Chaos God 3, page 23
part #3 of Chaos God Series
Gaelyra’s servant, Berk, stood nervously in the doorway, and I wondered for a second how I’d get him out of the way so I could search the office. I landed on the edge of the doorframe and took a moment to debate my options, but my companions must have noticed the issue, because a second later, Erik’s voice rang out strong in the village square.
“Berk is just as much to blame for this situation!” Erik declared. “He has been an accessory to this mess all along.”
Calls of “bring him out here” followed a second later, and I recognized every one of the voices as my companions. I glanced back at the crowd and saw that my black-haired lover and warrior friends had positioned themselves tactfully throughout the square.
Berk trembled and tried to sink back into the office, but Gaelyra pinned him down with a single lethal stare.
“Odin help me,” Berk grumbled low under his breath before he shuffled forward.
I slipped the rest of the way inside before the balding man pulled the door closed behind him.
Then I buzzed down to the floor as I took a few slow breaths, but my body seemed almost reluctant to shift back into my natural human state. I realized that was the shortest shift I’d ever done, and I wondered if my body had become so used to remaining in shifted forms for longer periods of time that a short shift was now more difficult. But a few seconds later, my body stretched back out to my six-foot-four frame, and the extra pair of legs disappeared into my torso.
Angry and confused voices rang out through the village square, and I could tell Freesia, Erik, Eirlina, and my companions were doing their best to rile up the other villagers with questions of their own as to why they had to survive on such little food. I heard Eirlina’s strong voice demand to know why no demons had attacked during the two moons since the Demon Lord’s death.
“Where did you get this impossible idea that our Lordship is even deceased?” Gaelyra groaned in a voice that made it clear she knew this was the truth.
“These warriors have come from the Demon Lord’s castle to share the news with us,” Freesia declared.
“It is true, the Demon Lord is gone!” Finnern called in a steady voice.
“How can you trust these strangers over me?” Gaelyra scoffed. “I have protected us for decades from the demons who prowl the orchards and the forests beyond. It is I who have kept you safe, not these newcomers!”
I shook my head and turned to the task at hand. I knew my companions would answer or deflect any of her questions, it was my job now to find this magical relic and destroy it and Gaelyra’s power over this village.
I strode across the office, around her desk, and looked at the messy stacks of papers. It looked like Gaelyra and Berk had been tearing the whole place apart in their desperate search for answers. I started to pull her desk drawers open in search of anything that could fit in the palm of the short elf’s hand like Freesia had described.
The center top drawer was pretty average-looking for a desk. There were several wooden pencils, a fine ink quill pen, a loose ball of twine, scraps of paper, a pair of silver-handled scissors, and a random copper key. I closed the drawer and moved on to the next. I found tons of pages from her ledgers, scrap pieces of paper, more writing utensils, and a metal ruler in units I didn’t recognize. I closed the last drawer with frustration and turned around to check out the shelves behind me.
The rising agitation in the crowd outside was bleeding into the room around me, and my heart started to thump as I imagined the ticking clock of my escape room over my head. I could only imagine this was the kind of time-sensitive pressure my customers always felt as they searched through my puzzles for a way out.
I decided I needed to do what I always silently urged my customers to do when they got stuck. I’d sit there behind the camera feeds and mutter to myself that they needed to take a step back and find a new perspective, so that’s exactly what I did.
I closed my eyes, walked back around the desk, and turned to face the wall of shelves before I opened my eyes.
It was lined with the ledgers I’d seen the last time I was in Gaelyra’s office, some knickknacks and trinkets that looked like personal items, and something I hadn’t noticed before.
I smirked as I looked at the small wooden chest on the top shelf the color of well-polished walnut floors. It was about six inches by four inches, and only as tall as a coffee mug, but there was a sturdy lock on the front. I reached up and brought the small dark chest down to Gaelyra’s cluttered desk. Then I opened the center drawer and pulled out the little copper key, and it fit perfectly into the lock.
“Yes,” I whispered to myself as the lock opened smoothly and silently.
The small chest had a few folded letters on top, so I picked them up to look underneath. But then one folded letter fell open, and the signature on the bottom of the page stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Eldorn,” I read the name that was penned in a bold and tidy script, and bells rang out inside my head like an elementary school fire alarm.
That was Elora’s light-elf grandfather’s name. Apparently Gaelyra had more than one surprising correspondence in her life
I opened the letter and tried to read it, but it was written in a language I didn’t understand. I could still pick out a few other names I recognized, though. The letter was addressed to Gaelyra, and Elora’s light-elf mother, Fayeth, was mentioned, as was her dark-elf father, Olmer.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as I noticed a subtle blue-green glow emanating from the wooden chest.
There was an oval-shaped pendant on a dainty gold chain laying on a folded cotton handkerchief inside the box, and the pendant was rimmed with more gold. The blue-green gem in the center was the size of a silver dollar, and it pulsed with light like it had a heartbeat of its own.
I lifted the necklace from the box, and the light grew brighter as I brought it closer to my face. There was a steady thumping coming from the necklace that pulsed along with the beating glow, and a shudder raced down my spine. It wasn’t a shudder of terror, though, it felt like electricity, and every one of my nerves seemed to sing with recognition of the evil magical power inside the necklace.
I instinctively rushed right over to the small stone fireplace to try and smash it, but Finnern’s words rang through my head.
“The rot of time…” I reminded myself, and I laid the amulet down on the stones as I pulled my acid-spitting demon quenched dagger from my belt.
I watched the amulet begin to pulse faster as if it had enough sentience to know its death was imminent, and I raised the tip of my dagger over the top of the pretty blue-green gem.
“Fuck you, Gaelyra,” I muttered, and I stabbed the tip of my blade directly into the center of the gem.
The blue-green stone seemed to scream with pain as a massive spiderweb of cracks split over the surface of the gem. They slowed their spread as they approached the edges of the golden frame, and I pressed the point of my blade harder into the necklace.
Then the festering and rotting effects of my dwarf-crafted blade started to seep into the gem, and it began to turn black. The darkness bled out of my blade like ink from a fountain pen, and after several long seconds, the entire gem was as dark as the depths of space.
But I could still feel a tiny wave of power and energy coming off the necklace in weak waves, so I pulled my blade back and slammed it into the same place with as much force as I could muster.
The gem exploded into a million tiny shards in a shockwave that rippled around the office and knocked me back a few steps. The shards sprayed out through the office, and the windows rattled in their frames from the force of the magical energy being unleashed.
There was a pause of silence out in the village square as the explosive shockwave of magic ripped through town, and then every villager started to shout in a mass of angry and accusatory voices.
“You have betrayed us, Gaelyra!” came one woman’s angry shout.
“You favored the Demon Lord’s needs over those of our people!” another man raged.
“My daughter died because of you!” a woman screamed with tears in her voice.
“I have only ever tried to help you,” Gaelyra pleaded, and her voice grew louder as she backed toward the office.
I rushed to hide in the shadows in the corner of the office, and I wedged my body into the corner just as Gaelyra and Berk stumbled into the room. Berk slammed the door behind them, and he locked it just a split second before several angry fists started to pound on the wood.
“Come out here and face us!” a man yelled from the other side of the door.
“This village is lost to us,” Gaelyra hissed to her balding servant. “Gather what is most important. We must flee. Quickly!”
“Yes, my lady!” Berk rushed forward and clambered up to the second story with so much haste that he slipped and almost fell back to the floor.
“Damn,” Gaelyra cursed as she sank into her desk chair, and she rubbed her hands over her face.
I realized the small chest still sat open on her desk as I slipped silently up behind her with my dagger in my hand. The angry shouts of the crowd continued outside, but they faded into the background as I stood like the grim reaper himself behind the white-haired bitch.
“Where will we go now…” the white-haired elf grumbled desperately to herself, and she finally sat up as she rubbed her hands over her face one more time. Then her hands dropped to her lap, and she gasped as she saw the open chest in front of her. “What…?”
I moved with the speed and precision of a scorpion as I slipped my dagger around to the front of her throat, and I pressed it up against the underside of her jaw. I pressed the palm of my other hand against the curve of her skull to keep her in place so she couldn’t lean her head back away from my blade.
“What indeed?” I whispered above her.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?” Gaelyra asked, and her voice shook with a level of fear that made my blood hungry for her death.
“I want answers,” I growled. “This letter here, what does it say?”
“What?” Gaelyra asked, and her confusion was clear in the way her hands fluttered anxiously in her lap.
“The letter,” I repeated with an impatient growl. “The one you received from Eldorn. Read it to me.”
“That letter is more than two hundred and fifty years old. Why--” Gaelyra started to ask, but her words cut off as I pressed the edge of my blade into the fragile skin at the underside of her jaw.
“I said read it,” I hissed. “I won’t repeat myself again.”
Gaelyra picked up the letter, and the dried paper shook violently in her trembling hands.
“‘Dear Gaelyra, I must thank you for the information you passed on to me,’” Gaelyra read from the letter. “Your knowledge of my daughter’s captor’s whereabouts has led to the capture of the scoundrel who would defile my family name and lineage. You have played an integral part in the arrest of the dangerous criminal, Olmer, and the return of my precious daughter, Fayeth.’”
My brain buzzed, and my blood boiled as Gaelyra’s quivering voice read the letter to me, and I found myself struggling to still my blade until she got to the end of the letter.
I deeply looked forward to this bitch’s demise.
“‘As promised, I have sent the payment you requested for the information.’” Hot tears slid down Gaelyra’s cheeks and dripped onto the cool metal of my blade. “‘This amulet will grace you with the power you desire. I trust it will also buy your silence of this situation. If news spread that my daughter had planned to run away with that dark-elf criminal, my entire family’s reputation would be ruined. Once again, thank you for helping return my precious daughter to me. All my regards, Eldorn.’”
“Eldorn gave you the amulet?” I asked to make sure I had the details straight.
“Y-yes…” Gaelyra stuttered. “Take it, it is a powerful magical relic, take it and leave me be. Please.”
“I’ve already destroyed it.” I grinned as I revealed the information to her. “Besides, the necklace isn’t what I want.”
“Y-you did what?” Gaelyra gasped, and I could practically feel her last scraps of hope fading away. “Do you have any idea how rare… how powerful… wh-what have you done? What do you want?”
“Justice,” I murmured in a voice like velvet laced with arsenic.
Then I pressed the razor-sharp blade of my dagger into her throat and held her head slightly forward in order to bring her carotid arteries into my blade. I slashed slowly through the tissues of her throat without any haste, and her blood poured out all over her front like I’d dumped out a gallon of bright red paint.
“My lady!” Berk gasped suddenly.
Chapter 16
Just as Gaelyra’s body went limp in her chair, I looked up to find the balding man standing in shocked horror at the bottom of the ladder that led to the second floor. Then I let her rotting corpse drop into the red pool of her blood on the desk, and I stared at the horror-stricken servant.
“She got what she deserved,” I growled. “Now, what do you deserve?”
“No… please…” Berk breathed as he raised his hands up, and his watery blue eyes flicked between me and the door for a split second before he bolted toward the exit.
I didn’t see any need to rush after him because I remembered the door was still locked, and besides, there was an angry mob waiting for him outside.
Berk fumbled with the lock for as many seconds as it took for me to slowly prowl across the room, and he managed to yank the door open just before I reached him. Then the scrawny man threw himself through the open door and into the waiting arms of the mob outside.
“You!” Edgar growled, and I did a double-take at his severe expression. The man who’d led a donkey into town with the docile demeanor of an aging house cat on my first visit was filled with such rage as I’d never seen before. “Where is that wench?”
“My lady…” Berk gasped as tears flowed down from his eyes, but I couldn’t tell if they were from sorrow or fear. “Sh-sh-she’s dead!”
“Good!” Mabel shouted with the rage of a lioness whose cubs had been messed with one too many times.
Berk’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water for exactly two seconds before he shoved his way roughly through the crowd and bolted between the houses in the square. He raced toward the Tim Burton-style forest to the east of the village, but no one tried to stop him.
“He should not get off so easily,” Jarod the cobbler grumbled.
“I could always deliver a more immediate justice?” Ayen offered as he stroked the string on his bow.
I turned to Freesia and cocked an eyebrow to see what she thought.
“It is against everything I have ever learned during my years as a healer…” Freesia sighed with regret, but then her leafy-green eyes turned hard and cold. “But that man is a worm, and he has brought this fate upon himself.”
I gave Ayen a single nod and then turned back to see the man had made quite a getaway already despite his frail-looking frame.
“Ayen, can you even make such a shot?” Shalanna asked. “I don’t doubt your skill, but will an arrow even make it that far?”
“Lucky for us all…” Ayen smirked, and he drew a single arrow from his quiver. It was different from the others with a longer shaft and paper-thin metal fletching. “Hezzig has crafted some special arrows just for this sort of occasion.”
Ayen stepped forward away from the group, nocked his arrow, and took aim. Then he adjusted his bow so the tip of his dwarf-crafted arrow pointed further into the sky, and he let it fly.
The entire village held their collective breaths as the arrow soared through the sky, and it slowly descended in a beautiful arc toward its flailing target. The arrow pierced silently into the back of Berk’s balding head, and he dropped to the ground in a heap as the thump of the arrow hitting its target rippled back to us over the distance.
The crowd cheered.
“An impressive shot,” Finnern said in an admiring tone, and he pursed his lips forward as if he was trying to hold back a smile.
“Thank you,” Ayen replied with a hugely smug grin.
“Good riddance,” Eirlina grumbled.
“Are we finally free of her?” the underfed boy, Sten, asked of no one in particular.
“Yes,” I answered, and I laid a gentle hand on the boy’s too-thin shoulder. “Gaelyra is gone, and so is her hold over you.”
Sten’s young face screwed up with a tumultuous mix of pain and relief, and a shuddering gasp ripped from his mouth.
“Thank you!” Sten nearly screamed the words with relief, and he sank to his bony knees in front of me as he sobbed. “Thank you.”
“What is your name, sir?” Mabel asked.
“This is our honorable and just leader, Lord Levi,” Finnern announced to the crowd.
“Lord Levi!” Seymour cheered.
The cheers of my name and tear-filled gratitude came from every direction of the crowd of villagers around me.
“Finally, the control Gaelyra had over us is gone,” a woman said.
“I must know,” Ayen said as the cheers started to fade. “Are you all totally free of her confusion now?”
“Oh, yes.” Edgar nodded so hard that his sandy-brown ponytail swung wildly. “It was as if she’d smothered us in a thick blanket. I could always understand that Gaelyra was the cause of all our hardships deep in my mind, but I could never bring the thoughts forward to speak or act on them.”
“Yes, it was like trying to run through hip-deep snow,” Viola, the ash-blonde woman who’d been in the stocks with Freesia, agreed.
“So you were all aware of it underneath it all?” I asked, and a more savage part of me longed to bring Gaelyra back to life so I could slit her throat again.
“Yes, my lord.” Viola nodded. “It was like a waking nightmare.”
“You have saved us all from our unending torture, good sir,” Seymour added.
“How did you do it?” Krispin the vegetable farmer wondered.
