Phoenix: Paying the Devil Part 3

The Duke has seen his last sunset and death stands in awe of it

Nesma stopped her bike on top of a hill looking back over the flat land. She could see farther on this hill than she had ever seen on most planets. The desert went on until the sun sallow it all up, and the four towns to the east doted the ground. The orange and red of the yawning sun painted everything before her. She glanced up once to see the coming of the stars on a moonless night and smiled at it.

                “He knows we are coming,” Zisbuz said from the rock above her.

                Nesma glanced up at her oldest friend, a tall man with a sturdy body, and said nothing. He would have made Kay look like a rut, but Kay wouldn’t have carried too much about Zisbuz's height or the mass of his arms. He would have been stun white at the sight of the lion head man, who’s fur was snow white and pricing red eyes. Scars painted Zisbuz face from his time in the Imperial Special Forces, a mark of each and every battle he had been in over his military career. The Imperial Special Forces gave the Lyrian the boot after he couldn’t handle the stress anymore, not caring or thinking about how they put him into the pits of Hell, and then ordered him to fight his way out.

                The Lyrian didn’t have many of their kin left in the stars, several scattered clans, but no standing civilization, and yet, they made great warriors. They were quick, powerful, deadly, and didn’t have a good moral compass at the end of the day.

                It made them great mercenaries as well.

                Nesma turned back to the plantation down in a small valley. It almost looked to be a small town itself but lived in by slaves, masters, and the Duke. He had a small family in the house at the center of the whole plantation; a wife, one son, and a daughter, from what they had been told about the monster. She still had a hard time with the knowledge. How could some love him?

                The wife had to know what the Duke did to his slaves. The way he used them for experiments to see how much suffering someone could handle before they die. He would sell off the female to anyone who wanted them, no matter the age, and no matter if they came back in one piece.

                And somehow, someone loved him enough to give him children.

                She wondered if he loved them. It doesn’t matter if they did love him; the job was the job.

                Either one of them knew what they were going to do with the family. They weren’t paid to kill the family, Nesma wouldn’t have taken the job if it had been a card on the table, but the question still remained, what to do with them?

                “Does he have a ship?” Nesma asked.

                “Yes, there is a small jumper on the far side of the complex,” Zisbuz said. “Looks as if it is heavily guarded.”

                “Is the ship big enough for the Duke and his family?” Nesma asked, watching lights boom to life on the ground of the Duke. His guards had been put on alert, but Nesma knew most of those men down there wouldn’t stick around in a drag-out fight. They weren’t getting paid enough to die for the Duke when they knew the Duke genuinely didn’t care about their lives.

                “Oh, yeah,” Zisbuz said, lowing the binoculars. “You think about letting them get to it?”

                “Them, not the Duke,” Nesma said. “We force him out, make him run, and get him at the ship.”

                “There is a lot of guns down there,” Zisbuz said, putting the binoculars back to his eyes.

                “Any idea who they are?” Nesma asked.

                “Does it matter?” He asked. “It is still a problem for us.”

                “Let’s hope they run,” Nesma said, looking back at the last rays of the sunlight before the night took over the whole of the world. She liked the night more than the day, but the sunsets were nice here on this planet. She still felt safe in the darkness; it had been that way for a long time in her life. The darkness hid her from everyone giving her a cloak to slice the throats of her foes.

                The darkness was the only reason she lived now. She used it to kill her masters back before she was free. One at a time, she sunk in the dark, taking her time with the masters who used her like a doll. When the sun rose again, she was dripping in their blood but free from her duty as a slave.

                She didn’t ask to be a slave, nor was she born into it. She had been born into a great house, but when the Kuhtall Elders were told her family was witches, the house was burnt to the ground. All the men of her family were killed slowly over four days, the older women shot right out, and the younger ones, like her, were sold to the pleasure houses. She had never found her other three sisters.

                None of her family dear practice the dead magic of her people, and it had been a ploy for one of the Elders to take their wealth.

                And one day, she would make them pay.

                Slowly, and painfully, but she would make them pay.

                Yes, the night is my alley. She grinned at the last bit of sunlight, looking back at the Duke’s home, knowing he would never see another sunrise.

                “What’s the plan, boss?” Zisbuz asked, looking down at her. “How do we flush him out?”

                “You still have your bombs?” Nesma asked.

                “Yeah,” Zisbuz said, smiling.

                “Set them near the house, try to take out some of the guards,” Nesma ordered, “while I get some of the slaves to start fighting back.”

                “I’m going to lose my guns, huh?” Zisbuz said, frowning.

                “Hopefully not,” Nesma said, starting up her bike.

                “I want my guns back,” Zisbuz said, tossing his bag of weapons down to her. “I mean it; I want them all back.”

Author's Note

If you had made it this far, then I appreciate it, and before you start to tear my work apart (which doesn’t bother me too much), let me explain something. The most common critique I see is about my spelling and grammar. It is an understandable critique, and I do not blame you for pointing it out. After all, spelling and grammar are the tools in which we use to craft our work, like a paintbrush or a chisel. The artist must know how to use these tools well, but like an artist who has a tremble in their hand's somethings will never be perfect.
My tremble in my hand is caused by my dyslexia. It is something, no matter how much I learn, study, or works on, it will never go away. It is the reason you will find a good bit of spelling and grammar mistakes in my work. I ask you to keep this fact when you are about to write your critique.
Also, I feel the need to point this out, this website is like a journal for me. A messy journal I used to work out problems in my stories or to simply warm up before digging into my novels. I do not hire an editor for the work here. I do not spend hours and days pouring over these stories to make them perfect, that energy is saved for the project I plan on taking to market. Everything on this website is my world-building exercise or sketches for other projects.
I do hope you enjoy my work, but this website is not a publishing house for me, and it shouldn’t be for you either. Something to keep in mind as you write your critique.