Outside Hell (16 page)

Dracus sensing the moment was soon to be upon
him then looked up and stared deep into Rex’s red hood, allowing
his eyes to burrow deep into the evil bastards being and then said,
“Satan’s an ugly fucker and you aren’t any different, you make me
sick just looking at your rotting face.”

In response to his comment Rex nearly
swallowed his own rotting black tongue, and the crowds of vicious
vampires went absolutely fucking crazy. They were banging their
chests together and screaming for him to be killed.

Rex responded to their request
instantaneously by screaming, “Elite warriors, Loicheonk and
Marchilla, kill him.”

Dracus then bowed to Rex in a ridiculing
fashion as he’d prepared for the onslaught that ensued.

The bowman graciously took a few paces
backwards and then grinned. His stance as he’d left one leg
trailing the other and his face tilted whilst looking down at the
soil beneath him, was like that of a bull fighter from Spain.

A moment past and then there was a rock
grating against rock sound coupled with another huge uproar from
the crowds. Dracus looked forwards and from beneath Rex a secret
door then slid back in the rock wall. As it did and from the pitch
black hole that was revealed from behind it, four huge warriors
stepped out that he knew. All of them had faces that were twisted
cruelly into snarling masks of hate.

In response to their size that dwarfed him,
Dracus grinned.

The first warrior to step through had been
Vius from the Elite Warriors with his one eye. He’d lost the other
one in strange circumstances when Rex had been in Paris at a
friend’s palace drinking wine, and he’d ordered his warriors to
wait outside the walls of the palace.

Later that evening there’d been an
assassination attempt and his friend who’d been paid a lot of cash
had turned on him. Only Vius with his concerns from the very start
for his master’s safety had ignored Rex’s rules to wait outside the
palace walls, and because of it he’d been lucky enough to bare
witness to the whole thing as it had unfurled before him. He’d
saved Rex’s miserable existence, and then when one would expect
something like the Victoria Cross for his bravery or Rex simply
offering his gratitude for his heroic act, instead the evil bastard
had decided to go the opposite way and punish him. The punishment
that he’d given him for ignoring his rules to wait outside the
palace walls was to have one of his eyes cut out. The sick twisted
fucker had cut Vius eye out, and then for deranged memorabilia
purposes or whatever you want to call it, he’d kept the thing
rolling around in the pocket of his brown robe for many years
afterwards too.

The second warrior to walk out from
underneath Rex was Mietioc. He was kinda like the younger brother
to Vius, and apart from being second in command in the Elite
warriors; he was also just as equally skilled in swordsmanship and
handing out vouchers for a one-way ticket into hell too. Then
bringing up the rear was Hoidrious’ two bodyguards, Loicheonk and
Marchilla who’d preferred the idea of slicing the limbs of their
victims first, and then whilst they’d suffered extreme pain and had
a new look something like a skittle in a bowling ring, they’d laugh
down at them, taunting them, and then urinating over them before
finally death by slowly chopping off their heads.

All of these warriors were around seven feet
tall with huge muscles, towering frames and broad shoulders. Then
to make them this massive one might have thought that Satan had use
steroids in these boys, only they’d be wrong because in his twisted
mind he’d just designed them this way.

Dress wise they were all wearing the same
leather body armor. It was on their legs, across their backs, and
down their sides. Then across their chests they’d breastplates of
steel, and down their arms the leather was thicker and bonded
heavily to the leather underneath forming a flexible, but effective
defense against sword swipes.

In each of their hands they’d wielded huge
gleaming broadswords that looked like they were forged and crafted
fit for kings. The handles were dark leather with large shiny
pommels at the end, and huge guards in front of their fingers
lending their overall shape to that of a cross. These weapons apart
from seeing many battles and experiencing rivers blood passing over
the savage bite of their lethal blades; were imbued with the clear
and obvious sense of death. Then as the four warriors stormed
towards him with their brows furrowed and teeth firmly gritted,
their heavy strides dislodged the dust beneath them, sending it
spiraling into the air.

Then when they’d got to about twenty feet
away from him, rather than continuing straight they’d fanned out
and tried circling him. Vius and Mietioc went left, and the other
two meatheads swung right. All four of them were now grinning at
him whilst dangling their massive broadswords in their right hands
that were so long, the tips were scraping in the dirt beneath
them.

Dracus was ready for the fight but was also
very much aware that if one of his moves was a millimeter out of
place, then it might be his last fight. Only to enrage Satan enough
to be ultimately sure that he’d follow him back to the Valstrath
realm, he’d no choice but to follow through with it. The prince of
Eldor only hoped that he’d still got his head by the end of it
too.

Then as the four meat heads approached him,
he’d slid his hand behind himself for his weapon, only as his
fingers had skimmed the surface of his bow, and like a phone
embarrassingly going off in the cinema or something, he’d felt in
his mind what he’d thought was Regina’s Scareb bracelet calling to
him. Then in response to it he’d paused and to be sure that it was
her bracelet, he’d quickly slipped his fingers up from his right
hand and touched his temple. Only as he did something strange
happened, his mind was flooded and deeply washed in hundreds of
images that were coming back at him. Aware though that the Elite
warriors were almost upon him, and that they’d relish in him being
incapacitated making him an easy kill, he’d desperately tried to
clear his mind only he was unable to stop it from clouding over.
His conscious thoughts were sucked into a viewing room somewhere
deep within the subterranean grey matter of his mind, and
everything around him was blocked out. The images that he was
looking at showed an old wooden floor, a bar table and something
like four or five pairs of legs that had snow on their boots whilst
walking around a shapely body that was laying in a pool of thick
crimson blood. He couldn’t see the head but knew that it was
Regina, because he could see her tapered milky thighs and badass
ass boots that he’d recognized from Paris.

The whole pictures watching thing for him
even though it had felt like an eternity in his mind, had actually
only lasted second, but it was still too long in the situation that
the bowman was in. The warriors saw his back arch and his eyes
suddenly roll back into his head and then as his body had started
to shake suggesting that he was under some kind of dream or
something, they’d charged.

Dracus’ predatory hunting skills from his
other world had taught his subconscious mind a few things over the
years. One of them being never to let go of reality completely and
his senses hadn’t.

As the warriors had charged suddenly the
picture show in his mind was halted, paused as if the cinema had
been rudely closed for the day. Then as his vision had come back
online, Dracus with the speed of lightening had reacted; only his
move was a millimeter out of place.

The bowman had tried to dive down to his
left, dropping below a lethal strike but the tip of Vius’ sword had
found contact and sliced deeply across his right shoulder, finding
vulnerable tissue and bone. The wound was savagely painful but it
wasn’t life threatening, only had it been a few millimeters higher
and like a lump of firewood under a deafening blow from an axe, it
might have split his head cleanly in two.

The blade as it was doing its wet work sliced
through the strap that was going over his shoulder and down to his
quiver. Then as it’d fallen down lifelessly from his side and
crashed into the dirt beneath him, the cursed arrows had leapt out
in a fanned position across the floor.

Dracus winced from the agonizing pain as he’d
brought himself around, and then whilst coiling into a defensive
stance and ducking his head from Mietioc’s first attack, he’d
rolled to his side over the cursed arrows and flung his concealed
red handled throwing knife straight up into Rex’s chest.

The evil leader had been grinning down at him
with Hoidrious his second in command. They were discussing a wager
and from the crowds that were close to them, the two leaders were
taking bets on how long Dracus would last. Only when the knife had
embedded itself, it had all happened so fast and for a millisecond
all Rex had been aware of was a thump in his chest. The evil fucker
hadn’t actually seen the weapon take flight, and was completely
unaware that his existence was about to be over in this world
too.

Then as the pure silver had done its work,
Rex’s eyes had rolled backwards in his head and his mind as he was
preparing for his journey back into hell, was consumed in a tunnel
of flames.

Dracus had been right, they’d been so sure
that he was going to be killed by the four warriors that even his
own guards had taken their eyes off protecting their leader.
Finally after hundreds of bitter years working for the evil tyrant
who’d be deeply paranoid throughout all that time of assassination
attempts on his miserable existence, he’d let his guard down and
was dead because of it. Rex had felt safe and just like most
assassinations; he’d not been expecting his own death coming at
all.

In response to Rex clutching his chest and
the knife sticking out from it, Hoidrious had leapt forwards in
horror from his slouched position, and the demonic crowds
surrounding the cavernous room froze tight. They’d only ever known
Rex as their leader and expected him to always to be there.

A second had past and even the four meatheads
attacking Dracus had paused and then looked up in horror too. Rex’s
body had given way at the knees and the grotesque form that he was,
then slumped forwards and spiraled down over the edge. He’d crashed
down face first into the dirt beneath it, and then lay there in a
heap of red sacrificial robes not moving. A second passed and then
from the silver blade within, the effects took hold and his body
started to sizzle. The warriors had run over to him but by the time
they’d reached him, the evil bastard had already burst into
flames.

The crowds needed no introduction to what
death would look like should they ever succumb to the bite of a
silver blade, and with the sight of their coven leader dead before
them, suddenly their frozen states had changed into that of wild
anger. Only as planned, the bowman’s friend Lucious had been
watching the whole thing through a tiny peephole in the heavy stone
door. He was ready for the moment that Rex was killed and as he’d
seen the dagger take flight, he’d slid the bolt back on the door
and started opening it to let Dracus escape.

Dracus hadn’t waited either, the moment that
he’d seen the dagger embedding itself into Rex’s chest, and the
warriors turning to look behind them at their leader dying before
them, he’d run.

Then once he’d run through the doorway, he
and Lucious had slammed it shut so fast behind him that the blade
of surreal light that he’d seen upon coming through it earlier,
hadn’t even reared it’s head.

Then taking the two swords that Lucious had
placed outside the door earlier, with their white handles and gold
bands looking like serpents as they’d weaved along the leather
handles, they’d charged up the eighty flights of stairs. Then once
outside Lucious took his own pathway for freedom and leapt up into
the moonlit sky, whilst Dracus with his magic unmasked from the
deep evil that was beneath him, summoned a portal and told it to
take him to Regina.

(Racing down to HELL)

Regina dropped to her hands and knees in
agony. She was on some kind of dark grey granite slab that was
hurtling down at unbelievable speeds into the pits of HELL. It was
about 2 meters square and a meter thick, and by its appearance it
had looked as if a giant had just ripped it up from a Manhattan
walkway or something.

Looking at her she looked like some master
slayer out of a Flash Gordon movie or something that was happily
travelling into battle on her flying machine, only she was not
enjoying the experience at all.

There was flame roaring off the sides of her
rock in multiple colors, its effects reminiscent of that when a
meteor blasts its way down through the atmosphere.

All around her without any way to escape, the
space that she was travelling through was filled with huge flames
that roared up, and were so wild and full of heat that she was
feeling deeply anxious and overcome by it all. She’d felt stifled
and had to bury her head down underneath her chest, keeping her
face inches away from the rocks hot surface, and trying desperately
to shield herself away from the encroaching heat and fumes that
were everywhere.

The flames took various shapes and appeared
to be fighting one another, as they’d darted viciously across the
infinite space that was surrounding her.