meandering gallop of blind struggle to escape the inevitable end. Sir Kellumvor turned to face Ivanos. The knight raised the visor of his helmet and stared at Ivanos with his brows furrowed, then held up his sword in a defensive guard.
Ivanos swung his magically charged blade through the knight's sword, passing through it and the knight cleanly with an arc of fire and sparks. Sir Kellumvor's upper half slid diagonally down from his hips into the grass. His armor glowed orange from where Ivanos's sword had seared through it, cauterizing the halved knight's torso. Sir Kellumvor's lower half took two steps before it toppled over, still spasming and kicking. The knight's upper half crawled forward towards Ivanos, muttering a curse as his bodily functions waned and took him into the throes of death.
NOW KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!
Ivanos understood.
Another trog warrior approached with his ax held at the ready but did not attack. He looked down at the fallen knight, his eyes wide with fear. He nodded at Ivanos with an upward chin raise and swung his ax at another attacking knight.
Ivanos looked around him, at everyone's reaction. The witch on the dais had been watching him intently. He went into a frenzied rage and sliced through the Red Wolf Knights with his longsword, each time searing through armor, flesh, and bone as if he were slashing up melons. The odor of smelted steel and burnt flesh permeated the battlefield. Every time Ivanos met another Red Wolf knight and swiped through them vertically or horizontally, a wisp of smoke followed from the burnt steel and cooked flesh. Soon, he had left a cloud of smoke in his path.
He stood before the barrage of battle. Both Red Wolf knights and trogs had begun to back away in shock at the spectacle of his rage. Limbs and heads lay scattered with curling tails of smoke trailing upwards from where Ivanos's sword had divided them from their hosts. Ivanos pivoted around and around finding no one from either army willing to come at him. No one came near him. A perimeter of fifteen or so paces cleared from his path as he scissor-walked to the side with his longsword poised out before him. He counted over twenty knights he'd sliced to pieces strewn across the field.
The trogs still fought with Red Wolf knights, keeping their distance from Ivanos on his flanks. He looked back over his shoulder and went to duck as a cluster of arrows came down at him. He screamed at the Red Wolf army, "You are not knights! You have no honor!" One shaft punched through a weak spot in his thigh armor and exited out the back of his leg. Another thwacked into his helmet and lodged into his forehead. He staggered sideways, his sword becoming heavy in his hands. He fell onto his knees.
Trog warriors began to surround him. He felt two of them lift him by his arms, and he moaned at the burning pain in his leg. He hardly felt the arrow in his head. It only vibrated his skull a little when the shaft shook against the metal of his helmet.
A trickle of warmth beaded
down his eyebrow and his vision blurred red. All around him he heard steel ringing and the shouts of men and women cursing and groaning. His heels dangled across the grass as they drug him back from the fighting. The trogs holding him spoke a dialect of common he couldn't follow. Only a few words made sense to him. He heard "cuck" and "blade". A buzzing sound swelled in volume then, and he thought he must be hallucinating. Could he think right with an arrow in his forehead? Was he hearing things? He peered out across the field and saw several black clouds of insects churning over the Red Wolf Knights and writhing down upon them. The knights began to cry out and swat at themselves, tearing off bits of armor and fleeing back into the wood. Some of them fell prone and tried to shield themselves with their cloaks or saddle blankets. Soon, the knights on horseback began to pull away and gallop into the wood at full speed.
One of the insects spiraled down from the sky and landed on Ivanos's sword and crawled up the blade and rested at the tip flitting its wings. It was a red hornet.
The trogs dropped him, and he moaned in pain. They had dropped him in the dirt somewhere behind the trog fortifications. "Wait,” he pleaded. "Someone help me. I'm bleeding out here. My leg." He looked down and saw that blood coated his greaves and dripped out into a small growing pool in the dirt. His head swam. He glanced at his sword, still in his hand. Why hadn't they taken it? One thing was certain if they intended to kill him, they had their chance. They believed he would die soon anyway, and they wanted to steal his sword or have their witch study him?
He watched the hornet on his blade. It didn't try to fly away. As it rested there, and he looked closer with the one eye he could still see-through. He noticed tiny rivulets of energy sparking from his sword to the hornet.
He shivered as a chill overwhelmed him. He knew he needed a tourniquet on his leg, or he would bleed out soon, but he didn't have the strength to lift his arm. He kept watching the red hornet on his blade.
The Vanguards of Scion Page 14