Along the Razor's Edge (The War Eternal Book 1)

by Rob J. Hayes

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Lessons

  Chapter 1

  Pre-order The Lessons Never Learned now

  Newsletter

  Books by Rob J Hayes

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Along the Razor's Edge

  (Book 1 of The War Eternal)

  By

  Rob J. Hayes

  Prologue

  My life began the day we lost the war.

  I remember seeing the fire go out of Josef's eyes. I remember seeing my oldest friend give up and surrender. "Eskara, STOP! It's over. We've lost."

  We were surrounded by enemies, standing atop the tallest tower of Fort Vernan. The city around us was chaos, a battle played out in the darkest shades of red. Beyond the city was a scorched ruin, fields turned black by fire and war.

  "It's not over!" I screamed, a shard of ice forming in one hand while the other burst into green flame. "We can take them. We are the Emperor's Weapons." Oh, the over-confidence of youth, before the hammer and anvil of time and reality have beaten us into whatever shape society demands.

  I remember twenty men and women surrounding us, though my memory is fuzzy from rage. Perhaps it was more like ten. Some were warriors with glowing armour, enchanted to deflect magic. Others were Sourcerers like Josef and I. Well, not quite like us. We were beyond them. In our prime. Each with five Sources lending us power.

  "It's over," Josef said again, grabbing my arm and pointing.

  Down below, on the field of battle I could see the two armies clashing; crashing against each other. Horns sounded over the din, echoing up to our ears. And I saw flags falling. The tell-tale blue blur of a Chronomancer darting between units, relaying the orders. Our soldiers laying down their arms.

  Josef was right, the order had been given to surrender. It might not have reached us yet, so high up, but it would. After ten years of war the Orran empire was crumbling.

  I didn't know it then, but the emperor was dead. While the battle raged at our door and I rained down five types of bloody hell upon our enemy, they had infiltrated the palace and ended the Orran bloodline once and for all.

  "Stand down," ordered one of the Terrelan soldiers. His armour was silver with etched runes glowing pink. There was fear on his face, as well there should have been. I saw it there and smiled. We had already killed so many of his comrades. They were right to fear me.

  The sky was on fire, blood red showing behind the grey clouds, lightning rippling overhead and thunder rattling the earth. A Meteomancer beating out a dramatic ending to the ten-year war.

  There are times in life when it is wise to lay down and accept defeat. It is a lesson Josef learned early on in his life. I was, as always, the slower learner.

  "No! I will not lay down and..." My mouth fumbled out a strangled cry as Josef hit me from behind, and the world went bright for a moment. The next thing I remember, I was down on my hands and knees, staring at stone the colour of ash. It was rough to the touch and cold despite the battle. I have always been attuned to temperature. Pyromancy was the first school I mastered and remains one of my most proficient.

  When I looked up, I saw a woman rushing towards me, she wore Terrelan robes and her eyes glowed green with her magic. I felt a wave of hopelessness wash over me, quashing my will to fight.

  Hands grabbed hold of me from behind and pulled me up to stare at the woman with the glowing eyes. She reached into a pouch hanging from her belt and pulled out a clump of brown weed. I clenched my jaw shut and struggled against the hands holding me, but I was not strong enough. My power lay in magic, not brute strength.

  Fingers pushed into my cheeks so hard I felt them puncture the skin. They forced my mouth open and shoved the weed inside. Then there was a hand underneath my jaw, clamping my mouth shut. The taste was bitter and spicy all at once, so hot it burned my tongue and made my eyes water.

  Too late, I thought to use magic. With a surge of power, I ignited my hands into searing green flame. Those holding me screamed and fell away. I leapt back to my feet just as the first wave of vertigo hit. The world turned upside down and then wobbled, finally righting itself with a violent shake. I was back on my hands and knees again, the green flame guttering out even as I watched.

  You can't control the retching once it starts. Spiceweed is potent stuff. Within moments I was hacking up the contents of my stomach while struggling to breathe. My first Source hit the floor in pool of acidic vomit. It held a faint orange glow, already fading. I felt my connection to fire fade with it.

  The second Source to go was my connection to the Other World. It was larger than the others with hard edges, and bringing it back up was beyond painful. Somewhere above, I knew the hellions I had summoned would tear free of their bondage and fly away. Unleashed monsters are a blight on the world, but a few monsters to hunt down are less dangerous than I with a Source in my stomach.

  My last three Sources I vomited up as well, each with a sticky coating of blood. They were snatched away as soon as I retched them onto the floor. I was exhausted. Bringing up Sources has always been that way for me. It takes such effort, as though my body refuses to let go of the power even once it starts to hurt me. And it has hurt me. Many times.

  I lay there on the rooftop of the tallest tower of Fort Vernan, in a pool of my own vomit and blood. Beaten. Stripped of my power. And so fucking angry! My hands were pulled behind my back and I felt rope wrap around them. A distant discomfort I barely registered as the misery of my defeat rose up to claim me.

  At just fifteen years old, I had fought in the greatest war mankind has ever known. I had been one of Orran's most powerful Sourcerers, celebrated by our allies and feared by our enemies. I had helped bring prosperity to my emperor's lands, destruction to his foes. And now I was a prisoner, my power gone with my Sources. There was only one place the Terrelans would send a prisoner as valuable as I– the Pit.

  Chapter 1

  You may think it strange I start my story there, at the end of the great war. The truth is, my part in that war was small and insignificant; a few skirmishes, some fire in the night, one battle lost before it even began. I may have been there at the end, but I missed the great war. It's probably a good thing. The young and innocent are usually the first casualties of any conflict. Though I was already far from innocent.

  Before that, I grew up sheltered in the Orran Academy of Magic. Food, lodgings, education; all was provided for me. It was not an easy life, never that. The training we Sourcerers are put through is a harrowing experience, especially for one as young as I. That's not to say I don't have some storie
s to tell about my time there. I was always in one type of trouble or another. I believe the tutors liked to describe me as challenging. Often a bad influence on others, especially Josef.

  No, I start my story at the end of the war for good reason. I consider that the time where my life began in earnest. It was after the war, after everything had been taken from me, that I had to stand on my own for the first time. It was down in the Pit where I found a purpose for my existence, a reason for living. I'm not about to claim that retribution is a wholesome purpose, but then my life has never been that. Friend and enemy alike have long referred to me as the Corpse Queen, and it is a name I bloody well earned.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself. I choose to start my story in the Pit. Down there, I was surrounded by monsters, some terran and some not. Down there, I made friendships that would last a lifetime, and enemies that would last even longer. I was raised in the luxury of the Orran Academy of Magic, but I grew up in the squalor of the Pit.

  Three months into my incarceration, and I had fallen into a routine of sorts. I slept near Josef, as much for protection as for loyalty. We had been together since our first day at the Orran Academy of Magic and I loved him more than I ever did my own flesh and blood brother. Even after he helped the Terrelans capture me, I loved Josef. I know he did it to save our lives; we would have died up there on the tower if not for him stopping my retaliation. Even so, part of me hated him for the betrayal. I sometimes entertained dreams of smothering him in his sleep. I'll admit I was a little confused back then.

  There is no true day or night cycle down in the Pit. At least not as far down as we worked. After three months of not seeing the sky, nor a single ray of natural light, I began to forget what they looked like. I tried to picture the sky in my mind every day and all I could see was rough-hewn rock lit by greasy lamplight. The world is a miserable place down in the Pit, but then prisons are not meant to be cheerful.

  We worked, slept, and ate in shifts and I lost all sense of time. I relied on the internal clock of my body to wake me for work and learned early on not to be late. The foreman's punishments were particularly harsh, and the mouldy arsehole was not shy in handing them out.

  Josef and I were assigned to different teams, though by sheer luck we kept the same shifts. At night we would curl up together, as we had many times back in the academy, and pull our dirty, threadbare blanket over us both. Everything down in the Pit is dirty, covered in layers of grease and rock dust. After a while I forgot what it was like to be clean. After just a little longer, I stopped caring. There are no mirrors down in the Pit for good reason.

  I always woke just a little before Josef. Each morning— and I called them mornings for lack of a better term— I would wake and roll away from him. I would stare up at the rock above me and hate. Anger has always been one of my strongest passions. Some say it grants strength when reason and will fail. I think maybe those people are right. It granted me a fire burning inside when hope failed me. I didn't so much desire to escape, as I needed to visit my burning wrath upon all the bastards who had put me there. I had a great many enemies to kill, and most of them didn't even know I existed. There is little that is as maddening as being beneath the notice of those you wish to murder.

  I hated the Terrelans, every single one of the fuckers, for putting me down in the Pit, for winning the war and even letting me live. I hated Prig, the rotten cunt of a foreman who drove our team deeper into the rock each day. I hated my team, broken workers for the most part, for not standing up and fighting Prig. I hated the cock-faced overseer, even to this day I don't know his name, for trying to break me once a week. I even hated Josef for helping in my capture and for giving up. I could see in his eyes every day that he had given up. But I think most of all I hated my own damned self.

  No! Most of all I definitely hated Prig.

  "Up! Get up, scabs!" Prig bellowed, punctuating his order with a crack of his leather whip. Nasty things, whips, perfectly suited to inflict terror on a person as much as pain. I hate to admit it, but I came to dread the sound of that whip cracking. I wanted nothing more than to take it from him, shove it up his arse and drag it out through his mouth. Just a few months earlier I would have set the shit-sniffing bastard on fire for talking to me that way. Instead, I rushed to my feet and stood ready along with the rest of my team. Josef let out a groan and sat up, already rolling our blanket into a ball. He would find some little nook to hide it until we returned. It wasn't much, but the other inmates would happily steal nothing much. I've heard it said there is honour amongst thieves, but down in the Pit honour was a commodity worth shit. Down there, there was nothing so valuable as food and fear. Well, and shoes.

  The whip cracked again and Josef cried out as it lashed a bloody trail along his leg. He scrambled backwards against the rough stone wall, clutching at the limb. I have found there is little in this world quite so horrible as a loved one's pain. It carries with it a certain hopelessness. A knowledge that there is nothing you can do but watch them suffer.

  "Always sniffing around this one. Heh!" Prig snorted, a crooked grin revealing brown teeth. His rot-breath could have felled a particularly vicious tiger at twenty paces.

  I took a step sideways, putting myself between Prig and Josef, and locked my knees, trying to stop the trembling in my legs. I have said fear was valuable commodity down in the Pit, and it was one Prig was rich in. I refused to add to his hoard of riches.

  "Fuck you, Prig," I hissed. "He's not on your team. He can sleep wherever he likes."

  Prig was not a small man and I was still a girl. He dwarfed me both in height and bulk and I had already learned the hard way, more than once, that he had no qualms beating a young girl. I think he enjoyed it as some men do. I think it made the rotten fucker feel powerful being able to dominate a woman, even one as young as I, and there were no others on his team. Without any Sources, without any magic, I had no way to stop him from doing whatever he pleased.

  In a flash he was on me, a meaty fist slamming into my gut. I staggered, feeling air rush out my lungs and bile rise in my throat. I think I must have closed my eyes. It would not be the first nor last time Prig had beaten me unconscious. Fingers like iron wrapped around my throat, hauled me back to my feet and bashed me against the wall of the cavern. I smelled that rotten breath, so vile it made the urge to vomit even stronger. Honestly, it smelled like the bastard regularly dined on shit.

  I struggled against the grip, clawing at the fingers digging into my neck. It's hard to describe the panic of suffocating. Prig had already driven the air from my lungs and his iron grip stopped me from breathing. I couldn't even make a sound as I struggled, pawing impotently at his hand, eyes goggling with terror. Prig was worse than anything the Terrelans ever did to me. He made me helpless.

  Just as my vision started to dim, Prig let go, dropping me to my knees in front of him. I gasped down air, clutching at my throat and shedding shameful tears onto the rock below. There were eight other people in the little cavern we slept in and not a single one of the fuckers helped me, not even Josef. I hated them for that, even as I realised I didn't blame them. Prig was chief of this little part of the world and he did not brook defiance. That didn't stop me from hating them though. I think, looking back now, I still hate them a little.

  I felt a hand grip hold of my hair and my head was wrenched back forcing me to stare at Prig's leering face. "Just for that, cunt. You get to hold the marker." A violent shove sent me sprawling onto my back and Prig turned and strode away, cracking his whip against the floor. "Heel! All of you."

  None of us hesitated to jump to his command; even I, still shaking, sobbing, and coughing. The shame of that terrified obedience burns me still. I spared a glance back towards Josef and he gave me a nod. His own shift would be starting soon enough, and his rot-brained foreman was almost as unpleasant as Prig. Almost.

  To this day I still do not know the purpose of the Pit, Terrelan's largest prison sunk deep into the ground. The inmates spent their sente
nces digging and transporting rock to the surface. Then that rock is dumped elsewhere. We weren't mining, there were no seams of precious metal. I once heard of a team who found coal, but that tunnel was quickly collapsed and the team reassigned. It seems to me we were there simply to dig. What a fucking waste of time. I sometimes wonder if the purpose was to break us. To crush the prisoners' spirits. Maybe it was just punishment; never-ending, pointless toil down in the dark. The sure, unwavering knowledge that nothing we did or said meant a damned thing. A punishment worse than death. Irrelevance.

  I guess I'll never know the truth since I eventually flooded the damned place and everyone in it. I sometimes imagine Prig drowning down in the Pit, struggling for air in the pitch-black, icy water flooding his lungs and dragging him down into a forgotten grave. Such thoughts bring a smile to my face even now. Age and wisdom have done nothing to quash my thirst for vengeance, even against those long dead. But even those we've vanquished leave their marks upon us, and Prig certainly left his on me.

  Prig always marched us along at a quick pace, caring nothing for the strain it put us through. The foremen down in the Pit were inmates as much as their charges, but they had a better quality of life. Prig had his own bed and two real meals a day, not the gruel and mouldering bread the rest of us had to fight for. His boots were new, though certainly not shiny, and most amazingly of all, he had socks. It says a lot about the conditions we lived in that I dreamed of owning a pair of socks.

  We passed other teams, and other inmates, trudging along in the greasy gloom. Some were also on their way to or from work, while others made their way down to the arena. I had yet to see the arena so early in my incarceration, but I had heard of it. Inmates slaughtered each other for the amusement of those in charge. Sometimes the gladiators were even pitted against other things, like creatures found down in the depths. What a fucking tragic waste of life. The Terrelans could have put a stop to the arena, but they didn't care. As long as the digging was done the bastards let those in charge run the other inmates as they saw fit. Those of us at the very bottom of the pecking order were always the ones to suffer most.