Chapter 4
Dreven
Leaning against an old oak, I watch her stumble out of the crypt. “Good girl,” I murmur, seeing the blood dripping from her wrist. “Always blood.”
Her blood sings with a power she doesn’t understand.
A faint, forgotten echo of a song I last heard centuries ago.
It’s a dangerous melody in a vessel so fragile, and it smells of iron and old promises.
She clutches the wound, her face a mask of exhaustion and fury, glaring at the silent crypt as if the stone itself has personally offended her.
The fire in her is amusing. A flickering candle fighting a hurricane, yet it refuses to be extinguished. She thinks she stabbed a goddess. She has no idea what she truly did, what she truly is.
The tear in reality is gone. The silence it leaves behind is far more satisfying than Aethel’s shrieking. Order, of a sort, is restored. For now. My part in this is played. I have nudged the piece; now I will watch where it lands.
I let the silver coin fall from my fingers, catching it in my palm before closing my fist around the worn metal. The slayer starts trudging away, favouring her ribs, her shoulders slumped. But even in defeat, her head is up, scanning the darkness. A true predator.
This slayer is an anomaly. A variable I hadn’t accounted for.
Her blood sealed a divine fissure that hasn’t been opened in more centuries than I can count.
The ravings of a madman brought us forth to this mortal world we were cut off from so long ago, forced to watch as time passed us by, not able to cross over, even though we were a hair’s breadth from the veil.
It has changed, and yet many things remain the same.
The slayer is a mortal woman, not quite human, definitely not supernatural, one hundred per cent not a god.
But that task, closing the maw that spat us back out, should have burned her to ash.
Instead, she just looks exhausted and profoundly pissed off.
She glances back at the crypt one last time, her senses still screaming, no doubt.
She can’t see me, of course. Not unless I want her to.
The shadows are my cloak, my skin, my kingdom.
I watch her trudge away, a solitary light against the gloom.
My curiosity, a beast that has slept for centuries, stirs.
I let the darkness claim me, dissolving into the ancient night to follow her home.
I need to know more about Nyssa Vale, Slayer of Demons for this generation.
I need to know more about why we are back, who and what that man was that summoned the Pantheon Realm to break the veil between our worlds.
But mainly, I need to know how it felt to kill Aethel. That goddess has been a blight on our existence since the dawn of our realm. She is the sole reason why we were locked up in the first place, but gods can’t kill gods.
It’s rule number one. Keeps the balance. I respect it, even though it pisses me off. I know more than one god I’d like to take down, but it remains an impossibility.
“Dre,” Voren says, appearing beside me and breathing in the clear, sharp air this realm has to offer. “Aethel is gone.”
“She is. I saw it happen.”
“You know what that means?”
“The Shadow Gods are mine as they were also supposed to be.”
He chuckles. “So humble, old ruler. Might want to check the attitude in case you end up stabbed in the face as well.”
“You saw it too.” It’s not a question. I might’ve known he was lurking. Along with others. We were all thrust out of the hole at the same time, scattered while Aethel tried to drag this world under her thrall. Too bad for her, slayers don’t fall for that trick.
“Like a star imploding. The silence is… refreshing.” He rolls his shoulders, a gesture of a man shrugging off a heavy coat worn for too long. “She smells of it. Victory and righteous fury. It’s a heady combination.”
I don’t reply, my gaze fixed on the spot where the slayer is patrolling at the edge of the graveyard. Her scent lingers in the air—ozone, blood, and sheer, stubborn will.
“So, what’s the plan, God of Shadows?” Voren asks, his tone mockingly formal. “Gather your newly freed legions? Find a throne to brood on?”
“The plan,” I say, my voice low, “is her.”
Voren follows my gaze. “The mortal toy that broke the queen? An interesting choice of pastime.”
“She is not a toy,” I say, sharply, a feeling of possession dropping over me for the slayer, despite her calling to kill my kind. “She is a key. One that just unlocked a cage we’ve been in for far too long.” I let the shadows gather at my feet, the darkness eager to obey.
“Thought it was the crazy dude who broke the veil,” Voren says, with narrowed eyes.
“I’m talking about Aethel, you fucking idiot,” I growl, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at him. Pretty face, but not too sharp.
“Oh, okay. A metaphor. I get it.”
My shoulders slump of their own accord. Looks like I’m as stuck with him here as I was there.
“She wasn’t surprised. She was expecting it. So how? How did she manage to coerce that human into releasing her when she couldn’t reach this world?”
“Good question,” Voren agrees.
I fucking know. My gaze drifts back to where the slayer disappeared, the path she took now just another swathe of darkness. “Our prison was not stone and magic, Voren. It was a cage of perception. Aethel managed to bend the will of a mortal even across the veil.”
“Whispering to madmen.”
“His mind, for all its differences, somehow connected to her frequency,” I counter, turning my gaze to him. The pale blue of his eyes seems to catch the faint starlight. “She found a mind fractured enough to slip through the cracks. Do you know what that means?”
Voren stares at me. I can see his mind ticking over, but he hasn’t got the faintest idea what I’m talking about.
“It means,” I say before he can embarrass himself, “that mortals and gods could always communicate once the veil slammed shut, locking Aethel, locking us, away. It was merely finding the right broken mind.”
“So what did she promise him?”
I shrug. “Probably the usual. It doesn’t really matter now. He is gone. She is gone and we…” I smile savagely, “…we are free.”
Voren grins, a flash of white teeth in the gloom.
“Free. I’d almost forgotten what the word meant.
” He breathes in deeply again. “I can hear them. The lost ones. So many souls wandering this place, their stories cut short. It’s a feast.” A shiver of power, cold and silent, undulates in the air.
The God of Wraiths, enjoying his new hunting ground.
“Enjoy your meal,” I say, my attention already drifting back to the slayer. She’ll be home soon. “I have other appetites.”
“Fixated on the little killer?” Voren asks, his gaze finding mine in the dark. “She’s just a mortal, Dreven. A powerful one, I’ll grant you, but her kind are like mayflies. Here and gone.”
“This one is different,” I state, the truth settling deep in my bones. “She killed the unkillable. Her blood sang a song of creation and destruction. It closed a divine gateway. She is more than a mayfly.”
He considers this, tilting his head. “So you’ll what? Collect her? Keep her as a pet?”
The shadows around me deepen. “I will understand her. And you will not call her a pet again.”
Voren raises his hands in mock surrender, that arrogant smirk never leaving his face. “Touchy about his new pet. Fine. Your profoundly significant mayfly—”
I slam him up against the nearest headstone, my shadows pressed against his chest. “I said… don’t call her a pet again.”
Voren doesn’t flinch. His eyes glitter with amusement, not fear. “Point taken. She’s not a pet. She’s a significant mortal anomaly with a penchant for stabbing things in the face. Better?”
I release him. The shadows retreat, and he pushes himself off the stone, brushing non-existent dust from his grey duster. He’s testing me. He always does. It’s the nature of our relationship—a constant, low-grade war of wills that has spanned the ages.
“Much,” I say, my voice flat. My gaze drifts back towards the path Nyssa took. The scent of her blood is fading, carried away on the damp night air, but I can still feel the echo of its power. It calls to a part of me I had no idea existed.
“So, what is she?” Voren asks, his curiosity finally overriding his sarcasm. “Not just a slayer.”
“I don’t know,” I admit, and the not knowing is a sharp, unfamiliar irritation. “But her lineage is old. Ancient. It sings the same song as the First Slayers, the ones who carved the runes on that blade of hers.”
He whistles softly. “The ones who helped lock us away in the first place. Irony is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“A beautiful one,” I murmur, thinking of her amber eyes, spitting defiance as she raked her gaze over me.
It makes my cock hard. I turn away from the graveyard.
The mortal world hums around me, a symphony of souls and secrets.
My kingdom is no longer a prison. It is everywhere.
“Have your fun with the lost souls, Voren,” I add, dismissing him. “Don’t make my business yours.”
He gives me a mock salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it. The dead are far better company. They don’t argue back.” With a final, lingering look in the direction the slayer went, he dissolves, not into shadow like me, but into a shimmer of cold, spectral mist that the wind quickly disperses.
Alone again, the silence of the graveyard settles around me. Voren is a necessary annoyance, a piece on the board I can’t afford to lose, but his extended presence grates on my last fucking nerve.
My focus returns to her. Her scent lingers in the cool Irish air of blood, sweat, and that fierce, untameable spirit.
I bleed into the nearest shadow, the world losing its colour and texture, becoming a landscape of grey and black.
I flow through the darkness, silent and unseen, following the trail of the mayfly who just might burn down the world.