Blood Bond

Jarlen loomed over me. His face was hidden in the shadows, while specks of predatory light, filtering through the forest canopy, dappled his back and shoulders. All around us, grey-clad elves moved with a chilling grace, their half-masked faces swiveling from side to side as they assessed the aftermath of the poisoned feast. Some were already hauling away the paralyzed forms of Stonehand's warriors, dragging them into a grim, orderly line.

Kael received particular attention; he was bound tightly, his limbs cocooned in thick ropes, as if being wrapped for immediate transport, a prized cargo. The sight sent a fresh wave of dread through me.

I reached for my blood within him, but then hesitated. He is strong, yes. My Protector. But his drive to protect me above all else was exactly why I couldn't bring myself to neutralize the paralyzing poison that gripped him. The image of him the night before, defiant and struggling even with swords at his throat, burned in my memory. He'll get himself killed if he sees me like this.

My attention shifted to Stonehand. His massive frame lay crumpled nearby, a felled giant on the forest floor. Focus. My mind was instantly joined with my blood trickling past his weakly pulsing veins. All around me, tendrils reached out from the sea of crystals, having already frozen everything else. I willed my blood to become that 'key' that I'd formed within me. My cells surged forth against the crystalline tide. In a few heartbeats, the waves were shredded to dust all through Stonehand's body, but the cells remained inert, frozen. How long for them to thaw? Would they ever revive?

Pain, searing and absolute, exploded over my thoughts.

White hot, and blinding, it tore a scream out of my lips only for that to be strangled by thick, salty, hot liquid gushing out of my throat. My gaze shot downwards, and a thick shaft of solid ice was protruding out the right side of my chest. Swirls of dark, red, vibrant blood—my blood—were smeared over its translucent length. My hand clawed at the frozen rod, desperate to wrench it free, but my fingers skittered uselessly over the slick, blood-greased surface.

I thrashed, but the cruel spike of ice had impaled me to the earth, pinning me in place like a helpless insect. Each movement, however slight, sent fresh waves of agony through me. I tried to scream again, but only gurgled more of the hot, metallic blood that my lungs were drowning in.

Through a crimson haze of pain, Jarlen's face swam into view above me, a slow, sadistic smile twisting his lips. He made a grand, theatrical show of surveying the surrounding carnage, as if admiring his grisly handiwork. Then his eyes returned to me, to my pain-shaken fingers struggling to pull away the shaft. His eyes moved up and down, and then he slowly pulled out a long, slender dagger as if he were a surgeon pulling out a scalpel.

"Well now, Princess." His words were razors hidden beneath silk. "How about we take that nice little useless head of yours and send it as a present to your troublemaker, big brother? I think he'll grasp the implications for the rest of your family." He announced this loudly, his voice carrying through the deathly still clearing, as if he were speaking to a hidden audience in the woods.

My hand, slick with blood, flew to my own neck. The mercenary puppets that I had controlled before: when their heads were cut off—I had instantly lost control of them. In zombie movies, wasn't that the golden rule? Decapitation equals death? This is it, he's going to actually kill me!

My mind catapulted into overdrive, desperately clawing past the raging inferno of pain for anything, any sliver of a chance.

The searches I did late-night in the hospital bed surfaced. Cat claws. Retractable. Marvel of biological engineering – muscles, tendons, sinews, all anchored for lethal precision. Spitting cobra fangs. Not just teeth, but hypodermic needles of enamel and dentin, hollowed for venom. Nature's perfect injectors.

As the flurry of concepts, diagrams and words fused together in my mind, my blood gathered in my wrist. It coalesced into a fang, carving out the hollow groove inside, then spun muscles around it, anchored tendons, and wove in the sinews.

An unnatural pressure bloomed in my forearm. Things were crawling, shifting beneath the skin, pins stabbing from within, followed by the grotesque sensation of wrist bones and cartilage grinding, reforming.

It'd erupt out the base of my palm. All I had to do was press against him. Snap out the fang, and inject him with my blood. But my hand was lead. My movements agonizingly slow. Far too slow.

Jarlen laughed when he saw me reaching for him with such molasses motion. He knocked my hand aside, and with a dramatic flourish, traced a line over my throat with his dagger.

Motion streaked in from the treeline. Geysers of dirt and debris exploded around us.

A figure flashed into view behind Jarlen–Meris! Her face, grimly smeared with black, her uniform in tatters, dress slashed high on her thigh. She slammed her palm against a nearby tree, and a deadly volley of barbed, vine-like spikes sprouted out of its trunk, hurtling toward Jarlen's unprotected back.

He didn't even flinch.

A visible distortion rippled the air behind him–a shield! The sharp spikes flattened against it, stopped midair, before clattering uselessly to the ground.

In the next breath, a fine, shimmering mist enveloped Meris. She gasped, and then choked, stumbling blindly as a net, crackling with electric arcs, dropped from the canopy, ensnaring her. Grey-clad elves materialized from the shadows around Meris, pulling the net taut with a single, smooth, synchronized motion. Meris was slammed to the ground by the net, her body convulsing from the electrical shock.

Hope that flared for that fragile instant died in my blood clotted mouth.

Jarlen slowly straightened from his crouch over me. His sadistic smile returned, wider now, and dripping with contempt. He idly twirled the dagger.

"How predictable." His gaze flicked from the netted, convulsing Meris, to the bound Kael, and then to the paralyzed Stonehand. "To think this charade was all we had to do to draw her out."

His cold amethyst eyes settled back on me. "Three seeds, all for the price of... nothing really." He paused as my attempt to breathe brought another painful spasm of gurgling blood.

The spinning blade came to a stop. "Still. I do think Theron deserves a gift. He needs... prodding."

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He leaned closer. His breath, hot and foul, spilled over my face as the cold thin metal kissed my throat. I writhed weakly against the ice spike pinning me to the frozen earth, each movement sending fresh waves of agony through me.

"YOU FORGOT ABOUT ME!" came the roar of a mountain.

A colossal hand blurred, snatched an elf behind Jarlen, and a fist like a stone hammer obliterated his face. Teeth and bone fragments erupted in a spray of crimson, along with the crunch of crushed bones.

Jarlen staggered back onto his feet, dazed by the shockwave. Another granite fist lunged for him, but a grey blur whisked him away an instant before impact.

Stonehand's massive form towered over me, roaring his defiance. Streaks of grey converged on him, masked elves raining a storm of metal spikes, fire, ice, and arcing electricity.

"EARTHQUAKE!"

He shouted as he brought his hands together and slammed them into the ground. The earth buckled and everyone was thrown down.

The ice beneath me shattered, releasing me. I was on my hands and knees, still wheezing blood out of my lips. Pain still racked my lungs, my body, but I knew I had to do something. He was one against a cunning many.

I crawled over to an elf getting up. His head jerked toward me. His pale blue eyes wide. I stumbled forward and grabbed his shoulder. Agony lanced my palm as the fang burst through my skin. The elf's startled gasp was swallowed by a wet tearing sound as it plunged deep into the flesh of his shoulder. My blood was injected to him through the hollow in the fang. Driven by the need of my hunger, the pain and the richness of his essence, my cells ravenously consumed his. I was the tide surging through his arteries, taking, subsuming, spreading.

Terror flared in his wide eyes for a few heartbeats before dimming. His struggling heart stuttered, then beat in time with a will that was no longer his own. Then his eyes emptied as my blood flooded his mind.

Stonehand swiped at a grey-cloaked figure. The figure's silhouette smeared into streaks, vanishing an instant before his massive hand could crush it. Others took the figure's place. A ray of fire seared through the air, exploding against Stonehand's shoulder, scorching the blue waves of his armor. Stonehand bellowed in pain and rage, swinging wildly as more lithe figures darted just beyond his reach.

They were too fast, too coordinated. This wasn't like the mercenaries, where I could brute force by throwing zombies and Trevor in. No, watching these ninjas dodge and weave past Stonehand's thunderous blows, I knew: I needed finesse.

I reached into my elf puppet's mind, where my blood was already seeping into the fringes of his brain. Cerebellum, Frontal Lobe, Basal Ganglia… I plumbed the depths of his mind. I needed to find his skills, his rune powers. My blood seeped deeper in, searching, connecting, finding. He was an Air Assassin, trained in the ways of shadow movement. Shroud Step, Phantom Blow… Fluidity – skills that reminded me of the action from the martial arts animes on Earth.

I sent him forward.

Shroud Step.

His form dissolved into a shimmering heat haze, then reformed. He was now behind one of the elves harrying Stonehand. ​​My puppet slipped in closer, weaving through the air, in sync with the movement of his target.

Phantom Blow.

A silent, two-fingered jab to a vital pressure point in the back. Faint electrical arcs crackled over his fingertips as they struck. His mark seized, body spasming before falling back. My puppet drew a short blade in a flicker of motion, he slashed a gash open in the falling elf's back, and then tossed him with a swing of the arm back to me.

—

With a strangled, tear-drenched groan, I gripped the jagged length of ice still protruding from my chest and yanked. It came free with a raw and wet tearing sound. The ice emerged long and hideously dyed in my own dark, dripping blood. A wet suction wheezed from my gaping wound. Almost immediately, tendrils of blood reached out to each other across the open flesh and began knitting it together. I gasped as air rushed into my lungs. I could breathe again. The pain, I could handle.

I advanced on the backward-stumbling elf my puppet had delivered, and clamped my bloody hand to his exposed back. Faster this time. The assimilation was ravenous and instinctual: my blood was a wildfire in his veins, consuming, spreading and then seeping deep into his mind. He was a Fire-affinity Stalker, trained in infiltration and disruption. His skills were now mine.

Through his mind, I directed him to use his Shroud Step, moving in amongst the others, and then, to channel Flame Bomb.

WHOOMPH!

A wave of concussive heat erupted and blew past me. A bright ball of orange-red flame lit up the woods, sending several grey-clad figures tumbling through the air amidst shocked cries.

The mood amongst the remaining elves shattered. Their coordinated assault faltered as heads snapped towards the source of the unexpected fiery devastation – one of their own. My first puppet, the Air Assassin, exploited the momentary chaos, Shroud Stepping to disable another grey-clad figure and drag him toward me. Simultaneously, Stonehand's fist caught a distracted elf mid-turn; the sickening crack of vertebrae snapping reverberated through the forest.

My newly formed palm-fang tore into the delivered elf. An injection of my blood, then the all-consuming tide as I turned him.

My internal vision was now a kaleidoscope of three. The strain of controlling was weighing upon me now, like countless needles being jabbed into my forehead. Even though they were three, they were faster, more skilled, their vision sharper, their thoughts more insidious – it felt like three took the same effort as controlling six from before. Was it because I'm controlling their rune powers? Or because their runes might be more evolved? I wasn't sure, but there was one thing I was sure of, I could handle more of that strain. Deep down, I knew I had gotten stronger. Was this because of all the lives I took? Does draining blood essence make me stronger? The thought sent chills through me.

Stonehand managed to catch another elf and swung him by the legs like a club, toppling the others like dominos. He faced my Fire Stalker and paused mid-swing, as if he knew my elf was an ally. He turned to face the others. The swirl of dust, frost, flames, mist, and arcs of electricity settled around them and now, it was four versus four.

Jarlen appeared from behind the line of four elves. He pointed toward three figures now flanking Stonehand. "What is the meaning of this? You three! Who put you up to this? Is it one of my brothers?!" His voice cracked into a shrill. "Whatever the gold, I will triple the amount. Remember, I am the favored one."

Stonehand glanced from side to side, his yellow eyes meeting the hollow, masked gazes of my puppets. A booming laugh erupted from his massive chest. "Oh, I don't think these boys are looking for gold or your favor, little princeling. All they and I want. Is to smash your face in!"

With another earth-shaking roar, he lunged. Two of my puppets Shroud Stepped, blurring behind the enemy line. The line of elves shrank back, surrounding Jarlen. As one, they made a gesture with their hands, index fingers pointing up and down. The air shimmered around them. Their outlines distorted and then vanished just as Stonehand's fist slammed down upon them.

I limped forward, clutching my chest, the wound still open and throbbing. The pain in my body blared throughout now that the adrenaline was receding. All around us lay the bodies of grey-clad ninja elves, some with their faces smashed, others with contorted limbs, and a couple looking perfectly untouched.

A loud, sharp screech pierced the air above us, and I looked to see an Aethelwing, white and majestic, perched proudly upon a long tree branch.

We had won.