A Girl and Her Monster (Rune Breaker) (21 page)

The figure on the boulder turned in time for a soft light to appear before him. He was one of the elders of the village, the one that went to fetch clothes for Taylin. And on the other side of that light was the demon who wouldn't forget.

Rich robes in red, black, and white with golden accents clothed him, but failed utterly to conceal his monstrosity. Even beneath the regal trappings, his neck and arms showed skin that was like poorly aged and cracked leather; his fingers overlong and ending in thick, black nails that scraped together with a sound like metal files. He wore his hair long and brown, tied into a tightly braided tail.

Upon his face was a mask, seemingly of stone, but in the light, it showed a golden sheen that only direct brightness could reveal. There was no mouth, but there were two angular holes for eyes through which a faint, white glow escaped. Dozens of thin lines were scratched in the mask's surface, forming strange patterns across it. Where the light struck them just right, they betrayed a glimmer of red, orange, or blue.

Partha shuddered. Somewhere above him, a black shape crossed between him and the stars. It could have been his fear, but he swore he heard a noblewoman's laugh on the wind.

“Lord Immurai.” He sputtered.. “I—”

“We had a very simple bargain.” the demon, Immurai the Masked, spoke over him, never losing his even tone. “You deliver every soul in your pitiful little hamlet to be slaughtered by the King of Flame and Steel; an example of his power in the region; and in return, I grant you renewed youth.”

The demon took a step forward and reached into a fold in his voluminous robes. Partha scrambled back until he ran out of rock. The gurgle of the river below was a siren's song to end his life before the demon could.

Immurai didn't seem to care about his fate one way or another and kept talking. “And what should we find, not two miles out on the frontier?” He took from his robe a blackened human skull, still stinking of char and burnt meat. Partha imagined he could still see curls of smoke occasionally wafting from it.

“Pity be to him.” the demon said dramatically. “His real name was Tanner. Did you know? I saw a spark in him; a will to lead, the charisma to back it. He dominated his men. Made them afraid to fail him. Afraid to be caught not following him.”

The white lights behind the mask dimmed and focused on Partha. “But all's the more pity that I put six years into setting this locust up to rule this hill of ants. You might think that a blink of the eye to one who has lived as long as I, but I assure you, it is not. This one could have been the antithesis of Nov I, forming a nation in this dust-bowl under the Threefold Moon. And I would no longer be Immurai the Masked, but once more Immurai the Gaunt, sitting at my Lord's right hand.”

He never raised his voice, but the rage was clear. And then it was gone. His clawed hand flexed and the skull formerly belonging to the King of Flame and Steel shattered like cheap pottery.

“My Lord, it was not my doing. The halflings came on their own and—“ Partha cringed and tried to apologize, to beg for his life. But the demon spoke over him again.

“But... and this is where your luck turned, dear Partha: When we came upon the bodies, I found that some of them retained an essence from contact with a being of great power.”

Above, the
thing
blotting out the stars in passing was back again. This time Partha knew he heard the laugh.

Immurai was suddenly behind him, terrifyingly close. He spoke into the old man's ear. “So tell me, good Partha: did someone extraordinary come to your aid when the King came to claim his due?”

Shivering uncontrollably, the old man nodded. “A woman and a man. The chronicler brought them the day before. The woman was a wingless hailene; a soldier. And such strength! I thought her one of yours at first. The man fought like an animal; transforming and killing at will. They left with the halflings.”

One of the holes over Immurai's eyes actually widened with his interest. “So. That is my prize then. Quite the antiquity that one.” A gentle laugh escaped him. “And they travel with halflings, who the One Dice shields from my sight. You are a very lucky man, Partha.” He moved around the old man and began to walk to the proper shore.

“Lucky?” the village elder asked. “My Lord, how can you say that? I am still stalked by age!”

“Are you?” The soft light flew to Immurai's hand and suddenly blazed into brilliance. It threw his masked face into sharp relief. Then, he flung the light into the old man's chest where it burst into white flames, which instantly spread to consume him.

Turning, he admired his work while Partha screamed. “You are very lucky indeed, dear Partha. I have use for a younger you. Surely you can handle a little agony for youth, yes?”

There was a high, shrill laugh behind him and a slender hand the color and texture of rich, red clay touched his neck. “It is a great deal of power, my love.” A female voice said. “Is building a whole new body for dear Partha worth it?”

Immurai reached up and caressed the stony appendage. “My love, if we capture this prize, we won't even need the Threefold Moon any longer. We can build our own gods; and make them fight for our amusement.”

End Book 1

If you enjoyed A GIRL AND HER MONSTER,

Keep an eye out for

LIGHTER DAY, DARKER NIGHTS

Rune Breaker Part 2 of 4

by
Landon Porter

With Immurai on the hunt and the Clan of the Winter Willow on the move, the story is just beginning for Taylin and Ru.

Their next stop takes them to Daire City, where they meet a talented adventurer, her not so talented fan girl and a pious swordsman. Things are looking up for Taylin and even Ru is less irritable for a change, but all that could be fleeting as Immurai sets his plans in motion.

***

Chapter 1 – Tales of the Rune Breaker

Wind swept the top of the hill, laying the grass flat and shaking the leaves in the sparse trees at its crown. If wind could be seen, this one would be revealed to be swirling around a dark figure who stood on the bald, south facing slope. It gathered his coal-gray robes and tossed his jet hair, but it may as well have been doing nothing for all he noticed.

Gripped firmly in both hands was a scythe, but it was in a form that was neither a farm tool, nor a weapon of war. Its curved haft was blackened by fire tempering and girded by rings of unadorned iron. The scythe-head was over sized, wickedly curved and polished to a silvery sheen. Intimidating, and in those practiced hands, also functional; deadly.

It was around that murderous curve that the eye of the small whirlwind centered, drawn by invisible patterns of 
vin
, the mystical energy of air, and the words on his lips.

“That which is nothing and yet fills all empty space. That which we pass through, and yet drives galleons forward. Heed my will. Focus and be transformed.” He raised the scythe overhead. The whirlwind intensified. “Let all forces arrayed against be scattered. Let those who stand in my way be torn asunder!”

The spell fell into place, a complex weave of patterns, each iterating into the next, concentrating 
vin
, directing it into a singular direction and encasing it in still other patterns. Tension built as titanic forces were channeled.

Mnemonics, like the one he intoned, were concentration and memory aids for spell casting. The less complex the spell and the more advanced the caster, the less necessary they were. He was a master of his art and had other aids beside, but his personal reserves of energy had been depleted, requiring him to use a longer form of the spell with a built-in structure for summoning the energies needed to power it.

Forces that proved too much for the mere matter that hosted it. A high keening of steel sheering against steel filled the air for just a moment before being overtaken by a sharp, loud report like a rifle shot. The scythe blade shattered, the mystic pressure within sending steel shards out in all directions with ballistic force.

“Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs!” Ru roared, throwing down the now empty haft of the scythe. The fury of yet another failure made the seven or eight shards of metal in his arms and chest almost an after-thought to him.

They did not go unnoticed by someone else.

Ru, what was that? Is something wrong?
 Taylin didn't have to ask if he was hurt because she could tell, even when the pain was in the back of his mind.

That was failure and disgust, Miss Taylin.
 He replied darkly.

Down below the hill, he could see the wagons, arrayed in a lazy arc along the banks of the Hattale River, centered on a low, stone building that served as a kind of rest station for halfling caravans. Within its walls, raised by deific magic identical to that which Grandmother channeled, were emergency rations, healing supplies, and permanent magical structures for purifying water and locating nearby settlements. The Winter Willow was strong at the moment, so instead of partaking, they added to the stocks of salt meats and dried food for their cousins in hard times.

At the moment, the clan was taking advantage of the river for cleaning and bathing. 
Nir-lumos
 clans bathed communally as a bonding activity, but none of them batted an eye at the fact that their human and hailene 'siblings' didn't take part. There were a few friendly barbs about the tall folks' idea of propriety from Raiteria when Taylin absconded with a metal tub from a supply wagon and retreated into the woods downstream to do her own washing.

Without looking, he could pinpoint exactly where she was, thanks to the link, and it worked both ways. He imagined he could feel her infuriatingly concerned glance in his direction even from a quarter mile away, but she let the subject drop when his response proved he wasn't badly hurt.

The girl needed to learn that his pain was not her concern, he thought darkly. It was barely even his concern when it wasn't from a directly mystic source. Absently, he picked a three inch sliver of metal out of the flesh beneath his collarbone and glared at it for its lack of mystic fortitude.

“You curse like a relic.”

Ru turned in place. As he nearly always hovered, he didn't have to move a muscle to accomplish the motion.

A translucent, yellow kite shield hovered in the air just ahead of Kaiel's open palm. Three more pieces of shrapnel were caught in its layers of protective energies, slowly rotating as they continued to spend their momentum against his mysterious power source.

For over three weeks, curiosity regarding that; a magic he couldn't detect, burned at him. But Ru refused to reveal his ignorance and ask after what the chronicler was tapping when he performed magic. He fixed the other man with a glare through the shield.

Until being so rudely interrupted by the threat of high velocity death, Kaiel had been sitting with his back against a tree, surrounded by open books, drawing some sort of spell diagram on parchment spread out on a lap desk across his knees.

Parchment and desk were toppled into the dust now, books askew. It wasn't for the first time, not even the first time that day. Ru's experiments with the scythe had started two days out from the village the Winter Willow along with Taylin and Ru defended from bandit siege. He claimed he was making progress, but that seemed to only mean that his failures had gone from mundane to spectacularly dangerous.

This one seemed to tire him more, both in body and spirit, than the others however, and he didn't respond to the shot with his usual acid. “That one comes from Miss Taylin's direct predecessor. Of all the undeniably mad creatures to hold the link, he was among the worst.”

Having blasted the weapon apart several times already, this time he had the forethought to place several contingencies on the blade. A small surge of 
vox
 tugged on invisible lines of force connected to each broken piece, pulling them back to a center located above his hand. Within moments, a small cloud of metal began to orbit him and reassemble into some semblance of their former shape.

“If you say he was mad...” Kaiel started.

Ru sneered. “It truly vexes you not to know the entire story, doesn't it, story spinner?”