Season of Sacrifice (Blood of Azure Book 1) Jonathan Michael (red novels .txt) 📖

without stopping. Coloss! He chases after Zoie now. Maybe he was never chasing the assassin. Coloss scoops her over his shoulder and hurdles through the forest in his ape fashion.

I don’t know who this man is, or what his plans are, but I know I don’t want to tangle with him any longer.

The man rises to his feet several paces away from me, and I follow suit. Except…I stumble right back to the ground. My entire body is numb. This isn’t right. I can’t let this villain succeed. Great heroes save the day. They don’t crumble beneath the villain.

My will takes over.

I make another attempt while he remains disoriented. I rise to my feet. It feels odd, almost as if I am floating, but my legs are functioning—I simply can’t feel them.

I glance at Helios with a desire to help him. I cannot linger, however. Helios is a resilient beast. He’s not the one who needs me. Instead, I race through the forest in the direction of Coloss and Zoie as fast as my legs will allow.

The assassin, still gathering his wits, is in no hurry to pursue us.

The ape leads us back to his great fig tree, in which none of the other assassins remain. They’ve cleared out. What remains in place of the chaos is even more disturbing. I want to collapse to my knees and wretch the nauseating feeling from my stomach, but I hold strong.

“What have they done?” Zoie exhales as Coloss sets her to her feet. “They’re…dead. All of them,” she whispers.

Zoie allows herself to collapse. A collage of bodies covers the ground. Her kin, an entire village of people, strewn about everywhere. Some, bloodied and dismantled. Others, seemingly intact but lifeless all the same. There is no hope of survival for any of them.

The stairs climbing the cliff are littered with corpses as well, and the wall itself has been stained a chilling dark red. Just as the creep said he was going to do, the wall satisfies its name now.

I shed away my pride, allowing myself to collapse beside her and embrace her. Tears flow freely down her cheeks as I battle my own from breaking loose. I don’t say anything because it will only be worse than the silence. The quiet, chilling aftermath of a village massacre.

Coloss startles the two of us with a sudden burst of rage. He beats his chest rampantly while bellowing a massive howl that resonates throughout the wood. There isn’t any movement in his tree. All the siamangs are perched throughout, but none move. Coloss rushes to his kin and throws his fists at the trunk in a violent fury, sending an unsettling reverberation to the tips of the branches, shaking the entire tree. Two of the apes fall from the branches above, lifeless.

Squirrels frolic about the madness, hopping from carcass to carcass. They’ve lost their family as well. These assassins have destroyed more than the lives of humans; they have taken it beyond the quarrels of man; they have destroyed the entire livelihood of this forest. The Redcliffe Village and the forest were one. All its inhabitants interlinked in some way, and the assassins have stolen that.

“Let me free you from the pain,” a maddening voice offers from behind.

Both of us turn to see a hooded ashen man standing in front of his entire gang of assassins. The same man who was in pursuit of Zoie. The same man who murdered Fairview. Among them are beasts of great mass. Two assassins are mounted on rhinos. Another sits upon a giant brown bear.

How in Susy’s four hells did they manage to tame a bear?

Then, a massive winged beast appears from the shadows and sits like a dog amidst the marauders. Its wings stretch, then curl into its abdomen. But it’s a wolf. With wings.

“How satisfying it is to see the sorrow pour from your eyes.” He pauses for a moment. A sinister grin appearing from within his hood. “You think me mad? Maybe. I have been known to make some radical and borderline maniacal decisions. But—”

“Who are you?” I step in front of Zoie.

“Rude, lad. First you interfere with my pursuit of your girlfriend there, then you interrupt me while I speak. Is there something wrong with you?”

“You murdered an entire village!” I shout back at him. There’s something strange about the man. Something off-kilter. His skin looks cold and clammy. The scarring lacing his body looks fresh like open wounds, but there is no blood. It makes him look like…like a corpse.

“Not yet I haven’t.” His brow scrunches as he looks at me with concern, as if I’m an idiot. “Two remain. Are you lacking your wits, lad? Do you not know how to count? Let me put you out of your misery.”

“Zoie, run,” I whisper. The same way Fairview instructed me when this man first stepped out of the shadows.

I pull her to her feet and nudge her. “But…” She hesitates.

“Zoie, go! I’ll distract them.” She looks at me, her beautiful green eyes leaking sorrow down her flushed cheeks. It’s heart-wrenching. I want to tell her everything will be alright, but it hasn’t been up to this point, and I don’t know if I can make it any better. She knows if she flees the odds of seeing me again are slim. She’s stronger than me. I’ve known that since the day she first approached me. Zoie wraps her arms around me tight, then takes off toward the crossing.

“Let’s finish this. You and me,” I say to him. He laughs. I don’t blame him. I have no idea how to stop him, and he has an entire mob of assassins with him.

“Alright, lad. You and me. Men, your task is complete. Go pilfer the village for whatever your heart desires. I haven’t had my share of the bloodshed