As Lady Tsokei closed on them, both men dropped the steel in their hands and their shouts died in their throats. One of the guards collapsed onto the deck, curling into a ball and sobbing quietly, while the other began to claw at the wall, trying to escape the horror bearing down upon him.
The enslaved officer barged past T’ruck, running past the witch and picking up one of the dropped swords. The man first stabbed the soldier on the deck before cleaving the other guard’s head in two. As swiftly as it had begun, the oppressive fear emanating from the witch disappeared. T’ruck realised he was frozen in place, his entire crew similarly caught.
“I suggest you arm yourselves,” Lady Tsokei said without turning to look at the pirates. “Not all will die as easily as these two.”
“Fetch me a sword and shield,” T’ruck ordered Brendin, one of the youngest surviving members of his crew. He stepped closer to the witch. “That magic affects us too.”
“It is difficult to control,” the witch said, turning her dark gaze on T’ruck. “Those in front of me are most affected, but everyone around me will experience a similar fear.”
“We can’t fight like that,” T’ruck snapped. “I could barely bring myself to move.”
The witch nodded. “I will try something different. But Captain Khan, those above and below me will also have experienced that fear.”
T’ruck glanced upwards. “The knights?”
Another nod.
“Then we deal with them first,” T’ruck growled, taking a sword and shield from Brendin. He turned and stormed back towards the ladder, a grin spreading across his face. It had been years since he’d last had a chance to kill a knight of the Five Kingdoms. Not since he’d been driven from his home, leaving his murdered family behind. He was going to enjoy the night’s activities.
Nerine Tsokei was angry. It was the type of anger that boils over and quickly turns from a hot, burning rage into a cold, calculated fury. She knew the limits of her magic, and she knew the limits of her ability to channel power from the Void, but she would push past those limits to strip away everything these Five Kingdoms pigs held dear. The despair of her enslaved officer was a balm to her soul. He could do nothing but serve her now, his will no longer his own, hers until she released him. And she had no intention of doing that until the man witnessed just what his fervour had cost him.
The fools had plucked her out of the water, soaked through and shivering, on the verge of drowning as she struggled to hold on to the wreckage that had been North Gale. They saw her iron collar and assumed she was a slave serving the pirates, and they put her to use accordingly, giving her to the chef to work her way back to the Five Kingdoms. For days and days she’d scrubbed floors, stirred broth, and cleaned pots until her fingers bled.
Her anger built daily. Nobody had ever treated Nerine Tsokei, lady of the red ice, Keeper of Shadows, that way. She endured the disgrace, willing to put up with a little indignity if it allowed her survival. She’d eluded the Inquisition for decades – she would survive this too. Nerine had already set her mind upon sinking the ship and escaping as soon as it made port somewhere with a civilised population. Preferably somewhere not allied to Sarth. One witch hunter she could deal with, but the six that chased her included an Inquisitor, and she needed to evade them at all costs.
Her plan, and all resolve to suffer the undignified treatment the crew showed her, disappeared the moment the fool of an officer decided he wanted what was beneath her dress. Nerine had let him take her back to his quarters before she took control of him and turned him into her slave using nothing but her will and the barest hint of magic. She’d long ago learned that lusting men were the easiest to dominate.
Once Nerine had enslaved the man, she no longer had a choice. She couldn’t continue to control him while she slept, and she would need to sleep eventually. It was at that point that she decided to release Captain Khan, so he could in turn release her from the infernal collar that kept her powers constrained.
Setting a foot to the ladder, Nerine began to climb, Captain Khan’s call to wait falling on deaf ears. Before long she reached the level where the knights they’d passed earlier were quartered. But this time she didn’t bother to hide her presence.
The casual atmosphere on the deck had disappeared. Some of the knights were busy encasing themselves in armour while others stood guard with drawn steel. Three men approached Nerine as she finished her climb. The first was tall and muscular with a perfectly groomed moustache in the shape of a horseshoe; he held out a hand to Nerine.
“You’re the cook’s slave. Away from there, wench, and tell us what you’ve seen,” he said in a voice as pompous as his facial hair.
Nerine opened herself up to the icy call of the Void, sending out a request for power. She didn’t bother to ask the name of the being who answered her – she didn’t care. Nerine never cared; she just hoped whichever creature answered opposed Volmar and his Inquisition.
With power flowing through her and the spell whispering out from between her lips like an invisible serpent, Nerine knelt down and tore at her shadow. It ripped in two, and one half shattered into thirty shards that slithered away along the deck, seeking out living targets.
The three knights in front of Nerine stumbled backwards, attempting to jump out of the way of her snake-like shadows, but the spell wasn’t targeting them; she had very little control over whom they would attack.
The first man to die did so with barely a sound as a shard latched onto his own shadow, distorting and growing until it reached up from the deck behind him and tore open his throat. The knights around him didn’t die so quietly. Before long there were plenty of screams.
“Witch!” the man with the moustache shouted. A shadow in the shape of a monstrous dog leapt out from a dark corner and pounced on one of his comrades, bearing him to the ground and savaging him.
The knight charged at Nerine, followed closely by his surviving companion. As the moustached knight swung his sword, Nerine stepped sideways into the attack, the blade skimming past her stomach, and quickly slammed her shoulder into the man’s chest. Despite weighing twice what she did, he flew away from her, and she plucked the sword from his hand as he went. The second knight attempted to catch her off guard, but Nerine was never off guard. She parried the strike as smoothly as water flows and stepped past him, leaving the moustached knight’s sword in his companion’s chest.
As his comrade dropped to the deck, the first knight regained his feet and leapt at Nerine, this time without the protection of a weapon. Waiting until the last moment, Nerine sidestepped the knight’s bullish charge, catching his flailing arm and dragging him about with his own momentum. Then she wrenched, dislocating the arm and sending the man to the floor once more. All the while, Nerine’s shadow creatures continued their gruesome work, each one finding a single victim and slaughtering them before vanishing like mist.
Captain Khan gained the deck from the ladder and wasted no time in stabbing the downed knight through the neck. He took in the sight in front of him with a curl of his lip and then looked at Nerine.
“You know how to fight,” the captain said as more of his crew scrambled up the ladder.
“Better, I would imagine, than you,” Nerine said. “I have sown the seeds of death and chaos, Captain Khan. I suggest your crew capitalise on that distraction.”
The giant pirate grinned and charged off to join the battle. There were precious few of Nerine’s shadow creatures left, and the pirates still had plenty of killing to do. She could have killed them all, but she needed to preserve her strength.