Dusk of the Realm

5

Before the black-clad soldiers had even reached them, Tarin was searching for the one that had been described to him. His rage intensified as none of the foolish, suicidal men running at him, their faces morphed into eager grins that conveyed just how oblivious they were to the identities of their combatants, matched the image of the man he had painted in his mind after listening to as many accounts of his appearance as he could find.

He took the next second to make a sweeping guess at how many soldiers were attempting to ambush the six of them. His magic told him that there were at least forty converging on them all right now, but he could smell a campfire, and knew that they should probably be expecting a second wave of men after this one was decimated.

"The plan, Sir?" wondered Birches. His tone was so casual that one would think this was just a normal day of training. If Tarin was completely honest, he would admit that the things he put his men through in those sessions were often much worse than this.

"The plan," Tarin replied, twirling his sword through the air and tossing it from hand to hand, making sure it was as balanced as ever with motions so effortless that some of his enemies staggered slightly at the sight, "is to kill them all."

His eyes narrowed as they rested on one man who was scanning the area from the shadows of a tree, probably thinking he was hidden from Tarin's gaze, or else thinking that with everything else going on, he would not attract Tarin's attention. Either way, he was wrong. Tarin lowered his sword and pointed the tip directly at him.

"All of them," he repeated, "except for him."

He felt the slight shift in the air as his elites spared a glance to see who he was pointing to, and then the soldiers, who had probably been moving fast by any but Fae standards, were finally upon them.

Fighting for Tarin was as simple and thoughtless as breathing. Nobody actually monitored each rise and fall of their chest, each and every pump of their heart. That was how it was for him, when he was slaughtering the people who would otherwise slaughter him. His swords would swing, and there was never a time when they would not make contact with whatever he was aiming for. His body would duck, kick, hit, shield, his magic would blast and protect and slice and burn, the many hidden stashes of weapons on his form would gradually diminish, but he never felt like he was in the midst of chaos. He always felt in control, and he had grown so used to gathering piles of corpses at his feet that the sight did not stir anything in him anymore. In fact, today, it gave him savage glee to watch the stream run red.

He was aware of everything going on around him; he did not go into a daze while fighting, as that was how one would get themselves killed. He knew that Birches had scaled a tree and was picking off the soldiers that must have been coming from their camp to assist their fellows. Tarin brought the hilt of his sword down so forcefully on the top of a soldier's skull that he heard a crack before the man crumpled to the ground, and then turned to watch Birches nock his bow and release the string, the movement bringing down five soldiers in one go. Birches just smiled and reached back for five more arrows.

Dallin was deadly behind him; Tarin heard the thump each time another soldier fell, one of Dallin's countless hidden knives planted in some vital organ or another. Alcern, on Tarin's right, could swing a mace with an exhilaration and accuracy that was enough to terrify his opponents, even before the spiked ball was tearing through their esophagi or lodging in their chests.

And of course, the twins. He had chosen them because their mother had been a notorious magician before one of the more dangerous spells she had experimented with went horribly wrong. While magic was inherent in every Fae, there were some that had learned more of its mysteries than others, who had trained and trained to harness the full concentration of magic in their blood and use it in ways that others had sometimes not even discovered. The twins were particularly talented in one branch of magic – a branch that caused chills to go down even Tarin's spine.