Fractured Spirits Read online

  He screamed, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

  “We are past the wall, they must be demons. Didn’t you see them? She wanted to drink your blood!” Giblet let out a soft giggle. “You should have heard the screams of fear when we attacked.”

  Hayline realized he still held his weapons, the blades resting in the mud. He did all he could think of: he crossed the blades over his neck and carried them there ready to slit his own throat. “Leave me, or else I will do it right here.” His emotional outburst made it hard to understand his words. Snot ran down his chin while he cried.

  “You know you can’t do that. Remember, you said you would do anything to be free of your bindings. Now you’re stuck with me, forever.” Giblet’s voice mocked in his ears.

  “I mean it!” The fine edges bit into the soft flesh of his neck. His blood mixed with the victims’ that covered him.

  “Fine!” Giblet retook control. The sword points dropped onto the muddy path. Out of control, Hayline stood and turned to the nearest hut at the far side of the wall. “Remember, everyone on this side is a demon.” Hayline marched toward the nearest hut, both blades twisting in his hands as he warmed up his wrists, preparing for the workout that would soon come.

  Hayline watched in horror as he uncontrollably marched to the closest hut and kicked in the door. Screams reached his ears, while his dissenting sword arm hacked, killing every demon in sight. The unarmed civilians had little chance against the well-armed and armored fighter.

  The shrieks of the dying were accompanied by the hideous cackle of Giblet’s bloodlust. If Hayline had the control, he would have fallen on his sword, anything to stop the murderous rampage he committed at Giblet’s command.

  Hut after hut, he worked his way up the valley through the smaller and smaller farmsteads until there stood nothing left to slaughter. Even the farm animals were not safe from Giblet’s rage. By the time the killing was finished, nothing lived in the path of destruction save the harpies that began gathering to feast on the fallen families.

  Hayline marched farther up the valley, past any settlement or signs of civilization. His ragged breath sounded more like a wild rabid animal than a human, but he climbed higher, following a small stream that ran along his track.

  Eventually, Hayline spoke. His voice, hoarse from the exertion, came in gasps. “How could you?”

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Giblet giggled.

  Through the pain, Hayline climbed on. “They…”

  “They were demons, that’s all you need to tell yourself. We are on the far side of the wall, everyone on this side is a demon, and we can kill at will here.”

  Hayline quickened his pace. “They were… farmers… and children.” He would have shouted, but his breath grew short from the exertion.

  “No! They were demons! You need to listen to me, you need to always listen to me. I am the only one that keeps you safe! Not your father, or siblings, especially not that bitch of a witch! Me! I am the only one!” Giblet’s voice screamed in Hayline’s head. “You will die if not for me.”

  The more exerted Hayline became, the more he controlled his body. The simple act of walking higher into the mountains caused enough pain for him to take partial control over his actions. “You know… I can’t let you… do this.” He puffed.

  “You can’t do shit unless I let you. Just tell yourself everything past the wall is a demon, and all will be well.” Giblet’s voice became soothing, like it was when Hayline was a child. “You know I only want to keep you safe, but I have needs. I need the fear of their souls as they die a violent death. Don’t you love that feeling? I could feel your hard-on when your blade sliced through that soft tender flesh.”

  Hayline felt himself becoming aroused at the thought of the power he gained when Giblet controlled his actions. The power over life and death excited him, while making him feel the true monster he’d become. He picked the path as close to the edge as possible, the stream a distant memory at the bottom of the cliff. Ahead, he heard the growing thunder of a waterfall. “Is there nothing I can say to convince you to stop the killing?” Hayline pleaded with Giblet. “Please, let’s go back to the way it used to be, like when I was a child.”

  Giblet laughed. “Silly boy, you can never go back.”

  A tear rolled down Hayline’s cheek. He recognized there was nothing he could do to change Giblet’s mind. The roaring water approached on his left, his pace quickened. “You’re right about one thing,” Hayline said to himself and left the words hanging.

  Giblet gleefully asked, “What’s that, my boy?”

  “There are demons over the wall.” To that, Hayline walked over the cliff, throwing himself into the mist below. His, or Giblet’s voice if you prefer, screamed, “Nooo!” until the echoes drowned out the original scream. After, there was only the sound of the water crashing over the rocks below. No one witnessed Hayline’s final act of bravery.

  Chapter 3, Alerga:

  It was human, at least Alerga thought it was a human male. The caine had done an excellent job of pinning the man to the stone floor of the cave. By pure chance, he wasn’t crushed. Whatever the creature, it stank of the dead and unwashed. It might be better to kill it now than take it back, but he wore strange clothing and spoke with funny sounds. He might be something to play with. At the very least, he would carry the caine kits she came to collect, and the fur from the kill. If he became a nuisance, she could feed him to her kits. They needed the extra meat.

  The man was out. He might be down for a few hours. Her spare spear became a lever to pry him from under the kill. It would be impossible to move the dead animal off the top of him by herself. If she couldn’t free him, she might be forced to kill him here and not claim the prize.

  Saunders had fallen into a cleft in the rocks. The carcass over him only partially pinned him down. With a little work, Alerga freed her catch and promptly bound his arms, held like a chicken wing by the spare spear at the elbows. She left to begin the task of skinning the massive beast before the harpies and other scavengers arrived to claim their share.

  Deep in the cave, the cold air might slow them down, but they would surely come, like the snows that fell in the mountains. She wanted the skin more than the meat, but she would take everything the two could carry. Flint knife in hand, she stopped skinning to glance over and see a man staring her down. He spoke strings of incomprehensible words, which she didn’t really have the time to consider or learn. By the look of his boney legs that stuck out from under his dress, he might starve before she got him safely back to the settlements of her people. Rather than waste meat on him, she jumped to her pack and pulled out a copper cup. She filled it with blood from the beast and walked over to her catch.

  He shook his head, mouth clenched shut. For a moment, she almost killed him with the flint knife in her right hand. Instead, she punched him in the gut and poured the warm red liquid down his open mouth.

  He promptly threw it up.

  She didn’t have the time to lose on him. With the blade held to his neck, she motioned for him to drink. He managed to swallow the next mouthful and kept the majority of it down. There was no more free time. The longer they stayed in the cave, the greater the chance a larger predator would stumble upon the pair.

  When the creature died, it jammed itself into the crack, she would not be able to haul it out, no matter how much muscle was there to help. She skinned what she could and left the rest to rot. With a flick of her wrist, she slit the creature’s belly open. Her hand crammed deep into the cavity, and she twisted a significant portion of the liver out. Still warm with blood, she bit off a mouthful and started to chew. The male barely handled the blood, she didn’t want to waste a single bite of her prized organ on the puny semblance of a man.

  A swift kick from Alerga launched the man scrambling to his feet. He growled more words that sounded like, “Damn it, just ask.” However, the sounds held no meaning for her.

  She tried to mimic the sounds, “Damn it,” which she beg
an chanting while she worked. She prodded him with her spear to get him moving toward the basket rig she’d set up with the kits nestled inside.

  He shook his head. Maybe she wasn’t using the words correctly.

  At the stone where she needed him to sit, she slapped the flat of the rock with her spear end and then his butt and grumbled, “Damn it,” as best she could. The sounds coming from her mouth nearly made her laugh.

  When he didn’t sit, she pushed him in the chest with the point. A slight amount of blood painted his chest where she forced him. My, he is thin-skinned.

  With him sitting, she strapped the kits and the portion of the caine skin she had salvaged on his back. He looked overloaded, but better for him to carry the weight in case they were attacked.

  A quick scan of the sky revealed the harpies were starting to gather. They would draw in more scavengers to the carcass. If they didn’t escape soon, the chances of them spending the night in the cave grew considerably. “Damn it,” she said while motioning with the spear for him to start climbing.

  She began to like the sound of her voice when using the words. Maybe she should learn more. She wasn’t sure what he was saying. The man spoke with such variation to his voice, it almost sounded musical.

  He made it three steps before he fell face first into the rocks. With his arms tied behind his back, there was little to break his fall, save his face.

  It looked painful.

  “Damn it!” the man cried out.

  Alerga laughed at the sight, even if time grew short.

  The male creature let loose such a string of words. She’d never heard such a colorful use of language. She was certain most of them were curses or cries of magic cast upon her and her tribe, but the male showed little magic skill or power of any kind.

  She rushed to inspect the precious cargo. The kits inside the basket were safe. That was her only concern. Once she discovered they comfortably rode out the collision with the earth, she helped the man to his knees. He promptly spit out the words, “Fuck you,” through his bloodied teeth. Now the blood ran from his nose, over his chest. With a glance, she understood the fall had broken his nose. The twin black eyes formed quickly.

  She had noticed the damage to his one leg long ago. He wasn’t going to be able to keep up. It might be better to kill him here than waste any more time on the thing.

  She pulled her flint knife. “Damn it, fuck you,” she tried to say as best as possible, the knife held ready to strike.

  He did the strangest thing. Before she struck him down, he closed his big brown eyes and bared his neck, ready to die. He moved like a kit. When they finally submitted to her power as the pack leader, they would close their eyes and roll their head back, offering their throat to her.

  In that instant, she decided not to kill him but to spare his life. Weak and damaged as he was, she could run him through without warning. She used the blade and cut the bonds that bound his arms, pulling the spear from behind his back. With free hands, he had a chance to climb out of the cave before the creatures struck. If she managed to break him, he might make an excellent addition to her stable of caines, though she doubted he would ever be as loyal as a kit. She tried something different, “Fuck you.” She slapped him on the ass to move him up the narrow path between the rocks.

  With a huge breath of air, he emptied the blood and spit from his mouth onto the stones at his feet. Hands now free, he was able to brace his weight on the trip out of the cave, giving him much more stable footing. The blood flowing from his nose dripped a trail any child could follow. She would stop the bleeding once they cleared the mouth of the cavern.

  Overhead, the harpies called to one another, daring the first to swoop in and risk the fresh kill. Once the first tasted the meat and didn’t die, others would join in seconds. Alerga and her prisoner crested the hill and made it into the fresh air before the first harpy landed.

  Free of the cave, she quickened her captive’s pace. The first call from a great gatka echoed through the chilled air that filled the deep canyon walls. It wouldn’t be long before the creatures arrived to crack the bones and reach the rich marrow inside. Within a few hours, little would remain of the caine’s body except for the few bits that couldn’t be digested. That would be spread about the mountains in the droppings of the scavengers.

  In her bones, she felt the weather about to turn ugly. It would snow before morning. The wind had shifted from the south, blowing the moisture high into the mountains. This was odd for this time of the year—the storms usually came much later—but she planned to be in the safety of the stronghold long before the snows came down to fill the canyons.

 

  Saunders’s head hurt, that was an understatement. If his head had somehow been cracked open and filled with worms that slowly devoured his brain, it might hurt more, but he doubted it. His captor behaved like an animal. He was confident she would kill him if he made a mistake. He forced himself to not make mistakes, but it was hard, given how tired and cold his body felt.

  Except for the captivity, he found himself ecstatic to escape the cave and venture into the fresh air, even if the frosty air in this part of the land hurt to the bone. The exertion of carrying the load helped to keep him warm, but the added weight made walking difficult. Once the sound of the monsters’ cries reached his ears, he discovered added energy to pick up his pace to outdistance the sound, or at least the beast that made the terrifying cry.

  At the moment, he didn’t care where the woman led him, as long as it offered warmth and safety, more than the open trail they now traveled. For a fleeting instant, he thought, somehow, he’d traveled through the underground and exited in a magical place, where few from his city had ever visited. He wouldn’t be far from the truth, but his city stood closer than he ever would have imagined.

  The woman pushed him, to the point of collapse, as he thought he could go no farther. She might kill him and leave his body where it lay. She made more strange noises foreign to his ears and added one of the more colorful curse words she copied from him and let him rest. She thrust a slice of the raw liver into his mouth and watched as he ate all of it. Her wicked looking blade ready to strike if he spat it out or wasted any portion of it. More than a few times during the journey, he was sure he would die when he stumbled and she cursed him. Her spear or blade was always at hand to dispatch him with a single blow.

  Few trees grew in this part of the canyons, more gray and black stone than anything. Along the path, a few caves were visible. Saunders worried what horrors might lurk in their shadows. Death seemed at hand behind every corner in this land.

  She did allow several breaks in the pair’s trek. During one of the stops, Saunders pointed at his chest and said, “Saunders.”

  The young woman pointed at her chest and said something that sounded like “Alegria,” then promptly pointed at Saunders and said, “Fuck you.” To which, she laughed loudly.

  He wasn’t sure if she understood the words’ meanings. Next, she pointed off to a distant colossal opening in a cliff face and mumbled more incomprehensible words. Saunders didn’t think it mattered much what she said, at that point he understood he truly was fucked.

  Chapter 4, Hope Shoemaker:

  It seemed bad news would travel the full journey before it left the lips of the first speaker. Hope never understood that old saying before today.

  It had been raining now for two days. The moisture in the air went a long way to dampen the city’s spirits. Before the court convened, she received the initial reports of the slaughter on the far border of Perdition, and the reports continued to trickle in. She was tempted to ride out and inspect the area for herself, but she knew the people in the city would need her to be present and strong. Rumors of all shapes and sizes would be filling the streets soon. Better to stay here and put people’s minds at ease. There was little she could do in the field. It would be better if she remained in the keep and managed the events as they arose.

  Her decision was made be
fore she entered the council chamber. There on the platform sat her father’s and mother’s thrones. Her chair as regent had been moved to the left of her father’s seat, the largest and real power of Perdition. She wanted to sit in that chair so badly, but it wouldn’t be prudent. The city wasn’t ready for a queen, even if they already had one. It would take time to sway public opinion to her side.

  Before she sat down, she scanned the audience for her fiancé and half-brother, Meyers. He should be there giving moral support at least. The marriage announced, and arrangements well underway, it wouldn’t be long before she might need to share a little power with him… if he survived long enough.

  “Have you heard of the attack? What are you going to do to protect the city?” a nameless face asked from the gathering before she sat down.

  “Are we in danger?”

  “We need to protect the city!”

  This grew out of control quickly. The mob shouted questions at her as she sat. It would be imprudent to kill them for their insolence, so she would need to find another way.

  She sat, silent, letting the crowd throw their baseless questions at her. She smiled, showing her strength over the masses.

  Meyers’s mother slipped in the side door, waiting quietly for her to speak, and there following close behind stood Hope’s younger sister Chastity. That was a new development—she would need to monitor that relationship before it became a danger to her position.

  Joti, the bodyguard of her younger brother Ollie, slipped in the back, followed closely by Meyers. Odd they should be standing so close, whispering to one another. Did they just giggle at such an important and solemn meeting?

  It was time to stop the chaos, the crowd had become unruly. Time to show the normals what she practiced for so long. She closed her eyes and concentrated, mumbling a long-forgotten incantation she had discovered in a secret tome obtained under less than reputable circumstances. The lights began to dim.