CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE HOLLOWS
Keira's nerves were tattered with anxiety. The party of Mercius' friends had been searching in the darkened mists of the Hollows for she knew not how long. It seemed like days, possibly weeks. She wasn’t hungry or physically tired, but her mind was weary and exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in months. Indeed, she couldn’t remember the last time she slept, or ate. All she knew now was the grey mist that shrouded everything, and the terrible fear that she would never see her man again. She had known since she first laid eyes on Mercius that she loved him, but only since he left her to follow after the angel did she realize how much she needed him. Hers wasn’t a love of simply passion or comfort. She had realized in the weeks since he had been lost in the dungeons that her soul quested after him, like a starving woman after food. She had known true misery since Griffin had returned and told her the news that she already, in her heart, had known: that Mercius was not returning; that he had followed Asgoroth into the very depths of Hell. Since that day, she had woken with the dawn and mended the wounded and gone about her life as best she could, with no outward sign of the anguish that tore at her heart. But she felt as if a part of her had been violently and mercilessly ripped away; as if the air about her had turned to ash and the sky was pressing down upon her. At times she felt as if she couldn’t breathe; that she couldn’t summon the will or effort to continue living.
Every time one of these daunting and intimidating moods crept upon her like a shadow from the darkness, she was able to picture Mercius' burning green eyes in her mind and forge ahead, taking the next breath, and the next, and the next. But still her heart was broken to the point where she felt physical pain because of it. At night, alone in her travel-stained bed roll, she wept from the misery of loneliness, but also from the cramping, empty pain in her gut that swelled into her chest and head, and flowed through her legs and arms. She needed Mercius, and would do anything to bring him back to her, if only for a moment, so that she might look upon his scarred, handsome face once more.
It was a longing, she knew, that helped little, if any. Her desire would not change the fact that Mercius was in Hell, possibly battling at this very moment. But Mercius was embedded in her mind as she wandered aimlessly through the mists of the Hollows. She had lost her companions some time ago, they being swallowed up by the unforgiving greyness of the place. She called their names occasionally, hoping to find some luck that one might hear her through the muffling gloom, but she knew that it was moot; she was on her own for now, and all that she could do was think of Mercius, and love him with all of her will and all of her heart and soul.
One thought that crept back to her mind always was their first coupling. That time when she had lost herself and succumbed to the passion that flowed from her like waves, and gone to him in the Rau'halla. She recalled with detailed clarity the smell of the greenness and earth, the sound of the soft breeze through the leaves overhead, the feel of his fingers as they caressed, ever so softly, her back and breasts and neck. As she wandered through the emptiness of the Hollows, she let her mind slip back to that first time, and dwelt there, in her head, knowing that, should she never see Mercius again, she had known true happiness in his touch that night. Over and over, in her mind’s eye, she replayed that night, and all others that followed with her strong, steady man beside her.
Her reverie was broken when there came, off to her left and far away, the sibilant sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard. While she had been born and bred in Drurador, which had hundreds if not thousands of guards at any given time, she had never, whilst living there, been familiar with weapons. She had learned to recognize the sound of a blade being drawn since she had taken up traveling with the Hammer and the Blade, and it had even become a comforting noise to her. Now, however, it shocked and dismayed her. One of her companions, she knew, had sensed a threat, and had drawn their weapon. As an afterthought to her fear, she dropped her hand to the hilt of the long knife that hung at her belt.
She had begun training with Darius the day after she had received it from Maul'din, and nearly every member of the Hammer and the Blade had helped with her tutoring, including the marshals. She felt natural with the thing in her grasp now, but she was untried and untested in any form of combat. She was, in fact, terrified of having to use the wicked blade. Nevertheless, she gripped the hilt tightly, ready to draw with lightning speed, as she had been drilled countless times, at a moment’s notice.
With pricked ears, Keira walked in the direction of the sound of the unsheathing blade. Before she had taken a dozen steps, she heard shouts and yells and grunts. These she recognized as well, for she had watched on many occasions the troops spar for practice. The grunts of effort and shouts of rage she was very accustomed to, nowadays. The noises she heard now, though, were not borne of practice. Someone was doing fierce battle with something, and their lives were in peril.
Keira quickened her pace in the direction of the battle, unsure and afraid of what she would find. The noises of skirmish sounded as if they were right on top of her, but still she hurried onward. Suddenly, a curling eddy in the mists surrounding her showed her a tall, broad man slashing and hacking furiously with two curved swords. Two curved blades…Jax! She could tell that he was losing. He fought with ferociousness, but took more steps backward than forward; the enemy was harrying him and driving him back, and he was on the defensive. Keira halted and squinted her eyes to see the man’s foe, but she was unable to make out anything but the curling swirls of mist before the large man.
Finally, after several short moments of peering and guessing, the unknowable pushed her to the edge of her nerves, and she drew her blade and plunged into the fight with a piercing battle cry that seemed to swell into, and escape from her throat of its own volition. She knew not what Jax had been fighting against, and what she rushed to meet, but she soon found out: there were hundreds of them, if not more. Suddenly the mist had cleared so that she could see clearly before her a swarming mass of grey, writhing figures. They were demons, most certainly. Their flesh seemed to be made of the living mass of the fog that shrouded the Hollows, taken on somewhat solid form. They had no eyes or other facial features but their mouths, which were filled with deadly, gnashing fangs and seemed to take up the whole of their faces. Their bony, scrawny limbs were terribly long and ungainly, but the demons moved with deceptive speed as they rushed at Keira with hate and terror.
Her absolute fright was replaced, to her utter surprise, with lessons and tips. She had spent the last weeks learning the tricks of using her newly acquired weapon, and all of her lessons manifested themselves into her limbs with stunning alacrity. She slashed and stabbed and spun more quickly than she had believed she possibly could, and, within mere heartbeats, she had felled half a dozen of the grey demons that assaulted her. She heard, somewhere in the inconsequential distance, someone shouting her name, but that was behind her, and her enemies were before her. Keira leapt and spun and killed mercilessly, feeling what Mercius had always called ‘battle rage’ flowing hotly through her veins like liquor. She was lost in an element that she hadn’t known existed, and she possessed it fully; she was death; she was a scourge; she was hate and rage and precision rolled into one, backed by love and hope. She was killing, and she loved it. She was battling and she hated it. She was alive, and she knew it. Her mind was blank but for two things: the next foe that stood before her, trying to destroy her, and Mercius' burning green eyes. Not his face. That she could not see. Just the depths of his eyes. They melted themselves into her vision as if he was once again holding her gently and firmly in his arms. She fought, and she would not surrender, knowing that his eyes watched her.