Restart Again: Volume 2 by Adam Scott (best adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

as it lunged forward, closing the distance to the investigating guard with a single, impossibly effortless step. The flaming bastard sword in my hand impaled the man, driving up through his gut to pierce his spine and emerge from between his shoulder blades, steaming with fresh blood.

The presence filling my body roared in bloody triumph, so loud it seemed to shake the world around me. No sound came from the guard as I lifted him up into the air on the end of my sword and marveled at his lifeless, bleeding body. I felt a deep, primal fear at the sight, but another feeling grew quickly and overwhelmed my terror: relief. It was relief to a pain I didn’t know I had; a pain buried so deep within my psyche that I hadn’t truly felt it for decades. It was relief, but it was something else as well, I realized as the guard’s corpse burst into black flame: it was retribution.

There was an immense infusion of power into my body from my sword as the man burned. The feeling fascinated me; where I normally would have recoiled from the all too familiar pain of the void between worlds, it was now a welcome rush of fuel for my flames. I lowered my sword when his flames burned out, leaving nothing behind but a quickly dispersing cloud of black ash. Without delay, my attention turned to the remaining two guards at the edge of the smokescreen.

I stalked towards my new prey, whipping my sword in a quick circle to remove the last bits of ash and blood staining the edge of the blade. Based on the expression of the two men as I exited the cloud, I must have been a nightmarish sight; a demon wreathed in shadow-black flames, carrying a burning sword and emerging from the exact spot their friend had entered mere seconds before. They stood in terrified awe, mouths open but voiceless as their hands fumbled frantically at their weapon belts.

A single step and a flick of my wrist was all it took to dispatch them. Wounds opened across their chests, boiling with a mixture of blood and dark smoke as they fell to the ground screaming in agony. Their cries grew quiet after a few moments, and the black flames quickly consumed their bodies. More.The thought came from the dark presence, but I knew that I wanted it too. More.

The commotion caught the attention of the collection of guards across the plaza, and a chorus of shouts rang out as they readied weapons and began a reckless charge towards me. A gout of flames burst from my feet as I sprinted out to meet them, barely touching the stone below me. I broke through their front line and dove into the center of the group, spinning my sword in a wide circle to create distance between us. “Come. Meet your end,” I growled, my voice reverberating with a deep distortion.

My perception of time stopped as the fighting began. Every moment existed alone, disconnected from the next like a slideshow, and I watched them go by with a growing sense of unbridled glee. Every stroke of my sword, each weapon deflected, every spin, slash, dodge, stab, and kill; they were all woven together into my joyous dance of death. As the bodies fell and burned around me, the dance quickened as my own flames grew brighter. I lusted after every drop of dying energy the guards could give to me, and hunted them down relentlessly.

A flash of crimson at the edge of the courtyard drew my attention, and I froze in place to turn and inspect it. Eight men stood at one of the plaza entrances, their purple irises gleaming at me through the darkness. One of them held a heavy chain attached to the collar of a hulking dog that snapped its jaws angrily at me, its eyes matching those of its master. YES. LET’S MAKE THEM SUFFER. TOGETHER,the presence screamed to me. I agreed.

Before I could move towards them, a sharp pain shot up from my right leg. One of the guards had capitalized on my lack of focus and stabbed his sword through the skin and muscle of my thigh, cracking it against my femur. I threw back my head and let out a guttural scream. Instead of turning to fight, I continued bending backwards, folding over with a series of sickening cracks until I faced the man upside down. I turned my head to observe the blade that stuck out of the obscuring flames of my leg. A bolt of black energy cracked along the surface of the metal and into the guard’s hand, and both exploded a moment later in a bright gout of flames.

The vicious wound in my leg was already healed by the time I straightened out again. While my focus was entirely consumed on my new targets across the plaza, I had a vague awareness of the four remaining guards around me scattering like frightened children. Two ran towards the lingering cloud of smoke at the edge of the plaza, while the other pair moved in a straight line towards their reinforcements, dropping their weapons in a headlong sprint to escape the punishment I sought to inflict upon them. Unfortunately for them, it also meant they stood between me and my true targets.

I hurled my sword towards the closest one and watched the flaming weapon scream across the distance between us before it embedded itself in the man’s back. His anguished cries as the flames engulfed him only served to fuel the second guard’s fear, and his frantic sprint intensified as he left his comrade to die. Even though he was nearly fifty feet away, I could feel his essence like it was beside me; his pounding heartbeat, his shaking legs, and his burning lungs were just an arm’s length away.

I reached my now-empty sword hand out before me, and a cloud of sickly purple energy formed around it. My