by Rosie Scott
It was not war paint which adorned the faces of our enemies; it was blood. We had finally come face to face with the Blades of Meir. Though they often attacked travelers in this area, there were no corpses, because their victims would have been taken back to the ruins of the cult, where they would be cannibalized.
As I watched Jakan fight with a raging gusto, shooting bolts from his crossbow into heads and organs alike and cutting down nearby cult members with his scimitar, I put two puzzle pieces together that I never had before. Not only had this cult nearly ruined the lives of both Jakan and Anto, they had killed both of the Vhiri's parents. Given their nature, I realized this meant Jakan had probably been forced to think about his parents being eaten, even if he hadn't witnessed the crime first-hand during his time in captivity.
Just knowing what my friend had been forced to go through caused a new vindictive energy to surge through my veins and to my palms, where I built earth magic. Moments later, I directed it to the sands before me. Like twice before, I planned on summoning a golem. The Blades of Meir did not wear armor, so the crushing damage of a sandstone monstrosity would ruin them.
As my golem slowly built itself upward from the ground with the crackling buzz of breaking stone, I hurried to Nyx to give her a shield. The Alderi was in the midst of dodging the stabs of a broken sword as its wielder hissed nonsensically at her, but one of the hits had already landed at her waist. Blood glistened from the break of her armor in the pale moonlight. I could not heal her right away due to her quick and constant movements, but the shield would keep her safe from the next few hits.
The sandstone golem was charging into battle by the time I turned back to the others. It immediately rushed up to one of the cultists, punching her so hard in the head that it was left broken and hanging off of its spinal cord as her body fell. Nearby, Anto was spinning through enemies so quickly he was a blur of green with the edges of silver, his arm blades fanning out to cut through unprotected flesh in splashes of red. Everywhere the orc went, a mess of corpses and cut limbs followed, sprinkling the beautiful golden sands in displays of gore.
We had only been fighting for a few minutes, but already, only a few members of the Blades of Meir were left. The cultists hadn't realized just how much of a fight we would put up, and the few that were still alive turned to the north and bolted.
To my surprise, Anto rushed after them, his thick muscular arms out at his sides as he charged. He wasn't quite as fast as the human cultists given his bulk, but he kept up the chase. Jakan looked after his lover in the midst of reloading his crossbow, blood dripping from both his scimitar and the bashing shield above his ranged weapon.
“Jakan!” I called, hurrying to him. My golem surged past where we stood, hurrying after the cultists itself.
The Vhiri glanced up to me nervously as I approached.
“Where is he going?”
Jakan looked up and squinted into the distance, where we could hear Anto yelling in blood lust. “After them,” he replied, as if it were obvious. “This cult is the reason he was enslaved. Seeing them again makes him angry.”
Yes...that much was obvious. I hurried alongside Jakan as he started off after Anto, and the quickened footsteps of Nyx and Cerin followed behind us. “Do you think he's okay?” I asked the Vhiri.
“After they're all dead he will be,” he replied quickly, before lifting up his left arm and pulling the trigger of the crossbow. My eyes followed the arc of the bolt, until it splattered into the eyeball of a cultist ahead, jerking the enemy's head back until the body fell to the sands. With the enemy he'd caught up to dead, Anto refocused farther north, and took off again.
There was an anxiousness in my gut I was unwilling to confront. This was the first time I had ever seen Anto like this, and it brought up memories of hard conversations I'd had with Theron in the past, before his death. The ranger had been concerned that Anto would go berserk, as orcs were prone to do, and that he would become a danger to his own friends. I hadn't truly entertained the idea. Anto was such a sweet and humble man that it seemed the idea was born more out of Theron's biases than reality. But now, here, something in our friend had snapped. Clearly, he was not immune to the rage of the orcs.
I had never brought up the berserk subject with Jakan or Anto over the three moons I'd been with them thus far. I had fought alongside Anto many times at this point, but had never seen him snap. I figured it was something he had been able to miss due to sharing his blood between the orcs and the Celds. Besides, bringing up racial attributes with a man who was used to dealing with judgments felt like an awkward faux pas. I never wanted to make either of our two newest members uncomfortable with us. On the other hand, as I heard Anto's hoarse screams of fury echoing out into the night sky ahead, where the light of a fire flickered against fallen sandstone ruins, I wondered if our own friend was a danger to us.
We had made it to the camp of the cultists. Given our location, I figured it was the same camp Jakan and Anto had been kept in all those years ago. Half-finished golden sandstone buildings dotted the sands, holes and broken walls covered with thick maroon fabrics. There were clearly many fires burning here, since the orange light flickered across pillars and nearby sands alike. From my distance, all I could see so far was Anto's shadow cast across a leaning pillar, big and intimidating as it spun into a group of enemies.
I rushed after Jakan into the camp, finally passing a building near the edge to get a better view of the whole thing. There were only a dozen or so structures here, and many of them were unfinished, entire ceilings or walls missing. The cultists had improvised with both thick fabrics and half-walls made of human bone. Down past what would have been the center road for the village upon its completion, the skies were open and vast on the horizon. I knew why the cultists liked it here. The second moon of Meir would hang heavy in the sky for their entire camp to see during its semi-annual treks through the heavens.
The cultists clearly had alchemists among themselves, for much of the fire light came from sconces haphazardly placed on fallen pillars and broken walls, where the black sludge of calcint coated thick fabrics to keep the fires burning for weeks on end. In the center of the camp, a large spit turned slowly above a cooking flame. The full body of a woman spun slowly, the spit completely connected through the digestive system of the corpse from the mouth to between her two legs. The cannibals had clearly been cooking the meat for awhile, as the woman's skin was a golden brown, and sizzled like the finest venison.
Gods. Somehow, the image of a human being like this brought back thoughts of eating a fish dinner the previous night. I could not pretend to be horrified by this sight, for I often ate the flesh of others. The only difference was that this dinner was human and looked like me. It wasn't logical to view this as any different, but perhaps the rarity and shock value of it caused my normal reasoning to fly beyond my reach.
Hundreds of black tendrils raced by my feet and into the camp beyond. While one of them found the woman over the cooking pit and buried its energy within her, the others pulled my attention between two buildings, where thousands of bones sat mismatched in one huge garbage pile. Cerin had the right idea. We were in a home of cannibals, and bones of their previous victims were in abundance here. We could wipe out this sect of the Blades of Meir by using their past meals to fight against them.
Creatius a friz projectille. I repeated the spell again, forming two sharp icicles above both palms. Ice shards were most effective against enemies with thick hides or shells, but against humans, they promised to be even more devastating.
Cerin's skeletons rushed forward into the fray, many wielding bones as club weapons. There were so many bones here that many of the skeletons were incomplete, some of the pieces having been used by the cannibals for piercings or materials. What skeletons could rise simply had taken the extra pieces, bashing the cultists with tibiae and femur alike. The woman still cooking on the spit writhed with a need for battle even as she stayed skewered, an undead hiss crackling fro
m her bubbling internal oils.
The smell of cooking human meat hung heavily in the air, reminiscent of high quality pork. I attempted to ignore it, following the skeletons toward the spit. Cerin's scythe swiped easily through a man's torso to my right, the body falling in two leaking pieces. A cultist screamed in an insane rage as he ran toward the necromancer, a scimitar glimmering in the fire light as he held it in the air.
I released one of the ice shards, directing the energy to the head of Cerin's pursuer. The ice shot through the man's skull, shattering the bones of his face and forehead, the pressure forcing both eyes from their sockets. The corpse fell backwards from the force of the magic, the ice which poked out from the broken parietal bone slowly melting from the heat of both brain and blood.
An animalistic hissing pulled my attention to the left, where another man was rushing in to fight me. He had seen me wield water magic, and probably didn't expect me to have a defense. As he swiped a sickle toward my throat in a move meant to decapitate, I thrust my free hand out, and a shield encapsulated me with a zwip. The sickle clattered off of the magic, disorienting the man enough to stall him for the moment. Before I had a chance to kill him, a crossbow bolt cracked through the right side of his skull, and he collapsed.
I dispelled the other water spell and directed my attention to Jakan since he'd been the one to protect me. I gave him a shield as a way of thanks, before noticing he was bleeding from a cut on his right forearm. As the Vhiri kept shooting bolts into the group of our enemies I healed the wound, taking advantage of a few seconds when our enemies were focused on the others.
Between the dozens of skeletons and all of us working together, the numbers of the cultists were depleting. My golem was crushing bone and flesh alike, and Anto's fury was still prevalent, causing the orc to have immense strength and energy even though he should have tired long ago. The cultists outnumbered us, but we were proving to be better in battle than the travelers they so often ambushed near the river. It was too late for them; we would wipe this camp out like a hornet's nest.
I managed to catch up to Nyx so I could heal her stomach wound and regenerate her shield. She hung back from the fray for now, taking note of Anto and the golem charging through the remaining enemies as if they were made of paper.
“I suppose this is what revenge looks like,” she commented to me.
There were only four cultists left, and they swarmed the orc. Anto spun into the first two, his arm blades fanning out and shredding through the skin of their torsos, leaving organs and bones exposed as the bodies fell. One of the victims still breathed shallowly, blood pooling out over the sands, slowly depleting his body of its life force. Anto stalked to the next enemy, throwing his right arm out to the side, the blade slicing cleanly through the throat. The head toppled away behind the body even before it fell, a fountain of red squirting out from the neck.
Even my golem slowed its pace as Anto neared the last cultist. Because minions often mimicked the mindsets of their masters, I was sure it was as a result of my uncertainty. I couldn't be sure that the orc would stop after his last enemy was dead. How long did a berserker rage last? Would Anto be able to tell the difference between foe and friend?
The last cultist had desperation and rage written all over his face as he came to clash with Anto. The foe dual-wielded two sabers, and only one was blocked by a defensive arm blade. The other sliced cleanly through the orc's gut, shining a bloody silver through the green skin of his back. Anto had failed to block for a reason, however, as he sliced the protruding end of his free arm blade up through the man's chin in an uppercut, the blade rampaging through flesh and bone of the head, before bursting out of the top of the skull in a mess of flesh, hair, and tissue.
Blood leaked from the man's eyes and nostrils, before Anto jerked his muscular arm back. The body fell, the limp hands leaving the sword stuck through the orc's torso.
Anto's thick muscular shoulders heaved with the efforts of battle, before he turned to the rest of us, the blade still in his gut. The orc was absolutely covered in the blood of his enemies, which I supposed was a given due to his gory choice of weapon. His brown eyes found mine, and he walked toward me, leaving the enemy's sword where it was to keep his blood loss low.
I searched his eyes, looking for sanity. I couldn't tell if I found it. I backed up a step as he neared, defensively.
Anto stopped in his tracks, noticing my move. Thick exhales blew through two flared nostrils. “I need healing,” he stated, his voice weaker than normal. He eyed the sands nearby the fire pit, and grabbed hold of the saber handle in his gut, before finally pulling it free, releasing his own thick blood. He then slowly went about lying down on the sands, exhausted and wounded.
“Kai,” Jakan pleaded, hurrying toward me. “Why aren't you healing him?”
I swallowed hard. “I'm going to,” I replied distractedly, taking a moment to dispel my golem. Across the camp, Cerin did the same with his undead, and the bones around us collapsed.
“Kai,” I heard the necromancer call out, before he started toward me. “I can heal him.”
I shook my head. I understood why he offered. Cerin was the only one other than me who knew of Theron's misgivings. The ranger had only ever talked about the berserker rages around the two of us, and since I'd never seen Anto go through it, I hadn't brought it up to Nyx or anyone else. There hadn't been a reason to, until today.
I knelt beside Anto, my eyes finding multiple wounds. He had been in such a fury on the battlefield that I hadn't noticed he'd been hit more than once. It appeared his rages really were similar to my own leeching highs. It blinded him to pain until it was gone. His rage had clearly subsided, then, since his powerful face grimaced as multiple cuts released blood over his deep green skin.
I focused on healing the wound through his torso, since that was the most serious of them all. Cerin came to the other side of our friend, helping me by healing other injuries. We were all quiet for so long that it became awkward, so I decided to break the silence with something positive.
“You have demolished the Blades of Meir,” I murmured, watching the muscle beneath my palms slowly mend together.
“Only this group of them,” Anto breathed in response, his eyes closed as we healed him. “There are more. Besides, I had help. Thank you for following me here.”
“You have offered your services to me in my quest for revenge,” I said, as the fire nearby flickered, the energy of its heat being stolen by my magic use. “The least I could do is follow you for yours.” After a hesitation, I added, “Do you feel better?”
Anto finally opened his eyes, and met my gaze. There was a lot he held back within them, for he was aware of my hesitation to be close to him earlier. “I do now,” he replied. I was unable to tell if he meant mentally as well as physically, but explanations would need to be saved for a later time. “Thank you.”
Cerin and I stood up from healing. Nearby, Nyx was kicking a body to the side, in the midst of looting from our victims. She glanced up from the corpse, throwing a hand toward it.
“Many of our foes were little more than children,” she commented.
“That doesn't surprise me,” Jakan said, as he helped Anto stand. It was probably more of a gesture of love than anything else. Even with the elf's acquiring of muscle over the past seasons, he was but a third of his lover's size. “The Blades of Meir are isolationists. They are mostly self-sustaining, save for some in-betweens who deal in trading between them and the cities. They probably give birth out here and raise their children to be murderers.”
“You don't say?” Nyx mused, pulling a bloodied sword from the corpse's grasp. Whoever the child was, they'd landed a hit on one of us during the fight. “Fight like an adult, you can die like one.”
“It is a shame they are being raised out in these sands with little chance for innocence,” Cerin said, frowning before ducking beneath the maroon fabric of a broken building to loot.
“Innocence?” Nyx laughed heartil
y at that. “If you were an innocent child, Cerin, you were surely the only one. Kids are far from innocent.”
“Many of us weren't raised as assassins in our pre-teen years,” Jakan pointed out.
“No, but why do you think the Alderi start that young?” Nyx asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Kids in the early double digits of life make the best assassins. Adults tend to mellow out with their attitudes. But kids? They think they'll live forever, so they're more likely to take stupid risks. They're vindictive, think they know everything, and are out to prove something. Not to mention, they haven't lived long enough to learn how to empathize with others. That is why the Alderi start their recruitment so young, friend. Child assassins kill without mercy or remorse. I killed hundreds of targets before I started coming of age. Then I went to kill Kai, and I felt empathy.” Nyx shrugged. “Wouldn't have felt that way just a year or two before, but I was becoming a woman.”
Anto spoke up from near the fire, where he still stood. It seemed he did not desire to loot with the rest of us. “I have to say, I have met many people who lack in morals. But I have yet to meet someone who is as hate-filled and cruel as the children I grew up with.”
Jakan sighed. “And here you are, ganging up on me again.”
Anto chuckled low. “I'm not ganging up on you. I just agree with Nyx. Children are not innocent. I would know. I remember being one.” He hesitated. “Besides, you were the only one of us who was not raised around other children.”
This interested me. I glanced up from going through a box of goods. “You did not go to school in T'ahal?”
Jakan shrugged. “Only the rich may go to school there. My parents were not rich. I spent most of my time being taught by the Priests of Ciro in his temple, while my parents were working. I was the only child there.”
