Beyond the Hell Cliffs

by Case C. Capehart

  “Sir, is that… does she have one of ours hostage?”

  One of the soldiers finally noticed Raegith’s northern features. Raegith looked to the side and saw a Twileen hunter with his bow drawn on both of them. He looked hesitant.

  “That doesn’t look like one of the ‘Darkies.’ He looks like… Rung’un.”

  Raegith recognized the word. Ebriz had called him by the term before. It was what several of the older Twileen tribes called those of mixed heritage. A twinge of doubt and uncertainty shot through him. These were his people, standing before him, weapons drawn. Even if the soldiers spared him, they would cut Beretta down immediately. The only way they were both escaping the Citadel was to go through these men. It had finally come down to choosing between his people and the ones who took him in.

  The horseman drew closer and raised his pike.

  “No, don’t!” Raegith yelled, holding up his hands at the man and stepping between him and Beretta.

  “Sir, he’s one of us!” the hunter yelled, lowering his bow. “Kid, get away from that thing! We’ll get you out of here!”

  “Corporal, do not address the enemy,” the horseman commanded. “If you have the shot, dammit, then take it!”

  “Sir, he’s Rung’un! He’s not Greimere; he’s a Saban! He’s probably that thing’s prisoner.” The hunter was coming towards Raegith now and holding out his hand.

  “Just let us go, please,” Raegith said, hardly thinking of the words coming out of his mouth.

  “Corporal!”

  “Sir, just let me get to him…” The hunter could not finish his sentence. From behind him a large shadow appeared.

  Dull green arms emerged from the shadow of the building and grabbed the Twileen’s head. With a quick twist, the hunter’s neck popped and he slumped to the ground. The horseman had been trying to warn him.

  From the roof of a building, a dark form took to the air like a bird and dove down onto the horse. Kimura landed on the back of the beast, behind the rider. Something flickered in her hand and she pounded the side of his chest over and over. The horseman groaned and threw his elbow back, catching her in the face and knocking her from the horse.

  All around Raegith, the Helcats stormed out of the alleys and engaged the soldiers. Beretta caught the horseman off guard and burned him in his armor. A tornado appeared before the Faeir and he screamed enchantments into the air, sending his deadly cyclone cutting into the Rathgar that had killed the hunter.

  Raegith’s breath caught as the skin was ripped from the girl’s body by the force of the wind. Her right arm was flung so hard that it popped out of the socket and whipped around the back of her head, spinning her into a wall. The razor wind hit her again and grinded away her flesh.

  Then Helkree was there, grabbing the Mage by the neck, bending him over and ramming the top of his head into the side of a nearby wall. The Faeir’s neck crumpled and his head sunk into his chest. Helkree raised his corpse off the ground and flung it at an approaching soldier, knocking him to his back. As the soldier squirmed under the dead Mage, Helkree grabbed the horseman’s still-flaming pike and skewered both of them.

  In seconds the fight was over and Sabans lay dead all around. Raegith had not even reacted to the situation. Even after the death that he had seen in the Pit and at the hands of Greela on his first night, he had still locked up in actual combat. Or was it uncertainty? As Helkree called out to her Helcats, he realized that he was still staring at the dead Twileen; the one who had disobeyed a direct order to try and rescue him.

  “Helcats?”

  “Broosh!” the survivors bellowed, like berserkers.

  “Grass… hair…”

  Raegith turned towards the weak voice to his side. As he looked at the mangled Rathgar, with half of her body eaten away to the bone in places, he recognized which one of the Rathgar girls it was.

  “Oh no, Enga,” he whispered.

  He ran to her side and the others were there a moment later.

  “It hurts…” she said, slumped against the wall.

  “We have to do something,” Raegith said, looking up at Helkree.

  She reached down and pulled a slim dagger out of the hunter’s belt and handed it to him. “This is the only thing you can give her.”

  “I… got one… Grass-hair…” she said. Her voice was dropping off. “It hurts.”

  “You did good, Enga.” It was a lie. Raegith could feel the revulsion down inside him. He did not want the hunter dead; but he lied for Enga. He lied to give her a good death. “You’ve earned a spot among your ancestors.”

  “Do it, Raegith.” Indie, the other Rathgar in the Helcats was beside him. “She deserves to have this from you.”

  Raegith looked down at the dagger and back at Enga. “Yeah.”

  He stroked her good cheek with his hand and she closed her eyes. Then he plunged the dagger into her chest, just left of center. It was quick and he thanked the Fates for giving him a steady hand.

  Then Helkree was grabbing him and hauling him to his feet. Her face was inches from his.

  “You don’t stray from my side, ever again. Understand?”

  “You were right,” he mumbled, looking behind her. Kimura was bent over the form of Makat, her best friend. They had lost two Helcats that night, rescuing him.

  “Hey, snap out of this!” Helkree shook him.

  “We have to leave now, Raegith. The gate is open.” Beretta eyed the others suspiciously. “My orders were to protect Raegith, not a group of convicts.”

  Helkree turned on her. “We don’t need your useless protection, Infernal. Helcats, form up! We’re leaving this sinking ship. Kimura, get moving.”

  To her credit, the bubbly Lokai girl got to her feet and turned away from her best friend’s body with nothing but a hardened expression on her face. For a moment her eyes met Raegith and he wanted to turn away. He expected hatred in those dark eyes. It was his fault that Makat was dead. What he found was only determination. Helkree had picked some tough women for her group.

  There was little resistance as they left the gates. The Helcats had salvaged what weapons they could from the soldiers, but the shields were too unwieldy and the short swords were foreign. As women, none of them had any experience with weapons, except Helkree.

  They passed below the gate and left the Citadel behind. A few other groups of inhabitants had the same idea. Rathgar, Lokai and Gimlet were fleeing the city. Beretta stood out among all of them, the green flames atop her head like a beacon. No other soldiers appeared. They were all converging on the Spire.

  As they walked further from the fighting and smoke, Raegith looked back at the Spire. He wondered if the Rellizbix army had reached it yet. He wondered if the Empress would somehow survive the assault. Maybe the general in charge would have mercy or respect for royalty. Maybe they just wanted to destroy any aspect of a resistance.

  These were dying hopes. Rellizbix had never invaded the Greimere before. Even in the old days, when the Greimere Empire was a real threat, Rellizbix had stopped short of the Hell Cliffs. For them to come all this way, into unknown territory with such a massive force, just to stamp out a possible rebellion was unthinkable. Something had changed with the king. Maybe Helfrick sent him down there to die as an excuse to end the treaty and destroy the Empire once and for all.

  “How did you find me?” Raegith asked.

  The group had settled down for the night, taking shelter with the large group of refugees that had coalesced as they put distance between them and the Citadel. It was second nature to those in the Greimere to band together at night. The dangers of the darkness could be held at bay with large numbers and plenty of light, but the chances of one or two of them getting picked off by a Grabber or some other night beast were still high.

  “Mostly luck,” Fenra said. “Helkree was taking us all the way into the Citadel… to the Spire in order to get to you. We had set off for the west gate just moments before we heard the attack. Our escorts bickered about what to do,
but Helkree broke free from them. Once we all started running, the guards just let us go.”

  “And Noriko?”

  “The Junie was too scared to come with us, I suppose.” Helkree rolled her eyes and played with the dirt at her feet. “She didn’t even turn around to look when we heard the thunder. She obviously didn’t give a shit about you; just like I told you before.”

  “She was escaping, she said. She told me that she would sneak away from the escort and head home, to the south.”

  “There is nothing to the south,” Beretta said. “Only the Gimlets go into the Bogs and not very deep even then.”

  “The Junie bitch was out of her mind, it sounds like.” Hitomi, the other Lokai girl, was a bit of a pessimist. “Doesn’t surprise me. None of us like Junies, much. They give us Lokai a bad name.”

  “They do?” Indie asked. “Lokai reputation not that great to begin with.”

  Hitomi lifted her hand and waved Indie off, dismissively, as Raegith had done in the Pit.

  “Oh, dumb brat thinks she’s Grass-hair, now?” Indie grumbled.

  “It’s a good insult, I think. I’m just helping it catch on. One of these days, when Grass-hair rules this place, this will be the standard insult.”

  “Is that what you think we’re doing, Hitomi?” Raegith asked.

  His tone was not humorous and the others got quiet as Hitomi just stared wordlessly at him.

  “So, your idea of the future is that I will just conquer all of the Greimere? I’m going to become the new Emperor and make all of you my… what, duchesses? Do seek to be a noble now, Hitomi?”

  “I, uh…” she stuttered, looking around at the others. “Grass-hair, I…”

  “In case you missed it, Hitomi, the Greimere is back there, getting obliterated. The Spire is falling and with it are all of the histories of this place. The Sabans won’t care about any of it. They’re probably burning it all as we sit here, just to make sure we’re left nothing. Who knows what they’re doing to the ones who did not get out. Who knows what they’re doing to the Empress…”

  Raegith paused and clenched his jaw. He looked back to Hitomi, who still sat on the ground, motionless and voiceless. “Get up.”

  Hitomi stood up as directed, a bit shaky on her feet.

  “Your clothes… take them off,” Raegith commanded. When she looked to Helkree for guidance, Raegith lost his temper. “Don’t fucking look at her! She serves me, just as you do! Now get those fucking clothes off now! All of them!”

  Others among the refugees looked in their direction, but with Beretta sitting among the group, no one dared bother them. An incident earlier in the day had cleared up who they were. Raegith was accused of being an enemy spy by a deserting guard and Beretta had burned him to a husk. After that, no one spoke to him, the Infernal or any of the Helcats.

  Hitomi quickly pulled her ragged shirt over her head, her dark breasts bouncing with her frantic movement. After she pushed her pants down and stepped out of them, she just stood there in the midst of the entire refugee camp, scared and vulnerable.

  “Come over here,” Raegith said.

  “Grass-hair, I’m sorry. I said something stupid…”

  “Get over here!”

  Hitomi jumped forward, sliding to her knees in front of him. Raegith reached out and grabbed her by her hair and pulled her forward to him. Turquoise hair was rare among Lokai and it made the girl a target in the Pit, even more so than her sarcastic mouth. If Helkree would not have taken her in among the Helcats, she probably would probably have died messy among the easily enraged males.

  “I don’t like this color. I want you to get rid of it tonight… with a knife. What do you think about that?”

  “Whatever you want, Grass-hair, please…” she begged.

  “Oh, you really want to impress me, don’t you?” Raegith laughed menacingly. He began loosening his pants with his other hand. “You want to be a duchess, Hitomi? Maybe you want to be the next Empress? Is that why you’re trying so hard to impress me? Well then, let’s see how impressive you really are!”

  “Raegith,” Helkree said.

  Raegith turned on her, his teeth bared. “Wait your fucking turn!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Her voice was calm and she did not move to stop him.

  “What the fuck does it look like? Do you suddenly have a problem with this, now that we’re not in the Pit anymore? Can I not do with your Helcats what I wish? Isn’t this the point of them?”

  “The point of them?” Helkree asked. “Do you mean your Helcats, or women in general?”

  Raegith did not respond. With his hand in Hitomi’s hair, holding her face over his partially exposed crotch, he just stared her down, simmering in rage and frustration.

  “You’re certainly Greimere now. Well, I guess you’ve earned it, haven’t you?” Helkree looked down at the frightened girl in Raegith’s grip. “If that’s what he wants…”

  “Shut up!” Raegith screamed, shoving Hitomi away from him. He stood up, tying his pants back around his waist. “All of you… I can’t even fucking look at any of you right now. I need to be alone.”

  Beretta started to follow him as he left the group, but a look from him made her stop. He would have fought her in that instant and she must have seen it. He wanted to fight something; anything at that moment. A part of him had wished that Helkree was about to attack him, then he could fight her.

  As he walked away, he looked around at the others in the refugee camp. His eyes dared any of them to challenge him. The things he felt were burning him inside, making his body hurt as if he were being physically beaten. He wanted to scream at the night; to tear at something until it stopped breathing. Something inside him felt as if it might rip right through his skin and run crazy through the camp, wrecking and destroying until he was put down. That would at least give him some release, but he knew it would not happen. They were emotions, not some parasitic demon lying beneath his flesh. All the turmoil was in his mind; it just felt as if his entire body was filled with it.

  And there was nothing he could do with it, but let it pass. The anger had swelled so quickly that he could not handle it. With no enemy nearby to pound with his fist, he had tried for another kind of relief. He would have taken out his anger on Hitomi had Helkree not stopped him. He could still see the images that boiled up in his mind as he vented on the poor girl; of pushing her face into the dirt and forcing himself in her. He would have hurt her, made her scream in that instant and he would have made the rest of them watch. They would know that at any moment it could be them taking his wrathful sex.

  “What am I doing?” he whispered to the empty night around him. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  Raegith was hitting the ground, pulverizing the lifeless grit below him fruitlessly. His eyes were wet and his face hurt, but there were no sobs. He growled and grunted, filling his bloody fists with as much pain as he could, anything to bleed out the pressure inside him.

  Then he felt someone beside him. It was Helkree. She was the only one who would come to him while he was in such a state. Beretta might have come to make sure he was not abducted by some night beast, but she would not have knelt close to him, as Helkree did.

  “You done with your little tantrum?”

  Raegith almost pounced on her, but the thought came and went. She was not his enemy. She was his closest friend and the one who forced him to become strong inside the Pit.

  He sighed, long and uneasily, gaining a hold over the weakness in his voice. “Yeah… I think so.”

  “The dumb twat doesn’t know when to shut her mouth sometimes and probably needed to be put in check. She’ll think a bit more before speaking next time.”

  “No, that’s not it, Hel. That would have broken her and that’s not what I want. Fates, the thoughts I had… I’m one sick fuck.”

  “You’re young, Raegith,” Helkree replied. “And you’ve got a lot of darkness in you. It’s good, you need that shit here.”

 
; “Would you have let me do it?” Raegith asked, looking over at her. “If I would have ignored you and tried to rape her, what would you have done?”

  “Watched,” she replied, dryly.

  Raegith laughed. “Okay, you’re more fucked up than I am, at least. I didn’t even go through with it and I feel like a monster.”

  “Because you’re not used to this place. You found me tied to a rock, remember? A thousand bad things like this happen every day somewhere in the Greimere. I don’t have time to feel bad for all of them; I don’t have time to feel bad for any of them.” She paused for a moment, deciding on what to say next. “And Hitomi is tougher than you think. You wouldn’t have broken her… but she wouldn’t have been the same around you.”

  “I’m not that morbid, yet, Hel. But I’m glad I’ve got you to keep things in perspective for me. I’m also glad you stopped me earlier.” Raegith paused for a bit and stared out at the night. A dim speck of orange was the only sign of the Citadel. They could not even hear anything from the battle anymore, if it still raged.

  “Head back to the Helcats and get them turned in. I’ll keep first watch. But send Hitomi to me when you get back.”

  “You want me to put some clothes on her first, or as she is?”

  “Are you kidding me? She hasn’t put her clothes back on, yet? Fates, Hel!”

  Helkree just shrugged her shoulders as she got up and turned back to the camp. A few minutes later Raegith saw Hitomi wandering among the refugees. When she saw him, she paused and then weaved through the fires and prone figures to get to him. Her pale hair bobbed oddly and as she got close to him he could see that she had already started trying to get rid of it. So far she had only shortened it, but there looked to be a patch missing near the right side of her scalp. She had only recently taken pride in her unusual hair after gaining the protection of the Helcats.

  “Oh no, Hitomi,” he sighed as she got closer.

  “I just haven’t had enough time to get the rest,” she babbled frantically. “It hurts to do too much at a time, but I’ll stay up all night…”

  “Stop! Just… just come over here with me.”