The plan was simple. Imaro rested on his haunches in the middle of a blot of space that served as a public square when the dead city was alive. The broken cobbled surface was a white hot anvil beneath the punishing glare of a brutal sun. Yet, Imaro was unaffected. He tended to his saber, running a sharpening stone casually along the blade's length. Beyond the square's boundary, structures, once much taller than they were at the present moment, stood as degraded monuments to a forgotten past. Imaro rose, tossed the stone aside and twirled his sword as if testing its heft. He proceeded toward the edge of the square, gazing straight ahead, but his kufuhama, that hidden sense all Illyassai developed in the Tamburue, pounded in his head like drums at a feast.Suddenly, a cry rang out. Imaro jerked his gaze to the west, in the direction of a partially standing temple-like building. That was where Mahoud was positioned with bow and arrow. Imaro sprinted toward the building. Ajil and Malikk, who were hidden nearby amid the ruins skirting the square, emerged with their bows and followed Imaro. Mahoud stumbled out of the temple's jagged entrance just as Imaro was about to charge in. The soldier collapsed into Imaro's powerful arms. The Illyassai lowered Mahoud to the ground then noticed blood bubbling from an ugly gash in the man's lower right midsection. "It...it struck from behind..." Mahoud wheezed.Imaro heard a faint scuffle coming from inside the building.Malikk and Ajil arrived as Imaro placed a steadying hand on Mahoud's shoulder. "Ajil, stay with Mahoud. Malikk, come with me."Malikk strained to keep pace with the fleet footed warrior. Imaro raced through the interior, coming across a staircase that wound upward like a massive serpent. There was no rear exit that he could discern. Imaro thought it likely that the fiend had remained on one of the upper levels. Frustration drove his movements. He had put himself in the open square as bait, to draw the fiend out. If the man or demon or whatever it was had chosen to fall upon Imaro, Malikk, Mahoud, and Ajil would have pierced the thing with arrows from three directions. Afterward, Imaro would have used his sword to make sure the creature was dead. Such was the yawning gap that often separated planning and implementation.Imaro stopped midway up the stairs. He remembered seeing something earlier, an odd shimmer in the air, such as produced when the drop of a pebble disturbed a still pond. The fiend was using a veil of some sort, no doubt woven by sorcery to obscure his presence. He gestured Malikk to turn around. "We have to get back to the entrance!"Ajil's body was hurled at the base of the stairs, barely missing Malikk who leapt over his comrade to avoid the collision. Ajil rolled on his back, his face twisted in agony. Malikk and Imaro saw the fiend's silhouette eclipsing the entrance to the temple. Malikk froze at the sight of their enemy. Its shape was manlike, but not so its stature, which made the Illyassai effete in comparison.Imaro snatched a handful of arrows out of the wounded Ajil's quiver, grabbed the soldier's dropped bow, and notched. He raised the bow, releasing the arrow with a snap. The fiend moved out of the doorway and the arrow sailed harmlessly over the square where it grounded itself on the other side. Imaro ran after the fiend, careful to drop and dive through the entrance lest the thing was standing in wait just beyond the opening. Imaro rolled to his feet, scanning around him until his eyes locked on the distortion he was looking for. The fiend was invisible and imaro's keen eyes could just make out a shimmer moving toward a mound of rubble at fifty paces.Malikk came to Imaro's side and the latter pointed at the shimmer before notching a second arrow and aiming. "There!"Malikk was not sure what he was supposed to be seeing, but he followed Imaro's lead and notched his arrow. Imaro fired first. The arrow flew a straight, undeviating path until it bounced off something and clattered on the ground. Malikk's arrowhead shattered against an outcrop of stone within five paces of where Imaro's projectile struck...or did not strike?Imaro searched the distance for the shimmer, but it vanished in the ruins. "I hit it," he assessed."But how could that be?" Malikk asked, his expression frayed with fear, rage, and adrenaline. "The creature was gone!""Not gone," Imaro corrected. "Invisible. He can become invisible."Imaro and Malikk returned to the temple to find Mahoud dead. A fresh and fatal wound through the throat showed that the fiend had returned to finish off the ill fortuned soldier.Ajil died shortly afterward from the blunt impact nature of his injury."This creature is not a man," Malikk muttered. "If you hit it as you say and it did not die...did not falter then it cannot be a man. It must be a demon. Demons cannot be killed!"Imaro fixed the rattled soldier with a cold, hard gaze. "In my experience they can."
You need to be a member of Blacksciencefictionsociety to add comments!
Replies