Chapter Fourteen
Boraleashe
The Battle of Courage
It only took Boraleashe seconds to reach the center of the madness.
People were running terrified into the night.
Villagers scattered like ants, trying to bustle their children and elderly to safety.
Elephant-sized monsters barreled through the small homes as if they were made of paper, not limestone.
Boraleashe wanted to curse the gods at what he saw.
The snow was painted with the blood of corpses. A heavy, metallic scent permeated the once clean air and ate through the gleaming snow like hot water. Vacant eyes bore up toward him, still widened in a primitive state of terror, shrouding Boraleashe with guilt.
He counted four trolls, which should’ve given him relief, except just one of those bastards possessed the equivalent strength of a herd of Godduhl demons and were ten times more vicious.
Boraleashe tasted the panic bubbling in his throat.
Growling, he barreled toward the ground, his five-foot spear drawn and held high to strike.
He hit the ground with an ear-deafening roar and hurled his spear into the flank of one of the trolls that was feet away from trampling over a couple running hand in hand with their three children in tow.
His weapon struck a mighty blow, but it was unable to pierce the thick, dragon-like hide of the troll. The beast snarled, forgetting about the villagers, and turned its black eyes and rage onto Boraleashe, which was what he wanted.
He had seconds to use his wind to recapture his spear and hurl it again at the juncture of the troll’s shoulders, sending it crashing to the ground only for it to shake it off and get right back up.
The animal swung its massive head around, its pointed ears drawing back, snarling like it’d had enough.
The troll stomped his hooflike front feet, the three ten-inch claws digging into the hard terrain.
Boraleashe searched for a spot of vulnerability anywhere on the animal that he could penetrate, but the oversized animal was made up of millennia of packed snow and an unyielding ice exterior.
He became frustrated and desperate when more screams and sounds of flesh tearing rang in his ears.
His weapons were useless, and it was taking him too long to kill one. Boraleashe rotated his hands around each other and created a massive force of energy with his wind. He shot his hands out and sent the beast flying backward several hundred feet.
His people cheered for him; some cried out for help.
Boraleashe yelled at the villagers to take cover in the mines nestled in the mountains, hoping he could give them a fighting chance to get there. Though he didn’t know how the fuck he was going to take all those beasts on at once.
It took the one troll longer to recover, but it didn’t stop the others from coming together and charging right for him.
The trolls were back far enough that Boraleashe was able to form dozens of ice daggers with the most frigid arctic wind he could conjure and hurled the six-foot-long icicles in the beasts’ direction.
The force of his element behind the blades went straight through the eyes of one troll, a heinous cry ringing out before the crazed animal slid several feet across the ground, his rough hide slamming into the huge base of an elder tree, knocking it over and a couple surrounding it.
It lay there motionless… but not dead.
The remaining three seemed to double their efforts, coming at him with the full vengeance of the Snow Moon.
“Lord Boraleashe! Run! Come with us!” his people screamed at his back.
The only way he could protect them was by keeping himself between the entrance of the cave and the monsters. Boraleashe stretched his arms in a wide arch to create a cyclone, his most powerful weapon.
His energy was waning, his wind taking longer to conjure, allowing the beasts to get closer each time.
His retractable spear was made of Cypianite platinum—an unbreakable metal forged by a demigod of Hephaestus lineage and infused with a subzero temperature that could freeze Boraleashe’s enemy from the inside out.
But he could not freeze what was already frozen. There was no weapon forged that could kill these demonic creatures, and Boraleashe feared his army was marching toward a massacre.
Then who would guard Amárach from future threats?
The black fear inside him ignited every cell in his body. The beasts charged at him with their razor-sharp teeth bared, snarling, and slobbering like his death would taste delicious.
Boraleashe didn’t have time to conjure his tornado. Working on pure adrenaline, he hurled a burst of wind, snow, and ice that didn’t even knock the trolls down. Anger flared through him so fast it burned his skin. The moon’s feud was with him; why were his people being slaughtered?
His rage threatened to spill out into screams. He drew his spear one last time, prepared to give these monsters all he had before they took him down, and even then, he wouldn’t stop fighting until he drew his last breath.
Boraleashe grunted and hollered from the effort it took to leap into the air and come down on a troll’s back. He landed a wicked blow from his sword, Weeping Glass, that didn’t do as much damage as he’d hoped.
Throwing caution and technique away, Boraleashe fought mercilessly and with no control, unleashing fury in every direction and at anything that came toward him. He sent small, ineffective bursts of northern energy while his lungs struggled to take in air.
The beast seemed to sense that he was out of steam. They approached him with bloodstained grins, taunting him before they finished him off. The hooves of his army’s Clydesdales pounded the ground in their rush to join in the fight, shaking the earth with their arrival.
If Boraleashe laid his life down now, it would be over. The Snow Moon and its assassins would have what it came for.
A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye triggered him to turn his head. A child was running lost and scared through the clearing, crying out for his father before he fell face-first to the ground, only to get up and fall again.
Boraleashe heard the child’s cries… and so did the trolls.
Fear burned at the back of his throat, but he bolted into the sky, using every ounce of wind he could muster when he swooped down, hefted the boy in his arm, and got him the last feet toward the opening of the cave.
“Hurry, boy. Run! Quickly!” Boraleashe commanded. The boy was staring transfixed, his feet glued to the spot Boraleashe set him down.
The kid’s eyes bulged, his mouth gaping at whatever was behind Boraleashe, a warning that was too late. Razor-sharp claws slashed across his chest, slicing through his armor.
Liquid heat covered his torso before he was thrown across the field. His body slammed into the side of a towering elm before he fell to the ground in a heap of pain and defeat.
Boraleashe was on all fours, spitting blood across the once white snow.
Warning snarls were directed his way, the creatures circling him.
He tried to get to his feet, yelling in agony at the white-hot fire licking up his chest and into his throat.
The scent of fresh blood—his blood—invaded his senses.
Boraleashe’s guard commander’s booming voice rang in his ears, the ground vibrating beneath his palms at their arrival. Boraleashe opened his mouth to shout at them to go back and choked on the blood pooling in his mouth.
He needed to somehow warn his battalion that their swords and spears would be useless against the trolls, but all that escaped his throat were strangled gurgles.
He had one hand gripping the shredded armor over his seeping wound, and with his other, he tried his hardest to generate enough wind to prevent the demonic beasts from delivering the final blow of brutality that would end his torment.
He whispered a prayer to the gods, staggering upright, tugging at the last amount of life left in his wounded core. He refused to die on his hands and knees. Standing shakily, he closed his eyes and waited for the end.
“There! He’s over there. Move it!”
Boraleashe wanted to double over and plunge his own spear into his gut at the sound of Enosabe’s voice screaming across the blood-soaked battlefield. And if his oldest was there, then that meant—
“I’m right behind you!” Kallos answered, terror tinging her voice when her shimmering eyes met his, then traveled to the blood soaking through his chest plate. “No! Father!”
Both of his daughters were there and in grave danger. So was the fate of Amárach. He couldn’t allow them to face off with the trolls—he wouldn’t allow them to risk their lives.
Enosabe was the first to reach him, dismounting her powerful war steed and landing at his side in a defensive stance. She wielded a spear in one hand and a pearl-handled sword in the other. Her sharp eyes didn’t linger on him, her mind focused on the threat in front of her.
“Be!” Kallos skidded to a halt at her sister’s side, tears flooding her eyes. “Father,” she cried while staring at his fatal wound.
Boraleashe tried to clear the fog of pain from his mind and the blood clogging in his throat, struggling to communicate through the terror. His oldest spoke the words he was unable to.
“Father can protect himself! Wipe those goddamn tears and get your head in the fight, sister.”
They stood in front of him as though they were his personal guards.
Boraleashe staggered backward, shaky on his feet, the tree at his back bearing much of his weight.
He wanted to leap in front of his daughters and protect them, but he didn’t even possess the strength to raise his arms over his head.
“Run,” he coughed and spat blood, begging his heirs to be smarter than this.
“Fuck that! Amárach is ours to protect,” Enosabe swore, stabbing her spear into the ground. She leaned forward, inhaling the frigid winter air deep into her lungs.
Boraleashe was just able to slam both hands over his ears before his oldest opened her mouth wide and screamed her battle cry across the open field, creating a sonic blast that threw the beasts hundreds of feet away.
His daughters were not his direct descendants, so they did not possess the power of harnessing the wind, but they were still titanesses of his blood, and they held unique abilities and strength that made them a force when combined.
Kallos knocked her fist on her sister’s Spartan helmet in admiration, then yelled for the army to maintain their positions. “Hold this line! No matter what!”
It took a lot longer this time, but of course, the beasts were able to shake off the effects of Enosabe’s sonic waves of rage and come at their intended target again. They were programmed to never stop until the Snow Moon’s target was eliminated.
“Run, my daughters. Please,” Boraleashe tried again, feeling his life force leaving this realm. His voice was a mere whisper now. They couldn’t hear him amid the commotion. They didn’t realize the severity of his wounds and that he was dying only inches away from them.
Boraleashe closed his eyes, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.
He tried to focus his last few seconds on the sudden warmth encompassing him like a weighted blanket.
The air shifted around him, the frigid temperature of Amárach heating to a degree that stunned Boraleashe’s world into complete silence.
“What the hell?” Kallos gasped at the intense unknown thickening the atmosphere.
“I don’t know,” Enosabe answered, crouching even lower as she gazed into the sky. “Can you see that?
Boraleashe felt the presence before a thunderous explosion erupted so powerfully it made his ears pop. The sky turned bright orange and red before the thick clouds were split open by a brilliant golden light, blinding Boraleashe as fire streaked across the sky.
Hades’ hellfire.