Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  “Jolan, look at me.”

  He turned away from the wreckage to see Ashlyn staring back at him, hair damp with sweat. Eyes bloodshot and glassy.

  “We don’t have time to hesitate,” she said. “I need you to give me more targets. A lot more.”

  Jolan nodded. Looked down at the astrolabe and found another skyship.

  Started reading off its location.

  76

  CASTOR

  Castle Malgrave, Western Tower

  Castor was awoken from a deep sleep with the news that Kira Malgrave had escaped. He dressed. Armed himself. Splashed some water on his face, and made the long trek to her chamber in the King’s Tower.

  The giant acolyte that stood permanent guard in front of her dome had been reduced to a pile of putrid mush. There were ten engineers bustling around the area, muttering to themselves in small groups. Ward was bent over some kind of modified astrolabe, which had scores of wires spilling out of it. Knowing Ward, he’d altered the thing to blow a man’s head off from ten leagues away.

  “I can’t fathom what substance could have caused such catastrophic destruction,” said Nebbin, who was standing over the pile of mush, frowning. “Or who brewed it.”

  “Oh, I know exactly who brewed it,” said Ward as he dropped a pea-sized lodestone into a hole in the astrolabe. “Her name is Caellan. And I wish I’d killed her years ago.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ward replied. “The priority is finding Kira and getting her back inside this dome.”

  “My men searched the castle pretty good,” Castor offered. “Didn’t find a trace of the empress.”

  “But where could she have gone?” Nebbin asked.

  “That is what we are about to find out,” said Osyrus, closing the panel of the astrolabe. “At least, we will as soon as someone gives me two pints of dragon oil!”

  A junior engineer came running over with a tube of oil, which Osyrus pressed into a separate port.

  “I am not sure that I’m familiar with that mechanism,” said Nebbin as he watched Ward configure a few things.

  “Why would you be familiar with something that I never fucking told you about?” Ward snapped.

  Castor worked to hide a smile. He found the old man’s frustration a little amusing.

  “As a security precaution, I always install one half of a unique lodestone pair into each of the Seeds we harvest,” Ward continued. “Should a specimen ever go missing, all I need to do is run a charge through the other half while it’s attached to this tracking device, and it will give me the Seed’s location.”

  Ward wound a lever on the side of the astrolabe a few times, then pushed a button that caused a loud pop. A few dials turned and a set of coordinates rolled across the number slates.

  “Hm. She is nearly ten leagues east, over the Soul Sea. The only way that could be true is if she’s on a—”

  “Master Ward!” cried an engineer, running up the steps and panting hard. “Master Ward, there is an urgent problem with the skyship armada.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  The engineer swallowed. “We no longer have control over it.”

  To Castor’s surprise, Ward smiled at that news. “Ashlyn Malgrave is making her move.”

  “That’s a good thing?” Castor asked.

  “It means that she’s exposed.” Ward stood up. Headed for the door. “Follow me, Castor. If Ashlyn is making her move, we must make ours.”

  77

  VERA

  Above the Soul Sea

  “We have a problem, Vera!” Decimar called from beside Entras.

  Once they’d been picked up by the Sparrow, Vera had ordered a full burn to the east, with plans to adjust course once they were beyond the sight of land.

  “Give me a moment,” said Vera, tightening a blanket around Kira’s shivering shoulders. “Stay right here. Take deep breaths. Your body will calm down soon.”

  “I’m all right,” said Kira. “Go see what he needs.”

  Vera nodded, then crossed the deck to the pilot’s cockpit.

  “What are you doing, Entras?” Decimar asked. “Throttle up.”

  “We’re fully lit.”

  “Then why are we slowing down? We’ll be going backward in a minute.”

  Entras rechecked his controls and dials. “I have no idea. It’s like we’re tethered to something that’s pulling us—”

  He stopped talking midsentence. Pointed east.

  The entire horizon was filled with skyships. All of them seemed to be having the exact same problem that they were. As Decimar warned, the Sparrow slowed to a stop, then started getting pulled backward.

  “Is Osyrus Ward doing this?” Vera asked. “Trying to bring us back to Floodhaven?”

  “We’re not being pulled back to Floodhaven,” said Entras.

  “Then where are we going?”

  Entras studied his instruments. Glanced at a map of Almira he kept inside the cockpit.

  “The Gorgon Bridge, looks like.” He scanned the sky, which was now filled with skyships—most of them lilted at odd angles. A few were completely upside down. “And the entire armada appears to be coming with us.”

  78

  BERSHAD

  Southern Side of the Gorgon Bridge

  Bershad and Felgor watched the skyships exploding as their raft surged closer to the Gorgon Bridge.

  “Think that’s Ashlyn’s work?” Felgor asked.

  “Don’t see who else it could be,” Bershad said, taking a deep dig with his oar.

  “You sure she needs our help?” Felgor asked. “Seems to me the situation’s pretty well under control.”

  “I’m not gonna sit on my ass hoping that it’s gonna stay that way. C’mon. Row.”

  Bershad guided them to the Dainwood shore of the Gorgon, hauled the raft into the reeds, then he and Felgor worked their way up to the bridge.

  The portcullis leading into the gatehouse was closed. Eight sentries were trying to force it open with a long string of grunts and curses. A ninth man was standing with his back to Bershad, shouting at the workers.

  “Haul this gate up!” he shouted. “Men are dying!”

  “I told you, Sergeant, it’s bloody jammed!” one of the men hissed. “That Almiran bitch must have cast a spell on it or something.”

  “Just fucking haul!”

  The Balarians continued their labor. Bershad and Felgor dipped back under cover.

  “Nine men’s kind of a bigger deal without the moss, huh?” Felgor asked.

  Bershad nodded.

  “Okay, no problem. Here’s what we’ll do. I still have my Balarian officer’s uniform—I knew that garment would come in handy again. We’ll run what I like to call the Pargossian Prisoner Con, with a little bit of a Lysterian Milk Maid thrown in at the end. It’s pretty simple, but there are a few specific aspects that need to go just right or else—”

  “Forget all that,” said Bershad, hefting his shield and spear. “There’s an easier way.”

  Bershad walked down the middle of the muddy road that led to the bridge. Stopped when he was two strides from the sergeant.

  “Hey, asshole.”

  The sergeant spun around. He was an ugly bastard with muttonchops and a frying pan face.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Bershad stepped forward and slammed the shield into his face, splintering the sergeant’s top row of teeth and sending him stumbling backward on his ass. Bershad let him crab walk toward the gate as his eight men armed up to face him.

  “I am the Flawless Fucking Bershad,” he growled. “And if you don’t get out of my sight in the next ten seconds, I’ll kill each of you where you stand.”

  * * *

  After the Balarians had fled into the woods, Bershad gave the gate a long once-over. He even tried the chain, but the reality was that if eight soldiers couldn’t get the thing open, he wasn’t going to, either.

  “This is totally jammed,” he told Felgor. “Ashly
n must have shattered the gear boxes.”

  “What do we do?”

  Bershad peered around at the edges of the gatehouse. “Might be we can climb around it.”

  “Don’t they design these types of structures to make that particularly difficult?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I doubt this rain’ll help.”

  “It won’t.”

  Felgor sighed. Started digging into his pack. “All right. Guess I can part ways with yet another collector’s item.”

  He produced one of Jolan’s bombs, looking at it like a child staring at their last morsel of chocolate.

  “Felgor, where did you—”

  “The same place I always get shit, Silas. By Aeternita, are we going to do this every time?”

  “Do you know how to set it off?”

  “Kinda.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “One.”

  Bershad shook his head. “Best pick a real good spot for it, then.”

  79

  ASHLYN

  The Gorgon Bridge

  Ashlyn destroyed a massive cargo skyship that she’d pulled in from the southern coast of the Dainwood. Then a cutter from the Gorgon Valley. Her ears were ringing and her lips were chapped. She felt like her bones were on fire.

  “There are fourteen more coming in from across the Soul Sea,” Jolan said. “They’ll be in range in four minutes.”

  Ashlyn looked to the east. She could see them on the horizon.

  Before they were in range, Ashlyn felt a strange signal spear through the system, burrow into the acolyte’s brain, and begin to spread. Unlike Ashlyn’s signal, which had to be carefully woven and twisted into the acolyte, this one flowed rapid and uninterrupted, like water through a pipe.

  The acolyte bolted upright. Jolan was so startled he nearly fell out of the wagon.

  “Ashlyn Malgrave,” the creature said in an imperious tone. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

  Ashlyn released the skyships she’d been reeling in and tried to tighten her grip on the acolyte’s spine and stun it again, but the new signal blocked her.

  “You will find it is not so easy to throw me out of the system that I created, Queen of Almira.”

  “Osyrus Ward.”

  The acolyte smiled. It looked like someone was pulling on his cheeks with hooks.

  “At last, we meet. I am a great admirer of your work with the Ghost Moth tissue. You have no idea how many barriers that has allowed me to break.”

  Ashlyn swallowed. “Oh, I have some idea, Ward.”

  He studied the bands on her arms.

  “So, this is the apparatus you’ve used to cause so much trouble. Interesting. But I’m afraid we’ll need to put a stop to your antics.”

  The acolyte’s eyes followed the wire in Ashlyn’s arm to the astrolabe in Jolan’s hands. Then it chopped out in a clumsy but powerful motion, hitting Jolan in the neck and throwing him from the cart.

  The astrolabe went with him. Ashlyn’s connection to the skyship above was severed.

  Before she could do anything, the acolyte grabbed her by the throat. Its long fingers snaked up her neck and around her head.

  “I could crush your skull like an eggshell,” it hissed. “But that arm of yours may still prove useful.”

  Ashlyn tried to summon her lodestones, but her bands were still wrapped up in the harvester’s system, and Ward refused to let her out. She was stuck.

  Overhead, there was a metal groan, then the rattle of cargo hatches opening.

  Ward pulled the acolyte’s face into that creepy smile again.

  “You were smart to lock down the Steady Cog,” he said. “Her holds were recently stocked with a new type of acolyte that I’ve been tinkering with. The feral model. They are a somewhat rough precursor to my final project. I’m interested to see what you think of them.”

  Acolytes started dropping from the sky in groups of three and four. These weren’t the hulking war acolytes she was used to. Their bodies were deformed and swollen. Teeth sprouted from shoulders. They each had dozens of eyes placed in random locations along their misshapen skulls.

  “Black fucking skies,” Ashlyn hissed.

  “Yes, they’re quite horrifying. But we wouldn’t want the Jaguar Army mounting an ill-advised rescue attempt before someone can come collect you, would we?”

  The Jaguars weren’t coming to help her, which meant she needed to help herself. She focused on the harvester’s system. Osyrus was preventing her from extricating herself, but she had a little room to wiggle deeper inside.

  She carefully shifted her hand behind her back, then started rotating her bands—slowly guiding her magnetic strand to the manual override pathway.

  The lock was wide open now. But Ashlyn would still need to travel through it.

  She would only have one chance at this. She blinked tears into her eyes. Forced her lip to quiver.

  “Please, Osyrus. I’m begging you to let me go.”

  “That is not going to happen.”

  “I’ll turn on the Jaguar Army. I’ll kill them all for you.”

  The acolyte craned its head. “Pity. I expected you to have a stronger character.”

  “Can I just … can I just say one more thing in my defense?”

  “If you must.”

  Ashlyn filled her bands with current, rushing down the manual override pathway. She reached the end in less than a heartbeat, and a massive array of commands opened up to her.

  But she only needed one of them.

  “Execute annihilation protocol.”

  “Confirmed,” the harvester said in its normal, rigid voice.

  Then its head imploded.

  The acolyte’s entire system shut down. Its fingers went slack, releasing her.

  Ashlyn jumped out of the wagon and ran to Jolan. He was unconscious, but alive.

  All around her, the feral acolytes turned their twisted faces and wild claws toward her. Their warped hackles rose. Their wretched bodies coiled.

  Ashlyn summoned the lodestones to her. Then she flooded her bands with power, causing the lodestones to rotate around her and Jolan in a wild blur.

  The ferals howled before they charged.

  Ashlyn howled back.

  80

  GARRET

  Castle Malgrave, Level 79

  Garret had been on a balcony of the Queen’s Tower—practicing with his repaired whip by snapping it at empty wine bottles—when a skyship careened overhead, lilting almost completely sideways as it was pulled south by some unknown force. Garret started coiling up the whip. He had a feeling practice was over for the day.

  Less than a minute later, a pale-faced and panicked engineer came for him. Said he was needed in the upper workshops.

  * * *

  When he arrived, Castor was already there. Osyrus Ward was sitting in a big metal chair. There was a pair of needles in each of his wrists. Those needles had wires running to the spine of a comatose acolyte that was submerged in a tub of translucent goo. The tub was connected to a bunch of pipes running deeper into the castle walls.

  Ward’s eyes were closed and he was muttering to himself.

  “That isn’t the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen,” said Castor, eyes fixed on Ward. “But it’s high on the list.”

  “You know what’s going on?” Garret asked him.

  “Not really. Ashlyn Malgrave’s up to some shit, and Ward’s trying to stop her with, uh, that.”

  Garret frowned. “How’s it work?”

  “No idea.”

  Before Garret could ask more questions, the acolyte’s head collapsed on itself, turning to red mush and releasing a foul odor in the room.

  Ward’s eyes snapped open.

  “Clever bitch,” he muttered.

  He yanked the needles out of his wrists and sprang up from the chair.

  “Ashlyn is on the Gorgon Bridge,” he said. “She was using the Steady Cog as a conduit to control the armada. I’ve dropped a pay
load of ferals onto the bridge to keep her busy, but that is a temporary measure. Where is Kira Malgrave, currently?”

  Nebbin consulted some kind of orb, which he was clutching like a baby. “Seven leagues east of the Gorgon Bridge. They’re dead in the sky. Engine was probably damaged during Ashlyn’s attack.”

  “Good. Mark her location. Since Kira isn’t going anywhere, Ashlyn is the priority. Fly to the Gorgon Bridge and subdue her, then collect Kira on your way back. I’ll pay each of you one hundred thousand gold once they’re both safely returned to the castle.”

  “Fly to the bridge in what?” Castor asked. “Every skyship in Floodhaven just got dragged over the Gorgon and blown up.”

  “There is one that remains. The first skyship that I built. Its design is rudimentary, but she has more than enough room for a few passengers.” He turned to Garret. “I want Ashlyn Malgrave brought back alive. When I am done with her, you may kill her. Not a moment sooner. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  Castor cleared his throat. “I’ll fly your ship over to that bridge, but if you don’t trust a horde of acolytes to handle the witch queen, how’s the Hangman gonna capture her alive on his own?”

  Ward smiled. “He won’t be alone.”

  81

  BERSHAD

  The Gorgon Bridge

  Felgor’s bomb blew the first gate off its hinges, but only left a long diagonal tear in the second one. Bershad used the dragontooth dagger to widen the opening a little, then climbed through the narrow gap, cutting his stomach as he pulled himself through.

  “Shield and spear,” he called to Felgor, who passed the weapons through, then started to follow.

  “Hurry the fuck up, Felgor,” Bershad hissed when a few moments had passed and all the Balarian had managed to do was squeeze one foot through the crack.

  “I’m trying,” he grunted. “It’s pretty narrow, and I can’t heal my stomach with moss if I slice it open. Neither can you anymore, I might point—”

  “Forget it. Catch up when you can.”