Unus (Stone Mage Saga Book 1)

by Raven Whitney

  Ahead of me, the darkened hallway probably led to rooms that nobody would be using, so I fled into the safety of those concealing shadows. Somewhere ahead of me, shouts and grunts echoed down the hall. Immediately, I ducked into a small alcove off to the side between the wall and another bust of Octavius. Once hidden in the crevice, I peeked around the corner to see what was ahead.

  At first, all I could make out were shadowy blurs with only brief glimpses of an arm or leg swinging through the air. But as their fight came closer, I could see in the torch light that it was Unus— the son of a bitch who killed Lexie— fighting against a gang of escaped prisoners. Faced against a mountain troll, a half-shifted lion, and two human-looking men with swords, he was sure to lose.

  One of the men launched a fireball from his hand, revealing himself as a mage. Unus cast his hand out in front of him and the fireball reversed course and blasted the man, knocking him down in a burning heap and sending something rolling down the hallway. It wasn't until it stopped that I could see it was his charred and still burning head. The troll bellowed in rage and charged at Unus, who appeared to be almost bored.

  He casually flicked his finger, causing a giant hole to explode through the top of the troll's head. From where I was peering around the corner yards away, hot droplets of blood and brain sprayed my face, but I still couldn't look away from the carnage. The heavy troll sank to his knees, sending a quake through the solid stone floor. With another blasé flip of Unus’ wrist, the troll's head slid off his neck and dropped onto the floor with a wet thud.

  The lion-man leaped at him from the back, long claws bared and outstretched as the other human-looking man attacked from the side. Unus knelt on the floor, pointing his finger upwards as the lion sailed over his head. A pouring of red and other darker shapes rained down on Unus' head as he gutted the lion-man without even touching him.

  He skidded to a stop only a few feet in front of me, writhing in a pool of his own blood and clutching his stomach to try to keep what was left of his organs inside. Seeming to realize someone else was there, he whipped his head around to me, snarling defensively at the unknown person. His beastly golden eyes met mine and he stopped growling. He jerked his head towards the hallway I'd just come down, as if he was trying to tell me to run before he passed out.

  A bark of laughter brought my gaze back to the battle unfolding in front of me. The other man had slipped unceremoniously in the blood and fell forwards, landing with his face just inches from Unus' feet.

  “Too easy,” he playfully griped, rising to stand at his full height. The ripped skinny jeans and graphic tee of a popular punk band seemed so disturbingly at odds with the coating of blood still dripping from the curls of his mop-top. “Even if you didn't just try to kill me, I would ice you just to chlorinate the gene pool.”

  With that, he bent over from the waist above the unconscious man's head and drew a line in the air across his neck. His head lolled, now disconnected from the rest of his body. Arterial spray gave Unus’ legs another coating of blood as he stepped nonchalantly over the body.

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw him begin to walk towards me, facing downwards and inspecting the damage to his vintage t-shirt. I jerked myself back into the alcove, but it wouldn't do any good. He would find me and there was no escape route from here. I would be cornered.

  He stopped a few feet away and the sound of more liquid spilling made me realize that he'd come this way to behead the lion-man. Please let him go back the other way now. He took one more step forward before halting.

  “Well, hello, there,” he exclaimed with a sarcastic happiness. “Trying to escape with the others, are we?”

  I opened my eyes to see him standing right next to me. I hadn't even heard him cross the remaining few feet to me. His blood-covered face was smiling as though he had just been given a nice birthday present.

  My feet were in motion before I could even think, running as quickly as I could down the hallway away from him. I ducked as he reached out to try to grab me, but he managed to snag a small tuft of my hair. Panic spurred me forward and my scalp felt like it was being stung by wasps as that chunk of hair was pulled out, but the shock blocked most of my pain. The only indication I had that he did more than pull some hair out was the feeling of hot blood trickling like the whisper of a breath down the back of my neck.

  His jogging footsteps behind me made me run even faster, plowing into the throng of escapees still pouring out of the tower. By now, the crowd was thin enough that I could move through them. I don't know what made me turn right, back into the dead-end tower I'd just run from, but I did.

  The booming sounds assaulted my senses, ringing through my head. The screams of rage, terror, and agony from the distant battle beyond echoing through the castle and the dying cries of those Unus mercilessly cut down behind me felt like someone was slamming a mallet against my ears. But I couldn't stop running, couldn't help them, couldn't even pay the dying the dignity and respect of looking back for them.

  Down the stairs into the pit's holding cell I went, hoping for a hiding spot. I didn't know how far behind me he was, but from all of the people still fleeing the tower turning their rage on him, he had to have been slowed down. Hopefully, I was out of eyesight and could hide here. If not, if he saw me come down here, I was as good as dead.

  Once I made it to that tiny, dark cell, I pulled the gate shut behind me and crouched down in the corner. From here, I was in a blind spot unless somebody was standing right next to the gate. In vain, I tried to calm my racing heart and panicked breathing. But still I trembled and cowered in the corner like a little mouse.

  Through the loud reverberations of the yelling, metallic clanging, and explosions of the battle outside, it was almost impossible to hear if anyone was approaching. My heart leaped into my throat when the gritty sounds of footsteps slowly descending the sandy stone stairs reached my ears.

  I was trapped.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Unus' voice sang out. It rang out loud and clear, singular amongst the din.

  The sound of his hand brushing lightly against the time-roughened iron bars of the gate poured concentrated, icy panic through my veins. I lurched to my feet and flung my entire body weight into the heavy gate leading into the pit. The gate gave way with surprising ease and I went straight through it to land on my side in the arena's sands.

  Behind me, Unus meandered slowly towards me, intentionally drawing out my terror. The fresh blood and bits of flesh covering him from head to toe dripped slowly from his hair and fingertips, leaving a gruesome trail in his wake. His eyes held my gaze as he slowly walked to me, intentionally making the heels of his boots clack against the stone floor with each step. At the precipice of the sand pit, he paused with a saccharine smile before stepping onto the sands and continuing his steady advance.

  The horror and adrenaline pulsing through every muscle in my body numbed my quaking muscles. I couldn't get to my feet. Every time I tried to push my legs under me, all I ended up doing was scooting myself a few inches across the sand. It wasn't enough to put any distance between me and an agonizing death.

  Unus came to a halt in front of me. An eerie smile split across his lips. As cold as his smile was, his eyes were even colder, like shards of ice as they fixated on me.

  He bent down and grabbed a solid handful of my hair. He lifted me from the ground until my feet dangled in the air beneath me. I kicked and thrashed wildly in my blind, fight-or-flight panic. Even though I delivered a few blows strong enough to send shocks of pain through my mostly numb legs, he gave no signs that they had any effect.

  “What a dumb animal you are,” he commented with an idle amusement, looking over me like a mouse he was holding by the tail. “Can't you see what an honor it is to give your life and your stones for the future Princeps of the Pax?”

  I landed a hard kick to his groin that briefly buckled his knees, though whether it was from pain or surprise, he gave no sign.

  He let o
ut a low, threatening growl. “You are going to pay for that, you little rat.” An indignant rage came over his face and he jerked the hand holding my hair, jostling me. The index finger of his free hand extended in a way that I now knew. He raised that little finger to point directly at my forehead.

  Slowly, he drew his hand across in a horizontal line. A lash of hot, fiery pain followed in its wake and blood streamed down into my clenched eyes. An unholy shriek stabbed through my eardrums and I realized through the haze of primal hysteria that it was mine.

  From somewhere around me, I felt a thread of pure, dark energy. It slipped like silk against the inside of my very soul. Like death itself, it was the essence of cold stillness. I seized that satiny ice and drew it to me, wrapping its black serenity around me like a protective cloak. That sensation grew stronger and stronger until that blackness was all that was in my mind and all that I wanted. And I wanted it now.

  A piercing screech snapped me out of that peaceful darkness. I fell roughly to the ground, but instead of landing in what I knew should be sands, I hit hard and evenly sized rocks that moved underneath me like a gravelly water bed. Opening my clouded eyes I searched for the source of that horrendous sound, instinctively needing to get away from whatever poor, unfortunate creature was making it. And whatever was causing it.

  Not ten feet in front of me, Unus was the one making that piteous, terrifying sound. He thrashed mindlessly on the ground amidst a swarm of the carnivorous pit skulls. He flailed around, trying to throw and kick them away from him, but for each one he managed to fling across the arena, there were three more to take its place. The chattering nightmares were smeared with red as they roiled around him like ants on a carcass, ripping him apart bite by bite.

  Soon, I could see flashes of bone in the limbs that surfaced through the bloody tide of skulls. His arms and legs emerged from the mass slower and slower until a soft, drum-like boom sounded through the arena and a mass of them went flying through the air in tiny pieces.

  From the hole in the pile, a stunted, red-and-white shape emerged. It wasn't until I saw the single eyeball dangling against the exposed muscles of his cheek that I recognized it was Unus, not a mangled mess of misplaced roadkill. It was impossible to read his expression, but with most of his face gone and his mandible hanging by a thread of sinew, it couldn't be a happy one.

  He made a loud, furious vocalization that carried with it the entire weight of the agony of having your body torn apart by the mouthful. With the only remaining knuckle of his only remaining finger, he pointed directly at me.

  Knowing what those fingers of his were capable of, I ducked out of the way. The clattering of heavy rocks behind me made me turn around to see a pile of rocks larger than me at the foot of a crater in the wall.

  His screams rose with renewed fervor. I didn't want to turn back around to face him, but I couldn't turn my back on him until I was sure he was dead.

  Eventually, the screaming stopped, leaving nothing but the wet tearing and crunching sounds of raw flesh and bone being ripped apart.

  The sight of it held me frozen in place, even though all I wanted to do was run. Inches in front of my face, a reddened, wet skull surfaced from below with an unidentifiable chunk of something in its mouth. I jerked away from it to sit upright and it dropped the little piece of flesh at my feet. The hollow blackness of its eye sockets was aimed at my face as it bounced and chattered in front of me like a gag toy, but it made no move to come any closer to me.

  It was then that I noticed that there wasn't any sand in the arena at all. The entire surface area was a bed of squirming skulls. Somehow, I got my feet under me and I dove for the sand at the entrance to the holding cell.

  I didn't stop running until I got to the first floor and looked over the domed cage covering the top of the arena. All of the thousands of skulls were perfectly still and staring directly at me. With a stone in the pit of my stomach, I turned on my heel and ran as fast as I could with no other thought than to get the hell out of here.

  I elbowed my way through the battlefield in the palace hallways and throne room, nearly slipping on several puddles of blood on the already slick stone floor. Until now, I hadn't fully seen the enormous scale of the battle between Liam's friends at the Pax and Octavius' forces. Hundreds of people and creatures were screaming, clawing, and casting explosive spells across the moonlit, mountainous valley surrounding around the palace.

  Thankfully for me, everyone was so preoccupied with the opponent in front of them that I was able to slip through catching only a single stray slash from a half-shifted wolf who was attacking one of the guards. I made it to the courtyard I'd been in only days ago. Now, it felt like lifetimes ago.

  In my haste, I tripped over the headless corpse of a wendigo in the doorway and caught myself before I tumbled face first down the entire grand staircase. Whatever was beneath my hand was cold, hard, and moving. Slowly, knowing I was going to be looking at something awful, I turned to see one of the black horse golems was coming to life beneath my hand.

  Releasing a powerful, angry bray, the stone beast reared up, its massive talon-tipped feet well over my head, and lashed those claws out at me. It gashed me across the chest, knocking me to the ground. It leaped from its pedestal to land over top of me with its front “hooves” landing on either side of my face. After slamming down, it moved one of its paws to sit on my wounded chest, applying just enough pressure to immobilize me even though I knew it could crush me like a grape. From miles above me, it seemed, it slowly lowered its head with its fanged mouth open.

  Blindly, I reached around me looking for anything that I could use even though somewhere in my mind I knew that it would be pointless to try to stab a piece of stone. As its mouth came to a stop with those freezing cold, razor sharp fangs resting threateningly against my skin, I finally found a piece of metal above me somewhere.

  I pulled on it as hard as I could from my awkward position, but it was connected to something wet and furry. The sharp edges cut into my palm, but I managed to get it detached and stabbed it into the beast's stone eye. If the stone horse was going to be weak anywhere, it would be there.

  My attack did absolutely nothing, not even inciting a twitch. From above me, I heard a scuffling noise before a big, dark shape slammed into the golem, sending it tumbling down the staircase, clattering loudly as stone met stone with enormous force.

  Taking advantage of the situation, I rolled to my feet. I'd have to run by the golem to escape the palace, but it was a necessary risk. I went down the stairs as quickly as I could. The sound of hooves behind me made me go even faster, fearing the second golem could have come to life as well.

  The first golem was just getting back onto its feet as I ran past it and into the fray. The deep snow in the valley made running hard, but I was from Rhode Island, damn it! I could deal with snow!

  I pushed even harder when I heard two pairs of pounding hoofbeats behind me, catching up quickly. Despite the odd temptation to watch death's approach, I focused all of my efforts into running forward and dodging combatants flinging claws, arrows, and fireballs.

  As I ran, I noticed more of the zombies defending the fortress began to stop attacking the prisoners and Pax fighters and turn on their own forces. The rotting, armored, human-looking bodies ripped into the guards as voraciously as a pack of wild dogs. Despite being dead, they moved like lightning in spurts and tore limbs and heads clean off their owners. It took several seconds in the chaos before the guards noticed and spread the order through their ranks to kill the zombies, as well.

  One of the two golems was coming up next to me, only a few feet behind. Finally, I couldn't resist anymore and I turned my head to see that there was a third horse that was following me. At first, the only thing I noticed was that it was very clearly flesh-and-bone as it was decapitated, with its vertebrae, windpipe, and muscles visible through the coagulating coat of blood. No sound of breathing accompanied its thundering hoofbeats.

  The headless bay horse
ran beside me, keeping pace as the golem was rapidly gaining ground behind me. Maybe it was the inevitable head trauma messing with my judgment, but I reached my hand out to touch its shoulder and felt that cold, silky water resonating from deep inside of it. This was mine.

  My legs were beginning to burn with cold and exhaustion and with the golem getting closer with every step, a horrible, brilliant idea came into my head. I'd only seen it done in Western movies, but I had no choice.

  Sending up a silent prayer that it would work, I grabbed what was left of its mane and scale armor plates and vaulted onto its back. As soon as I was on, the horse zombie beneath me picked up speed, running even faster than the snowmobile I'd ridden here.

  Turning around, I could see the golems beginning to fall back into the distance. To my right, a zombie charged at me and leaped into the air with its arms and legs spread out like a starfish. I reflexively ducked down as far as I could, but it landed in the snow ten feet short of me. I unfurled myself and looked back to see it get back up and spin around to reveal two flaming arrows in its back that weren't there before. It let out a wet snarl as it charged a guard with a bow who stood a hundred feet away.

  I kicked the horse to go even faster to the edge of the forest of pines, slouching from the weight of the snowfall. The forest was thin, but it was a distance away from the battlefield and was the best cover I could find.

  Ahead, a wendigo ran at me on all fours like an anorexic, hunched-over gorilla on a trajectory to collide in a few hundred feet. That fucker would not stop me now. Rage and fire heated my hand and I glanced down to see a fireball seething in my palm like a miniature inferno.

  I flung the flames at the monster, exploding it in a white-hot blaze. If there was any good thing about a headless horse it's that you don't have to worry about hitting it in the face with a flamethrower.