The Creators Ch. 18

"You!" someone shouted.

I whirled around and saw Kiyo Satori racing toward me across the sky. Dozens of Breytans peeled off from their engagements and followed, giving the beleaguered Ionans precious moments to recover and regroup. I flapped mightily, folded my wings, and corkscrewed towards my challengers. Kiyo never had a chance. She veered left to avoid me, and I turned my blade to the side and cut her right in half. The next woman went for my right side, but I was already beneath her, scoring her across the underbelly and opening her from collar to crotch. Five women engaged me then, driving their swords incongruence. I contorted my body around two blades, blocked two more with a swing, and trapped the fifth in my armpit. I yanked away the blade in my arm, slashed away the blades contacting my own, then whirled around with my feet high, and broke the jaw of the fourth woman with my heel. The fifth slashed me across the thigh, the blade cutting near to the bone, but I was already moving my sword for her neck, and she had no chance to get out of the way. Her head rolled off her shoulders, and I continued the swipe in a wide arc, slicing through shoulders, chests, and torsos in an even line until all five women were tumbling to the earth in ten separate pieces.

I never stopped moving. The Breytans surrounded me and harried me, but I directed the flock with my speed and grace, weaving between their slashing katanas, closing my wings to split between them, and then opening them quickly to stall before an impending strike. A woman hacked at my wing, and I closed it, then flapped it with such might that it broke her back. Three attackers managed to block my advance, and I dropped like a stone before they could deliver their unified strike. I unfurled my wings, caught the wind, soared upward, and drove my sword through the crotch of one woman, exited through her heart, then opened her body with a slash to split the next woman's skull. A Breytan corkscrewed at my back, and I caught her blade on my own, snatched her by the neck, and ripped off her head, her spine coming out with it. I tossed the head at an impending diver and crushed her face with it. Her unconscious body stayed parallel in the air for a moment, then dove headfirst into the fray below.

Thirty Breytans retreated into the sky, coalesced into a circle, then dove. They became a vortex of wings and blades, moving with gravity to negate my superior speed. It was suicide to run away, and martyrdom to attack. It was an easy choice for me. I surged upward, my wings driving against the desert wind, propelling me faster into the mouth of the sharp tunnel. I attacked the sides before the formation could swallow me, chopping a girl off at the knees, cleaving an arm away before it could deliver its strike, sliding my blade up a katana, and shaving the meat off a poor Breytan's forearm. I attempted to break out of the side, but a suicidal woman charged me headlong, speared herself on my blade, and killed my momentum. The mouth closed around me, and the teeth began to bite. A katana went through my shoulder, another went into my side. I whipped around, opening myself around the blades, slashing out wildly and blindly.

I couldn't miss. I cleaved a woman down the middle, exited her crotch, then embedded my blade into the collar of the woman beneath her. Ripping my sword out in an arc, I opened the bellies of two more women, then unfurled my wings, and knocked three more out of the sky. I felt a sharp pain in my left wing, and I flexed the appendage away before she could slash me to ribbons. As the rest of the women surrounded me, I closed my wings, dropped fifty feet, then opened them, and spun. I accounted for the damage in my span and opened before I usually would have. My timing was perfect, of course, and my sword cut through seven pursuers, sending their halves falling in a shower of red. The others came diving after me, and I fell backward with my wings open, letting them close the distance as I faced them, drawing them nearer and nearer.

I was a hundred feet off the ground, then seventy, then forty. The smart ones pulled up. The dumb ones screamed their banzai songs and closed their wings for a glorious kamikaze end. No one could make up the altitude I'd lost. No one but me. I tucked my wings in, flipped around, and flapped. My feathers grazed the top of orc heads, then the wind of my wings sent a shockwave through them, blasting their bodies to pieces, upending a cloud of sand as I forced the air down, and pushed my body up. The fifteen suicidal Breytans splattered in my wake, and I soared upward to meet the ones who had not followed.

They did not engage me. The attackers who remained watched me from a great altitude then looked to the west. The distraction I'd made had worked, and the four scores of Breytans who were left fighting the Ionans were becoming overwhelmed by sheer numbers. They began to systematically retreat, cutting down the dogged blonde warriors who followed them until they split cleanly from the engagement. My attackers sheathed their swords, bowed to me from above, then joined their retreating brethren. I let out an exhausted sigh, and the pain I had suppressed began to creep into my cloven flesh and muscles. With a beat of my battered wings, I rose slowly into the sky and glided to my final prey.

Kiyo was still flapping, her entrails hanging from her upper half, her katana still in her hand. She groaned a dying war-cry, and feebly rushed me. I caught her sword-hand and embraced her. My fangs plunged into her throat, and as she gasped her final breaths, I gave her some measure of comfort with my venom and sucked her dry. It sated me enough to keep me going, but barely. The few hundred Ionans remaining hailed me, and I just waved toward the rim of Droktinar and glided away. It was a legendary fight, one that would be sung for ages to come, but I didn't care anymore.

JUSTINA

My pulse was pounding in my head. My bare hands were scraped and bloodied on the ground, and my knees pulsed with contusions. I'd been a centipede scuttling through the subterranean caverns of Gratora one second, then a succubus lying on her belly the next. I called for Brandon twice and heard nothing. There was nothing. No antennae adorned my head to signal through the tight hollows, nor nocturnal vision to show me the path ahead. There was only the darkness and dead silence. My breath sounded in the deep reaches, echoing in the tunnels. I took a deep intake and tried to quiet the thundering of my heart. The stillness pervaded for a moment, then my ears picked up a subtle sound. It was gentle clicking, slow and plodding, as though something was trying to keep itself from being heard. I wondered if it was just my mind that manufactured it, but when I sniffed the air, my keen nose touched the scent of venom and the miasma of death, and I knew I wasn't alone in this place. The spider knew it too.

I sprinted blindly down the tunnel, heedless of the low clearance of the ceiling, praying that my head wouldn't find a sudden outcropping. My soles pounded frantically beneath me, the sound accompanying the frantic patter of the beast approaching me from behind. I ran headlong into a wall, bounced off of it, stumbled into my turn, and kept on charging. Panic suffused me, manic terror bled behind my eyeballs, and I lunged into the depths without thought. My momentum built with my mounting terror, carrying me ever forward until I smashed into another wall. The wind was punched from my diaphragm, and I was sent flailing to my back.

A concussive bell tolled in my skull. I couldn't reorient myself. I tried to get up, but I just fell right back down. The clicking became louder. I scrambled upright and turned around. Which way had I come from? Where was I going?! The clicking became louder. It was coming from everywhere. The tunnel was filled with the horrific cadence, now accompanied by the ticking of mandibles and the scraping of carapace against the stone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. I could smell it clearly now, smell the decayed flesh around its mouthparts, smell the blood of orcs and valkyries it had feasted upon all day long. Clickity-clickity-clickity... the interminable rhythm was frantic now that it had eyes on its prey, accelerating toward me from an unknowable direction, its great fangs salivating. I screamed and thrust my hand into the darkness.

I had forgotten there was an obsidian sword in my fist. The blade drove into something hard and massive, and the thing before me let out a horrific squeal. It scrambled for a moment, then ripped itself open trying to escape, and died in the darkness before me. I still couldn't see it. I pulled my blade out and took a shuddering breath. There was urine running down my legs, and... yes, I'd shit myself as well. To complete the trifecta, I pitched forward and vomited the last of my adrenaline onto my hunter's corpse. After sobbing for a few seconds, I collected myself.

My shoulder was still bleeding from where Aiko had slashed my wings, but the cut was superficial. My ribs were smarting from the impact I'd taken against the wall, and my head was still ringing, but I was lucid and strong enough to walk. I sniffed the air. Through the mosaic of orcs, valkyries, and insects, I'd caught a heartbreakingly familiar scent, and had been traveling in its direction since I'd split off from the others. Though I'd lost all my shapeshifting gifts, my sense of smell was still as keen as ever. I was close now; less than half a mile away. I turned toward the direction it was coming from, then paused, and turned back around. Brandon had said Diamond sucked Corruption out of my mother, but then again, why the hell would Diamond tell him the truth? There was a very good chance that Mom was still loyal to her captors, and that I was walking headlong to my death.

What would you do in this situation? I asked the memory of my mother. She certainly wouldn't run right into it. She would be crafty and deceptive, not making her move until the optimal moment. The dead spider before me was a Tyrannous Porrhothele Antipodianna, which meant it put its victims into a coma before it feasted. I walked around the behemoth arachnid and plunged my sword into its venom sack. After I'd greased my blade with it, I walked back over to the front and examined the wound I'd made. I spent a few moments battling my squeamishness before I concluded that I'd had far too many bodily fluids on me in the past to be disgusted at this stage. I grabbed two fistfuls of gore and commenced smearing it all over me. Once every inch of my body was saturated with the stink of the spider, I turned on my heel and continued down the tunnel.

For excruciating minutes, I endured the darkness. When I saw the glimmer of light down the tunnel, I nearly wept with joy. I ran to the opening and clamored up the sides. Such a feat of athleticism would've been impossible for me just a month ago, but training with Ofanians and Ionans had served me well, and I scaled the convex bowl easily. I reached the lip of the hole and peered out.

Fifty yards away, there was an ornate wooden carriage. It was nestled against a sandstone outcropping, seemingly hidden from the rest of the desert. It matched Angela's description perfectly. I sniffed the air and caught the familiar scents of Jade Toa, Julia Gendian, and of course, my mother, but when I peered around the edge of the rim for any movement, I could see no one. They were all in the wagon. After giving myself a count of five, then balking a few times, I finally mustered the courage to crawl out of my hole, and onto the open sands of Gratora.

"Hello, Your Eminence," Jade said, laying the flat of her katana against my back.

I exhaled a whimper into the sand. "Hi, Jade."

"Let go of the weapon and roll onto your back, please."

I opened my hand and slowly rolled.

Jade didn't look much different when we'd parted, but she had changed completely. Her dark eyes were dead and cold, her lips looked like they'd never borne a smile, and there were intricate scars that crawled up her neck from her robe's collar. The same scars traveled down her chins and ankles, which were spread over my joined knees, my bare flesh just inches away.

"I truly hoped that we would never meet again," she frowned down at me.

"Yeah... well..." I grumbled, and shifted my knee subtly, "...I'm at least happy to see you."

"No, you're not."

"The circumstances aren't great, but... you know..." I shifted my knee a little more, "...so, I see you still have the Sword of Iona."

She nodded slightly. "I will be its steward until an Ionan comes to claim it."

"Cool," I said, inching even closer, "I actually know Nona Cloudwhisper. She's the acting High Guard, so if we ever get a chance to..." I kicked hard, and pressed my naked knee to Jade's bare flesh. She blinked, then looked at our point of contact, then back at me. Nothing happened.

"Ah, shit!" I snapped, reached frantically for my weapon, and grabbed the blade. My hand went numb with the neurotoxin, my body froze in paralysis, and the last thing I saw before my eyes closed, was Jade frowning down at me.

TERA

Julia should've been dead an hour ago. Her blood soaked right through the mattress, her body was so pallid that her crimson hair made her look like a clown, and her eyes were vacant. And yet, when I pressed the dagger to her throat, the blade sizzled and melted at the tip, and her flesh indented by only a fraction, leaving a bruise, but nothing more. Something was preserving her—someone was preserving her—but even that someone couldn't hold out forever.

I poked at Julia's throat, eyeballs and belly, testing her soft spots until my knife had been melted to the hilt. I grabbed another and continued this arduous process for another ten minutes. Though I did not break the flesh, the imprint of my blade was becoming more obvious. I selected poison from a vial and upended it into Julia's mouth. It boiled the moment it touched her lips. I pressed a pillow over her face, and it combusted almost immediately. Tapping my lips contemplatively with my hooked hand, I eyed my shelves until I found a can of Nightshade. After grinding it into dust, I lit it and held the vapors beneath her nose. She took the toxic aerosol deep into her lungs, and breathed out black flame, killing the toxins. I shifted on the mattress, and the bedding squelched with the blood soaked into it. Not much longer. I'd just have to wait.

I glanced out the window. Jade was standing as still as a statue, watching the southern horizon. It appeared that there was a dust storm a few miles away, though most of it was obscured by the lofty sandstone rim of Droktinar. I sniffed the air and detected a lizard twenty yards to the east, a goat half a mile to the north, and a tarantula just a few yards away. Jade's familiar scent touched my sinuses, and a distant orc also was detected, but nothing else. I returned my attention to Julia and tried stabbing at her eyeball a few more times. It would've been a very painful ordeal for her if she was still conscious, but all the damage I managed to do was break a few tiny vessels. I glanced out the window again and confirmed that Jade hadn't moved from her spot. Taking a calming inhale through my nose, I selected a new knife and readied my next strike. I stopped. I blinked. I raised my head and sniffed the air again. Beyond the smells of the tarantula, the lizard, and the goat, was the faint scent of... cow shit? Angela?! I inhaled again. No... Brandon!

I leaped from the bed and rushed to the door. My hand stopped just short of the handle. Another smell reached me, this one unmistakable. Diamond. Though they were together, the stench of spent adrenaline and fresh fatigue wafted plainly from them. They were both so weak; almost as weak as Julia. But that was not what gave me pause. What stalled my hand before the door, was another smell. Two smells, actually. They were very faint, but the aromas still wafted from Brandon's flesh. Astrid and Willowbud. They were alive! There was, of course, another smell. It was extremely subtle, likely very distant, but it caused my guts to turnover with guilt. I didn't know how I'd ever face her again, but I had to. I would.

I stayed frozen in uncertainty for a second, then made my plan. I rushed past the comatose Heat Bringer and collected every bomb I had. Then, donning my belt and sash, I filled the pockets with weaponry and climbed out of the window.

Jade was standing next to a large stuffed bag. From the strength of its stench, I'd gathered she'd just killed the lurking tarantula and was preparing to dispose of its corpse where its scent wouldn't attract nighttime scavengers. However, the dead spider wasn't the focus of her attention any longer. She was facing away from me, her eyes fixed on two figures that had just crested the far dune. One was dragging the other, and though I couldn't discern their shapes well, I knew Jade's ocular vision could. She cocked her head in confusion, and in that moment of distraction, I leveled my crossbow and fired.

Jade caught it. She wasn't even looking at me. She glanced at the fist holding the bolt, then glanced back at me. I pulled the pin on a grenade and cooked it in my hand. She drew her sword and turned around.

"Is Sister Julia dead?" she asked me, not seeming very interested one way or the other.

"Not yet, but there's no saving her," I replied. "She did it to herself, Jade. Even she doesn't think she deserves to live. Let her go."

Jade offered me a joyless smile. "You know I can't do that."

I pointed to the two figures slowly coming our way. "There are other gods."

"I serve until the end."

"It is the end."

Jade bowed her head in respect, then pressed her heel back into the sand. I stopped cooking the grenade. Her wings unfurled, and she launched at me. I dropped the grenade, cooked another one, dropped it a half-second later, and rolled backward. Sand exploded in front of me, and Jade dashed through the debris, her wings tucked around her, her sword leading the way. The next grenade exploded right beneath her, and she was sent careening to the side. She hit the sand in a flurry of feathers, then rolled to her knees, her wings absorbing the blow easily. She got to her feet and walked at a measured pace toward me. I pulled the pin on three grenades and tossed them one after the other. She dashed away from the first one, knocked the second one away with her sword, flipped before the third one exploded beneath her feet, then caught the crossbow bolt I had trained on her chest.

I stepped backward as she stepped forward. I fumbled desperately with my crossbow, my hooked hand not cooperating, and Jade maintained her even gait, her sword glinting in the sun. I notched the bolt, broke a capsule in my mouth, spit on the tip, and fired. She cleaved the poison projectile with just the slightest movement of her sword. I stepped backward; she stepped forward. I loaded another bolt, secured the crossbow beneath my arm, then pulled out an incendiary jar. Leveling the crossbow, I aimed for Jade's face, then tossed the jar with my hooked hand, and pulled the trigger. The jar exploded in front of Jade, and she was engulfed in purple flame.

Her profile appeared in the inferno, her robes burned right off of her to expose the horrific knotwork of scars that covered every inch of her body, mangling her breasts, contorting her belly, sealing her womanhood shut. The fire still burned on parts of her flesh, but she didn't seem to notice it all. She just kept walking forward, and I kept walking backward. Then she wasn't walking. She was sprinting at me with terrifying speed, and I barely had a second to pull the pin of my last grenade and hold it to my chest. Just as Jade was about to gut me, the bomb exploded between us. Acrid fume rushed into the air, filling my nose and mouth with poison. Though I hacked with snot spewing from my nostrils, my immunity saved me from the worst. I staggered backward from the purple fog and struggled to notch the final bolt. My hook slipped on the release, and I shot the bolt into the sand. Cursing, I fumbled with another bolt, locked it in, and aimed my crossbow at the clearing fog. There was nothing there.