The Devil's Judgment

by Chris Pisano

  Something was off with this minotaur. It was moving as if it were a puppet. When the soldiers brought it down, it fought back, but by twisting in unnatural ways. Then a figure burst from the thing’s back. Large. Green. An ogre. A hitch caught in the throats of Bale Pinkeye’s children as their father attacked the closest guards. The minotaur carcass still moved, though. A human hand reached out and flailed about as soldiers tried to grab it. They finally succeeded and pulled a woman from the belly of the beast. A large woman with long hair as black as a starless night, as black as Nevin’s hair.

  Dearborn Stillheart.

  “Mother?” Ideria whispered as her legs started to move her out of the forest. Her feet moved faster toward her mother, the woman she thought was dead, the missing piece in her heart. Faster she ran. She heard voices shout after her from behind, but could not make out what they were saying, nor did she care. Faster still. The wind stung her cheeks and she had no concept of how fast she was sprinting until she contacted a soldier. He wore only pants, no armor to protect him. She caught him under the shoulder, popping it out of the socket and cracking his clavicle, and launched him through the air. She took a breath, allowing her mind to catch up with what her body was doing. It was difficult as the last cognition she could muster was standing within the bordering forest. Now she faced a dozen men and one screeching hobgoblin. More men flowed from the opened turret doorway as Speekore raced toward it, yelling at them to fetch weapons. Some of the men stopped and ran back through the door, while others sprinted toward the skirmish in progress.

  Ideria became aware of her surroundings as a fist connected with her jaw. The blow was glancing and not solid, but enough for her wits to gather. The castle was twenty paces in front of her, a large pond next to it she had not noticed it from the forest, now a hundred paces behind her. The grass beneath her feet was short, obviously munched on by domesticated sheep. Light from the Day Sun danced of the placid waters of the pond. Her mother was alive; the only obstacles keeping her a reunion were the newest recruits of the King’s army.

  Soldiers wrestled with her mother, struggling to contain her limbs. Ideria rushed to her aid, but the soldier who punched her swung at her again. A decade of having been trained by Draymon, Bartholomew, and the best instructors they could find developed certain instincts within Ideria. She let that training take over, dodging the punch with ease and grabbing the man by the scruff of his shirt and the top of his pants. Little effort was needed to lift him and a scant more so to throw him into a pair of oncoming soldiers.

  Ideria only made it two steps before three more men converged on her. Their lack of armor gave her the advantage. Fist to nose. Elbow to cheek. Foot to sternum. But sheer numbers stripped away that advantage.

  She felled two, but three more appeared. Then another. And another. She backed away, but they all advanced on her. Surrounded her. They were trained in tactics and this one was simple: quantity over quality. She wanted to keep them at optimum striking distance, but they closed the circle they had formed around her. She went hard at one soldier and broke his arm in multiple places, but the other men took advantage of the calculated sacrifice and crashed in on her.

  Their strikes were weak, too close to put any force behind their hits, but they were coming from everywhere. Front, back, sides. She had no strategy for this situation, becoming direr by the second. Until a streak of blood splashed across her face.

  The struggle stopped. Every soldier looked suddenly confused, none more so than the one in front of her with the blood gushing from his sliced open throat. He fell, his face disappearing and making way for another face: her brother’s. Nevin’s dagger was warm with blood, yet his face held no expression, just his piercing blue eyes. Cold as a painted statue, a simulacrum of a human with all the outside pieces and none of the inside ones.

  Two of the other soldiers suddenly disappeared from the mass of bodies, yanked away by Rue. Holding one in each arm, the ogre slammed the soldiers together and dropped their limp bodies. Another soldier vanished, this one hoisted into the sky by Hope. The harpy strained her arms and wings to lift the squirming soldier and when she achieved the height of the turret’s roof, she let go. The man hit the ground with a thud. He no longer squirmed.

  Bartholomew and Draymon joined the fighting, tearing through the soldiers with precision knife cuts. Their efforts thinned the number of soldiers descending upon Bale. Thanks to the help from her brother and her friends, Ideria was free and charged toward her mother. As easy as picking ticks from a dog, Ideria tossed the soldiers away. Behind her played the sounds of men dying; in front of her, Mother. Down to the last three, her mother had been freed enough to help. She wasted little time in ending the lives of her captors as she broke their necks.

  Ideria cried, her bottom lip twitching so hard that she had difficulty forming the word, “Mother?”

  Tears ran rivers from Dearborn’s eyes, the same blue eyes that Ideria saw every time she looked in a mirror. A similar face, too. If not for the hardness and weathered skin, it might have been the same.

  Dearborn placed her right hand on Ideria’s cheek, her left on Nevin’s as he joined them, standing next to Ideria. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, only a howl of pain from being struck by an arrow.

  Ideria’s world went red. She had no idea what caused the phenomena, blood in her eyes or something shifting inside of her, but everything changed to different shades of red. Her mother’s face twisting in pain. Her brother’s face in open-mouthed shock. The grass of the field. The stone of the castle. Every weapon-wielding soldier rushing from the open doorway.

  She heard no noise, just the slow, steady thump of her heart. Not even her own screaming, an act she only assumed she was doing from the rawness burning hot in her throat. She saw no true motion either, just an image frozen in time with every beat of her heart.

  Thump. A sword in her hand.

  Thump. Gape-mouthed faces of anguish from dying soldiers.

  Thump. Multiple geysers of blood captured mid-spray.

  Thump. Severed heads just above the ground like over ripened fruit falling from a tree.

  Thump. Blood.

  Thump. Blood.

  Thump. Blood.

  “Ideria!”

  Her mother’s voice.

  The world’s colors came back to Ideria as did sound. Life moved at a regular pace now, her mother and brother and friends running to her. It hurt to breathe, and she was not sure if she was inhaling too fast or too slow. Her arms and legs shook, her joints all throbbing in unison. She had a sword in each hand and dropped them; they were too heavy to hold any longer. When she spoke, her words weighed more than the swords. “The rest . . . of the . . . soldiers, Mamma.”

  Ideria reached out for her mother but froze when red liquid flowed from her arms as if she pulled them from a pool of ink. Reality started to push through her dream state. She had killed people. She killed the soldiers who shot her mother with an arrow. How many, though? She started to look down. How many had she killed to have this much blood on her? Her mother stopped her. Both hands on her face, Dearborn kept her daughter from looking down. “They’re gone, Ideria. There are no more soldiers.”

  Ideria could not feel her mother’s skin through the wash of blood on her face. Her body shivered. Was this a chill? Or fear? Dearborn embraced her and whispered in her ear, “It’s okay, Ideria. It’s okay. You did what you had to do. It’s okay.”

  “Mamma? The arrow?”

  “Hit my leg. I’ve had worse injuries.”

  Still in her mother’s arms, Ideria looked up to see her friends gathering around, all wearing the same mask of wide-eyed shock, except for Bartholomew. He wandered from one body to the next, kicking them to make sure they were dead. “Someone give her a cloth and let’s get out of here.”

  Bartholomew could be bluntly honest without the need to coat his words
with sugar. A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Ideria’s mouth until she noticed a ripple in the nearby lake. Small waves rolled outward from a central point, but nothing had dropped into the water to create such a disturbance. More waves formed from nowhere. Not from nowhere, Ideria realized, but from under the water.

  A geyser erupted as if the lake held something so offensive and vile the water needed to vomit it out as quickly as possible. The column of water returned to the lake in a gushing splash and what remained was a dragon. The water dragon.

  It fell gracelessly from the sky, scales shimmering the dark blue of an ocean. It was smaller than the other dragons, one wing stiff and brittle, the front half of its right side wrinkled and folded from burn scars. Its leg there was shriveled and less agile than the others. A decade ago, the inferno dragon had belched a splash of magma on the water dragon during the insurrection battle of Oremethus, taking the throne from Perciless. A bit of pride pulsed through Ideria knowing that her mother was there and fought bravely for the side of righteousness. Her mother’s effort left lasting effects on the scarred dragon. Despite its deformities and smaller size, it was still fearsome.

  Claws digging into the ground, it landed and immediately opened its mouth to release a torrent of water. The column slammed into Bartholomew. He disappeared within the deluge, and when it stopped, his broken mass was hundreds of feet away.

  “Uncle!” Ideria cried out. She tried to run to him, but her mother still held her, tighter now that they were under attack. Ideria wanted to run to the broken remains of the man who added levity to her training, who taught her tricks and told her secrets that she would have never learned from anyone else. But her mother refused to let her go and angled herself between Ideria and the dragon. Her mother used her body as a shield.

  Her friends scattered trying to surround the dragon, each of them screaming for its attention. The beast’s tail twitched as it hissed at each of its attackers. Anytime it prepared to release its hurricane breath, someone threw a knife or sword. It was usually Draymon, but the others helped as well. Hope even dropped a few heavy shields on the dragon’s head.

  The dragon lashed out. It snapped its jaws at Hope, swung its tail at Rue and Bale, swiped its claw at Draymon and Nevin. It became very focused on whoever it was attacking, not turning toward the various shouts and screams. It only paused when a shadow on the ground glided by. Everyone stopped and looked up.

  The rising Day Sun acted as a backdrop to a terrifying silhouette—a winged creature approached. Another dragon? No. As the shape drew closer, it mutated from a winged animal to something more. Arms and legs of a human became visible but much larger. At the last second, Ideria recognized the shape, and she smiled. It was Woe.

  The winged ogre dropped from the sky, using both hands to swing a mace with a head as large as her torso. He brought it down on the dragon’s skull, just behind its right eye. The dragon roared in pain and turned toward its attacker to release another torrent of water.

  Woe touched the ground long enough to bend his knees and launch himself into the air again. Within three flaps of his wings, he was face to face with the dragon. The beast opened its mouth to strike, but the ogre closed it, bringing the mace upward this time, slamming it against the underside of its jaw.

  “Mother,” Ideria said as she gently pushed Dearborn away. “Woe is attacking the dragon. We have to help.”

  Dearborn acquiesced, releasing her daughter and allowing her to pick up the swords she had dropped. Dearborn found one on the ground as well and followed Ideria into the skirmish.

  Woe continued to club the dragon’s head, while everyone else on the ground sliced at its body. Dearborn and her children focused their attacks on its chest by its mangled leg. It snapped its jaws at them but missed as they dove out of the way. The dragon whipped its head to the side to ready another strike, but Woe timed his attack perfectly, striking the monster’s chin. The dragon’s head drooped and everyone on the ground took advantage of its stunned state. A flurry of knives and swords cut through the scales of the dragon’s neck releasing rivers of blood.

  The dragon backed away, its bad leg giving out. It released one enfeebled attempt of a roar and collapsed. The only celebration came in the form of short-winded hugs.

  Draymon started to walk toward the forest. “We need to leave. We’ll celebrate our victory and mourn our loss later, but now we have to leave before any more soldiers arrive.”

  Upon hearing the word “soldier” Ideria looked back to the castle, to where she had attacked the throng of soldiers. She saw what she had done and fell unconscious from shock.

  seventeen

  “Not often I get human clients,” the satyress said, open palm in front of Landyr’s face.

  “That’s because most humans aren’t as enlightened as I.”

  “Or as flush with coin.” She wiggled her fingers.

  Landyr laughed as he rolled to his side and grabbed his coin pouch from under the bed. She had asked for three when she first crossed the threshold, but her skills were far beyond satisfactory, so he grabbed four coins from his pouch.

  As he rolled back over, he sat up and cupped her hand, while placing the coins in it. Then he ran both hands up her arm, their paths deviating upon reaching her shoulder. His left hand slid down her side and stopped at the middle of her back, while his right slid over her bare breasts one more time and nestled in her leg fur. He kissed her and when he finished, she cooed and said, “You wish to go a third time?”

  “Not tonight. I just wanted to keep one more memory of you.”

  The satyress giggled as she stood from the bed and ran her fingers through her hair to tame the wild curls bounding from her head to her shoulders. She donned a vest to hide her bosom and slid hoops of gold jewelry over her right horn. As she exited the room, she blew him one last kiss and said, “You have been one of my favorite clients. Ask for me if you ever lay your head down in this town again.”

  Landyr laid back on the bed and enjoyed the tingle of sweat evaporating from his skin. It had been too long since he had been with a satyress. Even longer since he had been with a dark elf. “Damnation.”

  His mind flooded with images of Chenessa as a dark elf, as a demon, as the void dragon. The satyress calmed the burning he had in his loins, but not the fire in his head. For that, he would need mead

  Pants, boots, shirt, and he was on his way down from the second-floor rooms to the tavern below. A stool at the bar and coin on the bar top, and he was on his way to washing away the images in his mind.

  “Hello.” A woman’s voice from the seat next to him. As soon as he looked over all he could see was green skin and cleavage; the cinched corset made sure of that. She wore a tricorn hat with one willowy blue feather stuck in the side. The way it was placed on her head and how she held herself, Landyr could see nothing more of her face than her chin and full lips. “Would you like some company tonight?”

  Her voice sounded familiar, but he could not place it. At first, he thought it might be Leelanna, the goblin witch, but her hair was blood red, while the locks flowing from under this woman’s hat were fawn brown. “Always, but I usually insist that I know who my company is.”

  The mysterious woman lifted her head.

  Thorna.

  Landyr almost jumped off his stool. He grabbed her arm and discovered the green of her skin was nothing more than a powder that left no stain and could easily be removed. “What . . . ? What is the meaning of this?”

  Wearing a predator’s smile, she purred, “I wanted to get your attention. Did it work?”

  “Get my attention? Why?”

  “Maybe I’m lonely. Maybe I’m tired of summoning up a stranger to satisfy a need. Maybe I no longer want inexperienced young men or the stench of stale ale that accompanies older men. Maybe it’s time you and I explore.”

  “That is not a good idea
.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m your general.”

  “That notion is more repugnant to you than alleyway horse shit. Never once in the past decade have you ever tried to refer to yourself as a general let alone made any attempt to live the title.”

  “Be that as it may, I—”

  Thorna yanked her arm from Landyr’s grasp as if he no longer deserved the privilege of touching it. “It’s because I’m human, isn’t it? Everyone knows you spend your days pining for a dragon, while you spend your nights with a woman from any species other than human. Tonight was the first time you looked at me like a woman, and that was only because I powdered my skin green.”

  This was the first time anyone was so blunt to him. Cezomir would chide him now and again, but he never blatantly stated that Landyr no longer preferred the company of his own kind. He felt like a child being accused of fearing darkness. “That’s preposterous. Whether you’re human or not, it just wouldn’t be a good idea. Do you really think now this is the best time to attempt this? We were attacked by Daedalus’ Elite Troop just two weeks ago.”

  “Because we were attacked two weeks ago is the very reason to attempt this now. Other than helping a local militia break up an army supply chain or aiding a Tsinel spy across hostile lands—that was the closest we have come to the king’s men in the last ten years. The winds are starting to swirl, Landyr. A hurricane is coming soon and who knows if we’re going to survive it.”

  She was right. Things had been out of sorts of late in every town they visited these past few weeks. Rumors were scurrying like rats about the happenings in Phenomere. But were these rats running from a sinking ship, or toward a bountiful meal? “I understand your feelings of uncertainty, especially with the loss of Rolin. I miss him greatly. You’re right about my title of general. The only one who sees me as one is King Perciless. Rolin was much more than a mere subordinate. He was a friend. He was family. You all are, even the deplorable Cezomir.”