by Mark Barber
“Lie down and rest,” a hushed, female voice said softly, the tone unearthly in its kindness and care. “You must recover.”
Orion turned to face the woman and briefly saw a tall figure, taller even than himself, clothed in a white hood and cloak.
“Avert your eyes,” the woman commanded, “for your own good.”
Orion obeyed, swinging his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to the woman. It quickly made sense. His last memories were of impending death, knocked to the ground by countless demons that hacked and clawed at him, breaking his body and overriding his senses with pain as his life ebbed away. Yet now he found himself alive, rescued, in the presence of something holy and divine – a woman of inhuman grace who thought it best for him not to gaze upon her.
“You are an Elohi,” Orion said quietly, “an angel of the Shining Ones.”
“Yes,” the angelic woman replied simply.
“You rescued me,” Orion continued.
“That is correct.”
“Thank you,” Orion said humbly, “I… do not see why I am worthy of such treatment. I have seen your brethren on the battlefield before from afar, but I have never had the honor of talking to an Elohi.”
“It is rare,” the angel agreed, her voice soft and agreeable in every way, “but the Wicked Ones have intruded the sacred earth of the Shining Ones’ chosen people. It was time to act.”
“Then why did you not help us in battle?” Orion said, fighting the temptation to turn to look at the Elohi. “I do not wish to sound confrontational, but why did you not help us if it is the time to act?”
“If only it were so simple,” Orion detected something akin to a slight laugh in the woman’s voice, a laugh that was sympathetic rather than abrasive or patronizing, “but for the same reasons that the Wicked Ones cannot send their demons to the mortal world without limitation, we too are limited in our ability to intervene. Saving you was the best I could do.”
“How were you able to do that?”
“I flew down and picked you up,” the Elohi replied simply. “I healed many of your wounds and I brought you here. No, do not turn around, Orion.”
Orion stopped himself from turning to face the Elohi. He had heard that to make eye contact with one of the angelic host was to risk instantly and obsessively falling in love, to the cost of all else.
“Thank you,” Orion managed again, staring at the simple rug covering the floorboards at his feet.
“I must leave soon,” the angel continued. “You are safe, but even with my powers, your wounds will require more time to heal.”
“But… what now?” Orion asked. “Everybody is dead! Demons invade Basilea! What now?”
“All is far from lost,” the Elohi said with a tone emanating an inspirational determination. “There is… one of our kind. She will know what to do. And you must protect her. That is why I chose to save you.”
“Because I was the best warrior?”
The comment met silence. Orion felt a wave of disappointment hit him, wounding him to the core of his very soul. He felt tears well in his eyes for causing such disappointment and found himself uncontrollably mumbling apologies.
“Jahus worries about you,” the Elohi finally said.
Orion’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Uncle Jahus? He is watching me?”
“It is not like that,” the angel explained, “it is… better than that. To try to explain it to you would not fit in with mortal comprehension. It is not so linear. To understand paradise is to see it, and that time will come for you. But not now.”
“But… Uncle Jahus… Why does he worry?”
“He feels you have strayed from what he taught you. With each passing season you stray further still.”
“How? I let him down on that mountain! I let him die! Since that day, I have never let anybody down on the field of battle, I have never made a mistake that has caused comrades to lose their lives! I have stood my ground and fought hard!”
“You have spent every waking hour perfecting your swordsmanship to the cost of all else. To the cost of friendship, spirituality, worship, devotion to the Shining Ones. You have challenged every warrior you have met to further your own feeling of self-worth. You hide behind a facade of dishonesty by telling yourself that it is for your comrades on the field of battle. But it is not.”
Orion felt the tears flow freely as he heard the disappointment in the Elohi’s softly spoken words.
“Your uncle taught you to be a good man, to choose the hard road if it helps others. Instead, you make your road easier with constant training for war, and then you choose a road filled with violence. Even if you do not need to. When you realized that I was an Elohi, you even considered challenging me to fight. Only for a moment, but I felt it.”
Orion leaned forward and planted his face in his hands, fighting to control his breathing as the tears continued to flow. He felt the depth of the angel’s words penetrate his core, find the root of his intentions and his deepest motivations. He saw himself in a new light, as if darkness had been lifted from all around him. He did not like what he saw.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, “I am so sorry. Tell my uncle that I am sorry I let him down.”
He felt a soft hand rest carefully on his shoulder, the warmth of the angel’s touch immediately filling him with hope.
“Your uncle loves you,” she said kindly, “I have faith that I made a wise choice in you.”
With those words, the presence was gone. Orion remained alone, analyzing his words, deeds, thoughts, and very core deeper than he had ever done before. Minutes became hours as the night drew on, lightning continuing to flash in the window behind him. The loss of the Elohi’s very presence left him feeling hollow and saddened, but the warmth of her touch and the inspiration of her final, simple words left him renewed and reinvigorated. Orion thought hard on how to change for the better.
***
The flow of blood from Constance’s injured abdomen had at least stemmed by the time she found her way back to the ruined farmhouse that had been her prison the night before. In the long shadows of the cool evening, she had found the bodies of the unfortunate souls tortured by the Abyssals, but no evidence of the demons themselves. She spent a pair of hours using a sharp rock to dig a shallow grave before dragging the bodies in and burying them, muttering a few brief prayers for the departed before spending the night huddled in the corner of the ruined farm building. The next morning, she found an orchard and recovered some of her strength with consuming as many apples as she could manage, but of Dionne and his army there was no sign.
As she continued her search, Constance noticed that her ragged clothes were coming apart at the seams and streaked with blood and dirt. Her wounds showed signs of infection and her forehead felt as if it were ablaze. She found a small farmstead at midday, but it was abandoned. She helped herself to food and water and found a kitchen knife that was at least usable as a weapon. Constance continued her search throughout the afternoon, her hopes fading as she realized that without any idea of where the Abyssal horde had gone, she had no plan and no way ahead. Then, at sunset, the northern horizon glowed a gentle amber-red, as if the sun, too, was lost and had chosen to set on the wrong compass heading.
As Constance walked north, her suspicions were confirmed when it became evident that the flickering red was fire; columns of smoke wafted up into the air from atop a blazing forest that lay in a shallow valley between the gentle, rolling hills that lay inshore of the Basilean coastal road. The wind rushed over her shoulders as she approached the blazing forest, sucked into the fiery maelstrom to fuel the rising flames. Trudging wearily through waist-high grass down the gentle slope toward the forest, she saw the figures ahead before she heard them, their screams carried away from her in the winds rushing toward the heart of the fire.
Men ran in panic away from a small logging camp at the edge of the burning forest, frantically trying to claw their way to safety away from
the fires behind them and the flame-skinned demons that chased them remorselessly down. The loggers, perhaps as many as twenty, were hunted down by packs of lower Abyssals, five or six of the demons for each helpless logger, and were then dragged screaming back to the encampment. Powerless to intervene, Constance felt her soul grow heavier as she lumbered hypnotically toward the scene of the carnage, watching helplessly as the men were brutally tortured to death under the cruel supervision of the same temptress that had threatened to kill Constance and her friends. Of Dionne, there was no sign.
Gritting her teeth as pain flared up in her abdomen, Constance bent over double to hide herself in the long grass as she skirted around the scene of the brutal massacre, heading to the west of the forest. Keeping her distance, she spent the better part of an hour threading her way through copses of trees to sneak slowly closer to the Abyssal force, her eyes scanning the groups of demons for her former captain as the natural light faded, leaving only the eerie illumination of the blazing forest to silhouette the monstrous Abyssals.
Then, walking away from the blazing trees alone to the north, she saw the familiar figure of the man she once followed into battle for the Hegemon. Dionne, still encased in his imposing suit of plate armor, walked slowly away from the blaze and the Abyssals scrabbling and squabbling over the corpses of the loggers. Careful to remain hidden from the demons ahead of her, Constance patiently bided her time and crept slowly closer to Dionne as he continued to distance himself from the massacre behind him. Seeing her opportunity, she rushed out to face him once he was clear away from his devilish horde.
“Captain!” she called out.
Dionne stopped and slowly turned his head to face her. His features were darkened to blackness, shadowed by the raging fire behind him, but his eyes glowed burning red within the darkness. Constance limped over toward him.
“Captain!” she said again. “I’ve come back to talk to you! To plead with you to see reason!”
“Constance,” Dionne said quietly, but firmly, “I gave you your chance. I honored my commitment to you as one of my former soldiers. I told you what would happen if you came back.”
“I know that,” Constance said desperately, her arms held passively out to either side as she approached him, “but I owe you more than that. You are my captain, and I won’t abandon you. I’ve come to ask you to walk away from this madness, before it is too late!”
Dionne took a pace to stand in front of her, slipping an armored hand over her shoulder to gently grab the back of her neck. He leaned over to look into her eyes. Constance watched helplessly, aware of the events unfolding but somehow unable to will her limbs into stopping them as Dionne took the kitchen knife tucked into her belt and drove it into her gut, to the hilt. The pain in her body did not compare to the pain of betrayal that wracked her soul as she looked into the cold, remorseless eyes of the man she once devotedly followed to war, but now stood before her as her killer. Her legs collapsing beneath her, Constance slipped back and crumpled to the ground, her heavy eyes closing as she watched the shadowy form of her former captain walk back toward the fire behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
The dark rainclouds had all but disappeared over the western horizon, forced up by the mountains and leaving a clear morning with a crisp, autumn wind blowing in from the coast. Aestelle poured the very last of her water into her parched throat before swearing violently. Her horse’s hooves kicked lazily along the path north as the muddy ground soaked by the previous night’s downpour already rapidly warmed and dried in the morning sun. Her task to send the Dictator-Prefect’s message to the Duma had been simple enough, especially when utilizing the arcane powers of an old friend to convey the message directly to the city of the Golden Horn, saving her days of travel on the road. Now she was left on the road back north, searching for the Basilean force she had left so that she could renegotiate her pay. But first she needed fresh water, and that meant stopping at the next of the many small villages that punctuated the northern trade road.
Within an hour, she found a small collection of farmhouses a few yards off the track, on the horizon ahead of her. Three houses and a few small barns and stables; definitely enough to require its own source of water. Aestelle’s mind drifted to what she might spend her money on once this debacle was over – perhaps some new clothes or armor, maybe even an excursion to the city of the Golden Horn itself, but in all likelihood she figured she would do what she normally did and spend most of it on a few weeks extravagant accommodation and fine wine. The thought of a long bath and a good bottle of white wine drew a long groan from her lips.
A high-pitched scream from the farm buildings ahead immediately brought Aestelle’s attention back to the here and now. She looked up and saw a small girl, perhaps four or five years old, sprint clumsily out from the far side of the buildings and hurtle a few steps across the field beyond, tears streaming from her face. Aestelle’s eyes widened in alarm as a red-skinned Abyssal warrior ran after her, grabbing her by one muscular arm and lifting her off the ground before stomping back over toward the houses, snarling viciously at the petrified girl.
Aestelle quickly dismounted her horse and ran through the long grass of the field to the east of the road, crouching low. In only a few paces, she had reached a vantage point where she could see the courtyard in between the three houses. Six lower Abyssals formed a semi-circle around the same number of farmers; a family consisting of a young man and woman, two small children, and, judging by their attire, two farm workers. The woman was shrieking and crying, held back and overpowered by one of the demons as their kin dragged the little girl back over to the courtyard. The man, presumably the husband and father, lay motionless in the courtyard in front of a large well.
Fighting to control her anger, Aestelle rapidly formulated a plan. She had faced worse odds. It was all about speed and surprise. She took her bow from her back as she stood, notched an arrow into place, and drew the string back whist she took aim. Letting the arrow fly, she allowed herself a grim smile as the projectile met its mark, impacting the side of the head of one of the demons. The creature staggered a few steps, looking around in almost comic confusion before dropping down dead. Angry screeches and growls were exchanged between the five remaining Abyssals as they drew their swords and axes, looking frantically around for the source of the attack.
“I’m up here, you bastards!” Aestelle shouted.
With a roar, the five devils hurtled toward her through the long grass. Aestelle lined up another shot, drew her bow, and planted an arrow straight into the chest of another. Throwing her bow aside, she walked out to meet the remaining four, drawing her greatsword from her back. One of the Abyssals was foolish enough to run out ahead of the others; Aestelle met the creature head on, swinging her greatsword up to rip open the monster’s guts before slicing back down and opening a great, bloody welt on its back as its momentum carried it past her. The demon fell down dead. Aestelle brought her pistol up from her side and shot the next lower Abyssal in the face before throwing the smoking gun aside and returning both hands to the handle of her sword, standing in place to face the final two demons.
The two hulking Abyssals stood their ground, fixing their black eyes on her. The first of the two seemed to arrive at a sudden realization and turned to sprint away from her in terror. Realizing it stood alone, the second Abyssal also turned to run. Aestelle unsheathed one of the pair of throwing knives at the small of her back and flung it after the closer of the two fleeing demons, striking it squarely between its shoulder blades. The Abyssal let out a roar of pain and slowed to an awkward stumble, reaching pathetically behind it with both clawed hands to try to remove the offending blade. Aestelle caught up in a few paces and plunged the tip of her greatsword through the creature’s back. The thin blade emerged from the demon’s chest with a great spurt of blood, eliciting another howling roar before the creature fell silent and slipped off the sword to crumple motionless into the long grass. The final Abyssal ran across the cou
rtyard in terror and disappeared into a wooded area behind the buildings.
Slinging her blood drenched blade up over both of her shoulders, Aestelle walked casually onto the courtyard, careful not to break into a run after the final demon, for fear of ruining appearances in front of the farmers she had just rescued from a terrible fate. The closest of the six was one of the farmhands, a thin boy in his late teens, who stared at Aestelle wide-eyed and jaw open. She momentarily transposed herself into his position to see things from his viewpoint; he had faced a slow and agonizing death at the hands of the stuff of nightmares, but now found himself safe and well after the intervention of a beautiful, powerful woman that was most likely the stuff of his wildest dreams. Aestelle shot him a wink as she walked past him, the smug feeling of leaving men helpless in her wake still being one of the highlights in her life.
The young woman she had rescued knelt by the side of the bleeding man by the well, wailing in despair and holding tightly onto his hand. Aestelle dropped to one knee by the farmer, quickly checking over his wounds. All superficial from the beating he had received. She placed a hand on his chest and focused her powers of divinity to accelerate his healing.
“He’ll be fine,” she said coolly to the woman before nodding toward the tree line where the final Abyssal had run to. “But that bastard won’t be.”
