The Cleansing Flame

by Alec Hutson

  The Cleansing Flame

  Alec Hutson

  The Cleansing Flame © 2020 by Alec Hutson

  Published by Alec Hutson

  Cover Illustration by Bob Kehl

  Cover Design by Shawn King

  Edited by Laura Hughes

  All rights reserved

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  1

  The red waste shrieks, lashing me with stinging winds. I raise my hand to try and shield my face, squinting past my fingers at the swirling gloom. Shapes pulse in the depths of the dust storm, blooming and then wilting as I stagger forward, taunting me with the suggestion that somewhere ahead of me looms refuge. A place to find shelter . . . and a moment’s peace so I can bring order to the chaos of my thoughts.

  Where am I? Who am I?

  Eyes watering, unable to keep staring into the teeth of the storm, I look down at my boots. They might once have been black, but now they are caked red, and dust swirls and eddies with each of my faltering steps.

  How long have I been out here? What is this place?

  My mouth is so dry it feels like I have been taking great gulping swallows of dust, and the stuff coats my throat, almost choking me. There’s a stitch jabbing into my side that makes me think I’ve recently been running. I lower my hand, as if I can massage away this pain, and my fingers brush something smooth and hard.

  It’s a pommel of dark wood shaped into a raptor’s head. My touch lingers on the curving beak, tracing the small slits of its eyes. Below the carven bird the grip is pebbled skin, and instinctually my fingers find their accustomed grooves. I’ve drawn this sword many times before, but no matter how I strain I can’t summon forth any memories of doing so. My body remembers, but in my mind there is only blackness.

  I know the sword is valuable, though. Men would kill for it. Men have been killed trying to claim it. Did I kill for it once?

  And yet it is not the most valuable thing I carry. What is in the pouch at my waist is worth a hundred of these swords. A thousand.

  My hand goes to the bag, feeling the heavy object within. It’s hard, with jagged edges, and a coldness seeps through the leather, prickling my fingers. Whatever this burden is, I find it unsettling.

  Another shriek, but this time it is not the wind. Fear washes through me. I don’t know what animal it could be, but the nature of that cry is clear – it’s the sound of a hunter tracking its prey.

  Me.

  I quicken my pace, my tired legs moving through the thick dust and pummeling wind. My arms carve the air around me, as if I can swim through the churning grit. Redness occludes my vision, and tears wet my cheeks as I force myself to stare ahead.

  The piercing cry comes again, closer. It sounds triumphant, like the creature knows it is closing on me. This time other shrieks answer the first, farther away; a pack is out there, dispersed to cover more ground. Now one has my scent, and the rest will quickly converge. My heart falls further with each echoing shriek; I stop counting at six, trying to keep the dwindling flicker of hope in my chest from going out.

  Enough. Pushing aside this despair, I let my anger rise. My hand slips to the hilt of my sword. Let them come.

  I’m about to pull my blade free of its black leather sheath when I see something ahead of me bulked within the storm. A mirage? For a moment my pace slackens as I still consider whirling around to meet my pursuers head-on – truly, this is a far more appealing thought than letting them ambush me from behind as I stumble along blindly. But the shape in front of me is only growing more distinct, suggesting it is not an illusion.

  Tamping down my exhaustion – and the fear of flashing claws carving my back – I clench my teeth and plunge ahead.

  I push through a curtain of dust like a swimmer breaking the surface of the water. Suddenly I can breathe freely, and I swallow gasping lungfuls of air untainted by the red grit. I’m able to see again: the looming shape I’d glimpsed before is a great knob of rust-colored rock rising hundreds of lengths into the sky. There’s a sheltering overhang that I’ve nearly passed beneath, which is creating a pocket of calmness within the raging storm. The spot in front of me where the soaring ledge meets the rock of the wall is lost to darkness, suggesting that there might be caves here leading deeper into this hill.

  The flicker of hope within me flares brighter.

  Wind-scoured stones – some larger than I am – are scattered about in the shadows beneath the overhanging ledge. Places to hide?

  But before I can take cover, the hunters reach me.

  There is no shriek this time – perhaps it is the sudden absence of sound that alerts me. I whirl around, drawing my sword and setting my feet in a defensive stance. The blade of my weapon is a tapering length of green glass or crystal, and it chimes like a bell as it leaves its sheath. A thrill of anticipation shivers through me at the sound.

  One of the creatures emerges from the wastes. At first it is a shadow swelling larger, and then it bursts free of the red dust and charges. It is a thing of nightmares, its body sheathed in black, gnarled chitin. Powerful hind legs churn the red dust, but what propels it forward are the long scimitars of bone that extend from just beyond the first joint of its front limbs; the creature furrows the ground with these hooks and then uses them to lunge forward with startling speed. Its face is long and vaguely reptilian, with a distended lower jaw bristling with fangs.

  The distance between us vanishes in a heartbeat. A bone scimitar flashes out, trying to separate my head from my body, but I duck beneath the blow and with my sword knock aside the creature’s other limb as it reaches to disembowel me. My movements are instinctual, drawing from some deep well of training and muscle memory.

  This is not the first time I’ve had this sword in my hand. Or fought monsters.

  I charge towards it and the creature scuttles back, warding away my sword by slashing the air with its hooks. These curving limbs are twice again as long as my green glass sword, and with such an advantage in reach I hesitate before getting too close. The creature’s slavering jaws open wider, viscous yellow fluid dripping from between its jutting fangs, and it shrieks a challenge.

  As if summoned by this cry, more shapes suddenly appear within the depths of the dust storm.

  I howl something unintelligible, rushing at the monster. If I’m to die here, I want to fall bathed in the blood of these things.

  A scimitar tries to block my sword and I shear through the bone, feeling only the slightest resistance. The creature’s shriek becomes a pained keening as I lunge closer and bury the length of green glass in the thing’s abdomen; black blood gouts and I rip my blade free, throwing myself backwards as the flailing limbs slice where I had been but moments before. The creature’s hind legs collapse, and it begins writhing in the dust as more ichor pulses from the hole carved in its chest.

  I turn away just as a dozen more of these horrors stalk from the swirling dust.

  They are not alone. A different kind of creature shambles in their midst – this one more resembles a man, though folds of its corpse-pale flesh hang loosely from its cadaverous body, and its hairless head is bulbous, strangely misshapen and bruised, like a rotten fruit. Its swollen lips glisten redly, and nictating me
mbranes slide rapidly across its huge, fish-like eyes. The hooked monstrosities crouch around it like whipped curs, panting, long forked tongues lolling.

  There’s a buzzing in my head as this new creature steps forward, the sense of a great presence pushing down upon my mind.

  “Pilgrim,” it murmurs hoarsely, the word somehow carrying over the flailing winds and slipping directly into my thoughts. “Tell us, how did you know where to find the key?”

  My feet are stuck fast, like they’ve been encased in stone. I try to raise my sword but my arm merely trembles. Invisible fingers clutch at my throat so tightly that points of light explode and then fade in my darkening vision. The creature shuffles forward, dragging one of its feet in the dust.

  “Speak,” it commands, and the pressure around my neck vanishes. I draw in a shuddering breath.

  “Speak,” it says again, and crushing pain engulfs my legs. My bones feel as if they’re about to buckle and burst asunder.

  “I don’t . . .” I begin, gasping with the pain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The thing snarls, its blood-red lips writhing. It raises its arm, and I know when its hand falls so will I, in a boneless heap, and then the monsters will be upon me with their rending hooks.

  A lance of golden light stabs from somewhere behind me and strikes the fish-eyed creature in the middle of its bulging skull. Sickly white flesh curls and blackens at the edges of the hole that has appeared where the lance vanished; the creature’s mouth falls open, as if in shock, and the membranes slide over its eyes and do not retract again. It collapses, raising a cloud of dust.

  For a moment the crouching horrors stare blankly at their fallen master. Then they let loose with a ululation that chills my blood, clashing their bone scimitars together as they raise their faces towards the storm-blotted sky.

  I take this momentary respite to glance over my shoulder. Several robed figures have risen from behind the scattered rocks. One of them is still gesturing in the direction of the slain creature, his hand limned in white-gold light. His cowl is thrown back, revealing a red-haired young man with wild, exultant eyes. The others standing with him hold hewbows, steadying the heavy weapons upon the stones.

  As the unholy bellowing fades away, I turn back to the monsters. In unison their slitted yellow eyes also settle on me, and then suddenly they explode into motion, churning the dust as they charge.

  The hewbows twang and a flight of quarrels thicken the air around me. One passes so close to my head that it stirs my hair. The span-long shafts punch into the approaching monsters, ripping holes the size of my fist in their chitin, splattering black ichor. Only one falls, though, a quarrel embedded in its eye. The rest continue their enraged stampede, raising their bone scimitars as they draw closer.

  “Come on, you ugly bastards!” I scream, the battle-rage thrumming in me.

  The creatures hesitate, but it’s not my cry that gives them pause. One of the figures has appeared beside me: a woman clad in leather armor, her red hair unbound. In her hand is a sword like mine, slightly curved near its tip, except her blade is crimson glass and the hilt is polished white.

  She does not turn or speak to me, intent on the onrushing horrors. The stance she’s adopted is one I know, somehow, and I mimic her, the weight on the balls of my feet and my legs slightly bent.

  The monsters shriek again, and the ground trembles beneath their pounding claws.

  Chaos.

  I slip beneath a slashing length of bone, twisting away from another of the creatures before it can rip me in half. My sword flickers out, tearing a gash in blackened flesh and splattering my face with bitter drops of dark ichor. I’m reacting purely on instinct, trying to keep away from the maelstrom of razor-sharp hooks, weaving and twisting to avoid getting caught. If one does snag me, I’m almost certainly doomed.

  But there’s simply too many of them.

  A scimitar slices at my neck and I block it with my green glass sword; the blade passes through the bone and I lunge forward, ripping out the thing’s throat. I’ve overextended, though, and burning pain erupts in my back as one of the monsters rakes me from behind. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to be too deep, as I manage to scramble away before the monster can take off my head. The creature still would have slain me, but a length of red glass explodes from its abdomen as it tries to pursue. The sword slides out a moment later and then the warrior woman is gone, spinning away into the middle of the swarming monsters.

  More lances of white-gold light carve the air, burning holes in the chitinous horrors. I can’t hear the thrum of the hewbows over the blood pounding in my ears, but I see the quarrels sprouting in the carapaces of the monsters around me as I hack and thrust. The red-haired woman flashes past me again, her face streaked with black ichor, her mouth set in a feral grin.

  Searing pain. I stop, swaying. A bone scimitar has flashed out and caught me in the belly. My sword slips from my fingers as I fall to my knees. There’s a roaring in my ears and the world tilts sickeningly. The creature looms over me, hooks upraised, but a blast of white-gold light obliterates its head, leaving only a charred stump.

  I press my hands to my belly. I’ve been gutted; blood squirms between my fingers, and I can feel my insides trying to slide out. I topple over.

  The swirling red of the wastes fades to black.

  2

  I’m not dead. Or if I am, death is a lot stranger than I thought it would be.

  I’m lying on something hard, staring up at a ceiling dripping with luminescent blue moss. Light ripples through it in shimmering, soothing patterns, and here and there fibrous tendrils dangle down, twisting in an invisible breeze.

  My hand drifts weakly to my stomach, expecting to find an eviscerated mess. But the gaping wound I remember is gone – my fingers feel a long curving ridge of scabbed skin, as if I’d been sutured up months ago and my flesh has already knitted back together.

  “I killed a Voice, Mother!”

  I tear my eyes from the hypnotic glow above me and weakly turn my head. I’m in a stone chamber, and three figures are clustered near the lone arched entrance. I recognize two of them: the young man – barely more than a boy, really – who had summoned forth that cutting light, and the red-haired swordswoman. Her arm is in a sling, but she seems otherwise unhurt. The black blood that had stained her face has been wiped away, and the wild frenzy I’d glimpsed in the swirl of battle has been replaced with a focused calm. She’s older than I first thought – I can see a few streaks of gray in her hair, though her body still looks lithe and strong.

  The last of the three is a woman as well, and she appears to be about the same age as the man. Her hair is also red, but slightly muted compared to the other two.

  “I saw,” the older woman says, wincing as she pulls her arm free of the sling. She rolls her shoulder, testing its range of motion. The younger woman steps closer and presses two fingers to the swordswoman’s collarbone, as if checking to see if it is healed.

  “Has anyone slain a Voice before? Am I the first?”

  The older woman shakes her head. “There are stories from long ago. During the Winnowing.”

  The man’s face falls, and the woman quirks a smile. “But this is the only time in living memory.”

  “A Voice and a dozen Scythes,” the younger woman murmurs. Her speech is soft and musical. “Slain on our doorstep.” She shivers, shaking her head.

  “Yes,” the man says harshly, rounding on his mother. “What were you thinking, attacking so many of the Shriven? I couldn’t believe it when you leaped up and charged those demons. You might have killed us all.” His tone is accusing.

  The older woman gestures across the chamber to where I lie upon the slab, though she keeps her eyes on her son. “He carries one of the prism swords. And there hasn’t been a wanderer emerge from the wastes since I was a little girl.”

  “But you might have exposed us,” the man says sullenly. “You are always the one preaching caution, but then you rushed f
orward like a hotblooded youngling when this stranger appeared.”

  “I could not ignore . . .” Now the woman looks at me, and she sees my open eyes watching them. “He is awake,” she says, and the other two turn to regard me as well. They all have striking copper eyes, which flash in the pale blue light seeping down from the ceiling.

  The younger woman makes a shooing motion at the others. “Go! He needs his rest. He’ll be ready to answer your questions tomorrow.”

  The man opens his mouth as if he wants to say something to me, but his mother lays her hand on his arm and guides him towards the entrance. He frowns, casting a final, suspicious look across the chamber, and then they are gone.

  The young woman sighs, drawing closed a beaded curtain that separates this room from what lies outside. She shakes her head as she approaches where I lie.

  “How do you feel?” she asks, laying her fingers lightly on my bare chest. A tingling warmth spreads from her touch.

  “I feel . . . good.”

  She smiles, and I’m struck by her beauty. Her face is soft and round, with large, luminous eyes. Her skin has the freshness of youth.

  “I’m so glad. You were very nearly gone.”

  “What . . . what did you do?” The heat from her fingers is now pulsing through my body in slow waves.

  “I wove you back together,” she says, and then her brow furrows when she sees my confusion. “You don’t have weavers where you come from?”

  “Weavers?”

  Her mouth makes a small circle of surprise. “I never thought that other tribes wouldn’t be the same as us. None of your people are blessed?”