The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3)

by Philbrook, Chris

  “There are always stories of something ‘far worse’ in the Plague Dunes. It’s where the Great Plague happened. Where the Waymancers and the Apostles and the Artificers made their last stand against the hordes of the dead caused by The Plague. The Plague is still there, hence the name of the place. It’s still lethal too. Still protecting the secrets and treasures of Elmoryn from before The Fall, and still… horrible. ‘Don’t steal from your brother or we’ll send you to the Plague Dunes.’ Everyone knows about that place.”

  “And yet so few have been there,” Umaryn said conspiratorially.

  The home checked and deemed both safe and empty, they exited with caution. Umaryn looked for her brother, who stood with James at the ruins of the village Church near the center of the mining town. Mal looked directly at them; bow in hand, a nervous expression on his face. She waved to him and his concern melted away. He waved back with his free hand. They moved down the way towards the stream that had fed the village with fresh water, and out of his sight. If New Falun in its advanced state of decay didn’t look mortified and putrid, the town would have been a truly beautiful place to be. Primordial forest at its edges, with tall peaks wreathed in white and sheer cliff faces that hugged in around those forested edges. If you didn’t think about all the death that had happened here… it wasn’t all that bad.

  “Daydreaming of steam engines?” Chelsea asked Umaryn as she moved into position at a door’s edge.

  Umaryn snapped back to the present. “Something like that. I was just thinking that it’s pretty here. You know, if you ignore the present condition of it. It’s a shame.”

  “I suppose. You considering moving here? Setting up shop? Armor maker for all the animals we haven’t seen?” Chelsea said in a whisper as Umaryn readied herself for the door to be knocked on and kicked in.

  Umaryn laughed and shook her head no. “If all of this goes south on us, you know, if we’re accused of Alisanne’s murder, and we’re forced to disappear, this wouldn’t be the worst place for us to make a go of it. Assuming we are able to find the evil here and eradicate it, of course.”

  “Tall order sister,” Chelsea said as she tried the rusty knob on the door. With a tiny grinding peep it refused to turn. Two fingertips pressed into the door told them it was shut and locked. It would need the boot. Something inside had locked it shut to keep something out.

  Umaryn prayed with swift words. “Sorry door. You’ve already given back the life you had to the world and for that we are appreciative. Thank you, and may you forgive me for this.” Umaryn took a deep breath and stepped forward into a heel kick directly beside the lock. She was strong. Hammer forged strong. Stronger than her brother possibly, tougher than the steel she worked, and her armored leather boot hit the door with a thunderous crack, and the old wood splintered and broke. It didn’t swing open, but it had broken open enough to pose no further resistance to the women.

  As Umaryn steadied her body, Chelsea put a shoulder into the busted and rotting door, and it half-swung, half-fell apart to the floor, leaving the pitch black entranceway open. Something not too far inside the door prevented it from falling flat. The women stood at the ready, expecting something dangerous to come out at them, but after several baited breaths, nothing did.

  Chelsea confirmed with Umaryn that she was ready and then peered around the jam into the home. “Ugh, it stinks.”

  “Dead body stinks? Or body odor stinks? Do you think something is alive in there?” Umaryn asked her, Chael’s hammer at her shoulder, ready to smash anything that threatened them from within.

  “Dead body stinks,” she said gagging.

  “Let me in. I’m used to the smell. I grew up with a brother,” Umaryn said, stepping forward. She felt powerful in her armor. She could feel the spirit inside it aching to be tested. Flexing its immortal energy around her and making her feel invincible. It had infinite potential energy, like a child on a summer day. Chelsea moved to the side, and Umaryn walked into the darkened home.

  The smell assailed her. Her heavy plate failed to protect her from the stench that had twisted Chelsea’s stomach into a knot. Her own belly trembled, threatening to seize from the slick, oily scent of putrefying flesh and blood somewhere inside the small building. Umaryn drifted back to her memories of Quality Meats, Cheap and the string of murders she and her brother had committed in the name of justice in Graben. That thought nearly did her stomach in as effectively as the present stench.

  The interior of the room had clutter right to the doorway with something heavy. Logs, or perhaps rolled rugs that hadn’t been eaten away by the water and mildew like the others. She couldn’t see all the details, but knew she’d need more light to do anything inside. Umaryn took a step back but something in the dark grabbed her foot, pinning it to the still hard floor of the home. She yelped in surprise, and lost her balance, stretching and hopping back, her booted foot caught in the vice grip of something incredibly strong. Her heart stopped.

  “Help!” she asked Chelsea.

  The Varrland soldier sheathed her sword and stepped back into the door frame and grabbed Umaryn around the waist with both arms like she was an errant child. She put her back into it, and they grunted together, trying to free Umaryn’s foot and body from whatever laid in wait inside the darkened home with the rotting smell. Umaryn felt her leg at the hip socket give way briefly, and a lightning bolt of pain ran up and down her leg. She cried out softly, but gritted her teeth. The two women had moved her foot out of the depths of the house perhaps a step and a half, right to the jam, and a new smell had invaded their noses. Something acrid and caustic, invasive, and foul. Something burning. The women ceased their struggle and looked finally to Umaryn’s foot.

  A long sinuous humanoid arm, naked and extending into the darkness beyond the reach of their vision, had finger clamped on the flat of her boot below the ankle, and around the toes. Each fingertip ended in a thick, filthy yellow nail that had been worked down to an eagle claw point. The talons were broken and ragged, and looked infectious. The skin of the arm, white with jaundiced flecks and streaks of old bloody veins underneath pulsed with hunger as the hand squeezed her booted foot. The flesh smoked. The sunlight’s gray indistinct edge reached inside the jam in the same way the arm reached out of it, and where the light touched the stuff of the thing, a smoke as thick as burning leaves lazily wafted up, curling back the skin, setting free to the air desiccated and long dead flesh.

  The fingertips and their dagger-claws dug into the Plainswalker plate on the top of the foot, denting the soft outer layer, and then with a terrible strength, began to drag her back into the home.

  “FUCK!” Umaryn said as she dropped Chael’s hammer and put both arms—stiff as beams of iron—into the frame of the door to stop her trip into the darkness, and the sure annihilation in the hands of the thing that was dragging her. To enter the dark meant death and the women knew it.

  “Motherfucker,” Chelsea said through her own gritted teeth looking down at the hand. She unwrapped Umaryn’s body to free up her hands, and the Artificer nearly launched into the gloom. She ripped her sword out of the scabbard at her side and spun it deftly until the blade pointed to the ground like a stalactite made of honed steel. With a grunt, she powered the blade down at the wrist of the burning creature, attempting to impale it, to pin it to the ground.

  The sword skipped off of the gray and yellow flesh at the hand, leaving no mark, and sank inches into the spongy wood at the ground. The strike had been ineffectual in every way.

  “What the hell? It can’t be hurt?” she blurted.

  Umaryn saw the lack of damage to the hand that tried fervently to yank her apart and an idea struck her. “Grab my hammer. I enchanted it earlier. The spell is still going!” she got out between grunts and struggles to stay out of the room.

  Chelsea looked over Umaryn’s shoulder and saw the shining steel hammer sitting in the dirt, practically begging to smash something apart. Even further she saw Malwynn sprinting at full speed through the
village towards them, vaulting over the raised train tracks that bisected New Falun. He must’ve seen their struggle and from the look on his face, he was horrified. Chelsea reached down and scooped up the very end of the hammer’s shaft, and inched it towards her as she put a shoulder into Umaryn’s stomach armor to try and add some kind of resistance to the pale arm dragging at her, or even possibly push her out. She got the hammer into her hand, and dropped to a knee, below Umaryn’s arms, and right in front of the smashed open door, right at the claw tipped arm that was now only smoldering as it retreated into its cocoon.

  “Try this on for size,” Chelsea said grimly, and she brought the hammer down in an abbreviated swing from the center of her chest.

  The steel head of the hammer hit the wrist of the creature and crushed it with a rapid series of wet, heavy snaps, like stepped-on acorns under wet autumn leaves. Something escaped the lips of a monster only feet away inside the house, under the broken door and the pile of… stuff inside the home. Guttural and primal came the scream of a thing that had not been harmed in a very long time.

  The hand opened its talon claws, freeing Umaryn’s foot. The limb snatched back and disappeared into the piles of debris inside the home as she scrambled back to her feet.

  The pile, the whole mass, then shifted, and writhed. The entire waist high jumble of unidentified stuff in the home moved, bucking and convulsing, coming alive, retracting into the home with hisses and scratches, human limbs flying about in all directions, each now seen to be pale and white, covered in flecks of offal, blood, and other things too inhumane to speak of. The stench worsened impossibly as the mania built. Eyes, glowing and evil as a cat’s at midnight began to open all around the depths of the dark room, wide at first, and then narrowed in anger. As Malwynn breathlessly arrived, bow in hand, the myriad voices spoke.

  “The ones we were told of…”

  “Infiltrators…”

  “Thieves…”

  “The evil ones. Killers of the lady…”

  “Food...”

  “The food…”

  “Our food for our souls…”

  “For the people, for the ancestors…” the last voice snarled, and the pile of killers lurched towards the door in an eruption of vomitous evil.

  Umaryn stood slack, open mouthed and fully in shock at the grisly spectacle in front of her, both arms still on the doorframe. Chelsea was on her knees right at her side, and they were both about to be torn to shreds by what looked like a hundred claw-tipped, milky evil fingers. Chelsea leapt backward, still clutching Chael’s hammer in her hand. Umaryn lowered her shoulder, and had faith in her armor.

  It did not betray her.

  The slashing fingers tried to pry her skin apart, but the blood red armor that had an awakened spirit inside it stood strong, resolute, and turned away the violence that would have ripped normal armor apart, and shredded the flesh below. She cackled in triumph under her helm, feeling the surge of the spirit inside the armor swell.

  Ten hands punched her then, and knocked her out of the frame. As she tumbled back into the embrace of the life saving sunlight, the hands reaching out to drag her in to her death smoked and sizzled, and with more yelps of inhuman pain, they retracted away back into the carapace of the rotting home. The voices began to curse at them, and curse at the sun.

  “So wicked the sun!”

  “Evil, evil traitors with magicked armor.”

  “The Way won’t save you!”

  “Yes it will,” Malwynn said in a voice cold enough to bind flesh to iron. He moved into the doorway and raised a hand, extending it into the darkness until something reached out, and tried to grab him. Just as the monster inside made contact with the necromancer’s flesh, he spoke a single word. “Eicio,” he said in a whisper.

  A hum happened. A vibration of primeval energy both physical and spiritual, and made of creation and destruction shook the world’s existence and changed it in a slight but far reaching way. It was the beautiful warping of the paper, into the origami creature that it would forever be.

  The thing that touched Malwynn ceased to be in a violent, destructive immolation of The Way. It turned into ash, and bone, and collapsed to the floor in a puff of mold and powder. He had unmade it with The Way.

  The rest of the inhuman undead bellowed in discordant agony and grief, as one of their own was sent back to the finality they never should’ve come back from.

  “The day is ours,” Malwynn said without fear, still standing in the door, well within the reach of the thing inside. “And soon the night will be, too. Sprack,” he said, flicking his finger at the wooden floor of the home. A small jet of flame leapt out of the palm of his unfurling hand, and hit the floor in a splash, setting it alight.

  The fire showed them all what had tried to kill them.

  The abominations were the vampires the drunken knight in Daris told them of. Alabaster skin wracked with blue veins, and eyes swollen to see in the dark of night, where they existed. Claws, and a disjointed mouth too misshapen and large now to shut, filled with rows of discolored, sharpened fangs that grew disjointed and askew. The things were hunched, with arms that hung long and low, thin but with freakish strength born of the necromantic energies that gave them the power and will to drink the blood they craved.

  Chelsea and Umaryn watched as the flames grew with the old home, spreading across the floor as if they had tossed oil about, pushing the creatures back and back until they were pinned against the far walls. One of the vampires, in a panic, lost all sense and ripped open a storm shutter on a window, letting in the gray sunlight, creating pain and even more smoke as he and his kind erupted into flames. They were trapped. Surrounded on all side and burnt by the light that hated them, and the flames that wanted to eat them as badly as they wanted the blood of the living.

  Within seconds, the roar of the flames drowned out their infernal screams.

  “Do you think that’s all of them?” Chelsea asked as she stepped to Mal’s side. Umaryn flanked her, and the three watched as the roaring home destroyed the vampires trapped within.

  “Can’t be,” Mal said as he watched the undead monsters flop and flail in the fires. The things had gone silent, but they moved still. He sounded weary, and frustrated. Perhaps even afraid.

  Umaryn put her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Mal blinked a few times and shook his head. “Those two spells took it out of me. I’ve never cast a Rend so powerfully. Really got all of that one. I need to sit and rest. Go protect James with my bow I suppose. We can’t afford to let his spell be interrupted.”

  “Go ahead. We’ll handle the town. If we find any more homes that are locked up, we’ll just torch them. Rip open every window before any doors.”

  Mal seemed to like that, despite his weariness. “Hey, your armor,” Mal said, pointing at her breastplate where the vampire had tried to rip her apart.

  Umaryn took off her helm and looked down at the plate. The armor had been damaged by her stand in the doorway, but something was happening. The crimson armor had lines gouged in where the fingernails had raked it. Underneath the hardened exterior sat a layer of the hard, almost fatty skin of the Plainswalker that had nearly killed her and her brother. The armor looked nearly alive to those gathered right in that moment, and like a living thing, the flesh of her armor mended. Each slash thinned visibly, and its length diminished with each passing moment. The armor had the power to heal itself.

  “Huh,” Umaryn said with a surprised smile. “Self repairing armor.”

  “You think that’s all it can do?” Chelsea asked.

  Umaryn shrugged her armored shoulders and watched as one of the smallest rents in the plate sealed shut, leaving a smooth and flat surface behind. The armor looked brand new where it had only just been defaced. “I don’t know.”

  “Neat,” Mal said almost dismissively before walking away, back to James and his unfinished consecration, leaving the women to their task of clearing out the village. />
  Chelsea watched him walk away with a lover’s eye for his mood. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked Umaryn once he got out of earshot.

  “I think so. Using The Way drains you. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. Hard to explain really. It leaves you with no will sometimes. Let him sit and rest for half an hour and he’ll be right as rain.”

  Umaryn’s words only barely comforted Chelsea’s worry, but achieved enough for them to get back to work. Many more homes would be put to the torch before they were done, and the screams of the dead resounded in the canyon the village was trapped in, echoing back and forth, ensuring that there would be no sweet dreams for them any time soon.

  Deep in the forest, far beyond the village of New Falun where Chelsea and Umaryn were torching the vampires dozens at a time in clutches of unadulterated undead evil, Aleksi Oathman sat up in the cramped cave he was buried deep inside, and listened to the cries of his people dying again, for the last time.

  He snarled, and put his head back down.

  Their justice would have to wait until the night.

  —Chapter Eleven—

  THE SIEGE

  The sun had set on the day, and the Empire had begun their assault on Ockham’s Fringe once more.

  Still unwilling to commit his ground forces to a frontal assault, General Dalibor Hubik concentrated his army’s efforts on letting fly a thousand more flaming arrows into the village. Wooden arrows with iron tips were cheaper than lives to him.

  But only barely.

  The ranked up archers stood behind a row of undead serving them as shields composed of flesh. During the short life of the siege the Varrland archers had proven themselves to be experts, and the Empire had thousands of undead to spare, but only a few hundred archers. It made sense to allow the defenders to pierce the caged headed undead a hundred times over and waste their arrows, so Dalibor instructed to his necromancers what their exact positions should be. Further, he had his chief death mage Yefim tell his archers that they were to slide into cover behind the undead as they notched and lit their new arrows.