Ascending Shadows

by Everet Martins

  Their slinking in along the gate seemed painfully obvious then. If there was an ambush waiting, they would surely leave their assailants with no questions about their intentions. Perhaps they could’ve waited for the cover of night. It was possible that these Tigerians had decent night vision if they were anything like cats. Senka never liked working at night, preferring the bright of the sun. And only villains worked at night.

  They passed more Tigerian corpses, sent back to the sands in the same manner as the others. A few looked to be youths, a couple women given the breasts and the lack of bulges under their loincloths. They were all teeming with swarming flies and ragged craters showing their insides. The village was a haven for the buzzing bastards. They landed on her neck, bit her cheeks, got to the point it was no use in swatting at them anymore. She did her best to ignore their pinprick bites but wished she could harness the Dragon to burn them to ashes.

  Her head whirled at every unfamiliar sound, her fingers poised to draw her blades free from their scabbards. They broke off into a single line as they drew closer to the gate encircling the village. The heavy garlic scent of fear came from one of the men, maybe both, leaving another wall of stink for her to wade through. Sweat prickled on her neck. It felt like death was lurking at their backs. Every color seemed to glow, the odd flutter of a shrub’s leaves made her heart roar with panic. She felt at the metallic scales carved into her dagger’s hilts, cool and reassuring, nails pressing in. She heard every breath in her chest, heard Isa’s breathing give the softest of hisses. She noticed how her bare feet grabbed at the soles of her boots, noted the hot spot already forming on her big toe. Few things annoyed her more than a nagging blister, besides being poisoned and getting stabbed.

  They froze as a door to the hut on their right creaked open. Three male Tigerians staggered out of it, snickering to themselves, a wall of black smoke billowing out behind. The one at the front had a long white mane that swept around his face, a big grin stamped on his odd human shaped skull. He had a mouth full of canines that were brighter than his mane. He looked at Senka, then shifted his gaze to Isa and Juzo, all of them gone still as statues. The other two Tigerians stood in the doorway, one dark haired and another a mustard yellow. They all stared at each other with dumb wonderment.

  Senka felt time slow down, the way it always did before she knew there’d be blood. It was enough time for her to see odd things. Smiles fell away. How a beam of light shone bright against the lead Tigerian’s whiskers, shining like diamonds. The length of the nails on his claws, about four inches long and looking sharp enough to tear through leather. She saw the striations of color on his fur were alternating shades of white. She knew the feeling, knew what it was, yet every time it invariably stupefied her.

  “The Shadow has returned,” the white one whispered, the words drawing out slow.

  “No, not us. We mean you no harm.” Juzo raised his spear and opened hand, saying the words in a placating tone.

  “The Shadow! Look at his eye!” The yellow one said, its voice an angry hissing. Senka remembered the blue on her face and how strange she too must’ve looked.

  “No.” Isa shook his head and then the white Tigerian raised its claws. She felt the air change with a cool breeze against her back. Time sped up in that one instant.

  Juzo and Isa lunged in a simultaneous display of ferocity, ramming their spears into the white Tigerian’s sides, which let out an ear piercing shriek. His raised hands went to the twin spears spilling beads of red along his fur. Senka drew her daggers with a ring that only told of death and fell into a roll to her right at Juzo’s back, popping up on sure legs, dagger hammering into the yellow Tigerian’s thigh. Leaving him bleeding and mortally wounded, she darted for the dark haired Tigerian, smashing the pommel of her other blade into his mouth and sending him stumbling with bits of shattered fangs flying. The dark haired Tigerian’s claws raked the air, scraped the hut’s side, puffing out dust.

  “Duck,” someone said, and she did. She felt the whoosh of a spear thrust over her head before taking the dark haired Tigerian through the throat and impaling him on a wooden support post with a thunk. Blood gurgled out of his mouth and over the spear, blood splashing down the back of her neck. His broken teeth bit down on the iron haft, making a few more break like glass.

  “Damn it,” she grunted as she rose up, saw Isa drive his spear through the guts of the yellow haired one clutching his wounded thigh. She sloughed globs of blood from the back of her neck, felt it sliding down her back, warming down to her ass crack. “Damn it!” she barked again. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate being covered in blood?”

  “Shh.” Isa hissed. “Might be more.” But there was only the forest’s silence. Twittering birds. The creak of two pieces of wood rubbing together.

  There was blood everywhere. In her hair, between her tits under her armor, sliding down her boots and squeezing between her toes. She growled, anger rising up her throat like a boiling volcano. She winced at feeling the blood curl around her thighs, ass crack now serving as a blood swamp. “Gods! Damn it!” She stomped her boot, felt the blood squelch under the arch of her foot.

  A soft clapping came from somewhere nearby, and anger melted down into her stomach. She turned her ear towards the sound and noticed the clapping was getting closer, coming from between the pair of huts set staggered behind the one the three Tigerians had emerged from. The men turned to face the sound too, peering intently. She smelled the smoke billowing out of the opened door now, a harsh fragrance unlike no other. She started to feel a bit lightheaded, felt her legs quivering. She always felt shaky after a fight; it took some time for her legs to right themselves.

  “What is that?” Isa whispered, his spear held out in one hand, arms spread wide. “Come out!”

  “Show yourself!” Juzo barked, re-gripping his bloody spear haft. Blood spiraled down his arms in red streaks.

  The clapping came from behind the wall of smoke forming between two adjacent huts. How could they have been breathing in all of that? A shadow of a figure emerged from the smoke, still clapping, grinning at them with an unnaturally broad smile that crept up to her eyes.

  “That was all of them. They were somehow able to resist my spell. I wanted to know how, but you’ve gone and ruined things,” a cool feminine voice said. “It has been long since I have last heard the Zorian accent.”

  The figure stepped into a beam of light, half of its body lit in a cutting diagonal. She wore a strange reddish armor that looked to be bonded with her skin, seen where the two merged at her neckline. It looked like great Dragon’s scales were bonded at her shoulders, down her arms and over the whole of her form. Her arms were thin as a reed, great swathes of flesh connected at her wrists and draping down to her ankles almost like wings. Her face was beautiful, cheekbones all sharp angles, nose small, lips smiling sharp as a knife. Eyes glowing violet.

  “But how?” Juzo breathed.

  “Couldn’t be,” Isa murmured and shifted back a step away from her.

  But it was her.

  They weren’t ready. Senka had never felt so small. Never felt so crushed with defeat, not since she ran from her father’s killers. This should have felt like victory. Instead, a great sense of hopelessness settled into her bones at seeing the glow of those eyes, the glow of the Shadow. She wanted to bow down like the gnat she was, let herself be crushed if only for the opportunity to feel the bottom of her glorious boots.

  Senka managed to steal her gaze away from the goddess before her, seeing Juzo’s posture slumped down low to make himself look short, shoulders drooped. His hands were falling open, the spear almost spilling free from his loosed fingers. Isa gripped his spear tight, though his entire body seemed to be shaking, sweat forming fat droplets over his hairless head.

  “From which part of Zoria do you hail?” the Shadow princess crooned.

  “You-you’re not her,” Isa stammered, re-affirming his grip around his spear, fingers welling with blood. His or the Tigerians’? �
�Can’t be. Too easy— impossible.”

  “Is that so?” She sashayed over to him, her hips seductively swinging. Her hips swayed in an unnatural dislocation, like they weren’t attached to her spine. She placed a finger on the tip of his spear. “Do you intend to do something with that, or just stand there staring at it? Or maybe you just like what you see? Maybe you want to put your white prick in me?”

  Isa’s jaw was hanging slack, and he croaked out a sound before clamping it down shut. His jaw started working with flexing muscles. He made no move to attack, didn’t even have his feet in a proper fighting stance. What was he waiting for?

  Senka wanted to move, but what if she made a mistake? What if she got her friends killed? The only friends she ever had. What if she couldn’t stop this monster no matter what she tried? Clean your laboratory. Did I raise you to be a filthy pig? Too much venom. Not enough substrate. Stab faster, harder. Did I tell you to show your target mercy? Her father’s endless admonishments galloped through her mind. Then they were gone in the wake of an ashen hand raking across her vision, the hand of Dressna.

  The Shadow princess reached a glistening red talon toward Isa, the tip glowing with violet light. Something was going to happen. Something bad. She should do something. DO SOMETHING! Her father screamed in her head.

  His screams became Senka’s, whose voice was cracking and warbling as if an invisible shell enveloped the air. She lunged at the Shadow princess, one dagger stabbing and the other slashing. The demon twisted sideways to dodge her first strike, the second hacking through her extended index finger. She shrieked with a voice that sounded like three voices at once, all harmonizing in demonic rage. Her severed finger flopped to the ground, spurting with a thin jet of glowing violet blood.

  She bleeds, Senka thought, staring stupidly at the bright blood on her hands. The Shadow princess whirled around, a blur of red and smoke, and something caught Senka in the guts, sending her careening through the air, hurling her at least five feet, tumbling head over ass.

  Senka fell into a back roll to recover, going around twice from the force of the blow. The clang of metal, shouts, and grunts called out. The world spun in swirling smoke, dancing figures, and waving trees. She gathered her legs under her as the world started to reform. She rose up and shook her head, willing the shaking image to go solid.

  There was a strange buzzing in her ears that made sounds fade in and out. Not flies. Juzo and Isa were fighting, she thought distantly. She spat a mouthful of earth and blood from the corner of her lips, her mouth dry as cotton. Her eyes blurred with wet, and she wiped them on the back of a quivering hand, saw her dagger glowing with the Shadow princess’ blood. This was a nightmare she’d wake from any time now. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and saw the blood still there, pattering onto the black leaves. They will die because of your carelessness, she thought.

  “Senka!” someone shouted from far off, though it should have sounded closer.

  She sucked in a ragged breath and blew it out hard, the side of her chest roaring like a knife had been put in it. She looked down and saw it wasn’t a knife but a hunk of splintered wood sticking from the side of her armor. It looked like a section of the rotting fence.

  “Oh,” she muttered. “Oh, no.” But she didn’t feel any particular concern about it, and that thought made her feel odd. It was all very strange, her head not working right. Get yourself together.

  She re-gripped her daggers, caught a breath, and forced it out. “Need to help. Need to fight.” The urge to vomit rose in crushing waves along with what felt like a second heartbeat where the section of wood jutted. She wanted to sit, knew she was defeated. Knew she should just stop, maybe then she could find Angel’s Moss.

  They need you.

  Senka growled and started to charge, pain cutting and twisting through her side like magma. Broken rib or two, maybe three. Maybe a ruined lung. She knew the feeling well. Her daggers glinted from chinks of light, swinging in her unbreakable grip.

  Isa thrust low, and Juzo stabbed high, the Shadow princess a mass of whirling reds, grinning all the while. She was toying with them, making sport of it, Senka realized. Senka slid to a stop behind Juzo and Isa, kicking up dirt, careful of not getting run through by their spears. She darted for Juzo’s side.

  The Shadow princess leaped back a pace. “Nasty little blades you’ve got there. You will pay for that. I think I will fashion your intestines as a trophy.” The blood from her severed finger curled around her forearm and down a length of wing.

  “Die!” Juzo roared. He stabbed, and she ducked, narrowly avoiding his spear tip from taking her eye. Was this a game? Maybe something had weakened her?

  Isa came after, his spear gliding up and ramming it at her inner thigh where her armor was thin. His strike landed true, plunging in where her flesh was soft. She shrieked and clutched his spear with her bloody hand. “You—”

  Juzo rose up to his full height, his spear raised high over his shoulder for a deathblow. She smiled, and Senka raised her hand to say something because she shouldn’t have been smiling. But it was too late. “Shadows burn!” The Shadow princess opened her hand and bathed Juzo in a torrent of blinding white-violet fire.

  Senka had her hand up to cover her face, the heat of it burning her lips despite dropping back and instinctively rolling away. She heard him scream in horror, could almost feel the agony of it on her own flesh. The light faded an instant later, leaving a dark streak in her vision. The air around his form shimmered with heat.

  Isa stared, his jaw hanging limp. Juzo’s hair was gone, his clothing in smoldering tatters, body nothing but red blisters. She watched him release his spear, the flesh peeling away from his palms in blackened strips where he had gripped it. The metal of his spear was a cherry red and sagging in the middle, bending in the heat.

  Juzo let out a shudder and hit the ground, dead as a sack of butcher’s meat. He just needed to be carved up so he could be sold.

  “No!” Isa roared. In one lightning fast motion, he jerked his spear free from her leg and rammed it into her chest between pieces of her plate carapace. “Bitch!”

  The Shadow princess let out gurgled surprise, her eyes wide. Blood leaked around the spear and the glow in her eyes fluttered. Senka dashed in front of her, close enough to smell the stink of rot wafting from her body. She slipped her twin daggers around her neck like a pair of opened scissors. She dragged them through, screaming, tearing through her ashen flesh in two vicious slices.

  “What…?” The light went out of the Shadow princess’ eyes, and she collapsed like her bones had become dirt. Blood pumped from her neck in grisly jets. Purple air bubbles started forming around her neck wounds, hands clawing at the earth, legs shaking like she was having a seizure.

  “I’ll watch her; tend to him,” Isa said with a snort and wiped spots of her blood down his face in purple streaks. He put his boot on her chest and slipped his spear free with a squelch, smashed it down again into her body, made her twitch with the force of it. “Die! Fucking cunt!”

  “Right,” she nodded, staring at the Shadow princess’ writhing body. Could this really be her? It all happened so quickly. It felt too easy, and things never felt easy. A great sense of wrongness settled into her guts worse than the one she’d felt when she first laid eyes on her.

  “Now, Senka!” Isa barked, sparking her nerves back to life.

  “Juzo!” Senka sheathed her daggers, reached her arms under his shoulders, gently dragging him away from the dead demon. He was breathing, by the gods, he was breathing. It was a pained whistle, but it was breath nonetheless. She remembered then he was hard to kill. Something slipped against her fingers, and her hands jerked out from his underarms. She stumbled back, heel catching on a root, and falling onto her ass with a thump.

  “Ungh,” Juzo moaned. “Unh!”

  “Oh. Oh no!” she screamed, staring at her hands covered in patches of his broken, blackened flesh.

  “Blood,” he croaked. “Please. Blood.”


  She scrambled up and met his eye, his eyelid mostly burned away and showing bits of scorched eyeball beneath, the flesh cooked white like meat. Her side shrieked with pain, begged for mercy. Sweat dripped from her temples and fell into his face.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried and struggled to wipe his congealed flesh and muscle from her hands, smearing it over her thighs in streaks of red, white, and black.

  “Blood. Okay. Blood, but where?” She remembered the slain Tigerians and hoped they would do. She shuffled over to them, her pain becoming impossible to ignore, breathing becoming difficult. It felt like all the water in her body was leaking out in sweat. She reached the trio, wondering which would have more blood, all looking to be quite drained.

  “Hurry!” Juzo cried then broke down into a shuddering whimper. All manner of his hardness vanished, body spasming as he shrieked in agony.

  “Shit.” She screamed as she got the white Tigerian unaffected by the Shadow plague moving, dragging it by the ankles, earth and blood trailing after. Isa finally came and hoisted it up by the shoulders. “About time,” she huffed.

  “She’s gone,” Isa stared at her, his face a mask of violet streaks, his nose trickling with red blood onto his chest. “Did you hear me?”

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” Senka cried. “She was just here. How did you lose her?”

  “I don’t know. Just fucking vanished. Gone like she was never there.” He growled through clenched teeth. “Some kind of Shadow magic.”

  “We killed her. What are you saying?” Senka’s teeth ground together, her jaw popping under the pressure.