“The Prince’s blasted Death Circle will annihilate the city in half an hour!” I tried not to squirm at Fultur’s Brinn hands squeezing my hilt. The blood of two of his comrades soaked my edge.
Nedir and Dorar.
I had savored the sweet taste of their names as I drained their life.
“Precisely.” That was Mathir—the leader of this little Brinn party I had found myself in. I could hear his name in the memories of the two bodies at Fultur’s feet that now sang within me. “We do not have time for petty squabbles over a sword.”
He was right, of course. Their looting of Datrea had the strictest of time limits.
Half an hour.
And it was my purpose to make them forget that. If I could tempt them into dueling over me, it would keep them in the city too long. The dreaded Brinn Prince would accidentally annihilate his own men with the Death Circle. I knew my father would find that justice fitting, and I so very much wanted to make him proud.
I had failed him enough already.
“Don’t you see?” Mathir hissed. “That fool of a skeleton will claim the whole city as his kill and then he will forbid us all from looting further. This will be the only time to plunder the riches of Datrea!”
“Then let us duel after we have left the city!” Fultur said.
“Of course you’d prefer that!”
“No,” I whispered to Fultur. “By then, it will be too late. You must fight them now.”
“Hold your Datrean tongue, sword!” He said back to me, but his comrades didn’t know that.
“You dare call me Datrean!”
“I wasn’t talking to you—”
They argued on and I fell quiet.
My voice was an obvious interloper. I needed to sound like a friend.
I considered. I had sung songs in the voice of those makers trapped within me. It stood to reason I could speak in the voices of others I had devoured as well.
I twisted my voice into that of Nedir, the very comrade he had slain to keep me. “Do you think they will let you live after what you did to me?”
“Don’t you dare haunt me, Nedir?”
“To even speak his name!” one of his comrades cried.
“I will not hunt with this murderer!” another spat. “He has slain Nedir and Dorar without proper ritual. In the eyes of the Angel, he names himself an enemy of—”
“Enough.” Mathir raised his hand and as he was their captain, they all fell quiet. “We don’t have time for quarrels.” He approached Fultur and I saw his intention clearly. “Fultur is right. We will sort out the ownership of this sword after we are clear of the Death Circle. Are we agreed?”
“You are a fool to let him near you,” I warned, but he ignored me.
This was his Hunt Captain, a man he had trusted for half a decade. He would not raise me against him and I didn’t have enough command over his body to do so in his stead.
He didn’t even have time to brace for Mathir’s dagger sinking into his neck.
“Dorar and Nedir,” Mathir whispered. “May they live on in the Hunt.”
“For Dorar and Nedir!” the rest of the company echoed.
Fultur’s body slumped to the ground and me with him. I was ashamed that the separation from a Brinn wielder was just as agonizing as all the others.
Mathir took hold of me and I put aside the pain and shame to seize the opportunity. Fultur had already been suspicious of me; Mathir was not. This was a clean slate.
“Hunt Captain,” I said in Nedir’s voice. “Thank you for avenging me.”
“Nedir?”
“I am here.”
Mathir gasped. “What wicked steel the great Daened has made.” He looked to the rest of his men. “This blade steals you for itself, life and all. Nedir is in the sword. I can hear him.”
Several staggered back in horror. “You mean…Dorar and Nedir will never go to Heaven?”
Cries of outrage rippled through the men.
“We must be careful not to kill each other with it when we duel for the right to claim it,” Another pointed out.
To my irritation, they all nodded in horrified agreement. That was the opposite of what I wanted. Now they had every incentive to avoid wielding me against one another. I was going to have to get creative.
“I am sorry, Nedir,” Mathir said to me. “To think that something made from Datrean demon songs could deny someone a chance to hunt beside the Angel…”
“Do not weep for me, Captain. I am still a part of this hunt, with you.
Mathir was moved. “You honor this company with your commitment. Yethyr is unworthy of your dedication.”
I considered and then with lethal precision, I said, “It is not to the Prince that I dedicate myself, Captain.”
I could feel Mathir’s heart grow tender, as clearly as I felt his grip on my hilt.
It reminded me how I had so clearly felt Erjed’s love for his daughter, but that had been a raging torrent, incapable of being ignored. This soft feeling was a trickle by comparison.
But it was there.
Mathir and his company tore through the palace, slaughtering everyone who had not escaped through the Maze of Stone. They ripped opal necklaces off slit open throats and golden rings of fingers that would never twitch again.
And I could do nothing.
Mathir directed their slaughter but was not bloodying my blade himself.
I felt bloody anyway.
The precious jewelry that they stole sang sweet passive songs from the days when the steelsingers made beautiful frivolous things, before the war, before the siege.
Before me.
I was not like my ignorant and powerless siblings. I was granted the ability to comprehend the desecration of these halls that were once sacred to our makers and I should have been able to stop it.
Damn the Brinn’s insatiable greed. I would make them choke on it. I would hone their greed for me to a razor’s edge and cut them all down.
For the first time, I tuned out the songs in the walls and the weapons around me and tried to listen to my connection to my wielder. Mathir had killed no one with me. My hold on him was weak now, barely a stitch of thread, but it was enough to feel him. I could not quite hear his thoughts, but I was close like I was ever nearing a roaring river.
I wondered if I could drop my own thoughts in the currents of that mental river. If my wielder’s love could consume me so utterly as it did with Erjed, it stood to reason it could go the other way.
The question was how.
My father had left me my inherent allure, a poison that seeped into the thoughts of any who saw me, but that was a curse beyond my control and from what I could tell, not strong enough without incentive or catalyst. These men had just vowed to each other that they would duel for me after the siege was over. They had every reason not to fight now.
I considered. How was I to tempt these looters to violence when my current wielder had not killed with me and therefore, I could not yet wield him back?
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All I had was my voice.
My attempts with Fultur had been too blunt. I needed to cut through to Mathir’s soul, sharp and subtle and sudden.
So I waited for a moment to strike.
The looting of the palace was frantic and violent. They had no time to be thorough, running through gilded doors and leaving bloody footprints on intricate mosaics that had taken Datrean artisans centuries to complete.
All ignored.
The company plunged itself back out into the brisk night air. The song humming from the Prince’s Death Circle loomed in the wind.
They were running out of time. They were unsure how long it had been since their Prince had issued his warning and Mathir didn’t want to take chances. No one did.
The streets surged with Brinn soldiers and Datrean survivors alike, rushing toward the city gates in a mad scramble.
It was pandemonium and it was perfect.
Mathir shouted at his men to keep together, but everyone jostled everyone else in the frenzy. There were enemies and other Brinn hunting parties. Potential threats to his own. I could feel the edge of panic in his mind as people he didn’t know bumped up against him.
I used that edge to strike.
“Look out! He means to kill you!”
Who “he” referred to meant little to me and in the heat of the moment, Mathir did not ask for clarification. He swung and a Brinn soldier he did not know fell to his feet.
He tasted delicious.
Mathir panted in panic. “Why?” I heard the question roar from that mental river in him. The blood dripping from my edge had bound him ever closer to me.
“He wanted me,” I lied in Nedir’s voice, “the sword I mean.”
Mathir was confused and horrified. “But we were on the same hunt.”
“The allure of this blasted steel is what got me killed,” I said as Nedir. “Do not fall prey to that same fate.”
Others in the dead Brinn’s party drew their red fangs on Mathir and Mathir’s party, knowing only that their Captain was being threatened, drew theirs as well.
“What treachery is this? To slay a fellow hunter when the prey is so plentiful?”
“It is treachery to steal a hunter’s fair spoils.” Mathir pointed me at the body whose blood still dripped from my white edge. “Your fellow had no claim to this blade. He should not have tried to take it.”
“Bavyr would never—”
Their arguments died in their throats.
It was a fortuitous mistake of Mathir’s to call attention to me. They had not given notice to my white steel before. Now I felt my curse seep into them, stoking their vengeance. Others in the crowd did as well. Desperate eyes in the chaos of the falling city saw me.
And they wanted me.
The Death Circle was briefly forgotten. No. It was more than that. The fear of the Circle made them want a blade to cut through to the city gates all the more.
Suddenly, that dreaded song encircling the city was helping me.
The Brinn parties clashed and I cleaved apart all in my path. With each death, Mathir fell more under my sway. In the rush of battle, he did not even notice that he was moving at my will and not his own. His swings became my swings. His thoughts became my whispers. His targets became my choices. I was able to direct the carnage away from fleeing Datreans and with each Brinn that I distracted or slaughtered, another survivor was able to slip past.
It relieved me that some good was coming out of my bloodshed.
Then an arrow splintered Mathir’s skull, put down like a rabid dog, at least that was the comparison I felt ringing in the head of the soldier who snatched me from Mathir’s corpse.
Wugrir.
“Stay back!” he shouted, swinging me to keep at bay the advancing crowds. He had not killed anyone with me. I had no control over the situation, and yet…
I pitched my voice to copy Wugrir himself. “I’m going to have to cut through them to get out of here.” It wasn’t right, not as exact as when I was channeling the voices of those I had killed, but for someone on the edge of panic, it was just close enough to confuse it with his own thoughts.
He swung me at the crowd, restarting the violence. The streets became a swarm of looting ravagers in a mad scramble, egged on by my whispers.
The city’s fast-approaching annihilation was forgotten and it was exactly what I had intended.
That of course meant that I would be within the circle when it awakened.
I was not sure if it would kill me, inhuman as I was, but I found that I did not rightly care.
My last remaining maker had wanted to destroy me. To be destroyed taking Brinn lives with me would fulfill the wishes of all the blacksmiths.
That felt right. I was a blight on the world. I had killed my makers and killed people I had sworn to save.
I deserved to die.
So did my wielder, as far as I was concerned.
I whispered violence in their thoughts and dealt out that violence when they had killed enough for me to command them. Arrows would overwhelm us and the cycle would begin again. Wugrir fell and so did Brunur after him. I traded hands through the carnage, going from Duther to Cathar to Naidur so fast I barely had time to so much as taste their names.
Murderous looters. The whole lot of them. Their deaths, physically painful as they were to me, mattered little.
The people who mattered were escaping through the Maze of Stone. There was no qualm left to stop me. There was no person left to stop me.
“What is the meaning of this?” A woman’s cold voice split over the carnage.
I paused and Naidur’s body paused with me. There was a mountain of dead at his feet, and their blood had knit him to my will so closely that it was me who turned to face the newcomer and not him.
In the narrowed vision of frayed nerves, Naidur did not notice.
Before me was a tall woman. An ugly scar cut a jagged line down her cheek, from hairline to jawline.
Her nut-brown curls were wild and kinked and barely tamed by the circlet of carved bone across her brow.
Below that sat big dark doe eyes that would be called lovely if not for how cold they were.
To my startlement, I felt fear in the air. I felt fear in Naidur. The few who still lived in the street were backing away.
“The Huntguard of the Prince.” I heard someone whisper in awe.
I tried to temper Naidur’s fear.
“You have Datrean steelsong in your hand,” I whispered in his mind, a false thought masquerading as his own. “You need not be afraid of her anymore.”
Bolstered by my confidence, he said, “Do not interfere. We were settling a dispute over the spoils of the hunt.”
“This hunt is over,” she said. “The Prince will not let your presence get in the way of his. The city will be annihilated in minutes whether you all stand here or not.”
People began to flee for the gates. Naidur would have followed suit, but I made him stand his ground. Anyone from this damnable Prince’s guard was someone I wanted to slay.
So this woman had to die.
Naidur was confused, searching for a reason why he wasn’t running for the gate, so I gave him one. I remembered Mathir’s company’s contempt for the Prince and dropped a different thought into the river of Naidur’s mind. “He means to take the glory of this great achievement from the people who truly made it happen.’
I knew I had struck true. Naidur did not question the thought’s presence at all. He had thought so before. He had whispered it and heard it whispered among the camp a thousand times.
He had never dared…no one had dared to say in front of the dreaded shadow that guarded the Prince though.
“And take all the spoils too,” Naidur muttered.
“What was that you said, hunter?”
With me, his fear felt far away. “I said of course your precious skeleton doesn’t care if he annihilates us or not. All the fewer to question when he takes the spoils, swooping in and claiming victory over a city we already subdued.”
There was a flash of crimson. She was across the street, her red fang blade unsheathed and arcing toward Naidur’s head so fast that he did not even see her move. I parried the strike for him and our clash rang of deathsong. It rattled me down to my steel. This tooth sang of more than just the dead monstrosity that it was taken from. It sang with the same voice that I could hear humming in the wind.
Prince Yethyr. He had carved songs into this sword himself and I understood their meaning clearly.
Pure death.
So much as a graze from that blade would kill a man. It was a testament to my father’s skill that the poison bleeding from that red edge wasn’t killing me each time we met in a bind. Every time our blades clashed was another note in a devilish duet that could shake the heavens.
The deathsong of Yethyr, First Prince of Brinn, and the steelsong of Daened, First Blacksmith of Datrea, dueling to drown out the other in a test of wills between great and terrible men who had never met.
I would not let my father lose.
Poisonous as this abomination created by the Prince was, it was a dead thing that could not think. All I was fighting was the woman who held it.
Naidur was stronger than her, but she knew that. She never let it come to a contest of pure strength. Her steps were light, parrying what she could and darting out of the way of strikes she couldn’t.
Her dark eyes watched my white blade warily and then hungrily, for I too was a poisonous blade and I felt the poison of desire seep into her.
“What happened to your warfang?” she said.
Dropped. Abandoned. All Brinn who had picked me up in that mad scramble had done the same. I was better. Naidur just shrugged. “We came to this city for their songsteel, did we not?” He swung me at her. “I am merely early to the bounty!”
She sidestepped and countered. I threw Naidur’s body back so that the poisonous sword only narrowly missed his cheek.
She pressed her advantage with attacks that were as swift as they were vicious. Her style was not like the other warriors of Brinn, strange and familiar to me all at once. I saw a terrible beauty in that it wasn’t beautiful at all. It lacked flourish or pride or honor. All strikes were direct and as deceitful as they come.
And it was my job to counter every single one. Naidur was useless here, a body that would have been skewered a thousand times over without my protection, but protect him I would. I had to defeat this sword strengthened by the monster that had destroyed my maker’s home. I had to kill this woman who guarded him. I was shouldering the hope and pride of all the steelsingers. Yethyr had beaten them in body; here and now, they could beat him in spirit.
They would beat him through me.
So on we fought, back and forth, in the desolate street of a ruined city, red enamel grinding against white steel in a duel worthy of song.
And in the end, in one swift cut, deathsong rang through Naidur and he died, falling with me still clutched in his hand.
I was falling. I was ringing. I was stunned.
Did I just….lose?
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
I will be posting a chapter every day until July 30, 2025. Make sure to follow the story and come back to read more!
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