She tried to open her lips and found they could once again part. “I’m sure such gifts are not freely given. What name may I call you?” She hoped her tone relayed respect to avoid offending this creature.
“No.” His lips formed a sinister smile. “Prodal is my name in the human tongue, though I have gone by others in different times.” A rumble sounded from above. Prodal looked up, and she followed his gaze, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open at finding a star-studded sky.
It was a sky unlike any she had ever seen before. Among the stars were a dozen moons, each burning in a different shade of red. There were streaks of glittering dust and swirling nebulae frozen in eruptions of phantasmal light. Some were violet at the epicenter and transmuted into blues and greens at their fringes. Others featured golden yellow orbs like the sun on a cold morning.
The low rumble became a thunder crack, drawing his gaze back to her and her eyes to his. “Time dwindles for us, and thus, this is my price. Your essence will be mine once you leave your physical form. You can save Baylan. He will live if you do this thing. Do we have a deal?” He asked, spreading his arms, and opening his palms.
Anything for Baylan. “My essence. Do you mean my soul?”
“The meaning is the same.”
She swallowed hard and nodded. “We have a deal.”
“A wise decision.” Prodal clapped his hands together, and she was drawn from her feet and raised into the air. She kicked her legs and raked her arms, finding nothing. She knew it was a moot effort but couldn’t help herself from trying. She was drawn up and up, and thought that he would send her into that beautiful sky above.
She stopped about eight feet from the floor, floating like a dust mote. “What are you doing? I thought—”
She screamed as fiery pain lit up her forearm. Along her inner forearm, a swirling script was being etched into her flesh, rending it with a searing tattoo. Bits of charred flesh fluttered from the mark. A brand, she realized.
“No!” she screamed. A terrible mistake. The brand went on from wrist to elbow, stopping with a surge of bone chilling cold. A wave of gooseflesh traveled from her neck to her toes and brought a shiver from her guts that threatened to loosen her bowels. I will not shit myself before this creature.
Prodal uttered a laugh.
The force that held her aloft on the air relinquished, sending her plummeting to the hard stone. The ground came up hard, and she landed on her side with a slap, ejecting the air from her lungs. She heaved out a breath, eyes watering and glaring up at him. What have I done?
He gave her a jovial wave. “It was a pleasure. I will see you… soon.” He turned his back on her, lumbering for his chair.
The foyer returned, and the timeless room vanished. She felt giant hands on her shoulders, ripping her to the floor, Haru’s blade hacking only dust. She stole a backward glance and predictably found no one.
Haru cocked his head at her, eyes flickering with surprise. “You’re different,” he mumbled, brow furrowing as he drew his blade back for a second attempt.
“Yes.” She grinned, and she was. She felt as if she’d spent the last week sleeping ten hours a day and eating nothing but the best of meals. She found her wounds were healed as she sprang to her feet and sent a flaming dart through Haru’s skull, blasting it open with mushroom shaped cavitation. His brains sprayed the face of the taskmaster standing behind him, making him drop his crossbrow with a retch. The crossbow clattered, and its hammer rang, sending the bolt into the crotch of the taskmaster across from him. The struck Tigerian fell to the ground with a shriek, hands clutching a red mess around his groin.
“Die!” she screamed, summoning hunting knives of Dragon fire and driving them into the nearest Tigerian’s gut. She ripped the knives apart, spilling wet intestines onto her feet and bathing her ankles in warm blood. She drove another knife upward under a broad Tigerian’s jaw, pulling it up and splitting the feline face into ragged halves.
Something cracked like glass, drawing her eyes. She saw that the Equalizer crystal hanging from Baylan’s neck had shattered. His face lit with a dark smile, eyes flashing with a blinding bluish-white brilliance.
“Lillian,” he whispered.
Portals cut the air where every Tigerian stood, each a long and razor-thin oval of white-blue light. Within each portal, the world of night outside the mansion’s steps could be seen. These portals, however, were not for transportation. They were for destruction.
Thousands of years ago, wizards rarely used Phoenix portals because of their potential for harm. The risk was too great. They were wonderful for near-distance transportation, but they had to be summoned in a place where there was a low probability for there to be anything living as they sliced razor thin lines through all they touched. The other risk was merely stepping through them. Since they often left the wizard with unspeakable deformities over longer distances, they’d fallen out of the repertoire of most wizards. That was until a rebellious wizard realized that their destructive edges should be embraced as an effective weapon and not shunned as a poor method of transport.
Phoenix portals winked in and out of existence, leaving only sparks and severed bodies and sliced limbs behind. Where the portals cut flesh, they cut everything including the timbers and the stones making up the floor. Baylan’s form became outlined in a thin band of shimmering white light, muscles flexing with renewed vigor. He wheeled and started for the few remaining Tigerians who had discarded their weapons, leaping for the main door. Baylan ran after them, chasing them down the front stairs and into the night.
Lillian sighed and dismissed the Dragon. She folded her arms as Baylan’s portals worked through the few Tigerians who’d made a fruitless attempt at running before they were cut down. It was horrible. And it was beautiful.
“So much blood,” she muttered over the last of their desperate screams. A roar called from the ceiling, and her eyes flicked up as an enormous ring of steel filled her vision. She protectively raised her hands and thunder roared in her ears as bits of plaster pelted her face.
She slowly lowered her hands, swatting at a plume of white dust. A giant circular candelabra had come loose from the ceiling, narrowly missing her. A few of the candles still flickered. Had it landed on her, she would have surely been gravely injured, if not dead.
Another time then, Prodal’s ancient voice laughed in her head.
She swallowed, wiping a hand over her nose and lips. She pressed the hand against her chin with enough force to drive her jaw inward until it started to hurt. What have I done? She set her gaze on the blackened brand lining her inner arm. What have I done? She tried to rub it off but found it was part of her skin, like a new birthmark. What have I done!
“Lillian?” Baylan stood in the frame of the doorway, chest heaving. “Heard the sound, came as fast as I could… are you okay?”
She dropped the hand from her jaw and gave him a fierce nod. “I made a mistake,” she whispered so low he wouldn’t have been able to hear.
“What?” The light in Baylan’s eyes faded as he released his hold on the Phoenix’s strength. He strode toward her and wrapped her up in his muscular arms. A flood of tears gushed from her eyes, wicking into his shirt. She pressed her face against his chest and heaved out a guttural sob.
“You found me. You came back, you didn’t forget about me,” he said, holding her tight and rubbing her back. His hand went to her head, clasping the back of her neck.
“Never. I could never forget you.” She walked her hands to his hips and walked them up to his chest, slightly pushing away so she could look into his sapphire eyes. He’d lost a lot of mass since she last felt him, his chest withered and bony.
“Not a wound on you… but new scars.” Baylan said, his keen eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. “You didn’t perhaps learn a new way to heal using the Dragon?”
She pressed her forehead against his chest and shook her head. “No. But I’d rather not talk about that now. Can we please go home?” Her thro
at hitched.
Baylan stroked her hair. “All this commotion will likely attract a lot of attention. There surely had to be some who fled. There are the hunters too, though they live about five miles off…” She felt him twist to peer about. “Let’s gather what marks we can, fresh clothing for traveling and be off. Your friend… I’m sorry for your loss. She seemed… lovely.”
“She was,” Lillian sniffed. “I need to go to her.” Her heart gave a frantic pump at the prospect of finding Brenna alive, but then wilted, knowing in her gut that she was dead. A long breath ghosted from her lips.
“Of course.” Baylan met her eyes, then wiped a hand down his mouth, smearing his lips in a mix of blood and dust. Behind him, the glow of the moon dimmed, coating the world outside in inky blacks.
“But where…” Her mind was a muddled heap, not unlike the gore decorating the hallway. She peered about as if the answer would emerge from the spread of broken Tigerians. There were still a few who lived, she realized. Their limbs scraped at the wooden floor as desperate moans carried along the walls.
“Helgar’s study.” Baylan’s eyes flicked to the doorway leading toward it.
“Right.” She swallowed and followed his eyes. The doorframe’s ornamented edges had been ripped asunder when she blew the doors. “Can you finish the rest? I’d like to do this alone, if you wouldn’t mind.”
He gave a few nods, lips pressed into a sympathetic line. He turned his back on her, and she watched as he stepped over a corpse to stand over a crawling Tigerian, his back fur singed and blistered.
Lillian started for the study, hearing Baylan’s portal spark to life, muting one of the few remaining moans. She threaded her way under a thick beam that had fallen from the ceiling, resting askew in the vast hallway. A tiny fire the size of her finger danced on its edge, struggling to live.
Within the study, the windows were like shattered teeth, sucking out the flaming curtains and the majority of the smoke. There was still enough to make her eyes water and throat burn. She couldn’t stay there long, though most of framing wood was dense and slow to burn.
It felt like a vice was winding down in her chest, going so tight her heart might burst and kill her where she stood. She slowly walked into the middle of the room, scanning it with her eyes, letting them finally rest at where she knew Brenna would be.
And there she was.
Brenna hadn’t moved far from where she had fallen. She had crawled a few pitiful feet toward Helgar’s desk, streaking through a spreading disc of her own blood. Sofor’s sword strikes were accurate, one likely goring her heart and the other piercing a lung. She hoped her death had come quick.
“Brenna,” Lillian breathed, her eyes blurring as if underwater as she stumbled for her. She managed to get her legs to lower her to the ground, kneeling at Brenna’s side. Brenna was on her side, legs splayed, her once luxurious hair thick with blood. Her skin was a sickening white, mouth fixed in the start of one of her beautiful smiles. The smile Lillian would never witness again.
“I want to see you smile. Can you…? Why won’t you smile?” Lillian’s voice shuddered. She heaved a great sob that clawed her belly and made her arms tremble. “Won’t you smile one more time?” Her eyes screwed shut and hot tears streaked her cheeks. “Please smile, Brenna, please…” She struck Brenna’s chest with her fist and left it there. She was already cold, so terribly cold.
Lillian eventually opened her eyes, her chest drawing staggering breaths, and slowly placed her hand on Brenna’s shoulder, turning her onto her back. She leaned over, closed her eyes, and placed a kiss on Brenna’s frozen lips. She stayed there for a long moment, hoping some vestige of Brenna could receive her love. Lillian raised herself up to kneeling, nodded, mastered her breath, and closed Brenna’s half-parted eyes with two fingers.
It struck her then how only in death were people made real. Brenna was always an unfathomable hero in Lillian’s eyes, a mythical figure who could only ever exist in stories. But now she was dead. And it proved she had indeed once lived.
“My life was bought by your death,” Lillian murmured, wiping away a tear.
Lillian had pretended that the passage of time before this moment had been real, but she realized that nothing else before this moment mattered. Because this moment was true, which meant the future could be true too. But she knew in time, this memory would become fragmented and blurred. Brenna would lapse into the world of pretend. It would all move along in the ever-blackening clouds of time, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She shook her head and the thoughts away, knowing the path they strayed lead to nowhere. She fumbled her hands into Brenna’s pouches and retrieved Baylan’s bill of sale, not that they would need such paperwork in Zoria. There was always the chance they might be challenged by an Arbiter or worse, a bounty hunter.
She gazed at Brenna’s corpse one last time as she stood. She swallowed hard. “Thank you, I won’t forget you… and what you did for us, all the sacrifices you made. The ultimate sacrifice. We won’t let your death go to waste. Our lives will matter. My only wish is that I had more time to get to know you…and to give you a proper burial.” Her breath caught, thinking Prodal might’ve been listening, but his horrible voice was gratefully absent. She could only hope it stayed that way. “Safe travels, Brenna. I hope the Shadow Realm finds you well.”
In about half an hour, they were ready to depart. Baylan sat upon Stanley’s back in one of Helgar’s well-tailored suits, though the image was diminished by the dirt and blood rimming his hairline. The suit’s legs were too short and showed his hairy shins. But they were his free shins, and they were wonderful. He and Helgar were apparently almost the same size.
She donned one of the servant’s riding outfits, utterly lacking ostentation and favoring function over form. She tied her blood matted hair back into a ponytail, wincing in disgust as bits of dried blood flaked down her back. They were side by side about half a mile from the mansion, staring at it from the cobbled road. Flanking them on either side were long grasses, illuminated in the dim glow of the moon. The road led to the marble stairs that arced up to the main door, parted open like a broken mouth. One of the doors hung askew from a lone hinge, the other torn free.
The grasses rustled in a breeze, and somewhere, an animal roared. They shared a glance. It was time to go. Kalli pawed at the ground, and Stanley snorted.
“Do what you do best, my love,” Baylan said, giving her a proud smile.
She pushed a laugh through her lips, but it was tainted by the brand throbbing on her forearm and by the pain of losing her only friend. He had yet to see her brand, and she would keep it that way, for a time. Lillian dismounted and took a few steps ahead of the horses. She embraced the Dragon, its familiar and welcoming rage coursing through her nerves like a tidal wave of strength. She inhaled sharply, drawing deep on her reserves.
A meteor of flame appeared over the mansion, hovering for a second before she dragged her arms down. The meteor struck the roof, throwing out smaller fireballs into the night and roaring like a thunderbolt. The structure imploded, shrieking with a great wave of fire, and throwing flaming debris in every direction. Boards spun, bricks skittered across the stones, and paintings flipped as they withered to ash. From every window emerged a gout of flame, sending shattered glass twinkling like stars. The sides of the mansion were lifted off the ground and the walls torn into burning halves. Dragon fire raged and licked at the night, consuming all in its insatiable mouth.
Baylan let out a great belly laugh with the mansion’s fires gleaming in his eyes.
Lillian let the Dragon go and could only stare. A grim pit formed in her stomach and seemed to grow larger by the minute. She had paid a great price for this moment, and Brenna the greatest. She resolved that she should learn to enjoy it and all of those that came after it. The thought lent a lightness to her heart and lessened the weight in her belly.
For the first time since arriving at the Oakmourn Plantation, she genuinely la
ughed. Baylan’s fingers twiddled at her hand and found their way to intertwining with hers. She gave it a squeeze, and he squeezed back.
“We’re free,” Baylan breathed the last of his laugh.
“Free,” Lillian echoed. She saw a flash of that starry infinity making up the ceiling of Prodal’s lair. A wise decision, she remembered him saying. She shook her head and the thoughts away. They heeled their mounts into motion and rode into the night, away from the dwindling conflagration. “Let’s go home.”
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Acknowledgments
First of all, I would like to thank you for reading this book and helping me realize my dream of becoming an author. Without you I wouldn’t be doing what I love. Thank you! I appreciate you more than you know.
I would like to also thank my proofreader, Martin O’Hearn, incredible editor Lynette Patterson, as well as my map creator, Promit. Thank you for all of your help.
The stunning cover design was illustrated by Sebastian Horoszko. https://www.artstation.com/artist/sebastianhoroszko
About the Author
Everet Martins writes stories of the fantastic. His first foray into the published realm is Stormcaller. It has the type of visceral action and fun he had always dreamed fantasy could be.
Forsaken Hunters_Book Zero of The Age of Dawn_A Prequel Page 19