by Evan Currie
*****
Ser’Goth fought down the amusement with more difficulty than she had fighting the two humans trying actively to kill her. Both of them sported weapons that were actually dangerous but only marginally so in the hands of the barely trained youths.
Jol had surprised her with the runic hammer, and she would have to keep him alive long enough to determine where he had gotten something like that. Particularly one that had clearly been designed to evade her senses. It was actually possible that he could have killed her with it had a little luck shone in his direction and had he chosen a better time to make his attack.
The girl, on the other hand, used the epitome of the ancient human-war fighting technology. It was dangerous, to be sure, but had an inherent predictability that the runic hammer didn’t. Again, the weapon could kill her in theory, but in practice the odds of that happening—particularly while she was in full armor—were negligible.
So Ser’Goth felt no particular reason not to toy with the pair, and she found herself rather enjoying the sport of it as she fought.
The girl, especially, was easy to rile up. Getting her angry and frustrated was of great amusement. While Jolinr was more in control, the fire in him burned under the surface. She knew him well enough to know that it was eating at him, and that would be even more destructive when it inevitably broke clear. He wasn’t controlling his anger; he was suppressing it . . . and she was all about dredging up suppressed emotions.
Normally she preferred to work with other emotions than anger, but fun was fun wherever it was to be found.
She casually turned aside the girl’s blade, letting the carbon slide along the flat of her own weapon as she pushed it away from her body with a disdainful flick of her wrist. Jol was charging in again, so she stepped to one side to force him to redirect the force of his blow, weakening it in the process such that she easily caught the hammer with her dagger again and held it against the trembling force of his arms.
“Your only chance is wasted, Jol,” she said, a hint of genuine affection in her tone as she looked on the fierce expression of the young fool trying so hard to kill her. “You had a small window, but it closed when you lost the element of surprise. Not even that very impressive hammer of yours will open that window again.”
She laughed internally as he flinched at the way she stressed the word hammer, loving the way the young human could get so flustered even in the middle of a fight for his very life.
Youth, she thought fondly, such a human thing.
The girl was attacking with real vigor, but her skill was marginal at best. Jol’s skill with his chosen weapon was decent. However, the weapon itself was a poor choice. She understood the choice; it was an unobtrusive weapon, easily overlooked. Once in a real fight, though, there was little to really recommend it against demons . . . particularly one of her stature.
It could break bones, certainly, but she could heal them near as quickly. Beyond that, there was very little it could manage against her body that would be fatal quickly enough to end her unless she were so foolish as to remain still and allow him to whale on her for a significant time.
Unfortunately for poor, dear Jol, pain just wasn’t her thing. Not suffering it, at least.
“I grow bored,” Ser’Goth said finally. “I believe it’s time to bring this game to an end. Unfortunately for you both, the end was already written.”
She surged forward, hammering Jol across the jaw with her fist. Wrapped as it was around the pommel of her dagger, it twisted his head sharply around and sent him to the ground in an instant as the blood was cut off to the brain and his gray matter rocked around within his skull. Before he had even hit the ground, she turned on the blonde girl and attacked with both weapons in a flurry of action.
The blonde tried, Ser’goth would give her that, her black blade flashing and parrying desperately as she was forced back step-by-step.
“That is a fantastic weapon you carry,” Ser’Goth complimented her casually as she fought. “I always regretted the blood lock your people used on their best tools. There is an elegance to your weapon, and the use of pure carbon was brilliant in ways I doubt you can even begin to comprehend . . . however . . .”
She twisted, hooking her dagger around the black blade and trapping it between her short blade and her armor, grinning as the girl struggled to break the blade free.
“They aren’t indestructible,” Ser’Goth said as she brought her sword in to strike with ferocious power against the flat of the black blade, sending crackling splits traveling along the surface until they reached the edges and the blade shattered.
Ser’Goth stepped back, smirking as the girl stared at her broken weapon in stunned silence.
“I would normally advise surrender,” she said finally. “However, between you and me, it would be best for you to die now, here.”
For a moment she thought the girl’s mind had broken with the blade. The blonde seemed unable to do anything but stare at the shattered weapon.
Then her head snapped up, and Ser’Goth felt herself pinned by a glare that actually intimidated. The thought was ludicrous—or it should have been—right up until a familiar gleam of white light leaked from behind the girl-child’s eyes, and Ser’Goth had a moment to wonder just how she’d forgotten that from earlier.
Then the blonde rushed forward, breaking through Ser’Goth’s defense in a single blinding moment, and the world went white.
*****
Elan was in a rage.
She couldn’t believe that she’d just lost another weapon!
She flashed back to her father’s sword, remembering what it had meant to her and how at the time, its loss had been lost in the nightmare of everything that had happened. Since then, however, she’d felt that loss acutely whenever she had cause to consider it. Now, again, she’d lost her weapon . . . it was the fourth time that had happened and in so short a time.
It all rushed back to her, the feel of her father’s sword in her hand, the pain the night she’d been left for dead in the desert badlands. The pit in her gut when she’d watched Kaern sacrifice himself to buy her time as the wave bore down on them. Losing her weapon had always been a forebear of pain.
Off slightly to the side, she noted Jol lying still as stone on the ground, and she felt the pain in anticipation of what was to come.
She dropped her useless weapon, eyes laying on the demon who’d shattered the black blade so contemptuously rather than just kill her.
Elan didn’t notice how the world lit up, the shadows of the city hiding nothing from her. She was too focused on her target as she angrily leaned into the charge and rushed the tall demoness. Time felt sluggish as she twisted under the blade of the azure-skinned demon, letting it pass over her as Elan brought back her hand even with her shoulder, palm out and fingers splayed.
She slammed the palm strike into the demon’s armor, crumpling it like fabric under the power of her blow, a word she did not know roaring from her lips.
Elan relished the look of shock, disbelief, and anger on the demoness’s face as she was lifted off the ground and set flying back across the city’s street and into the crowd of demons who were still watching. The demoness’s sword hung in the air as Elan paused, cocking her head and wondering at how slow it seemed to be falling.
She reached out and casually plucked the sword from the air, twisting it around as she scanned the area and made her decision.
Sword in hand, Elan didn’t pull back. She charged.
Dozens of demons watching were caught between being shocked at their lady being tossed back through a score of their own like some rag-doll toy by a slip of a human girl and being stunned when that same human grabbed the lady’s blade and, rather than taking advantage of the moment to flee, actually attacked.
Three demons fell to the blade before any of them managed to react, and another four before the first effective responses began to form.
As Elan slew demon number eight, a hammerblow rocked her head a
round and drove her to one knee as pain blinded her momentarily. She lunged her blade up into the chest of number nine just as a kick lifted her off the ground, and she felt a spike of pain in her ribs the likes of which she wished she’d never known.
Before she came down, another blow struck her in the side and sent her tumbling across the ground, sword ringing against stone as she rolled to a stop. She struggled to her knees as she heard more than saw the mob of demons rushing her.
Elan barely heard the crack of thunder that shook the square, but the force of it ripping through the air nearly sent her to the ground again. She struggled against it, planting the edge of the stolen blade into the ground and pushing herself up, the sound of rushing footsteps causing her to react and swing.
The figure ducked under the wild attack, putting his shoulder into her upper arm as she tried to bring the blade back. Elan lost her grip on the sword as her arm went numb, and she staggered slightly, collapsing into the arms of the man inside her guard.
“Time to leave, lass,” Brokkr told her as she looked up at the short man, an oddly wild grin on his face as he dragged her away.
“No . . . Jol . . .” she mumbled.
“Already got him,” Brokkr said as he hefted her up and tossed her casually over his shoulder.
“The . . . slaves . . .”
“Seriously, child?” The short man laughed as he turned and ran. “Those worth anything have already run, and those who stayed are of too little worth to worry about.”
Any more protests she might have had died as the surge of energy she’d felt seemed to flee her, and she slumped over his shoulder, all the fight gone from her. As the light in her eyes faded, Brokkr saw her close them and slip from consciousness.
He shook his head as he ran through the back ways of the demon city, not quite believing what he’d seen go down.
Who or what taught you words of power and that style of fighting, girl?
He had no answers, but something she’d said to him earlier came back unbidden.
Stink of prophecy indeed. Someone is playing you . . . but are you the knight or the fool?
Chapter 19
Caleb’s feet sank into the wet sand as he hopped off the boat and cast his eyes up and down the beach and then to the jungle. The crossing had been a time-consuming one but largely without incident. Thankfully they hadn’t been attacked by any massive sharks or any other beasts of the sea. Now he and the others just had to worry about the denizens of the jungle ahead of them and, of course, the demons themselves.
He reached behind him, closed his hand around the prow of the boat he’d arrived in, and, using the strength of the armor, hauled the heavy wooden craft high up onto the beach.
“Unwrap the weapons and hand them out,” he ordered. “I’m going to help the others land their boats.”
The men and women with him nodded silently, setting about the task as Caleb went on to the next boat to offer a hand. Simone was already on the beach, soaked to the knees but grinning as she put her back into the boat and helped shove it up to drier sand. Caleb helped them in turn and quickly moved on to the next, giving only a nod to Simone as she pulled her sword from inside the oiled cloth wrap that rested inside the bottom of the boat.
Landing only took a few minutes with his help, and soon he and Simone were standing at the edge of the jungle and looking into the twilight world that lay within, both feeling trepidation and uncertainty about what they were about to do.
“According to Merlin, the demons are a half hour’s march that way,” Caleb said, pointing. “The animals and insects will get thicker and more dangerous as we go, with the worst of them being right on the edge of the jungle around the standing stones.” He took a breath, looking back to the gathered people. “We’ll have to get through them to fight the demons, but just remember that if we can slip through without attracting attention from them, all the better. They’re not the enemy; they’re just in our way.”
The group nodded nervously, hands tightening around weapons, but their expressions were determined.
After everything they’d seen, the demons were too close to their surviving families . . . to their new home. If they had to crawl over their worst imaginings to protect what little they had left, then that was what they would do, to a man.
“Alright,” Simone said, nodding to everyone. “Let’s move.”
The group set out, vanishing into the twilight jungle, leaving the sunny beach behind as they began their traverse of the small island.
*****
Merlin was trying to split his attention among several subjects that all required close focus, and it was beginning to strain his abilities. Elan he was mostly leaving up to her own affairs, mostly because his ability to influence her environment was vastly diminished from the peak of the Lemurian infrastructure. At the moment, the most he could do was help her map out the areas around her location, and frankly, she was doing well enough as she prepared to make her own attack on the stones.
So he left only a very slight tendril of focus watching her actions and instead focused on the demons nearby and the newly organized Atlanteans closing on that location with the intent of disrupting the demonic plans. Caleb was his main center of focus, because the boy was wearing a communications suite to rival anything ever made quite that portable and, in fact, Caleb was far superior to even the probes he had in the area.
So while Merlin was keeping an eye on the feed from the probes, his primary focus was to look out on the jungle island through the eyes of a boy.
The irony was not lost on the elemental in the least, though he drew none of the amusement that many of his past comrades might from the situation.
“The area in front of you is clear of dangerous fauna,” he informed Caleb as the boy led the group through the jungle. “I will monitor and inform you when this changes. Move quickly. The demons appear to be almost ready to finish their current task.”
“Right,” Caleb answered. “We’re moving.”
Merlin watched as the group picked up the pace and nodded to himself as he brought his focus back and observed the island from above, relying on nonvisual data to keep track of the Atlantean force while he monitored the status of the island as a whole.
The reaction of the local wildlife was baffling to him. There was nothing in his experience that could explain it. The most he had were the words of the two demons that Elan had spoken with, and that was something that Merlin refused to take at face value, no matter how friendly they appeared to be.
Whatever the demons here are doing, it’s driven the local wildlife . . . and even some plants into an absolute frenzy. That is either very good for my Atlanteans or very bad. Quite probably both.
The biggest issue he had was that, without any experience in just what the phenomenon was, Merlin could find no method by which he might exploit it reliably. It drove him mad to have such potential for exploitation resting right there in front of him and have no idea how to use it.
*****
Caleb held up his free hand, slowing the advance as he noticed the outlines of animals ahead of them, lit up by his suit.
“What is it?” Simone asked, coming up from behind him.
“We’re getting close,” Caleb told her. “I see animals ahead.”
“What sort?” Simone asked, curious.
“Cats,” he said, “big ones. Black, I think. Not sure; this suit is strange.”
Simone nodded. “The same as on Atlantis?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Okay, we can handle those,” she told him. “I’ll pass the word to be quiet. Just let me know when we’re close. They prefer to ambush from above, so if we don’t walk under them, they’ll probably not bother with us.”
“I know,” Caleb answered as they pressed on.
Jungle cats were a new thing for him, but in the last little while on Atlantis, they’d learned quickly that the large and powerful animals preferred to ambush prey. They rarely went out of their way to hunt
down something as large as a human, and never when people were in groups half as large as the current force.
What mattered most was that it meant they were close, and the island had far more dangerous things than cats to deal with. As Simone passed the word, a hush fell over the group, and they progressed even more quietly than they had previously.
*****
“We are almost ready.”
Tel hissed out in annoyance at the Rune Master, “It’s about hells damn time.”
The overseer was well and truly sick of the situation. They’d lost dozens of his demons, to say nothing of the slaves, to animals, by the depths of the circles! Animals!
It was completely mad was what it was, and he would be satisfied only when it was over and not on instant earlier.
“What do you need to finish it?” he asked the rune-master, eager to see the tail end of this assignment.
“Once this is complete, we will make the sacrifice,” the nearly crippled-looking demon said firmly.
“How long?”
“When it is ready, not earlier.”
Tel grimaced but was forced to accept that answer, as little as he liked it. He shifted his focus to the remaining demons under his command.
They were a motley crew if ever there was one, but that was sadly normal for demons. He’d seen too many better-disciplined and better-equipped forces brought low by the sheer willingness to sacrifice thousands or more if that was what it took, for him to be much fooled by that.
The problem was that he didn’t have thousands left, and there seemed to be no damned end to the beasts on this blasted island.
At least they’d been able to stop the attacks from the sea by simply abandoning the beaches.
How I am going to explain to Her Lady that a bunch of fish ate my demons? I have no idea.
Thankfully she wouldn’t likely care, not so long as the job was complete.
He cuffed the closest of his subordinates on the shoulder, getting his attention. “Gather the remaining slaves. We’ve one more job for them.”
