by Stone Thomas
“Everyone!” I yelled. The crowd turned to me for leadership. Now was the time to instill confidence, embolden, and inspire.
“Stand stalwart in serenity and see our survival steadfastly secured! I mean… Please persevere, placid people, and prepare to prevail!” Nola, this is such bad timing. “Tranquil, troops. Today we take our tenacity toward triumph!”
“What is it you’re trying to say exactly?” someone asked.
I took a deep breath. “Just stay calm for a sec. I’ve got this.”
The top of our hill was basically a circle, with twelve defensive towers evenly spaced. Only some of them held energems ready to pump out fire, ice, and snake spells to slow down oncoming attackers. Vix had started building shrines in the space between those towers, all behind our electrified wall.
The metal tower Mayblin and Vix had built before our last attack was inoperable, since the mechanism would conduct electricity and fry anyone inside, so there was no rearranging the energems now.
Then there was the front gate at Halcyon’s north end. It was sturdy, and opened to a long fortified path toward the temple doors. Six pairs of towers lined that path, also partially equipped with energems. We could lower wooden pike fences between each pair of towers on the northern path to slow any attackers, but Duul’s army was marching from the south, and the lumentors would bypass any physical defenses.
“Ambry,” I said. “Our first priority is visibility. Take a team with you to start lighting torches around the hill. Mercifer, you conjured slimes for this moment. Bring them here. Mayblin, have your people bring the energems up from the temple. We’ll want them charging up as each of Duul’s familiars fall.
“Lily, go with Mayblin. Bring our twenty seraph guardians up top but freeze the temple doors shut when you leave. We want the battle up here, away from the infirmary.
“Mamba, let Brion out of the prison. I may not like him, but we can’t leave him locked up and defenseless. Ess! I know you can hear me. We need your gi-ant children digging holes under any enemies that come through.
“Yurip, I have a request.” The lawmonger came close and I spoke into his ear behind my cupped hand. I wasn’t sure whether I’d live long enough to see the election results come in, but I needed to plan ahead just in case. He nodded along as I relayed a few instructions, then headed toward the temple.
“Everyone else,” I continued, “go home. Ambry and the others will light the way so you can stay inside your new residences until this blows over. If it doesn’t… If Duul defeats us here today… Run and don’t look back.”
Ambry walked up just then with two torches. She handed one to someone in our crowd, then raced off again to light up the village with the other one.
“But I have marbleskin,” the candlemaker said. “Let me fight.”
I hesitated. Her skills were not suited to combat. The team had left her on the cannon tower for a reason.
“Me too,” the tailor said. A few glass bottles clinked in the dark, then a handful of other people volunteered to fight alongside us.
“I’m humbled that you would put yourselves in harm’s way,” I said. “Really, I am. But most of you don’t even have weapons.”
“I can help with that!”
Our smith pushed a cart full of iron swords, of all varieties. “I was hoping to sell these at the match, but no one has any gold to spend. You know that bush you planted just keeps growing swords? Twenty a day at least!”
“Okay,” I said. “That settles it. Anyone willing to fight, here’s your weapon. Start sparring with each other now and I’ll unlock what skills I can while we prepare.”
Nola put a hand on my shoulder and looked out at her followers. “I can’t see Duul’s army from here, but I can feel it. It’s large. I am deeply grateful to any who will fight, but please, if your potion wears off seek safety.”
“Smith,” I said. “I’m ready for that slender, featureless spear that doesn’t grant any bonuses!”
“It’s about time,” he said. “I’ve been carrying this thing around for days, wondering when you’d come for it.”
“Thanks, smith,” I said. “Actually, I’ve been rude. What’s your name?”
“I thought… I thought you knew. My name is Smith Yest.”
“Of course it is,” I said. Sometimes, the name makes the man.
Corks popped from more glass bottles. The sweet scent of pound cake filled the air as everyone that found a potion drank it. The single torch among us cast its flickering orange light on the crowd’s faces, sending long shadows toward the houses and shops closer to the northern half of the hill. Here and there, sparse bursts of fire lit up as Ambry and the others lit torches all over.
Thanks to Savange, the dim faces of our bravest residents were more visible to my eyes than theirs. We had almost a hundred fighters now. Even though many had special skills suited for commerce or domestic tasks instead of battle, we had an army.
“Nola,” I said. “Your father’s familiar may be the missing piece we need to activate a shrine to him. If that works, do Valona’s next. We have one of her mummers in the caravan we rescued from the gypsies. I’d say to take Hipna’s snoozer too, but we only have so much time.”
“We’re not even sure Valona will side with us,” Nola said.
“No, but she needs help and we promised to give it. This is our chance to make good on that. Wait! Let me skill you first.” I opened Nola’s skill menu. “I did what I could, but you’re a little shy of unlocking Cunning Edge. You’ll have to manage with that iron sword for now.”
“And you with your iron spear,” she said. “I’m glad you left the Vile Lance with Reyna.”
“You were right,” I said. “That weapon sends the wrong message. The way Reyna looked at it, and Hipna. It’s hard to trust someone with a weapon of master destruction.”
Nola left to set up the shrines while I turned to face our new army.
“Those of you who have seen lumentors before,” I said, “you know what they want. They will reach inside you, drain your souls of energy, and take your emptied bodies for their own. Do not attract them with your special skills, do not fight them, do not even speak to them. I want you all focused on Duul’s familiars. Leave the lumentors to Mercifer.”
“Because that’s no pressure,” he said, carrying a large sack over his shoulder. “No pressure at all.” His small yellow body hunched and struggled to tug that bulging bag behind him.
“I hope you appreciate how much effort goes into luring one hundred slime mice inside a single sack,” he said. “Running all over the place. Biting at me...”
“Why didn’t you just wait until they were in the bag before you enlivened them?” I asked.
“Because,” he said. “Because… shut up, okay?”
The war drums kept beating. Poking through the trees to our south was the topmost level of an approaching siege tower. It was a hulking wooden column, easily fifty feet wide and three stories tall. A cauldron sat on top, spewing a geyser of black magic into the sky. The air hung heavy with the scent of tar on a hot day.
Then, on our hill, a beam of light. It was luminous and silver, a steady stream of energy emanating from one of our shrines.
Woozy, Nola said. Oh boy.
Did it work?, I asked.
Yes! This little guy just marched right inside the shrine, tilted his head to the sky, and started beaming energy out to Akrin. I feel weak though. Light-headed. The shrine is pumping out more of Halcyon’s soul energy than it reflects back.
Additional shrines won’t take more energy away, I said. They’ll start reflecting extra energy back at you. Where is Gowes? He’ll accept a shrine, which should help with that woozy feeling.
Strange, she said. He’s not here. Neither is Eranza.
Hipna was reluctant, I said. That just leaves Valona.
I’ve sent her familiar into the shrine, Nola said, and the psychic link is ready to go. She hasn’t accepted it yet, but I’ve done everything I can here. I’m coming back.
“That,” I said, “is not how you boost morale before a battle.”
“It’s your eyes,” she said. “They’re blacker than ever. What is going on with you?”
I swallowed hard. “If I don’t make it, Vix—”
“Will always have a home here,” Nola said. “The children will be loved and cared for, unconditionally. Look, we don’t know what today will bring. You’re missing the mark on your neck. You changed things.”
“For the worse,” I said. “We knocked out the mantid warriors and subdued the rex fulmin, but with nothing to save Valona from, of course Duul would stop worrying about hell and start marching on Halcyon.
“All I did was speed things up. I deprived us of the time we’d need to prepare. Eranza was right. We’re the only ones that can doom ourselves. I screwed it up. I screwed it all up.”
“You’re not dying here today,” Nola said.
“Now who’s in denial?” I asked.
Everyone traded practice blows with their new weapons behind me. It was a tense time, waiting in the dark. Nola flew overhead and peered at the approaching army. The war drums beat louder now. They sped up their tempo as they got closer.
Ambry returned to the center of our hill with a handful of torches all casting a flickering orange light in different directions. They barely beat back the magic that sucked the light from our hill. Our stone buildings were bare outlines in the distance.
Our new recruits were nervous, confused. They huddled and waited for an unspeakable destructive power to tear down the city around us, but they huddled together. We finally felt like a unified people.
Twenty seraph guardians marched toward us with Lily in the lead. Mamba and Brion approached from the other direction.
Duul’s army had appeared suddenly, but now they slowed their approach. Were they toying with us, or was there something missing, another piece of their war machine not yet in place?
“Everyone’s as ready as we’re going to get,” I said. “Now all we can do is wait.”
+59
“Twinkle, twinkle, little ghost.
You won’t take us for a host.
Please go back to where you dwell,
Deep inside the bowels of hell,
Twinkle, twinkle, evil spirit,
I think you’re a big piece of—”
“Nola!” I yelled. “That’s not how that lullaby goes.”
“Who said anything about lullabies? This is a war ballad. I have 17 more stanzas after that one. I am going to rhyme these ghouls into submission!”
“There are one hundred and eight of them,” Brion said. “An exact ratio of one lumentor per line.”
Our fighters spread out so that no one was blocked from the battle. Surrounding us were the twenty seraph guardians, holding their thin golden spears as our first line of defense. The cannon towers erupted periodically, blasting the air with sound every time the energems inside them released their spell.
The lumentors had no trouble climbing our hill, or bypassing the electrified stone wall that protected it. They gathered at Halcyon’s edge and waited while the rest of their kind joined them. Then, without warning, they launched into a sprint.
Here they were, our first wave of attackers. Spectral and glowing and hungry for souls. “Remember, nobody touch them! Mercifer, let’s see what your rodents can do.”
The yellow old elf opened his bag and a hundred green slimes raced forward. They scurried across our grassy cannonball field and out in every direction. Some ran toward the lumentors, others just scampered over the low brick wall and disappeared on us.
One stopped at a lumentor’s foot and sniffed at it. The ghost glanced down for a moment, then looked up. He ran toward us while the slime pet kept exploring Halcyon.
“They don’t want these slimes,” I said. “Dammit. I know slime bodies can attract them. They attacked Cindra in Mournglory. Savange, you shared a home with these rotten souls. What do we do?”
Savange’s body took shape against the darkness, carving a hole out of the shadow instead of into it. She was a window through the veil of night that fell on Halcyon, a shapely woman with impossible dimensions. She morphed into her oversized lizard shape as she spoke though, with the same bulging eyes and long curved tail she had shown me before.
“Why would I care to reveal their secrets when I’m so busy discovering my own?” she asked. “The lumentors are a bore. It’s Duul I’m interested in. He’s near.”
No help there.
The lumentors spread out, surrounding us on all sides. Some issued taunts, while others just stood and laughed. We must have looked like livestock before the slaughter.
One pointed a ghostly sword at several of our people, one at a time, carefully selecting which body to steal. Nola, I asked. How long would it take to fly everyone to safety?
Too long, she said. I can’t carry more than one at a time.
“Mamba,” I started.
“I’ve already tried Larry,” she said. “He’s too afraid. What would happen if these lumentors crept inside his bones?”
The nearest lumentor’s blade stopped when it pointed to a seraph guardian. “Block!” I yelled. “Like I taught you!”
The seraph held its spear in a defensive stance and thrust outward to meet the lumentor’s blade. It didn’t matter. The second that ghostly weapon touched the familiar, some of its energy siphoned away. The lumentor glowed brighter.
“It’s always the familiars they want first,” I said.
The last time lumentors climbed inside slime pets, there were no familiars on hand. They were also desperate to escape the sun. Now, they could afford to be picky the way they were when Klimog protected them with the ghost book. That’s when a lumentor chose Cindra. Not because she was made of slime, but because her shape was so human. She was shaped like food.
“Mercifer,” I asked, “can you shape your slime into a seraph guardian?”
“That would take a lot of slime,” he said. “More than with a normal slime pet.”
“I need you to try,” I said.
Lumentors closed in on the familiars in our midst, but something new was coming. Cursed men ran at us from the south.
“How?” I asked. “We have an electric wall!”
Nola flew above us. “The siege tower,” she said. “It’s not just there to support that bubbling cauldron of doom. It’s also full of people. They lowered a drawbridge over the wall and fighters are jumping out, bypassing our defenses.”
“Forty-five human men approaching,” Brion said, “with another ninety-four exiting the siege tower.”
“Ambry,” I said. “Can you burn the tower from the top down?”
“There are people inside,” she said.
“Then they’d better climb back out the bottom before it gets too hot,” I said. “Lily, take a group and give her cover while she works. Go!” A contingent of our army ran south as cursed men charged toward us.
All the guardians were under attack by multiple lumentors. Other ghosts sank their weapons into people now, but these attackers were so rotten with rage, so blinded by their need to destroy, that they didn’t differentiate between our warriors and the men Duul had cursed. Any warm body with a vibrant soul was fair game.
People yelled as their action points and experience drained from their spirits. That energy was just a buffer, a protective aura around the soul. When it was all gone, these ghosts would keep sucking away until they drank that soul dry.
The only people that avoided the lumentors’ attention were the goblins. They raced across the hill, depositing energems they had retrieved from the temple before Lily sealed it shut.
The first guardian fell, its limp yellow body vanishing as it hit the ground. There wasn’t a drop of lifeblood left, nothing to fill our empty energems.
Cursed men yelled and
whirled their weapons forward recklessly. Duul’s curse bore into their minds, drowning out thoughts of self-preservation. Drowning out all reason. One man aimed a sword at me, but I grabbed his wrist in time to stop him.
I wrestled against that man, unwilling to stab him and unable to subdue him. A lumentor pierced his torso with a glowing, ethereal mace. Another reached through my back with its bare hand. My blood turned to ice as my energy left me.
Then the lumentors lost interest. They dropped their attack and stared past us, then stepped through us on their way across the hill.
“It’s working!” Mercifer yelled. Two seraph guardians stood by his side, one a pale golden color, the other a vibrant green slime. A lumentor pressed its face against the familiar’s, inspecting it. Then it looked at the slime replica. The guardian was full of juicy, delicious energy, but the slime replica was empty. Available.
The lumentor reached through the slime’s body and climbed inside it. It looked down with its smooth green face to apprise its new form.
The thing about a glowing, vibrant body with a robust soul trapped inside: it attracts more lumentors. Some opted to drain the guardian of lifeblood, but others reached inside the slime, destroying the rotten soul that inhabited it. Lumentors flocked there, tricked into draining each other’s energy as they took turns briefly inhabiting the slime form Mercifer had made.
A handful of lumentors lingered elsewhere, attacking a guardian here or a human fighter there, but how could they resist that glowing slime much longer? Each soul inhabiting it was stronger and brighter than the last.
Smoke stole my attention next. The wind carried the smell of burning oak before I noticed the flames slowly eating away at Duul’s wooden siege tower. Ambry succeeded in igniting it, but not before a wave of men escaped it. The cauldron on its top platform still pumped a murky miasma into the air that choked out all the light.
I wrestled with the same cursed man this whole time. Finally, I punched him in the head the way I had seen Telara do once. He fell, unconscious, but there were more where he came from.
“Only twenty-nine cursed men were forced to evacuate at the tower’s base,” Brion said. “None died. Twelve have since been contained.”