The Crimson Hunters Read online

  The monster sent the old mercenary flying like his comrades before. He landed upon his head beside Derian with a horrific crack, and Derian knew Lorgan would never get up again. He lay motionless, but his eyes blinked rapidly as though struggling to understand this impossible angle his neck found itself at. A little trickle of blood came out of his mouth, and he began to slip from life.

  “NO!” screamed Kesta, who fell upon the monster in maddening grief. She struck it through skin and muscle several times, and it spun towards her. The world became still, and for a moment it didn’t fight back. Instead, it looked upon the warrior of black as though it was something to study and not fear. Kesta wailed as she swung with her sword, plunging deep inside and drawing much blood, yet it did not fall to her wrath.

  “Leap away!” Derian cried, preparing his attack, but as with Lorgan before, Kesta was deaf to typical tactics through a haze of anguish.

  It horrified Derian to see a faded blue sheen cover the monster. The wounds it suffered began healing in front of his eyes. He felt the burning touch of fire in the air, and as though standing before a charging carriage with no route to escape, he knew this was the end.

  “You thurken piece of–”

  The monster took hold and lifted Kesta in the air above its head. She was fierce, she was brave, and she wasn’t a very good mercenary at all. She continued to stab with all the hatred she could muster, but it twisted her like a small bundle of kindling. Derian heard the ripping snap as it broke her in two. She didn’t scream, the pain took her consciousness, and it flung her aside like a child’s toy before spinning around and charging the last standing Crimson Hunter.

  The ground shook, and he thought he’d try to escape, but a terrible surge of hate engulfed him and kept him in his place. His limbs felt impossibly light as though controlled by thought alone. He desired to raise his sword, and he did so without feeling the action. In that moment, he knew his mind was abandoning him when he needed it most.

  He thought he’d be terrified at the end of his life, but he was only angry. Not for dying, that didn’t matter. He was angry that he couldn’t kill the demon and raise its decapitated head above his own in triumph. The beast took him, and he thrust his sword towards his vanquisher.

  It wasn’t an impressive strike, but his wrist was stiff and straight; his blade’s pointy tip reassuring. He plunged the tip through the demon’s neck and as he did, he shattered the dazzlingly beautiful amulet for good measure.

  The world exploded in a pulse of dark fire and blue lightning. He felt his body rip and separate, and as his eyes burned away, his last vision was watching his limbs tear free and take flight—and with it the glorious anger. He spun in fire, blood, and pain, and the world went dark as Derian died in a wretched dell, in a wretched country, in the wretched rain.

  4

  After the Dark

  Birth.

  Birth was painful, terrifying, and terminally unescapable. She knew this because she’d been through it all before and thought it a nasty affliction. At least with traditional birth, there was a watchful midwife and a caring mother waiting with open arms and warmer hands, but as this familiar moment enveloped her, Seren felt no comforting call.

  As bad as birth was, a second birth was worse—though she didn’t know how she knew this. She knew she must learn to think like humans again.

  Humans had many thoughts, didn’t they? Flying through her mind like flutterbyes. Close yet elusive. Also pretty. She hadn’t thought like a human in so very long. How long? Well, she didn’t know. She also didn’t know how she knew what a flutterbye was, but knowing was delightful.

  One of her first thoughts was this world is bright. Her eyes burned like the sun, and though she tried to cover them and hide again in the eternal darkness, she did not cower, for she knew her eyes would overcome this horror. Also, she had no hands yet, only molten eyes. The world spun, and she felt its embrace. From her stinging eyes flowed tears of agony, release. Oh, she had old thoughts, but they forsook her and flittered away from where they came. Like a particular hissect. Would they return? He said they would.

  “He said I would forget,” she whispered, and her voice was unnatural and croaky as though she hadn’t wet her throat in a thousand years. That wasn’t true. It was more like twenty. What was a year anyway? She felt the world’s winds upon her skin as it formed around her bones, and the pain was deliciously maddening.

  She felt her tongue and it was strange. Slithering. Her burning eyes floated in the air and then they became surrounded by muscle, ligament, blood and bone. A head, hair, a face, grimaced in torment. A body clenched in a demon’s wrath, broken and torn. She felt herself as she would be, and she felt the blissful cold all around her as though emerging from her mother’s belly into a freezing life of struggle, pain, sustenance, and death—and she loved it.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to her master, and it hurt more, and it was wonderful, and she tried to thank him again but he was gone; gone longer than she could understand. Just like he said he’d be.

  I’ll see you on the other side.

  Her knees became whole and they buckled beneath her as though she was a witch of a thousand years. Further thoughts slipped from her mind replaced by the wonderful new.

  Imprisoned. Mother. Demon. Dark One.

  “Hunting.”

  She fell to the ground, blind to the dreadful burning of day. She wept majestically and manically like babies when tasting the world for the first time. For the second time.

  The ground was wet; she remembered wet, and other things, and she wept in joy a little more. There had been no wet where she had been. Her thoughts and understandings from the darkness slipped away as thoughts of this new world replaced them. How did she remember what wet was?

  She couldn’t sense him anymore now. She couldn’t even remember who he was, apart from his fierceness, his love, his kindness, and his eternal hope.

  Like a father.

  She felt cold, her hands were wet and muddy, and she felt happier than she’d ever felt in her life. Her first life. Her eyes blinked and focussed, and this too brought a fresh wonder. She was on her hands and knees; they were attached to the rest of a woman’s glorious body, and she was free. Free to bring doom to them all. She took breaths and realised the delirium of a deep breath and the world around Seren focussed completely. Everything was sharper—as sharp as a tormentor’s wicked knife—and her eyes tried to focus upon the grassy strands interspersed between the muddy patches in her vision.

  “Where am I?”

  She was alone, and it was beautiful. The world focussed, and a half-life of blurred darkness gave way to the delicious brightness of day. She was Seren, and she was alive after years of imprisonment, and she knew little else. It would return, her mind, when the moment had passed. When she’d become born fully. Any wonderful moment now.

  She stood up, and this time it was her cold, muddy feet which betrayed her, and she fell again with a wonderful plop all over the wet, muddy ground. To be alive was a precious gift, and she cherished it in these first few moments, for though she couldn’t quite understand why, she knew her fleeting life would be entrenched in blood, horror, and misery. She knew this because he’d shown her what was coming. For now, she was happy because it was raining. Yes. Raining started the wet. Brilliant.

  It was raining, and she was naked, and she was free.

  She rose once again as the last memories of her tainted imprisonment slipped away completely, and she cried aloud in an ecstatic wailing bray of liberty. Her eyes became her own, and though they hurt with such dreary bright light all around her, she soaked up what vision she could. She felt the world come alive in honour of her birth, for he had enchanted this moment. Made her heal to life. Made everything heal to life. At least, for a while.

  Maybe not the vector demon though?

  A self-healing vector demon would be a terrible thing. Or a wondrous thing. She couldn’t remember at all. She smelled the richness in the bitter-col
d air, and she knew that fragrance. Around her stood a forest of grey, and she thought it beautiful. She stretched her arms out wide and spun around in a circle giggling. Yes, to dance was a human thing of such merriment, and she remembered that vividly. She wondered what else she would remember as the moments passed. She’d need to remember the art of killing. What a strange thought, and how strange that it reassured her.

  She could hear the raindrops all around her, and they felt larger than she’d remembered. It didn’t matter, for she was awestruck by the simple wonder of it. She opened her eyes against the wind, sting, light, and rain, and she looked upon the glorious dell.

  At her feet were countless tufts of green long grass, wilted and scorched by her birth. The scarring on the ground spread out fifty feet in a great arc, and she thought this another reason to dance in appreciation, though she couldn’t be certain why. Just in case, she spun around in a delicate pirouette and caught her foot on a jagged rock. She remembered pain. Sharp, unavoidable, and a reminder that a breath was a gift. She felt a gash in her foot, and then she felt it disappear as the last of his enchantment fizzled out and disappeared into the dark eternity. And then she saw the bodies.

  No longer alone at all. They were human creatures like her own body of flesh, and all of them were spread out around her. All of them ambling as though being born like herself.

  She saw the female, lying in the grass, and she watched her rise, just as she had only a few moments before. The dark-skinned woman had unsettling hair. Long and thick and decorated in beads. Like a beast from the dark, her eyes were tragic. She would be no threat. Nor would the young man lying in the grass be. He said something, but she lost his words in her hearing. In her understanding. She was not fully born at all. It would appear.

  He spoke again swiftly, and she wondered would they be friends?

  It was the tall figure with shield and sword which shook her entirely, and she sensed sadness. He also spoke, and slowly the words formed in her mind, and she began to remember the act of coherent speech. She tried to listen, but her body carried her around the glade as she took enjoyment from everything she happened upon. Until she came to the last human.

  She liked him most of all. Him and his bow and arrow. She felt her new heart already skip a beat. For she sensed something in him. Something near yet far away.

  She could sense his essence, she could feel his vitality, she could see his terrified eyes, and she thought them pleasing. Did she like to instil fear? She knew fear was a potent source of vigour. Oh, she had an overwhelming desire to leap upon him too. For many years denied such primal thoughts flooded through her frantically happy mind.

  Mating is what humans do?

  She tried to smile. She walked to him, and with every step, the world grew loud and vibrant, and Seren gorged herself upon it—as a drunkard did after a barrel of ale and no evening supper. How did she know this? It didn’t matter. What mattered was walking to the boy and ripping his clothing free so he could be naked like her, and then they could be close.

  She wanted to spin around and give a cry of joy for her birth. She very well might have, but suddenly, an ache stirred in her stomach and thrust itself outwards—like a creature with jagged teeth, long claws, and a jagged tail. She imagined it tearing and ripping from deep below, out through her newly formed muscles and skin. She screamed like a beast in a trap.

  She could feel the mark upon her skin. A demonic tattoo of knowing, and she tried to remember what he’d said of it. Painted in goldstone, knitted into her new skin by a monster of a purest divine wrath, she carried the mark, and she carried it openly. It ruined her and elevated her all at the same time. So, she did what new-borns did once delivered. She screamed deafeningly so the world would know her pain better.

  And the beautiful young man shot her in the face with an arrow.

  5

  Killing the Girl

  Derian woke from the explosion and found himself surprised he was capable of an accomplishment like waking from an explosion. The world around him was hazy, and he found himself far from where he’d battled the monster. Had it thrown him?

  His body felt a ruin, but not as bad as his soul. He felt a misery, shared only by those who’d survived the desperation of battle, and in the dreaded hush of its aftermath, he recalled that all his comrades were slain.

  Torn, snapped, ripped.

  The Crimson Hunters were disbanded in blood, pain, and violence. All of them dead, and he was alone.

  How?

  His mind was a blur of darkness. He crawled through the grass with limbs he’d thought thrown asunder by a fireball. He didn’t know where he crawled, only that he kept moving lest death return and discover him nearby. His legs would not move beneath his will, and he almost cried out. Had the monster crippled him? Was he torn apart alike Kesta but just too stupid to die?

  A lesser man may have just lain in the wet mud, crying out in anguish. He looked behind at his legs and thought them impossibly heavy and long. They stretched out uselessly, and there was a deep crimson trail gushing out from behind him. A terrible thing to see; a worse thing to overcome. He dropped his head and wailed pitifully for his fate. Giving up was acceptable too.

  He tasted the bitterness of mud, and he hated everything. He remembered the fireball and wondered if these were just a few lost moments before the end. Was he already dead? His face felt numb as though his mind hadn’t recognised the agony he found himself in, or else the pain was so potent, his mind had blocked it out. His skin had burned away like a swine’s deliciousness upon a spit, and he tried to remember anything beyond fire and burning shards of muscle, but there was nothing.

  He had his scars now, he thought miserably. Nobody would ever ask him how he’d earned them though.

  “This is how I die,” he whispered to the rain, as its cool droplets fell upon him for the last time. He would have preferred it to be sunny with the blue sky warming his face on the last day, but mercenaries rarely died well. At least, he wasn’t moaning like a rodenerack after you’d stolen its cheese. Dying alone with dignity was better than nothing, he supposed, and he felt his bladder release.

  He turned over onto his back and stretched out as though felled spectacularly. His bones would look rather impressive, he pledged, and then he noticed his left leg had a terrible itch. Then he noticed the seeping blood had slowed its escape, and after that, he felt a tingling in many parts of his body.

  Was this all in his mind? A last distracting gift before the end?

  Then the feeling began to return to his broken legs. Each breath he took brought him a step closer (so to speak). A few breaths after that he began to feel the gentle urge to move, like a little spark throughout his body, and he thought this amazing.

  And then a naked girl walked by him and he thought this even more amazing.

  She was faded as though stuck between two worlds, like the spirits of Brimlor Fields, and she stumbled and fell, and he thought her nakedness wonderful from this angle.

  He felt a sudden strength course through him, and far away he heard the mutterings of Lorgan as he recovered from his impossible injury. Derian saw the old mercenary kneeling in the mud looking thoroughly bewildered, but something drew him back to the naked girl. Perhaps it was her nakedness.

  “What in the seven dead gods just happened?”

  He knew that voice. Deep, feminine, and motherly. Derian pulled his eyes from the wonderfully naked girl burgeoning into the world and saw an equally bewildered Kesta resting her hands on hips exactly where the beast had snapped her irreversibly.

  What enchantment of weaving was this? The naked girl began spinning and laughing, and he wondered was he in fact dead? Blown to bits by a lecherous demon—which wasn’t actually a lecherous demon, but rather something far more volatile. Perhaps this was the world beyond the source, where all dead friends took unlikely breath and pretty females with wonderful breasts danced around giggling?

  Natteo would hate it here.

  “Who made
it?” Kesta called out. She looked around the glade, unable to focus on object or comrade, blinking as though her eyes worked for the first time. Derian felt the same with his limbs.

  It felt like a strange dream had befallen him—befallen them all, really. Everything around them appeared ethereal, unnatural, and a breath of time seemed both an eternity and immediate.

  Strangely enough, (as if there hadn’t been enough strange things already) Derian’s body felt better than he could remember. A life on the march usually left any mercenary’s body covered in bruises, from crown to toe, but he felt no pain at all. In fact, he felt like running a dozen miles at full pace without rest.

  Dead.

  Yes, he was dead; he had to be. He’d joined the last ranks of the fallen mercenaries. The Crimson Hunters were done. Chapter done. No more tales to tell.

  “Well, we’re not dead, that’s for sure,” Lorgan said, staring at his hands as though they were new appendages to him. “Vector demon. Nastier than I’d heard.”

  Derian hadn’t heard of such a thing himself, and if Lorgan had more to say, he fell silent because the beautiful naked girl with flowing long raven hair walked past him whispering little sweet nothings to herself. “Who are you?” he asked stepping after her with feet less stable than usual, but the stunning naked girl had no intention of paying him any attention. Her bleary eyes resembled a patron at a lustre house in the wicked quarter of Castra. Derian had never been to that isle, but he meant to—as soon as he led his first mission. They weren’t as popular these last few years according to Natteo, but it was a rite of passage any successful mercenary went through, and one he held a great interest in “enduring.” The naked girl would fit in nicely with her dancing, he thought.