by Thomas Green
Mathilde remained calm, which did not help Zerae’s soul. “By the decision of the high council, those laws had been adjusted to meet the current needs of the clans.”
“Changing of military laws would require the agreement of the grand council, and I remember no such changes being voted upon.”
Mathilde laughed. “They were. Since you were unavailable to attend, your sister Alicia took your place for these meetings.”
Zerae’s heart froze. She clenched her fists not to faint. “That’s a loophole. There is no way our people will accept you tricking me out of my position like this.”
“Won’t they? Remind me, daughter, how much time and effort did you spend on searching for the Goddess? And what have you delivered in return? It has been decades since the search started and yet there are zero useful results to be assigned to your name. A War Leader who cannot fulfill her duties has no right to lead. Everyone knows that.”
Her words pierced through Zerae. Have I… lost? She still had her position, but it was a mere word if the decisions were made without her. She had failed. “Yes, Matron.”
Mathilde’s smile was cruel and victorious. “I will oversee the cooperation with Ur’Thul’Gar myself while Elaine and Karmen will handle the tasks we had promised Lady Kayleanne. My second in command will be my dearest daughter, Alicia.”
Zerae bowed. “Yes, Matron.”
Elaine Darkscream clicked her tongue. “Claire, please get me whatever top dream walkers and researchers you can gather, from any clan. We meet in our war room in two hours.”
Claire nodded.
“Sibyl, see me in private right after we are done,” Karmen Voidwalker told her granddaughter.
Sibyl smiled back in agreement.
***
While barely stopping herself from collapsing into tears, Zerae rushed to Astril’s room.
Astril glanced at Elizabeth, who was cleaning her puppets by the other end of the room while her tiger lay purring by her side. “We need the place for ourselves, now. Go train or something.”
Elizabeth looked at Zerae, but seeing her made her eyes widen. She grabbed her black spear and motioned her pet to follow her. “Come on, Niuffie, we will go practice.”
Astril soulstepped behind Zerae to catch her into a reassuring hug. “What happened?”
Zerae relaxed into her arms as tears slid down her face. “The matrons took over our armed forces and sell us to the demon princes for empty promises. I am demoted to nothing.”
Astril kissed her cheek. “You are still the War Leader.”
The door burst open, and Elaine stormed into the room, tossing her pole axe aside as if the place belonged to her. “Psycho, fetch the Addict. I need the three of you for a bit.”
Zerae stared at the oldest pureblood while Astril detached from the hug and soulstepped away. “We were in the middle of something.”
“Whatever.” Elaine swept the table clean and rolled a map over it. “You will help me figure something out, and then you can go back to playing with your pussies.”
With a mighty sigh, Zerae stepped to the table, gazing at the map of the Cotton Woods covered by blue and green dots. Astril soon returned with Leena and all four of them gathered by the table.
Elaine cleared her throat. “Pay attention, and this will be done soon. Kayleanne wants us to investigate her bird demons being killed around the Cotton Woods. So does Ebilezerhar, except about his snake demons. Go.”
Zerae scanned the map. She counted nine hundred seventy-two nests and lairs destroyed, combined. From the numbers scribbled by the dots, she estimated the average number of demons per den or nest and counted there had been about thirty-one thousand, five hundred twenty-eight demons killed. If there were any traces, Kayleanne would have found the perpetrators. To walk around randomly would not have worked due to backtracking. “Leena, how difficult is it to locate a demon nest through Limbo?”
Astril drove her elbow between Leena’s ribs to bring her to reality, and Zerae repeated the question. Leena scratched the top of her head. “Kind of difficult. It takes longer to calculate the location in reality from finding a soul chamber. Plus, traveling between them would take too long so you would have to need a dozen dream walkers to take turns in scouting.”
Elaine frowned. “That doesn’t sound too hard. Go to Limbo, hop among soul chambers, remember where you went, do the math, and you got a location. If you had custom tailored toxins that don’t damage your body, you could dream walk every night, couldn’t you?”
Leena stretched her neck, wearing an awkward smile. “The distance is still a problem.”
“Can’t you float through the Void and thus not have to deal with soul chamber defenses?”
“That’s kind of dangerous. I mean, the Void tries to suck you in, and you have no way to tell the time or distance, so it’s easy to get lost… and then there are the Void demons who hunt there. You also need to use a lot of power to float through the Void, so it’s easy to backlash yourself.” Leena took a sudden pause. “Oh and don’t get me started on the Void currents. They are rivers of darkness which freeze you to death in minutes if you stumble into one.”
Elaine narrowed her eyes. “Why does it sound like you have done all of what you said?”
Leena rubbed the back of her neck. “Yeah, sort of. I’ve tried a lot of things… but they didn’t work, and it was kind of terrifying.”
“So… there is nothing impossible about it, but you would need to be much stronger or less lazy.”
Leena frowned. “That’s not how I meant it.”
“I know.” Elaine’s face split into a broad grin. “Now, the last thing, getting a location from Limbo bubbles… how hard can that be, Zerae?”
“The theory is mapped, but the application is difficult and not much used.”
“Suppose you practiced it every day for half a year, how long would it take?”
Zerae shrugged. “Seconds?”
“So… if Leena wasn’t lazy and did the Limbo scouting, someone made tailored toxins to sustain her and Zerae did the math, we could do it. If each of you trained an apprentice, we could do so easily. Astril, how many bird or snake demons can you kill in a day without using too much aether?”
Astril put her hands over Zerae’s ear. The glare Zerae threw her made her retract them. Astril turned red and aimed her gaze at the ground. “Dozens.”
Elaine laughed. “And if you weren’t spending aether on other stuff, like making yourself better in bed?”
Astril glowered at her. “That’s a legitimate use of aether!”
Elaine arched an eyebrow. “At least a hundred a day, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Still.” Leena took the word. “You would use too much aether to dream-walk and fight in the same day.”
Elaine smirked. “Which gets solved by this being done by two people. One dream-walks while the second one does most of the killing. Zerae, point me where they are on the map.”
They exchanged a glare. Elaine won the contest, so Zerae focused on the pattern of the locations and times. She found it within seconds. “Today here, tomorrow there, and moving toward this town.”
Elaine rolled up the map and turned to Zerae. “Make sure the war in the south doesn’t lead to our civilization getting wiped from the Palai Order, and we cannot become their enemies.”
With relief, Zerae bowed. “Yes, Matron.” She watched Elaine leave before she collapsed into the feather-filled bed, crushed beneath the weight of her own thoughts.
Leena left while Astril weaved herself into her and softly stroked her hair. “It will be all right.”
With her momentary duties done, her insides filled with emptiness. Except that I can’t do anything in the south. “It won’t… I have failed. We’re all going to die, and there is nothing we can do about it.”
“Don’t say that, for you will find a way out of this. I’m sure you will.”
“How? We are joining the demon princes at the time when the Palai Ord
er is coming at them with the largest army they had ever had. We’re like a leaf in a hurricane. Now we will fly around and then get crushed by the wind when it hits us from the wrong side. We will either die on a pyre or be eaten by demons.”
“There is always a way,” Astril said, “and you will find it, I’m sure. The cavern city was a good start.”
“The cavern city was a setup for the war in the south, where I have lost all the power plus it won’t do anything to solve the other two directions. Even if I somehow maneuver through the south, stopping us from dying at the bottom of the sea, it won’t change anything from the large picture.”
“You will save us. I’m sure.”
“Your belief in me is unfounded. I got outplayed by Mathilde without as much as realizing she was doing it. I am a failure.”
9
Lucas
Lucas sat down by an old chestnut tree and started scraping a mixture of dried slime and blood from beneath his tunic. The fresh layer wasn’t too hard to remove, but the one from the morning was hard as a rock. He did not want to know how his long, silvery hair looked as he was sure his visage was everything but savory.
Raven sagged next to him, his alabaster-colored chain mail armor barely visible beneath the thick layers of muck. He reached for his boot to pull out a dagger but failed as the dried slime sealed it within.
Lucas stretched out his hand and focused for a split second. He reached beyond the reality, into his soul chamber, grabbed a dagger and made it appear in his palm.
Raven took it and started working on the muck, trying to unstick his greaves. “When I promised you I would help you kill some demons around the Cotton Woods, this is not what I thought you had in mind. Nor that it would take two years.”
Lucas smiled. “You have upheld your promise since we are done with the Cotton Woods.”
Raven frowned. “Not going to tell me the full story?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” Lucas turned serious. “Because this is the last point for you to walk out of this.”
“How come?”
“The next thing I plan to do is to kill a demonic champion. Once that is done, the hunt will begin, and you will have a target painted on your back if you are a part of it. From then, were you to leave, the demons would hunt you down to use you against me.”
“What if I wanted to be a part of whatever you are trying to achieve?”
Lucas measured him with a calm gaze. “Don’t tell me freedom is too heavy for you to bear.”
“Thought being free would be different.” Raven sighed. “Yet now, over two years after I stopped being a slave, I still don’t know what to do with it.”
“Well, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you desire.”
“To what purpose? I don’t know… I always thought that getting rid of my shackles would change something. It hasn’t. I’m still the same, and the world is still the same, so I still kill demons since ending lives is the one thing I’m good at. And I can’t shake the feeling that’s one skill that can always be used in your company.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. “You can go back to being a prince.”
“And do what? Sit by a table? Come on, Lucas, I can’t organize myself, so how am I supposed to rule a city?”
“And a few towns with over a dozen villages.”
Raven shook his head. “I don’t want to be a decorative ruler, but neither do I want to mess things up or become a manipulated puppet. To continue with you makes much more sense so what would you have of me?”
“I plan to kill two demon princes, Kayleanne and Ebilezerhar. Promise me you will stick with me until they are dead and I will show you what it takes to kill a god.”
Raven smiled. “I swear.”
“Be careful what you promise, Prince, for you may live to regret your words.”
Raven scoffed. “Don’t bother trying to dissuade me. Now, I want to hear the plan.”
“There’s not much to it. We have wiped out the base of the worshippers of Kayleanne and Ebilezerhar, so now we move on to the champions. Once they fall, the demon princes will be exposed to kill.”
Raven arched an eyebrow. “Why can’t we kill them straight?”
“All demons below the champion rank worship the prince in exchange for importance or promise of it. The prince receives power from being worshipped and gives a part of it to his champions. In this sense, they work like gods. To kill a demon prince, you have to break the faith, kill its champions and only then the actual prince. If you skip straight to the prince, he will possess a champion upon his demise and thus survive.”
“Sounds like you have done it before.”
“Eight demon princes entered this world during The Upheaval, yet now seven remain, for I killed one of them two and half years ago.”
Raven raised an eyebrow. “Do they have something like a king?”
Lucas shrugged. “Never heard of one.”
“Where do demon princes come from?”
“Hell.”
“Where is that?”
Lucas smiled and turned his eyes to the sky. “That’s a story for another day.” He rose.
Raven followed him, advancing into the forest, one which used to be fields of cotton before The Upheaval, before the civilization that once ruled this continent became a mere ruin of itself.
***
The next morning, as they continued their march through the broad-leaf forest, a sharp, female voice echoed through the air. “Heeelp!”
Raven looked at Lucas, who nodded. They sped up. Silent as death, they advanced through the forest toward the sound. A large meadow opened in front of them where a young, black-haired woman in traveling clothes desperately avoided vicious attacks of two griffins and a wyvern that were ridden by women armed with bows.
Lucas stared at the scene, wondering what type of prank this was. The black-haired woman was unharmed and undamaged while the riders never made a move to corner her. A staged incident.
A memory flashed through his mind. He saw his wife, Sophiel, wounded and surrounded by men riding demons. For a split second, he wanted nothing more than to go see his wife. But that was pointless for as long as he couldn’t release her from her prison. And for that, he needed to kill the demon princes.
Raven’s voice brought him back to reality. “That looks fake.”
He grinned. “Totally.”
They sat down by the oak at the edge of the meadow to wait.
“Heeelp!” The woman leapt left, narrowly dodging the jaws of the wyvern. She rolled over to the side to avoid arrows followed by a swipe of griffin claws.
Lucas nodded with appreciation. “They practiced it well.”
“Oh, yes, love the timing on the rolling dodges. Look as if she evaded the claws by mere fractions of an inch.”
The woman kept dodging the attacks, one after another. Then she noticed them and shouted. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
Lucas laughed. “We are curious for how long can you girls keep it up.”
She leapt away for another dodge. “Seriously? Are you going to watch me die?”
“Yes.”
She stopped jumping around and turned to walk to them. The riders on the griffins and the wyvern flew off. The black-haired woman threw them an inquisitive stare. “How could you tell?”
Lucas and Raven exchanged smiles. “That’s a secret… miss?”
“Asking a lady to introduce herself without offering your own name is seriously rude.”
“I’m Lucas, and he’s Raven.”
She smiled. “Zoey.”
“Zoey, your damsel in distress act, has failed, so how about you return to your friends, and we will be on our way?”
She clicked her tongue. “They flew off already, and I have no good way to go back. I’m coming with you.”
Lucas measured her with a glare. Rich black hair arranged into a single braid, lean body covered by sweat, average breasts, average height, pale, clean skin and mediocre blue eyes. Her ou
tfit was standard traveling clothes made of leather, although they were a touch more revealing than normal. He scoffed. “No, you are not.”
“Oh, really? And what’re you going to do about it? Kill me? Knock me unconscious, so wild beasts can eat me?”
Lucas turned to Raven. “Help me out a little.”
He shrugged. “I don’t see how. We aren’t going to hurt a young unarmed woman, are we?”
“Since nobody else flies on griffins and wyverns, she’s a Sil Haen, so she is anywhere between sixteen and a century and a half old.”
She made a slight bow. “Zoey Darkwind, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Fake clan name? Really?”
Zoey narrowed her eyes. “So, you do know what our clans are… have you ever been to our highlands?”
Lucas rubbed his face with his palm. I got rusty. Okay, this is dangerous, and I need to pull myself together right about now. He turned to Raven. “Is it me or am I losing this conversation?”
He chuckled. “Zero three by my count.”
Lucas eyed Zoey with a long glare, blood filling the places that lay dead for the past years. Not seeing a woman for over two years sure had its effect. “Alright, how about you cover that cleavage and we start again?”
“Don’t tell me you like what you see?” She smiled while arching her back to emphasize her bust.
Raven laughed. “Zero four.”
Lucas sighed and rose. “Take this and if something attacks you, stab it with it.” He tossed her a dagger.
She stepped to the side and let the dagger fall to the ground without touching it. “Nice try, but I wouldn’t be a defenseless woman if I took that dagger, would I?”
Lucas sighed and stretched out his aether, filling an invisible globe around them. While his aether bounced off Raven’s skin, it passed through Zoey freely. He withdrew the aether within an instant. She knew how to hide her strength, which placed her on a dangerous level of power. He should kill her, but he didn’t kill the Sil Haen.
Zoey stretched and continued. “Plus, did you think I would take into my hand a dagger that’s half covered by coagulated blood and hardened snake slime? I understand you two have an aversion to cleanness, but really, don’t put me to the same level.”