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A Creature of War, Book 6, CH02
🕑 Added 2025-05-25 13:00:04 +0000 UTCWhile not identical, the temples were similar; tall stone buildings with stained glass letting in light. The images in the glass showed how the Celeste made the world and the people on it, pulling them out of the ground, how he gave wizards devices through which they controlled extraordinary powers. It showed demonic-looking creatures giving those powers directly to people to use. Showed those people corrupted, gaining demonic aspects.
Whoever had come up with the stories the windows were based on had noticed details most people didn’t. Only Furrians had innate powers, and only humans could make the strange devices wizards used.
LRK wondered if those stories had come to during the transition, when enough people remembered Anthros being created by the military, or if they came from someone with an agenda, an innate dislike of Furrians, or at least Furrians with power. He might consider a wizard had done it, to eliminate the competition, if they weren’t too insane to even think of it.
He tried to remember when he’d first heard of the Celeste. At least a century before he left, possibly more. One of the Keepers had walked through the camp. Calling for the soldiers to abandon their corrupt leaders and turn to the Celeste for protection. The first Keeper hadn’t received the warm welcome he’d probably expected. Vee’s army had still included a lot of Powered Anthros then. That Keeper quickly left to continue preaching elsewhere.
LRK remembered an increase in Powered recruits for a few decades, so definitely more than a century, closer to two then? He hadn’t thought about it, but now, he realized that as the religion had gained strength, the Powered Anthros joined Vee army because it was known to have Powered, and they sought protection.
Eventually, as the Celeste became the only god anyone recognized, even the army wasn’t the protection it had once been. Vee didn’t turn any Powered away, but still less joined, preferring to remain hidden, and the army was large enough that even once it was mostly composed of normal people, it remained a force to be reckoned with.
It could have been started by one of the military leaders who had opposed the existence of Anthros. There had been plenty of them even within the army that had made him. The idea that beings created as slaves for humans being more powerful than them hadn’t been comfortable for many, regardless how often those powers had kept the country safe.
But, aside from making him reminisce and give a fictitious history of the world, the windows didn’t help him decide how to proceed.
The nave was large and high, letting in enough light that even on cloudy days they didn’t need lamps. Keepers gave their sermons, and the shape of the room allowed the words to reach even the back, where LRK stood, not listening, but watching.
The temples in this city didn’t lock their doors once the sun set, as all others had done. The sermons stopped, but anyone who sought the Celeste’s protection could enter. This meant that he had to be even more careful, or he’d kill bystanders, and he still wasn’t willing to do that. To cross that line would make him a monster worse than the Keepers. They killed anyone suspected of being possessed without proof. He would only kill those he knew to take part in that. Only Keepers and their acolytes were to die at his hand.
It meant he couldn’t simply bring these temples down on their heads. He needed to take his fight to the living quarters and keep it there. The problem was that with all the moving between temples, he couldn’t keep track of who went where easily. His estimation put them at a dozen Keepers and acolytes per temples.
He needed to kill thirty-six people in one night.
For the first time in decades, he wished Vee was with him. Vee would be able to identify all of them and kill them with a thought. Not that the bull would be happy to leave it at that. Knowing him, he might look at how complacent the inhabitants were with the killing of Anthros and decide to raze the city for good measure. He didn’t care how many people were caught in a war’s crossfire.
It was best if LRK solved this on his own.
He could identify them with his ability, each person’s heat, water, and earth patterns were unique, but he couldn’t keep a dozen of them in mind, let alone thirty. He needed to be close to them to reacquire the pattern. As a test, he was able to keep track of seven, but he needed to be in a quiet room without any distractions.
He needed a method that didn’t rely on his abilities.
He could kill them with claws and swords. He could kill everyone in the living quarters without those in the nave noticing, but it took time to cross the city to the next temple, even at night. And he’d have to avoid the guards, since no law-abiding citizen should be sneaking around the city in the dark. All it took was one of the homeless getting sick in the nave, calling out for help, and not being answered, for the alarm to go up.
A possibility came to him as he walked by a tavern, with everyone assembled there, complaining of the heat and drinking. He’d been so set on their death being by his ‘hand’ that he hadn’t even considered alternate methods of killing them.
He watched the people drink the weak beer as if their lives depended on it. And it did.
They didn’t have LRK’s ability to control water, to move only it, so that the impurities, the poisons it contained, were left behind. And they didn’t have the luxuries small towns had. Here, the filth they poured down the street seeped through the ground so that even well water was poisonous. This beer was all they had to stay hydrated with. Beers, ales, wines.
Finding out what was in the temple’s living quarters was simple. He put rags on and passed himself as another of the servants, cleaning the rooms. Wines was what the Keepers drank, and only from one distributor, which made this even simpler.
He found work at the distributor, as a common laborer, and discovered he couldn’t simply poison all the wine, she had contracts with the wealthier families on top of the temples, and no casks or bottles were marked with their destination, they were all the same and when the temple needed wine, bottles were crated and sent there.
He needed a way to target only the Keepers and their acolytes.
Back before the world changed, rumors of targeted poisons had surfaced, coming from either the Chinese, or the Swiss. The story claimed it could be dumped in the water supply and only the people targeted would die. He’d never found out if the rumors were true, but for a time his superiors were careful about what they drank.
A wizard might be able to create something like that, but he didn’t want to involve anyone else. All it took was a pang of conscience and they would report what he did to the city guard, and for as insane as wizards could be, they could still have a conscience.
So he was back to his abilities.
He could burn down the living quarters, his control of fire was enough, but without being able to watch, he couldn’t tell if someone escaped it, or if someone came in to help the burning Keepers.
Could he suffocate them? He could pull the air out of one of the living quarters, and he knew where all three were across the city, but his control of air over a distance wasn’t as precise as with fire. He also couldn’t tell if anyone left the area he controlled.
Could he drown them? No. He’d have to fill the living quarters and couldn’t keep anyone from leaving it as the water accumulated. Lightning?
It would act as a sign from above, and there was little enough metal in the city to pull it away from where he wanted it to go, but to strike them all down at once, he was back to having to keep track of them, not to say he could only do that if they were outside.
Earth was out of the question. Even bringing down the living quarters walls and ceiling didn’t ensure they would die. He could bury them, but couldn’t ensure no bystanders would fall in with them.
He sighed and picked up a stone, for as powerful as he was, he couldn’t think of a way of doing this. Of killing the Keepers here without anyone else dying. Would doing this force him to cross that line? Or was he going to let them live? Move on to another city without making the Celeste pay for all the death caused in its name?
With a scream he threw the stone. It ricochet off a wall, bounced off the cobbles that composed the path, rolled and stopped in a puddle. It was deeper than it looked; he felt the stone displace the water almost a full foot before stopping in the bottom.
He frowned at the puddle, feeling both the water and the stone. He crouched before it, making people curse as they had to walk around him. He focused and used the water to move the stone under the surface. It wasn’t easy, but he could create a current that moved it. He reached in and plucked the stone out, looking at it.
What if he had this all wrong?
What if, instead of trying to track the Keepers by the elements that were in their bodies, He kept track of them using something that didn’t belong? He felt the people around him. Each of them had elements of earth in them. LRK could sense that with enough precision to tell each apart, but trying to keep track of them as they moved away became more and more difficult. If he only focused on one of those elements it was easier, but he lost the ability to tell people apart, many had the same quantities of that element in their bodies. It occurred naturally.
Could he add one of those elements into someone’s body in such a way that it wouldn’t be detected? It would have to be in the wine, which meant it would reach more than the Keepers, but this wouldn’t be deadly, and the wealthy families lived nowhere near the temples. When he felt for them, he’d be able to tell which was in one of the temples and who wasn’t.
What could he use?
The wine would hide the taste, so it was a question of it being fine enough not to be noticed during a visual inspection. He bought a bottle of wine, the same kind the temples got, and studied it. There was sediment at the bottom, so that would camouflage whatever he put in, to a point.
He found the finest sand he could, from a glassmaker, and even that was too grainy, and sank to the bottom, to be noticeable among the sediment.
He bought fine clay from a potter’s supply shop and found that once he ground that even finer, most of it stayed in suspension. With multiple bottles, he worked out how much he could add before it affected the taste, and then he had to figure out how to procure the volume he needed to contaminate all the needed casks.
And he realized he had another problem. How was he going to introduce the powdered clay to the wine? Could he do it while passing himself off as a worker? No, with the number people working around each cask someone would notice.
He was going to have to sneak in during the night. The distributor’s warehouse was guarded, and the walls made of wood. Going through the ground would be too exhausting, considering the bags of clay he’d have to carry. He was going to have to bribe guards.
He picked up his coin purse and found it had gotten light over the weeks he’d been trying to come up with a way to kill the Keepers here. He had nowhere near enough for one guard, let alone the four protecting the warehouse.
That meant bounty hunting.
*
Quite literally the instant technology stopped working, the existing society fell apart. LRK didn’t know what it said about them, but the fact that the next thing people did was turn on one another, steal and kill to assert dominance couldn’t be good.
LRK sometimes blamed it on a defect in humans, on days when he’d been particularly pissed at them for one reason or another. The rest of the time, he had to remember that while Anthros had been made to do what was right, protect others, follow ordered, they had turned on each other about as fast as humans had. Anthros were just as likely to take advantage of one another as humans were.
It depressed him, sometimes. He wanted his people to be better. They should be better, but all he had to do was look to his brothers and sisters, to Vee, to know they weren’t. Vee, who had gone from a loyal soldier, to a leader, to using his army to protect, then to fight, and then just to kill whoever he was paid to. It had taken the bull a hundred year to transition? Less? If Vee, who had to have been the best person LRK had known could fall to killing, no one was immune to—
He froze.
He focused on the group ahead of him, the brigand he’d tracked for two weeks now. There had been a shift; something had pulled him out of his thoughts. What had it been? They felt the same. Talking, too far for him to make out the words. The fire in the center of their camp. He extended his senses all around him, instead of only ahead, and felt the animals in the forests, small and large.
One large was behind him, and he sensed it had frozen as he had. He didn’t know what it was, he wasn’t familiar with the area, but it was low to the ground, and he thought, pointed at him. He didn’t want to fight it, it would draw the brigands’ attention.
The wind shifted, and the fire’s smoke drifted over him. The animal raised its head, sneezed and slinked away. LRK focused on the brigands again.
Twenty, no, nineteen. He couldn’t tell species just from what he sensed of them, but it would be a mix of humans and Furrians. It always was. It meant he could encounter someone with powers.
Bandits were common in these wild times. Without technology, there was no way to secure the roads; certainly not the forests. He’d encountered his fair share of them since leaving Vee’s army; were his go-to for when he needed money faster than working a job produced.
This group would supply him with all he needed for the bribes, and more, even if they had nothing with them. Any groups of brigands this large would be wanted by someone willing to pay to see their heads. He hadn’t even bothered looking for any posters at the gate’s tower. He’d exited the city, cast his senses as far as he could, and went for the closest group of people.
The first two had been teams of hunters, hunting illegally, if LRK understood the local laws, but he didn’t bother with them. They weren’t hurting anyone. This group he didn’t think were hunters. There was a tone in one of the voices, command. That woman gave orders; the others followed them.
They might be soldiers, out looking for poachers, or brigands, but it was unlikely. Kings had enough with protecting their city, their land, to send this large a group in the forest.
Once he was close enough to see them, he knew they weren’t soldiers. They weren’t dressed like soldiers and didn’t have any of the discipline.
The mismatch clothes spoke of using their victims’ clothing to dress; some still had blood on them. He shook his head, not entirely understanding people who preyed on others. They weren’t animals, there were other ways or making money.
Twelve tents around a fire, two carts behind that, filled with crates. He wondered how they’d managed to bring them this far into the forest; there were no trails for them to follow.
Eight people were visible, seated around the fire, five women, three men — half of them Furrians. Three of the tents had couples in them, five other tents were occupied.
LRK didn’t consider tactics. He took out his sword and walked into the camp, cutting down the closest person. The alarm went up immediately and they scrambled for their own weapons and rushed him.
They were trained, but lacked his centuries of experience. He dodged before they decided on which attack they’d do, parried even before they started the swing, and cut them before they could understand that he’d moved.
He removed three more before the first person exited a tent, someone large, dirty brown fur. As LRK turned to take that one on, the world went dark.
With a curse he switched to his other senses, feeling for the water in them. It meant he couldn’t sense weapons, so his defenses and attack lost precision, but he could estimate based on how they moved.
More exited tents and still he didn’t worry. If they became too difficult he’d fall back on fire to give them something other than him to think about. It was still going well when pain exploded inside his head.
He fought the reflex to grab it and parried. This wasn’t an attack, it was a power. He tried to tell who it was. Unless they were comfortable using it they would stay out of the fight proper. The pain increased, and he ground his teeth, he staggered, losing sense of where the ground was. He could feel the people around him, but they were indistinct, as he lost his ability to concentrate.
His sword flew out of his hand. Not a power, someone yanking at it. A fist hit him in the stomach and the breath went out of him. Then someone punched him in the face, and he didn’t feel himself hit the ground.
*
LRK came to slowly. His head was heavier than the rest of his body, an experience he’d only had once before, years ago. He’d been young and curious as to how much alcohol his body could process. He’d drank beers after beers until he couldn’t anymore. He’d woken up the next day feeling like he was now, and had no idea how many beers it had taken, but he’d learned not to attempt it again.
Vee had fixed the problem back then.
Vee wasn’t here now.
He opened his eyes, had to force them, and instead of bright light, it was the light of a fire, casting shadows around him. It had been late morning when he attacked the camp, now, it was evening. He should have woken up faster.
He tried to sit up and discovered why he’d been unconscious for so long. The pain through his body almost made him lose consciousness again. This was more pain than before he was rendered unconscious. They had unleashed their anger on him.
When he tried to move his hands, he found they were tied together, behind his back. He traced the rope to a tree. He had less than a foot of play. The lack of sensation in his fingers told him they’d put gloves on him. He wasn’t using his claws to cut the rope.
“Well, look who’s finally awake.” The voice was female, and LRK had trouble getting his eyes to focus enough to find her.
She was the large Furrian he’d seen before losing his sight. A hyena, wearing clean clothes that fit her. The only one here dressed properly. No, he noticed the man standing behind her, to her right, looking at the ground. He too was properly dressed, while everyone else’s clothing was a mishmash.
He was a cat of some sort, with gray fur with black splotches on his head and hands. There had been so many made by the army based on what they called ‘house cats’ that they were all referred to as Housers back then, regardless of their coloring and change in build. A few had coloring that could let them pass themselves off at one of the Anthros based on the wild felines, but they were rare.
The pristine clothing marked them as being in charge, but the man had a clear subservient feel to him. She was in charge.
“Got to say I’m impressed,” she said. “Don’t know anyone who keeps fighting after I steal their sight. Where did you train?”
“You wouldn’t know it.” He leaned against the tree and felt for the diameter. Too large to pull out.
“Try me. I’ve been around.”
LRK shrugged. “It was destroyed a long time ago.” Twelve of them left.
“That’s too bad. To make you pay for what you did here, I’d have gone and destroyed it myself.”
LRK chuckled. “I’d love to have seen you try.” He felt around for anyone hiding, but these twelve were all that was left. He’d only killed five, but he’d injured the others. Six of them were in no state to get into another fight.
“Oh? You think they’d stand a chance?”
LRK smiled. “I’m nowhere near the best fighter who lived there.” This little band against his brothers and sisters. They wouldn’t have lasted a minute.
“That wouldn’t have helped them. Miles here can stab more than one mind.” She smiled at him. “Isn’t that right, Hun?”
The cat nodded, never looking away from the ground.
LRK looked from him to her. “Hun? Really? He can’t even look at you and you act like his’ your boyfriend?”
“Husband.” She reached behind and caressed the cat’s leg. He didn’t react to the touch in any way. “I bought him in Whitmill. Best investment I ever made.”
“You bought him?” He stared at her, then frowned. “Wait. Whitmill? The slave-trading town of Withmill?” She nodded. He closed his eyes. “I was really hoping that place had been destroyed by now.” One of his and Vee’s rare fight, back then.
LRK had been livid that Vee had accepted to protect the town, to protect slavers. But by then Vee had been driven more my money than a sense of justice, and Whitmill’s money was good. LRK had had to protect them, as Vee’s second in command, he couldn’t defy him publicly, but he’d hated every minute of it.
“Not a fan?”
“I spent most of my life fighting to keep people free, so no.”
She smiled. “Then you’re going to hate my plan for you.”
LRK looked up, wincing at the pain in his neck. “You’re planning on selling me to them.”
She shrugged. “I’d get decent rings for you. You’re healthy, and by the time we get there, if you’re not stupid, you’ll be healed up. Someone would have a use for you, if only as breeding stock, but no. I’m thinking the arena is where you belong.”
LRK looked at her, the motion making his head hurt. Selling people hadn’t been enough for them? Now they were forcing them to fight?
“Considering what you did here, you will make me a lot of rings there.”
“If I fight.”
Her smile broadened. “Oh, you’ll fight. Once I enter you in the arena, they will make sure you want to fight, and they aren’t pleasant about it. They’ll keep you alive, but you’re not going to like it.”
He tried to remember where Whitmill was. To the south, but then, just about everything was to the south of here. How far? Weeks, at least, if not months. They weren’t reaching it. If he had his way, they wouldn’t even leave this camp. That meant he needed to untie himself first.
“Orora, you and Giles keep an eye on him through the night. If he twitches, feel free to bruise him, but no permanent damage. Any ring I lose because of you, I’m taking out of your share.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” one of the human men answered.
She stood and took Miles chin in her finger, lifting his head so he had to look her in the eyes. “Love, stay here while I go speak with our contact.” She kissed him, and again, he didn’t offer any reaction.
LRK fought the desire to incinerate them. He needed their heads if he wanted to get paid. None of his abilities would help him get out of this, if he wanted to get paid. He’d give himself time to come up with another plan, and to rest. He needed to let his body heal before he could do much, but he had to keep an eye on them in case they tried something.
*
His eyes snapped open.
The fire was almost all ambers, an animal on a spit over it. He could just make out the lightening of the sky on the horizon through the thinner of the trees. He mentally cursed himself; he shouldn’t have fallen asleep. At least he felt better. An advantage of being engineered for battle.
“Don’t even think about it,” a man said. A canine of some sort by the shape of his face. The only thing visible by the ambers light.
“Any chance I can get some water?”
The man snorted. “You think I’ll waste that on you?”
LRK rolled his eyes. “Beer then? I’m parched.”
The man didn’t move, and LRK opened his mouth to ask again when he took a skin and stood. The man placed it at LRK’s lips and he was able to take three gulps before it was taken away.
He considered his options while the man sat back on his log.
“How can you work for her?” he asked, going for the low hanging fruit.
The dog tilted an ear.
“She’s a demon, so is that lover of hers.”
“So what?” the dog snorted. “I’m all saintly? I turned my back on the Celeste years before I joined up. Those two are the best thing I’ve gotten recently. She’s never offered me demon things, so she’s fine by me. If they get up with that kind of stuff, they’re keeping it to their tent, so what do I care? She’s brought rings to my pockets, and that’s all I care about.”
LRK rested his head against the tree. No turning them against each other, then.
He felt through the ground for a stone. Broke it to a sharp edge and bought it up. He pushed his wrist down and got the rope catch. It wasn’t comfortable, but he could endure it while he got free.
He sensed around him, anyone beyond the camp, weren’t his concern for the moment. He needed something to act as a distraction. Most of the animals were small, scurrying about the underbrush. He found a large one, but on spindly legs, a herbivore, but behind that he felt it, large, low to the ground, stalking the herbivore.
He smiled, wondering if it was the same one. He wrapped the smell of the meat over the ambers in a bubble of air and sent it through the forest and used it to get the predator’s attention. He was able to get it close, but it wouldn’t enter it, staying at the edge, in the darkness. But it stayed, the smell of the meat too tempting.
The rope around his wrist broke. And the dog hadn’t noticed; he was looking away, toward the prowling predator. LRK extinguished the ambers and ran for the tent.
The dog had the time to let out a yell of alarm before it turned into a gurgle, but it was enough. People woke. LRK found a knife before reaching it and as lamps came out of tents, the scene of the predator feasting on the dog drew their attention.
The cat came out and LRK stabbed him through the heart. He gasped and fell. LRK ran into the darkness before the hyena exited, too preoccupied by the snarling as the predator protected its kill to notice the corpse by her tent. She yelled for more light.
Two torches were lit, and LRK saw his sword. He grabbed it while they tried to chase the predator away. When it finally ran, one of the women ran after it, and LRK killed her as she returned.
The fire was lit by the time he returned. The hyena cursing and kicking the dead cat. So much for loving him.
Remembering what she’d done to him, he extinguished the fires and in the darkness he ran for her. By the time a torch was lit, she was a corpse next to the cat. Panic set in among them and ratcheted up when the torch went out.
Screaming and dying ensued.
A torch-lit, the man holding it brandishing a knife. “Stay away, demon!” he yelled at the darkness. LRK stepped into the light and the man screamed. He backed into something solid he couldn’t see. “Please,” he pleaded. “Don’t kill me. I’ll do anything you want.”
LRK grabbed the torch by the lit end and brought it down to head height. “Even if I have a reason to want you to live, I can’t have you go around telling everyone what I am. My life is complicated enough as it is.”
“You don’t have to kill me. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll go away, far away.”
LRK shook his head. “I can’t let you live.”
“Why?” the man asked, desperate.
LRK opened his mouth to say it was because of all the bad things the man had done. That LRK had been made to protect people against men like him, but the hypocrisy hit him hard.
He hadn’t protected anyone in centuries. Oh, he’d told himself it was what he’d done, while being part of Vee’s army, but if that was true, why had he left? Why had he become disillusioned with what they did?
Sure, he’d protected people after that, when he come upon them needing help. But when was the last time he’d set out to protect people? He had to go back to the early days of the changed world to get that sense back.
Even killing these brigands wasn’t about protecting anyone.
He shrugged. “I need the money.” And cut the man’s head clean off.
*
The guard captain paid him a silver ring for each of the heads. Even mentioning the cat and hyena had been demons didn’t change the amount. The captain asked LRK for proof, and since he couldn’t, it was the standard bounty for them.
That, and what he’d gotten for everything the brigands had accumulated was enough for what he needed. He bribed one of the city’s thief to bribe the warehouse’s guard and spent the night adding the fine clay to each cask of wine. Keeping it in suspension required barely a thought, and all he had to do then was wait.
Four days later, he could feel it accumulated within the Keepers at the temples. Two days later, he was sure he had them all. When night came, he focused on them.
He’d decided to make this one easy on him. Since he knew where they were, he simply incinerated them where they slept. They died quickly, faster than he preferred, but it was done.
He slept for a full day afterward, and by the time he woke, the city was panicking. The ashes had been found by the servants, and news spread. Was this the demon’s work? It couldn’t be, the temple were still standing, but if not him, who? Was there more than one demon, like some stories claimed?
LRK considered destroying the temples, but the damage was done. The Keepers dead, and citizens afraid, wondering if the demons would come for them if they kept praying. Maybe leaving them wondering was better this time. The one thing he did regret, as he left the city, is not having been able to leave a message for the church, for the Keeper still chasing him.
That was fine, there were plenty of other temples he would destroy, many other opportunities to leave her messages.
Comments
Marcwolf
Shame Furrians could not work together... Anyway LRK is slowly getting things done.
