Soul Forge (Book One of the Soul Forge series)

“You want me to what?” Elda yelped over the noise of the rain.

“Wrap your arms around my neck, lock your hands together and don’t let go,” Sypher instructed urgently.

“I’ll strangle you!” He turned sharply when something huge and black made a dive for them, the movement almost unseating her.

“That’s the point, moron! Hold onto me like you’re trying to kill me and you might not die!” Another piercing shriek rattled their teeth. “Last chance. If you fall it’s on you.”

Elda barely managed to get her arms around him before he dipped into a steep dive, tucking his wings in so tightly that she was clamped between them. The speed of the fall sucked all the breath from her lungs, her stomach lurching when he tipped over backwards. For a horrible, weightless moment they were upside down. He flung out his wings, grunting in pain when the updraft caught them hard enough to strain the joints. They were the right way up when the shadow overshot, sailing by them and turning its massive form in the air to come at them again. Elda’s eyes widened when a bird the size of a mountain opened its shadowy beak and snapped at them.

“What is that?!” she shouted, her voice shrill with fear.

“A Behemoth. I’ve been looking for the little bastard for the last six months.”

“There is nothing little about that!”

“It’s not that big.” He drew his sword, hovering in place to assess their opponent. Elda’s arms and legs began to tremble with the effort of hanging onto him while he was upright. “If I’d known it was using the thunderstorm as cover, I’d have killed it a while ago.” The enormous demon circled them slowly, its beady black eyes fixed on Sypher’s beating wings. He waited patiently, one hand keeping Elda’s leg in place, the other holding his wicked black blade.

“I’m going to slip,” she panicked, her body aching from the strain.

“Don’t you dare let go of me.”

The bird-monster lunged at them and Sypher twisted, his body falling into a tumbling spin when he tucked his wings in to drop beneath it, throwing them out a second later and rising up to slash at its underbelly. Long talons snatched at Elda, trying to drag her from her perch, but the Soul Forge dipped deftly out of the way. She clung to him for dear life, heart hammering in her throat while he tore a hole in the wing of the demon. It screamed and lightning flashed in answer. The bright bolts struck the Behemoth, feeding it energy and closing the hole right back up.

Sypher let go of Elda’s leg and drew on his umbramancy, sending solid shards of shadow zipping towards the bird and piercing it all over its body. The Behemoth howled in agony. Several more monstrous shrieks answered, and Elda’s pounding heart skipped a beat. Sypher turned and looked into the storm, searching for the source of the noise through the dense downpour.

“Wraiths,” he muttered.

“Can you handle them?”

“I wouldn’t be the Soul Forge if I couldn’t,” he replied with a sigh. “Sorry Princess, you have to hold on a while longer.”

“I can’t!” He let go of her leg again to clench his fist and she felt something settle around her, pressing her into his back so tightly that she could only move to breathe.

“Problem solved.” He zipped towards the Behemoth when it shook out the last of the shadowy spikes in its flesh, screaming at its companions for help. Elda couldn’t look back, but she could hear the beating of many more pairs of wings chasing them.

Something slapped against her and bounced off the tough cloak, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. The only reason she stayed put was Sypher’s magic holding her still. She noticed it ebbing and strengthening when his focus shifted, allowing her more movement whenever he got distracted. She began to picture him getting sidetracked enough for her to slide off his back and fall hundreds of feet.

He slashed suddenly, lopping off the wing of a Wraith that drew too close. It tumbled to the ground with a pained cry, and the Soul Forge turned and rounded on the next one. Fire ignited in his palm and he tossed it, consuming another Wraith until it was nothing but ash.

The Behemoth rejoined the fight, directing its wrath towards them in the form of a lightning bolt that Sypher deflected with his shadows. The next bolt missed, destroying a third Wraith in an instant, but there were more circling all around them. Elda pressed her face into Sypher’s back, getting jostled around by more talons bouncing off of her cloak. One of the birds got a grip and tried to yank her away. The Soul Forge snarled and twisted, snapping his boot across a pointed beak. Elda flinched when he gripped the sharp appendage in his gloved hand and wrenched, breaking its neck in one violent pull. His anger reached new levels with every kill, the magic inside him becoming so overwhelming that it left an odd metallic taste on her tongue.

The banks and rolls became more frequent and more forceful, picking up speed until Elda’s eyes were watering. She started to feel the wind dragging at her again when his attention became focussed solely on killing scores of giant, raven-like monsters. He swooped down towards the Behemoth with a dozen smaller Wraiths on his tail. Elda’s hands began to slip from their chokehold, fingers straining to maintain her grip when he tucked his wings into another death defying roll.

His sword sliced across the back of the giant bird, severing the spine in one impossibly powerful swipe. He didn’t let up the speed, outpacing the crippled body of the Behemoth and making a hard left, tipping sideways to turn back on himself and drive his fist through the skull of another Wraith. Elda slipped again.

“Sypher, I’m falling!” she gasped. He snarled and grabbed for her, but his fingers closed on empty air when razor sharp talons gripped her cloak and tugged her free. Her scream was strangled by the fastening of the cloak constricting around her throat.

The Soul Forge tried to reach her, taking his eyes off of his opponent for a second too long. She gagged in horror when one of the Wraiths used his distraction to force its beak through his stomach, the sharp tip bursting through the front of his armour, coated in his blood. He snarled as it withdrew, leaving a gaping hole in his torso. Elda struggled for breath while he cut the bird to ribbons, black spots dancing in front of her eyes.

The creature shook her, dropping like a lead weight through the rain when the cloak finally slipped from around her neck. Her body pinwheeled, turning over and over while the downpour pelted her from all sides. She didn’t know which way was up or down. Suddenly, she glimpsed trees, the ground rushing up to shatter her bones and crush her organs. She couldn’t make her eyes close.

Strong arms caught her at the last second, shunting her sideways. Sypher tucked himself around her, realising it was too late to stop the impact, and opting for protecting her instead. When they hit the ground, they skidded several metres, him taking the brunt of the fall on his back. Elda gasped when the bouncing rattled her brain, joints jolting and shaking until they finally came to a painful stop in the dirt. Sypher was still beneath her, his chest no longer rising and falling.

She lifted herself slowly, eyes widening when she saw him sprawled in the mud beneath her. His wings were broken in several places, blood no longer pumping from the gaping hole in his gut. With no magic to sustain it, his armour was gone, leaving his scarred torso bare to the elements. A petrified sob stuck in her throat when her gaze landed on his face.

His eyes were coal black, all of the red extinguished. His mouth was slightly open, revealing two rows of sharpened teeth stained with blood. Dark veins spidered outwards beneath the skin of his left eye, creeping across his cheek and down to join the runes tattooed on his throat.

He was a demon.

A scream from above signalled the arrival of the single Wraith the Soul Forge hadn’t managed to kill, its claws still clutching the cloak. Elda was frozen, her muscles refusing to obey when its sharp beak came closer, opening wide to reveal a gaping throat with several rows of serrated teeth, perfect for grinding her bones.

A gloved hand shot out and gripped the lower jaw when the beak was an inch from her eyeball, yanking it downwards. Sypher sat up, his other hand reflexively flattening against Elda’s back. She stared at the hand around the beak, watching it ignite. Flames swallowed the shadowy plumage until the Wraith was reeling and screaming. After a minute, it fell in a heap and didn’t move again, the smell of charred flesh and burnt feathers permeating the air.

“You’re...you’re a demon,” Elda stammered, frightened tears welling up in her eyes. Thankfully, the pouring rain disguised them. “You were dead.”

“Immortal,” he replied, his velvet smooth voice taking on a strange hiss. She was still sat on him, his hand at her back keeping her from moving away.

“You’re bleeding.” She looked down at his wound, frowning when she saw it was no longer oozing. It closed over slowly, the torn muscle and skin knitting back together right before her eyes.

“Are you hurt?”

“Not like you.” She cast a look over his wings, which didn’t seem to be healing anywhere near as quickly as the rest of him. “What happened to your armour?” He ignored her question, watching her with those frightening black eyes like she was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

Elda blinked. “What?”

“The others were.”

“You mean the other Keepers?” He nodded. “I am afraid of you.”

“Not like they were.” His head cocked, a furrow forming in his brow.

“You just saved my life. Again.” Elda swiped a hand across her face when more rain dripped down her nose. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, dirt coating her from head to toe. She sucked in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “You aren’t going to hurt me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She studied his face carefully, forcing herself to take in the bottomless eyes and sharp teeth for what they were. A shiver of fear rippled down her spine, her response sounding braver than she felt. “If you were going to hurt me, demon or otherwise, you would have done so already.”

When he said nothing, she cast her eyes over the many old wounds on his torso. A vivid scar split the skin from his left collar bone all the way to his right hip, and Elda’s breath caught when she imagined what sort of pain it must have brought him. His gloved hand caught her wrist when she reached out to touch it, bringing her back to her senses.

“Don’t.” When she looked up at him, the red had started returning to his eyes. “Please don’t.” She nodded slowly and moved backwards, sliding off his lap and sitting in the mud. He got slowly to his feet, broken wings hanging awkwardly behind him.

“Why aren’t they healing?” she asked.

“They don’t work the same way as the rest of me.” He glanced back at them. “I can’t pull them in until they’re fixed, and they won’t fix until the rest of me is finished healing.”

“So you’re stuck like that?”

“For now.” He ran a hand through his dripping hair, pushing it back off his face. Now that she wasn’t taken over by his scars, the movement sent Elda’s focus straight to his bare biceps and heat flushed her cheeks. He quirked an eyebrow, but no cutting remark followed.

“Is there somewhere we can go to get out of the rain?” she asked to distract herself.

“There’s a village with an inn not far from here. Kilmarthen.” He clenched his fist and the darkness stretched towards him again, wrapping him back up in his armour and hood. The shadows didn’t cover his face this time, so she saw him flinch.

“Does magic hurt you?”

“Depends how much I use and what kind.” He stooped to pick up the black cloak the Wraith had dropped in the mud, one hand pressed to the still healing wound in his stomach. “Here. No point getting drenched the whole way there.” She took it from him, noticing the dirt didn’t stick to it when she fastened it back around her neck.

“You said you didn’t know what you were,” she mumbled when they started walking.

“I don’t. I’m half Greater Demon and half...something else. I never found out what.” He didn’t look at her as they tramped through the rain, so she snuck a look at his face. His expression was troubled. “If you see me like that again you can’t just sit there. You have to move.”

Elda frowned. “You didn’t hurt me.”

"This time. I’m not in control when I’m like that.”

“Why did you need to be like that in the first place?”

“How else do you think I take down Behemoths and live? I don’t usually have a passenger to worry about.” He stopped and turned to face her, a deep frown settling on his brow. “Whenever I go that far, there’s a risk I won’t come back from it.”

“What do you mean?” He took several steps closer so he could look her in the eye, all six and a half feet of him towering over her.

“My soul is divided. One side of me is the demon. The other side is whatever I am now. I spend my life constantly fighting to maintain control of my nature. My control is weakening.”

“I don’t understand.” A prickle of foreboding crawled over her skin.

“I’m telling you that one day soon, I’m going to go too far. When that happens, you’re going to have to kill me, Princess.”