The Flame of Wrath (42 page)

             
“Aurea, while the others may believe you are doing this as a means of protecting Logos, I know the truth. This is about power and nothing more.”

             
Aurea laughed quietly into her glass. When she withdrew the chalice from her wine-glistened lips, she slowly nodded her head. “Yes, but just try telling that to any number of my generals. We shall see whom they believe.”

             
Angelos balled his fist. “Do not be so arrogant, Empress,” he warned quietly. “There are those who would believe me.”

             
“Yes, but is your little band of brothers enough to overthrow me?” Aurea smiled all the more as her finger ran along the mouth of her cup. “I think not.”

             
“Your reckoning is coming, Aurea.”

             
Aurea shrugged in disinterest. “Perhaps,” she sighed. The mesmerizing waters of her eyes chilled to dangerous ice. She stared out through her lashes, taking in the man she loathed. “But that day shall be long after yours.”

             
The Empress raised her glass in a mock toast, feigning salute to her revered general. “Thank you for volunteering your army to lead the surge.”

             
As the King opened his mouth to counter, the Empress began walking past him. “Mother keep you,” she prayed mockingly.

********

              The air was a hellish thing which weighted the chest. It was stiflingly hot. In its reign, it birthed a painful sound. Hammers loudly pounded in thundering procession.

             
The King and Princess walked among the crowded streets. Together, they surveyed the progress made by the talented craftsmen of their home. A new suit of armor to every enlisted soldier had been commissioned. As well as a strong new sword and shield for every warrior. This was the Angels' way. It was from the King's purse that these expenses were paid.

             
Angelos had often boasted, “Let it be said that no King would offer up his gold with more pride.” It showed in his direct involvement with each specially crafted provision for his army.

             
“Make them strong,” Angelos said as he surveyed a shield. A glistening sword was soon to take its place. He smiled approvingly as he wielded the weapon with precision and skill.

             
Autumn heard a voice approaching with profound timidness. She turned her head in its direction. A small child with soot smudging his features motioned her to follow. Intrigued she smiled and followed the boy to his master's shop.

             
“What do have you for me, young apprentice?” she asked kindly.

             
The boy shuffled over to a table of mountainous landscapes. He drew back a leather sheet sheltering the better part of the work-table. Upon the table, a collection of armor twinkled like fallen stars.

             
Autumn gasped. Her fingers traced over the winking bronze breastplate. Its surface was painstakingly etched with Djidjiga blooms and stars.

             
“It was your father's design,” the blacksmith explained as he left the back of the shop.

             
“My master strengthened the bronze with a layer of gold beneath,” the boy whispered softly. His gentle eyes stared up at her past the table's edge. “To bring you home safely to us, Princess.”

             
For a moment, Autumn could not speak. She knelt before him then took him into her arms. She felt the way he hugged her tightly, realizing in that moment that the war had come to affect all within the land from the highest ranking generals to even the smallest of their clans.

             
When she withdrew from his small arms, she felt him lingering near her side. He lifted onto the tips of his toes to peer at the tall table in the hopes of seeing which items she chose to inspect first. She smiled down at him before returning her attentions again to the armor.

             
Her hand reached for the helmet meant to adorn her head. The bronze face stared back at her with black empty eyes. She cupped that face within her hands adoringly. The face she gazed into was one of strength and grace, one of nobility and humility. Her eyes rose upward to the sacred flower bejeweling a majestic brow. She tore her eyes away from it to meet the gazes she felt heavily upon her.

             
Respectfully, she dipped her head in gratitude to the artisan blacksmith. “I will wear it with honor,” she promised.

             
“Of that we have no doubt,” the blacksmith voiced proudly.

             
Angelos' steps came against the gritty earth like a familiar song. He stopped behind his daughter then lightly rested his hand upon her shoulder. His eyes smiled as he caught sight of the armor meant for her. He had meant for it to be a gift in honor of her taking the Guardian's oath. As he realized how it would actually be given to her, the smile of his eyes fell away.

             
Autumn would be accompanying him into battle. He knew that it was a battle from which Aurea never intended him to return. He was being sent to be killed at the front. If Autumn was at his side, she might surely fall as well.

             
Autumn reached out. She gingerly lifted the newly-forged sword from the table. Her fingertips alone touched its surface as she weighed it. She said nothing as she withdrew from the others. She left the modest enclosure to stand in the yard before the smith's shop.

             
As the others followed her at a distance, they watched the fluidity with which she and her sword danced.

             
Angelos followed the exercises performed by his child. He noted each graceful transition with a great sense of pride. As he watched, the vision came rushing toward him brutally. He was its victim yet again.

             
One by one, men fell in every direction.

             
Angelos III groaned as he weakly fell to his knees. The flags of battle were slumped in defeat.

             
The sound of the smith's voice woke him from his inner horrors.

             
“Highness, I have a bow for you as well.”

             
Autumn smiled happily. “Thank you,” she said. “I will send a page for my things this afternoon.” Her approving smile only intensified as she added, “You are an artist of metals.”

             
Both, smith and apprentice bowed happily. Their honor to adorn the Princess had gone well. It would mean many future commissions with the royal house.

             
“My King,” they heard.

             
All eyes gravitated toward the crowd humbling to the old ways. They bowed in reverence of the Guardians drawing nearer. And yet, more than anything, they basked in the glory of the oldest Druid.

             
Soren was no longer a man hiding for his life. Among the peoples of Angels, he was a welcome sight that the atrocities of this new world had not yet claimed all Pyros' wonders. His auburn hair was clean and shining. His beautiful features were no longer hidden beneath sadness and soot. Instead he seemed at ease in a way he had not in some time. It warmed his soul to be among his beloved Angels.

             
Coming to stand near to the King, Soren smiled. “You must look down upon the valley, my friend,” he said sagely.

             
Angelos did not question Soren's words. He instantly snapped his fingers, summoning his attendants to action. Within mere moments his transport was brought forward. He mounted his red-tailed hawk, holding comfortably to the reins.

             
Looking to his right, he watched as his daughter moved astride her ivory eagle. He remembered the day that Prayer had flown home to Angels’ lands. Her saddle was empty of its rider but stained with Autumn's blood.

             
As if sensing his disquiet, Autumn gave her father a reassuring gaze.

             
The King nodded, signaling that he was all right. Then together, they ascended into the sky. The only inspiration they required was a word from the trusted druid. As they flew over the land, cheers rose up into the air to greet them. With poise, they gracefully waved. In closely held formation, their transports veered to the left.

             
The trees suddenly broke. The emerald landscape opened to reveal a rich valley. Within that valley's heart, more soldiers than any army the King's bloodline had ever raised, began training exercises as a synchronized machine.

             
A trumpeter broke the collective consciousness.

             
“The King!” The words echoed throughout the men in triumphant calls. “Long live the King!”

             
Angelos looked to his daughter who glowed with pride in both her people and her father. “Never forget this,” he instructed. “Remember to echo the loyalty you are shown and you will never be without an army to fight beside you.”

             
“Yes, father,” Autumn promised.

             
With those words, Autumn watched the King of Angels descend from on high to stand shoulder to shoulder with his men as together they trained for the impending battle.

Chapter Seventeen

Pull the shroud over noble head while mourning the onset of eternal night. Lost child, father does not wake. Lost child, Mother is crying.

----The Book of Wrath

********

              The rages of the world can plague the earth as elemental catastrophe. Yet, no devastation can ever be felt more clearly across the land than those brought about by the ignorance of man. The end of the world was not by Nature's whims, but by the inhumane brutality with which two warring sides collided to tear the earth asunder.

             
They were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers. And yet, when seen within the armor about their bodies, there appeared to be little difference to distinguish among them. While lost in war, they were not the lives they had left behind. They were soldiers. They were also the last hope meant to stand between Pyros and an angry Lucidian army.

             
Cords of red ran over the battlefield as if the very earth bled from countless wounds.

             
“Archers!” came an impassioned cry of warning.

             
The ranks pulled together to form a tighter defense. Their shields raised in unison, creating a strong dome of protection. Beneath the turtle-like shell created by their shields, the soldiers listened to unnatural rains. It was only after the deadly downpour had ceased that their shields were lowered and they trudged forward again.

********
             

             
Inside the rapturous comforts of the Imperial Palace, two massive doors tentatively began to open. Its subtle movement caught her attention. Aurea lifted her head from her banquet of splendid food and beautiful women. As she watched, a messenger entered the banquet hall.

             
The messenger hustled through the room of lavish fineries until he stopped near the Empress. He extended the parchment with trembling hands.

             
With a furrowed brow, Aurea primly accepted the papers. She motioned the young man away with an annoyed hand.

             
As he scuttled from her presence, her fingers ripped at the seal.

             
Aurea's eyes hungrily roved over the scroll. Their fires began to dance with each line she read. Her chest heaved passionately while the words she ingested began to take meaning within her mind.

********

              He stood breathlessly amidst the fallen. The day was nearly at an end. Around him sound had drifted to a distant plane upon which he could not follow. The gold of his armor had been stained beyond recognition. Slowly, he lifted his hand. With a weary motion, he smeared the blood away from his chest-plate. In its absence a family crest was revealed. The engraved details of that crest bled with the crimson nestled into each groove.

             
His stormy eyes panned broadly in the direction of his turning head. In a trance, he watched the figures entangled in the distance.

********

One by one, men fell in every direction.

********

              He narrowed his eyes. His men were rushing toward him. For five long years they had remained at the front.

             
Five years, his soul lamented!

             
Around him, Angelos saw his people dying. Their souls were tired candles. Each day, he witnessed their flames slump until their wicks drowned.

             
Something painful stirred within him. It caused him to be consumed by a yearning to bring comfort to his clan. What could he say? What would mend the souls left broken by the realization that they were nothing, but sacrificial lambs in Aurea's war?

             
He ached to speak, to utter even the simplest of words. Yet, nothing came. Why had his words abandoned him?

             
Sound slowly began to break against the shores of his armored shins.

             
“The King!” they screamed. “Defend the King!”

             
Angelos frowned. His biting confusion was worn by his paling face. He reached upward with a trembling hand. A sickening feeling within him brought the onset of such a gripping cold.

             
The bitter lump within his throat would not be swallowed. Try as he might, it would not be banished. Then it donned on him that what he could not be free of was not regret or even sorrow, but a Lucidian arrow which had found its way into his neck.

********

The flags of battle were slumped in defeat.

********

              The King met a gaze of tragic eyes. They stared out through bronzed tears with stars and blooms accentuating their emotion. He knew their pale gray depths. They mirrored his winter-morning eyes.

********

He tore his eyes away from their disgrace to the pains which would not end.

********

              Autumn sliced at the soldiers keeping her from her father's side. She fought with all the brutal might possessed in the darkest recesses of the soul. From her lips, foreign sounds came. They were growls of rage and carnal savagery.

             
Where was her father's protection? Where were the Guardians appointed to defend him?

             
As another Lucidian soldier fell at her feet, she was able to see clearly to her father. At her father's feet, she saw the fallen women littering the ground. She could also clearly see the countless warriors of Angels never to draw breath again.

             
A shadow fell over the King. Angelos felt it more than he saw its foreboding arrival. Its birth from the unknown was answered by Autumn's hastening speed. She pushed and shoved with every ounce of strength she had. Still, Angelos could only struggle to understand.

             
His daughter's screams suddenly invaded his world with feral force. They impacted against his abdomen as a mighty blow.

             
“Father, no!”

             
Body rigid, the King lowered his head. His eyes fell to his body.

********

A wound bled angrily from his abdomen.

********

              The broad-sword protruding from his abdomen made his legs buckle. Angelos turned to gaze over his shoulder. Disarray made his eyes wild.

********

He clutched the wound, hoping to stop the bleeding.

********

              A Lucidian soldier in bloodstained silver loomed over the King. His purple tunic and black leather pants made him more a dusky shadow than a clear enemy. It was not long before his likeness bristled with the feathered tails of arrows.

             
Angelos almost smiled or in that moment a spark of one began to twinkle somewhere inside the dimming lights of his eyes. “Autumn,” he thought while recognizing his daughter's distinctive arrows.

             
As his world began to haze, so little was clear to him, but one thing refused to lose its brilliance. He saw his daughter standing with the light at her back as she returned home to him. She brought with her his lost hope.

             
“Sweet father, what have they done to you?” echoed throughout Angelos' reality.

              Unable to summon another ounce of strength, he fell.

********

Angelos III, High Lord of Angels, fell.

********

              Aurea pushed up from her chair so roughly that it fell in dejection toward the floor. Huffed sounds of astonished laughter panted past her moistened lips. Her cheeks were flushed as her heart raced excitedly.

             
The pure unadulterated rejoicing seen within her glowing skin caused the noblewomen, who had fallen silent at her table, to hope that the Logos War had come to an end.

             
Aurea closed her burning eyes. She held the paper to her thundering heart to savor this news. The crowning figurehead to her only opposition was dead, slain on the battlefield. She trembled as that reality reverberated throughout her core.

             
When her lashes parted to reveal her eyes, they were like bright summer skies. She read on with a trembling body. Her radiant smile threatened to singe the pages until the base of her spine was gripped mercilessly by a consuming cold. Her smile faded with each new word to fill her mind.

             
As the moments ticked onward, her breathing grew labored. Their hoarse sounds filled the room. She clawed at the jewels about her neck, frantic for air. With ragged breaths, she collapsed to her knees. Thick tears blurred her vision. She blinked at them wildly, unable to keep herself from reading onward.

********

              Chaos was birthed of man's warring heart.

             
The tear-stained Pyrosians swarmed upon the body of their fallen King even as the determined Lucidians battled ravenously to take it as their prize. Together, they fell underneath the quick-moving shadow of a winged escort to the afterlife.

The shadow
came in the form of the brave transport maneuvering through the arrows fighting in vain to meet it. Its armored body danced in the dying sun. With brutal force, it landed upon the war-torn earth. Beneath its fierce talons, Lucidian men fell to a painful demise. The loyalties a creature holds for its master emerged as the glorious hawk pressed harder against the Lucidian soldiers underfoot.

             
With clanging swords all around him, a soldier of Angels hefted Angelos' body over the waiting hawk. He mounted the massive creature with one mission in mind, to take King Angelos' body away from those who might harm him any further.

             
Loudly, the red-tailed hawk clapped its wings. It released a shrieked sound of lament for its fallen rider as it was compelled into the air.

             
Before spiriting away, the soldier committed one final act on the King's behalf.

             
From this Lieutenant's hand dropped King Angelos' sword.

             
In the angry light, the beautiful sword twinkled. Its slow descent made Pyrosian souls rise to meet it while Lucidians recoiled inwardly from its shimmering reign.

********

              “No,” the Empress gasped hoarsely. “This was not how it was meant to be.” Her whisper was scarcely above a breath. “Not you!”

********

              The late King's sword sliced with purposeful intent through the air. Beneath its direct path, a warrior began to enact a kingdom's vengeance.

             
Suddenly there was silence. An eerie sort of stillness washed over the armies in this much-needed moment to catch one's breath. The ragged breaths of the exhausted soldiers could be heard with unfailing clarity. Together a sea of faces waited within that agonizing heartbeat.

             
With a furious determination, a solitary hand thrust above the confusion. Around its wrist, a gauntlet blazed in the dying sun. It winked in time with the legendary sword.

             
Autumn of Angels had taken possession of her father's sword and in so doing claimed command of his army and his kingdom. Her extended arm lowered as a drawbridge to what she would unleash upon her enemies. Her flat gray eyes witnessed the slow manner in which the Lucidians instinctively drew together. She tightened her other hand's hold around the hilt of her sword. Slowly her legs bent as she settled down into her stance yet again.

             
In the ghostly light of dusk when the fires of hell crept up from the horizon to claim the world in torment, eyes were wild with a desperate need to survive. Sweat enriched the light by winking off of helmets and exposed skin. Muscles grew taut in the knowledge that at any moment the strike would come.

             
Autumn stared out at her enemies from beneath her lashes. Her head was lowered dangerously. Before she saw the enemy line advance, she heard the distinct sound of their boots inching forward against the gritty earth.

             
The Lucidians were advancing in the hopes that they might take a Pyrosian army without a leader. They longed to slay a beast without a head.

             
“Zahara?” Autumn called into the dying day.

             
A nearby voice drew closer.

             
“I'm with you, Highness,” Zahara answered immediately. Her seething tone spoke of her thirsting desire for vengeance.

             
One by one, the army of Angels rose from the paralyzing realm of despondence. They were battered and badly beaten. They had faced impossible odds, but they would not be defeated. No matter how many times Aurea sent their province and their allies to the front, no matter how depleted of energy, morale and supplies, they might have been, their clan would not die out as the Empress' sacrifice. In their eyes, sang the haunting war-song of their people.