23. Black Death #3
I release him and pull my daggers from my belt. With fast—short, brutal stabs—I bury steel into him again and again.
He spins to straddle me and lands a punch against my chin. The blow is solid enough to rattle my teeth. “Shall we see how easily one of God’s four chosen breaks, Horseman?” Another deadly punch lands, threatening to crush my cheekbone. Then his large hands wrap around my throat and squeeze.
I call on my power. It hits him in a violent surge, tearing him free.
We’re on our feet again, circling each other in tight quarters, boots grinding through dirt and ash. He rushes. I sidestep, slice low—feel steel bite into his leg.
Again and again he comes at me, and when his hits make contact, they do considerable damage.
When I get a clear shot, I spear my blade into his side, punching through hide and bone. Not satisfied, I also wrench it sideways. He howls—raw and furious—and claws blindly for me, fingers grazing my armor.
I dodge the grasp and ram my other dagger into the side of his neck.
He convulses, thick blood spilling hot over my hands. I tear the first blade free and stand. While he’s choking on his own blood, I drop my daggers and walk the few feet needed to pick up my discarded swords.
His laughter turns wet. Broken. Blood spills from his mouth as he forces the words through failing lungs. “You…have…no…idea what’s coming for you.”
“Maybe not. But while I will go on to live another day, you will not.”
“You… wanted my name?”
I stride back toward him, knocking his massive hand away when it comes for me. “That’s no longer necessary.” Then I quickly set the blades on opposing sides of his neck, scissoring them across his throat, leaning into the cut, feeling resistance give way beneath steel.
He stares up at me, those white eyes still burning, still defiant, lips pulling back in a sneer even as his head slowly falls back and away from his body.
It rolls two feet away before stopping. The body jerks violently, muscles spasming, claws digging furrows into the dirt, and it lands before it, too, finally goes slack.
I stay where I am, breathing hard, watching.
I wait longer than necessary.
When nothing moves, I set to work.
I dismember the body piece by piece until nothing is left that could pull itself back together. Then I open the earth and bury what remains deep, sealing it beneath stone and compacted soil.
Only when the ground stills do I step back to survey my work and take notice of the outside world again.
The settlement is quiet now. Too quiet.
I walk through it to make sure nothing else needs to be dealt with.
The air is thick with the coppery tang of blood and the sour reek of demon and the destruction he wrought.
Bodies lie throughout the town. Men and women alike.
Some were ripped apart, throats shredded by claws and teeth. Others were dragged, the ground scored with deep grooves where heels and fingers failed to find purchase. There is no order to the slaughter. Just violence and hunger unleashed on anything that moved.
As I leave one of the buildings, I sense something I hadn’t before.
A presence of something’s watchful gaze on me.
I turn sharply.
In the doorway of a half-collapsed structure, deep within the shadows, a pair of eyes stares back. Not the white burn of an underworld beast—but glowing red irises. Familiar by sight, but its soul signature is not.
“Kahill?” I call out. “Is that you?”
The eyes blink out.
For a moment, I wonder if they were ever there at all. But the sensation remains—the pressure of a presence that hasn’t left, only withdrawing as if not ready to engage.
What unsettles me most is what I find next.
The woman who escaped. What’s left of her.
Her body lies just beyond the edge of the settlement, burned so completely that the earth beneath her is cracked and fused. Her mouth is open in a silent scream, jaw locked wide. Her hands are raised, fingers curled as if trying to shield her face from something she saw too late.
This was not the work of a demon.
I move through the rest of the settlement carefully, searching for tracks, for any sign of another underworlder. There are none. No claw marks. No scorched impressions. Nothing that tells me how—or what—killed her
Whatever was here knows how to hide itself.
Worse, it wanted me to know it was watching.
When there is nothing left to find, I close my eyes and reach outward—not with violence, but with judgment.
To the souls that linger.
They cling to the ruins, to broken bodies and burned homes, heavy with fear and unfinished ends. I draw them to me one by one, feeling the weight of each as they pass through my grasp. Their lives. Their choices. Their final moments.
Some rise easily, lightened by love, sacrifice, or quiet fortitude. Others sink below, burdened by cruelty, wickedness, and sins that stole more from them than they can even imagine.
Each is accounted for. Their weight registers on the scale, which shifts once again.
When at last my duty is done, I stand alone among the dead and pray no more lords walk free of the Hell they belong in.