Page 22 of Bite Sized Bride

KAEL

T he wooden bird lies in the glowing moss between us, a testament to my own stupidity. A token of my hope, now a brand of my failure.

My love for Mikana, the confession that was a sunrise in the darkness of my soul, has led her to this. To the end.

A rage, cold and absolute, eclipses the grief. It is not the mindless, red storm of the Urog. It is the focused, killing calm of the orc. The warrior. Kael. And it is aimed at the smiling, silk-clad figure on the throne of black stone.

“You will not touch her,” I say, the words a low, guttural promise. I move, placing myself fully in front of Mikana, my body a ten-foot wall of scarred hide and righteous fury.

Malakor laughs, a sound of pure, condescending amusement. “Oh, it speaks in sentences now. How quaint. Vexia, it seems your masterpiece has developed… a personality. Erase it.”

He does not need to give a command. From the shimmering, twisted trees around the clearing, more figures emerge.

A dozen Miou warriors, their curved swords whispering from their sheaths.

But they are not alone. With them are three other figures, robed in the same dark purple as Vexia.

More sorcerers. They fan out, forming a loose, inescapable circle around us, their hands already glowing with contained power.

This is not a hunt. This is an execution.

“Run,” I snarl at Mikana over my shoulder, my gaze locked on the closing circle.

“No,” she says, her voice a fierce, trembling whisper at my back. “Not without you.”

There is no time to argue. The first two Miou charge, their movements a blur of black armor. They come at me from opposite sides, their swords aimed at my legs, a classic tactic to hamstring a larger opponent.

I do not let them. I stomp my foot, the ground shaking with the impact, and a shower of dirt and glowing moss erupts.

The warrior on my left falters for a heartbeat, his vision obscured.

It is all I need. I pivot, my massive arm scything through the air, and backhand him.

The sound of my claws on his helmet is a sickening crunch of metal and bone. He goes down and does not get up.

The other warrior is on me, his blade slicing a deep, burning furrow along my thigh.

I ignore the pain. I grab his sword arm, my fingers closing around his armored wrist. He is strong, but I am cursed.

I squeeze. Bones snap like dry twigs. He screams, a high, thin sound that is cut short as I lift him from the ground and hurl him into the oncoming line of his comrades.

They are a wave, crashing against the rock of my rage.

I am a whirlwind of destruction, my fists and claws my only weapons.

I break swords, I shatter shields, I throw bodies.

The orc warrior inside me sings with the grim joy of battle, the familiar dance of death.

But for every one I fell, another takes his place.

They are a tide, and they are wearing me down.

And then, the magic begins.

Vexia and the other three sorcerers raise their hands in unison.

They begin to chant, their voices weaving together into a low, dissonant melody that makes the already strange air of the Wildspont feel thick and heavy, like water.

The glowing moss at my feet begins to writhe, twisting into grasping, spectral hands that claw at my ankles, trying to root me to the spot.

I roar and stomp, shattering the magical constructs, but more rise to take their place. This is their plan. The warriors are a distraction, a way to hold me in place while the true trap is sprung.

“ Kael of the Stonefang, ” Vexia’s voice echoes in my head, not through my ears, but directly in my skull. It is an oily, invasive presence. “ Let us peel back the layers. Let us find the beast beneath the broken orc. ”

The ritual begins.

It is not a simple pain. It is an unmaking. I feel their magic, a web of invisible, hooked tendrils, sink into my mind. They are not just attacking me; they are dissecting me. They pull at the fragile threads of my re-formed memories, trying to unravel them.

Grommash’s face, his proud smile, begins to blur, his features melting like wax.

Lyra’s laughter, the sound of the sun on the snow, becomes a distorted, mocking screech.

My father’s face, stern and proud, dissolves into the sneering visage of Lord Malakor.

“No,” I groan, dropping to one knee, my hands pressed to the sides of my head. The memories are all I have left of who I was. They are the foundation of the man Mikana loves. And they are being stolen from me.

The red storm, the Urog’s mindless rage, surges back, a welcome tide of oblivion against the surgical precision of their psychic assault. It is easier to be the beast. The beast does not remember. The beast does not feel this loss.

“That’s it,” Vexia’s voice purrs in my mind. “Let go. Forget the name. Forget the clan. There is only the collar. There is only the master.”

I am losing. The warriors are pressing in, their swords finding marks on my arms, my back. The magical tendrils are tightening, squeezing the last remnants of Kael from the Urog’s shell. I can feel my name, my precious, hard-won name, slipping away like smoke.

Through the red haze, I see her.

Mikana.

She is not cowering. She is not running. She is standing a dozen feet away, evidently furious. Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides, and a strange, faint, silvery light is beginning to glow around them. The Purna blood. The power she does not know she has.

“Get away from him,” she screams, her voice a raw, powerful thing that cuts through the din of battle and the drone of the ritual.

She runs. Not away. She runs directly toward the circle of sorcerers. She runs toward Vexia.

“The anomaly is becoming a nuisance,” Vexia says, a note of annoyance in her voice. She gestures with one hand, not even breaking her chant. A bolt of black, crackling energy, a smaller version of the one that nearly killed me, flies toward Mikana.

It is a death sentence.

The sight of it, of that black spear of magic hurtling toward the one pure thing in my world, breaks the last of my chains. Not the master’s chains. My own. The chains of despair.

With a roar that comes from the very core of my being, I surge to my feet. I ignore the swords, the grasping moss, the hooks in my mind. I have one purpose. One goal.

But Mikana… my Mikana is a warrior.

She does not try to dodge. She does not cower.

She does what I taught her. She acts. She throws herself to the ground, not away from the spell, but under it.

The bolt of black energy sizzles over her head, missing her by inches.

She rolls, coming up to her knees, the Miou knife I gave her now in her hand.

She is inside their circle.

The sorcerer to Vexia’s right turns, his face marked with surprise, breaking his part of the chant to deal with this unexpected gnat. He raises a hand to incinerate her.

Mikana is faster. She lunges, not at his body, but at his leg, plunging the knife deep into his thigh.

He screams, a high, thin sound of pain and outrage. His concentration shatters. The ritual falters.

The pressure in my head lessens for a critical instant. The hooks retract slightly. It is the opening I need.

I am on them.

I grab the wounded sorcerer by his robes and use him as a living club, smashing him into his companion.

The third sorcerer turns to flee, but I am too fast. My hand closes around his head.

The memory of the scout’s death, of Mikana’s horror, flashes in my mind.

I do not crush him. I simply throw him into the shimmering, iridescent trunk of a Wildspont tree.

He hits it and dissolves into a shower of screaming, multi-colored light.

Only Vexia is left.

She has abandoned the ritual, her face replaced with a mask of cold, controlled fury. She is powerful. She is the architect of my hell. And she is standing between me and my mate.

She raises her hands, a storm of black lightning crackling between them.

But as she prepares to unleash her power on me, Mikana acts again. She stumbles to her feet, her face pale with exhaustion, and throws herself at Vexia, not with a knife, but with her bare hands. She presses her palms, glowing with that faint, silvery Purna light, against Vexia’s back.

The magical backlash is explosive.

It is a silent detonation of pure, chaotic energy.

Vexia is thrown forward, her spell dissolving, her body tumbling through the air.

But Mikana takes the brunt of the feedback.

The silvery light around her flares, then dies.

She is thrown backward, her small body limp as a doll, and lands in a heap on the glowing moss, unmoving.

“Mikana!”

My roar is a sound of pure, soul-shattering agony.

I start toward her, but a figure steps into my path. Lord Malakor. He has descended from his throne, a long, slender blade of black steel in his hand. A shimmering, golden shield of force surrounds him, a perfect, impenetrable sphere.

“A touching display,” he says, his voice a dark, mocking purr. “But the game is over. The girl is dead, or dying. And you, my pet, are coming home.”

I look from Mikana’s still form to the smug, arrogant face of my tormentor. The red storm is back, but it is a cold, focused thing now. It is the red of a dying star, a rage so absolute it has become a singularity of purpose.

I charge him.

My fists, my claws, my entire body crashes against his golden shield. The impact shakes the very ground, but the shield holds. It does not even flicker. I am a hurricane beating against a mountain.

He laughs. “Your brute force is useless against true power, beast.”

He is right. I cannot break the shield. The other warriors are regrouping. Vexia is stirring. I cannot win this fight. I cannot protect her.

I look at Mikana’s body, so small, so still. I look at the pillar of pure, white light in the middle of the clearing. The center of the Wildspont. A place of unmaking.

And I know what I must do.

It is not a choice made of despair. It is a choice made of love. It is the only move a warrior has left when the battle is lost. A final, defiant sacrifice.

I stop my assault. I stand before Malakor’s shield, my chest heaving.

He smiles, thinking I have surrendered. “Wise,” he says. “Now, kneel.”

I do not kneel.

I turn and scoop Mikana’s limp form from the ground. She is so light. So cold. I press my face to her hair one last time, inhaling her scent, the scent of summer grass and impossible hope.

“I love you,” I whisper to her still form.

And I turn back to Malakor.

Before he can react, I charge again. But this time, I am not aiming for him. I am aiming past him.

I use his own impenetrable shield as a battering ram. I slam into him, my massive shoulder against the golden energy, and I do not stop. I push. I drive him backward, his boots skidding on the glowing moss, his face a mask of shocked disbelief.

“What are you doing, beast?” he snarls, his confidence finally cracking.

I am taking him with me.

I drive him backward, step by agonizing step, toward the pillar of white light. Toward the heart of the storm.

“Stop him!” Vexia screams from somewhere behind us.

But it is too late.

With a final, desperate surge of strength, I push us both over the edge.

We fall into the light.

It is not a fall. It is an ascension. It is a dissolution. The light is not light. It is pure, untamed creation. It has no heat, no cold. It is everything and nothing.

Malakor’s shield shatters instantly, a pane of glass in a supernova. He screams, a sound of pure, terrified outrage as the light begins to unmake him, peeling away his silks, his skin, his arrogance, his very being.

I hold Mikana tight against my chest, my body a shield around her.

The light hits me, and the pain is absolute.

It is the pain of the first unmaking, magnified a thousand times.

The Urog’s curse, the hardened hide, the fused collar—it is all burned away in an instant, not by fire, but by pure, untamed possibility.

The orc’s soul, the ghost of Kael, is laid bare. The memories, the grief, the love—it is all there. And the light begins to unmake that too.

I let Mikana go.

My last conscious thought is not of the pain. It is of her. Her face. Her name. Mikana.

The light takes me. The world dissolves into a symphony of white, silent sound.

And then… nothing.