Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

“Do you know where warforged go when they die?” Kandler asked. His voice trembled as he spoke.

The warforged leader hauled on the hilt of Sallah’s blade. With more of its fibers exposed by the growing gash, Bastard was starting to burn.

Kandler smacked the warforged across the top of his head as he circled around him, hunting for the perfect spot for a killing blow.

“Do you?” he said.

Bastard glared up at Kandler through its sapphire eyes. “No.”

“Well,” Kandler said, “you’re about to find out.”

He reversed his grip on his sword and raised it over his head for a two-handed stab. He threw himself forward, putting all his weight behind the blow and driving the point straight for the warforged leader’s exposed neck.

Bastard released his grip on the hilt of Sallah’s sword and flung up his arms to protect itself. Kandler’s blade caught Bastard square in the forearm, drove through, wedged into the arm’s fibers and caught halfway along its steely length, jarring Kandler’s shoulders in their sockets.

Bastard roared as he wrenched its arm forward, smashing Kandler in the eye with his own sword’s pommel. The justicar fell back, clutching his hands to his face.

Surging with fury, Bastard began to roll back and forth on the arena floor. Each time he did, Sallah’s sword cut deeper and deeper. To Kandler, it seemed that the warforged leader was trying to saw himself in half. Perhaps he would have succeeded, but the blazing blade became wedged between two plates of the warforged’s armor and stuck.

Kandler stumbled back and fell a safe distance away. He pulled his hands from his face and felt the damage. His eye was still intact, but it was swelling shut so fast he could only see out through a tiny slit between.

Bastard slammed his wounded arm down into the arena floor at an awkward angle, shoving the point of Kandler’s blade through the boards. Using this point as leverage, he wrenched against Sallah’s sword again, again, and again.

The wet sound of the weapon working its way through Bastard’s artificial flesh turned Kandler’s stomach. He just wished that the creature would do the right thing and die, that this would all come to an end.

With a snap, Sallah’s sacred sword broke in two, and Bastard came tumbling off the blade, his pinned arm twisting at a horrible angle.

Kandler heard the fibers and plates in Bastard’s limb crunch and break against each other under the stress. The justicar scrambled back to his feet and watched the warforged through his one good eye.

Bastard pulled his way to his feet, but his arm was still stuck on the floor. He reached down and grabbed the hilt of Sallah’s sword protruding from his chest. Its flames had snuffed out when the blade snapped, but the remaining shaft still smoked where it touched the warforged’s flesh. Bastard pulled on the hilt, and the sword’s shattered length slid free. The warforged snarled at Kandler, who hung back a respectable distance to see what would happen next.

“I may have your sword”-Bastard waved the hilt-shard of Sallah’s sword at him, its sacred light extinguished forever-“but you,” he said, “you still have something I want.”

Kandler stepped backward, ready to run, even though the warforged was still anchored to the floor by its mangled arm.

“What’s that?” he said.

Bastard raised the hilt in his hand and brought it chopping down on his pinned arm. The edge of the broken blade sliced through the twisted fibers there, parting him from his maimed limb for good.

Freed from his ruined arm, Bastard stood up to his full height. He held the shard of Sallah’s blade and pointed it at Kandler’s chest.

“I want your blood.”

Esprл stood on the bridge of the airship and watched her stepfather battle the warforged leader. She screamed every time Bastard attacked, and she cheered each time Kandler escaped harm. When he stabbed the creature through the arm, she jumped and squealed.

The girl’s joy was cut short, though, when Bastard broke Sallah’s blade. Seeing Kandler staring at the creature through his one good eye, without a sword in his hand, Esprл knew she had to do something.

She cast her eyes about. Burch was gone and maybe dead, plowed down with the arena wall. Sallah lay leaking blood from a handful of wounds. Deothen had disappeared under the arena floor and never came back out. Brendis was just this side of the grave. Below the ship, the artificer stood over Te’oma, making sure the changeling didn’t get up and start wreaking havoc again.

“Xalt!” Esprл shouted to the warforged below, a spark of hope fanning to a flame in her heart. “You have to help Kandler!”

Xalt looked up from Te’oma and Brendis and waved at the girl. “I would like to help, Esprл,” the artificer called, “but…”

Esprл’s flame of hope began to flicker. She glanced over to see Bastard stand with a fragment of Sallah’s sword still jutting from his chest, and the fire in her nearly went out.

From below, Xalt yelled, “The ship! Use the ship!”

“Yes!” Esprл said. “Yes!” She beckoned down at the artificer. “Come up!”

Xalt looked over to where Kandler and Bastard were still circling each other. “There is no time!” he shouted. “You must do it yourself!”

The girl nodded and turned to the steering platform. The wheel stood before her, solid and unmoving, although she could almost feel the elemental beckoning to her through it. She stepped forward and wrapped her long, delicate hands around the wheel.

In the distance, Esprл could see that the warforged who had stampeded from the arena were rallying again. Several squads of warriors were marching her way from the rear of the city. Some were pointing at the ship and shouting orders. She knew she didn’t have long.

Two streets over, a lone mounted figure was leading a train of horses to the arena. Esprл squinted down at the rider and realized it was Burch, picking his way along the edge of the city on his way back toward the arena. She laughed at the sight, then a ballista bolt sailed up past her from the ground below. As she searched for the shooter, another bolt struck the ship’s hull, shaking the deck.

The attack reminded Esprл how serious her situation was. Kandler was depending on her-everyone was-and she was not going to disappoint them. She stuck out her jaw and looked for her stepfather again. As she did, the ship began to move.

On the arena floor below, Kandler saw the ballista bolt slam into the side of the airship, and dread filled his heart. “Esprл,” he said.

“Do not worry about your whelp,” Bastard said. “I won’t make her suffer long.” Then he charged.

Kandler scrambled backward from the warforged leader, turning to run, hoping he could outpace him, but he stopped in midstride. This direct threat to his daughter unleashed a thunderstorm of rage in his head. There was no way he was going to let this beast get near Esprл.

As the warforged reached for him, the justicar pivoted and slammed his fist into the side of Bastard’s jaw with everything he had. Bastard dropped to one knee, stunned by the force of the blow. Kandler shook his hand, convinced he had broken knuckles, but he followed the first punch with a flurry of blows to the warforged’s face, pounding away at the creature without pause or mercy until his fists bled freely and his arms felt like lead.

Bastard raised an arm to defend itself, and Kandler backed off from the rows of sharp spikes. The warforged used the hilt-shard of Sallah’s sword to keep the justicar at bay.

His heart beating like a war drum, Kandler wheezed and huffed as he looked down at the creature to survey the damage he’d done. He felt like he’d been the one given the beating, but the adrenaline pumping through him let him ignore the pain. Bastard’s face bore a dozen dents and scratches. One of his sapphire eyes had been knocked from its face, leaving only a dead socket behind. In his left hand, he still held the sword-shard, but his right arm ended in a ragged stump.