THE FORSAKEN LAND OF GENèSE | LOST KINGDOM

  600

  A venomous hiss dripped off the man’s half-melted tongue. “It’s you.”

  The younger of the two felt something equally venomous rise in him at the sight of that dirty flame. A simple urge, clean in its brutality: tear the tongue out, end the noise, finish the job that the forest fire had started.

  But the needle punished every indulgence.

  A moment’s distraction would cause him to suffer a parable’s ending at the instrument’s hand—some lesson about evil thoughts coming around to harm the unwell wisher.

  So, he tightened his grip, his attention on the only thing that mattered.

  “Who?” asked the other, languid as a stolen hour of slumber. “Me?”

  “Don’t play stupid! Took me a while, but I recognise you…” His voice trailed off, echoed off the walls, then boomed back. “I recognise you, you son of one! You’re the archer who was picking us off in the wetlands! And if you’re not him, then you know him! I bet he had something to do with this…”

  An uncoordinated series of rapid gestures to highlight his various injuries. Then an encore to the unsettling quiet, where his body swayed back and forth, and his awareness drifted to the side.

  Trailing …

  Trailing…

  Returned—awareness glinting. “Didn’t he?”

  Saint spotted the red and pink mush sticking out of the side of the mercenary’s head and shook his head approvingly.

  No healer was putting that back where it belonged.

  “Already dead,” he murmured, though the mercenary's small, offended breaths spoke otherwise.

  “And here I thought I was finally getting some recognition.” Saint huffed lightly. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him. But the two of us have this sort of rivalry going on, so if he’s the one who did you this bad, then I won’t be able to sleep until I do you worse.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll kill you,” whispered the swaying figure as he reached into a pouch which was starkly unaffected by the flames. “I’ll tell the world I made the quicksilver overdose on my medicine… Then you’ll respect me. Won’t you? You’ll finally know my name.”

  “Oh, I know who you are.” Saint took three slow steps back, careful not to startle his prey.

  CEDRICK GOODHALL

  The Black Hand

  Race

  Human - (100%)

  Character

  Mercenary

  Nine Wolves

  Abilities

  Hooked by The Queen

  Skills

  Apothecary : C

  Skilled in making concoctions.

  The Black Handed Goodhall, “Slayer of a thousand babes, Master of many concoctions: The Black Handed Goodhall, who carries several murky vials on his hip. None more fearsome than the Black Hand of your very own discovery, capable of killing an entire household with a single drop.

  The mercenary fingered inside the pouch with the clumsy fury of a half-dead avenger. “I’ve never liked babes. Too soft. Too loud…”

  “Me neither. What are you reaching for there, Cedric? Don’t make me tell daddy what you’ve been up to.”

  “Silence!”

  Were there a chirping cricket in a bush or a bird pinpointing dinner from a tree, the outburst would have rendered them speechless.

  The silence of the Forsaken Lands became all the quieter.

  Saint stopped as the cold throwing axe came underfoot.

  Solvanel was not far behind, a double-handed grip between his right eye and the needle.

  “I won’t let you…” He wheezed. “…punish me again. It’s his fault for leaving me alone with you, damn it…”

  “Damn it!

  Admit it, Willia! You never cared about your education! All you cared about was making senseless noises and milk, and you hated when useless Cedric started showing some promise!” Goodhall choked up on memory, his hand pausing in the pouch until it soured. “I just wanted to read. Some peace and quiet so I could focus on my studies, and you, my very own blood, wouldn’t even give me that. You were jealous of me—always was. Seeing your brother choose the right path while you drank yourself silly on our mother’s breastmilk! It drove you mad!”

  As the mercenary’s injured arm came out, revealing a teardrop-shaped glass bottle, the sound of ridicule, delayed but well deserved, burst out of the older youth like an infant's cry.

  “He… Hehe…. Hehehe…”

  And the Black Hand joined in.

  A slow, viscous liquid collected at the base, pitch-black. It held to the glass with predatory intimacy, yearning for the human warmth emanating from its master’s fingers.

  “Man, for the whole lot of you to turn out like this, there had to be something in your village’s water supply!” He doubled over, clutching his stomach. “I’m not usually one for talking, but if the truth is as funny as it sounds, I might even spare your life for the hell of it. How old was this little tyrant, exactly?”

  Drifting again, he answered…

  “Willia… One… two… then one again… then zero-”

  Saint kissed his teeth, cutting him off. “Yeah, yeah. Pipe down when it’s my turn, will you? You didn’t hear a peep when you were using my talents to play hero.”

  “I only wanted you to be quiet. I didn’t mean-”

  “Serious?” The youth laughed. “So, what if I have a little fun with my prey? It’s my first time out in years.”

  Wrestling in the darkness behind him, the shepherd was trying not to grow hateful.

  The darkness was real, even if the light was only a tale.

  But in his mind, he was bombarded by images where he was presented as a stinky, smelly, drooling imbecile, named ‘Simpleton’, fighting a tall, handsome, wealthy, and excessively muscular hornet after kicking its nest.

  [Buzz. Buzz.]

  “Argh! Get out of my head!”

  He tried to envision himself as the muscular, tall, composed, inevitable victor of the battle, instead, and the hornet, a quivering, spineless larva. If the needle had received the image, however, it was already dead set on its delusional worldview.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Solvanel’s spirit wavered momentarily.

  The needle shot forward, closing the distance to his face by an inch in his double-handed grip. The shepherd didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Seeing ‘Simpleton’s’ singular bucked tooth get knocked out of his mouth was simply too disheartening.

  He then remembered that he no longer followed his late grandmother’s teachings. So, luckily, his fate in hell was all but set in stone! Therefore, the shepherd was all too happy to admit that he was really starting to hate this damn needle!

  Fragments of a conversation came over the needle’s insistent buzzing, both men having diverged into their own senseless monologue.

  Saint, complaining to himself that, “Any idiot with a flask can whip up a half-decent poison. Most of the shit we come across on a day-to-day basis can’t be eaten, anyway.”

  The mercenary, trancelike, “Zero… zero… zero…”

  “Oh, yeah? I didn’t know you read up on the scrolls while I was away. Since you know every single poison in the world, which one of these would kill a normal human being the fastest?”

  “One…one… one…”

  “Wrong! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Saint turned to the needle and the other youth. “You there. The one with an inferiority complex. Which one of these would kill a normal human being the fastest? Devil's bane, taking a big ol’ swig of that lunatic’s vial, or eating an entire tree, whole?”

  “Wha-..,” Solvanel asked, out of breath, momentarily stunned by the question’s sheer stupidity. Time is of the essence, here, you fool! Would you please kill the enemy, so we can move ahea-”

  “Man, just say you don’t know the answer,” dismissed Saint, then mumbling, “Not like I was talking to you anyway. You there, lonely instrument with an inferiority complex!”

  The azure needle froze.

  A shepherd was granted reprieve as it shook out of his hold.

  In the silence of the ashen sand, it turned its tip from side to side, confused.

  [Buzz, buzz?]

  “Yes, you. Which one of these would kill a normal human being the fastest? Taking a big ol’ swig of that lunatic’s vial, or eating an entire tree, whole?”

  [Buzz… buzz?]

  “Yes! You! I’m talking to you! Which one of these would kill a normal human being the fastest? Taking a big ol’ swig of that lunatic’s vial, or eating an entire tree, whole?”

  [Buzz… Buzz buzz buzz?]

  “Yes, like with a fork.”

  [Buzz…]

  The needle pondered extensively.

  Solvanel grimaced with self-pity, heart racing with shock from the pending possibility of being skewered, and similar indignation that this imbecile, his first opponent since the demoness, had paused their duel to give the query mind.

  “Two … two… two…”

  “Hurry up, kiddo. We don’t have all day.”

  [Buzz… buzz!]

  Come to a sudden conclusion, the needle descended to the sand and skittered artistically across the grey desert, forming a dust cloud over its progress until the final result.

  Solvanel gripped a handful of sand, receiving a copy of the image. “You…”

  It had drawn a doltish picture of one-toothed Simpleton, shrugging with contentment of his own ignorance. A text above his head that read, “Uhh… I dunno!”

  Then reared back in mid-air and resumed its assault on the shepherd.

  Saint sighed. “Yeah. Should have known better than to ask you. Hey, don’t kill that guy for me, okay? I’m in between a pair of lovable sidekicks.”

  “Three… Three… Three…”

  “Right answer is the tree, by the way,” He revealed, turning back to the mercenary. “All that stuff about eating your veggies is just tree propaganda. Oh, damn. Figured you’d be dead by now. What were you saying?”

  “Tree… tree… tree…”

  “Yeah, well, I already gave you the answer.”

  “I’m sorry... I’m sorry…”

  The vial’s stopper came away with a soft, wet resistance.

  Goodhall’s muscles tightened with recognition as the odourless content was exposed to the air. Awareness—stirred by the one thing that mattered to him most.

  The shepherd swatted the needle away, fighting to his knees.

  Apothecary’s Axe

  Acier Gris

  Rank : D

  Save us from the trees.

  Lesser Conduit - D

  Mimics the properties of any liquid substance.

  Loyalty - B

  Returns to the thrower after being thrown.

  The shepherd swatted the needle away, fighting to his knees. “Wait! Don’t kill him! He's-”

  [Buzz!]

  He was thrown across the sand the next instant.

  “No promises.”

  Goodhall stooped while unsheathing his instrument.

  Carefully, he released a single droplet into the groove carved close to the blade.

  Defying expectations, it raced across the length of the weapon, which was lying a learned distance away from his body.

  But then, the potion-maker froze, lifting the vial to eye level.

  In his eyes, a flicker of morbid curiosity. No—a lifetime of morbid curiosity, every minute, every second, every atrocity spurred by moral depravity culminating in a single look that said, ‘I wonder what will happen if I do this?’

  Goodhall tipped the vial to his lips and threw it back in one smooth motion, swallowing a mouthful of his own doom without flinching.

  The last of it emptied from the vial, unwilling to be left behind, clinging to his face.

  “Sorry, Willia. It had to be done... Don’t make me kill you again.”

  With that, the other shoe fell—

  —right upon the mercenary’s head. Saint kicked up the first throwing axe with his heel, catching and slinging it in one fluid motion.

  It struck between the eyes with a dull thud, splitting his skull and his flame into even portions. Somehow, Saint was beside the corpse before even death.

  “Figures. You think you’ve seen the worst of them, and then it’s something new. The lows of man just keep on digging.” The older youth planted a boot on the dead man’s chest and levered the axe free from his skull.

  Soothed by his version of justice, he started away, heavy steps leaving the body behind. Then he paused, dissatisfaction setting his shoulders like iron. He turned back, crouched, and spat into the crevice of the mercenary’s fatal wound. “You know, I bet she would have cried for you in the end, even after you killed her. That’s the kind of thing that pisses me off the most.”

  He kicked the corpse for good measure. “You weren’t fit to be a human being.”

  Saint sighed.

  “The hell am I doing, acting all serious?” Glancing at his dim reflection in the vial, he ran his fingers through his hair and chuckled. “You’re right. This doesn’t suit me at all.”

  “But fuck it, baby. Let’s see what this world’s got in store for me next. I’m thinking ‘bout going back to that treasury, see if I can’t find a succubus of my own.” A pep in his step, having assigned the unpleasant memory a burial in the sand.

  He stopped.

  The hairs stood up at the back of his neck—none exception.

  Behind, the corpse came up like a puppet on a string.

  In the distance, a buzzing rose from an entirely different source—far deeper than the shepherd’s instrument. It came on with an impending weight, until the earth itself began to quiver, the sands shuddering underfoot.

  And as a pair of equally tremendous locusts emerged from the horizon, the rotting husk of man stretched his lifeless bones with reckless glee.

  When his lips parted, her dry rasp was bitter to the ear, like the unacquirable taste of a certain pitch-black poison. “Finally! A corpse for me to possess!”

  “I thought I’d have to wait forever for her mark to fade from the others. But look at this.” She lurched a step closer, savouring the feeling like a recovered limb. “You have no idea how good it is to have my control back. Now—where is that miserable prisoner who dared usurp my rule over the inevitable kingdom of death?”

  The Essaifamés landed hard on the rooftop peaks to either side of the shade, talons finding purchase on stone and ornament alike. They perched like punctuation—her existence, a dying word.

  Her lifeless gaze found a boy playing in the sand nearby.

  “Oh,” the shade said—sweetness attempted and failed. “What's this?” A small giggle escaped her, thin as a cracked bell. “Playing with your weapon like an ignorant babe. And with such pretty hair, too!” Her smile sharpened. “Too bad for you, Gold is just about my favourite colour. Until I get my hands on that succubus, I think I'll be taking that pretty little face for myself!”