Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  Garret turned to Jolan. “What about you, kid?”

  Jolan’s jaw tensed. Garret could see the roil of emotions and conflict behind his eyes.

  Before he could answer, there was a wave of wild howls from the castle. Everyone looked back across the platform.

  A pair of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness. Then another. And another. And another.

  Acolytes. Five. Ten. Then too many to count.

  “How much longer until we can get out of here?” Vera asked.

  Kira looked at her dials. “Seventy-seven seconds. If we lift off before that, we’ll drop out of the sky like a rock.”

  The acolytes charged. Crossed half the platform in ten seconds.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Vera said.

  Garret picked up the whip. “Yes, you are.”

  He hopped onto the gunwale. Turned to Jolan.

  “It’s better you didn’t answer, kid. And it might be that looking back, you’ll figure that meeting me in the woods that day and saving my life was the worst thing you ever did. Might be that’s true. But I’m glad to have known you, Jolan. I’m glad you’ll outlive a wretched thing like me.”

  110

  JOLAN

  Aboard the Blue Sparrow

  Garret jumped off the ship. He uncoiled the whip as he moved to meet the acolytes and filled it with current.

  Jolan dug his hands into the gunwale so deep, his fingernails threatened to snap off.

  When the first acolyte swiped at Garret, he lashed his whip around its wrist and used the momentum to swing into the air before blasting the acolyte’s arm apart in a spray of gore. He landed on another one’s back, strung the whip across his throat, and yanked the creature to the ground.

  “Twenty more seconds!” Kira called.

  One of the acolytes rushed past Garret, focused on the skyship. His whip lashed out. Blew the creature’s knee apart and sent it sprawling. Realizing they couldn’t reach the ship without getting past Garret, the others descended upon him in a horde. Garret whirled around in a swirl of current, somehow keeping the creatures at bay.

  “Five seconds!”

  Jolan couldn’t watch the rest. He collapsed to the deck. The sizzle of Garret’s whip stopped. Got replaced by the sound of tearing meat, followed by the thump of acolyte feet thundering toward them again.

  And then the roar of the skyship engines drowned out everything else.

  The ship jolted into the sky.

  111

  BERSHAD

  Foggy Side Square

  Everyone was still arguing over what to do when a blue skyship fired its engines and pulled away from the castle.

  “Is that them?” Ashlyn asked.

  “Not … entirely … sure,” said Cabbage, lens focused on the skyship. “My eyes aren’t so good. Everything’s blurry.”

  “Give me that,” Bershad snapped, snatching the lens and glassing the ship. He could see people moving on the deck. Couldn’t make any of them out except for one.

  Felgor. Grinning like an idiot and waving at him.

  “That’s them,” Bershad said.

  Ashlyn’s bands whirred to life. The lodestones rose in the air around her, and she rose with them.

  “What are you going to do, exactly?” Willem asked.

  “Silas always said I’m no good for castles.”

  Ashlyn tore across the city. When she reached the castle, she wrapped around it in a blur of destruction, ripping the walls and structural beams apart as she spiraled her way to the top of the King’s Tower, leaving nothing but a skeleton of bent support beams in her wake.

  When she was done, she flew back to the square and landed next to Bershad.

  Everyone watched the broken tower as it teetered in the wind.

  Bershad cleared his throat. “Think you might have needed a few more passes.”

  The tower snapped in half at the middle, sending up a massive cloud of dirt and smoke that washed over the city. Bershad shielded his face against the grains of dust that came sweeping through the square.

  “You were saying?” Ashlyn asked, doing the same.

  “Nothing.”

  Bershad smiled at her, but his happiness disappeared as the dust settled.

  The tower was gone. But a strange, golden orb the size of a castle room remained. It was floating in the sky, unharmed and unaffected by the removal of the tower around it.

  “What is that?” Bershad asked.

  Ashlyn swallowed. “Osyrus Ward’s loom.”

  “Loom? The fuck is he sewing?”

  “Anything that he wants.”

  “That’s not good.”

  The orb released a low hum, like a whale’s song in the deep of the ocean, then tore through the sky—heading east.

  “What now?” Bershad asked.

  Ashlyn’s bands started churning again. “We go after him.”

  112

  JOLAN

  Above Floodhaven

  Jolan felt like he was going to puke. His head was awash with the horror of Garret’s death, the chaos of the castle’s destruction, and the cold realization that Osyrus Ward was still alive.

  “Should I land?” Kira asked.

  “Don’t think that’s necessary,” Felgor said, pointing down in the city. “They appear to be coming to us.”

  Bershad and the dragon took to the sky. Started circling the skyship.

  Ashlyn flew up to the Blue Sparrow amidst a cloud of lodestones. Landed on the deck with a clatter.

  “Jolan,” she said, coming over and pulling him into an embrace. “You saved my life.”

  “You saved us all,” Jolan replied. “But we’re not done yet.”

  “No,” Ashlyn said. “We’re not.”

  “I think that Osyrus tethered the orb to that skyship that burned eastward. Once he reaches it, he’ll only be able to go as fast as the ship.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Ashlyn.

  “The Sparrow can fly twice as fast as that cutter,” Kira said from the pilot’s seat.

  “Kira. When did you learn how to fly a skyship?” Ashlyn asked her sister.

  “Ashe, it’s been a long time and it’s good to see you, but if we start asking each other shit like that, we’re gonna be here all day and Osyrus Ward is going to escape.”

  “Fair point.”

  Ashlyn turned to Felgor. “Sorry about this, Felgor. But I promised Silas.”

  “Promised what?”

  Ashlyn zipped a lodestone beneath each of his armpits, then hauled him into the air and down to the city below. He was screaming the entire time.

  When that was done, she looked back at everyone else.

  “Anyone who stays is unlikely to survive. This is your last chance to leave.”

  Nobody said anything.

  Jolan turned to Oromir. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Oro. I’ve gotten people killed. I’ve killed people myself. But this is one thing that I can do right.” He turned to Ashlyn. “Take him.”

  Oromir’s eyes widened with realization. But before he could say anything, Ashlyn slipped five lodestones beneath his armor and carried him down to the city. His was less of a scream and more of an angry growl.

  Jolan didn’t care if Oromir hated him forever. He just wanted him safe.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to go with him?” Ashlyn asked him.

  Jolan nodded. “I’ll see this through to the end. I have to.”

  She turned to Vera. “And you?”

  “I promised someone that I would kill Osyrus Ward. That’s what I plan to do.”

  Ashlyn nodded. Motioned to Bershad, who guided the Nomad east, over the Soul Sea.

  They followed.

  113

  BRUTUS

  Above the Soul Sea

  Brutus didn’t see where the orange orb had come from, exactly. He’d been too busy celebrating their narrow escape from Floodhaven with the crew—slapping backs and bumping bracers. Dumb shit like that. Captain Copana was the one
who sighted the thing, which hung on their tail as if tied there by an invisible string.

  “What the fuck is that?” Captain Copana asked, pointing.

  “No idea,” Brutus admitted. “But I think we should try to outrun it.”

  “I’m already at full throttle,” said their pilot. “And before you ask, no, there isn’t a way to speed up beyond full throttle.”

  The ship lurched and shuddered as their speed decreased with a level of violence that couldn’t possibly be good. They also began to change course, lilting to the north.

  “Well, you can certainly speed up now!” Copana yelled. “And why are you changing course? That will just—”

  “I haven’t done a fucking thing, Captain,” said the pilot, who appeared to be the only man capable of remaining calm in the face of this terrible situation. “I’m not in control of this skyship anymore.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Dunno. But I’d venture to guess that giant golden orb is a factor.”

  “Where is it taking us?”

  The pilot consulted his instruments. “Shit.”

  * * *

  There was nothing to be done while the golden orb directed them toward the Heart of the Soul Sea.

  Well, there was nothing useful to be done. The men alternated between futzing with the controls—which were completely locked—screaming at each other, hitting each other, crying, shooting arrows at the orb, and crying some more. Going to the Heart of the Soul Sea was a death sentence.

  For Brutus’s part, he just kept an eye on their heading and waited for the source of his demise to appear, which took about thirty minutes.

  He’d skirted the dragon-infested islands that made up the Heart of the Sea dozens of times during the war, and always thought of them as looking surprisingly small, given their dismal reputation for dealing out death and destruction. He soon realized that was just a trick of perception.

  The general orders were to avoid coming within five leagues of the Heart. But the orb sent them careening inside the five-league threshold with a purpose, and Brutus saw that the islands were actually enormous and varied in their landscape. Some were covered by rocky ridges that were all cut up with raging rivers that poured into the ocean. Others were all heavy forest with deep valleys covered in thick canopy. Others still were dominated by flat meadows filled with tall, wild flowers.

  And all of them had hundreds of dragons swarming above.

  When they were about a league away from the nearest island, the skyship lurched upward at a threatening angle, which sent the crew grasping for handholds. A few men were a little slow, and went tumbling off the back of the skyship and into the sea. Brutus wasn’t sure whether that was a better or worse way to die than being eaten by a dragon. He debated letting go of the rail, but some idiot aspect of his brain insisted on stubborn survival.

  They climbed for a full minute before leveling off. The orb shifted around to the bow of the ship so that Brutus had a close-up view of the thing. He squinted at the golden surface, which was just translucent enough for Brutus to see that there was a man in the middle of it. He had a bundle of golden appendages pouring from a gash in his stomach. They snapped and writhed like the tentacles of an octopus, attaching to different places on the orb, making what seemed like instrument adjustments, although there were no controls or dials, just fleshy pockets of liquid that shifted in an oddly systematic pattern.

  “I think that’s Osyrus Ward,” Brutus said, squinting at the man.

  “Well, if anyone was going to drag us across Terra while riding inside a massive bubble, it’d be the Madman.”

  Osyrus made a few more adjustments, and then all the tentacles pouring from his body were sucked back into his stomach. They formed a golden splotch against his skin that rippled like a pool of water. He turned around and scanned the skyship, eyes searching. By that time, most of the crew had joined Brutus at the bow.

  Ten of the golden tentacles snapped out of Ward’s stomach and grabbed ten men by their faces—one of whom was Captain Copana—and sucked them into the orb.

  Their bodies weren’t exactly torn apart as they moved through the orb’s film. It was more like being shucked. Their armor was peeled away into long strips of metal and leather that gathered in pools at the base of the orb. Men’s skin separated from muscle, muscle separated from bone. All the errant parts were siphoned into a hole in the middle of the orb that looked disturbingly similar to an asshole.

  The entire orb swelled a little in size. A mixture of steel and bone formed on the bottom. It looked a bit like an upside-down acorn.

  Ward pointed a bony finger toward the ground.

  The orb plummeted from the sky.

  Brutus leaned over the gunwale to get a look. The orb landed on a forested island. Trees in a two-hundred-stride radius were snapped at the base of their trunks, creating a big clearing and sending scores of dragons into the air. They darted away at first, but they quickly started to swarm around the orb. Tails flicking and teeth gnashing.

  “Maybe the dragons will destroy it?” Brutus muttered to nobody in particular.

  His optimistic idea was quickly put to rest when more of those golden tentacles lashed out and sucked the dragons into the orb. They were torn apart, just like the men. Again, the orb swelled in size, threatening to burst this time from all the extra material. Then the membrane of the orb broke like the yolk of an egg, and an array of strange machinery made from organic material spread across the forest clearing. Each of the bulging compartments was connected by a narrow tube, like the way wasps are held together.

  “I have control again!” the pilot shouted. “Engines, instruments, and levitation mixtures.”

  “Then by fucking Aeternita, get us out of here!” Brutus shouted.

  The pilot fired the engines and throttled up. But just as they were beginning to move away from the horrifying scene below, one of the larger sections of the machine started to expand toward the sky. It looked like the cone of a conch shell, and within a few seconds it stretched halfway between the ground and the skyship. The tip opened to reveal another one of those asshole-looking siphons that had eaten both dragons and men.

  Brutus cursed. Dug his seashell out of a pocket. Said a prayer to Aeternita.

  With trembling fingers, he placed the seashell in his mouth and closed his eyes.

  114

  ASHLYN

  Above the Soul Sea

  As the skyship they’d been chasing was pulled toward the funnel of Osyrus Ward’s loom, it began to break apart.

  At first, it was just small fragments pulled from the rigging and the hull. Then great chunks of machinery were sucked from the guts of the ship. Men started jumping overboard and plummeting toward the ground. They splashed into the water or slammed into the forest below.

  Hundreds of dragons rose from the nearby islands, swarming the sky and moving to attack.

  They were pulled into the siphon, too. Every last one of them.

  When it was done, and the sky was clear, Ashlyn could see Ward’s machine swelling across the island. The structure was a hideous amalgamation of tissue, dragon bone, and skyship steel that rippled and shuddered like a living creature.

  Bershad and the Nomad came up to the port side of the ship. Glided alongside them.

  “What’s the plan here?” Silas called.

  “Destroy the machine,” Ashlyn said. “Kill Osyrus Ward.”

  “He just turned a hundred dragons and a skyship into chowder,” Silas said. “Don’t think he’ll have much trouble doing the same thing to us if we get much closer.”

  “The siphon didn’t capture the men who jumped from the ship. The key is to approach at speed. I can get down there first, but I can’t kill him alone.”

  “I’ll go,” said Kira, already working her way out of the pilot’s seat.

  “No, you need to fly the ship. You’re the only one who can do that.”

  Kira’s lips tightened. But eventually she nodded.

&n
bsp; “Good. Bring us higher, but don’t get any closer.”

  Ashlyn tried to think. She judged the angle between them and the ground. Then she looked from Silas to Vera.

  “We’ll only have one chance at this,” she said. “And everything needs to go perfectly.”

  115

  OSYRUS WARD

  The Heart of the Soul Sea

  Osyrus Ward picked up an errant human leg and tossed it into one of the loom’s fuel cavities. The crunching whir of mulched bone and sinew gave him an immense amount of comfort. Like the first sip of a warm drink on a cold, rainy day.

  Ashlyn Malgrave had caused quite the commotion at Floodhaven, but she was too late to cause any real harm. The loom was now fully functional, producing its own synthetic Seed fluid on an infinite loop. All it needed was more organic material, and these islands provided a surplus.

  The loom worked the materials apart, dividing everything into their most basic elements, and then braiding them together according to the designs that lived within his mind. Ward dabbed a finger in the loom fibers that were adhered to his stomach and spine, running along his entire nervous system. The loom was a part of him now, and he was a part of the loom. No need to fuss with spiders and snapped fingers anymore. His thoughts were enough. There would be no more slow, iterative improvements, earned through years of toil and failure and setbacks.

  Finally, at long last, the perfect engine of creation rested fully within his grasp.

  His mind wandered over the possibilities before him. First, he would produce several updated acolyte models. A few mobile minions to gather materials from the different islands while he gave the loom further instructions. After that, there was a truly endless array of applications. Ward envisioned a floating city strung beneath an artificial cloud on impossibly fine thread. Another city could go deep beneath the sea, where a bubble of atmosphere was fortified by a set of heaving lungs the size of a castle.

  Neither were impossible anymore. Neither out of reach.