Chauvinistic dwarves, great, just what she needed. Apparently the dwarves who adored and fawned over their women only existed on her world.
Silver drew her swords in one breath, sliced his spear in two with the second and by the third breath she had her blade against his neck, her wings flaring menacingly.
“Now I have some questions for you, and you’re going to answer them honestly and quickly, or I will kill you slowly and painfully. Is that clear?”
The dwarf gave her a stubborn look. Damn, she’d forgotten what stubborn imbeciles they could be, time to get to work. She pressed harder almost subconsciously and then watched fascinated as blood flowed slowly down the blade of her sword in a crimson stream.
It was the first blood she’d shed since being reincarnated, and now as it reached the guard of the sword and dripped to the stone of the floor, something seemed to almost break and reform inside her and a coldness entered her mind, imbuing her with a clarity she both loathed and loved yet she welcomed like an old friend.
Her mind was focused, blade-sharp and finally, blissfully back to who she was before those sixteen years with her brothers tried to soften her.
She felt nothing, and that meant everything. Somewhere she had doubted her ability to return to who she had been after all of those years spent pretending to be the perfect sister; after all those years of being horribly and uselessly mortal.
The line she cut with her sword curved downwards, cutting what little was exposed by the thick armour. Her arm was bent awkwardly to accommodate holding her captive still and getting the pattern just right, but it didn’t bother her.
“Do you want to talk while you still have a tongue?” Silver asked, but she wasn’t really interested in torturing this dwarf. Torture should serve a purpose, and it was often best used to send a message as she had used it against King Marten all those years ago.
The dwarf glared but told her anyway, he was just a coward afraid of death when it came right down to it.
“Ask your questions.” He muttered.
She sheathed the broadsword but took a knife from one of her thigh sheaths. The dwarf was sensible enough not to try and run, dwarves may be stubborn but they weren’t stupid. She moved across to the other side of the tunnel and sat cross legged on the ground.
“Is there anywhere on this planet where the darkness isn’t permanent?”
The dwarf looked at her suspiciously, but at a twirl of the knife, he finally replied.
“Yes.”
One word answers? This was a dwarf after her own heart.
“Where is it? How well guarded is it? Are there any demons there?”
“A single place. The home of our kinsmen is the most guarded place on this planet. It is only a few square miles across. No demons have ever attempted to enter.” Brief simple answers which didn’t give too much away yet shouldn’t have given her any reason to retaliate against him because everything he said was still honest.
“Give me directions to it through these tunnels.” Silver ordered.
“I will lead you.” The dwarf bartered.
“Ha, nice try but no.” Silver retorted.
“If I tell you, you have no reason to keep me alive. If I lead you, you will have to wait until we reach it to kill me.” Clever dwarf, he may be a coward, but at least he still had a brain.
Silver smiled a cruel smile. “Or I could just kill you and choose another dwarf to tell me what I need to know.”
“This is a seldom used corridor that is barely patrolled; if you went in the wrong direction then you would go even deeper into these tunnels and never find your way out.” There was a knowing and clever glint in his eye that irritated Silver; enough that a knife somehow managed to soar across the corridor and into his arm. He let out a strangled curse. “You cannot kill me because there is no guarantee you will find anyone else to guide you.” He yelled at her. “With the amount of use these passageways see you could wander in here till you starve.”
Silver wasn’t worried about starving, Gaillean would teleport her away in three days whether she liked it or not, the only thing that she was wasting was time and knowledge.
She picked out another knife. “Start moving, if you’re not going fast enough I will put another knife through you.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to keep up with a dwarf underground.” The dwarf smiled and began to hasten along the passageway.
It took hours, and the dwarf was silent for the entire time, probably plotting his escape. Yet again, maybe he thought it was beneath him to talk to a woman, or yet again maybe he though she wouldn’t kill him because of his gender. Either way, he was an idiot.
When natural light began to filter through to accompany torchlight, she silently moved up behind him and slit his throat.
The exit to the outside was carved in the typical dwarven fashion; spirals interspersed with geometric lines led to a cavern with a stone door that was at least five times taller than any dwarf. The cave continued downwards beneath her as she walked up to the edge of a walkway fashioned onto one long ledge which encircled the cave. Fortunately, though she could hear the noise of metal striking rock below her, only a few guards remained on the same level as her and she easily slipped past them by flying across using her wings. The guards on the doors, she knocked out. Killing too many dwarves would reduce the amount of food for the only demon species she had come across on this world.
And depriving her troops was not an option. She planned to have plenty of demons at her command, thank-you very much.
The doors were open, which explained the light she’d seen before, and she strode straight through them.
Bright light was a pain until she stopped directing the magic towards her eyes and her sight returned to normal.
She had come out of the tunnels in the snowy drifts of a mountaintop. Blinding sunlight illuminated the snow until it glowed like shards of diamonds. The peak was so high that the clouds were below her and she could see miles of fields and tiny villages spread out under the sunlight on either side of the mountain. Yet there also existed a clear divide from the darkness. A line of barren grey between walls of dark and light, Silver spread her wings even as shouts went up from behind her and a volley of arrows narrowly missed her.
Smiling at the chaos, she dived, freefalling down the cliff until it appeared she would hit the snowy rock below. At the last moment, she twisted, flaring out her wings so that she soared back upwards, before heading towards the grey. If other demons existed, she was certain they wouldn’t be in the prosperous terraced rice paddies that the dwarves below her were farming in.
When she landed, some mere minutes later, on the dwarven side of the light she was almost confused by what she was seeing. Tendrils of darkness snaked from the dark boarder and towards the light only to stop short, as if they could not reach the light side. Then they fell limp to the ground, where they seemed to sink downwards into the earth.
It was a shock to Silver when she saw the demons from her pack hovering just inside the darkness. They had followed her wherever she went using their hearing.
“Light creatures.” The demon nearest to her grunted, “Death here, come, dark is safe.”
“Light creatures?” Silver tried to ask.
“Light creatures kill Dark. Come, dark is safe.”
They clearly couldn’t mean the dwarves, who they had slaughtered with such ease. So that meant that some other creature – most likely a demon of some kind – lived with the dwarves, though knowing the dim-wittedness of those short morons they probably lived under the protection of these demons without even knowing it.
One of the demons reached towards the light, intending to grab her arm, but shrunk back instantly, their tiny eyes sparking with fright at something behind her.
She wheeled around to find a dwarven woman, clad in white robes from head to toe, her eyes white and blank as her entire figure seemed to glow.
Was the demon possessing the dwarf?
The woman a
dvanced towards her and Silver projected her magic into her voice. “Stop!”
The woman froze, as if she were turned to stone, interesting. Silver didn’t need to take control of the demon’s mind to control it, she’d bet that worked with all of them, and she cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner.
“Why are you possessing this dwarf? Answer me.”
“To shore up the defences against the Darkness that consumes me.”
“How many of you are there?” Silver demanded.
“Just one, but I can become many.”
Silver quickly mulled it over in her head, so this entity was able to divide itself into many smaller ones, interesting, and potentially useful. But still, from what she could see, the nycto-demons were perfect; deadly, camouflage and able to tack across far difference. The only thing they really lacked was visual appeal.
But as she thought about it the possibilities for this new demon became more and more apparent. With it she could possess her enemies and use them.
Though the glow was a bit of a giveaway, she admitted with the sigh.
“Detach yourself and lead me to where the rest of you is.” She ordered.
“I am patrolling everywhere.” Was the demon’s reply, “To leave myself in one place would not make much sense; I would be vulnerable to attack.”
“Can you leave the dwarf’s body and exist independently?” Silver demanded, irritated by its attitude.
“Yes.”
“Then do it, and send the dwarf away.” She ordered.
It looked strange, watching the glow fade from around the dwarf and then wink out of existence altogether. Then, a tiny golden being, which looked much the same as an elf but far smaller, flew out from the dwarf’s mouth even though it had no wings that Silver could see.
Somewhere in the back of her mind Silver noticed the dwarf walk slowly away as if in a trance, but her attention was more on taking in every detail of the being in front of her.
“Are you the only other demon species on this planet?” She asked.
“Yes,” The voice of the creature was tiny as it hovered before her.
“Why protect the dwarves?”
“I do not like to be alone. The dwarves are the only other beings besides the Dark.”
Silver didn’t bother asking why the helio-demon didn’t just use the nycto-demons for company; it was clear that their abilities repelled each other.
“Have there ever been more of you?” She asked.
“We have heard of another, yet it is likely just Dark trickery. There were once many more, but Darkness got to them, they were negligent in defending themselves.”
Silver’s brain whirled. The helio-demon would not have moved from this area for centuries for the dwarves to have been able to build this kind of civilisation, so really this demon would have no idea if it was the only one or not, considering that another demon could be doing the exact same thing on the other side of this world. Finding another could be beneficial, with more of them she would be able to use them to her advantage in battle. “You are not to engage each other.” She commanded both groups, spreading her wings. Then she turned to the nycto-demons, “Is there another Light?” She asked in their language.
The demons, still looking afraid of the small creature behind her, nudged one among their number to the front of the pack.
“Know three enemies,” It grunted before retreating,
“Show me,” She ordered.
There were grunts of agreement and a few nods from the ones that had been around her the most and knew her habits.
She flapped her wings and took off, to hover above them.
The burst of movement from the pack was explosive, and soon she was soaring through the skies after then, admiring their speed.
Studying the helio-demons took less time that she anticipated, there were four in total, each one believed itself to be the only one, and so when she informed them of each other’s existence their disbelief was obvious. She forbade all of the demons she came across from killing one another; she didn’t need dead beings to conjure. Dwarves were fair game, and she told them to continue fighting to train their skills, but death was not useful to her here.
To think that she had hated compulsion when Kate used it on her, well she had no problem with it when she could use it as well.
On the seventh day, she was ready to leave, one more world had been completely documented and she had to admit that it would be a relief to get away from the helio-demons and their stuffy attitudes. The pack, she may summon when she got back to her own realm, but for now, onto the next world.
Gaillean did not disappoint. The sensation of being teleported struck her at the exact moment the seventh day ended.
She reappeared in a war zone, literally. Demons were fighting demons in a chaotic, gruesome clash of feral creatures. Black blood formed a sticky surface beneath her feet while corpses piled up around her.
More infighting among her troops? This was going to have to stop.
Silver layered her voice with compulsion and yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Halt!”
Every demon paused, held completely immobile by the strength of her command.
There was no obvious difference between the two sides; both were human in size and appearance, except for their feral glowing eyes and sharp looking elongated teeth and claws. These were creatures designed for war, they wore no armour, and from the look of it they wouldn’t need it. Silver would bet that their skin was stronger than the steel made by any blacksmith.
Judging by the mangled state of the corpses on the ground, they were also very hard to kill.
The perfect soldiers and they were fighting each other.
“Return to your ranks, your leaders are to come before me immediately. Get moving!” She yelled.
Seconds, that was all the time it took for her commands to be obeyed. Soon she had organised rows standing opposite each other like the toy pieces of a chess set. Her soldiers had speed and discipline as well; some part of her mind noted her approval. She had an army of deadly soldiers at her command.
Chapter Eleven
BEINGS OF WAR
Kate stood next to Gaillean, watching Silver as she ordered demons about like playthings. She had an army, and she knew it. But it was what she would do with them that worried Kate. Marta had said this was the option with the least casualties, but it was still to be a bloodbath of the innocent. What if the Council were conspiring to sacrifice her world in exchange for their own worlds remaining at peace from Llewellyn’s children? Troubles swirled in her mind as they sat in the calm serenity of her own plane, on a lake shrouded with mist. The surface of the water was displaying everything that Silver did, and it was how she had been keeping track of the youngest of half-ancients.
“She is incredible.” Gaillean murmured, sitting beside her atop the gentle waves. “I do not see the madness you all speak of within her. She is intelligent, strong, a little bloodthirsty it’s true, but are not all beings of war the same?”
Kate searched in her mind for the right words to say. “Her own survival is paramount to Silver, and she uses extreme methods to reach her ends, torture and betrayal has warped her mind. She will never trust, never love, never care for anything that does not amuse her. At the moment there is nothing to bore her, she is constantly being challenged. When that changes, she will become unpredictable, she will torture because it is necessary but she will go overboard because it is a game to her. I cannot explain, I have been inside her mind before, back at the dawn of her existence, she would give anything to help others, yet she has lost pieces of herself over the years. It is a fate that I myself fear we will one day face when ennui gets the better of our race.”
Gaillean looked at her strangely. “You believe some of us have already come to that point?”
“I have my suspicions. Age seems to have numbed some of us to the point where compassion is forgotten.”
He nodded. “Do you believe I am one o
f those you speak of?” It was a blunt request for honesty that burned in his eyes.
“If you answer me one question truthfully I will know for certain.” Kate met his gaze.
He waited for a long time before replying. “Ask your question.”
She took a deep breath. “Do you care for either of your daughters?”
Gaillean looked taken aback. “Kate, how could I not love my own flesh and blood? Are you so used to the faces we show to the Council that you think that I am the mask they make me wear?”
“I apologise if I offended you.” Kate muttered, yet she still wondered if what she was hearing was the truth. Gaillean had been lying since the twenty-one worlds were created.
“The way that the Council acts is a disgrace upon our race.” Gaillean continued. “In our efforts to avoid war we avoid all interaction with other beings, and it is for that reason that I rarely attend their little power plays. I observe my daughters from my own plane. I do not interact with Romana because if the Council found out I was taking a role in the upbringing of my children there would be consequences.”
“What consequences?” Kate asked, dreading the answer.
“There was talk of removing our distraction.” Gaillean looked like he wanted to kill someone at the memory. “During your pregnancy there was a meeting of the Council where many of them doubted our ability to remain as impartial observers. You have always had difficulty with the rule, it was only by proving I was unaffected by the birth of our daughter that I could convince them to spare her life. That on its own may not have been enough, but Marta had a vision of Kobos where the only factor that prevented the obliteration of the Council itself was Romana.
“Why wasn’t I informed of Marta’s vision?” Kate was dumbstruck. “If she saw everything, she must have known that Romana would be taken from me. You must have known she would be stolen!” Betrayal cut through her like a knife.
Kate would never forget the day that she had lost her daughter as a child. She had asked the elves to help her deliver her own child, trusting the people of her own world more than she had her own race. Her naivety had been punished by the midwives drugging her; she had stayed conscious just long enough to see her baby rushed from the room by a servant of Talia.
Silver's Redemption (Soul Merge Saga Book 3) Page 8