The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4)

by Everet Martins

  He was shirtless and sticky with a sheen of sweat. His flesh was twisted and mutilated with battle scars. Brutal stretches of thickened flesh ran in every direction across his chest, around his back, and up his ribs. Up and down his arms were tens of white, raised mountains of scars. They had healed at least. His skin felt tighter where they were, resisting his movements. Where had his armor gone? On his waist was his sword belt. His Breden stamped long sword banged against his hip with every footfall. He wore simple woolen trousers and soft leather boots.

  The demon had said he was in the Shadow Realm. Had he died? There had to be more than this. He should have been at peace now. The war should have ended for him. He was tired, so terribly tired. Maybe the stories were wrong after all. Maybe there would never be rest. The Shadow Realm was supposed to be a place of rest.

  He didn’t know how long he had been running. Minutes? Days? Time felt like it stretched out here. There was no sun, no moon, or stars to hang hope on. There was only him and the gnashing of teeth at his back. He swung his arms harder, driving his feet with his upper body. He was falling and catching himself with his legs before crashing onto his face. It wasn’t running as much as it was a continuous stumbling on rubbery limbs. Part of him wanted to give up, but that just wouldn’t do. He would fight until the bitter end, even in the arms of death.

  It was time to stand. How long had he been running? The question plagued his mind. He couldn’t discern an answer that made rational sense. Where was everyone? He caught his footfalls for the last time, boots planted and sliding across the smooth cobblestones. He whirled around, knuckles bone white. Everything was shrouded in shadow but an ellipse spreading from his feet, bright with an unseen light. The veins of the cobblestones were dark, as if held together by shadows alone.

  His pursuer crept into the light, hundreds of pincers gently tapping on the stones. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself, anything to stop the trembling in his legs. He ground his teeth together, gums sore, lips pulling into a snarl. His stomach felt like it was twisting into knots.

  Walter rubbed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, it would all go away. He would be back in his bed, waking from the nightmare. It was all just a bad dream. Nyset would be there, warm against him and he would bury his nose into her hair. The nightmare did not fade.

  A deep, rumbling, mocking laughter came from the beast. “There is no escape,” it hissed. He thought maybe if he ran long enough it, or he, would become something else. It didn’t. He didn’t. Its narrow face came into the light. Six eyes blinked with a series of clicks. An incredible mouth spread apart in a greedy smile. The mouth was lined with thick, sharpened teeth. Four arms wound out from inside the mouth. The arms were scaled like a lizard’s hide and terminated with metallic claws. Upon the apex of its head was a straight horn the length of his torso, built like a tower of bone.

  “I don’t plan to escape,” he replied. The sound of his voice was different, rasping and sending a shudder of panic through his stomach. The beast’s eyes bulged from its long head, a claw darting for his neck. Walter twisted and bladed his body, raised his forearm to block and allowed its arm to slip over his head. Another arm came, chopping into his ribs and crushing and cracking them within its pincers. He bellowed a mix of agony and rage, back viciously arcing. Blood rolled down his ribs and onto his stomach, pooling at his waist.

  How did he forget his weapon? His sword was out in a flash, slashing at the third arm and chopping into it. It was still broken, more a jagged dagger than a sword. It still did the job. The wounded arm flopped back into the beast’s mouth and the other released its hold on his ribs. Blood seeped from between its porcelain teeth and down its stubby chin. Walter felt his blood flowing down his legs, warm against his thighs.

  He sheathed his broken sword, took a step back, and raised his chin. He hoped the beast would see this as a sign of defeat. The monster grinned and its mouth hissed open. The wounded arm flopped out, a dead snake against its chin, the other three snapping for his body.

  Walter’s eyes narrowed and he leaped to its flank, landed on one of its squat legs and immediately pushed off again, arms outstretched, lips tugging into a grimace. His arms snapped like a bear trap around its horn and yanked its head back. The horn felt rough like an old bone in his arms, pressed and scratching against his chest. He planted his boots and dug his heels into its head, jerking it further back and producing a deep crack. The monster writhed and shrieked, smashed its pincers into the ground, head whipping and trying to buck Walter off.

  Walter saw dark blood trickling out the base of the horn, realizing where the crack came from. His lips formed a wolfish smile and he started laughing.

  “Die! Die!” He roared and smashed his heel into the horn, sinking his entire body weight into it as he kicked. Again, again, and again he kicked, harder and harder, horn cracking and splitting up the middle. The beast’s fury enraged him further, feeding his hate, filling him with the urge to destroy. Blood welled out from the horn, spreading down its face, neck, squelching on his boots with each savage kick. The beast smashed its head to the side as Walter kicked and the horn finally broke with a booming crack. Walter was tossed from its back, hurling through the darkness. He rolled across the stones, the horn clutched in his arms like a newborn baby.

  He coughed, took a ragged breath, and rose onto one leg. The beast had collapsed. Its legs and hundreds of arms spread out under its snake like body. A fountain of blood softly bubbled from the top of its head, bony shards of white protruding in the red. It was as if he pulled the cork from a wine skin and inverted it. He rose to his feet and blood pattered from the end of the horn onto the tips of his boots. The dripping blood was like thunder in his ears, the only sound he could hear.

  Something interrupted the thunder, screeching like a hawk from behind. Another beast slipped from the shadows. It had a scarlet eye as big as his head surrounded by three angular mouths. He didn’t think, simply reacted. He wrapped the wide end of the horn tight under his bicep in one arm and gripped the narrow end like a spear with the other. He lunged into the creature, ramming the horn’s tip into its eye.

  The monster shrieked and blood showered from its impaled eye onto his cheeks. The wide end of the horn dug into his arm and side from the force of the blow, cutting and burning. Walter growled with ferocity, jabbing the horn into its eye again and again. Its blood slapped against his body with pleasing streaks. The creature slumped to the ground, tongues like vipers lolling from its mouths. Its body was amorphous, seeming to function without bones.

  Something hit him in the back and white-hot pain lanced across his flesh. The force of the blow sent him staggering forward, his horn slipping from his warm and sticky fingers. Walter fumbled for it and seized only air as the ground vanished. He was falling, feet seeking purchase, red and black whirling past his vision. He fell head over heels, felt like his body was being pounded by smith’s hammers as he tumbled. His boot snagged on something, torn free from his foot and left behind. He finally stopped, rolling face down in a strange liquid, clinging to consciousness by a string.

  Where am I? I can feel my body sinking deeper. Deeper into… Walter gagged, rolled onto his side, coughing and spitting out sheets of red. He was in a river, or a stream, trapped by valleys of ruby stones on either side. The river was hot, thick, and metallic tasting. Blood. No, it couldn’t be. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, retching out globs of congealing blood. The blood swirled between his fingers and over his hands. It ran up his legs and filled his boot. He stared down into the river of blood, seeing his ghastly reflection in its winding eddies.

  “Where am I?” he screamed, his voice ragged. He stumbled onto his feet and then fell against the sloped stones, his bare foot extracted from the red channel. “Where is everyone?” He sobbed. His bare foot slipped and one of his toes caught on something, cutting into it. “Damn it! Fuck!”

  He looked down at his blood-covered foot. The ground wasn’t stones or rubies at all, bu
t scarlet skulls. They were laughing at him, smiling like it was all a good joke. The valleys surrounding the river of blood were nothing but skulls. Heaping towers of them, packed tight enough to walk on. A laugh erupted from his throat, vibrating in his chest. His mouth formed a wicked smile. He dislodged his toe, freeing it from the skull’s yawning eye socket. “What is this? Why am I here?” He screamed.

  “Hello? Help!” A shrill voice cried. Someone was splashing through the river in the distance, holding something gleaming. A sword maybe. Walter felt a spark of warmth in his chest at the sight of someone else.

  “I’m here!” Walter yelled and waved. “Over here!”

  The man screamed and waved. “Run! Run!” Walter could see the man was dressed in Midgaard Falcon armor, red plume matted back against his helmet.

  “What?” Shadows were rolling behind the man like a wave. There were so many, too many of them. “Shit!” He scanned the ground, looking for the horn. There it was on the other side of the river, glistening with a mix of wet and drying blood. He snatched it in his arms, his breath gasping. “Make it stop. It has to stop…”

  The man drew closer. He was at least twenty paces away, waves of blood spilling over his armor as he shuffled through the river. The soldier seemed to smile at him and paused for second, staring in disbelief. His eyes were a walnut brown and red with irritation.

  He wasn’t alone. “Run!” Walter screamed. Why had he stopped?

  A talon screeched against the man’s armor as it slid through his back and out his chest. The talon’s bony protrusions were pinked with his blood. Another one followed and proceeded to split the man down the middle, tearing him into two ragged halves. Two corkscrewing limbs the length of Walter hurled the pieces of the man’s body aside like butcher’s scraps. Behind the limbs was a beast with an oval shaped eye, its pupil the size of Walter’s head.

  “No, no.” Walter stammered. He gritted his teeth, gripped the horn so tight he cracked a fingernail, but he didn’t feel it. He heard the crack, thought he should have felt something. He sprinted at the shadows, fury painting his heart with vengeance. His muscles quivered with rage, veins stark on his forearms. If he would die, he would die fighting.

  He growled and sprung into the air, horn clutched overhead. He slammed the horn into the top of a bulbous creature, extracted it with a jet of blood. Another slashed at his back with what he thought might be tongues as long as lashes. He turned and dropped the horn, let them wrap around his arm then hacked them off with the remains of his sword. The wheezing monster was built like an ill tree, scraggly and gnarled, tongues oozing dark blood. It slumped against the wall of skulls, flatly regarding him with its hundreds of eyes.

  He heard the screams of women coming from behind. He whirled, seeing three of them fleeing from a beast with an upside down face, wide mouthed with flat white teeth. Its flesh was reddish, shadowed in places, impossible to make any sense of its form. It was leaping like a rabbit, rapidly closing the gap between them. It had at least ten waving snakes sprouting and hissing from its head.

  They were dressed like apprentices of the House of the Dragon, a shade of red he distinctly remembered. One girl reached a bloody hand for him, though he was much too far to reach back. It pounced on the two slowest women, mouth spreading open like a chasm. It didn’t stop. It continued bounding with their bodies dangling out of its mouth, chewing and grinding through their legs, bones snapping with loud cracks. One tried to pry open its jaw, another slammed her dagger into its mouth, clanging like metal on metal. It had a single limb it sprang upon, thick, wide and shimmering with blades at the end.

  “This is all just a dream. Just a really bad dream,” he whispered.

  There was nothing he could do for them now. The monster reached the last woman, blades slashing over her back and cutting her down, falling upon her with its incredible maw.

  “When I open my eyes, this all will be gone and I’ll be back in the real world, back in reality.” He let out a tremulous laugh. “Back in my warm bed.” He ran further down the river, away from the horrors behind. He understood the blood now, knew its source. He knew he would soon be part of it.

  “He fights so hard! The irony is that the more enraged he becomes, the more he fuels the hatred of future generations of rapists and murders,” A sensual feminine voice said everywhere but nowhere.

  “What? Where are you?” Walter screamed into the sky. There was a moon he saw now—scarlet and dim as candlelight. The sky responded with silence. Was there no end to the cruelty of the gods?

  He was running alongside the river, for how long he couldn’t say. The beast was snarling behind, always around the corner like a bloodhound on the hunt. The broken Breden sword was sore in his palm. His short hair and face were crusted with blood. He wanted to vomit at the thought of how many had to die to produce this much of it. The valley of skulls flattened out further down the river into waving hills. Something caught his eye on a flattened mass beside the river.

  There was a nude woman there, protectively holding her arms over her breasts. Her knees were pressed together, hiding her sex. She had luscious blond coils of hair, flowing over flawless milky skin, caressing her shoulders and slipping between her breasts. There was something deeply wrong here, but he felt drawn to her like a Rot Fly to dead flesh. He took a step forward, a bloody foot slipping on a skull.

  “I love a good woman,” a man’s voice said. “It’s been too long. A woman, here?” The man wore the pearl Milvorian armor of the Tower’s armsmen, streaked with pinks. He held a wicked halberd at his side, waving blade tinging off the grinning skulls as he lazily dragged it towards her. “You’re beautiful.” He discarded his weapon and tossed a dented helmet to the skulls. The woman opened her arms in an embrace, round breasts inviting him.

  “No! Wait!” Walter called, uselessly reaching from the bloody riverbank.

  The armsman ignored him, or didn’t hear him. He fell into her arms, body sagging against her, pressing his face between her breasts. She held him up as if he were made of sticks, unflinching at the weight of all that armor. She placed an ivory hand over his neck and worked her fingers into his blood-matted hair. Her soft eyes regarded the armsman, the inklings of a smile spreading across her lips.

  “What is this place?” Walter blinked and rubbed his eyes, grinding the pommel of his sword into his temple. He opened his eyes, gasping and springing back a step, splashing into the warm blood again. His breath caught before he could say anything. To speak might alert it. Maybe it hadn’t seen him. Where did the beast chasing him go? Maybe it found something easier to catch.

  The beautiful woman had become a nightmare. Her head was a wolf’s and her body was contorted into an unnatural, sinuous shape. Bones showed through her skin, pulled tight as a drum. Her elegant hand around the armsman’s neck had become a giant’s, tipped with gleaming obsidian nails. The armsman remained there, nuzzling himself in its pelt, surrounded by enormous breasts swallowing his head.

  There was a mark on the side of the man’s neck, like a tattoo or a brand. He slitted his eyes. It was in the shape of a figure eight. Did he have one too? He reached back at the same side of his neck, fingers jumping at the scar when he first felt it. He tentatively reached back again, running his fingers over its shape. It was there, just like the armsman’s.

  “What is this?” he barked. Anger took him again, dashing the fear that fought to seize control of his body.

  The armsman screamed as the beast twisted its paw around the man’s head, its nails digging into his skull. His screams became shrieks of agony. His head was snapped around the wrong way, arms and legs flailing at his captor. His head was then torn free in a shower of dark streaks.

  “Shit. Shit!” Walter ran, daring to look back. The wolf was a blur, almost on him; its bloody mouth spread apart, beady eyes hungry. It growled and Walter dropped to his knees, stabbing up with his sword in two hands. Blood splashed up from the river onto his chest and down his pants. The beast lunged over his h
ead as his sword cut a long gash under its jaw. It had almost ripped the weapon from his grip, left his fingers and wrists aching .

  The wolf rolled over and over before falling with its big tits up and poking out of the river, looking like stones and diverting the blood’s flow. Its long muscular arms twitched as blood spurted out from under its neck, adding its own blood to the grisly river. A tongue lolled out from the wound, long as a sword and wide as a bowl. It didn’t look real.

  “Fuck,” Walter breathed, and wiped his sword on his pants, trying to clear off the blood and only making it worse. He started laughing at the gesture. “What am I doing?” He didn’t care anymore.

  Everything hurt now. The tendons in his fingers felt torn and stretched. The wounds in his ribs and back were throbbing hammers. His knee popped and clicked as he walked. There had to be a way out of here, somewhere. The river was flowing and merging with something else. He just had to keep following it.

  Why weren’t his wounds healing? He could feel the Phoenix in his chest, buried deep and inaccessible. But it was there, he knew it. The Dragon was there too, eager to be set free, but something was blocking it. It was like an Equalizer, but much more powerful, pressing their powers into a great chasm.

  Walter stopped to catch his breath. He closed his eyes, pained with the burning of blood. The faces of dying men and women screeched across his mind. Wails of pain and cries of mercy echoed around their images. They were the faces of men and women he remembered from the siege of the Silver Tower. The faces of those he had failed. Their faces exploded all around into plumes of blood, screaming and streaking red all around.