The Destroyer

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Magical energy built behind me and I tried to pick up the pace. Heat washed over me as an explosion of magic lifted me off my feet and spun me through the air like a coin. I hit the roof of a building and felt it break underneath me. Now her voice woke me. How much time had passed?

  "Move!" her voice commanded from behind me. I spun around but didn't see her.

  "Iolarathe?" I called out but got no reply. My left arm was still numb, but the toxin had not made it to my chest yet. I grabbed the shaft by the arrowhead and ripped it the rest of the way through my arm. My vision swam darkly and I fought against the desire to scream or faint. I forced my body to heal, but the poison created an uphill battle.

  A shadow flashed across the opening above me like a bird flying across a window. I looked for an exit to this warehouse on the ground level and spotted a double set of wood doors twenty feet from me that probably led to the main street. I ran over and lifted the bar from them as quietly as I could with one working arm. My hands were about to push the wooden portals open so I could run. Then I thought better of it and stood to the side.

  Sure enough, as soon as I pushed them out a trill of bowstrings sung and the doors instantly filled with arrow shafts. No exit that way. I looked up at the hole forty feet in the ceiling. Even if I made the jump, chances were that my attackers would be waiting for me up top.

  "Now what?" I asked the voice in my head that sounded like Iolarathe. I got no answer.

  "Come out O'Baarni . . ." a female voice whispered from the street outside the building. There was another flash of darkness across the hole in the roof and I looked up to see a figure leaning over the edge looking down at me.

  I needed to get out and was thinking too much like a human. My kind had other talents besides our fists. I ran to the opposite side of the warehouse from the door, toward the thick wood wall that led out to what I guessed was an alley or another street. Earth and Air swelled inside of me. It pushed into my chest and I reached out my hand, focusing the power through it and against the far wall. Fire and force exploded from me and shattered the wood like a rock being thrown against a glass wine bottle.

  Then I was through the wall and into the street. Using the Wind always left me a bit disoriented. It was no problem to run, but I couldn't have harnessed it while in the midst of combat.

  Screeches of outrage echoed across the walls of the city behind me as I ran. I had no idea where I was in the capital, so I debated jumping onto the roofs to get my bearings. There was a risk I would be easy to spot by my pursuers, but staying at ground level meant that they would have a better angle for their arrows.

  There was one close behind me. I heard the light, quick footsteps of his or her pursuit. I made a sharp turn behind what looked to be a dry goods store and quickly jumped up to the ledge of the second floor.

  The Elven turned the corner and I jumped down on him. He didn't have his sword out, just a short, heavy bow with one of the familiar barbed arrows notched in the string. It went off as my knee connected with his lower back and bounced off the street walls and ground until it impaled itself in the wood of the store.

  The force of the blow drove the man to his stomach, though I didn't weigh much. I grabbed onto the back of his head by the braided hair with my right hand and slammed his face into the stone of the alleyway three times until his skull cracked. I stood up and finished him off by grinding the bones in his throat into a flat piece of leather with the heel of my bare foot.

  He carried a curved long sword, curved short sword, two daggers, and the bow with six arrows in a small quiver. It took me a half a minute of numb arm fumbling to untie his various weapon belts and attach them to my own thin waist. Once settled, I ran my right hand over the hilts of the blades and memorized their draw angles.

  I heard the dancing of two more pairs of booted feet coming down the road toward my alley before the alarm sounded again. I flipped out one of the newly acquired daggers and exhaled. Then I poked my upper body from behind the corner and threw it at the one closest to me. It was a lucky throw, hitting her right in the throat and flipping her body back. She gurgled out a soft scream of blood through torn vocal chords. Her companion dove to the side behind a discarded hand cart.

  "He's here!" the Elven shouted out in our language from behind the cart. Half a dozen voices howled out in the night from around us. I reached down and grabbed the bow with my right hand and ran to the nearest silent spot.

  Two dead. How many more were there? Eight? Perhaps less. I jumped up to a small thatched roof and then leapt up to a higher ledge of stone. I ran for a minute or two, jumping between rooftops. Finally, I slowed to a stop and looked around to get my bearings. I was near the south of the city. The castle sat to the north, its hundreds of windows like the eyes of a hungry, giant tarantula over a web of glowing fireflies. My left arm started to screech with pain, so I carefully flexed my grip and managed to close my fingers. At least this was one thing going my way.

  I didn't hear my pursuers, which meant I had either lost them or they were moving in discreetly for the kill. I bet on the latter and hurdled off of the edge of the building, falling thirty feet to the hard cobblestone below. Arrows bounced off the walls around me as I fell; they all missed, but confirmed that I had taken the right bet. Howls of anger echoed across the roof from the Elvens once they realized I had escaped their ambush again.

  I kept running, aiming for the west side of the city. The alarm bellowed across the still night, reminding me of my friends in the castle. I didn't have much of a plan other than regaining the full use of my arm and then killing them off one by one. I just needed to live for a bit longer.

  There was a group forty yards behind me, and another maybe sixty yards to the northeast of me, trying to flank me. I heard them cracking the tiles of the roof tops as they ran. My arm could move now but I doubted its strength. I cut west through another alleyway and headed directly to the wall around the city. I slowed down a little and tested the pull on the bowstring without notching an arrow. My arm almost bucked, but was able to hold it firm if I locked my elbow. It would have to do, I thought to myself as I carefully placed one of the poisoned arrows against the string.

  I turned the corner again to double back south. The street here lay on a steep decline and I spotted a few barrels sitting in front of the doors of a home. I kicked them over and sent them rolling down the hill. Then I faced the direction I came from and notched the arrow, hoping that the sound of the tumbling casks would cover my lack of movement.

  It did.

  The first Elven took one of my arrows into his stomach before he had moved three steps around the corner. He let out a shocked scream as he doubled over in pain and stumbled to the ground. The Elvens could heal themselves using the power of the Earth as I did, but I doubted he would be able to pull the barbed tip out himself or heal before he fell unconscious from the pain.

  The second one notched her arrow quicker than I did with my damaged arm. I heard the twang of her bow and then I prudently ducked while I continued to attach the arrow to my own flax string. I felt the feathered shaft pass over the hair on my head and then I came up with mine drawn back. She dodged to her right, laying her sleek body out through the air in a line parallel with the cobblestones. My arrow still took her in the left leg and she screamed out in dismay as the force spun her around like a child's top. I notched another arrow and pointed at the corner of the alley from where they would emerge.

  "He's here!" the woman called out into the night. She took another deep breath and was about to yell again when I put my arrow through her jaw and into her skull. I didn't hear any howls to answer her but I knew they were going to be coming soon.

  I ran down the steep street and looked over to the west. The wall of the city was almost within reach. If I made it there, they could only approach me from one side. I didn't know for sure how many more there were, but I guessed at four. I made a quick right at an intersection and there was only a few hundred yards to the wall.

&n
bsp; Almost there. I risked a glance back and saw two figures bouncing on rooftops a few blocks behind me. I would be able to make it to the wall before they would get to me.

  An Elven stepped out from an alley about eighty yards in front of me with an arrow notched. He let loose and I dived forward and to the right. The barbed missile passed to my left side harmlessly. If he had been a little closer, I wouldn't have been so lucky.

  "I made this special for you, Kaiyer. It weighs as much as a dragon but you'll laugh off anything lighter than a ballista arrow," the huge old man said to me. The armor did weigh a lot. But I imagined I would get used to the weight. The helm looked like the bare skull of some nightmarish demon. The shoulders were screaming skulls, and the smith had etched thousands of tortured demon faces into the surface of the dark black metal. If skulls could have expressions, theirs would be of loathing and hate.

  "Holy shit. I'm scared just looking at that thing," Malek said at my side. He delicately picked up the helm and turned it over in his outstretched hands as if the visage would bite him.

  "Aye," the old man spit on the ground. "It's my finest work. I hope they all shit themselves when you come to rip the souls from their wailing throats."

  "What are these?" I said, reaching into the armor to touch the sharp points connecting the joints.

  "I'll explain those to you when you put it on. I've heard you’re a tough motherfucker."

  I shrugged but didn't answer him directly.

  "You'll need a weapon as abhorrent as this armor," Malek said to me with a smile.

  "I'm working on several of those. I think you'll be pleased," the old man said.

  I switched the bow to my right hand and notched another arrow. The male Elven in the street also pulled back his string, so I crouched down low and pushed my right side against the wall. The hand change would let me expose less of my body against the corner. I gritted in agony as my left arm struggled to hold the string back. He let loose when my head appeared briefly, and I ducked back as arrow slammed into the wooden panels of the building I used as cover. I stepped out and let loose. Unfortunately, my left arm still felt the effects of the poison and the arrow went wide over his head as he jumped out of the way.

  "Shit!" I muttered under my breath as I continued north through the alleyway. I moved the bow back into my left hand.

  The alarm echoed across the city and I decided to double back the way I had gone. The cover of the noise would give me a few precious seconds to change direction before they might notice me running again.

  I noticed the pair of shadows up above me to my left and prepared to dodge another volley of arrows, but the alarm was still ringing and they kept running in the direction they believed I was heading. I didn't think I would get a better chance to surprise them, so I jumped up on the ledge of the building and pulled myself up with my right hand. They were sprinting away from me across the roof, oblivious to the feint I had pulled. The arrow drew back on my bow and I aimed for the lower back of the Elven that was closest to me. She grunted in surprised agony as I caught her in a midair jump. The barbed shaft hit her in the lower spine and bent her back. I doubted that she was dead, but she wouldn't be walking or moving for a few hours.

  Her companion turned as I notched my last arrow. This Elven dove off of the ledge with the speed of a diving eagle. The bolt embedded itself in the stone roof where she had been a split second earlier. Light footsteps scraped the roof next to me and I spun my bow around my head to block the sword blow I knew was about to slice me apart.

  The bow I had been using was finely crafted, with metal in its shape to give it an extreme amount of strength, even for its half-size. The sword bit into it halfway but didn't snap it in two. My Elven attacker looked surprised that I had blocked his swing. He quickly flipped around the handle of the sword in both his hands, making a quick cut with the blade's tip at my chin.

  I dropped the bow and threw myself back, dodging the blade by an inch. I also avoided another barbed arrow that had been aiming for the space my shoulders occupied a fraction of a second before. The missile came from my right and I turned in mid-fall to see the male I had evaded in the street. He perched on a higher roof and already had another arrow ready to shoot down at me. I pushed my arms behind me and made my body flip into a handspring.

  Another arrow flew by my face as I dove behind a chimney. The Elven with the sword moved up to strike me and I had to jump out from behind my chimney cover to avoid being cut. The sword banged against the stone of the chimney and another arrow slammed into the back side of it as I stepped in close to the Elven and wrapped my hands around the hilt and his grip. This bastard may have not been the world's best swordsman, but he was resourceful. As soon as he felt my grip around his sword hilt he reached down with his off hand and pulled a curved dagger out of the sheath on his waist.

  I kept my right hand locked around his on the sword and moved my left down to attempt to parry the dagger. He should have tried to cut off the hand that went for his dagger, but instead he cut for my stomach, it was a rookie mistake and I easily sucked myself out of the way. Then I pushed his left hand into the stonework of the chimney, rendering the dagger useless. My hands gripped and pulled him toward me. Instinctively he tried to resist and pull back. I expected it and released the grip on my right hand and slid it down his right sword arm and slammed into the crook of his neck. At the same time, my right foot stepped down in between his legs.

  The force of the blow wasn't hard enough to break his neck or his windpipe, but it crushed his throat and he tumbled back off balance. His short sword was then in my hands and I left the cover of the chimney briefly to slam its curved blade through his heart.

  The Elven on the roof above me had been flanking me to my right, so my move to finish off his friend put me in a position of better cover. I jumped down from the roof and ran south again, with hopes that I could head west on the street where we exchanged arrows earlier and then make it to the wall.

  The street looked clear, but I moved to the far side of it, away from where I last saw the Elvens, in case I needed to duck behind cover. The wall loomed up ahead of me like a small mountain. I could see the stairs leading up about two hundred yards away. I would be there within seconds.

  "Stop. I challenge you O'Baarni!" a female voice said as soon as I reached the stairs heading up into the nook of the wall. I turned to the woman that had dodged my arrow from the rooftop a minute earlier. She had a curved sword drawn and was sprinting before me. She slid to a halt when she saw that I had stopped on the stairs. I didn't see the male who had shot at me anywhere.

  "What does that mean?" I said as I slowly backed up the stairs to the wall. Both sides of the pathway on the top were spaced with thick stone pillars and I could take cover from the archer there.

  "You fight me alone. No tricks," she said. "I want to know your skill." Her eyes glowed like sapphires from the light of the moon. Her hair was tied in two matching ponytails on the side of her head. I couldn't tell what the color of her mane was, but it was reflective, either gold or silver.

  "Six of your detestable kind are dead by my hand and you want to try your luck?" I moved the rest of the way up the stairs and looked down at her.

  "Yes." She nodded and smiled.

  "Where is your friend? He will interfere."

  "No. He went back to report to our Commander." She looked around.

  "Why don't you follow him?" I raised an eyebrow.

  "She does not accept failure. I would rather die here fighting you than face her." She began to ascend the stairs.

  "But your companion doesn't feel the same way?"

  "Perhaps she will forgive him for reporting what you are capable of, but I'll take my chances here." She smiled. Her exotically beautiful face filled my mouth with bile. I was about to reply when my ears picked up another sound in the otherwise silent night: many horses racing through the city toward the west exit.

  "Sword against sword O'Baarni. No magic, just our bodies entwined
in combat." I looked back down the stairs at her and she slid her long tongue across red lips. The woman wore black leather armor and I saw a white insignia on her left breast piece. It looked like the stylized design of a flame and I recalled that the others I had killed all bore a similar icon on their armor.

  "No tricks?" I asked. She nodded and I smiled back at her.

  I felt the Air slide around me and I summoned the Earth to my chest. Before the woman could react I threw the power out from my body. It was flame, force, hate, passion, and death. Her face changed from lust to horror as she exploded into fire. Her scream filled the silent air and seemed to shake the stones of the wall. No tricks.

  Deep satisfaction came from watching her body burn.

  It was impossible to walk across the battlefield without stepping on bodies.

  "What are you looking for?" Alexia asked as she flipped back her short blonde hair. Her dark green armor had snakes scrawled and etched over every surface.

  "A particular one. I was just curious. Carry on with the search and destroy." Alexia nodded and flashed me a grin before she leapt away.

  I glanced back to the bodies, expecting to suddenly see a long trail of hair that looked like fire. I knew that she wasn't dead. I could still feel her heart beating in the Earth and hear her laughter on the wind.

  I staggered against the wall with dizziness from the memory and the use of Air. She may have been lying about her companion, so I kept to the inside of the wall and continued to check the rooftops while I ran. The sounds of the hooves seemed to be getting closer. I reached the west gate a few seconds after the horses passed through. There were six of them. Larger steeds that bore the markings of the king's mounts. I recognized the posture and riding style of three Elvens that sat atop them. They were wearing dark leather armor similar to the ones I had just killed. Sharing the saddle of the Elven in the middle of the group was a woman in a thin white dress.