Carnage (Remastered)
Page 3
exploded. He was moving before she knew she was dead.
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
Breaking right he slipped through the remaining Hunters of the commander's group. They were still trying to react to his attack. To his eyes the four soldiers moved as if in slow motion. The other groups reacted faster. The Knight got out of range a split second before they were torn apart by bolts of lightning, balls of fire and bars of light. The music did not cover the sound of their screams.
The hairs on your arm will stand up.
Ozone tickled the Knight's nose and sparks of power began to crackle as the air grew heavy under the weight of magic. Spells followed him as somebody tracked his movements. But he wasn't the only thing they were chasing. He'd sent decoy shadow cloaks flying to his left and to his six. Split their attention, split their power.
Will you disappear into the potter's ground?
The Knight hit the next group like a bulldozer. The shield he wove ahead of him was strong enough to block their fire for the seconds it took to get among them. Bars of saffron light lanced from his palms and streaked as he swung them like swords, cutting down the second group of five. Again, he was gone before the last began to fall.
When the man comes around.
Forward this time, he ran, chased by the strikes of lightning and the crashes of explosions. Two especially loud explosions told him the surprises he had hidden in the decoys had triggered. Spells of earth and fire that dug into the ground and exploded, sending flaming shrapnel in every direction. Flying land mines.
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
The third group saw him coming. The Knight had to dance and dodge his way through a hail of destructive spells to get to them. No time for anything smooth, the other groups were starting to get a bead on him. He wasn't a good enough dancer to dodge fire from so many directions at once. Not for long. He had to take out the whole cluster in one shot. Fire, lightning, air and earth compressed into a volatile ball. The knight threw it into the center of the group like a grenade as he flew past. It exploded into a ten foot orange sphere of chaotic heat and energy. The spell consumed the whole group in a flash, leaving nothing but a smoking circular crater where there had been five wizard soldiers.
Some are born an' some are dyin'.
A wall of air from the explosion slammed into his back like a speeding car. The back of his shirt seared off but his shield protected his flesh.. No advantage, no moment, could be wasted. He jumped and let the thrust launch him like a cannon ball over the next group. In mid-air, he turned so he was upside down and fired five beams of violet light. The lances burned through the Hunters and they fell like rag dolls.
It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.
Righting himself at the last possible moment, he landed on his feet and hit the ground running. Time to change things up. He'd been taking out groups of Hunters counter clockwise from the center but the defenders were getting too close with their spells. A storm of death crafted by magic thundered on his heels just a half tick behind. Running behind a thick support girder, the Knight stopped dead and sent another cloak along the path he had been following. The Hunters' fire tracked the decoy while he turned around and cut across to the last group in line.
Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.
The Knight's bare feet splashed through a greasy stain. The stench of blood and burned flesh coated the back of his throat. Another especially loud explosion told him his decoy had reached another group of Broken Bolts. They'd already been hit once and this second blast took out the survivors of the first mine. The stain marked the spot where he'd broken the commander's heart. A needless reminder of the price of failure. Win or die.
At his feet they'll cast their golden crowns.
The first four of the next group were easy. Too surprised by the decoy's explosion to react he sent bolts of lightning into them. Blood misted the air as their as bodies were shattered. The fifth Hunter was a little more alert. The tall woman was able to deflect his bolt so it went sideways into a girder. Electric current ran up the steel beam like half a Jacob's ladder. She answered the Knight's attack with a ball of compressed air and fire. Fast as he was, strong as his shield was, she was to close, her spell fueled by desperation and hate.
When the man comes around.
Taking the hit felt exactly like what it was, a giant's flaming fist punching him in the side. At least three of his ribs broke and he felt the skin above them burn and crisp away blackly. He suppressed the pain and made the bitch pay for it with another bolt of lightning. This one blew her head from her shoulders.
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
If he allowed himself to slow just because of a few broken ribs and a burn they would be the least of his worries. So the Knight ran straight towards the next group. Fortune had smiled upon him. There were only two groups left and the one he met first was already at half strength. Victims of another mine. Only two Broken Bolts left. Water and earth forced kinetically into their bodies, liquefying their organs. He hated using the same trick twice but he needed this over quickly
It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.
Knowing they were the last, the final group gave up the pretense of putting up a fight and ran towards the exit. Growling with contempt, the Knight raised his right hand. Never show your back to the enemy. Once upon a time that had been the motto of the regular army corps. Their motto. Spiraling bars of cobalt fire lanced from his hand into the backs of four of the cowards. Limbs and heads fell from torsos scattering into ash on the breeze. He had plans for the last one, so he lived.
When the man comes around.
A web of shadow slammed between the running Hunter-no-more and his connection to the Reigh.* The vortex he had been trying to weave terminated in a flash of light. Stupid, even a Knight couldn't run and open a vortex at the same time. Air hardened into the consistency of steel around the fleeing man and he collapsed to the ground under the weight of it. Caught, like a bug in amber.
Blood trickled down the Knight's side as he walked slowly toward the last soldier. He ignored it. His words to the worm on the ground required all his concentration. They would set the tone for what was to come.
The Knight stopped almost on top of the Broken-Bolt-no-more. He released the web of air that held the prostrated man but the soldier didn't move except to shiver on his belly.
"Look at me." Cold rage added gravel to his already deep voice; it came out as a grinding whisper.
Hesitantly, the man turned onto his back and looked at the Knight. He was not seeing a fourteen year old kid or even a twenty-five year old man. He saw a mass of slowly swirling shadow with eyes that glowed crimson.
"Do you know why you live?" The Hunter-no-more shook his head jerkily, not quite believing he was and certainly not believing he would stay that way.
"You are to be my herald, boy. You will go back to your masters and you will tell them all that happened here. You will tell them I called you to this place so the lives of your vile brethren could feed my hunger. You will tell them that the vengeance of the Harrowers has begun. Do you understand me, boy?" Even more jerkily, the man nodded his head, eager to agree to anything that would keep him alive. The Knight was tempted to ask for his soul to see if he would offer it up. "You will tell them one more thing. You will tell them my name. I am…Wraith." If the boy kept nodding like that, his head was bound to fall off. "Now go, run boy, and tell everyone you meet of me."
Scrambling, the man got off the ground and began to run. "Boy!" The Knight – no, the Wraith, he liked the sound of it – spoke and the command cracked against the hunter-no-more like a whip. He froze in mid-step. "Don't come looking for any remains. They belong to me now. As do their souls." If possible, the man ran even harder.
Alone in the site of his first massacre, Wraith allowed himself to become Vlad once again. The agony in his side crashed into him full force. Sweat poured from his body as the heat he'd ignored during the battle assaulted him.
Grunting in pain he forced himself to remain erect as he spread healing webs over his wounded side. Bones knit back together and burnt flesh repaired itself. Not the first hit he'd ever taken. He could deal.
Vlad let the cloak drop too. No way the little coward would double back to try and gather more information. He'd created the web that made the cloak as a joke last Halloween, but it'd come in handy. The perfect tool for the job he needed to do, terrify a superstitious fool. That was all wizards were any more.
"So that's what you look like."
Snapping back into his Wraith persona, the Knight spun around. Behind him, maybe twenty-five feet away, stood two new figures, one man, one woman.
The voice in his head had been quiet since he'd first noticed the Hunters but it finally spoke up. Nothing's ever easy. Kurt Cobain replaced Johnny Cash with Smells like Teen Spirit.
The World of Knights: Knight Hunter Tactics
The Knight Hunters are a paramilitary organization sworn to the service of House Blackblade. Creation of the Knight Hunters was mandated in one of the very first Articles of the Burning Sand. At first the wizard High Council tried to maintain at least nominal command Over the Hunter. Legal and budgetary constrains forced them to hand total control over to House Blackblade. The have retained control ever since.
While their membership is recruited from the