Belial - Episode 1 of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles Read online

  Belial

  Episode One of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles

  Belial

  ∞

  Ben Stivers

  All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2016 Ben Stivers

  Cover art Copyright © 2016 Bryan Keller

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1540359568

  ISBN-10: 1540359565

  Printed in the United States of America

  “He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.” —Holy Bible, Isaiah, 59:17

  Prologue

  Arthur lopped away a flailing leg from their opponent. Gideon’s sword had been crafted for this war. Shanay rejoined the fight, blood coursing down the front of her. With all the strength her body could muster, she drove her protruding sword up and into Lucifer’s fallen body. Wolf hacked repeatedly at the remaining arm as it swung over him, taking a nasty cut on both his left arm and leg, despite chopping the offending appendage from the elbow, which carried it.

  Arthur straddled Lucifer’s chest, sword in hand, but Lucifer ceased his struggle.

  “You cannot kill me,” he leered.

  “Like hell,” Arthur replied, his mouth drawn up in a sneer.

  Joanie sprinted down the hill.

  “I am a part of you—all of you. I am your darkest desire. Release me and I will give you back Cleola!”

  “She is not yours to give.”

  “I have her soul.”

  “You lie.”

  Lucifer started to deny it, but Gideon’s sword rammed down into his mouth, piercing the back of his skull and pinning him to the ground. He flopped, too well pinned to resist.

  Joanie returned, wielding The Chalice. Arthur released the sword and took it from her. Raking a bit of blood from his own chest, and a finger full from Shanay’s, he turned to Joanie. Rather than donate blood, she spat in The Chalice. Wolf did the same. Octavus, however, wiped the gouge on his chest and dipped his fingers into the cup.

  Arthur held the cup skyward.

  “Into God’s hands, I commend you,” he shouted.

  He poured the contents into Lucifer’s mouth, the effect instantaneous. The world trembled. Around them, the wounds of Sawtooth closed. The rest ran for safety, but Arthur stayed, looking into the face of the beast that had shattered his life and that of so many others.

  “You will be cast into a Lake of Fire,” he said, and then turned and stalked away.

  Sunlight pierced the clouds. The earth opened in a blazing fury and swallowed the Beast, Gideon’s sword, and chalice. With a snap, the rock closed over its victim.

  Arthur took a step toward Shanay, and then stooped to catch his breath.

  “It is finished,” he gasped. “We were well-advised to hold sacrament over those swords. Tell Benjamin—

  Then, his mind deserted him. He fell to the ground at her feet, his breathing stopped.

  Chapter 1

  Arthur’s consciousness drifted for what seemed an eternity. When he felt he had, at last, reached his final resting state, his focus abruptly reinstated. He and Blade sat at the top ridge of a mountain that overlooked Wizard’s Tower. Blade struck his hooves upon the rock-strewn surface and snorted, drawing Arthur’s attention. Arthur patted his companion on his substantial neck and allowed his own eyes to socialize the devastated basin. Iron clouds propped the sky, but they provided no contour. Thick pungent air labored his lungs.

  His mother, Lieala, and his father, Daemon had battled wickedness in this place. As druids, they deemed the encounter their duty to the earth rather than a matter of the soul as Arthur did. Arthur had been young in those days. Yet, he had exterminated Mrandor’s army in that battle—Arthur’s first skirmish of grand proportion, but not his last.

  A weak sun pierced the brown smog and granted him enough brightness to see clearly. The once magnificently constructed Wizard’s Tower was no more than shambles. Enormous blocks of stone from the tower’s destruction sprawled across the plain. Despite his mother’s best efforts to heal the land, the ground remained charred and lifeless. That tragedy, however, did not hold his gaze. He could not disregard what his hazel eyes articulated. On the valley floor, he saw a fallen angel emerge from the catacombs onto the plain.

  She did not see him, but even from this distance, he heard her demonic thoughts churn. How he did so lay mysteriously hidden as the scene crept to the grotesque stage.

  God cast down Belial with Satan during the War in Heaven. God had brought His angels into existence with a single breath and had discarded them with the same zeal. Yet, from her perspective, a more fair or fearsome countenance could not be found in Heaven once she left God’s presence. At the time of their banishment, there had been tales of her, but those grossly understated stories receded over time. She occasionally heard the narratives whispered by the insignificant bone sacks that the Father loved to call, “his children” when one of them spoke her name.

  Children. The word nettled her.

  Belial had infiltrated the catacombs of Lucifer’s underground labyrinth for a smattering of years while her brother hid in Sawtooth. She admired the underlings he had bred. The hellhounds were a remarkable piece of work, though she could have honed better killers. Still, she might yet restore them for her own desires.

  She had been there when he coerced animated corpses to life, but he could not bring himself to allow a single hell-bound soul freedom enough to inhabit one of those bodies, or he may have reared a victory through sheer numbers.

  His desperate moment of victory deserted him. All that Lucifer had created passed with his ending. None of his vile creations survived his demise. She found nothing but death, dust, and the ruins of her brother’s attempt to thwart the Children, turn them his way, make them bow before him until their flesh separated from their bones. He wanted to rule Creation.

  He had shared with her his vision of his own kingdom. Foremost, like God, he habitually demanded attention. Lucifer thirsted to dominate all God’s works. He sought demonstration that he deserved the forsaken love that his Father had adeptly withheld.

  She thought at the time that his idea bordered upon absurd. She did not care for rule. Her plans lay along a different path. Therefore, she had stood aside and watched events unfold. Fate acted like a wicked harlot, willing to sell her wares to whichever patron resounded her presence longest and loudest.

  In earliest days, Belial had lived among Lucifer’s hellhounds and his other ilk. She vacated the catacombs when hordes went to the plain to battle the Romans. She returned her attention back to the earth in time to sense her brother’s failed moment. She felt him die in his effort to control creatures that were unworthy of an angel’s wisdom.

  She offered him neither assistance nor hindrance. She held no positive emotional tie for any living thing, and that included her ken.

  To his credit, her prideful brother died the eternal death without asking his fallen brothers and sisters to help. Yet, the Father had sent His own emissaries to aid the Children at critical times. God wielded omniscience unlike what she and her kind might do.

  Angels were not omniscient, omnipotent, nor omnipresent, but they were omniintuitiv
e and strategic. They had been their Father’s warriors. He called them beloved until He betrayed them.

  Then again, she pondered the veracity of deception. If you never truly cared for the person offended, could you betray them? Either way, they had nearly thrown off His detestable shackles.

  For the first time, she walked into the daylight outside of Lucifer’s stricken fortress and onto the lifeless battlefield. She preferred the realm of night and associates who presented themselves in silhouettes, shadows and nihility. The massacres upon this bloodstained ground held the fragrance of failure and distraction. On more than one occasion, Belial wished she had come from inside the fortress; arrived in time to witness the carnage that had bathed this hallowed place. The bouquet of human blood and malformed, magically altered, derivatives lay palpable to her senses.

  Dirt and stone were her medium. To smell the blood, the broken bones, the residue of a Tree of Pain, and shattered lives that ended in this place, elucidated for her all that had happened in the decades. An altar built in her name could not have fitted her more snugly.

  God no longer ruled here. God had, in His usual manner, finessed the circumstance, slain everything upon the plain, and then abandoned the memories, looking for a new sacrifice.

  She strolled forth, great silver wings extended, and the black tips touched the tremendously large stones with her deceptively gentle fingers. Her wingtips bit into the granite and listened to the stone’s narrative of war, fighting, empires, monsters, hellhounds, trolls, and the undead.

  She flipped through the past like leaves on a tree, examining a moment here and there until she found what she sought—a cornerstone. Lucifer’s familiar. A human who turned to the true ways when he was still an innocent child. This familiar had managed to remain alive over many years. Feigning loyalty to her brother, he had outlived his master.

  She continued her search—reaching, twisting—the offspring of druids. She hated everything about druids. Their lack of belief made them practically impervious to creatures like her. However, their son believed in her Father. With proper tempering, it was possible to sculpt him into an irreverent, bitter warrior for her cause.

  For Belial had not come to build a kingdom. Quite to the contrary, her agenda lay much broader. She would not rest until everything that the Father had ever created on this world lay waste.

  Decades before, a deep and ancient forest had held its breath, waiting for a young boy to murder his father. Fate had dealt the family a harsh hand, for the killing had been a ruinous misunderstanding. When he killed his father, Mrandor had not understood his tainted perception of his father’s business. When he killed his mother a few moments later, he had done so almost accidently. That series of events had twisted the tide of history. The boy had listened to the voice that whispered to him in the night rather than the shout that roared from his conscience.

  Freely, a boy became a fiend. That monster currently clawed his way back towards the Black Forest. He had not drawn a single breath without scheming the world’s destruction. He would be an already honed, pliable, tool for her exploitation. He may still be a better servant to her than he had been for her brother. Better masters yielded better slaves.

  Considering, as though standing next to them, she turned her gaze to Arthur and Blade.

  Covered in sweat, Arthur bolted upright in his bed and reached for his sword, but the sword that had once belonged to Gideon hung on the wall across the room.

  Had it always been there?

  Had that sword not fallen into the pit?

  Next to him, Shanay, his wife, lay quietly sleeping; her red hair cascaded across her shoulders, a slight smile on the edge of her lips that could coax him from the meanest mood.

  No sounds intruded. The coolness of the autumn air drifted in through the window of their small home and brushed its face with sweet fingertips, but from that, he drew no comfort.

  Confusion strangled his active thoughts, spooning them around inside of his head and stirring them with chunks of charged emotion. His instinct wailed. Something commanded action. Soon.

  Arthur’s heart beat feverishly. The dream still tried to pull him back.

  “Shanay,” he whispered. Reaching to her arm, he shook her slightly. That was enough to wake the slumbering redhead.

  “What is the matter?” she asked, sleepily, raising herself up from her pillow. He paused to answer, urging himself toward calm. He tried to hold what he felt from his face, but the emotion must have overpowered his will. She asked, “Arthur, tell me, what is it?”

  “The danger is not over. Blade and I sat at the valley ridge. I saw that—discarded angel.”

  Shanay crawled across to him, swung her feet over the edge. They had fought many battles together, starting with one that pitted them against one another. They would work through this moment. They would survive.

  “Arthur, I need you to listen. Blade died a year ago. The enemy lies vanquished. We are home. We are safe.”

  Shanay spoke the truth. Memories crowded and pushed away his confusion. They had defeated Lucifer on Sawtooth Mountain. They had destroyed the Apostles. They had eliminated Mrandor. They had set Overlord City on a road to recovery, and they had returned home four months before.

  Nonetheless, for the third time in as many weeks he had experienced the same dream, the same confusion. Did God speak to him once more or did the past merely haunt him?

  He patted her on her thigh. As hard as she fought, a warrior in her own right, her skin felt like velvet to his calloused fingers. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck and rubbed her face in his gray-streaked beard.

  Arthur allowed his gaze to scan their small, rough-sawn shelter. One room. One table and two chairs. The empty loft above them where he had slept as a child.

  “Joanie and Octavus have gone to Britannia. Wolf left Hellsgate and bought the Lusty Wench. We are home here in the mountains. You and your father built this place. Tell me that you remember.”

  “I do,” he answered. He laid his rough left hand on her arm while he gazed across the room at his sword. Shanay’s skin felt warm as always. The scars she wore did not bother him. Nothing could mar her from his perspective. She calmed him, handed him purpose.

  Whispers scampered in the deepest chambers of his mind, hiding behind reassurances. He had dedicated his life to his God and his family and here they were against all odds. Finally, they were safe—all of them.

  Shanay encouraged him, “Come. Lie down. These dreams will fade. Forget them. They mean nothing.”

  He grimly smiled as she disentangled herself and said, “I am fine. I need to go for a walk to clear my head. The night air will help. I will return soon.”

  “Wait for me. I will get dressed and come with you.”

  He climbed to his feet, pulled on his boots and fetched his sword from the wall. “Get some sleep. I will return shortly. I promise.”

  Frowning, she did not try to stop him as he opened the door and went out to chase away the angst that troubled him.

  As soon as the door closed, Shanay donned her clothes, drew on her boots, cinched her belt and sheathed her weapons. Strapping her boots behind her thighs, she inserted a pair of daggers into knife sheaths on each boot. He said a walk, but he had taken his sword.

  They had returned home after Arthur felt convinced all aspects of Overlord City were in the hands of capable men. He harbored no desire to lead as he had the Roman Legions. Yet, solitude ill suited her man.

  Arthur and Wolf had reestablished both the army and the governorship under a man named Nerva. He exhibited a mild manner. His credentials as a bureaucrat played well to the job without droning into sluggishness. He had once been a minor official in Rome.

  She unsheathed her dagger, examined it quickly and tucked it back into her belt sheath, and then did the same with another along the small of her back. Being almost a foot shorter than Arthur did not prevent her from being as dangerous as he.

  Congenial and educated, Nerva had much to learn,
but his manner allowed him to compromise when he needed, lead when he must. His credentials made him desirable for the position. Therefore, Arthur had chosen him.

  As might be expected, not everyone had agreed with Arthur’s choice. Led by a man named Ptolomus, a freestanding group of experienced soldiers held themselves and their swords from under the Governor’s rule. They cooperated with the army when needed. Still, they swore no allegiance to the State.

  They called themselves Templars.

  Arthur had agreed to their terms without negotiating conditions. Ptolomus was a young, vibrant, imposing man, an inch taller than Arthur was. He wore his hair short and his face usually carried only a day or two’s growth. His men loved him and had Arthur still been a military man, Ptolomus would have been a man he chose as centurion. Arthur, however, stayed out of the Templar’s business. The Templars, he left to Wolf.

  Nerva took no offense. After all, he had his own standing army and a recovering city to keep him busy. The population accepted him. Within ten years, the citizens could remove him from office if they did not approve of his rule. To Arthur, that felt sufficient.

  The Bornshires and their friends had gone their separate ways. Wolf had originally bought stables in Hellsgate, but left after a few months, selling them to Scralz and Anthony, owners of the Dead Whore Tavern. Stable mastery did not suit Wolf. Thus, he left and went to Ploor where he bought the Lusty Wench Tavern. He found satisfaction with that decision when last she and Arthur had seen their friend.

  Wolf’s daughter, Elizabeth, had found a place to be at her father’s side, and though Ploor might not be a haven of safety, the town had much to offer that Hellsgate never would. Wolf’s son, Daniel, had signed on to a rugged ship bound for anywhere the captain deemed worthy of his time, and as of yet, they had not returned. Wolf did not object, but he often wondered if he should have tried to dissuade his son.