Emily's Saga

by Travis Bughi

  Heliena’s komainu pawed the ground, leaving claw marks in the dirt, and whined. Heliena’s grin grew wicked.

  “So, she may eat then?”

  Renshu nodded but then added, “Your komainu has never been fed human flesh before. She was bred specifically to serve as a lady’s, not a warrior’s, mount. So, be warned that she will become more aggressive after her first taste. However, it is in their nature, and who am I to deny my lord’s wife her wish?”

  Heliena laughed and nudged her mount forward. The komainu stepped to the body and began to sniff with nostrils as wide as a human fist. Then it began to lick, and Heliena watched with parted lips as the komainu’s tongue slurped up human blood for the first time.

  “She likes it,” Heliena smiled. “There you go, girl. That’s it, eat him.”

  Renshu laughed and turned as someone called out his name.

  “Lord Miyazi!” A soldier came running forward. “My lord!”

  The soldier knelt to one knee, head bowed low, gasping for breath. Heliena could tell he wasn’t a samurai. Not only did he wear no katana, but he also lacked the laminar armor worn by Juatwa’s elite warrior caste. Renshu looked down at him and curled his upper lip.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The soldier paused. He’d been in such a hurry to reach Renshu that he hadn’t noticed Heliena’s komainu was eating a decapitated body. When he finally did acknowledge this, he gave an involuntary shudder and began to stammer.

  “Well?” Renshu shouted. “Out with it, peasant!”

  The man got ahold of himself and went to stand. Fortunately, he realized just before moving that Renshu had not granted him permission to do so, and he stayed on the ground, head bowed.

  “My lord, you commanded to be informed where the deserter was headed. Although he did not tell us, we scouted where we found him and discovered a family he’d been trying to shelter. They are relatives of his, cousins of his wife.”

  “I take it they fled the village when we burned it?”

  “Yes, my lord. We’ve detained them, if it pleases you.”

  “It does not,” Renshu said, his voice full of anger. “We are not taking prisoners until Lord Jiro agrees to talk. You know this! What is your name?”

  The soldier swallowed and shook in place. He glanced over at Heliena’s komainu and the half-eaten corpse.

  “Aiguo Mein, my lord,” the soldier said, voice quivering.

  “Well, Aiguo,” Renshu said, lifting his chin so he had to look down even farther, “go and instruct that the prisoners are to be dispatched immediately and then report back. I shall decide on your punishment for disobedience at that time.”

  The soldier slowly steadied himself and nodded. After a pause, he rose up to run away, head still bowed low. He dared not look Renshu in the eye, for to do so would be a sign of defiance. As he left, Heliena’s komainu was slurping up the last bit of its meal, licking its lips. Heliena patted it.

  “Aiguo!” she called out.

  The soldier froze, tense as a frightened child. He spun around, dropped to his knees, and bowed his head until his forehead touched the dirt.

  “Yes, my lady?” his call barely audible as he shouted it into the dirt.

  “If you kill them personally,” she said, “then your crimes will be forgiven. My komainu is still hungry. Bring their bodies back so that she may continue to feast.”

  The soldier stayed still for a moment. Heliena smiled, watching him quiver with a new kind of fear. She enjoyed watching them break. Yes, she thought, this is the kind of command I was born to!

  “As you wish, my lady,” the soldier answered.

  World of Myth V

  Juatwa

  Prologue

  It took Jabbar every fiber of his being not to roar. He wanted so desperately, innately, and instinctively to roar that it ate at his soul like a disease. Roaring was not just in his nature, it was the only outlet he’d ever had for his ocean of wrath. Now it was all pent up, shut out, and he would die in silence.

  It would be total silence, too, because he couldn’t shout, growl, or so much as snarl. He could barely snort, despite all his rage and power. He was a rakshasa! One of the mighty rakshasa of Savara! A warrior race known for such legendary prowess that the mere sight of them—no, the mere mention of them—would make the strongest of men weaken with fear. Yet now, Jabbar could only breathe. There was nothing else he could do. The sand made sure of that.

  All around him, filling every crevice but one, the sand pressed and clung to him like water. It ground into his clothes, filled his ears, and covered his eyes. It ground between his claws, filled the space between his toes, and flooded his hair. The sand was closer than any lover, and it waited patiently day and night for Jabbar to crack apart his lips so that it might fill his throat and suffocate him. The sand’s appetite was insatiable, Jabbar knew, but he would not let it consume him. He would remain calm like the hunter he was and cherish the fact that there was one, single, wretched place in this entire vast chamber where the sand could not reach: his nose.

  When the chamber had first begun to fill, he’d tried to escape, and had it not been for the viking, he’d have made it out. The viking had had such strength for a human, though; Jabbar could scarcely believe it. Had that viking not held him back for a moment’s time, he’d be free now, rather than dying of thirst. Of course, the viking had had help from the other two humans. Those two, the amazon and the samurai, had kept Jabbar from escaping once he’d thrown the viking off.

  Oh, how I loathe them.

  Just thinking about the two sent a wave of pulsing anger coursing up his spine, and it took all his efforts to keep his lips sealed. If he made it out of here alive, he’d hunt them down and peel the flesh from their skin, piece by piece, and consume it in front of their dying eyes.

  If, his mind taunted.

  After the door had shut, sand had engulfed the chamber. Jabbar, in a fury, had wasted precious moments ripping out the viking’s throat rather than looking for another escape and then had wasted precious more by tearing the viking’s weapon from his hands in insult. Although it had been satisfying to watch Koll die gasping for breath without a weapon in hand, it had been a foolish error in judgment. The viking’s terror-filled face had been a delight to watch but proved of little use in stopping the falling sand.

  With the chamber nearly full, Jabbar had had to climb the sand constantly to stay on top. He should have died—he had known he would, and he hadn’t completely understood why he was prolonging the inevitable—but still he had fought for life. His eyes had searched and his feet had kicked at the sand. He had swum through it, pulling his body with clawed paws, while the fear ran rampant in his heart.

  But then, by some combination of miracle and flawed design, one of the holes where sand poured out had stopped before the others. For seemingly no reason at all, the hole had been left clear, and Jabbar saw it before sand filled the rest of the chamber and his eyes were forced shut. With all his fear, he had scrambled through the sand, pulling himself along by latching clawed fingers into the ceiling. He had nearly run out of air when his claws found the hole.

  He had snorted out the last of his breath and shoved his nose up against the hole. One nostril had found it, the other pressed against the ceiling, and when he’d taken a deep breath, his burning chest had expanded with air, not sand, and the feeling had been so blessed that he’d nearly shed a tear in relief.

  And then he had remembered where he was.

  He’d left the hole only once in the past week. Dying of thirst and starvation, he had gone to fetch the viking’s body, and that trip had nearly cost him his life. He’d barely made it back, but he had—thanks to an appreciable memory, a legendary strength, and a lifetime of hunting in the dark. Piece by piece, Jabbar had used his claws to strip the meat from the viking’s bones, sliding the decaying stuff through the sand and into his mouth, swallowing a handful of sand along with his meal. It was a horrid experience, and were Jabbar anything but
a rakshasa, he would have died from dehydration. But for him, meat was all he needed. So long as there was blood, he would survive.

  And that was as much a curse as it was a blessing.

  The ample time to think, constantly plagued by his attempts to control his anger, were slowly eroding his mind. He found himself constantly exhausted, and he slipped in and out of consciousness at random with no way for him to tell how long he’d been out. A part of him thought he’d been down here a week, another told him a month, but they were both nothing but maddening thoughts. The longer he spent alive, the less reliable his inner sanity became.

  The area around him was a perfect example of that. It was a desecrated place, Jabbar knew, even if he couldn’t open his eyes to see it. The viking’s half-eaten corpse, clotted with sand, had turned the dried dirt into a rotten sludge. Jabbar’s own personal waste, disgusting in its own right, mixed with the sand and caked to his body. It added an atrocious stench and caused a perverse inch, and Jabbar hated the sand the most; although the stone ceiling took the brunt of his anger, and it bore deep claw marks in its ridged face.

  It was his only form of release, the scratching. A normal human wouldn’t have been able to move with so much pressure from the sand, but Jabbar was a rakshasa. In frustration and anger, he clawed the stone and left raking gouges that he could trace with his paws. It would be a haunting sight if this chamber were ever cleared and his bones discovered.

  No, he commanded himself. I will not allow myself those thoughts. Not until the last effort has failed.

  He’d been thinking on it—his last attempt to escape—a day now, or what he assumed was a day. He’d already tried to pick the ceiling apart, running his claws over it, digging into the cracks, looking for some way to break through, but none of it had worked. He knew the walls were useless because he was in a basement, so that only left one logical option: the door.

  The chamber had one doorway, which had been slammed shut by a slab of stone. It was solid in weight, Jabbar knew, for it had taken all he’d had to hold it before the samurai had stabbed him and caused him to drop it, locking him into this merciless tomb. Jabbar had frantically attempted to pry it up before the viking had come at him again, but he’d found nothing to hold. As the sand had filled the chamber, he’d abandoned the idea and climbed the mounting sand to stay alive. Escape seemed a useless concept after those attempts, and the ceiling had been so kind as to give him an air hole.

  He did not think it kind anymore.

  This chamber meant to kill him as slowly as it could. It was nearly as cruel as himself, and Jabbar loathed it for that. He hated to admit it, but he feared death. It was life he craved, though only for himself, and if he got out, he would inflict death upon as many as he could find, but on two in particular.

  Yes, he told himself, I will live.

  Courage filled him, courage and pride. It was a fleeting feeling, surely, for the sand did not care how he felt, but Jabbar would not waste a moment like this. He would go for the door, and if he died, then it would be by his will. Jabbar took one last gasp of fresh air through his single nostril.

  He ground his jagged teeth together and pulled with stiff muscles through the sand. It both resisted and assisted, acting as an obstacle and also pressing his body against the ceiling so that he could grip the tiny crevices in the stone. The sand filled in behind his every movement like thickened water—always grinding, always rubbing, always against him. His ears filled with a constant tingle of falling sand that pushed inside his head, filling his ear canals and causing a subtle yet agonizing pain. He fought to keep his lips sealed, and onward he moved.

  Every pull was relentless, and his heart raced against his will to slow it. He knew that every beat counted away the seconds before he died, and that made it both easier and harder to push on.

  His claws touched a wall, and he grabbed it for all he was worth. This part was hard, though not the hardest, and he gave what strength he had, pushing with his feet until his body was forcibly shoved against the next wall. In this, the sand aided him. Perhaps it was eager to see him die. Perhaps it longed to see him struggle in his last attempts to escape. Perhaps it smiled with delight to see Jabbar clinging to hope with his last bits of strength.

  Jabbar fought down another urge to roar.

  Down the wall he went, clawed paw after clawed paw, searching for the door. He knew it was here. It had to be here! He remembered; he could not forget. The door, his escape, his last chance! It was here!

  He found it. His heart raced to a new level when a single claw clamped upon a narrow gap that was too wide to be a wall. Frantically, he pulled himself to it and then down to the ground.

  Yes! his mind screamed. Here! Now! Damn it, now!

  Jabbar slipped his claws along the thin line where door met ground, searching for any slight gap he could grab. His lungs were on fire, his heart raced, and still his claws found nothing.

  He wanted to open his eyes. He wanted to roar. He wanted to slam a paw against the door. He wanted to live.

  And then his claws caught something.

  As the air in his lungs continued to fade and his closed eyes began to flutter and explode in flashes of white, a single claw hooked on something lying on the ground. When he touched it, his mind told him it was metal, and a brief memory of the samurai stabbing him streamed into his fading consciousness.

  Calmly, he ran his paw down the blade until it touched the door. His claws parted and slipped around the blade, and there Jabbar found the tiniest of notches. For as strong as the door was, it had not been able to crush the metal, thin though it might have been. Jabbar let out a purr and dug both claws into the tiny notches surrounding the blade. He spun his body to put his feet on the floor, shoving the sand out of the way, and prepared his body.

  And he roared.

  Sand flooded into his mouth and throat, choking down into his airways even as he put every ounce of strength he possessed into pulling. The gratification was nearly instant, and the door began to rise slowly, ever so slowly.

  Racing against the sand, Jabbar roared and roared, filling his belly with dry dirt while his muscles burned and strained, lifting the door up and up, past his feet, then his ankles, then his knees. The sand flowed, eagerly looking for another area to consume, streaming past his legs, so many thousands of death-dealing particles. He could feel the sand shift all around his body, even as it filled him, and he continued to pull up and up and up, until the slab reached his waist, then his stomach, then his chest, and still the sand flowed.

  Throat choking, lungs burning, muscles screaming, Jabbar flung himself with the flowing sand out of his tomb. The door instantly began to fall again, pushing through the shifting sands. If the sand dared stop, it might have held against the door’s weight, but the sand was too hungry, and so it moved while the door cut through it, slamming shut again.

  Jabbar sprawled onto the sandy floor, already a hand’s width in height all around him, and began to heave. His stomach clenched and rocked, spewing out sand, blood, and bile in painful spurts. Through quick intakes between agonizing waves of vomit, Jabbar gasped tiny pockets of air into his sand-soaked lungs. His entire body shuddered, sending puffs of sand cascading down around him, as he retched over and over again on his hands and knees. Below him, the sand soaked up the contents of his stomach eagerly.

  And then it stopped. His stomach had nothing left to give. He heaved a few more times, involuntarily, as his stomach tried to expel the pain along with the sand, but finally he regained control. Sand continued to pour from his hair, his clothes, and his ears, but at last he could breathe. He took in a huge gulp of air, coughed up a handful of sand, and then took in another huge gasp.

  Then he laughed.

  Then he roared.

  Chapter 1

  Emily felt the wood crack just before she heard it. A shudder of pain that was both numbing and excruciating at the same time ran through her hand and down her arm. She cried out and dropped the stick, which clattered i
nto two pieces onto the ship’s deck. Emily stopped the pieces from rolling with her foot and began to shake her hand back and forth.

  “Rule number two,” Takeo said. “Never let go of your weapon.”

  Emily gritted her teeth and flexed her fingers. Both the numbing and the pain faded quickly, and she scolded herself for letting it affect her in the first place. The chill sea wind blew by her again, and she opened her palm to let the breeze soothe her aching, calloused hand. The weeks of swordplay were really beginning to take their toll. She had thought fighting with a sword would not be much different than with a knife; she had thought wrong.

  “I didn’t let go,” she replied, sweeping the broken pieces aside and grabbing another sturdy stick. “You broke it.”

  “To a samurai, you let go.”

  Emily sighed but otherwise did not argue. She had asked for this, the training. She was skilled with a bow, decent with a knife, but she had never once touched a sword. Considering that Takeo and she were traveling toward a land full of sword-wielding warriors, she thought it prudent to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. They had been at sea just shy of two months now and were within a day’s time of landing. The only thing this meant to Emily was that her training was coming to a close.

  Remembering this, Emily lifted the stick for another duel. Her hand gave an aching stab of defiance, but she ignored it and focused on her goal. She pointed the stick toward Takeo, as he did his towards her, and she looked into his black eyes, which reflected whatever light touched them. Almost instantly, her muscles began to clench up with an anticipation that was as involuntary as it was unwelcome. After a few deep breaths, she was able to steady herself and release the tension from her body. It had to be done, or otherwise the clenching would stiffen her movements, preventing better reaction. She wished the nervousness was easier to suppress, but every time Takeo raised his weapon, even if it was just a stick, she felt her heart skip.