Macille steps in front of me, hefting his shield.

“Hold on,” I say. I grab his shoulder, feeling the tension run through him. “You don’t think he is going to attack us, do you?”

“How should I know?” Macille says. Ahead of us, Jor’Mari continues to stand with his one good eye locked firmly on Macille. “He just killed that man.”

“He did,” I say, and it is only then that my head starts to catch up with the situation. That man had been a rank two magician, but Jor’Mari ripped his head clean off his shoulders with his bare hands. It happened too quickly to even see. I don’t think there is any way that Macille or I could stop him.

I raise my hand, flinching when Jor’Mari’s eye flicks over to look at me. “We aren’t going to attack you, Jor’Mari. You know us, right?”

There is only vacancy in the man’s eyes. The black veins running beneath the surface of his skin pulse in time with his heart. Jor’Mari’s head cocks to the side and a second later I hear something from the woods nearby as well. A man yells, stumbling backwards as he and four others appear out of the woods, looking down at the headless corpse at Jor’Mari’s feet.

“He killed the boss!” One of the five yells.

A second later, a bolt of lightning crashes down from the heavens over Jor’Mari. A woman steps out from among the group of people huddling around a massive tree, her hands alight with yellow energy. Smoke and cinders billow up from the spot Jor’Mari stood, his still unmoving form somewhat visible through the haze.

“He is still standing!” says one of the men as he scrambles back to his feet, the shock of seeing his boss’ body on the ground having made him trip. “Hit him aga--” He jumps behind the tree as a bolt of dragonfire explodes against the trunk.

Macille looks back to me wide-eyed, and it is only then that I realize I even threw the bolt. I stare at my hand, fire glowing from my fingertips, a strange sense of betrayal towards my own body building inside of me. I just attacked that man without thinking about it. If I hit him, he might have died.

“There are more!” A woman in their group yells. An arrow comes sailing my direction from the sound of the voice, but with the hundred feet between us, Macille easily catches the arrow on his shield.

A roar erupts from the still billowing smoke and Jor’Mari’s hand peaks from the gray shadow. Three more bolts of lightning crash down on him as Macille pulls me back to take shelter behind the tree. I can still see the obscured figure of Jor’Mari in the smoke, standing there, unmoving.

The lightning stops crashing down a moment later. The smoke clears, revealing Jor’Mari, his bloodied robes burnt and falling apart as he stands seething in the center of the lightning strikes. Twin horns spike up from his forehead and drool hangs loosely from his lips. None of that truly registers for me, as I see something I have never seen before. The description given to me by my Eye of Volaash changes before my eyes.

Jor’Mari(Rank One), Son of Duke Cla’Mari of the Mari Duchy

Demon Conflux

“Is that possible?” I whisper.

Macille pushes me down. A split second later, a bolt of lightning crashes down on our position from among the treetops overhead. Macille shakes, his body seizing as the lighting strikes his outstretched shield before he falls to his knees as well. I am about to grab him, but he waves me away, steam boiling up from his armor.

“I’ll heal myself,” he says, green light already building in his hands.

Another rumble overhead warns me of a lightning strike. A wave of helplessness washes over me as the bolt of light booms down out of the heavens. My heart stops as I see death coming right at me.

The lightning strikes crashes into a boulder just three feet in front of me. Shards of rock explode away from the strike, turning into shrapnel that cuts my face and neck. I blink, a blackness in my eyes that slowly begins to focus into the world around me. I find myself once again being attacked by other people, other people that aim to kill me.

The burning fire in my hand is like an outlet for my anger. Ignoring Macille’s warning, I peek around the trunk of the tree. The group huddles behind their own tree trunk in the distance. Jor’Mari has vanished in the last few seconds. An arrow comes sailing out of the woods from fifty feet north of where I am looking. The arrow sticks into the trunk of the tree just a few inches left of where my head had been before. I hurl my ball of fire towards their group, the ball of fire erupting against their tree, sending them scattering back for cover. For good measure, I throw another ball of fire towards the archer, forcing them to duck back as well.

Looking back, I find Macille still kneeling on the ground, his magic working at fixing the burn lines that run through his skin. He looks back up at me, concern and fear in his eyes. Seeing that look spurs me to hurl another bolt of fire at the other group, the trunk of their tree charring with each blast of magic.

One of their members takes a probing step out from behind their tree, and I toss another Dragonfire Bolt in his direction. As the man tries to duck back around the tree, he trips, falling prone. The terror in the man’s eyes turns into confusion and then amusement as he watches my bolt of fire hit the trunk of the tree in the same spot the first two had. He looks across the distance in my direction, a look of triumph on his face.

“What’s the matter, girl!” he calls. “Never killed anyone before?”

“Fuck!” I swear, dodging back behind our tree as an arrow comes sailing out of nowhere. Panic starts to try and probe into my head. Normally, I would be confident enough to push that aside, but today has been one emotionally taxing surprise after another. Behind us, the forest ends in a dead drop just forty feet away, the land falling away in an almost sheer drop for two hundred feet. My breath starts to become rapid as I look about, trying to find a direction to flee. “Get up. Get up. Get up,” I urge Macille.

Macille looks back at me as he pulls himself to his feet, using the tree for support. I stare up at the shadows overhead, expecting a lethal bolt of lightning to peel down at us any second. The waiting for that deadly strike is agony.

“Run,” Macille tells me.

“I don’t think we can outrun them,” I tell Macille, my voice strained and weak. “There are five of them.”

“We can,” he tells me. “You are fast. You can do this, Charlene. All you need to do is run until they give up chasing you.”

“Us,” I say back to him.

Macille rolls his shoulders and gives me the most reassuring smile he can muster. “Right,” he says, his projection of confidence somewhat disturbed by an arrow bouncing off a tree just near us. “We will make a break for it. They won’t chase us for that long. We haven’t done anything to them.”

“So, start moving,” I say, trying to push him into running. My fingers shake and I can’t keep from looking back towards the tree, like I will be able to spot the other group through the trunk. I haven’t heard anything from that side of the woods in a while other than the archer shooting from some secret vantage. “Go.”

“You in front,” Macille says, hefting his shield and nodding West along the line that the cliff cuts through the forest. “I will cover us from behind.”

I want to argue with him, but the words die before they even reach my lips. I nod at Macille and sprint from behind the tree, running towards the next that is more than twenty paces away. An arrow and a thrown ax thud into the dirt behind me as I sprint, our attackers obviously not expecting me to be as quick as I am. The sound of thunking metal and a grunt make me slide to a stop behind the tree when I make it there. Macille still runs between the two tree trunks, the haft of an ax sticking out of his shield. Blood dribbles down Macille’s shield arm, the head of the ax peeking through the metal.

“Keep running!” Macille commands.

My body jumps to obey. My legs burn as I force everything that I have into them, sprinting between the trees while a seemingly endless rain of axes and arrows sail out of the distance towards me. I feel a deadly gust as a javelin lands between my sprinting feet. I realize that I have run hundreds of feet before I even think to look back.

I look back, finding Macille huddled behind a tree more than sixty feet away from me, crying out as he pulls the ax out of his shield and arm. Sweat drips from his brow, and his shield arm is covered in a gauntlet of blood. Macille calms his ragged breathing for a moment to build up the words. “Keep running!” he yells to me.

“Macille…” A bolt of lightning crashes down out of the sky less than a foot in front of me. My world turns into a blinding field of white as heat scorches my face. Pain blossoms, something sharp punches straight through my right shoulder, and I stumble back, blind. Without thought, my hands scratch at the ground, trying to remember where I am, but the crash of lightning has made everything muted in my ears.

“Run, Charlene!” I hear Macille’s voice cut through the blinding white in my eyes. “Run!”

I crawl through the dead leaves and dirt, finally finding my feet beneath me and racing away. Tears streak down my face as fear overtakes me. I run blind through the woods, only the grace of the gods stopping me from sending myself tumbling over the cliff.

Bruises and cuts mark my face and arms as I collide with tree after tree on my sprint. Time is gone, lost, but my feet refuse to stop. The world starts to come back to me little by little, indistinct pillars of shadow in a field of white. I stop running headfirst into the trees when my head settles enough to understand what I am seeing.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The forest turns uphill. I slip more than once as my sprint continues. I don’t know how long it is by the time I can see the ground again, by the time that I can pick out the roots and rocks that try to trip me up. I gasp for air as I run up a rise, my lungs working harder than they ever have in my entire life.

Making it to the top of the incline and turning around a tree, I collide with something, sending me sprawling back. Through the wetness in my vision, I register a second later that a man stands at the top of the rise, a sinister black aura billowing up around him. I call fire to my hands, but my body is too exhausted to heed me properly.

Panting for breath, I stare up at the man. His coppery hair is plastered to his face with sweat, a gauntleted hand held awkwardly at his side. Confusion and rage battle in his amber eyes, but when I meet them with my own, all of the fire dies out inside of me.

“Kendon,” I say, still panting for breath.

Kendon Esfelle(Rank Two)

Devastation Conflux

His eyes are huge as they run over me. “You’re dead,” he says, his voice like a whisper.

----------------------------------------

Twenty minutes later I sit against a tree. My heart aches with each beat, the simple inflation of my lung made painful. There is a knot in my side that refuses to go away. More than the pain my body has inflicted on me is the terror and the shame.

I flinch as I hear Kendon’s hammer fall with a sickening squelch. He straddles the body of a woman, raising his hammer high over his head only to bring it down on the bloody patch of ground where her head used to be. He pulled his aura back after it became clear that none of enemy magicians stood a chance against him. I will remember their screams as Kendon’s black and venomous aura poured over them, causing their skin to begin to melt before my very eyes.

“Here.” I look up, finding Coriander standing above me, a handkerchief in her outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice a hoarse whisper. I press the cloth to the arrow wound in my shoulder that has refused to stop bleeding.

Through all of it, I can’t stop looking at Kendon. The man grinds his teeth as he steps away from the corpse he has busied himself with mutilating with his hammer, leaving it to boil and decompose from the power of his magically infused strikes. The anger in Kendon’s eyes is inviolable as he stalks through the dead leaves. With a final roar, he swings his hammer into the trunk of a tree, the blow hard enough to shake all the way up through the massive tree, dropping acorns on our heads.

I am too tired to appreciate the situation. Until just a few minutes ago, I would have bet that these two had died back at the parade ground. Macille never gave up hope on seeing his brother again.

Thinking of Macille turns my attention to him. He lays in the dirt not far off, the entire right side of his face hideously scorched from a lightning blast. Blood stains his armor, and his right arm is bent at an odd angle. Despite his wounds, he still breathes, shallowly, inconsistently. The man hasn’t opened his eyes since we arrived. We found him this way, a group of four arrayed around him, kicking and beating him. The final member of their troupe, the woman with the bow, was already dead by the time we arrived, her belly split open by Macille’s blade.

Flashes of what Kendon did to the four threaten to return to me, but I push them away for now. Kendon yells his anger into the air above us, a pain that I can’t understand burning inside of him. His hammer falls to the ground as he stalks back to the prone form of his brother, falling to his knees in front of Macille.

“You came back to me,” Kendon whispers, running his fingers through Macille’s hair. “You came back from death, but I wasn’t here fast enough. How did you do that, Macille? We saw you die.” He shakes his head.

“He saved me,” I manage to say. Kendon looks up. “When the risers collapsed, he saved me.”

“No,” Kendon says, shaking his head. “No. He died when it all collapsed. You both did. We saw you die.” Kendon’s gaze flicks towards Coriander, and the woman shudders as she takes a step back. “We saw you die.”

“We did,” Coriander says, a little too quickly. “I’m sure of it. We both saw it Kendon. You saw it with your own eyes.”

“Yes.” Kendon looks down, petting Macille’s hair. “I know I saw it. I know that I did.” The love I see on Kendon’s face is too beautiful for the man. He kneels over his brother like a blood-covered angel.

A shudder running through the ground snaps me back to the moment. Did I doze off for a moment? A second later I hear the sound of rocks colliding with the bottom of the cliff we sit at the top of. The light in the forest is lower now, but Kendon still kneels over his brother, running his hand slowly through his hair. He is muttering something too low for me to hear, and Coriander stands a short distance away from him, biting the nail of her thumb.

“We need to treat him,” I say. My voice is still harsh, and I pull some water out of my inventory to drink. Coriander’s eyes flick towards the bag on my waist as I store the water once again.

“Do you have anything to treat him?” she asks me.

“No,” I admit.

I look back to Kendon as he continues to mutter. Straining my ears, I catch that the word he says over and over again is “How.”

“Kendon,” I try. “We should try and splint Macille’s arm, it looks like it is broken.”

Kendon jolts at the sound of my voice, his head turning in my direction. “Charlene, what are you doing here? You’re dead.”

A shiver runs down my spine. “No Kendon, I didn’t die. Macille saved me.”

“Macille.” Kendon looks down at his brother, and it is as if he is seeing him again for the first time. “He’s burned.” He looks back at me. “No, we saw you die. Didn’t we.” A sudden anger seeps into Kendon’s voice as he pulls himself to his feet, but it is Coriander he is looking at now. “We both saw you die. We saw the bodies.”

As Kendon steps towards her, a tremble shakes Coriander’s lips. “That’s right,” she says, her voice projecting confidence despite the fact that she is backing away from the man. There is a distortion in the air between them, a twisting like a heat mirage that passes from Coriander to Kendon. “We saw them die. We saw that snake push them over the edge and then they died.”

“We saw them die,” Kendon says, nodding, the anger vanishing from his voice. “That’s right. Jor’Mari pushed them over the edge, and they died when the risers collapsed.”

My stomach turns in knots as I watch Kendon step up to Coriander, but his anger and her fear have vanished. She pulls him down, pressing her lips to his in a passionate embrace.

“I’m sorry,” Kendon whispers to her, setting his forehead against hers. “I get confused. Thank you for keeping me sane.”

“Of course, my love.” Despite her words, I can still hear a hint of fear in Coriander’s voice.

I try to stand, my mind whirring, trying to follow what is happening, but it’s no use. My shuffling feet draw Kendon’s attention back to me, and I freeze in a half-crouch.

“Charlene,” Kendon says. “Thank Exeter you are alright. I could have sworn Jor’Mari killed you. Killed you…” His voice trails away as his eyes fall back on the prone form of his brother. “Someone burned my brother, Charlene. Who would do that? He was always the kindest person. He just wants to protect people. Why would anyone burn him?”

“That woman did,” I say, standing as slowly as I can, pointing to the puddle of black sludge on the ground, all that remains of the mage’s body. “They attacked us and Macille saved me. He told me to run ahead. He never gave up on looking for you. He knew that you would be out there looking for him.”

“You ran from him?” Kendon asks. The way he looks at me, his eyes pinpricks of dangerous intent, it makes my heart pound in my ears. “Why would you run from him, Charlene?” A tear falls down Kendon’s cheek as he looks down at Macille. “Someone burned him. Did you burn him, Charlene?”

“No!” I almost scream. “No. That was the mage woman. I would never hurt Macille. You have to believe me, Kendon.”

A wave of black erupts of Kendon as he pushes his soul presence outward. The air feels like acid in my throat as I struggle for breath. Coriander, standing just a few feet away from him, falls to her knees as the soul presence washes over her. Coriander clutches at Kendon’s waist, trying to pull his attention towards her.

“You’re hurting me,” she squeaks out. I see the distortion in the air between the two once again. The pain in my throat nearly knocks me over. “Kendon,” Coriander says. “Kendon, you’re killing me. Stop.”

The black aura vanishes and the next lungful of air I take is like a spring, putting out the fire in my throat. Kendon pulls Coriander up, holding her tightly, more tears running down his face. “Who did this to Macille?”

Horror stabs into my heart as I hear Coriander’s words. “She did. Charlene did this.”

“Charlene?” Kendon asks, pulling away. I try to say something, but the pain in my throat stops me from speaking. I cough. “Why would she do that? She and Macille are friends.”

“No,” Coriander says. She turns her head in my direction, and past the clear venom that I can see in her eyes, there is a deep fear as well. I realize that she is as terrified of Kendon as I am.

“She was never his friend,” Coriander says, again, space is distorted between the pair. She hugs him tightly, caressing his chest. “She is like all humans, secretly hating our kind. She would kill you if she were strong enough to do it. You cannot blame her for it really, it is in her blood.”

Despite the tears still streaking his face, Kendon’s eyes hold no emotion as he stares at me. “Is that right, Charlene? Do you hate us that much?”

“No,” I barely squawk out, but Kendon is already moving towards me. Lamplighter’s Charge appears in my hand, and I am already pouring mana into it, setting the head of the staff alight. “I would never hurt him. You have to believe me Kendon. Why else would I have brought you here? I am your friend. I am Macille’s friend.”

Kendon stops in front of me, his eyes boring into me with frightening indifference. It is as if he doesn’t even consider the weapon in my hand a threat. I can’t stop the shaking in my hands as the man looks down at me.

“It’s okay,” Kendon says, a smile creeping onto his lips. “You’re already dead anyway.”

Before I can utter another word, I feel a sting in my stomach like I have been punched. Lamplighter’s Charge falls from my numbing fingers, and I take a step backwards, the strength in my legs already draining away. I look down, seeing two-pronged spear of black jutting out from my broken armor, its surface like the carapace of an insect, stretching all the way back towards the sleeve of Kendon’s right arm.

A window flashes in my vision for a bare moment before vanishing in crystalline motes of magic.

Serpent’s Bite(Artifact):

???

I fall back, trying to reach out with my hand to break my fall, but my arms don’t obey me anymore. The insect-like spear of chitin vanishes back into Kendon’s sleeve in the blink of an eye. My head cracks against a rock, and the world turns black for a moment.

I don’t know how long has passed when my eyes open again. Kendon is there, pulling at me. I can’t feel my body at all. My thoughts are like sludge, and it takes an eternity for me to realize that Kendon is unstrapping my armor. I try to speak, to say anything, to scream but nothing comes out as Kendon pulls my breastplate off and tosses it a short distance away to where the rest of my armor has been piled.

Coriander stands against a tree a good distance away, her hands shaking as she grips the bark.

“You did this to yourself,” Kendon says to me when he sees my eyes are open. “You can’t go around hurting the people that I love. No one can. I am sorry that it had to be this way, Charlene.” He holds up the pouch that Arabella gave me. “Don’t worry. I won’t waste what you have left with us. I will tell Macille that you died doing something honorable if he doesn’t remember you attacking him. He had a crush on you, you know. I wouldn’t want him to know what you are really like.”

I try to speak, but I can’t even move my jaw. A low whine escapes from between my lips. There is no vengeance or satisfaction in his eyes as Kendon presses his fingers into my side. I feel then how powerful this man truly has become.

“Goodbye, Charlene.” The words are full of regret.

All I can do is gasp as I feel the man shove me with his prodigious strength. My limp body doesn’t bounce off the dirt as he pushes me away. I sail through the air, watching in horror as the edge of the cliff shoots up past my vision.

“You idiot she still had…” Coriander’s voice trails off as I fall through the air.

My shoulder collides with the side of the cliff, spinning my limp body as I fall. Turned, I can see the jagged rock jutting out of the side of the cliff as I plummet towards it. I hit the rock. Darkness.