by Rosie Scott
I finally crawled within reach of Marcus, and he reached up and grabbed me around my waist with one hand, pulling me from the wall. My heart jumped in my throat as he carried me over thin air, but Marcus delivered me safely to the driest section of the battlefield near Uriel. My boots didn't sink into the ground as quickly here, but the earth still caved with my weight. I thanked Marcus for his aid before moving on.
Circa a wava de chil. Cold air magic burst outward from my hands, the brisk winds blowing between the allies around me and forcing their anti-magic shields to flicker. The mud beneath us glistened just a little less, proving that our desperation to solve our predicament was working...slowly.
I pushed my way through the crowds of soldiers, repeating the spell over and over as I shouted orders for our men to follow my lead. My friends finally came into view, but none of them were fighting. There was nothing they could do. We were sitting ducks.
“Hinder, Kai,” Azazel said, motioning at the mud beneath his boots before he glanced at the walls that kept our army imprisoned.
Hinder. The god of obstruction.
My nostrils flared with frustration. No wonder Chairel had such high hopes for Narangar. Multiple gods aided their ambush with powers I couldn't understand.
Like the final shovelful of dirt thrown into a grave, the earth vibrated violently as another stone wall rose in the south, its sides meeting with the ends of the other barriers in the east and west. A shadow fell over our armies as the entirety of our military force was entrapped by a prison of solid stone.
Hiss...
My heart almost stopped. My eyes followed the noise to the northeastern corner of our prison where the walls Hinder had summoned met with the cliffside of the ambush area ahead. From the edge of Mirage's illusion, a summoned thick green mist spewed from open air. The dense fog trickled past the wall where it fell over our trapped soldiers and billowed out into the crowds. My loyal followers gasped for air as the green mist invited itself into their nostrils and mouths. The veins beneath their flesh rapidly darkened to a deep green, leaving the rest of their skin looking pale in comparison.
All at once, hundreds of my soldiers fell like lumps, foaming from the lips. Open mouths revealed the mist had even affected their tongues, for moist pink flesh was now tinted green. Eyes were bloodshot and panicked. So many soldiers were dead, and yet poison continued to spew from the hands of an invisible god.
Visha. The god of poison.
“What is happening?” Holter screeched in a mixture of panic and disbelief.
“It's a party for the gods, and everyone's fucking invited!” Nyx yelled back, desperately pulling her boots out of the mud to back out of the area's approaching poison.
“Battering ram on the wall, Marcus!” Cyrus screamed in the west. The directive was quickly followed as the giants bashed the metal ram into solid stone. The vibrations of the hit were so strong they numbed my feet. In the northeast, Visha continued draining poison over my men, and the green mist billowed ever outward, killing more and more. As I summoned the anti-poison rains I'd used in Hammerton, Dax rushed through the chaos to aid me.
Kaaarrriiisss!
I went still. I'd only heard that cry once in my life. As Cerin refreshed Nyx's ward, he also stiffened with recognition.
Kaaarrriiisss!
In the ever-darkening skies to the west, multiple shadowy forms ascended from all over the mountainside. From caves and crevasses, undead creatures came out of their perpetual rest to loyally heed a call. Leathery corpse-colored wings manipulated the air one slow flap at a time, carrying shriveled and lanky bodies in desperate need of blood.
Kaaarrriiisss!
The hiss sputtered through the air from dozens of similar voices. Our armies panicked further as a pack of vampires descended upon Narangar.
Twenty-nine
The western path of Narangar's entrance was empty, but the skies above it were not. I screamed preemptive orders at my men to leech from the vampires before using fire to burn them into ash, for many of them had never fought such creatures before. Visha continued spewing poison into our stone cage, and Dax and I worked together to combat its spread. Thankfully, my spell worked against the toxicity, but our energy reserves were quickly running out. After all, our armies were alone in this obstruction and unable to regenerate with necromancy, and other than a few breezes, the day wasn't particularly energetic.
Kaaarrriiisss!
The pack of vampires swooped lower over the western cliff edge, their shadows racing over the gray rock below. Just as they passed over the curve of the path leading from the west mountain to Narangar's upper doorway, they all disappeared, affected by Mirage's illusion.
Pound. Pound. Pound. Pound.
My head felt like it was shaking with raging pumps of blood as my mind desperately sought solutions. I summoned more anti-poison rains, and the teal water poured from the heavens and removed more of Visha's toxic fog, though it quickly added to our mud problem. I anticipated attacks from the vampires at any second, but I couldn't see them to know where they were.
Splat!
A splash of red sprayed over the interior stone of the eastern blockade, pulling my attention to the right. The shriveled, emaciated body of a dwarf slowly slid down the wall, its own fluids keeping it stuck for a few feet before broken flesh peeled off of stone. The bony body fell and collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the wall, knocking out one of my soldiers when they were hit in the head with it.
I was confused. Save for what was within our prison, I could see and hear nothing that was happening up on the ridge. With my eyes up on the rock ledge beneath the ambush, however, I saw a stream of blood roll over, calling attention to the fact that an invisible battle was taking place.
I thought back to our fight with the vampires in Eteri. Nyx had claimed vampires could sense even the invisible. The vampires here were only focused on the invisible soldiers.
BOOM! Marcus rammed the metal rod into the northern wall once more. The stone at its center was cracked and extremely damaged, and flakes of rock rained down into the mud. Nearby, another giant threw a humongous war hammer into the top of the wall, and a boulder cracked off. The stone was grabbed and hurled over the wall, and then the hammer was thrown again.
More blood poured down the eastern wall of Narangar's entrance, further proof of a battle we couldn't see. As if the world finally decided to give into our desperate requests for calming the confusion, Mirage's illusion dispelled, and the air rattled with new screams of battle and panic from members of the ambush ahead. I looked over the scene happening up on the mountain paths and slowly began to understand it.
Mirage and Visha were the leaders of this ambush, and they were both busy fighting vampires alongside dwarven and human soldiers of Chairel. Mirage appeared Alderi. Her skin glimmered silver-gray, and she had hair as black as night which was just long enough to lie on her shoulders. The goddess wore the black lightweight leather armor of an Alderi assassin. Throwing knives were kept in sheaths across her belt, but she fought off a vampire with two daggers. Black metal rings adorned most of her fingers, and she had a dark chain belt that was clearly for show as it loosely crisscrossed twice over shapely hips.
Visha, too, appeared Alderi. His skin was nearly as dark as Mirrikh's, but it had undertones of sickly green. The god of poison was bald, but a short pitch-black chin strap beard connected from ear to ear. Visha wore black armor and a cloak that kept his face in shadow. I realized with some relief that he was no longer releasing poison mist into our prison. Instead, green-tinted fingernails surrounded an orb of new magic that he thrust toward a nearby vampire. The undead creature shook and rattled, and newly moistened skin slowly dried and flaked until it became sickly and crusty once more. One dwarf threw a clay ball at the vampire, coating it with calcint. A Chairel fire mage quickly threw flames at the creature, and it burst into gray ash.
Clearly, these three gods were working together to entrap my army and kill us all with poison, and based
on the hundreds of soldiers already dead, they were well on their way to success. But the illusion didn't discriminate within its barrier, and the vampires could detect their soldiers through it while turning invisible themselves. To fight the vampires, Mirage was forced to dispel her namesake magic.
But there was one other person who'd been affected by Mirage's illusion and thus arrived unannounced to all of us. The goddess screeched with fear and recognition as her golden eyes fell upon the new arrival across the central path at the same time mine did.
Standing right across from the chaos on the opposite upper mountain road was yet another Alderi god. But this one I had seen before. This one, I had met.
Hades stared over at Mirage from their distance with only one good golden eye. The god of the dead had clearly traveled through the underground in the time since I'd seen him in Tal, for he had an entirely new wardrobe. Hades wore simple Alderi civilian clothing. A black V-neck shirt hung over dark gray trousers with loose-fitting legs meant to hold belongings in many pockets. Thick, shiny black boots made from the dense hide of underground creatures adorned his feet. Hades had acquired a new cloak since losing the one Altan destroyed in Eteri, but the shadow of its hood couldn't hide the metallic gold of his eye. Just behind him on the path were the Alderi reinforcements Calder had requested. The soldiers set up a counter-attack along the western ledge, shooting bows and throwing weapons and magic over the gap. As vampires sucked many of the Chairel soldiers dry, our allies aided the undead creatures, and it was proving troublesome for the carefully orchestrated ambush.
“Mirage,” Hades announced, his whispery voice drawing out the last syllable of the goddess's name like a mockery. A small smile raised his dark lips. “Long time, no see.”
“You're supposed to be in Eteri!” Mirage yelled back, just the edges of her voice wavering.
“I was in Eteri for centuries,” Hades replied casually as if he were making small talk. “I grew weary of chasing the sun and the weather. They are both dead, you know.”
“So what?” Mirage snapped back, pulling two throwing knives from her belt. “Now I'm next? You're here to kill me?”
Hades chuckled, the noise expelling as raspy spurts between his teeth. “I might as well. I came all this way.” He rose one arm to point at her, and the cloth of his cloak fell from his forearm, revealing a multitude of scars. Across the gap, a vampire threw its most recent meal to the side, forcing the body to topple down jagged rock until it hit the grasses below. The undead creature's hollow eyes found Mirage, and it shoved dwarves and humans alike out of the way as it hobbled over to her.
Mirage launched her throwing knives across the gap with startling accuracy. Hades casually turned his face to the north, and the blades clashed into the dark skin at his right temple before bouncing off harmlessly and falling to the rock. Hades chuckled low and reached out with one hand, taunting the goddess by curling two fingers toward himself twice.
“We had a deal!” Mirage screamed, backing away from the ledge, unknowingly moving closer to her vampire pursuer. “I have protection, Hades! We had a deal!”
“I'm not the one who broke it, am I?” Hades taunted, his one good eye following the vampire's movements as it finally lashed out for the goddess. Two gray hands with eerily long fingers grasped onto the goddess's waist from behind, and she screamed and grabbed for the daggers at her belt. She retrieved the blades and swiped this way and that, but the vampire paid no mind as it leaked the blood of recent victims from new wounds.
“Bring her to me.” Hades waited patiently as the vampire whipped its leathery wings out to both sides, the harsh movement slapping back multiple soldiers who came to the goddess's defense. As Mirage twisted in the creature's grasp and screamed protests, the vampire lifted into the air and slowly carried the goddess over the gap.
FWOOSH. FWOOSH. FWOOSH. FWOOSH.
Hades watched with little expression as the vampire delivered the goddess to his side, dropping her roughly without care. Mirage fell in a lump, but she quickly pulled herself to her knees, preparing to flee.
Hades reached out with one arm, grasping the top of Mirage's head. The goddess shrieked as she struggled to stand against his grip, her fingers ripping at his. She only pulled out clumps of her own hair in her desperation. The muscles in Hades's scarred arm bulged with strength as he kept her still.
“Goodbye, Mirage,” he murmured.
Black leeching magic fogged out from Hades's fingers for only a millisecond before the goddess slumped with death. Keeping his hand grasped over Mirage's cranium, Hades lifted her corpse up a few inches from the stone like it weighed nothing and threw it over the ledge.
“Now you may feed,” Hades announced. As if the vampires could understand their master's words, one of them swooped into the pass, grabbing the goddess's falling body and stopping its descent. As the vampire hovered in mid-air, it pulled the body up to its face, revealing a set of horribly long fangs before biting over Mirage's trachea. Her corpse shriveled into a dried husk, and the vampire dropped it carelessly, letting it fall in a pile of bones and loosened armor. The creature rattled with a sporadic seizure, and its gray skin moistened with new life. It flew back up to the upper pass to search for more victims.
Hades released death magic at his boots, and hundreds of black tendrils zipped speedily to the east and southeast. Chairel soldiers rose to fight former friends, and even though the god was far from us, his necromancy was powerful enough to travel up and over Hinder's wall to raise my own poisoned casualties. I watched with hesitance as the corpses rose, but when they stood, they didn't fight us. They faced north, pounding at Hinder's obstruction like it would help them get to the dwarves.
“Why is Hades here?” Cerin asked desperately, not bothering to regenerate his ward when another gust of my air magic flickered it out. All over the muddy battlefield, the moisture was finally depleting. The northern stone barricade was breaking down from the top as the giants slowly dismantled it, but our armies weren't free yet.
“I don't know, but he's not attacking us,” I breathed.
“In other words, don't question it,” Nyx added, and Cerin huffed with amusement.
BOOM! Crack!
At last, Marcus's battering ram broke the left section of the northern blockade. Huge cracked off sections of the upper wall fell unsupported, but the other giants quickly grabbed the debris and threw it over to the other side. One broken piece at a time, the giants tore down the northern obstruction, making a rough exit out of jagged stone.
A bright white light flashed just beyond the north wall, so excruciatingly intense that it dazed and confused all soldiers on the upper mountain paths. Allied and enemy soldiers alike squinted their eyes shut and fell to their knees. Hades and the vampires were not immune; the god closed his eyes against the magic as his vampires screeched and backed away from battle. I heard a male curse irritably on ground level like his plan was foiled, proving Hinder was still near. This time when I sought life, the magic showed a red sliver beyond the wall where the god stood. Hinder had either fought against Hades in the past or knew light was a weakness of vampires, but the spell had affected everyone instead. As the first few giants escaped to the other side of the wall, the red energy darted to the right like Hinder planned on escaping.
“Ha! No, you don't,” I exclaimed, before turning to my friends. “Holter, take over for a few minutes, will you? I have a god to kill.”
“Sure,” Holter replied. He added in jest, “Just try not to hurt yourself doing it this time.”
I snorted a laugh and grinned at Nyx, who also appeared amused. “Your man is getting sassy, Nyx.”
Nyx shrugged with a smile. “What can I say? I'm corrupting him.”
I shook my head in humor and motioned to Azazel. “I need you.”
“On it,” he agreed, following me through the drying mud and to the new exit.
Azazel and I hurried to the east outside of the constricting northern wall, swiping our boots through clean gras
ses as we walked to clear them of as much mud as possible. Hinder was gone, so I used more alteration magic to search for him, finally seeing a sliver of red darting south alongside the exterior eastern barrier. When Azazel and I passed the northeastern corner of Hinder's obstruction, the god's back was visible as a diminishing blur in the distance as he fled from Narangar. I pointed to him and requested one thing of my right-hand man.
“Disable him.”
Azazel quickly nocked a black arrow. His eyes were unblinking as he calculated distance and drop. He tilted the memorial longbow and pulled back the string with barely an effort. The arrow released, zipping through the evening air with a slight whistle.
Shik!
The arrowhead split the tendon just above Hinder's right heel, the shaft sticking out between the edge of the god's trousers and the cuff of his boot. Hinder collapsed forward to the grasses, his heavy breaths of pain echoing out as he glanced back to see his pursuers.
“Good gods, Azazel,” I blurted, in disbelief at his skill. “Stop being so damn good at what you do.”
“Then it wouldn't be any fun,” he replied. “I'm fairly certain you keep asking me to make shots like these just because you find watching them entertaining.”
I chuckled dryly as I headed toward the god. “You've figured me out.”
Hinder said nothing as I stalked toward him, closing our distance. The god of obstruction crawled away from me, favoring his lame leg as it trailed blood over previously unmarred grasses. His straggly black hair was segmented with the weight of excess sweat from his exertion in the battle. Raggedy breaths shook in the air between us as I stood over him.
Hinder reached back quickly as if to use a spell, and I immediately put a hand over my eyes. The god used the bright light again to delay me, but I'd already figured it was coming. It seemed he was low on energy and could use nothing else.
Even though I'd blocked the light with a guarding hand, when I lowered it stars danced before my vision. I quickly paralyzed Hinder with alteration magic.