Blood Myst: Bleeding Aegis Book 1
By
Valravn D.
Chapter 1
The cowled figure hurried down another decrepit alley, pulling his hood farther over his head. He was distinctly out of place in the hive-city of Grimvale, a sprawling jungle of neon lights and concrete that dwelled under a perpetual pall of smog. For more than a day now, acid rain had been gushing from the sky.
The tight space was ripe with the stink of dissolving rotten food, ozone, and bodily waste. Dozens of spent and dead myst crystals littered the ground, and he off-handedly kicked them from his path, sending them skittering into the patchwork of potholes that pocked the asphalt.
A warbling canine howl slashed through the sound of the sizzling rain, and the figure quickened his pace. The absolute last thing he wanted was to be caught in a dangerous downpour by a pack of mange hounds. Those Death Magic-infused monsters would make a quick meal from him.
Not for the first time, Tave wished he had some way to defend himself. But he had so thoroughly embarrassed himself during his Adventurer Entry Exam that he would never try anything that physically taxing again.
Another howl cut through the air. This one was much closer. Tave gave up any pretense of calm and broke into a frantic sprint toward the next intersection. He reached the first space where two alleys crossed and quickly used a thought command to pull up his therra-node's heads-up display to check his map. The translucent street map popped into his vision, and he traced his GPS guide route to his destination. One more alley and one more turn. Then he’d be safe.
A quadrupedal shape, much bigger than any house dog he had ever known, blurred past the alley mouth he had just fled. With true panic setting in, he followed the path with pounding feet and frantic breath, his messenger bag bouncing wildly at his hip beneath his acid-proof leather cloak.
Tave broke into an open space that had once been a parking lot several lifetimes ago. Occupying the center of the concrete courtyard was a three-story structure of stained and aged wood that appeared immune to the caustic downpour. Above the front door danced a hologram of a wooden tankard, frozen mid-spill with an enraged face on the mug. Above the image were three jumping words: The Cantankerous Tankard. The tavern stood out in this city like a cadaver at a wedding, but Tave couldn’t have cared less. It was protection.
He rushed through the entry door and stepped into a homey interior. The lighting was low—not so dim as to interfere with sight, but low enough to accommodate those with sensitive eyes. The sources were a series of faux gas lamps mounted to the walls every few yards; no two were styled the same. Oak paneling stained a dark red-brown walled the interior, decorated with an odd assortment of monster trophies and scenic paintings from across the globe. The open room was filled with mismatched tables and chairs. The ceiling was high enough for taller species like Dracose or Orcs, but a lower ceiling of smoke hung in the air, smelling of pipe tobacco and burning herbs.
The tavern was all very pleasant, but Tave was more concerned about the absolute bedlam unfolding inside. He jumped back as a Human man struck the wall beside the front door and slid to the floor with a moan. When Tave turned back to the room, he saw a tan-skinned Wood Elf lunge with a dagger at a dark-dressed man standing beside the bar. The man drove his elbow into the attacking Elf’s solar plexus with enough force to throw him backward several feet to lie prone across a vacant table.
As the dark-dressed man righted himself, Tave noticed a pair of menacing horns growing from his brow. He was a Darkling—someone with the blood of a demon or devil. Before Tave could examine the Foul-Blood any closer, new fighters assaulted him. A Dwarf, a Human, a Dracose, and an Orc joined the fray. The Canyon Dwarf, his skin the color of clay, hurled a bar chair at the Darkling. As it flew, a lizard-like Dracose man with a sturdy build raised some kind of magic energy rifle. At the same time, a Human woman pulled two kinetic sidearms loaded with physical bullets and took aim. The green-skinned, massive Orc closed the distance with reverberating footfalls, readying fists clad in metal-plate brawler gloves.
Everything after that happened so quickly Tave almost couldn’t track it. The Darkling pointed a fist at the Human woman. A four-inch spike shot from it, expanding mid-flight into a claw that latched onto her shoulder. Her body seized with uncontrolled muscle spasms as sparks danced from the claw. The Human wasn’t even down when the Darkling made his next move.
He aimed the same arm at the chair flying toward him. A strange, six-limbed, squid-like apparatus shot from within his sleeve and latched onto the chair, launching it back toward the Dwarf who had thrown it, but with a good deal more force. The Dwarf raised his hands to guard, but the chair broke his guard and then his nose. It wasn’t until the Darkling thrust his arm to his side that Tave noticed the squid apparatus was still tied to the man by a wire cable. The chair flew off the Dwarf and struck the Dracose with the rifle in the side of his head. The Dracose was tossed from his feet, his weapon tumbling away.
Only the Orc woman was left, and Tave did not see how a six-foot-tall man could win against a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall Orc built like she could bench-press small cars. His assumption was proven wrong when she closed the distance only to be launched off her feet and against the wall on the other side of the door from Tave. The wood buckled and splintered under her weight, and Tave started having second thoughts about this “great work opportunity.”
When Tave turned back to the Darkling, he found some kind of collapsible battering ram retracting back into the sleeve of the arm that had done all this damage. Tave finally got a good look at the Darkling and gave an audible gulp.
This man looked every bit the villain. From the floor up, he was dressed in all black: combat boots with a single bladed spike on each toe; cargo pants with an absurd number of pockets and reinforced padding on the shins and knees; a t-shirt with a design of a bleeding, mechanical, anatomical heart, smattered with what might have been actual blood. Over it all was a wide-mantled leather duster with installed spell circuits giving off a dim, multi-colored glow. A three-strap eyepatch covered what should have been his left eye. His other eye was a phosphorus green with a disturbing X-shaped pupil.
The intimidating Darkling gave a single look around at the remaining patrons, all of whom appeared unperturbed, before turning and sitting at the bar.
“This must be the man I’m looking for,” Tave muttered under his hood before nervously approaching.
“Excuse me, sir.” Even Tave could hear the quiver in his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to be Mr. Maverick, would you?”
The Darkling half-turned his head, glancing sidelong. “Well, that depends on who is asking.” He faced Tave fully, looking his slight frame up and down. “I’m willing to bet you’re not an organ harvester, debt collector, or adventurer, from your dress. I doubt you have any beef about the mega-corporation-toppling spree I went on a while back. Did I wrong you? Maybe killed your secretly evil brother or parent?”
“What? No, no, no.” Tave lowered his hood to reveal Half-Elven features: a young man with slightly pointed ears nestled in a mess of chestnut hair. His skin was pale, barely touched with the color of lavender, and he had a boyish face set with silver irises and gray sclera. A half-breed Star Elf. Beneath his leather cloak was a fine-cut, if rumpled, green silk vest over a black t-shirt emblazoned with stylized blue font that read ‘To the winner go my pages’. He wore a pair of crisp, clean blue jeans and travel-worn black and blue sneakers. Perched atop his nose was a pair of square-framed glasses. “We spoke two weeks ago via email. I’m here to write your story.”
Tave pinched a small rune on the inside of his cloak, causing the article to bend, warp, and reshape into a brown leather duster, similar to the Darkling’s, if much less villainous. “I’ve got to say, Mr. Maverick, you're a hard man to find,” Tave said as he took a seat on his subject’s right side, the side with his remaining eye.
“Please, not Mr. Maverick. That was my bastard of a father,” the Darkling’s voice rang with tiredness and old pains.
“Oh.” Tave felt another spike of nervousness. He would rather not upset this man. “What should I call you? The Pale Raven? Horned Raven? The Shadow of Justice?”
The tired man visibly flinched with each name. He took a deep breath before answering. “Iver. Just call me Iver.” At the same time, Iver waved down the Dwarven bartender. The red-bearded Dwarf approached with a single raised brow in quiet question.
“Something as foul as my blood. Crux Coast Rum, Sickle’s Spirits, Hound’s Hair, and… Muled Mead.” The barkeep only gave a nod before setting to work, but Tave noticed several other patrons eyeing Iver with panic and disgust.
“What did you just order?” Tave asked. “Some of these people seem… offended.”
Iver gave a one-shouldered shrug even as his glass was set before him. “Let them be offended. I’ve spent too long caring what others thought. But to answer your question, this,” he raised his whiskey glass and jingled the ice, “is a mottled concoction of potent liquors from around the globe, and none of them were meant to be mixed, by the decrees of Mortals, Gods, and others. Think of the most foul liquor you can imagine. Now multiply it by ten, mix it with bleach, and increase that all to a new order of magnitude.” With that, Iver took a sip and kept a completely straight face. “Tastes like my childhood.”
“I… uh… okay?” Tave was baffled. “Anyway,” he scrambled for a topic change, “what was that fight about?” He thumbed toward the people Iver had demolished, who were only just now picking themselves up to leave.
“Just some mercs who saw a price tag on my head. It’s a fairly regular thing these days, now that my identity is out on the net.”
That got Tave leaning closer. “Is that why you want me to tell your story?”
“No, kid. You found my info and contacted me about my story instead of putting crosshairs on my neck. I was honestly half-convinced you were going to try something stupid. I’m still not totally discounting it.”
Tave pulled a notebook and pen from his bag and leaned in even closer, like an overeager child. “Why would I try anything? I want your story. Your whole story. We’ve all heard the whispers and tall tales of the deeds of The Pale Raven, The Shadow of Justice, The Blood Fiend, and The Bloody Nightmare, to name a few of your titles. There are rumors about you being part of the winning party in the Gore Games the year those terrorists attacked, or the ones about you being caught in a death game with a mass-murdering phantom in cyberspace. I’ve done my research on anyone who could have possibly been you. Though, of course, I did throw out all those outlandish ones about you killing Gods and Titans.”
“Outlandish, huh?” Iver asked with a note of mild amusement. He threw back his drink, set down the glass with a firm hand, and double-tapped the bar for another.
Now that Tave had calmed down, he got a closer look at the man. It was hard to spy in the dimmer lighting, but Iver’s exposed skin looked… strange. He had an olive-bronze complexion, but every inch of bare skin had threads of ivory white, like the veins in marble. At the base of his neck, on the right side, just peeking out from his shirt, was what looked like a black ink tattoo of a sunburst made of black veins around a vicious, circular, white scar. Iver’s right hand, the one he had exclusively used during the fight, looked stranger still. The hand, and what of the arm could be seen, appeared to be made from some alien black material halfway between robotic and organic. A cybernetic? Tave even noticed a serpentine tail hanging off the barstool, mostly hidden under his coat, its arrowhead-shaped tip waving slowly back and forth.
“In the spirit of honesty, kid—”
“Tave. Tave Nightfall,” the Half-Elf quickly interjected.
“Okay, Tave. In the spirit of honesty, I’ll tell you why I’m letting you write my story. I’m tired. I’m really, really tired. Everyone seems to have a piece of my puzzle, but just a piece. Almost no one living knows where it all started or where it all went very, very wrong, let alone the whole story. I guess I’m just fed up with dacker half-brained nuts thinking they have it all pieced together when they’re missing four-fifths of the wretched saga of my damnation.”
“Saga?” Tave squeaked, a mixture of excitement and worry.
“Fraggin’ right, kid. What I’ve got to tell you will fill plenty of books.”
Iver propped his elbow on the bar and took on a thousand-yard stare as he sighed into his knuckles. “Where did it all start? Before I started a war, even before I lost my arm,” he pulled back the sleeve of his right arm to reveal the disturbing limb, “it all started with a box when I was an infant. That box came into my life only a few times, but when it did, it was a disaster. I feel like I could blame that black box for everything that went wrong. But before I really start, I need to apologize in advance if things get a bit… melodramatic. Especially this first bit. I only heard about it from my father, so I filled in the blanks with my own details.”
Greetings Adventurers!! Val here. Because I'm still honing my craft (and likely will be for the rest of all time), can you please leave a comment on any chapter that you have thoughts about? Critiques are always helpful, as long as they are civil. Comments on what you loved do a lot to help me understand what I should keep doing. Lastly, please drop a heart on any chapter that really got you hooked. I can't wait to see you in the next chapter. Till then, happy hunting and profitable delving.