Darkblade Savior
Hero of Darkness (Book 6)
By Andy Peloquin
Copyright. Second Edition
Andy Peloquin
©2018, Andy Peloquin
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.
Any resemblance to persons, places living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.
Life for a Life
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Contents
Life for a Life
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Epilogue
Afterword from the Author:
Darkblade Justice (Hero of Darkness Book 7)
More Books by Andy Peloquin
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About the Author
Glossary
Gods of Einan
Darkblade Savior Characters
I'm on the wrong side of Heaven, and the righteous side of Hell. -- Five Finger Death Punch
Chapter One
The Hunter returned from the dead with a scream of agony.
Pain flared through every fiber of his being, driving back the numbness of the iron’s poison. He gasped at the sudden rush of sensation through his chilled limbs. A finger of fire carved a new scar into the flesh of his chest as he sucked in one ragged breath, then another.
“I’m alive.” The thought ran through his pain-dulled mind, yet it didn’t make sense. A shard of Lord Knight Moradiss’ iron greatsword, snapped by a monstrous Stone Guardian, had killed him. So how did he still draw breath?
“Drayvin?”
That name! So…familiar.
His name. Time and the Illusionist Clerics had stolen it from him, along with every memory of his past, his child, and the woman that stared down at him. He’d seen that face in his dreams a thousand times. A dainty nose, sharp cheekbones, cherry-red lips, and eyes as black as his own. The scent of jasmine and honey, cinnamon and berries.
And blood?
Confusion wrinkled his brow as his eyes registered the flecks of crimson staining her face. A gash ran along her forehead, trickling blood, but he could see the flesh re-knitting before his eyes.
“Drayvin, can you hear me?” she called. Taiana, his wife, the woman he’d crossed a continent to see once more.
“I…” His tongue, thick from the iron’s poison, struggled to form the words. I’ve come for you, he wanted to say. We can be together at last.
A scream echoed behind Taiana before he could respond.
“Shit!” Taiana leapt to her feet and whirled in one smooth motion, then disappeared from the Hunter’s view.
With effort, the Hunter turned his head to follow her. She let out a bellowing shout as she barreled toward three figures locked in combat, distracting the one nearest her. Steel flashed in her hand and a shriek burst from the lips of the man she charged. The Hunter heard Soulhunger’s faint cry of delight in his mind as a fresh scar burned its way into his flesh.
He struggled to clear the blurring from his vision and forced his mind to take in the details around him. He lay on a broad stone road, in the shadow of an enormous wall, with an open gate not five paces behind him.
Ahead of him, the Lost City of the Serenii spread out in all its glory. Built atop a mountain, the city rose in three concentric Echelons. From his vantage point on the ground, the Hunter could see only eight of the sapphire blue towers that dotted the city, but he’d seen at least twenty when he caught his first glimpse of Enarium. Oddly enough, all of the towers bent inward, their sharp gemstone tips pointing toward the single looming spire of the same deep blue that stood on the pinnacle of the hill. Clouds concealed the tip of the stronghold from view.
A gurgling gasp snapped the Hunter’s attention back to his immediate surroundings. Not three paces from where he lay, Taiana ripped Soulhunger from the chest of an armored man. The armor was comprised of a solid metal breastplate and pauldrons made of odd-looking metal scales the same deep blue as the sky far overhead. As the armored man sagged, lifeless, his weapon—a quarterstaff with metal caps and spikes twice the length of the Hunter’s index finger—fell from his insensate fingers to clatter to the stones of the road.
Beyond Taiana, two more figures, both men, were locked in a furious struggle. One wore the same blue breastplate and scaled mail as the man Taiana had killed, but his chest bore ornate golden whorls like a circlet of thorns. The second wore an ancient-looking suit of armor that looked like hundreds of brass coins strung together for protection. Dust and dirt stained his dull brown clothing, sun-tanned face, strong hands, and long, dark hair, but a fire of fury burned in his eyes as he struggled to rip a strange-looking weapon—which bore an odd resemblance to an oversized crossbow stock before the arms were attached—from his opponent’s grip.
Taiana raced toward the two men, but in the three seconds it took her to cross the distance, the blue-armored warrior had broken free. He lashed out with a vicious kick that snapped the dark-haired man’s head back and sent him reeling. That strange weapon in his hand whipped up, pointing at the brass-armored man, and his finger pressed the trigger.
Blue runes glowed along the length of the weapon—made of a strange metal and stone rather than the wood used for crossbows—and a loud humming filled the air. Lightning burst from the end of the stock and crackled the short distance to the staggered man. Bronze armor, tunic, flesh, and bone exploded in a red mist. His head, shoulders, and chest simply disappeared, and his truncated torso collapsed to the road.
Taiana leapt onto the blue-armored man and drove Soulhunger into the space between his armor’s gorget and the side of his neck. A scream of agony filled the air as Soulhunger’s gemstone flared bright. Power raced through the Hunter, p
ushing back the last of his numbness and purging his body of the iron’s poison. Another scar burned into the flesh of his chest, but the energy flooding him cleared his mind.
He leapt to his feet, his senses on full alert for any sign of danger. Seven bodies littered the street around him. Six wore blue-scaled armor and carried the strange spike-tipped quarterstaves. Taiana knelt over the seventh, the headless remains of what had once been the bronze-armored man.
“Damn it, Neroth!” Taiana gripped his lifeless hand, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Sorry, my friend.”
After a moment, she stood and turned to face the Hunter. “We need to move, now.” Her voice held steel, her expression hard as stone.
“Taiana!” The cry came from behind the woman.
Taiana whirled, Soulhunger at the ready. She lowered the dagger as she saw the figure racing down the street toward her. The newcomer was short and narrow in the shoulders, with skin the deep copper color of Vothmot and a sparse beard that made him look barely out of his teen years. He wore the same ancient-looking bronze armor and carried a spiked staff that matched the ones littering the street beside the blue-armored corpses. The Hunter caught a hint of his unique scent, a deep blend of Vothmot kaffe, worn metal, smoke, and sandalwood.
“Kalil, what are you doing here?” she demanded. “You and Cerran were supposed to—”
“They’re coming!” The young man skidded to a halt in front of her, and the words poured from his mouth in a breathless rush. “Three full companies of Elivasti, heading here now. They’ll be here in less than a minute. Cerran sent me to warn you and Neroth to…” His voice trailed off as he saw the body behind Taiana. “No, Neroth, no!” He made to rush toward the dead man, but Taiana’s arm snapped out to catch him.
“He is gone, Kalil.” A mournful note echoed in her voice. “That is a wound from which even he will not heal.”
“B-But, Neroth…” the man stammered, and tears streamed down his face. “He can’t be—”
“But he is,” Taiana snapped, and her words had a hard edge. “And we will be, too, if we don’t move now.”
When Kalil’s eyes refused to leave the body of Neroth, Taiana grabbed the smaller man by the shoulders and shook him so hard his bronze armor rattled.
“Which way are they coming from?” she demanded.
This seemed to shake Kalil from his stupor. “N-North,” he said, blinking hard. “Two companies from the north, with another from the west.”
Taiana released the man with a curse. “We have to collect their spikestaffs and get out of sight before they surround us and cut off our escape.” She turned to the Hunter and held Soulhunger hesitantly out to him. “Can you move?”
The Hunter nodded as he took the blade. “Yes.” The single word was all he could muster. The glimpses he’d seen of Taiana in his memories hadn’t prepared him for this hard, commanding, almost soldier-like woman before him. She spoke with the voice of one accustomed to having her orders obeyed.
“Then we get the bloody hell out of here now.” She pointed to the newcomer. “Drayvin, this is Kalil. Kalil, Drayvin.”
The smaller man nodded, but said nothing else. Grief, an emotion the Hunter recognized all too well, shadowed his dark eyes.
Black eyes, the Hunter realized in shock. Eyes the same midnight void as his own, the same as Taiana’s.
The Hunter’s jaw dropped. The man and woman before him lacked the scent of rot and decay as the Abiarazi, but the eyes revealed the truth. Kalil and Taiana were Bucelarii, just like him.
His mind reeled at this discovery. How was it possible? He was the last of the Bucelarii, the only one of his kind left on Einan. The Cambionari had hunted the rest to extinction, until not even the Sage or the Warmaster could find any left alive to serve them. Yet here were two more not an arm’s reach away. Something in the way Taiana had spoken of Neroth’s healing abilities told him that the dead man had also been Bucelarii.
Three of us. The thought left him speechless. Three Bucelarii, right here in Enarium. Were there more? Was the city of Enarium home to more of his kind?
Another realization hit him and his gut tightened. Is he…? The Hunter had come to Enarium seeking his wife, who’d been with child the last time they met. Could this be that child? Our child? He studied the newcomer, searching for any resemblance between him and Taiana.
Taiana picked up the strange crossbow-looking weapon she’d taken from the dead blue-armored man, and at her instruction, Kalil helped her to strip the staves—spikestaffs, she’d called them—from the corpses.
“Let’s go,” Taiana commanded. She hesitated only long enough to glance at the dead Neroth before turning and running up the street.
The thought that the young Bucelarii could be his son—my son—rocked the Hunter to the core. Before he realized it, he was moving, following Taiana, his body working as his mind struggled to digest everything that was happening.
He’d fought off the Stone Guardians outside Enarium, and Sir Danna had died fighting by his side. When the monstrous stone-skinned brutes shattered her iron greatsword, he’d suffered a wound that had nearly killed him.
No, the iron’s poison did kill me. He remembered dying; not the worst experience, but not one he cared to repeat. And Taiana saved me.
She’d used Soulhunger to kill the warriors in their strange blue armor and, in consuming their souls, had cleansed the iron from his blood.
But who in the bloody hell are these warriors? Could they be the Elivasti Kalil had mentioned? Now that he thought of it, they had lacked any trace of scent, just like the Elivasti in Kara-ket. Why are they fighting the Bucelarii? And what were those weapons they carried? Those glowing runes set into their length could only have been Serenii, but he could never have imagined the Serenii created something that wrought such horrific death.
His survival instincts, honed over decades as an assassin, kicked in and shoved all the overwhelming information to the back of his mind. He had to focus on staying alive long enough so he could find Hailen and—
Hailen!
Fear spiked through him, and he skidded to a halt. He’d sent Hailen and Kiara racing toward Enarium as he fought off the Stone Guardians, but they couldn’t have reached the city more than ten or fifteen minutes ahead of him.
So where the hell are they?
Taiana glanced over her shoulder, then slowed as she saw him stop. “What are you doing?”
“The boy!” the Hunter demanded. “Where is he?”
“Now’s not the time to—”
“Where in the bloody hell is the boy?” The Hunter’s voice rose to a shout.
“What boy?” Taiana asked.
Dread sat like a rock in the Hunter’s gut. “The boy who entered Enarium shortly before me.”
“I saw no boy.” Taiana glanced at Kalil, who shook his head.
The Hunter’s blood turned to ice. Where could Hailen and Kiara have gone in the few minutes before I arrived? He’d seen no sign of them at the gate, nor anything to indicate what had happened to them.
“We need to find him!” The Hunter’s fists clenched. I can’t let anything happen to him, not again.
“We will.” Taiana’s response was curt, sharp. “But right now, we need to get the hell out of here!” She cast a glance up the street and spoke quickly. “The Elivasti will be here any second, and you saw what those weapons of theirs can do. The smart things are to get out of sight and get back to the others, then figure out how to find the boy.”
She took a step closer and gripped the Hunter’s hand. “But you have my word, Drayvin, we will do whatever it takes.”
The sound of his name knocked something loose in the Hunter’s mind, and a memory washed over him.
“You have my word, Drayvin, we’re getting through this alive, whatever it takes,” Taiana said, gripping his hand tighter.
Freezing cold rain splashed down around them in great droplets, turning the already churned earth to mud. Rivulets of red coursed past the Hunter a
s the falling water washed away the blood staining the field of battle.
“And when we do, are you finally going to answer my question, Captain?” he asked with a smile.
“Really, this again, Captain?” She tried to sound angry, but he could see a hint of a grin toying at her lips. “Now’s not the time for this, not with the humans gearing up for another attack.”
“I figure now’s the best time for it.” He squeezed her hand, which felt so warm and firm in his, blocking out the chill of the falling rain. “There’s a chance we don’t get through this, so I figured you’d better—”
“I accept, Captain Drayvin.” Her face broke into a smile, the same smile he’d fallen in love with all those months ago.
He swept her into his arms and kissed her with the ferocity of the emotions roiling with him. Being by her side had made the days of endless war worth it. Without her, he’d never have survived. His father, the Abiarazi general, would have—
“Drayvin!” Taiana’s shout snapped him from the memory. “We need to move, now, but we will find the boy.”
“Good enough,” the Hunter forced out, though the words seemed to catch in his throat. He fell into step behind her as she raced up the street, and again shoved down the distracting thoughts and conflicting emotions churned up by the latest memory. He had to focus on escaping the Elivasti, on surviving.
For now. When the Elivasti were no longer a threat, he would get the answers he’d crossed a continent to find.
Chapter Two
Even as he raced through Enarium, the Hunter couldn’t help marveling at the splendor of the Serenii city. The streets were paved, not by individual stones joined together by mortar, but a single unbroken sea of white rock. Houses with one, two, and three floors bordered the roads, all made from the same white, red, and grey stone of the Empty Mountains.
In Kara-ket, the Sage had spoken of the Serenii enslaving humans, yet this looked more like the humans had lived in Enarium. The grand towers had to belong to the long-dead race, but perhaps these smaller structures had served as homes for early men.
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