The woman’s gaze was heavy as she watched a nearby Khamsin man, his arm severed at the elbow – a jagged line of flesh that could only be caused by hounds’ teeth. In that moment, Finn saw another side of her – something deeper than the thin veil of bravado, the self-interested ambition, and the political gamesmanship. He saw pain. And fear.
And suddenly, he realized that he was leaving her alone to guide an army – with many of their strongest mages and warriors volunteering to undertake this final mission.
He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she glanced at him in surprise. “You can do this. Lead them, I mean. There are still others in the chain of command for the fighters and mages – even with the loss of Malik, Kalisha, and Abbad.”
A small, wry smile twisted her lips. “And yet, there is only one prophet.”
It was Finn’s turn to snort. “I don’t think you’ve ever really believed that I’m following some divine path. I’m just a man. A particularly determined man with nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
“And one who has accomplished more in weeks than our people have in years,” Aerys replied. Her tone was bitter but not unkind. “Your actions may not be divine, but you see clearly in a way that few will ever understand. You are always three steps ahead – even when your actions look foolhardy. And you aren’t afraid to commit everything to the task at hand, including your own life.”
She seemed to chew on her final words, as though they pained her to say aloud. “You are a true leader. I am just…”
“A woman that has pulled together more than a dozen disparate bands. Who put aside her own pride and history to forge an alliance with her former enemies, and who raised her hand without hesitation when asked to charge straight to her death,” Finn said firmly.
Aerys’ eyes were wide as she looked at him. “You can do this. You can lead them.” A pause and a grin. “And if it helps, you don’t really have much choice.”
She laughed then, perhaps the first time that Finn had ever seen her sincerely amused. “And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it?” she replied.
Her expression sobered, and she met his eyes again. “But thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied.
“Let us just hope that our decoy will be enough…”
And then, in that moment, the thought hovering at the edges of Finn’s mind resolved into focus. He could almost feel the pieces shifting across the board. Maybe it was Aerys’ words about their ruse. Or Kyyle’s fear that Bilel might have another plan up his sleeve. He couldn’t place his fingers on exactly what had encouraged his idea to flare to life, but he certainly wasn’t going to question it – not now, with so much on the line.
“Actually… I just had a thought,” Finn said, turning to Aerys, her brow furrowing.
He leaned in close, whispering a few final words in her ear – words meant only for her. The Khamsin leader’s eyes widened as Finn pulled away.
“Do you really think this is necessary?” she asked.
“I hope not,” Finn answered, his expression grim. “But better safe than sorry.”
He met her gaze then, holding her eyes, seeing the fear and doubt that lingered there. “Will you do it?”
Aerys met his gaze for a fraction of a second longer before nodding curtly. Then she squared her shoulders and marched off toward a line of soldiers, barking orders. Finn’s eyes followed her as she left – a sense of uneasiness lingering in his stomach. Despite his reassurance and his hastily whispered words, he could feel his own worm of doubt writhing in his stomach.
They were creating a ruse meant to deceive a demon. But he doubted that Bilel had been idle while they breached the city gates and regrouped. He had likely been busy devising his own plan – assuming he hadn’t already been prepared for days now.
Finn just had to hope that three steps ahead would be enough…
Chapter 44 - Mechanical
The mechanid skittered out into the street, its metal legs thumping against the wet sand and anchoring the creature to the ground, keeping it stationary despite the howling winds that whipped down through the narrow gap between the buildings. A group of hounds rounded the corner, and a fiery gem in the mechanid’s chest flared to life – just enough fire mana rippling across its hard casing for the creatures to pick up its scent.
The hounds seemed to sniff at the air for a moment before their glowing orange eyes settled on the mechanid. With a howl, the pack leader surged forward, the muscles in its legs rippling and snapping as it launched down the road – the rest of the hounds only steps behind, their voices filling the air as they picked up their leader’s call.
The mechanid promptly skittered down the street. As the hounds neared, it suddenly veered toward the wall of a nearby building, its metallic limbs puncturing the sandstone as it swiftly scaled the surface. A hound leaped after it, its fangs snagging on one of the mech’s legs. Gears ground and shrieked in protest, its upward march suddenly halted.
Then, with a shower of sparks, the leg ripped free, a faint stream of air mana spewing from the broken pneumatics with a violent hiss. Yet the mechanid continued its steady march, soon cresting the lip of the building and scurrying down the street by following the line of rooftops. The hounds still lingered below, their orange eyes never wavering.
“Damn it. I’m going to run out of mechs at this rate,” Kalisha grumbled from a nearby alley as the group watched the hounds race down the street and out of sight. Her right hand anxiously stroked at the small metal spider creature that clung to her left arm.
“Like you don’t have plenty to spare,” Kyyle replied dryly, waving at the veritable army of mechanical spiders that clung to the walls around them – their mana crystals deactivated and silent to avoid giving away their position. Once they moved again, the mechanical creatures would activate and scatter in sequence to avoid creating a cluster of energy that might be visible to Bilel.
“Actually, this might be my own personal nightmare,” Kyyle muttered as he eyed the mechanids looming around him. He hadn’t forgotten their encounter in the Abyss when he and Julia had been tasked with holding off Kalisha and her companions.
It hadn’t been too long ago that they had been fighting off these damn things.
Julia came up behind the group, slipping quietly through the shadows of the alley. They’d picked this spot since the ground seemed relatively stable, and the walls of the surrounding buildings offered shelter from the rain. The group was no longer able to use the barriers of air mana for fear of alerting Bilel to their presence. Even the fire crystals that Kalisha had installed in her mechs to bait the hounds was a risk, and she’d been forced to carefully adjust the strength of the energy with Finn’s help, keeping the energy signature around the same level as an average human person.
“I don’t see any movement behind us,” Julia grunted at Finn, shaking the wet from her armor.
Kalisha’s eyes went distant as she surveyed a prompt that they couldn’t see. “The hounds are also out of range now, and my sentries aren’t picking up any other packs nearby. It should be safe to move.”
Finn nodded, his eyes skimming to the map hovering in the air beside him. They weren’t too much farther from the walls that ringed the palace. He picked out another small alley that opened up beside the gates, choosing a location along the western side of the wall a decent distance from the entrance to the palace grounds. They weren’t going to be able to casually stroll into the palace this time around.
They’d need to find another way past the walls.
His fingers tapped at the location, leaving a glowing yellow waypoint marker. He spared a glance at Kalisha. “It looks like you won’t have to worry about losing any more mechanids. This is our last stop, and then we need to figure out how to move inside the palace grounds without being detected.”
“Greeeaaat,” the merchant drawled with a frown.
The others looked equally unenthusiastic, shouldering their gear and savoring these last few moments
of relative dryness. Finn certainly couldn’t blame them. As he swiped away his map, he tugged his damp robes close again and pulled the hem of his robe up and over his mouth, tamping down on the desire to light just a small flame to force away the cold and wet. The thin barrier of cloth helped to filter the rain and sand kicked up by the storm, but it did little to ward off the sheets of water that would soon beat down on them.
“Okay, we move on five,” Finn said, sparing a look at Malik.
The fighter nodded and moved into the point position, Julia taking up the rear. If it came to a fight, that pair would need to do most of the heavy lifting. The mages couldn’t afford to cast anything substantial for fear of giving away their position.
“Go, go, go,” Finn said, placing his hand on Kyyle’s pack in front of him.
The others followed his lead, grasping the person in front of them and creating a living chain that surged out into the stormy street. With one final glance at her mechanical pets, Kalisha waved at the mechs, and they scurried up the walls, splitting off in different directions and taking up sentry positions along the rooftops – using their metallic limbs to anchor themselves in place along the buildings.
Wind pelted them as soon as the group left the alley, nearly knocking Finn off balance and sending a wave of rain splattering against him. It was all he could do to see amid the storm, the energies swirling chaotically. Lightning snapped down against a building nearby, carving a dark furrow in the sandstone and sending several bricks spiraling down toward the group.
Julia was there in a flash, her heavy metal armor letting her navigate the storm more easily. With a sweep of her arm, she knocked the bricks off course, sending them smashing into the ground nearby, the wet sand swallowing them with a squelching sound.
Then they were moving again.
A hand on the body in front of them.
A steady march through the relentless rain.
And then they were cresting another line of buildings, and the group stumbled into another alley. They immediately leaned against the nearby walls, their breathing heavy and uneven, and their muscles burning.
Kyyle spared Finn a mock glare. “Okay, I’m really starting to regret this storm,” he gasped. “And this illusion just makes it worse. It’s like it’s trapping the water closer to my skin,” he muttered, tugging at his collar uncomfortably.
“While I certainly sympathize,” Abbad said, the stoic librarian equally soaked, “the illusions coating our bodies and the energy of the storm are the only things masking our movements. Without them, I suspect Bilel would have already sent hounds to converge on our location.”
“Hey, a quick death might be preferable to this nonsense,” the earth mage groused as he wrung out his robes for at least the dozenth time.
For his part, Finn had already tuned them out. Stepping up toward the mouth of the alley, he took in the walls of the palace. A frown immediately tugged at his lips, his brow pinching together.
Those stone walls practically shone with mana. And not the calming emerald glow of earth mana. No, they were riddled with the other affinities, the colors swirling together to form complicated patterns along the stone – glowing symbols and designs etched into the surface of the stone. That could only mean one thing.
Wards.
“What do you see?” Julia asked from his shoulder.
“Nothing good,” Finn muttered.
He knew some of the symbols scrawled across the walls, and they didn’t bode well. They weren’t just reinforcing the stone itself – which likely took Kyyle’s Dissolve out of play. He also saw symbols for what looked like “electricity” and “fire.” While he didn’t recognize the underlying spells, he could assume that they were probably some sort of defensive wards designed to electrocute or incinerate anyone foolhardy enough to attempt to scale the walls.
And just beyond those walls, Finn could make out the telltale amber shimmer of air magic. Those barriers extended up and over the palace itself, protecting the structure from the worst effects of the storm and the occasional blast of lightning. Bilel must be actively shielding the entire palace. Finn could only guess at how much mana that must take. Even a couple hundred air mages working together would have difficulty accomplishing the same task.
However, he would have to put that aside for now. He had more pressing concerns.
With a grimace, Finn shifted his attention, pushing past the layers of mana in the nearby wall in an effort to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond. It was difficult with the many sheets of mana now coating the surface of the wall – mixed with the mana from the storm that still raged around them. But after his time in the Forge and at such close range, he could just barely filter through the layers of interference.
Only a few moments later, his eyes widened.
If the walls were a problem, the glowing orange field of fire mana that lingered on the other side of that barrier was even more worrisome. Even as he looked on, he saw the sapphire energy of the rain sweep down across that field, the energy turning to a dull, muddy brown that indicated steam. After their siege on the city and their journey through the storm, he’d come to recognize that mana signature immediately.
Those were hounds. Lots and lots of hounds.
“Shit,” Finn muttered, pulling back from the lip of the alley and shifting deeper within the protective stone walls of the two adjacent buildings.
“Judging from your expression, I’m going to guess you’re about to regale us with how easy and simple it will be to break into the palace,” Kalisha observed.
Malik barked out something that sounded eerily like a laugh, earning him a few surprised glances from the group.
“What?” he demanded. “She is occasionally humorous.”
“And here we were starting to think the Fighters Guild purged your sense of humor,” Kyyle offered with a raised eyebrow.
The rest of the group peered at Finn, waiting expectantly for a report.
He let out a sigh, leaning against the wall behind him and rubbing at his eyes. “The walls are warded. I didn’t see any evidence of wards last time we were here, so either Bilel has only recently charged the symbols, or they’re new. Either way, it looks like they’re designed to reinforce the stone and possibly stop anyone trying to make it over the walls.”
“When you say possibly stop…” Kyyle trailed off, waiting expectantly.
“I’m guessing you get electrocuted if you touch the stone, and a Fire Wall may spring to life if you somehow make it to the top of the wall,” Finn said. “So, you get to choose between getting zapped or burned to death.”
“Perfect,” Kyyle grunted, eyeing the wall looming above the mouth of the alley with a wary expression now.
“Oh, I’m not done. Assuming we survive that, there’s the legion of hounds stationed just behind the wall. They practically fill the palace’s outer courtyards,” Finn added.
“Do you have a sense of their numbers?” Julia asked.
“Too many. Far, far too many to fight with just the six of us,” Finn answered. His Mana Sight didn’t make identifying specific hounds easy. It only gave him a broad approximation – somewhere between a “few” and a “shitload.”
“Okay. So, we just have to get past an impenetrable wall of death and fight off an army of hounds. Sounds like a great warm-up for trying to assassinate a demon,” Kalisha observed, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
Kyyle’s brow was furrowed as he stared at the wall. “Or we could go under it,” he murmured. He looked up and realized that the group was staring at him.
“See, right there,” he said, pointing at the sand at the base of the wall. It had begun to shift and sink – evidence that the ground wasn’t stable. They had been forced to divert their path many times during their trek through the city to avoid such sinkholes. “I’m guessing there’s a sinkhole forming already. We could just reinforce it a bit. Maybe shore up the walls with thin barriers of stone – just enough to buy us a few minutes.”
“Th
e mana might give us away,” Abbad observed.
Finn was biting at his lip now as he observed the ground. It was times like this that he wished he had Daniel’s help – although he’d never admit it to the often-recalcitrant AI. For now, he’d been forced to de-summon him, worried that his ambient fire mana would give them away on their trek through the city. But even without Daniel’s analysis, Finn’s Mana Sight confirmed that Kyyle was right.
The rainwater had seeped through the sand and rock, a natural fracture in the stone forming a small cave just below the wall that extended outward on both sides. That water was weakening the walls of the cavern, causing it to widen further and destabilizing the sand along the ceiling of the cave. If given another few hours or days, a sinkhole might form directly below the wall. Although, that was time they didn’t have.
“I see a growing cavern forming just below the wall. There’s enough sand and rock there to hide Kyyle’s casting if he keeps it low key,” Finn said, his eyes still on the wall. “The wards along the barrier are also a double-edged sword. They’re preventing entry, but they also obscure the area beneath the wall. It takes quite a bit of effort for me to peel back at those layers of mana, and that interference might also help hide Kyyle’s casting.” He waved at the storm that still billowed above them. “And then there’s all of this shit clouding the area.”
“Okay, so let’s assume I could accelerate the formation of the sinkhole and then create a reinforced tunnel under the wall without drawing too much attention,” Kyyle said, running a hand through his hair and his fingers coming away coated in sand and water. “How are we going to deal with the hounds on the other side?”
Finn frowned. That was a problem. There were far too many to fight.
What they needed was a distraction.
His eyes swept back to Kalisha, and she let out an exasperated sigh as she met his gaze. “You’re going to make me use my babies as a distraction again, aren’t you?” she asked.
Awaken Online: Inferno (Tarot #3) Page 51
