Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4)

by Christopher Husberg

  “It’s about time,” Azael said. His voice still had that strange rolling, burning quality to it, but less penetrating, not quite all-encompassing in the way it had been before. He looked at the others, who were also beginning to twist and morph. “Let’s get this over with.” A beam of something shot up from Azael into the night sky; it was not light, Winter was sure of that, because it was black and dark, but neither was it darkness, as it dispelled and warped the night sky around it.

  The hand that emerged from Azael’s robe was nothing but black bone, pointing one lone, skeletal finger at Winter.

  “You,” Azael grated, his voice like fire, “have just saved the world.”

  * * *

  Astrid sprinted through the Odenite camp, knocking aside makeshift stools and scattering campfire ashes in her wake.

  When she reached their tent, she shook Knot awake.

  “Winter’s still alive,” she told him, “I let her live—” not entirely true, considering the fact Winter could have killed her easily, but still, “—but I think now she’s done something incredibly stu—”

  “You’ve been up there? What in Oblivion…?” Knot growled. But he was already awake, alert, and throwing on his armor. He followed her out into the night, and they both looked up at the cliff face.

  It looked… Goddess it looked like…

  Eight strange columns of light jutted up into the night sky. Red, orange, gold, green, blue, violet, silver, and a dirty shade of white. And another column, darker even than the night sky, pulled the other lights toward it, around it, so that they began to lean inward and eventually spiral around one another as they rose upward.

  White flakes had begun to drift slowly down around her. She held out her hand, and a tiny snowflake landed, perfect and unmelting on her palm.

  The first winter’s snow.

  “Come on,” Knot said, stalking away. “We need to find Cinzia.”

  * * *

  Cinzia and Jane were together, awake and fully dressed, when Astrid and Knot ran up to them. They’d been watching the spectrum of color on the cliff too, and the strange, dark light bending them all into itself.

  Cinzia counted eight lights. Nine, including the dark pillar.

  “It’s happening, isn’t it?” Cinzia asked.

  “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you mean,” Astrid said.

  “I am sorry you didn’t, Astrid,” Jane said. “If you had, you might have prevented this.”

  “And what is this?” Cinzia asked.

  “This is the Rising,” Jane said. “The Nine Daemons are here.”

  “How is Winter involved?” Knot asked, his eyes searching the clifftop as well.

  “I think she’s planning to fight them,” Astrid said. “Or kill herself trying.”

  Knot swore. “I’ve got to get to her.”

  “I think…” Cinzia’s hand strayed to the gemstone in the pouch at her side. She half-expected it to shine through the pouch itself, perhaps even burn through it, but the pouch was as dark as ever. She could sense it, however, sense the connection between the gemstone and those lights on the clifftop.

  “I think I need to be up there.”

  Jane’s eyes widened. “Why on the Sfaera would you…?”

  “I know how to use Canta’s Heart,” Cinzia said. She met Knot’s eyes. “The gemstone I procured at the Fane. I think I can use it to stop…” She glanced up at the lights on the clifftop again. “To stop that, I hope.”

  “But you said you did not know how—”

  “I’ve figured it out, sister. But I need to get up there, to where they are.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Knot said, shaking his head.

  “Did you hear what I said?” For a moment she almost forgot Jane and Astrid were there. She took his hands in hers. “I can stop this.”

  Knot scowled. “Then I go with you. To help you, somehow. And to help Winter.”

  “If I can do this right,” Cinzia said, “I think I can help her, too.”

  “Then let’s go!” Astrid was pacing back and forth like a jungle cat, waiting impatiently.

  “There’s something else up there,” Jane said. Her face was an illumination of color, yellow and orange and green and violet. Each of their faces, Cinzia realized, was lit up in a rainbow of color. It would have been an incredibly beautiful sight, had the portents not been so dire.

  A faint shimmer in the light show above them caught her eye. And then another. And then another, and another, and suddenly she realized why she had not been able to see what it was Jane saw. She had been looking too narrowly. In the sky above the cliffs, a massive, roiling blackness shimmered and twisted. A blackness all too familiar to her. And, if she squinted, she could see dozens of large, dark forms pouring down from the darkness, and onto the clifftop.

  “Outsiders,” Knot said.

  “There are so many of them.” Cinzia had only ever seen three at a time, at the most. Canta’s bones, there had to be a hundred of them up there already.

  Astrid laughed nervously. “Maybe going up there isn’t the best idea,” Astrid said.

  Cinzia squeezed Knot’s hands tightly. “It is the only way,” she said. “But how in the Sfaera am I going to make it past all those Outsiders?”

  “I believe I can guide you, sister.”

  “I’m coming with you both,” Knot said.

  “Oblivion,” Astrid muttered. “If you’re all going to go, then I might as—”

  Something thumped loudly to the ground behind them: an Outsider, twice the height of a human. Fangs the size of Cinzia’s forearm jutted at all angles from its mouth, and a half-dozen black horns and spikes ran the length of its head.

  Astrid looked back at the others. “Go. I can handle this one.”

  With a supernatural burst of speed, the vampire leapt on the monster, burying her claws deep in its neck.

  Cinzia pulled Knot along gently. She could not imagine the conflict in him, but they had to move.

  “Astrid can handle herself,” Cinzia said to him quietly.

  Jaw set, Knot nodded, and the three of them moved toward the cliffs.

  * * *

  As the Nine Daemons formed, coalescing in rays of light around Azael, Winter could not help but wonder what in Oblivion she had done. She ducked back behind a pile of timbers, shielding herself from the monsters as they formed, unable to tear her eyes away.

  It was too late to change her mind now.

  Outsiders rained down all around her, falling heavily to the ground, their dark forms in stark contrast to the gently falling snow. Given what had happened when Mefiston took his form at the Battle of the Rihnemin, she had expected these Outsiders to appear. That was why she had sent her Rangers away.

  But the Outsiders were the least of her concerns at the moment.

  After Azael took shape, each of the nine people around him began to change. The fat man ruptured, his flesh exploding outward. Gore splattered everything around him, giving way to a hugely fat monster of a man. Bald, hairless, his skin pasty and pale pink and covered in the guts of his former host. The fat hung in loose folds, like a set of clothes several sizes too large. The man was naked as far as Winter could tell, but his rolls of fat kept him as modest as any item of clothing might. This was Iblin, the Daemon of Greed and Gluttony, standing at least four times her height. As Winter stared up at him in horror, she noticed for the first time the Daemon had only a single eye at the center of its head, bloodshot veins around an iris of sickly yellow.

  The noblewoman appeared to be slowly melting, her skin sliding off her muscles, her muscles sliding off her bones, her bones melting into a viscous, slimy substance. The woman’s face was last to liquefy, even then not quite being absorbed into the horrific substance, her eyes, nose, and mouth elongating and warping, almost straining to escape the blob they had become a part of, but never quite succeeding.

  The old woman, mumbling to herself all the while, began to morph into the Daemon Nadir, Insanity, elongating until s
he stood even taller than most of the Outsiders dropping to the ground around them, though not quite as tall as Iblin, or a feathered serpent Winter recognized as Bazlamit, both of whom stood at least twice the height of most Outsiders.

  The old woman’s head split into three, like a flower blooming with three large petals. Her true face remained at the central head, but her eyelids peeled back revealing bright orange glowing eyes, red-ringed in blood. The heads that split to either side had all four eyes sewn shut with ragged, uneven stitches. All three of the heads converged at the mouth which had morphed into something like the center of a flower, though the mouth had now opened wide into a near-perfect circle, rows of sharp teeth lining the entire circumference’s interior. The scalp and top of the skull of each head was missing, as if torn away, revealing a mush of gray matter amidst jagged bone and bloody flesh. The noblewoman’s arms lengthened till they formed long, uneven claws that scraped the ground.

  A chill ran through Winter as the rest of the Daemons formed. Each one sent a ray of colored light up into the sky: orange from Nadir’s horrifying visage; gold from Iblin’s corpulent bulging sack of a body; green from the huge werewolf Samann; blue from Luceraf, the feathered serpent; violet from Estille, the Lust Daemon, who was still a beautiful woman, but with curling horns, the leathery wings of a bat, and a long, barbed, swaying tail; the pile of viscous flesh that Winter now recognized as Bazlamit sent a silvery light up into the night sky, through the falling snow; and, finally, Hade, who had taken the most nebulous form of all, hardly more than a billowing cloud of crackling smoke, sent up a pale gray light, almost white, but lacking the purity.

  “Where is the woman?” Iblin bellowed, his voice deep and booming.

  “She is close,” Azael said, “but she is not our immediate concern. Our immediate concern is—”

  “Solidifying our power,” Bazlamit hissed. “Claiming our true forms.”

  True forms. Were these not the Daemon’s true forms?

  Winter looked down at her pouch. The faltira that she had used when Astrid attacked her had faded moments ago, and she’d been stopping herself with all the willpower she had from taking more of the drug. Now was the time. She took two crystals. She needed all the help she could get, consequences be damned.

  The frost took effect almost immediately, and power rushed through her. As the drug burned, the nearest Outsiders turned to face her, dark eyes staring.

  Winter ignored them, and came out from her hiding place.

  “Honestly, I’m insulted.” Her voice shook. She was terrified. “I thought I’d be just slightly higher on your threat list.”

  She was minuscule in their presence. She was nothing.

  And yet she wasn’t.

  She was a murderer, yes. She knew she was that.

  But she was a tiellan woman, too. She was a wife, however estranged. She was a daughter, and a fisherwoman, and a huntress. She was a queen, now, too; a warrior. She was the Harbinger. She was all of these things, and yet she was one thing more.

  She was a weapon.

  “Let’s see if we can do something about that.”

  With every tendron available to her—hundreds, so many she could not count them—she sought out the weapons she had ordered her Rangers leave behind. Axes, daggers, circular blades, swords, spears, sharpened shields. The tendra that did not find weapons found other things instead: a wooden beam from a shattered trebuchet, one of the stones from the War Goddess’s unused ammunition. With all of these tendra, all of these weapons, she moved forward, attacking, in what she knew would be her final battle.

  43

  Triah

  “SIR, ANOTHER ONE HAS appeared near the Trinacrya, at the center of the city.”

  Carrieri held up a hand to the man who had just approached him, and turned back to his conversation with Captain Deregard. “Split your platoon. Take half of them to the Fiftieth Circle, the other half to the Thirty-Ninth by the shore. Take out those two threats.”

  Carrieri stood in the courtyard of the Legion’s central barracks, soldiers and officers and messengers swarming around him. Snow fell gently from above. Normally, he took joy in the first snows of winter. While the cold and inconvenience got old quickly, their first appearance was always welcome.

  Tonight, he had no time to notice such things.

  “Yes, sir.” Deregard saluted, but before he turned Carrieri gripped him by the shoulder.

  “If more of those monsters show up, take them down. Understand, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir.” Deregard’s face was pale, but his eyes were hard with determination. If Carrieri had a hundred more men like Deregard in his army, he could conquer the Sfaera.

  “Good. Now go.”

  Carrieri turned to Illaran. “How many does that make?”

  “Five inside the city, sir.”

  “Five.” Carrieri swore. He wiped sweat and snow from his brow. “And we have no idea what is causing them? How to stop them raining down on us?”

  “No to both accounts, sir. Although the lights at the top of the Cliffs of Litori continue to shine.”

  “Can we get a squadron up there?”

  “Sir… there are five in the city, but there are over a hundred on the cliffs.”

  “Canta’s bones,” Carrieri muttered. There hadn’t even been that many at the Battle of the Rihnemin.

  “Is the Chaos Queen causing this?” Carrieri demanded. “I thought the Rangers retreated yesterday. Isn’t that what our scouts told us?”

  “Yes, sir. But perhaps she didn’t go with them.”

  “What about the city walls? No attacks?”

  “Not from the tiellans, no, sir. The Odenites battle their own monsters; two or three have dropped in among them as well.”

  Carrieri swore again. “Is there anyone these daemons aren’t attacking? What of the Rodenese fleet?”

  The fleet had begun moving inland earlier that night, when the light show had started up. “They’ve changed course, and were last seen heading toward the northern pass. We think they’re going to attempt to scale it and fight the monsters atop the cliffs.”

  “What in Oblivion is going on?” Carrieri muttered. “What regiments haven’t been deployed yet?”

  “Root, Orb, and Thorn.”

  “Send the Root Regiment to the cliffs,” Carrieri said. “But don’t let them engage that nest of monsters, not if they can avoid it. We must see what the Rodenese are up to. Goddess, we must see what in Oblivion is going on up there.” He knew it might be a suicide mission. It could be a trap; the tiellans might fall on them from the trees, and the Rodenese from the cliffs. All while daemons slaughtered them.

  He remembered, bitterly, when he had retreated from the Battle of the Rihnemin. He hadn’t thought the tiellans had enough left to counter the dozens of monsters they had been fighting together. He hadn’t counted on Winter being… whatever in Oblivion she was. Perhaps she had called the Outsiders down on his city as revenge.

  Carrieri could not help but wonder how things might have been different if he had stayed to help the tiellans fight, instead of leaving them to die.

  “Get the Orb Regiment as well,” Carrieri said. “I’m sure we’ll get more reports of…”

  Carrieri trailed off. In the midst of the falling snow, a strange blackness twisted above him—a blackness very different from the night sky around it, and not just for the absence of falling snow. This blackness glistened, oscillating.

  Both Carrieri and the psimancer dove out of the way as a black shape dropped from the portal, contorting around itself until it coalesced into a sinewy black form with claws and teeth and jaws that seemed far too big for its already massive stature. A long, snaking tail whipped out from behind the monster, covered in black barbs.

  “Form up behind me!” Carrieri shouted. His disoriented soldiers backed away from the monster, staring up at it in terrified awe. “Form up!”

  This time his order galvanized the soldiers into action.

  “Loose ranks,”
Carrieri said, “spears and shield up front, archers in the back. We’ll turn this thing into a bloody pincushion. Illaran, you have no place in this fight. Get my orders out, and inform me of any updates.”

  Illaran nodded, unable to take his eyes off the roaring monster.

  “Go,” Carrieri said, and then Illaran was off.

  The monster roared so loudly it made Carrieri flinch, the sound some twisted hybrid between a deep, booming bellow and a high-pitched inhuman scream.

  Carrieri drew his sword and rushed at the monster with a war cry of his own, his soldiers charging behind him.

  * * *

  Snow continued to fall lazily, dissolving in the water of the bay below, as Cova and her Reapers marched up the mountain pass. Beasts as big as small ships roamed the clifftops. Her scouts reported some in the city, as well as the Odenite camp. What Cova had seen through the spyglass on her ship, and the way the monsters were described to her, reminded her of a rumor she had heard in Izet, from the time the old Emperor Grysole had been killed: massive daemonic bodies had been found beneath the rubble of the imperial dome alongside that of the emperor. Her father had kept the whole thing quiet.

  Whatever her father had been involved with—daemons and monsters and Scorned Gods—had something to do with what was happening now.

  And atop the cliff, in a twisting array of colorful light, even more terrifying monsters battled a tiellan women—which must be Winter Cordier. Cova knew enough of legend to know that the Nine Daemons, in their true forms, were on top of the cliff.

  If the tiellans were still up there, they did not stand a chance. Cova had heard nothing from Winter or Urstadt of any plans for such… Goddess, what even was this? The end of the Sfaera?

  Once she had read the signs, she knew it was in her best interest to help. She prayed Carrieri would recognize the threat, too. If the Daemons defeated Winter and the tiellans atop the cliff, they would barrel down toward the city and destroy Triah completely—eventually, they would destroy the entire Sfaera. The Nine had no good intentions for the Sfaera, or its peoples.

  The pass narrowed quickly as it curved into the cliffs, taking a series of switchbacks before reaching the top, about half a radial from where the center of the clifftop battle was, near the southern edge of the cliffs that faced out over Triah.