The pair of whimpering slaves spotted freedom through the doors. They dragged themselves up and ran. It was a woman and a man she saw with the start of a smile. Freedom was near.
Hammers roared, and bowstrings snapped before they could make it to the exit, sending them careening onto their backs. Their screams of terror cut at her heart. Their bodies gave a few rebellious twitches, littered with at least ten bolts and arrows. The man reached for her, but she didn’t reach for him. A pair of arrows stood from her throat. His fingers tried to meet the woman’s as he bled out, inching for her on the blood-slicked tiles. But his hands didn’t make it as he breathed his last.
Smoke billowed into the night air, clearing just in time to show six or so Tigerians fanning into the hall. Lillian rose to her full height, brows drawing down and eyes flashing like bonfires. “Bastards!” she screamed.
She was Death. She flicked her fingers, sending a burning dart through a Tigerian’s heart. “Bitch!” he screamed as he fell, blood streaking the floor. The next two, she beheaded with a disc of fire, cutting through their necks like a scythe to wheat. Their disembodied heads floated on the air, trailing ropes of glistening blood, expressions of shock forever fixed.
“You’re beautiful when you die,” she whispered. She walked towards them, drawing halos of fire around her fists, grinning at feline eyes wide with terror.
“Wizard!” one of them screamed, his bow tumbling from his hands as he turned and sprinted for the door. But it was far too late for that. A great scythe of flame materialized in the air, chopping the runner down, splitting him in half from shoulder to hip, producing a wet click. She punched with both fists, sending beams of searing fire through the torsos of the next pair of Tigerians. The lances of fire followed through the wall behind them, blasting great holes that showed the jet black of the encompassing night.
She laughed as the Dragon took its hold, its rage searing in her veins and seeking nothing but more lives to take. Her face was a mask of blood, dress matted in gore. And on they came, attempting to satiate her blood lust. She clenched her jaw so hard a tooth shattered to bits, sharp against her tongue. She held the beams of fire, severing the next three fur-lined bodies into a mess of spinning limbs.
There were so many dead they were starting to form a pile at the foyer. It was a mess of blood, severed limbs, smoking flesh, and stinking fur. Her laughter became a madman’s cackle as she was lost in the throes of the Dragon’s chaotic embrace. It was everything, and everything was this. They came and came, and she cut them down, throwing their blood on the walls and turning the foyer into her butcher’s block. It was a nightmare. It was a dream.
At some point, they stopped coming. She released the Dragon, her throat a ragged mess like she had swallowed glass. Fire smoldered on the thirty or so corpses. Great sections of the front wall were missing as if it had been torn apart by Midgaard demolitionists.
She heard frantic footfalls from the upper levels of the mansion. She peered up and saw that ladders had been raised at the sides of the house as Tigerians scampered up their rungs. “Shit,” she whispered, strength fading from her like a wilting balloon. They were wiser than she had given them credit.
Where was Baylan? If she died, he would certainly be killed. “Baylan?” she called. “Bay!”
Nothing.
Footfalls pattered on the upper floors. “One… two… three,” she counted. She had to move.
She ran into the hall she’d been in before and worked to drag a giant armoire across the width as a barricade. Lines of sweat welled from her hair, cutting clean paths through her bloodied face and showing her ivory skin beneath the gore. Lillian grunted and grimaced, dragging the behemoth away from the wall and finally tipping it over. Its top corner smashed into the plaster, leaving it at a low angle. She next dragged a heavy table and turned it over to fill in the widest gap the armoire left in the hallway.
She nodded at the makeshift barricade, whirling around to gasp at a door behind her. “By the Dragon!” She swallowed. How had she missed that? To her great relief, there was a heavy couch on the wall adjacent to the door which she dragged before it. It wouldn’t wholly prevent it from opening, but at least made it significantly more difficult.
She knew she was only buying time. There were too many Tigerians, and the majority of her strength had been spent. She lowered herself to her belly, moaning as pain flared in her leg and back. She squeezed into a nook formed under the upturned table and against the wall. Where her arm touched the pristine wall, she left red smears behind. This spot would make her a small target and give her the chance to deliver a few more Tigerians to the Shadow Realm.
She felt for the Dragon, finding what strength it could lend her the equivalent of a flickering candlelight. If she were to attempt to pull on more of its blessing, there was a high risk that she would be burned alive by an uncontrollable surge of power.
Doors squealed open on the upper floors, and she heard Tigerians flooding down the stairs. They filled the hallway with their scowling faces, bows humming and hammers falling to paint the air with projectiles. They cracked through walls and tore into her barricade like thunder.
She closed her eyes and flinched as an arrow almost struck her head, warbling in her ear. A defeated whimper escaped her lips. Ten, maybe twenty feline eyes traced to where she huddled, bows and crossbows trained on her. She closed her eyes and waited for the end. She’d fought well and did not fear death.
“Hold! Hold!” Someone roared. It was a familiar voice… Haru’s, she realized. “Hold! Do not fire!” A few Tigerians growled, some turning to regard the main hallway and lowering their weapons. Most kept their weapons trained on her. Why they didn’t kill her to avenge their fallen would always be a mystery. Maybe it was because of their sense of duty and dedication to their new master.
She heard the scrape of Haru’s cane as he made his way down the stairs, navigating the sea of dead in the main hallway. “We have your man, Masa! Lillian… whatever your name is. Baylan is here with me! If you give up now, there’s still a chance he will live. You didn’t come all this way to let him die, did you? You give up, release the Dragon, and Baylan walks away.”
She scoffed in disbelief, head sagging as she stared at her scarlet hands. The gods smile on me. There was still a way out.
“Show her!” Haru’s voice drew closer, just around the edge of the hallway from where she hid. In the foyer, a great section of wall tore free, hitting the ground with a roar. “Whoo! Almost got me!” Haru laughed. “What a way to go that would have been! Show her already, damn it! By Ashrath, if you damned fools had listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place! But no one listens to old Haru.”
The knot of Tigerians before her reluctantly parted as a taskmaster pushed Baylan through with a dagger held to his throat. One of his feline hands gripped Baylan around the belly, holding him close as the other pressed the blade hard enough to draw a trickle of blood over his collar. The Equalizer crystal dangling from his collar flared with bright pink, stopping Baylan from touching the Phoenix.
“Stop that!” the Tigerian snapped, pressing the dagger up, raising Baylan’s chin. Baylan nodded, the frantic gesture minuscule as his eyes whirled back, hair matted against his neck in a sticky mix of sweat and blood. The Equalizer crystal dimmed and faded to black. He met her eyes, thick with tears. He looked relatively unharmed but for a few scratches and the dagger’s wound.
“Lillian,” he said, the words barely audible. “I’m sorry.”
Her throat hitched. She shook her head, choking out the words, “I failed you.” After all the sacrifice, all the hardship, and most importantly, Brenna’s death, their attempted rescue had been an abject failure.
“If you come out and give up,” Haru shouted around the corner, “we’ll let you live. If you don’t, you will certainly die, and that is a promise. Release the Dragon, come out, and only you will die. I’ll let your man live.”
What choice did she have? She
slowly raised her head, looking at the ceiling for some sign of hope, finding only spattered blood. How blood had found its way there was anyone’s guess.
“I love you,” Baylan said, blinking back glossy tears.
“Come out now, or you’re all dead!” Haru screamed. “You are testing my patience!”
“Okay!” Lillian croaked. “I… give up.” She crawled out from the nook with a wince, trailing hot blood from her leg. Twitchy Tigerian fingers rubbed at crossbow triggers and plucked drawn arrows. The floor blurred in and out of focus.
“The belt,” the taskmaster holding Baylan beckoned.
“Right.” She had forgotten it was there. She undid the buckle, letting the belt bearing her hunting knives thump to the floor. She slowly raised her hands, giving a resigned nod.
“What did that humie cunt say? I can’t hear you, bitch!” Haru yelled.
“I give up! Give! Up!” she shrieked, throat breaking, guts rebelling and making her vomit. She bent over and retched out her half-digested meal. Her legs trembled, and knees uncontrollably knocked. She mastered her stomach as Haru shuffled down the hall, giving her a frozen glare. She glared back, wiped a swinging line of spittle on her shoulder. The older man’s eyes were red around the edges, sore from his sorrow. The white shoulders of his shirt were spotted with red, half of his face darkened with soot.
Haru beckoned for her to follow, and follow she did. Her legs hardly had the strength to support her, warbling with every step. The walls were a crumbling wreck, the plaster and trim torn away in great sheets, showing the mansion’s bones. Carpets smoldered with small fires, paintings were torn asunder, vases shattered to bits. Dust hung in the air like an ethereal mist. In the main hallway, the walls were pocked with hundreds of bolt holes and standing arrow shafts.
Baylan was dragged out after her, doing his best to stifle a whimper. She knew it wasn’t a whimper drawn of physical pain or defeat, but at the grim prospect of witnessing her execution.
Lillian tore down the top of her dress, baring her form for the Dragon’s embrace. Her once perfect skin was a patina of filth. Abrasions, gouges, soot, and lines of blood wept from unfelt wounds.
Haru hobbled to the center of the foyer, and she followed. He turned about and grinned as his eyes fell on her tits. He raised his eyes, narrowing as they met her iron stare. He drew a dagger from behind his back, the handle and blade curved like a sickle, the guard heavily ornamented with a swirling Dragon. It struck her as strange to see such a weapon in Tigeria.
“Raise your throat, and you can die on your feet. I must applaud your efforts. You were so close, but we will live on and you… will die,” Haru said, his last two words thudding like hammer blows in her head.
She inhaled as the blade came and caught moonlight, a few hairs from her throat. She screwed her eyes shut and waited…
There is another way, an ancient voice said. It sounded like it had been produced from a desiccated corpse rotting in a forgotten well. Somehow, she knew hearing this voice was poison. Once it entered your psyche, it was like spilled ink in water, infecting everything it touched.
She furrowed her brows and turned her thoughts inward. Which way?
I can grant you what you need, but there is a price, the voice rasped.
Who… what are you? You’re not the Dragon, she thought back.
My ability to hold time is limited. Let us hold palaver, the voice said.
She opened her eyes with a gasp. She was no longer in Tigeria.
The room was curved, but curved in a series of harsh lines. A pair of pillars stood in the center of the room covered with sheets of gleaming emeralds cut into long rectangles. The walls were made up of beautifully carved bookshelves, every inch filled with ancient tomes, though without an iota of dust.
There were a few strangely shaped objects that looked like vases made of copper, one of them softly hissing out steam through a narrow hole in the top. Upon a desk between and behind the pillars, a song started to play from a wooden music box sitting on a pile of books. The crank turned on its own and played a high-pitched melancholy tune. She felt the hair on the backs of her arms rise under the blood and sweat. Her eyes were involuntarily drawn to a shimmering bauble.
An enormous glass sphere taller and wider than a man sat near a wall showing her grisly reflection. Within the sphere were stars that winked in and out of existence, glowing blue-green dust hanging in the air, a series of bright threads connecting the stars and forming a strange web among the shimmering dust. It was both beautiful and horrible. Horrible because she felt like she was seeing something not meant for the eyes of man. Whatever it was, she knew it should’ve remained hidden from the world. The tapestry of light, dust, and stars was ever changing, ever shifting into new shapes and patterns. It seemed to have an infinite depth. The closer she looked at an area, the more it seemed to grow and expand.
In front of the big sphere was a smaller sphere of about half the larger one’s size, both of them floating on nothing. Her eyes bulged and her breath caught. Within the smaller sphere, she saw a series of strange images.
She saw herself perched against the banister of the Warwick with Baylan’s arm draped across her shoulders. The Far Sea glimmered like smashed sapphires. She gave him a sad smile, then rested her head against his chest. On her back were long scars that could have only been caused by an animal’s claws. A Tigerian’s, to be precise. Those were healed scars from the wounds she had now, which meant this was the future.
A potential future, the voice giggled. It was hearing her thoughts, she realized with a chill and realized it would know her realization. This was too much.
The image shattered like glass, transmuting into something else. She saw herself fighting strange beasts in what appeared to be a rural village. The creatures were humanoid and wearing slate gray armor that seemed to swallow the light of the sun. Their eyes glowed like dying coals, each deep set in hollowed eye sockets. Their flesh was pulled tight as a drum around their bony faces. They held the weapons of nightmares, rusted hooks, pitted swords, and jagged scythes.
Then it was gone, replaced by another. This time, she and Baylan were trudging through a forest, encountering a lone boy hacking down trees with a legendary weapon of Dragon fire. She saw herself bowing before Bezda Lightwalker in the Silver Tower’s high office. It was all happening too fast and impossible to comprehend. Her gestures pleaded for Bezda to listen. She saw her own mouth moving but was unable to hear the words. She saw herself fighting someone in the Tower then killing a fellow wizard who tried to put her in chains. Baylan grabbed her hand and dragged her into a shadowed hallway.
Then there were snakes. Thousands of snakes with violet eyes swarming over the Tower’s bridge. There were so many the bridge couldn’t contain them all, some plummeting into the gorge below. The Tower’s roaring falls swept their wriggling bodies into the Far Sea.
Gone and replaced. She saw a woman she didn’t recognize flailing on the ground behind the Arch Wizard’s desk. Her long golden hair fanned out over the rich carpets. Standing over her battered form was another woman, this one’s flesh covered in a thick carapace the color of red wine. Her eyes glowed with a sickening violet light. The dying woman’s limbs were twisted in the wrong direction, an eye gouged and hanging from the socket. Her cheek had been hacked with a blade on one side, giving her a lopsided smile that reached her ear and showed her clenched teeth. Three of her fingers had been chopped from one hand, each stump weeping blood. Her amputated fingers were spread about the floor, followed by a trail of bright blood.
“Make it stop,” Lillian whispered. “No more!”
Something tapped, and the visions vanished, the smaller sphere once again only showing her bloody reflection. The music box abruptly stopped, became a piercing screech, then nothing. It was as if all sound ceased to exist. The only noise she heard was the gurgle of her own blood rushing through her ears as her heart roared like a beating hammer.
A high-backed chair sat in front of a
fire that burned without a crackle. Her breath caught at her lack of awareness. How had she missed it before? A gnarled staff protruded from the edge of the chair and struck the floor with a thunderous tap, its sound the only sound besides her blood.
“Do you like the baubles?” a crisp voice asked. “They were difficult to come by, a rare treasure in this age. Please do not touch them.” The figure groaned as he stood. “We have little time, and thus, the time for pleasantries must abate until a distant future.”
He looked to be in his early twenties by Lillian’s guess. The man wore simple brown pants and a brown shirt, the linens spotless and without wrinkles. There was a series of bags draped across his chest, at least two hanging from each shoulder and resting on his hips. Around his neck was a pendant that looked to be made of bones. Human fingers, she guessed by the size of them. He wore fingerless gloves and clapped his hands, lips curling into a grin. The sounds of the world returned, fire crackling, earth softly rumbling above them, her own nervy breathing.
“What do you want with me?” She took a step back. “Why am I here? Where is this? Am I dead? Is this the Shadow Realm?”
He slowly raised his hand and closed his fist. Her mouth snapped shut, lips sealed, and she was unable to pry them apart. With an inner wave of relief, she noted that her body hadn’t changed, but only that it would not respond to her will. Some type of magic, but no form she recognized.
“You do the listening,” he gave a slight bow, “and I do the talking.” The man let out a weary sigh and then smiled. His mouth was cascading rows of black teeth chiseled to points that traveled down as far as his throat. His eyes were heartless, constantly shifting in hue from black, to blue, to a light brown. Perhaps a demon of the Old Magic, maybe a god.
He wagged his finger. “Not a god, but for the sake of mortal understanding, let’s go with it, shall we?” Before she could nod, he carried on. “This is my offer. I will restore your constitution such that you can survive this encounter and live another day with your partner. Haru’s blade will miraculously miss your neck, and you will have the strength to lay waste to your captors. Ride off into the sunset with Baylan, return to your Arch Wizard, and everything will be just wonderful. What do you say?”
Forsaken Hunters_Book Zero of The Age of Dawn_A Prequel Page 18
