THE FORSAKEN LAND OF GENèSE | LOST KINGDOM

  600

  Saint envisioned limbs forged of ruby—bleeding sacrifice—and a string dipped in golden resolve, drawn to the limit. A mirage aimed at the enemy, drawing the attention of illusory bar patrons who’d left this place behind.

  Under their expectation, Saint aimed.

  Applying the weight of their hope to the pull, he loosed.

  But he could not envision the arrow.

  His bow unravelled in an instant.

  The ghosts of memory disappeared in sequence, starting with a boy holding a paper lily. This time, Chris and Dixon were the last to leave him behind.

  Saint Myles of The Valley—alone he stood. Empty-handed, with a sudden penchant for drink.

  The beast sniffed once, then swung its head. “You!”

  “In the flesh, dear friend,” responded the newcomer—a poor choice of words. “Albus believes that quicksilver infiltrated the procession. We’re regrouping in the square in case his buddies start popping up. But I’d say you already knew that, judging by your appearance.”

  Fearing the worst, Saint paced to the other side of the room.

  And there he was.

  Covered in ash and burns, this man was yet another member of the Nine Wolves—an upstart band of misfits who were making waves before their capture in Shindholm.

  Back then, he was drinking off a hangover in a bar just like this one.

  [They’ve been making a name for themselves by taking all the hardest jobs and never failing a single one. Nobody knows where they came from, or what they’re really about. But they say that if you wanna kill a god, hire them to cut a tree in the next town over. Just make sure you’ve got the money to pay for it, and it’ll be done before morning.]

  However, among the sinners and the psychopaths, one person stood out—a man who went by the name of Cynzen Sula. Or, as they referred to him in that bar, the man who was closest to ordinary.

  More composed than Albane and less greedy than Albus, he could not even be called the largest; both dwarfed him with ease. He kept a consistent distance from women and children, lacking Oedipus’s taste for the perverse. Goodhall had been overheard more than once chastising him for putting test subjects out of their misery. And Wilhelm—the Spineless—was known for his brutality, as well as being the loudest voice in any room.

  He kept to the rear, joining when their leader was purposefully dragging their battles. And when he intervened, those battles ended immediately—often with a single swing of his weapon.

  If there was a single mercenary he wanted to die in that forest fire, it would be him.

  The One-Man Army, Cynzen Sula—because that name was a hornet’s nest he could not afford to kick.

  “Oh no,” he empathised upon seeing his injured comrade.

  There was a fresh wound on his forehead, a nasty bite mark which stretched from one side to the next, which wept as he clasped a string of crimson prayer beads before his nose. “I knew your time was coming, Cedrick. Death by poison is far too clean, and the Blood God wants his blood.”

  “The Blood God?”

  The creature echoed his words as if mouthing a bitter memory. “I knew I smelled shit. And to think I was about to offer you a space in my harem. That lunatic still has admirers?”

  “I’ve received a message in the blood of my latest hymn,” continued the mercenary. “God blessed you despite your cleanliness—letting you walk at the side of his chosen. But you have jeopardised the cause by infecting him with your weakness. Now, Archangel Jonah’s been bewitched by a dame, and I’ve been called to act. Tasked with putting down both of you.”

  Beauty harrumphed. “Who are you? Are you a mercenary or a cultist?”

  “Who am I?” the cultist-mercenary pondered leisurely.

  Greyish light condensed in his right hand—a single mote that morphed and stretched into the shape of a weapon: a one-handed blade, resembling the bastard child of a greatsword and a scimitar.

  “Who am I?” He repeated.

  “Hmm… If the Great Lunatic has ten thousand admirers, then I am one of them,” he began. “If he has a thousand admirers, then I am one of them, too. If there are a hundred admirers, then there are ninety-nine, subtracting me. And if there are ten admirers, then I, Cynzen Sula, am the most faithful one. Therefore, if there is but a single grateful worshipper, then that worshipper must be me. And if there’s nobody left in the Lands Forsaken to honour his name, then you may consider me nobody at all. Because for that day to occur, I would have to be dead.”

  Saint ignored the cultist’s spiel, utterly disgusted by that tragedy of an instrument.

  Having inherited its weight and breadth from its father, greatsword, it stood the stature of an ordinary man from hilt to tip; and from its mother scimitar, it inherited its curve, which was so bulbous and grossly exaggerated that it could be nothing but a defect. And its maker should have started on a new one right away.

  Instead, they’d left it to rot in the back of their smithy.

  Irregular pits had eaten into the blade’s structure, leaving it with the look of bone after a week of decay—papyrus-brown and porous. The hilt, made of hardened red flesh, answered the way he gripped, reciprocating his grip like interlacing fingers. And the largest pit, near the blade’s tip, held a cyan gemstone, which had half melted onto the edge of the hole, like tears from a withered cyclops.

  The cultist had realised his instrument.

  “You asked me who I am, but I’m not a mercenary or a cultist.” There was a sudden stream of tears from him as well. Though like his weapon, his heart held no remorse for what he was about to do. “I’m but a humble priest. My God is the Divine Slaughterer. And bloodshed is my way of worship. It just so happens that I travel with the like-minded to facilitate my beliefs. But while they are hired killers, I am a killer who just happens to be for hire. Does that answer your question?”

  “Mmm. So, a cultist, then.” The undead shade dismissed. “And a mentally ill one, too. I don’t want to put something like you in my mouth. You can keep your nasty brain-meat. As long as you promise not to waste my time.”

  Saint didn’t like the sound of that agreement.

  If the heavens had eyes, these two would kill each other after a lengthy battle.

  So, he poked his head out of the window, keeping most of his body behind the frame. “Open your fucking eyes, merc! Goodhall’s dead, and that thing’s using his body as a vessel.”

  Sula closed the distance until the natural dimness was no obstruction.

  What remained of his comrade was grotesque. The man wasn’t built sturdy from the beginning; any one of these wounds was sure to be fatal.

  The mercenary frowned. "Answer my question, beast.”

  “I’ll humour it.”

  “When you kill the man hiding inside that building,” the mercenary asked, “will his death involve great bloodshed?”

  “Yes.” The shade’s visage contorted in an animalistic grin. Drool rolled down the corner of its lips. “And all that blood is going straight to my stomach.”

  The mercenary sighed. “Then there may be no peace between us.”

  Sula charged.

  Boots biting into sand, shoulders low, eyes fixed on the thing wearing Goodhall’s ruin, the mercenary raised his cleaver high.

  The shadespawn met him with a smile that belonged to a banquet.

  Its borrowed body moved too fluidly for something half-dead, too eager for something that had already been executed once. It stepped into his charge as if stepping into a dance.

  Sula swung first.

  The blade came in low and rising, meant to open it from hip to shoulder.

  However, the strike was premature.

  Beauty should not have found it surprising that humanity fell after the desolation of their great cities, but it was an archer’s joke to miss his mark. For a swordsman to do the same, it was more than—

  At the last moment, it dove to the side.

  Dodged by an inch—a red wave of energy, meant to open it from hip to shoulder, too thin to be seen from its initial perspective. The cut that should have disembowelled took a shallow ribbon of meat and disappeared.

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  To its utmost horror, a droplet of crimson beaded out of the shoulder wound.

  Beauty licked it up out of pure spite as it breathed. “Ah. That weapon is quite a danger to my current vessel. I’ll make sure to—”

  The mercenary cleaved again, claiming the opportunity.

  This time, it dodged the physical blade by dislocating its shoulder. Responding to the blade with a familiar, sickly voice, “Ah, good one, Sully. You fight like the best of us.”

  Sula didn’t answer. He turned the miss into a second strike, snapping the blade back across its throat. It raised an arm to block with confidence, forgetting too quickly what these borrowed bones could afford.

  The blade bit into its forearm.

  Beauty was pushed back by several steps as it tried to match the cultist’s brute strength with its own. Or rather, the dead man’s own. And of course, it wasn’t enough. Even in life, this mercenary’s body was no match for the other's.

  Goodhall’s bones cracked wetly under the skin.

  Sula kicked the beast and cleaved again. "Die!"

  The shadespawn screamed—utter delight as the severed arm flopped on the sand.

  Its other hand shot forward, fingers like hooks, aiming to clasp that handsome face.

  This time, victory was certain. And for good measure, it strengthened the poison coursing through its stagnant veins with the purple and green, sickly power of rot.

  That’s right, its veins were stagnant.

  A heartbeat never to be heard by its lover again.

  And yet—this feeling inside its chest.

  It was like the olden days. Wreaking havoc across the earth while facing off against those pesky cultists.

  Beauty would never admit it, but as its fingers were this close, close enough to feel the tiny hairs on the enemy’s cheekbones…

  As the lunatic pivoted inside its reach and shouldered its sternum…

  And as it was thrown over the sand, making eye contact with the gem in the middle of the blade, shivering under the chill of reciprocated distaste—the confirmation that an old friend was still alive in this era…

  It thought that it may have left something beating in the dead man’s chest.

  Because this was what it felt like to be truly alive!

  Beauty’s heels dug trenches, but it didn’t lose balance. Anchored by hunger as it wiped the blood from its lips. “Who would think that a mere foot soldier of the crimson moon, wielding a measly teardrop cleaver touched by the vermeille, would one day cause me this much trouble?”

  The suction returned in pulses.

  Not quite as powerful as before, aiming instead to unbalance the handsome beast of a man. The street began to lean toward the beast again, tiles chattering as they crawled.

  Sula was pulled inward. He braced and cut downward—an executioner’s chop meant to split the sinner in two.

  It ducked under the red energy wave and surged in close, slamming its forehead against his armoured chest as a lover reunited. Its vortex kept them together. Sula spat a mouthful of blood as the air abandoned his lungs.

  Its mouth opened near his collarbone, and he felt, more than heard, a wet inhale.

  Confused, he drove his knee up into its ribs and felt them cave like brittle wood. He seized Its hair and yanked Its head back, exposing Its throat.

  His blade flashed.

  The cut carved through neck and sinew, nearly clean. For a moment, its head listed to the side at an angle no living thing could tolerate.

  The shadespawn blinked thrice:

  Slow.

  Offended.

  Disbelieving.

  And then its body moved anyway.

  The corpse’s remaining structure did not support the sudden jerk. However, something else did:

  A pressure in the air, stirred by a hungry insistence.

  It grabbed the side of its own head with one hand.

  “Mm,” it said, voice gurgling around severed pathways. “That was rude.”

  Sula’s expression didn’t change.

  The sum of countless years of battle: the great human skill of adaptation.

  He stepped back one pace and bit off a piece of his tongue, spitting the still-bleeding flesh into his hand and then stuffing it into his weapon’s central hole.

  The mercenary raised the shining instrument into the air, a beacon of his bloody values in a city with no more blood to shed. He and this weapon—they walked together, talked together, and slept together. Therefore, when it came time to weep for a fallen enemy, they did that together, too.

  Cynzen Sula swept his cleaver in a wide arc.

  Blood energy gathered at the blade and shot forward, cleaving through the suction’s pull. Beauty fell to its knees, its severed head thudding dully in the ground.

  Then he went for what mattered.

  “Wait, no. Please!" Begged the shade, shivering from head to toe.

  His cleaver entered from the shoulder.

  The blade met rotted and corrupted flesh, broken bone and thickened black blood, reinforced by hunger and bound by will. And it sank anyway. The corpse’s back bowed.

  The shadespawn’s eyes widened.

  A battered vessel—bruised until it could hurt no longer.

  Inch by inch, it disappeared into her, the cyan “eye” on the instrument watching her end, careful not to miss a beat.

  “Wait...” it breathed, voice thinning. “Wait—please. Don’t—don’t do this.” A tremble ran through the corpse, perfectly timed. “I can be… useful. I can—”

  It looked almost small. Almost deserving of something.

  But that something wasn't pity.

  Sula didn’t answer. He drove the weapon deeper.

  Its hands lifted slowly, palms in open surrender.

  “It’s been a long time… mother. Will you still remember your little girl’s face?” Glassy-eyed, its mouth shaped the beginnings of a final plea as it reached out to the empty sky. “Please let me come up there with you, mother. I was only trying… my… b-”

  Silence.

  “Tch! Nasty thing.” Sula put a boot on its shoulder and leveraged his sword.

  Then it smiled. “Just kidding!”

  It was neither a grab nor a strike.

  Instead, it was a maiden’s first attempt at intimacy, pure in all its tenderness and all its deadly poison: a single fingertip resting on his veiny forearm. A touch that sank beneath the skin.

  The contact point went numb, burning at the same time.

  Poison.

  Sula’s eyes flicked to the finger still touching him, then back to its face. No surprise. No panic. Only a small, clinical narrowing. "So that's how you died, Cedrick. Cowardous to the point where you went and swallowed your own damn poison."

  The blade was still buried in its chest. Beauty's grin widened, certain she’d won.

  Sula released the weapon.

  In the same motion, his left hand snapped to his right forearm, clamping hard above the touch—blocking, buying seconds. He drew his own blade up with his other hand and, without hesitation, cut.

  His arm dropped into the sand like dead weight, still twitching.

  “I don’t share,” he said.

  “You—” it started, then stopped.

  Beauty sniffed the air, tasting an absence of a most wondrous aroma.

  Sula raised the blade again.

  The mercenary was sent tumbling across the sands before he registered the movement. And back at the site of their battle, Beauty was left banging a severed head on an invisible barrier.

  ____________________

  Unfortunately for the mercenaries, their most reliable combatant was the first to stumble upon their comrade’s corpse. And just like that, the greatest threat to their escaped procession became the second and was crippled right in front of him. Since then, the hired killers had been launching daily attacks on the hungry beast.

  Saint made good use of the opportunity, escaping at the height of that first battle.

  Leaning against the wall, he shook his head, questioning if he would have been able to do the same: sever a limb for the good of the greater whole.

  On the streets below, Sula, who was newly missing an arm, didn’t share in his comrade's raucous laughter. “How many of them do you have left?”

  “Eh," Wilhelm searched his pockets. "That was the last. Albus won the rest of it in a game of torture-dummy.”

  "Then we'd better go find him and get back to Ody. It's safe to say that thing doesn't know about the square. We should leave before it changes its mind."

  "Aw, would you lighten up?" Wilhelm slapped his comrade on the back. "Where we're going, it don't matter if you lost one arm, two arms, or your whole damn head!"

  Sula casually slapped his comrade upside the head. "And why is that?"

  "'Cause money talks, baby! And that gigantic bar of silver's calling us the richest bastards alive."