Emissary- Of Gods and Monsters, page 11
part #1 of The Divine Monsters Series
The otherworldly sheen of the prince’s maroon armor captivated my view even as the wraith’s soul-screeching sound captivated my ears. His armor was so fine, so rare in material and craftsmanship, that the girls and I were completely outclassed. Yet the prince’s furrowed brow and terse mouth showed he too feared the battle ahead.
Perhaps, then, this endeavor had been a mistake.
“Your highness,” I said. “Allow us to assist against this foe.”
“Man,” the prince said, “as a subject of the crown it is your duty to lay down your life for your liege. I would not stand in the way of that responsibility, but nor will I shy from a parlor trick sent to dissuade me from my errand.”
“Parlor trick?” I asked. “Sire, do not underestimate this creature. It is responsible for more death and destruction than you know!”
“This illusion?” he said. “Ha!”
The monster’s face neared the prince’s own then, curling its dry, cracked lips away from a toothless mouth, and sucked in the air with the force of a thousand winds. The prince’s own breath escaped his lungs, strain crossing his face as he lacked the power to inhale again the forest’s sweet scent.
I stabbed at the billowing shape of that murderous shade with my pole, but I could not dissuade it from the attack. Jarah’s fists punched as if toward a cloud. Rikki held her pendant aloft and her dagger high, but the light from Redelia’s gift was faint against the aura of gathering darkness that strengthened the wraith from all sides.
The prince fell to his knees then, letting his broadsword drop from his grasp as the wraith sucked the life from his eyes.
“No,” I said, my weight resting against my staff as its pole-end dug into the loamy earth beneath. “We are no match after all.”
15
Another dark blur erupted forward, tackling the prince to the ground and breaking him free of the wraith’s death-hold. The vile shade rose and circled overhead, no doubt preparing a repeat assault once the tangle of bodies below made sense of itself.
The newcomer was clothed in black, and he scrambled to stand upright first so that his deep bow of respect would be fully seen.
“Triskin,” Jarah said, her voice redolent with contempt.
“Your highness,” Triskin said, ignoring Jarah for just that moment. “My blade is yours.” He produced a small knife then, a short serrated blade once tucked into the band of his pants.
“As is mine!” Rikki added, brandishing her dagger. The prince glanced only briefly at Triskin. It was Rikki that stole his eye.
“Beautiful creature,” the prince said. “How had I neglected you? Even amidst commotion, your features are a beacon of idyllic beauty.”
Rikki blushed at the compliment and I privately seethed. Every utterance from his pampered lips carried thrice the effect my own true words did. Was she blinded by his title, or was it the man himself that served as my competitor for Rikki’s devotion?
“My liege,” Triskin said, claiming the prince’s focus and mine. “Would it not be forward to request the merit of a minor reward when the foul creature is slain?”
The young royal rolled his eyes and reclaimed his sword from the ground. “Like every man, you seek gold or glory to spur you to civic duty.”
“No,” Triskin said, “I ask only for the cyclops. She is no subject of yours, she is a thing that might be owned with the proper decree.”
“Your highness,” I said, stepping hard before the prince so that my shoulder forced Triskin to retreat. “Jarah is my trusted companion, not livestock fit for barter.”
“Any reward that doesn’t lighten my pocket or empty my coffers is worth a thought,” the prince said, “but I won’t argue it until necessary. The pressing task is to erase this deadly phantom!” He reached down to reclaim his broadsword and resume a stance befitting a battle-trained knight. His blade was two inches wide, with a strip of black set within the metal that stretched from its sharpened tip to its wide base. His focus left us as he slashed at the air before him in practice.
“Victor,” Jarah said.
“It will not happen,” I replied. “So long as I live, you are a free woman.”
The wraith dipped down again, and Rikki met that creature with her horns and her blade. She charged right through it, its formless shape lacking any substance to collide with. Its descent complete, it began its wheezing, sucking assault once more, pulling at the air and the shadows until small leaves and moths breezed into its mouth and vanished amid the darkness inside.
Then, it reversed itself, spewing a forceful wind infused with black wisps that beat cold and harsh against our cheeks. The foul scent of rotten meat washed over us, nauseating and thick. I fought against the onslaught of forced air to block the prince’s body with my own, offering him a brief respite.
Despite the struggle to maintain, I kept my place at the prince’s fore. Triskin, by contrast, stepped away — his eyes diverting from the monster before us to the cyclops woman he hoped to claim.
He could not keep his wits together long enough to see the battle through, so deep ran his obsession with confiscating Jarah’s independence. I would not lose my women to this battle. I left the prince and slammed the flat-end of my staff into Triskin’s back.
“You’ll stay clear of Jarah Lin,” I said. “You are a man of lowest life and smallest character, not fit to touch the ground she flattens underfoot.”
“She is chattel,” he replied. “With half a face and half a brain, a beast to burden beneath whatever man holds title.”
He raised the back of his hand to swipe at the cyclopean woman, but she bent back in avoidance. Then he turned his attention toward me — just in time for my tightly wound fist to inflict a sturdy blow against his jaw. My knuckles sang with pain and joy as his head whipped in the opposite direction, a thin spray of blood fleeing his pernicious mouth.
He turned back and grinned, his teeth pink with diluted blood. “Is she so good to feck you would waste your moment with our prince defending her honor instead of your own? I’m glad to know she’s worth laboring for.”
Triskin’s knife did not glint or flash in warning here in the dark forest, darkened still by the vile ghost that shaded the very air we breathed. The tip of his blade caught me in the center chest, the force of his thrust pushing me off balance so that I stumbled a half-step in unwilling retreat.
I clung to my chest and breathed deeply, expecting a fit of coughs and a slurry of sanguine heat to flow from a fatal wound, but all my fingers sensed was a pinprick divot in my vest. My leathers! More sturdy than I had even hoped. They had done their duty, and now I must see to mine.
My hand came away from my chest clean, causing the self-satisfied grin on Triskin’s face to curl downward.
A few errant stones lifted from the wraith’s incessant effort, inciting the urge to shield our faces and protect our eyes. I resisted that urge, while Triskin did not. I took his momentary distraction as a boon and swiped out at him with my staff. His wrist cracked loudly from an impact that forced his puny knife to drop from his fingers and sink into a tuft of grass by his side.
“May your path to hell be swift and bright,” I said.
“We’ll see how swift and bright you are empty-handed,” he said, lunging toward me and gripping my pole with both hands. I pulled back, digging my heels into the topsoil and struggling to maintain my weapon.
The wraith dove and swirled as I grappled with Triskin at the clearing’s edge. Jarah ducked to avoid that phantom’s advances and the prince crouched small to reduce his profile, but the ghostly apparition came perilously nearer with each sweeping dive.
“Focus, men, or get us all killed!” the prince yelled, his arm across his face to block the debris given flight by the wraith’s assault. I ignored him. If death came for us this day, let it start with Triskin.
I held my staff across my body, resisting the pull of Triskin’s arms as he tried to divest me of my only armament. I realized that moment what would happen if I pressed forward and into his effort rather than strain against him.
I treated that walking-stick-turned-weapon as a boatman treats an oar against a flooded river current. I rowed in violent fashion, pulling my left arm sharply inward while thrusting the right out, using the force of Triskin’s own toward motion to beat him in the shoulder. When his muscles relented in confusion I pulled my right hand hard and brought the left end of my pole up to smack his face.
He stooped then, fumbling through the grass until he reclaimed his fallen blade. I jabbed him in the ribs before he was able to stand again. He winced, but assumed a fighting stance to prove his mind — small as it was — had been set to finish this fight one way or another.
When he stabbed out again, it was in a sweeping arc unintended to make contact. He just wanted to buy some space and some time, but I was no vendor of those. I swatted his arm away with my forceful rowing motion and thwacked him in the side once more.
He hesitated to lash out again. His knife twiddled in his hand, an unsteady wrist unable to keep up with the constant barrage of my polearm against his skin and bone. He began to retreat.
I chased him faster than he could fend me off or back away, my pent-up rage fueling a fighter’s instinct I had never tapped before. This man filled Jarah with defenselessness and fear. He had struck her and Rikki both, intending to do far worse and for far longer than I could even fathom.
He was a fetid carcass no decent soul could call home.
The grain of my staff’s wood grew pronounced as it soaked up errant blood from Triskin’s battered body until he turned his back and fell onto one knee. I stepped forward with one arm ready to loop his neck in restraint.
“Were—” he started.
The crook of my elbow caught him perfectly, choking his throat before empty words could escape it. Let him swallow those words, to rot in his own belly rather than foul the forest’s air with vulgar voice. He dug grimy fingernails into my exposed forearm, but I enjoyed the pain for what it represented: the last-ditch efforts of a villain in full possession of his own desperation.
I shoved the sharp end of my stick into the tender underside of his chin, eager to let his blood escape in a dark river down the shaft of my spear. Yet, I did not break his skin. I pressed the flat of my foot against his ass and kicked hard, forcing him to the ground before me.
“Jarah,” I said, tilting my head toward my shoulder without taking eyes off this fallen fiend. “He’s all yours.”
Triskin tried to scramble away, but Jarah was on him in an instant, gripping his ankles and dragging him toward her. Perhaps drawing inspiration from the dark wraith that encircled us, she moved her feet in small steps that turned into a slow spin, scraping the man’s face and chest against the rough earth.
Prince Taron and I backed away as Jarah spun, lifting Triskin’s body from the force of her rotational movement. Triskin yelled and flailed, but was powerless to free himself of her grip.
“Where is Rikki?” I yelled over the sound of the wraith’s enduring winds.
“Who?” the prince asked.
“The satyress you claim such fondness for,” I replied, my voice insistent and far too familiar.
The prince’s face tensed at my tone. “The creature scurried off, and took those implausibly powerful hooves with her, crushing stones beneath her with every stomp.”
“No,” I said, the fear of loss gripping my heart and narrowing my focus. “I had my eyes affixed to Triskin Flatts for only so short a spell. When—”
The wraith halted its swirling, then hung in the air above us to open its deathly maw, interrupting my speech with an unrelenting gasp a hundred times louder than the haunting echo of storm winds through vaulted caves. It sucked and sucked, drawing loose leaves and small rocks from the ground that entered its dark cavity never to be seen again. The prince bent his knee and sank his sword into the ground to keep from being drawn further into the endless abyss of the wraith’s core. I leaned heavily on my staff and prayed that my dear Rikki was safe.
Only Jarah maintained her balance without assistance, her muscled thighs and dense physique too sturdy for the wraith’s vacuum wind. Her blonde hair fanned around her as she spun, Triskin’s body extending outward with limp arms like a man already dead.
Then, as the wraith’s vehement breath drew inward with the power of twin typhoons, Jarah released Triskin into the air.
His body flailed in panic as he arced toward the upper limbs of nearby trees, but his trajectory took an unnatural swing on its return to the ground. He was pulled toward the wraith’s sucking mouth, the force of its inhaling gust too much for Triskin’s body to evade.
The phantom shade, with its gaping jaw and cracked, decrepit face, welcomed Triskin whole into the depths of its ethereal form, swallowing him in an act that cancelled out their mutual existence — him, a creature of warm blood and an extant soul, and it, a bottomless pit devoid of light and heat animated by dark power condensed into a deathly form.
As Triskin Flatts vanished from this life, the wraith’s cyclonic breath extinguished. Its black shape lightened over the course of mere seconds, becoming translucent and grey, until it was but a wispy nightmare from which our collective minds had finally awoken.
Jarah, the prince, and I shared a blink and a breath before our muscles relaxed into the reality of a threat dispelled.
“Thank you,” Jarah said, “for letting me be the one to send him off.”
“You are a strong woman that no man should cross,” I said. “I hope now you have found your strength. We shall need it to find Rikki.”
“I’m here,” the satyress said, nudging her dark nose past the blockade of a nearby tree. Her nostrils flared in rapid time, her large lips quivering in trepidation. “Is it done?”
“Sweet child of the forest,” I said. “I feared so deeply you had fled us for good.”
“I… got spooked,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought back upon the forest children we witnessed before and… an afterlife without my horns, or my tail… I just…”
“Say no more,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and pressing her face against my chest. Her horns braced my cheek as I leaned down toward her. When she looked up again, I kissed her deeply. Our connection filled me with comfort and relief.
I did, perhaps, cling to her body longer than either of us needed for our own reassurance. My eyes were not on the prince, but I wanted to ensure he witnessed the bond Rikki had already formed, and to ward him away from seeking to establish his own.
Rikki’s hands on my chest nudged gently until I broke from our embrace. “Does this mean,” she asked, “that the children of the forest are free and safe?”
“I fear not,” I said. “We have seen the bloody remains of the true monster’s prey, but this wraith leaves no trace of its victims behind. Our quarry’s tendency is to maim, but the wraith’s method was to erase.”
“This was no monster,” the prince said, standing and pacing toward the clearing’s edge. His horse, white and terrified, neighed loudly as it bucked against tethers that held it between two nearby trees.
“She dares to send an abnegation wraith at me?” he continued in an outrage, though his hand caressed his steed softly to calm the animal now that the fight had passed.
“She who?” I ventured.
“The so-called goddess of abnegation,” he replied. His fingers unfastened the horse’s reins in precise and nimble movement. “This was a conjured assassin meant to kill a prince.”
A sense of worry and regret creeped into the pit of my stomach. “Or perhaps,” I said, “we intervened when we should have let the wraith run its course. The forest suffers a monster that tears her children limb from limb. We were warned that a goddess fashioned a weapon against this scourge, though we did not expect one so dark and… animated.
“If this was the holy project of a goddess protector, our aggressions were wrong to divert its attention from that blessed task. We may have destroyed the one best weapon to lash out against the greatest challenge the forest has ever seen.”
“Each day in this realm brings a multitude of challenges, not only a single one,” Prince Taron said. “Whatever monster you speak of pales against the threat these false gods pose to our continued order.”
“False?” Jarah asked. “I have seen their power with my own eye.”
When the prince replied, it was to me instead of Jarah. “You take them at face value. Such is the problem with the small minds of the hinter-realm. No, these are no extensions of divine light, they are warlocks plain and simple. They lure common folk to their service, siphon their souls, and steal their fealty from the crown. Theirs is a black magic the king has finally agreed to stamp out, and these sorcerers refuse to slip away in quiet defeat. Hold my horse.”
The prince passed the reins of his mount to me and I followed after him, leading the animal through the trees with Rikki and Jarah behind.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I know,” the prince said. “Nor must you. The crown will not suffer these gods to challenge our rule, not any longer. Once we rid the land of them, there will be nothing to understand. Only unyielding fealty to my father the king.”
The prince stopped walking where a round patch of dirt lay brown and barren, surrounded by short grasses and clover that stopped where a dark shadow from above cast a perfect circle.
“Yuriana!” the prince yelled. There was no response.
“Yuriana!” he yelled again, drawing the name out longer this time. “Show yourself or I will burn this sliver of the world forest and leave you without a shadow to call your home!”
He glared at the darkness on the forest floor. After a moment of stillness, the shadows of nearby trees began to swirl toward that central circle, extending its radius and darkening its shade. Upward from the ground spiked a smoky cylinder whose outer wall waffled and shimmered like a dream we might dispel if we looked too close.
