Eye of Hel: Stories of the Nine Worlds (Ten Tears Chronicles - a dark fantasy action adventure Book 2)

by Alaric Longward

  Thousands, ten thousand, then twenty, a dozen fierce Jotuns. The ring was growing around the two Gorgon commanders, the dark portal thrumming with more arrivals until at least fifty thousand enemy were there, staring out in fierce readiness. They were playing haunting flutes, the music ominous, sad, promising sorrow to their cousins of Aldheim.

  The elven hosts were murmuring. I could see some shaking with fear; a hundred humans of Daxamma House fell back, even elves slipped away here and there until a horn played.

  I looked towards the sound and saw Kiera standing in the middle of the Bardagoon elven host, playing a merry melody with deft hands, burying the sound of the flutes of sorrow, and the hosts were heartened visibly.

  The enemy army stopped coming.

  A moment’s silence invaded the White Court.

  Then, the battle began.

  ‘Show our ancient enemy Aldheim is ours!’ Almheir Bardagoon screamed with a booming voice, and Danar Coinar echoed him, for they had no quarrel at that point. The southern lord knew he had been betrayed.

  The elves charged the terrible enemy host.

  Thousands of elven and human warriors went forth to kill and die. A thousand spells splayed across Euryale’s host, burning, killing and ripping dark elves apart. Some spells fell away due to the Charm Breaker, but thousands died in blizzards of fiery fires, in ripping winds of ice, in the shaking and trembling earth, and I witnessed a desperate spell of a dozen tall elementals rising before the Jotuns and then the hosts charged each other. Tens of thousands of arrows flew, hitting shield and armor and flesh. Swords carved down in an unholy clanging sound, loud enough to break eardrums, and noble blood flowed freely as the elves tried to carve the dark elves to pieces. Fierce warriors, the night stalker armies gave way, their tall spears taking a toll of death in the Aldheimers, but only a little. They were bracing their feet, locking shields in a huge ring that replaced any fallen of the first rank quickly, and their maa’dark answered the elven spells with darkness-born battle fire, black, insidious flames cutting deadly swath through their cousins. The dark fire was suffocating, and in one place, a hundred elven warriors fell in a heap of flesh, unable to breathe, and into this hole the armored Jotuns charged, chopping apart or ignoring the elementals that had been raised before them. Their twelve-foot long swords and axes flashed in the air, carving elven warriors into pieces, their kicks crushed elves and men. A Jotun fell, burning, another toppled, filled with arrows.

  Danar’s army was reeling, and I saw the army of Gorgons slashing their way for Marxam Daxamma’s lizard. They used whips of fire and steel, flails and maces, striking the Daxamma army hovering behind their shields, pushing at their enemy ruthlessly. Spells flew, lightning slapped down dozens of fighters, rampant maa’dark slew thousands with wild spells until they were exhausted, and I could hear and see every one of the spells, learning them as they were released, and the dagger helped me do that. I stared at Euryale and Stheno, now seated before the gate on red seats, enjoying the terrible carnage and the apparent destruction, and they would rule the land with an iron fist. Dana stood behind them, her face serene.

  Almheir was fighting. He was holding hands with a dozen of the north’s mightiest spell casters; I saw Ulrich there with Anja. He was wearing Strife’s mask, bravely fending off the enemy with spells of destruction, cutting elven troops to shreds. Anja was releasing spells of fire across the enemy troop, and I knew she hoped to fight Dana.

  Dana was our enemy now.

  My sister was not showing any remorse over the destruction. Indeed, I saw her gathering great power and releasing her fiery cloud at a brave shieldwall of elves, killing hundreds, though that also wiped many dark elves.

  The battle was brutal. It was to the death.

  I felt it, tasted each, and wondered what Hel had done to me. The smell of blood was sweet to my nose, the taste in my mouth intoxicating, the stench of charred flesh made me smile. Then I was ashamed, and then again not. I laughed as the Jotuns and the dark elves, howling, charged Almheir’s flag, slaying ten maa’dark while taking a thousand losses from mighty spells, pillars of flame and spears of ice. The Bardagoon elven host was retreating to two sides before the burning Safiroon palace, perhaps two-thirds of them still alive. Almheir was split off from Kiera, and thousands of deadly, tall spears herded them back towards the walls, elven faces glistening with sweat, the dark elven ones with the fierce joy of conquest.

  Danar’s army was dying as well. It was still strong, but thousands upon thousands had died as dark elven continents pushed long spears at them, methodically wearing them down, and the Gorgons were dying in dozens as they dragged down the mightiest of human and elven fighters, ripping them apart and feasting on them before the horrified eyes of their kin.

  The largest Jotun pointed a burning blade at Almheir and looked at the Gorgon mistresses. Euryale nodded. Thousand dark elven maa’dark in black hoods walked forward, grasping at spells.

  He would fall; I despaired. He was mine.

  I looked up. I saw the rock on top of the Citadel and my dagger gave me a solution. Flight was not a spell known to any but the gods, but Famine was a god’s dagger, and I felt wind rip at me, dark shadows swirl and night carried me on top, not unlike Euryale’s spells that she had used to move around her tower. I looked down at the hosts of Aldheim and Svartalfheim.

  And so, I snapped my fingers.

  The sound echoed, enhanced by a simple spell.

  I stood up on the rocks, leaning down to look at the foes, all of whom slowly turned to stare up at me. I had few allies amongst the embattled troops. My eyes met with Dana. Her mouth hung open for just a second, for none of them could see me well enough, even if I could see them all. All they saw was a figure, and they knew the figure would be important, but they did not fully know how or even who I was.

  I pulled down my cowl and smiled, for I knew Euryale would know me.

  And she did.

  She got up from her seat, and I heard her whispering my name. Dana’s head snapped my way, and there was a disbelieving look on her face. Yes, Dana, it is I. I was not sure if there was a fleeting look of relief or if was it of terror, but she knew I was no longer her friend. Euryale was still gawking, and Stheno’s beautiful, strangely innocent face was serious as she whispered to Euryale.

  I spoke harshly, and my voice boomed across the city. ‘Humans shall leave the city. And so will those few elves who are guiltless of treachery and murder. The rest can stay.’ The elves below shuddered with indecision, but none moved. Dark elven faces were full of wonder, and one, a short female harnessed a spell of Fury and unleashed a stabbing light of fire at me. I built a guard of molten stone around myself, and the spell sizzled around it. ‘Euryale!’ I shrieked, my voice hollow.

  ‘Yes, Hand of Life?’ she yelled back, with a hint of doubt. ‘I do not know how you evaded death, girl, but it was a mistake to come here. Did you come for your sister?’

  ‘I did come for my sister.’ I laughed and spread my hands. ‘I also came for you. I came for anyone who has lied to me. Surrender, and I shall only kill you. I’ll not skin you alive nor will I make spoons of your bones.’

  ‘Who?’ Euryale asked, shocked. ‘You would slay me?’

  ‘Yes. All of your kin as well,’ I hissed. Stheno did not move at that but stared at me balefully. Then she put one of her hands across her mouth and laughed. And so, the dark army joined her. They mocked me, harshly and brutally, calling me down, but the Aldheim’s elves were quiet. The Bardagoon armies were trying to regroup; Daxamma and Coinar were thickening their lines.

  ‘Come down, silly human girl!’ Euryale mocked. ‘Come, come! And take my head! I’ll let you make spoons of my bones if you do!’

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  I called for the powers Hel had given me access to. I didn’t have Silver Maw and its huge magical potential, but I felt much more powerful anyway, the limitations of my body gone. I could gather so much power. I let go with a rumbling, fiery spell that shoo
k the foundations of the Citadel. The stone beneath my feet crumbled. A portion of the wall buckled. It sizzled and melted; a tower leaned down, and it fell, bit by bit in the midst of Danar Coinar’s troops. I witnessed the old elf scrambling as tons of stone and wood and iron fell across his army, crushing elves and men and a dozen Gorgons. He fell and was pulled up by his guards who were backing away. He was wounded and careful as he eyed me with dread, and I realized I did not look entirely human anymore, my skin white, my arm was but bones, and my eyes fiery coals. I walked and slid down the rubble, dropping with deadly agility the last ten feet and stood there. Thousands of dark elves faced me as the elves backed off to the sides. A Jotun or two were pushing their way for me, parting the dark elven hosts with their feet, hoisting their bloodied swords. A hundred dark and white maa’dark of Svartalfheim were facing me, their faces uncannily beautiful, and I noted they were all insulted, even ridiculed by my challenge. I stared over their heads at Euryale and Stheno for a moment, and the elder Gorgon’s innocent face betrayed brief worry as if she was sensing something out of place. Euryale was cursing, rushing to confront me, her naked skin gleaming with sweat. She came out of the dark mass, flanked by dark-armored Gorgons, lesser but mighty, and a hundred fiery whips flew into being. Coinar and Daxamma troops were still backing off, but I did not care as Euryale was finally facing me. She held the deadly shield on one of her arms, holding it tightly as her Gorgons and elven hosts were surrounded me. The two Jotuns, both scowling mightily, were walking around me as well, making the ground shake and crack.

  ‘You told me to surrender? You, a child?’ she smiled. ‘Brazen, ruthless, and arrogant.’

  ‘And were you not my mother from whom I learned such manners?’ I said.

  ‘There is something odd about you. What are you, I wonder? But a child, yes, that you are,’ she chided me, tilting her beautiful head.

  ‘I am a child who has outgrown you and your schemes, you filthy mockery of a First Born, lying queen of maggots.’

  With that, she moved impossibly quickly and stood before me. She pulled off her heavy diadem, and her eyes were freed. They burned with dark magic as she attempted to turn me to stone. Those terrible eyes probed deep inside me with molten fire, enough to destroy flesh. I felt the stirrings of her compelling power deep inside me. The petrifying commands were demanding my death; her terrible eyes were commanding me to die painfully.

  She kept pouring her malice into my eyes. It went on and on, and the maa’dark elves and even Jotuns stared at us incredulously.

  I yawned.

  She blinked.

  I laughed.

  I stared at the Charm Breaker, the mighty artifact of old, and saw its power and intricate weaves; the old spells woven deep inside its simple surface, the staring, astonished face gleaming dully on the battlefield. I could see spells. I could see how they were braided and weaved together. I had never seen the weaves of the artifacts and their ancient power. I had never dreamed of sensing the oldest and strangest weaves of the Glory, nor would I have thought it possible to breach something like the Charm Breaker, but everything was different then. I saw them. I gathered the old energies and pulled at the spells hammered on the Charm Breaker’s surface ages ago, our strength nearly equal, but mine was stronger after all, and so I pulled at the shield’s spells and broke them.

  The shield snapped in half with a resounding crack and the crowds gasped.

  I shuddered with surprising fatigue and stared at Euryale’s face. She looked down at the broken artifact in her arms, then at me, her mouth open, but I did not wait. I would die. I would die again as the army facing me was far too powerful.

  I took the Hel’s Seed, the innocent thing of black and dropped it to the ground. It made a heavy thudding sound as it hit the cobblestones. Then it cracked open, and a whisper was released to the air.

  I felt the spell.

  It was not of ice and fire, but of the deep, whispering, dry fumes of the ether, from the fringes of the void, a calling for bones and a lure for the dead, asking for the powers of the Dark Mistress, for that is what Hel’s minions called the magical powers, and they were not meant to be accessed. The whispering fumes braided together, and a mournful, singing voice filled the square.

  Then a black cloud billowed through the city.

  It shot to the skies and raged on the horizons like lightning. The armies fell, weapons clattered on the White Court, weakened towers crumbled, fires were put out, and even Stheno fell from her chair. The spell disappeared though I realized it was meant to do something far from here, not only in Aldheim, but across the Nine. It was an … awakening. An awakening to renew Hel’s War?

  Yes.

  The combatants climbed onto their feet in the White Court.

  Euryale discarded the shield’s remains and scoffed, ‘I don’t know what that was and what you are, Shannon, bone hand, but that was very impressive. Both the breaking of this artifact and what you just released. I smell Hel in the spell. Won’t matter. Whip her,’ she said, and the wall of Gorgons surrounded me.

  Then, the dead moved.

  What had been dead, were now alive. They climbed amidst the living. They were draugr, wise dead, intelligent and envious, mad and strange. There were thousands and thousands of dead elves and men, and two Jotuns, at least, and fallen beasts aplenty in the square. Ten thousand, fifteen, or twenty? I knew not. I had apparently called for the dead, and the dead had responded. They stared around, speechless, their eyes fierce with cold fire, their hands clutching at weapons, their movements jerky, wondering at their strange state. They turned to stare at me. And there were other things there than draugr. Hel’s spell had called for beings that were even more dreadful. Amidst the draugr hovered spirits or the lost, and beings that were never human nor living, primal spirits dwelling in Hel’s lands, close to the dead, yearning to feed on the fallen, and they all came forth.

  Euryale was staring with confusion at the host standing in the midst of their army. The elves and men were cursing in horror.

  ‘I told you to leave,’ I said with an echoing voice. ‘Now, you cannot. Feast, fallen, my fiends, and this city is yours. Kill them, kill the servants of Euryale. Kill them. Kill Danar Coinar and the Daxamma lords. Slay Asfalon Bardagoon. Slay the Gorgons and bring me the head of Almheir Bardagoon. And spare her head so I can take it.’ I pointed a finger at Dana, standing next to Stheno, and she went bone-white in the face as the thousands of wicked dead stared at her. ‘Spare the young, the women and the weak!’ The spirits and the draugr howled and descended on the living. They wickedly attacked the might of Svartalfheim and that of Aldheim. The undead Jotuns grinned and ganged up on their living kin, and they were near impervious to harm. A mad, terrifying melee raged in the Court. The draugr were fast, savage and inhumanly strong, ripping flesh with swords, then teeth, their wounds terrifying to the living. Many were braiding spells and releasing them at the elves.

  ‘What are you?’ Euryale asked with a small voice and stared in horror as the thousand-strong contingent of Gorgons were thrown into chaos by the dead Jotun and five hundred draugr, who took snakebites with guttural, savage glee. Whips flared, opening undead flesh, spells raced across the living and dead alike. ‘It’s like it was with Cerunnos. No!’

  ‘I’m Cerunnos now. Where is the Horn?’ I hissed at her.

  ‘I hold the power of a dragon!’ she screamed. ‘And do not answer to my former slave!’

  ‘I hold the power of a goddess, one you made very upset over the years.’ I laughed at her. ‘So let us see.’

  A spell battle of true master maa’dark is a terrifying thing. She called endless amounts of spells to guard her, red-hot spheres surrounded her flesh while releasing an inferno of pillars of fires, and then a stabbing lance of ice, hoping to destroy me. I recalled the stone shield, repeatedly, my robes protecting me as well. The strange magical stone was absorbing her spells, and I lashed at her with the icy spikes, and with my new strength, they were high as towers, splitting dozens
of embattled people and elves and dead. I noticed the northern elves retreating for the gates of the palace, Almheir leading them, Kiera with him and a dozen handsome elven commanders of his bloodline were with him, but they did not get far, for the dead swarmed around them, battering at their spears, and they were falling back to the wall. Coinar’s troops were fleeing. They ran for the Citadel, but they did not get far either. I heard dull, cold clashes and groans as stone slabs were being moved deep in the Citadel’s Crofts, and I realized the old, ancient mages of the past had being recalled to life as well. They would be terrible, deadly, and the screams of the Coinar drifted from deep inside the Citadel. I hazarded a glance that way while Euryale released a staggering swarm of fires at me, all of which my shield absorbed.

  I laughed as I saw Asfalon surrounded by pale, mummified elven lords of old. They mocked him with their rotten smiles. Asfalon was begging, but one pulled a flaming dagger across Asfalon’s belly and armor, leaving him howling. Their terrible old eyes gazed at me, and at my command, they closed the citadel’s gates, pushing at them mightily. Those escaped would tell tales of the cruelty of the ancients. The Daxamma troops climbed the walls and made it out with some loss over the walls of the Shining City.

  I turned back to the battle. Dark spells of the reeling Svartalfheim host and fires ignited some hundreds of the dead, others fell to the blade, but the army that had marched from the Svartalfheim’s fogs was being torn apart. The carnage was terrible; the draugr wise and intelligent and powerful in magic.

  ‘Pay attention to me!’ Euryale demanded shrilly. ‘Don’t dare to turn away!’