The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH MADNESS

Fleur woke wet and cold, with her wrists tied to the arms of a chair. She felt confused; her head was pounding as painfully as it ever had. Her memories were muddled, tangled in knots, and nothing made sense to her anymore. Fleur was sure she was going mad. She was a young girl running combat simulations and a confident woman teaching sword katas. She was the Lady War Oracle and the Dark Oracle Queen. She was a prisoner of the Darkness and the Light that destroyed it. She was Fleur but she was also someone named Daisy. Her mind threw itself against the strange flickering memories, like distorted images in a hall of mirrors. It was madness and she had to escape it.

She was also barefoot, remembering the voice of a man named Ty telling her to always try to leave a trail, no matter how incapacitated she might me. After Corbin had hit her and carried her into the storm. She had slipped off her slippers and socks in the vain hope that Fang would be able to lead Stacy and Rieth to her. The ache in her soul reminded her that he had been dying in her arms, but in her mind, she saw the event happening three times.

Once long ago, when he was Lord Yurieth with a trim beard, long blonde hair and eyes like silvery morning fog, and another time he was Yuri, clean shaven, with haunted steel gray eyes and gray-blonde cropped hair; she wondered when she had ever called him Yuriel, it had always been Yuri. This last time, he was Rieth, with dark hair and full beard that she had only seen through Yuli’s eyes, but as her fingers traced his face, her mind drew a picture that didn’t make sense, but her heart insisted was true. They were all the same man. It was impossible. Lord Yurieth hated her, Yuri had only ever been her friend, and Rieth loved her. They couldn’t be the same person and yet they were.

Fleur couldn’t think clearly, and the harder she tried, the greater the agony she felt. In her mind, everyone was someone else, even herself. She wondered if Damien had finally broken her sanity. He was here, pretending to be someone named Corbin and he had maimed and possibly killed another she loved.

Fleur’s mind, Daisy’s mind, whomever she was, her thoughts rapidly sought to form an escape plan. Corbin/Damien hadn’t taken her back to the Nebulae

so, she still had a chance to get away and back to her son Kalen... No, her son was Yuli. She shouted at herself to keep it together, she could succumb to madness after she freed herself. Corbin/Damien didn’t know that she knew who and what he was. She would play his game back on him the same way the Oracle had... but she was the oracle, wasn’t she?

Her mind reached out, the way she often did to check on Yuli or to feel who was in her house. There were eighteen besides Corbin/Damien. She could sense their argument on the floor below her. Some wanted to ransom her, some wanted to sell her, Corbin-Damien wanted to torture her again. She cringed at his thoughts of the things he wanted to do to her body and the unnatural coldness in his soul. Suddenly he killed one of the men, the man screamed as he died. He had secretly wanted to help her escape because she taught his little sisters. Fleur remembered the girls who wore their brown hair in pigtails and adored Fishlover. Her mind lingered on the pleasant memory of them. Kalen had taught them to swim... No, Yuli... it was Yuli who taught them to swim. Fleur was confused again.

Her mind was showing her two slightly different versions of her son. One had golden amber eyes like Lord Kaleth, and one had the silvery eyes of Lord Yurieth. She wondered as she stared at the two memories; one of her standing behind Kalen trimming his hair, and the other of her looking at Yuli through his eyes on his seventieth birthday as she trimmed his hair. She was wondering still when she remembered walking on a beach with Kalen and Yuri, she wished Yuri was with her but then she remembered that Shadz and Mara, who always called Yuri, Yuriel, had said he died. She wondered if her Kalen had died too, and she had forgotten him with so much else after her injury. Fleur was pondering how she could completely forget a child, when a malevolent voice interrupted her.

“You have always been so beautiful, my lady oracle.” He leaned over her and smelled her hair. “I admit that without your lavender eyes, golden skin, and rich brown hair, I failed to recognize you for a long time. There is some kind of glamour that hides who you are that I only managed to see through recently. I think I like you better as a platinum blonde, it suits the paleness of your skin in this climate better than the tan you always wore when you lived at the Southern Castle and swam naked in the southern sea.”

Corbin/Damien pushed her flannel robe off her shoulders. She resisted the urge to flinch away from him as he continued taunting her, “Do you remember all the times you laid on the sand or wandered your garden in the moonlight, my lady oracle? Of course, you don’t.”

“Have you lost your mind, Corbin? I’m not the oracle, she died decades ago,” Fleur hissed out through clenched teeth.

“Actually, you are the one who has lost your mind. I don’t know what happened but somehow you don’t know who you are, Lady Daisy. ” He smirked at her, she could feel it and something else that terrified her. “I guess that doesn’t matter, I have you now. You’ve lost your power and the Lords of Adamos aren’t here to save you.” He ripped one of the shoulders of her night slip and ran his fingers down her neck and to her cleavage. “You’re mine until I sell you.” He muttered against her neck as he kissed a and bit her flesh, leaving a trail of drool and blood.

She swallowed so she wouldn’t gag and bit her lip so she wouldn’t scream. Her mind was coming apart. He said she was the oracle, Lady Daisy, but she couldn’t be, or was this another one of Damien’s games to remind her how powerless she truly was. All the horrors of her captivity swirled in her mind and tangled with reality. She felt herself being sucked down into darkness... then there was a light in her consciousness.

‘Fleur, we are almost there. Hang on.’ He was alive!

’Rieth!″ her mind screamed to him, ‘Help me. Damien is trying to take me back. He wants to hurt me again… He wants to sell me to his followers…’

Her desperate plea was heard by the minds of all the royals. Karstien looked over his shoulder at Shadz. ‘What has happened?’

Shadz shook his head. ‘It is as Asha feared; Daisy’s mind is fragmenting. We may be too late to save her.’

They stopped running, at the top of a ridge, in a box canyon below was an abandoned mill.

‘We must hurry,’ Rieth’s mind insisted. ‘Before she goes completely insane. She believes Corbin is Damien and means to violate her as Damien before he sells her to the dark ones.’

Carefully the warriors approached the old mill. They could hear her crying in their minds as she struggled to hold on to her sanity. Karstien remembered the late General Ty Taylor telling him that when Daisy got emotional to make her focus on the mission. He also remembered that she had learned to overcome hallucinogens when she was hospitalized.

‘Daisy, how many?’ Karstien’s mind demanded firmly.

‘Kars, I’m confused. The Darkness is here. He wants to hurt me, he isn’t Damien, but he is. ’ She sobbed again, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

‘You’ve been drugged, Daisy, remember your training. Listen to my voice. Focus on the mission. I need the analysis to get my team in. How many are there and where? Fight the drugs, run the tactical. You can do it.’ Karstien gruffly assured her, his will pushing hers. They could see the tears in his eyes as his best and oldest living friend was suffering.

In the room where Corbin was, Fleur suddenly stopped moving and went completely limp. She hadn’t fainted because her eyes were open, she just wasn’t there. He shook her and even slapped her, but she didn’t respond. He had been enjoying her cries of fear and struggling, but now it was like her mind wasn’t even there.

Daisy’s voice spoke to the minds of the Royals , calm and almost emotionless. ‘There are eighteen total. One is asleep on the first floor. Ten meters forward and three left from your position, in the room that holds the base of the main stairs. Five are on the second floor in the center room at the south wall. They will be directly above you when you enter. In the room above those are seven more. Two are fleeing down the backstairs at the northwest corner with the body of their friend... He will not revive.’ She paused and emotion wavered in her mind’s voice, ‘I taught his little sisters.’

‘Finish the tactical.’ Karstien prodded.

’All have weapons, some with dark enchantments, requiring at least protection two armor. She paused again and then in a frightened tone mind-whispered, ‘Damien is hitting and cutting my body. He said I am the Oracle but I’m Fleur, that’s the name Mina gave me. He is hurting me but I’m hiding. I...I can’t let him find me.’

“Stay in your mind, Fleur. He can’t reach you there.′ Rieth pushed the thought to her desperately as he led the others through the building.

‘What if I can’t?’ comes back the frightened mind-whisper.

‘Sing to us, Daisy, like you did when we were trapped in the Dust, sing to us to drive away the Darkness.’ Abe willed her to hear him.

‘Abe, you lived... Did Serapha?... I used to sing after he hurt me... I don’t want to go through it again.’

‘Sing like you are singing to Yuli,’ Rieth begged her

The words to “May it be” stuttered between gasped exclamation of pain. Rieth could feel Corbin cutting her with a cursed blade like the one he had tried to kill Rieth with. The return of her powers meant he could hear and feel her like before but there was no filter, and her agony poured into his soul like lava.

‘Hang on, Fleur, we are almost there. Sing another song. Just keep singing.’ He encouraged as he viciously decapitated one of Corbin’s new recruits.

Shadz was holding a Room of Silence enchantment around the walls so the other brigands would not be aware of what was happening below their feet. Then the royals charged toward the stairs. The Mage surrounded the room with silence as the two Huntsmen, the Protector, and the King rushed in. Karstien glanced at his uncle, both could feel the shadow in the room through the next door. The brigands fought like Berserkers, all with glowing red eyes tinged with insanity. Swords in close quarters clinked strangely in the silenced room. Karstien and Rieth fought to get to the door and the shadow waiting on the other side.

In the third-floor room, Corbin had gotten frustrated. Nothing he did would make her respond the way he wanted. She just stared at nothing and hummed between gasped breaths. He untied her wrists from the chair and tied them together, before dragging her across the room to hang her from a coathook. She was so petite, it held her weight easily. He cut her arm with a regular blade and she didn’t even gasp at the pain, he did it again and again she didn’t stop humming. Enraged, he retrieved a cursed blade from the desk in and slowly sliced down her arm, her humming faltered slightly. He smirked malevolently, she had cost him so much so he did it again.

First, she killed elder Tabot, then his brother Elder Tudot. They had paid Corbin well to spy on her and the other royals, but mainly her. They had all wanted to kill the oracle or to possess her power. However, the High Lord of Adamos and those loyal to him had always stood protectively around her. The Dark Prince had paid well for the information on the Southern Castle and the data on the colonies. Then the Dark Prince’s pet assassin had found out the data on the colonies’ security was false and he had barely escaped with his life and the wealth he had acquired. She had no idea how many times she should have died, how many times the followers of the Dark Prince had failed because she held the loyalty of the one closest to him. After the High Lord Guardian’s death, his Brother, the Huntsman, had taken up her protection and assigned his journeyman to stay at her side always.

For some reason, the Darkness had spared him and his shadow sent him to the place he had tracked to Guardian to many times and told him to waited to see what was so special about Arbor Isle. A century after the war, she had come. Corbin felt the shadow inside him swelling, pushing him to hurt her more so it could feed on her misery. He began drawing the blade on the swirling scars so faint on her skin. All those who protected her were on other worlds far away, and none knew the glamour that hid her identity had been pierced by the eyes of his shadow. Whomever she was now whether the proud War Oracle Lady Daisy, or sweet Lighthouse keeper Fleur of Soldiers Cove, she was his and his alone.

The sky began to lighten as midmorning came but the storm still raged outside. Corbin had all the time he wanted with her and he laughed in sadistic pleasure as he taunted her and carved her flesh. “Wake up, Fleur, come back. Or would you rather I call you Daisy? Did you know your Huntsman was here while you were out with the fleet? He looked for you, they say he is going mad for want of finding you. Wake up and tell me what he did to earn the King’s displeasure... That the Mage Lord would hide you here. Where did you get all these new scars, Lady Daisy? They look like lace. You’ve always been so beautiful, so intelligent, so deadly, so powerful, and now you’re so helpless. You couldn’t even save your woodsmith. Or your wretched cat.”

Regis and Abrieth, still dressed as Sieger and Brie, were fighting the last of the brigands as Rieth and Karstien burst through the door. Suddenly, they could hear again. Corbin looked at them startled, but more surprised to see Rieth alive. Rieth shoved Corbin away from where Fleur hung on the hook with enough force he crashed into the desk, dislodging it.

“How are you not dead?!” Corbin snarled at Rieth

“I am a Huntsman,” Rieth growled out the words, as they circled each other.

“Former Protector Corbin, you’re going to prison. You’ve dishonored yourself.” Karstien announced, with Rieth standing between Corbin and Fleur.

Corbin glared at the blond warrior as he carefully lifted Fleur down and realized he was the King, Corbin’s eyes snapped back to Rieth and he knew who he faced.

“So, Lord Yurieth, you came back for your brother’s concubine, it is too bad you had to trick her to love you again. She will still hate you when she learns the truth.”

Then Corbin laughed evilly as his eyes glowed red. Strange dark smoke formed around him in black wisps, his voice changed into something demonic and the air grew colder. “She will never escape the shadows, she belongs to us, Huntsman.”

“The Oracle will never belong to you, we won the war,” Karstien snarled.

The shadow within Corbin glared at him. “You will never truly defeat us, King of Aetheria.”