The Devil's Judgment

by Chris Pisano

Obeed backed away and placed both hands over his new wound. He looked at the blood dripping from his fingers as if he had never seen it before. Perciless advanced and stabbed Obeed again. “They also say I’m a fop.”

  A gurgle escaped Obeed’s mouth as he grabbed for Perciless’ shoulders. The king pulled the knife out only to stab again. “They say I don’t like to get my hands dirty.”

  Perciless twisted the blade and Obeed’s eyes rolled up into his head. He pulled the knife out one last time and sliced it across Obeed’s throat. The crime lord fell to the ground without further ado. Perciless bent over the corpse he had made and as calmly as explaining a lesson to a child said, “What do you think of those criticisms, Obeed? Would you like one last observation of note? I think this would be the perfect time for Landyr, Thorna, and their new snake-like friend to ambush Obeed’s dumbfounded followers.”

  The marauders might have been organized with Obeed as their leader, but without him, they lacked any cohesion. As soon as Perciless mentioned the others, each criminal looked over his shoulder, training their weapons on whatever possibility might be behind them. None of the civilians they ignored made a direct move against them, but they wasted no time in helping remove the ropes binding Brokar, Lina, and Cezomir.

  As with the rogues outside, Samillia sliced through those closest to her with noiseless ease. In a wicked dance with three other partners, she had one knife for each, gracefully escorting them through the ballroom of the damned. Landyr fought with one of the criminals, but took so much longer to finish him it became a struggle filled with parrying two knives and descended into fisticuffs. After the thug dropped lifeless to the ground, he looked to help Thorna, but she was slicing through the King’s captors as quickly as the snake woman.

  The civilians ran to the closest exit, holding each other and attempting to shield their eyes from the horrors they had experienced. A few screamed as streaks of blood splashed them while they fled. Cezomir and Lina tore through half of the marauders, even the ones trying to escape with those they had held hostage. Landyr had to admire their precision. Despite the guttural noises they made as they bloodied their claws and slicked their muzzles, they were able to pick from the fleeing crowd only those who pledged allegiance to the crime lord. Landyr fought hard to ignore the fistfuls of meat they scooped from the men and shoved into their mouths.

  Too caught up with the actions of his feral companions, Landyr failed to notice the marauder behind him. At first, he thought Perciless had gone mad when his king suddenly threw his knife at him. It shot past Landyr’s face and sunk deeply into the eye socket of the man behind him. His pitiful moan was the last sound any of the marauders made.

  Landyr expected Perciless to give him a tongue lashing for one of his many possible short-comings this evening, from abandoning his post to taking so long to intervene. Instead, Perciless approached with a smile and clapped both of Landyr’s shoulders. “It’s wonderful to see you! I was worried when you weren’t with our group and feared you and Thorna might have been on the wrong side of their ambush.”

  Landyr returned the king’s smile. “I was busy meeting her.”

  Both men looked at Samillia as she used a dead man’s shirt to wipe the blood from her blade. When finished, she noticed the two men staring at her and the hue of her cheeks changed ever so slightly. Landyr assumed that to be a blush. Perciless nodded for her to join him.

  “Please, Landyr,” the king said, almost singing with joy, “introduce me to this magnificent individual who aided in my rescue.”

  “Her name is Samillia. We had met at the inn’s tavern earlier this evening.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, your Highness,” Samillia replied. Her muscles were toned and taut but did little good in making her attempt at a curtsy look anything other than awkward. Landyr had trained with soldiers more demure than she was.

  “He tried to put his dick in her earlier this evening,” Thorna mumbled as she walked by on her way to Brokar.

  Perciless neither flinched nor wavered as he continued, “The success or failure of that specific endeavor held no bearing on how spectacularly you handled yourself in this situation.”

  Her green skin almost glowed. Landyr wondered if it was from anger at Thorna’s rude comment or the embarrassing amount of praise King Perciless heaped upon her. “Thank you, your Highness.”

  “I’m assuming you two heard what Obeed said about my brother pulling troops from Kallistah Pass? I believe we should investigate. Rumor is the only thing that spreads faster than fire in this kingdom and I feel that we were the last people to hear about this one. We need to investigate why. If this is a tactical error, then I wish to exploit it. If this move gains them a tactical advantage, then I want to know why. The time is nigh to call upon my secret army, but I need to understand this sudden maneuver by my brother. So, Samillia, would you be willing to join us?”

  “Yes,” Samillia answered. Her face held a hard beauty to it, silk draped over an angular statue. When she smiled as she answered the pride was obvious, but Landyr swore that he saw elements of guilt as well.

  twenty-one

  Cezomir thrust faster. Lina matched his rhythm with her hips. His panting came in ragged huffs. She expressed her pleasure with one constant deep, throaty moan. From behind, Cezomir reached around and grabbed her breasts, too big for him to contain with his hands. Her tail curled around the small of his back and pulled with each thrust, encouraging him to go faster, harder. He bit the back of her neck. She ran her claws down the tree she was using for support. It had been too long since they had an opportunity to fuck and they were making the most of it.

  When they were finished, her feet were hidden by curved strips of gray bark that she had shredded from the tree. Cezomir laughed as she made exaggerated movements to step from the pile. He cinched his britches and found his tunic. Just for fun he grabbed Lina’s clothes as well and held them above her just out of reach. As always, she convinced him to give them back by running her rough tongue over his, while running her hand over his freshly spent manhood. She always made such a compelling argument to give her clothes back he felt he had little recourse other than to hand them over to her.

  Waiting for her to put her clothes on, Cezomir closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The Looping Forest was such a strange area. The tiny leaves rotted differently than other leaves, the smell far more bitter than any other forest. No animals lived in this forest. No pheromones. No decaying carcasses. No piss or shit. Just himself and those he traveled with. Lina’s sense of smell was better than his—a fact that he had yet to admit anywhere other than within the private confines of his mind. If he could pinpoint exactly where everyone was, then she must be overwhelmed with the pungency. A sudden odor offended his nostrils and he snorted to expel it. “He watched us again.”

  Lina sauntered over to Cezomir and gently ran a claw under his chin, sending tingles all along his face. “I can smell him, too. And, just so you know, he’s watching me.”

  “Doesn’t matter who he watches. It’s disturbing that he wrestles his own snake while watching us.”

  Lina shrugged a shoulder. “It’s his ‘thing’.”

  “His ‘thing,’ you say?”

  “Yes. We all have one. He’s a human that will put his dick into any nonhuman female.”

  “And me? Do I have a ‘thing’?”

  “You used to fuck fat human women if that’s what you mean.”

  Cezomir grabbed Lina and pulled her to him, her chest against his. As he spoke his canine lips almost touched her feline mouth. “Very amusing. How about you? What is your ‘thing?’”

  She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again. “Apparently I like dogs who get shy when they know people are watching him fuck.”

  Cezomir laughed again, releasing Lina from his grip. “Yet Landyr’s ‘thing’ is still the most puzzling. I’ve known me
n who cast broader nets to catch any prey they could find. But to refuse such an obvious morsel . . . ?”

  “You mean Thorna?”

  “I do. Anytime he gets too close to her, I can smell her loins burst into flame.”

  “Alas, he doesn’t like humans.”

  “I, for one, find that hysterical, adding to the comedy the fact that he lusts for the newest member of our cabal and she has no interest in him.”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s completely uninterested.”

  “No? I barely smell her when she’s right next to me let alone any changes in her moods.”

  “I can barely sense her either, her moods are very controlled.”

  “Huh,” Cezomir grunted. He started to walk toward where the rest of the group set up camp, undoubtedly breaking it down now that the Morning Sun had climbed over the horizon and pretending not to know that Landyr was hiding behind a tree twenty paces away. “Well, she is mostly snake after all.”

  Lina walked beside him. “I think it’s more than that. Her movements are very precise. She’s always watching everything. She never speaks unless spoken to.”

  “Are you talking about Samillia or yourself?”

  Lina frowned. “After ten years, I still can’t tell when you attempt to make a joke.”

  Cezomir laughed and Lina frowned even more.

  Thorna approached them as soon as they returned to camp. “Have either of you seen Landyr?”

  “I thought I saw him behind a tree wrestling with a snake,” Cezomir said.

  Upon hearing his words, Thorna glanced over her shoulder to Samillia, helping Brokar and Perciless fasten a bedroll to one of the horses. Lina moved her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. Cezomir followed up with, “A different kind of snake.”

  Thorna looked behind Cezomir into the forest. “Snake, huh? It’s been a while since I had fresh snake. I was beginning to wonder if we’d find anything to eat in this damnable forest.”

  Tears forming in her eyes, Lina turned away, but when Landyr emerged while adjusting his pants, she hid behind Cezomir. Thorna asked him, “So, where’s the snake?”

  Landyr froze mid-step as if his foot was close to a viper’s pit. “The . . . snake . . . ?”

  “Yes, snake. Cezomir said he saw you wrestling with one behind a tree.”

  A hue of pink touched his cheeks as he replied, “Oh . . . yes . . . a snake . . . unfortunately, I was mistaken. It was merely a branch. Sorry to get anyone’s hopes up.”

  “How can one mistake a branch for a snake?”

  Landyr chuckled. “Have you not looked around? Everything is gray. A maddening amount of gray. I swore the flames of last night’s campfire had gone gray.”

  “Pity,” Thorna mumbled. “I was hoping to eat some snake.”

  Both Cezomir and Lina burst out laughing.

  “What is going on with those two?” Landyr asked.

  “That’s beyond my knowledge,” Thorna answered. “They’ve been a touch daffy ever since returning to camp.”

  Cezomir shook his head and went to help the others pack up camp. He made his way to Perciless’ horse.

  The horse exploded.

  In a burst of blood and bones, Perciless, Samillia, and Brokar flew backward. Samillia remained still on the ground, dead or unconscious, Cezomir did not know. Perciless rolled to prop himself up on his elbows and shook his head, strips of bloodied horse hide clinging to his body. Brokar leaped on top of the king as two dozen arrows formed a line down his back.

  What caused the horse to explode reeked of magic, but what launched the flurry of arrows was mechanical. Three men worked a mounted automatic firing crossbow; one to aim, one to work the wheel crank, one to feed the machine a continuous strand of arrows tied together by threads.

  Cezomir knew little of modern weaponry, but this mechanism of death looked complicated to operate and he hypothesized that if it was complicated to operate, then it must be easy to disrupt.

  Running toward Perciless, Cezomir snatched a fallen branch from the ground. Short, but thick, he snapped it into two pieces and threw them at the crossbow operators. His distraction gave him enough time to grab Perciless by the back of his shirt, snatch Thorna’s short sword from her pack and Landyr’s from his, and then meet the rest of his companions behind the curved roots of a nearby tree.

  “Sorry for dragging you by the shirt, your Highness,” Cezomir said as he tossed the swords to Thorna and Landyr.

  Perciless used both hands to wipe the gore from his face. “Nothing to apologize for. The perception of dignity disappears during life or death situations. Have we any idea what happened?”

  “None yet. Brokar’s dead, maybe Samillia as well.”

  Thorna gasped and turned to Landyr. “Brokar . . . ?”

  Landyr said nothing in reply as the muscles of his clenched jaw rolled.

  “He died saving the king,” Cezomir continued. “And there’s a wizard about.”

  “Do you think the king’s Elite Troop found us again?” Perciless asked. He pulled a small dagger from his boot as he cautiously glanced out from behind the tree.

  “It’s possible. Lina and I shall conduct a full and detailed investigation.”

  Before Perciless could object, Cezomir and Lina sprinted toward the point of attack.

  A steady stream of projectiles flew between them. She was far more agile than he, but they had been in situations like this before and weaved their way toward the crew operating the rapid-firing crossbow without a single scratch.

  Lina jumped on the man who had been aiming the weapon, all four sets of claws digging into his torso as she sunk her teeth into his neck. Cezomir swiped at the man spinning the crank, removing his face as his claws left gouges in the bone. The remaining man stood in gape-mouth horror, holding an armful of arrows now useless. Without hesitation, Cezomir jammed both sets of claws into the man’s chest and snapped his rib cage in two while ripping him open. The dead man’s face froze in his last expression, dumbfounded that a werewolf was burying his face in his torso, eating his entrails.

  After a few quick swallows, Cezomir dropped the carcass and turned to Lina. She, too, had taken a moment to feed on her kill, chunks of meat sliding from her blood-soaked chin. They rushed to each other and indulged in a kiss. They separated when a branch wrapped itself around Lina’s neck.

  Cezomir’s powerful claws snapped the branch before it could do any harm. This was the wizard’s doing. He used his magic to ensorcell three trees, wooden puppets commanded to kill. Again, Lina was too fast.

  She lacked Cezomir’s strength, but she could still slice through branches as thick as her arm. Cezomir could break those as thick as thigh with one swipe, larger with more strikes. Branches webbed together to ensnare Lina, but Cezomir shredded them with ease. She climbed to the top of a tree, snapped away the smaller limbs, and then jumped to the next one. Cezomir climbed as well, but not very high. Climbing trees was not a skill he had mastered, but he only needed to climb high enough to remove the branches Lina could not. As if merely plucking petals from a daisy, they worked together quickly to remove the branches from all three trees. The roots were too thick for the wizard to make the trees mobile, now just wishbones stuck in the ground.

  Cezomir crouched, snarling with his claws ready to rend, excited for the next fight. The trees did little more than waste time and he wanted a challenge more suitable for his blood lust. But there was nothing around him other than Lina, shredded meat, and empty forest. “It was a distraction. The king!”

  They ran back, under and around the archways made by tree roots, through the camp with the other horses still braying about one of their own disappearing in such a violent manner, toward the noises of metal clashing with metal. Cezomir noticed that Samillia was no longer on the ground and saw her dancing around the spear strikes bet
ween two centaurs.

  Landyr and Thorna did their best to keep others of the Elite Troop away from Perciless. Cezomir had seen the prince fight before now and knew that he was not some bureaucratic fop coddled into existence by privilege. He wondered how much protection the prince truly needed as Perciless stood over the body of a felled orc and pulled his dagger from its neck.

  Two more bodies lay on the ground wearing the king’s insignia, a human and a winged monstrosity. Despite the valiance of his companions, they were still outnumbered three to one. And there was still the wizard. The stench of magic twisted Cezomir’s guts and out of reflex, he pushed Lina away just as the fireball engulfed him.

  His thick fur protected him from any true harm and smoldered as he dropped to the ground to roll away the flames. The conflagration inside of him raged hotter than any fireball and as soon as he saw the wizard, he launched himself through the air at him. Cezomir had little care that the wizard wore a cloak of flame, he just wanted to kill the bastard. It was not to be.

  With a roar, Cezomir slashed both sets of claws as he came down on the wizard, striking nothing but an illusion. The image disappeared and he slammed to the ground, getting a face full of dirt. And a new opponent.

  The illusion hid one of the Elite Troop members, one so horrid it gave Cezomir a moment of pause. It had the shape of a human male, but its height and muscle size were both impossibly large. Its head looked as if it had once been a human, but now it appeared as if its features had melted off, leaving nothing more than exposed teeth and globs of folded skin. Its legs were long and thick but bent the opposite way a human’s did. Its fingers were long, each one tipped to a hardened point, but scaled as if its hands were ripped away and replaced by dragon claws. The thing had thick plate mail, but not a suit of armor, rather chunks of metal nailed directly into its skin. Cezomir was too stunned to block its kick.

  He flew through the air and landed hard again. How did that thing possess such power? The time to be amazed was over, lest Cezomir wished to discover exactly how sharp those claws were. Back on his feet, he growled and charged the clawed beast. It was fast, the claw swipe faster than the werewolf expected. He dropped just in time, slid between his opponent’s legs and jumped to his feet with his arm back, ready to use his own claws. Too late. The monster twisted and connected with a backhand to Cezomir’s jaw.