The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  Juzo tried to move, but his body wouldn’t respond. He saw he was trapped in Sanur’s fist. He choked on a sudden rush of blood pushing up from his guts and spilling over his chin. He tried to connect with his Blood Eaters but felt nothing. Dead. Everything is dead. Even Pain, his most cherished friend had left him. He wished he could’ve said goodbye, wished he could’ve told someone he loved them. He wasn’t supposed to die like this. Another fury of cracking bones slashed at his ears, the sound coming dimmed. The light of the world went black as Juzo Pulling’s body was flattened in Sanur’s uncaring fist.

  Nyset’s breath heaved in her lungs. She dropped out of her run and into a stagger once she reached the bridge. She wove a Phoenix portal that opened behind the ramparts, ushering soldiers and wizards through. Three Phoenix wizards whose strength almost mirrored hers in the Phoenix joined her in opening portals for the remaining defender’s escape. A damp wind sighed across the bridge, dragging her hair across her throat.

  She turned back to face the archer’s towers, watching as the Blood Eaters swarmed over Sanur’s body. They were difficult to see at this distance without squinting hard. He raised his mighty leg and dislodged a few of the climbers then crushed them under his massive foot. They didn’t rise.

  A figure with long white hair incredibly stood at its chest, hacking at Sanur’s eye. “Juzo! Yes! He’s doing it. He’s going to kill it.” Nyset felt herself beaming with pride. Then something changed, drawing her eyebrows to a furrow. Her heart froze. Juzo squirmed and threw his head back. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no, no.” She lost her concentration, and her Phoenix portal hissed shut beside her, thankfully not harming anyone.

  Sanur’s arm reached for Juzo, snatching him in his paw like he was an insect. Sanur raised his hand, fist closing down to swallow all of Juzo’s form. Everything stood still, and Nyset’s eyes bulged. “No.” She trembled. A fountain of red sprayed out from the top and bottom of Sanur’s crushing hand. “That’s too much blood,” she choked, unsure of why she said what she said. “Too much, too much, too much. No! JUZO!” she screamed, eyes blurring behind a cascade of tears, hands balled. She threw her head back in a primal scream, the arteries in her neck throbbing like drums.

  “Ny,” Isa said and gripped her shoulder with a strong hand. “Everyone’s gone through. We have to go.”

  His words were logical and reasonable, but she didn’t care. “You’re right. I’ll follow after you.” She summoned another Phoenix portal for Isa and Senka. “Go.” She nodded for them to enter, tears spilling around her jaw.

  Senka went first, but not before giving her a reluctant frown. Isa scanned the bridge. A trail of dead Shadow snakes followed after them. “I’ll go after you, Mistress.” He hefted a hatchet in one hand and a heavy hammer in the other, his arms and weapons both speckled in violet blood. There was no time for more words. She drew on the Phoenix and shoved him through her portal then let it close. She ran toward the bridge’s mouth, toward the enemy. She bridged the distance to Sanur in a series of rapid portals, bringing herself to stand before him, maybe forty paces away.

  “Juzo!” she screamed. “Why? Why!” Her voice roared her pain, magnified by the Dragon’s touch, and reaching the ears of even the Shadow Princess. She sent a swarm of fireballs smashing against the giant’s chest, each tearing a flaming hunk of rock from its body. A few slabs were so large when they hit the ground they crushed tens of Shadow snakes. Sanur marched on unfazed and might have even emitted a rumbling laugh. Blood wept from a ruined eye, Juzo’s doing, she realized. Sanur’s laughing grew louder, pounding in her ears, taunting her. If it was a trap, she knowingly entered its snares.

  The Dragon’s insatiable urge for violence took her, and she welcomed its madness. “Is something funny to you?” she screamed. “Is this funny?” Her eyes blazed as she drew on more of the Dragon, gathering her strength into a broad pillar of flame. Her flesh trembled, and her veins burned like magma. She gritted her teeth and released her strength, groaning with the effort. A white spear cut across her vision, leaving a black afterimage. It sliced clean through Sanur’s knee, throwing out a gout of flame, molten rock, and burning blood. The behemoth collapsed under its own weight, falling onto its side, and passing easily through a house’s foundation. Incredibly, it started to crawl with both arms, behind it a river of violet blood and its severed leg.

  “Why won’t you die?” Nyset growled between sobs of rage. “I’ve got a new spell for you,” she roared, a madman’s laughter bubbling from her lips. Whatever part of her that had been balanced by the Phoenix’s cool temperament vaporized as she gripped the Dragon harder, drawing more of it to her form as one might too much drink. A giant wheel of flame vertically manifested on the air. Her eyes flared bright, the flames licking over her head, bright red sash flapping at her legs. “Die!” She thrust her arms forward, directing the wheel at Sanur’s body. In a flash, it struck his head, cutting through slow and throwing up heaps of burning flesh and stone. On and on her wheel went, slicing his body down the middle and finally cutting through, leaving a smoldering line.

  Sanur no longer laughed. Somewhere, a demon wailed, and she hoped it was the Shadow Princess’s cry. The smoking line on Sanur’s back squelched apart, revealing an enormous mass of twisted tissue and bones, all weeping violet blood and wisps of smoke.

  The Shadow Princess vaulted into the air above her charging throng, her shrieks of pain calling out of the streets of New Breden. Then the weakness born of using too much of the powers came, threatening to bury her. The world swam. Fearless Shadow snakes slithered over the burning body of Sanur, winding between its gaping wound channel and over its burning halves. They did not mourn the loss of their fallen brothers.

  “Arch Wizard!” someone shouted behind her, and she turned to find a grizzled wizard with a portal hissing behind him. Two more portals opened, Senka and Isa leaping through. The wizards who’d opened them were fifty paces farther along the bridge.

  “Nyset!” Senka’s mouth fell open as she sprinted toward her, a form of blurring shadows. “Let us help you!” Nyset heard her say as she once again collapsed into the arms of her friend.

  She was a fool. She inwardly scolded herself for all the lives she put at stake for her revenge. “Sorry. I… lost myself, Senka. Lost Juzo. He’s gone. Dead,” she muttered, letting herself be drawn through the portal.

  TWENTY

  Ramparts

  “The mind breaks in a strange elegance. It leaves us dead inside, unable to feel much of anything. To repair a broken mind requires that we embrace our suffering and endure what we couldn’t yesterday.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  Nyset stumbled through the portal, freeing herself from Senka’s iron arms. She gave her a nod that said she was well, forcing her posture upright to regard the defenders upon the Tower’s wall. It felt like every face turned to regard her from spearmen to archers, some expressionless and others horror stricken. Some faces were streaked in a dark mix of char and gore while others were pristine. It was plain to see who had survived the archer’s towers and who had been stationed on the ramparts.

  A hot wind worked to dry the blood on her cheeks. She grimaced as the colors of the world once again shifted, closing her eyes and pressing the heels of her palms to her temples. She groaned, waiting for it to pass. Her guts churned with the urge to vomit.

  “Mistress?” Senka asked, her tone questioning her state while she again gripped Ny’s hand.

  Nyset squeezed it, noting the woman’s thick calluses. “Just a moment. Used too much of the Dragon out there. More than I likely needed to do the job,” she said with what she hoped came out as a reassuring snicker.

  “Ny! Juzo? Are you… is he?” It was Grimbald’s voice. She opened her eyes, gazing up to meet his murky blues. He shook his head, jaw hanging open. “What did you…? What happened?” His tongue circled his lips behind a shroud of beard.

  “I…” Her voice faltered, and again, colors swayed.

  “Tell me!”
Grimbald yelled, seizing her shoulders, and giving her a hard shake. Harder than he meant, she knew.

  “Dead,” she got out. “He’s dead. They’re all dead!” She growled. “The day isn’t over and now isn’t time for grieving,” she said, voice falling.

  “Dead?” Grimbald asked, hands lowering to his sides, and angrily furrowing his brow. “Do you mean it? What do you mean dead? Juzo can’t die. Just needs some blood, right? I can offer it.” He held out his arm as if Nyset might be the one to bite into his veins.

  “The White One is dead?” a soldier echoed, despair laced in his voice. The news carried along the wall, most muttering in disbelief while others suppressed grateful smiles.

  A sob threatened to tear from her throat, but she pressed it down, slightly shaking her head at Grimbald and holding his gaze. “There’s no coming back for him, Grim.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, turned away and leaned over the walls to glimpse the Shadow horde. They spilled over the remaining towers, toppling them with the weight of so many bodies. The crashing of timbers and stone was clear over the broad expanse of the bridge.

  Above them all soared the Shadow Princess, an aerial commander with an absurdly advantageous view. Maybe the odor was locked in her nose, but she swore she could smell the roasting dead from up there.

  “What are we going to do?” Grimbald shifted beside her, placing his hands on the battlements, fingers drumming the stones. “There’s so many. Far more than the other times. And Juzo. I know…” He shook his head. “What I mean to say is that I can’t believe it.”

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve faced impossible odds,” she said, regarding him with a steely nod. She turned about to raise her voice, making sure to address those with the most harried expressions. She started to pace down the ramparts. “We’ve faced hard times before defending the Tower. We’ve lost once, but what was lost was reclaimed.” A few heads nodded at that, some grunts of agreement. “We fight as hard as we can! This is the last of the Shadow’s stain on our world. We will survive!” She screamed and punched at the sky, producing her sword of Dragon fire in her grip. She continued her pacing, sword raised high for all to see. “They can break everything. They can destroy our lands, ruin all we’ve built, but we will survive. They can break everything, but they can’t break us! They can take everything, but they’ll never take us! Crush our bodies but never our spirits!” Cheers of rage and shouts of fury answered, weapons raising to mirror her. She gritted her teeth, glancing back at the charging horde, now maybe one-third of the way down the bridge.

  She threaded her voice with Dragon fire, booming it over the defenders. “I am the conduit of the gods! Our gods! The true gods!” She hammered her fist against her chest. The defenders roared back at her. “The gods stand with you, and with their strength, we will smite our enemies! Purify them in the Dragon’s flame and savage their bodies with the Phoenix’s will. Our arrows will fly true, and our spears will be swift. Our swords will cut quick and our axes merciless! Do not fear our enemy,” she snarled. “Welcome them to our Tower with spear and blade. Show them what the Tower means. We will be their ruin. We will be their damnation. Do not fear these reptiles of shadow, but gore them upon the spines of your will. Fight with me!” She shrieked, the thirst for blood growing in her like a boiling inferno.

  A harmony of screams congealed with both terror and anger split the air. She glared back at the charging mass and shouted, “Die beasts of Shadow!” She hurled a great meteor of flame, crashing into the snakes leading the charge and vaporizing hundreds in the conflagration. The bridge was untouched despite such massive outpouring of power due to its Milvorian steel infused stonework.

  Bowstrings buzzed in her ears and spears fell like guillotines, skewering through Shadow snakes. Wizards hurled fireballs and wove portals of the Phoenix, all their efforts like pissing in a tsunami. It was all but lost. This day was going to be long, and she truly wondered if she’d live to see the end of it, but she had to put on a brave face.

  Time again seemed to stretch as they grew ever closer to the wall. She widened her eyes, taking it all in from the white mist of the falls roaring under the bridge to the burning wreckage of the archer’s towers and the city she worked so hard to rebuild. She licked her teeth. Her throat trembled.

  “The Tigerians?” Grimbald asked, drawing Corpsemaker from its leather strap on his back. He shifted his weight from side to side, eager for war.

  “Dead.”

  Grimbald grunted. “Strange to have witnessed the extinction of a race.”

  “It was long overdue, I think,” Nyset answered, forcing her breath deep and calming her nerves.

  “If this doesn’t work…” Grimbald trailed off.

  “Let’s not worry about that now.” Nyset gritted her teeth and took aim as the first Shadow snake sprang into the air, cutting it down with a spear of flame. Its bloody corpse whirled down atop its brethren.

  “They don’t need to scale the wall. They can just launch themselves up,” Grimbald scoffed. “The wall. All of it for nothing.”

  Nyset bit her cheeks, not wanting to acknowledge what he said was true. “I know,” she whispered. They turned, and for a moment, met each other’s eyes, both of them stricken and sharing in the understanding that the future was uncertain.

  A snake hissed as it flew like an arrow on Grimbald’s right. He leaped up and chopped it down with a precise swing, its body severed and the halves flopping into the courtyard beyond. Violet blood speckled one side of his head. He started to move to wipe it off, but then shrugged at the understanding that this day was to become far bloodier. “Where’s your shadow? Thought he’d want to be here with you.”

  Nyset snickered. His joke didn’t strike her as being particularly humorous, but it was an opportunity to release some of the misery brewing in her body. “Claw is with Gaidal. If things don’t work, he is to flee with him. We need to protect the last dual-wielder if we fail.”

  When we fail.

  “Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  The Shadow snakes came in force, hurling themselves into the air, first in a volley of tens, then in sets of twenty.

  “Don’t let them bite you!” she shouted. She threw a quick succession of three fireballs, aiming for airborne clusters to maximize the damage. A twitch formed in her throat as she saw a snake pass through a young woman’s neck, blood gushing onto her neighboring defenders, who shouted in surprise.

  Those who didn’t find targets splattered against the tower’s walls. Others soared beyond the walls and into the spires and courtyard, their bodies exploding in a spray of violet. Some crashed through the shingles of the supply barns, others throwing torn leaves and flower petals from the distant gardens. “At least they’re not blowing up like bombs this time. And dying on the impact.”

  “Thought I saw that,” Grimbald growled. He ducked low as a snake crashed into the back of the wall. The snake flopped to the ground and tried to slither away with bones protruding from three places. It gnawed on the stones, maybe thinking it flesh. Grimbald raised his polished boot, stomping down on its head with a vicious crack. “She’s making them do this,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” Nyset shouted as a trio flew for her. She flashed a wall of flame in the air and turned them into black dust. “I think so.” Nyset found the Shadow Princess, watching her circle around her army a safe distance away from wizard fire near the burning towers.

  “And here we are again. Defending this blasted hunk of stone,” Grimbald roared and slashed through a pair of snakes, their ruined bodies bouncing from his body. “They keep coming. Do they have no end?” He peered out while drawing his gauntlet across his brow, smearing it with blood.

  “Conserve your stamina, for the day will be long.” Nyset looked farther down the line as men and women crushed Shadow snakes under heels and spear butts. There were already more than a few casualties, the walls bloodied in bright red in places. She caught sight of an Armsman falling on a Shadow snake, dagger thu
dding into its body over and over. His neck was gored at the side, trailing blood over his breastplate. Men moaned and pawed at wounds while Phoenix wizards worked to mend their flesh, doing nothing to stifle the inevitable transformation of the infected. They could at least carry on fighting until they died.

  “Mistress! How long?” Isa shouted, hammer coming down to pierce through a snake’s head, hatchet whirling around to chop another out of its flight. Senka covered his back, daggers working crisscrossing cuts to slice a snake into broad diagonals. “Disgusting!” She spat a mouthful of violet.

  Poisoned, Nyset thought, a frozen pick ramming in her chest. She’s using them to poison us, to infect everyone here with her touch. If she won, they’d all become like them, reduced to hosts for her reptilian parasites.

  “How long what?” she barked. Isa shouted something back, but she didn’t hear him. It isn’t going to work. Even if we won, we would still lose. Their blood is infectious. Coils of hopelessness wound through her every fiber. The Shadow Princess’s dark clouds followed after her, blotting out the sun and casting their grim stain over the rooftops of New Breden. “Doomed,” she breathed, and the horde crashed against the gates below with a thundering roar, snapping her from her stupor.

  “Burn them!” Grimbald yelled, leaning over the parapet to point down. He swiveled his head back to gape at her, eyes knitted with concern. “Ny! Are you well? Ny? You’ve gone white as Isa.”

  “I have?” she muttered, collecting herself. This was not the time for thinking. This was the time for killing. Some part of her remembered Isa’s question, yelling it back to him. “Until we abandon this position. Won’t last long here, not like this, not with them.”