Book 1 of The Courts of Daemonium.
Alexander 'Xander' Duran, the world's first Lamia, has been in charge of the Courts of Daemonium for decades. After being turned into a shadow-wielding, blood-thirsty Daemon in 1649 by Lilith, his only purpose in h...
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1649
Blood.
It was all he could see. All he could smell. All he could taste. He was covered in it from head to toe, chunks of flesh between his teeth and under his nails. His soldier's uniform that had been too big for him, presumably due to its prior unfortunate owner being a larger build, now constricted his body and was slick to the touch. His boots, once clean and polished, were covered in mud and guts.
I'm dying, he thought. No man could survive losing this much blood, and the pain in his head and throat burned harsher than any fire he'd ever felt. He must have been shot. The firing squad must have found him and shot him before he could run away from the battle that none of them cared about. Xander had never been a true soldier, he was too lanky, he couldn't even fill out the previously grey and now dark reddish brown uniform he wore, yet he had been made to lead his small squad to join the ambush.
He struggled to keep opening his eyes every time he blinked, his lashes were coated in blood that stuck his eyelids together. His long, dark hair stuck to his face in the most unpleasant way and, if it weren't for the metallic smell and taste, he would have assumed it was due to a torrential rain storm.
As he wiped his face with his sleeve, he finally saw his surroundings. He was still on the battlefield. The same one his squad of soldiers had agreed to flee after cohesively realising they'd rather be killed as deserters than brutally murdered by an enemy attack, an enemy that they realistically had no personal quarrels with, but the enemy they had been trained to fight no less. It looked the same as before, but without the stampedes of idiotic young men in uniforms too big for them charging from both sides. There was no sound, not a single gunshot ran through the air, nor a shout or scream. It was as if the entire battle had just stopped.
Xander tried to step forward, but his foot caught on something in his path. A man was staring up at him from the ground, startling him and making him fall back. He prepared himself for the harsh landing against his back but was surprised by a softer, warmer one. The man in front of him was dead, his throat torn out with blood slowly pumping from the wound, pooling around his mangled body. And yet somehow, Xander felt he was staring into his soul.
He looked young. Younger than Xander's age of twenty and six. Too young to be drafted into war, too young to have met such a gruesome end.
He felt behind him to try to get up, to get away from the staring man. More blood. More bodies. His victims.
There must have been dozens piled behind him, with more and more piles across the field. Some he recognised as fellow soldiers from training sessions, which in reality were just a few days spent learning how to hold a musket and point it at the right person. Others he noticed wore the uniform of the enemy. The entire field, the entire battle, was lost on both sides.
Xander found the strength to stand, though his legs shook as they bared his weight with the adrenaline slowly wearing off and the ache in his body creeping in. He knew he had done this, he knew he had killed them all. And he knew he had enjoyed it.
