Chapter 10
It was carnage from the second we arrived in Loreshia.
We were standing just on the outskirts of the village, with the demolished, curved wooden sign in front of us. Fires burned in all directions, buildings were being destroyed, and the constant sound of harrowing, painful screams pulsed through my ears. The sky was so dark that I was unsure of the time of day, and the harsh stench I’d smelled in my vision was even stronger now. My entire coven and the familiars had joined me, and I could see how eager they were to put their powers to the test.
“Go!” I ordered. “Save anything and everyone you see! We will not stop until the last ember has died down!”
I’ll check up ahead and see what I can find, Alexander said as his wings lifted him into the air.
“Good,” I replied. “I need to know every little detail.”
Then, right as those words left my mouth, a green bolt of lightning whizzed past my face and hit a wooden beam beside me. The wooden beam disintegrated from the impact, and that would have been my face had the person’s aim been accurate.
“Praemium!” Akira shouted into the air, but her target ran before the bolt of light could hit him.
I noticed a man sprint behind a burning building, and I ran toward him without a second’s hesitation. I never got a good look at the man, and the dark, smoky fog made it harder for me to see, but his shadow could be seen through the orange and yellow flames
“Proelium,” I said as firmly as I could.
A tangerine-hued light smacked the man in the side, and he flew through the air and into a pile of burning bodies. Then the man let out a gargled scream as his skin and bones began to melt.
I left the man to meet his death, and then I turned to see my coven had aimed their wands toward five other men. One by one, the men met slow and painful deaths, and the grin on my face increased the more I watched them die. Faye blew off a man’s head, Beatrix and Penelope worked together to turn another bastard into stone, and Revna had the pleasure of breaking that stone into pieces. Blood, bones, and scraps of skin littered the grassy area, and I hoped the Elder Lord got a good look at what we were capable of.
The men clearly didn’t look like the elders we’d come across before, so I had to wonder why the Elder Lord disguised his men to look different. Or perhaps they weren’t elder men at all, and maybe they were merely holy worshippers. Either way, I was going to find out.
Alexander, I called on my familiar. We’ve just fought off six elders, but I need to know if more are around. Only women live in this village, so let me know if you see any men at all.
No problem, he replied. I don’t see anyone right now, but those fires are burning quickly, master.
Yes, I’m aware, I said.
“Master, what should we do now?” Beatrix asked when the last elder around us was dead.
“We all need to split up if we have any chance in saving this kingdom,” I said to my group. “The Elder Lord may have more of his men around here, so keep an eye out and be careful.”
I watched as my coven split up into groups and began to extinguish the flames, but Vanessa, Circe, Astrid, and Samara stayed with me. They combined their forces together to save a wooden hut from being destroyed, but I looked around the battle scene and tried to work out who to aim for.
I spotted many women fleeing from raging fires, and children were being carried away in their mothers’ arms. I knew the Elder Lord was behind all of this, but I needed to know if he had placed more of his men in the village.
“I’m going over here,” I said to my group when a bright burst of flame and a scream caught my attention. “Come and find me once you’ve saved that building.”
I heard their mumbled replies as I sprinted toward a raging fire. The air turned into thick, smoke-filled fog the closer I got, but I could just make out the woman tied to a burning stake. The orange flames licked her feet, and her piercing screams traveled high into the air.
“Prohibere!” I shouted with my wand aimed at the burning wood.
The fire slowly began to die down, but the woman continued to scream as she twisted her body from one side to the other. Then I closed the distance between us and noticed the rope that had been tied around her body in several places, which included her wrists, ankles, chest, and arms. The rope had caught the black soot from the fire, and the flames had caught onto the frayed ends.
The woman would have died in minutes had I not been there.
“Intermissum,” I said.
A spark of light left my wand, and the rope slowly began to unravel to free the woman from the stake. I repeated the spell a couple more times, and once the woman was free, I picked her up in my arms and carried her over to a clear patch of land. Her pale skin was covered in soot and ash, and her hair looked dark, but that could have been from the fire. Her beige tunic was singed at the bottom, and there was a slight wheeze in every breath she took.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I gently placed her down onto the grass.
“Y-Yes… I’m okay,” she panted. “I… thank you. You saved my life.”
“Who did this to you?” I asked. “Did you see their face?”
“No,” the woman said as she shook her head. “It all happened so suddenly, I don’t think anyone saw their face.”
“What about their clothing?” I asked. “Did you see that?”
“Um…” She frowned. “Black. I saw black leather and silver chains.”
I couldn’t say for certain if the men we fought off wore the same clothing, but I needed to know who we were working with, and whether these men were all from the same group.
“Thank you,” I said as I stood back up again. “I’m going to save the others, but do your best to find somewhere to hide, and I’ll be sure to return to you when it’s all over.”
“I… I don’t know where to go,” the lady said, and a look of panic crossed her face. “My home was burned to the ground, and my entire village has been destroyed.”
The lady was right. I was going to do whatever I could to save these villagers, but they needed somewhere safe to go once I’d released them from their agony.
“Okay, stand back.” I said as we cleared the space. Then I pointed my wand out in front of me. “Aedificate.”
I pictured a building in my head, down to the smallest of details. Then a white light formed around the area like it had done in Revna’s village, and the light sat there until a new building had been created. The building was made from pure steel, with nothing but a black door in the center. It wasn’t overly large from the outside, but I’d pictured it to be bigger on the inside, so I knew it was large enough to hold the entire village if needed. Then I added a simple charm to the door so only the villagers could enter, and it saved them from any threat that could have come their way.
“Go in there,” I ordered. “You’ll be safe inside, I promise.”
“Thank you,” the woman said with a voice thick with emotion. “You really did save my life.”
“I’m only doing my duty,” I shrugged. “I’ll return when it’s over.”
Then the lady ran toward the steel building and shut herself away inside. I hoped she’d soon be joined by all the other residents, but I knew not everyone was going to survive, and that woman was going to be left by herself if I didn’t hurry and release the others from their entrapment.
“Cole!” Vanessa called over to me. “This way.”
I searched around for my coven and found Vanessa, Circe, Astrid, and Samara not far from the fiery stake. Their hair was messy, and they had soot on their cheeks and foreheads, but my women still looked incredible.
“We’ve found a collection of women and children who need our help,” Vanessa said as we began to run. “We would have tackled it by ourselves, but the fire is so big that we need you to help us.”
“We need to save the children more than anything,” Samara added. “These children are not made the biological way, and if they die, the entire village will die out in a few years’ time.”
I’d read about the children of Loreshia before, and how the women worship them as much as they worship me. Without any men in the kingdom, certain women are picked to birth and raise the offspring of the future, and without them, the kingdom won’t survive.
“We have to do what we can,” I said firmly. “Remember, we will heal from a burn. They won’t.”
The young, terrified screams hit me as we reached a wall of fire. The wooden beams of the building were just seen peeking from the top of the flames, but the destroyed timber creaked from the heat that engulfed it. I saw no initial way in, but there was a door somewhere, and I just had to find it.
“Aim your wands at the flames and use all the power you possess!” I shouted. “We have many more people to save, and only a short amount of time in order to do it.”
An abundance of lights left my covens’ wands as we shouted out various spells and incantations. I used the prohibere spell as much as I could, but after five minutes of battling the heat, I knew I needed to use something far greater than I had before.
I thought back to when we’d battled the slontaurs, and how I needed to combine my wand with the others to create a wall of fire. Then I thought about the opposite effect of that, and an incantation quickly came to mind.
“Everyone put their wands together,” I said with urgency. “I know what we need to do, but we’ll need to be quick.”
I briefly wondered if my incantation would be strong enough, especially with only a small number of my coven with me, but I didn’t have the time to think of another plan.
“Unum vinculum nos, ut et nos in unum facti speciem fortissimum,” I said under my breath.
Together we bond as one, and together we become the strongest form.
Then, as the power vibrated through my body, I pulled my wand away and aimed it at the burning building.
“Monstrum mare creare fluctus,” I ordered.
A blue light flew from my wand, and a tsunami of water poured down onto the building. The waves then formed into the shape of a sea monster, and I watched as its large, snake-like tongue lapped away at the flames. The fire slowly began to die down, but it took every ounce of energy in my body to keep the waves going and for the sea monster to continue its job. The screams broke through the walls, but I had to focus on the incantation instead of the desperate women and children inside.
A white smoke mixed with the black fog as the fires were extinguished, and I watched as more of the building came into view. The framework was seen first, but I noticed how the beams were dissolving, and it wasn’t going to be long before the roof would collapse down onto the terrified women and children.
“Get in there,” I ordered to my coven. “I’ll keep the waves brewing, but you cannot use your wands until I’m finished with my own.”
I focused the waves toward the main body of the fire and cleared a path for my women to run through. Vanessa went first, followed by Circe, then Astrid and Samara. I couldn’t see them once they’d entered the building, so anything could have happened at any given moment. I could hear Vanessa talking, and occasionally I heard Circe, but the thickness of the fog created a terrifying darkness that I couldn’t break through.
“Save the children!” I heard a woman shout. “Please, save the children.”
Five minutes passed before I saw anyone, but then I noticed Samara break through a cloud of smoke with a child in one arm and her other arm braced around a woman’s waist. The lady and the child had issues with their breathing, and they’d inhaled a lot of smoke, but I hoped that was the only issue they faced.
Samara placed them gently on the grass, and then she ran back in to save some more of the trapped people. Vanessa and Circe brought out some women, too, and Astrid left the flames with a young girl cradled in her arms.
It took about fifteen minutes for all the women and children to be saved, and minutes after the waves had ended, the final wooden beams collapsed, and an almighty bang shattered through the sky as the dust and shrapnel settled.
My group checked on the injured people, and a few of my women used the sarcio spell to assist with any wounds or injuries they may have had. I was pleased to see everyone in that building had survived, and although they couldn’t say the words, I knew how thankful they were for our help, and especially for saving the children.
“I have created a place for you all to stay in,” I said. “You will be safe in there until we get this battle sorted.”
“Th-Thank you,” a woman said as she fought against a painful cough. “We… we’ll always be in your debt.”
“Look after yourselves,” I said with a smile. “We’ll return to you once the fires are under control.”
Then I gave the group the directions to the safe room, but I knew the steel building wasn’t going to be hard to miss. Every building in this realm had been made from wood, so it stuck out dramatically.
My group and I went to find another fire to tackle, but before I could take another step, Alexander’s voice floated into my mind.
Master, he said with a slight panic. We’ve found someone!
I closed my eyes as I summoned myself to connect with Alexander.
Is it a man? I asked. Does he look like an Elder?
He’s a man alright, Alexander said with a snort. But he doesn’t look like the Elders we’ve seen before. He’s dressed in black, with greasy, brown hair and a menacing look on his face. We’ve got him cornered, but I don’t know if there are still others around here.
This only confused me more, and it didn’t offer any sort of answer to my previous theories. I needed to work out who they are, and the man they found could hold all the answers.
Where are you? I asked. We’ll come and terrorize the truth from him.
I’ll send Trixie to guide you, but be quick! my familiar said with urgency.
“We’ve got to go,” I said to my group once Alexander had left my mind. “The familiars have found a man who assisted with this blaze.”
“Just one?” Vanessa asked.
“Just one.” I nodded. “There may be more out here, but there’s a chance they’ve all fled already.”
A high-pitched, familiar squawk rained down from the sky as Nyx’s falcon, Trixie, came into view. The bird hovered in the air as she continued to call down to us, but I had to think about the fires before I followed her. I had no idea where the rest of my coven was, and I couldn’t just leave these buildings to burn.
“Samara and Astrid, you stay here and take down the flames,” I ordered. “Circe and Vanessa, you and I will follow Trixie.”
“Of course, my lord,” Samara said. “We won’t stop until every woman and child has been saved.”
“We don’t know if more men roam this village, but use everything you can to fight them off,” I told them. “None of them are allowed to leave this kingdom alive.”
“They won’t get past me.” Samara winked.
“Good, don’t let them,” I said with a smirk.
Then Circe, Vanessa, and I followed Trixie as she took us through the burning village. I extinguished a few flames as I sprinted past them, but I had to leave the major fires for others to fight. The desire to meet this man the familiars found surged through my veins, and I was just as eager to see the life as it left his eyes. I knew he was a member of the Elder Lord’s army, and the repercussions of this were going to be mighty, but they had focused on an innocent, vulnerable village, and I wasn’t going to stand back and watch them destroy more lives.
Instead, I was going to destroy theirs.
I hadn’t realized how small this village was until I ran through it, and it only took ten minutes to reach the outskirts. Then I noticed the group of familiars in the center of the open plot of land, and the man they’d surrounded. He’d been forced to the ground, and his outfit matched what the woman had told me, with the black leather and silver belts and chains, but I also noticed the anger on his face and the constant scowl that formed on his brow.
Ursula, the ivory-skinned snake, had wrapped her long body around the man’s waist and arms to keep him still, and I watched her muscles tense up the more the man struggled and wriggled.
“Stand aside,” I said to the familiars. “I want to see the man before he dies.”
The captive let out a humorless laugh as Ursula untangled her body from around him, but before he could jump from the ground, Vanessa cast a spell that kept him stuck to the grass.
“Tell me everything,” I ordered as I stepped forward.
“You’ll have to beat it out of me first,” he snickered.
“My pleasure.” I grinned as I held up my wand. “Dolor.”
Then the man’s face scrunched up in pain, and a guttural groan left his mouth. He couldn’t move from the spell Vanessa had placed on him, but I could see how desperate he was to try and settle the pain that ran through his body.
“Pl-please!” he cried out. “Please!”
His screams filled the air, but I kept the spell close against his body until I felt like he’d gone through enough torture.
For now.
“Tell me everything, unless you want me to unleash the pain again,” I said as I towered over the man. “Are there others around here?”
“I… I won’t say!” he shouted.
“Fine.” I shrugged. “Aranea.”
The grass and dirt around the man began to tremble as the creatures from my spell became alive. The spiders’ legs broke free first, and then their bulging bodies came out of the ground. The spiders were all various sizes, some were as small as a fingernail, whereas others matched the size of the man’s head.
The spiders crawled across the man’s body, and soon only his head was visible. He tried his best to fling the creatures away from him, but they were far too quick, and there were too many for him to fight off. I would estimate there were at least four hundred spiders crawling across the man, but there could have been more than that.
“Okay, okay!” he cried out. “Get these motherfuckers off me, and I’ll tell you!”
“Reditus,” I said with a click of my fingers, and the spiders instantly returned to the ground again. “Now, tell me everything.”
“What is it that you need to know?” he asked in a trembling voice.
“How many of you are here?” I started.
“There w-were twenty of us to b-begin with,” he stuttered. “Some of us have already left, but we were told to stay until every fire had been lit.”
“Who told you to stay?” I demanded.
“The Elder Lord,” he said. “He… he told nine of us to stay here.”
If nine had stayed in the village, and we’d killed six, then that meant we still had another two men to find.
“Where are the other two?” I asked, but the man refused to answer. “Tell me!”
The man let out another cry as he covered his face with both hands. I knew the reason behind his hesitation, but I wasn’t one for playing games. I’d asked for an answer, and I expected to receive just that.
“You will either tell me where those men are, or I’ll have the spiders nibble away at your body until you’re just a pile of bones,” I said with a smirk. “It’s up to you, but you’re going to die either way.”
Then, all of a sudden, I noticed a shadow out from the corner of my eye appearing from a collection of trees. At first I wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, and nothing about their appearance gave it away, but then Trixie soared through the sky and gave out a shriek, and I instantly knew it was someone we were after.
Then I watched as the man ran back into the trees, but the falcon was hot on his heels.
“Get him!” I ordered my women. “We cannot leave this kingdom until they’re all dead.”
Vanessa and Circe ran in Trixie’s direction, which just left myself and the quivering man on the ground.
“So, we’ve found one of them,” I said as I sauntered closer toward him. “Where is the other man hiding? Is he about to jump out at me?”
“I don’t know!” the frightened man shouted. “We all split up once the fires began, so I don’t know where any of them are!”
“Part of me wants to believe you, but the other part knows you’re talking nothing but goblin shit.” I shrugged. “Like I said, you’re going to die either way, so you may as well put your final breath to good use.”
I watched the man deliberate for a second, and I began a countdown in my head. I gave him ten seconds to think of a response before I ended his life in a brutal way.
One, two, three…
“Come on, time’s ticking.” I motioned toward my watchless wrist.
Six, seven, eight…
The countdown continued, and I held my wand directly in front of the man and opened my mouth to speak the spell.
“Okay!” he cried out. “Okay!”
“Where are they?” I asked with anger clear in my voice.
“In the trees!” he said with a sob. “I don’t know where, but we were told to hide in the trees in case someone came along.”
“Find that final man,” I ordered as I looked toward Alexander and the rest of the familiars. “Ursula, constrict him if you want.”
Do you want us to save him for you, master? Alexander asked.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I don’t care how these men die, just be sure to explain every detail to me first.”
Oh, you know I will! he said in a cheeky tone, and then the familiars took off to do my bidding.
“Now…” I walked back and forth in front of the man. “Are you telling me the truth? Are there any more men out there?”
“N-No, I-I promise!” he sobbed. “Nine of us stayed behind, and the others left.”
“Do you realize what I do to men who lie to me?” I snarled. “I torture every inch of their bodies. I begin with their toes and work my way up. Sometimes, I pick and choose my choice of torture, but other times I keep it the same way.”
I heard the loud gulp as the man swallowed back his fear.
“I feel as though I should give you the same torture that you placed onto this innocent village.” I shrugged. “But I also love it when you scream, and I can think of other, more interesting ways of killing you.”
“Please, I beg of you,” he said, and he tried to climb up onto his knees.
“Ah, ah, aah… stay where you are,” I said as I kicked him back to the ground.
“I promise I won’t do anything to harm you,” he begged, and his lip trembled like a small child. “Please, let me go.”
“How do I know to believe you?” I asked.
“Because I told you where those men were!” he said with pleading eyes.
“Yes, but you weren’t going to in the first place.” I smirked.
Master. Alexander’s voice came through. Miss Vanessa and Miss Circe have tracked and killed the first man, and Trixie has tracked down the second. I’m going to search the forest in case there are more, but those two men have died. And, master, it was a thing of beauty!
“It looks like you’re all on your own,” I said to the man. “My group have killed your men, so unless you have more hidden somewhere, you’re all alone.”
“No…” he said sadly. “I told you the truth, it really was just us.”
“Oh, well,” I snickered. “Any final words?”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but I was quicker than he was.
Pressura.
I watched as an almighty pressure began to build in the man’s body, but he no longer had the ability to make a noise. His cheeks flushed red, his eyes screwed shut, and his arms and legs began to swell. Then, before I could prepare myself, his brain bulged against his skull, and one by one his eyes popped open and hung from their sockets as his brain exploded.
Once his brain had exploded, the rest of the body continued to pop and split open in various places. I spotted the exposed bones of his arms and kneecaps, then, as his stomach exploded, I spotted the string of intestines and other organs that seeped out onto his clothing. It was a beautiful sight, and I was almost annoyed no one else got to witness it.
I was covered in chunks of brain matter, organs, and droplets of deep, red blood, but the man was dead, so the rotten stench was nothing for me to be concerned about.
All I had to think about was how to save Loreshia, and when the Elder Lord was going to strike again.