by Eric Asher
I didn’t know who he was talking to until Foster and Aideen flashed into their Proelium forms, and their swords cut deep into the massive stag.
The beast whined for a second before it collapsed to earth, dead.
“You dare!” Hern cried.
Drake tried to stand up, and that’s when I realized he’d been hit. He’d placed himself in front of one of the most powerful of Nudd’s allies to protect Vicky. He had to know he was putting his life at risk. It wasn’t until that moment that I truly trusted the fairy, the ancient Demon Sword whose power rivaled Foster’s own.
Vicky leaped to the fairies’ defense, soulswords still blazing.
Hern stepped toward the child, and the rage of a million souls screamed inside my head.
“Damian, no,” Zola croaked from beside me. “We cannot win this fight without Morrigan and Edgar. This was a mistake.” Fear showed on my master’s face. A fear I didn’t understand. Until I called a soulsword and realized it was black as pitch.
“Damian …” It was almost a plea, but the note of loss in her voice was unmistakable.
I’d crossed a line. A line I hadn’t realized I was so close to. That’s why I’d felt the pain of the gravemakers. I’d let them in too deep. The mantle closed over my head, and the power of an ancient god settled into my bones.
Hern pulled his arm back to strike Vicky down, and my body exploded into motion. Between one moment and the next, the gravemakers surged with me. Not the slow, unstoppable crawl I was so used to seeing from them on the battlefield, but a whip-like response that put me in the path of Hern’s blade.
My black soulsword met his strike with a thunderclap. Powers that were never meant to collide exploded into lightning and thunder. My mind warred with itself, and the screaming voices that escaped my throat were not my own. This Fae, this creature, had helped shatter thousands of families, murder innocents, and defile ancient grounds that had been fertile with the blood of our ancestors.
I felt my hand close around Hern’s throat even as his sword ripped through my gut. If we were going to die, we’d take that fucking bastard with us. Vicky roared as she leaped onto the old Fae, the rage at a loss I would never comprehend, one that fueled her in every battle. Brilliant soulswords cut through Hern’s armor, and I relished the scream of pain as the Old God fell to a knee.
It was the simplest thing … to squeeze, extending claws until the lifeblood of a god flowed over my hand. Vicky’s soulsword stabbed deep into Hern’s eye. He twitched twice before I felt the body start disintegrating beneath my grasp.
But something changed. A knowing … unlike any I’d felt before. Memories of grand cities and lavish dwellings built in harmony with the natural world around them. This vision spoke to me. I could feel it in every beat of my heart. Memories that were not my own flooded my mind. Remember what we lost.
The rise of man and the wars in Faerie that followed. Hern’s memories … but mine … but … the line between what I’d lived and what he’d lived blurred. At once, I was myself, but I was a fledging Owl Knight in the ranks of the Mad King. Something was wrong, but the light was fading. But maybe that was ok. Maybe the price of our lives for peace was a price we could pay.
Darkness rolled in on the edge of my vision even as I tried to fight it back. I couldn’t let this be the end, I couldn’t let Vicky and Sam down … couldn’t let them die because of me. But even as Hern’s allies fled, and his power fell apart around us, all I could feel was the need to fight. But it grew into a need to kill. To punish. To devour.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jasper screeched in pain as he pulled away from the writhing mass of the leviathan. Someone shouted a name, I think it had once been mine, but I didn’t turn to look at them. They weren’t the thing that needed to be killed. They were insects, worthy only of my mercy to allow them to exist. Worthy only to serve. The leviathan wasn’t. It didn’t belong here.
I raised my arm, and the sword of light appeared within its grasp. I’d once called it a scepter, but I understood better now. It was a soulsword without a hilt, without a focus. An unstoppable weapon that could bring the end to any enemy.
The leviathan raised one of its largest tentacles, revealing an eye. Without hesitation, I lunged for it. For all its power, the leviathan’s eye was too large for it to easily defend. The soulsword cut deep until my entire arm was encased in the screaming mass of my enemy. I clenched my fist, and the soulsword lanced out like a spear, deep into the creature’s brain. A quick twist of the blade ended the beast.
I stepped back, satisfied, as the slimy gray tentacles fell still.
“Damian!” a small human said, standing atop the corpse of my enemy. “Come back to me!”
A strange thing for a mortal to say, for she spoke to me, an old power, and an ancient being.
My voice filled the cavern. “I am always here. I have always been here, and always shall be.”
“What’s wrong with him?” one of the knights of the Court asked.
I studied another of the fairies as he stepped up beside the first. I could see the red glow of the mantle of the Demon Sword, but it was split between them so that neither wielded its full power. An odd thing for a king to do.
But these beings did not demand extermination. No, I could feel the corruption above us. It felt like my old city, Falias, but wrong. We weren’t in Faerie, but I could sense its power in the ley lines. Fragments of the Hunt surged around me, but they weren’t right. Something had changed them. No matter. They’d follow their master.
More banter from the mortals followed me as I stepped toward the wall, a wall I knew hid an ancient stone ramp. Once used for transporting ballistae and green men, now it was reduced to a loading dock for the mortal weapons.
I raised my hand and pictured the old wards in my mind. They glowed yellow in my memory, but as they appeared on the wall, they were tainted with darkness.
Stone fractured and shattered and fell away in an avalanche of rubble. I made my way out of the shadows and up into the light of the old city.
* * *
One of the mortals screamed the name Damian again, but that was a question I could ponder later, after I’d removed the scourge from the walls of the sacred city. Words came to my mind as I stepped into the sunlight. Words I didn’t recall knowing the last time I had walked upon the earth. The mortal weapons, those they called tanks, surrounded a gathering of Fae.
The old gates of the city stood broken before me, but the mortals did not seem to be battling the Fae here. Fairies and mortals alike screamed as I entered the gathering. Most were quick to leave my path, but a few tainted ones gave a satisfying crunch beneath my powers. I wasn’t here for them, I was here for the darkness pulsing through what was once the golden city of Faerie. But now there was poison and shadows where there should have been light and obedience.
The armor of the dead gave protection to most creatures and magicks foolish enough to attack, but the first of the mortal tanks to fire sent me stumbling into one of the great towers of Falias. It held firm, having been built by one of the most skilled Fae architects of the last several millennia, but the mortals had caused pain. For that, there would be consequences.
A quick flick of a wrist and power surged through my fingertips. The earth roiled with the dead, and a wave of blackness powered through the soil, swallowing the tanks in a heartbeat.
The mortals continued shouting, “Dig them out! Dig them out!” But none were foolish enough to try my patience again. Even after all this time, with all their modern weaponry, they still knew how to obey their gods.
A gray blur darted in front of me before hovering not twenty feet before my face. Almost within reach. One of the ancient dragons, and atop it a mortal who had once been human. Something forgotten stirred deep inside a memory. I had an attachment to this being somehow.
“This isn’t you!”
“Of course it is,” I said, my voice twisted into a growl by the armor of the dead. “There is none but I
who wields the blade.”
The mortal, little more than a child, lit a soulsword from the back of her mount.
Fragments of memory wormed through the edges of my mind. I’d walked through the forests of the Burning Lands, side by side with a cu sith. I’d battled through the armies of fire and crossed the Sea of Souls. The Destroyer …
“Don’t leave me.”
“Find shelter, little one. I have no quarrel with you and yours. But all who impede the glory of Falias shall be struck down.”
Her voice snapped with anger. “What’s wrong with you!”
“Nothing, child. I am reborn. As it is written, so it shall be.”
“Then save that family!” she shouted. “If you’re so great, prove it. No one here remembers you!”
That was a ridiculous sentiment. I’d been a fixture of Faerie for millenia … the Wild Hunt … the … I shook my head, as other memories crawled into my mind. Not my own, but hundreds of minds, thousands, that had died at the hand of the King.
“Fool!” I shouted as the memories played out, relentless. “To begin a war with the mortals? At a time such as this? Fool!” Nudd had always been unstable, always teetering on the edge of madness. He’d never been fit to be the Lord of the Dead. It should have been me … Hern … Vesik … what was my name?
I shook my head, and the blade in my hand flared. Regardless, I’d seen the memory of his declaration. I’d seen the family of Fae he meant to execute. That I could stop, but the dark ones were all around us. Once this battle began in earnest, too many would die.
But it was a price someone had to pay.
The small mortal released a string of curses fit for a soldier in the fight of their lives. Something in the child spoke to me, struck a chord of fondness I did not fully understand. The rider and her dragon swooped back into the clouds of the Wild Hunt now billowing up behind me as the great cloak, not the corrupted thing my enemy had conjured.
The masses had taken notice of us now. Those who knew, fled. Those who were our enemy stood their ground.
I leveled the blazing fires of the soulsword at the nearest of Nudd’s men. He’d gone back to days long forgotten, marking his soldiers with a white hand. A hand that for many represented the iron rule of a Mad King.
“Release them.” My voice boomed across the field. The three Fae, strapped to pikes as though they were meant to be burned alive, looked up at me with something like hope on their faces. It was possible they’d be more useful as martyrs, but the moment that thought crossed my mind, another voice rose up to shout it down, telling me they were allies, disgusted at the mere thought.
But thought did not indicate action. The thinking of an atrocity did not make it so.
The ranks of dark-touched filth Nudd had welcomed into his forces didn’t move. A smile crawled across my face, fracturing the blackened flesh that formed my helmet. I rolled my shoulders and let the antlers rise into the sky. Confusion lit the nearest vampire’s expression before I dropped the soulsword, and a wave of dead carried our enemies into oblivion.
The thunder of hooves echoed through the mists of the Wild Hunt, and my power rose.
* * *
Long ago, in the time of the Wandering War, the Mad King had sought to make a pact with the dark-touched vampires. It hadn’t ended well, their betrayal leaving scores of our knights dead, their blood on the hands of the Mad King. There is much for which I was able to forgive the old king, but the alliance with creatures that should have been our mortal enemies was not one of them.
Some of the Fae in the audience were drawn into the Hunt, and as they matched the step of those shadowy apparitions, the silver armor of the Hunt materialized on each of them in turn. The Mad King would have called it blasphemy, visages of his victories replaced with the fauna and antlers of my own. But the dark-touched had harrowed this world long enough. While Gwynn Ap Nudd might have been willing to sacrifice much to reach his final goal, I found myself still loyal to Faerie. Still loyal to the families that had raised Gorias and Falias into the empires they had been.
“Destroy them,” I growled.
The Hunt didn’t need more guidance than that. It was old magic, and understood intention better than most. That was also what made it dangerous. It’s why the thoughts of those atrocities could bear fruit, but I’d been in control of the Hunt long enough to understand the difference between a stray thought, and a death sentence.
The front line barreled into the streets and alleys as the dark-touched descended in force. They came from the windows and the doorways, seeming to melt out of the shadows. A grin lifted the corners of my mouth as I realized some of them were old enough to know what was happening. Toward the back of the ranks, as the boldest dark-touched were pulled down into the surging clouds of the Wild Hunt, a few turned and fled. Perhaps they meant to report back to their generals, their strategists, but to me, it did not matter. Send more, send them all. The Hunt would harvest them like a dullahan seeking its prey.
A series of thunderclaps sounded across the field of battle. It was something I’d never heard on this world until nearly a century past, humans and their weapons. Shells exploded inside the shadows of the Hunt. Fiery balls of light showed the death of innocent Fae, and some of the humans’ own people. I’d fought many wars over the millennia, but no creatures fought among themselves quite so often as the humans.
Something spoke to me, a voice from the shadows, that the ground we stood on had been some of the bloodiest seen on this side of the world. But that mattered little.
Another round fired from the commoners’ tanks. One of them caught me in the chest, blasting a hole through the black armor of the mantle. I fell to a knee, catching the charred flesh of the gravemakers as it tumbled away from me. I frowned at the sight. The mantle of Anubis was not mine. It was a necromancer’s, Vesik. Enemy to the throne, but … confusion swept through me. Two lives, one a short span—mortal, violent, and dark—and the other the gleaming beacon of the Hunter, a life of millennia and violence, but more peace than the mortal would have imagined.
I turned my attention back to the tanks. A quick sweep of my hand and a line of gravemakers exploded from the earth, sending one of the tanks into a cartwheel. A glimmer of satisfaction lit in my gut, at the same moment a stark sense of horror crawled through my brain. But they’d threatened me, injured me, and it was my place to strike them back. Of that, the voices could agree.
Another tank swiveled to take aim at the crowds, but one of the Demon Swords, the dragon rider, dove into it. The barrel collapsed under a fiery strike, and the Fae shouted something into the mass of steel and gears.
Whatever he’d said, one at a time the tanks ceased their attack. as the communication made its way through the ranks. They began to retreat.
I felt certain they would need to be punished, made to understand why no one could interfere with the Hunt. But for now, my prey waited in Falias.
* * *
The city had changed. I recognized many of the streets and towers, but their position no longer matched the ley lines in Faerie. For a moment, I wondered if they had been changed to match those in the world of the commoners, but it was easy to see that the line energy here was diluted, and only a few massive trunks of power flowed through the city. It would be enough to fuel Gwynn Ap Nudd, but I didn’t think it would be enough to restore Falias to the glory it once had in Faerie.
And maybe that’s because you let Nudd murder millions.
I frowned at the whisper in the back of my mind. That hadn’t been true. Ezekiel and the old necromancer, that had been their doing.
The fucking hell it had.
The voices in the shadows grew quieter as we stormed through the city, carving up dark-touched, obliterating whatever Fae decided to stand against us, but even though the voices grew quiet, I could not silence them entirely. Some insisted on speaking, apparently never having learned the appropriate time for quiet and concentration skills they would’ve learned in the army of Falias. I could s
carcely imagine an Owl Knight prattling on in the midst of combat. They would confuse their birds, and likely leave nothing but their armor behind.
“Damian, turn back!”
The other dragon rider had returned, hovering precariously close to the edges of the shadows. What a prize she’d make, a warrior with control of the beasts, not so unlike the Demon Sword.
From one step to the next, I found my body hesitating. One of the voices sent up a scream of rage, and I had to focus to bring silence once more. A flick of my wrist sent another wave of the fairies crashing into the nearest tower, surging up the side and striking down every vampire they found. It would take time to clear the city, but time I had. I smiled beneath the dead flesh of the gravemakers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Darkness. Everything is darkness. I am aware, somewhat, of Vicky’s voice and others in the darkness. At times the shadows become light, and I can see the scarred streets of Falias before me, the billowing shadows and night. But I know something is wrong. I know I am not in control of myself. Something happened with Hern, and the gravemakers absorbed some piece of his personality. They’ve corrupted the Hunt, and I fear what is happening. I can only watch as the scene unfolds around me. Only listen as Vicky cries out to me in the shadows. I try to move, to stop the destruction before me. But I have no control. The light fades out once more, and only the echo of a terrified girl follows me down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Take us in!” Vicky shouted as she steered Jasper too close to the dark-touched. But whatever was happening to Damian, whatever the fear and power was she felt through her tie to him, the monster before her did not lash out.
Jasper unleashed a torrent of blue flame. It sent two of Hern’s Owl Knights to the ground as little more than ash. But one of their mounts evaded the fires and circled back, the massive bird of prey darting toward them, claws extended.
The dragon tried to veer to the side, even as Vicky drew a soulsword, but they were both too late. The claws were already in Jasper’s hide, the beak inside their defenses.
