Bloodless

by Roberto Vecchi

  With all things considered, the easier of his two options to live past this encounter was to engage the guards at the end of the walkway and then flee directly across the street into the houses and yards beyond. But once he did that, there would be a quickly coordinated effort to apprehend him. All of the guards would be mobilized making escape very difficult. And if he did, the resulting pursuit would be relentless. If he was by himself, or even with just Drin, he would be able to stay ahead of the chase, but with the girls, there would be no possibility of outdistancing the inevitable pursuit. So, he turned around and prepared to engage Commander Yullos. Eliminating him, while increasing the difficulty of living past the immediate danger, would do a great deal more to ensure their escape across the countryside.

  But as he turned around to confront what he judged as his best option, he himself was confronted with a third variable, one he had not considered, her stark blue eyes. They were so remarkable still. Even as these long had passed, they held nothing but the purest sense of compassion for him. He still remembered how they would turn the most brilliant shade of turquois when she cried. And although he had not seen them do so for many, many years, their effect on him was the same as it had been then. They completely disarmed him. In a single moment, one that he may come to regret and prove to be the ending of him, he understood that he would never be able to take from her that which she loved and cared for.

  He looked from her eyes to the blue skies and closed his. He breathed in two easy breaths and opened them again. As his head returned to his level gaze, he saw Commander Yullos walking warily toward him. Kinarin held out his weapons and let them drop to the ground.

  “Take him!” shouted the commander. It became apparent that the guards were indeed well drilled, for they cascaded upon him quickly and efficiently, binding his hands behind his arms in only seconds.

  “Drin Martos, you are being charged with the murder of Count Dyer’s son, Frendoro Dyers. And because we already have an eye witness who has given her account of your damning actions, and held trial in your absence, you sentence has already been passed. You will be executed at sundown,” said the commander. Turning to his guards, he said “Take him to his cell.”

  Before his eyes were forcefully removed from the gentle turquoise of Coleyne’s, now overflowing with silent tears, he heard a quick wisp of air followed by a soft, leathery thud. Kinarin turned his attention to the sound and saw a dark shaft with its arrow head buried deeply into the chest of Commander Yullos. Before he was able to locate from where it came, three more sequences of similar sounds followed, each with the same result as the arrow heads were buried deeply into the chests of the closest three guards.

  There was a delayed panic, the way a heard of animals reacts to a loud and unexpected sound; however, when action did descend, it was complete. Coleyne was the first to react, her screams filling the air. The guards were next. The ones located at the ends of the street started running to the confrontation. Those who were left alive began running for cover leaving Kinarin to fend for himself. He picked up one of the swords he dropped, from one of the fallen guards and used it to cut the ropes binding his hands. Though he understood the precarious position he was in, he did not feel directly threatened. Judging by the speed and expertise with which the four targets were killed, he knew if it was in the design, he would already be dead.

  When he finished cutting his bindings, he jumped back up, located his swords and began searching for Coleyne. When he saw her, held around the neck by a thin hand, with a devilishly thin blade held against her skin, he stopped. Behind the turquoise eyes that sill held his emotions bound, he saw the raven black hair of the woman named Vismorda. He saw her and knew fear.

  “So, this is the thing you want most is it not?” asked Vismorda, her words dripping from her mouth in a darkly seductive manner. “Maybe I will take her from you the way you have taken my Malice and Vile,” she continued as she slowly drew the flat blade across Coleyne’s skin. “What do you think, hunny, would you like to be taken by me?” she asked Coleyne as she kissed the terrified woman’s cheek.

  “You have no charge against her. Let her go and I will come peacefully,” he said as he took a small step toward them.

  “But that is not what I want now is it?” she said as she continued to taunt Coleyne with her blade.

  “What is it that you want then?” asked Kinarin, taking another small step closer. By now the remaining guards had their weapons drawn and were circling the three of them. They kept their distance, but Kinarin could almost feel the growing tension in their hands. He hoped that their patience was greater than what he had originally surmised. If one of them moved too quickly toward the two women, he was sure Coleyne’s blood would be spilled.

  “I want my little Ravens back. And then I want that boy,” she said kissing Coleyne’s cheek again. “If you give them to me, I will give this little plaything back to you.”

  “What of the guards?” he asked, taking yet another step closer to them. “You do not believe they will just let us leave?”

  “I should hope not. I have such a taste for blood today!” she said wickedly.

  “Let her go and I will take you to them, but I will not move while she is in your possession.”

  “What a dilemma you have given me!” she said as she laughed out loud. “You are ever the challenge! Let me see. So, if I let her go, you will take me to my little Raven’s and their brother. But the guards will surely attack as soon as I let her go. And you will no doubt, join them in their fight. But if I hold her, and keep her for myself, you will not assist me in recapturing what is rightfully mine. Is that correct?” she said as she flicked her blade dismissively in the air.

  “Yes,” said Kinarin stoically, inching closer to the two women.

  “It seems that you have given me no choice then,” said Vismorda as she eased her grip around Coleyne’s neck. “Very well, you may go, my sweet little plaything.” But just as Coleyne took a first tepid step toward Kinarin, Vismorda pierced her chest with one of her black bladed swords.

  Kinarin moved.

  So did Vismorda.

  She gripped the power of her dark liquid and sank more deeply into her death trance than ever before. With the speed and lethality of a coiled snake bent upon vengeance, and vengeance alone, Kinarin engaged her. He existed as rage that burned black hot when she extended into his consciousness. She saw that he was trained and trained well. Blades flying around from every direction and into every direction created a mesmerizing cacophony of death. She stretched more of her liquid into him, seeking to become one with his movements, to know them before he did, and then to act to end his life; but she could not hold him. He was illusive. Illusive in the way that the creation of fog is illusive. And his illusiveness made him impossible to hold. She saw his awareness right in front of her, and what should have been an easy task of grasping, was proving more difficult than she anticipated.

  In their first encounter, he had gotten lucky as fate looked down upon him and decided that she place her foot in the dampness of the stone keep causing her to slightly misstep and lose a fraction of her perfect balance. In the briefest of moments, he drove his fist into her face and slithered out of the conflict. But she did learn much about him that day. She knew he was lethal. He had lasted longer against her than any man save one, and he was the progenitor of her power. But to suggest that there was another, and one who was lacking the power of the dark fountain, who could withstand her physically or otherwise was a thought so perverse to her that it fueled her rage.

  And rage she did.

  Jesolin had always told her that subtlety was not within her grasp of actions, and he was right. As Kinarin’s illusiveness grew, so did her rage. And when tolerating the prowess of this man, this inferior opponent, invoked her contempt for all beings, she exploded into a visage of finality. It was enough she was subjected to Jesolin’s will, but to endure another’s, even if it is simply to live, was a tolerance she could no longer abide. Cl
arity. Depth. She gained them both and became more deeply rooted in her darkness. She could feel it flood every poor, every vein, and every muscle fiber. And she gave them all to her rage and hate. Pulsing with power, she reached back into all the hate she felt and released it in a singularly destructive explosion. It was not the same manifestation of Mordin’s magic, but it was just as powerful and just as relentless.

  As she looked around, after the energy she released had dissipated, she saw both what she expected and what she did not. At the periphery of their battle, she saw all of the remaining guards lying unconscious and withered, like a leaf that is almost ready to fall from its branch in the chill of the early autumn. Their faces and bodies seemed sunken, as if their life and substance had been sucked away. But when she focused on the center of her confrontation, there he was, standing as an outright indignation of her total existence. It was then that she knew. He must possess the ability of the dark fountain.

  “Shall we continue,” was all it took for him to say to provoke her continued attack. But this time she was wild, unnerved and unfocused, whereas he existed as the central eye of the storm. They continued in their dance of death, neither winning nor losing, but each becoming deeper in their understanding of each other. She again tried her fountain induced link, and this time, perhaps because he was becoming fatigued and lacked the discipline to maintain his illusiveness, she found her hold. Entwined with him through both physical and mental capacities, she began to see him, really see him. And what she saw was something she never thought she would find. She saw herself. She saw herself and stumbled.

  It was then that he struck by driving his booted foot into her stomach ending any continuation of their conflict. For a strike like this, from a foe like him resulted in only one possibility, death. But when his steel did not follow his kick, and she was left to struggle against the gaining of her breath, she dropped to her knee and dropped her sword.

  “How?” she gasped.

  He walked up and knelt beside her, “I should think that was obvious now.”

  “How did you hide it,” she asked. But he remained silent as he stood. “Are you going to kill me now?” she asked.

  “No,” he said as he turned and walked away from her.

  “I will never stop hunting you,” she said.

  “I know,” he said as he walked over to the fallen body of Coleyne. Vismorda saw him kneel down and close her eyes with his fingertips. He touched her so gently, as if even the faintest of pressure would wake her from the most pleasant of dreams. She saw him bend further down and kiss her gently on her forehead being careful not to disturb her sleep. And lastly, she saw him brush the side of her cheek with the back of the most loving hand she had ever seen. When he rose to his feet again, she saw him wipe the smallest of tears from his eye. The moment of tenderness was more than she was capable of enduring without sharing a like response.

  When she saw him begin walking to her, she turned her head to hide her tears. She rolled over to try and stand again and found that one or two of her ribs had been broken, but she still pushed herself up to her hands and knees.

  “I know you will never stop hunting us,” he said. “But neither can I allow you to follow me.”

  “Then be done with it,” she said holding in the tears she did not want him to see. She knew what was coming next and it was such a contrast to the tenderness she had just witnessed. Intimately and secretly, she wished to be touched as tenderly as he did with the woman whose heart she had stopped, but she was long resigned to her fate at the hands of men. So, when he took a step and exploded his boot into the side of her face, she allowed it without resistance. She allowed it because perhaps violence from a man capable of the tenderness he had just shown would be less damaging to her soul than from a man incapable of even the smallest tenderness. But as she felt her cheekbone shatter under his expertly placed kick, she knew she was wrong. It felt even worse.

  Volein

  (Silence)

  He woke bathed in the lingering scents of blood and domination enhanced by the still tingling sensation in his soul, if he still had one, from having another of his chosen women just beyond the verge of her blossoming womanhood, succumb to his immortal, hate driven power. Though he was granted such a tremendous boost of energy to his mortality from communing with the dark fountain, he still found himself growing weary at times. And it was in these times that he felt completely refreshed after visiting that which allowed a physical release of not just his male needs, but his expression of hate.

  Over the years, he had come to realize the purpose for hate, and thus every emotion, was to be expressed. If expression was not the end of the complex mental processes leading to all emotions, then what was the purpose for them at all? If they be held inside, disallowing their manifested dictates, emotions were essentially useless. Why did he, or anyone for that matter, have the ability to feel anything if not to generate greater strength from those feelings ultimately ending in the dynamic, behavioral manifestation of action? Action, therefore, is the expression of all emotions, including hate.

  He observed so many people throughout the years that he was driven into contempt by the sheer magnitude of those who remained impotent to act when all endeavors of the situation dictated action as the necessary remedy. And the more he saw them remain inactive, the more he saw their emotions amass into a mountain of unreconciled hindrances preventing even the consideration of action for future events. However, as much as he would enjoy lingering in all the deliciousness of last night and the mental pathways it led him to follow, his hatred for all provoked inside him a mission of undeniable potency. So, he used his emotion, and acted.

  His followers had already fallen behind his rather aggressive command that they be ready to march against the Silver Empire itself and lay siege to the Capital city of Pretago Cor in only a week’s time. In spite of all of their dedicated efforts, which he had to admit to himself were impressive, their desire to fulfill their tasks within the time frame Jesolin had set upon them was still governed by the physical constraints of the mortal world. And as much as their wills were devoted to him, some things were still not possible. So, his first action for today, after he sought further clarification from his master in the ever comforting yet ever awful embrace of Satan’s presence, would be to follow up and monitor their preparations.

  Naked, he rose his from his bed and saw the two slender young women sleeping, no doubt still recovering from last night’s engorged and consuming delve into the darkness of the sexually dominant. He casually noticed he had forgotten to remove the gag from one of them. What was her name he wondered? He admitted to himself that if he ever came to know it, he would forget it quickly for her name did not matter, only that she did his bidding. They all had to only do his bidding because all other details were moot. All of them, except Vismorda.

  What had happened to her during their last moment of sexual expression? He was indeed going to kill her. He still felt his fingers tighten just enough until he held her throat on the edge of collapsing under his grasp. He paused for just a fraction of a second to enjoy the following crunch; but in that moment, something within her changed. He would have felt it if it had come from her power. Neither was it the result of a conscious decision as her limp and almost lifeless body betrayed her unconscious state of being. Nevertheless, he felt her hips, previously resisting him, begin to move and blend with his intense rhythm of thrusts. Moments after, he saw her eyes open and witnessed a depth to them he had never seen before. Likewise, they echoed his intense passion without the order of mortal expression. There was something darkly chaotic to her stare, a stare that bore deep into him, captivating him.

  “Strike me,” she said. No, not said, demanded.

  He obeyed and slapped her across her face.

  “Again,” she demanded once more.

  Becoming enthralled by her new-found desire, he could do nothing but obey her command.

  “Yes! Again!” she shouted seemingly drawing more sexu
al strength from his slaps.

  As he hit her a third time, this time across the other side of her face, he felt his thrusts grow to an intensely vicious level of frenzied expression. He had hit her many, many times before, but never at her own bidding. Indeed, he had subjected her to more pain than what he once felt she was capable of handling, so much so, he was still surprised she had not completely broken. And though her resistance had intensified his arousal, it was nothing compared to this.

  “Fuck me harder!” she commanded; her eyes alit with a seductive intensity he was unable to resist. He howled as he looped his arms under her legs throwing them over her shoulders allowing for a deeper, heavier penetration. He reached for her wrists and tried to pin them on the bed, but she was strong and quick.

  “Fuck me harder!” she yelled as she slapped him across the face.

  “How dare,” he said but was interrupted by another of her slaps.

  “I told you to fuck me harder!” she commanded as she latched her hands behind his neck pulling his face only inches from her own. Not only did she possess the strength of hand to trap his head, her eyes possessed a capturing power completely consuming his will to do anything else but stare more deeply into hers. What followed was unlike anything he had felt before. Yes, he felt the outpouring of hate from each of their dark fountains, and yes, he felt the powerful grasp of wicked lust consuming them; however, never before had he been commanded by her during their sexual expressions. And command him she did. When he was moments from reaching ecstasy, when he was on the verge of releasing his orgasmic crescendo, she violently spun forcing him on his back.