‘Totelun,’ he called. ‘I feel you out there. You cannot escape me. This is the end for you. And once you’re gone, I will destroy this pitiful city, hiding from the gaze of the Goddess.’
A horn blew. Kasimir had directed the battlewing to split in two at the sound, half to stay and fight Abrax, and the others to circle up to the Celestial’s body high above. Totelun watched them, harrying the tentacles as they flew. He stayed with the thrall group, and dived for Abrax.
‘There you are!’ the voice boomed.
Lightning shot down the tentacles from above, crackling down towards Abrax. As it hit him, he launched it, aiming for Totelun. Shenkhi reacted fast, barrelling into a helpful air current and sweeping them out of harms way. The rider behind them wasn’t so fortunate; blackened and burnt, he and his Thunwing tumbled out of the sky. Tentacles began to swoop in now that they were in range; one knocked a Thunwing senseless, stinging pilot and harpooner to death before they even started to fall.
To Totelun the squad looked like wasps harassing an intruder to the nest, buzzing and stinging, but not big enough to stop the oncoming creature. Spear throwers stood in their stirrups and launched their weapons at the swinging tentacles, making little difference. Each time, the Celestial would counter, swatting at the riders and connecting more often than not. As Totelun swept Shenkhi round in a large arc, Cassandra pointed out Kasimir readying for a dive toward Abrax. The way ahead of him was a mass of writhing danger, tubes snapping like whips in the air.
He wouldn’t make it alone. Totelun coaxed Shenkhi to dangerous speed and dived. He felt Cassandra stand behind him, prepping a harpoon, held fast only by the stirrups. If anyone could land a hit it was her. Shenkhi flit in and out of the tentacles, making them look slow by comparison. Below them, Kasimir’s partner launched a spear but missed, only serving to attract Abrax’s attention. He pivoted, seeing Totelun before he was close enough. A wall of tentacles swept across him and Shenkhi was forced to dodge back and dive again. Cassandra settled back into the saddle, their moment lost.
The Thunwings were learning; less were being knocked out of the sky now, and more were scoring hits on tentacles. He watched as one team cut incredibly close to one of the trunks, slicing through it with blades on either side as they flew past. The severed tentacle fell out of the sky, smashing into the sea below them with a great splash.
As good as that was, Totelun knew they would not succeed if they had to cut each and every tentacle. Eventually they would tire, and slow and Abrax would knock them aside, sting them, or hit them with a bolt of lightning. He was far too powerful for a battle of attrition. Totelun dodged the crackling electric energy as he tried to get out of Abrax’s line of sight again.
The battlewing had dissolved into individual attacks, feints and counters. Where one pair might succeed, another making the same play were bludgeoned from the air. They needed to co-ordinate more.
He tried to find Kasimir again, and Cassandra pointed him out, like she was reading his mind. How did she know want he wanted? It didn’t matter how, only that it worked. He caught Kasimir’s eye, signalled to him what he hoped was an obvious pincer gesture. All in at once.
Kasimir nodded, his partner blowing the horn again. The note was different, a call to form up. He watched as the riders disengaged from the writhing death-trap, leaving only a couple of their number behind. The formation split into two groups, and each broke off from the other to circle round; Abrax could follow one, but he couldn’t follow both.
Totelun found himself in the group that Abrax wasn’t tracking. Instead, the thrall threw up another flickering wall of tentacles in defence, impossible to penetrate. Another horn blast and they all attacked as one, from every side. The wall came crashing down as Abrax reacted to attacks on multiple fronts at once. Tentacles were slashed, more than one severed and spurting ichor and gelatinous flesh across riders as it fell. He saw a couple of riders go down as Abrax’s attention hit them; some stung to death, others swiped straight off the back of their mounts with wickedly accurate blows.
Cassandra stood, locking her knees against his shoulders. Shenkhi dived for Abrax as the thrall’s back turned. They knew what to do, even if Totelun didn’t.
When Abrax did turn it was too late to come out of the manoeuvre, but it was also too late for him to react; Cassandra’s harpoon hit him in the shoulder just like her spear throw had atop the mountain. She was an amazing shot. Abrax roared, throwing lightning at them, one flashing bolt after another. It was all Totelun could do to hold on, and hope Shenkhi could get them out of there safely. He felt the Thunwing swooping over and under the tentacle counterattack, flailing in panic and without aim. He felt the heat as electricity passed by them.
When he turned back he expected to see Abrax huddled up in a clenched net of tentacles, like he had in previous bouts of their ongoing duel. Instead he found an enraged thrall with the power of an Overlord hurtling through the air after them. The thralling tentacle held him attached and lifted him as he swept after Totelun as if he were flying. Cassandra huddled down low beside him as Totelun yanked Shenkhi through a series of feints and evasions.
We are never going to get away from him like this, he thought.
Totelun angled Shenkhi straight up suddenly, abandoning the squadron, causing Abrax to miss with a carefully aimed bolt of lightning, gaining a safety margin of a few extra metres. He drove Shenkhi onward, upward, straight into the pelting rain. Cassandra held onto him for her life. He lunged under a mass of tentacles, each one aiming for them now.
‘I will kill you, Totelun!’ roared Abrax, below.
Totelun looked back, saw the thrall swooping in behind them. He was gaining.
Closer and closer to the storm clouds, Totelun could see the other half of the battlewing, the ones that had split and aimed for the Celestial’s body. It was nowhere near the clouds now, having lowered itself toward the battle. Kasimir had told the riders to aim for the sensory orbs around its carapace, to blind it, and he could see the evidence of their skirmish. Ten or so of the orbs were burst and shredded, leaking jelly into the rain. Kasimir had also instructed them on how Totelun had killed the Celestial with his father, cutting into it and slicing out the heart. As he swept up and over the skirt around the edge of the massive beast, he looked for signs of entry; he saw only the bodies of fallen riders knocked from the sky, sprawled and broken on the creature’s carapace.
Abrax reeled out of the storm, crashing into them like a cannon shot. Totelun was wrenched off the back of the Thunwing, thrown onto the unforgiving shell of the Celestial. He rolled with the fall, came up without injuring himself. He was grateful they hadn’t been much higher. Looking up, he could no longer see Shenkhi or Cassandra, he wasn’t even sure she was still on the Thunwing. She could have been knocked off to fall the mile or so back down into the sea.
Or worse, the ravine.
He had to trust she was alive, or he wouldn’t be able to fight.
Totelun was on his own.
The carapace swept up in the centre twenty metres away, like a ridged hill made of shell. The hardness of it was deceptive; he remembered pushing his piton blades through it. It would give, like it was made of hard leather, but also taut like a drumskin. It could be punctured. Was he going to have to cut his way inside again?
As Totelun came up onto his feet, looking for a likely spot to slice, he saw Abrax land. The thralling tentacle attached to him, soared up into the air and down over the lip, into the tentacles underneath. He was stood upon the creature he was thralled to.
He ran at Totelun, yelling a battle cry. Totelun only noticed he was armed at the last moment, flicking his own daggers into hand as Abrax smashed into him, knocking them both sliding across the rain-slicked shell. They were on their feet again in seconds. Totelun caught the first bludgeoning thrust on crossed blades, snapped it back at Abrax. He dodged the follow up, punched the thrall in the face with a hilt-filled fist. Abrax slashed at him, causing Totelun to weave back, duck and parry.
He was slow on his left side and Totelun took full advantage, knocking aside a weak thrust and slicing into his left forearm before he could block. He saw the wound Cassandra had inflicted on Abrax’s left shoulder, blood mixed with rainwater.
Abrax used the power of the Celestial to aid him; tentacles swept in without warning, coming at Totelun from underneath the carapace, only visible at the moment they crested the edge and aimed for him. He had no hope of batting them away or parrying; he would be pulverised if one of them hit him. Instead he was forced to stay aware of more than just Abrax’s blade, forced to react and jump aside every few moments as a tentacle trunk tried to squash him.
Even so, Totelun was the better bladesmith, consistently able to deflect Abrax’s attacks. The thrall was taller, more powerfully built than Totelun, and with the power of the Celestial behind him, consistently able to drive Totelun back. Totelun could tell he was untrained, but it didn’t matter. Eventually he was going to make a mistake and Abrax was going to drive that sword through him.
What he hadn’t reckoned with was Abrax’s temper. Where Totelun was still calm, measured and precise in his deflections and counters, Abrax was reckless and enraged, becoming more so with every parried attack. Frustrated with Totelun’s abilities he roared, kicking out at the same time as he sliced. The mistake came as Totelun had known it would; he couldn’t parry both the slice and dodge the kick at the same time. He swept the slice aside, but the kick sent him sprawling on his ass.
Abrax levitated up into the air, visibly building with power. Electricity came in from the surrounding storm, shooting along the thralling tube and into his body.
Totelun felt rather than saw the harpoon shot from the darkness of the storm clouds. It missed Abrax by a safe margin, landing and embedding deep into the Celestial’s tough membrane almost directly between Totelun’s legs. Was that Cassandra? If so, she’d missed at the critical moment.
Abrax laughed. ‘Goodbye, Totelun. The Goddess still wants you, but you are too dangerous to be left alive.’
He launched the built-up energy, a single bolt shot from his outstretched palm. Totelun didn’t have time to flinch, didn’t have time to shut his eyes before the bolt hit. But instead of hitting him, the electricity smashed into the metal harpoon, redirecting its energy down into the Celestial itself. He heard the dull whump as the soft unprotected insides of the creature were fried and burnt, internal organs flash-cooked, nerves and crystal-link severed. Jelly flesh shot from the remaining orbs around the skirt as they exploded outward.
Abrax convulsed in the air above. Then he fell, his powers suddenly and disastrously severed like an umbilical cord. He crashed down in front of Totelun.
The Celestial was shaking like a concentrated quake. It’s dying, thought Totelun. I’ve felt this before. The carapace shifted below them, lurching and falling. Gravity began to exert itself.
Abrax had hold of his leg. ‘You destroyed my dream. You did this!’ He lurched to his feet, unsteady, reeling from the impact of his stolen power. He aimed the blade at Totelun and tried to cut him. Totelun batted it away easily, regaining his own feet, only to have Abrax slam into him, wrestling him to the ground. Totelun thought he’d have to fight hard to live, but Abrax’s limbs were weak and his movements ungainly. He was no longer capable of the fight he had begun.
Totelun found himself underneath, holding Abrax away from his face. The man was scratching and tearing, crying. Totelun’s blade was at Abrax’s throat. It would be as nothing to end him now. Abrax convulsed again, ripped upwards as some poisonous surge of the Celestial’s death travelled down the thralling tentacle and into him. The blue of his eyes died, turning black, and he collapsed onto Totelun’s outstretched blade. It entered his chest and slid into his heart.
This was what would happen to Cassandra or Chrysaora if their Medusi were killed. This is what destroying the Medusi would do to all those thralls from Theris, and the rest of Arceth. A thrall could not long survive the death of the Medusi. Naus had described it as a poison always ready to surge into them at the last moment.
Totelun pushed Abrax’s lifeless body off, stood on shaky legs. He could feel the Celestial falling out of the sky. The rain drops weren’t falling right, almost hovering as he fell with them.
He remembered his father trying to save him from falling out of the sky with another Celestial. His fingers touching, just missing.
It’s all happening again.
He looked up into the sky at a sound. A roar. The roar of an excited Thunwing. Above him, soaring through the sky towards him, matching the speed of the dropping Celestial, was Shenkhi, with Cassandra on his back in the front saddle. Her arm was stretched out for him, her fingers grasping. Totelun judged the moment and leaped, leaving the collapsing Celestial for a moment of stillness, weightlessness, his hand locking onto hers and then swinging up and round into the saddle on Shenkhi’s back. The Thunwing pulled out of the dive as the Celestial smashed into the ocean below.
When he righted himself and recovered from the sickening dive, Totelun could see the Celestial’s crash in all its glory. The carcass hit just to the side of the crevasse, its body deflating and losing its shape as the carapace broke apart on impact. A tidal wave swept out from the corpse in all available directions, hitting Captain Cane’s ship immediately, but thankfully before it had built in size. The tentacles of the beast lay half in and half out of the ravine, creating their own strange break in the waterfalls below.
Cassandra looked over her shoulder, solemn-faced as she guided Shenkhi’s slow circle. Totelun knew that she had been waiting to throw that harpoon at exactly that time, exactly in front of a killing lightning strike. She had slain the Celestial this time.
Overlords really could be killed, Totelun thought. Naus was right.
He roared into the brightening sky, heard Shenkhi’s crow match his own. He would enjoy telling Naus about this when they met again.
Chapter Forty Six
Aurelia
It was the rhythmic swaying that brought Aurelia slowly awake. Her head lolled, resting against a rubbery material, with tiny coarse hairs all over. She realised it was skin, as the sharp shoulder blades undulated within. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t dreaming as she had been for a long while; the landscape that moved all around her was sharp and clear and real. And she was too high up.
That’s when Aurelia realised, she was draped over the back of her Luacha and it was walking through a land of dull terrain, rocks and scrubland for the most part; in the far distance ahead strange stacks of boulders stood in precarious formations.
She wasn’t alone. Aurelia was just one small part of a large procession, one of thousands, a winding line of travellers, most without the luxury of an Ambler beneath them. The walkers pulled covered carts laden with their possessions, everything from food and supplies, to furniture they couldn’t bear to live without, gold and riches, trade goods and silks. Most wore more than one layer of clothing and sported satchels and packs filled with everything the carts couldn’t hold. Aurelia stared as the procession wound round a dusty road, she couldn’t see the beginning or the end of the line.
The citizens of Argentor, the refugees of a city she’d watched burn. She had somehow caught up with them, but she remembered almost nothing of it. She turned her head to the other side of the Ambler.
Chrysaora was there, one hand holding the reins. She caught Aurelia’s movement and smiled at her.
‘You’re finally awake,’ she said, beaming. ‘About time. Makes sense, I did stop drugging you yesterday.’
Aurelia was so grateful to be alive and well, she didn’t question that. ‘You got me out?’
Chrysaora nodded. Her Medusi wasn’t tucked away in its hood, but proudly displayed, floating above her. Chrysaora seemed more relaxed than Aurelia had ever seen her. ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ she asked.
As Aurelia pulled herself into a sitting position on the Luacha’s back, she thought of Naus driving a sword deep into his ow
n guts and shuddered. She had watched it happen, that was the last thing she remembered, the final culmination of the visions she’d been having for weeks now. If that was the kind of thing Cassandra wanted to share with her, she could keep it to herself. She hadn’t known him long, but she couldn’t believe Naus was dead. She felt a tear escape, run down her cheek. He had been an ally; someone who was fighting the Medusi out there, not just her. Someone else fighting Noctiluca. Totelun, Cassandra and Naus, but now there was one less.
‘Why the tears?’ asked Chrysaora.
She wasn’t sure she could explain everything immediately. She would only make her thralled friend upset. How did she even begin to broach the things Naus had said before the end? Eleutheria and Noctiluca were one and the same. It was beyond belief.
Chrysaora had meant the last thing she remembered awake. She would start there. ‘Faibryn attacked me,’ she said. ‘With a poisoned blade. You used your healing magic to squeeze the poison from the wound.’ She touched the spot where the tiny dagger had entered, now merely an angry scab, wrapped in bandages. It hurt, but like a dull memory. She had survived Iruki venom. ‘I must have blacked out.’
‘You did. It was a painful process.’
‘And you’ve kept me sedated since.’
‘I had to, you lost a lot of blood. Contaminated blood. You needed rest for your body to make more.’
‘Thank you so much,’ said Aurelia, feeling tears again. ‘I would have died screaming if it weren’t for you. You saved me from a fate worse than death.’ She thought of how her father died, how his faithful servant had only been able to end his suffering, where hers had cured her. ‘I don’t know how to repay you.’
Chrysaora smiled again. Twice in one conversation. Aurelia couldn’t remember another time the serious woman had done that. ‘You rest and relax. Build up your strength. You have already repaid me a hundred times.’
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 61