Damara had to dodge again as he continued to follow through with his attack but this time she swung a leg to knock him aside and onto the floor. As he pulled himself up Damara stomped down hard on the hand grasping the blade, making him shriek in agony as she then kicked his head, hoping to knock him out as easily as Anouk might. However, Leridan’s free hand snatched out to grab her ankle and yank her off his blade wielding arm. Damara gave a shriek and kicked out as she fell onto her backside, smacking his head and shoulder even as he was able to swing the blade clumsily and slice her foot. The kicks to the face were enough to get him to swat her legs away and let go of her and suddenly Damara was not sure of what she was doing here. She was now starting to think about whether she should now turn and run, but she’d done too much to anger him and was not going to escape so easily.
As she got herself up Leridan managed to pull himself onto his feet and straightaway Damara charged him, startling him as he tried to pull his knife-wielding hand forward to attack. Damara spotted the curious way the hand refused to respond to its master in confusion but thankfully his slow response gave her a perfect opening. Instead of simply bowling him into the ground and risking herself getting stabbed in the back or body, Damara leapt upward and swung her legs out. The first foot collided with his chest, he’d pulled up the other hand to grab it but the second caught that hand too. Whilst still in the moment, Damara stomped downwards with her feet, pushing both into Leridan’s chest and bending her knees to take the shock as he let her full weight throw Leridan back. It had all seemed to happen in slow motion, she had felt a curious connection to everything around her as if the meaning of time were lost and she had pondered – was this what a Benaga felt? As his body tilted she then managed a clumsy throw of her body away from him, knocking him down so his hand threw the knife and it clattered off down the stones. When Damara fell she tried to curl her body, landing hard on her back but having enough swing still in her body to roll herself backwards and onto her front. With a painful grunt she pulled herself back up and charged towards the blade as Leridan adjusted himself once more.
He did not go for the blade this time and instead charged toward Damara with a howl of rage at her interference. She clenched her fists, trying not to curl them too tight so she would lessen her own damage and once more she felt the ice shard sitting in her hands. She slammed a fist at the face of her enemy, catching his ear with a clap but his own longer reach meant his fist clocked her right in the cheek. Damara slumped to the side but once more she swung out with her legs, falling backward awkwardly but throwing her leg high enough to kick his chin and make him bite into his lips. She landed with another heavy thump onto the ground, her body jolting with pain enough to make her kick out and knock him onto the ground once more, but this fight was stupid.
Damara knew she was not going to do any better, so swiftly she aimed a finger towards the passage to the Core Headquarters and with a swift blink there was a sudden burst of light from her finger that spun down the passage. She hoped it would be enough to attract attention from the Core but the moment she sent the message her leg was grabbed and she was suddenly dragged back to Leridan’s hip as he lifted his blade to try and hack her head off. Damara tried to wriggle free as she kicked out with her other leg and grabbed at his raised wrist with her hands, trying to squeeze his wrist enough to make him drop the blade she had forgotten again so easily. Leridan was much stronger and his deranged expression of boggle-eyed glee was making her feel weaker, but as his bleeding head came close she jolted forward with a quick click of her neck. Her forehead smacked against his and both reeled back with dizzying pain as Leridan dropped the knife to cradle his skull as Damara swung her foot out to it. She scraped the blade towards her, swung her dress across it to smother it from sight as she kicked out once more to break Leridan’s nose fully and knocking him reeling back in a spray of blood and a howl of anger. Damara yanked herself upward, grabbed the knife and aimed it toward Leridan with a growl of anger.
“Give it up… by the Glittering Stars there is no need for this violence. Please Leridan… come to your senses and relent now before the Core cut you down!” As if on cue there was a shriek from the passage way and a cry that sounded eerily like Martum. The familiar cry eased Damara’s heart as she continued to wield the knife, but there was something about it that stung her fingers. As she looked to the strange item, curved like a desert-dwellers blade with strange demonic markings and symbols upon its length, she could not stop herself from casting the blade as far away as she could before Leridan wobbled upward onto his feet with high pitched wheezes of pain. “You can’t kill me, I know my family wronged you but that was before my time… I have no quarrel with you so why do you attack me? Please… stop this.”
“But I can’t be freed… I’m as ill-begotten as the humans….” Damara’s words seemed to stab through the cloud of madness as Leridan grasped his bleeding face tightly in his long fingers. He grasped at his head, trying to pull the hair and skin from his skull as he howled and rocked in his madness. As he began to wobble and shudder, Damara could clearly see some brand burning its way to the surface of Leridan’s pallid blue-grey skin and she hissed in understanding. Her finger tips were still burning from touching the blade, but she could not help but stare at the wound marking out this poor figure as being corrupted by evil. All the same, Damara listened to his mumbles about the tale of the humans and their rejection because of the death of their father and swiftly she recalled the rumour about Zehna’s real love. Whatever evil had corrupted him now, it was clearly playing on the wishes and weaknesses already existing within the poor bastard child.
“Nabuto did not think of them as evil things Leridan… he only saw in them the son that he lost, your father sees you as the life he could have had or he would never have cared. You… you look to him as beautiful as your mother….” Damara had no idea of what Leridan’s mother had appeared as, but the words were getting through and Leridan dropped his hands from his face. As she tried to soothe him with her words, tired from her bleeding cuts and the lack of sleep and the suddenness of the battle, Damara could not fight anymore. She watched the eyes begin to glitter with tears, to seem happy and delighted to hear such words.
“Do… you really think…” Leridan began, but the moment Damara lowered her head to sigh in relief, his hand slid up the other sleeve of his robes. Damara had shown vulnerability, lowered her head to permit attack and his murderous instincts were on display. He pulled a second demonic dagger from his sleeve and with a hiss and howl of rage he lunged forward, his roar the only thing to make Damara react. She pulled her arms up, ready to try and hold the blade from touching her, but the moment she stretched out her hands a shield of ice formed about her for the blade to crash into and shatter.
“LERIDAN DON’T!” The words escaped Damara’s mouth before she even knew that the shield had formed, the sensation of the hit vibrated through her bones and made her scream in agony. As she dropped to her knees, suspecting she had been slashed in the chest, Leridan fell back clumsily onto the floor. She could not stop herself from suddenly pulling herself up and swinging this shield to the side. The moment it swung back the ice about it changed to form the shape of a glittering sword. She felt the blade in her hand and something commanding in her mind scream at her that she had to strike. With a roar of rage Damara did so, but it stabbed into vapour rather than a body. “No… he’s not dead… Anouk told me the mages do that weird spell…”
Confusion bit her mind, she dropped the ice to let it hiss into a steamy mist as she began to tremble and drop onto her backside. She heard feet rushing towards her and before she could do or say anything to inform them she was alright or what had happened, Martum was at her side. He had pulled a cloth from his hands, a tatty and gnarled white rag and wrapped it about her head before he had swung his arms about her shoulders. He pulled her into his chest and whispered words of reassurance as she shook violently and gave out a few sudden sharp screams of realisation. But more th
an anything else there was a kind of power buzzing in Damara’s body that seeped up to her mind and woke her in time to open her eyes and understand who and what she was.
A sudden sound echoed about the entire underground city with a reverberating thrumming that warned them all about the approaching army and the true battle about to take place. Understanding that Leridan had used his powers to escape her, Damara now had a clear thought as to why he’d attacked her and what she had to do now as she pulled herself from Martum’s embrace and knocked the rag from her head as she turned about to gallop off. She was a Benaga, with her sister out of action someone needed to take their place beside the king and prepare to die willingly if needed for his sake. Damara might not be a proper soldier but she was a loyal citizen with a warrior’s heart and all the protective drive of a mother for her child. She knew that Leridan would be aiming to take out the king… the stone stealing had been a distraction to scatter the guard and remove the one obstacle that would protect the king with their life and kill anyone that tried to stop them… a Benaga.
“The King’s in danger… oh Nabuto forgive me for not covering the shame of my hair but I have to save him!”
Sixteen: The Archdemon
“It is said that a member of the Benaga Household, male or female, is always aware of the greatest threat within battle and aims for it. It is believed that their minds are so in tune with their demonic enemies and with their position as executioners that they cannot join a campaign with any goal other than to take down the worst of the worst. It is assumed also that the high death rate of more recent years has come about because the female members maintain this same mindset and when protecting their husbands, children, siblings or king… they can be twice as vicious as the male and withstand more mortal wounds before they finally drop.”
- “The Kingdom of Virenheim” by Ronvaldo Hilosa
The attack was to be expected, but at the same time it was always terrifying for those guards in the towers of the outer wall connected to the First Dam to see the hordes sweeping out of the swamp land. Their job was to call out and identify the location of each swarm, to guess where the first strike would take place, to count the number, to identify the creatures and then to prepare to fight. Being in the wall around the Above Ground region of Virenheim was generally a death sentence but the warriors were aware of such a thing and always fulfilled their task, it was their greatest honour after-all.
When the first rumble was felt out in the heavy walls to the south-west, the three old elves present there stood up straight and lifted their hands over their faces as they peered outward. From the turret, it was obvious to see where the black spores had smothered the sky and the roofing, making any attempt to stretch the body out of the little box openings a risk, but the veterans were used to it. They pulled up their masks to smother their nose and mouth and then steadily leaned their bodies forward out of the square as far as the rim of the roof kept them covered. Amongst the black rain of the spores and the thick grey clouds that fell after them from other spawning trees, the swamp was barely visible save for the ripples of fish at the surface as the air was choked out of their home. Beyond the swamp was the edge of the tall grass and the forest that marked the boarder, the veterans recalled the last attack and the position of the enemy then and they stretched out a line with their finger towards the mountain passage and paused. There was another rumble and this time a section of the tree line appeared felled.
But then, as one of the veterans looked out towards the line of trees that reached out towards the river crossing, he noticed a massive bulge shifting through the branches followed by another. That region of Virenheim was probably the least defended on regular days and even when they had expected attack, only someone within the kingdom would have known that it was the easiest way to penetrate the first wall and breach the pooling land of the rice fields.
“Send a message across to the army on the Rice Wall – there’s a whole herd of Glarkas being driven in their direction. Tell them to move as many water wielders to that area so they can keep the river working as a barrier between them and the Inner Citadel.” The veteran growled to a younger recruit that sat in the hatch at the centre of the floor, listening in as he clutched the ladder for safety. He nodded his head in understanding and quickly slid down the wooden frame to the next level. He passed the message on to the first soldier waiting with a bow and arrow. The message was scrawled onto a piece of paper, tied to an arrow and then shot out to the guard house within the wall that would then shoot it on to the next until it reached the citadel. But swiftly the young recruit was ushered upward again by one of the other veterans.
“Send a message to the northern wall – an army of Hive Demons and Orc are heading in their direction to cut off any chance of help from our neighbours. There is also a generous portion of demon shuffling through the swamp heading straight for the dam.” The old veteran then settled back to watching and once more the messages were passed on until they finally reached the citadel and were passed through the pipes down to waiting soldiers beneath ground. Here they reached the nobles that were clustering towards the library as an emergency meeting was held. This meeting meant that the Karayan would not be able to keep up his hunt for the treacherous Leridan as he gave up in the Southern Passages to the Dredging tunnels and rushed to the marble form of the library in time to see only a few of the lords, particularly Chroniison who was clad in thick brick-red coloured plates of armour and bearing a massive shield about the size of his whole form.
“Ah, the Master of the Core has appeared – call off whatever search you are involved in, traitor-hunting or not we’ve got a fundamental problem. The Rice Wall looks like it may be breeched, this means we’ll have a flood of trouble going straight through the ground into the prison quarters. Arrange your Core to prepare for battle there alongside the prison officials, but make sure there are still sufficient members of the Core around the king’s citadel. You and the other nobles will be requested to come to the Citadel’s floor and maintain protection of the king.” Chroniison began, taking full control as the other lords trembled and nodded their heads in understanding. The Karayan almost snarled in rage, this was exactly what the traitor would hope for them to do and he nearly shouted at him until he heard a familiar cry from Martum and Damara.
“Goodness what’s all that racket about?” Lord Kelvis snarled before turning around and nearly getting knocked sprawling as the girl careened into them. She barged through them all, knocking them out of the way with a chorus of grunts and swears until they spotted that her hair was on display and gave cries of terror. Straightaway they covered their eyes in respect of her beauty and then they realised she was still running towards the gate and the citadel! They could also hear her calling out about the king and once more they began to panic and squeal in terror as she galloped off, tears streaming from her eyes and wounds visible from whatever had just taken place!
“Hold up there Damara, what’s wrong?” The Karayan called out to the girl as she galloped on, too determined to run than to stop and focus on any of them. Considering she knew he’d visited the prison, the Karayan was sure Damara would have stopped to pester him but as he finally clocked onto the sight of her purple hair, he realised that this was very serious. Vaulting after her, the great beast blocked her path before she could make it through the gate and she ran into his chest with a soft thud. The Karayan’s shroud suddenly lunged about her as she gave a little shriek, touching her wounds with concern as she shuddered in fear before being released with a piece of it wrapped about her head to cover her hair. The Karayan’s eyes were flickering like embers and he could feel the energy crackling from Damara’s form for the desperate urge to run. “Tell me whatever you can and then you can go.”
“The king’s in danger… Leridan attacked me… said someone was helping him! I have to go to Zehna and the king to protect them!” Damara gulped heavily with water dribbling from her wide eyes, her words garbled and confused, but the Karayan patted
her shoulder gently. It was clear to see that even if Damara was saying she was going to protect the king, she had just learnt that her sister was being held unjustly… that she might be able to save her sister. The Karayan knew that she had good reason to go and was probably going to be the only person to enter into the Palace and convince the king of anything. He stepped aside to open the gate as the other nobles bleated in concern, but Damara just shot past him and through the gate the minute he yanked it open. The Karayan knew that his shroud would keep her out of danger and shame, but he was very worried about what was going to happen as the world seemed to be closing around them like the jaws of a beast about a struggling prey animal’s pulsing jugular.
“Martum… go send Floryas to the King to help find Leridan and keep them all safe.” The Karayan barked, suddenly turning around to look at the figures that were catching up. They all froze in surprise for a moment, but when the coin dropped the nobles clustered around the fellow in a quest for knowledge. Martum was able to catch his breath for a mere minute before he rushed off to the same gate as the Karayan marched back amongst the nobles. He would send Droy to the prison section and as he pulled the axe from amongst his shroud the nobles shuddered, pulling away from him to avoid getting damaged. The Karayan knew he needed to be on the surface to fight, but the nobles realised his intention to leave and began to grasp at him, all of them talking at once in a chaotic clamour as they compelled him to stay below. Their logic was simple, the Karayan had to guard the bridge over to the king’s palace or climb to the walls and defend there… either way the bulk of the enemy were for the army to engage alone as everyone else prepared a magic array. The Karayan scowled at them for the choice of words, they were clearly under the assumption that the Karayan was ignorant to their methods and therefore stupid in a fight. He sneered at them through his mask, but Chroniison was quick to think of a way to cull his attitude as he barked his belief to them. “I should be at the dam… something very horrible is going to happen…”
Traitor to the King: A Tale of the Benaga Sisters Page 39