World Eater (Standalone)

1 - Edgewalker

 'Edgewalker!'

I was halfway out of bed when the door exploded inwards. Any hope of reaching for my sword dissipated with the red mist that funnelled out the window. I hit the wall, a sharp exhale clawing from my lungs, and landed on the floor in a heap.

Dark mist surged into the room, carrying the eye-watering scent of rotten onions. Bile climbed my throat. I gagged, and then vomited up last night's delicacies.

Armoured boots thumped in time to my pulsing headache, growing louder. Blurry-eyed, I reached for the edge of the mattress. The Impaler kindly helped me up with a hand clasped around my throat, then slammed me against the wall, knocking the breath from me for a second time. I squinted through the pain and uttered a pitiful, 'your Grace.'

'Where is she?' snarled the Impaler through black teeth, rancid breath threatening to stir my stomach again. Red veins throbbed against his sickly skin, gathering like crow's feet at the corner of his feral eyes.

I managed to gasp out a weak 'who' only to be pushed harder against the wall where the jagged stone dug into the back of my skull.

'Don't play coy with me. I know she was here.' He sniffed the air around my throat with his imaginary nose, the real one having rotted off decades ago. 'I can smell her on you.'

'I... I don──'

'Shut up, half breed! You have the arrogance of your mother's kin and brazen stupidity of your father's. Letting the likes of you into my home? Listening to your request?' He spat. 'I should have killed you the moment you arrived.'

He squeezed my throat.

Images flashed through my mind: the feast the night before, the two-hundred-year-old wine that the Impaler had sworn was not blood, Myrra sitting beside me...Myrra sitting on top of me. In any other circumstance, I'd have let a smile pull at the corners of my mouth, but having the life choked from you tended to put a dampener on things.

I closed both my hands over his and attempted to prise open his rigor-mortis grip.

'I'm going to impale you on a stake and let the harpies feast on your eyes and tongue,' mused the Impaler. 'Keep you alive as I strip the flesh from your bones and feed it to my wyverns.' He licked his thin lips with a slimy white-coated tongue. 'I will save your heart for myself.'

It was said that your entire life flashed before your eyes right before death. All I could see was the disappointing shake of Gospiah's hairy horned head and the soundless words of 'I told you so'. So much for learning from your mistakes.

'Darling?'

I felt a sudden calmness close around me. Not the tranquillity that came with acceptance of one's fate because I sure as shit didn't want to die. No. It was the soothing seductiveness that coursed through that sweet voice every time it uttered a sentence, a word, a single deathless breath.

Although my sight was blurry, I could make out the female silhouette enter the room. A seraph come to save me.

'What are you doing?' The questioning in the words loosened the Impaler's grip enough for me to suck in some air. My sight returned to find Matriarch Alessandra standing beside her husband, a questioning look decorating her regal dusk face. She wore her midnight hair in an archaic braided fashion, something akin to what the shieldmaidens of the Frostbeards wore to war.

'This filthy half breed seduced our daughter with his elven magic,' defended the Impaler, though his voice lacked the conviction it had moments beforehand.

'No, dear. Myrra left the castle last night before the feast ended.' She placed a delicate hand on his shoulder. 'She has gone to visit my sister.'