Fractured Dreams Read online

  That was, until she heard the unholy scream come from the creatures. They hunted, and it would only be a matter of time before the hoard found their way to the city. After that, all bets would be off. The cliff face would offer little protection from the creatures that would rain down on the city below.

  Rachel instinctively reached out to pet the horse’s jaw. “It might be a better idea for us to keep running tomorrow.” She reached up and tickled the animal’s ear. “Better for us to run away and fight another day, right?”

  “I’m curious, if you could escape, where would you go?” a deep male voice boomed from behind her.

  Rachel spun her sword in her hand in an instant. There was no way a man snuck up on her. All the doors and windows she double-checked to make sure they were barred tight, and yet he somehow made it to the center of the room and stood, one hand resting on the bar.

  The man behind the bar was huge. His bright red hair was hard to miss, and his silver staff was held at his side in the crook of his arm. The staff looked just like Lane’s, but she knew that weapon was still at the dojo, with Lane.

  “Anywhere but here.” Rachel stood, her legs parted, ready to defend herself.

  “I’m afraid that would do little good. The world has become out of balance. Demons walk the land of men now. This is going to grow much worse before it gets better.” The man’s voice sounded deep in his chest, like if he let out a yell, he could have blown Rachel against the wall with the force of his voice alone. This man seemed so strong, she was drawn to his side with every word he spoke.

  “Then I should stay here and die?” Rachel relaxed a little. For some reason she felt her weapon would have little effect on this man who stood behind the bar.

  “The brave one dies once; a coward dies a thousand times.” His eyes never left her. She felt them judging her as he spoke nonsense. “Why do you think you will die?”

  “You didn’t see them attack the training camp. The outer wall never even slowed them down. We barely got out alive.”

  “If a wall did little to stop them, what did work?”

  Rachel hadn’t thought about that. Once they blocked the doors, the survivors were able to wait out the attack until the sun rose. The sun didn’t even need to be up—it had been overcast—yet the monsters retreated from the daylight. “The torches did little to slow them down, but it seems they fear the sun. If we could harness the sun as a weapon, maybe we could beat them off.”

  “And to kill them?”

  Rachel thought a moment. She knew a few of the monsters fell during the battle, but their outer scales turned arrows away. The riders were easier to take out, but the creatures they rode were so fast. “We need to separate the riders from the scaled creatures.”

  “Sounds like the start of a plan…” The redheaded man watched her as she lowered her sword. “I think it is time for you to sleep now.” His booming voice became soft-spoken, and Rachel found it hard to keep her eyes open.

  “I think I need to sleep now.” She slumped her body against the wall and let gravity take her to the floor.

  She woke with a start. The man was nowhere in sight. It only took her a moment to check the doors and windows to find they were still barred from the inside.

  She slept until first light. The clouds still hung heavy over the farmland outside, but she could see a lighter gray on the east horizon. “Come on, horse. Let’s see if we can find any survivors out there. Then we need to come back and get ready for tonight. If the monsters didn’t come last night, they will surely come tonight.”

  The horse resisted leaving the comfort and safety that the four walls of the tavern provided, but Rachel coaxed the animal out with a slap on the ass. She jumped in the saddle quickly, as she knew it was easier to control the animal from the back more so with the reins. Now she just needed to stay on. She was not what a person would consider a mounted fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Her second foot barely in the stirrup, the horse took off at a brisk canter.

  Rachel needed to hold on to the saddle to keep from falling off, but before the creature reached the first destroyed farmstead, she learned better to control the animal. Not good enough to fight but well enough to keep from falling off if the animal got spooked.

  The horse was skittish this morning. Every noise and movement caused its head to twitch like the animal would bolt. The farther afield Rachel rode, the more damage she found.

  Every building had been set to the torch. She was no farmer, but the crops looked mostly ruined, trampled into the ground. The mud of the field made counting of attackers impossible. The prints mushed into a single mass of mud and vegetation.

  Still the clouds rained on her. If not for the rain, the fires from the burning buildings might have caught the fields on fire and ravaged the land even more.

  From a distance, she spotted the once-white walls of the dojo, turned black by fire. Her heart sank. She knew it was too late, that everyone in the house and training building must be dead. There was no way Lane could have survived the attack. However, she came this far, so Rachel forced herself to travel the last few hundred paces to be certain. She had found the wounded Lane buried under a burning building before. There remained a chance she might still find him alive.

  The horse slowed. Rachel assumed it knew his home and sensed the death that had been brought to his safe stable. Rachel felt the same. She never felt particularly safe in the barracks of the fighters, but she didn’t think the building would ever fall from the outside.

  The creatures the monsters rode ignored the walls of the building and attacked everyone not protected inside the building. Now that building lay in ruin, the three stories fallen into a heap of smoldering rubble.

  Rachel slid off the back of the mount and tied the reins to the ring at the front gate section that still hung on its hinges. The other lay on the ground. She pulled her sword and stepped into the walled courtyard.

  Once inside, the understanding came quickly, she’d wasted her time. Lane, or someone, went to great lengths to make sure the building had been destroyed. Not only the main house was burnt to the ground, but the rooms built into the walls had collapsed as well.

  They must have used some accelerant to make the fire spread in the rain. That was when she stumbled on an empty bottle that had been tossed into the sand yard of the training pit. She picked it up and at once noticed the sweet smell of alcohol from the dregs left in the bottom of the glass bottle.

  She tipped it up and tasted the powerful drink on the tip of her tongue. “I hope you drank some of it before the attack. This must have been a great bottle of hooch,” Rachel said to herself. She tossed the bottle back into the yard and marched back to the gate and the waiting horse.

  Reins in hand, she looked in the four directions. Cliffside lay to the south. There was nothing left to stop the monsters between the mountains to the north and the small city.

  Rachel scanned east and west. She spotted nothing but smoke from the smoldering fires that lay in either direction. With the horse, she might be able to reach safety before the monsters attacked. She might be able to outrun them when they struck tonight.

  She shook her head. She was a fighter. It was not in her mind or body to run from a fight, no matter the odds. It was time for her to return to Cliffside and tell the magistrate what she learned and start preparing the city for the attack she was certain would happen tonight.

  No walls would stop these monsters, but maybe a solid roof and door would slow them down. She needed to work with a smith. As a child, Rachel would watch in awe as a hare would escape her dogs in a patch of briars. The spines would keep the dogs from eating the rabbits that made their nest deep inside. She had an idea for a weapon that might help even the odds, but they would need to hurry to make them in time. The twin moons would rise before she knew it. Time was not a commodity they held in abundance.

  Chapter 3, Kanika:

  The Phoenix fled Freeport as soon as Kanika returned to the ship. A foul stench of
magic hung over the port and the hidden city under the rock, and Kanika wanted nothing to do with the people who remained behind.

  Her fears concerning Captain Talen became abundantly clear. The first chance he had to raise himself at the cost of others, he took the leap. Kanika was certain he would have moved to kill her and any who remained that stood against his plans.

  Word spread fast: the fleet was to move to the first shard north of Freeport. Funny thing, Kanika didn’t know the area well enough to make that call, but the captains and officers who walked out with her spread the word.

  She was now the de facto leader of a growing fleet. The only problem, she was uncertain of the size of her power or who helped her obtain it. It was a certainty magic helped to create the situation she took advantage of.

  There might have been magical influence over the men and women who decided to follow her. She did not remember all of her impassioned speech that drew so many over to her way of thinking. Were the words even hers?

  Something must have been in the air… or the wine and ale. Some magical influence created the atmosphere for her success.

  Now the ship was safely underway. Lizzie sat with her in her cabin. Bran, her first officer, took the helm of the Black Death and knew where the ship needed to go. It was easy enough to fall in with the others who went to the same place. Kanika’s navigator and bosun took charge of bringing the ship safely into the harbor.

  Kanika needed time to think. This all happened so fast, too fast for her mind to wrap around.

  “I told you, your aura was ready for something to happen. You are gifted, you are touched by the gods,” Lizzie mumbled. She paced the cabin deck, her feet silent on the carpeted floor.

  Kanika glanced out the rear window of her cabin and shook her head. “I can’t go before the other captains and claim to be touched by the gods. They will cut me down where I stand and feed my pieces to the fish.” She had thought of no plan. How would she explain that to the cutthroat women and men that followed her?

  “If they try, I will call a curse down on them from Anshika. They will wither on the vine and die… Their blood will run from their eyes and every other hole of their bodies…” Lizzie kept describing the various curses she would call upon the men and women if they moved against her friend. That was all well and good, but Kanika would still be bait.

  “I would rather not curse the captains if we don’t need to…” Kanika watched as the minor moon broke the surface of the water. It would only be visible for a short time, between the water and the clouds that became a permanent fixture of the skies overhead. The rain from the south hadn’t let up for several days. Kanika was worried it might never let up now.

  “It would be best if you did not curse our allies the first day.” A strange woman’s voice spoke in the dark of the stateroom. Kanika spun around, while her sword of leadership sprang into her hand. She stood ready to attack the intruder. “Put down your weapon, it will do no good,” the voice continued and gave a soft giggle at the end.

  The hairs raised on the back of Kanika’s neck. She searched the room and found no one. Lizzie prostrated herself on the floor. “Get up.” Kanika moved a step toward her friend and gave her a kick with her foot. Her recurved blade still held at the ready.

  Lizzie whimpered, “Holy mother, forgive me. Please forgive the captain, she knows not who she addresses.”

  “The witch knows who I am. She fears me… as she should.” The voice blew in from the dark corners of the room.

  “You are now going to tell me you’re Anshika, goddess of the moons and magic. Bullshit, I would sooner believe you were your crazy sister Sinead. You have no power here. Show yourself if you are truly a god.” To Kanika’s ears she sounded brave, but she could feel the power in the room, her innards felt like water, and she was concerned she might lose her bowels at any moment. Some powerful creature was within her presence, and she couldn’t do much more than hold her sword at the ready to defend against an attack that hadn’t come yet.

  “If the weapon makes you feel safe, keep it. I don’t fear your mortal weapons,” Anshika said.

  “Goddess, please, she knows not what she does,” Lizzie begged from the floor, not raising her head.

  “Yes, she does.” Kanika forced herself to move forward slightly, her weapon still at the ready. “I see no goddess. I only hear a disembodied voice that could be a stowaway on my ship, playing a trick on both of us.”

  The light in the room flashed. She held her ground, even when the voice shouted, “I’m no stowaway. I am Anshika, goddess of magic and the moons. You would do well to respect that.”

  Kanika couldn’t see now. The flash had blinded her, she hoped only for the moment. “Fine, you have some magic. Why are you here? You could have helped us when we were prisoners on this ship. You could have made yourself known when we were being raped repeatedly. You could have done something then, but now you are here to give us your help. Sorry if I don’t feel like bowing to your worshipness.” Kanika was surprised her heart held so much anger for the gods. She’d never really thought about it, but they paid so little attention to her and her plight, she cared little for what they might have to tell her.

  Lizzie blubbered something from the floor, but Kanika was too angry to hear her words. If she thought it would do any good, she might have attacked the unseen goddess, but the creature was wise enough to stay hidden.

  “The world is out of balance. Dark forces have risen from the depths of the earth and will soon overrun humankind. You will need to settle old scores and make new allegiances to survive the coming storm. The southern winds and the rains are only the beginning. Soon the skies will open, and fire will fall from the heavens, monsters and demons will flow from the mountain valleys. Nowhere will be safe on the shards or cracks. You must make the others understand this is only the beginning of the pain that is to come.”

  Kanika lowered her sword. She stood blind in the center of the room. With no hope of attacking her unseen assailant, she knew the time came for her to listen. “This all sounds wonderful, but I need something to tell the captains, unless you are going to come and address the men and women of the fleet.”

  “You will need to make contact with the invaders from the south. They are not your true enemies. You will need to turn your attention to the shores of Perdition. From there, the hordes of the underworld are being woken, and they will crawl out from the faults of the earth. Already they wake and have attacked weaker forces on the land. This coming tide will be washed in blood.”

  Kanika started to regain her sight. She could see the shape of a woman float before her. It looked like her feet were several hand-widths above the floor. If she wasn’t a god, she was a powerful mage or a talented charlatan. “If things are so dire, why don’t the gods simply smite the rulers of Perdition?” Kanika could not let it go. “I would think the rulers of Zar should be attended to first.”

  “Zar is out of the picture. Evil forces have already taken out that ruling family, along with most of the population. Soon the shard will be overrun by death from the old ones. You must understand this battle will not be fought between the old and new gods. The ruler of Perdition aligned with the demons long ago. She is protected by their forces, now she has gained the power to offer her people up for possession wholesale. Once that happens… the hells will return to the surface.”

  Kanika didn’t like the sound of that. “I will do what I can.” She shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she feared more: the fact a god came to warn her of impending doom to the whole land or the fact that a creature that claimed to be a god was helpless to stop the evil that came.

  One thing that struck Kanika for certain, she doubted the gods would be of any help in this fight. Either they had lost their power or they never truly had the power to begin with. They stood as straw men ready to be knocked down during the first conflict.

  Anshika reached out and stroked her face. Kanika felt the warmth of energy come from the touch. Another flash of li
ght came, but she was able to close her eyes before she came away blinded.

  It took some time before she and Lizzie regained some semblance of coherent thought. Kanika was first to move. She worked her way to the edge of her bed and sat down. “She is gone now, you can get up.” She tapped Lizzie’s arm with her toe.

  Kanika didn’t know what to think of the events of the past few moments. It wasn’t every day she got a personal audience from a god, complete with a warning about the end of the world and instructions on how to avoid it. It seemed the realm of the gods had just declared war on the shard of Perdition. Now all she needed to do was convince her fellow captains that Zar was not the threat, but a city that for the most part aligned with the slavers was the place the threat came from. This was going to be a hard sell.

  As soon as they reached the location, she would need to call a parley with the other captains and plan their next steps. In the meantime, she needed to think of an argument that would convince the free captains that Zar was no threat. That they needed to contact the invaders from the south and turn north to bring all forces to the shores of Perdition.

  While she was at it, she might go ahead and lasso the twin moons and put them in her pockets for night-lights.

  “I’m sorry, but I found myself frozen at the sound of her voice.” Lizzie worked her way up to the bed and sat next to Kanika.

  The captain shrugged. She was sure it wasn’t every day a witch came face to face with her god. “You’re certain it was Anshika?” Kanika asked.

  Lizzie nodded. “During training, we would pray before her statue until she came to us. It was the only way to become a priestess of Anshika. She came to me after three days and nights of constant prayer. That was when I learned of you and the role you would play in the future of this land. Now she has come to you and told you the same thing before my eyes. What else am I supposed to think?”