The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  Isa gave her a curt nod, took up his bow, loosing a volley of arrow after arrow in terrifying speed down at the choking mass. He didn’t have to aim to find targets now. Senka worked her bow beside him, with every loosed arrow she let out a harsh grunt.

  “When we can hold it no more.” A violet portal opened in the middle of the bridge, drawing Nyset’s gaze back to the sky. The Shadow Princess was still whirling above the city, so it wasn’t her portal then. From it came a lumbering humanoid above the throng. It appeared to be a conglomeration of flesh and steel bound as one. It wore what appeared to be an executioner’s hood with chains crisscrossing over a muscular torso with some of the links mended in his flesh. Its rusted chains went around its arms and dragged on the ground from long ape-like arms, legs squat. It swayed its body to and fro, snakes giving it a wide girth as it marched up the path to the tower’s gates.

  “No. Is that… that’s not. Is that Asebor?” Senka said wide-eyed, pressing herself against the wall to stare out.

  Nyset’s heart fluttered at the mention of that name. “No. It’s not him,” she said confidently. “It’s a target for our blades. Another of her minions intended to soften us up, no doubt.” The chained creature halted in its stride, maybe narrowing its eyes at the wall. “It’s doing something.”

  Grimbald growled, axe making a broad arc and hammering through a snake, sending its guts spattering onto the backs of her boots. Nyset winced as its hot blood circled down over the tops of her boots, tickling her calves, and warming her ankles. Five feet away, a spark of brilliant light sent her instinctually staggering back and turning. A violet portal cut the air, taking a soldier’s spear arm with it at the shoulder. The man screamed in agony and fell backward, flipping over the back wall of the ramparts, shrieking as he plummeted.

  Corbyn’s long arms swung over his head, rusted chains floating on the air, eyes under his hood shimmering obsidian. “Shit!” Nyset threw herself to the side, chains rattling as they pounded the stones. A dark shape passed overhead, and she peered up a second later to see Isa had launched into jump kick, his boot colliding with Corbyn’s throat and sending him stumbling back a step.

  A hoarse gurgle came from the beast’s mouth, ape arm sweeping down to take out Isa’s legs, him evading to its flank then countering by burying his axe into its bicep. Corbyn ripped his arm back and tore Isa’s axe out of his grip, the axe firmly wedged in his flesh. He hardly seemed to register the weapon as if pain didn’t touch him. Isa stumbled from the force of it, smacking his head against the back wall with a sickening crunch. He slumped to his bottom, unmoving, a streak of blood following from his head.

  “Isa! No!” Nyset grimaced, slipping on warm blood as she started to stand, thumping onto her side.

  Somehow, Senka had managed to make her way behind Corbyn, daggers flashing to life in a burst of flame. Nyset grinned, again driving herself up to stand.

  “Isa!” Senka screamed and drove her blades into its side where its kidneys might be. Corbyn extended his back and tried to grab her. The tips of her flaming daggers tore through his guts, emerging like embers at its ashen belly. Corbyn’s reaching hand found purchase, seizing Senka’s leather backplate, and in a flash, drew her over his shoulder, slamming her into the ground like a child’s doll.

  “Senka!” Nyset screamed. Senka hit the stones so hard she bounced, Dragon head daggers spinning from limp hands and the flames dissipating. Blood gushed from her nose, limbs motionless.

  Nyset sent a carefully placed spear of fire at an upward angle, carving a great hole through the center of its chest, revealing the sky behind it. A moment after, dark blood welled out of the wound, filling in the gaping hole. It trudged onward, Nyset’s breath catching. It slashed its chains against the ground in what might’ve been a taunt.

  Grimbald and two Armsman at his sides blocked its path. “Fight me!” Grimbald roared in challenge, axe chopping at its torso. It lowered its arm to block the attack, forearm lined in an endless coil of chains, sending Grim’s brutal axe ricocheting away in a hail of sparks. Grim’s warded blow carried onward and into the gut of the bearded man beside him. “Jackson! Oh no!” Grimbald released his hold on his weapon, mouth falling open as the struck Armsman collapsed with Corpsemaker buried so deep it nearly severed his torso into halves.

  Nyset licked her lips and sent twin healing spells for Isa and Senka, snakes of bluish light curling over the air to connect with Isa and Senka. She couldn’t save them all, but she could save her friends.

  Corbyn lashed out with his arms, sending his chains coiling around Grimbald’s torso and his throat. He tugged on the chains, dragging Grimbald stumbling toward him and seizing his arms in his mighty hands. He drew Grimbald’s arms apart and raised him in the air, trying to tear them from the sockets. Grimbald threw his head back in a terrible howl as he resisted it with trembling shoulders.

  Isa and Senka stirred, rising up in bewilderment and patting at their wounds. Nyset wove a portal behind Corbyn and leaped through, the sword of flame materializing in her fist. “Die!” She used the Phoenix to launch herself up a few feet, jaw clenched as she slashed through the back of its neck. The sword passed through Corbyn’s flesh without any resistance, a razor blade of smoking blood welling out. He released Grimbald.

  Corbyn’s head squelched free from his neck and rolled from his shoulders, thumping to the ground with a wet slap. Its neck was all but cauterized and blackened from the Dragon’s kiss, a few spots weeping violet. Corbyn’s body went stiff and toppled over like a felled tree. Nyset easily side stepped it and watched it fall with a measure of caution.

  Grimbald winced, working his shoulders in circles.

  “Healing?” she asked.

  He nodded with a shudder. “Please. My arms… not working right.”

  The wonderful thing about the Phoenix was that you didn’t have to know what was wrong with a person in order to heal them. The Phoenix managed the discovery of the ailment and the treatment all at once. She dismissed her flame sword and place her hands on his shoulders, instilling him with a measure of the Phoenix’s healing. He shivered, then gave her a hard nod. “Thanks. And thanks for saving me.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said with a half-smile.

  Grimbald bent down and dragged Corpsemaker from the dead Armsman’s gut with a heavy sigh. “Jackson too?” His tone revealed he already knew her answer.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for him.” She turned away to help Isa to his feet, but he waved her off. “Leave me. I’ll be fine, Mistress. Appreciate the healing. Just need a minute… head feels like a sack of mud.”

  She went to Senka, offering her hand, which she took, heaving her up. “Impressive use of the Dragon, wizard. How long have you known?”

  “Not long,” Senka smiled. Nyset drew her daggers from the ground with the Phoenix, lifting them to hover before Senka’s welcoming hands. Senka’s eyes narrowed behind her, beyond her.

  “What now? Not another,” Nyset whispered, dread clawing at her chest at what she might see. Something rolled like a mass of huddled flesh along the ramparts, throwing soldiers who didn’t move fast enough off the edge and others smashing into the walls.

  Its body unfolded maybe twenty feet away, a giant mouth on its back yawning open to chomp through a wizard focusing on the horde at the gates and simply hewing away all the flesh that once occupied her midsection. She didn’t scream for long as a river of blood poured from her ruined form. The creature chewed on the expanse of flesh for a second, coils of intestines hanging from the corner of its mouth, then slurping it all down with a belch. It giggled.

  What disturbed her most about it wasn’t how it attacked or how its body was a construct born of nightmares. It was its human face. It looked strangely familiar.

  “Do you see…” she trailed off, recognition slowly dawning.

  “Greyson,” Senka answered. “It’s Greyson, Mistress.”

  “What has she done?” Isa said beside them, voice colored by horror. “She did
this.”

  “No!” Greyson shook like a dog. “You… did… this… to… me!” The creature that might’ve been Greyson once pointed at her from the distance, eyes full of amber and rage. A spearman tried to run to him through, but Greyson spun in an instant, chomping through the spear with his hind mouth, taking both of the wielder’s forearms in a single bite. “This. Your. Fault. Cunt!”

  He leaped from the merlons on the back of the wall to the front, making a zigzagging pattern in a stunning display of dexterity, closing the distance between she and her friends. About half of the defenders in proximity to him tried to kill him while the other half focused their attention on the Shadow snakes below. Spears hissed over his head, swords hacked only air, axes caught stone, and fireballs went wide as Greyson dodged it all.

  “By the Dragon, they’re piling up at the gates! They’re piling up!” A young wizard with gingery hair and a round belly screamed, eyes bulging at the ground. Greyson bounced atop the merlon beside the man, bisecting the front half of his head with a vicious bite.

  “I suffer!” Greyson shrilled. “I suffer! Suffer!”

  Nyset followed his gaze, seeing what the poor wizard glimpsed. The Shadow snakes were sacrificing themselves, using their bodies to build a wall of their own. It would only be a matter of time. Wounded snakes used their last breaths to crawl farther toward the top of the pile. It was their only goal, their only purpose to ascend the heights of the dead and dying.

  Nyset’s eyes slid back to Greyson, not willing to risk burning her own. She waited. “I—” Nyset’s voice froze in her throat. “I did this to him,” she breathed. He was right.

  Greyson’s voice boomed over the battlements, growing with every man he slaughtered. “I suffer! I suffer! I suffer!”

  “Never liked this one.” Isa stoically raised his bow, drawing an arrow from his quiver. “Complains too much.” His bowstring creaked as he slowly drew it back. “Always complaining. As long as we were with him. Could’ve done this back then.”

  Senka’s eyes flitted between Isa and Greyson, nervously shifting her feet.

  “I suffer! Suffer! Suffer!” Greyson’s voice crescendoed and grew. He ignored everyone trying to kill him now, his hate pure and focused at Nyset.

  “The weak must be culled.” Isa loosed, bowstring snapping, arrow hissing but going wide of Greyson. Eyes narrowing, he drew again.

  Nyset pulled on the Dragon, preparing for her own attempt. Should have just ended him when I had the chance. Greyson bounded between merlons like a fleeing deer. The next shelf of stone he landed upon brought Isa’s second arrow home, thudding into his eye, arrow shaft buried in his brain, the point emerging from the back of his head.

  “You’re incredible!” Senka cheered, stabbing the air with her blades. Isa stared, expressionless as Greyson stiffened, balanced atop a merlon. He raised his hands to feel the arrow as if confirming it were there. “Finally,” Nyset saw him mouth. He toppled over the edge of the ramparts, body striking the courtyard beyond the wall with the crack of shattered bones.

  “I had the chance to kill him before. I was weak too,” Nyset said, biting her lip.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Senka said, pointing at the gathering mound of Shadow snakes. “They need to be burned.”

  Nyset nodded, bracing herself for the exhaustion she knew would come from another great outpouring of the Dragon. But she didn’t have to do it alone. “Wizards! Flame walls below!” she shouted. She saw heads nodding in recognition of the command. A few helpers would be better than none.

  The greater the strength of the wizard, the wider and taller the wall. Some were maybe a few feet in length, others ten or so. Among the handful of them, it should’ve been enough to burn their piled bodies to cinders. Nyset was the first to release the spell, the others shortly after doing the same. Something was wrong.

  She cocked her head, gripped the wall to stare down in disbelief. Their fires dwindled to wisps of smoke, all the corpses untouched. “How?” Nyset swallowed, gazing back at the ramparts.

  Isa growled behind her, the clang of his hatchet striking stone followed by the death squeal of a Shadow snake. Grimbald had traversed farther down the ramparts, ordering some wizards to issue healing and tending to some of the wounded himself. He paused in his shouting command to work his axe through a projectile Shadow snake, spraying everything in violet. The stonework had all taken on a strange beauty, violet and scarlet blood melding together in a canvas of nightmares. If it weren’t for the screams of the dying, it could’ve been born of one of the more extreme artists in Midgaard.

  Nyset looked back at the growing pile of Shadow snakes, blinking as if it might change what she saw. “How?” she demanded. It had to be a novel spell she hadn’t seen or studied. It shouldn’t have been possible. She tried again with a fireball and a Phoenix portal, both bouncing harmlessly, warded off by an unknown magic. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t know what to do. She felt her legs going light, world swirling around her. She steadied herself by widening her stance and gripping Senka’s arm.

  “By the Dragon, what do I do?” she asked, shaking her head. She looked toward the sky, searching the archives of her memory for some semblance of anything she’d read regarding what this ward might be. She found nothing. She glanced from Senka to Isa, both of them regarding her with hard expressions.

  Isa licked his teeth like a ravenous wolf, breaking his stare as he searched for prey. He snatched a snake that had landed on the wall behind them by the throat and started to bash its head atop the stones, brains splattering out from its poisoned jaws.

  “Mistress?” Senka prompted.

  Nyset slightly shook her head and hissed. “I don’t know. Dragon fire isn’t working. Phoenix portals aren’t touching it. Physical weapons are working…”

  “Crush them with stone then?” Isa suggested.

  “They’d climb that too,” Senka groaned. “Just make it all come faster.”

  Nyset steeled her voice. “Kill as many as we can, then we fall back to the courtyard and then the gardens.” Like when we lost the Tower the first time, she thought.

  “Tired of running,” Isa said, wiping his bloody hands on the wall and snatching up his bow.

  “Right.” Senka gritted her teeth and settled into a low fighting stance, daggers bursting alight with Dragon fire. Isa fanned out beside Nyset, loosing arrow after arrow.

  Nyset set her eyes to the distance and raised her chin, watching that flapping demon circle her city. Fight me! She mentally willed her thoughts toward the Shadow Princess, and at that moment, she dropped from the air as if stunned. She caught herself a moment after. Nyset narrowed her eyes in curiosity. “Strange.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Endless

  “A world of passion can pass in a moment. The world devours me, the difficulties I face insurmountable.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  The Shadow Princess coasted on the gale blowing in from the Far Sea. The flapping of her great wings whooshed, the sound always something she found pleasant. She pitied those who couldn’t fly, immobilized at the surface and forced to traverse the world on foot.

  Courage buffeted the air beside her, shooting her a glare that spoke of disdain for the Shadow Princess’s inaction.

  “What?” The Shadow Princess asked in accusation.

  “You know. Why do you tarry and avoid attacking in earnest?” Courage regarded her with genuine curiosity, not the mocking tone she’d anticipated.

  “She has traps. I’m sure of it. She’s trying to bait us. Bait me.”

  Courage grinned at her mistake, then let out a breathy sigh. “It’s working you know. He’s helping us.”

  The Shadow Princess nodded. “Their fire doesn’t touch them. But how? Couldn’t be him, could it?”

  Courage smirked. “Yes, it’s Prodal, of course. I find it hard to believe you can be so naive sometimes.”

  “Get out of my head!” she screamed, snapping her eyes shut and drawing her wings in pro
tectively close. Courage vanished. She fell from the sky, air whistling in her ears. Her wings hissed open, and she glided low over the city rooftops. She opened her eyes and looked to the tower’s ramparts, finding the brightest figure of the bunch in a blood red outfit.

  “She tried to kill me,” she whispered. “Used a spell we’ve never seen before, lightning almost cutting us down. Can we risk it? Maybe my pets can kill her first before we go in. Maybe…” She shook her head. “No, there is no us. There is only me. Only me.” Even her own voice wasn’t compelling enough to convince her.

  “You know she’s right, don’t you?” Annoyance asked, gliding beside her. “Prodal is doing this. If I can feel him, so can you, disrupting our connection to the children.”

  “He’s not supposed to be here. How can he be doing this?”

  Annoyance laughed, her voice crisp and polished. “He transcends us. All of this, everything. Why must you question things you know as truth?”

  “No.” She twiddled her wings between flaps.

  Annoyance smirked. “Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t make it any less true.”

  A shadow appeared just ahead of her over the rooftops, a mirror image of her own. She looked up to find Anger regarding her with clenched teeth, voice a wolfish growl. “You wait while we die. Slay them! Slay them all! Or will you wait until we’re all dead, picked off one by one? Perhaps you’d like to send Larissa next to die?”

  “Stop,” the Shadow Princess whispered. “I still feel his pain, still feel the arrow…” She raised a hand to her eye.

  “Pathetic weakling! You’ll never be like Father, a pale shadow of his glorious reign,” Disgust hovered in front of her, forcing to make a hard bank to avoid a mid-air collision. “Go away!” she screamed, flapping her wings hard as she ascended higher and higher.

  The horde below her was now a wriggling dark mass, defenders among the tower shimmering dots. Up here where the air was thin and the sound distant, she could think. Up here, her duplicates abandoned her. Perhaps the others were right. Her forces were slowly thinned as she sent them in piecemeal. If there were any traps left to be unleashed, the Arch Cunt would’ve already done it.