The Dawn of the Raven episode 17 (3 page)

             
Prince Treyan was watching as the last of his men fell.  Uerin, his greatest soldier.  He saw the last Gekken archer aim his bow and fire it.  He knew it was headed for Raveena.  He shoved her aside with his shield.  Raveena was shocked and stunned as she was blindsided, and fell hard to the ground.  As she fell, she heard the sound.  It was a massive, sickening sound as the arrow struck the metal armor with such speed and power.  It pierced him from front to back.  Its momentum was so great that it shredded through his breastplate, his bones, his organs, and still had enough momentum left to break through the back of his armor and lodge into the ground behind him.  Raveena stared at the blood oozing out from the massive hole in his breastplate.  She saw the arrow behind him, with blood and guts streaming down its shaft.  He didn’t scream.  He didn’t make a sound.  His eyes still held a bit of focus and smiled at her.  Then, they went vacant, and he fell.  Raveena screamed.  She screamed loud enough for the whole battlefield to hear her this time.  Those around her were unnerved by it.  A scream like they’d never heard.  Raveena rushed to his side and held him, but all of him was gone now.  There was no chance to say goodbye, no chance to say anything at all.  He was gone.  The last of the Kraulian soldiers gathered around her to protect her as quickly as they could, as it was clear she had lost her focus on the battle.  They too were stunned and shaken to see their leader fall. 

             
Shyrea was in a Gekken soldier who was near Raveena.  She saw what happened.  She looked up at the hill, and saw Mathren loading another arrow into his giant bow, taking aim at the Kraulian soldiers who protected Raveena, cutting them down one by one with his arrows.  Shyrea abandoned the body she was in and flew to Mathren.  She entered him just before he could fire his next shot.  She aimed the massive bow towards the Gekken soldiers who approached Raveena’s position and began firing upon them.  The Gekken were taken completely by surprise, and she killed many quickly.  Any who turned back and looked and realized it was their own archer firing upon them were greeted with an arrow in the forehead, throat, or chest.  When Mathren’s quiver was empty, Shyrea rushed to the body of a fallen Gekken archer, and pillaged his arrows so that she could continue her barrage.  The battle had been at the point of teetering hopelessly in the Gekken’s favor, but now as Shyrea unleashed arrow after arrow upon them it began to sway back to even.

              Kiella loaded an arrow into the bow.  She knew now what she was doing.  She’d barely missed with her first shot.  She knew how to make the necessary adjustments.  She wouldn’t miss again.  Wrathe’s man who had gone south had been close enough to hear Wrathe’s screams.  He rushed down the edge of the ravine quickly, and Kiella took aim as soon as he was in sight.  He hadn’t even had time to grasp what he was coming upon when the arrow caught him in the throat.  He clutched at it, trying to stop the bleeding, but it was no use.  He bled out in less than a minute.  Kiella checked on Shyrea.  She still lay completely still, but her diaphragm was moving.  She was still breathing.  Kiella got ready to fire again, in case there were more coming.

              Raveena finally lifted her head.  It had been bowed, her forehead resting against her lovers’ as his eyes peered blankly and lifelessly straight up into the ether.  Tears ran down her cheeks, but now her eyes no longer told of her mourning.  Now, they were completely and utterly consumed by fury.  She rushed out from behind the Kraulian soldiers who protected her.  She attacked the Gekken head-on.  At this moment, it felt that nothing remained.  She had no home anymore.  She had failed them.  Her lover lay dead on the ground.  Was there any reason left to win the battle?  They had been so decimated, their casualties so high, their kingdoms all ruined, did any potential for victory remain?  What would victory even mean, when there were so few left to celebrate?  She no longer fought for victory.  She no longer fought for her life.  She didn’t care about it anymore.  She fought because of rage.  She fought just to try and quell the sadness inside of her with blood.  But as she hacked ferociously through them, a cold ruthless killer the likes of which they’d never encountered or seen before, the blood she spilled didn’t quench the sadness at all.  Each slice, each fatal or devastating strike she unleashed only made her feel more empty, and so she struck with even greater fury with each blow, in a desperate attempt to right a wrong that could no longer be righted, to regain something that could no longer be regained.

             
It didn’t seem to matter how many of them she faced.  It didn’t matter how overwhelming the odds.  When a Gekken would come near hitting her from behind, Shyrea would pierce them with an arrow.  She wouldn’t let any come close enough to blind-side her friend.  And those in front of Raveena fell like wheat to a scythe.   Each kill made her lust for three more.  Her rage grew to a frenzy where she was barely even conscious.  She watched in heated anger as her hands worked in front of her, butchering them, as her instincts and her reflexes took over, allowing her to dodge their blows and cut quickly through them with astounding ease. 

Finally, she had gone too far.  Moved too daringly into their midst.  She was surrounded, and they began to close in on her. 
Raveena knew death was coming.  She wanted to live.  Not because of any love of life.  No, she didn’t want to die because then she would have to stop killing them.

Shyrea
could tell that the arrows wouldn’t be enough to protect her now.  She threw herself, in Mathren’s body, onto a spear, and then rushed into the largest Gekken body she could find near Raveena.  He held a giant mace, and she swung it fiercely to fend them away from her.  Raveena instinctively knew this giant ally was her friend, and she stood up and used him to fight alongside as she had with her Prince, using one another to protect each other’s flanks.  A sizeable portion of what was left of the Gekken army was becoming preoccupied with them, and it was allowing what was left of the humans to gain the upper hand elsewhere on the battlefield.  The tide began to turn.  It began to be clear to even General Krex that this day may not yield the victory his people had waited so long and so patiently to claim.

Kiella listened intently, bent over the bow, ready to load it again in an instant.  She heard the footsteps approaching from the north.  She knew one was coming down the slope.  He was trying to move quietly, but she was so attuned to every sound now that each footstep was crystal clear to her.  He moved carefully because the Gekken could see his fallen comrade, his body still laid out in the sunlight, bled out from the arrow wound to his neck.  Kiella fired as soon as she saw him, and the arrow struck him in the thigh and pierced deep into his bone.  He screamed out in agony.  He tried to limp to cover, but Kiella reloaded the bow and fired again before he could get away.  The second arrow struck him in the lower back.  The sound it made as it lodged deep inside him was grotesque, but it didn’t bother Kiella at all.  With cold determination she left the cover of the cavern.  She walked to him, bent over him as he lay face down quivering in agony, and slit his throat.

It was obvious now that the tide had turned irrevocably against them.  The scattered Gekken that were left began to flee the battlefield.  They disappeared into the scorched woods that surrounded them.  General Krex watched in disbelief as they ran away.  Never could he have imagined this.  Gekken looking like cowards.  Vanquished by the weak humans.  Their plans had been so carefully laid over such a great long time.  How could they have failed?  How could he have failed?  He would not run.  He would not flee.  He would die here today.  But, perhaps, he could achieve one last victory.  Perhaps he could kill her.

General
Krex approached Raveena with cold quiet purpose.  There were few human soldiers left to greet him, but those that remained close by rushed towards him to protect her.  Raveena called them off.  Her bloodlust remained unquenched.  Perhaps another kill would satiate the terrible appetite for revenge she felt deep in her gut.  She wielded Deathraken in one hand effortlessly, spinning it with a circular motion of her wrist.  She would not underestimate him.  Not like the first Gekken leader she had faced on the field of combat so long ago.  No, she would focus.  She would not be careless.

General
Krex moved towards her swiftly.  He swung his blade at her throat.  She barely evaded it, throwing her head backwards, contorting her back at a nearly impossible angle to do so.  She was off balance, and his next swing came even closer to its mark.  It grazed her leg, slicing through the tip of her boot, but barely scratching the skin.  It was meant to take her legs off just below the knees, but again she narrowly evaded it.   He took one more swing, but again she was too quick.  She ducked under it and rolled beneath the blade.  Deathraken pierced his chest plate.  The blade went completely through him.  She twisted it inside of him.  The pain was immeasurable, but he didn’t scream.  He reached for her throat, but she twisted it again, and he gave way to the pain.  His arms fell limp.  His body slipped to the ground.  His sad eyes closed slowly, and he gave in, allowing himself to pass on into the unknown.

Raveena
stood and surveyed the field around her.  Some of the humans began to celebrate, but Raveena felt no sense that any victory had occurred.  She looked at where the Typhorian Palace had once stood.  There was barely a remnant of it visible now.  All that surrounded them were bodies and blood, littering the field as far as the eye could see.  She looked down at her sword and saw that it was covered in blood.  She wiped it against her leg to remove what she could.  The symbols on the blade were not visible under the layers of blood and gore caked onto the blade.  She tried to uncover them with her thumb, but it wouldn’t come off easily.  She dropped the sword.  She sat on the ground and, as the other humans around her cried out with joy for their victory, she held her face in her hands and cried for her loss.

To Be Continued in

Episode 18:

Remnant
s

Yet he knew that their mission was important.  He’d seen what had happened during the night.  He’d heard the never ending screams and scuffles that would erupt, one after another, all around him.  Some far, some close, as
Gekken turned on one another over and over, cleaving each other, hacking one another limb from limb.  Wrathe was not accustomed to magic.  It scared him.  Whatever he was hunting, whatever he was searching for, he knew he had to find it, he knew he had to kill it, but he felt, for the first time in his life, apprehension.  Normally when he was sent to kill, he relished it, but this mission filled him with a grave sense of fear.  He didn’t allow the men sent to accompany him to sense his fear. 

              The Gekken general, Throng, looked over the soldiers that surrounded him.  The night had been terrible.  Their initial assault had been thwarted by the fire the humans had started.  And, as they waited for the blaze to burn itself out, his men were plagued all night long by attacks by their own members.  The morale of his soldiers had been greatly dampened by the cries that soldier after soldier had turned rogue and butchered his comrades.  He knew there was magic to blame, but his efforts to snuff out whatever being was behind it during the night were unsuccessful.  And, in their rushed efforts, not all of the parties he’d sent out to search had been organized well enough.  He knew that at least one group hadn’t returned, but in their hurry to find the source of the human magic they hadn’t properly tracked what each party’s search area was.  He’d spent the greater part of the last two hours trying to guess as to where