by E. M. Knight
As I walk over the familiar ground, I find myself looking with fondness upon the peaceful landscape. There is tranquility here. And that inner calmness, the rock-solid steadiness, is what I’d learned to adopt as a part of me whenever I wield the sword.
My feet lead me to my old training grounds. I stand in the middle of the sand pit and fill my lungs with the fresh, pure, clean night air. Nothing out here but me and my sword. Nothing out here but the path to mastery.
I strip out of my shirt, unsheathe my weapon, and begin the slow, patterned dance of the Katta.
Within minutes my legs are burning, my arms heavy, and my back lined with sweat. But I chose the hardest of the Kattas for a reason:
After losing myself in the flesh of a woman, I wanted to do the same thing with the sword.
Each of my movements is slow, controlled, precise. I close my eyes and focus only on my muscles. My mind forms a link with them, an otherworldly type of awareness that I summon in battle on a dime.
It is the secret of what makes me so skilled. Many claim to be able to connect with their weapon. Few know how to do it while connecting with themselves.
The minutes blur together and soon become hours. One passes, then two, then three. Exhaustion set in long ago, but this dance takes nearly four hours to execute from beginning to end. I do not allow myself a single mistake. If I were to make one, I would start right over, no matter how I feel.
That is the type of discipline that separates me from the rest.
But I make it through to the end without failure. Then, once I’ve held the final pose for the required amount of time, I let go of my weapon, release the ball of sensation in my mind, and let all the fatigue I’ve kept bundled up crash into my body.
It hits me in an instant, and it hits me hard. My knees give way first. I drop to the ground, so slick with sweat I must look like I’ve just emerged from a lake.
I lumber onto my back. I spread my arms and open my eyes and stare into the sky, satiating in the raw, exhausted feeling crippling my body.
It takes some time before I feel strong enough to sit up. As I do, my stomach muscles contract almost painfully to complete the movement. I roll my head from side to side, stretching, then with a great heave haul myself up and regain my feet.
I turn back toward the village—and alarm grips my insides.
There is smoke on the horizon.
It’s only starting to billow, but its source is obvious. It’s coming from the huts I’d left behind.
Cursing, I start to run. But I know my body well enough to know that if I push at breakneck speed I’ll collapse before I get halfway. I hate holding back, but I force myself to slow to a trot. As I get nearer, the trot becomes a brisk walk.
Now I’m in the trees. I cannot see far ahead of me, but if I turn my eyes to the sky the smoke is only getting worse.
I pull my sword out and crouch low as I get nearer and nearer. The smell of burning wood reaches my nostrils. That is not what concerns me most.
The absolute silence is.
Nobody is screaming. Nobody is yelling. Even though the sun is coming up, not a single bird sings. The forest seems almost dead in its solitude.
That does not bode well for me.
I cross the final distance, keeping eyes and ears open for enemies. I emerge from the last line of trees and see the sight I’ve been dreading the whole journey back.
My entire village is in flames.
I give a guttural roar of indomitable rage and rush forward. I don’t care who sees me or who hears me. If there are archers posted as sentries, let them shoot me down.
Yet I do not think they would be as cowardly as that.
I break past the first line of houses. The buildings burn.
Where are all of my people?
Picking a door at random, I kick it in. The wood crashes against the floor. More of that acrid black smoke streams out. Coughing, I put my elbow over my mouth and plunge inside.
The entire floor is abandoned. I break into the bedroom. The bed is empty, the floor aflame. Cursing again at the intolerable heat, I rush out.
Only seconds after I emerge the roof groans and collapses. My heart is beating fast. Had I lingered even a moment longer…
I don’t have time to worry on what might be or what would happen. I race from door to door, yelling for my people, breaking down the entrances where they are closed, looking through broken gaps where parts of the structures already fell.
But all of it is the same. I find no one. Nobody responds to my call.
I am too tired, too dazed, too confused to comprehend why.
Finally, I reach my own little shack. The worst of the conflagration is behind me; still, the edges of the hut smoke just slightly. For whatever reason, the fire has spared most of my home.
I put a shoulder into the door and shove it open.
When I see the sight before me, the shock is too much. I drop to my knees and let my sword fall from my hand. I cannot even muster the strength to wail in sorrow.
Each one of the villagers is bound here. None are alive.
They’ve all had their tongues cut out and their bodies impaled on strange metal posts. The scent of death is still fresh.
Blood soils the floor.
Men, women, children—none have been spared. I see the faces of the ones I'd traveled with. I find the woman I'd left in my bed. They're all here, and they've all been brutally murdered.
Who would do such a thing? Why?
As my wits slowly come back to me I realize the bodies are arranged in a pattern. They haven't just randomly been impaled. With hanging heads and limbs outstretched, they all point to a single spot.
The other door.
The one leading to the yard.
A cold rush of anger sweeps over me. My hand digs into the bloodied soil to pick up my sword. My fingers grip the hilt hard.
The fire continues to cackle behind me, but I know it will not spread. Whoever did this wanted me to see. They wanted me to find this horror.
I push myself up. My body draws on its final reserve of strength. I plod through the middle of the floor, toward that last door. I reach it and heft my weapon in my hands.
Whatever is waiting on the other side will not be pretty. But having just lost everything the way I did?
I am willing to face any horror.
With one foot, I push the door open.
It creaks on the hinge.
And there, standing in the middle of the dewy meadow is… a woman.
She’s wearing a back shawl but her feminine form is unmistakable. She’s faced away from me, still as a statue. Only the billows of the bottom of her dress give any movement to her form.
My eyes narrow in suspicion. This has to be a trap.
Yet as I scan the surroundings I find nobody else. The clearing around her is completely empty. Its tranquility is at odds with the hell from which I’d just emerged.
I take a cautious, weighted step forward.
Immediately, the ground seems to shift. I lose my balance and go down hard.
The woman laughs. It’s a soft, nebulous sound.
Then she turns back to face me.
I blink and try to clear my vision. My eyes are playing tricks on me, because I can’t help but see this blue aura surrounding her. It’s almost like an angel’s glow, a full-body halo.
But I am not one to believe in God. I chalk the vision up to pure exhaustion.
I try to stand. But as soon as I plant my other leg, the ground shifts again. All my coordination is lost, and I go tumbling down.
Once more the woman laughs. “Is that all you have?” she asks, her voice soft and mocking. “A pity. I’d expected so much more.”
“Who are you?” I grunt. The shadows of her hood prevent me from seeing the top half of her face. I’d almost go so far as to say that darkness is unnatural, but—once again—I have no faith in the occult.
And yet that blue nimbus continues to surround her.
�
�You don’t know?” she asks. She steps toward me. Her feet don’t seem to fully touch the ground as she walks.
Again I try standing, and again, the earth harshly shifts. I cannot get upright.
But the shift does not affect the woman. With a start I realize that it’s not the ground that’s changing—but my perception of it.
What the hell is happening to me?
“You mustn’t bother,” she says. “I have no intention of letting you up.”
“You’re doing this?” I growl. I cannot hide the incredulity of my words.
“Yes, me, who else?” the woman asks. Her lips are slender but full and they form a pitying sort of smile. “Were you expecting an army?”
Again I reach for my sword. But now I am like a drunk. My hand juts out to where I expect it to be. It finds nothing but dirt and earth.
“Really, now,” she says, coming even closer. “You mustn’t try to fight. If I wanted you dead, warrior, I would have killed you like I did the rest.”
I spit to the side in defiance. “I’d like to see you try.”
Suddenly the glow intensifies, and an invisible force crashes into me. It knocks me back so far that I hit the outer wall of the house.
My sword is now completely out of reach.
The woman’s hand juts out. I can barely believe my eyes as my sword is lifted up and drawn to her hand. It floats through the air, as if pulled by strings of…
Magic.
The crushing force continues to press down on my chest, pinning me to the wall. All my muscles struggle against it, but it is as if I am bound by iron chains. I cannot break through whatever it is that’s holding me.
And the woman approaches, surrounded by that horrible, mocking blue halo, holding my weapon.
“How I wish you would have been here when it happened,” she says. “How I wish you could have heard them scream, and cry, and beg for their miserable lives.” She comes close enough that I can touch her, and kneels down at my side.
Now I know the shadows are unnatural. Even from this close, I see nothing but darkness past her lips.
“I killed the children last,” she confides. “I gathered them all up, all of your pathetic people, and made them watch as I set fire to their homes. Some tried to fight.” She shakes her head. “They were the ones who died first.”
I strain with all the strength given to me, but I cannot move an inch.
“Then I picked the parents off, one-by-one.” She plucks at a loose strand in her sleeve. “I wanted to feel the children’s fear, I wanted them to know the warrior they so worshipped had failed them.”
“Who are you?” I rasp. The words grind out of me.
She ignores the question as she brings her face close enough that I can feel her breath on my skin.
“The youngest died last,” she whispers. “And their final moments on this earth were filled with stark terror.”
I roar in an absolute rage, fighting against the bonds, and the force… snaps.
It snaps, it gives, and for a glorious moment I’m free. The woman gasps in alarm, but she does not move fast enough. The light around her winks out at the same time.
With my nearest hand I grab her by the neck. Her hood falls back, revealing a girl of no more than seventeen.
I don’t care. I wrench my sword out of her grip and am just about to plunge it through her chest when the light explodes again, and I am thrown viciously back.
Now she advances on me in a rage. “You dare?” she cries out. “You dare raise your hand against me?”
The shadows are back, her hood is up once more, and darkness swirls around her like a pulsating miasma. The sky seems to darken overhead.
I lift my head up—the only part of my body unbound by that force. Clouds are gathering above us. They come with such speed that I know she is responsible for them.
Rain pours down, an absolute torrent, and douses all the flames in the village. In seconds we’re drenched. The darkness extends out from her and seems to cloud the whole sky, though whether that is another illusion or the truth, I do not know.
“See my power, you fool!” she cries. Lightning flashes above her. “Who can call upon the elements but I? Who has taken the steps necessary to ensure eternal youth but me?”
She sounds crazy, maddened, deranged. It’s all I can do not to look away. My eyes are drawn to her like moths to a flame.
It’s not just the things I’m seeing that are astounding. It’s her strength. I’ve come upon worthy adversaries before, and all of them have always radiated a certain presence, an absolute conviction in themselves and their talents and their abilities.
None hold a candle to what this girl is showing me now.
The rain falls in a cascade of fat, thick drops. I realize with a start that her robe is not getting wet. It doesn’t simply repel the rain—it seems to absorb it, to suck it up and thicken as it does.
Now I know I have gone insane.
But the girl—the woman—continues to advance on me. “I let you live so you could spread the word of what happens when you steal from a witch clan. The last town you raided belonged to me. The jewelry, the stones, the coin you took all belonged to me.”
She throws her hand out as if using a whip, and a sudden, crippling lash slams against my legs. I feel the skin and muscles tear with the slice.
She laughs. The glow about her deepens. An invisible noose wraps around my ankles, and I’m suddenly picked up, and flung again against the house.
I hit it with tremendous force. The air goes out of my lungs. A horrific pain explodes through my body.
Bones crack and break.
As I slide to the ground, I realize vaguely that I have lost all feeling in my legs. She approaches me, triumphant in her victory. “There are stories told about you, you know,” she whispers. The clouds part, the rain lets up, and sunlight filters in. “Tales of the great seven-foot warrior. The master with the blade.”
She gives a sad smile. “Unfortunately, it looks like all of that has come to an end. I didn’t want you dead. But, in the condition you’re in, how will you live?”
She shakes her head. “Too bad magic does not heal. Otherwise, I would—oh, who am I kidding?” She giggles in maddened glee. “I would leave you there as you are even if it could heal!”
She turns away. The force holding me down ebbs away. But I can do nothing with my now-ruined body.
“Good-bye, great warrior,” she says. “I had hoped that you would be the first to start the tales about me.”
She walks away.
I fight through all the overwhelming pain to call out, “Wait!”
She stops. She turns. Her lips quirk up in bemusement.
“Yes?”
“I would like to know.” I grunt. “Who it is that bested me.”
She gives a sudden, radiant smile. “My name is Cierra,” she says. “And my legend has just begun.”
Chapter Four
Dagan
I give a start as I break from my reverie.
Cierra… the witch… her name matters not. That was the day that solidified my hatred of all things to do with magic. While I always had a cold heart, I would never have done what that witch did to any village. I may have raided and killed, even without discrimination, but I would never have tortured anyone so. I would never have, as a human, or now, as a vampire, gloried in the fear I can pull out of others.
But that witch was different. She was truly deranged.
I’ve wondered, from time to time, what ultimately became of her. Our paths never crossed again, although I swore, as I lay there with my back broken and my life seeping out of me, that if I somehow survived, I would get my revenge.
The sun peaked high overhead that noon, cast in a cloudless sky.
Three full days had passed since the massacre of my village. Three days where somehow, I’ve managed to hold on just enough to life to not yet succumb.
I dip in and out of feverish states. When my eyes close and I descend into
sleep, I think I can hear the screams of the children as the witch killed their parents. I imagine their cries as they watched, helpless, as she cut the tongues out, one-by-one.
Had she really meant to spare me? Or was it simply luck that I had decided to wander off in the clearing that night?
No matter. I grow weaker by the hour. The small puddle of water at my side has long-since been contaminated with the blood of the killed villagers. The stench of death, of decay, of decomposition wafts from inside.
In and out I go, in and out, in and out, certain that the next time I close my eyes will be the final one.
But somehow my body refuses to give in. Maybe it’s the determination I feel, the absolute hatred I have, directed at the woman and all of her spawn. I was never one to believe in magic, but I saw what she could do with my own eyes.
Somebody has to know. Somebody has to take up arms against such an abomination of nature.
Night comes. The fever gripping me reaches unbearable heights. I’m burning up. It is the one thing that actually masks the horrific pain.
Perhaps, in an ironic way, it is the only thing still keeping me alive.
But the weakness is now so great that I have absolutely no doubt: I will not live to see the sun.
All the hate, all the determination, all the empty vows and promises in the world cannot save me from the reaper.
At this point, my suffering is so great that I would welcome the sweet embrace of death.
At some point I realize that the moon has been lost behind a great cloud. I squint into the night but see absolutely nothing. A chill washes through me, contrasting against the constant heat.
Next thing I know, there is a man standing beside me.
At first I do not believe my eyes. I chalk his appearance up to a fever-dream. But when he kneels down and touches a hand to my forehead, I know that he is real.
His hand is cold. It is ice cold. So much so that it actually eases some of the fever I feel.
Another chill runs through me, this one more acute than the last.
