Adapt
ADAPT
The Scourge Wars Book 2
D.W. BELFIELD
Table of Contents
Copyright/Disclaimer
Acknowledgement
Prologue: The Hero Mourns
Chapter 01: The Heavy Crown
Chapter 02: The Patriarch Plots
Chapter 03: The First Clutch
Chapter 04: The Faithful Spy
Chapter 05: The Cult Strikes
Chapter 06: The Chieftain Lives
Chapter 07: The First Flight
Chapter 08: The Circle Convenes
Chapter 09: The Fun Begins
Chapter 10: The Raider Rises
Chapter 11: The Cult Returns
Chapter 12: The Immortal War
Chapter 13: The Village Burns
Chapter 14: The New Consort
Chapter 15: The Crystal Cathedral
Chapter 16: The Lightning Strikes
Chapter 17: The Siege Commences
Chapter 18: The Meat Grinder
Chapter 19: The Grind Continues
Chapter 20: The Next Assault
Chapter 21: The Corruption Strikes
Chapter 22: The New Scourge
Chapter 23: The Beast Below
Chapter 24: The Soul Anchor
Chapter 25: The Healer Heals
Chapter 26: The Tower Falls
Chapter 27: The Mystic Dwells
Chapter 28: The General Arrives
Epilogue: The Scion Returns
Overcome: The Scourge Wars Book 3
Grow: A Somnium Web Serial
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Copyright/Disclaimer
Copyright © 2019 by Derek W. Belfield
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This is a dark fantasy novel. It contains an anti-hero lead, graphic violence, explicit language, and sexual themes. This novel is not for the faint of heart or those who shirk at the thought of violent deaths, chest-bursting parasites, brutal executions, sex, swearing—lots of swearing—and/or strong male/female characters. If you either skipped Book 1 or believe the pure awesomeness of Book 1 is changing, consider yourself warned. The madness has only just begun.
Cover Illustration Copyright © 2019 by Paoli Torres
Cover design by Paoli Torres
Editing by Lucas Luvith, Matt Conrad, & Sammy
Acknowledgement
The writing of a second book is much different than the first. In some ways its easier, but in many ways it isn’t. In this book, I was more private, I didn’t share my ideas so easily nor did I share it online as much as I did the first. I put words on the page in a mostly silent hope that the readers would enjoy the story enough to read the second book at all. In that spirit, there are a few people I need to acknowledge because like I said in the first novel, no book is written alone.
To my wife, thank you for your patience and understanding as I tried to reach word counts late into the evening and left you to fall asleep in bed alone. I love you and I appreciate your support through this writing process.
To my friends and family, especially my parents, thank you for being my biggest fans. I don’t mean how many copies of the book you buy, or the amount of reviews you give, but thank you for believing in me.
To my editors, thank you for taking the time and the effort out of your own lives to make sure my story became everything it could hope to be. Thanks for being friends, confidants, advisors, and teachers rolled into one. I hope that one day we’ll be sitting in our own indie press discussing these first mangled books and how far we’ve come since that day.
Finally, I wanted to say thank you to my Patrons from Patreon and my readers from Royal Road, your feedback and your support is what helped make book one a success and book two a reality. I can’t wait to hear what you think about this final product.
See you in the next book,
D.W. Belfield
Prologue: The Hero Mourns
Sumnu Stonebringer had never felt agony like this before. His whole life, he'd been a warrior his entire adult life; he was a Guardian. It was an occupation that carried its share of risks. He had broken bones, been gored, stabbed, cut, burned, and suffered grave injuries in the pursuit of honor and recognition. His body used to be a litany of scars chronicling his near-death experiences. Since his transformation to a Guardian of the Scourge, those scars had faded away.
The blood loss he was experiencing made him light-headed.
I miss my scars. This body is too perfect. The thought crossed Sumnu's mind like a drifting cloud.
His introspective musings weren't coming to him easily and it felt like each thought had to travel a long distance before arriving. He considered that maybe it was the fever. He felt unbearably warm, his flesh felt like it was on fire, and he came to the realization that something was pressing him down into the earth. He tried to open his eyes–one side simply refused because it was caked close with blood and dirt. The other creaked open. Even the sliver of vision that broke the blackness was enough to tell him that he was lying underneath a dark and dense mass. He grunted and used his abs to push the air into his muscles as his arms screamed in agony. It took him a full half a minute to regain enough strength to heft the weight off of him.
With his arms shaking in exhaustion, he pushed the object on top of his body until it slid to the side like a sack filled with sand. Sumnu laboriously lifted himself into a sitting position. He needed to put his arms on either side to support his muscular frame. Surrounding him on all sides were the corpses of his fellows. Their lithe and deadly bodies were mixed in with the comparatively crude figures of their human enemies. They resembled priceless works of art mixed with refuse.
It's a shame to see them this way. He lamented. These were his people, and he felt guilty at seeing their unmoving forms on the ground. He studied his surroundings, but exhaustion caused him to move much slower than normal. Where they had once valiantly fought at the threshold to the temple of Lighthaven, now unremarkable forest stretched in every direction. A startling mix of unease and abandonment swept him as he marveled at the absense of buildings. They had simply disappeared like like a mirage in the desert. Sumnu had never seen the desert of course, but the elders told their stories, from sand-filled wastelands to a bountiful paradise filled with clear waters, he had always imagined it to be a magical place. All of his friends felt the same of the stories told from elder to child, and he had grown up on such tales. It was dry and warm with treasure buried underneath every step if one simply tried to find it.
My thoughts are drifting again, Sumnu noted. He morbidly began to search the faces of the fallen for recognizable features. There's Mozus Fireward. A couple years ago during the dry season, lightning had struck one of their treetop homes. Flames had raced over the tree. Mozus braved the danger and climbed up the tree with his bare hands as embers drifted around him like deadly fireflies. He had charged into the blaze and saved the life of a woman and her two children. He had been a true brother and friend beyond earthly value. Now he's gone. Tears came unbidden to Sumnu's eyes eyes, even at his age the loss of good friends who ate over fires was painful to him. He used a blood and dirt-stained hand to bring Mozus' panicked eyes to their final rest before moving on. He passed over Mozus and searched for other people he knew.
His eyes felt drawn to a figure separate from the rest of them. Sumnu
recognized the set of the man's shoulders and the clothing that lay in blood-stained tatters. A sound of terrible regret marked by subtle grief came from Sumnu's lips. 'Lucedus, if anyone were to have perished, it should have been me. Not him. F or some reason, he had hoped, perhaps deluding himself in his worn state, that the scholar had found his way free of the attack. Out of all the people he had shared meals with, spoken with, and gotten to know over his many years, there had been few who deserved to pass on of venerable age than him. Especially now, when his skills had finally found their place. The realization of the situation began to grasp upon Sumnu's mind as his eyes were swept by a field of carnage. Where heroes died. But now, he had to be sure, and he had to get moving. He tried to rise to his feet and a piercing knife of pain radiated from one of his legs.
The sudden jolt of pain confused him and he looked down to discover that his left leg had been broken. It wasn't a mortal break—bone hadn't sheared through his flesh or ruptured an artery. As a warrior, he knew that breaks in the leg were dangerous. A wrong movement could send shards of bone slashing through life-giving arteries, and he would bleed out and die before he could rectify his mistake. He knew that if he had the choice, he should never move a broken leg unbraced or untreated, but his warrior's spirit refused to break his gaze from the favored servant of his Lords. He had to see it for himself, damn the consequences could come after.
He dragged his exhausted body over the corpses of friend and foe alike, the pain fading as he practiced the warrior's breath. Strength pushed into his broken muscles and pressed on. The high of the warrior's spirit began to flow into his veins, further dulling the pain. By the time he reached the Governor's body, the pain had faded to a dull murmor and the ringing of acute awareness rang in his ears. He had become even more covered in gore, blood of both his enemies and kin alike. It was not a new concept to him, but his hand shook as he reached out to Merus' thin shoulder and rolled him on his back. He had not known him like a brother, but Sumnu knew just how important his comrade lying before him was for everything he now held dear, and, as Merus' unseeing eyes met the sky, Sumnu wept. They were of grief, sadness, regret, and filled with an unsatiable rage. A rage against his enemy, to Merus for dying early, but most importantly at himself for not being there when it mattered. His roar of anger echoed in the trees for a moment before the aged soldier regained what he could of his calm. A comrade's dignity came first, and revenge could wait. It was in that moment, Sumnu knew his world would forever be changed.
Merus wrapped himself in a figurative cloak of self-exile. He felt disconnected and separated from the rest of the village, and so he imposed that sense of not belonging on himself. He had a hard time relating to people, his intelligence and scholarly pursuits marked him as different from everyone else. Sumnu knew that despite Merus feeling like an outcast, the entire village was proud of him. Out of all the Guardians, they could sense that he, and only he, truly cared for his fellow elves with every fiber of his heart, even if he'd deny it to himself. More so, he cared about the Wyldwood itself. For him, he recognized the Wyldwood for what it always was—a prison as much as it was a sanctuary, and it was Merus that that the people expected to be the one to set his people free.
Sumnu knew that may not have been the case, he had known of the elder's plots and schemes long before the other elves had known, but Merus' very spirit gave the people the thinnest of lifelines. He kept the idea of freedom alive even though he refused to recognize it for himself. Merus was convinced that he would find a way to set his people free. But, more than anything, the horrific acts that they had all endured as Guardians had hurt Merus deeply, and the grimace and emotion he carried with him afterwards, his silent despair and desperation, kept others from falling to the same depths. It kept them from feeling alone, to have a figure like themselves to relate to.
Sumnu had lived long enough to recognize the importance of such a symbol, which was why he had convinced the elders to leave him be and continue as he pleased. Merus was not the only one with a silent desperation to escape the Wyldwood, but he was the only one the people could place their hope in. Like a prisoner rattling a cup against the bars of his cage. It wasn't as if he knew that it wouldn't have an effect on his imprisonment, it was the fact he kept banging in defiance that mattered. That defiant nature was so precious, now more than ever, and the tears streaming down Sumnu's face has he closed Merus' eyes told more stories than he could ever hope to.
He had been a prisoner rattling his cup against the bars of his cage—knowing it would have no effect on his imprisonment but unable to stop trying.
If you had asked anyone on the night of the Reaping who was most likely to bring about the prophesied change that the elders always hailed upon the horizon, it would be, to a person, Merus who the common people believed would do it. He was sincere, determined, and kind. Perhaps not suited to be chief, but sometimes that doesn't matter. It was that quality, to a person, they would have said Merus. His sincere desire for a better world had brought out the best in them. It was that quality that attracted the most beautiful elf in the village to be his wife. Even still, Merus had a humility that wouldn't let him accept that he earned her love with his own.
Sumnu knew that the Guardians wouldn't take Merus' death easily. It would ignite their anger, their disdain for outsiders, and their fear. If Sumnu knew Slate, the Scourge leader would use those emotions to his benefit. The Guardian didn't know what brand of monster that man with the black sword had been, but he found himself wishing an eternity in the Beyond on their entire race–he would help Slate bring it about.
Merus hadn't known it, but he had been loved. He had been needed, and losing him now would break his people's hearts even more than it had Sumnu's warrior spirit. Sumnu grieved.
He was roused from his maudlin thoughts by the howling of forest wolves. He looked up his eyes red rimmed from the tears that had stained them. His heart went cold at what he saw. All around him, wolves had appeared between the trees. They were gray with matted, dirty fur. They were large beasts, at least as tall as a grown man’s waist with massive paws and teeth to match.
The elders had said the wolves in the Wyldwood were much larger than their average counterparts. Unfortunately, Sumnu had never experienced enough of the outside world to know the difference. If smaller wolves had ventured into their part of the wood, then the larger ones likely killed them.
Sumnu rose to his feet, defiant of the pain. He grasped the sundered arm of an enemy and ripped out the bones with his claws and brute strength. In less than twenty seconds, the bones were jammed into his boots on either side of his broken leg and a torn comrade's cload bound the makeshift splint so hard that the chill of circulation loss spread into his leg. The needles told him that the pain would die, and that was a good thing. With a grunt, he stumbled, and ran, towards the wolf closest to him. His flesh and bones protested harshly but he clamped down on the pain and pushed through. He roared his defiance at the wolves, sounding like a beast himself.
The wolf in front of him snarled and launched itself at Sumnu. With a savage grin, Sumnu took the tackle and rolled with it. He avoided the snapping jaws of his opponent and got a grip around the wolf’s neck. He allowed gravity to pull them both to the ground, ensuring that he turned to land on his good leg. Using their downward force and the inertia of the wolf’s own leap, Sumnu twisted and the small bones in the canine’s neck cracked and popped as they were violently shifted from their proper configurations.
Both man and beast hit the ground but only one would live to rise again. Sumnu had been able to snap the wolf’s neck just as they planted into the earth. Sumnu quickly got to his feet again and crouched down with his arms spread wide. He didn’t have any weapons, but he had the teeth and claws of a Guardian. He wouldn’t let it end this way.
“Come on, dogs!” He snarled at the nine remaining creatures. “I won’t let you turn me into an easy meal! May I be damned to the Between if I let you eat any of my companions, either!”
br /> As if his shouting were the dinner bell, the other wolves all sprinted toward him. In this instance, their numbers were more of a detriment than an advantage. They became a whirling mass of flesh and fur. In the midst of it all, Sumnu screamed and tore at his opponents with all of the strength he could muster. He had always been large for an elf. His stature had intimidated many of his opponents. When he had been turned into a Guardian, he had grown even larger. Now he was a hulking brute and could put his significant mass to good use.
In the rolling and teeming mass of combat, they brought themselves closer to the corpses of the other Guardians. In their wake, a trail of broken dead wolves littered the ground. Sumnu hadn’t come out of the conflict uninjured either. He was covered head to toe in scratches and disfigurements that seeped viscous silver blood. His healing abilities had been super charged by his transformation to a Guardian, but even that couldn’t keep him from suffering from the fangs and claws of the wolves.
The wolves disengaged from Sumnu; their primitive brains finally realized that their numbers had been halved by the giant in front of them. Now there were only four of them. They watched the guardian as he slowly backed away from them and toward the pile of corpses.
He neared one and carefully knelt down to pick up a sword while keeping his eyes fixed on the wolves. They growled at the sight of him kneeling but none of them wanted to be the first to attack the man. Finally, a grizzled wolf, clearly older and more experienced than the others, launched himself at Sumnu and the other wolves followed.
Sumnu spun on one heel and brought his sword into a sweeping uppercut. He had timed it perfectly and the wolf’s head separated from the rest of its body. The headless body kept running, not having realized that its head was missing, while the head itself flew into the air like a morbid children’s ball. A spiraling fountain of blood ejected forcefully from the arteries in the head and painted the ground around it a vibrant crimson.