AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The women scream, their sobs pressing at my anger as I continue my search. There are plenty to choose from and, like the hunter I am, I choose them all. Not one will escape my grasp today. If I am to be here, then I will ensure the job is done to the best of my ability. If this means I win favor with the King then all the better.
Carnage claims the landscape, the smell of blood, fear and fire seeping up into my nostrils. My skin is alive with magic and my insides burn. How long has it been since I have felt like this?
With the eyes and nose of a hunter I track down my prey. I was chosen for this because of my way with beasts and it seems as though Asmodeus was right. None will escape me, not now. There are many of them, all so small, their faces and bodies so fragile and weak it turns my stomach.
One by one I drag them from their hiding places, their arms and legs flailing in fearful protest, before handing them to one of my comrades who shackles them ready to take back to Ti’lith.
Still, dark elves fly at me—I had no idea they were so fond of their humans. They must indeed make good slaves or surely they would not risk their lives defending their property in such a way. But I don’t let this stop me and send them to the same place as their fellow soldiers.
Before long the screams have died down, though the Gilak continues its rampage roaring up into the blackened sky. The shackles are almost full, and I narrow my eyes, gazing around, casting a final enquiring eye over the chaos before me.
It has become still, surprisingly so, as I begin to assess whether it is time to take our leave. In the distance, the Soz’garoth hover in the air, waiting for my command to return us with their magic.
Then, from the corner of my eye I catch something—a flit of golden hair as another human woman, surely the last, takes off down the alleyway. But it’s too late. I’ve seen her already and have already made up my mind how unwilling I am to come back here even if it has been a surprising break from the monotony of my life.
Not one of them can be left. And I’ve got this one in my sights.
7
CORA
I am as a hare in the midst of a great war, slipping between buildings and hiding until I can make my way home. That terrible sensation seeps into my bones and slows my progress, but I’m careful, and finally, I make it back to our corner of the settlement.
What I see makes me skid to a stop.
Our house is in ruins, the tattered curtains flapping wildly in the tempest that has overtaken the sky. Most of the roof has collapsed in on itself, but there is still a section that hasn’t fallen yet. But my worst nightmare is upon us.
What if they’re already dead?
Here, at least, the battle has moved on. The dark elves don’t care to protect their ‘valuable’ assets of human laborers. Gidresu will be their top priority, but even he will fall to these monsters that have rained down on us from the sky.
He is a slaver, not a fighter.
A terrible wind whips through the streets, bringing with it more of that darkness that oozes into everything it touches. I’ve never felt such evil magic as this, if it is magic at all. It feels nothing like the compelling power of dark elves, that seeps into one’s mind and makes us compliant to their will.
"They have to be here," I tell myself, throwing myself forward and pushing through the wreckage as I scream their names. “Mattie!!! Elizabeth!” My throat closes before I can call for Laura. After all we’ve been through, it comes back to this. Always this.
I remember pulling her small body from the destruction of our family home. I remember the screams of our mother as she told me to run, before a dark elf’s blade silenced her forever and her words cut off in a bloody gurgle. And the awful chase, before they pinned us down and threw us into cages. My mind is stretched between memory and the terror of this new reality, both intertwined in this one, horrible moment.
This is how it will always be, I realize, tearing at the broken wooden panels, searching for the little bodies of Beth and Matt. Terrified of finding them, yet refusing to stop until I do. I don’t see any signs of them. No blood or limbs beneath the drifting dust of the wreckage.
My fingers are raw, and my voice is hoarse, but I can’t afford to stop.
I push through the wreckage into the tediously erect bedroom we all share, but there’s no sign of them at all. “Laura?” I croak, my throat parched by the dust. “Where did you go?”
She should have been here, protecting them.
The sound of battle drifts closer on a northern wind. I don’t have much time before they’re upon us again, and that monstrous creature tears our house apart with me inside. My family needs me, wherever they are, and I refuse to give up.
One of my nails breaks, shooting pain up my arm, but I hardly feel it, shaking it out as I keep moving. I find myself in the living room again, digging madly into the rubble. Broken glass and splintered wood are everywhere, as if the army had dropped straight onto our home.
But as the dust settles, and my mind goes numb, I realize they’re simply not here. I’m looking in the wrong place, and I have no idea where they might be.
I stumble out of the broken front door to catch my breath, choking on dust.
I wipe my burning eyes with a sleeve but it does nothing. Blood has chased down my arm from my broken nail, which has split in two. I know I should feel the pain of it, but I’m numb to everything, unable to formulate my next move.
There’s a high buzzing in my ear that stems from no magic, and my skin has gone cold with shock. I know it because it is a familiar sensation, one that drags me back to that other time, when Laura was just a toddler in my arms.
