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His eyes dart from my face to my hands and back again. He’s hoping for a tell, a clue as to where I might attack him next, where I’m most likely to draw blood. But he won’t get one from me. I’ve been doing this for centuries.
He feints to my left, and I let him have the small gain. He’ll make more mistakes if he thinks he’s winning. Scenting his fear on the air, I inhale it deeply into my lungs. It fuels me. His terror is the entire point of this exercise.
Lightning illuminates the fat, dark clouds overhead before forking to the ground again and again. The man circles closer with each lightning strike, swiping a hand over his sweat-soaked brow.
He holds a dagger at his side with trembling fingers. Twice he’s tried and failed to wound me, twice I’ve delivered deep cuts to his flesh. The wounds weep blood, soaking through his threadbare tunic and dripping down to the parched earth.
Another strike of lightning lances a tree close by, and the splintering crack is deafening. Flames shoot up into the dark, licking the sky, and the man takes another step closer to me before thinking better of it.
Caught between me and the flames, he’s not sure which is the better option. You’d think after all these years, he’d know the flames would deliver less pain and a faster death.
A gust of wind knocks him to the side, throwing him off balance, and I capitalize on it, spinning in the opposite direction and bringing my elbow down against his temple. His head snaps back and he groans, clutching the side of his face as he stumbles and falls to his knees.
He makes a weak attempt to swipe at me with his dagger, and I kick it from his hands. I could end him here and now with a single thought. A jolt of power through his body until he’s dead on the ground, eyes wide and staring. But that would be too easy for him. He doesn’t deserve easy.
When he moves to stand, I force him back to his knees and draw my blade across his chest, watching him thrash violently. It’s a deep cut, but not enough to kill him. At least not yet. Another gash across his stomach, and he gasps from the pain, dropping to his hands, fingers curving into the dry earth.
It doesn’t take much to shove him onto his back. A slight nudge from the toe of my boot and he drops to the ground like a lead weight. He’s crying now, tears seeping from the corners of his eyes and carving lines through the dust and dirt on his face.
He looks up at me, mouth open to speak, but no sound escapes. He wants to beg and plead for his life, but he can’t. I took his tongue. The tears come harder now, as they always do at this stage, and I wonder if he’s remembering all the unimaginable horrors of his life.
In case he isn’t, I wave my hand in the air in front of his face and make him watch. One scene rolls into the next and he gasps for breath, coughing up blood as he struggles to stay alive.
I leave him to suffer a few moments more, until the final scene of his death plays before him. He watches in wide-eyed horror as he’s forced to kneel in front of freshly dug graves, his body twitching from the pain and anticipation of what’s coming next.
The steel of a sword sings as it’s drawn from a sheath, and there’s a murmured plea before a wet squelching sound and a dull thump. I give him a moment to experience the pain of being beheaded all over again, and then I drive my dagger into his heart and wrench it until his mouth contorts in a silent scream.
The moment his body goes limp, it disappears in a cloud of black smoke, and the flaming tree is instantly whole again, unmarred by fire. As I rise, the clouds overhead recede until the sky lightens to its usual perpetual twilight.
Grabbing my discarded robes, I slip them on over my black tunic and breeches and adjust the collar, letting them billow out behind me as I walk. A lone figure waits for me at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed over her chest, and I’m already disinterested in whatever it is she’s sought me out to discuss.
“You’re not responsible for torturing them personally, you know,” she says, falling into step beside me.
I raise a brow at her tone but she is undeterred, flashing me a disarming smile. She’s up to something, and at the moment I don’t care what it is. I want to enjoy the high from my kill a little longer before I have to deal with anything, let alone her.
“Go away, Aeris. I’m busy.”
Her head swivels as she looks around us, her long blood-red curls swaying with the movement. “You don’t look busy, my lord.”
I shift to the palace grounds, hoping she’ll take the hint, but she appears at my side with a silver shimmer, and I sigh. Crossing the courtyard and climbing the deep stone steps, she again matches my pace, a mischievous smile on her face.
“Does he have to be tortured the same way every time?”
“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about? The methods of his torture?”
“It just seemed”—she wrinkles her nose—“unnecessarily bloody.”
“The Goddess of Chaos can’t handle a little blood?” I ask, opening the door with a wave of my hand and stepping into the tomb-like quiet of my palace.
“There are less messy ways to torture someone, my lord. That’s all.”
“He deserves the pain,” I inform her. “The man raped his own daughter every day for years and then killed his whole family when his wife found out.”
“Oh, I could make it hurt,” she assures me with a wicked gleam in her eye. “But that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m waiting,” I prompt when she doesn’t continue.
“A forest guardian escaped into Acaria.”
