by David Burke
War God for Hire- Mercenary
by
David Burke
License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licenses for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
War God for Hire- Mercenary
Copyright © 2021
David Burke
Cover art copyright
© David Burke
Cover art created by Yanaidraws
TABLE OF Contents
Prologue - Krig / Skylar / Void Lord
Chapter 1 - Another Filler Quest?
Chapter 2 - Bargain of the Sea
Chapter 3 - Cultivating Under Pressure
Interlude 1 - When He’s Away
Chapter 4 - Building Steam
Chapter 5 - A Turn of Events
Chapter 6 - Memories of Old
Chapter 7 - Decisions to Make
Chapter 8 - Hobnobbing
Chapter 9 - New Recruits
Chapter 10 - Running Wild
Chapter 11 - This Changes Everything
Chapter 12 - New Flesh
Chapter 13 - Truth within Lies
Chapter 14 - Old Foes
Chapter 15 - Older Foes
Interlude 2 - The Price of Betrayal
Chapter 16 - The Requisite Beach Episode
Chapter 17 - Clam Blocked
Chapter 18 - Negotiations
Interlude 3 - A Sight to Behold
Chapter 19 - Next Steps
Chapter 20 – Shepherd of Souls
Chapter 21 - Assembly
Chapter 22 – Uplifted
Chapter 23 - Consummation
Chapter 24 - Training Time
Chapter 25 - Confrontations
Chapter 26 - New Birth
Chapter 27 - Identity
Chapter 28 - War Council
Chapter 29 – Fury of a War God
Chapter 30 – Final Preparations
Chapter 31–Death and Lies
Chapter 32–A Date with Death
Epilogue - Many Threads
Prologue - Krig / Skylar / Void Lord
Rejected. Defeated. Supplanted. These were not words Krig was used to. Since long before he had been called a god, he had been used to winning. War wasn’t the actual drive of his life—those who served him best had understood this—it was winning. Triumph was what mattered, the drive for victory.
That was the essence of war after all. In war, there was no second place.
In his arrogance, he had forgotten his roots. He’d given his power to another, thinking that no one else could handle it. He had assumed the mortal would test the waters, and Krig could thus find out if it was safe for him to return.
Instead, what happened was the mortal strove for victory with the self-same drive that Krig possessed.
Now, he was cut off from his power. He was alone in a world lacking the concentration of essence that he needed. But he wasn’t undone. He was the war god and he would fight to take his place back from his mortal heir. The man was, after all only a placeholder.
Krig had done it once before, rising from nothing. He would do it again.
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Skylar collapsed upon the beach. The sea was not her natural habitat, but in her weakened state, just being near so much life-giving water was refreshing. After escaping the void and returning to her home universe, the great dragon was spent.
Her vast stores of essence were drained. Elder dragons could store raw essence similar to how the gods could set aside essence in their mantles. Her essence stores were what had kept her alive these past few years.
Now, she was like a man parched from a trek across the desert. Coming back here was not like being offered a drink. Rather, it was like being thrown into a fresh and pure lake. Verden had so much essence. It was positively brimming with the energy of life. Her cells soaked it all in.
It would be a long time till she moved again, if she had her way.
What had happened at Calrissa two days ago was horrible. Fortunately, none of the void wraiths had made it through. At least Skylar didn’t think they had.
Truthfully, she didn’t even understand what they were. They weren’t alive, and they weren’t undead. They were either some kind of anti-life, or a form of corrupted life.
Krig would know. Skylar’s faith in her master was boundless. But she hadn’t been able to find him. He hadn’t placed a divine splinter in her, like he’d done with his lesser mortal servants. They had just shared a connection. She admired his ferocity, even though she found him to be cold and distant.
The way he shut himself off from her was making it more difficult to find him, though she could sense his presence on Verden. His power was here, but it was diffuse, almost like it was still being gathered together. She would need to sort out what that meant, but for now, she would rest.
She couldn’t do anything at the moment. Now, she drifted in and out of consciousness. She had flown north till she crashed onto this beach, a couple hundred miles past Thena. There, his presence had been strongest, but she could tell he was no longer in the city or even its territory.
A stray thought rose from the depths and drifted across her hazy awareness. If Krig was too difficult to pinpoint, she knew someone else that would be easier to find. A fire celestial on Verden would be rare. In fact, there most likely would only be one.
Skylar had never gotten along with Qua’ardet Flammaurorae. Perhaps it was because the two of them were constantly competing for Krig’s attention. Still, if she could find the fire celestial, Krig was certain to be nearby.
___________________________________
Finally, at long last, he had found them. Those bright little fireflies he’d sought for so long to trap. Though many had fallen long ago, those that remained had absorbed what the fallen had bequeathed them.
Then, they had escaped him.
The thing he lusted for more than anything else had been taken away. But now, it was within his grasp once again. One of his wraiths had followed a creature through the void. The hunt had been an amusing diversion from eternal desolation. Emptiness was his being and meaninglessness was his life.
His wraith had found a way into their refuge. It led to a pocket in his emptiness, a hidden universe. Yes, that was what the fragile creatures called it. This one was different. It was suffused with life, even more so than the place where he had been born, so very long ago. The first place that he had consumed.
The frantic beings that had escaped him for too long had always rushed about in such a hurry. They were driven by what they called essence. He knew the truth of it, though. It was food.
Then again, everything was food for him. Always, he sought to sate his hunger, but never could. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t devour this universe, though. It too would be gobbled up, just as everything else had been before.
He would consume all, till someday there would be nothing left but him… emptiness without end, the Lord of the Void.
Chapter 1 - Another Filler Quest?
Kyle loved this. It wasn’t really moving him forward, but there ha
d to be time to relax. If being the War God was only about endless work, then what was the point? He had goals, but he had wasted most of his life on Earth chasing one goal after another.
He wasn’t going to lose sight of his goals here, but he was going to stop and smell the roses along the way. He glanced back at the rest of the party behind him. The first face he saw was Skrug’s. Kyle could only chuckle. That one was certainly no rose. Nor for that matter, was Gilthan who stood next to him.
No, the roses he wanted to take the time to enjoy were off to the side of the large room they had entered. He smiled when he caught sight of Hilde, Nyda, Kierra, and Lash. Each was a beauty in her own right, though in quite different ways. Who would have thought that having such a variety of women at his side would be so fulfilling?
They all stood just inside the entrance to an underwater dungeon. Supposedly there was a great treasure to be found here. Kyle doubted it would be anything worthwhile to him, but it seemed a number of ships had been destroyed by monsters reportedly flooding out of these chambers. His party had traveled through the night last night to reach this dungeon.
The reason the people of Maresco wanted it taken care of, was because it served as the likely base for some pirates who had been interfering with local shipping for the past week. It had become so dangerous, that no ships had been able to land at the port.
It helped that his life was now a grand adventure, made even better by the company he enjoyed.
Kyle would not let time slip away from him in this second chance at life. He was determined to succeed, to become the War God in more than name. The people of Verden deserved better than the petulant children who acted as their gods now. So, Kyle planned to become a god above all others.
Kyle wasn’t out to save the world, but he wasn’t going to let anyone take this second chance at life away from him. He looked back over his shoulder one more time at the beauties awaiting his command. When he looked their way, he heard them giggle like they had been talking about him.
Nyda was actually blushing. It was so cute, with her magenta hair. This was her first time actively participating in an adventure, and with her bloodline now active, she would be a welcome addition. It was always nice to have a healer on the team.
“Is everyone ready?” Kyle asked.
“Nyda’s a bit nervous about how deep we will have to go into the… umm, dungeon,” Kierra said. Her long canines flashed as she suddenly grinned.
“It’s just that its size is rather intimidating. I mean, look at how big this place is,” Hilde chimed in with wide, innocent eyes.
Lash put an arm around the elf and said, “Leave her alone, you two. Not all of us are skanks. Some of us are willing to take things slow.”
Kyle just shook his head.
Apparently, word of Nyda’s difficulties had spread. He wasn’t exactly surprised, since even women on Earth had seemed to share more intimate details than men ever did. In some ways, it was refreshing. Despite being an immortal celestial, a fiend spawned lycan, an elven sorceress with a rare gift for healing, and a hundred-year-old battle maiden, they were still all just women.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. What about you two?” Kyle asked Skrug and Gilthan.
“Wouldn’t want to get in the way of anything,” the elven sorcerer smirked.
“Skrug go when boss man says,” the half-troll responded.
Actually, when Kyle thought about it. He remembered the big guy wasn’t a half-troll anymore. He was now an Earth Infused Dire Troll. This would be their first chance to test the evolution that Skrug had gone through. They’d measured his strength and other capacities after Kyle had fused the monster core into him, but training and battle were not the same thing.
Now was when the rubber would meet the road, so to speak.
“Okay, then you all know your jobs. Skrug, you’re up front. Nyda’s with me. Kierra will scout ahead. Lash and Gilthan are behind us, with Hilde acting as the rear guard.”
They all nodded, wearing their game faces. The time for joking was done. His girls might like to play hard, but they also knew when it was time to get down to work.
Down the tunnel they went. Kyle was spinning his essence wheel faster now. In the dungeon, he should be somewhat shielded from the other gods being able to find him. But more than that, he wanted the increased awareness that came when he increased the cycling of his essence. As if called by that thought, his senses expanded, and he could detect everything within a couple miles of his location.
Though it took a bit more concentration and effort to be aware of so much all at once, it wasn’t like he paid attention to it all at the same time. It simply meant that there was a portion of his mind fully dedicated to scanning their surroundings.
The strength and vitality of a god was amazing. The ability to manipulate energy in massive quantities was cool. But the greatest aspect, he had found, was his ability to expand his mind.
He understood everything around him with much more precision than ever. It was almost as though he had been blind before. Even better, he could partition his mind into parallel channels of thought. This allowed him to multitask, in the truest sense, being able to consider more than one thing at a time.
Even now, a part of his mind was pondering how he was going to juggle a bevy of women. Another part was focused and ready for combat and a third part was scanning his surroundings. This third partition was running into some problems, though.
He could sense that there was a tunnel on the other side of this entrance room. He could sense the sea above him and beyond that behind them, the coastline was only a short swim away. The problem came as he tried to scan further into the dungeon.
“Something is blocking me from seeing what is going on inside the dungeon. It is like there is a cloud that obscures my sensing. I can tell that there are tunnels and rooms further in, but the details are all shrouded in mist,” Kyle said.
Hilde closed her eyes and Kyle watched her brow furrow. It was surprisingly cute, although since she was practically the epitome of physical perfection, ‘cute’ wasn’t much of a stretch.
She opened her eyes, “I can’t sense anything at all beyond this doorway.”
“That is to be expected. If even Kyle can’t sense much beyond this room, how would any of us?” Lash asked.
Kierra coughed then mumbled, “Brown noser.”
“Nothing for it but to move forward,” Kyle grunted. “I don’t sense any traps on the door. Skrug, break it down.” Kyle watched intently as Skrug swung a massive fist into the stone door.
The man’s new rock-like skin pulsed black with veins of Death Essence. The stone cracked and the door began to break down under the onslaught. Kyle enjoyed watching the process.
It was more than just brute force, though. The door was giving way on both a physical, but also an essence level. Molecular bonds simply dissolved as the spiritual ideal of decay seeped into them.
The third time that Skrug’s ham-sized fist slammed into the door, it split down the middle, and the fourth blow shattered it inward. As soon as the door was down, Kierra darted past Skrug. She moved so fast; her golden fur was a blur. She moved with amazing grace for someone who was nearly eight feet tall now.
As she passed into the tunnel, it was as though a torch had been lit and he could sense clearly for twenty feet or so around her. It reminded him of the way the mini map would light up as he explored a new floor in one of his video games. His connection to Kierra allowed him to pierce whatever was blocking his senses, even if it was only for a short distance around her. A moment later, he felt a pulse of surprise through the bond he shared with the Lycan.
“She’s under attack!” Kyle shouted.
Skrug pushed through the rubble in the doorway with Kyle right behind him. As they entered the hallway, they found Kierra fifty feet down the corridor dancing with a trio of sea serpents. Each of the snakes was as long as Skrug was tall and as thick around as Kyle’s bicep
s.
The lycan’s golden fur was stained with blood from a single bite mark on her forearm, and that arm hung limply at her side.
Closer examination showed Kyle that the serpents possessed a tough hide, but Kierra’s razor-sharp claws had no trouble slicing through it. The problem was that she was starting to slow down. Her movements lagged more and more by the moment. Whatever venom she had been injected with must be potent if it was outpacing her regenerative abilities.
“Skrug, be careful of their bite. Try to smash them from a distance,” Kyle ordered as he stepped up to the side of the troll. His soul weapon shimmered in his hands as it became a long hafted naginata.
He swung the polearm in a wide arc and caught the first of the serpents by surprise. Well, it may have been surprised for the briefest of instants before he removed its head with a single swipe. Obviously, the danger these serpents presented was due to their venom, not their physical prowess. The death of the first put the other two on notice, and they both dodged a wide swing by Skrug.
