Chapter 28
A part of him became unhinged, broken
“Lan! In the kitchen!” Treva’s voice yelled from the beam of her previous perch above. Relief filled him. She was safe—but this was instantly replaced with dread as she just gave her location away, betraying herself to alert him. The Mysra guards skittering to a halt hadn’t realized she was alighted above them.
“To the kitchen!” She gave a quick, connected gaze to him.
The irony of it struck him. It was the same place, it was said, where his father had been killed by Grude himself. The General Prince would see to it that it would be the same manner of death for the tyrant within.
Without further thought, she covered for the General Prince, diverting their attention and bringing it to herself instead. She leaped down and engaged immediately, swinging her swords with a violent fervor, grinning hideously and gaping madly at her clashes. She swung, ducked, lunged, leaped, dived, and grinned even more. She was fascinating, a deadly dancer. Her form maneuvering articulately from heads, shoulders, beams. Tumbling and spinning high through a gauntlet of clashing metal beneath.
She was entrancing. Lanico determined could watch her forever, but in that split second, Lanico took advantage of her diversion. He had to. And although this seemed as mere play to her, he knew she was risking her life for him, for his throne, for their people. Every passing second was more precious than handfuls of diamonds. Anger and anxiety mounting; he had had enough. Enough. He lunged for the kitchen door, but not all the Mysra guards had been distracted by the toying of the unnerving Emerald Knight.
A guard with unwavering focus on Grude’s protection attacked Lanico from behind just as the General Prince tried opening the door. Lanico had heard the nearing steps in time to duck. In a flash, the Mysra’s sword stabbed the door where his head would have been. That was it. Lanico swung his sword countering, just as the Mysra freed his own. Wild, haphazard strikes came from the General Prince. His heart raced. His mind blackened as he fought without mental capacity, without caution. A part of him became unhinged, broken. He could see only Grude at the end of his power-surged strikes.
The Mysra was taken back and stumbled, losing his footing at Lanico’s newfound super strength. Lanico quickly lunged forward and thrust Reluctant Leader into the guard’s chest. Lanico was crazed and wild. With ungovernable wrath, he turned in pursuit of his target and once more swung, kicking the kitchen door open with a loud slam! His eyes flared with madness beneath unruly sections of hair.
He breathed heavily. Odan help whomever was in his path because any connection with him would promise death.
The door closed behind him. He could hear Treva’s yelling just outside with the loud clangs and clashes.
A hauntingly familiar voice hissed, “Hello Prince…”
Chapter 29
A Likeness
Grude turned from a stool in the corner. His gray skin matched the soot-covered gray kitchen walls. Had it not been for his cloak, Lanico may not have noticed him as quickly. In a smooth move, he rose. Slowly. Innocuously. As if he were a fine smoke rising.
Lanico’s grip tightened and his heart hammered.
The Mysra leader’s voice was as Lanico remembered—higher-pitched than other Mysra. “I don’t want to fight you. You’re obviously more skilled than me.” He walked slowly and paused. “Then again, most are.”
It was a deception. From years before, Lanico knew Grude’s pastime. His interest in swordplay wasn’t secret. Perhaps the Mysra could lie about that to others, but not to him. Lanico pinned Grude with frenzied gaze. He’d play this game, and he’d win. His silver hair and fair face were splattered with blood. He breathed, holding the Reluctant Leader and a crazed flashing glare for Grude.
“You’ve been planning,” Grude continued, as he ambled casually toward the General Prince.
Lanico continued to hear Treva outside. Fires! She was still battling the guards. He needed to aid her. She was just as skilled as he, but she could last only so long before tiring out. There are so many of them and perhaps more wou—
“Go ahead, Lanico.” Grude’s voice sliced, interrupting Lanico’s concern. “Kill me with your, with your...Reluctant Leader.” The tone of his voice was a taunt. “I know that you’ve long seen my face reflected in its legendary shine.” Grude’s purple robe covered the whole of his body. The muscles and details beneath remained hidden, and any weapons as well.
Lanico stiffened. He didn’t know what to expect except…victory.
“Lanico,” Grude said smoothly as if reading his thoughts. “You’re outnumbered. Once you kill me, your Treva will be slain—permanently. You will also be killed. There are many of us, and more after that. An endless supply that rolls on and on actually.”
Lanico felt his brow furrow that that. An endless supply?
The Mysra leader continued, “And someone will—no—a Mysra will simply take over.”
Lanico’s voice was guttural, “No.”
“No?” Grude asked, amused.
“I don’t believe your lies.”
Clearly, the General Prince hadn’t any idea of who had been supplying the endless army of Mysra all these long years. “The General Prince surely has had to ask himself about how the Mysra numbers never cease?” Grude led. “About their source…”
It was a question Lanico had wondered about. He had indeed wondered why their battle against the Mysra never lessened. Lanico’s Soldiers had been effective over the years and had it not been for Grude’s hinted secret source, the Odana Knights of old would have cleared all the enemy Mysra out by now.
Grude’s reflection was clear in Lanico’s azure stare. Grude issued a small smile and tossed off his robe, his form noticeably more muscled than before. A saber had been sheathed at his side. He grinned noticing how the General Prince’s eyes shifted to it. A flash. A whisper of metal and Grude unsheathed his sword swiping a torrent of strikes at Lanico. The air hissed then clanged. The force, the blows made Lanico’s arms and shoulders burn. He blocked, taking them in. The space was small—too small for this.
“Don’t know how to fight with the sword?” Lanico scorned the deft swings.
Grude only made a low chuckle after a parry.
“Lies. More lies upon lies.” Lanico’s tired voice was graveled. He whirled and swung at the Mysra, again. His move, deflected. The Mysra leader was good—very good. It only served to incense the General Prince further.
Lanico heard Treva yell again. His mind raced at the urgent sound of her voice. She was taking on so many…
“So,” Grude said, as he pushed into Lanico’s sword with blinding force. Lanico felt himself straining, caving at the Mysra’s unwavering strength. “Perhaps you should give me this victory,” he said coolly. “As you can tell, I’m not tired—” he swung from their lock. “I’m not leaving—” another clash, “and I’m not giving my throne to you.” Grude turned and whirled a low swing for Lanico’s legs.
Blocked. “Your throne?”
“I won it from your father in this very room, in this very spot.” The Mysra growled, “Earned it.”
Lanico became unleashed at that. He felt himself engulfed in flames, a blinding vengefulness claimed him. His arms, his sword hand, the deft steps—they didn’t belong to him. He lost control wildly moving faster and faster. The swoosh of his strikes became rapid, forceful, a tempest of flashing metal. Defying the fatigue that threatened to grip him, he put everything, his soul, into his swings. The image of his father, dying on a kitchen floor—on this gods damned floor!
“There’s the General,” Grude rasped mockingly, before spinning and deflecting. His movements were expert. But, in a whirl, one misstep placed by the General Prince and Grude planted his firm strike!
White-hot pain seared Lanico’s chest at the tip of Grude’s sword, but fell short of fatal damage. Lanico roared. Pain radiated. The Mysra leader belted a high laugh. For the General Prince—that was it. A thunderclap boomed. The deafening crackle reson
ated for many miles. Instantaneously Lanico’s fury, his pain, his power transformed; coalesced into something else entirely. Something he’d never experienced before in his long life. Somehow, inexplicably united with his sword, Lanico swung the Reluctant Leader’s brilliant lightening-blade through Grude’s unguarded torso, midair arching, slicing him in half ending at the echo of his laugh. The move was easy. Unexpected, just following his own blow to the chest.
Instantly the Mysra leader’s eyes shot wide just as smoldering halves of his body fell with weighted thuds; spattering a shower of blood against the gray walls and floor.
There was no sound beyond the heartbeat pounding in Lanico’s ears.
It was fast. So fast. Lanico stumbled back, his body knocking against the kitchen wall. So fast. The years, the dreams of running his monster through, done. He was elated, but he couldn’t grasp that this was real. That this end—just happened. No, not the end. For there was still so much more to be done. The mysterious glow of his sword dimmed. There was just so much to take in.
Grude’s surprised face eerily lingered and convulsed in a series of eye twitches and a slight jerking smile. It was ghastly, but immensely gratifying.
Lanico panted, staring to allow this sight to remain stamped into his memory. After endless seconds, he turned touching the gash on his chest. Hot blood oozed from the gap. It wasn’t a lethal blow, but it still radiated in pain, having severed muscle and tissue. He pressed against his chest firmly, and more crimson blood flowed. Thankfully his Fray heritage would allow for quick healing.
Wakening his senses, Treva screamed from outside the door. Her sound was of fatigued ire. Right. More to be done!
Treva!
With Reluctant Leader still at the ready in his grasp, Lanico whirled and kicked the door through. “Treva!” he yelled in a cracking voice.
There she was.
In the center of a pile of dead guards. Disbelieving, he blinked. No. It couldn’t be. She was fighting a lone remaining guard. What in the fires? he thought in incredulity!
She was a killing machine! She stood on top of a pile, a small mountain, of dead Mysra.
Of course! She was the Emerald Knight, the Mysra Slayer.
Lanico laughed to himself at this spectacle but then his chest tightened in pain. He couldn’t remove this trance from her. She was amazing, but slacking he noticed in critique. Loathsome weariness was setting in. He knew her movements well. Without further delay he sprinted to join her and aid in killing this remaining guard, not that she actually needed his help as he had previously thought, but rather to hurry this up and end it for the both of them. He lunged at the guard from behind. His chest recoiled with stabbing pain at his attempt. Lanico growled suddenly at the movement. Fuck! He had just forgotten again about his piercing injury.
The attempt to jab the guard missed.
At that moment, the throne room door flew open and Cantata stood in the frame panting like a wild boar on a chase. She looked on in shock and then a flash of horror lashed her ivory face at the pile of dead guards. She glanced down to find herself standing in a pool of black blood that had leaked out from the large pile of death just in front of her.
“You!” was all that Cantata managed at the two through a quivering voice. She turned a trembling blazing glare from them, from the remaining fight, and tore off into the kitchen—to her kitchen. Her dress followed behind with the susurrus of stiff fabric dragging pooled blood in its wake. A horrid painting.
Lanico and the guard continued to follow through with swinging blows, undeterred from their missions. Treva was on guard, ready to spring to action with Lanico, if needed.
The cold quiet was suddenly stabbed with a deafening shriek. A cacophony of horror rang out from within the kitchen at Cantata’s shrill cry. A sound that was higher than any vocal she had ever belted. It pierced their ears with wounding stabs of its own. Surely somewhere in the vocalist’s heritage there must have been a banshee.
The guard stopped his fighting to lift his hands to his ears, a fatal error that Lanico seized. Undeterred but wincing, he slammed his sword through the guard’s chest. The pommel went flush against him for a quick death. The Mysra tipped and fell, landing among the large, warm pile of other newly killed Mysra. His limbs, his movements slowed to a stop.
Lanico and Treva bent forward, bracing themselves against their knees trying to catch their breath enough to speak. Lanico’s black tunic was wet with blood—his blood. He panted painfully, making short breaths. The stab wound would take time and his Fray energy to heal. But he could already feel it.
Treva noticed the darker wetness blooming on his tunic—the split fabric. “You were injured!” She said worriedly without words.
“It’s nothing” He made a small smile.
“Did you—did you?” Treva managed, but couldn’t. “Did you kill him?” she clarified once more in their shared way. Their breath wasn’t needed for that form of communication and she was still too winded.
His eyes transfixed on hers. “Yes.” A wicked grin curled at the corner of his mouth at the realization. “Didn’t you hear my thunderclap?”
Treva tilted her head quizzically and opened her mouth to answer just as there was a break in the sobbing and screaming that had been incessantly resounding until then. They stood at attention. Right. Cantata was still in the kitchen with her dead lover.
“She’d be witless to try to take a kitchen knife to us,” Treva said as if interpreting the songstress was contemplating murder at that moment.
“Regardless, we better go in.”
Tiredly they walked into the kitchen, bruised, bloodied, but on alert. Cantata had been grasping on to the upper half of Grude. She cradled his contorted remains in her saturated lap. His blood was just visible against her sapphire dress. Her head was lowered as she rocked and sobbed in deep despair. It was almost heart-wrenching until—
“You,” Cantata growled, turning her glare upward, toward Lanico. “You took my love from me. He was mine! No one had ever been—” Mine, she would have finished. She trembled. Her voice quaked as she continued, “He was changing Odana for the better. He had great visions for the future—a future we’d never see with you.” She sniffed. “I was helping him shape the new Odana for something better, unlike you—you evil, power-hungry, negligent brat!” Spit flew from her venomous words.
Treva steadied her gaze. The smooth drag of metal pulling from the falchion’s sheath whispered slowly. Cantata had gone mad and Treva would slay her if she posed any harm to Lanico—it was still her sworn duty.
Lanico, still staring intently at Cantata, lifted his hand. A signal for Treva to cease, knowing very well her intent. Cantata could do no harm to him. She was not a warrior. She didn’t even appear to be physically strong.
“You will pay for what you did to me and the baby to come. Of this, Lanico Loftre,” she ignored the use of his title and spat, intentionally this time. With a low growl she added, “I promise.”
Treva and Lanico exchanged glances. “A baby?”
“I lay with him last night, and I already know.” Cantata tried to keep from her deep sobs at this. Her eyes bored into Lanico. “Do you understand me? I have the knowing.” She trembled.
In that instant, Lanico felt ice run down the length of his spine. His blue eyes grew wide in alarm at the gravity of what he just heard. The knowing—and what that meant. Oh fires! He breathed in a whole other level of alarm. A slam to his mind.
Cantata stood with effort. Grude’s upper half rolled from her lap and flung onto the wooden floor leaving a trail of oozing blood in its wake. There would have been a dark humor to the sound that his body made, but this wasn’t a moment of gaiety. Standing, Cantata’s full height was now matching Lanico’s—a likeness. An odd likeness the two had—and not just in height!
Cantata discreetly glided her hand over her pocket, feeling for the concealed item inside. Still there, she thought with a grain of relief washing over her. “I promise, Lanico. I promise you!
I will take away what you love!” Cantata’s bloodied arms hung loose at her sides. Her hands dripped with Grude’s black blood. “It’s my turn now!” She eyed Treva intently wiping them on her satin dress and shakenly walked toward the door, toward the pair.
Lanico breathed. He didn’t want to kill her. She was pregnant. He held his arm out to the side, and moved backward from the door making safe room for her to pass before them. He shoved Treva back with his own back steps, as if protecting Cantata from Treva. He knew Treva well. If Cantata so much as slapped him, Treva would clear her head from her shoulders in a blink.
Treva’s glare was thick against the quivering, traumatized Cantata. Completely void of mercy.
Cantata made her way through the door. Her puffy dress squeezed through the frame. She casually turned and opened the throne room door with a heave. It swung open with her forceful effort. In vain, she patted down the loose strands of hair on her head, gathered up her skirts, and held her head up high with as much dignity as she could muster. She marched forward, into the throne room, and then toward the entrance. Blood continued to smear at her wavering path as a broad-brush stroke.
The Legacy of Lanico: Return of the Son: Book two of the Legacy of Lanico series Page 25
