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Darvade toted a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other as he strode up the stairway of the Golden Blessing, a luxurious inn on the outskirts of Feroch. He stepped to the side when a pair of chambermaids descended, showering him with admiring glances. They couldn't feel the compelling waves that unconsciously pulled them, the mental stimulation that stroked just the right places in their minds.
It was second nature for him to always have Coercion focused. Like the others of his Sect, it was a natural gift. Coercion could be strongly focused to compel a person into action, but Darvade found that a light touch was all he needed in most circumstances. The human mind was easily manipulated. It was in their nature to follow their baser instincts, despite their attempts at decorum and civilized behavior.
He smiled and caressed their soft skin and bare shoulders with his eyes, rewarded by their flushed faces and embarrassed giggles as they passed by. Pausing at the top of the stairway for a moment, he watched the pleasant sway of their hips as they continued downward.
Perhaps he would play with one of them another night. He wondered if they had heard the noise from his room. His lovely had been quite loud only a few minutes earlier before she had begged for rest, begged for a drink before she could begin again. The art of lovemaking could be strenuous on one ill-prepared for the challenge.
Well, the bottle of Hispalia’s finest should do for her, and then they could begin again ... before he enjoyed refreshment of his own.
He nudged the door to his room open and smiled at the sight. His lovely had rolled over, her voluptuous form covered by the velvet bedcovers.
"Turned in so soon, my sweet? The night is still young, and we have much to do before the sun rises."
The bedcovers were snatched back.
Darvade's eyes widened. His lovely wasn't there. In her stead was a dark-skinned warrior in a turbaned headdress. His cloak swirled as he rose; killing weapons swung from his sides. He clutched a uniquely designed crossbow equipped with a rounded cylinder in his fist.
The attacker's face contorted in rage. "Odji, the only thing you have to do is die." He pulled the trigger, and the bolt hissed as it snapped forward.
Darvade focused Effluvium at that moment. With an earsplitting wail, he dissipated into mist. The bolt passed through harmlessly, striking the wall behind him. More bolts followed, fired from the Huntsman's modified weapon. Darvade would have been impressed by the weapon's design had his life not been in immediate jeopardy.
His vaporous form swirled across the room unharmed by the deadly darts; his howl swelled throughout the inn. He retained his misty form until he reached the window, where at the crescendo of his blood-curdling scream, he solidified, hurling out the window in an explosion of shattering glass.
The shards flashed around him, and the air whistled as he fell three stories, landing in a shower of glassy debris. He ran almost before his boots hit the ground. Vaporous clouds exhaled from his lungs, but the cold did not touch him as his long hair flailed and his boots pounded the gravelly street.
He growled a curse when he heard his pursuer land unharmed as well. Heads emerged out the windows from curious lodgers with flickering candles in their hands. Some exclaimed in astonishment, but he ignored them as he bolted down the alley.
Gravel scattered under his boots when he rushed around the corner. He spotted his companion Godfrey wrapped around a tender young morsel, pressing her softness against the splintery side of the building as his fingers eagerly sought to drain her flesh.
Darvade snatched him as he ran past, ignoring his friend's loud curses.
"Huntsmen!" was all Darvade said as he ran on. Suddenly Godfrey passed him, long legs carrying him along like an antelope. Darvade heard the Huntsman gaining, impossible as it seemed. But they were near the end of the alley...
A lithe black-clad warrior blocked the mouth of the alley, hurling star-shaped blades at them. Darvade and Godfrey leaped upwards, crisscrossing off the alley walls in mid-air as the blades hummed underneath.
Darvade grasped the edge of the inn roof and hoisted himself up. The clay tiles were covered in snow and ice, but he managed to right himself and ran across the rooftop without looking back.
Something landed beside him. He whirled, snarling in rage before realizing it was Godfrey.
"You should have gone the other way. It's better if we split up."
Godfrey shook his head, his eyes wild. "No, we stay together. We may have to fight them."
Darvade argued no more, and the two never flagged in their run, leaping from roof to roof. They landed several streets over, looking about warily as they made their way to the stables. The horses inside whinnied nervously.
"We have to leave town now; make for the woods." Darvade peered into the darkness as he opened the stable doors. "We can lose them in the forest."
He threw himself aside with a wild curse as something sharp and gleaming grazed the side of his head. A Plainswoman emerged, attacking with the ferocity of a wildcat. A bejeweled eye patch covered one of her eyes. Her remaining one was narrowed in hatred as she swung a short sword in whistling arcs, so swiftly that both he and Godfrey had difficulty avoiding the vicious cuts.
Darvade broke out in a sweat. If they could not take the madwoman out, the other Huntsmen would catch up to them.
The thought became action as he snatched a long razor from the band of his breeches. His hands blurred as the razor sought to strike the arteries he knew would end things quickly. As the woman parried desperately, Godfrey snatched a pickaxe from the stable wall. It would be over in seconds...
Something roared.
The horses reared and whinnied in panic as a bear tore the door off its hinges. No, not a bear—a man. He was a hulking mass of muscle and rage with a double-bladed ax in his burly arms. His hair was fiery red, and his beard all but smothered the roaring mouth. A Norlander without a doubt, one of those fighting men from the Norland Alpens who lived to fight, brawling their way through life with no care for the size or form of the enemy. The savage swing of his ax nearly took Godfrey's head. Godfrey ducked at the last second, snarling as he buried the point of the pickaxe deep into the Norlander's upper leg.
The big man didn't even notice. His beefy fist shot forward, knocking Godfrey back with a crunch of splintered ribs. Only then did the Norlander pause to yank the pickaxe out with a grunt. His thick eyebrows almost buried his eyes when he glared at Godfrey.
"You'll pay for that, wraith."
Darvade finally managed to bring himself within the arc of the woman's furious sword thrusts. He snatched her sword arm down, and as she fumbled for one of her daggers on her vest, his other hand brought the razor to her lovely neck.
Agony exploded in his left shoulder. He turned to see a feathered shaft protruding. The Huntsmen from the alley ran toward them. The smaller one already had another arrow nocked to his bow.
"We leave now!" He shoved the woman hard, and she sailed backward, slamming against the stable wall before hitting the hay-covered floor.
Godfrey leaped over her and landed on the back of a screaming horse. It reared wildly and nearly threw him off. Darvade focused Coercion as he mounted another, soothing the steed immediately.
He turned to Godfrey. "Get that beast under control!"
The Norlander closed in, his battle-ax whirring. Darvade pointed at the Norlander, focusing Transference. He was not strong with the Craft, but the ripple of pure force knocked the big man completely off his feet. At any other time, his startled yelp would have been amusing.
Darvade felt the ripples of Eler when Godfrey focused Scintilla, the Craft of fire. The lamppost next to the approaching Huntsmen exploded in a ball of flame so blistering that they were flung to the ground shielding their faces.
That was all the time Darvade and Godfrey needed. They spurred their horses forward, galloping hard down the road leading out of town. Luck. They would need more of it if they were to make it through the night alive.
They had a good head start, and their horses ran in sheer terror. The beasts sensed that they had not men on their backs but something that filled their animal senses with dread, spurring them forward ever faster. Darvade looked over his shoulder. The Huntsmen were swift to mount the remaining horses, but they were not gaining. It looked as though he and Godfrey would be able to lose them in the forest.
When they reached the outskirts of the woods, a terrible scream rent the air. The sound was unearthly, reverberating all around them, sending shivers down Darvade's spine. His horse reared with a terrified whinny, unseating him. He hit the ground hard, cursing. When he rolled out of the way of the stamping hooves, he looked up at the apparition that rode from the fog and darkness.
The face of Death stared back at Darvade, a black-armored giant with ember eyes flaring from its massive horned helm. The ominous figure sat atop a terrible steed that billowed gouts of fire from its nostrils. Darvade had never seen a Reaver or a Night Mare before, but he knew of them through legends that were still fearfully whispered ages after the last sightings.
Yet it was no ghost that towered over him, no translucent specter that unsheathed a double-handled black longsword and rode a beast so monstrous that it could scarcely be called a horse. The heavily-armored death knight was terrifying real, its appearance far more dreadful than any legend could describe. The Night Mare screamed again, exhaling sulfuric fumes and streams of living fire.
Darvade screamed as the flames ate him alive.
~*~
THE EIDOLON WERE BEINGS from a different Age, a time when the boundaries between worlds were still malleable. Spirit, specter, phantom, ghost—Masiki had heard her ghastly guardians described by many different labels. The misinterpretation was reasonable. Only the thinnest layer of dry, crusted skin prevented their faces from being bare skulls, and their sockets flared with glimmering, unearthly light in place of eyes. Their loose-fitting robes and cloaks were beyond white; iridescent light flashed from the garments that never stood still but billowed and fluttered as though stirred by gale winds.
But they were not spirits, nor were they undead creatures somehow bound to the living world. They were experiments, the punishment inflicted by the Man with Mirrored Eyes upon his enemies—betrayers and traitors who dared to turn against him in his time of need. Instead of profiting from their treachery, they suffered the consequences: their forms altered, their minds enslaved, so their every thought was of pleasing their lord and master. In the end, they served him far more loyally than they ever did when they were human.
Their employment came in many forms: vigilant guardians, ruthless assassins, or zealous hounds that tracked their targets across worlds if necessary. There was little that could harm the Eidolon and even less that could destroy them. They were more energy than anything else: dark puissance in decaying flesh, cloaked in radiance, locked in subservience.
They emerged from the wyrmhole first, silver-gauntleted hands on their longswords as they glided ahead into the mist-enshrouded terrain of what was called the Barrens. The description was apt, for the land was dead and devoid of all but the meanest brush and stunted grass. A wall of impenetrable fog lay directly ahead, shrouding all of what lay beyond. A man stood in front of the mist, shielding his eyes from the wrymhole's brilliance with one hand even as he drew his sword with the other. Masiki smiled at his foolhardiness. Gile Noman could be called many things, but a coward was not one of them.
"Stay your blade, Gile. A battle against my Eidolon is one you cannot win."
The one-eyed man dropped to his knees and thrust his battered sword into the turf. "High Lady." He bowed his grizzled head in homage. "I did not expect you to arrive so grandly."
The wyrmhole glittered behind her. The circular threshold was framed by crystallized air, a beautiful aftereffect of distorting time and space. Creating such a portal required focus and experience that dwarfed that of any so-called master of the Crafts or the cruder form of Apokrypy. The view beyond was of shifting sands and a merciless sun, the sky blue as a windless sea, devoid of even the dream of moisture. In the distance were peaks of steepled pyramids, shimmering in fever dream ripples from the heat. The threshold slowly closed with a crystalline sound, cutting off the desolate view.
"You speak of the wyrmhole?" Masiki smiled. "There is no one left across all of Irth that possesses the power to create one. No one but me."
"Yes, High Lady." Gile kept his eyes cast to the ground.
"Rise, Gile. It is time that you know what your next task is to be. Do you know what lies behind this fog?"
Gile stood, glancing warily at the Eidolon, who stood on either side of Masiki with their brilliant robes fluttering despite the absence of wind. They gazed back with hatred on their skeletal faces, deep-rooted detestation of everything that lived and walked about freely.
"I've heard rumors." Gile repressed a shudder and turned his good eye toward the shifting mass that shrouded the view a few paces away. "The Hispalian people say the lands of the fog are cursed. Others say the lands beyond contain more riches than a man can dream of." He shrugged. "Many fortune-hunters have gone into the mists, and none of them has ever come out. They say Tristan the Bright led his Victorious Legion within, seeking the holy Sword of Deis. He was never heard of again either."
Masiki nodded. "Beyond the mists is where you must go."
Gile's neck tightened, but to his credit, he did not hesitate. "As you command, High Lady."
Masiki laughed delightedly. "That is why I have chosen you for my cat's-paw, Gile Noman. You do not have enough sense to acknowledge your fears, so you swallow them and tread where even the bravest would tremble."
Gile spoke hesitantly, as though not familiar with expressing himself. "You ... have given me a chance. I was ... nothing. You made me what I am now, and I will do whatever you ask."
"Yes, you will. I do not doubt that." Masiki gazed into the line of billowing fog, where ghostlike shapes shifted forms, and phantom lights played tricks on the eyes. "Beyond this fog is Aceldama, where the Co'nane reside. There you will find Alaric Aelfvalder, their lordly king."
"What will I do when I stand before him?" Gile's battered face was expressionless. Masiki knew he was prepared to do whatever asked, even should that be to slay the legendary and powerful lord of the Co'nane. Since his transformation, there was nothing that Gile would not do. He was her slave of his own free will, which made his services all the more effective. No one performed his tasks with more enthusiasm than Gile.
"You are to bring him news of his death," Masiki said. "And with that, fan the flames that will consume the world."
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End of Shadow Battles Volume One