Carnage (Remastered)

A Rising Knight Volume
1:
Everything That Has an End

Issue 01:
Carnage

By Vladimir Duran

Copyright

Short Story Cover:
Shane Braithwaite

Contents

Other works by this
Author

Chapter Two - Cover Credits

ARK-001
Carnage

A legend is made the moment you deiced the
cost is worth the journey. The moment you decided your life is
worth fighting for, bleeding for, and killing for. This is the
moment Vlad will choose between murderer or victim. This is the
moment the legend of the Wraith begins. Could you live with the
choice?

The World of
Knights: Knight Hunters

ARK-001 Glossary

ARK-001 Playlist

Next
Time

Chapter Three - About the Author

Chapter Four - Connect
with Me Online

ARK-001:
Carnage

-Darkness birthed him, a blade fathered him, Death was his
first lover. He was baptized in fire and blood. He will save
you.

July 15th 1:37am(EST)
-
1 Year, 2 Weeks, 1 Day since first
contact.

79 degrees. Turning in the eternally
graceful cacophony of the universe, stars in Choirs and multitudes
peered down into the city of New York. Their course was set in
motion eons ago, they knew the way as they knew the end and the
beginning. Beyond them, in a place of shadows and power, a crowd of
gods watched over their shoulders. Song stood at their fore, her
form youthful and ancient as befit she who set the stars on their
journey, dictated their course to make her music. Eyes like the
first melody you hear after heartbreak watched the play taking
place in the city far below. She had set this thing in motion,
caused the first domino to fall. Yet, she had not power to control
this tune. It belonged to a power far beyond that of the assembled
divinities. All she could do was give her blessing to the brief
little things flitting their lives on that spinning ball of rock
and mud. Clear skies or stormy did nothing to affect her vision.
Yet the skies after heavy showers that had started at midmorning
and continued into the early evening. Balmy night winds from the
southeast brought relief after the sickly, sticky heat of the day.
Mud caked untended seams and cracks in New York City sidewalks.
Bless and hope and watch.

Shadows dappled the forest of metal bones that
would one day be a building on forty-fourth and sixth. Forty wizard
soldiers moved through those shadows, keeping careful watch in
every direction. Another ten moved in pairs around the perimeter.
Their job was to be ready to reinforce or retreat as necessary. For
the moment they busied themselves keeping humans away from the
construction site. Simple shadow spells affecting simple minds
helped with that tremendously. Human guards lay slumped at their
stations, tranquilized by more spells. The invaders didn't care one
whit about the safety. They only cared about taking down their
target without warning, without as few casualties as
possible.

Human eyes, staining to their limit might
have seen shadows moving in strange patterns. But only if they
strained hard. To the eyes of a wizard the soldiers appeared like
darkness wreathed in light. They wore dull gray uniforms under
breastplates, greaves, gauntlets, and helmets glowing faintly with
protective spells. Tendrils of multicolored light twisted
themselves into spell webs around them. Their swords had a fine
phosphorescent sheen that promised a harder bite than mere
sharpened steel could have delivered. A fist clutched a broken bolt
of lightning on field of violet stood out arrogantly on their
chest.

Hunters. Not the underpaid castrated cannon
fodder that made up the regular wizard army; trained professional
soldiers. Knight Hunters. Broken Bolts. The men and women who
hunted monsters in the dark.

A scout moving alongside
the main body looked carefully into every shadow before moving on.
The Spell on the Hunters' armor could hide them from humans but
there were better spells. No one in the Hunters could work them but
a Knight would have the skill. And a Knight wouldn't be limited to
weaving one spell at a time like a normal wizard. Even if
Ilom
could
weave a
spell to hide his presence, he wouldn't be able to do anything
else. A Knight wouldn't have rely on his armor or
protection.

This wasn't his first hunt. No one took
chances when it came to Knights. He checked every shadow twice,
shifting his eyes through every spectrum they could perceive. His
sword was drawn and he had a long dagger ready to pull if he had to
drop the longer blade. Deadly cords* of fire and lightning
encircled his shield arm*, ready to launch but not yet ignited.
Nothing to be done about the witch-light from his armor, but he
could deny his prey a perfect Reigh shadow.

Ilom was bait. His job was to wait until he
made contact with the Knight, and then use those spells to hold him
off while retreating. As soon as his unit saw him lighting the
place up, they would swarm the Knight and take him out.

Or her, the last one had been a girl. Little
redheaded slip of a thing ripped out poor Jori's guts with her bare
hands. She laughed while the man spilled his guts at her feet. She
laughed while raking them with more spell fire than half his unit
combined could have put out. She didn't stop laughing until they
separated her head from her body. Dangerous job, but it paid very
well. There were only three active tracking and elimination units
in the hunters. The rest were on standby and defensive duty. Ilom
had a little one on the way, he needed the money if he was going to
give his little girl the life she deserved.

The fight was over before he knew what
happened. A shadow he had cleared exploded into life. Then there
was a hand on his throat, releasing something into him. His foot
gave a single twitch and went still.

Warm blood trickled down Vlad's face. He
held himself and his victim as they were for a count of ten, quick
movements would attract attention. Cords of earth and water flowing
from his palm had torn the Hunter's throat so badly that blood kept
gushing onto his killer. Too much power; hadn't meant to do that.
Fading blue light crackled feebly around his right hand where it
pressed against the dead man's breastplate. Passive shields might
as well be tissue paper at this range. More cords of earth and
water ran from that hand into the man's body. The dead Hunter would
have bled out from the wound in his neck, but that had only been
intended to keep him quiet. The Knight's right had been the real
death dealer. The spell had crushed the Hunter's organs into so
much paste within his own body.

When he was sure he had not been noticed,
Vlad lowered the body to the ground behind a girder.

He was back to being Vlad, and that was a
problem. Sweat beaded his oval face, trickling into brown eyes and
matting finger combed hair. His wiry body trembled. He'd never
killed before, nothing that wasn't already dead anyway. Once or
twice he'd come close, moments when his rage had nearly overwhelmed
him. Stopping had been a matter of coming up with a smarter, often
a more cruel, plan.

The shock had broken his focus. With it went
his other identity, the Knight. Thinking of himself as the Knight
gave him access to the reality warping powers of the warrior born.
If he was going to survive the night he would need them. He needed
to bring his trembling inner world back into balance. Balance was
everything.

Unbidden, his eyes went to the body. Vlad
allowed his mind to run where it would. Some problem solving
methods were not linear.

Once upon a time, a Knight could have gone
his entire life without shedding a drop of blood. The Twisted* did
not bleed, only fell to dust and ash. Knights, serving in the
Harrowers, were once the blade that cut into the armies of the
Horde and the Host.* But he was only fourteen and he already had
blood on his hands.

Wizards grew at a different rate than
humans. After first gaining access to their full power, they
rapidly grew to physical prime and stayed that way until the last
year of their lives. In human terms he appeared to be about
twenty-five. But he didn't feel twenty-five, he felt fourteen.
Which was wrong. He never felt his age. For as long as he could
remember, he'd been an old man. Old men did not become teenagers,
it didn't happen. Not to him. He was supposed to be better than
this.

Things didn't have to be this way. He'd
spotted them first, he could have run. Might have been smarter if
he had. Instead, he'd left a trail of magic for them to follow.
This was his choice of battlegrounds. Out of the way, quiet and as
deserted as you were going to get in Manhattan.

Even without his help the Hunters would have
found traces of him sooner or later. They were all over the city.
Wizard and demon magic clashing left distinct traces. There was no
way to remove them or he'd have done it already.

But if they didn't
find
him
they
might assume he'd moved on. They would consider the city just a
temporary hunting ground. The Broken Bolts would look for him
elsewhere. For that to have a chance to work, however, he would
have to leave everything behind. Anything that made the city seem
like something other than a temporary place to sleep painted a
target on it.

Staying and hiding was out of the question.
Finding and killing people like Vlad was what Knight Hunters did.
Eventually, they would sniff him out. And, if not him, those traces
would lead them to people who knew him. The Hunters would hurt them
to get to him. That was how they worked.

Shit! They might do it even if he did run.
They'd tear the city apart looking for clues to where he might have
run off to. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

No, there was only one way for this to work
out so he could keep his life. Make it seem as if they'd been
deliberately lured here as part of a trap. Anything the Hunters
found after that would be written off as part of the trap. They
would investigate of course but they'd start out with bad
assumptions. Everything they found would looked like it was just
there the make the bait more genuine. Of course, you didn't set a
trap in your own home. You did it somewhere far away. Somewhere you
didn't care about. But, for the lie to work, the trap would have to
appear to be successful. He would have to kill more of them. Kill
them all.

Or he could walk away right now and he
wouldn't have to take another life this night. All he had to do was
leave everything and everyone he cared about behind and run.

He took a breath, slowed his racing thoughts
and focused on what mattered.

All his life he'd heard that life was
precious and that killing was wrong. But there was one simple truth
that no amount of sanctimonious bullshit could wash away. The lives
of all these Knights Hunters combined were not as valuable to him
as his own. He thought of Whit and the feeling he got when she
kissed him, her lips hungry against his. Ethan, with whom he argued
incessantly and who'd taught him everything about what it meant to
be a wizard. Kat, who teased and mocked him constantly, his first
in many ways but chiefly his first real friend. His mother, who
never threw the sacrifices she'd made for him in his face, no
matter how much be bickered with her.

Vlad knew what it was to be alone, truly
alone. Alone not because of an absence of people but alone because
you couldn't connect to them. Becoming a wizard, a Knight had saved
him form that. He'd fought it, fought the connections. But they'd
dragged him kicking and screaming into being a real boy. And now he
was scared to go back. Without them in his life he just know that's
what would happen.

In that moment Vlad had the power to choose
between the lives of these soldiers and his. So he chose. He would
not walk away. These people had chosen to make their living off the
pain and suffering of others. Looking down at the man he had just
killed he expected to feel sadness or pity or something like
regret. He was supposed to. You were supposed to regret killing…but
he didn't. All he felt, was contempt for someone who whored
themselves to the council.