by Steve Vera
Skip rushed up against the window. “Holy shit, they’re everywhere,” he said in English. “There are those kids we saved...oh my God....” He brought his hand to his mouth.
The flare of deep, vivid blue in Skip’s aura told Donovan what the police chief was going to do even before he did it. “Cover me,” Skip barked, dropped the fifty and took off outside, drawing his revolver as he ran.
Idiot. That’s how you want to die.
Amanda threw herself against the wall, crossbow knocked, and just started firing, eliciting a scream and a crash off her first shot. “They’re everywhere!” she screamed, pulled back on the lever and was firing again. The streets were mostly black. The only light came from the occasional lonely globe of desolate violet light, thrashing and swirling against the darkness of the Drynn, but it was in that darkness that Donovan watched a forty-two-year-old police chief dash into the street.
“Well, go out and help him!” Amanda yelled.
Donovan stared at her for a micro-second. Little grasshopper, indeed.
Donovan turned to the others. “Shall we add to our totals?” he asked and then kicked the double doors open. He walked straight out into the dark street, rifle in hand, Ladom’er on his left, the black wizard on his right. Thirty archers followed, and then came Amanda and Dwensolt.
His mind processed everything at the speed of light—seven charging Horde closing on Skip. Thirteen Flyborne descending, led by a wounded Warlock. In one smooth motion Donovan brought his rifle to his eye, locked his target and fired in under a quarter of a second. The powerful crack of the rifle bit into the night, alien in its violence, and the lead Drynn’s head snapped back as his eye burst into jelly. As well as a good part of his head.
Sensing movement from above him, Donovan swiveled and fired another shot, blowing the wing joint of a Flyborne apart. It shrieked and plunged to the ground, head first. It continued to snap and claw itself up to an attacking position.
“Clear the skies!” he yelled and then went back to work on the original seven, picking them apart with the surgical precision of a satellite tracking system. The sudden symphony of twanging bows sang into the night, followed by the hiss of thirty arrows and the inevitable shriek of the impaled, the rain of their blood splashing on the cobblestone.
Ladom’er stole Donovan’s last victim and put an arrow right through his open mouth. “Mustn’t have you taking all the medals, Offlander.”
Skip led the two terrified apprentices and single Legionnaire through the wall of knocked arrows straight back into the doors of the Hall. Once inside, one by one the archers filed in, each one covering the other. Twice Donovan’s rifle barked and twice a Flyborne dropped.
He made sure he was the last one back in. His journey to godhood progressed.
Chapter 55
It was just Gavin and Noah now. They’d all been split up and swallowed by chaos.
Around them were bodies piled six feet high, many Drynnian, more Nu’romian, and every time Gavin stepped, his boot slurped.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” he asked Noah in a ragged, exhausted breath. He simply had nothing left. All this, one day after their ride of slaughter from the Pale Gate? He was cooked. The human body could only endure so long. Everyone had a breaking point, and Gavin had just broken. His consciousness was little more than the crackle of a short between wires. A wall of fatigue, of sleepiness more powerful than terror crushed down on him, ground out his thoughts like a like a falling continent.
I think that’ll about do it for me, he thought. He staggered, looked for Noah, couldn’t find her. Where’d she go?
Out of the periphery of his consciousness, Gavin sensed the shadow, the attack to come and in reflex, on instinct he threw up his cocoon and watched his world change to a scarlet, phosphorous ball of napalm.
Had Noah not been there to join him, there probably wouldn’t have been enough of him to put on a pizza. In fact, the fire was so violent, so powerful that he could feel its heat even through their joint cocoon. It was collapsing. His Wellspring had run dry hours ago. He was using his lifeforce now.
His soul.
When the flames receded, Gavin’s already considerably bleak world became a sadistic joke of fate.
Hulking at least eight feet tall, encased in blacksteele armor that seemed to absorb light instead of reflect it was the Lord of the Soldiers. With the exception of Asmodeous the Pale himself, this was about as bad as things could get.
“Greetings Shardyn,” the Drynn-lord said with a smile promising dark terrors. His cavernous, grating voice seemed to reach right out and squeeze Gavin’s entrails. “You are the only warriors in this whole skirmish worth killing myself.” The Drynn-lord clanged his enormous crimson-flamed two-handed sword (which he carried in one clawed fist) against the black shield with the crest of the black sun chased in ruby. Each time the metal hit, icicles stabbed into Gavin’s brain.
Gavin turned to Noah and Noah turned to Gavin. Old, familiar eyes met, and tomes were exchanged. The clanging stopped.
“I have waited ten thousand lifetimes for this moment,” the Drynn-lord said, bringing his sword to his face so that his milky amber eyes could look through the crossguard, burning with malice and hunger.
“Do you have one more in you?” Gavin asked her in English. It was more of a gasp actually, but she heard him. Her eyebrows went up as if to say, “like we have a choice.”
He looked around at the carnage, up at the three enormous Warlocks circling hungrily above, back at the Drynn-lord, and somewhere deep, on the other side of his soul, a dry, analytical, objective part of his subconscious calmly informed him that this was the spot where he was going to die.
He gave it a glance. Not a bad place to go as glorious deaths went and frankly, if he’d been by himself, he just might have folded. But Noah was here. Gavin loved her too much to not fight.
He sighed and she sighed and the Drynn-lord smiled.
“On your guard, cattle,” he said and took a step forward.
* * *
Tarsidion swung and swung and swung, eyes wide, lips peeled back in a constant snarl. Blood sprayed into the air from his cleaving blade. He was immersed in a trance of sick ecstasy, a sense of freedom from responsibility—a justification for bloodshed and wanton destruction. The burning in his arms was ignored, the pain across his back unprocessed. He clenched his teeth so hard he might have cracked them, and swung and swung again.
To his right was Cirena, her violet eyes dancing in bloodlust, white teeth splashed with her own blood that ran into her mouth from an ugly gash half an inch from her left eye. Together they weaved a dance of death and destruction, so in tune to each other’s bodies and spirits that they entered the coveted and sacred realm within their mindscapes once explained to them by the Seneschal as “The Formless.”
There they were perfect. Flawless. And they killed everything.
It wasn’t until he realized that there was no more enemies to swing at did Tarsidion return to his body, to the present, where he was immediately besieged by silver specks on the perimeter of his vision and cramping, failing muscles. He collapsed to one knee, struggling to stay conscious against the white haze that washed over his senses like a riptide.
A minute passed, maybe a year, but when he finally looked up he saw Cirena’s radiantly wasted face shining down on him. There was dried blood smeared through her hair and bits of bone clinging to her chin. Behind her were the remaining survivors of Nu’rome’s vaunted 2nd Legion. Out of the more than five thousand Legionnaires it had once contained, barely twenty were left. Shell-shocked, pale and barely alive, their faces nevertheless burned with awe and disbelief at what they’d been witness to. That they were still alive.
Tarsidion pushed off his good knee to stand but was stabbed by a bolt of pain in his side and belly. It was then that he realized he was
bleeding. A lot.
* * *
Not only was the Soldier Lord gigantic, but he was a master at his weapon and for the first time their Quaranais didn’t simply vaporize whatever they came in contact with. Sparks of pale blue clashed against crimson and cascaded around them like storms of fireflies. Noah came in from the left and Gavin from the right, blurring, striking and feinting, twirling and slashing.
They couldn’t get through his guard.
“You’re breathing hard, Shardyn,” he growled with a dark upward twisting of his eggplant-colored lips. His upper fangs protruded slightly from his jaw.
“That’s because you haven’t had the week I’ve had,” Gavin gasped. He was so exhausted he didn’t have the energy to be hopeless. His sword no longer poured off light; it barely managed to gleam. And even if they somehow took him down, what about that trio of Warlocks circling above?
“Asmodeous desires that I bring you to him unspoiled, Stavengre, come with me willingly and I will spare your friends. On that you have my word.”
This again?
“The word of a Drynn?” Noah asked. At least she wasn’t breathing so hard.
“Name a single instance a Drynn did not uphold his word,” the Drynn-lord said, turning his full attention to her. Of all the castes, the Soldiers were the most human. His eyes were both feral and intelligent, speaking even of a personality—a rational, logical and calculating mind. Very, very, very bad news. “You cannot, can you?” he asked. “That’s because the word of a Drynn is his life. A Drynn who lies is a Drynn who dies, from any of the castes.” He then spit. “We have more honor than Men, Sur Noahvden. A Drynn never kills its own. Not like your kind.”
“I’ve never heard a Drynn speak so much,” Gavin said, thankful for the moment to rest.
“I already fed,” he said, wiping off a crust of dried blood from the side of his mouth. He grinned. “Accept Lord Deos’s offer of clemency, spare your friends and your woman huddling in terror in the Hall of Olympians.”
Gavin must have given something away. Damn exhaustion.
“Oh yes, the Hall is besieged as we parlay. Such valiant creatures, these Olympians.” He smacked his lips. “Succulent.”
“Tell your master that after careful consideration of his most generous offer, he can shove his offer up his ass sideways.”
The Drynn-lord smiled again, revealing ivory teeth. “I had hoped you would say that.” With a flash of his eyes his great sword flared like a sun, bursting in bloody light. “Then I shall bring him your head and your heart on spikes.” He stepped forward.
The Warlocks circled above.
* * *
Decurion Rashauk’s flight of three huddled just outside the East Wall in a copse of trees, camouflaged by Roland’s craft. Bloody, exhausted and wounded, their mounts were no longer capable of anything more than short bursts of flight.
Too terrible to be real, the screams of the dying drifted through the darkness like blood in a river, and the most damnable thing about it was that they were helpless. If they helped, they died, as would the one helped.
“Look there,” Roland whispered.
Rashauk followed his finger and saw two pale lights cutting the air.
“The Shardyn fight yet, even for a city that rejected them.” Roland stood.” Mount up,” he said.
The Gryphons lifted wary heads. Long ago they had learned the tongues of men. On all of Theia, there were no greater steeds. They could think. They had honor.
After they’d mounted, Decurion Rashauk lifted his lance and spurred it forward.
“Ascend!”
* * *
Noah was down to a knee but still fighting. She’d gotten clipped even through the protection of her cloak and armor and was now bleeding freely out of the side of her belly, staining the already bloody ground with fresh scarlet. Gavin attacked with everything he had but he was sloppy, overcommitting and wincing each time his Quaranai smashed into the Soldier Lord’s blade.
“Will you not reconsider, cattle? Come with me and I’ll spare your brethren.”
“Don’t even think about it,” she gasped in English, pressing her palm to her side to stop the blood spilling between her fingers and onto her armor. “I’d rather die.”
I know. So would I.
Gavin attacked again. Deflected. The Drynn-lord was toying with him. Gavin couldn’t even lift his blade anymore. The point dragged on the ground. Each breath was broken razor blades in his throat. He pulled his Quaranai off the ground and held it with both hands in front of him, arms trembling.
“Goodbye, Sur Stavengre of the Seven App—”
Twin bolts of lighting speared down from the heavens and crackled full force into the Soldier Lord’s back on the cries of three screaming Gryphons.
The Drynn-lord roared and arched his back in shock and pain, and in that moment, Gavin summoned every ounce of everything he’d ever fought for, everything he’d ever loved, and launched his whole body at him.
He would either kill or die.
Noah mirrored him and together, they hit the Drynn-lord from both sides. Even as the creature’s body convulsed from the electricity eating his flesh, he blocked Gavin’s blade with such force that Gavin’s arm went numb. And his blade went flying.
Noah’s blade, however, plunged right under his pit, through his armor and came out the opposite shoulder. His following spasm ripped her Quaranai right out of her grasp. He staggered, her blade buried in his body and with a mind-numbing strength, he grasped the hilt of the Quaranai inside his flesh and began to pull.
Gavin was vaguely aware of the screams and crackles of magic above them but neither of them dared to take their eyes off the Lord of Soldiers. Like a nightmare, Gavin watched him pull Noah’s entire Quaranai out of his body and when the tip of her blade exited, there was stream of blood that splashed the ground. His eyes flared and then fluttered and then closed, yet he remained erect, swaying like a freshly sawed tree.
Just die, damn you, Gavin thought. Because I don’t have anything left to kill you with... He spied his Quaranai sticking in the ground at an angle, not three feet from his leg. Gavin extended a trembling hand to summon it but didn’t even have enough in his Wellspring for that. Which meant he was going to have to get it the old-fashioned way. Up close and personal.
Noah tried to stand. By instinct he was by her side, guiding her up, risking a glance at the sky that was a swirl of Gryphon feathers, sizzling magic and the roar of Warlocks.
“How bad?” he asked. Blood wasn’t spurting but still came in a steady flow that went down her stomach, to her legs and boots and then to the ground. It wasn’t stopping. “We have to get you out of your armor—”
“Leave it on or take it off, it makes no difference to me.”
In numb, disbelieving, irritated horror, Gavin watched the Drynn-lord open his eyes and grin. How could he still be alive? Nothing could survive that. In one hand the Drynn gripped his sword and in the other...Noah’s Quaranai. Gavin’s Quaranai remained teasingly at his foot, hardly a stride away.
“I shall dine on your flesh the same.”
Chapter 56
“Time to go,” Donovan rasped.
There were a lot of dead bodies in the stables, both Drynnian and Olympian, but the home team were the ones still standing.
“Don’t suppose you got a plan, Donnie-boy?” Skip asked. He’d never look at Donovan the same way again, how he’d just kicked open those doors and laid waste to everything around him like nothing he’d ever seen before. That one was going in the vault.
“We take the tunnels.”
Skip sagged. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” He’d gotten his fill of cramped spaces for the rest of his life back at the Pass of Almitra.
“And you owe me again.”
“No
pe. That was for leaving me to freeze to death back at Blackburn Cemetery. You taking point?”
“No,” he said and slipped on his red-lensed Aviators. “Dwensolt is.”
The old Druid froze. He gripped his staff, wriggled his unibrow and turned to face Donovan. “Why would you presume that I know where to go?” he asked.
“Because you are an Arch-Druid.”
Clearly this wasn’t common knowledge because even in the company of such high caliber magic-users, Dwensolt got a lot of looks, most of them respectful. Mostly. The old man’s shoulders seemed to sag ever so slightly. “I was once.”
Donovan took a step forward. “You know things, don’t you, Dwensolt?”
Easy, Donnie-boy, I was just starting to like you.
“I do. Donovan.” Now that the initial shock of his secret was out, Dwensolt had composed himself. Was calm. Watchful.
“Tell us,” he said and looked around at the assembled survivors of the Fall of Nu’rome—the magic-casters, the archers, Amanda, the two kids and the Legionnaire they’d just saved. “Where do we go to make our stand against the Drynn? Where can we go that is unassailable?”
Dwensolt was silent for a long time, stroking his frizzled beard. In that silence, they could hear distant screams, breaking glass and the sporadic roars of the conquerors.
Nobody said the obvious. There was a city dying out there and it wasn’t over. The roars were getting closer, more frequent.
Dwensolt finally spoke, “I know where we can go.”
“Then lead the way,” Donovan said and indicated the tunnel.
“It will be perilous,” Dwensolt warned.
“More so than out there?” Donovan replied with a jerk of his thumb in the direction of the city. “Lead the way. Now.”
Dwensolt stood, gave them all a long, good pass and then turned to face the tunnel.
“This way,” Dwensolt said and stepped into the dark.
* * *
“It’s a good thing the Seneschal isn’t here,” Gavin muttered to Noah. “Because he has both of our Quaranais.”