by Stone Thomas
“You know what else is a problem?” I asked. “The army of rage-rotten souls no longer confined to the shadows. The whole city is shadows now.”
“Everyone,” Nola said, “hold on to your bowels.”
+24
For a moment, I froze. As Nola and the girls pressed their backs against the metal spire and stared out at the army charging toward us, our initial plan — our whole trip here, to be honest — had become a cataclysmic disaster. Aside from the cursed men waiting for their cue to attack, the citizens we had come here to save were nowhere in sight. We were bathed in darkness from a massive umbrella blotting out the sun, with snarling cretins, an evil general, and an army of undead spectral warriors prepared to close in on us.
“Savange,” I whispered. “Can you cast aside these shadows and keep the lumentors at bay?”
“I play in your shadows, not theirs,” she said. “I can lighten your sight, but that doesn’t change the world you live in. I’m no use to you here.”
“Arden?” Lily asked. “What’s our move?”
I wanted to test our capacity for sieging a city. What started as a dry run turned very wet and very messy. My least favorite type of runs. I took a deep breath.
“Ambry! Give us a ring of Holding Fire to hold the cretins back. I don’t care if the lumentors feed off the magic flame for now, keep it burning. Just make sure the flames don’t close in on us and ignite the lumber launcher. Lily, summon Stalactice spikes to tear this canopy to shreds. We need light and we need it now. Mamba, we have cursed men out there. Summon as many snakes as you can to tangle their legs and pin them down.”
A few cretins made it through the flames before Ambry’s fire wall was in place, but I dispatched them easily with my Vile Lance.
Mamba’s hands waved in front of her, then to her sides. Her shoulders and hips came alive as she coaxed dozens of snakes from the ground. Just outside Ambry’s wall of flame, the cobblestones jostled free, releasing a torrent of snakes whose skin was black and white like marble. They slithered toward their prey, slowing down the team of gray-skinned men consumed by the rage of the cretins’ curse.
“We’ll set those men free if we destroy the cretins and their general,” I said. “Cindra, turn a few cretins against each other with Heartstringer, then switch to Moneyshot to increase your attack damage and help us whittle down the number of cretins here. I know it’s hard to aim through Ambry’s flames, but do your best.”
Kāya twirled around in the air, summoning something bright and round in her hand.
“Nola, I need you distracting Kāya,” I said. “Don’t let her get off any bombs.”
“Take this,” she said, summoning a seraph guardian. It was likely the last she could conjure with her dwindling AP, so we needed it to count. Then she leapt, flapping her angelic wings as she flew toward Kāya. She had her simple iron sword, though little experience using it.
Lumentors crowded around Ambry’s magic flame, drawing its energy into themselves. She raised another wall as the first one died out. Somewhere in the heart of the city, a handful of men bellowed out some kind of war cry. Feet thumped toward us, but I couldn’t hear what their owners were shouting.
As I scanned the streets through the haze of Ambry’s heat, Duul’s general backed away from the fight. He was a hulking, barrel-chested familiar with black metallic skin and red glowing orbs where eyes should be. He was smarter than the smaller cretins at his command, and knew as well as I did that the cursed men would fight on as long as we couldn’t reach the general to kill him.
“The canopy is too thick,” Lily said. “Whatever they slicked it with is resisting any ice damage.”
“Change of plans,” I said. “Mamba, I need you earning XP, now. Send your snakes after the cretins. Bite to kill. Lily, arc your Battle Cryo skill high over Ambry’s wall and start freezing those men in place before they can hurt themselves.”
As cretins fell to Cindra’s arrows and Mamba’s snakes, puddles of black speckled the surrounding area. Some of the lumentors dipped down and drank from the pools of cretin lifeblood, glowing brighter as they drank the energy in.
The sound of angry men crashing through the city’s back streets got louder. Maybe Valleyvale had a secret army ready to liberate us and take down Kāya. Wouldn’t that be nice?
A couple of cursed men charged through Ambry’s fire wall, singeing their skin but ignoring the damage. I wrestled one to the ground, disarming him while the second man punched me in the back. Lily froze them while I struggled, almost turning me into a block of ice as well.
A hundred feet away, Duul’s general laughed.
“I have to take him out,” I said.
“How?” Cindra asked, spiking a Moneyshot arrow through a cretin’s skull. “The lumentors will eat you alive.”
I could throw my weapon at him. I’ve killed others just like him with one hit of that powerful spear. I wasn’t well practiced at throwing my spear like a javelin though. I needed a reliable way to launch this thing.
The lumber launcher.
I took one of the wooden beams stacked inside the tower and attacked it with the tip of my spear. The wood cracked and split. I stabbed it again, forcing a deeper crease to open up. Then I rammed the handle of my weapon into the wood and loaded it into the siege tower’s apparatus.
The general didn’t seem to see what I was working on through Ambry’s flames. I turned the crank that lowered the launcher’s aim, then turned the tower until it pointed right at him.
Nola and Kāya wrestled in the air, trading punches. Nola’s sword sat in the scabbard at her side, unused. She lifted a golden leg, wrapping her thigh around Kāya’s back while Kāya reached for Nola’s hair.
“Nola!” I yelled as the two tangled bodies swooped in front of me, then rose again. They were obscuring my shot. The Vile Lance was designed to slay deific enemies, including the gods. “Nola!” The crackling flames surrounding us, the screeches of cretins, the grunts of cursed men, the whir of arrows, and the hissing of snakes — it drowned out any hope I had of calling out to the goddess.
Nola!, I yelled with my mind. Take her down!
I’m trying!, she replied.
Akrin hovered above the fray, watching it with almost anthropological interest. I waved my arms at him and he noticed. He floated over the fire wall and approached me.
“Can you make sure Nola stays clear of my shot?” I asked.
“Shot at what?” he asked.
“Duul’s general,” I said. “If I kill him, the curse will break.”
“And those men will be free to choose,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, they can choose to move to Roseknob. But I need a clear shot!”
“Very well,” he said. He zoomed toward the two younger goddesses. Nola and Kāya were a blur of pastel yellow and purple, dipping and rising in the air together. Akrin darted toward them, grabbed each by an ear, and pulled them to the ground. They struggled against him, swatting at him as much as each other, but he just laughed and accepted their slaps and insults.
He bought me the shot I needed. I curled my fingers around the trigger lever, eyed the general one last time, and pulled.
The wooden beam, clutching my Vile Lance in its center, tore through the air at cannonball speed. One moment, it was lodged in the base of our siege tower, and the next it had flown a hundred feet, sinking the tip of my weapon into the chest of Duul’s strongest minion.
The general coughed up black sludge and stumbled backward, reaching for the weaponized wooden plank that did him in. By the time he ripped it from his chest, his torn metallic skin had peeled back like foil and released too much of his internal life force for him to keep fighting. He lay back, defeated.
I activated Call to Arms to reclaim my weapon. It didn’t sail through the air in reverse though. I cursed under my breath. It was too far away.
The men of Valleyvale, and those from Meadowdale that were led here by the general and his army, started to shake free of thei
r curses. They stopped fighting alongside the lumentors, and started to gaze at them in fear.
The lumentors couldn’t smell fear. At least, I didn’t think they could. Their noses were just glowing shapes of light, leftovers from the time when those souls had physical bodies that needed noses. Noses were useful things to the living. They gave us someplace to aim our fist when someone insulted our masculinity, someplace to stick our fingers when we were bored, and something we were actually allowed to steal from babies.
Lumentors didn’t need noses. They could sense fear without them. Fear, and souls, ripe for the plundering.
“Did we make it worse?” I asked. The lumentors stalked toward those men as Akrin invited them one by one to a lovely new home in a city he may or may not own stock in.
Then the shouting in the background became shouting in the foreground. I knew what they were chanting now. “Kill the gods! Get XP!”
A dozen scruffy, sweat-slicked thugs charged at Kāya and Nola as they wrestled and punched each other on the ground. They seemed to sense that they were, for a moment, unlikely allies in their combined need to get into the air so they could war with each other in peace.
Telara chased after those men, shouting that Kāya was the only target. The men had long since lost their use for Telara though. They raised their weapons menacingly toward Nola and Kāya both.
“Zero cretins,” Brion said, “still 28 lumentors and two tier-three familiars.”
“Tier three… Rabbijacks?” I asked. The hot pink creatures emerged moments later from an alleyway taking long, bouncy strides.
“Mamba,” I yelled, “did you get many kills?”
“I don’t like to take credit for my snakes’ ambition,” she said, “but my dancing pushed them to do their best.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I said. “I want to unlock Midge if you have the XP now. You really don’t know what she’ll do?”
“Unseal her lips and she’ll tell us herself,” she said.
I cracked open Mamba’s menu and unlocked Midge with barely any XP to spare. Instantly, Mamba held her hands together above her head and began to spin. Her flowing skirt spread out on all sides, revealing powerful thighs leading to shapely calves and spiked stiletto heels.
The warm gentle breeze came faster now, a persistent gale that whipped against our clothes and faces. “Where is Midge?” I asked.
“She’s in the sky,” Mamba yelled as she twirled. “I want her to come dance with me, but she won’t. I can’t make her, Arden. I can’t control her at all!”
The massive metal umbrella began to shake and teeter as the wind flapped against the canvas it supported. There were no wind slits in the material.
“Keep it up!” I yelled. Ambry’s fire extinguished against the onslaught of air. The men ran toward us for protection as the lumentors closed in behind them. Without physical bodies, they didn’t struggle to maintain their footing against the unrelenting force of Midge’s violent windstorm.
The constant beating against the umbrella’s canopy intensified into a rapid-fire fap, fap, fap-fap-fap that promised to pay off soon. It might be enough to launch the mechanism clear past the city’s walls, as long as Mamba didn’t give up on Midge.
Nola and Kāya landed before the wind could sweep them away. Akrin rested on his silver heels. The rabbijacks stopped running and started their magic cha-cha. The lumentors, with nothing to keep them at bay, rushed us.
I held my fists up, knowing it was a useless gesture. Even if I had my weapon, these ghastly attackers would absorb my special attacks, and they were immune to everything else. Our methods hadn’t evolved to counter their kind.
As pink smoke erupted from the rabbijacks’ hands, Midge’s windstorm diffused the magic, spreading it over a wider area and afflicting entire groups. Three men got nosebleeds at the same time. People that didn’t used to be blue were turning blue and people that didn’t used to be fat were swelling to the size of a blimp. One guy, who I’m pretty sure didn’t used to be a woman, was gradually approximating one.
“This is all wrong,” I said. “This isn’t a battle, it’s a total cluster—”
“Duck!” Mamba yelled. A puff of pink smoke blew over my head. The wind carried it against our one and only seraph guardian who started to rise up from the ground like a balloon. I reached up to grab it, but only managed to get its spear. The wafting familiar let the weapon go as it blew past the city’s walls with two lumentors in pursuit.
The sound of wind battering against the curtained sky died down as Mamba slumped to the ground. The lumentors continued to march toward us, hungry for any source of energy that would keep them from dissipating.
One sank a scimitar blade into my chest, filling me with an unyielding cold. I felt my energy seep out of me, absorbing into the ghost and strengthening the glow of its formless body.
Something fell in front of me, smoky and black. A beam of golden sunlight struck the ground. Then another, and another. Flaming strips of canvas rained down on us.
The umbrella was burning.
The lumentors jumped back, searching frantically for the patches of ground still shrouded against the sky. Some escaped into the alleys while others cowered against the central metal spire. I raised a hand to protect my face from ash and burning debris.
One moment, the full circle of the umbrella was a raging dome of fire over our heads, disintegrating from the center outward. The next, it came crashing down in a smoldering black ring that flattened against the ground around us. The lumentors, now fully exposed to the early afternoon sky, scrambled for the shelter of the shadowy alleys but there was no time. The sun was high, and they were toast. Their shapes dissolved into puffs of glittery energy and then they were gone.
I coughed against the acrid air. Perched on the roofs of two-story buildings surrounding the umbrella’s cremated corpse were archers. They had been split up by Kāya’s earlier explosion of dark purple energy, but they had regrouped and fired burning arrows at the umbrella from afar. I waved to them all, and they waved back before sliding down the sloping roofs and charging toward us.
At the top of the metal spire sat the energem Brion had installed. It wasn’t just accumulating energy now, it was casting its spell. A tendril of deep violet reached upward, forming a giant dark purple anibomb that floated over the city as it grew, ever larger with each second the stone pumped out its power.
Ambry supported Mamba over her shoulder now. The half-gypsy belly dancer’s eyes were closed as the girls limped toward me.
“Mamba,” I said. “What happened back there with Midge?”
“She’s a gusty gal,” Mamba said. “She questioned who I was to command her, and I didn’t have an answer. I tried to promise her my gentle heart, but hearts are a softness she has no use for.”
“Sometimes,” Cindra said, “a firm hand shows love better than a gentle one.”
I turned to Brion. “What are you left with now? Divide your zero lumentors by your zero cretins and—”
“That’s not how it works!” he yelled. I finally found something that pet him the wrong way.
“Two plus two is five,” I said. “The square root of 1 is negative isosceles, and infinity minus ten is pistachio ice cream that doesn’t even taste like pistachios!”
Brion’s hands started to shake. He lifted them before his face, massive lion paws with carnelian red nails that came to a point an inch past his fingertips. Then he swiped one of those cat claws at me, scratching four parallel gashes down my chest that tore my vest wide open.
My fingers curled around the thin golden spear in my hand. It was a tiny, silly baton, but it had a sharp point and it would let me activate my polearm skills.
Brion looked up at Kāya, then back at me. His eyes traced the city’s main road back toward the melted front gates. I knew how quickly the wheels in his number-jumbled mind were turning. He was calculating his odds of escape.
I stabbed my tiny weapon at him, but its reach was limited and he had
already leapt into motion.
“Don’t let him get away!” I yelled. “No one who betrays Nola gets away with it.”
+25
“I’ve got this,” Cindra said. Her eyes glowed, vibrant and green. As Brion launched into a sprint, Cindra spoke in a firm, even voice.
“The city is surrounded,” she said, stepping toward him. “Did you think you could turn against my champion and live? Nola is one who forgives, but Nola is not the one you should beg forgiveness from. Not now.”
Brion stopped running and hung his head.
“Now this is a treat,” Savange rasped into my ear. “Your slime woman has talents that put mine to shame. Behold.”
The world Cindra provided for Brion came into view now. Somehow, Savange saw through Cindra’s secret illusion and shaped the shadows in my sight to give me a minor glimpse into the vision Cindra crafted. In my swarthling-assisted view, the scene was constructed from shadowy shapes, but for Brion it would be perfectly realistic.
Through her Illusions of Grandeur, Cindra conjured a massive angel to block the city’s exit. She was taller than the gates themselves, holding a shield that covered half of her body, with its pointed tip resting against the ground. Hundreds of smaller angels rose from behind the city’s walls, flapping wings as broad and feathered as Nola’s.
“Be not a coward, lionkin. Hold your head high in defeat as the proud warrior you are.”
Brion looked up at the sky. Then he fell to his knees and hung his head. “I am no warrior.”
“If not a warrior, what then are you?” Cindra asked.
“Archivist,” he said. “I returned to my home to find it gone. My library of books and scrolls, my home, my neighbors, all turned to ash. I was a man with nothing.
“That’s when she appeared. Kāya offered me a job. She promised we’d build a new home together, one fit to be recorded in the scrolls of history. What she gave me were numbers. Constant, unrelenting numbers. She made it impossible to think, impossible to control.