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Chapter Two: The Tragic Honeymoon


This was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.

Janie’s laughter rang through the hotel suite: bright, careless, alive, as Harry caught her from behind and dug his fingers into her sides. She shrieked, half-laughing, half-begging him to stop, twisting in his grip as silk rustled, and the chandelier light caught the shimmer of her gown. She almost escaped him, but Harry was faster. He swept her off her feet, her back arching instinctively as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

For a moment, everything slowed.

He looked into her eyes: green, vivid, glowing with warmth, and something settled in his chest. Certainty. This was right. This was forever.

“I love you,” he breathed. The words rough and unguarded.

She opened her mouth to answer.

He didn’t let her.

He tossed her onto the bed, laughter dissolving into surprise as the mattress dipped beneath her. Harry followed, bracing himself over her, his shadow swallowing her form as he kissed her hard, too hard for romance, too hungry for ceremony. Janie gasped, then gave in, fingers curling at his collar as she kissed him back, the world narrowing to heat, breath, and the scent of him.

Time blurred.

Fabric shifted. Buttons strained. Harry pulled back just long enough to undo the bodice of her gown, grinning as it slipped away and revealed skin still flushed from laughter. He looked at her like a man who couldn’t believe his luck.

“Do you like what you see, Mr. McCrory?” she teased breathlessly.

He answered by kissing her again.

The room was warm now. Too warm. Her thoughts dissolved into sensation until a sound cut clean through it.

A cat’s meow.

Thin. Reedy. Wrong.

They froze.

Janie frowned. “Was that…?”

Harry nodded slowly. “Yeah. A cat.”

The spell cracked. He stepped away, adjusting himself with a groan as Janie laughed softly at his frustration. He crossed the room and pulled the door open.

The hallway was empty.

Before he could close it, the sound came again, closer this time.

Harry sighed and stepped out, barefoot on the carpet. “Stay inside,” he called back. “This is your night.”

Janie smiled, bolted the door, and flopped back onto the bed, still giggling, still glowing.

Harry followed the sound down the corridor. Colombes d’Amour was immaculate, silent, spotless, too perfect for stray animals. His father loved this hotel. Trusted it. Security everywhere, even if it wasn’t visible.

The meowing came from the elevator.

“Poor thing,” Harry muttered, pressing the call button.

The doors slid open.

Empty.

Then the sound came again: mechanical now, hollow.

He frowned.

A small recorder was duct-taped to the elevator wall.

“What the Bleep…?”

He reached out and pressed the power button.

Something bit him.

“Ouch,”

He pulled his hand back. Blood welled from his fingertip. He sucked on it reflexively, irritation flaring,

And then the world tilted.

A sudden, icy clarity pierced his thoughts. A memory surfaced, unbidden: villains in old films, poisons engineered to leave no trace; deaths mistaken for accidents.

Too late.

His knees buckled. He collapsed, fingers clawing uselessly at the carpet, body jerking once, twice, before going still.

Footsteps echoed down the hall.

Inside the suite, Janie heard them and smiled, assuming it was Harry. She flung the door open without thinking.

It wasn’t him.

The hotel porter froze, eyes darting anywhere but at her. Janie flushed, muttered an apology, and shut the door quickly, heart thudding.

Then she smelled it.

Cologne.

Their cologne.

The scent she had bought. The one that meant everything.

Her smile faded.

She felt her before she saw her.

Jackie sat at the edge of the bed, legs crossed, wearing a simple sundress. Calm. Composed. Smiling in a way, Janie had never seen before.

“Hello, monkey,” Jackie said softly.

The room felt smaller.

Janie swallowed. “Where’s my husband?”

Jackie scoffed. “You’ve been married for, what, two minutes?”

“Where’s my husband?” Janie repeated, steel creeping into her voice.

Silence stretched.

“Dead,” Jackie said.

The word hit like a hammer. Janie’s legs gave out, and she slid to the floor, breath tearing out of her chest.

Jackie knelt in front of her, reaching for her hair. “I know you still love me. I know you were pretending with him,”

“Don’t touch me,” Janie screamed, batting her hand away. “Don’t you dare.”

Jackie recoiled, startled.

Then Janie laughed.

It broke something.

Tears streamed down her face as she lifted her head. “You don’t get it. I’m bisexual. I wasn’t pretending. Not with him. Not with anyone.” Her voice hardened, final. “I never loved you. You were an experiment. Nothing more.”

Jackie stared at her.

Something shattered behind her eyes, but she didn’t let it show. She straightened; the iron replacing hurt.

“I knew,” she said quietly.

She reached out again.

Steel flashed.

The knife slid into Janie’s throat with horrifying ease. Janie’s gasp came out wet and broken as Jackie watched the light leave her eyes, blood pooling across the white carpet and silk.

Jackie stood, wiped the blade clean, and walked out into the night.

By morning, they would say Janie couldn’t live with the truth. That grief drove her mad.

And Jackie would be gone.

Perfect crime.

Perfect silence.

Too late to matter.

Chapter One: The Tower Lord


The Plains of Isolna



The sun crushed the plains of Isolna like a merciless god, baking earth and bone alike. Nothing lived comfortably here. Nothing lingered. The only mercy was the shadow that sometimes passed overhead, vast, screaming, and deadly.

The swarmer shrieked as it descended.

Its wings blotted out the sky, its shadow sweeping over the riders like a death sentence. Six of them galloped across the plain, horses foaming, lungs burning. The beast circled once, savoring the panic, then struck.

A rider at the rear vanished in a flash of talons and terror. There was a crunch, a scream cut short, and the body was flung aside like refuse. The horse beneath him collapsed moments later; its dying screams were lost beneath the thunder of hooves.

“RUN!” Lea screamed. “FASTER, YOU WORTHLESS BASTARDS!”

She lashed her horse without mercy; her voice more terrifying than the beast itself. The animal obeyed, driven by fear: fear of the swarmer above, and fear of the woman on its back.

The swarmers were legends in the west: winged hunters, blind but deadly, guided by sound, scent, and instinct. Killers that played with their prey.

They had left the monastery ten strong.

Now they were six.

Olax rode hard; the child clutched in front of him like a doomed secret. He didn’t want to know what awaited the boy at the orchard. He already did.

The swarmer descended again, this time landing directly ahead of them. The ground shook.

“Easy…” Overn whispered to his horse, frozen by the creature’s size and presence.

“First time?” Baldy said calmly, smiling. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Lea didn’t stop.

“I’ll handle it.”

She spurred forward before anyone could object.

Knowing the beast hunted by sound, Lea loaded her crossbow and rose in her saddle. With a savage yell, she leapt, twisting through the air as the swarmer roared, spewing venom that dissolved flesh and screamed life from her horse below.

She landed on the creature’s back, driving steel into it.

The swarmer howled, bucking wildly. Lea was thrown clear, hitting the dirt hard, her sword skidding away. The beast charged.

She rolled. Scrambled. Grabbed her blade.

Then she ran at it.

Sliding beneath its massive body, she carved upward with everything she had. The creature shuddered, screamed once more, and collapsed in a heap of twitching wings and dark blood.

Silence followed.

Lea rose, drenched, breathing hard, eyes blazing.

Overn realized his mouth was hanging open.

“She’s good,” Baldy said.

Lea mounted without ceremony. “We ride. We reach the Weeping Caves before nightfall.”

No one argued.

They rode.





WEEPING CAVES

Everyone sat in a loose circle, the child at the center like a fragile offering. No one slept. The fire burned low, its light trembling across the cave walls, stretching shadows into uneasy shapes.

Kune was seething.

They had been ten when they left the monastery. Now they were fewer: cut down one by one, for a child who hadn’t spoken a single word. The anger in Kune’s eyes burned hot and reckless as he rose to his feet.

“What difference does it make?” he snapped, his voice sharp with resentment. “Why not kill the kid now?”

No one answered.

“The monks drugged him,” Kune went on, pacing. “You can see it. He’s been docile since the start. I swear we could take his head clean off and he still wouldn’t make a sound.”

He stopped, glaring at them, daring anyone to argue.

“We won’t reach the orchards,” he said flatly. “You all know it.”

Steel whispered as he drew his sword. “Watch.”

He took a step toward the child.

Overn didn’t see Lea move, only that she suddenly wasn’t beside him. In the blink of an eye, her blade was pressed against Kune’s throat, cold and precise. Overn felt a chill crawl up his spine. How was she that fast?

Lea spoke calmly, her voice low and lethal. “Ever since I’ve known you, Kune, your counsel has been consistently idiotic.”

Kune’s face flushed crimson. “What did you just say to me?”

Lea didn’t blink. She leaned in slightly, the steel biting closer. “I’m wondering whether you were born stupid, or if circumstance did the work.”

The cave fell into a suffocating silence. Hatred passed between them like a drawn bowstring.

Baldy broke it first. His dagger clattered to the ground as he exhaled. “Overn and I take first watch. Olax and Kune take the next. Lea watches the kid.”

No one objected.

Morning came screaming.

Overn’s cry ripped through the cave, jolting everyone awake. Steel rang as swords were drawn, echoes ricocheting off stone as they rushed toward the sound.

What they found stopped them cold.

Kune lay still.

Not sleeping. Not resting.

Gone.

Whatever had killed him had done so quickly and fed in a hurry. His body bore the unmistakable signs of violence, torn and brutal, as though something had struck and fled before it could be caught.

Eyes turned slowly toward Lea.

She felt the weight of their stares immediately. She had been the last to confront Kune. The last to threaten him. The memory of their exchange hung in the air like smoke.

Baldy crouched beside the body, studying it carefully. He frowned.

“Bite marks,” he muttered. “And big ones.”

He straightened slowly.

“This wasn’t murder,” he said quietly.

“It was a hunt.”



“Bite marks,” Baldy said slowly, straightening. “Almost the same size as a swarmer’s.”

Overn shuddered, his stomach still knotting at the sight before them. “There’s no way,” he said hoarsely. “Nothing that big gets in here without us noticing.”

Lea nodded once. So did Baldy.

Olax didn’t.

His gaze had drifted to the child, who sat apart from them, head bowed, hair spilling forward like a curtain, hiding his face, hiding his thoughts.

“Shrikers,” Lea muttered.

Every head turned to her.

“You think they come this far south?” Olax asked.

Lea nodded again, grim. Overn caught the look she gave him then: measured, almost pitying. He wondered if she saw him for what he was: too green, too hopeful. Men like him joined the order for reasons that never survived the road. Hunger. Guilt. Someone left behind.

“And why,” Olax pressed, “do you all think the Tower Lord wants this kid so badly?”

No one answered.

“You can’t tell me you haven’t pieced it together,” he continued, voice rising. “Everywhere we go, these cursed beasts follow. And we all know who commands them. So why does the monastery want the boy dead?”

Silence swallowed his words.

Lea had her theories: dangerous ones, but she kept them buried.

Baldy finally spoke, as if Olax hadn’t. “Shrikers are smaller,” he said. “But deadlier. Like distant cousins to swarmers. Faster. Smarter.”

That settled it.

Lea wiped her blade clean and sheathed it. “We move. Now. These things can smell fear, and we’re soaked in it.”

Baldy rose, tossing a dagger to Overn, his expression hard as stone. “We don’t stop. We reach the orchards today.”

His jaw tightened.

“And we end this.”



The Orchards

“HYAH!” Olax roared, digging his heels into the horse’s flanks as it thundered forward. The world blurred into dirt and wind. He hunched low, arms locked tight around the reins, one arm bracing the child against his chest so the boy wouldn’t be flung into the dust and trampled.

Behind him, Overn and Baldy rode their horses half to death, foam spraying from the animals’ mouths, hooves cracking the earth like splitting bone. Lea rode Kune’s horse hard and mercilessly, driving it the way she drove everything else: until it either obeyed or broke.

One hundred and fifty miles.
Four hours.
No rest.

Their thighs burned raw, their backs screamed, and the horses were near collapse, but the orchard loomed ahead, unmistakable and final.

It was a lie of a place.

No trees. No fruit. No life. Just a vast, barren stretch of land under an open sky, empty and exposed. At the far end stood a single structure: a thick, brick-built well, dark and waiting. From even this distance, they all knew it.

That was where the boy would bleed.

They reined in at the edge of the land. The horses staggered as they dismounted, trembling, sweat-soaked, breathing like dying men. Overn tied his horse to a crooked tree, hands shaking.

“To be candid,” he said, forcing a weak smile, “didn’t think we’d make it.”

Olax spat, dragging the child closer by the arm. “And why the Bleep is this shit heap called an orchard?” He sneered at the empty land. “Nothing fucking grows here.”

Before Baldy could answer: before he could explain the sick joke, their gods found amusing, Overn screamed.

Just once.

They turned.

A shrieker had him.

The creature clung to Overn like a nightmare made flesh, its claws sunk deep, its jaws working savagely at his throat. Blood sprayed hot and fast as the thing tore into him, chewing, ripping, feeding. Overn’s hands clawed uselessly at the air as his voice drowned in wet gurgles.

Lea fired.

The first bolt slammed into the shrieker’s side. It shrieked: high and piercing, and leapt away as Overn’s body collapsed in a twitching heap. Lea fired again. And again. Iron quarrels punched through bone and sinew, pinning the creature to the earth where it writhed, screamed, and finally went still.

Silence fell.

The orchard stood quiet: too quiet. Like a graveyard waiting to be filled.

Lea reloaded without a word. Crossbow in her left hand, sword drawn in her right. Baldy and Olax followed suit, faces hard, eyes scanning the emptiness.

Then the child laughed.

Softly at first.

Then he sang.

His voice was thin, wrong, and far too calm for what surrounded them: a funeral song carried on blood-soaked air:

“With the cold ring of steel
And the crows cawing for food,
There stood three knights and a child
On a plain, forsaken field.

With shriekers baring teeth
And old knights soaked in fear,
They were taught not to dread death
But theirs will be slow, and near.”

The song echoed.

They stared at the kid, hearts hammering like war drums, swords trembling in their hands. Sweat stung their eyes, and their stomachs churned as a chorus of guttural growls filled the clearing. Fifteen shriekers encircled them, grotesque monkey-like creatures, unnaturally lean, sinews twisting under their mottled skin, claws the size of daggers, teeth jagged and dripping with saliva. Baldy spat, muttering, By the gods… they eat like wolves, yet they’re all muscle and bone…

The shriekers lunged in unison. Baldy sprang forward, steel meeting flesh with a wet squelch. Two shriekers’ heads split open midair, brains spilling in thick, steaming ribbons. He landed crouched, blood slicking his boots. Another shrieker snapped at his heel, fangs tearing deep into the meat. He screamed, drove his sword into its skull, cracking bone with a sickening crunch. Come on! Bring more! He roared, blood from his wound mixing with the enemy’s.

OLAX dropped to one knee, swinging with ruthless precision. Heads rolled, torsos split from groin to sternum, viscera spilling like red ribbons on the ground. He rolled beneath a lunging claw, slicing the creature’s chest in two. Blood sprayed his face, coating his eyes, turning vision into a red haze. Yet he rose again, lungs burning, teeth gritted, and carved through the next wave of monsters with mechanical fury.

LEA moved like a storm of death. She cleaved a shrieker’s skull in one savage arc, then lashed out with her crossbow, shattering another’s jaw. She stomped on a creature’s head, grinding bone and brain beneath her boot until the scream died in a wet gurgle. Anger flared hotter than fire; she caught one midair, slamming it into the ground with a sickening crunch, fists punching until it went limp. Her sword became an extension of rage, slicing limbs from torsos, spattering everything in red, until the last shrieker fell silent.

The brief silence was a lie. Baldy’s foot throbbed: one shrieker had sunk its teeth into him, ripping a chunk of flesh free. He laughed, blood running down his leg. “The fucking kid…” But before the words could leave his mouth, the rumble came: a shadow blotted the sun. A swarmer descended like a missile, jaws wide, and snatched Baldy whole. Screams echoed as he vanished into its mouth, chunks of meat smeared across its fangs.

Lea and Olax raised swords again, terror hardening into resolve. The kid… he controls them. Olax’s eyes widened. Everything fell into place: the shriekers, the swarmers, the ambushes: they had all been distractions, predators drawn to the kid. The Tower Lord was a child, small, unassuming, but deadly beyond imagination.

Olax charged, sword raised, but the kid barely flinched. Pain exploded across Olax’s senses as blood erupted from his eyes, ears, and nose. The swarmer clamped down on him, bones shattering under serrated jaws, blood spraying in a crimson arc. Lea lunged at the beast, blade biting into sinew, gutting it from groin to throat. It screamed, gurgled, shook violently, but she kept hacking, slicing through shoulder and spine until its head rolled across the ground in a fountain of gore.

Lea turned on the kid, daggers stabbing mercilessly. His hands radiated white-hot light, slamming into her chest like hammers. Flesh sizzled, muscles ripped, and she was hurled twenty feet, scraping and burning across jagged stones. She rolled, coughing blood, staring at her half-burned stomach where muscle and fat had liquefied under his power. Pain lanced through her nerves, yet she crawled forward, dagger in hand, eyes locked on him.

The kid struggled, trapped by the blood-soaked bricks of the well. Screams gurgled from his throat as blood soaked into the stone, binding him fast. The well seemed alive, gnawing, swallowing him with finality. Lea lay on her back, lungs screaming, body torn open, half her belly a ruin of blackened flesh and scorched bone. Blood coated her mouth, teeth bared in a grin of grim triumph.

Even as her life bled out, the mission was complete. Every shrieker slain, every predator vanquished. Death had carved them, left them raw, exposed, but the Tower Lord: the monster, the child, the orchestrator, was gone. Her last breath came ragged, a mixture of pain and triumph, and her eyes closed on a world soaked in red, a battlefield they had survived long enough to conquer.

This anthology does not promise heroes.

It promises war-torn plains, screaming outposts, and a world where everything is not as it is.

Three books

Seven chapters in the first book

A new chapter every five days




Copyright Notice (Standard)

© 2018 Proteller James. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews or scholarly works.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this work is illegal and punishable under applicable copyright laws.

Author's Name; Proteller James
Book Title; Death and Carnage
Book Genre; Fantasy
Link; https://www.wattpad.com/story/407891478-death-carnage


Author's Name; Proteller James
Book Title; The Big Five
Book Genre; Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Link; https://www.wattpad.com/story/405064145-the-big-five




Author's Name; Proteller James
Book Title; Grimnir
Book Genre; Crime, Action
Link; Scheduled to be released on the 30th of March

Took a little hiatus and I'm back. This time on Wattpad with three body of works. Two ongoing and the other "Grimnir" to be released on the 30th of March with a new chapter every five days.

Death and carnage premiered on the 20th of February and tomorrow, ankrner new chapter will drop

Took a little hiatus and I'm back. This time on Wattpad with three body of works. Two ongoing and the other "Grimnir" to be released on the 30th of March with a new chapter every five days.

Death and carnage premiered on the 20th of February and tomorrow, ankrner new chapter will drop.