Damon whirled, searching for another opponent with his sword at the ready. He exchanged a quick series of attacks with another one of Avarice’s guards, barely dodging a slash that would have rendered his neck into a fountain of red. There was too much going on, voices and action and chaos in all directions.
He kicked the guard in the knee and clubbed him in the side of his head with his sword pommel as he crumpled to one leg. A burst of power shook the dining hall’s walls from Seffi’s direction, resonating through the chamber with enough force to send showers of dust cascading from the ceiling.
Avarice and Conceit were on the back foot. Seffi had pushed them into the corner, using her power with more focus and talent than Damon would have thought possible. Malon was still with her, serving more in the role of a defender, an extra set of eyes to keep the young Forsaken from being taken from behind.
The battle would have been completely different had Austine not agreed to stand down. Damon doubted whether they would have even made it into the dining hall without prompting Avarice and Conceit to their presence, not even taking into consideration how much damage his old friend could have caused to him and his allies.
Avarice walked backward quickly, putting himself in position by one of the windows. He splayed his fingers and made an odd movement with his arm. Damon felt as though he was observing his own trick as half a dozen spiders burst through the glass and climbed in through the now open window, moving to surround the Godking in a defensive formation.
Seffi sent a barrage of fireballs their way, striking each with perfect accuracy and turning each into hissing puddles of melted metal. Wrath, out of breath and favoring one side, came to stand next to Seffi. She flashed a feral smile at the younger woman and then turned to glare at Avarice.
“It’s over,” hissed Wrath. “You’ve lost, brother.”
She put so much contempt into the word that it sounded like the worst of insults. Avarice spat on the floor, baring teeth streaked with blood from some injury or another.
“You are nothing!” bellowed Avarice. “What have you done across the expanse of your lives? I’ve brought peace and prosperity to an untamed, savage land! Order to chaos! The two of you sniveling children wish to throw it away, and for what? Have you any idea what you’ll even do with this land once you rule it? Please, tell me if you think—”
Seffi cut him off just as he really started to get going. She conjured one of her crimson barrier hands and brought it down on both Avarice and Conceit. Avarice dodged sideways with remarkable speed, but a second massive hand of crimson grabbed him as though he were a field mouse in a pantry. Conceit, within her sole remaining body, was bludgeoned to the floor and scooped up similarly.
Damon watched what happened next in a state of nauseated awe. Seffi brought both hands together, her eyes pulsing with red power as she applied the full spectrum of her strength. The hands clasped together. Avarice and Conceit were still visible as vague outlines within the partially opaque conjuration.
The hands began to squeeze and crush. Horrible noises, screams, bone splitting pops, bloody bursting and gushing came from within, drawing absolute silence from the rest of the chamber. It went on for no more than ten seconds at most, but to Damon, it seemed like a torturous eternity.
When Seffi ended the spell, a ball of clothing and blood-red gore fell to the floor of the dining hall. Damon couldn’t tell whether the white he saw mixed in was bits of Avarice’s white robe poking out, or just bits of bone.
It was horrific, but it was their victory.
CHAPTER 36
Swords clattered to the floor, chiming like music, echoing off the dining hall’s walls. The few remaining guards loyal to Avarice sprinted out of the chamber, which he could understand, given how their liege had faired.
Seffi was down on one knee, looking as though she was about to faint with exhaustion. Malon crouched next to her, rubbing her shoulders and whispering words of encouragement. Vel, Kastet, and Lilian held one another, still caught up in the grief of Gabriel’s death.
They had won. It was all Damon could think, the only fact which seemed to matter in his head. He looked to Wrath and was surprised when she grinned back at him. It was the happiest he’d ever seen her. She was beautiful when she smiled, like all of the harshness of her personality could be instantly reversed into vivacious glory.
“It’s done,” muttered Damon. “It’s over.”
He heard someone start laughing, and soon enough, most of them joined in. Vel ran over to him, pulling him into a tight hug and kissing him on the lips. Damon started toward Malon and Seffi who were whispering to one another, still crouched on the floor.
No. Not whispering. It was only then that Damon realized something wasn’t quite right. Seffi bent forward over her knees, shoulders shuddering as though she was in the middle of a crying fit. Malon was rubbing her back, and Damon had started in their direction when the hissing noise began.
Seffi began shuddering, seizing within her own body as though every muscle underneath her skin was attempting to pull in a different direction. The movements, strange and inhuman, were accompanied by a horrible noise, like the death rattles of a plague victim. Crimson light suddenly poured from her eyes in a blinding deluge that forced Damon to look away.
He felt, rather than saw, the thrum of power on the air. When he could see again, he took in the sight of Seffi with her arm outstretched toward Wrath. Wrath held her stomach, and one of her hands pulled sideways to reveal blood gushing from a gaping hole through the side of her abdomen.
“Clara!” Damon ran to her side, reaching her just as she began to collapse to the ground.
“Why?” muttered Wrath. Blood leaked from her mouth, running in a little trickle down one side of her slender chin.
“You ask me why?” Seffi turned away as she spoke. “You know why. I remember. I remember what you did to me! You’re as bad as he was! Worse, in some ways. I can’t trust you, or any of our other siblings, if they can even be called that.”
When Seffi turned to face the chamber again, her eyes were pulsing red, like rubies twisted to catch the sunlight over and over again. Malon pulled in close to her, taking her hands, trying to calm her down. There was a flash of energy, and then Malon was doubled over.
“Aesta!” Damon wanted to rush to her, but his hand was on Wrath’s wound. Vel did it in his place.
“Aesta,” she said. “What happened? Are you alright?”
Malon opened her mouth, but no words came out, not at first. She blinked, and for a split instant, her eyes were as crimson as Seffi’s.
“Velanor,” she said, quietly. “I’m fine. I simply…”
Malon’s face contorted, and she clutched her arms over her body, shaking her head.
“She’s making me… say this!” she managed. “Get back! Please…”
To Damon, reality became a series of horrific, intractable moments. Malon’s entire body pulsed with red power, fluttering her clothing, shaking her hair loose from its braid. Seffi was laughing, and it wasn’t a child’s laugh. Vel screamed and fell backward as a wave of force pushed outward from Malon and Seffi, knocking over tables and unsteadying everyone in the room.
Kastet was suddenly next to Damon, at Wrath’s side. He pulled her hand to replace his and stood up, drawing his myrblade with a hand still slick with blood. Lilian seized his shoulder as he took a step forward, trying to draw him into a retreat while shouting for the others to follow.
“Sorceress,” said Seffi. “Dispose of those who remain.”
Damon shook his head, unable to believe. Malon took a slow step forward, her face so familiar, but so different. She splayed her fingers, summoning a fireball to hand, and flung it at him while he still gaped in disbelief.
Damon slashed it aside with his myrblade, drawing just enough from the ice enchantment to defend against the blast’s heat. He didn’t counterattack or even shift into a more defensible position. He just stood there, numb, unable to believe that she was now
his opponent.
“Aesta,” he said. “You can’t. Please…”
Her only response was to press both palms together to conjure an even larger fireball. She looked so different, from her loose hair to her borderline arrogant posture. She was still beautiful, but it was a dark, corrupted sort of beauty that represented everything she’d once scorned in life.
He stared at her, holding her gaze, but not seeing her in the eyes that looked back at him. She attacked, flinging a barrage of fireballs with ruthless efficiency. Damon formed a basic ice shield instead of cutting through each one.
He blamed himself, even though there was no logical way in which it could be his fault. It was a reaction of the heart, rather than the logic of the mind. He’d failed her, somehow, either here in the last few moments, or during their time at The Rosewood Inn, or way back at the farmstead, even.
“Aesta!” he shouted.
She heard him this time, though it only brought about a fleeting moment of control. “Solas. Please! Get out of here… Get seta and go!”
She seized, arching her back and covering her chest with her arms. As she regained control of her body, a fireball formed in each of her hands. Damon spun into a freezing strike to deflect each of them away from the others, who’d pulled together as a group.
Seffi seemed to be in her own world. She was cocooned in crimson, floating a few feet in the air, staring at the horrific mess of Avarice and Conceit’s bodies as though she was attempting to draw meaning from the deaths she’d caused with her own hand. Damon surged forward, thinking he might strike her down in that moment.
Malon blurred sideways, moving to intercept him. She swung an arm wreathed in crimson power at his head. Damon ducked and tried to spin by her. She grabbed him from behind, briefly embracing him across the shoulders, and then spun, ending the movement with a power-enhanced push to his chest that sent him flying.
He landed in a sprawl, feeling his despair more than his pain. Vel was at his side in an instant, tears dripping down her face as she spoke in a rush.
“We have to go!” she said. “Damon! There’s no time! We’ll die if we stay!”
Veridas Keep shook underneath them with an intensity that clearly threatened the architecture of its stonework. Damon swore under his breath, knowing he needed to save Vel, at least. It hurt so much to acknowledge the situation even without thinking about what came next. True Divine, it hurt.
“Help me with Clara,” he said, ignoring the ache in his heart.
Between the two of them, they managed to lift the wounded Forsaken. Vel kept one of her hands clutched over Wrath’s wound. Damon began moving toward the stairs, only risking the occasional glance back at Malon and Seffi. Seffi still floated in the air, lost in her own thoughts. Malon had her face buried in her hands, shoulders tensing and twisting as she underwent some hidden internal struggle.
Kastet and Lilian joined them, helping as much as they could. The passageway leading down to Veridas Keep’s entrance had already collapsed. Damon spared the impassable hall only a single glance before leading the others up instead of down.
They hurried, as much as they could, up to one of Veridas Keep’s rooftop towers. It was only as they emerged into the snowy night that the reality of the situation became clear.
Seffi had raised the keep out of Avaricia. Even as Damon and the others watched, Veridas Keep began to gain height, rising twenty feet, fifty, one hundred feet into the air. Nobody said a word as they watched their escape shift from the realm of improbable into an outright impossibility.
“True Divine,” muttered Kastet. “We’re dead. All of us.”
“No!” snapped Damon. “We’re getting out of here.”
He shifted Wrath’s weight to Lilian, who took his place, and drew his myrblade. It took only a minor flex of his will to bring himself into Myr’s cold, ethereal realm. She looked as upset as he currently felt, which wasn’t very reassuring.
“I need to save my friends,” he said, speaking so fast that he almost stumbled over his words. “The chains! I can save them! Myr, please! Which chain? Help me!”
“Oh, Damon…” The blue-skinned woman shook her head and hugged her own body, but she didn’t stop him as he came close enough to touch her. “This one. You can… lift ice if you break this one.”
The fact that she didn’t object, that she didn’t try to convince him otherwise, cemented the reality of their current situation. They might die, regardless. She knew how bad their chances were and wasn’t about to waste time telling him what he already knew.
Damon took hold of the chain, feeling each metal link, so cold that it made his ice-resistant fingers prickle with pain. He grunted as he put his strength into snapping it, feeling his muscles complain for an instant before finally being rewarded with the break.
He came back to the real world on his knees, fingers covered in the light layer of snow which had accumulated across the rooftop balcony. Kastet and Vel were arguing, though he couldn’t hear what about. He whistled, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Stand close to me,” he said. “Now.”
Vel helped Lilian with Wrath, and all four of them huddled near enough for Damon to work the magic he had in mind. He let the tip of his myrblade sink into the snow, and carefully crafted a platform of ice underneath them. Kastet flinched with surprise as he used his will to guide it upward, lifting them into the air.
CHAPTER 37
Under better circumstances, Damon would have enjoyed using his new ability to glide himself and the others through the sky. The sensation was exhilarating on a basic level, and rife with possibilities for traveling and combat.
He tried to go as slowly as he could while still giving them a chance to escape before Seffi remembered they existed. Veridas Keep continued to rise into the air, surreal in the sky behind them as they descended toward the city below.
Not all of the nobles who’d fled the chaos had managed to escape in time. A few tried jumping from Veridas Keep’s front gate, though it had long passed the time when such a fall would be survivable. There was still a certain amount of sense to it, Damon conceded, rather than taking a chance with Seffi’s unstable power.
He couldn’t let himself think about Seffi or his aesta, not yet. He focused on what was within his control. Avaricia was below them, but the city seemed to be suffering its own existential crisis. Fires raged across several districts, and dozens of ships were hastily departing from the port.
With Avarice deposed and Veridas Keep elevated to the sky with most of the city’s important nobles trapped within it, the basic order governing Avaricia no longer existed. Sure, there were still city guards and mercenaries left, but without anyone to command them, to pay them, they were just armed men in a crisis. Looters or refugees with swords and spears.
“Where are we going?” shouted Vel. “Damon! It’s cold! Please…”
He’d forgotten how much harsher the cold was to others than to him. He clenched his jaw, searching for somewhere to set them down that wasn’t within the city’s chaos, but also not out of reach. He spotted a small, stand-alone inn with a tiny stable next to it that lay beyond the main grouping of outlying buildings and towns clustered against Avaricia’s walls.
With more focus than he’d expected to need, Damon slowly guided the ice platform down to the ground. He let it dissolve as soon as it landed on the snowy grass. Vel hopped off immediately. Kastet and Lilian still held Wrath between them, and Damon helped them with her as they headed for the inn’s front door.
It was locked and nobody answered Vel’s frantic shouting and knocking. Lilian shifted Wrath’s weight to Vel and opened it for them with a solid kick. Damon expected another confrontation, but a quick pass over the single-level inn revealed it to be empty, despite evidence of a recent fire in the hearth and food left in the pantry.
“They must have fled when they saw Veridas Keep in the air,” said Kastet. “Probably a sensible decision.”
“Search the cupboards!” snappe
d Damon. “We need something to treat Clara’s wound.”
They’d set her down on one of the tables. Her bleeding had slowed, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think that the wound, large as it was, had begun to clot. She just simply didn’t have that much blood left.
“Don’t bother,” muttered Wrath.
She tried to lift her head but settled for swiveling her eyes his way instead. Damon was at her side, holding her hand, attempting to press his palm against her wound even though he knew, just as she did, that it would do no good.
“I could… freeze it,” he said, voice rasping. “Seal it with ice?”
“I’m sure that would feel ever so pleasant.” Wrath managed a smile that tore Damon’s heart into useless shreds.
“Just… hang in there,” said Damon. “You can heal from this! You’re powerful.”
She didn’t seem to hear him, even though her eyes never left his. “You were right. You made the right choice, Damon.”
He gave up on trying to hold her wound shut and simply squeezed her hand, bringing it up to rest against his forehead as though he could direct his mental energy toward healing her.
“It would have gone so much worse if you’d taken my crest,” whispered Wrath. “I think I knew it, on some level. That… making you choose was unfair. It would have been worse… Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”
He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
“Do it for me,” she whispered. “Please.”
He knew what she was asking, what she was really asking, and shook his head on reflex. “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Do it. You have to. We both know how bad this is. I’m done.”
Damon looked away. He felt his resolve failing, his eyes failing, as the tears arrived in earnest.
“Save those for someone who needs them,” muttered Wrath. “I’ll come back. You should look forward to it. You’ll be older, going gray, maybe… and a teenage girl will show up on your doorstep demanding you take her crest.”
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