The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker)

by Porter, Landon

  Rai scratched the back of her head and surveyed the same pattern Taylin had. “Maybe it's some kind of new weapon.” She knelt and placed her palm flat on the ground. After a moment, she straightened and dusted her sooty hand off on her pants. “This happened last night, I'd wager. Whoever did it is nowhere near here now.”

  “Should we look around a bit more? Try and figure it out?” asked Taylin.

  “I'm not sure what good that would do us.” said Rai. “Even if erethizons are less dangerous than other spirit beasts, they can still be deadly. This is a net good thing for us and the worse that can come of it would be upsetting the locals. Apparently, they like keeping the spirit beasts around as deterrents.”

  When she looked up, however, she saw that her much bigger sister's eyes glimmered with the fires of curiosity. Taylin had spent much of their time in Daire lost in books when she wasn't being dragged out shopping with Brin, or sparring with Issacor. Now she had something in real life she wanted to look closer into and she wasn't going to be so easily deterred.

  “Just another quick look around?” Taylin suggested hopefully.

  Rai sighed. “Fine, fine. Go back up and see if there's any more burned-out spots. I'll mark the trail here for the others.” She looked back at the husk of the erethizon. A dead spirit beast, particularly one killed by immolation (the only other option, short of ash chalk, was beheading), tended to frighten off the local wildlife for a few days in the immediate area. She would be fine without Taylin keeping an eye out for her for a while.

  A broad smile and the wind of powerful wings carrying her sister back up beyond the treetops were her reward.

  ***

  Taylin did find another burned out spot, but not until later that evening after the group had rendezvoused for the midday meal, and Kaiel and Brin had done some orienteering to make sure they were still on course to reach the road leading to the Passage of Conquerors as soon as possible.

  There were several burn patterns over an area about a quarter of a mile to a side. There was no evidence of what had been burned, but the large conical patterns were joined by smaller, round scorches that burned down stands of brush and places where clods of earth had been dug up or pieces of trees gouged out by explosion.

  As it was coming near to the time to break camp, she and Raiteria scouted out a place nearby to tie the animals and waited for the others to arrive.

  In the last hour of Ola's light, Kaiel, Brin and Ru all spent some time looking about at the destruction.

  “No flaer.” Ru declared shortly after his arrival. “Whatever did this was not magical in origin.” He looked to Kaiel. “You have devices that mimic basic battle magic; firearms and grenades. Is there one that can explain this?”

  Kaiel shook his head slowly. “Many alchemists are interested in replicating the ability to breathe fire, but the designs I've seen in Novrom and Chordin shoot narrow streams of flammable liquid and don't have anything near the capacity for this. And the only thing I know that could blast out a cone of heat like this is a dwarven steamjack.”

  “Any chance...” Taylin started, intrigued by whatever a steamjack might be.

  “No, we're nowhere near Genmide and the elders there levy a sentence of death on anyone that takes a steamjack or any of the components across the border.”

  “Besides,” Added Brin, “A steamjack runs on a mystic steam engine. Anything that can detect energies would have picked up flaer and akua from one having been here.”

  She was referring to Ru without actually saying his name, but he wasn't paying attention. Instead, he floated over to where one of the smaller blasts had blown a hole twice the size of a fist in an elderly larch. Stooping without actually touching the ground, he examined the spray of burned splinters from the point of impact.

  Taylin sensed the clicking of his analytical mind in the link and went over to get a closer look at whatever he was getting at. “Did you find something, Ru?”

  The dark wizard held out a hand over a charred pile and gestured with outstretched fingertips. The splinters quivered a bit before being pushed aside by something rising into the air from underneath. With the ash and other detritus falling away, it became clear that they were looking at the last remnant of a spinal column and two ribs. Whatever they belonged to hadn't been much larger than a cat.

  “I thought I smelled burnt meat.” said Ru, twitching his fingers to rotate the bones in space. “What was he doing?”

  “Hmm?” Taylin asked, having not quite caught what he'd muttered.

  “Whoever did this.” Ru said quickly. “Burning an erethizon makes sense, but all this flame and destruction to kill, what? Rats? I do enjoy overkill, but this is just a waste of resources.”

  Kaiel strolled over to them, though his eyes were still scanning everything around them for clues.. “You two find something?”

  “A dead ground squirrel, or rat, or something.” Ru said, “Nothing of consequence.”

  An equine scream came from the direction of the animals.

  Ru's head snapped toward the sound and the scythe appeared in his hand before he'd even straightened up. “Odds, bobs hammer and tongs! Of course it was nothing of consequence: it was a distraction.” Before anyone else could speak or act, he was off, flying at high speed through the forest toward the sound of the distressed horse.

  “Do you think...” Kaiel asked Taylin, reaching for the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “It's not the first time we've been ambushed.” Taylin pointed out. She drew out Novacula Kuponya in a smooth motion and reached her other hand back to trigger the mechanism to release the Eastern Brand. “Let's go.”

  There was no reason to take to the sky for such a short distance, so she ran along with the others.

  Along the way, she was treated to a flare of territorial fury in the link moment before she heard Ru bellow from somewhere up ahead.

  “Get away from my horse!”

  Taylin arrived in the glade where the mounts were tied just in time to see Ru hurl something forcefully against a tree not far from her. It was followed immediately by a sliver of iron that nailed it to the trunk.

  It turned out to be a strange animal. About the size of a large rat or lapbear, it had a long body covered in white fur with angular, dark gray markings. Its head was long, narrow and was mostly given over to a weasel-like snout full of sharp teeth and tiny, tufted ears. Hairless pink paws that looked like some hellish amalgam of a bird's talon and a humanoid hand with translucent, hooked nails scrabbled at the iron pinion through its chest while similar hind feet scratched backward at the tree. All the while, a denuded, scaly tail, tipped with a barbed point lashed the air uselessly.

  “What in the Seven Interlocking Hells is that?” Brin asked, coming to a stop next to Taylin and staring that the little beast.

  “It was attacking my horse.” Ru said darkly. “And for that, I will make certain that—” He cut off in a savage shout of pain as something slammed into his back, causing him to pitch forward onto the ground. Two more of the same kind of creature clung to his back, tearing at him with hooked claws and biting him in a frenzy.

  Gaddigan let out a pained whinny as three more of the creatures leapt from hiding to savage his flank. Buckling wildly, he managed to throw one and pay it back with a crashing hoof that caved in its rib cage.

  Ru followed his mount's lead, and suddenly rows of spines like those of some deep-sea horror erupted from his back, impaling the creatures attacking him with extreme prejudice. He retracted the spines as he stood, letting the furry bodies drop to the ground.

  While all this was going on, the beast pinned to the tree managed to force its body forward along the sliver of metal until it finally pulled itself free entirely and landed on the forest floor, no worse for wear. Before Taylin could react, it leapt at her with incredible force and celerity.

  It was all she could do to strike out with Novacula Kuponya while it was in mid-air. The blade sliced through its belly with an ease worth of its title o
f 'razor blade', and in the same stroke fed off the beast's own reserves of vitae to heal it in passing.

  From what Taylin understood, a wound that terrible should have caused the creature to slip into a temporary coma. What actually happened was that it became suddenly distracted, glancing off her chest. It hit the ground and lay there panting with its eyes rolling around in its head.

  Before Taylin could question it, Brin drove the Barratta through its chest.

  “That's not going to work!” Raiteria announced as she and Kaiel arrived on the scene.

  Indeed, even as Gaddigan crushed another of his attackers, the one he had stomped was twitching on the ground, starting to regenerate from what should have been a fatal injury. The pair Ru had 'killed' also suddenly leapt at him, fastening teeth and hooked claws into his left arm.

  The first one, now run through by the Barratta was trying to fight its way off the blade.

  “I'd like to know what does.” Brin said, looking at the struggling thing with disgust.

  Rai reached into a vest pocket and came out with a short stick of dull white stone: Ash chalk. She drew her kukri with her free hand and pulled the blade across the stone, leaving a streak of white powder along the edge. “The Winter Willow's run into these before, they're called phalangers and they're spirit beasts.”

  “Those are spirit beasts?” Taylin asked, splitting her attention between the wriggling phalanger still spitted on the end of the Barratta, and Rai tossing the ash chalk to Brin. “I thought spirit beasts were big and powerful. And dangerous.”

  Rai was too busy to answer because she was stooping to slash the pinned phalanger with her kukri. It was only as shallow cut, but the creature twitched and convulsed, blood starting to flow freely from both wounds until it was still.

  “Anything can get hit by a divinity spark.” said Kaiel, shouldering his rifle in favor of drawing his sword. As he spoke, he advanced on the creatures attempting to swarm Gaddigan. “Small, woodland creatures, trees, family pets... luckily, the remedy for them becoming aggressive is always the same: immolation, beheading or ash chalk. The ash chalk disrupts their immortality.”

  Taylin looked at Novacula Kuponya. Why did she seem to only draw it when it wouldn't help? Sheathing it, she pulled the Eastern Brand from its scabbard at her back and ordered it to ignite. She saw that Kaiel was doing his part against the phalangers attacking the mounts, so she went after the ones attacking Ru.

  Evidently, he hadn't been listening to the discussion, because instead of tapping flaer, Ru was using his shapeshifting to visit every punishment imaginable upon the phalangers. His fingers became spears, piercing them through; then his fists seemed to transform into living rock to hammer the creatures into fleshy pulps.

  But each time he by all rights should have killed them, the phalangers regenerated and were back to attacking him with renewed tenacity and supernatural speed.

  On their next lunge, Taylin stepped past Ru before he could counter and swung at them with the burning sword. The first one was laid open from the center of its belly up to the left front leg, the wound becoming instantly cauterized by the Eastern Brand's flames. It fell lifeless to the ground.

  The second only took a glancing blow across the side. It nimbly twisted away and retreated out of range of the sword. What burns the attack left on it did not heal.

  “Fire can kill them.” Taylin said without even looking back at Ru. She'd anticipated his question from the moment of confusion that had spread over the link like a film of oil over water.

  “Then let us make this short.” With a strong gesture, he caused a glowing spell diagram to overlay the ground around him, and by her proximity to him, Taylin. “Flaeron raide!”

  Fires lit in random places around the diagram, some on it, but most either around or inside it. They looked like the quintessential rendering of flames; perfect upright jets with a uniformly yellow/white core and orange corona. Wisps of red-tinted mist rose up from them and surrounded Ru in a tight orbit.

  “Ru?” Taylin asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Removing a threat.” He intoned. “And an annoyance.”

  With that as his only explanation, he pressed his palm forward, aimed at the phalanger that had managed to evade being killed by Taylin. Small balls of fire issued from his palm in quick succession. The first shot missed, blasting a crater in the grass and dirt. The second scored a direct hit and blasted the spirit beast into flaming bits.

  He then turned toward where now Kaiel, Brin and Raiteria were standing around the mounts. Two of the little beasts had been killed; one's corpse was missing a head and another had been stomped nearly to flatness and then had ash chalk applied to its broken form.

  The survivor was evading all three of them, dodging attacks with incredible speed in order to dart in to snap at them.

  “Heh.” said Ru and let loose with a barrage of small fireballs in the thing's direction. To its credit, the phalanger managed to dodge admirably, but it was up against a steady stream of blasts happening all around it. One final burst caught it in the side as it dodged another. The concussion sent it flying ten feet until it struck the side of a tree. On fire and badly hurt, it wasn't long before it curled up and died.

  “Well.” Rai said into the relative silence that followed Ru dismissing his flaeron raide. She looked pointedly at the scorch marks and small craters. “I think we know why there were parts blasted out of the trees. We were actually lucky though: phalangers are swarm hunters; there are usually around two dozen when they go hunting. Our firebug friend probably killed most of the swarm with whatever they used on the erethizon.”

  Kaiel clucked his tongue. “That's a long way to go in order to get rid of some of the more annoying wildlife. That just makes me wonder 'why' even more.”

  “Why indeed.” Ru growled under his breath as he moved to heal the wounds on Gaddigan's flanks and back.

  Something in the link made Taylin pay attention to his tone. There was a mix of emotions there. Frustration and anger as always, but also puzzlement and... betrayal? She had no idea what he had to feel betrayed over, even that one little bit. After all she'd come to his rescue and the others had slain the phalangers attacking his horse.

  Had he been anyone else, she would have expected gratitude or possibly even a stronger sense of camaraderie. From Ru, all she could hope for and all she had expected was some grudging respect and lessened indifference.

  She wanted to ask what was bothering him, but at the same time, felt that if he was going to be that way after they helped them, she could let him sulk or whatever he was doing.

  Kaiel on the other hand, had read his tone as well and wasn't going to let him leave it there.

  “Something you'd like to add to this conversation, Ru?”

  Ru said nothing until he finished healing Gaddigan, then turned to Taylin, pointedly ignoring the chronicler. “If you do not require me, Miss Taylin, I have more work to do.” He didn't really wait for a reply before taking out the House artifact and using it to open the door.

  “Probably mad because he's the only one that got bitten.” Brin muttered at his retreating back.

  The others were inclined to agree that something petty was to blame for the Rune Breaker's worse than usual attitude.

  All, it seemed, except Raiteria. She watched the door for a time after Ru disappeared through it. And as she rolled thoughts around in her head, her eyes narrowed.

  Chapter 13 – A Strong Soul

  'The experiment began with a group consisting of thirty-six female ang'hailene verified to be in good health and of optimum age for safe childbirth.

  Twenty-nine surrogates survived the artificial impregnation procedure. Of those, seven miscarried in the first month and one died of unrelated illness. In the next four months, five more died of complications relating to the embryo. In the sixth month of pregnancy, one surrogate quote: 'vanished into light' according to Leytic, who was with her at the time. The remaining sixteen managed to bring their charge
to a full eight month term, but six died along with the children at childbirth, three of the children were stillborn and one died shortly after birth.

  The Emperor himself contacted me to express his pleasure that we have six viable and healthy subjects.

  As for the dead surrogates, We were ordered to dump the bodies at sea.'

  ~ excerpt from the journal of Lena Hiddakko.

  ***

  Raiteria woke up sometime after midnight by her reckoning. That was getting to be the norm for her since they'd left Daire City, and there were multiple reasons for that.

  One, she was used to sleeping in her wagon, in her own bed, and with her husband by her side. Unlike tall folk scouts, nir-lumos scouts (at least those with the Winter Willow and its immediate sister caravans) weren't outriders; they returned to the wagons at night and rarely slept in the open.

  The second was the nagging feeling that she was alone. Not in a literal sense; she was, after all, on the journey with Taylin, Kaiel, Brin and (to an extent) Ru. Taylin and Kaiel were even family. But for all that, she missed Bromun desperately, to say nothing of how much her mother's heart longed to hold her children again. And she also missed Grandmother, Grandfather, Signateria—the whole of the Winter Willow.

  Many nir-lumos, barring a change of caravan by marriage, never found themselves more than a day's travel from their caravan in their lifetime. Now, she was hundreds of miles from the Winter Willow; everyone and everything she had grown up knowing.

  And finally, there was the thing that was blindingly obvious but none of the group, not even Ru broached: she was desperately afraid for her son. Raiteria was no fool. She had heard stories of Kaydan demons and knew that Motsey might well be dead or tormented at their hands. For all her and the others' talk of rescuing Motsey, she knew full well that they might actually only be sallying forth to avenge him.