>
> Sulynor, of Otholiel’s warhorse pushed the bushes aside and stepped into the opening. The Rokae leader turned his white-gold smiling mask on them and pointed at a glowering Aelrindel.
>
> “You ride behind me, Aeleniel will take Zilyana. Faelar will bring the others.”
>
> “We’re running?” Aelrindel hissed and pushed a crying Zilyana aside. “Are you serious Lord Sulynor?”
>
> “None of us is going to be lording anything no more,” Sulynol grunted and moved the big horse closer. She felt its hot breath on her face, smelling of grass, sweat and fresh blood. “Get on the saddle. We need to move.”
>
> “Where?” She blasted him. “Kallister’s Tower is too far away!”
>
> “Mistress just go,” young Zilyana pleaded. “I can’t lose you as well.”
>
> No.
>
> You don’t get to fuck me twice in a month!
>
> “Rai-Minas troops are across Myrdiel River,” Sulynor explained. “You’ll never reach Witch’s Dagger. You mother ordered us to take you North.”
>
> “MY MOTHER IS DEAD!” Aelrindel exploded in anger, her eyes glowing. “We must go with Calamer and Galadriel, strike back at Lord Elas! Turn his lands to glass!”
>
> “Elas wouldn’t have set up a meeting, only to bring poisoned blades inside the Garden. The Old Shield is a diplomat first and foremost,” Sulynor replied and tended his armoured arm at her. “Faelar saw a burning Minue Mol jumping out of a window when the Orchard House was engulfed in flames. If that freak Mol was there, then the mute Dar Fenog and Dar Draug were near. Assassins of Nym’s Circle wouldn’t have moved against your mother without orders from above. It wasn’t Elas. It was Baltoris. Cydonia isn’t safe, nor beyond their reach, but the North is.”
>
> “Curse them all to Oras Hells,” Aelrindel hissed livid, her face dark. “Blackened be their last days, foul the air in their lungs and ashes covering their bones,” she vowed under the Goddess’s Tree and grabbed the Imperial Knight’s arm.
>
>
>
> “What’s in the North?” a worried Zilyana had asked her a month later, their fast ship leaving the Torn Earth behind and sailing with the gulf’s current through the Wetull’s Straits towards the land of the Cofols.
>
> Aelrindel draped in her shawl, with salt water burning her eyes hadn’t answered her for a long moment. It wasn’t the greedy slave merchants of Ani Ta-Ne, the uncouth hashish-selling cretins of Que Ki-La, or the blasphemous fishermen of Rin An-Pur.
>
> “A place my mother built,” she murmured over the sound of the sails and the frothy waves. “She called it Neil-Dan. It means faraway roots. It’s an old poem her mother knew. My sister used to sing it to me when I was little. I couldn’t speak the words fully and always mumbled ‘ndani’ instead. Returned.”
>
> “Pay them back,” a young Zilyana had said with a cute frown shivering.
>
> “We shall,” Aelrindel agreed and embraced her small body to warm her up. “But we need to save ourselves first.”
-
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Aelrindel, of Edlenn
Death Defying Illusions
Part II
-Laitae ea Gimoss, in ulce Maetar-
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She hadn’t exactly pictured her return as a Horselord’s spouse. Her second come back, since the first one had gone tits up. You work with what life drops in your lap sometimes. You make a plan, the plan fails and you make another. Then it fails as well, because that’s what plans do. They are annoying and very unsatisfactory even when they sort of work.
Not the way you’d preferred, the rogue pirate being a two-timing murdering, unfaithful bastard probably something she should have caught on sooner, but that was done. I got Rida out of it, she thought with a frown. A hollowed out, burned and ruined Rida. So not exactly the deal she had in mind and she wasn’t really controlling it truth be told.
What she had instead was the privilege of getting plowed and flooded with thin seed by a philistine idiot, who was getting more difficult to control as years went by. Magic fades with time and when your heart ain’t in it.
“Lenar,” the idiot who’d almost gotten himself killed amidst a sea of troops tasked with guarding him said and limped her way. At least his face is still whole, she thought and allowed him to palm her through the thin chemise, using as much care on her as he did on his mares. Chest, thighs. Thank the Goddess he avoided the teeth. Aelrindel had to draw the line to the old ‘thumb in mouth’ routine. “Gods I missed you so much,” Sahand grunted after he finished his inspection very aroused, “Look at you smelling divine, I can’t fathom another night with the horses. You know what they say, befriend enough horses and you’ll turn into one.”
Aelrindel had to bite her tongue not to reply at his stirring opening.
“The battle was a success?” She asked instead, Sahand’s mouth munching on her neck and bodying her towards the bed. In his mind the Prince had said enough to get down to business. “Why leave Reeves behind?”
There’s the bed, she thought and put a hand out to stop him from crashing her on it.
It was a partial success, the bed creaking dangerously when they both landed on the soft mattress.
“Seriously Lenar?” Sahand protested, grabbing her ankle to pull her near him. “I haven’t seen you in months!”
“Aren’t you very injured?” Aelrindel queried and slithered away from him, using her foot to propel herself. A nibble Sahand snatched it and started sucking on her toes unruffled. She had to push his head away next to stop his ministrations. She covered the Prince’s forehead in saliva in the process.
“Have a cut on the thigh,” Sahand grunted trying to reach her again. “Let us talk of this later.”
“I’m really interested,” Aelrindel gasped with a grimace of pain, the Prince’s hand finding an uncovered nipple. The rough pinch brought tears in her eyes. Goddess that’s enough! She thought furious, when the pinch turned into a twist, barely managing to croak. “In the logistics.”
“Eh?” Sahand asked and paused to stare at her frustrated. “It’s Atpa. He’s absorbing all the supplies and Altarin is starving. We had to attack.”
“You lost,” Aelrindel hissed, tying a thread on his hand with a song and hurling it back towards his face. Sahand dodged, not as injured as the rumors claimed he was and groaned finding her knee between his legs. Right at the swollen cock, no magic involved.
“You won’t,” he grunted and winced when she applied more upwards pressure in warning. “I can’t believe I’m letting you get away with bullshit like this. I didn’t lose, but we can’t dislodge them from the path without supplies and more men.”
“You had thrice their numbers,” Aelrindel murmured and collapsed on the mattress. “How difficult can it be?”
“Almost as difficult as bedding you wife,” Sahand replied with a smirk stooping over her sprawled body. Fuck it, Aelrindel thought giving up and stared at the ceiling, trying not to hear the Prince’s heavy breathing. She concentrated on the guards watching from the door, Wulan hurrying to prepare a cold buffet for the Prince and as her sensitive hearing adjusted, to the more distant sounds of the Palace.
Everything mundane, except a single arrogantly thrown phrase followed by a frenetic laugh.
The Witch is fucking dead.
What?
“Oh I love these heavy juicy melons,” Sahand murmured working on her breasts.
Good riddance.
The voice added pleased.
Who the fuck said that? She wondered narrowing her eyes and then a huge wave of sadness washed over her senses. It was so strong Aelrindel felt drowning and kicked with her legs to get the Prince off of her and escape.
He was too darn heavy.
“Hey… what are you—”
“Au Ho Tu!” Aerlinder hissed, her eyes growing twice their size and Sahand was hurled to the other side of the room, the soft carpets saving him from breaking his neck.
The sudden heavy breeze that had invaded their bedroom so violent both curtains were torn off their clasps and landed near the stunned Prince of the Khanate.
Aelrindel jumped out of their bed and walked briskly towards the door, the guards blocking her exit. She paused and glared at them, Adi Putra’s nervous eyes flickering from her angry face to her left breast that had popped out of the front opening of her ruffled short chemise.
“Move aside,” Aelrindel told him and Sahand’s voice came from behind her really pissed.
“Adi, Indera bring her in!” He ordered them.
An alarmed Wulan who was coming out of the kitchen, a large plate with pastries in her hands, stopped abruptly just behind the two undecided guards.
“Lady Lenar,” Indera started, black eyes blinking and his jaw clenched, the pearls adorning his thin long beard gleaming in the torchlight. “Please return… to the bedroom.”
“How about I don’t?” Aelrindel retorted hearing Lithoniela’s muffled cries and shoved both men away to get past them. “But you can go ahead and suck the Prince’s cock yourself Indera.”
Goddess’ shadow, what are you girls doing?
Adi caught her right wrist, but she looped her fingers around, turned it and then sunk her thumb’s long nail into his palm piercing the skin.
The guard gasped not expecting it and Aelrindel pushed through determined to find out what was going on.
“Where are they?” she asked her slave.
“Ahm, in their room, I think?”
“Stall them,” she ordered an ogling Wulan, still carrying her tray and rushed down the long corridor to the other side of the Duke’s throne room. Prince Sahand yelling behind her to his bodyguards.
“STOP HER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? FUCKING IDIOTS!”
Aelrindel saw the door of the second bedroom hanging open, the smell of blood reaching her nostrils immediately. Melon standing outside the door, turned his head and stared at her approaching barefooted.
“You don’t want to see this Doll,” the stupid cat said, Sahand sounding livid behind her.
“GET THIS FUCKING BITCH OUT OF MY WAY!”
See what? She thought with a shiver, hearing Lithoniela’s incoherent rumblings and the smell of death coming out of their door so strong, her stomach almost revolted.
Aelrindel took a big rugged breath and stepped inside.
> Zilyana blinked, purple and gold mixed in her pupils and then smiled.
>
> “The Prince asked me to be his wife,” she told her with a naughty giggle.
>
> “One of his wives,” an exasperated Aelrindel corrected her and Faelar who had orchestrated the attack shrugged his shoulders not finding anything wrong with it. “This isn’t a fairy tale Zilyana.”
>
> The witch puffed her cheeks out troubled. “What do I say to him? He’s pretty eager to seal the deal. I can only stall him for so long?”
>
> Oh, for the love of Nesande the Bountiful, Aelrindel muttered under her breath and stood up, ancient Faelar and old Sulynor finding the matter nigh amusing.
>
> That is until she decided to save her mother’s last pupil again.
“I can’t… put her back,” Lithoniela kept saying knelt on the blood covered floor, face and hands painted in thick layers of gore, rocking a mutilated, headless body back and forth.
Oras Hells!
Naaargh.
NO.
Aelrindel felt her knees weakening, the room moving about as if she was back in that ship and her mouth turned numb.
“I can’t…”
“What did you do?” She muttered trying to keep her anger from spilling out and failing. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“I can’t… put—” Aerlinder slapped her so hard Lithoniela’s head snapped to the side, blood from her split lip mixing with the gore and adding to the gruesome splatter on the wall behind her.
Wulan screamed from outside, plates breaking and Sahand cursing irate. Aelrindel had to use all her self-control and she barely had any at that moment to stop herself from hitting the Princess again.
“Lithoniela,” she snarled through her teeth, the brutally mangled body of Zilyana haunting and so out of place, for a moment the sorceress thought she was having a nightmare in her post-coital sleep.
She wasn’t sleeping, but this was a nightmare.
“He… killed her,” Lithoniela mumbled still holding on to the bloody remains of Zilyana.
This can’t be real.
Good riddance.
But it was.
“Who did?” Aelrindel growled, the Prince’s voice cutting through her homicidal rage for a moment.
“By the desert jackals what happened here? What in allgods!” Sahand barked and stepped inside the room, followed by his guards. Adi carrying a bloody saber in his right hand. “What the fuck is this thing?” The Prince queried ogling his painted slanted eyes to stare at the distraught and blood covered Lithoniela. The Princess hair loose, the cobalt luscious strands stained in dark red blotches and her long ears sprouting out of her head for all to see.
And hence the how is revealed, Aelrindel mused her mouth dry and bitter as if she’d just swallowed a bucket of hemlock. Fuck you Goddess.
“Adi,” Sahand grunted. “Kill that fiend—”
He never got to finish.
Aelrindel had stepped forward and closed her long fingers around his neck cutting him off midsentence. The Prince blinked in deep confusion, as the sorceress had lifted him off the ground at the same time with ease, despite being half his weight.
“Stupid plebeian, I want a divorce,” Aelrindel hissed in the gasping Prince’s face.
Alurae…
> Nesande stopped time.
Sahand’s eyes widening slowly feeling his skin and flesh drying up on his bones. Adi standing a meter from him still moving slowly towards the sorceress saber in hand. Aelrindel snapped her head towards him and reached with her free hand to touch a long index finger on his sweaty forehead.
“Virya Saereg Mi Nenar,” she said in the old tongue using Sahand’s blood to make water, she then poured inside the onrushing armed guard. “Tye,” the scowling sorceress added just to make sure she didn’t accidentally kill her friends.
The torches went out and time moved forward again. A dead Sahand crumbled on the floor, his joints breaking and his chest caving in almost as much as his cracking putrefying face. Eyes gone, dry white skin peeling off his skull and the teeth protruding from his sunken lips.
Adi stopped abruptly, water bursting out of his mouth, eyes and ears. He stumbled losing his saber, desperately trying to use his flooded lungs to breathe and failing. Indera who was standing by the bedroom door gasped seeing the torches go out and then a ball of fire appearing in the pitch black, lighting up Aelrindel’s otherworldly figure. The sorcerer’s silvery eyes glowing like a night predator’s.
“Don’t do it Doll,” a concerned Melon said peeking from the door and an already freaked out Indera let out a panicked scream hearing a cat talk and turned to run away.
Stolen novel; please report.
Moving fast for a man wearing armor.
“He’s already dead,” the sorceress said and the Cofol soldier legging it down the corridor as fast as he could tripped up, face and hands covered in fiercely red boils. Two faltering screaming strides later, the boils ruptured and thick torrents of flames burst out, burning so bright they set the corridor’s heavy woolen carpets and drapes on fire.
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Oh shit.
The corridor was on fire.
Literally.
“Get up,” Aelrindel urged Lithoniela grabbing her elbow. The Princess moved sluggishly as if hypnotized and she had to carry her along. They made it to the door, the flames spreading and sucking the air out of the enclosed space heading for her bedroom and the open outside window there.
Faelar appeared next to her a moment later, gaunt face sober and pointed an arm towards the door he’d just stepped out of.
The one leading to the throne room.
“Zilyana?” The Ranger asked and grimaced seeing all the blood on Lithoniela. “The Duke’s throne room is empty. Take her there,” he told her and rushed inside the girls’ bedroom.
Aelrindel got through the door and soldiered on into the large hall with the massive balcony overlooking Rida. She made it to the Duke’s throne and stopped to check on the Princess.
“Lithoniela, you need to snap out of it,” she told her. “We’ve been made. The Prince is dead. We are not safe.”
What’s wrong with her? Aelrindel thought grinding her teeth, trying not to let the other female’s grief overwhelm her.
Faelar returned a moment later. “I tossed them in the fire, but people are coming,” the ranger said carrying Lith’s cloak and bow. “You need to get dressed,” he added and Aerlinder realized she was still in the Prince’s favorite silk chemise.
I never really loved you anyway.
“I had to act—” she tried to say, but Faelar stopped her with an impatient wave of his arm.
“It’s done. But we can’t explain this away. Everyone will half a brain will suspect the foreign spouse and Atpa was looking for any excuse to get rid of you. This leaves him room to be a hero on top of all.”
Fuck that ugly snake.
“Wulan?”
“Cut down. I’m sorry, but she’s irrelevant,” the ranger said callously, then sighed seeing her stumble to collapse on the throne unable to stand.
Aerlinder had watched the loyal Wulan grow up. She was bright and loyal.
Not irrelevant, she wanted to shout inside the massive hall.
These are my people!
“He killed her,” Lithoniela said monotonously. “Everything is empty now.”
“Greyboar’s hairy balls, what’s wrong with her?” Faelar spat with a grunt, ears moving right and left listening to the waking up palace.
Oh, you poor thing, she thought realizing what had happened.
“They were in each other’s heads,” Aelrindel murmured and got up. “Fuck the clothes. We are leaving down the stairs.”
“Can you cover us all?”
“You got my satchel?”
“The corridor is on fire,” Faelar grunted, but seeing no other way around the problem, he turned around and went back to get it.
“Who was it?” Aelrindel asked the muttering Princess and sighed seeing no reaction. She grabbed her bloody hand and laced her fingers on it. Slowly the sorceress drew her in a tight embrace, their foreheads touching. “What do you have in there Princess?” she murmured soothingly. “Let me see.”
“Zil?”
“Yeah,” Aelrindel whispered, a tear running down her face. “It’s me honey.”
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Oakenfalls appears bombarded, she thought. The damage resembling what you’d expect from Meteorites falling from the sky, or a thousand great fireballs. The fifty meters tall walls cracked and buckling at places, completely collapsed in others. The nearest buildings were caught in those explosions and completely gutted afore intense fire finished them off, their once smoldering ruins now frozen.
Brittle white bones amidst the rocks, the ruins sprinkled with them. Empty eye sockets on cracked skulls peeking behind broken walls and unrecognizable debris of all sizes at the city’s center. Aelrindel stopped her legs going numb, afore a still visible part of the stairs trying to fathom the level of destruction that had befallen the Empire’s most modern city.
“The Queen retreated towards the summer palace, when the walls were breached,” Lithoniela said somberly standing next to her. “The Hallowed gathered around her and they fell where you stand, their bodies scattered all the way into the building. The Issirs leveled the place.”
“You’ve seen this?” Aelrindel asked wetting her dry lips and crossed both arms on her chest.
“I’ve searched for it,” Lithoniela replied. “Dug most of them out. Some I couldn’t.”
“And you kept the image?”
“Someone should stand witness. Time has washed all you see away now.”
“Reinut did this?”
It was a rhetorical question.
“His magic.”
“He had no magic Lithoniela,” Aelrindel said and stooped to gather the fine ash from the ground. It wasn’t ash though. “This is powder. Crashed rock, pulverized material.”
“Something brought the walls down Aelrindel,” Lithoniela insisted. “I’ll take my eyes over your belief. The Queen’s grave was beyond the old garden.”
“Was?”
“Uhm,” Lithoniela nodded and pointed towards the jungle. It had encroached on the ruins whilst they talked, reached the center of the city and covered it as well, leaving only the huge mostly untouched pyramid temple away. A lot of time has gone by, Aelrindel thought. A lot of work went into recreating all this.
Years of it.
A lot of skill.
“One holds on to what’s important,” Aelrindel told her a lump in her throat. “Pleasant moments and places they miss.”
“What’s important,” Lithoniela agreed resolutely and three adventurers came out of the jungle. Their stance and mannerisms so iconic, their faces so familiar, as they were depicted in statues and paintings, their deeds many a times rehashed in wandering bards tales, Aelrindel recognized them immediately.
Framtond, Snowguard and Valwarin.
“What is old Ebenezer doing here?” she asked the scowling Princess. “You don’t find him dashing?”
“He was a murderous grave robber!”
Whoa there.
Eb, you stupid rascal. What did you do? “So, what was he doing?”
“Looking for a way into Quiceran’s Road.”
“Did he find it?” Aelrindel probed.
“He did,” Lithoniela replied. “In my mother’s grave. I couldn’t stop them.”
It wasn’t your fault.
“Apologies,” Aelrindel murmured deeply moved and made to hug the gloomy female, but Lithoniela stopped her and pointed an arm at the columned street leading to the pyramid. The impressive still standing building coming closer, looking much more ruined than a second ago.
Time had moved forward again and a young man stood knelt next to an old mare. Nibble hands packing a large saddle bag with gold coins. His pleased grin, when he finished checking about over the mare’s saddle that his older partner wasn’t looking, so wicked the Sorceress grinned herself unwittingly.
And remembered him a bit older, wearing mismatched armor and riding a different horse outside the walls of Rida. Carrying her dagger.
“Glenavon,” Lithoniela said. “That’s the boy with the Wyvern.”
“Reeves?” Aelrindel croaked and tried to bring the image closer, but realized she couldn’t.
“It’s a name he picked to fool the Knight, I think,” the Princess replied. “I don’t believe he was telling the truth. Everyone else though bought it. He can be very charming.”
Mmm, she thought remembering.
Hiding in those amber mirrors of his were many nights under the stars, the belly of a mountain and ship. A pirate’s eyes and a brigand’s life.
Lirue ni o linn, her mother sang and her heart fluttered at the memory.
I don’t understand, Sir Glenavon replied sounding genuine, the humming coming through the nearest trees, touching the cracked columns and circling the two females standing at the base of the temple now.
“Sorceress?” Lithoniela asked softly.
“Mmm,” Aelrindel muttered her mind elsewhere.
“What are you doing here?” Lithoniela asked sounding a little surprised.
Ah yes.
“I came to find you,” she replied with a smile and tended her arm. “Let us leave this place your grace.”
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Ten minutes later they were rushing down the stairs, a group of servants running the other way and the gongs banging monotonously at the top of the pyramid. The Duke’s palace was burning, the fire lighting up the night. They reached the base and the chaos there was spreading as quickly as the fire above them.
Some soldiers were marching upstairs without orders in an effort to help those slow to react and escape. Others were organized in large groups with officers barking orders to wake everyone up and bring tools, water and blankets to put the fire out.
Aelrindel cloaked them until they reached the gates of the pyramid afore she used up all her supplies. Faelar pushed them outside, through the numb guards and the groggy servants, everyone at a loss on how the fire had engulfed the palace so fast and slow to react.
“Don’t stop,” the hooded ranger hissed, the internal gates of the pyramid complex bustling with activity.
“The east gates are blocked,” Aelrindel told him and they turned to stare back at the still shaded in dark undertones red temple and its anterior. “Let’s head west.”
They rushed around the massive building, a returning patrol not bothering with them, towards the palace’s other exits. Four staircases circled the guts of the temple leading to four different exits out of the ancient building and as many external gates at the four sides of the surrounding walls.
They reached the west gates running hard through the yard, the lights multiplying all about them and the gongs still echoing down the blazing top of the pyramid. The latter providing enough illumination to lift the veil of darkness from the surrounding terrain and the mostly grass covered yard grounds.
The west gates were equally crowded. A detachment of Cataphracts had attempted to storm the gates, probably one of Atpa’s marauding the streets mounted patrols and the guards loyal to Sahand had stopped them. In the brief clash a couple of them had gotten trampled under iron hooves, the tempers flaring dangerously. Several slaves that were working the night shift were running away from the armed soldiers and riders to save their lives.
That is except for one that was walking stiffly towards the rowdy cluster of men twenty meters in front Aelrindel’s escaping group. She had tossed the leather cloak over her shoulders, her bare feet covered in mud to the ankles, but while the sorceress was hooded like the rest of them, these are a lot of eyes to fool.
“LET’S US THROUGH YOU MORONS!” A Cataphract spat through his silver-colored smiling mask.
“Nobody’s is going in or out,” a gate sergeant barked back eyeing the crashed soldiers pulled to the sides unresponsive. “Until we figure out what the fuck happened here!”
“The palace is on fire,” the Cataphract told him sounding incredulous. “You should cordon the blasted pyramid!”
The sergeant set his jaw stubbornly. “We guard the gates. Move your horses out of my face. This is the last warning!”
“BAH!” The armoured rider groaned in frustration and looked about him for a solution.
“Damn,” Faelar hissed pausing undecided as they neared the gates. “That’s a lot of them.”
Aelrindel took a deep breath and glanced at the frowning, still pale Lithoniela. Out of the corner of her eye the lonely servant carrying a very crude shovel over his right shoulder, continued his rigid monotonous stroll towards the guards.
The sergeant spotted him coming as if with no care in mind, while the world burned around him and frowned in alarm. He opened his mouth to order a soldier to body the clueless slave away, but a guard beat him to it and turned around on his own.
“Hey you,” the guard said, the weird ruggedly dressed man pushing him away with a bump to continue towards the gates. “Where do you think…? What in… Stop!”
“That’s him,” Lithoniela hissed, her longbow in hand. Aelrindel blinked in shock at her reaction, the worried sergeant noticing the armed female, slanted eyes growing to twice their size and his goatee adorned mouth opening again to order her arrested, just as Lithoniela’s words registered.
Oras Hells.
The Princess loosed her arrow, the projectile whistling over the flinching at the sound soldier’s shoulder, the Cofol had turned around to stop the unperturbed with the happenings wandering slave and then smacked said slave between his shoulder blades.
“Shit!” the sergeant cursed and went for his saber, the Cataphract waiting three meters away from him kicking his legs to get his horse going seeing his chance to break through.
Lithoniela went for another arrow, Faelar grabbed Aelrindel to pull her away from the onrushing horse, the animal shoving yelling soldiers’ right and left, the first guard reaching the servant just as he turned around.
The arrow still stuck in him.
“Murderers!” the sergeant cried shook, voice drowned out in the tumult, the disfigured sickly looking man now staring with a milky eye at the guard paused unsure in front of him. The other was larger and sported two different colors at the iris, a thin slit at its mid-point separating them. It wasn’t a human eye this. Not animal’s. The heavy Cataphract blasted past him a moment later and into the yard, his friends outside the gates getting ready to charge inside as well.
Everything turning even weirder than that really fast.
“WHO’S THE SNEAKY CUNT THAT DID THIS?” The freakish man bellowed in the shocked guard’s face, just as the Cataphract turned his horse around, spotted Lithoniela aiming her bow and made to cut her down whilst the sergeant sounded the alarm.
Jump.
Aelrindel told the warhorse and the animal reared on its hind legs afore jumping forward, the surprised Horselord’s swing going wild. The Cataphract went down landing on his shoulder, Lithoniela rolled to the side finally getting out of her tunnel vision and the man carrying the shovel snapped his dilapidated head towards the rising sorceress as if he’d heard her command.
Which was absurd.
Only a learned in the Goddess’ ways can hear the Voiceless Tongue.
Chaos had erupted everywhere around her.
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“Fuck’s sake,” the sergeant spat seeing the stranger lowering his stare on the long blade the scared guard had stabbed him with. “You got the wrong man you fool!”
No he didn’t, she thought.
The guard blinked, just before the stranger raised his left hand and grabbed his jaw. A savage yank to the left and the man’s neck snapped. He went down on his knees abruptly and the stranger returned his eyes on the standing over ten meters away Aelrindel again curious. The stranger made to come her way, but the sergeant seeing his man collapsing with a broken neck, his head wobbling loose and staring the wrong way, ordered the guards after him. Half of them turned to obey, out of eight, as the rest were busy trying to keep the rest of the rowdy Cataphracts away.
The latter had been enraged seeing their leader going down.
Who are you? Aelrindel thought and allowed Faelar to drag her to the side. The ranger wanted to help the other female in their group, as the Cataphract had stood up dazed and had gone after her. Lithoniela fired an arrow almost at point blank range then jumped back, but the scaled armor stopped it easily, so she slotted her bow on her left shoulder and unsheathed one of the two shortswords she always carried.
The Horselord’s saber a much more suited weapon for the fight.
Faelar glared at her to stay put and went after the dueling couple, while the stranger paused his advance to fight off the guards assaulting him from all sides. He did it mechanically and with complete disregard for his safety. A blade in the ribs was brushed off, for a punch that caved the guard’s face sinking in his scrabbled brains to the wrist. The chop that flayed his thigh to the bone, met with a retaliating swinging shovel, the blade on it sharpened and its width shortened to turn it into a very crude large cleaver.
With a heavy iron shaft.
The custom tool/weapon connected with the ducking guard’s conned helm, the metal caving on impact and the clang heard over the sounds of the heavy scrap. The gate guard went down, both eyeballs expelled out of their sockets in an explosion of gore and the top of his skull flattened.
Noble Goddess!
Aelrindel was stunned at what she was witnessing. The sickly-looking stranger parried the next guard’s slash into his friend’s face and swung again with his crude weapon catching the shocked soldier bellow the chin with the thin part of his blade.
“Shit!” The sergeant gasped horrified seeing the man’s brutally cleaved head landing in the watery mud next to him with a deflated squelching sound. He made to get in the fight himself, but a Cataphract pushed aside one of the soldiers blocking the gates and charged his horse full force to get to his badly injured leader.
Faelar and Lithoniela had all but killed the first Cataphract, injuring him seven times in a short minute. The Horselord was bleeding so much and from so many spots, his gleaming silver armor now sported a rough dark red coating.
The ranger twisted around hearing a heavy horse galloping their way, stabbed his shortblade between his legs and went for his bow coolly. He nocked an arrow and fired in one fluid motion, striking the onrushing warhorse in its left eye right at the head armour’s small opening. The warhorse swerved hard left with a pained neigh and on to the path of the advancing stranger. The Cataphract tried to control it, but the animal was already dead and they both barreled down on the unperturbed freak like an avalanche of steel and a ton of flesh.
The stranger casually stepped aside and let them past him.
“Now is the time to leave,” Faelar’s voice said, cutting through her trance.
Aelrindel was staring at the approaching badly injured man, a Lorian with a Cofol’s skin, she thought and a mutated eye.
Smelling of ancient death and nothingness.
A Construct?
Her toes digging into the muddy grass, her right hand fingers stretched parallel to the ground. A glance and she saw the Cataphract had survived the death of his horse barely. The broken bone below his shoulder protruding through his torn armour, the blood spilling down his sides. The sorceress sent an invisible thread to him and let the breath she was holding out.
“HOW MANY BITCHES HAS THAT WITCH POPPED OUT OF HER CUNT?” The freak bellowed, when he realized who she was, his voice cracking and bleeding down the mouth. “FUCKING BULLSHIT!”
Alurae…
Hmm.
The stranger showed her two rows of well-rotted teeth and petrified gums, black and yellow spots overwhelming the few healthy parts.
It was a smile.
“He’s dead,” he told her and pointed his shovel at the injured… now dead Cataphract. “I sucked him dry first. You’re either the dumb spawn of the family, or you’ve gone unfucked for too long and your brains have scrabbled. For which I have a remedy! HAHAHA!”
No construct can do that.
This is utterly ridiculous, she thought and reached to grab the approaching sergeant next.
“Who sent you?” She asked the mad bastard and the dilapidated rotten mouth turned serious, his expression almost affronted.
“Laitae ea Gimoss, in ulce Maetar,” he grunted irate citing what was written on the throne of Wetull.
In noltare o in Lae…
Praise be Gimoss, the Evil Artist.
“Oras Hells,” a heavy breathing Faelar spat spooked. “In witch’s visions.”
The Teacher of the Way.
It can’t be.
‘Gimoss’ sighed and shook his head right and left disappointed, afore he tipped his decaying thinning hairs back and roared hoarsely furious with himself.
“DON’T TELL ME I SLEW THE WRONG DARN WITCH! FUCK!”
But here it is, she thought astounded and then her wrath spilled out of her pores. A couple of meters to her right a bewildered Faelar dived on a bow aiming glowering Lithoniela and took her down out of Aelrindel’s sight.
“Cante nae calae,” the livid Sorceress croaked not taking her time to aim and the tiny fire that had sprouted under her extended palm grew and grew, tripling and then doubling again in size that by the time Aelrindel hurled the fireball on him a second later, it was the size of the dead horse and her leather cloak was on fire.
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read it at Royalroad : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46739/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms
& https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47919/lure-o-war-the-old-realms
Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/series/542002/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms/
& https://www.scribblehub.com/series/547709/the-old-realms/