The new King of Hygan, King Udel, I finally learned the man’s name, signed the copies of the Charter I presented to him without even bothering to read it again. Regardless, I made sure he had his copy to review and remind him of the promises he made to me before I shuffled him off to Evans—the two of them spent hours discussing the needs of the shattered Realm.
It mostly boiled down to food and security—Udel had little to none of either. Eventually, Evans agreed to detach a thousand of our soldiers to reestablish order and sent a vast portion of our food stores along with them. We had planned for extended sieges in both Hygan and Zonnia, but with the first of the horse lands already under our control, we were left with far more than we needed. Udel also proved himself to be valuable to us in return. Through his connections, he’d been able to learn a great deal about what had befallen Zonnia.
That Realm had crumbled, much like Hygan had, but with my Army in front of them and the Dark Lands at their back, the treacherous nobles had nowhere left to retreat. So, they had gathered themselves together and rallied all their loyal forces in their capitol, the fortified city of Ondale. According to Udel, it was there that the nobles intended to make their stand and resist me until the very end. Part of me hoped that they would.
After anticipating conflict for so long, Hygan was a disappointment to me. I should have been glad to take the Realm without bloodshed, but without Líann as my outlet, my darkness was growing stronger. I simply had to let it loose on something very soon, before it forced my hand and lashed out on its own accord. I needed the nobles left in Zonnia to resist me, as without the opportunity to unleash my shadows, I doubted that I would make it back home before they’d overwhelm me.
Fortunately, at least from my perspective, the march to Ondale would only take us a week, and once we had Hygan under King Udel’s control, we headed straight for the walled city. I had hoped for a quick siege, followed by the slaughter of the nobles who’d chosen to oppose me, but when the high walls of Ondale came into view, I knew that would not be the case.
The fortifications rivaled those of Orlan, with towers and weaponry of all sorts defending the thick stone walls. It seemed that our only hope was a long, drawn-out siege, one that would only end when one side or the other finally ran out of food. And if that were the case, with so many mouths to feed, it could very well end up being me who was forced to withdraw.
“I can tell by the look on your face that you haven’t seen Dellon’s catapults yet,” Evans said as he stood by my side surveying Ondale’s impressive defenses.
“Tell me they can breach those walls,” I asked him.
“They can, but it will take time,” he replied. “Dellon’s weapons have a greater range than anything our enemy has, so we can fire on them without fear of reprisal. But those walls are not only high, but thick as well, and it will take some time to bring them down.”
“And we’ll need to make more than one breach before we attack,” Evans cautioned me. “We can’t let them have a choke point. We’ll need to be able to attack on multiple fronts and force them to spread themselves thin. It’s the only way we can bring our superior numbers to bear.”
It sounded like a great plan. Perfect, almost, but time away from Líann was beginning to take its toll on me. I needed something soon, or I was going to lose control over my shadows.
“Make it happen, First Marshal,” was all I had to offer. “I need those walls down as quickly as possible.”
He’d anticipated that order, and the siege weapons were already being assembled on the fields outside Ondale. Our entire army was camped alongside, protecting the weapons from any attempt at a quick cavalry strike from the city. In only a matter of a few hours, the majority of them were firing projectiles against Ondale’s thick walls, but with little visible effect.
The defenders weren’t completely idle during our assault—they returned our fire, but their own missiles fell well short of hitting our position. Dellon had indeed created the perfect weapon for our siege; the only question was whether or not I’d last long enough to see the end of it.
“Stop pacing,” Tási chided me. “You look like a nervous hen.”
“I’m not nervous, Tási,” I growled. “I need to kill something, soon.”
“What’s wrong?” She asked as her tone became one of concern.
“It’s been too long since I’ve been able to purge my darkness,” I confessed as I glared at her. “It’s becoming too powerful for me to resist.”
She took a reflexive step back from me as I felt my eyes flare for just a second. I hadn’t intended for them do that, but just thinking about how intense the rage inside me had become stirred up the influence of my emotions.
“How can I help you?” She asked hesitantly.
I was moved by her dedication, and it calmed me momentarily. The shadows in me truly frightened Tási, and her offer to aid me with them had not been made lightly.
“Unless you’re willing to let me do some very bad things to you,” I forced myself to smile at her weakly. “I’m not sure that there’s anything you can do to help.”
“How… how bad?” She whispered.
“I’m sorry, Tási,” I replied. “That was only a poor joke. Even if you let me do the things I need to do, you can’t take my V’Ríel from me.”
“Your what?” She asked in confusion.
I sighed deeply and then explained the conversation I’d had with Nentai, leaving out Líann and how I’d make her one of the many-feeling. I’d explained much of it to her before, but some of it was still new to her.
“So, I’m Tási the Tári,” she rhymed in amusement.
“You are at that,” I laughed genuinely at her truly awful joke.
“How strong is your darkness?” Tási suddenly asked.
“That’s rather difficult for me to explain,” I replied, wondering what she had in mind. “Let me try and compare it something your more familiar with. Do you remember that one night that I…?”
“Yes, yes I do,” she flushed as she cut me off.
“Well, if you think of how powerful my passion was then, my darkness is many times stronger than that,” I couldn’t help but smile as I watched her discomfort turn to amazement.
Tási swallowed hard, obviously uncomfortable with the volatile and incredibly powerful forces that were threatening to overwhelm me before she replied.
“Instead of making your own orbs, what if you channeled it directly into one of those stones,” she suggested hesitantly.
“They’re inert,” a discouraged sigh escaped me. “As far as I know, my darkness only works on living matter.”
“Generally, yes,” she offered. “But these are weapons, Dreya, meant for destruction. Maybe their purpose will make a difference.”
I’d channeled my Strength into arrowheads before, but never my raw emotions. Thinking about the possibility reminded me of the time Venna explained resonance to me. She hadn’t been able to bless my wooden bow when we’d taken on the undead lair and been forced to infuse the metal of my arrowheads instead.
Some things like metal were inherently more receptive to magic than others, she’d explained. Maybe I couldn’t affect metal and stone with my orbs, but what if I didn’t use an orb as my weapon? What if I tried to infuse something instead? And why the fuck hadn’t I thought of this myself?
“Find me some metal,” I growled at her. “Anything metal we can use as a missile. I’m going to tear down those fucking walls myself!”
As luck would have it, not only did we have metal shot for our catapults, but the horse lords had been kind enough to fire a few of their own at us before they realized we were out of range and gave up. All of them were gathered for me, and once one was placed in the bucket of Dellon’s catapult, I had everyone back away while I attempted to infuse it with my fury.
As soon as I tried to channel my rage into the hard metal ball, I understood what Venna had meant by resonance—the iron was receptive, to a point, unlike the comparatively
willing Khelduin arrowhead that I’d filled with Strength. But with the experience I had in funneling my Strength into those few arrowheads, I had a sense of where the limits were, and just to be safe, I pulled away before I let the iron take on too much.
I’d closed my eyes during the process, to focus on feeling the metal and channeling my rage, so when I finished and stepped away, it was the first time I saw the results of my work.
Where a smooth ball of iron once sat in the catapults’ bucket, there now loomed a seething mass of oily black… something. It resembled one of my orbs, but only to a point. There was a certain quality to it that was indescribable. I could look at one of my orbs and think of it as anger, rage, hate, fury, or any number of other emotions, but this wasn’t the same. The metal had turned the darkness I’d channeled into it into something completely different. It was no longer… organic. The roiling ball of darkness before me lacked any connection to the living world and had become an instrument of pure destruction.
“Fire whenever you’re ready,” I told the catapult chief when I finally stepped away from my creation.
I was not the only one standing by to observe the results—word of what I was going to attempt had spread through the entire camp, and almost every soul had stopped what they were doing to see what would happen.
“Do you feel any better?” Tási asked when I stood beside her waiting for the shot to be fired.
“Not yet,” I replied as calmly as I could. “I feel it still. Everything I poured into that hunk of metal is still connected to me. I think I’ll only know the real effect when it actually does its damage.”
“You’re connected to that?!” Tási asked incredulously as she gaped at the seething iron ball.
“Yes,” I confirmed for her. “I was able to channel a small portion of my darkness into it, but I’m not free of it yet.”
“That’s only a small portion of your darkness?” She responded with a mixture of fear and awe.
“Very small,” I smiled. “Líann is able to take much more than that from me.”
It was, perhaps not the best thing I could have said, but my mind wasn’t entirely my own at the time.
“That bitch is insane,” Tási shook her head as she replied. “Both of you are.”
“Yes, you might be right about that,” I concurred absently.
The loud crack of the catapult firing interrupted any further conversation, and the ball that was formerly made of iron shot through the air towards the towering walls of Ondale. A trail of sooty black vapor trailed in the wake of the rage-fueled missile, and when it struck high on the stone wall, it exploded in a cloud of dark, angry smoke. The report of crashing stone echoed back to us, but I couldn’t see the results as I’d collapsed to the ground the second the shot struck home.
It wasn’t fatigue or strain that had overcome me; the sensation was quite the opposite. The sudden release of a portion of my darkness had taken me by surprise, and the internal defenses I’d erected to contain it collapsed once the shadows that were pushing against them had vanished. The feeling that had driven me to my knees was one of relief, not strain, and once Tási and Venna, who’d been standing on my opposite side, helped me up, I surveyed the damage.
The shot had struck about a third of the way down from the top of the wall, and everything above the point of impact was simply… gone. Dark streaks radiated out from the edges of the crater, and half of a small guard tower next to the point of impact had collapsed. The damage was on a scale I hadn’t even imagined possible, and I immediately called for another shot to be loaded.
“Don’t you think you should wait for a moment?” Tási cautioned me, “Give yourself a chance to recover?”
“No,” I snapped as the darkness shone from my eyes for all to see. “I can smell their blood and I want to see it flowing through the streets before nightfall!”
Under the glare of the green flame of my eyes, shot after shot of darkness-infused iron was launched into the crumbling walls of Ondale. The multiple breaches Evans thought might take weeks, I gave to him in only hours, and he arrayed our forces for an assault as the late evening light grew dim. Against the protests of most of my advisors and friends, I took my own place among the forces leading the charge into one of the chasms I’d broken through the city’s defenses.
“You can try and stop me, but you’ll fail,” I said as I nocked an arrow.
“I will guard your back,” Saibra said at my side.
“And I will watch your flank,” Ella added as she stood next to her.
Once it was clear I was going in anyway, my entire guard joined the assault with me, along with all my companions. When the signal was given, we charged forward towards the charred and blackened ruins of Ondale.
The defenders would most likely be waiting to ambush us as we climbed over the crumbled remains of their walls, so as we began working our way through the rubble, I stopped to fire Shockwave arrows into the area beyond the pile of shattered stone. My efforts were rewarded with cries of pain and confusion as the thundering echoes crashed through the streets. The first members of our unit to make it over the rubble quickly dispatched the helpless fools who’d thought to ambush us, and once we secured the area, we moved to support the soldiers trying to enter the city at the next breach.
An ambush had been set for them as well, and without the benefit of a Shockwave to disable their attackers, our assault had been stalled by the heavily armored defenders. Fortunately, they were completely unprepared for our flanking maneuver, and we tore into them with abandon.
I shot my fire and ice arrows at first, turning my targets into charred husks or freezing them completely solid. Then I stowed my bow in favor of more… direct action. My darkness needed to rage, and I let it run wild.
Black orbs shot through the air, slamming into anyone who dared expose themselves to me. When an arrow struck the Shield I’d erected in front of me, I sneered mockingly at the archer who’d fired it before turning him into a pile of dark ash. The deep viridian light that illuminated the world around me seemed to draw me to my targets, and one after another, I ended each and every one of them with devastating orbs of utter darkness. Everything seemed to be going our way until our enemy’s reinforcements arrived, striking our own flank in return.
The lords of the horse lands fought their battles on horseback when they could, but if they were forced to fight dismounted, as the struggle for control of Ondale dictated, they did so in full plate and with heavy weapons, aiming for overwhelming power instead of the lightning cavalry strikes they preferred. This was how they came at us—knights in full armor, intent on tearing through our ranks and killing every last one of us.
The lords of Zonnia and Hygan, along with their lackeys, hit us with the force of a battering ram, and easily broke through the hasty defense a few of our brave soldiers tried to erect. Despite their contemptable ways, the lords possessed both skill and prowess in battle, as their counter-attack so painfully reminded me, but the sight of so many of my own people falling before the detestable lords made my blood boil, and the rage I’d only just released seemed to come back to me a thousand-fold.
With my enemies so close, I drew my blades, extending the Essence Blade to its full length and pulling out the Short Sword of Sharpness for the first time in battle. The remainder of this fight would be up close and personal, and I felt my lips curling up in a smile at the prospect.
The armored knights were brutal and vicious and struck cruel blows with the heavy weapons they wielded, but my soldiers, and especially my personal guard, were well-trained, and didn’t fall into the trap of attempting to fight them blow for blow.
Quick strikes flashed between jointed sections of armor, and cries of pain echoed from within the closed helms of the knights as blades pierced into their eye slits. Beside me, Saibra’s blades made quick work of one of our foes; her blade snaking its way beneath his armor and tearing into the soft flesh of his neck. The man crashed to the ground, wet gurgles echoing within
his helm as he impotently clutched at his throat. I squared off against my first armored knight and was forced to dodge his blow when he swung his axe at me much faster than I thought his heavy armor would allow.
The strike clattered off the cobblestones of the street, and as he lifted the double-bladed weapon, I slashed at him with my sword. He saw my strike coming, but didn’t bother to react, relying on the thick metal plates of his armor to shield him from damage. Against any other weapon, his lack of concern would have been justified, but the Short Sword of Sharpness sliced through his armor like a thin sheet of parchment.
I felt only a slight tug as the blade slipped past the metal plate, and then another as it exited the far side of his body. For just a second, the only evidence of what had occurred was a thin crease in his breastplate. But that narrow gap instantly gushed with crimson fluid as the unseen wound inside him emptied his insides into the confines of his armor. He fell dead at my feet in seconds, bathed in a crimson pool of his own blood.
The thrill of his death caused my vision to flare even brighter still, and it focused my attention on my next opponent. Almost without a care, I marched forward among the din of battle, swatting away any strikes against me as I ruthlessly stalked my next kill. The knight may have noticed my approach at the last moment, I’m unsure, as he turned towards me slightly just before I separated his head from his shoulders. His still-occupied helmet came to rest a few feet away, while the suit of armor that contained the rest of him collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Another flare shined in my eyes, and my sight was drawn yet again to a foe across the battlefield from me. I had no idea who these people were or why I was compelled to slay them, but I’d unleashed my darkness, and it was my turn to do its bidding. This time, I was certain that the doomed man saw my approach as I hunted him down because he panicked and tried to flee from the green light I projected towards him. This I could not allow.
The Bolt that struck him threw him to the ground as it ran wild over his armor. The last traces of its current were still wandering over the metal when I jammed the Essence Blade through the eye slits of his helmet, slamming into the ground beneath him. With my boot on his neck, I yanked the Blade free, nearly ripping the top of his head off when it twisted in my grasp, but the depth of my disappointment was almost immeasurable when my vision didn’t surge and reveal another target for me.
Second Skin Omnibus Page 169