by Jake Stone
“No,” Atia says.
I look at her. “What do you mean, ‘no?’ You have a better plan?”
“Yes,” she says.
“And what’s that?”
“We go around this.”
I gawk at the warrior, shocked by her words. Ever since I’ve known the woman, she’s always been down to fight, especially when it comes to the less fortunate. Confused, I stare at her. But she ignores me, choosing to issue orders for the others to search out alternate passages, side-tunnels that’ll allow us to avoid this unnecessary conflict. And at that moment, I feel my stomach turn in anger. Is she serious? Does she really want us to abandon these suffering people?
“But there are humans down there,” I say. “We need to help them.”
“And there’s an entire army outside waiting for us to finish our mission,” she replies.
“But—”
She silences me with a raised hand. “We are not going to intervene, Xander, and that’s final!”
Ignoring my glare, she accesses the holographic projector on her vambrace, conjuring the map of the caves, and begins to examine it with narrowed eyes. She’s calm in her inspection, resolute, as if untroubled by the sound of whips cracking below.
To hell with this.
I’m just about to tell her to fuck off when, from the pit, we hear a frightening roar that freezes us in place. Atia turns. As do I, my breath catching in my throat as I see Azafalia still sitting on his throne, but with a deep scowl.
In his clawed hands, he holds what looks to be a rusty blade that has just been handed to him by one of the hellions. The blade is broken in two, cracked right in the middle. Angered by this, he lifts from his throne and lumbers out to the edge of the dais where he glares down at his human slaves. “You have failed me,” he roars out. “All of you.”
The human slaves bow their heads in submission, desperate to appease his wrath. But I doubt it’s going to work. This guy’s pissed.
“But do not worry,” he says with a grin. “For I will allow you the chance to redeem yourselves.”
He summons one of his minions, a twisted creature with a humped back wearing a dark, flowing cloak, whose face is pocked with scars. A sergeant, I assume.
The creature listens to his master intently, nods, then leaps off the dais into the crowd, where he begins whipping his way through the human slaves until he reaches a tall man with sunken eyes standing in the back. Bone thin, with long unkempt hair, he looks like a homeless man who’s been living on the street for a year. At his side, a young girl no older than ten clutches his hand, her eyes wide with fear as she watches the hellion marching toward them.
The man gasps as he’s punched in the stomach, his legs buckling beneath him as he’s overwhelmed by the searing pain.
Seeing him on the floor, the young girl rushes out to help him, calling him ‘daddy,’ but she’s quickly held back by a rail-thin woman whose right hand is missing.
The girl fights to break loose, but the woman refuses to let her go, knowing better than most the price one pays for intervening.
“Ah!” the man yells out in pain as he’s collared with a rusty band of metal. The collar digs deep into his skin, drawing streams of blood that spill from his neck, onto his chest.
With a tug, the hellion yanks the man forward through the crowd, whipping back anyone brave enough to get too close.
Frightened, the slaves look away, shielding the eyes of the young with their hands. Even so, one of the women, an elder with long grey hair, but with determined eyes, reaches out for the man.
“Korba!” she screams, pushing past the hellion. But her strength is nothing compared to the demon, and she’s quickly thrust back when she’s whipped across the face and shoulders.
“Mother, no!” the man yells out. “Take care of Sila. Please. All of you.”
I watch, hands clenched in fists, as the man is dragged before Azafalia’s throne, where he’s forced to kneel. Grabbing him by the hair, the hellion yanks his head back, giddy as he forces him to stare up at their grand master.
“Please!” the man yells out, screaming. “I have a daughter.”
But Azafalia merely grins. He’s enjoying this, relishing the pain and humiliation that oozes out of this battered man. Instead, it is the young slave girl lying at his side who shows the man pity. She crawls out to meet him, tears streaming from her eyes as she wipes away the matted hair from his trembling face.
She cannot save this man, she knows. But she does her best to comfort him, holding him in her arms and whispering sweetness into his ear. A promise to look after his daughter? A few words to affirm his faith in the corfew? Whatever it is, the man takes it willingly, his head hanging low in solemn acceptance.
When she’s done, she turns her gaze to her master, who’s been watching the interaction in fascination. It’s then that her eyes turn cold and defiant. She’s a fighter, I see, a brave soul who’ll face hell itself to help others.
Good.
“What are they going to do to him?” Zorel asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I do,” Petronelous says.
We turn to her.
“It’s the ritual of steel,” she explains, “the process by which they bleed a soul into steel.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes,” she tells me.
I look back into the pit, heart racing as I fear for the worst.
Azafalia rips the shirt from the man’s body, revealing a back marked with scars. This man has suffered. More than most. But there’s a calmness about him, a deep acceptance that has fortified him against his hellish world.
Resting one of his clawed hands onto the man’s chest, Azafalia begins to recite an evil curse, the sound of his words like the shattering of tectonic plates. When he’s done, he nods at his sergeant, and he’s quickly handed a rusty knife with a bone finger for its hilt.
Most of the men and women turn away, unable to face the doom that has befallen one of their own. A tragic event, indeed. But there are a few, those defiant till the end who refuse to give in to their torturers.
“I can’t watch this,” Zorel says, turning away. She leans into me for strength, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders.
“It’s okay,” I whisper to her.
“I will,” Petronelous announces like the good soldier that she is. “For him. For his honor.”
I do as well, but it’s hard. Every part of me wants to scream for war and attack, to draw my sword and lay waste to the motherfuckers. But we’re not ready. And, according to Atia, we shouldn’t.
I wince as Azafalia plunges the blade into the man’s chest, cutting out his heart and holding it up into the air, like some Aztec sacrifice, while a group of hellion assholes takes the man’s body to the forge where they bleed him into the tub, renewing the bath with fresh life.
The screams I hear are horrible, filled with such anguish, such sorrow that I nearly look away. But I don’t. I force myself to stare. The young slave girl who’s leashed to Azafalia lowers her head, sobbing uncontrollably into her hands.
After that, all hell breaks loose. It’s a celebration. The hellions, those sick fuckers, inspired by the sight, begin to cheer, wild in their enthusiasm. They beat the men and women around them, laughing as they do so, giggling and giggling until there’s no one left standing.
And amidst all of this, shrinking beneath the chaos, I see the young girl named Sila, the daughter of the man who was just murdered, cowering in the corner, lips trembling with fear.
Chapter Twelve
“Let us remove this filth,” Atia declares. “And bring peace to those who’ve suffered.”
“Amen to that, sister,” I reply.
The man’s sacrifice has hardened Atia’s heart, and now she refuses to leave without retribution. Armed and ready to go, we watch, silent, as we observe the cavern, waiting for our chance to strike.
The men, women, and children have been working for the past hour, toiling
under the stinging whip of hellion sergeants who shove them into line, where they stagger in exhaustion against the hearth’s blazing heat. The demons’ cruelty has no bounds.
They whip and whip until the humans’ backs are dripping with blood and their painful screams and cries fall silent to numbing breaths. It’s a disgusting sight that fills me with rage, and I do what I must to keep from leaping over the edge and firing into the rotting bastards.
“We must not fail them,” Petronelous says. She stares over my shoulder into the demons’ forge. “We must bring them to justice and sentence them to death at the ends of our weapons.”
“Agreed,” Atia says. “Spare no one.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Zorel says, her gray eyes sparking with crackling light.
Our plan is simple. Chun Hei will take out the guards on the far side of the cavern with her sniper rifle, removing them from the equation. Then, she’ll turn her sight to the passageway leading into the next chamber where she’ll kill any hellions who might charge into the battle.
Petronelous will take care of the canisaurs, using her skill as a swordsman to put them to rest. As she put it so eloquently during our planning, “Two blades for two dogs.”
Zorel, on the other hand, will unleash her power amongst the core group of guards, keeping them at bay as Atia and I rush the dais to kill Azafalia, and his sergeant hellion. It seems like a piece of cake. But as all plans go, I’ve come to learn, this one will inevitably turn to shit once the fighting starts.
“Be careful,” Chun Hei signs as she sets up position along the edge of the rocky balcony.
I offer her a curt nod, feeling a drop of sweat sliding down the side of my face. Even with all of our training, I’m always hesitant at the beginning of a battle, worried and clearly aware of how easily I can be killed at any moment. Even worse, I fear that any of the women at my side can meet the same fate and that it will be my fault. Shoving the thought from my brain, I prepare to jump.
We wait at the edge of our cliff, listening for the sound of Chun Hei’s rifle. When it comes, it rattles off in a series of plasma projectiles that streaks across the demon forge and into the distant hellion warriors standing guard by the weapons racks.
They die gruesome deaths as each of them are punctured by flaming hot plasma bolts, that explode their heads, chests and hearts, rupturing their bodies into splatters of black blood. They squeal like diseased pigs, falling to the cavernous grounds and lying still in puddles of filth.
“Now!” Atia orders.
We jump from the edge of our cliff and attack the surprised ranks of hellion guards, striking them down with swords and spears, plasma bolts and electrical charges. The sound of our fury echoes through the smoking chamber, adding to the human screams and offensive grunts of their hellish overlords.
“This way!” Atia orders as she plunges into the fray.
I follow her without question, willing to die at her back if need be. The hellions are well armed with rusty swords and twisted axes, but it’s no comparison to the technologically advanced weaponry of the Republic.
I aim my Rectifier as we’re surrounded by a group of armored hellions. The magnet combat sights of my rifle quickly lock onto the disgusting trolls, and a warning sensor beeps on the visor of my helmet, alerting me that I’ve zeroed in on the targets.
With the press of a trigger, rounds of tiny explosives erupt from the end of my barrel, swirling with trails of smoke as they plunge into the chests of the snarling bastards. In less than a second, their bodies rupture from within, disintegrating into showers of rotting flesh and disgusting bile.
“Die you, fuckheads!”
My satisfaction is short-lived. To my right, I watch as Petronelous dances with her demon dogs. The snarling mutts assail her with snapping jaws that salivate with green snot. They’re the size of ponies and the things of nightmares. They attack as if psychically linked, always moving in tandem and always striking at the exact moment.
Petronelous follows their movement with her blades, her gaze lowered to the ground as if relying on her senses over her sight. The snarling beasts barrel at her from opposite directions, leaping into the air with their jaws open. She ducks at the right moment, and their bulbous heads crash into each other. The crack echoes through the chamber, and I hear the once snarling beasts begin to whimper as they fight to regain their sight.
“Hurry!” Atia yells.
I rush to catch up with the valiant captain as she carves her way toward the dais where Azafalia watches the spectacle of our attack from his throne.
Behind me, I hear the crackling of Zorel’s power as it sizzles through the bodies of the hellions. Like meat searing over a burning flame, I hear the crack and pop of skin, followed by the tortured screams of the dying.
When we reach the dais, we’re met by the demon knight’s personal guard. They march out with their spears in hand, their rough armor dull and cracked against the fire of the hearth. They growl at us like furious gorillas, their massive arms and chests flexing with angry strength.
We empty our battery clips into the imposing guards, blasting through their ancient armor and dense muscles. But in the end, we do little. The monsters are wide pillars of hate and strength, made to withstand artillery fire from tanks, much less Battle Saints with Rectifiers. Still, we don’t give up.
“Explosives,” Atia says, activating the magnetic chambers that orbit the barrel of her rectifier. The cylinder halts at the top of her rifle, and she aims her weapon at the demon in her view. “Be gone from this world, demon filth.”
The demon staggers back as Atia unleashes a barrage of explosives into its right shoulder, eventually able to sever the arm from its body. But the demon is barely affected. It merely lets out a grimace as it glares down at its severed arm on the floor.
My demon is no different. It bears the attack of my projectiles, with little effort, raising a hand in its defense and lowering its head as it slowly marches toward me. With every step, I feel my heart beating faster, my fear growing deeper. If I can’t stop it, it’ll grip me by the throat and twist off my head.
I can do this, I tell myself, aiming my weapon at its groin. Taking a deep breath, I pull the trigger, eyes wide as I see the tube lodge directly into its balls. The demon stops and looks down, a puny whimper escaping its fanged mouth when it realizes what has just happened.
In an instant, the demon’s balls explode, and its legs give out from beneath, its giant form toppling to the ground, where it remains motionless. Breathing a sigh of relief, I hear Atia through the com in my helmet.
“Lucky shot,” she says.
“You’re just jealous,” I reply.
Our work’s not done. The demon whom she amputated is still marching toward us, and Azafalia and his hellion sergeant are still watching us from the dais, now more fascinated than amused.
“Watch out!” I scream as the demon guard swings for Atia’s head.
Now that the enemy is so close, we’re forced to use our melee weapons. Atia spins out of the demon’s attack and brandishes the titanium rod from her back, which quickly activates into a spear with glistening blades at both ends. The weapon is a marvel, a special spear that is only awarded to Saints, who can master all seven techniques of the weapon.
I watch, amazed, as the blond beauty twirls the long rod around her neck, spinning it like the blades of a helicopter as she outmaneuvers her much larger and slower opponent.
I draw my own blade, proud of the four feet of shiny metal glistening in the firelight, and join the fight. “Wait up for me!”
Our metal is tempered with the hottest of fires and blessed by clergy that have sworn themselves to the corfew—weapons that have a distinct advantage over the secular weaponry that regular soldiers use on the battlefield and are extremely effective at killing the enemy.
The demon roars out in pain as our blades singe its rocky skin. Steam rises from the wounds as black blood drips from the lesions, and I see the demon’s movements b
egin to slow as its life slips from its deep wounds.
“Die, beast!” Atia says as she finally relieves the beast of its misery. With a clear slash across its neck, she slices its throat, nearly severing every muscle in the process. The demon’s neck yawns open slowly as its head falls back, and I’m rewarded with the sight of blood gurgling out from its windpipe before it topples to the ground.
“Well done,” a deep voice rumbles from the dais.
I look up to find Azafalia staring down at us from his throne. He rises from his seat like a tired king and lumbers out to greet us with a lethargic gait. His demeanor is so relaxed, his fear of us so minuscule, that he actually leaves his long and twisted spear behind him to rest against the armchair of his throne.
When he speaks, I feel as if a hammer is banging against my soul and the most I can do is shut my eyes to bear the pain. “I see that the Battle Saints are still strong.”
“Strong enough to stand against filth like you,” Atia declares.
The demon arches a brow, impressed with the captain’s impudence.
“That’s right,” I add.
Both Atia and I stagger back as he steps toward the edge of the dais, our heads tilted up as we take in his towering height. Azafalia is a powerful being whose strength far exceeds even the greatest of our order. Good thing there are five us.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Zorel says, her fingers smoking from massacring the bulk of his hellion army.
Behind her, Petronelous appears, her chest heaving as she fights to regain her breath. Even Chun Hei has arrived, her sniper rifle cradled in her arms.
“How dare you stand before my master!” the hunchback hellion demands of us. He sneers through a twisted face, and I see the deep lines along its skin. “Bow your heads and submit to his rule. Take on these chains as this whore has.” He motions to the young slave girl leashed to Azafalia’s throne. “And give your bodies for his pleasure. Do this, or we shall rid you of this rotting planet.”
“Submit to your master?” Atia repeats in disgust. “Our only master is the corfew whose light shines more powerfully than any darkness you and your ilk can conjure.”
