by H. D. Gordon
Three more, having taken to their wings, shooting toward me with blades outstretched like people-sized arrows. I spun and swung and never once closed my eyes, watching my blade land home and perfect with every stroke. Now the smell of their lives spilling out grew stronger, and the hunger in my soul grew greater with it.
Some of them cried out, their voices deep and yanked and filled with pain as I cut them down one by one, much like an explorer chopping through annoying brush with a machete. Slice. Slice. Slice. and the sound of silver parting the air right along with muscle and bone and body. The whole world had slowed to a crawl. Every move that they made revealing their next, and I slid and spun and sailed around them, through them, under them.
A few of them managed to land superficial cuts on the skin of my arms and legs, one near my ribcage and another on my lower back, but there was too much blood now to even know which of it was mine, and too little left of me that even cared either way. If the wounds hurt, I couldn’t feel it. There was no room for me to feel it. Bloodlust had taken complete control. Red. The whole world had gone Red.
It seemed to last a lifetime, and yet it could not last long enough. I felt very much like a junkie indulging in my wildest fantasies, enjoying an endless amount of my preferred drug, drunk with it and in a wonderful stupor. I drank in the death the way that I imagined a reaper would, making sure to savor every slurp, every final beat and last breath. There was nothing in this world—not even Kayden, though I would never admit it to him—that could make me feel the way that death did. Death was my niche. Death was what I dealt in.
And I was good at it.
The dials attached to my senses were cranked to their highest notches. I heard heartbeats and whispered things and the swishes of blades slicing through the air. I smelled the tangy, unpleasant aroma of the blood, underscored by perspiration and fear and that horrible sweetness that carried on the pink fog, which seem to skip away from me as if the very air in this land was not fond of me. The taste of blood was also in my mouth, as some of it had gotten in with seemingly every scarlet shower that my blade drew from the air. Only when there was one left, did I pause for a moment.
My eyes settled on him, standing ten feet away from me and as covered in gore as I myself must have been, still brandishing his sword and prepared to fight like a brave soldier. Like a very brave, stupid soldier. I could see that in his eyes, silver like Arrol’s, that he was seeing Death in mine. I felt a smile touch my lips, crooked and toothy, like that of a drunken jester, I gripped the handle of my sword tighter, feeling thick wetness bubbling up between the cracks in my fingers, red and slick and nearly gone cold.
Just one more. I was oddly disappointed. I would need to savor it.
“No,” a voice whispered in my head. It was not the voice of my Monster, and it wasn’t mine either, but somehow, it was both. “A quick death. The warrior deserves a quick death.”
That sounded like no fun, no fun at all, and I almost ignored the silly suggestion altogether. But as I moved in on the last of the Fae Queen’s fighters, staring into his determined and loyal, but defeated eyes, I changed my mind and made the move before it decided to change itself again.
Sending my blade through his heart, a roar ripped up my throat that could have cowed a lion, so filled it was with hunger and anger and pleasure and agony. And I gave him his quick death.
As I stood over him, over all thirty of them, panting and painted in red, a sense of peacefulness filled me, and though the beauty I had seen it the act a moment ago was already gone, the sense of euphoria fading like an old memory, I did feel better than I could remember feeling in a very long time. I didn’t even try to send myself on a guilt trip over it; ask myself questions about whether I could have acted otherwise or made a different decision. I just accepted it for what it was, an exhibition of death.
When the Fae Queen’s laughter cut through the silence, a flash of anger struck through my peaceful haze and the bloodlust flooded back into me as though it had never left. If a hard hand had not fallen on my shoulder then, I may have charged her where she still sat perched on her branch. If the hand had not been Kayden’s, I would have torn it right off of its wrist.
Kayden spoke low in my ear, his voice tight. “That’s enough, Warrior. No more.”
With these words, my right mind settled back over me slowly, reluctantly. No one but Kayden and Nelly could give me such a command and expect me to obey, so it was a good thing that I had one of them with me, even if I didn’t get to have them both.
Now my mind felt tired, exhausted even, though my body was still ramped up on adrenaline. Slowly, I began to really take in the scene that lay before me, and then I just felt sick. I averted my eyes after only one glance at the bodies and the blood and the death. It was all I could do to look up at the Fae Queen and stand straight. I felt very much like clutching my knees and retching up the meager contents of my stomach.
I clenched my teeth together and swallowed back the bile that was rising in my throat. “Satisfied?” I asked.
The Fae Queen fluttered down from her branch and walked slowly among the bodies of her fallen soldiers, not even sparing them a single glance. Her wide-spaced eyes were only for me. “Oh, very!” she said. “Oh, am I! Very satisfied! Very pleased! What an enormous display of worth, Sun Warrior! That was simply lovely!”
This bitch has lost her damn mind, Warrior.
“Yeah, well, look who’s talking.”
My Gladius was still clutched in my red right hand, but I loosened my hold on it a little and the blade slid back into its hiding place. “Are we free to go now?” I said, doing my best to keep the anger at her reaction to such terrible violence—even though I was well aware that it was an incredibly hypocritical feeling—at bay. At the moment, Kayden’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing that was keeping me in place.
“Of course!” said the Fae Queen. “You and your army have until sundown, as was promised, to cross my land and travel into your Silver City. Mind you, it would be best to make haste in your travels. All bets are off after the moon and stars rise over the lands.”
With that, Tristell the Fae Queen took to her wings and disappeared into the canopies of the trees, and once again, it was just me and my small army. And Arrol. Which reminded me…
I strode over to Arrol and punched him hard in the face before he had time to protest or even widen his eyes. My fist connected with his jaw hard, making a cracking sound that unhinged it and sent his head whipping back on his neck like a plucked car antennae. My nails bit into my fists and a little spittle flew from my lips when I said, “Goddamn it, Arrol. A little warning would have been nice.”
The Fae rubbed his jaw, and I saw that my fist had left a smear of red there, and it was not his blood that made it. “I am sorry, Warrior,” he said. “I would have told you had I been able to, but I was forbidden to do so. The Queen loves surprises and dramatic displays, as I’m sure you noticed, and she expressly told me that I was not to tell you of the test.” His long fingers rubbed at the spot where I had hit him. “I guess I deserved that.”
I turned and stomped off in the direction he had been taking us before the psychotic Queen had interrupted with her twisted test. “Whatever,” I said. “It’s done now, so let’s get moving. I want to get the hell out of this forest.”
And after that, heads were really going to roll.
Nelly
I raced forward with a speed that I was sure to feel the effects of as soon as I stopped. But there was no time to stop now, no time to take a rest and think things through. Slow and steady was not going to win this race. My sister not only had a head start, but she had a shortcut. The only advantage I had was that I was traveling alone, but even that would not be the case for long.
As soon as night fell, the Lamia would join me.
In my travels, I had been acting on pure instinct. I had stolen a car, which wasn’t at all difficult for obvious reasons. I’d had only to reach into the human owner’s head and
have him pull over and give me his keys as though I was a police officer and he had been caught drunk driving. I had chosen a fast car, of course, and my crossing its path had only been a stroke of luck. After exiting the Outlands, it had been the second car that I had come across; a souped-up GTO. I had been flying down the highway now for over three hours, heading toward a destination on a map that still made no sense to me. At this rate, I would reach the territory known as the Silver City just after nightfall.
And, hopefully, not long after my arrival, the Lamia I had made a pit stop to obtain would join me. It had not been easy, seeking out Carianna’s soul signature and actively moving toward it, communicating with her over the distance, hearing the glee in her mind’s voice as she responded to my summons. And everything that had followed after that had not been easy, either.
I had done some things that I could not allow myself to stop and think about. Alexa was the only thing that there was enough room in my mind for, and it would stay that way until I made sure that she was safe. The rest of the world be damned. Alexa was all that mattered.
The beginnings of a loose plan had formed in my head, and I held on to the threads of it for dear life. There was no point in second-guessing it now. The wheels had already been set in motion.
I had reached out with my mind and seized control of human truck driver’s soul that had passed me on the freeway. I’d had to swing the GTO onto the shoulder of the road and park the car so that I could concentrate. He had been the perfect choice, even though I never saw his face save for the passing glance that I got as he barreled down the freeway in his eighteen-wheeler in the opposite direction as me. His trailer had just been relieved of its cargo, and that meant there was plenty of room to fill it up with my own. The Lamias could not travel in the daylight, but they could travel in the back of a semi-truck without windows. The command I gave the trucker was simple; go pick up Carianna and the pack—or as many of them as could fit in the back of the truck—and drive them to the same place I was headed. That was about all that I had figured out so far. And, no, I wasn’t going to think about what would happen to the truck driver after he had fulfilled his purpose; after night had fallen and a whole pack of Accursed spilled out of his trailer.
But, I had thought about the fact that this could be a futile attempt. Even if the trucker could get some of the Lamia to the Silver City before the battle, there was no way to know if the Silver City was surrounded by running water or not. If it was, they wouldn’t even be able to get in. And if that were the case, I would have to go in alone and try and save my sister. It seemed like an incredibly huge task.
Every minute that the clock on the dashboard clicked off seemed to echo in my head, and inevitably, the sun continued making its way across the sky to where it would eventually drop beneath the earth and drag night over the land. As much as I wished I could hit a pause button, I almost wished that the time would come, because at least then this day would finally end. I felt like I hadn’t slept or eaten in days, and really, considering the difference in time in the White World and time here, I supposed I had.
I could feel in my soul that this was it. Things were finally coming to a head. Tonight the final test would have to be taken, and I was going to use every ounce of my power to make sure that both my sister and I passed. With flying colors.
But, I knew that the dominant flying color would be red, for sure.
Stomping Out Fire
They were not far off now, and with every passing moment King William’s anticipation was growing greater and greater. Soon he would get to face the traitors head-on, and show them why he was King. He would finally be able to avenge his son, to assert his absolute power and stomp out the fire that had been set alight by two very foolish little girls.
There had been no word from Thomas’s son, and that did not disappoint him, as he had expected just that. He had been lucky to have received the tip-off from another source, and when they arrived at the Silver City, he would be ready for their attack. He would also be sure to string Lord Thomas Caslon up in front of the Council Building, so that there would be no question about whether he made good on his promises. The boy would be with the Sun Warrior, and once he saw his father being led to his execution, he would give away the position of their army. And then he and his eight thousand Warriors would slaughter them like the worthless pigs that they were.
Everything was just as it should be, had worked out better than he could have even hoped. The Sorceress would no doubt strike with the Sun Warrior, and the seeds of fear that he had planted in the minds of his people would be nourished and grow when they saw that the two of them were in league. The letter had said that Nellianna was out of reach, and would not be joining her sister in her pitiful attack. That was good. Very good, because when the Accursed girl saw her sister again, she would be dead.
And then he would use Nellianna’s grief to take her off guard and kill her, too.
Problem solved. Fire successfully extinguished.
Alexa
In all my life, I had never seen such a place, and yet, I felt as though I had been here before, as if I’d dreamt of it as a child on a night long ago and had long since forgotten it. The towers scraped the sky, which was deepening and darkening with the fading twilight. Fearsome things, they were, like enormous stalagmites that had been growing and growing since the beginning of time, and had reached a point where the Gods could use them as footstools.
The Silver City. It was not difficult to see how it had gotten its name. Every inch of the place was crusted with ice or covered with snow, from the sharp tips of the icicle-like towers all the way down to the silver streets that were the only pathways where the powder had been cleared. The houses and buildings and shops sprawled over what had to be miles and miles of land, but from where I stood it seemed to me as though the structures were huddled together, pressing in close to the towers at the city’s center, as if to keep warm.
The air was sharp and fresh and crisp, and I was more than grateful to Sasha now for giving me the black cloak I wore. It was made of a thick material that held the cold at bay as good as any clothing could do, and a Wolf-woman who was part of my party, but that I didn’t know, had offered me some gloves when we had reached the edge of the Fae Forest. Now, I pulled the hood of the cloak over my head, but there was nothing I could do about the stiff wind that battered the skin of my face, ripped the moisture out of my eyes. Stepping out of the Forest and into the Silver City had been like stepping out of a sauna and into a freezer. Unpleasant, to say the least.
We had just been walking along, and Arrol had put an arm out to stop me. “A few more steps, and you’ll be in your King’s territory,” he’d told me.
“He’s not my King.”
“No matter. What I’m saying is that once you cross over, there will be no more access to this land. Whatever waits for you there, you’ll have no way of escaping it.”
I looked ahead of me, seeing only more of the same multi-colored trees and pink fog and blue earth that I had been trudging over for the past five and a half hours. “I guess it’s a good thing that I have no intention of escaping it then,” I’d said.
The Fae man had regarded me with sorrow-filled and weary silver eyes. “No,” he’d said, “I suppose you don’t.” And then he had pulled me into a hug that had tested the strength of Kayden’s control. In spite of everything, I’d hugged him back. He may not have been completely forthright in his dealings with me, but he had delivered to me what he had promised. On top of that, I guess I felt right then that I needed a hug, as out of character as that was for me.
Arrol released me, stepped back and nodded once. “Farewell then, Sun Warrior,” he’d said. “And good luck.” Then his black wings freed themselves from his back and he took to the air and flew out of sight.
Kayden had taken my hand then, the army having paused behind us, waiting again for me to take the first leap. I could feel all of their eyes on me, the way that all of their eyes were on me now, as
I stood by myself atop a small hill that had to be some five miles out of the Silver City itself. The land immediately before me was nothing but white and more white, and the wind made my cloak ripple over my body and the cold made my breath hang in the air.
The people who had followed me here were behind me, hidden under the swell of the small hill and behind a line of pine and fir trees that ringed this land, whose branches and needles were also crusted over with a layer of ice. There was nowhere to take them now but forward, nowhere to go but into the cold, or the heat, depending on how you looked at it.
Even with all twenty-five-hundred of them at my back, including Kayden and Tommy and the rest of my friends and loved ones, I had never before felt so alone, so completely and utterly alone.
Look at this land before you, Warrior, with all of its silver and white. When the Red comes, it will be a beautiful sight to behold.
“No, it won’t. It won’t be beautiful. It will be the exact opposite of beautiful.”
Perhaps we are both right.
I turned on my heel, my cloak flying up in the wind, and headed back down the hill to where my people were waiting for me. I wished that I could trade my talents for my sister’s right then, that I could just throw my mind out, or whatever it was that she did, and see just who and what was waiting for us across this white landscape. But Nelly was far away from here and safe, and that was enough to be grateful to the universe beyond words.
I found Malcolm, the only Searcher that had accompanied us on this trip, standing over by Kayden. He looked out of place with the Brocken and Wolves, with his thin frame and thick-rimmed glasses, and I hadn’t asked him if he intended to join us in the actual battle. He would either follow us in, or he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter.
“What time did that flier say that the people here were supposed to arrive at the Council Building to pledge allegiance?” I asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the wind.