Castle Malgrave, Level 55
Jolan had bits of glass stuck into the skin of his neck and cheek. Garret had swung them off the tower and through a workshop window several levels below the top of the tower.
He looked around. Got his bearings.
There were hundreds of miniature humans hanging from the ceiling by hooks. They were each about a stride tall. Their bodies were deformed and twisted, and many of them seemed to have been burned to death by a scrap of dragon thread that was implanted in their arms.
“Gods,” Oromir muttered, looking at them. “What is all this?”
“Ward was trying to replicate Ashlyn’s dragon thread,” said Jolan. “Looks like he failed.”
One of the unburnt creatures opened its eyes, which burned with a yellow glow. The creature yanked itself off the hook and thumped to the ground. Released a wild howl.
The rest of them opened their eyes, too.
“Weapons!” Garret hissed, getting to his feet with a wince and a grunt, then activating his whip.
Oromir drew his sword.
Jolan looked around. Found a knife on a workshop table and picked it up.
The creatures swarmed.
102
BRUTUS
Above Floodhaven
Captain Copana was far less confident in the situation when they arrived to find an enormous gray dragon tearing through the skies above Floodhaven, laying waste to any ship that came within drop range of the city.
“That is the biggest fucking dragon I have ever seen,” Brutus muttered.
He was tempted to ask Copana if that was a close enough look for his retirement scrapbook, but decided against it. The man was on the verge of shitting himself.
“Ballista crews, arm!” Copana shouted. “Arm your fucking crews!”
The men rushed to prepare their weapons, but this was an Atlas Coast crew. Slow and out of practice and most likely completely incapable of pegging a dragon out of the air unless the beast was nice enough to sidle up along their port side and show its belly, which didn’t seem likely.
Three skyships converged on the city, moving in a tight formation and launching a volley of bolts. The lizard darted and spun through the sky with terrifying speed and grace, dodging the majority of the volley. The few bolts that did connect bounced away in a shower of gray scales.
“Why isn’t it dying? They hit it two or three times!” Copana shouted to nobody in particular.
“Glance shots,” said Brutus. “It’ll take a direct hit to bring her down.”
The dragon attacked the three ships that had fired on her. She tore the stabilizing rudder off one, which sent the ship into a wild spin that ended in an explosive crash just outside the city. Then the gray terror swooped along the aft side of another, raking its claws along the straps that ran between the levitation sack and hull. The skyship plummeted to the ground like a dropped stone.
“I’ve never seen one attack with that kind of precision before,” said Brutus. “Dragons don’t do that. They treat the ships like prey.”
Brutus raised his lens to get a better look. Didn’t believe what he was seeing.
“There’s a man riding it.”
“What?” Copana raised his own lens. Paused to train it on the same spot Brutus was looking, where a small figure was crouched on the back of the dragon’s neck, positioned like a man riding a horse at a hard gallop.
“That’s impossible,” Copana muttered.
Brutus didn’t say anything, but it was clearly possible, seeing as they were both watching some crazy bastard do it.
The dragon swooped toward the next skyship, which was a heavily armored combat dropship. Those were designed to take abuse from three or four dragons at a time. No way could a single lizard take her down before they got off a clean shot.
This was it. Had to be.
But instead of attacking, the dragon winged past at an angle so the man riding it could jump onto the skyship, then it rolled away, dodging the volley of bolts.
The man stalked toward the foredeck with a purpose.
“He’s going for the pilots?” Copana asked.
“I guess. But he’s gonna be disappointed. Their cabin is protected by a stride of dragon bone.”
The man stopped when he was directly above the cockpit, planted his feet, raised a spear over his head with both hands, then rammed it down on what seemed like a very specific location. He yanked the spear free, moved to his left a little, then did it again.
The ship lilted hard to the south, tugging away from the battlefield like a fish caught on a line. As it careened toward the ground, the man leapt off the side of the ship.
The dragon swooped beneath him, catching him a heartbeat before he slammed into the ground.
The dragon rose in a straight line, which gave Brutus the chance to keep his lens on the rider just long enough to mark the massive line of tattoos running up his right shoulder.
Brutus lowered his lens. “That’s the Flawless Bershad,” he whispered.
“What do we do?” asked Copana, who seemed to have forgotten that he was the captain of the ship, and deciding what to do next was, traditionally, up to him.
But Copana’s uncertainty gave Brutus an idea.
“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” he said, lowering his voice.
“Please, Corporal,” Copana said with an eagerness that was almost sad.
“Osyrus called back the entire armada. This whole situation is pure chaos.”
“What’s your point?”
“We don’t need to engage directly. We just need to appear to be engaging directly. Let’s just hang back on the outskirts and wait for a different skyship to—”
“Corporal Brutus,” rasped Acolyte 799, putting a meaty hand on his shoulder. “You will cease to spout treason from your mouth, or I will tear off your jaw.”
Brutus swallowed. “Uh, I was merely—”
“Master Ward ordered this ship to drop its cargo in the center of the city,” Acolyte 799 continued, turning to Copana. “You will follow that order, Captain. Right. Now.”
“M-M-Make a heading,” the captain said to the pilot, voice hushed. “Full burn, straight into the city.”
The skyship kicked forward. Brutus felt a sudden and urgent need to shit.
On their starboard side, a skyship with its entire levitation sack in flames careened into the ground. To port, another simply exploded, raining hot shrapnel and ignited men onto the city below.
The dragon seemed to be everywhere—screaming up and down and across the sky. Somehow, their ship remained unscathed. The square came into view.
The Jaguar Army had been pressed into the middle of the square so tightly that half of them had boots in the fountain. They’d formed a tight shield wall. There were at least a score of headless acolytes scattered around the perimeter.
“How did they kill so many of them?” Brutus muttered.
The answer to his question came a moment later when a grayskin stormed out of an alley and slammed into the shield wall. Before he could press through, a man in bone-white armor reached over and tore his head off.
“What the fuck is that?” Copana asked.
Acolyte 799 moved to the gunwale, shoving a crewman aside. He looked down at the man, eyes bulging with sudden lucidness and rage. Then he rattled off a series of words that made no sense.
103
ACOLYTE 799
Above Floodhaven
“Skojit. Skojit. Skojit. Simeon. Simeon the Skojit. Ghalamarian blood. Pus. Heads. Sergeant Droll. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes.”
What is your name?
“False.”
What is your name?
“False.”
What is your name?
A shock of clarity flooded his thoughts.
“My name is Rigar. And I am going to kill that fucking Skojit.”
104
BRUTUS
Skyship
After roaring that stream of incomprehensible jargon, Acolyte 799 j
umped off the side of their skyship with a howl. It dropped straight through the roof that it landed on. There was too much smoke and debris to tell if it survived.
“What was that all about?” Copana asked.
“No clue, sir,” said Brutus. “But I say we drop our ferals right now, then get the fuck out of here. Without that acolyte on board, there’s nothing to stop us from a hard burn across the Soul Sea and putting this mess behind a horizon or two.”
Captain Copana swallowed. “I agree.”
105
CABBAGE
Foggy Side Square
After Simeon tore the twenty-ninth grayskin’s head off, Cabbage started to hope. Hope that they could keep going like this long enough for Bershad or Ashlyn to save them. Hope he might somehow live through this mess. Hope that he might see Jovita again.
But when a skyship broke through Bershad’s line of destruction and dumped scores of deformed creatures onto the rooftops around the square, that hope died.
The monsters that scuttled off the rooftops and into the square weren’t as large as the normal grayskins, but they were horrific and wild—all tumorous flesh and jagged spikes. Mouths and eyes in all the wrong places.
They were the stuff of nightmares. And there were so many of them.
The Nomad made a pass across the rooftops, dragging her tail behind her and smashing a score or two to bloody pulp. But a volley of ballista bolts forced her to duck away before making another pass.
A group of about thirty monsters poured into the square. Cabbage tightened his grip on the shield. Braced for impact.
He bit his tongue when the first creature crashed into his shield. Felt his mouth fill with blood. The creature kept bashing at his shield. Over and over. His shoulder burned. His fingers were numb from holding the shield so tight.
Cabbage screamed. Grunted. Stabbed at the creatures as best he could, ramming his sword between the little gaps in the shields. A monster snuck its claw beneath Cabbage’s shield and hooked him in the foot. Cabbage cursed. Sliced the claw off with a swipe of his sword. Nearly fell over from the effort.
More screaming and grunting and stabbing. Cabbage managed to create a little pile of corpses in front of him, which was fantastic until a monster used those corpses to climb up the shield of the warden next to Cabbage, grab his mask, and ram a jagged thumb through his eye.
The man howled in pain. Cabbage hacked at the monster’s arm, severing it at the elbow. Problem was, that sent the warden falling backward, taking his shield with him. The gap in the shield wall was quickly filled with a surge of deformed limbs and screaming faces. Cabbage tried to hack at them, but his foot slipped against the bloody cobblestones. He landed hard on his ass. Dropped his sword.
He tried to get up, but the monsters charged over him, pressing the shield into his face. He tried to shove it off. Failed. The shield pressed down harder. So hard he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything besides register the strangely clear thought that this was how he was going to die—trampled to death by a bunch of monsters.
His lungs burned. His nose hurt. Cabbage was about to black out.
Then there was a guttural howl and the wet pop of limbs being torn from their sockets. The pressure let up.
Cabbage pushed the shield away. Took a deep gasp of air. Then another.
The shield wall was broken. It was chaos. Wardens were snarling and stabbing and dying all around him. Something grabbed him by the back of his breastplate and hauled him to his feet.
Simeon.
He punched and kicked his way through a horde of monsters, then sprinted toward the buildings that ringed the square, carrying Cabbage with him.
“What are you doing?” Cabbage shouted.
“Saving your fucking life, you idiot.”
Simeon dropped a shoulder and careened through the door of a coffee shop. Threw Cabbage over the counter.
“Stay there till it’s over,” he said.
“I can fight. I want to—”
“Simeon!” boomed a voice.
They both turned. There was a massive grayskin filling the doorway.
“How’d you know my name, asshole?”
“Fallon’s Roost,” the acolyte rasped. “Survived.”
Simeon laughed. “Rigar. You Ghalamarian bastard.”
The grayskin’s claws extended from between his hands. “Should have … killed … me.”
“Yeah, but that’s an easy mistake to correct.”
Simeon crossed the room with a roar. Rigar raked his claws across his chest, sending dragon scales spraying everywhere. Simeon grabbed Rigar’s shoulders and head-butted him. Once. Twice. But before he landed a third, Rigar rammed his claws into Simeon’s stomach and twisted.
Blood splattered all over the shop floor. Simeon howled.
They went down together. Simeon gurgled. Cursed. Grabbed a broken chair leg and shoved it through the acolyte’s neck, which did nothing to stop Rigar from pinning him down with one claw, and tearing him apart with the other.
Cabbage didn’t think. He just hopped over the counter. Dodged one of Rigar’s backswings, then ripped the chair leg out of his neck and rammed it through his eye. He punched the end of the stick as hard as he could, burying it in Rigar’s skull.
The acolyte wavered. Twitched. Then fell back dead.
Cabbage turned to Simeon. His whole chest had been torn open. He was bleeding all over the floor and struggling with the clasp of his helmet.
“Help me get this off,” Simeon muttered.
Cabbage did as he was told. Then he sat down. It made his heart hurt to see the wreckage of Simeon’s guts.
“Don’t look so morose,” Simeon said. There was blood all over his lips. “I didn’t deserve to survive this deal.” He looked at him. “But you do, Cabbage.”
Cabbage tried to speak, but couldn’t form any words.
Simeon shifted with a groan. “Do me a favor. You get out of this mess, you take that trip to the Razorbacks. To the highlands, where you can see all the way to Pargos. It’s … really something.”
Cabbage swallowed. “I will.”
106
VERA
Castle Malgrave, Level 39
Vera couldn’t see Kira, but she could hear what was happening in the dome. Listening to Kira scream while Vera stood helpless outside made her want to cut her own fingers off.
After the third round of torture, Felgor was still carving out pieces of the seal, trying it in the machine, then carving some more when it was rejected.
“Felgor, if you can’t get this thing open, you need to tell me.”
“I can do it,” Felgor said, face grim and covered in sweat. “I promise.”
Vera gave him another minute to carve and whittle in silence—keeping her eyes fixed on the stairwell behind them, praying that the other acolytes didn’t return.
“Okay, this is definitely the one,” Felgor said, blowing some dust away from the seal, then muttered what sounded very much like an honest prayer to Aeternita. He straightened up and inserted the disc.
Click. Click. Pop. The door opened.
Felgor slumped back on his heels with a sigh of relief. “Thank fucking Aeternita. I had no idea whether that was going to work or not.”
Vera rushed inside. The chamber was humid and hot and smelled of salt and harsh chemicals. Kira was on the table in the middle of the room, stripped back down to wearing only the bandages. There were scores of rubber tubes running in and out of her body.
Vera sliced the tubes apart with quick jerks of her dagger, then pulled them from her skin. She watched as the wounds where the tubes had been inserted knitted together and disappeared. Not even a scar remained.
Kira’s eyes opened.
“Ki, it’s me. It’s Vera.”
Vera moved to help Kira, assuming she’d be weak like last time. But Kira bolted upright and looked around the room with sharp eyes.
“I am going to kill Osyrus Ward.”
Vera was so stunne
d by Kira’s strength and alacrity that she didn’t react as Kira hopped off the table and stalked toward the exit, walking over the dead acolyte as if it was a carpet.
Felgor’s jaw dropped when he saw the nearly naked empress walk past him.
“Kira, wait!” Vera said, finally conquering her surprise and following her down the steps, back to the big chamber where she’d waited with Felgor. “We need to get out of this tower.”
“I’m not going anywhere until that greasy-haired motherfucker is dead.”
“You’re in no condition to fight.”
Kira ignored her, but a series of howls and screams echoed down the stairwell she was walking toward.
“By Aeternita,” said Felgor. “What now?”
Jolan came sprinting down the stairwell with some kind of creature on his back. It was about the size of a monkey, but shaped like a deformed human. Jolan was screaming and stabbing at its legs with a dull knife.
Kira grabbed the creature by one leg as he ran past her and threw it against the wall so hard that it exploded. She turned back to Vera.
“You were saying?”
Vera just shook her head.
Garret and Oromir came down the stairs a moment later. They were both panting. Both covered in blood.
“More coming!” Garret shouted, turning around and charging the whip. “A lot more.”
Vera raised her barbs. Felgor and Jolan took cover beneath a broken table.
The creatures descended from the stairs in a tide of snapping jaws and razor-sharp claws. Garret slung his whip across the stairwell, toasting a good chunk of them in a single swing. But he was pulled to the ground by three of the creatures before he could tear through them again on a backswing. More piled on after that.
Oromir started hacking at the creatures with his sword. Kira tore them apart with her bare hands. But they were both too far away to help Garret.
Vera rushed over to him—kicked one creature away from his face. Another from his stomach. Then she draped herself over him and flexed her muscles so that only the barbs along her back spiked outward. The creatures continued to attack, but impaled themselves on the poison barbs, recoiling and gagging and dying all around them.
Fury of a Demon Page 49
