by Thomas Green
Luna cleared her throat. “I suppose you have already made a plan and don’t plan to tell me.”
“Front’s mine, you improvise.”
She shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“The plan’s walking to the gate, kicking it open, and getting to the village square. There and on the way, I will kill everything I meet. I know the plan is for us to run, but I will see if I can’t kill the pirate captain straight.”
Luna threw Raven an awkward smile. “It doesn’t sound like you have a role for me.”
“Got one. What I expect is couple hundreds of pirates, out of whom about one quarter are elites and about ten of whom know how to use strengthening aether at the level needed to fight me. Gain the attention of these elites while you sneak around by the side and attack their captain. Will need about six minutes and twenty to forty seconds to hack through the elites and reach the captain, and then we sever his head before we go back home, victorious.”
Luna grinned. “So you can do it when you try.”
He nodded and walked to the gate, ignored by the guards that slept on their posts. He ran into the gate, shoulder first. The wing he smashed into flew away for a hundred feet as if it weighed nothing while the hinges fell apart as if made of sand.
Show off! Luna dashed toward the palisade, sunk her claws into the wood and threw herself to its top.
As Raven walked to the village square, men around the town shouted while others swarmed out of the buildings, drawing their weapons. Some shot arrows at Raven, but they shattered upon touching his armor as if they were made of glass.
Luna leapt onto the roof of the house in front of her and advanced forward in a crouch.
Raven entered the center of the village where about thirty men encircled him.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” one of them shouted.
Without a word, Raven drew his blade, crossed the distance to the nearest man and ran his sword through his stomach.
Luna prowled over the roofs while the beast within her purred at the scent of carnage from below as Raven slew one pirate after another. She glimpsed a well-arranged man holding a stylish cutlass walk out of one house before he headed toward the center.
Luna crept to reach above him. When the man stopped to observe the massacre at the square, she leapt down the roof with her fingers extended into vicious claws.
He spun at the last second and parried her strike with his blade. She slid to the side and swung at his legs. Her claws swept over them, cutting the pants but not through the skin.
Luna whirled from his counter-attack and slashed his arm, her claws sliding off his skin once more. She noticed moonlight reflecting from the hole she made in his sleeve. His body is covered by scales. I will need to stab through those.
She ducked under his blade, kicked at his legs and lunged at his throat. The captain narrowly evaded the strike and kicked her in the stomach. The impact shot the air out of her lungs and threw her backward. Pirates swarmed around her. She stabbed and slashed with her claws, ripping the men to shreds.
She heard Raven shout from a distance. “Focus on the target!”
Luna threw aside a man and leapt through a window. She ran up the stairs and ascended to the roof. Hundreds of pirates thronged through the city, covering the streets.
She found Raven and dove into the fray, cutting her path to him. “There are too many of them, so we need to run now else we won’t make it.”
Raven impaled another man. “Kill the target, and I will handle the escape.”
Luna took a deep breath and roared, shattering the windows of nearby houses. Using the moment of panic among the pirates, she charged through the crowd to leap at the captain.
He met her with a swift stab. She withdrew the feint, caught his arm and wrapped around it like a snake. Luna stretched her muscles to use her body weight as leverage, dislocating his shoulder.
Something large, fast, and heavy hit her from her blind angle, making her world turn black for a second while throwing her into the wall of a nearby house. As she screamed in pain, she noticed that next to the captain now stood a tall man clad in steel plates who he held a shield and a spiked mace.
He charged at her. Luna slid away from the shield, but he hit her head with the mace, cracking her skull, making her fly into the crowd.
Luna’s wounds regenerated in an instant while she turned inside to her spirit. Time to go full werewolf, Wolfie!
‘...’
Wolfie?
‘I’m trying!’
Start succeeding! We are surrounded and running out of strength, so stop making excuses and shift into me.
‘I can’t! I don’t know why, but I can’t.’
… fuck. She whirled to slash apart the pirates surrounding her and bolted toward the armored man.
He spun to smash her with his mace. Luna slid under his swing to reach the captain who now held his cutlass in his other hand. He slashed at her. She sidestepped and lunged at his wounded side. He spun to parry. Luna ducked and ran her claws through his knee and instantly pivoted to slash at his throat.
The armored man caught up and crashed the spiked mace into her head, its spikes piercing her skull. The impact lifted her off her feet and made her fly through the wooden wall of the house behind her.
With a shriek of pain, she crumbled to the ground and vomited blood. The armored man approached. Luna refocused her senses and leapt out through the window, dodging his mace. She started slashing her way through the crowd. Her ears were ringing, her vision was getting dim, and her body felt like it was made of lead. She felt the blades cut into her as she could no longer keep herself strengthened enough to fend off the pirates. Luna paid it no heed and kept forcing her path forward.
An eternity later, the captain stood in front of her. She turned her mouth into the nightmare of fangs and charged. He met her with a quick slash. Luna slid under it and rammed her claws into his stomach. She whirled, releasing his intestines out of their bounds while she glimpsed the armored man charging her.
She ducked under his swing. He kicked her in the knee, knocking her down before he swung his shield at her head. Luna blocked with her hand. The impact shattered her bones and threw her arm away. The man swung with his mace. Luna tried to dodge, but her body didn’t listen. She felt a hand grab her shoulder and everything stopped.
Luna stared at the armored man, whose mace was but an inch away from her face, and the pirates who stood frozen in place. Next to her, the falling head of the captain hung in the air with the drops of blood resting in the air near it.
She glanced over the shoulder where she felt the hand and saw Raven standing behind her.
He smiled. “We are done here, so let’s go.”
Luna gaped. “What’s going on?”
“Stopped time. Don’t lose touch of me else you will freeze.”
She stared in amazement. She reached with her hand toward a drop of her blood that floated in the air next to her but couldn’t move it.
“Can’t affect things frozen in time,” Raven said and lifted her up over his shoulder.
Luna blinked a few times. “I think I’ve taken one too many hits to the head.”
“That too.” Raven sheathed his sword, grabbed the pirate next to them by the shoulder and flung himself up, standing on the man as if he was a statue.
She found herself at a loss for words.
Raven walked over the time-stopped pirates to the port, where the galleon stood fifty feet from the pier while the corpses of its former owners lay in the river. He stepped on the water, which felt solid due to being frozen in time. Raven crossed the distance to the ship and climbed onto its side, seeing the soldiers of their company by the oars.
Lieutenant Redeye stood at the helm. Raven walked to the mast and unfroze time. Everything continued moving as if it never stopped and he put Luna down.
The lieutenant whirled as he caught the whiff of them.
“The pirate captain is dead,” Raven
said.
“…sir,” Luna added.
The lieutenant nodded, and they rowed up the river, leaving the confused pirates behind.
***
Luna sat at the forecastle deck, staring at the blank page of Daniel’s book. She had tried to write something into it, to make a drawing, but she couldn’t think of what. She had already torn dozens of pages because she drenched them with her tears, but she had yet to write a single line, leaving the vial of ink she found in the captain’s cabin.
Their ship stood stuck at a narrow part of the river while their company spent all the time they could removing planks from the hull of the ship to build large ramps to both sides of the vessel. Luna had long since stopped wonder why they were turning the boat into a bridge and kept staring at the blank page.
Raven sat down next to her. “Not finding the correct words?”
“Any words. I suck. I can’t write a single good sentence, draw one nice picture or anything else.” Luna sighed, not feeling any better. “Everything I tried to put in looked like an insult compared to what he wrote.”
Raven smiled. “Can’t all be good at everything.”
“But I am good at nothing. I thought I could fight, but when they needed me to protect them… I failed, and he died,” Luna stuttered, her voice breaking.
Raven shrugged. “Have the bad luck of facing one powerful opponent after another. When I fought Kayleanne, I ended with a shattered shoulder and had to be carried away by Lucas.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “She beat you?”
He nodded. “Don’t think she’s someone you can fight without a strategy.”
“Do you have one?”
“Part of one. Easiest approach would be to ambush her when she isn’t expecting a fight because she’s using strengthening so complex it has to take her minutes to weave it through her body. Otherwise, the issue is her speed in combination with her weight.”
Luna smiled. “So it wasn’t me imagining it.”
“No. Saw her cross a hundred feet in under a second and then ram into me with so much force it felt like she weighs a thousand pounds.”
Luna kept staring down at the book. “This feels about that heavy.”
“Need to bury it.”
“I can’t. It was his life’s work. I can’t abandon it.”
“His work, not yours. This is why Lucas gave it to you, so you have something to let go. Both you and Nancy.”
Her heart nearly stopped when hearing her name. Nancy had yet to speak, eat or smile since the battle and Luna knew not what to do with her. She wanted to help her, so, so desperately. But she couldn’t. “What do you know about that?”
“Right, you don’t remember.” Raven’s eyes filled with sadness. “Nibbles wasn’t the only one I buried. Next was Samantha and afterward, Stallington.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Told you it’s alright.” Raven smiled in the least convincing way Luna had ever seen him. “Made peace with my past and so should you.”
Luna rose and, followed by Raven, searched for Nancy. She found her lying by the river, staring at the sky, pale and weak. “Come on. Let’s go.” Luna grabbed her by the shoulders to raise her. Nancy did not have the strength to resist. They left the riverbank for a small patch of trees. Luna placed Nancy by a tree, dug a small hole into the ground while Raven went to pluck a little bundle of flowers.
Luna shrugged. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Wish I didn’t. Put the book in, say a few words, cover it and place the flower on it.”
Luna held the tome in her hands, staring at the blood-stained, leathery cover. Tears crawled into her eyes, sliding down her face, dripping down. “I’m sorry, Daniel… you believed we were making a better world. You believed in me… and I failed you. I failed, and you had to pay the price. I’m sorry, for you won’t see the world you wanted because of me. And I can’t even promise you I will see it for you.” Luna laid the book into the grave and crumbled to the ground, releasing a soul-tearing wail.
Raven helped her cover the grave with dirt. Luna placed the flower upon it, grabbed Nancy into a hug from behind and cried herself to sleep.
23
Lucas
Lucas threw Captain Beatrice Hellwind a sour look. Her tunic hid the wound at her chest well, but the bandages still peeked out from the holes in the slashed leather. “Don’t tell me it’s just a scratch.”
She shrugged. “Then I have nothing to say.”
Lucas shook his head. “At least share with me who Zoey is.”
“I can’t do that.” She pursed her lips.
He raised an eyebrow. “Why do I employ you, again?”
“Because nobody else would kill in your name for the excuse of a wage you are paying me.”
He pierced her with a glare. “You earn more than enough gold by doing assassination contracts.”
“I wouldn’t need to do those if you paid me properly.”
“I pay you the standard captain wage.”
“Which is petty cash.” She sighed. “Being a loyalist sure brings a hard life.”
“The Queen is doing fine, in case you were wondering.”
“Of course she is.” Beatrice narrowed her eyes, inspecting him before asking. “Which reminds me she promised she would negotiate a global raise for all Sil Haen in the Order. How has that been going?”
“Never heard of it.” Lucas shrugged. “Though she has been aggressive about getting a raise for herself.”
“And thus she remains every bit of the bitch she has always been.” Beatrice sneered and stopped talking.
He exited the forest with Beatrice at his flank and her company at their heels. The mountain range before them lay peaceful in the moonlight with no fires disturbing the silent night. They scaled the ridge’s side.
After an extra hour of walking atop the ridge, Lucas motioned them to a halt. “Beneath us is Ebilezerhar’s second largest temple. I will cause a distraction, after which you will slide down, head to the stables and steal as many horses as you can.”
Beatrice opened her mouth to protest but said nothing. Lucas smiled, placed his mark on the ground below and soulstepped to the entrance of the cavern.
No guards? Someone’s running out of demons. With a cruel smirk, Lucas advanced into the cave until he reached a steel gate. He had enough of bottling the wrath inside. A single memory was enough to remove the lid. Before his eyes flashed the image of his wife, Sophiel, lying crumbled inside a cage while above her towered the first lesser god he had ever met. As every time, it did the trick, flooding his veins with all-devouring wrath.
He focused his strength into his fist, into a single point in front of the knuckle of his index finger, creating a miniature globe of pure aether, one akin to a tiny sun. He stepped forward and punched the gate, releasing the power from the globe into an all-annihilating blast of pure energy that matched the direction of his punch. The world before him exploded. The gate shattered into splinters and shards, the demons beyond turned to a paste, the stone wall of the antechamber became dust, and the entire mountain trembled as if hit by an earthquake.
Shouting and screeching of demons echoed from ahead. Lucas walked into the mess of an antechamber which ended in a forward-leading corridor while it also contained a path to his right. The walls of the tunnels beyond the gate were crafted to smoothness, their stone decorated by etched drawings, and symbols of a snake with open mouth.
With a quick glance, Lucas confirmed the path to his right led to the stables while the hallway ahead aimed deeper into the temple. He withdrew his spear from his soul chamber and advanced. Men dressed in green-black uniforms bearing the symbol of the snake swarmed ahead of him.
Lucas soulstepped forward to run his spear through the nearest man. His world turned into carnage as he carved his path through the men, one stab after another, leaving behind but a trail of bodies. The scent of burnt incense blended with blood let him forget his worries.
While the maddening ble
nd of sadness and rage kept shaking the very core of his being, Lucas dove into the next set of Ebilezerhar’s soldiers, ending lives everywhere his spear touched. Bloodlust seeped out of him, clouding his mind, filling the air, suffocating his enemies.
An eight-feet-tall giant clad in steel awaited him in the main hall of the temple, his armor glistening in the light of the flames that shone through blinders of stained glass. Lucas formed a sphere of aether within his palm, collapsing in upon itself, creating but a point that attracted all from his surroundings. Everything around him drew toward the miniature orb, even light. He soulstepped the globe to the demonic champion.
The champion’s body contorted, sucked toward the black hole. The aether imploded, and the exploded, sending a world-shaking shock wave through the temple, breaking all chandeliers, and tempered glass. A paste of crushed bones, muscles, and blood was all that was left of the champion. Lucas stared above himself, watching the moonlight reflect from the shattered glass falling into the temple.
He did not calm down. The singular moment of destruction soothed his soul, bringing his mind to peace. Yet a swift memory of Luna lying crumbled on the ground next to him brought back the memory of his wife, reigniting the wrath. He slaughtered everyone else in the main hall. When no further prey dared enter his sight, he spread out his aether into a humongous globe, one through which he could feel everything it touched. He felt every corridor of the temple, every room, every being down to the last insect.
As he realized Beatrice wasn’t done stealing the horses, he dashed through the temple to kill every follower of Ebilezerhar he found. They had nowhere to run, no way to hide, no chance to survive.
As he left, the temple beyond his back lay silent, desecrated by blood, its walls forever scarred by the slaughter. Outside the temple, Zoey, Beatrice, and her company awaited him with almost three hundred horses. Zoey’s eyes were wide, skin pale, neither she nor anyone else said a word as he approached.
He made his spear disappear and flung himself onto a horse, forcing his expression to calmness. “What?”
