Blue Words

by M. C. Edwards

  I soon had my retribution, but even more important than my own needs, I had eliminated the threat and contained whatever the other......thing was. Though, in a bizarre twist, I actually found myself pitying the creature. Its torment at its father’s demise was more heartfelt than I had expected, almost human. I even decided I could not issue the master insult I had saved. It would be too cruel and far beyond reconciling my own loss. You see, two days earlier a young woman had come to me with knowledge of Gudrik, begging me to kill the Warlock and pledging herself to me in repayment. Her name was Elya. I felt it gentler to tell it I killed her. No man, human or not deserves the dagger of his most beloved wishing his demise. I never took her to my bed, but she did bear me the first nest of Swords.

  So what next? Should the amulet ever be removed, darkness would once again take the world. Should Gudrik ever be killed, a new unmeasured threat would rise. Someone would need to guard the hibernating monster.

  The weight of its defence could not be placed upon the shoulders of generations who had never seen its wrath. I was chosen to unseat it from power; perhaps it was I who was intended to be the people’s guardian. The thoughts weighed me down, heavier than any armour. Hour upon hour I sat, watching the sleeping demon. As long as I thought, compared and reasoned, only one option seemed to show itself, one option that would leave me no better than the beast.

  I made a vow. To shield the innocent from darkness, warriors of the light are sometimes forced to taint themselves. I sacrificed my soul and I sacrificed my salvation, heaven’s gate would be forever closed to me. That night I began my new life, a damned life, a corrupted life, a forsaken life. I fed for the first time on the demon’s blood. It turned my stomach, thick, warm and salty. I threw up the first dose, but I persisted. The second time I forced myself to keep it down. It became a practice which I repeated for centuries stretching my life to an ungodly length.

  The church paid me handsomely for my achievement, the seed which my empire sprouted from, but they disavowed all knowledge of my new quest, leaving it to fade into the gloom of history and myth. It mattered not. I would live, the earth’s secret protector, ever vigilante for Warlock threats. I was dubbed the Forsaken Guardian. My ever loyal knights were promoted to paladins. The five swore to live out eternity with me and would have happily gone to hell at my side, I forbade it. One corrupted soul is enough sacrifice for this cause. Instead, as a tribute to them I continued to tend their bloodlines through the centuries, upholding the honourable warrior traditions they lived by, keeping their lines strong and healthy. It was the least I could do for the loyalest of friends.

  Of course there were always opponents to my new position. A group calling themselves The Inscribed arose. Valiant warriors I would have been proud to call allies under different circumstances. One of the Warlocks poisoned their skin, brainwashing them as his servants. It was unfortunate that their dedication and loyalty blinds them to the evil of their cause. I have crushed them brutally and mercilessly at every incursion, not an act I enjoy, but my duty is clear and has always out shone my compassion.

  For an eternity I stood as the Forsaken Guardian, shielding the world from.....it....the relic. It was a duty which the masses were completely oblivious to. I battled addiction, the blood was truly a poison laced with long life. By the time I fought myself free of its hold and learnt to manage it, the world I had fought so hard to protect had found itself in a steady state of decline. It was decline on a scale which I was powerless to stop, a complete paradise to cesspit transition. Global society was being crushed and raped by one form of civil libertarian after another until eventually no one was forced to contribute and no one was responsible for their actions. My father always said, “A man who searches for others to blame is the worst type of coward.” Respect for fellow man had disappeared. The other inhabitants of the world seemed all but oblivious to it. I guess their life span was so short it simply didn’t register for them until their autumn years.

  I soon realised that this social collapse was a threat that loomed even greater than the Warlock. To my eyes, the problem was clear, again change needed a catalyst, in this case fear.....a threat the world could unite against. Not until men are faced with certain death do they forget their differences and turn to each other. Not Gudrik though, he could never be controlled. No, to truly fix the world, what I required was the ability to instil that fear myself. I finally understood my role, my purpose. I needed to become that common enemy.

  I hope the magnitude of this is not lost when I’m gone, I chose to become what I hated most in order to create a world where good can flourish. My soul was damned anyway; why not take the corruption further? Alas to do that I needed to learn a dead language. I had two words, they were not enough. Yet, in a sign which confirmed my course of action, I realised that I had already been provided my answer, the Heir.

  I have fathered many illegitimate children. I was rich, I was powerful and my mind was clouded by addiction. Women came easy. For a long time I forgot my beliefs. Over my centuries many of these offspring made themselves known, all proved less than worthy of my name and their line was ended, until one appeared which showed potential. This offspring showed initiative. This offspring showed faith and humility. I soon realised that this offspring could also offer an opportunity, a partnership.

  My part was to unlock the properties of the blood. Not an easy feat by any means, in fact for an age it would have been impossible, but fortune shone. Mankind’s understanding of the world began to develop and increase at a rate which I had never seen before, a rate matched only by society’s decline. I devoted my immense fortune to locating and recruiting the greatest minds in genetic and blood research, an act which eventually yielded a breakthrough.

  A symbiotic parasite was discovered, the agent which gave the blood cells their vivid blue colour. The agent I prayed gave them their abilities. It was something which modern science had never seen, a living particle which possessed none of the properties of life, a functioning contradiction. The unique “paradox” as it became known was separated from samples of the creature’s blood and grafted to my own.

  So here I am, halfway there, preparing for my end, and it seems that the relic has life in it still. It has escaped back into the world, but so far has lain low and hidden. No doubt it harbours a grudge against the world which scorned it long ago. If it stays down, maybe I should let it be. It really has no concept of just how insignificant it is. The grafting process has worked. I no longer have to feed on it and that damned amulet affects me as if I were one of them anyway. Best leave it and what ever it holds within to the torture of an eternal outcast life.

  I need only the language to truly unleash my fear and finally end this feeble excuse for life. Once it happens things will change hard and fast, so fast that there will be no time for explanation. That is why I leave this. I don’t know what will happen to my mind, but my paladins will end me when the time comes. Until then it seems I must endure the disgrace of corrupted blue filth being pumped around my body.

  I do what I do for the world. My life for the people. Let it be my legacy.

  I am Kyran.

  Part II

  The Hunt

  “Hunters can become prey in the blink of an eye.”

  “Bloody Hell and you guys think I party too hard?” boomed Crave in his thick Scottish accent. He tip toed between congealed puddles of blood and huddles of twisted flesh; the flies were thick. Neasa and Teefa were silent as they took in the scene of slaughter.

  “Check the bodies. Are there any of us here?” Teefa ordered, snapping everyone to task.

  Brood wandered in to see what the commotion was, “Baiser Tout!”

  “Brood!” came Teefa’s cry. “Go around the front. Check the bodies to see if there are any of us.” He took one gruesome scan of the room and obeyed. Brood streaked around the side of the house and brushed the flies from the group of corpses. He glanced at the gaunt faces of the throat-less men. “Not us.” He thought with reli
ef before pursuing the trail of dead to the beach.

  The others soon finished their search and followed the carnage to the ocean after Brood. They found him standing in front of a blackened patch of ash and sand. Bodies lined the water’s edge, gulls picking at them, still but for the gentle roll of incoming waves. In a very un-Broodish act he had his head slouched and Teefa even thought she saw a tear glisten upon his cheek. Jabbed into the sand in front of him stood a cross, though it was no religious symbol. Glimmering steel ran up from the sand to the leather wrapped hilt of a sword.

  “Ah, Paw you mute old bastard, may maidens bath you in wine in the next world,” said Crave at the sight of Paw’s prize possession. His untamed red mane danced in the breeze. He was a hard, crooked looking man, not cut and defined like Dorian, but certainly well muscled. He sported a suit of Inscribed armour which spilled from his sleeveless shirt and coursed around his arms. Tangles of script also crawled up his neck, where they hid amongst his unkempt red beard.

  An Inscribed member since before Paw, but after Teefa, he had in the past centuries drifted from the group, not in a traitorous fashion though. You see Crave had earned his name. It was not his true name of course. Like Paw and Brood, he once had another name, a name which was a string of Gaelic sounds that no others could master. A string of nicknames had long since taken their place.

  Long ago Crave had discovered that his agelessness allowed him to partake endlessly in all manner of intoxicants. Pipe weed, alcohol, exotic cactus juices and mushroom teas were all favourites, but it was the opium dens of nineteenth century London which had been his undoing. Visions, hallucinations, spirit journeys, they were all things which Crave....well....craved. For he had the ability to sculpt light and engineer visions or illusions. When high, an illusion sculpted for himself was so concentrated and realistic that he felt and experienced it as though it were reality. His abilities combined with psychotropic drugs could create spectacular experiences, things which were only fantasy to most. For a time he had much preferred his sculpted worlds to the one which reality provided.

  “Looks like the attack was moved forward,” said Neasa, flicking tears from her eyes.

  “Do we follow?” asked Brood.

  “What, and end up storming through any carefully laid plans they may have?” replied Teefa sternly. “You know as well as I do that us showing up un-briefed and ill-informed could do far more harm than good. Plus we have four hours travel to even get there. You smelt the bodies, they are not fresh. This has been in motion for some time.” She thought for a moment. “We wait. We clean up.”

  Crave stared at the beautiful seventeen year old frame barking orders at him, dominating him.

  “Is anyone else hard at the moment?” he boomed. Brood slowly raised his hand and a filthy smirk crept across his face. Disgusted by the kindred spirits, Teefa and Neasa rolled their eyes and stormed up the trail.

  To a regular mortal the flippancy which the group paid to Paw’s demise might seem heartless or uncaring. But these people had seen so much death in their time, more than any others alive today (with the exception perhaps of Gudrik) could comprehend. They also followed the old beliefs, as had Paw. They had glimpsed what they believed to be signs of the other realms and believed, without fail, that there was a better world waiting for them after death. He had not gone, only transitioned in their eyes. Whether it was true or not was of no consequence, either way the thought made charging into battle a much less terrifying prospect.

  The four Inscribed stripped anything of use from the fallen, before burning them. Not on the same spot as Paw though. These enemies were warriors and deserved funeral rights, but they would never sully Paw’s resting place with this scum. They then set about cleaning the red from the home.

  “Do I clean this?” asked Brood, staring down at Gudrik’s wheel of glyphs. Crave walked over and joined him staring down at it.

  “Have you read it brother?”

  “Baiser tout, I hate reading spirit tongue, it takes so long,” he whined.

  “It’s an exit glyph lad, rub that out and I am guessing, they will end up as ash on the low road.”

  It wasn’t long until the home once again looked as it should. The bodies smouldered on the beach leaching thick plumes of smoke into the sky and leaving a heavy stench in the air. The group sat in the living area, chatting amongst themselves, reacquainting with the prodigal son. The talk was pleasant, but the mood was not relaxed. All were on guard, eyes darting in the direction of each murmur, whisper or creak. Crave was telling a tale of his travels in Southeast Asia, when the sudden emergence of two bodies shunted them all to their feet.

  Ami lay still, the only movement seen, the rise and fall of her chest, a welcomed sight. Malaki on the other hand seemed unharmed other than a generous smearing of blood. He soon shook the disorientation of void travel and stood on his own. “Where are the others?” asked Neasa urgently. Teefa and Brood moved Ami to a mattress in the small bedroom.

  “They’re all fine, still searching for the little one. Tabitha was taken,” he replied grimly. Relief and concern fought for dominance at the news, concern won.

  “So the girl is alive? When we found the state of the safe house I.......I feared the worst,” said Neasa.

  Malaki shrugged before blurting, “Gudrik defeated Kyran.” The room fell into silent shock. “If he’s not already dead, he will be shortly.”

  Neasa made Malaki a cup of tea and handed it to him. As she walked away Crave rattled a small hip flask at him and Malaki gratefully held his cup out to have his tea seasoned. They shared a brief nod of greeting and proceeded to talk as though they had been apart days rather than decades. Time truly is relative to the length of one’s life.

  The chatter of the room was soon interrupted once again. George lay on the floor in front of them, sprawled across the exit glyphs, blubbering inconsolably as smoke rose off her back. Teefa and Brood leapt to her aid, helping her to her feet. At the sight of them she quickly nuzzled into Teefa, continuing to sob. Teefa uncomfortably patted her back and looked to Neasa for help. The outcome of the search was clear.

  A darkness engulfed the room. All were silent. Even Crave, who understood little of what was happening, felt the magnitude of the tragedy. In time Kahn, then Dorian followed. George was huddled between Teefa and Neasa on one of the large timber benches in the kitchen. Teefa rubbed her back in what for her was a touching show of affection, while the gentler, more empathetic Neasa whispered sweet words of comfort to her and clenched her hands tightly. Kahn eyed Crave coldly. “My house, my rules, understood?” he said. Crave nodded. “Welcome back,” Kahn continued, his gaze warming.

  Brood watched the glyphs, waiting for the final member of the team. “He will not be following,” said Kahn, noticing his attentions. No more was said on the matter, the Inscribed simply set about putting the pieces of George’s shattered life back together, for she was one of them now. Despite victory in their thousand year war, despite the prodigal familiar’s return, there was no feast, no mead and no celebration that night.

  A week passed, the grief did not. Nor did the hatred George heaped upon Gudrik. At the mere mention of his name George would grunt in distain or spit on the ground. So soon they stopped talking about him completely. Gently Kahn broached the subject of a feast to celebrate the death of their enemy. It was ill timing for her, but a turning point had been passed in the Inscribed’s existence. George saw no issue with it; she harboured no blame toward the Inscribed. Paw had died trying to protect her and Tabitha after all. “I get it,” she said, picking at the half healed slashes on her face. You fought that asshole for centuries. I get that you have all lost loved ones as well. While I mourn Tabitha’s death, I think I can still celebrate his.”

  So planning for the feast began. A large fire pit was constructed out of stone with a large spit extending across it. Brood, Crave and Dorian hunted for wild pig in the cane paddocks a short journey west of the beach house. Kahn tended to his precious vegetables wi
th Malaki’s assistance, harvesting their produce while the four women fished and dived for seafood. George once again began to smile when distraction allowed it, but absent that distraction, she was still as dark and cold as night stone.

  When the day of the feast came, everyone rose with the sun. Dorian and Ami in their small private bedroom, George and Kahn on mattresses in the common area. Malaki and Crave were slouched in chairs on the verandah. Teefa and Neasa were nestled in the shed slung in their giant hammock while Brood was sprawled on the grass outside the shed; just on the off chance he might catch a glimpse of the girls should they decide to become intimate.

  There was much to do. They prepared the table and chairs, lit the fire and tapped a new keg of mead. The boar had been skinned and hung the day before. The men were just preparing to stake it when a presence was noticed at the corner of the drunken shed. It was a young man; he could have been no older than his mid thirties. Kahn recognised him from the town about thirty minutes drive away. He must have wandered down from the trails which snake through the surrounding hills and farms. He eyed all the faces and clutched his hunting rifle close.

  “Greetings friend,” said Kahn, firm yet friendly. The man looked back at him. He was nervous and jittery, his eyes darted. Kahn whistled loudly.

  “D-don’t move any of you. You are all going to come with me,” he stuttered loudly, the rifle shaking with his hands. Even with the firearm there was little intimidating about him.

  “Why?” blurted Crave loudly. As he stood his intimidating frame became the target of the intruder’s rifle. Malaki and Brood stayed crouched by the boar, but their glare was no less intimidating.

  “You’re the Warlock’s men,” said the visitor, “Your blood’s worth a fortune.”

  “What? To who?” asked Kahn. His eyes went back to Kahn, but the gun stayed on Crave.