But I have other matters to concern myself with.
I jab my finger at War. His gaze follows to where I point next. Shadow, on the rock, held together by spears. I gesture again, first to War, then to my own eyes, and lastly at Shadow.
Watch him.
War understands. He gives the faintest of nods, his gaze glued to mine.
Before I push up from the ocean floor, I snatch the third spear slicked in my blood and spare War a one-over.
His timing is impeccable. Though, by the glint of interest that cracks the edge of his cool gaze, I suspect he thought he would find me in distress. Not to find me in a state of calm wrath, ready to erupt.
I kick my legs and swim upwards.
Soon, when I glance down at the seabed, the darkness has swallowed the three of them up.
Leaving Shadow with a stranger, Horserider or not, fills me with unease. But I must avenge him.
I swim higher.
Hums pulse from the boat’s engine. Each vibration ripples over me and guides me closer to my prey. A fair swim from the ridge is where I close in on the boat.
Unlike I’d expected, it’s not powering through the ocean to flee the scene of my watery grave.
It’s some distance from where I was dropped to beyond the ridge. The crew must have soared away for a while before accepting the falsehood that I was truly dead and gone.
As I slip my head above water, the thought of their false safety brings a wicked smile to my face. My free hand grips onto the rope lattice; I still, calm and steady, listening for any noise above deck.
I hear nothing.
With one hand, the other curled around the spear, I lift myself up until my eyes peer over the edge.
Opposite, stands the seaman who speared me. His back faces me as he hunches over the rail next to the bridge.
I assume he is meant to be steering, but he is a fool instead and takes a moment to ponder his poor choices by the barrier.
I pull myself up to the rails and climb over. The soles of my feet flatten silently against the blood-smeared deck.
I creep closer to him. The spear raises with each step I take. He’s in my sights, I could take my shot right now and he would die before he realised that I’d killed him with his own spear, in the same way he tried to kill me.
But I’m no coward. I won’t attack with his back to me. I want him to see me.
My tongue smacks against the roof of my mouth. The same click I use to boss Shadow around.
Seaman whirls around, eyes wide and wet. He weeps. I have no sympathy.
My smile stretches into a grin at the horror on his face. Before he can utter any pleas, I hurl the spear. It whips through the cold air, slicing it apart with a whistle.
It strikes him right in the throat.
He drops to his knees.
Shakily, his hands raise to the spear and hover. He can’t remove it.
His cries gurgle on the blood that spurts from him. I’m standing too close to avoid the spray. It coats me within seconds.
I watch him die. A moment is all it takes for the life to drift from his body.
With disinterest, I yank the spear from his throat. He slaps to the deck, red oozing from his wound, and I head for the bridge.
Three more to go.
The captain is in the washroom, behind a curtain.
Sounds of light rainfall patters from behind the drape. He washes blood from his body—Shadow’s blood and my own. But he will never wash enough to rid himself of his fate. He is mine, now.
For Shadow, I click my tongue again.
The silhouette on the curtain freezes, one hand raised, the other tucked against his armpit. Again, I click. His arm lowers. He’s still enough for a perfect shot, but I want him to see me. They must all see me as they die.
Vengeance only matters when it’s made known.
The silhouette moves.
Fingers curl around the edge of the slimy curtain.
My eyes burn as it’s dragged to the side, slowly. Captain doesn’t open the curtain all the way. Instead, he pokes his head around the side.
His eyes are creased; a mound of soap is perched on his head, some soap suds dripping down his face. My shoulders slump—he can hardly see me.
“That you, Mike?”
“No,” I growl. “It is your end come.”
Before the last word leaves my lips, the spear zips across the washroom. It rips through the plastic curtain and slams into the Captain’s torso.
A shrill cry escapes him as he slips. His head cracks against the tiles and then…silence.
I sigh an unimpressed, disappointed sound. I expected more of a fight.
Before I search for the last two, I take my spear.
It will wear all of their blood.
There is a cramped, damp room beneath the bridge, behind a shabby red door.
Inside sits a steel table, a counter that holds strange devices beside the sink, a deckhand snoring on a lumpy couch, and a black screen-like object tucked in the corner.
The black reflective screen shows my image as I wander the room.
Curious, I approach it. Somewhat of a mirror, I imagine.
In it, I see the sharpness of my cheekbones, the sullen shade of my skin, soaked hair plastered to the sides of my face. Dark patches of what I assume to be blood are sprinkled across my face, smeared over my lips, laced through my hair. I wipe my eye clean and rise.
A peculiar mirror, I decide.
My interest in it quickly vanishes, and I stroll towards the deckhand who slumbers on the tattered couch. My fingers roll the spear around and glide over its crimson surface.
I make quick work of him and the other, who I find in a tiny box-like room with a metal seat that reminds me of my old master’s latrine.
My work is only finished when red stains all the boards of the boat, and a tranquil smile wisps across my face.
Satisfied, I wander back to the main deck and allow the smile to take root. I run my fingertips down the spear. It’s time for us to part ways.
Slowly, I rise and let victory wash over me.
It does not soothe Death’s desperation to reach me. It does not tame his wrath or rage.
But in answer to my victorious elation, War sends me begrudged praise.
I open my eyes and look port-side, where I’d climbed onto the boat.
There, ankles crossed, leaning back against the railing, is a drenched War. His pale, slender hands lift and, flippantly, he gives a silent applause. Spearing into me are his hooded eyes, shimmering with whispers of red, like marbles caught in the sunlight.
How he must see me. Covered in the death of my enemies, a tranquil contentment to my features, discoloured hair matted in drying blood.
I’m not always like this. Those who attack me face retaliation.
I am vengeful, not bloodthirsty. There is a difference.
And, by the ghost of a smirk twisted his blood-red lips, I believe War can differentiate the two. Yet, I suspect he is filled with the other.
A thirst for blood, unquenchable.
Chapter 10
The soles of my feet slip over the wet deck. Blood swirls with the spray of seawater, making it a gruelling task to drag the final piece of Shadow under the tented raincoat I pitched near the bridge door.
Shadow will heal better above water—and on the boat, with him close to me, we will continue our journey. The faster I am rid of War, the better.
I know already I will not be fond of this proud being.
He stands there by the far railing with his steed, watching me tend to Shadow.
After we brought up our steeds—and even with our combined strength and many ropes, it was difficult work—War stopped helping me.
Now, not even as I wedge Shadow’s torn, fleshy neck to his body does War offer to reposition the spears before Shadow wakes.
Irritation darkens my grey eyes into storm clouds. I toss a glower over my bloody shoulder at the newest of my kind, my fingers pinching lumps of
Shadow’s neck skin together.
“I cannot help but ask why you were sent here,” I say with the darkest calm I can summon. “The Three Horseriders have managed for centuries—millennia—without a fourth.”
“War is needed.” His reply is so short and abrupt that I barely caught his stained lips move. “And so here I am.”
“Humans manage war just fine on their own.” I stand, satisfied with my repair of Shadow, and pull on my armour-dress. “It is one of their very few talents.”
“Humans succeed in creating war,” he agrees, his tone darker than the hair that curls at his ears and folds over the grey metal of his circlet. “It is the Horseriders who fail.” He pulls away from the railing, our gazes locked like bull horns, and he slowly advances on me. “Should you wish to rest blame with something, your reflection will do nicely.”
With a lingering stare, he reinforces his judgement of me and my kind.
But there is something more than judgement behind the hard shield of his eyes. Something that resonates with me—resentment.
He resents me…the Horseriders for his fate, as I resent Death.
Yet, without this fate of eternal servitude to Them, I would be in eternal suffering under the control of the Darkness.
This being before me had no such darkness in his future. He had something more—he was something more before he became War.
“What are you?” I ask bluntly, fastening my dress to my grey, thinning body.
The early stirs of nausea settle over me. The sway of the boat does not help me in fighting the symptoms sneaking their way in, begging for release, and I wonder if War feels the same—a premature desire to sheath his sword into the hearts of humans.
“I am War.”
“That is your assignment,” I snap. “Your duty. You are no Horserider—you are something older.”
“The same can be said of Death,” he says evenly, holding my gaze. Then, his distance returns and he looks over the boat’s edge to the rocky waters. “Your steed is settled, your thirst for revenge quenched. We have no reason to still be here.”
With that, he strides to the railing I once stood at as I desperately made my way to him—a Horserider I’d imagined to be new and confused. Like I had been on my first awakening.
Instead, I gaze at a proud soul. One of confidence and self-assurance, a knowledgeable and dangerous entity. And I think of his words.
The same can be said of Death.
Were he and Death kindred in their previous duties? Are they of the same cloth?
War carries the same sense of power with him as Death does—one that used to cripple me with fear when I was human.
I am certain now as I stare at his back, the set of his shoulders, the undeterred nature of his indifference. He was something grander before. Crafted by Them the way humans craft their art.
I turn and march into the bridge.
The boat still rumbles with life, and I steer us away. War stays outside…until the boat stops rumbling and we drift some distance from the land on the horizon.
۞
A day has passed us by in silence, but now we are forced to speak.
War stands in his proud way near Shadow. Amber dances over his contemplative gaze as he stares off ahead. “How long a trek are we to expect?”
My focus pours into Shadow, who still rests beneath the raincoat. He has awakened, reattached and healed, but is still weak. The journey underwater will be strenuous for him. He will slow us down.
“Two days,” I estimate. “And when we reach the island, my steed will need further time to rest.”
War makes a noise of impatience through our bond. A steely, cold sound that freezes my insides and clangs the echo of metal in my ears.
“It cannot be helped,” I say, stroking Shadow’s tender neck. My loyal steed blinks up at me with one blank eye, catching the shimmer of the pale, frosty sunshine. “I will not abandon my steed to escort you.”
“It is a mere animal with a soul created to suit yours.” War’s voice is as cold as our bond. “Another can be made, he is replaceable.”
Dangers twists my face as I turn on him. “As are you.”
The threat wounds only his pride, not his bravery.
War’s jaw tightens like Their wrath on humanity, stirring that same odd feeling in me as Famine had done. Fear, I think. And a reminder of my foolishness.
I pull my gaze back to Shadow before I help him up to his hooves. He is almost steady when a sudden rush of energy punches through us both.
The force explodes within us. A choked groan comes from my lips as my knees give out—and we both drop to the deck.
Death is near…closing in.
His sense of victory overwhelms me, white spots dance in my eyes—it is a new sensation that rips through our bond. A new feeling that sickens me as my body draws closer to disease.
My time is almost up before the plague begins to blossom within me.
I cannot manage it all at once.
In answer, I grit my teeth and warn Death away with urgency. My bond rattles with disgust and desperation.
Do not come to me. Never come to me.
But Death is what he is. Relentless, stubborn and my curse. He hunts me, still. My only option is to move around him and keep our bond hazy.
“The stories are true, I see.”
Blinded by the tornado of bonds and illness, I frown into the darkness of my clenched eyes and ignore War’s icy words.
“Death and a human…” his voice carries off into a bitter whisper of disgust. “Had your punishment been in my hands, this sentence of yours would be a blessing in comparison.”
Again, I pull Shadow up from the deck. Under my tight, hoarse breath I mutter, “It would appear my punishment has only just begun.”
Chapter 11
Days of trekking across the ocean floor meant no talking, but it wasn’t the peaceful silence of the ocean that I’ve become fond of over the past few centuries.
For the first few hundred years of my second life, the pressure against my ears throbbed my brain in an odd, uncomfortable manner.
But then I began to hear sounds unfamiliar to my once-human ears: the flap of fishtails, sharks fleeing a far superior being, a whale’s cry rippling through the water, and the heavy calm—a calm that War so easily twisted into something ugly. And the silent return of my inner plague, begging to be brewed, made the journey all the worse.
Shadow impresses me.
He pushes through the dense water with me by his side without complaint, until we finally emerge from the water.
Exhausted, he rests his head on my shoulder and takes a moment to sneeze out all the droplets of ocean stuck up his nostrils.
Shadow has never experienced decapitation before. Nor have I. And it is taking far longer for him to make a full recovery than I would ever have imagined.
On the murky beach, I look to my right where War blinks his watery eyelashes and rests his gaze upon the beige sand and bushy slopes as though they are ordinary kisses of nature, not the rare beauties to be seen throughout our dreary missions.
Perhaps because I was once human it is that I see the beauty of the earth, and War will never.
Desensitisation chills our bond.
I roll my eyes before I turn to stroke Shadow’s neck.
“You need rest,” I tell him.
“No.” War’s voice strikes like lightning—and I shudder at the gruelling memory it stirs within me. “We march onward,” he adds.
Shadow nuzzles closer, his voice a hoarse whisper tight with pain. “Do not worry about me, Pessie. I can fulfil my duties.”
But I speak most commandingly of all, with sharpness that matches the heavy glare I throw War. “And you will, Shadow. After you recover to your full strength.”
I shift my gaze to the cottage perched atop the mossy hill. “If you would rather move on without us, War, you may. While Free-Will was merely dusted over us Horseriders, we each possess enough of it to make many of our ow
n decisions. This particular choice is wholly yours.”
As I begin guiding Shadow up the steep hill, I don’t look back to see if War and his steed follows us.
Sharp branches from the shrubs attack my feet with every step I make, but it is not until I am halfway up the hill that I hear him—the heavy crunch of War’s boots against the shrubs, trailing me. He and his nameless steed follow us to the cottage porch ahead.
Decay eats away at the painted white wood we stand on, poisoned by the salt in the air. I can feel it rot. A slow, brutal process that seems eternal to the human eye, but to mine it is an agonising truth of existence.
The boards groan in protest under our combined weight.
I hesitate at the glass doors—
A shadow stretches up the lacy drapes on the other side before it vanishes completely.
But War shows no such hesitations and whacks the doors wide open with a lazy hit of his palm. A glass pane cracks from the force.
War strides through the doorway, tall and proud, uncaring of the wisp of human that disappears to the left of the corridor.
I fix my level stare on the back of his head.
Raven threads of hair are cropped before they can touch the hilt of a bloody sword. His strong shoulders push against the tight cling of his dark armour and fill up much of the space ahead.
There is a beauty about him, I decide. A terrifying beauty that radiates ancient power. His human form was sculpted by something not of this world, and I wonder, was he the sculptor? Did he craft inky hair into a dark halo around marble skin, and darken his amber eyes to match the hardness of his old soul?
“No,” croaks Shadow beside me. “To create a human form, he must be one of Them or the Darkness.”
“Whoever said he isn’t a Fallen One?” My question lingers between us as I guide him through the doors, taking the path War and his steed paved.
Our short walk ends in an open space that looks through paned windows to a mossy field of overgrown grass lush with quenched thirst and rich, damp soil.
In this room, the silhouette is seated on a wooden rocking chair by the window. A woman who reeks of oldness and disease—one of the mind, not the body; not a disease of mine, but of Mother Nature.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 37