Venir hung suspended twenty feet high in the air, his chin dipped against his chest, breathing raggedly. The lightning stopped. His body smoldered. An unseen force slowly turned him in midair. He felt the underling mage’s eyes boring into him. Below him, the underlings gloated with biting chitters. Somehow, Venir clasped the axe pommel with the tips of his bloody fingers.
The underling magi floated his direction. The one with fingertips like green fire lifted Venir’s chin with a thought. It was less than twelve feet away. They locked eyes. Venir fought to hold the underling’s burning gaze. His eye fluttered in his skull.
“I’m going to kill you,” Venir said with raspy speech. He spat on the ground. “All of you.”
The underling mage spoke. There was a hiss in its broken human speech. “Human, you are a fool. We shall flay you one strip of skin at a time.”
Without warning, Venir pulled his axe up into his full grip. He swung it like the blades of a windmill and released. Point first, the axe jettisoned out of his hand, impaling the underling mage. Floating fast to the ground, the underling gulped blood with Brool stuck full in its chest.
Venir plummeted on its last dying breath. He landed in the midst of the shock-faced underlings, crushing two of them under his muscular frame. In a blink, Venir’s wounded body came to life. Helm fed him a new spring of energy. He’d played possum as long as he could stand it. Now was the time to finish it. He drew his hunting knife.
“Eat steel, underling!” He stabbed the nearest underling through the throat. His helmet pulsed. The last underling mage’s hands renewed with white fire. Venir snagged a javelin from a charging underling. He put his knife in its belly. At the same time, he launched the javelin. The weapon smote the floating underling in the belly.
It dipped toward the ground, clutching the spike inside its gut. With lightning dancing on its fingertips, it pointed toward Venir. Crossing the distance between them in three giant strides, Venir launched himself upward. His fingers clutched the bottom hem of the underling’s robes. He dragged the fiend out of the air. Using his fists, knife still in one hand, he pummeled it to death in a series of bone-jarring blows. The helm pulsed.
The last remaining underlings, six in all, surrounded Venir. Sharp steel gleamed in their hands. The glint in their gem-speckled eyes was intent on murder.
Venir slipped his shield from his back, fastening it to his arm. Knife in hand, he said, “Come and die, fiends, die!”
The underlings converged.
Venir caught two strikes on his shield. He punched a hole in an underling’s neck then gutted another. Two underlings cut at his legs. He skipped away from one while braining another with the edge of his shield.
The three quick fiends stabbed at him one right after the other. They danced back and forth, lunging and dodging. None of them came in too close.
“Ah, Bish on this!” Venir flung his shield into one underling, busting open its face on the rim. With a hard flick of his wrist, he threw his knife into the second underling’s heart. With a churk sound, it died. The last underling darted inside Venir’s guard. Its sword ripped through the links of his chainmail, slicing away skin. Venir punched it so hard in the face that sharp teeth shot out of its mouth. It dropped its blade. Venir picked it up by the neck, hoisted it high, and squeezed. “Don’t you understand I hate you fiends?”
The underling neck gave with a snap.
Venir went for his shield. The underling he hit with it crawled over the grass. Venir picked up one of their small swords and pinned the underling to the ground. His helmet stopped throbbing. The rainy jungle drenched the bodies of dead underlings. Their greasy black blood washed away. Venir retrieved his knife and axe from the fallen underlings’ bodies. Limping, he headed deeper into the jungle, searching for survivors, assuming there would be none.