Whirling, she turned back to look at him. He had topped eleven feet in height, his clothing, though it still grew with him, was in tatters, leaving his arms exposed to the shoulder and legs to the knee, revealing expanses of pale blue skin with what were now discernible as tattoos formed from frost; tribal patterns and unfamiliar script that covered every inch of skin. The crown of his head was bald, encircled by thin, black hair that hung down to the center of his back. His normally well-groomed beard was a thick wiry bush that brushed his chest and gathered frost that formed from his breath. White mist curled off his shoulders as the apparent cold of his body interacted with the warm, moist air.
He took another step and now he was fifteen feet tall. His boots and manacles disintegrated and fell to earth as snow. One more and he was half a mile from the army and thirty feet tall. There, he stopped and spread his arms in defiance, unleashing a wordless shout that echoed in the river valley.
In the gloom of dusk, it was hard to see, especially with the mist rising from Ru's titan form, but Taylin made out a shape appearing at the downed gates of the Idarian Homestead.
Bashurra the Crevasse looked small compared to the dominating grandeur of a titan, but he appeared utterly unafraid. There was no sign on his body to hint at the damage Raiteria's attack had done. His deep voice easily carried across the valley. “And what is this, I wonder? Could those ten-a-penny sellswords have a summoner?”
In response to his taunt, the minotaurs and hailene redoubled their chants and the humans and half elves joined in by banging shields in time.
“No.” said Bashurra. “And not an illusion either, I would guess. Then that only leaves a shapeshifting master, doesn't it, Rune Breaker?” He raised his ancient, bronze ax on guard. “Immurai has told me many tales of the man who was worth an army. The weapon all evil souls seek to grant their greatest wishes. Due respect, but as you are to those wretched and inconsequential mortals, as I am to my god.”
Icy lips split into a familiar, cruel grin. “Heh.” Ru raised his hand toward Bashurra, drawing on ferif and flaer. “More's the pity for your god then.”
Bashurra had, of course, warded himself against the typical attack spells. So Ru didn't attack him. A net of the two energies fell over his ax and constricted, working its way into it all the way down to the most basic level. First the old bronze keened like a kettle too long over a fire. Then it exploded. Shrapnel tore into Bashurra's arms, side and face, opening up great rents that wept thick, too-red blood.
The gigantic demon staggered from the force, catching himself on the wall before he fell. Once steady, he sneered at Ru, the sight made all the worse for the hanging tatters of what was left of his right cheek. A dark miasma of nekras began to crawl over his wounds, repairing them.
“Did you believe that would be enough? I've survived battle with Greater Beasts and dragons. I've laid waste to entire armies. That is why when his plan succeeds, Immurai has promised to make me God of War.”
“What kind of God of War...” Ru drew back his arm and combined akua and ere-a into a construct shaped like a massive mace made of ice, “wastes so much time with talk?” He snapped the mace forward and the spikes broke off, hurtling toward Bashurra as deadly projectiles.
Bashurra surged forward into the onslaught, tapping flaer to cover his fists in flame. He met the flying ice with gusto, dispatching it with punches, blocks and sweeps of his burning hands. He finished by bringing both hands together and sending a burst of flaer to dispel the akua arrays that made up the icicles, instantly converting them to glittering motes in the moonlight.
“You embarrass yourself.” He made a point of spitting on the ground. “War is many things and I am all of them. Not just striking and destruction, but defense.” He flexed his right fist and an array of ferif, ere-a and vox appeared in a circle above his arm, solidifying into a painted, copper and bronze shield, resembling the screaming face of a man stretched almost beyond recognition. The brow formed a thick ridge across the top. “And control.” He held out his left hand and a second array of the same formed, this one manifesting as a long, thick chain with a meat hook on the end.
Ru boomed out a contemptuous laugh. “This is what you use your magic for? Conjuring armor and weapons? Hasty defense and attack? At least Immurai understands the art and the craft of spellwork: in your hands it's just a tool. Any ape can use a tool—but allow me to show you how a real wizard does battle!” He raised both hands to the heavens and began an incantation while simultaneously drawing patterns in the air.
“Now who talks too much?” Bashurra stomped his left foot, causing the earth beneath him to buckle and crack until he was standing on a broken shelf of stone and grassy soil that tilted toward Ru. Then he brought his right foot back and twisted it at the heel, completing a pattern of his own in his mind. The platform leapt forward as the earth beneath rolled and reshaped itself to propel it and its passenger forward.
Ru noticed too late and brought an arm down to conjure a shield, only to have it wrapped by Bashurra's chain and pulled aside before he could even bring the pattern to mind.
In the next moment, Bashurra was inside Ru's guard, slamming the shield home into Ru's ribs. Then, when he buckled forward, the demon brought the shield's thick brow-ridge up into his chin. The force of the blow sent Ru stumbling back until the mage brought one hand down to the ground to steady himself.
Baring his tangled forest of teeth, Bashurra pressed his advantage.
And back at the front line, Taylin frowned in confusion. Because in her head, Ru never stopped his incantation.
***
The sounds of battle were muted by distance and the surrounding houses as Brin moved into Idarian Homestead's village center. Surrounded by demon corpses, and the predated remains of the untended dead, the nekras contamination turned the last moments of dusk pitch black. If not for Reflair, she would have been blind.
As she walked, she opened up her docent's senses. Through the swirling miasma, she could see the shades of the homestead's dead. Most weren't really spirits of the dead; their souls went to the Afterworld to eventually rejoin the Well of Souls unless they were taken by their god for other purposes. No, these were the impressions of those people's terror-maddened final moments, given shape and power by the ambient anima. It could happen with vitae as well, but nekras was more common because it was always present around death and entropy.
Left on their own, those shades would grow stronger and more violent, possibly merging into more dangerous creatures that could rival spirit beasts in the threat they posed. Even as they were at the moment though, they could and would attack and even destroy true spirits like Reflair.
They instinctively knew who and what she was, and drew away as she approached, taking much of the choking cloud of manifest nekras with them.
Identifying, removing, and preventing the formation of such creatures in the first place were a spirit docent's responsibilities and it made her ashamed that she'd left the place in such a state. She drew a shuttering breath as she saw the half-shadowed faces of the former villagers watching her.
Finally, she reached the very center of the homestead's houses and shops. Bashurra had dragged most of the demon corpses away, but he'd left the bodies of three villagers; two men and a woman, all armed with bill hooks and cheap pistols, probably purchased from traders out of Daire City. None of it had helped them, and their savaged bodies remained on the hard-packed dirt, untouched by rot thanks to the nekras.
She made herself stare at them. Those people deserved better. Even though she'd known she couldn't have saved them, she should have stayed to give them proper burial and protection. But Layaka had been so scared to stay and...
...And there had been no Layaka. At least not the one she'd known.
With those bitter thoughts in her head, she struck the butt of the Barratta against the ground, making the rings jangle, then dropped into a seated position, soles of her boots flush against each other, and the spear across her splayed kn
ees.
Reflair wouldn't be powerful enough to cleanse the taint in the homestead and put the seal in place, but Brin was unusual for a docent and only had the one spirit companion at the moment. She would have to make contact with a local spirit for the job. And when dealing with strange spirits, one could not lie or dissemble with them in any way.
Glad the others weren't around, especially Kaiel, she brought her hands together. Her fingers touched a ring on her right hand that wasn't there, then slipped it off. In the darkness, it sparkled with stored magics that outlined its shape: a silver band with a pair of bat-like wings as the setting for a single oval-cut sapphire.
The world changed for her just as her body did; the succubus ring transformed the wearer completely, not just their appearances; old perceptions unavailable to her before came flooding back. The village leapt into view in her night vision, and the unnatural scents of the demons set her nose to twitching.
Guilt came as well when a new realization hit her: if she hadn't been wearing the ring, she would have known that those creatures were not spirit beasts.
The sounds of Ru engaging Bashurra reached her newly sensitive ears before she could sink too far into her fugue. There was work to be done. Once that was through, she could atone.
Chapter 7 – A Docent's Purpose
'There are three of us in my research group, not counting our students and support staff. Our charge is to delve into the nature of the so-called 'divinity sparks' that transform normal creatures into spirit beasts. The Emperor believes that unlocking this secret will allow us to replace or exceed the powers granted to priests by the gods. If we can do this, we will be rid of all dependance on the gods who abandoned this world to the tyranny of the Gold Nation and its allies during Draconic Control. We could finally be a truly free people.'
~ excerpt from the journal of Lena Hiddakko.
***
Spirit docents were accidents of birth, or so Brin had heard. They were children who, under other circumstances, would be born with the expanded energy capacity that made for talented wizards. But the old tales among her people went that if such a child came too close to death in the womb, a bit of the Well of Souls leaked into them, filling the place where a wizard would have a swirl of elemental forces with discarnate energy instead.
Whether that was true or not, it did make some sense to Brin. The afterlife had always been part of her normal life. Her mother had told her that she'd been looked after—even in the crib—by guardians from the other side of death.
Brin had never met another spirit docent in person. She only knew about them from news of their exploits and the occasional fictional account in a dime novel. There had been no one to teach her, so everything she had learned came from listening to the spirits and opening herself up to the in-between world they inhabited.
That was what she was doing now. With her disguise cast aside and her truths laid bare, she looked into the in-between space through the lens of the discarnate power inside of her.
All around her, throughout the ruined homestead, the spirits responded.
Lulled out of their fear of Bashurra, his stifling aura of nekras, and the maddened impressions left over from their murdered friends and neighbors, the undeparted dead of Idarian began to emerge from hiding; rising out of the ground, seeping out of the corporeal forms of tools, clothing and household items, and even dragging themselves out of what was left of their own slain bodies.
There was only just over a dozen of them compared to probably two score of the potentially dangerous remnants. They were all steadfast looking people, just as they had been in life; and they had died with a desperate piece of business left unfinished: to protect their loved ones. In failing to do so, they found themselves stuck, unable to pass on to the Afterworld. But instinctively, they knew Brin could undo the anchors they had chained themselves to and send them on their way.
All of them crowded in, jostling and sometimes overlapping one another in their rush to reach their salvation.
Brin looked up at them sadly. Men and women, young and old; they were all humans worn by hard lives on the frontier, no matter their age or gender. And yet even after living those lives and losing them in defense of those they cared about, they still couldn't get rest—not without her. And she knew that she couldn't take the time to send them on, not before sealing Bashurra's connection to the place.
It wasn't right, especially after she'd abandoned them the first time. She lowered her head in shame.
Something thrummed in her docent's sense like the strung of a harp plucked too hard. It wasn't just Brin that felt it, because the undeparted stopped their crush and turned in the direction it came from. Spirits began to step aside to form an aisle between a single figure and Brin.
Said figure was old, gray and bent; a man of the frontier through and through. His skin was leather, his eyes squinted from years in the bright sun, and though he was very old, he moved with power, confidence and pride. All of the spirits of Idarian turned to him and their expressions were of love and appreciation. They weren't respectful as such, and they certainly weren't reverent. It was an expression that people rarely wore because they rarely felt that specific emotion for a being.
If she'd been stripped of all of her docent powers, that expression alone could have told her who the figure was. It wasn't a ghost or a remnant. It had never been slain, and in fact, still lived. The people looked at it with such love because it was home—the spirit of their home.
It was something docents understood implicitly, but few others even entertained: anything the mortal races came into contact with on Ere could have a spirit. The Well of Souls infused everything on the planet with discarnate energy, and when discarnate energy met sapient thought, spirits formed.
Ancestral weapons, heirloom jewelry, and old ships could have spirits because of the thoughts people attached to them. And almost any place people actually lived was bound to have one. Strength, focus and level of coherency varied, but farming enclaves; where people all had a single goal and depended heavily on understanding and nurturing the land, often had very coherent and powerful spirits.
Brin looked up into the eyes of the spirit of Idarian Homestead and spoke softly. “Your people deserve to pass on.”
The spirit nodded. Probably a century of constant habitation had given it human mannerisms as well as form.
“But I must seal the nekras contamination first. If I don't, my friends will be killed by one of the monsters that defiled this place.”
An intensity entered Idarian Homestead's eyes and the undeparted ghosts mirrored it in their own. Every one of them now had reason to hate Kaydans in general and Bashurra especially.
Swallowing, Brin kept her gaze steady. “I can create the seal, but I need more power than I have. Will you help me?”
Somehow, spirits all knew what it meant to help a docent. Brin didn't know how and Reflair couldn't explain it to her, but they all did; even animal and plant spirits. The spirit of Idarian Homestead was no exception. It nodded and took a step forward that carried it into the same space Brin was already occupying.
Discarnate energy roared into her, a flood that enveloped her instantly. White light poured out of her eyes and mouth as she began the rite to create the seal.
***
Ru rolled to the side as Bashurra bore down on him with the edge of his shield in what would have been a decapitating stroke. He then answered the attack by snapping a heel into the demon's ribs.
Rolling with the blow, Bashurra came up whirling his hooked chain and cast it at Ru, wrapping one leg as the titan was rising to his feet.
“Becoming larger than me only means I have more weaknesses to capitalize on.” he hissed savagely before hauling on the chain. There wasn't enough friction in the grass, already made slick by the frosty mist that exuded from Ru's body, and his leg came out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground.
Bashurra wasted no time leaping upon his fallen foe and raining down crushi
ng blows with his shield.
Ru put up an effort of defense, but his arms were soon battered aside, opening his face up to Bashurra's brutal punishment.
Back at the front lines of Solgrum's army, Taylin reached back and grasped the hilt of the Eastern Brand. She couldn't just stand by and bear witness to the beating Ru was taking, so she triggered the mechanical bolts along the length of the sheathe. With a series of chunks and clacks they slid free, leaving the sword free to be drawn.
Only she didn't.
Because in the link, Ru was still feeling no pain. Instead, anticipation was building in the link, the kind of impatient blood-lust she'd felt before when they were waiting for the arrival of the King of Flame and Steel's bandits, or for the hounds attacking her on the day they met.
He saw no disadvantage, only a window opening in which he could bring down oblivion on something. And he was still casting his spell.
“...heed my will. Focus and be transformed.” He was saying.
Beside Taylin, Tal Eserin suddenly looked up. “Someone is moving a great deal of vin—the air currents don't move that way naturally.”
She barely acknowledged his comment, as she was seeing memories flash in Ru's mind as he used the incantation to recall the complex spell pattern. She saw, as always in those memories, through Ru's eyes, looking at Gloryfall as a young woman. She was dressed in a plain tunic and breeches, both so rumpled that she'd likely slept in them for the past few days.
Gloryfall was hunched over a workbench, upon which lay a scythe. Only that scythe was neither a farming implement, nor a weapon. It was... art. The haft was constructed of a flawless piece of wood that was dark and smooth like the fine chocolates Raiteria bought by the bagful in Daire. There were indentations smoothed into the wood: hand grips that had fingerprints stylized into them in hematite. There were also elegant sigils flowing up the length in silver workings so fine that they only showed when the light caught them just right.
The blade was attached to the haft by a cap of seemingly tarnished silver, and the blade itself was similarly dark; not black, but dull in color while bearing a metallic sheen. There were sigils there too; entire magic circles in miniature.
The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker) Page 9