Wah!!! @flashfictionfridayofficial
15min late! I’m sorry guys, but I had so much fun with this piece so it was worth it!!
This is in my Rise of the Blood Dawn series — it’s a magic escape in the moors!
No triggers, enjoy!
• • H a l f b l o o d • •
by C.A.Wolters
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It was not usually like this. Caz was usually a much much faster man, more than able to outrun the Watchers of the Gray City and the witch hunters on the other side of the wall, alike. Under normal conditions he could dash half a mile and then climb a steep cliff with his heart in his throat.
He had done that before, that one time where he was hunted by the Elsalvian pure-blood fanatics on Lord Ehka’s orders. Caz felt flattered that the ruler of the Endlands wanted him dead with such vigor that Ehka had sent his necromancers after him.
But that was then and this was now.
Ehka the Thousand Year Lord was dead, killed by the Empress from down south where the jade and ruby cities stood, and the broken arrow currently jammed in Caz’s femur and sticking out of his right thigh, like a twig growing directly out of his body, was slowing him down to an almost human pace.
Even with his muddled half-blood magic pulsing through his veins, working quickly to weave the muscle back together around the wound; the arrow had somehow managed to lodge itself in a crucial spot for sprinting and he was stumbling over the moor in his steps.
“Get him!!” A man, maybe the fat Baron of Dreist himself, bellowed, and then there was a ‘swiSHH’ in the air as another set of arrows flew past Caz’s ear.
Men echoed orders in the fogs.
“Kill the demon! Aim true!! Take it down!”
The demon. Caz would have laughed had it not been for his burning lungs and that slightly worrying taste of iron in his mouth.
The Rat Baron had been the one to hire Caz for his ‘special talents’ in the first place. He had been paid Caz in imperial gold to get rid of an young woman who had carried the wrong child, and who had unfortunately posed the wrong sort of ultimatum to the worst kind of man. The job had been an easy one.
Caz has only needed one night to step into her dreams and convince her that she was a bird, and the girl had jumped out of the tower the next day. Quick and clean, and discrete.
But now the good Baron was trying to kill his hired help because it was the Baron’s right by law, and because he was a cautious man who no doubt wanted to erase his tracks, tie up the last loose end with and arrow in the back of Caz’s skull. Just in case.
Caz had expected as much, his clientele were always rather lethal folk, but still it had taken him by surprise how quickly things had turned from a polite breakfast to a manhunt over the soggy morning moor.
Another load of arrows were released and this time Caz felt one in his long black hair whipping like seaweed in the cold humid wind.
He did not need to look to know just how close the Baron’s men were, their splashing footsteps told him that they were right on his heels. Fuck. If only Caz could manage to put some real distance between him and the Rat Baron’s men, then he could vanish into the dense fog growing denser in the distance.
“Riders! Maaake waaaay!!”
Riders!?! Fucking mother of a cunt!!
The footsteps fell away and the dull thumping of hoves, galloping over grass and mud, replaced them.
Caz cursed his parents. The stab of icy magic in his tissue of his right leg tore at him with every painful leap. If he has been a full blood Demon, he could just sucked the life out of whatever came next, use the vitality to grow strong and fight back.
But he was not.
Cazian M. Wohlchild was a special kind of blend — a forbidden kind.
He could heal rapidly and he could be in dreams he shouldn’t, but the rest of the Red Folk traits had avoided him in birth. He did not even have the hair or teeth of the banished people.
The thumbing came closer. It synced with the beat of his heart in his ear. In a moment he would be ridden down. His body stomped to a broken bag of mush, and nobody would bat an eyelash or bury his corpse. The law stated that he should not have been allowed to live in first place, so what crime was his murder?
Hypocrites!! Asshole hypocrites the whole lot, humans, Elsalvians, Half-breeds. Everyone trying to eradicate everyone to their own gain. But Caz seemed to be the only man that understood: You cannot challenge chaos to a duel to the death because chaos will make you choke on a fish bone before you even meet on the field or reach for your sword.
It was all beyond irony.
“There it is!” New voices, horses whinnying and snorting only a few paces behind him. This was it!!
The magic inside him squirmed in wound, retracting, and then seeking his racing heart.
Caz shot a glance over his shoulder to confirm his sudden death, and indeed. His eyes met the veiny throat of a brown warhorse breathing down his neck.
Caz screamed, tripped, staggered and fell on his front, face in a black puddle.
The monster of a creature, trained to kill, would crush him!! He could already taste his own bowls being squeezed up in his throat and hear his spine snap.
Bits of other people’s dreams swirled in his last moments.
The birds. Black shapes against a blue sky, and then, a blond girl, falling through time. He had seen her smiling face crack upon the courtyard stone. Maybe it was fate. Maybe Caz was the man that deserved to die a hard death.
But no pain came.
No hurt.
No agony?
Caz tore his face free of the icy mud in a gasp. He flopped onto his back and looked at the horse. Its rider was hitting it with the spores, kicking and furiously whipping the tethers, trying to make it go. But the beast had frozen in a docile stance. It gently shook its head.
And then Caz saw the rest of the horses did the same. War machines turned into mild giants. The other riders were equally perplexed, equally furious and violent with their horses.
Caz sat up slowly.
“What…” he lifted his hand, hesitantly reaching out in front of him, reaching inside the minds around him. The riders fell silent too. Slouching in their saddles and faces going blank.
Dream or non-dream, chaos or order, bird or horse, or man.
No… It was not usually like this for Caz.
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Ciao
