Icy fingers of dread wormed their way through Terisa’s gut as Guild Representative Chadwick used an item almost as infamous as the Golden Collars, more evidence of how deeply the man belonged to the Deskren Empire: after all, the Emperor didn’t hand out such artifacts lightly. With a twisting motion, a dark, gilded cage sprang into existence around the man, with a pulse of shadowy power. The Huntress flinched, as did Dana and Biggles; the magic felt wrong , and sent a twist through their guts. Mere possession of a Soul Shield, recharged as it was through terrible human sacrifice, was grounds for summary execution in every nation north of the Elemental Desert.
The man turned grey, his outline growing hazy as if seen through a wave of heat, as his physical being was partially shifted elsewhere , rendering him immune to Morgan’s magic as it slammed into a spherical lattice of dark energy. “Your fire will burn out long before the Soul Shield fades,” he remarked grimly. “I probably still won’t escape. But…” A grin flickered onto his face. “The rest of you will be trapped here, in the Wilds, while Expedition burns. The siege should be well underway by now.”
A distant rumble of thunder caught Chadwick’s attention, and he glanced off toward the west. “That’s Pontem Praetor . You’ll never cross the gorge in time now.”
“No—!” blurted the Huntress as Morgan screamed again, mindlessly flinging magic at the man. The effort was futile, the flames and lightning seeming to fizzle out within an arm’s length of the greyed-out figure. Earth Mana, having actual mass behind it, was slightly more effective, the gout of stone and dirt from underneath flinging the man back into the enchanted stone wall of Castra Pristis. Frustrated once more, the Sorceress screamed again.
As if in answer, a deafening roar issued from beyond the fort’s walls, the sound almost a physical thing. Mana hung thick and heavy in the air, dense enough Terisa could feel it; Biggles turned a peculiar shade of green as his more receptive senses were nearly overloaded. Dark green tendrils sprouted from between the cracks in the stone walls, and harsh grating sounds rippled through the air. A cool wind blew through the flames as a thirty-pace section of wall fell outward, ripped free by the colossal form of what might once have been called a man.
Crystal gauntlets wrapped in vines protected his hands and arms, glittering spikes protruding from shoulder and elbow. His brow was crowned in uneven nubs of the same greyish quartz, set above a face Terisa could never have forgotten, burned indelibly into her memory.
Misshapen and twisted, covered in crystal, he approached. Even hunched over as he was, and using his fists to walk, he stood over ten paces tall. The massive, ogre-like form opened his maw to reveal jagged crystal tusks and inhaled. The magic hanging heavy over the field evaporated, drawn into that inexorable sucking well of walking power that was the Crystal Titan.
The Sorceress, her flames banked and only faintly flickering, turned her glowing form to face the beast.
“ Oh, Daddy…?” she asked, her suddenly child-like voice clearly audible in the deafening silence. “I…I think I killed people…”
As if that effort drained the rest of her energy, she fell forward, the brilliant light of her runes fading into quiescence. Vines erupted from the ground, gently catching her unconscious form as The Titan lumbered forward through the gap in the wall.
It approached Chadwick on feet and fists, planting itself in the ground and staring at the man, his ancient eyes full of primal hatred.
“You…die. ”
The words shook out of the air, not from the creature’s maw, but from the humming crystals protruding from its head. They came slowly, as if the very act of speech had to be dredged up from somewhere nearly forgotten. The sound resonated through the air, the earth, and the stone, simultaneously a screech and a rumbling bass, and for a moment, Terisa thought her eardrums had ruptured. Chadwick watched nervously as a massive crystal fist rose into the air, and unconsciously raised his arm in a gesture of warding as it descended with meteoric force. A sphere of space around the representative was smashed into the cobblestone pavement, but the shield held around the terrified, trembling mage.
“Wait!” Terisa screamed, stumbling back to her feet. “We need him alive! We don’t know who else is working with him!”
“Where’s Wuffle?” Biggles was looking around in near panic, searching for any sign of his friend.
“He dies.”
“He definitely does, after he tells us what we need to know!” Terisa shouted at the gigantic man-like beast. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she registered surprise that the Wanderer was talking —none of the Expedition’s records had ever mentioned him doing so. The knowledge was welcome, however, for if The Titan could speak, then it could understand and, just possibly, be reasoned with. “There could be a hundred or more traitors in the Expedition!”
“Dies. All. Die.”
The vines had carried Morgan’s unconscious form closer to the Wanderer, and a massive hand scooped the woman up with a gentleness at odds with his terrifying presence.
“Hurt Morgan. Dies.”
“I think we’re in total agreement there, big guy,” Dana said. Her helmet had retracted after the flames died down, and her suit had returned to bipedal form. She brought her hand to her brow in a gesture Terisa was sure was a salute, though not one she was familiar with. “Thanks for the save, Devil Dog. I know she didn’t mean to, but the girl almost killed us, too.”
“Long time.” The yellowed eyes of the creature flicked over Dana’s form. His grotesque head bobbed slightly in recognition. “Soldier.”
The Titan swung its attention back to the frightened representative. It grinned, showing a terrifying array of jagged teeth, bone, and razor-edged mana crystals.
“Tick. Tock.”
It waited. It watched as Chadwick’s shield began to flicker, but it was not idle. As Terisa watched in wonder, vines snaked across the ground with a rapidity bordering on the surreal. The creeping vegetation spread faster than any plant, visibly working its way throughout the fort. Screams and cursing rose up from all around as people were forcibly dragged from wagons and tents, far more than the Huntress would have anticipated. Fully a third of the Expedition’s manpower was compromised by the Deskren—if the Wanderer’s senses could be relied upon.
Not that I could stop him, even if he’s wrong about any of them… she thought grimly.
“How do you know these ones are the bad guys?” Dana inquired of the giant.
“Bad magics. Same as other one. And hungry.”
“The magic is hungry, or you are hungry?” the Worldwalker replied.
“Yes.”
The guild representative kept trying to scramble out of the hole in the ground where his shield had formed an indentation, but each time he reached the edge, a length of vine would casually slam into the barrier to send him tumbling back down. The Titan seemed to find this amusing, a deep rumble emanating from within his chest as he sat cross-legged, waiting for the man’s defenses to expire. Biggles continued to frantically search the grounds for his scrubby assistant, and Lulu had hopped onto its mistress’ chest with a concerned wurble.
“I don’t see Wuffle! He’s not in my wagon!” he exclaimed, reappearing from within the structure.
“That’s the green one, innit?” a soot-encrusted dwarf asked while brushing himself off. Kojeg had rolled away from the flames, but seemed to have traversed the ashes of the cookfire on his flight away from the heat. He grinned, barely able to contain some sudden mirth.
“Yes, he’s pale green.”
“Methinks he’s about to have a word with the Guild Representative,” the dwarf said, leveling his hammer at the man.
Chadwick had finally noticed the lacy puffball stuck fast to his shoulder. He slapped at the scrubby, twisting around in a mad attempt to dislodge it. It remained doggedly attached, however; the Soul Shield’s effect apparently extended to the scrubby, as well.
“What is—!” the man exclaimed, trying to pry Wuffle away from his robes. The scrubb
y had a surprisingly tight hold, however, and all he managed to do was transfer the puffball from his shoulder to his bare hand.
“Wuffle! What are you doing?” the necromancer demanded.
The only reply Biggles received was angry wurbling.
Suddenly, the man’s shield finally flickered and died.
Chadwick began to scream.
The Titan began to laugh.
And as Wuffle set about his duty, the Swift Waters Guild representative learned the horrible truth about exfoliation.
Chapter 34: The Devil’s Drum
Millie Thatcher sat on the back of a wagon, cradling the nub that was all that remained of her left arm. The rest of her felt as empty and numb as the lost limb. The General’s Wife had wrought a cleaner amputation than any but the most skilled healers or priests could have managed—a far better result than she could have expected, given the circumstances. Simply stopping the Bloodsear poison at just her arm was practically a miracle all by itself. Others had not been as lucky, and the caravan following Jacob Ward had left behind a dozen grave markers before breaking camp that day. The bandits who’d thought a pack of farmers to be easy pickings had fared much worse when the Battlemaster eventually caught them. Several trees in their wake had sprouted grim fruit; cold comfort for a classless girl barely past twelve winters.
With only one arm, she’d felt useless, but couldn’t bring herself to speak about her troubles. Not even with Miss Erin, the wife of the Battlemaster and the [Hand of Solace]. Millie hadn’t spoken since the night bandits had killed her parents, and not even the motherly healer who had so skillfully saved her from the poison arrow could bring her to utter a word. The Battlemaster had understood, though, and had given her a small drum and taught her a few simple cadences. As the daughter of a Bard who’d retired from adventure to marry a farmer, she’d picked those up quickly, and had been grateful for something to do that was useful to the caravan.
That Millie remained classless at this point was merely by virtue of her not having selected a class, not for lack of level; the nearly daily fighting, continuous marching, and the simple nature of being on the road had led to nearly everyone in the caravan gaining new skills they’d never expected to learn. Older classless, of fifteen or sixteen winters, had already begun to gain classes aligned with combat and soldiering; new potency added to the Battlemaster’s already-fearsome banner.
And what a banner it was. Someone had hung a bloodstained sheet on a piece of wood attached to the head of a pike, and none would step forward for the credit. A vertical slash of black paint—or possibly tar, Millie couldn’t be certain—bisected the worn red cloth. The Black Lance, they called it, the symbol of Jacob’s class. He’d finally given up on ordering it taken down, as it would always reappear in the night. After a few encounters with Deskren Hoplites, the troops had taken to attaching slave collars to the bottom of the sheet. The sight of it held a weight befitting the atmosphere surrounding the refugee caravan.
Millie wasn’t sure it could even be called a caravan any longer. It looked like an army on the march to her own inexperienced eyes. Bandits who might normally find such a wagon train easy pickings had learned to run the other way when they heard the rumble of endless pairs of wheels. The smaller Deskren units no longer attempted to engage them, though they lingered in the distance in a worrying way. A few times, the entire column had been roused in the middle of the night for a quick march to surprise unlucky, lazy, and incompetent enemy commanders. The refugees had full bellies at the moment, thanks to a Deskren supply train they’d encountered and then overrun, the Battlemaster not being one to turn his head from opportunity.
The Deskren seemed to have finally learned that the caravan had teeth, though. The refugee train had grown to over a thousand wagons and more than ten thousand people over the long summer march. Nearly a thousand horsemen rode directly under the Battlemaster; veteran soldiers dusting off old skills alongside new classers learning quickly under the leadership of The General. Several times that many—at least by her own count, she hadn’t heard anyone give actual numbers—marched on foot, bearing pikes, spears, and what armor they could cobble together. Barely a week past, they’d suffered the worst engagement yet, losing dozens of wagons and incurring hundreds of casualties. Millie had reached level ten during the engagement, stabbing a Hoplite slave through the eye with her dagger when the face had appeared over the wagon where she’d been riding with other small children.
The more foolish or stupid enemy commanders seemed to have been weeded out, either crushed when they attacked the column, or recalled by higher authority from the empire. Millie didn’t understand the details, but a youth who remained silent heard many things. There was a nervous taste to the air around the wagons, she knew. They’d been marching north and west in their flight from the Deskren, but now a river she’d never heard of was supposedly in the way, and there were no bridges they could reach before the main Deskren force caught them. Nameless whispers floated through the caravan when the campfires rose, laying down a pall of fear in their wake.
Millie wasn’t afraid, though—not of the Deskren, nor of bandits or brigands. Her parents might be gone, but the Battlemaster had killed their killers, and then led the refugees across half the western side of the continent. There’d been losses and deaths in the undertaking, but every day the wagons rolled on behind his dread banner. She had faith they would reach their destination: the city of Possibility, and the Gathering of Kings.
So she sat in the back of the wagon in the predawn shadows before the nascent army roused itself for breakfast call, listening to the low chatter of cooks over their fires. In exchange for not sharing the caravan’s fear of the Deskren, she had her own fear, which she couldn’t share. Her eyes drooped, and she dug her fingernails into the stump of her arm to keep herself awake. She’d reached level ten, and she knew gaining her Class was now within reach. But there were obstacles in her way, and she didn’t know what to do. Sleep brought the nightmare unbidden, and she’d fought it for two days, but now weakened. Even the pain of scratching the tender flesh where her arm had once been was not enough to hold slumber at bay this time, and her head drooped as she slumped against the side of the wagon.
Then came the dream world, where she’d been reliving the worst day of her life every time she closed her eyes since reaching her tenth level.
Her father, opening the trap door under the table of the farmhouse, and her mother, dragging her down to the cellar. The scrape of wood and hushed whispers between her brothers as the table was dragged back over the hatch. She lived it all again as if standing beside her own body, seeing another her , but with two arms and still innocent eyes. The crash of the door splintering, the screams as her older brothers and her pa slew the first two bandits that rushed into the building. Dozens of savage thunks as arrows impacted the walls above, then a wetter, more sickening sound, and a thud as someone fell to the floor. Screams of rage, blood dripping between the floorboards.
Then the silence as the blood pooling on the dirt floor of the cellar reached her toes. The murderous bandits were already leaving, not noticing the passageway to their hiding place at first. But when that muddy red reached her feet, Millie screamed.
Then it started over. Her father opened the trap door. Her mother dragged her down. The sounds of fighting repeated. The shouts, the groans. The blood on the floor touched her toes. Millie screamed.
The trap door opened. Down into the shadows. Shouts above. Blood at her feet. Millie screamed.
Her fault.
It was always her fault. Millie screamed, and they were found. There was a small gap under the wall of the house, but while Millie had fit, her mother had not, and had stayed behind to give Millie a chance to escape. She’d escaped the bandits, but not the guilt. So she was stuck repeating the memory instead of moving on to gain a class, because in the dream, she couldn’t leave the cellar.
Door. Down. Shouts. Blood.
Millie screamed.
&nbs
p; Her fault.
She should have been able to move past it. Perhaps if she hadn’t levelled so quickly in the caravan, she could have worked through the memories and moved on. Perhaps not.
The tragedy had not gone unanswered, however. A barefoot girl in a torn dress covered in mud and leaves had stumbled out onto the road and almost ended up trampled, but the Battlemaster had turned his charger aside at the last moment. She hadn’t been able to speak, but the scouts had quickly found the farmhouse, and her family.
The bandits had cut her mother’s tongue out first, to stop the [Whisperwind Songstress] from charming them. The rest the Battlemaster’s wife had covered her eyes to keep her from seeing. Millie had watched when Jacob had the murdering rapists hung from the tree next to the farmhouse opposite where four shallow graves had been dug, and that should have been enough. It wasn’t.
Door. Down. Shouts. Blood.
Millie screamed again.
Her fault.
As she watched the past Millie work her way out from under the wall, she could hear the heavy steps of the invading bandits coming down the stairs to the cellar. A veil of darkness fell over the scene, but it couldn’t cloak the tension in the air, nor could it mask her mother’s sudden scream—
She was startled awake by the rattling clink of a metal dish hitting the wagon bed beside her. “Biscuits ‘n bacon,” grunted old Hett, the wagon’s driver. A skin of water followed, and then the ancient classer withdrew, continuing around to tend to the mules without saying anything else. He’d joined the caravan only a few weeks past, but his mules and his wagon had travelled at the head of the column without the man saying a word. It had simply happened, and the Battlemaster hadn’t objected. The man was old and wizened like wrinkled rawhide leather, but no one else could heft the broad woodcutter’s axe that rode next to him on the seat. None had dared pester the old man about his class or levels either, not after seeing him cleave Deskren horses into pieces with one hand on the axe, never letting go of his mules.
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