Chapter 2: Chapter 2

CASVAN

^Plane Of Dakhur, Dark Forest^

I raced after my fleeing prey silently, my feet barely touching the dark grass that carpeted the dark forest, my blood pumping with adrenaline. He was the last one, the last of the lost ones.

I had deliberately corralled him this way because the dark forest was less likely to have victims murdered. Twenty-two—that was how many I had killed in the last thirty-six hours I’d spent hunting them.

Herak was my last one and was proving to be more cunning than the rest. But then, it was no surprise—Herak had been one of my best hunters and my brother by birth.

I had personally trained him, had taught him how to fight and hunt. It was ironic how I was now the one hunting him down and the only one who could end him.

Emotions clogged my throat, threatening to choke me. But I forced it back; emotions had no place in what I had to do today.

The forest suddenly went eerily quiet. My step faltered abruptly between two reish trees, one of the tallest and largest trees in the forest, with dark-gray gnarled branches and thick, large leaves bigger and wider than any tree leaves in the human world.

They could wrap around a human body and had branches that reached to the sky and seemed to touch clouds. A perfect place to hide.

I sharpened my senses, that instinctive predatory part of me on high alert, trying to detect which tree Herak was hiding in. I inhaled softly when I heard his heart thumping at an alarming rate, a sign that what I was hunting was no longer the brother I knew.

It was one of the symptoms of madness. My grip on my favorite sword tightened as my ears twitched.

The air shifted, tension thrumming in the air. I felt the leaves from the reish tree behind me flutter a second before what was once Herak descended on me.

His fangs, sharper than daggers, dripped with his victims’ blood—men he’d sworn to protect but had slaughtered in a fit of madness. His dark hair was matted. I sidestepped in a blur, missing Herak’s claws by a quarter of an inch, my hands already raised, aimed, slicing through the wind—a lethal strike.

As I swerved, giving my back to Herak, my sword made contact with flesh and sliced through bone. Blood and gore splattered the side of my face, part of my neck, and the long hair that framed half of my face, until the strands were drenched, dripping onto my clothes.

I turned around to find Herak on the ground, holding his stomach, trying to force back his guts, gurgling sounds and blood spilling from his mouth. I bent over and kissed Herak’s forehead, a single tear defying and escaping the leash I’d had over my emotions, even though I knew deep down this husk of a male was no longer my brother.

My brother had been gone for months—that, however, didn’t stop the pain and regret of losing him. I sighed and stood up, my legs wide apart.

Without a second of hesitation, and with just a flick of my sword, I decapitated him, ending his suffering.

“May the aether guide you back to the mother, brother.”

***

Thick, dark smoke billowed into the horizon as far as the eye could see, the smell of burning flesh piled high stinging my nose. I had spent three hours going back and forth into the forest.

I brought back all the bodies of my former sentinels into the big clearing. I had given their bodies back to our ancestors, as was the old way.

I felt sadness and anger that I couldn’t save them, and I knew without a doubt, even as I hated it, I would do it again. Because I was the only one who could.

Though this killing had been my doing, I felt rage at the circumstances that had forced my hand into killing my own. As the king, it was my responsibility and mine alone.

It pained me that I couldn’t help them, but I still hadn’t given up on my plan to save my remaining people. Those who hadn’t given up the fight with their conscience.

Those who still fought daily against the madness. The war that destroyed my planet had also destroyed our women.

Males of my race were suffering from a lack of their anchors. Females who were their soulmates—for the power my race wielded was savagely violent, and only the calming effect of a true mate could help them control it.

Without it, we were just mindless animals. I swore that I would never rest until I saved my race, or I’d die trying.

Fortunately for me, three months ago, I’d started having a recurring dream. It was a vision, as all my visions were in the form of dreams.

In it, I saw the secret queendom of Marlenia, which my sentinels and I had been searching for ever since I’d heard about the rumored women’s city. I’d looked everywhere, as many had before me, but never found them until two months ago—barely a month after my vision started—when I came across two dead women.

I’d lost them; I was too late, but I recognized them as the Roses, women who were highly trained in martial arts. It had been weeks since that night.

My vision had continued. I still saw images of a stone castle amid mountains surrounded by thick trees, and I saw women toiling in the fields, training, fighting, and hunting.

But just like my other visions, the details weren’t specific. I tried to recall every detail I could, and yet I hadn’t been able to detect the exact location.

I even took some of the strongest sentinels to search for places I knew with similar large mountains like those in my dreams. In the end, I hunted down an old hag and tasked her with finding the city of women.

Now, if only the witch would successfully scry and find out the location of the hidden queendom of women before I was forced to kill another one of my people, then that would be splendid. I promised the witch she could stay here—she and her two grandkids—for as long as she wanted, if she succeeded in locating the women.

It was clear that their lives when I found them hadn’t been all that great. I knew for a fact if I hadn’t hunted her down, they would eventually have perished from hunger.

She and the two boys already looked starved when I’d found them. Just a few weeks here, and they had significantly changed from gangly and malnourished to having some meat on their bones.

I didn’t want to waste time going to the wrong place again. I couldn’t handle the disappointment, which was why I ordered the old witch to scry so she could find the location.

With a weary sigh, I lifted my now clean sword, which I’d been cleaning as I watched my brethren burn to ashes, and sheathed it back in its scabbard. The slight scuffle of feet on the grass alerted me that I was no longer alone in the forest.

I raised my head and found it was my other brother, Kayak. He was a large male, close to seven feet tall—even taller than me—and bulkier than me too.

I could feel his sadness at the loss of Herak, his guilt, his helplessness at the turn of events, the same way he could feel my emotions. It was our familial bond; we could sense each other, but I could always turn it off, bury my emotions deep so that he wouldn’t feel it.

Though I knew he understood why I had to do what I did, I still felt like I took his family from him regardless. I might have taught Herak how to fight and hunt, but Kayak had taught him other equally important things.

They were much closer than Herak and I ever were. As their older brother and their king, there were times I had to treat them as my subjects, just like everyone.

Which kind of created a complicated relationship between us, though we’d always had each other’s backs.

“May the aether guide you back to the mother, brother,” he said, touching one of the carved name templates I’d made for each warrior I’d slain today, another important tradition from our home planet.

“I made sure he didn’t suffer,” I said, trying to ease his guilt. It was a silent apology, the same apology I had to give the families of the men I’d killed.

Life was precious, sacred to us, and what I had to do wasn’t an easy thing.

“Don’t apologize, brother,” Kayak muttered, shaking his head. “I know how hard this is for you. You don’t know how sorry I am that you had to do this—I lost Herak. But so did you. Never apologize or blame yourself for doing what’s necessary,” he added solemnly, clamping my shoulder.

I nodded, meeting his yellow glowing eyes, different from my green ones.

We stayed like that, watching the flames devour the bodies of our brothers.

“Fuck, Cas, the old hag,” he blurted suddenly. “She found something. It’s one of the reasons I came here. I think she might have found the location of the secret queendom.”

His eyes were alight with something akin to happiness. I felt hope swell in my heart before he completed his sentence.

“It’s about time. Come on, what are you waiting for?” I asked as I bounded back toward the jagged onyx stone palace I called home.

It was finally time.

If all went well, I would never have to kill one of my people ever again. Our race would be able to survive—not only that but also prosper with the births of new younglings.