Tales of Death´s Daughter

“Stop being so touchy, you are creeping me out!” I shouted, grabbed the arms that wrapped around me and pushed them away from me. My world shook as the horse beneath me didn’t know how to handle my struggle.

“You wanted to ride this goddamn horse with me!” He shouted and gave his best to regain control of the horse with his meagre abilities.

“Because I cannot see, you idiot! Just stop touching me!” It was daytime and the army was marching through elven land. We were in the middle of the army, and yet we still had a huge area for ourselves. The end was already beginning, I could feel it in the air …

“Weirdo! You are leaning against me!” He bickered.

“Do I have another choice? You wanted me to sit in front.” I proclaimed and puffed my cheeks.

“Because the girl always sits in front of the guy.” I nearly proclaimed him as a sexist to the whole world before I had a better idea.

“You read too many romance novels.” I said.

“You too, apparently.” That backfired quickly. I desperately wanted to say I read all kinds of books, but Tom was faster and interrupted me.

“They are coming.” We immediately stopped bickering and I thought about this once more. Our only goal here was to bait the Devourer into being close to me and there was in my opinion no better way than to present myself without protection in a hostile environment, meaning in sunlight.

“1701 seconds. We are close.” I whispered and listened to the dull sounds of multiple horses around us. “You know what to do.” I whispered one last time to Tom before he stopped the horse and I jumped to the ground, nearly twisting my ankle. He was already riding away in the opposite direction as I gracefully curtsied in front of the approaching unit of knights.

“Hello, my dearest enemy.” All the knights spoke in unison and none of the surrounding soldiers seemed to bother. I was in a hornet nest, exactly where I wanted to be.

“Greetings, my least favourite victim.” I said with the hand on my hips, right where my sword used to be.

“Have you given up now? Leaving the protection of Arthur wasn’t the smartest move.” They said and drew their swords.

“Is it though? I suspect you are around here and want to see my end with your own two eyes.” I listened closely to every sound, but sadly, I heard absolutely nothing. Either she wasn’t here at all, or she was smarter than to fall for my trickery.

“Maybe I am around here, maybe not. Whatever is the case, you lost. I am not giving you another night to wreak havoc.” The knights encircled me while I stood completely still and only listened to any suspicious noises. It was hard with this bad hearing due to the sun to make out anything at all, but just for a short moment, I thought I heard a female voice among the chorus of males. This was going to be interesting.

“1800.” I said quietly. I didn’t wait for the signal itself, I needed to wait for the Devourers reaction which may even come before I could notice anything.

“What have you done?” They all screamed and turned in one direction, probably to look at a huge explosion in the distance.

“I don’t need a night to wreak havoc. I only need a single day.” Said I as I turned around and dashed towards the encirclement. My hands raced towards the two lightweight daggers on my hips, but I didn’t draw them yet. The sun made me slow, sluggish and weak. I had no chance against any of the knights who were around me, but I didn’t need to.

Hell broke out around me as my knights set fire to all our supplies, including the carts where the worms reproduced by eating human corpses. The resulting explosions sent shockwaves through the whole army that was incredibly thinned out due to marching on a thin street. One of these explosions happened a few hundred metres away from me and sent me flying through the air. I coughed up blood after I slammed onto the ground. Thousands of humans, worm-infested or not, died in the first phase and last phase of my plan.

I wanted to look desperately at the chaos I created. Arthur couldn't relay orders, not that he intended to. Sometimes, giving up and letting the chaos run its course was the only solution after all.

My ears still rang from the nearby explosion as I was lifted up in the air by a man grabbing me by my collar.

“What have you done?” The man asked once more.

“Oh, I just thought of going down with a loud bang for everyone to hear. You made too many mistakes lately … I mean, the prediction of my little flooding adventure was good, but after that? Just because I had no way of defeating you, did you seriously think I would give up? You shoved me into a corner and like an animal, I am now lashing at everything around me. I will hurt you as much as possible, even during the day when you expect it the least.” I grinned and spit blood on him. This was developing nicely so far.

“This is just a suicide attack. You will pay for this!” Spit flew onto my face as he screamed at me in anger. It was disgusting, but great to see how my little attack already did what a flood couldn’t achieve.

“Will I? It was great playing with you, and it was fun losing against you in its own way. Should I tell you a secret though? I don’t like losing at all.”

It was right at that moment as thousands of burning arrow rained down on the chaos, striking not only the surviving carts but also countless humans across the whole army. While some of them were obviously blocked by armour, others found their target and sank deep into the flesh.

“Boom.” I laughed as the knight holding me up burst into flames and exploded in a matter of seconds after he was hit by an arrow. Once again, I was thrown away through the air until I hit a tree at the wayside. My dress was already burning together with my skin in a few places. Additionally, I hit my head very badly at the tree and my nose started to bleed. My wounds weren’t healing as fast as they used to, making me even more vulnerable during the day.

Dizzy, I placed my right hand against the tree to push myself away but froze midway. This tree was incredibly sticky with some kind of sap. It didn’t work very well as an adhesive and as I never saw that before, not even during my short adventure yesterday. I was quite stunned by it, at least until I realized the radiating heat from the tree.

“Oh fuck.” The sap was incredibly flammable and I just set a whole tree with it on fire. I didn’t doubt one second that this tree wasn’t a singularity as I stumbled away from the tree and fell onto the ground.

A few seconds later as I turned on my belly and covered my head with my arms, the whole tree exploded. The bark, incredibly sharp and burning flew outwards, hitting everyone in sight. A large wooden splinter bore deeply into my thigh and I screamed in pain as the fire burnt the surrounding flesh away.

A few seconds afterwards, I robbed away from the exploding forest back towards the street that wasn’t exactly safer. Fire arrows still rained down on everything and everyone without any resistance. The chaos I spread made resisting this terribly hard as both the humans and the Devourer were initially dealing with other things.

“Devourer~ come to mommy~” I screamed loudly and opened my right eye a few millimetres, then even more. As everything was on fire, the smoke blocked the sun completely. While that strangely didn’t return my usual strength, it did allow me to see, at least a few metres wide.

“YOU!” She was completely going out of control and screamed with every mouth she had available.

“Didn’t you expect me to invite others into this game we play~ how unwise~ and you didn’t even expect the elves to be capable of this? Well, I guess nobody who didn’t read the book about ancient magic knows~ come here little kitten, I´m going to end your suffering now~” I was so delighted everything worked out perfectly so far and while I couldn’t exactly call this my win, the Devourer would still die, either through my hand or through fire.

I made a step backwards and drew my left dagger to ram it into the person who stumbled through the fire towards me. His soul vanished as he looked at me in surprise while I already pulled the dagger out of his wound.

“What a bummer.” I whispered and barely turned my head away from an explosion nearby. Flesh was flying everywhere, including towards me. “If this goes on I can support the economy of a whole country just by ordering dresses …” I mumbled and walked in the direction of the explosion while casually putting out the fires on my dress from time to time. My feet were already a black bloody mess as I had to discard my boots after a few metres because they were burning quite nicely.

“Devourer~ I know you are here. Come out and play~” I jumped over a larger fire just as an arrow penetrated the smoke from above. It bore directly into my shoulder and the fire soon engulfed the shoulder part of my dress. “Fuck!” I screamed as I slumped down to the ground, cut off the burning fabric and broke the arrow shaft off. As all elven arrows had barbs, I didn’t even bother with pulling this one out, but soon stood up again and resumed my crazed shouting.

“Devourer~ you murdered Luna and Kat~ now I am going to murder you~” I weakly slit the throat of another man who was definitely not human. His arm was cut off even before I saw them, and yet he still tried to strike me with his sword until he lost too much blood and simply collapsed.

“My father is going to kill you!” Screamed a woman a few metres away, still covered by the smoke.

“He is welcome to try~” I stormed through the smoke towards her, jumping over fires until this woman was mere metres away. Even with my bad vision and all the smoke, I remembered this woman as the mage I dumbly shared the carriage with. She already had an arrow knocked onto a bow and aimed directly at my head.

“Hmm, that’s weird.” She had burnt skin in several places, but she wasn’t going up in flames like the other ones. It was the right decision to lure her towards me as I otherwise couldn’t make sure I really killed her. “Just so you know, if you hit my eyes, it is theoretically possible to kill me. If you miss though …”

“I have the knowledge of hundreds of archers. I won´t miss.”

“Bothersome … hey, before we end this once and for all, how did you escape purgatory?”

“As if I am ever going to tell you that. Any last words?” She said with a grin on her face.

“Yeah … your attire is on fire.” While she must be largely immune to fire, the children she directly controlled were not. She must be quite scared of fire, even if a fire wasn’t anything to be scared of … right? Just like I expected, she looked downwards for a second and directly got hit by a dagger that bore into her right hand.

She howled in pain and stumbled backwards. Just as I wanted to throw my second dagger, an arrow flew with deadly precision into my back. I stumbled forwards as I tried to keep my balance and stepped on a hot burning piece of wood. My face contorted once again, but that didn’t stop me from going after her.

“Devourer~ why don’t you stop this shitty hive mind thingy for once and let me kill you~~” I laughed as she stumbled backwards and equally stepped onto a piece of burning wood.

“Why don’t you just die?” Another arrow came flying from further away judging by the arc of it. Luckily, it came from the side, so I was able to dodge it, albeit barely because I was weakened during the day. Sadly, I had to look away for a second she used to turn around and start running.

“Hehe~ want to play catch or what?” Just as I said that a bulky man appeared out of nowhere, covered by the thick smoke and with a slightly burning cloth around his arm. Just as I wanted to slice at him, I realized my mistake. “Whoppa.” I said as I threw myself sideways as his whole body caught fire and exploded in gore half a metre away from me. It wasn’t enough to send me flying, but the gore certainly served one purpose. An arrow flew right through the blood nebula, directly into my heart.