Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [28]
Not the boy. He held his ground, screwed up his courage once more, and said, "You are not of the tribes, are you? I see you are a full-blood elf, but not of these woods, or even those far to the north. Have you come from behind the menhir circle? Is it true star elves roam thete, in a realm apart?"
These children guess too much. Stardeep's defense is imperiled.
"Yes!" she agreed aloud with het blade, not the child. The sword lent her a focus completely new to her experience. It was almost like having Nangulis himself at her side. When he was alive, he had called her his Bright Star…
"You are? But that's wonderful!" exclaimed the boy, misunderstanding her response. He had no inkling of the death sentence silently handed down by the Blade Cerulean.
She closed the distance between them with five quick steps and brought the sword around. When the blade swept through the space beneath the boy's jaw, she hatdly felt a tug on the hilt. The youth's head rolled into the underbrush. Fluids sprayed. She blinked blood from her eyes.
The murdered elf s companions stood frozen in soul-stopped hotror. She continued moving, making one harvestlike motion after another, taking advantage of the interlopers' shock. Sword in hand, she moved to eliminate Stardeep's liability.
Her lips moved, too, but Angul's words were in her mouth. "We do not suffer abominations."
She learned that day that Angul impelled where dry reason faltered. Angul excited where debate and philosophy failed to motivate. With Angul in hand came purpose, exaltation, and the ultimate high of being part of a spectacular moment. A moment in which Angul delivered triumph in the face of insurmountable odds…
The scteams of the children, as she cut them down, penetrated her blade-given conviction. She paused, wiping blood from her face with the back of one gauntleted hand, her eyes blinking. Abominations…? What in the name of the Well was she doing? These were children! And she had… she was…
An arrow bloomed in her abdomen. She shrieked, went down on one knee. A girl had run when the others had remained within Kiril's fatal reach. She'd escaped the swords-woman's initial onslaught. But she stopped to loose an arrow, despite the fear trembling her limbs. The half-elf girl pulled another arrow to her bowstring.
Kiril struggled onto both feet, her breath ragged. Angul flared and the ache in her stomach melted. Like moral distractions, pain was a diversion to the glorious certitude Angul burned to dispense. With the pain, her moment of confusion, too, was swept away in cerulean light.
She raised the sword and his blue-white light doubled, then redoubled. Sunrise came early under the branches of Aglarond. Or was it sunset?
Kiril swatted the girl's second arrow out of the air with a twitch of her wrist. The half-elf turned to run. The swords-woman launched Angul through the air as if he were a spear.
Her aim was true.
When all was quiet again, she gathered the bodies and burned them on a pyre. To do so, she sheathed Angul.
Latei, she retrieved from the heaped ashes the fire-cleaned skull of the girl, the elf archer, the only one who'd put up any kind of fight. She decided she would bring it back to Stardeep as a trophy, a sign of her vigilance in keeping the hidden dungeon stronghold safe.
As the fire burned down, she resisted drawing her blade again. Instead, she fingered the skull, looking at it, worrying it between her hands. Something was hideously significant about the object she held so tightly. It indicated something pottentous, but like a puzzle box, she couldn't solve its significance. She stood, thinking to return down the Causeway before the access failed. But…
The longer she avoided contact with the blade, the more the blade's influence waned.
Finally, her captive conscience burst through the final, benumbed layers of Angul's influence.
Kiril screamed, long and loud. She collapsed