A second later, a headless body was falling, and Raven gagged. She covered her mouth and doubled over, but couldn’t stop watching as the man’s head hit the ground with a terrible thud, then rolled half a head’s length before it stopped on its side.
She stared at it in sick, horrid fascination for several too-long moments before she ripped her eyes away from it and back to the boy who stood still and poised at the center of it all. There was no shock in his young features. He was not afraid. He looked upon the fallen bodies around him and breathed.
Drake of Tanith’s hair was kissed by snow. But his eyes burned like molten metal, touched at their centers by the flames of Hell.
“By the gods,” came a whisper behind Raven.
She turned, slow and dizzy, to find Loki standing behind her. Grolsch was with him, both men just having stepped out of the camp. Neither wore armor, nor shoes, and neither were looking at Raven.
They were watching Drake. Which meant Raven wasn’t dreaming after all. They were seeing what she was seeing… and she’d known it wasn’t a dream all along.
She turned back around just in time to see the entire image of boy, blade, and bodies waver and vanish completely. A night breeze swept through the clearing, colder than before. Something was blowing in.
And she was too numb, too stunned to say anything.
Chapter Thirteen
Lightning on the ninth plane of Abaddon wasn’t white, not any longer. Red electricity split the sky, casting it in tones that bled upon the tortured land below. Lord Tanith stood upon a small, stone portico overlooking a mighty precipice from the highest tower in his castle and gazed out upon this land, the bloody lightning reflected in the chrome of his eyes.
He was yet whole.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Well… almost.
He needed one more thing, one precious, perfect piece, and the puzzle of his existence would be complete. No more struggling, no more indecision. She would come to grips with her destiny just as Tanith had, and join him to rule in glorious splendor.
Hell had never seen a queen like Winter.
Neither had his bed. And it was this thought that tightened his grip on the railing, forcing a fissure to open in the metal, which split its way along the iron rung into the stone below, cracking it wide open.
Tanith’s smile grew darker.
The spell he’d cast had ripped at him, tearing a hole in the fabric of his being, but it was the wrong hole. Instead of separating the halves of his soul as it had the first time, it had opened a gap between what Tanith was now and what he had once been. Between his present and his past.
He was experiencing visions, memories that came and went like dreams. He was uncertain what effect this would have upon the terran realm. Frankly, he didn’t care. He just found them an unpleasant waste of time. As far as he was concerned, his past was best forgotten.
“My Lord.”
Tanith’s head cocked slightly. The winds of Abaddon caught at the edge of his fine, black cloak as he turned on that terrace that overlooked death.
Tantibus bowed low before him, his mighty frame and armor nearly scraping the stone floor of Castle Nisse where he knelt at his king’s booted feet.
Drake wondered if he had better news than last time.
Apparently the Hunter’s Map was as untraceable as Raven, herself. Both were protected by the spirit of Magus, who’d sacrificed himself to become her Guardian. Rumor had it that Lord Astriel had attempted to search for the map as well. He, too, had failed. The two rulers were back at their respective ends of the playing field once more.
“I bring news,” the Nightmare Lord said.
Yes… I imagine you do….
The commander of Tanith’s infernal armies looked up as if he’d heard his king’s unspoken whisper. His red eyes burned a powerful blaze. “We are as of yet unable to scry the Hunter’s Map’s location,” Tantibus informed him solemnly. “What’s more, your mages were able to determine that it is not only her location, but her identity that Magus has disguised. She is still hidden as a female of the same age, but she bears the face of a stranger.”
The face of a stranger…. She was disguised as someone else. Which meant Tanith was playing a worthless game and wasting precious time searching for someone who actually looked like Raven. This was not good news.
“However,” Tantibus continued with stark confidence, “she also bears your mark.”
Memories of a kiss floated through Tanith’s shadowy mind, or perhaps it was only Drake’s mind, and beneath his royal black garb, the king’s strong body tensed.
A bolt of red lightning split the thunderhead above, and the hot, angry sky rumbled.
“Search every inch of flesh on every woman of age in the terran realm,” the Devil King decried, his deep voice rumbling with a powerful malice as clear as the thunder overhead.
Tantibus nodded reverently. “It shall be done.”
*****
“What does it say!” Loki called over from where he helped Grolsch pack up the last of the camp supplies.
Raven glanced over her shoulder to see Grolsch heft a large pack over his burly shoulders. He’d agreed to accompany them for the remainder of the journey, she supposed because he didn’t really feel he had anything else to do, or anywhere else to go. The war had turned the terran realm on its ear, and sometimes it was just good to have a purpose, especially in times like these.
She stood at the edge of camp, near the place she’d crouched the night before. She wanted to stay out of the men’s way, and frankly, also wanted some privacy. She’d been unrolling the map to attempt to determine where they needed to head next, but her mind wasn’t on the scroll in front of her. It was on Drake.
The scene that unraveled like a nightmare before her the night before hadn’t been a dream. Loki and Grolsch had apparently exited the camp a few minutes prior to making their presence known, and had been watching the scene in silence. They were all witnesses to a pivotal, defining, and horrible moment in Drake of Tanith’s life. They had all seen him kill the man and older boys who’d been, for technical intents and purposes, his adoptive father and brothers. When he was no more than a boy.
After the vision from the past vanished, Loki turned to his sister. “We must talk.” They had returned to the camp, re-lit a new fire for warmth, and Loki had explained.
“Magus’s spirit is in the pendant I wear, and earlier he reached out to me.” Loki touched his chest absently, where the pendant hung beneath his tunic.
Grolsch uncorked a bottle of something a clear blue color and took a sniff. He took a long pull of it, gritted his teeth, and offered it to Loki.
Loki shook his head and went on. “He came to me in my dreams tonight.”
Grolsch offered the bottle to Raven, and she took it. A drink of – whatever it might be – was welcome just then. She put the bottle to her lips and upended it. The liquid hit her tongue like fire and burned its pleasant, painful way down her throat. She swallowed once out of reflex, but rejected the second swallow, coughing when the alcohol accidentally found its way to her lungs.
Grolsch smiled a tusk-filled smile and chuckled.
Loki ignored them both. “He told me that Drake had cast a spell,” he said.
Raven wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve. “A spell?” she croaked, her throat still burning.
At that point, Loki went on to explain exactly what it was they’d witnessed. According to Magus, Drake of Tanith cast a spell several decades ago that split him in two. This part, Raven was familiar with. She knew Darken and Drake were one and that they’d somehow been separated. She just hadn’t known exactly how until now.
The spell ripped them apart and sent Drake into another realm, where he was literally reborn. But not as a prince, and not even as an infant to a well-endowed family, but as an orphan on a doorstep. What transpired over the next thirty years were the events that shaped the man Drake of Tanith would become.
But Raven wanted to
know why she was suddenly seeing these scenes from Drake’s past. Why her? And why now?
“It’s you because you wear his mark,” Loki explained, pointing at the back of his neck in reference to the mark she bore on her own. “Whatever you may do or say, the truth is, you are connected to Drake very deeply.” He shrugged. “We get to see it too because we’re close to you.”
Raven swallowed hard. “Then why now?” she asked.
Loki sighed. “Because Drake has cast the spell again. Only, this time it failed. Instead of freeing him of Darken’s hold, it opened a fissure between his past and present. The gap won’t close again until his past has played itself out.”
“So… I’ll be seeing more?”
“Undoubtedly,” Loki assured her.
Raven took another painful drink of Grolsch’s alcohol, then handed the bottle back to him as her vision went a little blurry. She coughed, then asked in a dry voice, “What about Drake?”
Loki paused before he responded this time, as if searching for the right way to respond. But in the end, he simply said, “The spell changed nothing for him. Drake is who he is now, and he always will be. He’s the king of Hell.”
Chapter Fourteen
Now as Raven stood outside the camp and waited for the boys to finish packing their things, she clenched her teeth and rubbed one hand over her face. She felt grainy. A little sick to her stomach. She was hung over, both physically and mentally.
Drake is who he is now and always will be. Loki’s words haunted her.
“Raven! I said, what does the map tell us now!”
“I don’t know yet!” she snapped loudly. She was feeling frustrated and short tempered. She was tired. Sleep had entirely evaded her, despite the alcohol.
She knew the rest of night had been sleepless for her brother, too, because she hadn’t heard his snoring start up again. And he was demanding and pushy this morning, and just as short-tempered as she was. The only one among them, in fact, who didn’t seem the worse for wear, was Grolsch. On the contrary, he hadn’t had much at all to say about the revelation of Drake’s past. Perhaps he’d already known about it. He’d been Drake’s friend for some time.
Ugh, we need to get moving.
Her gaze returned to the map, which had changed since the last time she’d unrolled it. The darkness behind them on the scroll was catching up. It had moved to the right a good two inches, and now waited just on the outskirts of the ruins.
Raven looked up when a flock of birds lifted from a copse of trees nearby. They sailed quickly overhead, leaving a quiet forest behind. She peered into that forest for a moment, her gaze narrowing on its secrets and shadows. Birds never fled in such a manner without a reason.
But the silence and stillness stretched.
Finally, she took a deep breath and returned her attention to the map. Fortunately, despite the darkness that was closing in across the parchment, a new path had also drawn itself upon the page. A fresh dotted line trailed from the ruins where they now packed up to a wall on the right side of the scroll. It continued over that second wall to what looked like the mouth of a cavern.
“We’ll need a light source!” she called over her shoulder. There was nothing but black ink at the face of the drawn cave, no indication of what might lay beyond. “And probably our weapons,” she muttered. Or my magic, her mind added warily.
All at once, while she looked on, the darkness on the left side of the map began to move once more. It rushed into sudden action, inching its very fast way toward the ruins.
Raven’s eyes widened. “Loki!”
But there was no response other than the sound of voices elevated in disagreement. Loki and Grolsch were arguing over something. She looked up toward the camp to find that Grolsch held out one bag between them, clutched in an angry fist. Apparently they were arguing over who would carry it. It was the last of the bags; both Raven and Loki wore their armor and weapons, and everything else had been packed up.
Raven broke into a run, skidded to a halt between the two men, yanked the bag from Grolsch’s hand, and swung it over her back. It was quite heavy, and it knocked her off balance for a moment, but she quickly regained her footing.
“Take hold of the map!” she commanded, holding the scroll up so they could both grab it.
Loki frowned at first, clearly confused. But then he looked into Raven’s eyes, and must have recognized the desperation there, because he hurriedly took hold of one corner, curling it in his fist.
“Grolsch, grab the other end of the map!” he told the ork.
Grolsch was neither a young nor inexperienced ork. He hastily grabbed hold of one of the two remaining corners.
There was a brief moment where the world seemed to pause. Then there was a flash of bright white light, and a following swirl of color, and Raven and the others were sent through another of the Hunter’s Map’s portals.
*****
The ground shook in the clearing where the three travelers had stood sheer seconds before. Pebbles danced across the packed dirt, and newly loosened remnants tumbled free of the ruin’s crumbling walls.
The rumbling escalated with a mounting fury, until like an explosion of night and fire, a storm of dark figures burst free from the forest line and thundered across the clearing. They wore armor of pitch, taken from the figures of nightmares, and rode mighty steeds of pure black. Their terrifying passage trailed clouds of billowing smoke, and dark gray ash covered the ground where hoof met soil.
The riders moved past the ruins at a furious pace, and just as quickly as they’d come, they were gone.
*****
The girl her mother had named Summer felt anything but sunny at that moment. She felt more like a storm cloud, dense and black, harboring barely-kept fury and tears by the millions. But she dammed it well, holding it at bay behind a façade of brightness that she’d cultivated over the years. Her mother had died giving her birth, but Summer believed in her heart that this cloudless mask did justice to the woman’s short-lived expectations of what her daughter would grow to become.
The sunny mask she wore was her way of honoring her mother’s life. After all, she must have chosen her daughter’s name for a reason.
It was also the only way Summer knew of to keep her father going day after day. So long as I remain positive, as long as I can assure him that everything will turn out right, he can’t give up. Not on me. Not on him.
So when the line she was standing in pressed forward and it was at last her turn to receive her family’s daily rations, she would make certain to smile graciously and say something nice. She always kept a pleasantry stored on her tongue. It always helped. It didn’t have to be sincere; it just had to seem sincere. That was good enough.
Perhaps it was a lie, but despite the strict teachings of several of the deities worshipped by citizens of the terran realm, she had never held to the philosophy that all lies were bad. Some served their purposes beautifully. Applied with empathy and kindness, they could do everything from brighten a sour mood, to heal. That’s what she believed, anyway, and she had yet to be proven wrong.
Summer made certain her smile was firmly in place as she approached the table where rations were bundled and handed out to evacuees each morning. Every day a different group did the bundling, in order to keep disparities from arising.
The pair behind the table that morning was a mother and her young son. The boy was a small tow-headed child no older than five or six perhaps, and currently bore a small bunch of scrapes on his chin that matched a second bundle of scrapes on his knee.
The mother was busy combining slices of bread, blocks of cheese, and grains of rice portioned out for each bundle, and though she had to nudge him to keep him focused, the young boy would then wrap them in a scrap of cloth and hand them to the next person in line.
A group of boys around his same age waited on the sidelines, their dirty faces watching him with quiet impatience. No doubt, they were waiting for him to finish his chore so that he could join t
hem in play, which was likely the source of his latest set of scrapes.
When he handed Summer her bundle, his mother placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and met Summer’s gaze. “How does your father fare today, Summer?”
Summer replied with her famous smile. “He’s well, thank you Mary. Your bread is helping him, no doubt, as hearty as it is.”
Mary reflected that smile, and warmth entered her cheeks where there had been only anemic paleness before. “Go on, now,” she said softly, placing her hands over Summer’s. Summer could feel that there was something small hidden in those hands; Mary was secretly passing her another slice of cheese beneath her friendly grip.
A mixture of guilt and appreciation rolled through her. It was an ambivalence she was more or less accustomed to. She hid both well, not wanting to alert anyone to her special treatment, and simply accepted the cheese, squeezed Mary’s hands in private gratitude, and stepped out of the line to allow the next person to the table.
This had been the morning routine for Summer for five months now. When the temples outside of Trimontium had fallen, she and her father had relocated to a temporary camp a day’s ride away. They’d spent a few weeks there, while Summer worked any job she could to earn them enough money to move on, and then they’d purchased a ride here, to Warrendale.
It was still a refugee camp, in the strictest sense of the term, but here, the majority of the terran realm’s larger cities’ lower class citizens had not only gathered, but begun to rebuild. There were more people and more trees for erecting make-shift structures. A clear river nearby drove drinking water to thirsty pails, and the soil surrounding Warrendale was good for planting.
All one needed to do was forget that they’d lost everything, and life was nearly palatable.
There hadn’t yet been time for crops to grow in, hence the people of Warrendale made do with rations that were scraped together by foraging parties who made regular, dangerous treks into the ruins of cities that had fallen in sieges. Sometimes the foraging party didn’t return, and it was assumed Abaddon’s armies had come across them, or that they’d been taken prisoner by bounty hunters or Astriel’s men. Sometimes they came back a smaller party than when they’d gone. But regardless of the dangers, they gathered together, hunted, and foraged, because without them, the people of Warrendale would starve.