“What?” she asked, breathless as she looked on the blade. It was so much longer than the knives she and her mother carried, and it was even larger than the heavy and curved blade her father habitually kept in his belt.
“The rule of iron,” Damasc said solemnly. “The demons are weak against it... Cold iron can cut a demon who is otherwise invulnerable... And if you can cut it, you can kill it. And that, my little dreamer, is the goal. You must be ready to kill for our freedom and not stop until every last demon is driven from this world.”
Elan was silent for a long time. “I understand.”
Damasc shook his head, his eyes hard. “No. You don’t. But one day, if you continue on the path you seek, you will...and on that day, you may pledge your life for whatever cause you choose. Until then, all I ask is that you hold your tongue when you speak of death and killing. You are a foolish child who knows nothing of such things.”
Elan swallowed hard, but nodded. Her father had never spoken to her like that, and suddenly the blade in her hand felt a great deal heavier.
“Good,” he said, after a time. “Now, lift your sword and do as I do.”
*****
Sword drills, running, chores, and the Dream Quest absorbed Elanthielle’s time from that day forward. As she trained, she grew. Within another few months she towered over her mother and was able to look her father in the eyes with only the slightest tilt of her head.
Together the two trained, working along the bank of the river each morning after catching the day’s fish. Damasc drilled his daughter in the forms he knew, teaching her to strike and to parry and to think as she moved.
For her part, the young girl moved fast, and learned faster. She mastered her father’s style in months and was quickly able to match his moves with almost every session.
His strength and his power, however, were not hers to grasp.
No matter how much she desired them to be.
One night in early spring, just after she had turned sixteen, while Elanthielle was training, life again changed.
She was standing on the top of “her” boulder, her blade flashing through the air as she swept through the motions her father had shown her, when it happened.
There was a burst of smoke and a flash of light that ripped through the air, the concussion sweeping through the air and blowing her off her feet. She hit the rock with her head, her vision going red and blurring as her body rolled down into the crevice that she used to play in.
She groaned as her hand reached up, flopping against the rock as she tried to climb upward. She slowly made her way to the lip of the rock and looked down at the flickering light that was coming from her home.
“Momma? Pappa?” she gasped out, her blurred vision making out the movement of forms against the flickering light of fires that she couldn’t make out with any clarity.
Chapter 2
Damasc groaned as he picked himself off the ground, scrambling and stumbling along the floor as he dove for his sword. He knew the feeling of the explosive spell that had rocked the old building, rattling the walls with the force of it.
They'd found him; he didn't know how. After more than four years, he had begun to relax, believing that they had given up.
He should have known better.
They never gave up.
He hit the ground rolling, the pommel of his heavy blade fitting like an old friend in his right hand as he clasped it firmly. His left joined it as he came to his feet, eyes darting right and left in an almost crazed search for the cause of the attack.
He saw the first of them, lower circle demons, as they crashed through what was left of the south wall of his home. He screamed, a war cry that was never far from his mind, and charged them with his blade held high. Three died in an instant, the heavy blade carving them from right to left as he made a single mighty swing of the imposing weapon.
They were still en route to the hard-packed ground when he heard a scream from one side and turned to see his Marra being hauled out of the building through a new hole that had been ripped in the wall by the very claws that were now dragging his wife away.
He bellowed his war cry again and charged the wall, bursting through it shoulder-first as the already damaged wood shattered around him. He hit the ground hard, but his muscled legs absorbed the shock, and stared around with wild eyes.
“Marra!” he screamed, his sword sweeping from left to right and ending the existence of another demon.
“Damasc!”
He spun, running toward the source of the scream, and ran straight into an entire squad of the same lower level minions between him and his wife.
Blood boiling, enraged, and seeing nothing but demon blood, Damasc charged the squad. His blade led the way and ended the lives of eight of the creatures before he was dragged down by the survivors. His head hit the ground hard, one of the demons slamming it into the ground with gusto as others ripped his sword from his hands. He felt their leathery hands pulling him along the ground and he struggled, but more just piled on until he couldn’t move any farther.
Damasc grunted in pain and lost breath as a booted foot cracked his ribs.
“Rebellious dog.”
He looked up, blinking hard as he tried to clear his vision. As the picture came into focus, he snarled and surged up. “Venadrin! You sick bastard!”
He got less than two feet before he was clubbed down again by the lower circle demons holding him back.
Venadrin smirked and stepped forward, pulling the beaten man up by one large hand wrapped around Damasc’s throat. “You knew the price of rebellion. You know the consequence.”
“No!” Damasc screamed, struggling hard against the restraining hands.
“Do it,” Venadrin said, turning to look at a lumbering beast that stood behind him.
The scrawny, leathery beast nodded and lifted the limp form of Marra from the dirt at its feet and dragged her over to the remains of the hovel that had been their home. It threw her bodily up against the wall and quickly drove a spike through her arm, pinning her there. It continued to do the same to each of her limbs as the woman screamed in pain and Damasc roared in rage behind it.
Tears blinded him as he turned his attention from his dying wife, back to his tormentor. “How could you, you bastard!?”
Venadrin idly traced a scar that ran along his left cheek. “I enforce the masters’ will. After all, who better to track down a human...than another human?”
“Traitorous, scum-loving piece of filth!” Damasc screamed at the man, spittle flying from his mouth.
Venadrin wiped his face clean, then turned away. “String him up.”
Damasc screamed in fury as the demons dragged him away from the human tracker.
They quickly ran him up a makeshift gallows, stringing him up slowly so that the pressure of the rope slowly cut off his air supply. For a moment he twisted around loosely as the rope turned, and his eyes fell on a pair of blue eyes that were staring back at him from the top of the stone mound just a short distance away.
He fought down the urge to scream through the pain and the strangling rope, fought back the desire to tell his daughter to run. Instead he just stared intently at her and shook his head wildly from side to side as he saw her move to climb down the rock. The rope burned his throat with every move, but he kept shaking his head until he saw her hunker back down against the rock.
He barely had time to nod his approval before he was spun around and tied into place so he could watch his wife bleed to death.
*****
Elanthielle rose silently from the rock just after the last of the demons had vanished. She was quaking from terror tinged with anger, having spent hours upon hours watching the horror unfold. She never looked away, she rarely even blinked, absolutely unable to do either despite the terrible scene that lay on the desert plains beneath her boulder. Through it all she’d blinked away the burning tears and refused to look anywhere but at her parents.