by Diem, J. C.
Finally rolling to a stop, I climbed to my feet and turned to face him. My anger reached its peak and turned into wrath, which was what I’d been waiting for. Now I would have the edge that I needed to be able to kill him. “You have incurred my wrath, Prince of the fifth realm. Prepare to meet your death.”
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Chapter Forty-Five
Hesitating for the space of a few heartbeats, the prince realized that he was doomed to death. It went against every instinct that a demon should have had, but he panicked and turned to run. “Delay her!” he shouted at what was left of his minions. They had no choice but to obey and surged towards me.
If the prince made it out of the palace, he’d be able to call on his nightmares to carry him away in his carriage. I had to find a way to delay him while I dealt with his lords. My hellhounds came at my silent call and appeared in the doorway. The four soldiers standing guard peeked inside then wisely fled. My quarry skidded to a stop when he saw that the exit was blocked. Apparently, not even a Demon Prince wanted to take on an entire pack of six hellhounds on his own.
Filled with wrath, the lords wouldn’t be much of a challenge for me now. The rage overwhelmed the liability of having angelic essence inside me and my wounds healed. With the skill that I’d gained from the legion, I cut them down one by one then turned to my final foe.
With the exit blocked, the prince had no choice but to face me, but he wasn’t alone. His Wraith Warrior had appeared beside him. Instead of ordering him to attack the hounds, he drew the deadly assassin back inside himself. He would be more powerful and dangerous with the influx of his essence.
Desperate to survive, he went on the attack. I barely managed to deflect the barrage that came towards me. I staggered back from his final swing and he took advantage of my momentary loss of balance. His sword sank into my chest, narrowly missing my heart. Ramming it in all the way, the hilt came to rest against my breastbone. Grinning down at me in savage triumph, he thought the battle was over, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.
His grin faded when I put my hand on the cold metal of his armor and shoved myself backwards as hard as I could. Stumbling free, I bent over and gasped in pain as blood sheeted from the cuts in my chest and back. They healed almost before the liquid could seep through my clothing. “Why will you not just die?” he asked in bewilderment.
“Because I’m Hellscourge,” I said and straightened up. “I was created to kill you. Nothing is going to stop me from achieving my destiny.”
Fear made him reckless. He unleashed another barrage against me and this time his sword came close to slicing my right arm off. He punched me in the jaw hard enough to knock me to the ground. Stunned, I lay on my back as my flesh knitted back together. He kicked my axe away then drew his sword up high, intending to plunge it into my face.
Growling and barking, my hounds came to my rescue and converged on the prince. Cursing horribly, he lashed out with his weapon. Nimble and ferocious, they weren’t easy to kill. The alpha darted behind him and tore out his hamstring while another crouched in front of him to trip him up. Working together, the rest of the pack savaged his arm until he dropped his sword.
Calling my weapon back to me, I climbed to my feet. My axe swung out twice, severing both of his hands before he could heal his wounds. Given enough time, he could reattach them, but I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to.
“Where is your piece of the object of power?” I asked. My hounds lined up neatly behind me. Growling quietly, they were ready to tear him apart if I gave them the signal.
On his knees, he sneered at me. “Go ahead and torture me,” he said in his guttural voice. “I will never tell you where it is!”
“That’s what they all say,” I said with a smirk and started slicing.
Soon, pieces of him lay strewn all over the floor. True to his word, he hadn’t told me what I needed to know. I’d turned his insides into minced meat and he was still clinging to a thread of life. “The object is far from here and you will never find it,” he said and grinned. Black blood covered us both and had spread out in a pool around him.
“I think I might know where it is,” a timid voice whispered. I thought the remaining servants and guards had fled from the palace. But that didn’t seem to be the case. Searching the shadows, I saw a dark form crouched next to a nearby column. It was an imp and she was just as hideous as Sam had been when I’d first met him.
“Keep your mouth shut, vermin!” the prince ordered. As her master, he had complete control over her. Her mouth snapped shut and she cowered away from him. She lifted a thin arm over her head to fend him off even though he was in no shape to be able to hurt her.
“If I kill him, will you tell me what you know?” I asked her. I was going to kill him whether she told me or not. That was a given.
Still unable to talk, she nodded cautiously. The prince opened his mouth to scream for a final time, but my axe sliced through his neck before he could voice his rage and terror. His head hit the floor, bounced a few times and came to a stop near the imp. Even in death, he glowered at her.
Taking a few steps forward, I kicked it as hard as I could. We both watched as it went sailing to the far end of the throne room. Growling and snapping at each other, my hounds took off after it. “Look at that. Even hellhounds like to play fetch,” I said more to myself than to the imp.
Freed from her restriction against talking, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “I am glad that you killed him.”
“Yeah, me too. Can you tell me what you know about the metal object now?”
“I was cleaning the Prince’s chambers when I saw him with a wyvern on the walkway between the spires,” she said. “He tied something to its leg then told it to fly back to its nesting place.”
“Do you know where that is?”
“Somewhere in the Mountains of Peril,” she replied with a shrug.
“Mountains of Peril, huh? Sounds like a fun place.” Neither of us smiled at my weak joke. “It sounds like there’s more than one mountain. Do you know which particular one it was sent to?”
“No. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure I’ll find it eventually. You should probably leave here,” I warned her. “Bad things usually happen after I kill the Princes.”
“Is it true that the palace in the sixth realm collapsed from a quake?”
“Yep. The whole thing split right down the middle.”
“Just like the Prince’s throne,” she mused then headed for the door. She stopped and looked back at me, looking so much like Sam when I’d first seen him that my heart clenched. “Good luck, Hellscourge.”
My alpha hound came bounding over to me with the prince’s head clamped in his jaws. “Good boy,” I said and I could have sworn he grinned before running off with his prize.
Hearing the flapping of wings, I looked up to see the raven heading towards a glassless window. It hadn’t bothered to stick around to taunt me this time.
Now that the battle was over, my wrath seeped away, leaving me exhausted. I returned to the staircase and wearily climbed up to the second floor. Making my way through the halls, I found the room where I’d left Sam.
Peeking over the bench, I saw him lying in the same position. He was deeply asleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. My axe reverted back to a dagger and I sheathed it. As quietly as I could, I pulled the seat away and picked up my slumbering friend.
The palace was eerily silent as I returned to the ground floor. My hounds were gone, leaving the chewed head of the Demon Prince behind. I skirted around it with barely a glance and headed for the door.
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Chapter Forty-Six
I called on the nightmares and they were waiting with my carriage when I stepped outside. I opened the door and gently placed Sam on the plush black leather seat then climbed inside. Slumping back, I closed my eyes and waited for the Hellmaster to take out his anger on me again. He always found some way of punishing me for ki
lling the princes.
At my silent command, the shadowy steeds took off at a trot. Something hit the window next to me and I belatedly remembered the wyverns that had been stationed on the roof to keep watch for intruders. Pulling the curtain aside, I saw them dive bombing the nightmares. Besieged by flying critters, they stumbled to a halt and reared in their traces.
The noise woke Sam and he looked around in alarm. He was befuddled to find himself in the carriage. “Stay here,” I told him then leaped outside. There were too many of the flying beasts to fight on my own. I transformed my dagger into an axe, but it wouldn’t be enough. My hounds materialized from nowhere and leaped up to snap at the diving wyverns.
The nightmares had talons rather than hooves and fangs that could rend and tear their attackers, but they were pinned in place and couldn’t defend themselves very well. I whirled the axe overhead, slicing off limbs and tearing through wings. My hounds savaged the ones that they took down. Turning tail, the wyverns gave up and fled. Their master was dead and they had no reason to stay. They headed towards the mountain range where I would hopefully find what I’d come here for.
They had been an inconvenience rather than dangerous, which meant that worse was surely still to come. The hounds disappeared again now that the threat was gone. I climbed back into the carriage and had barely settled onto my seat when the nightmares took off. My axe reverted back to a dagger, and I slipped it into the sheath in an inner pocket of my jacket.
“What did I miss?” Sam asked.
“The Prince is dead and an imp told me where he sent his piece of the object. She said we’ll find it in the Mountains of Peril.”
He was still groggy, but became more alert at that. “An imp assisted you? That was brave of her. My kind are usually too timid to speak at all.”
“She was terrified, but she still tried to help me. The Prince ordered her not to speak and she couldn’t utter a word after that until I killed him.”
His face became drawn and he nodded in understanding. “We must obey our master’s every command. Even if they instruct us to cause ourselves harm.”
“She’s free now that he’s dead.”
He shook his head in disagreement. “She will never be free. Another demon will claim her as his or her own. Her misery will last for an eternity. Such is the destiny of all imps.”
“That isn’t your destiny anymore,” I reminded him. Instead of reassuring him, it just made him even sadder. Leo and I had saved him from the portal, but the rest of his kind were doomed to spend the rest of their existence trapped here.
My battle with the prince hadn’t lasted long, but the upper tiers of the city had already emptied out. The streets were as eerily silent as the palace had been. Our wheels made the only noise as they rumbled over the cobblestones. I waited tensely for a catastrophe to hit us, but everything remained ominously still.
I heard screams of panic as we reached the lower tiers. Word had spread that the prince had fallen and demons of all description were fleeing. Seeing my carriage coming, they shrieked in terror and tried to leap out of the way. The nightmares used their force field to shove them out of our way. Every now and then I felt the wheels bump over a body.
The ground levelled out and the carriage picked up speed. I pushed the window up and looked out, figuring we had to be close to the gate by now. I saw it looming ahead, but demons were clogging it, desperate to escape. The nightmares’ invisible force field flung the hell spawn out of our path. Dozens of bodies were tossed aside and landed with jarring thuds some distance away.
When we were finally through the gate, we entered the wasteland and headed towards the mountain range that I’d seen from the walkway at the top of the palace. Drawing inside, I sniggered at seeing the demons being mowed down like bowling pins. I pulled the window shut to keep the dust out.
Sam still looked tired even after his nap. “I am surprised we managed to escape from the city without being struck with some kind of catastrophe,” he said while trying not to yawn.
My amusement died and worry took over. “Maybe the Hellmaster is saving his pretend fury for later.” I hadn’t met my arch nemesis yet, but I was convinced that he didn’t care that I was whittling down the princes. His retaliation each time I eliminated them was just for show. Maybe making us wait until he struck was part of the torture this time.
The landscape slowly began to change as we continued on our trek. Cracks opened in the ground and the air grew warmer. The faint red glow that I’d seen from the walkway high above the palace became gradually brighter. Sometimes, I saw magma in the deeper cracks as we rumbled past them.
We’d been travelling for a couple of days when the carriage abruptly pulled to a stop. Sam and I pushed our windows up and stuck our heads out to see what the delay was. We’d left all signs of civilization behind hours ago. Towns and villages had dwindled to nothing. Now only the occasional petrified tree broke the monotony.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the nightmares, not that they could answer me. The closest one tossed its head and pawed silently at the ground. Looking past it, I realized the dry, cracked ground had changed. Ahead, it was smooth and sandy.
“It reminds me of the Plains of Desolation,” Sam said uneasily.
Focusing on the soil, I saw the dimples that indicated that a swarm of arachnoids had taken up residence. They were directly between us and the mountain range. “Can you go around them?” I asked the nightmares.
They exchanged a look and seemed to share a silent conversation. Coming to a decision, they turned so that they were parallel to the deadly plain full of skeletal, insect-like critters and took off again.
Sam and I drew back inside and shut our windows again. “I am glad we do not have to go through the arachnoids,” Sam said with a shudder. “It was not much fun the last time.”
“You mean you didn’t enjoy clinging to me like a monkey as I blasted the creepy things with fireballs while sprinting for my life?” I joked.
“It would have been more fun if I had not been shredded by one of them.”
I grimaced at the reminder that his chest and stomach had been badly lacerated by an arachnoid. Thankfully, he’d healed completely. Leaning back in his seat, he closed his eyes and fell asleep again. I tried not to worry about how his changes would affect my chances of accomplishing my goals. He was my best friend and I was happy that he was redeeming himself. Yet a selfish part of me wished he could hold off on his transformation for just a few more months.
Going around the arachnoids added a couple of days to our journey. Reaching the foothills of the Mountains of Peril at last, the nightmares stopped and we climbed out.
Fluttering wings alerted us that we weren’t alone. I hadn’t even been aware that we were being followed this time. The Hellmaster’s pet raven landed on a branch of a lone petrified tree. Dampness at its base was enough warning to steer clear. Snake-like creatures dwelled in the smelly sludge that passed for water here.
“Well?” I said and it cocked its head to the side as if it was listening. “Your master hasn’t thrown a tantrum yet. What’s he waiting for?” It opened its beak and gave a derisive caw.
“It is probably not wise to taunt it,” Sam warned me. “That bird already hates you with a passion.”
“What can it possibly do to me here?” I asked and gestured at the desolate mountain range. There weren’t any other undead birds that it could call on to attack us. His answer was an uneasy shrug.
Taking to the air, the raven flew out of sight and I tried to put it out of my mind as well. Looking up, I saw several peaks looming over us.
“Do you have any idea where the wyvern that the Prince sent here could be?” Sam asked.
“Nope. I don’t have a clue.”
“Then I guess we had best begin searching,” he said with a sigh.
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Chapter Forty-Seven
If we’d been on Earth, the temperature would have grown colder the higher we climbed. It was the com
plete opposite here. The air soon became sulfuric and hard to breathe. Flakes of ash began to drift downwards, coating our hair, skin and clothes. At least I knew why it was getting warmer now. These mountains were slumbering volcanos. Every now and then the ground would rumble beneath our feet, making me wonder how stable they were. Each time that happened, we froze and waited for it to settle down again.
There were no paths to make our climb easier. I used brute strength and grim determination to claw my way upwards. Sam followed in my wake and I had to stop frequently to help him over the worst spots.
We were both exhausted by the time we reached the peak of the mountain. Sitting down to rest, I looked around to see half a dozen more peaks spread out all around us. Sam elbowed me in the side and pointed off to our right. His strength might be fading, but his eyesight was still excellent. “The wyverns are nesting over there,” he said.
I peered through the reddish gloom to see a large pack of flying creatures coming home to roost. They reached the mountain top that was two peaks away from us then sank down out of sight, which indicated that the center was hollow.
Now that we knew where to go, we rested until we had our breath back then resumed our trek. We’d walked and climbed for around twelve hours before the wyverns took off again.
“Where do you think they’re going?” I asked as we paused to watch them fly away.
“They are hunting,” Sam replied. “Most hellbeasts require food. Demons are one of the few beings here that do not need to eat. My kind also do not require sustenance, of course.”
“I wonder what they eat?” I said more to myself than to him. Then again, did I really want to know?
As we started our ascent up the next mountain, we worked out their routine. There seemed to be two groups of wyverns. They took it in turns to go out hunting while the other one stayed behind.