by Erik Reid
Now we’re talking.
“You still with us, Kaylee?” I asked.
“Mmhmm,” she said. Her cheeks were flush and her breathing was labored, but she didn’t shut her eyes and hide from the fight. Her eyes were still pleasantly brown — not the seething pits of crimson rage that filled her pupils when the curse took hold. Her meditative work was already paying off.
The second bloodhound had recovered from its earlier rolling tumble down the hill’s grassy face, and it leapt from the ground a few feet away from me. I bent my knees and prepared to punch the fiend in the gut before it could land, but Kaylee stepped forward and extended her own arm. Her fingers were spread and the heel of her palm launched upward, slamming into the monster’s throat.
That fiend’s trajectory spun out of control then, landing the bloodhound on its feet between me and Dani. It clutched its throat and tried to gasp through a crushed windpipe.
“Nice job,” I said.
Kaylee didn’t respond other than to nod slightly. Her cheeks were still getting redder, but she hadn’t lost control yet. The bloodhound took a shambling step toward Dani, but she sank her sword through its stomach and retracted the blade just as quickly.
Before the monster could fall down and roll out of reach, I jabbed my fist into its lower back, using the opening Dani had cut to sink Oscar deep into the monster’s bowels. I kept it from toppling over, but I had to curve my reach upward to find the heart. It was a gooey, slimy affair, thanks to Oscar’s ability to transmit all tactile sensation unimpeded.
My middle finger grazed against something hard and that was it. I rammed my fist further up, snatched the heart, and pulled it free. Dani kicked the monster away from us and I pulverized the onicite, igniting the same flashy blue burst as before.
Energy Reserves Up: 2.3%
“They’re not all worth the same amount of energy,” I said. “I’m not sure what to do with that.”
“Incoming!” Kaylee yelled. A single bloodhound had just hit the hill at six o’clock, due south. She bent her legs and prepared to fight it when a second attacker emerged to the west.
“I’ll handle that one,” Clara said. She stood nearest that bloodhound, and I would have protested, but another two were about to race up the hill toward me and Dani. Whatever head start we had was very short-lived. Not counting Benoch, we were fighting at a one-to-one ratio now, with another dozen or so bloodhounds still approaching.
Kaylee struck with deliberate motions at the monster she fought against. She punched forward, then reset her position. Kicked, then reset again. It was like she didn’t trust herself to execute those moves in faster succession, constantly returning to a neutral pose with her legs together and her arms by her sides as she took a single, deep breath between attacks.
“She’s going to get herself killed,” I said.
“It’s good practice,” Dani said. “She’s only been meditating for a few days now. Benoch said true control could take a lifetime.”
“A lifetime,” I said, reaching out to grab a bloodhound by the wrist as it attempted, and failed, to slash its filthy black claws across my new leather vest. “That’s going to last another six minutes at this rate, tops. Hey, did you just yawn?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, slicing the bloodhound’s head off in one powerful slash. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“You’ll wake right up when those synapper candies kick in,” I said, shoving my hand into the decapitated monster’s open throat and grabbing its heart. I crushed it then and there.
Energy Reserves Up: 2.6%
“When will they kick in, exactly?” I asked.
“Not sure,” she said. “The seedpods were slow to infuse. Maybe I didn’t make them potent enough.”
“Kyle!” Kaylee yelled. I spun back and found her arm slathered in thick black blood. A bloodhound heart sat in her palm. “Catch!”
She tossed the stone my way and I crushed it in one squeeze, filling Oscar’s meter just a little bit more.
Energy Reserves Up: 3.0%
“If Oscar gets more juice,” I said. “So do I.” I reached into my pocket and opened two more synapper candies. They were just as sweet and complex as the first one.
Our second bloodhound kept some distance, letting us decapitate its friend while it watched us. With my hands distracted for a moment unwrapping Dani’s homemade power-ups, it lunged at me. I barely got the candies into my mouth before the thing tackled me to the ground.
Dani lifted her sword, but hesitated. I wrestled with that monster at too close quarters for a simple stab in the back to suffice.
The fiend’s jaw lowered and it thrust its face toward my neck, but I slipped my fingers into its mouth and probed deep. Oscar was impenetrable, so when the monster snapped its teeth shut with all its strength, the tips snapped off against Oscar’s black fabric.
I lowered my own jaw now. To yawn. Which was getting really old.
“Dani,” I said, Oscar still wrist-deep in the monster’s mouth. “Why am I not bouncing off the walls? My reflexes should be at a Daredevil, but so far I’m at a Captain Marvel. After her run-in with Rogue.”
“I don’t know what’s taking so long,” she said, smashing the butt of her sword against the back of the bloodhound’s head and forcing my fist to sink deeper into its throat. “I made a batch of emberstick without the lusty cupid’s tooth, I finished a dozen noxyweed candies for Clara just in case, then I… Oh no.”
“Oh no?” I asked. The bloodhound’s claws slashed at my arms and I gave up trying to hold it at bay or find a way to kill it. I dug my arm further into its chest cavity, split apart some sinewy, slimy organs, and slipped my fingers around its hard, onicite heart. I gave it a firm clench and it collapsed on top of me.
Energy Reserves Up: 3.6%
“Maybe the pot I simmered the seedpods in still had residual noxyweed in it. I cleaned everything, I promise I did, but that noxyweed is just so, so strong.”
“Residual noxyweed,” I said, still processing what that meant. My mind was already slowing down, a growing desire for a nice long nap creeping into the back of my brain. “So I’m drowsy. Slowed down instead of sped up. No heavy machinery and I should be fine.”
I rolled the bloodhound off me and got to my feet, spying another five beasts running toward us and nearly reaching the hill’s base. In a moment, they’d be on us.
Behind us, Kaylee’s motions grew increasingly quick, often skipping the step where she re-centered herself and took a calming breath. Clara had a battle of her own going on, and one that she approached with unnerving calm.
As a bloodhound raced up to Clara, its nose greedily sniffing out its prey, she stood like a statue and waited. The monster recoiled the second it came within two feet of her, bounding backward and skidding to a stop to stare at the kobold girl and snarl at her.
Clara stepped forward, fearless and resolute. When the monster snapped its jaws together and lunged forward in an apparent attempt to scare her off, she reached forward, grabbed the fiend by its mop of unkempt gray hair, and pressed her other hand against its face.
She activated her healing magic, forcing a bright pink light to shine from her fingertips as they pressed further into the monster’s face. It shrieked and flailed, but the strength sapped from its muscles and its limbs waved uselessly at its sides as the face melted away from its skull.
Clara watched almost impassively as the creature puddled in her hands, tossing its wilted body aside and allowing its exposed skin to sizzle and smoke.
“That’s one heart I won’t be breaking,” I said.
I stumbled forward, fighting off the encroaching sleepiness. Then Dani stepped behind me and screamed with effort, bringing her sword up and across her body to slice off the arm of an oncoming attacker.
For a moment, I stood at the very peak of our hill, taking in the surrounding battle as if in a dream. Clara regarded the sizzling black blood on her fingertips with calm curiosity while Kaylee’s eyes began
to spark red with rage. Dani stepped backward, holding her sword with a shaky hand, as three bloodhounds climbed up the hill toward her.
Benoch’s mouth started moving, but his words didn’t register. He waved some kind of rag in his hand and gestured wildly, but I wasn’t interested in his advice right now. I was too busy counting the dark little dots moving against the grass in the distance.
I couldn’t count that fast.
“Skeeter Vision please,” I said, turning my sight into the infrared overlay that would reveal just a little more information.
That was enough to shake me from my noxyweed stupor. There were fifty — no, a hundred — bloodhounds still on the way.
“… of control!” Benoch said.
“You’re right,” I replied, suddenly realizing what Benoch was saying. “Everyone, retreat! Clara, down the hatch. Dani, don’t look back. Benoch, give me that.”
I snatched Kaylee’s blindfold from Benoch’s grip and approached the simki warrior. She kicked a bloodhound in the nose, sending a splash of thick black blood in a disgusting arc as its head whipped to the side. Then she spun around and kicked again, knocking down another monster as it tried to creep up behind her.
“Kaylee,” I said. “We need to go.”
She didn’t look. She couldn’t hear me. All the fighting, and the violence, and the bloodshed — it was too much for her limited training. I ducked and bobbed, waiting for my chance, then I lunged forward and wrapped the rag around her eyes.
She reached behind herself and grabbed hold of my vest, then bent forward and lifted me off the ground. I wrapped my legs around her for balance, then pulled the rag tight and tied it in a knot. She flipped me forward then, launching me from her body and knocking me into two bloodhounds that raced up the hill.
As other monsters attacked, she kept fighting, sensing their approach and striking before they came near. For my part, I had a bloodhound looking down at my body as I lay on the ground, its foul breath and gathering drool a dual threat to my continued good humor.
I leapt to my feet and ran, scooping Kaylee up by the waist and heading for the open hatch door.
Clara and Dani were already gone. Benoch’s hand was just barely visible as he disappeared down the ladder chute.
“Kaylee,” I said. “It’s over. You can’t see any more fighting, right? We’re going inside.”
“Why?” she asked. “Can’t see.” Her breathing was deep and raspy.
“Be calm,” I said. “Where’s that meditation I’ve heard so much about?”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Great. Do it on a ladder. Down! Fast!”
I guided Kaylee’s foot to the ladder’s top rung, then stepped toward our horses. A wooden spike in the ground held ropes that tethered them in place.
“You guys are always trying to get eaten,” I said, yanking the spike loose and tossing it aside. I smacked both horses on the ass as hard as I could.
They neighed and raced down the hill to escape the sting of my palm on their skin. At least they’d have a chance now.
When I turned back, seven bloodhounds all rushed toward me at once. My reflexes were slow, thanks to some unintentional downers in my system, but there was one move I could still try out.
I bent my knees and leaned forward, then screamed at the top of my lungs. “Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill!”
That’s right. Blade to the rescue.
The bloodhounds were taken aback by my impromptu outburst, and they stopped in their tracks, likely to assess just how bat-shit crazy of a fighter I would turn out to be. It gave me time to lean back, see that Kaylee had made it to the bottom of the ladder, and breathe a quick sigh of relief.
“Peace out, everybody,” I said, jumping down the ladder chute and reaching up to grab hold of the two metal handles on the hatch’s underside.
The door clicked shut the second it slammed down, flush with the hill’s surface. The metal reverberated and my non-Oscar hand really felt the sting of that jarring impact. I hung there for a moment, relieved to escape, but afraid to release the hatch. What if my bodyweight was all that kept the hatch closed?
“What are you doing?” Benoch called from the bunker below. “It’s not like your bodyweight is all that’s keeping the hatch closed. It’s got tighter locks than all the banks in Varrowsgard. Let those blood-suckers scratch at it with their ugly claws. We’re safe.”
“I thought you said there was no place safe in all of Silura,” I said.
“Wiseass. Don’t use my words against me. Now get down here. The world is worse off than I thought.”
CHAPTER 24
We gathered in Benoch’s workshop, deep in the heart of his bunker and away from the incessant howling of bloodhounds and their banging on the metal hatch door that separated us from a horde of blood-starved demonspawn.
Benoch walked past the tangled nest of wires and beakers that surrounded his experimental white glove. Its fingers kept twiddling, like a centipede’s legs after they’re separated from the main body. The small sliver of onicite that powered up that prototype glowed with the faintest blue sheen.
“I don’t suppose there’s an emergency exit,” Dani said.
“No,” Benoch said. “A dozen highly trained royal guards were supposed to prevent an important asset like me from being trapped like this. But the guards have all left.”
“Not my fault,” I said.
“No,” Dani said. “This is my fault, for handicapping our efforts to fend off this attack. I’m playing with ingredients I don’t understand and it’s an experiment that will get us all killed. I should stick to simple little flavors instead, harmless ones. Rose water and carnation nectar, or sweet pepper flakes and apple oil.
“Or better yet, I should just give it all up wholesale. A candy shop seems like such a silly little trifle when the fate of my whole race hangs in the balance. I wish my recipes had just burnt up in Varrowsgard. I would have finished mourning the death of my stupid dream by now.”
“Thank you,” Benoch said. “I am relieved to hear you speak some sense. It is time to put childish hobbies to bed.”
“Is that what Milton Hershey did when he ran out of money and had to close his first chocolate shop? No! He opened another one. And that failed too, but he got better, and smarter, and now there’s a charitable foundation named after him that helps… orphans, I think? It’s been a long time since I went on the tour.”
“Your point?” Benoch said.
“Dani has a talent. One that I won’t let you talk her into abandoning.” I turned toward the draykin woman, though she didn’t notice. Her head was down, staring at her lap where her hands fidgeted.
“Benoch said you could take what ingredients you wanted,” I continued. “Go get them now. All of them. We’re leaving.”
“The bloodhounds—” Kaylee started.
“Won’t even know we’re gone,” I said. “I’ve been setting waypoints with Oscar, which until recently were just location markers. Thanks to today’s bloodhound blitz, I have the energy we need to travel between them as a group. We’ll head to the castle and warn the queen about A’zarkin’s plan to steal her egg, ask her for an army, and march up the mountain to meet the demon head on.”
Benoch continued to pace the perimeter of his workshop, pausing at his bookshelf of old tomes and tracing his fingers past the spines of several before settling on a small book bound in light tan leather.
“You’ll take this, Clara,” he said. “Even if you don’t plan to use it, I want you to have it.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“A collected volume of theories,” he said. “They pertain to the phenomenon of the Goddess-touched, and many passages deal directly with improving the healing magic you possess. We won’t have time to test these methods out together, but there’s no sense in sending you into the world unprepared.”
He handed the book to Clara. She took it and traced her fingers over the image of a diamond
, etched into its soft cover.
“I have energy enough for all of us,” I said. “You’re coming too.”
“No,” Benoch replied. “I’m not. My life is here. With the guards gone I thought, for a moment, I was free to go. I realized I didn’t want to. I enjoy my work and I believe in its importance. There are rations enough for years down here now that my protectors have raced back to the castle city, and the security hatch will hold the bloodhounds at bay until they tire and wander off in search of warmer meals.”
“This is bullshit,” I said. “After all the years of service you’ve put in, you should tell the queen straight up that you deserve a state of the art workshop back home in Varrowsgard, not some subterranean compound under constant guard.”
“I am important,” he said, “but not so important that I can make demands of our queen. She’d have me buried so far beneath the Rundune Desert I’d pop out the other side of Silura.”
“Where is this desert, anyway?” I asked. “Queen Zolocki mentioned burying all sorts of stuff out there.”
“An instinct we’ve carried forth from our dragon ancestors, those poor souls.” Benoch said. “Goddess help us if the sins we’ve buried ever wake up again.”
He stared off for a moment, then shook his thoughts loose. “Thank you for the concern, but I choose to stay. It’s a choice I made a long time ago.”
“Mr. Benoch?” Kaylee asked. “Can I keep the blindfold?”
“Of course you can, dear,” he said. “I’m sorry you still require it.”
“What about me?” I asked. “Can I have my stuff back? You know, all my important pocket-sized possessions the guards confiscated from me.”
“Oh, of course, let’s see… It looked so much like garbage I had forgotten all about it. Where did I…” He wandered around his workshop for a bit and then came back with three items.