At ease, Hound. The threat to our mistress has passed.
But stay.
Guard our den.
You know what you must do.
Shuddering, Malek stumbled to a stop, sheathing his blade, taking deep breaths, quickly darting for the deepest nooks of flower and vine, the better to stay out of the eyes of guards and lords alike, poorly lit as the garden was, this odd night.
Their enemy had almost struck. Malek could feel it even now. The priceless ring of fire and gold, his beloved shieldsister's hair entwined about his finger had somehow throbbed her terror.
Yet now, peace of a sort. She was, for the moment, okay.
It was enough.
It would have to be enough.
But damned if he was heading back to Krona, for all that he and his companions sought the greatest prize imaginable. For now, he was needed here to guard a girl more precious still, vulnerable even before the trial to come.
This time, he would not let his shieldsister down.
Never again would he allow someone he loved to die, even if he had to embrace the final dance of shadows and steel, so long as those he cherished lived to see another dawn.
Effortlessly he leaped back across the wall, allowing himself a single moment to savor the thrill of leaping so high, arcing over to drop gracefully to his feet, like the most powerful of wolves. He smelled no trace of man with his silent landing, the scent of patrolling dogs bothering him not at all. Those few hounds accompanying Alben's men knew better than to curl their lips at him, after all.
Why do you think there are such things as cats and dogs, but that our mistress made it so? And we, forever their masters. Forever their kings. For had the queen of the Moonlit Garden not wished it, they never would have been.
Malek shivered and shook away those ancient thoughts, knowing they had no place in this day and age.
He sobbed, not for the first time, cursed with knowledge ancient and terrible, doors within his own mind cracking open ever wider, even as his body would shiver with the power of endless fallen souls shrieking into him with every nemesis fought and bested in the depths of Shadow and nightmare.
But Jess was safe. His beloved Jessica. Sister to his sword, queen of his heart. He would dream of her, even lost in Jacob's arms. The girl he would live and die for, through all the endless turnings of the wheel.
Jacob was gone.
Jess trapped in the twisted games of their enemies.
But her Hound stood ready. Ready to come to her aid, ready to butcher anyone who stood in their way.
Voice a low sob, Malek sunk deep within the leafy piles beneath the central apple tree, allowing himself to slip into haunted sleep, somehow knowing that Jess's grove would look after its warden before blackness overcame him once more.
The day dawned bright and beautiful and Jessica's apple grove was silent, save for the rustling of leafless branches, the odd pile of leaves that the mercurial winds had blown together throughout the night not particularly noteworthy save for the brightness of their colors. And if the pile seemed to ebb and flow rhythmically, as if one was lost in slumber deep within the pile, it could have simply been a trick of the wind.
Gentle blue eyes gazing down into his. Cheeks blushing so sweetly as she bucked and cried against him, squeezing him so tightly inside, his agony the fiercest pleasure.
Biting her lip and crying out as the fiery storm of desire exploded into sweetest bliss, before falling gently against his naked chest, chuckling throatily, shuddering with release. Malek softly kissed her, utterly replete, his fingers gently stroking her perfect hair, shining like spun gold.
He smiled, gazing at her so tenderly, drunk on brandy and what he thought might be so much more.
His warm euphoria instantly vanished, even as Jess snuggled against him.
No. Don't think it. She is gone forever. Jess? Your closest friend. Your battlesister.
They were naught but reveling in the moment, the sweet release of victory, having defeated their challengers that day, gaining a nod of respect from Eloquin himself.
The pair of them, shieldsiblings banding against all the sniping bastards who hated his past and her daring bravado, seeking to bring them both down, only inspiring them to band together.
Far closer than he had ever thought they would be.
And the sweetest of friendships was allowed drunken revelry. Such was almost expected. For Eloquin's handpicked Squires of War were, after all, training for death and the killingfields every day.
Their mentor turned a deliberate blind eye to their Revels, and no instructor dared to cross him, after what had happened to the last one to insult the general to his face.
Fine brandy, good humor, song and celebration, and what naturally followed between the closest of friends, seeking sweetest release.
“Malek?”
“Yes, Jessica?” Don't say it. Please don't say it. We are friends only. The best of friends! I would die for you already! But for gods' sake, shieldsister, don't say it.
She squeezed him tightly to her. Whispered in his ear, eyes luminous with her shy smile.
Malek gently kissed her forehead then, closing his eyes and drifting gently to sleep, not saying a word.
Perhaps she had sobbed silently for a time, already sensing the damage done.
And never again did they spend a night in each other's arms.
7
Malek! Awaken!
Malek blinked and shuddered. Momentarily dazed and disoriented, even as the odd voice in his mind set his heart to racing in sudden panic.
Nightmare. It must be. He shook himself free of a massive mound of leaves, wondering where he was, how he had gotten here, how long had he been asleep.
Rage!
And in that instant, everything came crashing down upon him with shuddering force.
He sensed Jessica's terror. He realized the nightmare was all too real.
Jess is in peril! Our enemy has unsheathed his fangs. Thirty men against our queen! Take them down, Rage. Kill them all!
And the boy buried in leaves, wearing eldritch armaments constructed of all the nightmares of Shadow howled like a wolf in truth, hungry for blood and death.
The sacred grove seemed to open before him, as he raced at a madman's pace for the massive stone wall circling the garden entire. A single leap of furious terror and he soared like a falcon crashing down upon his prey.
The ground shook with a weight far greater than as single man, and the air shrieked with the winds of Oblivion. Or such was the truth told in every man's gaze, flashes of shock and unspeakable terror upon every face that Malek spied in his mad dash for the centermost tower of Jessica's academy.
The heart of his queen's dominion, where Lilith's serpents sought to strike his queen down yet again.
As they had countless times before.
Endless turnings of the great wheel.
How do you know the name of your enemy?
Haunted gray eyes from terrible memory peered into Malek's soul.
Another girl he had desperately loved, doomed to die before him, he helpless before the gleeful machinations of a pitiless fate.
Not again.
Never again.
His blade moved without thought, shattering the dark bolts whizzing for his head from the windows above the reinforced door hastily slammed shut by royal armsmen.
Franken's men.
His crimson orbs began their baleful hum, whipping about his head as fast as blood and death.
He locked gazes with the pair of guards staring at him coldly behind fired crossbows.
His face a rictus of inhuman fury.
The men quailed, yet Malek did not stop.
The wolf howled.
An explosion of blood and bone. A shrieking pair of lost souls.
Instantly consumed.
He lashed out with his serpentine blade once more, and the door before him exploded in a cacophony of iron bars and shattered wood, spraying the crossbowmen who had been ly
ing in wait behind those doors with deadly shrapnel, even as bolts flew toward Malek at terrible speed, shattered instantly by his crimson orbs.
Twice Malek's massive Zweihander whipped out in tight, arcing blows.
Twice helmeted heads exploded in sprays of crimson gore and ruptured steel, bodies collapsing to the ground to the accompanied screams of horrified nobles pinned in the great front chamber.
And Malek was already gone.
Racing along elegantly appointed hallways that meant nothing, his guts writhing in speechless dread.
Terrified his Jess was even now in dire peril, naked and afraid, facing dozens of enemy blades.
Terrified that he was too late, even now.
Malek!
“I'm coming!” Malek roared, in his panic shouting words unintelligible to all who heard, tongue twisting in a language lost for millennium.
Jess is dying!
Malek screamed.
“There he is! Kill him!”
A dozen men armed with sabers. Eyes glittering with mad hate. Charging him.
Malek's roar caused the building to shake. Stone to crack.
The corridor became a slaughterhouse of blood and gore.
The soldier's battle cries quickly morphed to screams of horror.
Clawing desperately at walls with twisted limbs as their bodies were shredded alive by a blade forged of darkest nightmare, their shrieks reverberating through the college entire.
“Open the door! Open the door!”
Desperate, sobbing men.
And the door to the great chamber did open.
And Malek charged through, swinging his terrible Zweihander in hideous arcs, the very air recoiling from his shrieking blade.
Spraying the grand courtroom before him in a shower of crimson.
An avatar of death itself.
“Kill him!”
In a juttering flash Malek beheld a scene of such horror his soul shrieked.
Dozens of royal armsmen in pitched battle, his nose instantly making out the wreak of Franken's tainted men, dying even now before his blade, and half a score others, sorely pressed.
Alben's men.
The Lieutenant's exotic southern features locked upon Malek's for but an instant before paling in unmistakable horror. Yet Malek had eyes only for the beautiful figure slumped over on pitiless cold marble tiles.
His queen, besides her enemy even now shrieking and screaming as Lilith viciously tore free the soul her pawn had traded for power so fleeting.
Yet power enough to disembowel his queen, Jess's eyes slowly blinking closed as her dark blood pooled in an ever growing puddle before her.
Beautiful dress stained crimson.
Rage!
Malek howled then.
And the walls cracked, every window shattering, every man stumbling back, countless ears rupturing with blood.
He felt the thrust of one furious soldier seeking to impale him.
And Malek's wrath, twisted up in terror, roared forth at the last.
His Zweihander wielded by hands inhuman in their fury, time itself seeming to slow and bleed before his blade, the air itself igniting. Drops of blood and sweat, frozen in the air.
Malek howled as his blade rang against the armsman's helmet, the metal itself rippling with the bow wave of force before steel, skull, and brains ruptured forth in a terrible explosion of hot shrapnel tearing through the room as the now headless corpse collapsed to the ground.
And Malek did not stop. Could not stop.
His dance of death had just begun.
He blade the brush upon which he would paint the canvas of his fury with the pigment of his hate, lashing out to bitterest effect, shrieking blade tearing through air and ether, exploding through shirts of mail in splashes of steel and silver, cleaving through desperately raised limbs and fine steel sabers as if figures of porcelain and glass.
Crimson glass of blood and bone.
He saw Echobart in curious skittering fashion, gazing at the hellion before him with pale blue eyes strangely gentle.
But such meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Malek stood there, stock still for but a moment.
Countless men killed in the furious engagement, only half a dozen of Alben's men still standing, gazing at Malek in shaking horror, some few even now with blades raised.
“Put down your blades, you damned fools. Sheathe them now!” Alben roared.
But it didn't matter.
In that moment Malek had eyes only for his queen.
Even at that moment, breathing her last.
“NO!”
Malek shrieked, even as he raced to her side. Hands shaking with unspeakable terror, sensing his beloved Jessica's life fading even at that moment.
Furious sapphire eyes that blazed like dying suns locked upon his own. “Rage! Do what you must! These fools are nothing! Save our queen!”
Sobbing without surcease, Malek dipped his head at his beloved friend, even as he gently lowered his hands upon Jessica's abdomen.
To his utter shock, she opened her eyes and smiled.
And somehow Malek could sense what she was seeing.
His heart quailed with unspeakable despair.
“NO! Jess, don't leave me! Not again, not again!”
Malek! Focus!
A voice from the ether. Yet Twilight had disappeared.
This is no different from the realm of dreams! Our universe itself, but a dream!
Summon your power, Malek, and save your queen!
Malek blinked and shuddered, mind roaring with hope and horror in equal measure
He caught Echobart's gaze then, saw the man suddenly pale.
"In the end, dear Dean, what is life, but a dream?" Malek sung the words in a strange tongue, the older man tilting his head in confusion, but it did not matter. Malek knew what he had to do.
With the same furious intensity as he would embrace deep in the heart of Shadow, he summoned his darkest magics to him.
“By the gods, what is he doing?”
“It matters not. As long as those bastards are dead.”
Low murmurs Malek was utterly inured to, as his mind viscerally recalled the terrible flashes of blackest fury, when his blade had exploded against countless foes, locking gazes with their horror, before brains and bodies exploded to shimmering splashes of crimson.
There. At that moment. He felt the visceral shock, a soul disconnected, faint, ethereal, desperately clamoring to be free.
He clenched down upon it with furious intensity, even as the piteous thing screamed and quailed, flooding Malek with thirty years of memories, fierce and bright, sad and sweet. A young boy held by his father, enjoying the sunset. A young man holding his sword for the first time, brave and determined to make his family proud. Flashes of memories increasingly jaded and bitter. So many hurts and disappointments, but always striving to better himself with his blade, with his superiors, traveling a long winding path, somehow Franken's man, consumed by vile vice and darker hungers, trembling now, in fear and terror, in deepest regret, desperately wanting to be free.
Reborn.
A babe safe in his mother's arms, nightmares of past lives soothed away as a baby's cries often are, held safe and snug in arms that loved him.
Malek felt his own heart sob for that fragile soul, prepared to let him free.
No Malek! Hold strong! You know what you must do!
Hardening his heart, for this was no monster of Shadow, but the gentle soul of man, Malek did what he must, though he sobbed with the weight of it, the panicked soul crying out, gazing desperately back at Malek, the eyes of a little boy locking gazes with his father in desperate hope that his dad would save him in the end, for all that his family was but one cluster in a terrible line of sorrow, cold-eyed guards with unthinkable weapons gazing pitilessly down at them all, every family forced to cast their first born son into the hideous cauldron of screams and death demanded by their dark religion.
The boy's panicked hands, so
tiny, nonetheless gripping his father's dark robes and sobbing.
Pleading.
As he was with Malek, even now.
Victim of a world long since fallen to darkest chaos.
Memories of a soul tormented endless eons ago.
No! Malek! Hold fast!
Sobbing, Malek held the boy tightly. The souls of all the boys gazing at him with pleading eyes, to let them be reborn, to love them, to not throw them in.
Holding them tightly to his spirit, ignoring their cries, he threw them into the crucible of agony awaiting them. But he did not force them to go alone. He joined them in their pain, soothing them as best as he could. Screaming, his agony one with theirs, even as their souls raced in ways alien and strange, pulling the last remnants of their flickering life force, their blood, in impossibly thin strands of sinew and life energy, desperately sewing up the intestines, muscles, and skin of a woman Malek loved more than life itself, even as she lay dying in his arms.
Even as a score of innocent souls screamed and cried and begged to be free. Terrified and afraid, he making their pain his own.
And with a final cry Malek stumbled and collapsed. Kissing each of those trembling souls as his face smacked the hard stone ground, whispering his apologies as he allowed them at last to leap free, all of them sobbing with relief as they fled for a garden of such brilliance and wonder that Malek's own heart ached to join them.
To laugh and frolic, a playful puppy in their midst.
To let the horrors of his life go at last.
“No, Hound. It is not time for us to retire quite yet.”
Malek blinked up at a cat of ebony darkness and starlight, gazing down at him as he lay slumped over on the shores of life and death.
"I see my Hound has returned," whispered a voice that felt like Heaven's mercy to the shaking child.
Speechless, the boy gazed up in a face of such impossible beauty and love that he cried out in shame, unworthy to be redeemed by the angel of his heart, sinking into warm gentle clouds of forgiveness he could never deserve, and he knew no more.
8
Screams. She floated on a sea of screams. Of unspeakable pain. It burned through her. It seared her. But it was not her own.
Gods of Shadow and Flame Page 7