Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1)

by Scott Browder

  “It would have been so much easier on the way back, all of us together,” Chadwick continued, shaking his head. “A little something in the evening kaffen, a nice long nap, and you wake up in Nouveau Deskra.” The man’s tone was no longer pompous and self-important, and Terisa found herself immediately wishing for the annoying pervert instead of the new, colder Chadwick. Her heart froze as she saw his hand recede from his belt, a flash of gold resolving into a solid band.

  “Nessara, you can’t keep her still forever. Break her bow, if you please, and don’t lose the pieces; there’s still a bounty on it in the Empire.”

  Terisa couldn’t even voice a scream as Nessara immediately reached behind the Huntress with her free hand. She felt a surge of Mana, and heard a crackle of power and a series of popping snaps, followed by several soft thumps as her sister’s Soul Gem shattered, falling to the ground amidst splinters of witchwood.

  “A pity they only gave me the one collar.” Chadwick sighed. “It was meant for the one known as The Broken—” he nodded toward Dana—“but I suppose the Sorceress is a better choice, anyway. She can tame the rest of you once she’s nice and obedient.”

  The puffball on Morgan’s shoulder protested with sleepy wurbles as the guild representative batted it off its mistress’ shoulder with a negligent swat of his hand before looping the collar around the woman’s neck with a twist. Terisa barely noticed the Worldwalker jerk upright as it clicked, so lost was the Huntress in her own grief, and her vision blurry with tears. It had to be tears blurring her vision, because she thought she saw the woman begin to glow. Golden Collars lock down skills, I’m imagining things! Althenea! Gods, this can’t be real! Your Story wasn’t supposed to end this way! Terisa dropped to her knees, sobbing, as Nessara’s paralysis spell began to fade.

  Chadwick leered at Morgan. “Now, Sorceress , kill the others, but leave Dana alive!”

  Morgan made no move. She simply stood there, staring through the Swift Waters representative. The tattoos covering her body flared into brightness, and Terisa could feel the Mana gathering around them, even though she wasn’t a mage herself.

  “Filth.” It was barely a word, spat from between clenched teeth. The rune at the center of her chest just below and between her collarbones began pulsing—slowly at first, but then with feverish intensity. Chadwick’s expression began to falter.

  “You dare touch me,” she hissed, reaching up to grip the golden band with a hand wreathed in purple fire, “with filth !”

  The metal, quickly heating up, began to soften and run like wax before stretching away from the woman’s neck. Her expression, as she looked down at the melting artifact clenched in her hand, was one of the purest disgust, hatred, and outrage.

  This is impossible , Terisa thought to herself, staring at the spectacle before her. The Collars are absolute!

  The heat around the woman began to melt the stone under her feet, and the others around the cookfire began to scramble away. Foz, recovering faster than the humans or the dwarf, dragged Biggles with him as he rolled away from the heat. Dana’s suit shifted automatically into defensive mode, shields springing up as she stumbled back on six legs once more. Terisa had much higher resistances than anyone else in the Expedition. More experience, more travels. She’d lived a long Story, filled with adventures and wonders as much as with conflict and strife.

  Her resistances started failing her as her skin began to blister, and her wyvern-hide leathers and armor began to smoke and char. Terisa had fought in wars against mages, and against golems. She’d seen terrible things, and seen people die in horrible ways. She’d thought she understood fire. She was wrong.

  Morgan stood there, chest heaving and body tense, with hatred etched into every line on her face. Her body was hardly visible through the violet inferno she was cloaked in, and she stared daggers at Chadwick as he stumbled backward. The man activated the defensive enchantments woven into his rings and bracelets as he turned to run. Mana surged like a tidal wave, and Terisa could dimly hear the other people in the camp begin to scream as she dropped to the ground, covering the remains of her sister’s gem with her own body.

  She saw the Sorceress raise her head to the sky, violet flames shooting up around her as she gave one simple command.

  “Burn.”

  And the sky obeyed.

  Third InterLulude: Filth!

  Lulu knew something was terribly wrong.

  Someone had stepped forward from the friendly gathering around the mealtime campfire and sent out a pulse that had pushed all but the strongest into unconsciousness.

  The scrubby had only had the barest forewarning, and the man’s magic had a strange tang she couldn’t identify—oily, greasy, forceful, wrong—and couldn’t counter. Lulu struggled to retain her own consciousness.

  She hung onto Morgan’s shoulder by instinct, her mind screaming Danger! and Fight it! even as her body slipped closer and closer to sleep. Beneath her she could feel her mistress swaying on her feet, and the situation suddenly seemed even more grim. Desperately the scrubby tried to do something, anything, but could only muster a weak and sleepy purble.

  Even her mind seemed to slow down, sinking toward sleep. The slick-feeling coils of magic grew more intense as the dangerous man stepped closer, and though Lulu itched to try cleaning him, she still found herself unable to do anything but watch. Chadwick batted her off her mistress’ shoulder with a casual flick of a hand. The scrubby flared with indignation at being treated so casually, but still couldn’t manage more than a quiet wurble in retaliation.

  Things were going horribly, terribly, unequivocally wrong.

  With neither skill nor natural grace to aid her, Lulu fell to the ground and rolled briefly before coming to a stop. As though from a great distance, she watched as the man who wielded oily magic reached up and placed something golden around Morgan’s neck. The feeling of forceful greasiness in the air multiplied a hundredfold as something went to work on her mistress, and for a moment, Lulu thought all hope was lost.

  Then Morgan’s purple skin markings flared with their usual glow, and hope returned. With it came a single word from her mistress’ lips.

  Filth.

  Lulu had lived alongside Morgan for many months now, and had experienced many messes. From icky and gross to disgusting and sticky and yuck, and through to foul and slimy and even contaminated, the loyal scrubby had battled them all. Or at least she thought she had.

  Never before had an expression of dirtiness erupted from Morgan’s lips like a vulgar oath.

  Never before had a mess caused such levels of disgusted outrage.

  Never before had her mistress seemed so very, very angry.

  The new monosyllabic term raced around Lulu’s mind, allowing her to fight off the impending urge to sleep just a little bit longer.

  Filth.

  Filth was clearly bad. Filth deserved to be destroyed. Filth needed to be cleaned.

  Lulu struggled with her entire self. She tried to wriggle, to lather up, to do anything other than lie there and watch, but the man’s magic still held her fast. She couldn’t act, and yet she had to.

  As if born through her need, something appeared within the depths of the scrubby’s being. Something that felt like it could be an answer. Giving up on the effort of attempting to move as well as letting go of the desire to stay awake, Lulu’s mind sank like a rock to the most primal part of herself, to latch on to the [Matriarch’s Decree].

  Here, deep within her subconscious, the mother of all loofahs found the energy to act.

  The powerful, oily feeling in the air. The shine of the necklace. The helplessness of those who wore it. Mistress’ anger. The spoken word of filth . She compressed it all into a packet of memory and sensation and sent it through a tiny, glimmering doorway she found behind her new skill. All would know of this new kind of mess, this new dirt.

  Lulu still couldn’t move, but through that doorway she was able to observe the effect of her action, as every scrubby in the Wildl
ands—all her children, no matter how far removed from her—heeded their matriarch. She felt an unfortunate few, those embroiled in battle, wiped out as their attention turned to her. The rest responded with affirmation, understanding her decree.

  The scrubby matriarch was currently unable to do anything, but not all of her children were so affected. They could act.

  There was filth in the world, and one way or another, it would be cleansed.

  Satisfied that her decree had been heard, Lulu finally succumbed to sleep, lulled by the sound of crackling flames.

  Chapter 33: Under Ashen Skies

  Morgan Mackenzie was burning. So, too, was everything around her. Faintly, as though from a distance, she could hear pained screams and high-pitched whimpers that barely cut through the roaring wind and flame that swirled around her and inside her. She’d always been afraid of her fire, in a small way. For the first few weeks after she’d landed in the Tree, her magic had burned its way out of her body every time she worked any spellcraft that used fire or lightning. Those memories had never truly faded, but the biggest reason, the one she always tried to ignore despite the tickling sense of warning from her instincts, was because of her very first night on Anfealt. Now, however, she was too angry to be afraid.

  The sickening magic thing the strange, rude man in the blue robes had tried to put around her neck felt wrong on a fundamental level. Morgan didn’t know how she hadn’t sensed it before, but in the face of the fire, such questions could wait. The touch of the metal against her skin, the man’s pompous attitude, the cavalier way he’d ordered the other woman to destroy the bow—all of it was an assault of wrongness against everything she believed was good in the world.

  This was to say nothing of the soul housed in the bow’s gem. She felt it break before she realized what it was, and her realization only added to the fury. The woman raised her staff, stepping between the Sorceress and her enemy. Morgan’s fire raged through the staff, battering away the defensive enchantments layered into the other mage’s robes. When the illusion snapped, the golden collar became visible: a sharp new target, standing out raw and repulsive to her sight.

  Nessara fell to her knees when the collar melted under Morgan’s power and its own magical hold broke. The relief on her face and the tears that boiled away were almost enough to halt Morgan’s fire, the heat retreating for a moment as the woman whimpered a choking “Thank you.” Then the light left her eyes as she crumpled, and the Sorceress felt her rage reignite.

  The target of her ire sent bolts of water and ice at her as he backed away. His own defensive magics were much more powerful than what Nessara had mustered, several rings and dozens of bracelets augmenting the passive protections woven into his robes. Morgan launched bolt after bolt of lightning his way as the sky burned above. She saw Dana scuttle under the flames, low to the ground, to shield a weeping Terisa as the Huntress frantically gathered what fragments of the shattered gem she could find into a bag. A distant part of her mind regretted the damage her fire had caused the woman, but making up for it would have to wait for another time. Chadwick had produced a small black rod gilded in silver, and the shadowy bolt of darkness was enough to leave her fingers tingling and numb after blocking it with [Spell Parry].

  “Take her down!” screamed the man, his cowardice plain on his face. The other members of the Expedition had turned on each other in a grand melee, and now the instigators of the chaos left the fight to aid their master. A woman with a crossbow fell, one of many cleaved in two as Morgan’s [Plasma Glaive] scythed through the charging group. The others dove to the ground, seeking to evade her fate. The [Skyclad Sorceress] allowed them no succor, however, and the earth churned and heaved like a living thing. Only bones and grisly viscera remained as evidence of their doom.

  “I thought I understood what it meant,” she said as she stalked toward the panicking guild representative. Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it sliced through the roaring fire like a knife. “When the other me explained what the deal was. To not do nothing .”

  Morgan’s voice rasped through the flames, resonating with the magic that coursed through her blood and the fire she breathed in and out of her lungs. Her resistances and affinities had kept the sensations of heat to a distant thing, something she was aware of, but nothing that made her uncomfortable. Now she felt it running deep in her bones. White-hot and indiscriminate, her inner flame raged as brightly as it had that fateful night she ate the Fruit of the Tree. She poured it out toward her enemy, and one of his bracelets shattered into fragments. Another layer of his shields went with it. Her [Mana Sight] revealed dozens more, magic inscribed on items around his arms, pinpoints of magic at his belt, and the delicate filigree of enchantment in his clothing. Temporary obstacles, she thought in that small part of her mind that was still calm.

  “I made a lot of mistakes when I got here. So many mistakes. But the worst was the fruit.”

  Foz’s roar broke through the gloom, the booming sound competing even with the rumble of burning thunderheads forming overhead, as the enraged cook charged forward with only his massive clawed hands for weapons. Morgan shot a [Mana Pulse] to intercept the first shadowy bolt the slaver sent toward the half-Ursaran, but missed the second. Tendrils of darkness entangled the berserker, but the barbs were unable to penetrate his thick hide, so Morgan ignored him to turn back to her quarry.

  “I burned that first night.” Morgan’s fire—not her magic, but the terrible, primal force that had burned within her bones ever since that moment—raged in her and through her as she continued her approach. “I think…it broke me; the fruit healing me as I burned, over and over and over again .” For so long, she’d tried to keep her fire contained; now, she finally gave it leave to burn. And burn it did. She knew she’d lost control, but she no longer cared. She’d done so only twice before; first when the [Shadowlynx] had bitten off her arm, and once again after defeating Solana at the Eye of Madness. This time was different from the others. This time, she didn’t black out. This time, she stayed fully aware of herself and her surroundings. Before, her fire had dominated her; now, the [Skyclad Sorceress] embraced it.

  Thunderous explosions of fire and lightning burst from her hands, and one after another, more of Chadwick’s shield charms and defensive enchantments failed as he staggered backward under the ruinous assault. Several small seashells inset with intricate runes woven into his robes began to glow a brilliant blue. “Waters deep, heed my call!” he cried, and suddenly a torrent of foaming green sea water poured out of the enchanted shells. The streams of water gathered themselves in a vortex, sheathing the representative in a wall of liquid, and distorting his leering features. Morgan’s fire hammered into the flowing water, giving off great, hissing clouds of steam, but it held fast.

  Morgan took a step. “And that fire?” she hissed, violet lightning flashing and thunder rumbling overhead. Jagged teeth of ice came into existence around her and shot forward into the watery shield.

  “It never went out. ”

  The [Skyclad Sorceress] vented her towering fury in a single, piercing shriek, leaned into her fire, and gave it free rein.

  * * *

  Terisa Aras curled up around the leather bag containing the fragments of Althenea’s Soul Gem. Dana’s shields flickered, and the Engineer shuddered under the forces brought to bear against it, but the barrier around the women held. Distantly she heard Foz roar. The familiar sound buoyed her spirit, for she knew the longer he fought, the stronger he’d become. Few things could compete with an enraged Berserker, and his Ursaran blood only made his rage all the more potent. Biggles skirted around The Burning Woman’s flames, joining the Huntress and the Engineer, and adding his own layer of magic to the shields projected by the suit.

  “Something else is coming!” the necromancer shouted, his voice almost drowned out by the twisting inferno and the rushing winds that sprang up to feed it. “Pure Life magic, and Earth! I can feel it even through her Fire!”

  Terisa could hear The Burn
ing Woman speaking, but couldn’t make out the words at first. She dug into one of her remaining pockets to fish out another healing potion. Not as powerful—or as expensive—as the one she’d used to repair her eyes, but still of exemplary quality that proved its worth as her burns began to heal. While lacking the immediate intensity of Dana’s Annihilator warhead, Morgan’s fire more than made up for it with its persistence: it was like unto a living thing that swirled around the woman and filled the space around her.

  “The Wanderer?” Dana asked, her voice tinny and distorted through the faceplate of her suit. “I thought he was at least a couple days away!”

  Terisa clutched the bag of shards as she replied, “He can move more quickly than you would think, even at his size!”

  “—never went out.”

  The words came just as the rushing winds stilled for a moment, and lightning ripped through the sky above the flames. The Sorceress glowed even more brightly, her burning bones visible through the laced patterns of runes etched into her skin. The winds returned, whipping her hair into a wildly twisting mass of purple and black. And then the heat intensified once again.

  “She’s lost control of her Mana!” shouted Biggles as he backpedaled, trying to pull Terisa and Dana back with him. “And I can’t find Wuffle anywhere!”

  Spheres of solid purple lightning formed around the Sorceress, dripping liquid light that seared the eyes before dozens of balls of energy rocketed away from their mistress to slam into the guild representative’s shields. His layered barriers flared, and the watery wall he had summoned flashed into steam. The woman screamed incoherently, pouring more and more power into her effort. Chadwick’s enchanted bracelets and charms blackened one by one, shattering and falling away, as Morgan brought her towering will to bear against them. As the last of the steam from his waters faded, he reached into his robes and produced one final artifact.