The Destroyer Book 4

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I ignored the group of two on my left and sprinted toward the group of four circling to the right of the table. Just in case the pair of archers decided that they really didn’t need me alive I threw some Air behind me to distract any potential arrows. I did hear a dual twang of bow strings but no arrows ripped through me.

  The four saw me approach and pulled short swords from their belts. I was outside of the smoke of incense from my pavilion and their scent confirmed the fear that their eyes also betrayed. They had expected this to go much smoother than it was. I took a brief comfort from their mood and didn’t bother with a feint for my first broad swing.

  The woman tried to block and I was too fast or she was too stupid to get her weapon up in time. Either way my blade cut through her thin leather armor, chest, and spine to separate her torso from the rest of her lower body. The next attacker jumped to my unguarded left and aimed a kick at my stomach. My foot placement was parallel to his and weighted too much on the front. I couldn’t parry the attack but I did manage to flick the blade back after he struck me and slice off everything below his kneecap. He fell with a startled scream and I hardly felt the kick to the stomach.

  I had to retreat a few steps when the remaining two attackers pressed toward me in unison, pairing their strikes with nervous energy. I parried the first dozen of their swings until I got my footing again. Then I dove forward when they both accidently swung horizontally and had to halt their attack so they wouldn’t hit each other.

  By the Dead Gods these country bumpkins were terrible.

  I cut the arm off of the one to my right and drew a smile along this throat with the tip of the blade. While he gurgled I stepped past the last assassin and drove my knee into his groin. He screamed in pain and I smashed the pommel of Corlintha’s sword into the back of his skull.

  “Drop your weapon.” The other two archers had closed the distance from the pavilion and now stood twenty feet from me. They had their arrows drawn and aimed at my chest. I glanced over their shoulders to my tent and saw that my escorts and slaves were dead. At least they had bought me a bit of killing time.

  “What if I say no?” I licked my lips and realized I was covered in blood. I reached up with my left hand and wiped at part of my mouth and then licked the tips of my fingers. It tasted a little more metallic than I guessed. Iron, copper, too much salt.

  “Then we will put you down,” one of the archers said. Their eyes flickered up over my shoulder and I looked back over to the caravan. There were another dozen of these assassins murdering the rest of my guards and servants.

  “If you drop your weapons I will let you live.” I sighed with annoyance.

  “We have arrows pointed at your chest bitch. We give the commands,” one said.

  “Do you know who I am?” I almost laughed. This was beyond ridiculous.

  “Of course, that is why we are here. Drop your sword.”

  I debated my options. I might be able to kill these two but I’d probably black out from the magic use. Then I’d be captured by the rest of their gang. If I went with them I was certain of what would happen. They wanted me for breeding and would have their strongest males take turns with me until I begot them scores of children. Perhaps my father’s tribe would rescue me, or perhaps I would escape, either way my fate wouldn’t be entirely under my own control.

  Eventually I was going to have to breed. There was no way around it. My powers were too vast to not gift to our race’s evolution. I did want a choice in the matter though. I didn’t choose to be a Singleborn but I would decide everything else in my life.

  Even when I would die.

  I pulled the World into me again. My stomach began to cramp, but I ignored the pain. The problem my kidnappers had was that they couldn’t really attack me. If an arrow penetrated my womb I would become infertile and useless to them. They would have preferred me dead if not in their custody but I doubt their orders were that detailed. They were probably told to capture me unharmed at all costs.

  “Die.” I choked out the word as flame erupted from both of their skulls like torches. They didn’t even scream, or move, they just did as I instructed before their ash filled husks fell over onto the green plains. It was extremely hard to use Fire without a path from the creator to the intended target. It was much harder to do it twice at the same time.

  I felt the grass caress my face and I startled awake. Every muscle in my body ached and I wanted to retch. I knew my horse was tied up to a tree about fifty yards from the pavilion. If I could get to the animal I might be able to make an escape to my father’s estate. I inhaled and smelled the stallion to my southwest. Now I was thankful that the grass was tall since it concealed my own crawl toward my steed.

  Shouts rang from the south of me. They had noticed the fire burst and were rushing from the covered wagons to the spot I had last been seen. I gritted my teeth, fought against the pain that ripped through my body, and tried to crawl faster through the grasslands. I wondered if the layers of blood and grass on me would cover my actual scent or if they would easily find me once they reached the burnt out husks. My senses were more acute than my kin but they could still use their noses to track game.

  “Shhh.” I tried to sooth my horse when I got to the animal’s feet. It didn’t seem to mind my presence. If anything, the beast seemed highly amused by my predicament. I reached up to the ties by the juniper tree and loosened the knot. There were a few other horses in the campsite that these assassins could use, but my steed was the fastest of the bunch.

  They only consequence I didn’t like about my plan was that I would leave several of my attackers alive. It was a poor precedent to set in my new lands. First impressions were important and I guessed that this tribe was either a supposed ally or enemy of my father’s.

  I really needed to murder all of them.

  “Run fast you fucker.” I had only trained this horse for a few years but he knew that when I said those words he better move or receive a severe beating from my riding crop. He didn’t care that I wasn’t on his saddle, fear and memories overtook the animal and I almost couldn’t roll out of his path when he sprinted northward like his tail was on fire.

  “She is escaping!” Several voices shouted out from the east and south.

  “Get the horses from the wagons!” A woman’s voice screamed. Commotion sounded as the group ran back to the caravan and mounted their steeds. My horse was long gone by the time I counted nine other riders chase after him.

  “Fools.” I lay on the grass and sighed. My problems weren’t over but at least I had a few minutes to breathe.

  There probably weren’t any more kidnappers lurking about, but if there were I didn’t want to risk another confrontation without a weapon, preferably a bow, in my hand. I began the long crawl back to the caravan. By the time I made it I had recovered from using my magic enough to stand and search through the weapons without gasping in pain.

  I found a long bow and a quiver of arrows a servant had used for hunting. The pull was a bit light, but I was stronger than most. I saddled one of the remaining horses, checked to see if anyone by the caravans was still alive, and then rode up toward the pavilion.

  Corlintha’s sword lay next to the bodies of the two kidnappers I had immolated. I leaned out of the saddle, picked it up, and then continued the rest of the short journey to the tent. I confirmed that Corlintha was dead before I pulled her sword belt off of her body and buckled it across my waist. She had been my private guard for the last eight years and I hadn’t expected her to meet her end out here in the wilderness. It was slightly ironic since the silver-haired woman had been more excited about making this trip to my father’s lands than I.

  Everyone else in the pavilion was dead as well. There were a few plates of food and assorted bottles of mead that lay untouched by the attack. I grabbed one of the jugs and took a long drink from it. Then I looked down at Corlintha’s body and took another drink. Did the mead taste better because I was still alive? Did it taste better because
I was about to kill more? Perhaps it wasn’t important.

  I mounted the horse and tested the draw of the bow while atop. The weapon was meant to be used while on foot but I could make it work while on horseback. Then I pointed the steed to the north and kicked it forward. Perhaps I should have covered my head, so that I would be harder to spot from a distance. But no, I wanted them to see me coming.

  At least I wasn’t bored anymore.

  Chapter 4-The O’Baarni

  “Surprised to see me?” An armored hand wrapped across my throat and sharp claws dug into the sides of my neck. She stepped around to the front of my chair, obscuring the view of my tribunal. The dragons that had once been painstakingly etched into her green armor in beautiful detail were now distorted, gruesome shapes that twisted across the dull, melted surface.

  “Yes!” I gasped out and her grip tightened around my throat. She lifted me up a few inches and my arms strained against the chains tied to the chair.

  “Good!” she hissed. She reeked of both cooked and rotting flesh. The stench was strong enough to make my eyes water and my stomach turn. Half a million questions flooded my brain, and for a few seconds I could not make sense of anything except terror.

  Absolute terror.

  “Our friends did not think to inform me of your capture,” she sneered as she looked over her shoulder at the four other generals. I was high enough off the ground now to see their expressions. They looked almost as scared as I was.

  “Shlara, we—” Malek began.

  “Shut the fuck up!” she cut him off. “I’ll deal with your failures later.”

  Her helmet had been modified to cover the lower half of her face. Her green eyes were still visible, but the skin surrounding them was burned and scarred like my left hand. Her irises seemed to glow with insanity.

  “You thought I was dead. You thought that our business was finished, didn’t you Kaiyer?” Her grip tightened around my throat and the scent of my blood mixed with the rotting stench of her flesh.

  I tried to answer but she was crushing my windpipe and I could only gasp. I thought she might relax her hold to allow me to speak, but instead she tightened her grip and my vision swam.

  “Answer me, you fucking asshole!” She had always been strong, but I would have never believed she would have the strength to pick me up one-handed and pull me against the chains like this.

  “You are choking him,” Alexia muttered from behind Shlara.

  “So what if I am?” Shlara let me go and the chair fell back onto the stone floor with a jarring smash. I breathed deeply and fought against a gasp of pain.

  “If you want him to answer you then—”

  “Shut up!” Shlara screamed and Air punched through the room. My chair flew over backward and I had to pull my neck forward to prevent my skull from being crushed on the floor. Malek, Thayer, Alexia, and Gorbanni hung flattened against the far wall as if invisible hands held them up. Panic was plain on their faces.

  “Why do you think you can question me?” Shlara pressed her face to Alexia’s. She must have leapt over the table in the half-second I was falling back in the chair.

  “I’m sorry,” Alexia whispered. She had always been fair, but she looked almost white now.

  “Sorry for?”

  “Questioning you,” the blonde woman stammered and turned her head away from Shlara as much as she could. Alexia was not afraid of anything. Man, woman, Elven, I doubted she had even blinked as the dragons descended in the final battle. I had counted on her thousands of times to be the unemotional tester of my strategies.

  I felt the Air leave the room and the four warriors slid down from the wall. Shlara then turned her insane eyes on me and slithered over to my chair. Her armored hand stroked my cheek tenderly and her breath came out in painful spurts.

  “Do you know what this feels like? Being roasted alive like a pig? The itching, the burning, the stench of my own body? Can you guess, Kaiyer?” I closed my eyes and fought back tears. I had heard her scream and watched her die.

  “I would like you to imagine the pain of this Fire. It burned straight through my flesh, to my bones, so hot they turned to ash. I tried to heal through it, but my mind was too focused on the pain of your betrayal. That pain was much worse. Everything you have ever told me was a lie. I believed in you, in your promises, in the future you sold to me. I planned my life around the deception you worked so hard to make me believe. I gave up every other chance I had for happiness for the hope that you would finally do what you promised.” Her claws continued to stroke my face. They were like alligator talons that could shred my skin to tatters with a quick flick of her wrist.

  “You told me that we would be together after the war. You promised me children and a life. You promised to love me forever.” Her hand lifted my chin and I opened my eyes to meet her stare. She didn’t blink. She screamed so loud that I felt my ear drums seize and sputter. My hair was long enough for her to grab and she yanked my head back. “Why would you choose that Elven over me? You hated them. Your whole life was about hating them!” Her voice cracked between painful wheezes. “You meant to kill me, didn’t you? You were not fleeing; you were chasing her.”

  She let go of my hair and turned to walk away toward the table. The four generals had not bothered to sit. There was an absolute change in the room. Before, my five friends were partners, and while Shlara had been the most capable, their opinions all carried equal weight. Now Shlara controlled the group. I saw her power in the fear each of my friends tried to hide when the burnt woman faced them.

  “I told you he would come if we caught the bitch.” She made a hacking sound, like she was clearing phlegm from her throat. It sounded as if her throat was grinding pebbles together. The four nodded enthusiastically. She paced in front of the table and tapped an armored finger on the plate that hid her mouth. The gesture was so familiar, my mind spun through countless memories of her. My heart beat erratically and I shivered with cold sweat.

  “Who decided not to inform me that he was here?” She pointed a finger back at me while her eyes remained on my generals, searching them for weakness.

  The four stood silent for a few moments. Then Malek raised his hand slightly, like a child that knew he was about to be disciplined. Thayer and Gorbanni looked relieved that Malek had made the small movement.

  “Of course, there are no coincidences are there my sweet Malek? You were always coming between Kaiyer and me. Why should that change now?”

  “I just—” Suddenly Malek was pinned against the wall with Shlara’s sword sticking out of the right side of his chest. He gasped and blood dribbled from his open lips. I hadn’t even seen her draw the weapon, or move to impale him.

  “I’ve found that when a person says ‘I just,’ something incredibly stupid is about to come out of their mouth.” He coughed up another mouthful of blood and reached his hand to the hilt of her blade.

  “Leave that there. Think of it as your reward for insolence. You always wanted to put your sword into me, but now I’ve put mine into you. Isn’t that funny?” She laughed, a maniacal twisted sonata that made my stomach churn. Malek nodded slightly and moved his hand down away from the weapon. Thayer, Alexia, and Gorbanni looked at him in pity but they seemed too terrified of Shlara to make any sort of move to help their friend.

  “I said: 'Isn’t that funny?' Why aren’t you laughing?” Shlara turned her helmet to regard the other three. They promptly forced smiles to their faces and small laughs out of their throats.

  She turned her gaze back to me and I repressed a shudder of nausea. How in the fuck had this happened?

  “Now.” Her clawed gloves stroked my face again. I tried not to cringe, but she didn’t seem to notice me shy away from her talons. Or she did not care. “What to do with you?”

  She turned my head around in her hands to inspect my face. The terror hadn’t faded, even as the seconds ticked by, and I realized that I would have fought a dozen dragons again rather than remain trapped here with her
.

  “Torture? It would be fitting of course. Execution? Probably a given.” She bent down so that her eyes were even with mine. I could smell more of her rancid breath now and I was thankful I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

  “The problem is that I am still so in love with you, Kaiyer.” Her voice softened slightly and I saw the faintest flash of humanity in her eyes before they hardened again. “Nothing I could do to you would repay the betrayal you have inflicted on me. Instead, I will just take what I’ve always wanted from you.” She stood up and laughed again.

  “I may not be able to bear children. I have to peel this armor off in bloody pieces just to shit and piss. Without it, the pain is even more intense. The friction from even a breeze sears my skin with agony. I am relieved to put my armor back on. But the pain never leaves me. I do not need to eat or drink anymore. The Elements keep me alive now. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  She turned to the silent generals and glowered at them. Each squirmed uncomfortably and looked away, like a cowed dog.

  “This is how they are now, Kaiyer.” She turned back to me and took the few steps between us. She sat down on my lap sideways and flung her armored right arm over my shoulders. Her claws dug into my right bicep and she snuggled against my torso. “They don’t argue anymore, they just do as I tell them, like good little pets. Sometimes I miss our debates around the map table. But I do prefer it this way. I had to hold their hands through everything in the war."

  “That isn’t true.” Anger spat the words out of my mouth and I temporarily forgot my dire situation.

  “Kaiyer! There is some life in you yet. But your opinion hardly matters. If my previous statement applies to anyone, it would be you. I managed the entire army in the end, didn’t I? Oh sure, we had your name and presence, but everyone pretty much did as I said. Even you.” She tapped her finger on my nose playfully during the last sentence. Then she held her hand out behind her.