Ghostflame (The Dragon's Scion Book 2)

by Alex Raizman

  “Tythel…” Tellias said, coughing roughly before he couldn’t continue. “Get out of here…they’ll be waiting when the fire clears…”

  Tellias descended into another round of hacking coughs, and Tythel chose to ignore his protest. He was absolutely right. They’d seen her survive fire, they’d expect her to take refuge in the flame.

  Thankfully, that wasn’t her entire plan.

  Many of the landmarks she’d been relying on had been burned away in the fire, but Tythel didn’t need to see what she was looking for. She could hear it, the wind whistling by.

  Tellias still cradled in her arms, Tythel took a step towards salvation. Each footstep was like walking up a river, and the weight of Tellias in her arms was burning her shoulders. The slice in her side from the Umbrist’s spear was screaming in protest, and Tythel had to grit her teeth against the pain before she could take another step. Then a third. The effort was greater than she’d imagined, and her lungs started to burn – not from heat and smoke and flame, but from the sheer exertion of carrying this much weight.

  Halfway there, Tythel told herself. You’re halfway to safety.

  A burning log fell in front of her path, missing her by a tiny distance. She crushed the half-burned wood under her foot and felt splinters dig into her scales. She wasn’t sure if they broke the skin. Her ankles were in enough pain to make it impossible to tell.

  He shouldn’t be this heavy, Tythel thought, but pushed the thought aside. It was extraneous, useless, and needless – and the answer was obvious. Tythel had spent a day draped over a shoulder. She’d been in a fight, she’d burned strength with dragonflame, and she hadn’t slept since yesterday morning. Tellias wasn’t abnormally heavy – she was just exhausted.

  She could see her destination ahead and took a step with renewed confidence.

  Her foot landed in a hole belonging to some small, burrowing animal, and she collapsed to the ground. She could feel something in her ankle give and involuntarily roared at the sudden pain radiating up from her leg. Her ankle was blazing with pain.

  “Tythel!” Tellias said, fighting back a cough, his voice more insistent. “You have to go!”

  Tythel looked down at him, staring directly into the helmets eye hole. He was right. He was absolutely right. The safest option would be to leave him and run to safety.

  “No,” she growled, and she wrapped her hands under Tellias’ ankle. “I’m not losing anyone else.” Gingerly, she put weight on the injured leg. It protested, but it didn’t cave. Just a twist then.

  Tythel heaved Tellias along the ground for the last few steps, tears springing to her eyes with each weight on her bad ankle, before they finally reached what Tythel desperately had hoped was safety.

  Together, they tumbled into the hole in the earth Catheon had created.

  Chapter 29

  The lurching corpses didn’t walk like men, nor did they crawl like beasts. They shambled along the ground, crawling with unnatural motions that stretched their feet too far forwards, their hands too far back. Every motion was jerking and halting, and by all rights the undead should have been moving at a slow, faltering gait. Somehow, however, the motions gave the horrors a sense of fluidity when combined, and their progress was faster than Armin would have expected It was a mockery of human motion, a nightmare symphony composed by someone that wanted to deliberately twist and pervert the very nature of movement itself.

  Armin finally got the arccell into place, the satisfying click letting him know it was finally connected. The lines along the side and butt of his arcwand began to glow a bright crimson as it drew power. He took a deep breath to steady his hands then, in a single swift motion, raised the weapon and took aim.

  He wasn’t the only one making preparations. Clarcia had raised her right hand into the air and clenched her left into a fist. Armin recognized the motion – it was meant to draw in light, inviting the energy to flow into the lumcasters open palm and travel through their body so it could condense within their clenched hand. The veins of the closed hand were already starting to glow with the energy trapped within them. Beside her, Guiart had drawn his own arcwand and was raising it towards the approaching monstrosities. His hands weren’t as steady as Armin’s – he was a driver, not a shooter, and it showed in the unease way the tip of his arcwand weaved back and forth.

  Aildreda faded into the shadows of a nearby alcove, not yet powering up her weaponry. She would strike when the moment was right, and not an instant sooner. Knowing she was there was a comfort for Armin – it reminded him of fighting alongside Eupheme. Aildreda might not have the umbrist’s ability to walk through the Shadow, but she was more than capable of hiding in darkness and stabbing at the opportune moment.

  And Ossman…

  Ossman bellowed a wordless challenge and drew his axe, charging the abominations head on.

  Armin cursed and fired a beam of unlight into the lead undead. It hit the necrotized flesh and sizzled. The creature was completely unphased by the injury and continued to advance. Of course, Armin thought, and then Ossman was in among them, his axe coming down on the lead undead. It split the creature’s skull in twain, the two halve flopping to the side as Ossman’s arcbladed axe was able to cut it all the way down to the neck.

  Ossman stood there for a moment, looking both disgusted and pleased with what he’d accomplished.

  Then the undead’s two eyes – now far wider apart than they had been – looked up at Ossman, and the former man reached for him was hands that grasped like claws.

  Ossman stumbled back, batting away the grasping arms with the flat of his axe.

  Armin opened fire again, this one catching one of the undead in the elbow. It separated the arm from the limb and set the corpse tumbling to the ground. Ossman’s axe flashed, and the creature lost a leg as well.

  Somehow, it still managed to lurch towards Ossman. Armin knew his friend well. He could see fear was beginning to settle in, and Ossman took several quick steps back, sweat beginning to bead on his brow. The severed arm began to inch forward along the ground by its fingers, the rest of the limb growing flexible and slithering like a snake.

  Armin cursed under his breath. The undead could only be destroyed permanently if they were reduced to ash. Only one person had that power, and Clarcia was still drawing power. Guiart was firing, although he didn’t have Armin’s aim. His shots were mostly those of a soldier – hitting the undead in their torsos. While it managed to cut out huge chunks of flesh, it did nothing to impede them.

  They needed to buy more time. As much as he hated doing so, Armin took another deep breath and drew a bit of Light.

  In front of him, lines began to emerge along the skin of the undead.

  He hadn’t told anyone about this yet. Ever since he’d drawn light directly from the sunstone, ever since his eyes had been changed to glow like the corona of an eclipse, he could use light in one way that he’d never heard before – by holding onto it, he could see the lines of power that flowed with any lumcasting.

  It was heretical to even attempt it. Man was not meant to see the flow of light, only its effects. He was playing in the realm of the Little Gods – and even they would surely think twice before such blasphemy.

  But what he could see, he could target. Arcwands shot beams of concentrated light. It should be enough to disrupt the field containing the shadow. Free it, allow it to disperse.

  He just had to commit blasphemy to allow it happen.

  Forgive me, Armin begged as he took aim.

  He focused on one of the uninjured undead. The node of light that contained the trapped shadow was located directly under the creature’s right armpit. Armin took aim at the node and let loose a blast.

  His aim was off. He hit the undead just under the armpit. That arm now hung limply, strands of flesh barely connecting it to the larger body, but it still remained animate. Armin wavered. It gave the undead an opportunity to reach out and wrap brittle fingers around Ossman’s ankles. Another undead surged forw
ard and drew lines of blood along Ossman’s chest with fingers that ended in wickedly curved claws.

  Armin took a deep, steadying breath, and fired again.

  This time, his aim was true. The beam of arcfire intersected the node perfectly. The undead paused for a moment.

  Then darkness exploded outward from it, a long-trapped shadow freed from the creature’s corpse. It swirled in the air like a hungry cloud of smoke, searching for a vessel and finding none.

  And it was broken. Webs of something akin to light crisscrossed its mass, spiderwebs binding and containing the darkness, trying to force it into action.

  Unlight, Armin thought, his breathing stopping. Ossman cleaved the head from the undead that had attacked him and stepped back over the broken corpse of the one that Armin had broken. “How did you manage that shot?” Clarcia asked.

  “Luck!” Armin said, hoping he didn’t sound as disingenuous as he felt. “Was just trying to finish off the arm.”

  The shadow should have dispersed. The shadow would have dispersed if it had been ordinary necromancy. But the unlight trapped the shadow, bound it, and forced it to action. It floated up to the ceiling, where it waited.

  Waited for a new body to inhabit.

  Guiart screamed in sudden pain. One of the undead had slipped past Ossman while Armin was woolgathering. A beam of arclight shot out, severing the hand that had gripped Guiart’s arm, fingers digging into his bicep.

  Aildreda had emerged from the alcove she’d stepped into. She drew her sword and charged in, the blade singing through the air.

  “I need just a few more seconds!” Clarcia said, her voice straining from the power she was holding. Armin could see it clearly now. She glowed to his eyes like the sun – warm and painful to look at for more than an instant.

  Armin just hoped they could buy her the time she needed.

  ***

  “I need a few more seconds!” Clarcia shouted. Ossman stepped out of range of the nearest undead and swung his axe in a wide arc, the scratches in his chest burning lines of heat from where the undead had drawn blood. The unlight blade bit into undead flesh, but didn’t sever anything. In the stories he had grown up hearing, he would have paused in the battle and raised his axe towards Armin as a gesture of respect for freeing him from the clutches of the monster. Armin would have given him a solemn nod of camaraderie, and they would have resumed fighting.

  Ossman had seen people do such stupid things in battle. Acts of bravado and foolish wastes of time. Saluting while the enemy was still fighting, attempting dramatic speeches, heroic last stands.

  Every single one of them was now dead. Heroism, as far as Ossman could tell, was usually used as a synonym for stupidity. True heroes should fight for what matters. Being a moron should not be a prerequisite. So long as it was, Ossman was fine not being a hero. He’d settle for being a soldier with morals.

  And what Clarcia didn’t seem to understand was that a few seconds was an eternity in a fight like this. Battles could last for days, weeks, even months. But in the heat of the moment, grappling for life or death with an implacable foe, things were often decided in a fraction of a second.

  So he did what he always did. He did what he’d done in those dark days of the Collegium Rebellion, when he’d stood aside Armin and countless others – most of whom were dead now, none of them old enough to have earned the title of ‘adulthood’ yet. He did what he’d done at the Pass of Uramih, when the soldiers of the Alohym had first deployed their unlight weapons against a rebellion still wearing mail and carrying wooden shields and steel blades. He did what he’d done at the battle outside the Alohym factory alongside Armin, and Eupheme, and Tythel.

  He did what he’d always done in the face of terrible odds and impossible tasks. He planted his feet on the ground and said “I will not bend.” To avoid giving a lie to his earlier thoughts on heroism, he punctuated each word with a swing from his axe.

  Necrotized flesh was sent flying, fingers still twitching with an unholy desire to dig into mortal flesh, hands still grasping at throats they could not reach.

  If the undead creatures understood his words, they cared about them as little as they did the slow dismemberment he was inflicting upon them. He saw no flicker of recognition on those still human faces, no acknowledgement he’d even spoken. They continued their mindless advance, crawling along the floor with a gait no living creature had ever matched.

  It was disquieting. Ossman was used to his axe being the final word in any argument. He’d had it bounce off of imperiplate, only cracking the Alohym-forged armor, but that was expected. Imperiplate had been nigh-indestructible most of his life. It was like expecting his axe to slice through a block of solid granite.

  He wasn’t used to slicing the head off a creature and having the creature’s torso continue to advance on him with malign purpose.

  And to make matters worse, there were the voices. Twisted wrong don’t belong slice and smash and cut release the wrong cut the wrong holding wrong so much wrong slice their necks turn on flesh free us free us the taint the rot the corrupt kill and maim and slay. They’d been omnipresent ever since his near-dunk in the Lumwell, lurking on the edges of his consciousness.

  He hadn’t told Armin or Tythel. They would have just worried about him, insisted he sit on the sideline. Like Armin hadn’t kept fighting when his eyes had turned black and gold. Like Tythel hadn’t kept fighting when she’d been poisoned by unlight. They wouldn’t have seen it that way – they would say it was different. He certainly hadn’t told Eupheme. The idea of the sick concern on her face was too much to bear – almost as bad as the idea that she might think less of him.

  They didn’t understand. The three of them were imbued, each, with powers beyond the ken of normal men. Light, Shadow, and Draconic might. They could recover from injuries that would leave Ossman a broken shell of who he had been.

  That did not mean he was made of glass.

  Ossman brought his axe down on the headless torso with enough fury that his axe bit into the stone beneath the abomination. He felt a sudden pressure at his back. Kill! The voice demanded.

  Ossman ignored the order. A quick glance told him who was there.

  Aildreda had managed to reach him. She pressed her back against his, and together they began to dance with the undead that swarmed around them. Ossman’s steps were firm and heavy, hers were light and nimble, yet they found a rhythm. There were so many undead, many of them formed from the pieces of the creatures. There was a hand on the end of a leg, here was a decapitated head striding on three arms. They kept finding each other, forming new horrors to create, and advancing.

  Together, Aildreda and Ossman cut them down, as arcbeams from Armin and Guiart flew through the air.

  It was too much. They were being overrun. These undead beings were tireless, but Ossman and Aildreda were made of only flesh and blood. They would tire. They were tiring. It was…

  ..it was getting brighter. Clarcia held up her hand that had been balled into a fist. It glowed like a miniature sun, but Ossman could see through the glow, see how her hand was cracking under the strain.

  For the first time in weeks, the voices in his head went silent.

  Ossman shut his eyes against the intense surge of light, but it shone through his lids so intensely, he had to cover them with his hands. Even then, the intensity shone through.

  Then it started to fade, and with it came the greatest thing for a soldier to hear after a long battle. Silence. Blessed, beautiful, silence.

  Calm but wary use and find and kill and kill and kill and…