Layrion relaxed and stood from her crouched position. “You idiot. You scared me to death. I was ready to rip you from sternum to spleen.”
He chuckled and stared down at her, the cloth over his eyes providing no hindrance in him seeing her reserved amusement at his game. “Getting pretty good on Human anatomy there, Daughter of Akil. But I’ll still wager that I’ve killed more than you.”
“I’m not his daughter—merely his charge. You know that.” Layrion spit, showing her discomfort at how close her thoughts had been to her once protector. “It’s not like he’s been any help to our cause. He continues to deny that the Humans are getting stronger. Learning to imitate their feeble bodies is the only positive adaptation we’ve made to this environment.” She crossed her arms, her dagger still in one hand.
Yggdrasil nodded slowly, and shifted his blind gaze from Layrion to the cool night breeze. He sniffed and grunted.
Layrion sensed this light movement, even in the dim glow of the fire. She drew her dagger up again, ready to throw it or plunge it into warm flesh. “What is it? What can you see?”
“Nothing yet...” The he put his hand to his ear.
Layrion kicked dirt over the fire, dimming it even more. When Drasil sensed a disturbance, however low or distant, it usually resulted in something. She flipped her dagger around in her hand and wiped in on her bloodied skirt. It was out of habit, of course—the old weapons that she was used to had rusted easily. Those had been made of flimsy mortal steel and iron, swords and daggers stolen from the humans early on in the War, almost one thousand years ago. These new weapons had been forged by her Icchorian kin, purer and stronger than any mortal blade. Dagger use had been a crude skill she’d developed out of necessity. Layrion preferred to fight in her natural state, using the beast deep within her, which was kept only under the lock and key of her gold armor. Her breastplate was the heaviest—not to protect the weak female breasts that she now bore, but because her transformation into the pureblood form always started near her heart. It had been heavy and painful to wear at first, almost burning the flesh of the hidden beast, but it hardly bothered her now. She’d been living with it for almost four hundred years, and the weight hardly crossed her mind. She had learned to fight in the bipedal body of the humans.
“To know my enemy, I must become my enemy,” she whispered to herself, coming out of her wandering mind and back into the present moment. Possible danger. Yggdrasil on alert.
“What do you see? Anything new?” She narrowed her eyes, seeing several hundred yards into the distance. Flat plains were simultaneously an advantage and a disadvantage: your enemy cannot hide in plain sight, but then again neither can you. Layrion had had reservations about leaving the hilly country to the North, but decided that it was best to go on the offensive and decimate as many human territories as possible. Others called her crazy for venturing out into the Western Plains, but she persisted. They had become complacent in the little territory that they could defend, with its diamond gates, impenetrable walls, and silver sidewalks. Fat and lazy, she’d called them. They were neutral in the constant destruction of other Icchorians who lived in other cities across the world, oblivious to the developments of the humans. Adapt or die out, that was her motto.
In the end, only Ammy, Rune, and Yggdrasil followed her. Others of her kind had been here before, but in larger parties, with more weapons and horses and supplies. Those would just bog them down, she argued. Nothing else mattered to her except what she could carry in her hands or on her back; and horses had to be fed hay or oats. She only needed blood, and in the middle of a War, she had plenty of it.
The tent rustled, and Ammy crawled out, looking rested and focused. She bowed a greeting to her sister. “I sensed a disturbance. Yggdrasil was giving off a negative energy.” She looked up while instinctively patting her lower back, where her barbed whip was hidden underneath her skirt and chain mail.
“Yes. Something in the wind.” Layrion looked back at the tree top. “Drasil?”
He leaned forward again, further, his body putting as much weight as he dared on the unstable tree. “Something is coming,” he hissed, his mood going from playful to blood lust in a matter of seconds. “Something strange, something that we have never encountered before.”
Layrion just nodded, and quickly collapsed the tent and rolled into the small pack she carried on her back. “Should we wait here, or should we go for Rune?”
Yggdrasil descended from his nest and drew his sword. “Whatever is coming is coming quickly, and if we try to cross its path to go back west, it will surely get the better of us. We will be more focused and on guard if we stay here. It’s coming up from the Southern Forests, but it’s still too far away for me to see anything else.”
Layrion silently cursed herself for letting Rune go off alone, and even Ammy was, for once, unable to convince him to stay. His details were few, only dropping slight hints about “gathering intelligence” and “solving mysteries of his past.”
Ammy stepped up beside the blind warrior and focused her aura outward. “What Yggdrasil says is true. Perhaps if we head a bit east, we can flank it. If we get to observe it before it observes us, we’ll have all the more advantage over it. It is a strange thing I sense. Something definitely foreign to us.”
“Whether it’s of human origin or an enemy we must fight remains to be seen, then.” Layrion finished kicking dirt over the smoldering coals. “I will leave a message here for Rune that we have headed east. He is just as keen as Drasil, so hopefully he has not gotten himself into too much trouble—meaning, hopefully he can sense this strange being on the wind as well, if his mind is in the right place. Either way, I know he will find us.” Layrion ripped a small part of her skirt and grabbed a torched branch from the fire. She snapped it into a smaller writing utensil, and delicately burned Icchorian characters on the cloth. Old broken blades and other shrapnel were plentiful on the battle-laden Western Plains, and she found a sharp piece of iron. She hammered the cloth to the tree.
“Always resourceful,” Ammy said with pride.
Yggdrasil nodded. “But come. We’ve wasted too much time already. We’ll do as Ammy suggests and head east to flank the stranger. It’ll be sunlight in four hours, and we’ll need to find safe shelter by then as well.”
With cool night wind at their backs and the threat of daylight drawing near, the three warriors set out into the wild.
Elsewhere, Rune was levitating in a white-gold room filled with brilliant, iridescent lights. His auburn hair floated around him lazily, as though he was in water. He was sitting cross- legged, and his arms were relaxed, his palms open.
He had fulfilled his mission—well, part of it. He had killed all of the humans in the settlement. Every man, woman, and child lay dead in their homes, where they stood; whether it had been washing clothes or preparing a meal; tending crops or playing with siblings. The ground was soaked with blood, and half-eaten entrails were strewn about floors and sidewalks and grassy yards. It had been a relatively small settlement of around one thousand humans, but that made no difference to Rune. A human child was just as much threat as his fully-grown father, for he would grow up to be a hunter. Better to nip that life while it was still young.
Rune licked his lips with anxiety. His gold accessories still jiggled slightly, trying to keep the beast within him contained once more. He had decimated the village within two hours of unleashing his pureblood form, something that Layrion would have surely condemned. She preferred to fight as one of them, to adapt to their habits and fighting techniques as much as possible. The beast was always her first choice, but out of habit, rarely the one executed. She always held back and fought with her daggers instead. He didn’t trust her nearly as much as he trusted Ammy, but he had to admit that Layrion’s fighting style, though human in practice, was beautiful and a force to be reckoned with. While he practiced self-control in her presence, Rune was always eager to go off on his own, traipsing about the plains at night and unleashing the beast. He needed blood, and he was always much more satisfied after drinking as a beast.
Now he was in meditation, a ritual that only a few very, very old Icchorians practiced regularly. He was one of them, an Elder, and his dream was to build a Navy and wage war on the humans across the great ocean to the West. He knew he’d have to be patient, and this bothered him, but he was willing to wait. He did not foresee an end to the war in the next millennia or so, and he grinned slightly. He would have plenty of time to turn the sea red with Human blood, a sacrifice to the mysterious Originator. The omniscient Being was the reason for his deep concentration now, and as he transcended into the spiritual plane where the Originator reigned, he wondered if he’d be proud of Rune’s progress. The wide-scale invasions of eras- gone-by had given rise to stealthier, slower warfare as the Icchorians were forced to run by night and the day-walking humans developed newer and more efficient technologies. The wipeout of the entire village by one Icchorian was unheard of in recent years, and even more unheard of was the raw, unbridled brutality of the pureblood form hidden beneath the humanoid exterior.
Rune opened his eyes. He was in the Temple, his body transparent and glowing with the surrounding iridescent light. He smiled and breathed in the closest thing he had to sunlight. Someday, he thought. Someday, I will be able to see this on my own plane. We will conquer the day, and then...the Humans will fall.
The Originator was nowhere to be seen—he never was, and Rune for one moment sighed and wondered why a god was never to be seen in his own spiritual church. But where he could not be seen, he was always heard. The voice of a thousand earthquakes, the voice that resonated with the destruction of galaxies, spoke to Rune. He spoke his true name, a name unpronounceable to humans and even some late-generation Icchorians, in the language that was spoken at the beginning of the world.
Rune’s skin shivered with goosebumps. “Greetings, Thou Who Hast Made Me, Mysterious as the Sun, God of All Gods, Deity of Our Clan.”
“Rune,” the Originator used the shortened form of his name. “I have seen your chaos.”
“Yes, and does it please His Mightiness? One thousand Humans drained of blood to feed your One True Race.”
The deity laughed, and the reverberating sound shook the planets. “You fool. I wish for no bloodshed between my creations!” A great wind swept through the temple and straight through Rune’s spirit body. “I placed Humans in this realm in order for them to thrive alongside you! I wish for peace!”
“Peace?” Rune rose from his seating position and faced upward, assuming the Originator to be looking down upon him from another world. “How can there be peace when we were created with the lust for mortal blood? How can we, the One True Race, live for hundreds of thousands of years while your mere Humans live for barely eighty summers? If we are not to feed on them, then on whom do we feed? How are we supposed to live? You cursed us like this! You expect us to live in peace with inferior cattle, fit only for increasing our strength?”
Silence, and then the temple walls began to bleed black ooze that smelled of sulfur. Rune knew what that meant. The Originator was angry, but so was Rune, and he didn’t care if he were smote with lightning in that instant. He had to get this out. “If there is another way, let us know and we will follow it, Supreme One! The beast within me thirsts for blood, Human blood! If I were not meant to drink from a Human, then from what? I know no other passion, no other pleasure. My blood lust is not slaked by anything other than your inferior mortal creations.”
But the Originator was silent, and the bright, heavenly spirit world was fading to black. Rune focused on his breathing once more, and sat on the floor once more. The black goop filled the Temple, a physical manifestation of the god’s wrath.
Rune opened his eyes and inhaled sharply. He was alone in the middle of the town hall. Dead bodies were piled around him, remnants of his personal battle. He smiled at his work, but then frowned just as quickly when he remembered the Originator’s words. He was back at square one, no closer to knowing his creator’s true intention or plan for Icchorians or Humans alike. While he had no problem with an eternal war, he did want there to be some meaning to the violence. It wouldn’t take him more than a hundred years to build his Navy and bring victory to the One True Race. What would be the ultimate fate of the humans? And what would happen if they died out? Their total destruction meant destruction of the Icchorians as a race as well, and Rune couldn’t quite wrap his head around this concept. His pleas with the Originator had been fruitless. He would still keep searching for other Icchorian priests older and wiser (and on better terms with his god) than he was.
As he walked out of the village gate and headed back towards Layrion’s camp, a soft night breeze tickled his nostrils. He stopped immediately and faced south. He sniffed, then crouched and put his pointed ear to the ground. Something new. Something wild. It was coming this way. He could feel, however slightly, that his party of three was on the move around this new and possible threat. They were headed east, but a little southeast, and could probably miss him by just a few miles if he wasn’t careful. He decided to run. With any luck, he’d meet them in the middle, and they could decide the best course of action together. He picked his way through what had once been a large lush field thriving with life, all that had been lost in the last battle. The trees and ground lay scorched, and Rune could still smell the blood of both Humans and Icchorians that stained the Earth. He growled, hands clenched. He would avenge his fallen comrades.
The four did manage to regroup on the outskirts of the Southern border. Rune was met with a smile from Ammy and a once over from Layrion, assuring that he was uninjured and fit for whatever lay before them. The unidentifiable something was still leaving everyone on the edge; Yggdrasil’s sensory system was driving him crazy.
“I can’t stand this,” he groaned. “I can’t put my finger on this strange presence.”
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