The Destroyer (25 page)

“Tell your foolish general that we aren’t going to kill you. We would have done it by now if we wanted his death. Your soldiers are soft and like sheep to our wolf hunger.”

The king hesitated a second and then waved his hand.

“Fine. Move forward and say what you will. Then get out. You are not invited to our celebration.” I was surprised at the conviction in the king’s voice. The guards that had circled the four moved back slightly, allowing them to walk through the empty space that had previously been the stage for our peaceful gathering.

The lead male wore polished plate armor. It was etched red with pictures of hawks and eagles. A thin long sword hung at his waist, and daggers on the other side of his belt had red accents on the hilt wrappings. His eyes were a pale gold, as was his braided hair. He looked like a beautiful statue. I wanted to break him into a thousand pieces. My blood felt like it might boil through my skin.

Two females and another male accompanied him. The three wore smooth leather armor dyed red, they were armed similarly to their leader. The women’s armor was cut low to expose the perfect cleavage of their breasts. One woman’s hair was gray and tied into matching knots on each side of her head. Her eyes were bronze. The other’s hair was a light slate green and flowed down her back like moss on a rock. Her eyes were as red as rubies and glowed like embers. The man's hair was a blackish-blue, and his eyes looked like amber stones.

“I am Greretal. Captain in the Empress's Red Army. I am here on behalf of our empress. We demand your decision.” They stood twenty feet from the king. I was off to his side slightly. Maerc had his right hand on his short sword and his left on the king’s shoulder. Guards with spears stood in front of the table but were not in between the Elvens and the king. It did not matter. As Greretal had stated, they could do nothing to protect their monarch if even one of the Elvens wished him dead. Four trained and armed Elvens could effortlessly massacre every human in the Great Hall, if I was not here.

“My decision?” the king asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Don’t be coy, Your Highness,” the Elven practically spit the word. “My empress thought sending me would instill within you the gravity of your decision. She wants it now.” The three other Elvens were looking around the room. They seemed excited. I looked at the female with the green hair; her right glove was dribbling blood on the floor. The room became silent except for the sound of the dripping.

“I’m sorry. I broke some of your toy soldiers; they didn’t believe we wanted to come in peace,” the green-haired banshee said with a giggle.

We never have to bow before them again. We’ll take the battle to them, striking when they least expect it and showing no mercy. Then we will disappear.

“This plan is suicide Kaiyer,” Malek said. “We are outnumbered three to one and they have the higher ground.”

“I’ll lead the charge,” I said.

Sweat was pouring out of every inch of my skin.

My armor had millions of tiny skulls engraved in the dense metal. My gauntleted hand dripped with blood as I sank my teeth into a pulsating heart. It tasted sweet and tough.

“What are you doing, Brother?” Thayer said. He tried to hide his disgust.

“I said I would eat his heart. Look, he still lives to see me do it.” The Elven general moaned as the last of his blood ran out of his body.

The green-haired woman had walked over to me. The flowery smell of her filled my nostrils. I could hear her reptilian heart beating its slow, careful rhythm. My body twitched and my vision faded from black to red to black again.

“Look at this one. He is so scared he is going to shit himself. Can I cut him open and play with his intestines?” she asked the leader in the tongue of the Elvens. My head snapped down and my eyes made contact with hers.

“How about I tear your throat out and drink your screams instead?” I said in our shared tongue. The power of the Earth flared into my body. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to kill them, grind them to paste, my hatred was like a pot of water that now boiled over.

The woman’s eyes widened in shock and her three companions’ heads jerked over to look at me in surprise.

They were just in time to see me grab hold of her throat and rip it out of her neck.

Her hands came up to grasp at the warm, gushing fluid that poured from the hole in her trachea. She managed to get out a gurgling sound of surprise before her friends realized what had happened. They shouted in outrage as the other two drew their swords and moved in front of their leader.

There were screams of shock and fear from the gathered party attendees, but no one dared to move. Now they would be privy to a different performance, one far darker and more sinister than what they had enjoyed so far this night.

We faced each other for a few seconds as the three Elvens looked from my face to my right hand, which still clutched a handful of her throat.

“Circle and cut him down!” their commander said. They slowly began to move around me.

“That sounds like a great idea. I’ll kill them first, and then rip you limb from limb,” I spat at the man in the red plate armor. His face turned from outrage to fear. He wasn’t used to being taunted, especially by a human that spoke his language.

The male on the right attacked prematurely. When I was a normal human, I remember that they seemed to move so quickly and beautifully. Their strength and grace made us believe that they were Gods that deserved to rule us without question.

Now I knew them to be mortal, slow and weak. They could be slain like any other prey.

These Elven had never met a predator before.

His sword passed inches from my face. It was a vertical cut and my hands wrapped around his hand and wrist when he reached the bottom of his stroke, pulling it downward below my waist. I stepped over this sword and maintained my grip on his hand as I circled him and raised my arms across my body. The speed of my action combined with my weight and leverage caused his wrist to snap like a dry piece of wood. His body flipped and landed heavily on the stone floor. It made a sound like a thunderclap as the large tile beneath him cracked. His hand lost its hold of the sword when I broke his wrist. The movement had put the thin blade into my capable hands.

He screamed when he felt the pain radiate up his arm. It was one of pure agony and shame.

The Elven people are not used to experiencing anything other than pleasure. They are mentally unprepared for the serious wounds that we will inflict upon their bodies, minds, and souls.

My own voice echoed in my head as I faced the woman. Her eyes were still surprised, but she cunningly waited to see what I would do to her friend before attacking. She feinted the same movement her companion had made, but I pushed my blade up to parry above my head instead of taking the bait. She danced back with a quick back cut that would have ripped me in half had I been more aggressive. Then she executed a series of carefully constructed horizontal and vertical slashes that targeted my chest and thighs. I managed to dodge each one by an inch or so. She smiled as she saw me give up ground. Then she did the same combination of movements again.

I came in quickly after her first horizontal cut flicked past my stomach. I reached around with my left hand and grabbed the back of her elbow, drawing her to me like a lover. The closeness of our bodies left her right arm trapped in between us, her sword rendered useless.

The hilt of my sword smashed into her face from above. She grunted in pain, but she couldn’t fall back since I had trapped her to me with her left arm. I pulled back my right arm and smashed the pommel again into her beautiful face. This time I heard the skull crack and echo through the room. I let go of her body and she fell to her knees, free of me but not free of the abuse. I wound back my arm again and punched her in the face a third time with the hilt of the sword. She was probably already dead, but the force of the impact snapped her head back and sent her body sliding across the floor like a drop of rain down a slanted roof.

“Who are you?” the leader screamed at me. He was backing away toward the door. His friend with the broken wrist struggled to his feet. He tried to move away as I walked to him.

“No no. Forgive me!” he screamed as he felt my hand close around his esophagus. I didn’t bother to choke. I just crushed the bones into each other and let go. His body twitched a few times like a fish that had just been gutted. I watched the light fade from his eyes as he died.

By the time I looked back to their leader I realized that I had made a mistake letting him watch his friend die in my grip. His armor-covered hands rose toward me in a movement I recalled. I felt the massive blast of force, fire, ice, and pain slam into me. My feet left the floor with the power of the magic he had used. I heard wave after wave of explosions and my eardrums popped. Everything went black for a second and there was another impact behind me, bringing me back from unconsciousness.

I coughed up blood and felt my skin and lungs repairing themselves. My eyes burned, but I forced them open. I was forty feet away from the last Elven, almost on the other side of the Great Hall. I climbed to my feet and coughed again. The last of the black smoke oozed out of my chest and into the air. My fine shirt was on fire in the front. I grabbed onto it with my left hand and ripped it off of my torso. I had slammed into one of the columns that held up the roof. I couldn’t see where the sword had gone, but it wasn’t in my hands anymore.

I noticed the shocked expressions of horror on the surrounding faces, but none as horrified as the Elven leader.

“Who are you?” he screamed again.

“How did you get here?!" he screamed louder and backed away. His magic threw over the table where I sat with Paug. I was going to need to jump over it to get to him.

Then he turned and started to run.

“Sword!” I yelled to the king as I leapt over the table and ran to the door. He tossed his through the air and my hand closed around the guard as I swung my body to the exit. I slid for a few feet on the Elven woman’s blood. By then I had reached the door of the hall.

“We have to kill them or they will report back,” Thayer’s voice said in my head.

I sprinted toward the doorway and into the Receiving Room. He was up ahead and turned the corner. I grabbed onto the door frame to help me turn. My feet hit the opposite wall as my bottom half went the direction I had been going. For a few seconds, my speed and the way I took the turn allowed me to run on the wall instead of on the floor.

I saw him mount the set of stairs ahead of us and I gave chase.

The stairs twisted in a spiral and I tried to figure out what he planned. I couldn’t see him, so I assumed he thought I wouldn’t know on exactly which level he would exit. Perhaps he didn’t realize that I could hear his heart beating its staccato of panic.

He went up three flights of stairs and ran down the hallway. I was gaining ground on him, even though the king’s large sword hampered my movements.

Then he did something I hadn’t expected. He turned a corner quickly and met with a dead end, an ornate window looking down to the distant ground.

He glanced back at me as I turned the same corner. Then the Elven ran toward the window. A deadly shower of beautiful, vibrant glass blanketed his armored form as he crashed through it, light glinting in a rainbow of colors as he fell.

I ran up to the broken opening and looked down to my prey. He had survived the steep drop and was limping away. He looked over his shoulder at me with a smile. It was almost sixty feet to the ground.

The smile turned back into terror as I leapt from the window and crashed into the ground. It hurt terribly, and my legs almost snapped with the impact. My ligaments groaned and complained in the fraction of a second before I rolled forward and came to my feet. My body struggled to restore itself, but I had been hurt worse in the past and recovered. Within seconds I could feel the energy of the Earth repairing the minor injuries to my legs.

His heart beat faster than a small bird’s. I didn’t need to run after him. He was limping slowly. As I drew closer he tried to skip his body ahead by thrusting his hips forward and jumping. We were in the open training area on the opposite side of the wing from my room. He would never make it to the gate of the castle before I reached him.

“You aren't supposed to be here! Your leaders made an oath!” He was almost crying now. Finally, he fell down on his backside and raised his arms. “I surrender!” he said as tears came down his cheeks. He was so afraid, he forgot that he had a sword at his hip that he might use to defend himself. My brain was trying to puzzle out what he had just said, but before it could send a message to my mouth so that I might ask him for more detail about my 'leaders' my arm was already moving.

The king’s sword sliced off the top four fingers of his right hand. He gasped in terror as he brought them down to look at them and screamed. My next cut took off the rest of his hand. I didn’t think it was possible, but he screamed louder.

I tried to see how loud I could get him to scream before he died. He only lasted three more minutes until he bled out, and he didn’t get louder than when I had cut off his hand. His display of pain disappointed me.

I told him so before his eyes closed forever.