Soullord (Soulguard Book 2)

by Christopher Woods

  It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the scene below us was straight out of nightmare. There were thousands and thousands of Demons. They had pushed our lines so far back already, I was worried they would break out. I knew what was planned if that happened. Massive bombing and if all else failed, nuclear bombs. On American soil.

  That might stop the bastards, but it would destroy a sizeable chunk of the country. We would be doing their job for them. Destroy ourselves and they wouldn't have to.

  I saw a wave of destruction plowing through the horde of Demons on the right flank. The Jaeghernauts were at work. There were only twenty of them, but they plowed a row of destruction through the ranks two hundred feet wide.

  I think there were already more of the Kresh on the field than the whole first attack had been altogether. They looked endless. More poured out of the Gate.

  I was seventy five feet above ground, and closed my portal to drop the rest of the way. I had steered to land near the command center. It was a fortified building with a flat observation platform at the top where Dietrich had stationed himself and his staff. I scaled the side of the building instead of going inside. It was much quicker.

  As I landed beside Dietrich, he said, "Welcome to the festivities, Soullord. Thought you weren't gonna make it to the party."

  One of his staff muttered, "Doesn't look much like a party to me."

  "Wouldn't miss it for the world," I said. "What's our situation?"

  "We're holding at the moment," he said, "but that's not gonna last much longer unless we can get an Alpha situation."

  "Are the AC130's ready?"

  "They've made two runs already," he said, "They're reloading ammo right now."

  "They do any good?"

  I watched his memory flash across his aura of one of the planes circling the area, and it looked like it unloaded pure hell into the packed masses of Demons. It was beautiful.

  "That has to be one of the best ideas you've had. The forts were too close to the Gate, though. They pushed us out past them in the first hour."

  "Damn!"

  "We learn as we go," he said, "If we live through this, we can build more, further out."

  Suddenly he was looking to the right, "Reinforce Delta team."

  The second of his staff began speaking into his com to send a squad to the far right flank.

  "Jaeghernauts," Dietrich said on Command com, "Make a run up the right flank and give Delta a respite."

  "Copy," I heard Kharl respond.

  "When this started, we had a group of civilians out by one of the forts. They had a squad of trainees doing Guard duty. It was close but they got out just in time. They're over there on the left, workin their way out."

  "Your boy, Khalib and my daughter are part of the Guard. Your reporter and some engineers were out there. Looks like they're out now though."

  "Good, trainees have no business out in that," I said.

  I was watching the Gate and what looked like a huge dome of evil came through and stopped not far from the front of the Gate.

  I could see the power roiling in that dark mass. Demonmages. It looked like a whole group of them.

  "That looks like trouble," Dietrich said just as the twisted blackness erupted with a hail of what had to be fifty of their ugly black and purple fireballs.

  "Son of a Bitch!" I cursed as the wave of fire swept a swath of destruction across the left flank. I had just located the small group of civilians when it had happened.

  Demons flooded through the hole in our ranks and the party of civilians was right in their path.

  "No," I heard the whisper as it escaped Dietrich.

  Chapter 46

  From the outside of the battle zone swept a large group of men and women. In the lead was my mom, and she was followed by nearly every trainee that had managed to tie their knot. The lines were ragged but they never faltered.

  "Damnit, Mom," I muttered.

  "Ric," I spoke over coms, "take our Company and reinforce those Trainees! Close up that hole!"

  "Copy."

  My group of Mages shot off at close to seventy miles per hour.

  "I'm going for the civilians," I said. I could see the worry in Dietrich. His daughter was out there in a desperate situation.

  "Send the Jaeghernauts to meet me, there."

  He nodded and began spouting orders again.

  The next instant I was air born.

  I'm pretty sure that movies will be the death of me. I saw a movie a few months back about a man who had been transported to Mars where there was a whole civilization of people. Due to his denser structure and the lighter gravity on Mars, he could leap hundreds of yards at a time. Special effects have inspired me to do a lot of things, and this was another of those inspirations.

  I flew across the ranks of Soulguards and landed near the lines. Then I was air born once more. As I started down the backside of the arc I opened my weapons and launched everything. Disks of fire blew a great hole in the horde of Demons directly in front of me.

  Unfortunately, the backlash had me land in another spot where there was maybe a thousand screaming Kresh.

  My swords blurred and arcs of power slammed through the Kresh around me. Then I was air born again. At the apex of my arc I could see the group of civilians. There were ten civilians, twelve NG's, and ten Guard Trainees. They had settled in a diamond formation of sorts.

  The way a squad of Guards is divided is Three Guards per team, three teams per squad and a squad leader. At the four points of the compass was stationed Guards. Three to the south, I didn't recognize them. Three to the east, Irenia Jaegher was the team leader and two others on her flanks. On the west was Cordell Fortraine, and I recognized two of his fellow New Yorkers on his flank.

  There was only one Guard facing north, directly into the face of the enemy. Six and a half feet of concentrated violence, Mr. Khalib stood with his swords blurring. He was adept with any weapon made by man before he tied his knot. In three months, the man had proven himself to be nigh unbeatable in a fight.

  National Guardsmen crouched just inside the Soulguard lines, and their weapons spat fire as fast as they could.

  I released arcs of power to clear my landing and was back into the sky again. Two of the trainees were down and the Kresh were closing in. I saw Alstead grab a rifle from one of the fallen NG's, and start firing into the horde.

  One more leap and I would be there. I crafted a shield that wrapped around me and anchored to my Soul. On the right side I built a thirty foot long blade that hooked toward the back. It was sharp as a razor and about chest level. On the left was a sloped shield to turn the bullets that were flying. I wasn't sure if they would stop shooting in time so I figured I'd be careful.

  I landed on the east, almost directly in front of Irenia. I was about twenty feet out in the horde, and the second I landed I opened the portal on my shield. At nearly fifty miles per hour, I made a complete circle around the group with a huge arc of Demon blood exploding into the sky.

  The civilians were looking at me with the strangest looks. It may have had to do with the fact that I might have been laughing the whole time I was slaughtering the Kresh. I made another complete circle as the others cleared out the circle around them.

  I pushed the animal back down. That was the source of the laughter. I closed on the group and slammed out a shield around them.

  I stopped and saw crumpled forms on the west side one of which I recognized immediately. I could see it was too late for Cordell Fortraine. He was Lying in a pool of blood and it hit me hard. He shouldn't have been here. I brought him here just to die in the dirt. I knelt by him as I saw him reach feebly toward me. He smiled through bloody teeth and I heard his last words.

  "Stood...my...ground."

  He died there and his Soul slipped down into the earth to join the Source. I reached down softly and closed his eyes. I squared my shoulders and stood back up.

  "That you did, Cordell," I said and let out a large sigh.

&n
bsp; I began forming tendrils at the beginning of the shield and the end to tie it to the Source. I pointed toward the south where I made an arch glow.

  "There's the door," I said, "Guard it till you can get these people out of here. The first chance you get, pull these people out."

  Mr. Khalib nodded, and I opened the door. He planted himself there, and began swinging those swords in a form very near what I always called the Blade Barrier. I turned back to the shield, and slammed the ten inch tendril into the Source. In seconds, I slammed the second one down and cut my tie. The shield thrummed with power and shimmered. I had used large enough tendrils to feed it so nothing would be breaking through to the people within.

  Alstead approached me, "Why leave a door at all? Can't you take it back down later?"

  "If I'm still alive when this is done, yes."

  Her face paled as she realized what I had just said.

  "Jesus," she muttered.

  I turned back to the others and went to the wounded. The first one had a nasty cut down his arm. I lay my hand on his arm and he gasped in pain. Then I Pulled straight to the wound. The blood stopped flowing and the skin began to draw together where I was holding the cut closed.

  I had to stop before it went too far. Lyrica had told me it was dangerous to do too much at one time. He would be fine to reach the infirmary if they managed to survive what was going on around us.

  I could feel the ground shaking as I looked up to see a great wave of destruction plowing through the horde toward us. The Jaeghernauts exploded through the mass of Kresh to form a circle around the outside of the shield.

  "Dad," I greeted the huge man standing in front of me on the north side of the shield, facing out toward the horde of Demons flowing through our area.

  "Looks like you got here all right," he said. "I saw the grasshopper act. I could have been wrong about that particular subject. Seemed to work pretty well."

  I grinned at his back. Very seldom will you get an "I was mistaken" out of him, and I have to relish them when they make an appearance.

  Another volley of black and purple fireballs arced out of the shield. Most of them were blocked with shields as there were more Mages in the area they were launched toward.

  "I'm about sick of that," I said, "so I think it's time to put an end to that shit."

  "Too true."

  "That will be our target in a minute," I said, "but first I’ve got one more injured man in here."

  I knelt beside Keith, the camera man. His leg was dislocated at the knee.

  "Sorry Keith, this is gonna hurt."

  I twisted and shoved his leg back into place with a pop. His face went pale but he held up pretty good. I Pulled through his stream toward the knee and I could see the pain in his aura diminish.

  "That should do you, Keith," I said and stood up.

  That was the moment that no matter how I try, I will never forget.

  The line of Trainees, along with Rictor and my Mages stopped the advance of the Kresh. The lines weren't in far enough yet, but they were stopped at least.

  I was facing southeast when I stood up, and I saw the whole thing in slow motion. Another volley of Demon fireballs arced toward the Trainees, and with a novel sort of response, Rictor was slamming disc after disc into the fireballs. He broke them up that way, except the last one.

  His disc just disappeared as a twisted darkness began to form about a hundred feet in front of him, about thirty feet from my mom and a group of thirty trainees.

  The incoming fireball also disappeared from the other direction and a huge jagged bolt of energy shot out of the forming portal.

  In less than a second, Rictor was airborne, and he landed feet from the energy spewing portal. He slammed a shield out around him and the portal. Then he opened his portal on the shield, and slammed outward with everything he had. The shield impacted the Trainees and Kyra, throwing them sideways, away from the center where he stood. There were Mages and Trainees tumbling through the air and the portal exploded with a force that literally shook the ground under my feet.

  Chapter 47

  There are many things a person takes for granted. Fourteen years he had followed me into caves, into hordes of Demons. He had never even been seriously wounded in all that time. Somewhere inside my mind I had believed he was indestructible.

  I saw my friend's Soul just...cease to be and something broke inside of me. Something important. I thought the ground was still shaking, but it was me shaking as the walls I had so carefully built around that monster inside me crumbled, and that beast came roaring from the darkness.

  "Rictoooooooor!"

  My voice began as a scream of despair, and ended as something not human. Rage, hate, and pain flooded my awareness, and my head snapped to the north where my enemy was hiding inside its black shield. All that rage was driving me, and I was moving before I had even finished screaming my friend's name.

  There was no door to the north but I ripped a hole in the shield as if it weren't even there. Out that hole I plunged with an inhuman roar. I was on the other side of the Jaeghernauts before anyone even knew I was moving.

  "Oh shit," Daphne said as I shot past her into that mass of Demons between me and my prey.

  I discovered something in that mad charge into the abyss. I learned what makes a Soullord so devastating to their enemies. There was no focus, no planning. There was rage and there was power. I was Pulling harder than I have ever Pulled before and the power wasn't being steered into my weapons. It was flowing through me in torrents. Soulfire ripped out of me in massive arcs. Gouts of flame spewed into the throngs of Demons. Every ounce of that power was channeled through my body instead of around it. That’s the Soullord's gift. A body that can channel as much power as he can Pull.

  At Morndel I had hurt myself some. Mostly from holding the massive well of power inside me instead of channeling it through me.

  I was screaming incoherently as I plowed through the Demons in front of me. I was hit, and the massive well of power healed me as fast as I was wounded. I lashed out with arc after arc, and bodies literally exploded in front of me. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. I wasn't in control and all I could do was hold on as my monster reveled in its glory.

  I speak of the monster inside me as a separate entity, but I know it's not…not really. It's the part of me that does the awful things that people should not do. When I let that part of me out, I am still me, but I am something else, too. More and more I find that part of me growing and becoming stronger. Never more than that very moment.

  What scares me the most is that I enjoy it. I'm free.

  The shield was getting closer, and I was sending gouts of fire toward it. I could see it bowing under the pressure but it didn't break. I threw both my swords at it and they pierced the shield to the hilt.

  I sent discs from my launchers into it with no more effect than the attacks that came before.

  A group of Wraiths shot between me and the shield and I charged right into them. As I reached the first one I jumped over its head. My hand grasped the upper jaw below me and I ripped the top of its skull completely off. My flaming left foot slammed through the chest of the next one and my arm came around with the skull top. I poured fire into it and let it fly. It exploded through the chest of another Wraith, and embedded itself into the shield. There were two more Wraiths between me and my target, so I went through them. They exploded in a mist of Demon blood as my flaming form impacted with them.

  Everything I had thrown at the shield had been stopped. But I reached out as I had done with the shield I had started from and ripped the damn thing apart. Apparently, my skill with power flows extends right across the board. No doubt, due to the Demon blood running through my veins.

  I was inside the shield bubble and the end where I entered became a flaming patch of hell as I erupted in Soulfire.

  I could finally see the Demons inside the shield, and there were ten Demonmages. There was also a Farrara'Ti. He was twice t
he size of the Mages, and his stream was well over two feet in diameter. They were all about to launch fireballs at me, so I did something completely unexpected. I reached out with my mind, and ripped the Souls right out of their bodies.

  My hand was outstretched and the Soul of the Farrara'Ti was sucked right into my grasp. The second I touched that Soul my whole world went crazy. I felt their Source and it was massive. In that moment I knew I could use it as I used the Source on my world. I was whatever they would call a Soullord of their Source as well as my own.

  But, as with anything, there is a price.

  Pain ripped through me as something inside me spasmed. I thought I had felt the extent of what rage could be. I hadn't felt near the limits until this moment. I absolutely went berserk.

  The Kresh had no idea what they were creating when they come for my mother. I am descended from the mightiest Soullord to ever walk the Earth. His blood is in my veins. The blood of one of the most powerful of the Farrara'Ti also flows through my veins, creating the bridge it took for me to be on the level of their "Demon Lords". I am Rash'Tor'Ri, the Life-ender. I am a Soullord of the Blood, I am the Bloodlord, the only one of my kind. They created their own Hell on the day when they slaughtered a pregnant Soulguard woman in New Mexico.

  I am the Demon that crawled up out of that Hell.

  For some time I was lost in the maelstrom of hate, rage, and pain that my touching of that Soul had triggered. I knew without looking that the empty spot inside my Soul was no longer empty, and I had let something into me that I was not going to be able to just get rid of. There would be a price to pay for the power I had just used.

  God only knows what that price will entail.

  When I regained some of my senses, I found the whole battlefield eerily quiet. I was inside a circle of Jaeghernauts. Kharl was standing in front of me, and there was fear rolling through his aura. It was something I had never wanted to see. Never before had Kharl been afraid of me.

  I realized something else. I could feel what my Dad was feeling as well as see it. I felt relief as I could tell that he wasn't afraid of me. He was afraid for me. And with good cause.