This isn't just a direct attack. Ru said in Taylin's head. Avoid the hit and what comes after.
“I need more explanation than that Ru.” She hissed under her breath. But he didn't answer. Not before the barrage reached them. They hit the screens with jarring force, bringing a few down immediately and continuing through. Others exploded into smoke on contact.
Those in the path of the attack easily evaded it, but suddenly, one of the battlemagi began screaming, turning circles and sending out bursts of lighting and icicle lancets in every direction as he juked and spiraled to avoid something that only he could see.
A hailene woman with a halberd suddenly lunged at another and buried her blade in the poor man's wing, sending him spiraling to the ground with her diving in pursuit. Nearby, a sniper was swinging his weapon by the barrel against unseen enemies, his panicked flitting causing him to rapidly lose altitude.
Taylin tightened her grip on the Eastern Brand and flew on. The charge had been staggered by the chaos in the ranks, but not broken; at least not where Tal Eserin's Air Screen was holding the center.
The golden dragonsired was stealing glances backward at the members of his battle group, seemingly driven mad. He bared his teeth and spoke plainly to the group surrounding him. “Damnation abounding. Not a thousand psi masters on the continent and we find ourselves matched against one. Form up: we need to close fast and hit hard.”
Taylin looked over her shoulder at the degenerating situation behind her. Ru? Can you help them?
If I had a mind to. He replied plainly. The spell is similar to the bats Arunsteadeles conjured in the battle with the King of Flame and Steel, only more advanced. General fear can be overcome, but this spell dredges up personal traumas to fool the mind into accepting them as real.
Bashurra let fly a second volley of the macabre missiles, focusing them this time on Tal Eserin's Air Screen.
Ru, it would be very helpful if you started undoing them. Taylin tensed as the attack hammered the screening spell until it finally came apart under the onslaught. A screaming minotaur head, wreathed in flame, flew toward Tal Eserin.
With a powerful pump of her wings, Taylin hurled herself ahead of the mage and raised the Eastern Brand against the attack. “Ignite!” She cried even as she swung. The burning sword easily clove the projectile in two and scattered the pieces, leaving tiny bits of shrapnel and a cloud of smoke to break around her.
Her heart seized with the mindless terror known by children. The world became a confusing blur of sound and color. Someone far stronger than she grabbed her by the nape of the neck and pulled her backward. She tried to look back, but could only see a blur of bright, fanciful silks and the impression of an expressionless, yet still malevolent face.
A woman was shouting: angry recriminations mixed with anguished begging. It was the voice from Taylin's dreams, only twisted by grief. It seemed as if with every word she spoke, she grew farther way and the belief that Taylin would never hear her voice again grew more certain.
Before her vision flashed a small black feather, only in places, the black had been rubbed away, revealing vibrant red.
“My dear child.” A new voice; male and cruel despite sounding for all the world like a large, pleased cat, interrupted what Taylin realized was her own voice, only much younger, crying. “It is time you realized that you are not truly a person. Ayes ang'hailene.”
Her whole person shuddered as rage bubbled up. She didn't want to remember this. She didn't want to feel the pain anew, not after so many years hiding it away. Her breath quickened and she was no longer a child.
How dare anyone go into those places and steal my memories! She screamed in her own head, the words feeling foreign all the same. Raw will, driven onward by the rage, plowed into the forces that made up the spell, and though she couldn't see them, she felt them being torn to tatters.
The world returned: rushing air, the twin helix blaze that surrounded the Eastern Brand, and Ru's mind in her head, constructing a spell on the fly.
Behind her, the dark mage turned in air and held out his palm. A dozen streamers of yellow light burst from it, slithering across the sky until they either hit a plume of smoke or one of the trauma-stricken mercenaries. Where they hit smoke, it dispersed into nothingness, and where it struck people, shadowy doppelgangers of them were expelled and similarly dissolved.
Tal Eserin, having seen the entire proceeding, winged his way up even with Taylin. “I'm quite glad we included you two in the formation.”
Taylin just nodded and faced forward again. They had almost closed with Bashurra and the demon was already in the middle of casting another barrage.
“Oh I think not.” Tal Eserin said, allowing for a small spellcrafting of vin to make his voice carry. He flared open his wings to their full span and worked his fingers in front of him in a complex motion. “If you want to match strength for strength, allow me to indulge you, beast, with my own concoction. Perhaps you've heard of the Subtle Knife; a spell used by cutpurses to create a small infinitely sharp, and undetectable blade of air for a single moment.”
Bashurra laughed boldly, but didn't stop his casting. “Then you've created a blade of wind to swing at me?”
Tal Eserin laughed right back as the close-in fighters streamed past him, confident in their captain that his plan would turn their charge into something less than a suicide mission. “Please. We are a military, formerly funded by a Prince of Novrom: we use strikers instead of flint and steel, our officers tell time with the finest watches from Rizen. We are ahead of the technological curve in every way.” He thrust forth his cupped hands. “Behold my Subtle Bullet.”
A sharp crack resounded in the air and an unseen force kicked Tal Eserin backward a few yards. While his spell was unseen, the results were not, as a hole the size of a human head was ripped all the way through the demon's flesh between his ribs. A continual vortex of wind drove through the wound, expelling even more gore out behind him in a blackish-red mist.
The spellcraft Bashurra was working collapsed as his concentration failed and he couldn't stop himself from bellowing in pain. Slapping a hand over the wound, Bashurra spat curses in the Kaydan language before turning a hateful eye on Tal Eserin. “Only a trifle. Any damage you do to me can be repaired in mere moments.”
To illustrate, he lifted his hand away from the wound and reached out to tap the well of nekras in the homestead behind him. Nothing came.
Swinging his huge head around, he looked off toward the homestead. He couldn't detect nekras directly, but he could tell that the pall had been lifted from the surrounding wall and land around it. Something had stemmed the tide of dark anima.
“That's done it!” Percival shouted, winging his way ahead of the charge. “His healing is disabled and he is vulnerable. For Solgrum! For vengeance!”
The close-in fighters sped forward while the snipers and battlemagi held at a prearranged perimeter and let fly with lead and spellcraft. Taylin went along with the former, burning sword held at the ready and her own, roaring anger at the mental attack spurring her forward.
Bashurra turned back in time to meet Percival and the first of the wave. He clawed at them as they came, only to be answered with polearms biting into his flesh. One mercenary even won past his flailing arms to bury a lance in his chest.
A basso snarl issued from the demon as he switched tactics. Instead of trying to tear his foes out of the air, he started trying to grab them. An unfortunate hailene with a glaive was quickly caught and his body crushed in Bashurra's fist with a sickening crunch. His ruined corpse was then hurled into the midst of his comrades.
Percival shouted a curse at the insult and dove, whirling his halberd overhead to build momentum for a strike at the demon's face. Bashurra obliged with a toss of his head that brought his antlers to bear on the general, impaling him on a hedge of black spikes.
Through the rush of winged bodies, the lines of searing spells and flying lead, flew Taylin. She wasn't as agile as the other h
ailene and was having trouble not getting in the way of the other soldiers as they bobbed and wheeled around Bashurra, striking and retreating where they could.
Finally, she saw an opening: a path to Bashurra's chest that the others didn't seem to notice. She pumped her wings mightily and hurtled forward, holding the Eastern Brand overhead like a banner.
Bashurra saw her coming and snatched her out of the air. The suddenness of the attack knocked the air from her lungs and she lost her grip on the Eastern Brand. She watched helplessly as the blade tumbled to the ground with its flaming helix guttering out.
The sight of what he'd caught made Bashurra pause to stare down at her. “Ha! And Immurai thought so highly of you too. The little master of the Rune Breaker, or so I hear. I think I'll just keep you in hand as a trophy.” He gave her a sharp, painful squeeze to make his dominant position clear.
Taylin didn't hear him. The roaring in her head was too loud.
In the best of times, she didn't like being touched, aside from brief slips in the moment. Touch had never been a good thing in her life. It preceded slaps, floggings, being dragged to isolation cells, and worst of all having her wings taken. In the mines, it also wasn't uncommon to come into contact with the decaying bodies of workers that hadn't been so lucky.
Already, she'd been driven to great anger by the mental violation the demon had perpetrated: the galling theft of memories meant to be kept safe and hidden. With the added element of that same monster putting his hand on her, she lost herself completely to the urges inside her that begged to fight. To kill. To annihilate.
She opened her mouth and let out a feral scream that had nothing to do with fear. Scales grew rampant all over her body, from the thick, pentagonal ones she was used to, to lighter colored, but even thicker plates that formed on her belly, across her breasts and up her throat until she was entirely covered by them, but for her hair. Her teeth grew sharp and her nails thickened into black claws. Her feet twisted, the long bones expanding until the straps of her sandals tore, and each toe was tipped with a wicked talon. Muscles in her back spasmed and with a sickening pop, her wings were repositioned on her back, with more tendons growing thickly into them.
Formerly rounded pupils changed to catlike slits. Everything before her gained a new dimension of detail, as if she'd been half blind her entire life, and everything seemed to move a fraction more slowly than normal. And the magic... she could smell it as orbs of light and lightning streaked through the air and wardings blossomed into being to protect.
Taylin barely registered the surprise coming from Ru in the link because she had her own set of priorities. The first was the remove Bashurra's hand from her person—and from Bashurra's person if need be. She sank all ten claws into the demon's thumb and twisted. There was resistance for a moment before the joint popped, followed by the tearing of strained tendons.
Bashurra howled and tried to fling her way, but her claws held fast, giving her a solid platform from which to throw herself into the air. Her wings snapped down with the sound of a gale kicking up, sending her streaking toward Bashurra's face like a missile.
The demon only laughed, seeing an unarmed and tiny thing screaming toward him. As he'd done with Percival, he led with his antlers. Taylin had seen that trick before, and with her new wing musculature, easily dove below the killing spikes, only to suddenly scud upward to deliver a rising, straight-hand strike to the space just between his eyes.
If Bashurra expected his hide to protect him, he was mistaken. Taylin's claws pierced it through with no trouble before puncturing the cartilage above his nose so that her arm ended up buried to the elbow in his sinus cavity and awash with clear, sticky and foul-smelling liquid.
The demon's taunts and banter devolved solely into a rant in the Kaydan tongue, and he raised his unwounded arm to swat her down.
A shrill cry pierced the air when he did, preceding a raptor the size of a wagon with a golden brown body and white on its wingtips and tufts around its legs. It dropped from the sky to sink its pounces and talons into the demon's arm, scoring brutal, jagged wounds. Just as swiftly, it transformed into a gigantic green and black constrictor snake, whose body wrapped Bashurra's arm and began to crush the radius and ulna together.
Whatever you think you just did, it looked more like a suicide attempt to me. Ru bit out mentally as Bashurra seized his head with his wounded hand and started to pry him off.
This one must be destroyed, came the reply. And in the next moment, the link was muffled from Taylin's side. She shot Ru a glare while extracting her arm from Bashurra's sinus. Holding on to his face with her claws, she found herself staring at his eye. Heat boiled in her belly, a heat she'd always banked, and tried to snuff entirely. But this time, she called it up. A gelatinous glob rose up her throat and she spat it directly into the demon's eye. On contact with the air, the gel burst into flame, and on contact with Bashurra's eye and the surrounding area, it stuck fast and burned intensely.
With an oath that invoked darker things than himself or his god, Bashurra let go of Ru and slapped at Taylin, who scrambled up to the crown of his head to evade him.
Taylin found herself between the two racks of murderous antlers that stood proudly on the beast's head. Here and there, bones and rotten meat from past conquests hung in tatters from the many sharp points. The stench was such that the ensuing nausea almost robbed her of the all-consuming rage burning within her.
As she crouched there, gagging and trying to figure out how to hurt Bashurra more, a flicker of movement caught her attention. Without her expanded vision, she might have missed it through the thicket of prongs, but once she knew it was there, it was just a matter of climbing up between them to get a better look.
And what she saw was Percival Cloudherd, very much alive, though pierced through the upper thigh by an antler point. The wound was bleeding freely, and the General's movements were slow and clumsy as a result, but still he fumbled at something on his belt.
Logic, reason and memory dredged up what Kaiel had explained on the first day they'd encountered Percival: he was wearing grenades; a chemical weapon with the power of a fireball. Percival's plan was clear: detonate his grenades at point-blank range where Bashurra had neither the time nor the foreknowledge to counter or defend himself.
The blast would take a respectable chunk of the demon's head off, an idea that appealed to her. But Cloudherd would die in the attempt, which did not. For true, his demise would be heroic, but in the dark corners of her mind, she remembered that Issacor's had been as well and that didn't make it easier to accept.
Good and worthy people, wasted on the idea that their demise in one moment was worth it for a greater good. Even if that meant leaving those that needed them behind.
Had she really needed Issacor? She didn't know, and the thoughts Ru had put into her head in the House weren't helping. Other people had surely needed him though. Everyone needed a person who would stand and fight with honor and skill for good causes.
Similarly, Percival's army needed him too. They had already lost their king, their security, and almost all of their senior officers.
It all seemed so clear to her: anyone who would willingly attempt to sacrifice themselves in such a way were the very people who shouldn't die that way.
Armed with that clarity, she seized upon her anger and focused it just as she always did in battle. With her rational mind back in play, she climbed her way up to Percival. Just as his numb finger found the loop of one of his grenade pins, Taylin grabbed it firmly and pulled it away.
“No.” Her voice rattled and hissed with a reptilian quality.
Percival looked at her through the feverish veil on the edge of death. It wasn't quite clear to her what he was seeing, but he tried to wrench his hand away. “I have to. This creature...” He paused to find the words, “...has to die.”
“And he will.” Taylin hissed. “But not with you.”She reached to pull his thigh from the spar pinning it.
“N-no!” He s
truggled weakly. “Bleed out.”
Taylin stared at the wound and the copious amounts of blood already dripping everywhere. When she'd been a shocktrooper, she'd seen captains burning grievous wounds closed to keep more useful members of their unit alive until healing could be performed. Percival wasn't going to like what she was about to do.
“You'll be fine.” She said, trying in vain to make her voice less threatening and more reassuring. She delicately took hold of his leg above and below the puncture while at the same time reaching down into the fire in her belly. There wasn't much left, but it should be just enough...
Mustering all her strength and quickness, she pulled Percival straight up off the antler. Blood started to well instantly, but she spat the flaming gel onto his leg, smothering it in the next moment with her bare hand. Percival screamed loudly enough for it to echo in the valley and retched at the burning meat smell from his leg.
Taylin steeled herself against his pain and tried to lift him over her shoulder. His grenade belt caught, stuck on a second antler that had only grazed Percival's back, but tangled in a loop on the belt. It only took a single swipe of her claws to slice the belt off him, and in a moment of inspiration, she grabbed the pins on three of the devices and pulled them all as she jumped backward off Bashurra's rack of antlers.
It was a poor showing. She'd only ever carried Motsey or Rale aloft before, and a halfling child was in no way similar to a fully grown, pain stricken hailene. Percival became an unruly jumble of flailing limbs and fluttering wings as they fell. His own efforts to slow his fall sent them into a spin while Taylin furiously beat her own wings trying to at least mitigate their death spiral.
Suddenly, it felt like they hit a cushion. Wind howled around them at terrific force, slowing them. They still hit the ground with unceremonious thud, but it was a thud that didn't include broken bones.
The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker) Page 11