The Long Road to Karn (Realm of Arkon, Book 5)

by Akella, G.

  "Why don't I dance you the lakida instead, you filth?" Jaelitte spat back. Then, slicing off a tentacle that shot out from the fray, she quickly shifted to the left. Shiekata lunged forward, her chest cavity heaving, and struck out with the right pincer while hurling a wide translucent net at the demoness. That was exactly what the young woman was expecting. With a Step through Darkness, Jealette emerged between the monster's parted pincers, shifted into true form, and, imbuing her blades with the flame, spun into a fiery whirlwind that swept everything in its path. Master Haalet would always tell her that the power of a spell nearly always hinged on the caster's disposition. Thrashing on the ground now were two severed pincers and forepaws. You were right, teacher, the young woman grinned, chopping down as the beast's torso collapsed on its side, slicing the head clean off, then somersaulting backward to avoid the body's death throes.

  Fighting not thirty yards away, the old legate met his end at the same time—freezing still as if hitting an invisible wall, then crumbling to flakes of gray ash onto the scorched earth. The three wounded beasts parted, making way for him. He who had been cursed on all the inhabited planes, whose name was forbidden from being uttered even in the most elaborate curses—he was heading for Ahriman's daughter, the ground melting under his feet.

  "What a splendid specimen," Vill spoke softly, throwing back his hood and casting his lifeless gaze at the deceptively relaxed demoness. "You're even stronger than I'd anticipated..."

  The god's unnaturally light hair cascaded over his shoulders. His face was a wax mask, his lips a fine thin line, but his voice... Spoken almost in a whisper, his words drowned out the sounds of the battle—surrounded, the punishers were still trying to break through the ranks of the dark god's knights to their sovereign's daughter, but to little effect.

  "What do you want from me, you scum?" she said, peering into Vill's unblinking eyes.

  "This whole show is playing out just for you, princess," the white-haired god chuckled, gesturing broadly at the field of battle. "Or rather, for your proper death."

  The Cursed God's last words sent a shiver down her spine, but Jaelitte fought back the clammy, spreading sensation of fear with a force of will.

  "I shall decide which death is proper for me," she laughed into the face of the deity standing before her. "And I find it proper to take a certain blonde bastard into the Flame with me!"

  She wasn't stupid—she knew full well that her chances against a god were slim to none, and yet... She had already done the impossible once today. Oh, if only she could postpone this fight two centuries or so... Only nobody was giving her two centuries, or even two days. Still, she was determined to die on her own terms—if the Throne Attendants could do it, why not her? The midday sun reflected off her blades as her mind evoked the smiling face of the copper-haired beauty, and the spark of Primordial Chaos in her chest answered the last call of the scion of one of the Seven Lords. Realizing this, Jaelitte dar Rakata refreshed her shields and, yowling a battle cry that reverberated to the very skies, pounced on the Cursed God...

  When she came to, she was lying on her back on cold slabs of stone—her hands and feet shackled, her weapons gone, her body fully nude, her throat constricted by what appeared to be a leather collar. The stench of rot and burned oil was augmented with another, unfamiliar smell that somehow made the bouquet even more revolting. Jaelitte reached for Power, and for the first time in her life, she couldn't touch it. Power was clearly there—right next to her, in fact—and yet completely untouchable. By sheer force of will, the young woman quelled the rising panic, opened her eyes and looked around the space she found herself in. The walls were set with massive gray blocks of stone, each bearing strange crimson runes. She'd seen these very runes once—on tablets brought back by Master Haalet from barbarian lands. The illumination was provided by several skull-shaped lanterns mounted on the walls. There were five others in the room besides her: three gray-robed figures with opened hoods—an orc, a human and a demon—an unfamiliar tifling in a vinous vest leaning against the wall to her right, and the white-haired bastard god a few feet away, his face bearing a deep gash. Jaelitte felt a sense of satisfaction—she had at least managed to leave her mark on the scumbag with her blade. And wounds inflicted by the power of Primordial Chaos could take centuries to fully heal. Even on gods.

  "Go on, you worthless lot, get a good look," she said with as much scorn as she could muster. "As ugly as you all are, I'm sure getting laid even with lower ones is a problem," the young woman scowled. "So, go ahead, feast your eyes..."

  "A feisty one," the tifling chuckled, shaking his head. "And pretty to boot... Too bad she can't be used as nature intended." He signed, then looked to Vill searchingly.

  "You're lacking for women, are you, Erisjat? Or have you forgotten her purpose here?" the white-haired god replied insinuatingly, his lips barely moving.

  "I remember everything, master," the tifling gave another sign and looked away.

  "As for you, bitch," walking up to the table, Vill peered Jaelitte in the eyes. "I have paid too high a price to get you. Shiekata, and then this..." The Cursed One touched his scar, and his eyes filled up with blackness for a moment.

  "You should be thanking me, you freak," the demoness smirked in his face. "With that scar, I've made your ugly mug look almost like a man's. Almost. As long as you don't look too close."

  "Have you heard of a ring called Splendor of Primordial Chaos?" The Cursed One asked in an unctuous tone. "The materials it requires, and the reward it would bestow on whoever destroys it?"

  "Is that why you've stirred all this mess, you moron? For information known by every witch doctor in every village?"

  "No," the Cursed One smiled. "I will make it for Erisjat, and your father will be forced to step aside. Or to exit the stage..."

  "Where are you going to get the soul of an Elder Demon, idiot? And not just that, but the soul of one of the Seven Lords! Are you going to hit up Velial? Or Maloc? Or will you be paying a visit to my mother? Craven and feeble as you are, you hope to defeat any one of the Seven?"

  "No need to complicate matters," chuckled the white-haired god, ignoring all the insults. "All I need for the ring is the blood of one of the Seven. And your mother's blood, which flows in your veins, will quite suffice. Oh, and lest you're worried, I will pump you with so much Power, you'll be drowning in it. Be happy, bitch," another grimace of hatred distorted his face. "You won't need to wait a thousand years for your initiation. We'll be taking a shortcut." He turned around, and gestured to the tifling. "Let's go, best not to get in the way."

  Already on the doorstep, he turned back around.

  "One last thing I forgot to tell you. The initiation will last a few weeks, and the process will be rather painful," he shook his head with feigned empathy. "I wish there was another way, but, alas, there is not. You may begin," with a nod to the mages, he gave a spiteful smirk and left the room.

  The moment the door shut behind the Cursed God, the three disavowed pulled their hoods over their faces. Taking positions in a triangle around the table, they held out their hands and began chanting a dreary, rasping tune in a tongue she couldn't recognize. Obeying their voices, dark threads started manifesting over the table, forming a web that then began to gradually descend onto her.

  What a pity, the demoness thought with a sad chuckle. When the threads of the spell covered the sacrificial table in its entirety, Jaelitte dar Rakata gnashed her teeth to keep from screaming as unbearable pain seeped into every cell of her body...

  Chapter 5

  As the last traces of the vision faded from my mind, I grabbed onto the cool stone of the wall to keep on my feet, dizzy and gasping for air. Hart! How much longer was this going to go on?! And this time I was a chick! Well, at least no one in the vision had done it with her... I shivered. Despite being somewhat of a bystander in these scenes, the emotions felt were as deep and as acute as any I'd experienced in real life. The pain, the rage, the despair... My eyes fell on the scarl
et hieroglyph on the wall, its smudged lines giving the impression that the artist had dabbed their brush in rust-colored paint and simply hurled it at the wall. It was then that my psyche fully recovered, at last. Runes?! Walls?! I was sitting on the roof of the donjon! My sword swooshed as it slid out of its scabbard, and I spun sharply around to see a young woman sitting on a stone table. The sight of her left me speechless—to say that the woman was beautiful was to say nothing at all. Hard as it is normally to describe the appearance of a woman you like, in this case it was downright impossible. Picture the most spectacular Hollywood actress, a cool aristocratic, an innocent schoolgirl and a thirty-year-old on the cusp of realizing her unique, unparalleled beauty, then throw in the star of a very particular film genre that's not suitable for children, and multiply all that by infinity... The girl's semi-transparent trousers accentuated the flawless form of her legs, and her blue satin tunic only partially concealed her immaculately shaped breasts. Her hair was a cascading waterfall of true darkness. And only her face bore the mask of estranged disgust, like the face of a person who had spotted a roach in their neighbor's bowl. No name floated above her head, and though I'd never actually seen the face of Ahriman's daughter in my vision, I didn't doubted for a second that this woman was her—Jaelitte dar Rakata, the daughter of Alcmehn's Overlord, Ahriman. Janam the Beautiful? Bah, in terms of her impact on the male psyche, this girl sitting on this stone surpassed Astarot's spouse by an order of magnitude. Where did she manage to find clothes? the thought flashed through my mind, and I struggled to fight off the mental image that was as enticing as it was frightening. Finally noticing me looking, Jealette slid gracefully off the table and peered into my eyes, her expression unchanged.

  It took me a second to realize I was dying. A foreign will was literally taking over my consciousness as blurry images flickered through my mind. This was a mental attack of the highest caliber, and this bitch, for all her beauty and all of my sympathy for her ordeal, was about to literally oust my psyche from my own body. And no one would be able to spot the fake, at least not for a while. And me? Would I just remain here, confined to these walls of gray stone for centuries? Or longer? What about the prophecy? What would happen to it without me? Or maybe it wasn't about me, but about this woman who was going to become me in a matter of moments? Fuck that! When the cold rage exploded like a storm from the depths of my consciousness, clashing against the mental intruder, I felt a moment of clarity, and wasted no time seizing it. Clutching the hilt of my blade, I took a step toward the beautiful temptress. The scorn on the girl's face turned to annoyance; biting down on her lower lip, she flung open her jade-green eyes, unleashing Power into my consciousness that instantly converted into its exact opposite, becoming a tender warmth... Tender warmth that was hostile to me! I began hearing voices in a foreign tongue, spoken in a tone of a psychiatrist addressing a patient thrashing in a straight jacket, or a loving wife restraining a husband in an alcohol-induced rage. I felt my fury start to subside, slowly but surely. Was this going to be my end... Fuck no! With an inhuman effort, I took another step forward. The succubus had opened herself up with her last attack, and somehow I knew that if I were to survive it, she would be rendered helpless before me. But how would I survive it? How would I take just two more bloody steps separating us?! And it wasn't until the tender delirium seemed to permeate every fiber of my being, and the tension on the face of Ahriman's daughter gave way to a triumphant smile, that the image of a smiling Alyona appeared before my mind's eye, then switched instantly to Cheney's smirking mug... Bastard! A new wave of fury rose up within me, sweeping away an almost palpable mental barrier, and suddenly my consciousness was filled with emptiness—the same one I'd felt during the fight with Erisjat. The next moment, Cheney's loathsome image was replaced with that of the spike-covered muzzle of the White Dragon... The delusion abated. I took a step forward, snatched the woman by the throat, lifted her light body over the slabs of the floor and... I couldn't force myself to tighten my grip. No, she had already lost. Ahriman's daughter had gone all-in, putting all of herself into her mental assault, and wasn't a threat to me any longer. But to kill someone whose death I'd experienced personally, as if it had happened to me... Were I to clasp my fingers, the ring would be destroyed, granting me incredible strength and granting her the true death. She tried to cast you down into the void! Kill that bitch! An inner voice kept echoing in my mind. Gods damn it! Why does everything have to be so complicated! Flinging the girl away, I leaned on the edge of the table standing in the middle of the room, gasping for breath. To hell with all this! To hell with those asshole developers and their moronic quests! To hell with this world with all its visions! Sheathing my sword, I pulled off my right gauntlet, wiped the cold sweat from my brow, and shifted my gaze to the demoness sitting on the slabs.

  "So what now?" she spoke up at once, her voice still defiant.

  Hart! The mental influence was gone, but nothing else had changed—the girl remained just as strikingly, stupidly beautiful. Check out the sass! I thought with a dash of admiration. She knows she has lost, but there's not a hint of fear or despair on her face.

  "Are you deaf? Or has it been a while since you've seen a woman?" The demoness arched her right brow. "I'm asking you why you didn't kill me?"

  "Should I have?" I chuckled, studying the walls. "What is this place?"

  "A pocket of reality," she answered in an estranged manner after a moment's hesitation. "A tiny section of the Ancient Paths. "Hold on a second. Does the fact that you're wearing the ring mean Erisjat is dead?"

  "Well, aren't you a clever one," I gave a nonchalant shrug. "A real thinker—I can tell!"

  "Do I hear sarcasm from the lips of an idiot who dared to put the Splendor of Primordial Chaos on his finger?" She made a funny grimace, then sized me down condescendingly. "And how is that the blood of the White Dragon flows in you? Actually, never mind, that part doesn't really matter now. Tell me instead how you got your hands on the ring?"

  "Are you always this barefaced?" I couldn't help but admire her frankness yet again.

  "This isn't the time for decorum," getting up off the stone slabs, she took a seat on the tabletop mere feet away. "With the crumbs of Power I've left, I won't be able to sustain both of us in this pocket for much longer."

  With a shrug, I told her everything I knew. As she listened to my story, Jaelitte kept creasing her brow comically, then hopped off the tabletop and stood there—thinking and scratching her chin.

  "You still didn't tell me what you plan to do with the ring?" she asked as soon as I finished talking.

  "What are my options?" I sighed. "Given the circumstances, I'll probably give it to your father. Or to your mother, should she cross my path. As you yourself saw, killing women just isn't my MO."

  "No!" she almost shrieked the word.

  "No what?" I said, taken aback. "You got any other suggestions?"

  "Yes—marry me!" she exhaled, peering into my eyes.

  "What?!" I exclaimed in shock. If you asked me at that moment what my name was, I wouldn't be able to tell you.

  "Only family can rescue me from this place," the demoness rattled off. "My father loves me, no doubt, but he loves Alcmehn more, and on the scales of eternity, love of country will always trump a father's love. As for my mother, there are complications—she's too tied up with other obligations. The ring won't boost her strength, though she is one of the Seven... Remember what Vill has done to me, and draw the right conclusions."

  "But marriage... that's, uh..." I mumbled, still flabbergasted.

  The man inside kept was howling, "Here it is, your dream! Standing right in front of you!" But Ahriman's daughter was simply too beautiful—as if out of a fairy tale—for me to take this seriously. I'd watched plenty of visor in my past life, admiring the beauty of fashion models and movie stars. And, sure, I'd fantasized about ending up in bed with one of them, knowing full well that it would never happen, as I imagined most men did. But up until that night with Sat
a I'd never suspected something like that could happen to me. And here was another dream woman, ready and waiting... The last time everything had happened so quickly, and then... Anyone could probably bed a gorgeous movie star simply by being at the right place at the right time, only she would forget your existence the very next day, which was probably the case with the werefox. But this woman in front of me was offering something completely different. And it was a possibility I could never have conceived until now.

  "Do you deem the daughter of Alcmehn's Overlord an unworthy match for the ruler of a province that lies in ruins?" Jaelitte narrowed her eyes. "Or am I not pretty enough for you, prince?"

  "In my true form, my horns are a foot-and-a-half long," I replied calmly, having finally recovered from the initial shock. "Probably even longer now. Basically, I would prefer it if they didn't get in the way of me walking in the near future."

  "Horns are a sign of power for our kind," the young woman looked at me as if I was daft. "And I fail to see any connection between the size of your horns and me."

  "You don't see it," I chuckled. "But where I come from, the size of a husband's horns—their mere existence, in fact—depends entirely on the fidelity of his spouse. In my vision I was you—with your thoughts and feelings. And I can't help but doubt the fidelity of a pure-blooded succubus."

  "Oh, right," the demoness grinned. "You're half human, after all, and I hear you hold carnal love in too high a regard. Still, that wouldn't be an issue—I'm ready to swear a trueblood oath of fidelity to you right here and now—in exchange for your vow to get me out of this place."

  "I'm no expert on your laws, but how can I swear an oath on something you don't presently possess?"

  "Don't be an idiot," the young woman frowned. "The soul is primary—and the blood follows. Providence will accept my oath no matter my present form. And besides... You will need help searching for the White Dragon, won't you? Not to mention I have my own bone to pick with the Twice Cursed bastard..."