Home » Great Library at Hoeth » Book of Tales » Voice of the Phoenix » Voice of the Phoenix, Chapter Ten
| Voice of the Phoenix, Chapter Ten |
| by Calarion Sapherior |
Howell gasped and gritted his teeth in pain as rough hands flung him to the ground. Blood, he could feel hot blood flowing from his wrists where the too-tight manacles had torn away skin, and from where a sharp rock had grazed his knee. He struggled not to let any of this show to those around him, but it was a near-impossible task with their jeers.
“Why don’t you kill me?” he snarled at the dark elves that ringed him. “What do you want with me?”
One of them, a male with features that could have been called even beautiful had they not been so twisted by the inner darkness revealed blatantly on his face, stood forward, and kicked Howell in the face. The toe of the tough leather boot struck his nose, and Howell could feel blood spraying as the cartilage cracked and twisted. He went sprawling back, a solid trickle of crimson running from his ruined nose.
“I mean to kill you,” the Dark Elf grinned wolfishly. “I just want to have some fun with you first.”
The beautiful elf crouched down, and drew a cruel-bladed knife. “What shall you lose first?” he hissed. “Your ear? Or your eye?”
The ebon-bladed dirk slid through the air, and the Caledorian’s perceptions narrowed to that jagged, perfectly forged shard of steel as it tantalisingly stroked the air, inching closer and closer to his right eyeball...
“Tarnil! Enough!” an imperious voice snapped, and the dark elf’s knife was away at his side as he spun to face his accuser, his mottled purple cloak swirling around his lithe form.
The elfwoman who confronted him was a beauty by any standard – and her attire did not leave much of her ample figure to the imagination, skimpy diaphanous silks coiled around her breasts and hips. Her skin was pale, her face and belly and legs and arms seeming nearly disembodied before the waves of black hair and the thick cloak she had flung back. Howell gazed at her and felt a wave of lust wash over him, quickly followed by disgust. Then his eyes were drawn to her face, and all thought stopped.
The face of the sorceress was a rippling morass of raw emotion, ever shifting and changing. It was contorted in a near-bestial expression of bloodlust, flowing rapidly into one of a different kind of lust, but one no less frightening. Anger, hatred, pleasure, they washed over her face like the lapping waves at a beach and retreated just as swiftly. But there was one that haunted Howell’s mind – for an instant, he swore he had seen her afraid...
The sorceress’ voice echoed hollowly, weirdly – and strangely, differently than before. Howell could only listen with fascination to the weird echoes that fluted through her tones. “These ones may be useful to us. You are not to kill them.”
Tarnil laughed. “You always need your toys, don’t you?” he spat, stalking towards the strange apparition. “They’ll just slow us down. Best to have any fun with them you want now, and then to slit their throats and leave them here.”
A deep voice boomed from the delicate throat, and Howell flinched with shock at the strange, guttural, near-bestial voice. “Do not challenge my authority, Tarnil Maeglath! Do you think you are now leader here?”
Tarnil glared at her impotently, but did not respond.
“Bind them and carry them,” the powerful voice continued. “This is the word of...Seraxa Veruathil.”
As the hands seized Howell again, his mind played over the pause in Seraxa’s voice...and wondered.
After being dragged for such a long eternity through the last trees of Avelorn, it seemed a relief to Howell as the druchii stopped for a rest, flinging the captives they had borne through their loping spring to the ground roughly. His wrists were chafed a bright raw red, and blood trickled down his forearms lazily.
“Seraxa!” the druchii called Tarnil shouted, doubled over and breathing hoarsely from the exertion of the run. “What are we going to do with the prisoners?”
The sorceress strode over. Her voice croaked weirdly, hoarsely and wheezingly. “We keep them alive.”
Tarnil’s pretty face contorted, and he snarled, “I think you’re crazy, bitch. You and your weird voices and your lack of explanations. Why do you need these ones alive?”
Seraxa coughed, racking her slender frame, and a foul green mucous flew from her mouth. Howell recoiled in disgust, but his fascinated gaze focused on the small string of acrid smoke that rose from the ground as the grass died.
“This one?” she croaked – and then her voice changed again, becoming an evershifting morass of inflections and tongues and pitches, at once homely and alien, placid and obscene, beautiful and nightmarish. One hand seized Regulus’ face, the sharp fingernails drawing blood from the furrows they left in their wake. “This one is an enemy of the Great King himself. He was amongst those that led that ridiculous attack on Naggaroth last summer, and wounded the King’s dragon! The dark king will pay dearly to have this one in his hands, and reward richly the one who delivers this bothersome gnat to him.”
She let Regulus’ head drop suddenly, and sprang liquidly for Eilinel. “This one,” she said disapprovingly in that same voice, “is nothing. She, is yours. Kill her quickly, there’s no time for any of your usual fun.”
Howell stirred himself out of the torpor that had overtaken him all this time. “No! Wait!” he shouted, and flung himself forward, ignoring the agony that flared in his wrists as his movement tore the shackles against the already raw skin. A boot struck him in the back, and he sprawled forward on to soft, damp grass. He was screaming near insensibly, and another boot struck him, stunning him.
But despite, or maybe because of, the whirlwind of colour in his head, the image he saw focused like the delicate motions of some highbrow theatre, the steely whisper of a knife coming forth. Eilinel’s beautiful face, her dirty hair hanging artlessly and infinitely lovely across it, her features slack from the coma she had been in ever since the encounter with the Darkling Morass. The head flung back, baring the long white curve of her throat. The knife touching gently as a lover’s caress, stroking the throat. Pressing, dimpling, piercing. The cut spreads, and blood comes to the surface, first reluctantly but then quicker and more eagerly, running and then spurting and fountaining, playing, joyful to be released.
The abandoned husk that had been Eilinel Moonleaf was released and fell with a quiet noise that echoed in Howell’s mind, louder than the raw and primal scream that tore itself from his throat.
Another boot collided with Howell’s face, and he spat into the grass a gobbet of blood. There was no pain to it. Pain was dead, dead as Eilinel.
“What about this last one?” Tarnil leered. “He’s useless.”
“You had your fun, Tarnil,” Seraxa said. Her voice was sultry and primal, speaking of untamed desires. “This one, he is for my...fun,” she leered.
And then Tarnil shouted, “We don’t have time for your fun!” The knife flashed again, and Howell welcomed its approach, as an old friend. It had ended Eilinel, it would be good enough for him too. His tortured mind welcomed the sliver of steel.
Someone else did not though, for an unseen force struck Tarnil. The druchii watching the confrontation fell back as Tarnil screamed, flung through the air. He struck the ground hard, his dagger jarred from his hand. Howell felt the blade dig into some other him, jarred from its original course towards his heard to strike his gut and tear a long and bloody furrow. Blood spilled forth, but it was from some other Howell. Not him, for he did not notice it save in the most dispassionate manner. His passion was spent.
Tarnil scrambled to his feet, murder in his eyes. One hand began to reach for the sword at his side, when doom struck him. Seraxa’s eyes narrowed, and she gestured imperiously with one hand – and the dark elf warrior exploded. Skin tore off, leaving a screaming form of muscles and sinew and bone that still tried to move. Eyeballs withered and popped, spraying fluids forth as the red muscles atrophied. Veins bulged grotesquely and then exploded one by one, releasing showers of crimson blood from the horrifically still-living form. Somehow it lived still and tried to move, an animated mess of reddened meat, blinded by the agony it still felt. Muscles withered away in the red rain, baring pulsing organs before they too exploded from the body, and for a moment all that stood in that place was a skeleton. The last explosion swept over it as the brain inside it burst out in a shower of wet grey lumps, showering from the skull as the bones collapsed into the gore-soaked place where it had fallen.
Howell could feel the fatal wound in his stomach, slowly leaking blood. He could see the two bodies, one a pulped mess of red meat, the other looking exactly as it had before save for the crimson smear drying over her throat. He could see Seraxa, the sorceress’ shoulders slowly jerking as she cried softly in a voice that was her own again. Some semblance of sanity returned as his iron will exerted itself. Please, Asuryan, let some help, some rescue, come soon, Howell though, as his lifeblood slowly spilled from his gut and stained his clothes.
Seraxa straightened and tried to harden her voice. It was still her voice, weak and uncertain and pained. “We must move on,” she whispered. “Take the prisoners.”
No one dared questioned her this time. |
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