by Jeff Hale
“I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case, but I guess so,” I confirmed.
“Ya cain’t do this! Ricky, please! Jus’ take me back.”
“Sorry. But look on the bright side, you’re about to get a whole new kingdom. Our new kingdom. It starts here.” I made a ‘tsk’ing noise. “Although I am afraid this city will just have to go.”
“Ricky? What do ya mean?” she asked fearfully.
“I mean this city is standing on the exact spot where my fortress is supposed to be. This city is where your palace is going to be. Merlin picked Colorado for a reason. There’s a ley line here the size of the Nile. Baba Yaga’s followers will flock to our banner, and you will be their beloved Empress. Just like in the stories.”
“Don’t do this, Ricky. Please! Ya don’t have ta do this! I’ll stay with ya, ya don’t have ta kill hundreds of thousands of lives ta prove a point! Please, please, don’t!”
I smiled sadly at her, then it became an evil grin before I turned my attentions to the city. I raised my free hand and a pillar of white hot flame shot up through the middle of the city, quickly spreading outwards in a roaring blaze of devastation. Within moments then entire city was gone, razed to the ground, only a few leftover burnt out husks where some of the larger buildings had been. Serena shrieked in horror and buried her face against my chest.
“Don’t worry, my love. No one died,” I comforted. The flames had been meant to destroy anything non-living. “An Empire needs slaves after all.”
I gestured again and several of the empty husks joined together. Ash hardened into rock, and I moved the ash, and the earth beneath it, to form a lone bare hill with a fortress in the exact center of where the city had been. It stood as a bleak monument to the army that I would raise here.
The fortress rose as a singular tower for now; I would add onto it as I saw fit. It would take time, but soon my new Empire would be born. I flew Serena down to our new home, and as we settled on a balcony, Serena glared at me and then turned away.
“Why are you angry with me, angel? I’m doing all of this for you, for us. Just give me a chance to explain,” I pleaded with her. I truly wanted her to understand. She had to understand. I needed her to yield to my power. She knew where others of her kind were, and I needed to find them. It was part of the reason I had chosen this particular body, to get the information from her using a familiar form. That, and the boy’s power was undeniable, especially now with the Primal Aspect’s energy coursing through me.
“Don’t! Don’t ya dare put this on me, ya bastard!” she yelled, slapping me. “I don’t know ya anymore! I don’t see how I could have evah loved ya!”
I turned my back to her and I felt his soul finally break. I couldn’t fight the single tear that escaped and burned hotly down my cheek. His last testament.
It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does. So be it, he thought to me in surrender.
“Fine,” I conceded, turning back to Serena and fixing her with a cold gaze. “Then you are my first prisoner. Or slave. Depending on what I need.” I pushed her away from me and, with a flick of my hand, summoned two elementals of swirling flame and ice to take her to the newly forming prisons underneath the tower. As they escorted her away, I looked up at the sky, where a news helicopter was hovering, its cameras focused down on me. I flicked two fingers at the machine, and it went spinning away before exploding into thousands of bits.
A shape materialized on the balcony next to me, a tall woman with long silver hair. Her face was youthful, her body slim and curvaceous under a filmy robe in a way that would make men weep with desire. The hood of a velvet cloak the blackest of all blacks was thrown back from her head. “Nicely done, Lord Azryel. Or should I say, Duke Azryel?” she commended, smiling archly.
I savored the sound of the title in my mind before turning to face her. “That is my hope, but the little one needs to remember what she is first, Baba Yaga.”
“You will receive all you deserve for your service to me, have no doubt,” Baba Yaga vowed, her body fading from view. Her voice echoed in my head even though she was physically gone. “Just keep the Sentinel boy and his father in line, or they may overtake you. I wouldn’t want that, I have… plans for you when I return, and I have a feeling you are far more entertaining in bed then they are. I find demons to be… far more imaginative in the art of lust.”
“Do not worry. The boy’s soul is almost non-existent at this point. The father was easily corruptible because of his previous crimes. All it took was some… reminding on my part. The king stands with me with the promise that I will find a way to release him. I am in complete control.”
“I have faith in you, Azryel,” she said, her voice becoming distant. “See that it is not misplaced.” Her laughter dissolved into silence and I was left to myself on the balcony.
I looked around at the blasted wasteland around my tower, then up to the darkening sky as storm clouds gathered overhead. Multi-colored lighting flashed within the clouds, bathing the ground below in an eerie mosaic of color. I put out an Aetheric call to Baba Yaga’s demons and fae, inviting them to join me in open war against the humans and other Aetherics who thought that they should have territory on this planet. Through those armies I would gain even more, from their own connections and followers.
The end had come, and I was its herald.
About the Authors
Jeff Hale and Lezlee Cheek Hale live in southeast Washington State. The Pure Soul is the third book in their Aetheric Elements series. For more information, visit:
www.jeffandlezleehale.com
