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

to follow with the eye. Krig didn’t need to see it to respond, though. He accepted that he would take a wound to deal a greater one to his enemy.

The gray blade cut into his body and injected a deadly poison into his blood. It began coursing through him, and Krig clenched his teeth at the agony as his cells were shredded. But it was worth it. He brought his blade down Bedrag’s face. His enemy’s skull was shattered, and a great gash was cut down the left side of the deceit god’s cheek. Krig forced his essence into the wound. As his blade had shattered the body, so his power shattered his brother’s essence.

Bedrag collapsed to the ground and Krig raised his hands up in a cry of victory. “Call this matter over. Or do I need to cripple all of you?”

It was then that a subtle motion beneath him alerted him to another attack. Jordan’s essence surged up around him. The stone liquified and flowed around him faster than he could respond. Krig found himself bound. Tendrils of earthen essence began to force their way into his form. He solidified his body and enhanced the muscles. Surging with power, he pressed and strained against the stone that had him trapped.

He had to accept, though, that as much as he was the superior warrior, Jordan was physically the strongest of them all. Krig wouldn’t let that be what did him in. He prepared and focused.

Dod came in close now, thinking that he was trapped. “All that you have will be ours. Your essence will be stripped from you. It shall make us strong. Your soul shall be bound to that mortal frame, and I shall break you. Play with you. All eternity shall become torment for you and a game for me.”

Krig watched Dod’s form ripple. Her feminine curves disappeared. The dark beauty she possessed became a hellish shape, all lust and no love, all sharp edges and no curves, yet it was still strangely beautiful.

Three divine essences came together in a single moment. Krig sent his essence out like a drill to a hundred different locations to bore holes into the earth encasing him. Then he flexed and burst it apart. Jordan was strong, but always too slow to react to sudden change. As the stone body she had formed was shattered, her control over the land in the mortal realms wavered.

The world of Verden shook. The mountains trembled. Great rents in the earth opened up. In other places, mountains became valleys, while lowland plains surged upward to become mountains. All around, chaos reigned as the very face of the planet was reshaped.

New races joined the humans of the surface. Stout dwarves walked out of their mines and engaged in trade with the remaining cities. Dark and silent glytharen slipped out, and the humans were not prepared for the exquisite skills and dark arts they brought to bear, for they worshipped none of the eight deities, but instead served the voice of chaos.

Perhaps even worse, an assortment of monsters poured out. Hideous trolls, rock-eating monsters with a name that no man knew, and deadly worms which seemed harmless until they latched on. These were just the most numerous of the new horrors.

Even as he freed himself from Jordan’s hold, Krig’s torso was slashed, cut open by the dark claws of Dod’s new form. The poison breaking down his body, a hundred cuts opened by spikes of stone that had pressed into him, and now these great claws opening his armor to cut the flesh beneath, all took their toll.

Dod was hardly known for mercy. She struck again and again. While some blows got through, Krig was a weapons’ master. His shield lay upon the ground, but he blocked with his vambrace as best he could and parried slashes with his sword.

He was spent, though. Krig knew that wars did not just consist of one battle; the great secret was that he who ran away, lived to fight another day. So, with a rocket of power, he shot into the red hellscape sky with its black clouds.

Dod cried out, her form making the words come out all garbled, “Stop him! You will gain no essence if he escapes!”

As he prepared to part the dimension and leave the hellscape with what remaining power that he had, Krig found his way blocked by the eldest of them, Lige. A spear the size of a small tree, tipped with a glowing, golden head, blocked his way.

Krig prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible. They would not have his essence, even if he had to scatter it into the void between worlds. But getting past Lige would be difficult. The god of justice did not often fight, but it was not for a lack of strength. Krig knew that had he done more than watch the battle take place, this would have gone very differently.

Still, there was nothing for him to do but charge. It was less a physical attack and more an act of will. His essence gathered together to face Lige.

Then the god of justice made a fatal error. For a moment, he acted as though Krig would fight as he did.

Lige bowed his head and gave the salute of the gladiators to Krig. Krig knew that the truest honor of battle was to survive. He didn’t cheat. He excelled where others might not, but he wasn’t above striking first.

If he had to strike hard, he would. And now he showed no mercy.

His blade and a sliver of essence lashed out. The blow caught a bowing Lige upon the left side of his face. His eye was punctured and Krig willed the sliver of essence to war against the clarity of sight the self-appointed judge of the gods took pride in. He blinded his brother’s eye and in the moment that bought him, Krig ripped open the dimensional wall and stepped into the void.

The grayness welcomed him but Krig