Her familiar's troubling panic and the source of that terrible voice were near instantly forgotten, Jess embracing the battlefrenzy as it overtook her, causing her heart to race and time to slow seemingly to a crawl, analyzing every flicker of motion in crystalline detail even as she began arching back and step-sliding to the left the instant her foe's blade arced overhead, her own blade of thorns, weeping drops of crimson blood, ruptured the dark curse her enemy had hurled at her with a single slash, the foul magics bursting into flames even as she twisted away from her foe's arcing slash with the deadly grace of one who had danced this duet many, many times before.
The massive demon blinked once in surprise even as he sought to cleave Jess in two with his backstroke, Jess launching herself forward, blade raised in Seconde.
Swept hilt tilted higher than tip, her foe's weapon slid effortlessly off her blade, even as she snapped her weapon around in a glancing cut that scored her enemy's arm with a dozen pricking thorns as she step-slid away, her enemy sneering at the seeming insignificance of the blow. Smallswords, after all, were for thrusting, as everyone knew.
The hideous abomination roared and charged forth, blade raised for a vicious slash, his snarling face a pustulent mass of maggots and rotted flesh, even as a rain of bloody rose petals fell to the ground from Jess's glancing wound. Jess dodged and parried, her foe attacking with all the fury of the Fallen, screeching dark curses even as Jess ducked and spun away, his off hand jutting forth and Jess could sense the gout of fire the awful being sought to project, a fire that would instantly sear flesh from bone.
With an exultant roar, the beast blasted Jess with the power of his spell, hand jutting forward in triumph.
Only to look aghast as naught but thorns burst forth from his palm.
The monster blinked and hissed, stumbling back, shaken to his core.
And with a single beat and sidestep, Jess smacked aside his near-forgotten blade before plunging her sword of thorns deep into his protruding belly, then tearing it free with a savage twist as she darted away.
Her opponent roared and crashed to his knees as blood-red petals poured from his back in a crimson fountain, coughing and gasping as the petals gushed from his every orifice.
Yet his strength was hideous. A far deadlier threat than the foe she had faced only moments before. He fought with a berserker’s frenzy, leaping to cloven hooves even as his human disguise continued to fall away, lashing out with his deadly blade in a fierce barrage of hammering blows and vicious thrusts, doing his utmost to take out his tormentor even as Jess met him stroke for stroke, relishing in their deadly struggle, blades flashing in a terrible duet as their swords kissed and danced away, leaving bloody marks with each passing, her enemy's body scored an ever more brilliant crimson with every exchange.
As was her own.
She could sense it, her enraged foe who was no mere scavenger but a true Potency with legions under his command, pouring every ounce of power he had into a final exchange. Jess welcomed it, leaving herself open, her blade a smallsword no longer, but rather the favored weapon of a Squire; cocked over her head, and in no position to counter a quick fencer's strike.
He sensed her vulnerability, committing himself utterly to his cleaving blow.
And with a furious twisting of every muscle as time itself seemed to slow to a crawl, Jess spun away from the demon's fearsome charge only a heartbeat before his vile weapon could sunder her flesh, her own sword arcing out the instant he stumbled past, cleaving through her foe's suddenly vulnerable neck in a flash of crimson and thorns.
A dying scream echoed endlessly through the ether as she seized her tumbling prize, roaring as fiercely as any hellion claiming her due in the ancient arenas of the damned.
Jess hardly felt the fierce hot sting of her wounds, reveling instead in her decapitated foe collapsing at her feet, a shower of crimson roses spurting from his neck as his body crashed to the ground. Her hound gave vent to a terrible howl, darting forth in that instant to rend and devour their fallen foe as its body twisted and writhed like a hideous insect in its death throws.
Jess grinned in triumph, knowing the head she held felt the horror of its body being consumed utterly, even as she lost herself in the heady exultation of victory. She was overwhelmed by a dark euphoria far sweeter than simple conquest, howling with ecstasy even as her body shuddered with the hideous rapture of hundreds of lost souls pouring into her form, her gouged shoulder and lesser injuries knitting themselves together instantly as those lost spirits infused her with all the might and fury of the demon she had slain.
As one, the entire entourage of assembled lords and ladies clapped their applause. Their glittering eyes and hungry grins reminded Jess of nothing so much as a pack of jackals reveling in a fresh kill. The dozen souls she had torn free of Zolias’s power, even the young soul she had come so far to save, all stared at her apprehensively, shaking with terror as she gazed at them, though Jess could hardly fathom why.
Jess blinked, feeling oddly disoriented, even as her familiar’s claws pricked deep into her shoulder. “Ow, Twilight!”
“Jess, we must leave. Now!”
Jess snapped into focus, heart racing as she heard that hauntingly familiar laughter once more. And suddenly, she was afraid.
Twilight was right. She knew this. Knew with a chilling certainty that she really didn’t want to be there even an instant longer, immediately spinning around to flee back the way she had come.
“My dearest Jezabelle!”
The words slithered into Jess's mind with a hideous familiarity, echoing down pathways of her psyche closed to any who didn't know her with the terrible intimacy that this voice did.
"It has been so long since you last dueled for my pleasure, child. You aren't leaving so soon, are you?"
A taunting voice, and Jess realized to her horror why it sounded so familiar.
25
Inexorably, her eyes were drawn to the face of the being who addressed her. Covered in scaled armor of darkest night, blond curls cascading free, she wore the features of a young woman in perfect health, save for crimson eyes that blazed with a hideous hunger.
Slowly, the Fallen angel smiled.
Jessica's heart lurched, recognizing that terrible face; unspeakably desirable, inhumanly sensual, smiling with such awful cruelty.
It was her own.
Filled with sudden, mindless panic, Jess screamed and fled for her very soul. Her ears bled with the terrible laughter that followed, even as she raced past blurred figures lurching out of her way with clumsy slowness, the very buildings seeming to blur to crumbled piles of refuse and slag, remnants of a shattered industrial empire, and then no more than rocky outcroppings bordering tree covered hills.
And still the hideous cackles followed her, seeming to burrow into her very soul.
“You may flee, child. You may flee for all your remaining days. But rest assured, your time grows short, and in the end you shall face me once more!”
With a panicked cry Jess stopped short, compelled to move no further, yanked back by a hideous gray chord that somehow tied her to whatever terrible fate even now approached, coalescing in the strange mist behind her, even as the laughter grew.
"Twilight, what do I do?" Jess cried out in sudden panic, heart hammering with terror, more afraid than she had ever been before. Her sacred wood remained but a hairsbreadth beyond her desperate reach, tied as she was to the monster even now approaching her.
“That chord should not be there,” Twilight declared, and Jess blinked to hear the sound of a winter gale, her beloved familiar having somehow grown in unspeakable directions, his voice the crackle of frozen lakes, the howling winds of the arctic tundra, cold and dark beyond comprehension. “Lilith has no ties to you, in this place and time. That compulsion binding you to her should not be!”
“Oh, are you so sure of that, wayward creature? So far from the maw of Oblivion that should have consumed you, endless eons ago!” roared the terrible voice behind
them, the very ground shaking as the hideous thing approached.
Jess trembled, struggling to resist the compulsion to look back at the source of her growing terror.
“Jess, you have to focus,” Twilight compelled. “Do not look back. Do not let her draw you into discourse. Break through the barrier between our realms, and we are free of her!”
Whimpering, Jess strove with every iota of her strength to break through the barrier before them, crying out with shuddering relief when she felt it finally give, the terrible chord binding her to the hideous thing even now approaching snapping free at last, but not without cost.
And with a great lurch, as if she had just crossed an unimaginable distance, Jess found herself heaving and gasping, deep within the bowers of the comforting forest once more. Her shuddering sobs eased with the soft rustle of trees, the soothing trickle of a nearby brook, the gentle caress of moonlight upon her skin.
She shook with relief as the blinding terror eased at last, for all that she felt slightly off balance, sensing that something precious had been taken from her, just as she had seized a prize of her own. She gasped to see her hand was not clenching tight from strain alone, but holding a prize horrific and dark; a demonic skull encased in iron and steel. The true face of her foe, fallen to her blade, her own dark nature refusing to deny her prize. She hissed and dropped it, but the last wisps of potency she had not consumed had already turned to smoke and dream. Jess blinked and looked up, catching her familiar’s sapphire eyed gaze. “Twilight! By the gods, what was that?”
Her familiar sighed, even as he gently sprung to her lap, Jess finding much-needed comfort in emptying her mind of all but the sensation of stroking her kitty's soft fur between her trembling fingers.
“That, my mistress, was a glimpse of our most dangerous foe.”
Jess grimaced, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, her crystalline tears sparkling like diamonds as they bounced upon her familiar’s glossy fur before sliding off and settling upon the loamy ground about her feet. She tried to ask questions to which she was deathly afraid of hearing the answers.
“Twilight... she looked so very much like me.”
Her familiar turned his head, gazing deeply into her eyes. “Yes, she did, Jess. And that means no more than you allow it to.” He quirked a smile. “You do understand where we are, yes?”
Numbly, Jess nodded. “We are back in the wood, near Raphael’s chateau.”
Twilight nodded. “But are we really? Or are you but a spirit unmoored, lost within a living dream?”
Jess blinked, gazing up into the solemn features of over a dozen souls, the boy once known as Galeck sobbing openly as he approached, tentatively wrapping his spirit arms around her, weeping with relief and gratitude.
“Thank you, Jess,” he whispered tearfully. “Thank you for caring enough to come for me, after the terrible, terrible mistakes I made!” He trembled a grateful smile. “I am indebted to you beyond words, and I only pray that in my next life I can make you proud of me.”
Jess fiercely blinked back tears, though now they were tears of joy. "I'm glad I could pull you back from that fire, just as you once saved three children from a burning house yourself, asking for no more thanks than the relieved tears of the mother whose greatest treasures you had rescued." Jess's heart shook with the bittersweet memory of three beautiful children who had lived lives sweet and full before eventually passing on, as all mortals must. "Countless lifetimes ago. But I never forgot, beloved one."
Gently, Jess kissed the boy’s cheek. He gasped and began to shimmer and fade, an expression of heartfelt peace coming over his exhausted features.
Jess gazed at the dozen broken souls, utterly drained of all hope and joy after endless eons suffering the mad torments of Hell. Solemnly, feeling graced with a presence far greater than herself, she raised to her feet, gently kissing each of them upon the cheek, her own heart filling with nameless joy at seeing the horrific memories of endless torments fade from their haunted gazes, replaced by countenances blossoming with newfound wonder.
Speechless and trembling, they stared at her, the horrid welts and scars of endless torments fading from their spirit flesh even as she tenderly gazed at them. “Follow the boy once known as Galeck. He will lead you to a place of peace, and renewal.”
The spirits before her wept with gratitude, kneeling at her feet, before they too began to shimmer and fade, and within seconds the quiet wood was empty once more, save for Jess, the panting hound who gazed at her with such warm affection, and her kitty, rubbing her cheek as he settled upon her shoulder.
Jess gazed fondly at her familiar, even as she stroked the warm furry belly of her happily barking hound, feeling the first stirrings of utter exhaustion, which was quite odd, she thought, since she knew she was dreaming even at that very moment.
“It really makes no sense, Twilight,” she sleepily yawned, surprised to find her head suddenly resting against the flank of her hound, though not that surprised; his belly was as soft and warm as any pillow could hope to be, and he seemed to welcome her affection, gently placing his paw protectively upon her side. “Why should I be tired, if I’m still in a dream?”
Twilight gazed contemplatively at the night sky above. "There is sleep and there is sleep, my Jess. And truly, you have survived a far more perilous dream than most. Think of it as Delving within your very dreams, directly at the edge of darkest Shadow. Do Delvers themselves not end up sleeping for days at a time, after each such journey?"
Jess's gazed thoughtfully into the star-laden sky alongside her familiar, her body now that of a fully grown woman once more. “Will I remember any of what happened in this dream?”
Twilight shrugged. “In truth, it would perhaps be better if you let it all slip away. But don’t worry. I will be sure to remind you of the important parts, such as your promise to reward your noble kitty for all his diligent work on your behalf with lots of tasty fishies.”
Jess smirked and yawned. “I promised no such thing,” she said sleepily, “not that I would deny my beloved kitty well-deserved treats in any case.” Slowly, she closed her eyes.
“I’m sure you would have promised eventually,” her familiar soothed. “Now go to sleep, my Jess. You’ve done quite well this night, and I, for one, am very pleased with how you’ve grown.”
With those words Jessica’s breathing deepened into the slow rhythm of true sleep, Twilight gazing some moments longer at the brilliant moon high above, he alone aware of the price they had paid in saving their Hound. With a fatalistic nod, he too closed his eyes, the three of them slipping into mist and fading away with the rising sun, as if they were all but figments of an ancient dream.
Thank You
Thank you very much for reading Shadow Knight.
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Jess and Twilight have many more adventures to share. The first three titles in The Risen Queen series are all available right now.
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