She risked a glance above the platform, but not before peering back to see Senka and Isa had safely lowered themselves. She wove a Phoenix shield for protection, sending another gale low across the road to peel back the billowing smoke.
She frowned at something strange hovering behind an upper part of the veil of smoke. There were two slits of violet light floating above the apex of the tower’s height. They vanished for a second then reappeared like blinking eyes. Strange. Do I imagine this? The eyes blinked again. A dagger of worry hammered into her belly and twisted in her guts. “What is that?” She drew on more of the Dragon, sending an even stronger gust of wind to sweep away the tower of smoke, taking some of the burning barricade with it.
What was revealed drew a ragged breath from her lips. A figure of hulking proportions lumbered down the road. It had a humanoid shape, and its flesh appeared to be made of solid rock. On its elbows were giant spikes the size of men, its shoulders the size of houses. The giant lacked a neck, its head set at the top of the upper part of its chest, a slit-eyed mound of stone with a mouth as broad as a portcullis. The stone covering its shoulders wrapped down over its front, textured like waving sand dunes. It emitted a long and deep growl, its mouth made of rocks, the sound traveling deep in her chest and warbling in her throat.
Cheers fell away, turning into nervy shouts of alarm. A few men loosed arrows and women fireballs, all bouncing harmlessly from its stony hide. A great booming chuckle reverberated from its maw, the sound haunting and sending a chill through her legs.
“Wha-what is that?” Senka stammered, shifting back to bump into the man behind her. “Sorry,” she muttered without looking at him.
“Something that needs to die,” Isa answered coldly.
Nyset’s eyes bulged, and she licked her lips. “Once it’s over the bridge, we can focus our fire upon it. Time to go. Signal Juzo and Crugen. And everyone else, fall back!”
NINETEEN
Obliteration
“I do not fear death for I’ve lived a full life. In death, only my life ends. My spirit lives on. - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield
“Shit, shit, shit. Big fucking bastard,” Juzo muttered. He watched the chaos outside between a slit in the double doors at the ground level of the central tower. Behind him, his Blood Eaters gibbered, feeding on his anxiety. They were an outward manifestation of his emotional state. Their malevolent eyes bobbed in the shadows. “What are you waiting for, Ny? Going to keep us pent up in here all day?” he said then gnawed on his lower lip, uncaring of the pain and the drawn blood.
The behemoth reached the barricade of burning debris and swept most of it away with its mighty fist. Screams and shouts of terror rang out across the square from the towers. Harried footsteps thumped down the spiraling staircase that wound through the tower’s core. Juzo peered up as he listened, clucking his tongue at the dust loosening itself from the ceiling. The sound inevitably faded as men took the stairway where it forked leading down from the first platform and to the ground level. But then a set of boots grew louder, and with it came heavy breathing. Someone was coming. Juzo pulled himself from the door’s slit and the unfolding spectacle.
He walked backward and finally turned as a member of Grim’s men came clambering down the stairs two at a time. His armor jingled, sword slapping his at thigh as his heart rate thrummed in Juzo’s head. “Master Juzo? Juzo! Are you here?” the man called. “Can I come down? Is it safe?”
“We’re here. Not to worry, you’re safe,” Juzo replied, trying to hide the annoyance from his voice.
The soldier stopped at the last turn of the stairs. “That’s exactly what people say when they’re lying.”
“I’m not lying,” Juzo growled. “Do you have a message for me or not? Spit it out, damn you.”
“Aye,” the soldier huffed. “The Arch Wizard gave the signal. It’s your time. Best of luck, White One!”
Juzo grinned, and hot energy filled his muscles. Without another word, he drew his sword with a rasp and kicked the double doors open, hinges shrieking, sending the doors smashing against the outside walls. It was time to give meaning to his struggle.
He stepped outside and squinted at the brightness. The scent of roasting flesh collected in his nostrils, bringing a shameful glut of saliva to his cheeks. Sound crashed over him all at once, the intensity of the screaming and shouting giving him pause. He hadn’t realized how muted everything had been surrounded by the tower’s foundation.
“Time to die,” Juzo hissed, pointing with his sword at the goliath in a gesture he hoped the big bastard understood as a taunt. Then he ran, Blood Eaters whooping at his rear with cackles born of madness. The only command he gave them was: destroy. His surrogates were well fed now, their muscles strong and bellies swollen from overfeeding upon the Silver Tower’s doomed and imprisoned.
The behemoth’s eyes seemed to regard them, its colossal torso slightly shifting to face his charge. Juzo gritted his sawblade teeth, duster flapping, sword laying flat behind his shoulder in preparation for a mighty swing. His surrogates kept his hard pace, a blurring mass of figures in mortal eyes. In seconds, they’d bridged the distance from the central tower to the giant’s lead leg. It looked like it was made of rock, its foot having only three toes. That was fine with him because Juzo was well acquainted with difficult things.
Juzo swung as hard as he could at its ankle, the blade harmlessly clanging off. The impact of it buzzed up from his wrist to his shoulder, threatening to open his grip. A shadow loomed, and Juzo instinctively leaped backwards and fell into a roll. Flee! he mentally screamed at them. He popped up an iota before its fist struck home. It smashed into the ground with an echoing boom that made the earth tremble. A few of the voices in his head went silent, the significance was all too clear.
The force of its blow raised a storm of dust and flying bits of stone. The giant raised its fist slowly as if drawing its arm through mud. When its fist cleared the pall of dust, he felt that three of his surrogates were simply crushed out of existence, confirmed by the flattened mass of guts and hair on the bottom of its fist.
The dust slowly settled, showing a scene of absolute carnage where its fist had fallen. Thankfully, most of the group received his order to flee in time. The crushed surrogates were in pieces, heads, arms, legs, and shattered swords twisted up together like discarded meat. “Fuck me,” Juzo breathed. He didn’t think there was any measure of healing that could fix that. He had to be careful, throat drying up as if filling with sand. One of his surrogates retched at the slaughter.
Juzo stood staring down at the ruined bits of men, expressionless and taking it in with iron calculation. He squared his shoulders and hefted his sword in one hand as the giant’s arm raised behind its head for another attack. How am I supposed to kill a fucking stone?
A great roar that was distinctively Tigerian and Tougere flared to life, Juzo’s head swiveling backward to see Crugen finally leading his charge. They emerged from the streets of New Breden like a swarm of bats at dusk. Run! Juzo ordered, as once again the shadow born of the giant’s fist loomed. This time they were ready for it, giving it a wide girth when it struck. It must’ve hit harder this time as boulders were wrenched from the ground. One struck a surrogate’s knee and snapped it backwards, tearing a howl of pain from the woman. The giant growled in what might’ve been frustration.
Behind the giant’s tree-trunk legs came the endless mass of Shadow snakes, their terrible hissing licking the air. Now that most of the burning wreckage of the felled towers had been brushed away, it seemed they’d regained their courage. The only positive note about their entering of the city was that their speed would be choked and numbers dwindled by the narrowness of the roads and the Tower’s bridge.
Juzo braced himself for enemies on both sides, but kept his eyes trained on the giant. He clenched his jaw and hoped a Tigerian spear wouldn’t find its way between his shoulder blades. Can they be trusted? Will they turn on them? He scanned the giant, searching for some obvio
us weakness but finding nothing but maybe its eyes.
Its eyes! Am I really going to do this?
He growled and stole a backward glance, bracing himself with a nod as the contingents from archer’s towers fled across the bridge in a series of flashing portals and frenzied sprinting. He spied Ny in her scarlet robes among them, warming his chest at seeing she was still alive, loyally flanked by Isa and Senka.
The roaring Tougeres split into two groups when they reached the Blood Eaters and the giant, traveling around its legs. Their enormous paws thumped at the earth and provided a distraction for the behemoth, staring down at the Tigerians in apparent confusion. Crugen might’ve given him a curt nod as he passed his flank, but it was hard to tell with how much he was bobbing on his mount. Without hesitation, the Tigerian king hacked his blade at the giant’s leg, sending it spinning from his grip. He rode on with a deafening lion’s roar, drawing another from the many swords hanging from his saddle.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” Juzo muttered.
As the Tigerians passed, they hurled spears at the hulk, some bouncing away from its body and others shattering and splintering as they struck. Their long whiskers were drawn back as they directed their snarls at the enemy beyond, the true enemy. Their eyes glowed with a ferocity that rivaled the vilest of Death Spawn. Juzo was relieved to find to his body intact, not impaled nor slashed by Tigerian blades.
He slightly smiled with a ghost of a laugh. It was suicide. Hopeless. There was still a softened part of him that wanted to tell them to turn back, to flee for the Tower. He said nothing. Blood Eaters and Tigerians had no place in this world. Savages were all eventually washed away in the constant erosion of time.
The giant’s distraction was short lived as the Tigerian’s yipped and screamed, charging beyond it and at the Shadow horde. The Tigerians crashed against the living wall of Shadow snakes some fifty paces away, spears flying and short swords chopping down at the black mass. They fought in groups, carving pockets of earth from the dark wall. Juzo found new strength in their courage. They fearlessly swept their blades through snakes while their bodies were engulfed and gored by cruel fangs.
A female Tigerian with a tabby coat had three snakes dangling from her sword arm by their mouths, another curling around her throat, and a few more clamped on her legs. Despite her imminent death, she fought. A stout Tigerian with jet black fur and heavy golden armor dual-wielded his blades, each fluidly working through Shadow snakes in bloody poetry. Crugen’s wicked blade chopped through their bodies in two’s and threes. His savage strikes bathed his body in thick streaks of violet blood. Severed snake’s tails, snake’s heads, jets of blood, and clumps of Tigerian fur were hurled into the air in a cyclone of death. The Shadow snakes sang their hiss of death while the Tigerians roared back in defiance.
Their deaths could mean something. Juzo would make it mean something.
Ten or so brave archers clambered onto rooftops, loosing arrows down at the mass choked by the streets. Sanur plucked a pair of archers from a rooftop with one hand like one might an apple from a tree. He proceeded to close his fist around their wriggling bodies. They shrieked as blood was ejected from their noses, eyes, mouths, and gushed between Sanur’s stony fingers. Their bones were turned into dust in an instant. At least it was over quickly for them, Juzo thought with a swallow. Sanur dropped their flattened bodies, swiveling his stub of a head for the archers on the neighboring rooftop.
“Damn you! Damn you! No more!” Juzo screamed, sheathing his sword and leaping for its leg. His fingers found grips on its lower knee, and he scrambled to draw himself up. Distract, he sent to his surrogates. They fanned out in a line and started throwing discarded weapons and stones at Sanur from a bit farther up the street. Their attacks pinged harmlessly from his hide, but it served the intended purpose as Sanur took a lumbering step toward them. He bumped a house with his elbow, shearing off the majority of its roof and side in a hail of shrieking timbers and splinters. Screams of terror came from the house. Revealed within the topmost room, a mother huddled about her two children, protecting them with her body, tears bright in her eyes. Why haven’t they fled? It’s too late for them now.
Climbing Sanur was just like scaling the sheer walls of the plateaus in the Tigerian Bluffs. It was something he used to do while trapped in Terar’s mental snares. He’d enjoyed the plateaus and staring out at the vast landscape. He would watch as the last ember of the sun faded to black and grin while the moon crested the night sky. It was about as far as Terar would let him stray from his lair without the threat of punishment.
With both arms, Juzo hurled himself up for the stone beast’s thigh where he spotted a nub of stone, the giant’s fist closing on the air where he’d been at its knee. “Shit!” he barked as its fist clashed shut. One hand slipped from the nub of rock with a gasp, the fingernails of the other hand digging in as he swayed on the air. He felt his fingernails snapping, blood trickling around the nub and streaming into his eye, grip slipping. “Damn it,” he growled, blinking away the burning blood and regaining his grip with both hands. The giant rumbled and lifted its arm, opening its hand, and stared at it in bewilderment. It seemed this beast was not bestowed with an intelligence to match its power.
Juzo scrambled up to its round belly, the slabs of stone protecting it making for easy handholds. Above its belly were great plates of stone that curved down around its shoulders and over its chest, providing what might have been a shelf where he could stand where they intersected.
“You’re going to die today. Do you know that, you big fuck? I hope you fucking know that! Die!” Juzo screamed up at it. It was too slow, too clumsy to catch him as it made another attempt. He vaulted himself through the air another ten feet, and thankfully, his prediction was right, and his boots found purchase on a triangular shelf of rock. The cityscape sprawled out behind him, rooftops lining the bottom of the horizon before the shimmering blues of the Far Sea. Beyond the behemoth, Juzo glimpsed the full scale of the Shadow horde. Their numbers were truly endless, seeming to stretch for miles upon miles. “How?” he croaked, forcing his attention back to Sanur.
He drew his sword, whispering death, and its over-sized eyes regarded him with widening shock. Its eyes were glowing slits as big as his fist, and set within them were black pupils that had the shape of a cross. He gripped his blade with both hands, secured his footing, and drove the blade deep into its eye, the edge vertical.
Sanur roared like a broken trumpet, the sound nearly deafening. Hot blood gushed from its eye, dousing Juzo like someone had thrown a bucket of gore into his face. Juzo yelped in surprise. It sloshed over his throat, burned his eye, streaked through his hair, worked its way down his chest and even tickled his balls. He gasped and spat the blood that made its way into his mouth, fearful of how it might affect his curse.
The stony eyelids of Sanur’s pierced eye struggled to clamp shut, but Juzo had intentionally pinned it open with his vertical sword placement. Juzo’s mouth tingled, and its blood tasted like rot. His surrogates followed after him, climbing up Sanur’s legs and keeping his hands busy as he tried to pluck them free. Juzo forced his fingers to relent on the sword’s haft, bracing himself for the dark work.
Juzo snarled as he plunged his fists into its eye, the tissue yielding and gelatinous. He clawed his hands and gripped as much of it as he could, tearing it away and throwing it over his shoulder. Strings of flesh slopped against his neck, closing his eyes as a new fountain of blood sprayed against his chest. Sanur made an attempt at removing him with a clumsy swipe, but Juzo easily avoided it. Juzo ripped and tore and threw again and again, slowly tearing out its enormous eye.
“How does it feel?” he shrieked, bloodlust taking him in its torrent. He remembered Terar, taking his eye as if it were nothing at all, as if he were nothing. He was lost in the grim task. The world narrowed down to that violet crevasse of weeping blood.
All his suppressed pain, agony, and rage came out of him then. The pain of losing Wal
ter, his family, and friends boiled out of his eyes in thick tears cutting through the blood. For so long, he’d kept it all stuffed down deep where it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. In here, he was alone. His arms were bathed in blood as thick as mud. He reached in for what he thought was the last of its eye when something snapped with a high-pitched metallic ping.
He threw his head back and screamed as lightning bolts of agony ripped at his arm. His eyes went wide at the sight of Sanur’s s stony eyelid clamped through most of his forearm. “No!” Panic gripped his throat like a vice. He tugged his arm, and the pain sang louder. It was his turn to bleed, rivulets of scarlet melding with the torrent of violet issuing from its eye. “Not like him, not like Walter. Don’t make me do this!” His voice broke, eying the shattered bit of sword lying near his feet. He howled as he bent down to retrieve it before it fell, further pulling on his trapped forearm.
“Like… him,” Sanur slowly rumbled. His rumble became a bellowing laugh, arm coming up to crush the life from his body. His other eye narrowed as if he might’ve been smiling.
“Damn you!” Juzo screamed, hammering down through what remained of his forearm bones with the shattered sword. A horrible crack resounded in his skull, throwing all of his force into the blow. He ripped what remained of his arm free from Sanur’s eye, blood streaming in fat ruby droplets. For a brief moment, he felt nothing, time crawling as Sanur’s fist reached him. Despite his effort, he wasn’t fast enough with the shock of losing his arm. My best isn’t enough. He tried to move faster, but time wouldn’t let him, Sanur’s fist ever closing. Too late.
Thunder reverberated through his chest as his every rib shattered in a flash of blinding light. Time faded, and he was surprised to find his pain vanished. Then time returned. Juzo’s vision blurred, and he willed it to focus and found the ground growing smaller beneath him, raised up in Sanur’s mighty fist. A grim smile crossed his cheeks as the last of the Tigerians were swallowed by the endless mass of Shadow snakes. He saw a snake tear a chunk from Crugen’s throat, his Tougere mount swarmed.
The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7) Page 34
