Sword Sirens

by Edmund Hughes

  He slashed Smalls across the chest and stomach, opening a hideous gash that immediately began gushing blood. Smalls let out a choked scream and fell onto his butt. Jarvis pulled the sword back a second time, and then felt it disappear from his fingers in another flash of light.

  A girl stood next to him. She was young and close to his own age or perhaps a year or two older in appearance. Her hair was bright red, and she wore a black armored bodice that was low cut enough to show off a body with ample assets. She stretched her arms above her shoulders and yawned.

  “Lord Mythril…” the girl said, in a slightly petulant voice. “You said you’d let me do the killing with my hands this time. Why…?”

  The girl trailed off as she noticed Jarvis, and then she let out a shrill, slightly crazed laugh.

  “What… are you?” asked Jarvis. He tripped over a rock as he tried to back away from her.

  “I’m a sword!” said the girl. “I’m the best sword. Would you like to know why?”

  The only answer that came was the sound of Smalls whimpering as he continued to bleed out.

  “Because I know what I was made for,” said the girl. “Violence. Killing. I’ve always been good at it, too. I really have!”

  Jarvis slowly stood up, somehow sensing that she wasn’t a threat to him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember,” said the girl. “I think… they called me Bloodrose? What’s your name? You’re my new master, aren’t you?”

  ***

  The sword was still slick with blood by the time Jarvis made it back to the cave. He stood at the entrance, knowing that the moonlight would leave him silhouetted, and waited for the inevitable reaction.

  “You…?” said Kevo. “Where did Smalls piss off to, then? And where’s the food we sent you to…?”

  Kevo trailed off as Jarvis lifted the sword and pointed its tip at his face.

  “Smalls is dead,” said Jarvis. “I killed him.”

  The silence that followed his announcement almost felt like a physical thing.

  “You… what?” stammered Kevo.

  “From now on,” said Jarvis, “I will be deciding where we go, and what we do. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you leave now.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” said Kevo. “We aren’t just going to…”

  He trailed off abruptly as Jarvis’ sword flashed with light, and Bloodrose appeared next to him. She giggled and bounced over to Kevo, who drew back from her on reflex.

  “What does your blood taste like?” she said, in a far too friendly tone of voice. “I’d love to find out.”

  Ingrid, the only other remaining survivor, had less of a reaction than Kevo did. Jarvis knew that she was more like him, underneath it all. Numb and cynical. She’d follow him. So would Kevo, as long as he kept him scared enough.

  “Last chance,” said Jarvis. “Leave now, or obey.”

  “I’d listen to him,” said Bloodrose. “He’s scary.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “Don’t we have any of those berries left, though?” asked Ari. “The ones you had me test for poison.”

  “This is all we have,” said Kerys. “It’s not my fault! I could only gather so much yesterday before the Ravarians showed up.”

  “I’m not blaming you, I just…” Ari sighed.

  They were gathered around the common room table, all of them standing up since they still had no chairs. Ari was hungry, and he could tell just from the posture of Kerys and Eva that the same was true for them. The pot that sat in the center of the table contained the meager remains of the previous night’s dinner, which amounted to no more than a few bits of crab and some broth.

  “I don’t like being the one who has to take on the responsibility of foraging for the entire group,” said Kerys. “It’s not going to work for us in the long run.”

  “You’re right,” said Ari. “We can all head out today as a group and use the pack to bring back as much food as we can.”

  His growling stomach had as much influence on the decision as logic and reason. Kerys passed the pot around the table, and he took a small sip of the broth, deciding that it was far tastier when it was fresh and warm.

  They spent a few more minutes getting ready before heading out. Eva walked alongside Ari and Kerys in her incarnate form, and at Ari’s insistence, all of them carried some type of weapon. Eva and Kerys basically just had walking sticks, and he only had the small knife he’d been given when he’d left the Hollow, but it was the only alternative to relying on Azurelight to protect them.

  They headed south along the river, stopping wherever they could to collect the red berries that grew in clusters near the water. They’d stopped to load up on more of them when Ari noticed Eva lagging behind a little. He left Kerys gathering berries to jog over and see what was on her mind.

  “Everything okay?” he asked. “You’ve been a little quiet this morning.”

  Eva flinched slightly at the sound of his voice and seemed to lose her composure momentarily. She didn’t blush, but she did hesitate, seeming to choose her words carefully before speaking.

  “My apologies, milord,” she said. “I just… remembered something. It actually came to me the night after we first began strengthening our bond, but I was reminded of it again, just now.”

  “What did you remember?” asked Ari.

  Eva gave him a modest shrug.

  “Nothing relevant, or exciting,” she said. “It was a memory of me, or the woman who I’m an imprint of to be precise, dancing in the flowers. She was just a girl, but she was so happy and so carefree. Very much filled with joy.”

  She looked upward again, and Ari noticed that the object of her attention was a small flower, growing out of the craggy cliff face that ran along the nearby section of the river.

  “That’s the same flower as the ones you remembered, isn’t it?” asked Ari.

  “Yes, as far as I can tell.”

  Ari grinned at her. “I’ll get it for you, then.”

  He hopped forward, finding a handhold and scrambling up the first few feet.

  “Aristial!” said Eva. “I was not intending for you to…”

  “Relax, Eva,” he said. “It’s fine.”

  He’d done far harder climbs down in the caverns, and that was on wet and occasionally even mossy stone. Ari made it to the flower in under a minute and then climbed down with its stem clutched between his lips. It was pretty, violet with a maroon center, and as soon as he’d reached the ground, he held it out.

  Rather than taking it, Eva leaned forward and sniffed its center. Her eyes fluttered, and she smiled in a way that he hadn’t seen before. It was a young, girlish expression, and it made Ari feel a deep stab of emotion in his chest.

  “Here,” he said. “To make it easier to carry.”

  He stepped forward and slid the flower into her hair, which she’d twisted into a tight, silver-blue bun. The stem held the flower in place perfectly, and Eva reached a tentative hand up to touch it.

  “Thank you.” She leaned forward, bowing to him.

  “You don’t have to thank me, and you certainly don’t have to bow,” said Ari. “I’m glad you told me about what you remembered. And I’m really glad that it was a good memory.”

  The two of them just looked at each other for a couple of seconds. Ari felt a heady, not entirely unpleasant tension laced through the moment. Eva had appeared in a burst of mystery, and she’d pledged her service to him without hesitation. But she was a person, a woman in her own right. Ari found himself wanting to delve deeper into who she was, and what she really wanted, both out of him as her master and out of her own life.

  He cleared his throat as the silence stretched into awkward territory and turned back in the direction they were headed. His eyes momentarily met Kerys’, who’d been watching from further down the river. Her expression was hard to read, from a distance, but Ari could tell that she wasn’t all that happy from the set of her shoulders.
>
  “We should keep moving,” he said, in a voice loud enough for both women to hear.

  They passed by the area where they’d originally emerged from the underground path leading out of the Hollow, except on the other side of the river. Ari felt an odd mixture of emotions as he considered what the community he’d left behind had been up to in his absence.

  A few different dramatic possibilities played out in his head before he ultimately acknowledged that they were likely going through the same routine they’d always been going through. He took a few quick steps to catch up with Kerys, who was looking at the mountain with a conflicted expression.

  “Do you wish you could go back?” he asked.

  Kerys made a noise and scowled at him.

  “What kind of question is that?” she asked.

  “Basically the first one that popped into my head,” said Ari. “There’s no interim between my thoughts and my mouth, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “At least you admit it,” said Kerys, with a slight smile. “Of course I wish I could go back. Don’t you?”

  Ari took the time to seriously consider the question.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “You’re just saying that,” said Kerys.

  “I mean it,” said Ari. “I suppose it’s different for you, given how well you fit into the community. But there wasn’t a place for me there, Kerys. I was an orphan and a bastard, and there seemed to be no end to the ways in which people took to reminding me of it.”

  “We’d be safe if we were still at home, Ari,” said Kerys. “Sure, you might have had it hard. But maybe, the two of us still could have…”

  She trailed off, and Ari tried not to let his curiosity about where her sentence had been headed show openly on his face.

  “We’ll be safe in the tower,” he said. “I’ll make it safe for us. I promise.”

  Kerys sighed. “Are you lying again, Aristial?”

  “I never lie,” he said.

  “Liar,” said Kerys.

  They kept walking until they reached a new area, one far enough away from previously traversed territory to be ripe for foraging. Ari set the pack down in an open location and the three of them split up, searching the nearby forest for anything that looked edible.

  Ari didn’t spot anything, and he wasn’t sure whether it was because pickings were scarce or if he just didn’t have an eye for foraging. He did, however, manage to find a patch of bushes thick with sarkin flower. He plucked as many of the buds as he could and brought them back to the pack, chewing one of them for residual effects on the way.

  “Aristial Stoneblood!” Kerys had been dropping some wild carrots into the pack, and set her hands on her hips as she saw him approaching. “Sarkin flower is a drug, not food! For Dormiar’s sake—”

  “It has plenty of uses,” said Ari.

  “You’re just going to roll it into sticks and smoke it around the fire,” said Kerys.

  “Of course I won’t,” said Ari.

  Kerys was rolling her eyes at him and preparing another retort when a shout came from the nearby forest.

  “Lord Stoneblood! Lady Kerys!”

  Ari and Kerys hurried toward the sound of Eva’s voice. They found her crouched in the bushes, watching a nearby boulder with unwavering focus.

  “I found something,” whispered Eva. “You’ll need to use me as a sword in order to subdue it, however.”

  “Meat?” asked Ari, in a hopeful voice.

  Eva nodded. “Here it comes.”

  Grass rustled, and a long, green shape emerged from behind the rocks. It was thicker around than Ari’s upper arm and at least ten feet in length. The snake rose up to lift its head into the air and prod its tongue out.

  “No way,” hissed Kerys. “I am not eating a snake. Those were only a step above bugs and worms down in the Hollow.”

  “They aren’t that bad,” said Ari. “I’ve eaten snake a few times. And this one looks to have a ton of meat on it.”

  He reached his hand out, resting it on Eva’s shoulder as she flashed with light and shifted into sword form. The snake noticed the disturbance and did the opposite of what would have been prudent. It slithered closer, and Ari waited until it was within a few feet before launching himself out and issuing a ruthless, downward chop.

  The blade bit deep into the snake’s middle, cutting it in two. Both halves seized and contorted for a couple of seconds before going still. Ari draped each over his shoulder, feeling relieved by the relatively minimal amount of blood dripping from the creature’s severed halves.

  “Well,” he said. “At least we’ll have dinner for tonight.”

  “We aren’t done gathering yet,” said Kerys. “Those of us who aren’t snake-eating savages will need some variety in their vegetables.”

  They spent another hour or two scouring the nearby forest. There was food to be had, as Kerys showed him, just not where he’d been looking. The ground was rife with wild potatoes and carrots. Kerys dug up enough of them to stuff the pack full to bursting. She then proceeded to set a carefully stacked pile of rocks at the river’s bank to indicate that there was still food left to be foraged the next time they came around.

  “I’d say that was a success,” said Ari. “We should make this our new standard method for foraging. I don’t like the idea of you doing it on your own, Kerys.”

  “Neither do I.” She smiled and drew a little closer to him. “I think us splitting the work is a wonderful idea.”

  Ari nodded and turned to look over at Eva. She was looking at the sky with a frown on her face. There were a couple of clouds out, but none of them seemed to be of the type that rained without warning.

  “The weather is turning,” said Eva in a quiet voice.

  It was almost as though her words were the catalyst for it. One of the clouds unfurled, spreading outward across the sky as though it had been flattened from above by an invisible hand. It still didn’t look as though it was going to rain, but the sky abruptly became overcast, and the air at ground level began to thicken with fog.

  “Are there monsters that come out during the fog?” asked Ari.

  Eva slowly nodded, and it was all he could do to keep from unleashing a torrent of curses.

  “Do you know anything about them?” he asked, instead.

  “Unfortunately not,” said Eva. “There is no way we could have seen this coming. It is simply the nature of the surface. We should keep moving.”

  They retraced their steps at a brisk pace, even as the fog began to grow so thick that it was hard for them to see the path forward. Ari made sure Eva and Kerys stayed close to him and did his best to listen and anticipate any incoming threats.

  “Hold on.” He reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a handful of fresh sarkin flower buds.

  “Aristial, is this really the time?” asked Kerys.

  “This is exactly the time,” he said, as he chewed. “It’ll help me sense whatever is threatening us before it can get close.”

  The sarkin flower really did help. Ari could hear what was going on in the nearby forest with his expanded senses, even to the point of being able to make out the occasional soft movements of small animals. He couldn’t hear anything unusual or any threats, but that wasn’t enough to put him at ease.

  They continued forward until the noise of a snapping branch came from the trees to their right. Ari motioned for them to stop, and Eva shifted into her sword form so that he had a proper weapon to investigate with. He approached the edge of the forest slowly and used the tip of his sword to pull back a thick bush. A small rabbit hopped out and sprinted off before he could react.

  “Aristial!” screamed Kerys.

  Ari turned around and immediately tensed up at what he saw. Kerys had tripped over a rock, and a blob of a monster was bearing down on her. It was both taller and wider than he was and lacking any significant form. It was a blue, viscous, circular slime, with a body that already contained a collection of prey embed
ded in its considerably, gooey bulk. And it was only a few feet away from Kerys and moving fast.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Kerys!”

  Ari sprinted for her, knowing that there was no way that he’d close the distance before the slime was able to. He saw Kerys scream and attempt to run. One of her feet slipped on grass, dampened from the dense fog as it was, and the slime slithered toward her.

  It moved across one of her legs, pulling the limb into its own body with a viscous, sucking sound. Kerys screamed and tried to punch it with one of her hands. The motion only resulted in her hand also becoming stuck within the slime’s gooey, blue form.

  Ari reached her after another second and made a desperate attempt at pulling her out. It was like trying to free a person from thick mud, except with an additional, sucking force counteracting him. Kerys was screaming, and Ari felt like doing the same as he did what he could and watched his efforts come up short.

  The slime had absorbed all of her except for her shoulders, neck and head when Ari reached the point where he knew he needed a change of tactics. He took his sword in both hands and cleaved at the monster with a vicious strike.

  The blade cut into the slime halfway before coming to a stop. Predictably, Ari found that he couldn’t pull it loose with any amount of strength. He groaned through clenched teeth in frustration, taking a step back.

  “Eva!” he shouted. “Change back!”

  She did, in a flash of light, but the slime still had one of her legs absorbed into its bulk. Kerys was up to the neck now, and she was desperately turning her head from side to side in an attempt to slow down the inevitable.

  He needed a plan. He needed an idea, even, something he could act upon to keep his friends from getting killed. Ari briefly considered submerging himself into the slime to try to fight it within before recognizing how insane and reckless it would be.

  He looked toward the forest and noticed a tree jutting out at an odd angle that was directly in front of the slime. Ari didn’t have time to stop and consider whether it would work. He rushed into the forest, climbed onto the half-fallen tree trunk, and began to swing from one of its branches.