Chapter 26: Death's Pale Eye

Unlike before, Axel didn’t just blindly charge into the fray.

For one, the sheer mass of the troll stampede would just crush him anyway, so standing in front of the foe with no plan wasn’t bravery or madness, it just was suicide by stupidity.

And Axel had already established with his Reaper that he would not accept such a pointless death. On the day he returned to her embrace, he would bring her the gift of slaughtered souls. Anything less would be an insult to her.

So instead, Axel pulled from his inventory his old tools of war.

A grenade in one hand. A pistol in the other. It was as if he were back in the Trench Wars again, given minimal tools in hellish acid rain, fighting man-made horrors of flesh mountains and living gore-beasts.

How wonderfully nostalgic.

Axel pulled the pin off the flash grenade with his grinning teeth and tossed the explosive into the horde.

The King was at the forefront, its rage at Axel’s taunts driving it to crush even part of its kin and hosts simply to reach the soldier a second earlier.

The grenade bounced off its head and detonated.

The thunderous flash forced the entire host to recoil. Axel already had his eyes closed and to the ground, even as he was running forth the moment the grenade left his hand. 

By the time it exploded with its ear-splitting bang, he was amidst them.

Pained screams and roars of indignation accompanied axe slashes and pistol shots. Axel was not attacking the Troll King at the front; he was already behind the Boss, weaving between the foul ranks of the lesser trolls.

Most carried injuries of Axel’s earlier actions: missing arms, gut wounds, or just too many lacerations for even the regeneration to cover in so short a time. They had not expected Axel to rush into the horde, allowing himself to be surrounded on all sides, but they did not question the opportunity presented before them.

Putting aside the joy of killing the irritating pest who had wounded so many of them, there was much reward that awaited whoever managed to slay the human.

However, the tight space of the ravine, combined with the eagerness of so many, impeded their efforts to slay him. Axel was a buzzing fly upon an unending sea of flesh, delivering irritation and mounting injuries.

But he did not kill them. His axe blade bit deep, and his accurate pistol fire shot out eyes and fingers, but Axel did not stay long enough to deliver fatal strikes to any of the trolls.

Black blood, pungent and rancid, began to pool at the bottom of the ravine.

Then, a titanic roar from the Troll King, followed by a cleave that tore apart a trio of trolls that stood in its way.

“OUT OF MY WAY! HE IS MINE!”

The trolls tried to move, but there were too many of them. Most could barely lift their arms and swing their weapons without hitting another. Axel danced between crushing stomps and cramped club swings. He trusted his speed, weaving between their legs and cutting apart weak points.

Some of the trolls collapsed from their wounds, tendons and leg arteries severed. This created even more of a blockade from both ends of the ravine. The Troll King’s frustrated roars were accompanied by the increasingly confused and panicked grunts of its underlings.

In the middle of all that chaos, Axel did not stop. His breath was heavy. The air reeked of stink and blood. While his movements were swift, he could not avoid every blow. Frantic jostling combined with the weighty bulk of each troll occasionally sent him spinning to the ground. A stray stomp or kick caught him in the ribs or legs.

It was like trying to topple a herd of elephants while being in the heart of their rampage. Their wounds were mounting, but so was his.

[Warning! Health below 50%!]

“I know, I know!” He yelled out, his voice completely lost in the cacophony of roars and hammering strikes.

And yet, even in that chaos, Axel still heard it. The sound he had been waiting for.

The whistling of a heavy blade.

The soldier rolled out of the way, but even then, the halberd's edge caught his shoulder. Despite the force of it already mitigated by having to sever its way past another troll, the slash was still powerful enough to chop off his entire left arm.

[Warning! Health below 20%!]

[Conditions met! ‘Last Stand’ activated]

[Class Boon Active! All Stat gains doubled!]

[Stats increased! Endurance +12, Strength +8, Agility +8]

The pain was blinding. His entire body nearly froze up with shock, but Axel jerkily pushed himself to move, mind already working to suppress the agony behind a layer of laughing madness.

The Troll King was before him. There was no time to ingest a potion, no room to retreat. He had to hold the boss here by surviving the coming onslaught.

Easier said than done, with only one arm.

The King swung again. Axel could only try to dodge. Parrying was no longer an option. Strong as he might be, the King was stronger still, its swings fueled by rage. The whistling blade missed and took the arm off another troll. The rest of the underlings were trying to give their leader space, but too many of them had squeezed into the ravine during the initial charge.

Nearly all twenty of them were now tightly packed into the crevice.

Axel threw his axe, spinning it hilt over end towards the King as he drew out his pistol. The Troll Boss didn’t even bother deflecting the attack. He simply allowed the weapon to embed its blade weakly into its skull, roaring as he swung again, even as his eyes were shot out.

They regrew back almost immediately.

Lune’s toxin is wearing out. How many seconds left? Twenty? Ten?

Time was running out. There was no sign of Lune’s manifested distilleries. Had the Eldarin decided to run away while he distracted the trolls?

The thought made Axel chuckle. He would not blame them if that were the case. All that was left for him, then, was to try to kill as many as he could before he expired.

Then, it happened. A blooming light, and suddenly the walls of the ravine became even more crammed with massive machinery.

Hissing steam pistons and rune-strewn boilers were practically stuck into the rocks, such was the lack of space. The trolls roared in surprise at the new structures around them, but the Troll King was utterly focused on Axel.

Now! It has to be now!

It was hard to think. Axel’s mind was fading. Blood loss was taking its toll. His health and vision were fading.

How many times had he been on the brink of death that day already? Three times? Five? The cold touch of the Reaper’s scythe was on his neck again. He could practically feel her excited breaths on his nape.

As if asking him to lie down and die.

Axel spat blood. His legs were weak. The whistling came again, speaking his doom.

It was such a lovely sound… He could not stop the words from leaving his mouth.

“To Hallowed Death…”

He moved, numbed lips chanting. The words were familiar; he spoke them countless times. The halbard whispered past his head, cleaving his ear.

The pain gave him the will to move. And to kill.

“I grant you souls…”

Blood in his mouth. Iron in the air. He was born at the start of a global war. He was there at the worst of its fighting. The man named Axel was a tool made to take lives, sharpened by bio-genetics and made murderous by training and indoctrination.

He swung his axe. A troll fell. The warmth of its life splattered across his face. War was his music; Slaughter his muse. The roar of gunfire was the melody of his dance upon the battlefield, and the curve of titanium blades served as his ecstatic breaths.

“Such songs I have made for you… With the murderous instruments of all worlds…”

The King roared, yet its anger was muted against the haunting of Axel’s words. War turned humans to murderers, but his soul was tainted from the moment of birth. His mother was his first victim; his father ripped and torn with his hands alone. Every kill he made, Death was with him in the making of it.

“You held my hand the moment life first sparked in my flesh. You kept my company wherever I brought ruinous ends. In the flesh trenches of Raum; in the bowels of warships within Luna’s orbital sphere; in the moment of every kill I made.”

Something stirred in the canyon. It was not something that could be described with words. The confusion the distilleries brought among the trolls was replaced by something entirely different.

Cold, dark, and something instinctively perverse… None could deny the creeping touch upon their skin…

An inescapable feeling. From a place unknown, they were all being watched.

“I am the Harbinger of your Touch. The Red of your Blood, and the Pride of your Scythe.”

All around, sound was being muted, until only the Consort’s voice was clear. The trolls tried to let their frantic roars be heard, fear overtaking every other sense. The King’s arms were shaking.

Light was being drowned out. Something beyond darkness was settling upon them.

“Come, Pale Rider! Do not disappoint your Maker. I have given you many gifts over the long years, but this tithe I cannot grant freely! GIVE ME YOUR SONG!”

And then, everyone heard.

Her voice.

“As you wish.”

[Trait Conditions met.]

[Reaper’s Tithe Activated]

[The Pale Eye of Death falls upon you…]

The vision of a thousand deaths burned into the eyes of every living creature in the ravine. All of them saw a man, drenched in blood. They saw through the last moments of every soul he had ever murdered. Countless thousands in countless ways. They saw him laugh as he killed, wept as he killed, dying as he killed. They felt the taste of his blade upon their skull, the warmth of his hands around their throat, the steel of his bullet shattering teeth and organs.

Ten thousand and more deaths, overlapping, unending, in one heartbeat.

The trolls screamed. The King, for the first time in its life since meeting the Tryant of the Fae, howled with pure horror.

On reflex, without aiming, it swung.

Its target could no longer be said to be human. Silver burning eyes, the colour of a Morning Star. A demonic grin that belonged to no living creature. 

Axel dodged.

The halberd slammed straight into the largest rune-covered distillery. The magic was knocked out of alignment. The runes glowed.

The last thing the Troll King heard was a woman’s haunting laughter, and the touch of a bale-wreathed scythe kissing his neck.

“He always says the prettiest words, doesn’t he?”

[Boss ‘Troll King’ is Reaperbound.]

Light engulfed him, and the ravine erupted in unholy fire.