Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Grayson Sinclair (book recommendations website .TXT) 📖

eyes rolled back into his head, and he stopped struggling. He died a slow, painful death. Unable to even cry out, as if his vocal cords were removed.

Richard was dead, his eyes staring glassily at something not meant for mortals. What the hell!

“What the actual hell just happened?”

I looked around frantically, trying to see if someone was nearby hiding behind an invisibility potion or illusion spell, but there was nothing. Nothing I could see at any rate.

Godsdamn it! I slammed my fist into the grass. He had been so close to answering me! Now we had only an incomplete gurgle for a name and the fact he was male. Not much to go on at all. A sigh escaped my lips. Nothing I could do about it. Can’t wring answers from a dead man.

This complicated matters to a frustrating degree. I wanted answers, but I’d have to go about it the hard way. I’m sure some of our underworld contacts could help out. I thought, but that was a problem for future Duran; present Duran needed a shower and a nap. My battle fatigue was back at zero, but when my potion sickness kicked in, I’d be bedridden for a while.

“D!” a voice shouted from down the hill.

I turned around to find myself alone on the hill. Everyone else must have left when I started working on Richard.

“What?”

“Slight issue here,” Wilson yelled back.

The silence stretched for a moment before I gestured for him to continue.

“Unless I am miscounting here, we are missing one guild member.”

Who did we miss? I did my own count to confirm. Wilson was correct. Minus the two mages and Longsword, who had all been devoured by the void golem, that left us with twelve members. Someone was missing. Who had run off or hidden?

I received my answer a moment later. A whisper sounded as someone Shadow-Walked behind me. It was one of the rogues. I turned slowly, too slowly. Pain erupted from my side as the rogue struck, ramming his dagger through my ribs, missing my heart by a fraction of an inch.

My lifeblood pooled from my armor as I backed away from him and drew my sword. My health dropped low into the yellow as I bled my life onto the ground at an alarming rate.

The rogue was quick and got in under my guard before I could stop him and ripped out his knife, still stuck in me.

I couldn’t breathe. The pain stole every ounce of oxygen from me, and I staggered, turning, and gave the rogue the opening he needed to strike.

He took it, rushing me with his dagger.

Sucking in a quick breath, I lowered my center of gravity, put most of my weight on my back foot, and lashed out with the strongest side kick, I’d ever performed.

 My kick took the rogue in the chest. Like he’d run headlong into a wall, all his momentum stopped as I drove the air from his lungs. Not wasting my opening, I stomped on his knife hand, shattering his wrist, and plunged my blade into his heart.

Rogue coughed as blood ran from his stained lips. “You and yours are doomed. You can’t stop what’s coming next. Once he has set his sights on something, he gets what he wants…” he trailed off as death took him.

Who’s coming? I thought as I stumbled, my injuries finally caught up with me, and I crashed to the dirt as my blood loss took hold.

Coming close to death always brought my thoughts around to my family. Flashes of those happy days before the Night-Fall, before the apocalypse, ran through my head.

We didn’t have much, but we always had enough, though Mom and Dad usually worked early and stayed late on weekdays. It fell to me to make sure Micah was taken care of and up for school in the morning.

Micah and I had been inseparable in those days, despite him being eight years younger than me. We spent pretty much all of our time together. He became the mascot for our group of friends, who loved him almost as much as I did. He was a hyper kid, but it was never annoying. He talked so fast sometimes that it was hard to follow, but it was adorable. Micah was my best friend in the world. And I failed him. I failed all of them.

“Run! Go now!” my mother screamed, brandishing a revolver, aiming at the ghoul devouring what remained of our father.

It was a creature from my worst nightmares. Humanoid, but wrong. It crawled on all fours, its too- pale, thick, leathery body hunched over my Dad as it tore into his body and sucked long strips of flesh down its gullet.

I gripped Micah’s hand as hard as I could, ignoring his pained protests. The ghoul was focused on its meal, ignoring my mother for now, which changed as she opened fire. The first shot took it in the neck, burrowing in its dense flesh. Shockingly white blood dripped down its pallid skin like a glass of spilled milk.

Three more shots in rapid succession did little damage. A few more spurts of blood, nothing more. It opened its wide, angular face and let out a pained shriek that sent waves of fear through our minds. Mother stood steady and fired twice, finally hitting the thing’s head. One bullet took its jaw off, spilling hundreds of small, needlepoint silver teeth to the ground. The final shot went through its eye. White blood splattered in the air, and the ghoul dropped to the ground. Dead.

My mother stood still, in shock, pulling the trigger again and again. Click, click, click. Both of us moved to go to her and run from our home, our sanctuary that had been corrupted. As I stepped on the hardwood, my footsteps echoed in the quiet house.