“Claw, something wrong?”
“No.” He exhaled through his nose. He turned his arm over and opened his palm. He brought his blade down on his hand and dragged his blade across his skin. Bright blood welled from the wound. He tilted his head back, wincing and drawing in air.
Nyset gasped. “What are you doing?” He was truly mad.
“Ghostwalker must taste blood when he’s been drawn. Or else.” Claw flipped the blade over so she could see the name etched on the side of the blade. In was in a swirling script that only a true artist could create.
Nyset’s stomach rumbled with the memory of fighting the demon within, somehow linked to Juzo’s weapon. She still wasn’t sure exactly where she had gone to fight that creature. Blackout was also a named blade and urged — no, forced — Juzo to kill. Were there others like that? Could this be one of them? “Does the sword speak to you?”
Nyset felt Senka inch closer from around her back to her side.
“Mm. I’ve known Ghostwalker for many years. Found him discarded in the sands of the Nether, by a twisted old tree. Taller n’ any o’ the others.” He wiped the blade on a dead apprentice’s robes and sheathed it. The bluish light of the Phoenix flared from his hand, stitching his skin back together. “Said he was there, waiting for me for hundreds of years. Spent many years walking the sands, many long years. Searching and waiting to find you. The Oracle told me I’d find you and I put my trust in her and the gods.” He turned to face her, a broad grin plastered on his face.
Senka and Nyset shared impassive glances, but Nyset felt they shared the same feeling. Talking swords were not to be trusted.
“Mistress!” Senka bumped into the wall, jabbing a finger into the horizon.
“What?” Nyset naturally followed her direction, seeing the defenders hack into the fleeing Cerumal. “What is it? What am I missing, Senka?”
“It’s a trap,” Senka whispered. “Look!”
She looked harder, but Nyset couldn’t see what she saw. She knew Senka had unearthly vision and a keen sense of the land, but what was she not seeing?
“No, oh no.” Her heart began to thunder, causing a roaring between her ears. She saw it now. There was what appeared to be tiny berries skirting the flanks of the defenders. Except they weren’t berries at all, but the heads of Death Spawn peering out from the ground. Had they planned this all along? Were the initial attackers merely meant as sacrifices?
“Shit!” she hissed. Nyset planted one hand on the wall and vaulted over it, conjuring a powerful gust of air to blunt her fall. It blew her silks over her face, temporarily bathing her world in sheets of scarlet. “Come, I’ll catch you.” She beckoned to Claw and Senka. Claw leaped over the wall without a moment’s hesitation. Senka followed after watching how she caught Claw in the buffeting gale. She turned back to the defenders. The heads sprung from pits hidden in the ground, dark bodies scrambling in from either side. The group clustered together as the Death Spawn reined them in like sheepdogs on all sides.
“No!” Nyset ran, jerking her silks up to her waist so she could move. The Death Spawn screamed with rage and the defenders were forced into a ring of death. There were a lot more defenders than Death Spawn, but by forcing them into a ring, it effectively reduced the strength of their numbers. Their terrible spears lanced in and out of bodies. Apprentices couldn’t use their powers unless they were in a direct line of fire, forcing them to choose either death by a Death Spawn blade or killing their own.
One made a terrible, panicked decision and a lash of fire spread out from the center, cutting down men and Death Spawn alike. The gap was filled in by Death Spawn, their circle of death ever tightening.
The world grew terribly quiet. Nyset’s breath burned in her lungs and through her drying throat. Claw’s and Senka’s boots pounded behind her. Their breaths hissed in her ears, drowning out everything else. The roaring Death Spawn and wails of the dying hit her like a dream, almost inaudible. She felt a strange grin touch her lips. She had to be there now, wanted to be there. She wished she could move through Phoenix portals like Walter could, but she knew no amount of wishing ever added up to much. They were a few minutes away, at least. Too far. Now she could only choose her targets and visualize the motions she would use in combat.
Cacti, shrubs, burned bodies, and arrows standing from the ground blurred in her vision. Her eyes locked on the squawking Death Spawn, searching the spots where their armor parted to soft skin. Nyset clenched her fists and swords of fire burst alight, leaving trails of smoke curling behind her.
With every plunge of a Death Spawn spear, a part of her felt their pain. She watched as a grizzled man was ran through with two spears, one through his chest and the other his neck. The defenders fought like trapped animals. They made reckless attacks, foolishly exposing themselves. A courageous girl in periwinkle robes ran between a pair of Death Spawn and flared fire around her form, roasting them in their armor. Their miserable screams reached her ears now. Human and Death Spawn screams of horror intermingled with screams of madness.
A Cerumal raised a jagged spear to finish a woman fighting to conjure another spark of fire. Nyset rammed her molten sword through its back, her screams tore at her throat. The Death Spawn reached back for it, cutting its fingers off as it tried to grab it, blood spurting down Nyset’s arm. She pulled the sword free, not an ounce of resistance. She swung with both blades and carved a wide slice through a Cerumal’s torso, its burning guts spilling onto the ground.
“Fight!” she screamed. “Do not give up!”
Claw slammed Ghostwalker against a blade aimed at her head and she drove her blade around him, through the attacker’s pitted armor. Claw winked at her and smiled. Black blood crawled down his face. She winked back and his grin widened.
Senka moved in wide, calculated arcs. With every acrobatic swing of her body, she cut at least two enemies, tainting their blood with her lethal poisons. She didn’t wait for them to fall, but worked her way down the arcing line of beasts, marring their flesh and moving on. A Cerumal with a bald head topped with a sprig of white hair swung at her with a two-handed axe. She deftly rolled back, producing a blow gun when she emerged from the roll. Something glinted in the light and the beast keeled over, its face splitting on its own weapon. Its jaw hung loosely from one side, dangling over the edge of the axe.
Nyset tore her silks off at the waist, uncaring if the world saw her small clothes. It wouldn’t matter if she were dead. She had to be able to move. Hadn’t she vowed to never wear these again? What she lacked in skill with the sword she made up with the Dragon’s ferocity. Blades that came at her were sliced through, as if never there by the Dragon’s insatiable fire. Monsters fell all around her, collapsing at Senka’s skillful touches.
“The Arch Wizard!” someone screamed.
“She came for us!” a man roared, baring his teeth as he head-butted a Cerumal.
A lithe creature in violet robes wielding daggers in each hand crept along the outskirts, eyeing Senka’s dancing. Its robes changed color and texture as they brushed the earth and vegetation around it, instantly matching the surrounding patterns in an almost mesmerizing show.
The entrapping circle widened as men and women fought to reclaim lost ground. A Cerumal tottered between her and Claw, bent over a wound in his stomach, its hands dark with its own blood. Nyset impatiently backhanded him with a shield of fire, splattering its head onto the dry earth.
The Skin Flayer twisted around when it heard Nyset’s howl, its golden eyes going wide, daggers flaring. One of Nyset’s swords crashed off its Dragon forged weapons, raised for a parry. Her other sword chopped deep into its arm, wrenching one of its daggers into the side of its temple before sending it spinning to the ground. The Skin Flayer lurched and tumbled sideways.
Nyset lunged in to finish the job, but then another creature stepped in her way. It was a Cerumal, but with the body of a child. It snarled at her with what looked like a mouth full of glass, its eyes a pair of smoldering coals
. Its squat nose flared open, dripping with yellow mucus. It raised a primitive hatchet over its shoulder and charged, screeching like an injured bird. Nyset could never hurt a child, but this was no human. These were demons, she told herself. She jerked her head to the side as the hatchet spun wide of her head. Her flaming sword curved in the dry air and the boy-Cerumal desperately tried to block it with a narrow blade. Her Dragon fire ripped the weapon from his hand and split his face apart, shooting bits of brains into a shrub.
The edge of a twisted mace, maybe a horn, whispered at her and Nyset bent back from the waist but felt the breeze of it across her neck. Warmth spread down her face under her eye. Someone tackled the beast that had swung at her, driving savage fists into its skull. It was Claw, her always dutiful guardian. Blood sprouted in the air with each of his hammering blows.
A wide gap had opened in the screaming circle. The battle bloomed from a single ring to clumps of slippery combat. All concepts of tactics and order vanished, now a clamoring of bodies struggling for every additional moment of life. Order made things understandable, something she could wrap her head around. This was chaos and chaos was unpredictable. She turned in a circle, witnessing it all.
A Cerumal with the biggest axe Nyset had ever seen stood staring at her. She hadn’t seen many, but assumed Grimbald’s was one of the biggest. Not anymore. It had a wicked double edge and spikes on the butt. In the center of the two blades at the head was a vicious spike. It looked to have been created for a true giant, a creature that might have existed in another time. Its dull iron gleamed in a shaft of light. The beast wielding it was nearly as tall as the Lord of Death. Could this be another creature like that? She swallowed and took a cautious step back.
The creature had the look of an artist’s rendition of what a Cerumal should look like, much more terrifying than the real thing typically was. Jagged armor plates hissed over its shoulders and knees, and most of the armor was studded with spikes. Nyset felt the arrogance that the Dragon’s power had granted her drain out like the air from a punctured lung. “Fight every fight like it could be your last,” Walter once told her. Today would not be her day to die.
Nyset let out a belch that blew out her cheeks and twirled her smoking swords. The beast sprang forward, its elbow raised up for what she guessed was a sideways strike. She sent a pair of fireballs screaming at it as it ran. It fell to the ground on one leg, sliding underneath the trails of fire. She hacked with both blades as it tried to rise. It twisted to its side and dodged, counterattacking with a lunging stab of its axe. She had to fight the instinct to leap back but knew that with longer weapons, they lost their advantage once she was within range. She locked her eyes on the axe, watching its path course through the air.
She vaulted her body sideways and the spike caught on a ruffle of silks around her stomach. She felt the fabric shred on the blade and flap in the wind. She was already thrusting with her blade, but it caught only empty air as her opponent slipped away. Its speed was incredible. She blasted the ground around it in a wall of fire, but the creature dashed back into a roll with shocking speed. How could a creature this big move so fast?
The creature dashed in and Nyset screamed as she savagely sliced at its neck, but the beast snaked under it, ramming its armored shoulder into her chest, sending her sprawling onto her back. The air was blasted from her lungs, and she choked for breath. The creature raised its axe overhead for a finishing chop and Nyset sent fire spraying from her hands. The beast screamed as its skin burned and Nyset rolled to avoid the hissing of its blade.
She met its eyes for an instant. They were blood red like Juzo’s. A Blood Eater Cerumal? “Shit,” she coughed and rolled to avoid another strike. Nyset had managed to keep one sword, the other vanishing with the concentration needed for throwing fire. The beast chopped again and she rose up to her knees to meet its blow, their weapons ringing out with an arm-numbing clang as they collided. As she roared and jerked on the Dragon’s fury, a whirl of air spiraled up from the ground, launching the beast close to twenty paces into the air. Its limbs flailed in the sky, kicking and grasping. Bellowing an ear-piercing wail.
She gasped, the air just starting to fill her lungs normally again. She watched as it crashed into a cactus, splitting it apart and splashing its juices onto the earth. Its leg twitched, its axe a pace beside it. She limped over to it, something in her knee throbbing with pain. As she walked, she peered about the battle and watched the defenders work together to cut down the Death Spawn, evening the tide. When she reached the Blood Eater, its eyes sprang open and it sent an iron boot into her shin.
Nyset recovered before seeing the mighty axe coming, a shadow blotting out the sun. She summoned a block of stone blooming from the ground, sending the axe reverberating from it. The Blood Eater darted around the stone block, the axe bent on one side. It punched with a spiked fist and Nyset ducked, slashing with her blade of fire. It caught him across the thigh, sending a line of blood flying, causing its knee to wobble.
“Die!” she screamed. Time to finish it. She chopped down and hacked through its shoulder and its arm spurted out jets of blood. Another Cerumal had stepped close enough to kill her, but she hadn’t noticed until now. She blasted it in the face with a ball of fire, ripped it off its feet, and tossed it into a tangle of squirming bodies. She returned her focus the big bastard. He’d grabbed his axe in one hand, the other arm flopping uselessly at his side and hanging on due to armor alone.
Nyset found herself grinning as they faced each other again, truly understanding the thrill of battle for the first time, her fear dashed away. She pushed away the nightmarish images flashing around her. How had she learned to fight like this? Is this how the others felt? Her heart was a storm, pumping blood through her bulging veins. Reading about acts of valor was one thing, living them was something she’d never dreamed of.
The Cerumal grinned and the flesh of his arm started knitting itself back together. She dashed at it before it finished, sending a flash of fire at its head. The beast ducked as she expected it would, ramming her sword through its mouth and out the back of its neck. She grabbed the sword with both hands and ripped it up, splitting its head apart and launching its helm into the air. Blood splashed over her hands and onto her bare stomach.
The creature fell to its knees, the flesh of its head smoking and bubbling with burning blood. “No more!” she screamed at its ruined neck and doused fire over the remains of its head. The Dragon’s debt was starting to weigh on her. Its exhaustion pressed into her bones.
The remaining Cerumal moved slower and lost some of their courage, as if their endurance had finally reached its end. She guessed besting their champion had something to do with it. A few started spinning in circles, dragging weapons through the sand before being hacked down. One squat Cerumal with a long nose just started casually walking away after dropping its sword. A big man in mail ran up behind it and drove a spear through its back. Other Cerumal fought to the bitter end, running into bristling spears, felled by hacking blades.
Nyset threaded between the clumped skirmishes, tossed fireballs into unsuspecting foes. The defenders of Helm’s Reach screamed with cries of joy and wails of pain as they lay ruin to the rest. A heavy arm fell on her shoulder, almost dragging her to ground with it. A stocky woman in blue robes had a wide gash across her forehead, exposing the white of the bone underneath, her face a nightmare of blood.
“Help Mistress,” the woman hissed into her ear, her soddened cheek pressed into hers.
“I’ve got you, let’s go home.” Nyset found strength in that she had come out of this mostly unscathed. She dragged the woman’s muscular arm across her back and nudged her shoulder under hers. “What’s your name? Wait — Clara, is that right?”
The woman groaned and her legs wobbled. “That’s right, Mistress. Was in your apprentice’s class yesterday. Was my first class.”
“Yes, that’s right. I remember you now.” Nyset’s legs burned as she dragged Clara farther away from the b
attle. She had a pleasant smell, like blooming lilacs that overrode the rusty smell of blood and earth.
“Did I do well today? Tell me I did. Tell me I did well,” Clara gagged and a blood clot spluttered from her lips.
“Clara!” How had she missed it? There was a broken Death Spawn arrow shaft through her chest. They were brutal weapons. The entire shaft was barbed such that they went in and refused to come out.
Her coughs became ragged and body shaking. Nyset lowered her to the ground, her watery eyes searching hers for the answer to life’s suffering. “Not like this. Why like this?” Clara asked.
Nyset swallowed and squeezed her shoulders. “You did well today, my dear. You fought wonderfully, made your people and me proud of you.” The world blurred with her tears, warm and stinging in her eyes. Nyset placed one hand on Clara’s head and scratched her scalp. Her fingers were sticky with Clara’s matted hair and blood.
Clara nodded and rivulets of tears slid down her temples. Nyset scanned the battlefield, searching for Claw. He could heal her, give her a second chance. She had lost him in the fray. “Claw!” she screamed, her voice hoarse. “Claw!” she shrieked it again.
Clara’s coughing became a violent choking. She thrashed her head from side to side, blue eyes reflecting the empty sky. “I—” she managed. “Wanted to be something more.” Her mouth opened to say something else but nothing came but a soft hiss.
Nyset put her head to Clara’s chest, her heart as quiet as a block of wood. “No.” Nyset pulled her numb hand out from under her shoulder and the other clung to Clara’s bloody hair, the wet tendrils curling around her fingers. “No!” Nyset beat her fists into the ground beside Clara’s corpse with a thump.
All of this was her fault. Thump.
She let them go. Thump.
She should’ve seen the trap. Thump.
It was so painfully obvious to her now. She must have been sleepwalking. How had she missed the signs? Thump, thump went her fists into the ground.
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 3