Chaos Lives in Everything - 1. Chapter 1

From where he stood on top of the mountain he could see the vast harsh icy landscape in every direction. In the distance was the ruins of a desecrated village: straw-roofed huts were engulfed by vicious blazes that sent spirals of smoke towards the sky, carrying with it the scent of blood, burning flesh and death. Corpses were strewn everywhere like forgotten dolls. Many had been slayed by his own sword, human and fae alike.

He had stood at the top of this mountain many times in the past and would many more times in the future. Each time it was always the same, never different. He always had the feeling that something vital was missing, the answer to a riddle. A part of him that was forever lost. A realization danced at the edge of his mind, taunting him. He was close to realizing the one answer. If only he could just grasp it! Grasping the answer would be like discovering the greatest treasure. But already he knew that he would never find it and that was what made it a nightmare.

In one hand he held his sword. Even with his armor on the wind seemed to pass right through him, slicing at his flesh like a thousand sharp knives. His skin was numb. Though he knew it was a dream it felt real-painfully real. The blade was covered in gore. He held it before him as if preparing for battle but there was no enemy in sight. There was nothing in this barren wasteland, nothing but snow and blood. A single drop of blood formed at the end of the dangerously sharp tip of the blade. Slowly it plummeted towards the ground and splashed across the snow.

The elf jolted awake and grabbed the dagger that he kept on the bedside table. His teeth were clenched and his eyes gleamed a pale metallic grey, searching for a danger that wasn’t there. His knees sunk into the mattress. He looked like a feral animal, his muscles tense beneath his smooth milky skin. Cold sweat dripped down from in between his shoulder blades. It was the ringing of his cell phone that brought reality sliding back into place. Slowly his muscles relaxed and he realized that he was not on top of the mountain but the bedroom of his penthouse apartment.

He aanswered the phone with a silky, “Hello?”

He already knew that it was Sergeant Bryan Reynolds, chief of the Roc City Police Department, because he always wheezed when he talked on the phone.

“What took you so long?” Reynolds barked. Skold had to pull the phone away from his extra-sensitive ears. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last five minutes!”

Skold sighed. “What do you want, Reynolds.”

“I have a job for you.”

“Reynolds, I’m a bounty hunter. I kill people, you know that.”

“I have something for you to kill.”

“You do?” Skold asked hopefully.

“A troll,” said Reynold.

Skold’s eyes narrowed. “A troll?”

“Yes, it’s here in our city.”

“Oh yeah. Look out the window. We’ve shut the whole city down.”

Skold climbed out of bed. The darkness wrapped around him like a cloak as he moved with a cat-like grace. He padded down the long hallway into the living room. He owned a large penthouse apartment on the southern outskirts of Downtown Roc City. The floor was tile, the walls the color of French Vanilla ice cream, the trim a coffee brown. In the living room was a large fireplace.

The furniture was black and made of plush leather. The entertainment center was complete with a plasma screen TV, Blu Ray Player and six disc stereo set with Surround Sound Speakers hooked up to everything.

The best part of the apartment was the window that took up one whole window. It overlooked the entire city so that Skold could see the entire city: skyscrapers, office buildings, and the little maze-like network of streets. Normally the streets were overrun with pedestrians, and taxis, buses, and vehicles, their exhaust pipes seeping out with poisonous gases that were slowly killing the world, eating up the ozone layer.

Tonight the moon hung high and full in the sky, looking pregnant and bright. The moonlight bathed Skold’s body, his skin seeming to reflect it like a glass surface. His hair was long and hung down to his shoulders, a natural white-blonde color. His cheek bones were high and his mouth was wide. His shoulders were small and the ridges of his ribs shown through his skin. For an elf he was short making him look nonthreatening. This was a misconception that often proved to be fatal.

Rain pelted the window, followed by a wind that howled like a phantom, warning the world that autumn was about to come to an end and winter to begin. It rained nine months of the year in Roc City. In a few weeks the city would be under the wrath of heavy snowfalls, blizzards, and mountains of snow.

Tonight, however the city was different. The streets were empty. Barren. Not a car or a soul in sight. Several military helicopters hovered over the streets, their spotlights aglow.

“And you want me to kill this troll?”

“Not alone. I have a SWAT team of twenty-four of my best officers with me, including myself. The thing came from underground in the subway station. We have the it trapped in the subway systems. But my team isn’t qualified to take down a fucking troll. How the hell did it get in the city? I thought they stuck to the mountains.”

We also don’t have the kind of silver that it takes to kill it. You do and you’re a hell of a lot more experienced than we are.”

Troll skin was extremely thick. The only thing that could penetrate it and kill the troll, was Elven steel.

Skold’s mouth split into a very wide grin. “Sounds like fun. There’s sure to be blood, death and mayhem. You know I am.”

Without looking away from the window he ended the call. Skold drifted back towards the hallway and stepped through the first door on the right. The room was large with two bookshelves on both sides filled with fat leather bound volumes from end to end. At the very end of the room was a long rectangular metal safe. Once Skold put in the five digit access code to get inside the two metal doors slid open. Inside was every gun, from handguns and shotguns to submachine guns, daggers, throwing stars and grenades. The most valuable item within the safe, however, was none of the weapons but the armor that hung neatly in the center.

The armor was made of the finest gold, the breast plate and arms encrusted with the finest sapphires and rubies as was the sword next to it. The handle of the sword curved inward slightly as did the blade. Looking upon the blade brought back memories, memories that were both nostalgic and tantalizing.

For centuries he had preserved these items, treating them with the utmost care, taking them with him wherever he went. But it had been centuries since he had worn the armor, centuries since he had wielded the sword. It was not for materialistic value that he kept these items and by habit Skold was not a sentimental creature. Most fae weren’t. When immortal you found that everything around you was temporary and easily replaced. But the sword and the armor was the only artifact that he had to remind him of who he was, his past. For his past had been stolen from him and in its place there was a black crevasse. Most fae were unmarked by scars; they healed faster than mortals. But Skold had two scars, one of the flesh and the other of the soul.

For a moment more Skold stared at these items, a longing gleaming in his eyes. As he did so he reached in between his legs and felt the long jagged scar where his sexual reproductive organs should have been but wasn’t. Then he reached for his weapons, and started to prepare for the battle with the troll.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Skold was maneuvering his sleek, black, 2017 Mustang through the night. The engine growled like a hungry beast, tearing apart the hollow silence, filling the desolate streets with noise and life. He passed an old church, the stone greasy and slick from the endless rivers of rain. The windows glowed from inside with an eerie, pale, yellow light. A few blocks from here was the Roc City Art Museum. An article in the Roc City Tribune had been published, stating that Rick Hammond, the British curator, had opened a new exhibit, featuring art that depicted the days of the Black Plague. Out of curiosity Skold had gone to see the exhibit and had not been impressed. He'd never had much of an interest in art anyway. He had witnessed the Black Plague with his own eyes; the art did not give what had happened any justice. There had been many casualties, both fae and human alike. The plague had almost wiped out the entire human race, pushing them on the brink of extinction.

Finally he came to Slope Avenue and parked next to Darwin’s Ice Cream Shop (Roc City’s personal version of Baskin Robbins) and Felicity Used Book Store, a place that sold cheap paperbacks. It was here that Reynolds’s SWAT team waited, clustered in the middle of the street, dressed in black armor, looking stiff and toylike. The assault rifles they held looked like they were made of a rubber material. a child’s plaything. Still jagged cracks of lightning lit up the sky.

It’s the perfect weather for a night of chaos, he thought

Skold got out of the car and trekked through the rain; Reynolds stood in the middle of the street, dressed for combat and tapping his foot against the asphalt impatiently. A middle-aged man, Reynolds stood at six foot even with muddy brown eyes and a beard that was starting to show plenty of grey. His belly was round in the middle. He was the type of man who did not scare easily and when he was scared he rarely let it show.

At forty-nine, just on the cusp of turning fifty, with twenty-five of those years being devoted to the RCPD, Reynolds liked to believe that he had seen it all: robberies, domestic violence situations, murders that would make anyone’s stomach turn. He thought that if there was anything that scared Reynolds it was Skold. The very sight of him made his blood run cold and his bones ache with dread. Of course Reynolds would never give the elf the satisfaction of knowing it.

The air seemed to grow even colder, the rain more merciless. His team stared at Skold with open expressions of fear. They were already scared, already confused for they had been dragged from their beds and their families to deal with this emergency. None of them had ever seen a troll. Trolls were hideous creatures. They often dwelled in the dark, dank caverns of the mountains well away from populated areas. Every now and then there were stories sprinkled throughout history of some poor lost soul stumbling upon a nest of them. What happened to that poor, unfortunate soul was most unpleasant indeed. No one had seen a troll in this populated of an area in centuries, in a time when the world was nothing but snow and blood and death.

The very sight of Skold only made the fear and discomfort they felt more palpable. For everyone had heard stories of Skold, the bounty hunter. Oh yes, there were stories about Skold. Nightmarish stories. And if you needed testimony you only had to see the mangled remains of those he dealt with. To Reynolds he was nothing more than a last resort, a lost cannon that he only liked to let loose when there was no other means to an end. There were other words that could be used to describe Skold. Monster and sociopath was just a couple of them.

The fact that Reynolds had hired the likes of Skold had been highly controversial in the past, both on a professional basis and a moral one. But on several occasions Skold’s “services” had proven to be very useful: mostly in hostage and terrorist situations. Reynolds knew that Skold like to kill things, knew of his murderous nature and had seen it in action. And he was smart enough to know to use it to his advantage.

Skold glanced at the SWAT team dismissively. He could smell their fear, the way the very sight of them made their hearts beat double time. Part of him felt satisfied and honored. And the other part of them was already annoyed with them.

“All geared up and ready to rock and roll?” Reynolds asked gruffly. He hid his fear well behind a mask of indifference.

“You know I am.” Skold wore a black vinyl vest underneath a long black leather trench coat, black leather pants and boots. He did not shiver from the chill of the rain or even seem to notice it. His face was completely calm and relaxed betraying no hint of emotion but if you looked into his eyes you would see excitement and bloodlust, not fear.

“You know most of them if not all of them, including yourself, are going to die don’t you?” Skold asked Reynolds.

“We’re prepared to take that risk. It’s in our job description. I’ve already given them their orders: to stay out of your way and let you do most of the work.”

“That’s a good idea.” Skold smirked. “I’ll kill them if they don’t.”

Skold thought he saw Reynolds give a little jerk and knew that it had nothing to do with the cold-not this time anyway. Reynolds feared him just like everyone else and knowing this brought Skold satisfaction. Skold swiftly and without hesitation towards the dark subway entrance. Without waiting for the SWAT team he disappeared into the darkness, seeming to become one with it.