AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The boat takes off several minutes later, and I close my eyes as a wave of nausea washes over me.
“The sky was red this morning,” someone says right above me. I listen to the conversation between the captain of the ship – a gorgon – and one of his passengers.
A xaphan,I realize.
For once, I am not tempted to grab one of my knives and slit the creature’s throat.
Tonight, my life is changing forever.
Ikoth,I think tiredly to myself,here I come.
AZRON
PRESENT DAY
“Well, that was fun while it lasted,” I murmur to myself. I haven’t decided yet if I am being sarcastic or not.
The woman I have just bedded fell asleep quickly after we finished, and now she is curled up in a ball on one side of the bed. I wasn’t planning on staying until she woke up, but the fact that she managed to hog all the blankets on a very large bed wouldn’t have helped her case had I decided to stay.
I have been back in Ikoth, in Sarziroch, for several weeks now, and I have never been more fucking bored than I am right now.
I hated the war and everything that came with it.
I –we– all lost way too much because of this damned war with the xaphan. And there is no getting it back.
I tried, a few months ago when I was first discharged from my service, to go back to the person I was before.
But I don’t think he even exists anymore.
Sometimes I cannot even remember the person I used to be. Sometimes I think that the person, this image I have in my mind, never existed at all.
So yes, I hated the war. But at least fighting against the xaphan gave me something to do. It gave me some sense of purpose.
Killing the xaphan was also a nice perk.
Now all I seem to do since coming back to Ikoth is wander the streets and fuck anybody willing to go to bed with me.
“But even sex is losing its appeal. And I can’t believe I actually said that out loud,” I mutter to myself as I button my shirt and step into my soft leather boots – the boots were a treat to myself after I returned to Ikoth from my post. Then I quietly head out the door of the rented room.
The sun is setting over Sarziroch as I walk out of the inn and turn down the street. The air is warm and humid as always, and sweat pools in the small of my back almost immediately.
I adjust the collar of my shirt as I head to the center of the city, towards my favorite tavern.
“I didn’t miss the weather, that’s for damn sure,”I mutter to myself as the air becomes drier towards the center of Sarziroch.
Buildings stretch interminably into the sky around me in hues of black or brown, all built from the natural rock that grows all around the outskirts of Ikoth.
The sky is no longer bright as the sun sets rapidly, leaving only streaks of flaming orange behind.
I didn’t miss the color of the sky either,I think as I examine the blood red sky, streaked with fading sunlight.
Now, after having seen so much blood, the color of the Ikothian sky makes me shudder with cold nausea.
But the sky changes at night, as everything in Ikoth does.
The tavern is full of other demons when I enter, and suddenly I am thrown back into the battlefield.
Just breathe through it. The noise is just that – noise. It isn’t the xaphan’s attacking. Just breathe through it.
