Many had lived there for somewhere in the span of two weeks. And now they were all dead. Their body parts were mingled into one great heap. Blood painted the walls and some even seemed to have found its way on to the ceiling far above. It stood an inch thick on the floor, splashing like water as Torsten stepped forward. In the center of the slaughter stood Torsten’s prey. Skull Face and his gray men, all drenched crimson as though it was the latest in high fashion.
Skull Face held the bloodied body of a young man up by the throat, throttling him though he was likely already dead. One of the gray men carried something to Skull Face from among a pile of personal baggage. All that remained now of the lives of the refugees. A gleaming silver cube. Polished to a fine mirrored surface and no larger than Torsten’s fist. His eyes locked on it and he felt the War God’s control surge through him.
Anhur roared in rage through Torsten’s mouth.
“Mordechai! You will return what you have stolen!” A rare show of emotion from the stoic God of War that shocked Torsten with its volume and echoed throughout the warehouse. Things blurred in Torsten’s vision as everyone in the room moved at once, weapons brandished with ill intent.
Skull Face tossed the man he held aloft to the side and moved with a speed he had not possessed before. He covered half the distance to Torsten before the ragdoll form of the dead man hit the ground. Torsten covered the other half and their blades met inches from one another’s face as the corpse bounced lazily and skidded across the ground on a thick cushion of blood.
The Demon’s Maw rose to point at Torsten’s face. Before the sorcerer could activate it, Torsten swept both of Skull Face’s arms away with his freed hand, bringing the point of his blade around to face backwards as he smashed his elbow directly into the bridge of the bovine nose covering the target’s face. Bone cracked beneath the assault and Skull Face was launched backwards, heels dragging through the pool of blood they stood in and sending small waves of mortal remains in his wake. Bits and pieces of the skull mask trailed through the air, marking Skull Face’s path as they fell.
The Demon’s Maw rose again and roared to life as Torsten leapt out of its path. Bodies burst into ashes and blood sublimed to steam filling the air with an uncomfortable wetness and the smell of a slaughterhouse on fire. Torsten kept his feet as he leapt a pair of corpses holding on to one another. Family, friends, perhaps lovers or man and wife. They had died seeking safety and comfort in each other’s arms. Such humanity barely registered as he passed them, intent on killing the man before him.
Another exchange of blows and Skull Face was just a touch slower than Torsten. A savage blow of the pommel landed on Skull Face’s mask, shattering it completely and revealing some type of metal helmet underneath that Torsten was unfamiliar with. Shaped somewhat like that of a knight t tourney. As the sorcerer reeled from the blow his eyes flared red and for a brief second terror washed over Torsten, halting his attack.
The collar of the War God burned hot against his skin, dispelling the notion of fear and filling Torsten with battle rage. Sword’s edge flashed and blood spilled. Skull Face screamed in pain. Screamed in rage. Both. Though perhaps Skull Face was no longer an appropriate moniker for Torsten’s foe. The façade of the skull was no more. Steel Face? That just didn’t have the same ring to it.
He moved to finish the sorcerer, seeing his opportunity but was thwarted yet again. The grappling forms of Ragnald and a gray man fell in the space between the scout and the sorcerer. Their fight was intense but brief. Steel melted and ran as flesh burned and stank.
The death grapple gave enough pause for Skull Face to virtually leap from one side of the warehouse to the other. He crashed through a stack of wooden crates as a gray man fell upon Torsten. A mass of dull gray steel and whirling blades. Blue streaks of lethal potential seeking to open his flesh and sever his limbs.
Somewhere inside the steel there was a man. The decision to face Torsten was the last he would make. Torsten kicked blood onto the man’s face as he advanced, causing his instinctive defensive reflex to act. His arms rose to protect his eyes and Torsten moved far faster than he would have ever thought possible. The impact of blade on steel and then passing through flesh wrenched Torsten’s shoulders. Two halves of the gray man fell amidst the gore trailing their own addition to the mess, head touching ground before the hips.
Before the sound of the dead man hitting the ground reached Torsten’s ears he was already moving, heading towards the spot where Skull Face had fallen. The sorcerer had already risen and moved to the attack. Angling to flank Pier while he battled another of the gray men. A mistake.
The scout seemed crazed as the battle axe he swung with both hands spun around him. He powered through the defenses of the gray man and crushed him, splitting the head in half vertically and smashing the flat of the weapon into Skull Face’s side with the same swing. The sorcerer stumbled, but seemed to have learned a trick or two from Torsten. His elbow arced high and then downwards into Pier’s chin, crumpling him to the floor.
Skull Face knelt to pick up the injured warrior’s weapon and took a kick to the side of the head that sent him sprawling amidst the blood and gore as Torsten arrived. In Torsten’s field of view Ed repeatedly battered the prone form of a gray man with the crackling warhammer. The blows echoed throughout the warehouse like thunder, painting the bloodied surroundings further crimson.
“Now. Kill him. Take the Nexus from his lifeless corpse and bring it to me.” Anhur spoke in Torsten’s mind, back to his granite boulders grinding against one another monotone. Something in his speech almost suggested sexual excitement. But the voice was distant and distorted like the God of War was speaking through a torrential downpour. “The Nexus, bring it to” the voice began again before it was cut off by the sound of hard winds and rain.
Two steel clad hands still gripping a weapon tightly fell to the ground near Torsten. He quickly head checked to see Eric and Styg cutting another gray man to pieces. The soldier, Eric, held one of their weapons with both hands. Striking exactly as he had been training to do for so long.
As the last gray man died, Skull Face rose to his knees finding himself surrounded by Torsten and his crew. Despite the hopelessness of his situation the warrior laughed, his voice sounding as though the steel helmet wasn’t there at all. No final words, just laughter. Torsten stepped forward and raised his sword to finish the fight.
The blade blurred as it descended to take the sorcerer’s head, passing through empty space as Skull Face vanished without a trace. The bile of rage rose in Torsten’s throat as the wind and rain roared in his mind. Denied again.
Anhur’s voice ripped through the maelstrom and echoed through Torsten’s head, sounding on his lips as well and pouring out into the warehouse turned slaughterhouse.
“Leave this place. Now.” Screamed without emotion. He wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible until he heard it.
Torsten’s thoughts raced. One second the man was there, waiting to be harvested. The next, he was gone. Anger flooded into his mind. His own or the War God’s he couldn’t tell. Vengeance taken from him. Bloodlust and battle rage unfulfilled.
But he could no more ignore the command of the War God than he could stop his heart from beating. The ability to disobey simply wasn’t there. With no explanation of the order, but a sense of growing urgency nearing that of panic, Anhur’s men scrambled to obey.
As one, Torsten and his scouts turned and moved quickly for the nearest exit of the warehouse grabbing what weapons they could from the fallen gray men as they went. Guided by Anhur’s hand. Slightly confused and startled by what he had just seen, Eric followed them.
They didn’t know what was happening, but they could feel something… terrible…was about to happen. The War God’s thoughts or feelings spilling over into their own seizing control and forcing them into action with the compulsive activity of an obsessive. The urgency in their movements bled into Eric’s as well. He couldn’t say why, but even if he had not be
en ordered to do so, he would have followed these men to the best of his ability.
The six men shoved their way through a crowd that had begun to gather around the warehouse. Flames spread throughout the building behind them and smoke flowed through the windows on the upper floors. They forced people out of their way, making threats and finally striking a few and sending them sprawling to get their message across. In moments they sprinted down the street towards the nearest gate with Eric trailing behind them.
During the siege the small gate had been locked and fortified. Without pause Styg and Pier threw a fierce synchronized push kick at the gate that shattered the thick boards and sent them flying outwards. Eric caught up to them as they filed through the broken door and set off on foot away from the Fort and towards the seemingly abandoned siege lines of the Mountain Men.
A cold sweat broke out on Torsten’s brow. Something occurring far too often for his liking as of late. His lungs worked as he ran, breathing in the cool morning air and returning it in great ragged gasps. Beads of perspiration ran down his neck and onto the War God’s collar, evaporating with the heat originating there. Despite the exertion he felt physically fine.
There was just something gnawing at the back of his mind that he couldn’t shake. The sense of imminent danger. It grew and he redoubled his efforts, surging ahead of his crew and the man he had conscripted to his service. A moment later they matched his efforts and caught up to him, covering distances that should have been impossible for a man on foot in the given time.
Eric breathed hard, legs and lungs straining, mail chafing at his neck, shield battering against one shoulder where it was slung over his back, bow banging against the other. Despite his effort he quickly fell behind the five men. Men… he doubted that was what they really were. Fairy tales come to life and slaughtering other fairy tales. His mother had somehow left the parts where the monsters murdered each other out of her cautionary fables to young Eric.
Torsten took the lead, guiding his crew towards a gathering of tents and banners. A few Mountain Men milled about, keeping well away from them. The rest were apparently engaged in the assault on the fort. Behind the tents a group of horses stood grazing, lazily chewing mouthfuls of grass. Several were saddled and ready to go.
He aimed directly for the horses. There Torsten and his crew immediately mounted them, ready to ride, and gathering several more to each of them. Torsten’s eyes blazed red fury as he glared at Eric, straggling behind. His gaze shifted upward and he saw the Lost Star making its way through the sky, still visible in the daylight.
Only this time it was different. Something about the way it moved and the color it shone identified it as something else than the home of the War God. It seemed to slow as it approached a distant point, far above Fort Pleasant. Finally Eric caught up to them and mounted a horse as well.
The six men spurred their mounts to a gallop, driving directly away from the fort. Torsten chanced a look back, unsure why they were fleeing. Then he saw it. A bright piece of something broke away from the Lost Star’s imposter. Brighter than the sun for the briefest moment, it nearly blinded him and then rapidly faded until it was just barely visible. Silvery and metallic, it streaked down towards the earth trailing a pillar of fire behind it.
“Mordechai’s doing. He seeks to strike down my chosen champions. To spite me. Flee as fast as you can. Do not look back lest you be destroyed as well.” Anhur spoke in his mind, and Torsten did as he was bidden. Spurring the horse until it reached the absolute limit of its speed, he stared straight ahead looking for potential obstacles.
The sense of foreboding and dread overcame him entirely. Fear as it were, not unlike what he had felt when he had first met the sorcerer, now nicknamed Skull Face despite the lack of a skull for a face, in battle.
Some intense source of light shone above and behind him, as if another sun had just been born above the fort they were fleeing. His own shadow grew dark in front of him and something burned the entire back of his body like being too near an intense fire.
“Don’t look back.” Styg began to yell to Eric, but his voice was drowned out by a roaring sound like no other the men had ever heard. They had sailed through hurricanes in the south that had been less deafening. It began to cause physical pain in their ears before the ground began trembling beneath them and suddenly they were airborne being driven by a fierce wind that burned their flesh.
Torsten saw the ground rushing up to meet him as he tumbled end over end and then all was black.
A cold hand rested on his brow. Death perhaps? How dramatic, he laughed to himself. He struggled to open his eyes, opening his mouth as well and taking a great breath before gagging on a handful of inhaled soil.
The too familiar sound of hurricane force winds buzzed through his head. Anhur seemed conspicuously absent by the lack of his words or thoughts forced into Torsten’s mind.
“Rest awhile, warrior.” A woman’s voice spoke to him. His eyes wouldn’t quite open to allow him to see where he was and what was happening. “You have been injured, but you will recover soon enough. You should be dead, but his magic has done things to you.” The woman’s voice spoke again with a strange twisting of the vowels. Not from The Kingdom, but she speaks our language.
Finally his eyes responded and he looked up. Blurry. Unfocused. Wait a few seconds. Things shift and he begins to see clearly. The sun behind her head, silhouetting it like the halo of angel. Angel of Mercy or Angel of Death?
She shifted her position to block the sun from his eyes. Something seemed not quite right, but his mind was working too slowly at that moment to properly identify it. She smiled and he couldn’t help but smile back.
A row of perfect white teeth, each the perfect size and perfect shape, showed behind a pair of perfect lips. Was it possible to think a woman was beautiful based solely on her mouth? He laughed to himself again at the possible answers.
Vision clearing further. Almost back to normal. The face. Wow. Perfect features too. Perfect eyes the perfect shape in the perfect place and the perfect shade of blue. Perfect nose and cheeks and perfect skin so pale and soft looking. Glowing from within. Hair so blonde it was almost white pulled back and braided. Braid pulled to one side and forward over one shoulder hanging across one side of her chest. Glowing like the rest of her.
Why glowing? He focused his gaze upon her more intently. The sun seemed to be shining so brightly behind her that its light was passing through her face. Passing through all of her armored form. He started for a moment and a spasm of tension passed through his entire body arms and legs going tight before relaxing again. He felt all of his limbs. He supposed that was a good sign.
The light was passing through her he realized. Like she wasn’t fully there. Ethereal was the word he was looking for, but it eluded him. A spirit then? He didn’t believe in such things, but there she was. Of course he hadn’t believed in magic or gods either and as far as he could tell both had been heavily involved in his life recently.
She smiled at him again and his thoughts froze for a split second. As far as spirits were concerned, she was beautiful. Clouds drifted behind her and partially obscured the Sun. Not clouds he realized. Smoke. Still she shone as though with an inner light.
His eyes drifted down hoping to take in an equally appealing form. The shape was right, but the details were blocked from view. Battered plate mail covered her from neck to toe. She was a warrior then. Or had been. Did spirits count as current warriors or just in their past life? Regardless, the armor had seen its fair share of fighting. She looked nonetheless for the wear though.
“What is your name?” She asked in a strange accent, slowly enunciating each word so that he could understand. In the past, his name was something he hid from strangers, especially foreigners. No telling if someone was looking for him or not and what their intentions might be. Either his mind was still clouded or something about her put him at ease, despite the fact that she appeared to be little more than a ghost.
“Torsten” he answered without hesitation. “Torsten of Hearthhold, from the Heart Cities of The Kingdom.”
“The Kingdom is it? As if there are no others?” She asked with a musical lilt to her voice as she put extra emphasis on ‘the’. “No matter though, Torsten, my name is Modi. And I am here to help you.” Another brilliant smile and he barely cared that a dead woman was talking to him.
“Modi… is a man’s name, is it not?” He asked through a dim buzzing in his thoughts.
“It would appear it is also a woman’s name.” She answered. “Or do I look like a man to you?” Intentionally or not, she cocked her hips to one side. Though she wore armor, her shape was undoubtedly that of a woman.
She knelt and helped him sit up, brushing the dirt and dust as well as a few loose stones from his chest and lap as she did so. He looked into her eyes and could just barely see the background through them. A rising pillar of smoke stretching high into the sky. The top of it was curving off to one side, having been caught by the persistent winds higher off the ground. He looked over her shoulder for a better view.
Where Fort Pleasant had stood earlier, besieged and embroiled in battle with the Mountain Men, there remained only smoking ruins and scorched grasslands surrounding a massive crater. There in the crater the smoke was thickest and blackest. At this distance it appeared that the earth itself was burning.
Without looking back over her shoulder she seemed to already know exactly what he was looking at. “Aye. The doing of our enemies.”
“Our enemies? Then you are in Anhur’s service as well?” He asked while struggling to position himself to rise. Her facial features turned sour for the briefest moment, as if she smelled something unpleasant.
“No.” She said as they gripped one another’s forearms and she pulled him to his feet with surprising strength. He wobbled for a second and threatened to fall before he caught his balance. His legs felt weak and he was dizzy, but he could stand on his own.
Sons of the Gods Page 14