章節 16: The Lycan Gladiator Pits
In the aftermath of Prime Minister Douglas's explosive escape, an uneasy pall hung over the Majestic Castle. Wald was like a prowling thundercloud, his perpetual scowl and barked orders keeping even the most seasoned guards walking on tenterhooks.
Madison did her best to stay out of his path, quietly tending to her duties while her mind whirled over the sorcerer's ominous parting vow. Forces in motion they could not comprehend, Douglas had said. And that death would soon be the least of their concerns.
What fresh horrors did that demented warlock have brewing? The thought made Madison's gut clench sickly, not just for herself but for the entire kingdom if he somehow made good on his threats. She may have infiltrated the palace to slay Wald, but a global catastrophe at the hands of an unhinged sorcerer had never been part of the plan.
Questions and doubts swirled like a muddied eddy as the days crawled by with no sign of Douglas making good on his promised doom. With each sunrise, the memory of his dire vow seemed to fade just a little, replaced by the castle's usual taut routine of rules and obligations.
If Wald suspected Madison was somehow involved with the prime minister's treachery, he gave no outward sign of it. Perhaps he assumed her role as his maid-turned-bedmate meant she had been as ignorant of Douglas's plans as he was.
It was on one such occasion, with Madison's body still tingling from the aftershocks of his fierce lovemaking, that a furious pounding came at the prince's chamber door. She stirred against Wald's chest, blinking up at him in sleepy confusion as the thunderous knocking continued unabated.
The prince growled a curse and untangled himself from the sheets. Stalking nude across the chamber, he flung open the door to reveal a sweat-streaked guard, his face drained of color.
"Apologies, Your Highness!" the man gasped out, not even trying to avert his widened eyes from his naked lord. "There's an emergency in the southern woods - a clutch of fire drakes was spotted razing a village! The garrison is already assembling but they'll need reinforcements to drive off such a large brood."
Fire drakes - the massive, reptilian terrors were widely regarded as the most deadly of their realm's Indigenous monstrosities. Just a single mature specimen could incinerate entire townships if left unchecked. A whole clutch of the beasts went far beyond dangerous into potential catastrophic.
Madison saw the gravity reflected in Wald's eyes as he swiftly nodded. "I'm coming. Have the royal armory readied as well, I may need to unleash some less...conventional arsenals."
With the crisis finally laid bare, a palpable charge filled the air, the thrill of imminent combat bleeding away whatever languid afterglow remained from Wald's earlier exertions. The guard hurried off to relay the summons as the prince began buckling himself into a menacingly spiked black leather cuirass over his lean, muscular frame.
"You too, pet," Wald said with a wolfish grin, gesturing for Madison to rise. "I seem to recall you have some skill with a blade. Tonight, you get to indulge that delightful violence on something other than just me."
Shivering at the dark promise in his words, Madison hurried to dress and gather her weapons. Despite the obvious peril involved, she couldn't deny the spike of illicit excitement that threaded through her at the prospect of finally seeing the full extent of her lover's fearsome power on display. She may have been sent to kill Wald, but surviving an onslaught of flame-breathing behemoths suddenly felt like a much loftier challenge.
By the time they joined the assembled garrison in the massive outer courtyard, the sun had fully set, laying a blanket of gloom over the torchlit throng of heavily armed werewolves. At the center stood a raised dais upon which rested a series of ominous iron cages - each one containing a hulking, grotesque figure that made Madison's blood run cold.
"Behold our not-so-secret weapons," Wald's voice rumbled beside her as they mounted the platform. In the flickering torchlight, his expression looked almost feral, igniting a shiver of deliciously fearful anticipation within her.
The cages were stuffed full of what could only be described as humanoid aberrations - figures with roughly lycanthrope shape, but twisted into vile, twisted contortions of tooth, claw, and slick, straining musculature. Some stood as tall as small giants, with arcing horns and hooked talons that could disembowel a drake with ease. Others appeared more lithe and wiry, like beasts bred solely for speed and vicious tearing strikes.
"Behold...the Aroch'Nar," Wald intoned as if announcing some profane miracle. "Warped and augmented by the darkest sorceries, reborn as ultimate living weapons."
As if sensing the focus of their inhuman gazes, the creatures began straining and writhing against their cage bars, snarling and howling like demons given flesh. A klaxon blared, signaling the impending battle, and Madison saw several handlers rush forward with cruel barbs and whips to corral the maddened horrors.
"These...things, fight for you?" she couldn't keep the tremble of trepidation from her voice, shooting a worried look toward Wald. Though if the prince detected her apprehension, he paid it no mind - his luminous eyes were already gleaming with a bestial intensity she had never witnessed before.
"They are the ultimate embodiment of lycanthrope supremacy," he replied grimly, though there was a feverish undercurrent of something like rapture in those words. "Pain-forged and fear-fueled, tasked with purging a weakness from our realm that should have been shorn away eons ago."
More howls erupted as huge portcullises groaned open along the courtyard's outer walls, unleashing a blinding torrent of fire and smoke as the drakes began their assault. The Aroch'nar answered with deafening shrieks of their own, flailing and gnashing at their confines in a single-minded desire to join the fray.
"Open the Gor'thaums!" Wald roared over the thunderous cacophony. "Let our dark brethren indulge their blessed rampages!"
At his command, the cages began sliding open one by one, disgorging their twisted occupants in a frenzied torrent of scale and slashing talons. Madison watched with a blend of morbid fascination and dread as the maddened Aroch'nar surged forth, immediately tearing into the screeching drakes with an almost sexual ferocity.
It was a slaughter, pure and visceral, a gore-soaked spectacle of tearing fang and rending claw. The Aroch'nar were like whirling dervishes of death, utterly merciless juggernauts propelled by mindless, insatiable bloodlust. Yet despite their evident savagery, there was also an unmistakable grandeur to their frenzied onslaught, as if they moved with a barbaric, alien elegance.
Watching the chaos unfurl, Madison could finally see the appeal, the rapturous thrill the Aroch'nar's "blessed rampage" must have instilled within her fierce prince. This was power at its most primal and intoxicating - not the crude, utilitarian application of lethal force, but an unholy spectacle of brutality as an art form.
And yet, even as her body quaked and her core clenched with the vicarious thrill of witnessing such glorious, unrestrained violence unleashed, a tiny voice deep within whispered a horrified warning. This blatantly blasphemous display... could only be a harbinger of something much more dire yet to unfold.
The drakes never stood a chance against their unmaking. When the last massive carcass finally collapsed in a spray of pustulant green ichor, Wald threw back his head and unleashed a resounding roar of pure triumphant glory. He basked in the feral adulation for a long, charged moment before quieting once more.
"A flawless execution, my exquisite monstrosities," he purred, taking Madison by the hand and guiding her down into the churned crimson muck that had been the courtyard just minutes before. Several Aroch'nar turned at Wald's voice. Madison felt uneasy looking at their disfigured bodies. She didn't understand how Wald could see anything beautiful in these wretched creatures.
"Well-fought, my instruments of ruination," Wald said loudly. "But this was just the start. Get ready, because even greater battles lie ahead in our plan to reshape this world as we want it. Anyone who cannot change with us shall be destroyed completely!"
A ragged cheer went up from the Aroch'nar, echoed by the ranks of wolfen warriors around the courtyard. Madison felt a knot of dread Form in her stomach. What further horrors were Wald and his loyalists preparing to unleash upon the realms?
-- 收到的禮物 
-- 推薦票
榜單 
-- 推薦票