War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

Up above, Krig caught sight of Skylar. She fought for a place in the sky against three of Himmel’s minions. Her ebony black scales were as dark as a moonless night. So dark, in fact, that any but the eyes of a god would have missed the blood seeping out from numerous wounds.

She was powerful, else she would not have been his mount, but she was also outnumbered by her lesser kin. The three cerulean wind drakes twisted and swirled around her with a speed that she could not hope to match. Claws lashed out and peeled open a scale. The whip of a tail struck her wings. Magical winds buffeted her flight and razor-sharp fangs bit her softer underbelly.

Krig gave a huzzah inside as he saw a great gout of flame burst forth from her mouth and scorch one of the wind drakes. Its fine wings and delicate features shriveled up before the intense heat. In an instant, the enemy drake twisted and careened, slamming into the side of a nearby volcano.

In mindspeak, he told Skylar, “Beast, be gone. I would not have my favorite steed killed today.”

“And what of you, my Lord? How will you leave this place? You have none of your allies here. None to carry you home. None to watch your back,” came the reply.

“Obey me, Skylar. Know that you are my favorite mount and I will miss our rides, but know also that I shall return. The sun has not risen on the day yet where the god of war would lose a battle to the likes of these. The war may just take longer to play out than I might have liked,” he said with a laugh and then commanded, “Now go. I will buy you a moment of respite.”

With a laugh, she leapt into the void, but her parting words came through in mindspeak, “Perhaps when you return, you will finally consent to mount me properly.”

A roar escaped Krig’s lips. She was always jesting with him, but now was a time for battle. He stepped forward and shattered a dozen skeletal mages against one of Jordan’s elementals while at the same time transferring so much force, it turned the earth creature red hot and caused it to lose cohesion. He then activated his mastery of battle and in one instant took in the state of the entire field.

This allowed him, with one movement, to shatter Dod’s scythe into pieces while sending a kick into Himmel’s blue robed chest that shattered every bone. Neither attack was what it appeared to be. His cutting strike was intense, but it was his divine essence that reached out and found the smallest imperfection in his sister’s scythe. It was a divine artifact, but perfection did not exist in all of creation.

So, his power, driven by a relentless will, cut in two the device she used to reap the souls of fallen mortals to her realm of the dead, then spread up and down its length, fragmenting it further. It deprived her of a weapon, but more than that, it cut her off from her greatest source of power.

The goddess of death was clearly terrified of death herself, and she flew back and moved a legion of her elite fiends into the spot where she had been standing. She cried out in bitter anger, “What have you done? The mortals shall suffer as much as I!”

He pondered Himmel for a moment before responding to Dod. Just as the attack against her weapon had not been one of mere force, so too the kick against his brother had been more than a kick. Tendrils of Krig’s power had forced their way into every aspect of Himmel’s body. The gods needed bodies, but they weren’t just their bodies. Their divine essence was what made them who they were.

In that same way, the bodies they formed were invariably reflections of that essence. Himmel was the god of the sky. His body was agile, light, and fast. It was also rather fragile, and easy for Krig to shatter. So he did just that. He broke every bone in the god’s body and dissipated his form, his divine essence effortlessly returning to the sky that was present even here in the hellscape.

Beyond this realm, Himmel’s control of his domain faltered. The birds of the air became feral, banding together in great flocks and attacked anything that moved. The very essence of the air burned, and new terrors were born.

Further above, the air pressure dropped, and great storms formed in the atmosphere. Thunder, lightning, and pelting rain whipped up from nowhere. The very sky rained death and destruction upon those mortals living beneath its canopy.

“Think you that I care for the suffering of mortals? The worthy shall survive. That is what none of you have ever understood. I take no joy in death. I am not brutal because I want to be. I am these things because they are the only true crucible by which a mortal’s value can be measured.”

“So narrow-minded. Don’t worry though. We shall educate your followers. The priestesses of battle that you take such pride in shall be converted to whores in Begaer’s temples. Even now, she is out gathering your little battle princesses. She finds it hilarious, that those who have sworn wedding vows to the god of battle shall soon learn the ways of lust,” Dod taunted.

Her words angered Krig, but he was no fool. If she spoke like this, it was to take his mind off another attack. There it was. He felt the subtlest shift in an adjacent dimension. The buildup of essence thrust forward at him.

Bedrag was good at hiding, he was good at lying, but he didn’t understand how to apply that in combat, at least not at a level that could surprise Krig.

Bedrag phased into the hellscape, simultaneously thrusting with a serpent-shaped dagger. It was suffused with a fuzzy gray energy that made it impossible