Mourningbird

by Brock Deskins

  While some dust found its way around the mask’s edges and into her eyes and lungs, it did protect her from the haze enough that she wasn’t choking on it. Perhaps if Bertram had such a luxury he would not be seconds away from dying.

  It seemed impossible that the Necrophage could have heard her over the sound of the blowing wind, but some uncanny awareness caused him to look up. His speed was incredible. In the split second he had to react, he managed to divert his lance from Bertram to Kiera.

  Gravity was in full control, and there was no way for Kiera to avoid impaling herself. With reaction nearly as deft as Dorian’s had been, she kicked out to force the spear point aside. She brought her baton arcing down, but Dorian shifted, and it struck a glancing blow against his shoulder.

  Kiera hit the street, rolling to take away some of the energy from her hard landing. Dorian spun, leapt, and made to impale her just as he had been about to do to the inquisitor. Kiera launched her grapnel blindly behind her, triggering the retractor the instant she heard it contact something solid. She slid across the ground, and Dorian’s lance bit into the stone between her legs.

  Furious at the girl’s tenacity, Dorian ignored his previous target and ran at her, determined to put an end to these meddlesome humans’ harrying. He was the hunter, not them, and it was past time they came to understand their position in the new world he and his people would soon bring about.

  Dorian stalked toward his prey. Her gown was gone and she wore a different mask, but he knew her to be the same girl he had fought in the palace. He wanted to know who she was and why she was so troublesome, but he would be content sending her to her grave without such knowledge. Besides, he would pry enough information from her soul when he ripped it from her body.

  Kiera pretended to retreat in fear. The Necrophage fell for her ruse and hastened his steps. She snapped the grapnel gun up and sent the grapnel plowing into his shin. The impact caused Dorian to stumble and curse, but before he could bring his lance around to sever the cord, Kiera heaved on the line with all her strength.

  Dorian fell backward, striking the cobblestones with significant force. The nightbird leapt into the air, her baton held high to deliver a decisive strike. Dorian brought his lance around, lifted it above his face with both hands, and intercepted the blow. He shoved the girl’s baton aside, raised one hand, and sent a black bolt into her chest. Kiera flew back, and it was her turn to lay prostrate in the street.

  She fought to catch her breath as stars flashed in her vision. Dorian rose from the ground like the specter of death, little more than a tangible shadow in the hazy darkness. His void lance morphed, the end becoming a long blade. Kiera had the presence of mind to retract her grapnel before he cut the line and rendered it useless.

  A second silhouette appeared, an even blacker sword held aloft to strike the creature down from behind. Dorian spun at the last moment, sweeping his lance in a wide arc. Bertram leapt back, folding almost in half in an attempt to get clear of the swinging blade. He failed by the narrowest of margins. The blade parted the inquisitor’s coat as easily as it cut through the air. His white shimmersilk shirt shone brightly for a moment before his blood turned it almost black.

  Dorian reversed his stroke swifter than should have been possible and, even more unbelievably, turned it into a thrust the instant it came in line with his foe. Somehow, Bertram anticipated the move and managed to deflect it enough to send it whisking past his left side.

  Bertram countered with a powerful reverse slash that forced the Necrophage back on his heels. Dorian wove his lance in a series of arcs as Bertram battered at his defenses. The inquisitor’s brute force assault was not bereft of finesse, but the creature’s skill and power did not afford him the luxury of a more stylized display of dueling ability.

  Kiera ran at the Necrophage’s back. Dorian sent a tendril of dark magic snaking out around Bertram’s waist while thrusting his lance at Kiera. The shadowy appendage lifted Bertram from the ground and slammed him into the side of a building several yards away. Kiera batted at the lance with her baton and ducked beneath it.

  Bertram hacked at the tendril with his void-steel sword. The arcanstone pommel glowed with power, and smoke rose like a piece of iron pulled from a forge and thrust into a barrel of water as it cut through the black tentacle.

  Kiera scrambled backward as Dorian shifted his full attention onto her. His lance stabbed at her head and chest in rapid succession. It was all she could do to avoid the deadly thrusts. She tripped over the edge of the raised walkway as she retreated. Her feet beat a rapid tattoo on the sidewalk as she tried to keep from falling.

  It was a battle with gravity she was losing until Dorian’s spectral whip wrapped around her chest and held her fast. The unnaturally cold lash stole the breath from her lungs and, in her mind, the very soul from her body. Kiera tried to scream but lacked the air and strength to do so.

  As blackness crept into the corners of her vision, lightning flashed overhead and chased away the darkness for an instant. The hairs on Kiera’s arms and the back of her neck stood on end as a tingling in her chest crawled across her flesh. An arc of electricity erupted from her necklace, burning through both her shirt and the shadowy strand wrapped around her chest.

  The sound of Kiera’s gasp for breath was audible over the building storm. The air filling her lungs reinvigorated her muscles, and she lashed out with her baton. Dorian hopped back, avoiding the wild swing, but electricity ran down Kiera’s arm, leapt from the tip of her baton, and struck the Necrophage in the chest with a tiny lightning bolt.

  Dorian and Kiera stepped apart, both taken by surprise. Kiera did not have the luxury of dwelling on what had happened, knowing that the slightest hesitation would spell her death. She laid into the Necrophage with a barrage of strikes. Tiny blue sparks flew whenever her baton came in contact with the void lance, every parry sending a tingling sensation down her arm. She wasn’t sure if it was the weapon sending energy up her arm, or if she was sending it through the weapon.

  Bertram reappeared behind Dorian and slashed at his back. Dorian parried Kiera’s next strike and spun out of the entrapment, but Bertram’s blade found flesh. Dorian gasped at the pain, but he did not falter. Grabbing at the power stored in his soul stones like a drowning man scrambling onto flotsam, he spun his lance in a tight circuit around his body, unleashing a ring of energy. The power exploded out around him and struck not just Kiera and Bertram but blasted into the walls of the buildings around them.

  The shadowy shock wave sent the two humans flying through the air. Bertram struggled to regain his feet as well as his equilibrium, both proving to be a monumental task. Dorian gave him no respite and lunged forward with his lance extended. Pure reflex allowed Bertram to deflect the strike out wide.

  Dorian did not slow his stride. He bull-rushed the inquisitor, grabbed the torn flesh across his abdomen, and drove him back against the cracked and crumbling wall of a building. Black magic poured from Dorian’s hand into the wound. Blood that had been flowing down reversed course. It ran up Bertram’s chest and around his throat.

  Kiera’s grapnel struck Dorian in the back. “Get away from him!” she screamed as she heaved on the cord.

  Dorian tumbled backward, rolled, and tried to slash at the thin rope, but Kiera released and retracted the device. She did not have a spare spool or grapnel, and she was not about to lose her one and only advantage.

  The Necrophage snarled like a beast as he charged. Kiera loosed her grapnel at the nearest rooftop and streaked out of his immediate reach. She struck the side of the building hard, jarring her already battered body and reeling senses. She spun on the end of her rope and pushed off the wall with her feet to propel her onto the roof.

  Another bolt shattered a piece of the wall beneath her. Kiera chanced a look behind her and saw the creature scamper up the wall like a spider after her. Wasting no more time, she raced across the rooftop, jumped the narrow span to the next building, and propelled herself across the street
of the third.

  She landed hard and felt her ankle roll beneath her. It didn’t matter. There was no time for pain. Somehow, the creature was able to match her flight without mechanical aid. Her eyes went wide as Dorian leapt the span between buildings, looking like a great black bird in flight.

  Fear propelled her and numbed the agonizing pain in her ankle. Not wanting to risk further injury, she dropped to her stomach on the roof’s edge and lowered herself to the street below. Her best chance of survival now was to lose her pursuer in the storm, but to do that, she needed to gain some ground, ground Dorian was not willing to cede.

  Kiera jogged down a nearby alley with a limping gait and reeled herself up the side of the building midway down. She scrambled across the roofs of the next three buildings before dropping back down to the road.

  The storm had driven almost everyone indoors. Even the quasi-homeless found refuge wherever they could. Tens of thousands of people called Velaroth home, but the city was as deserted as Thuum or even Phaer.

  A nearby sound caught her attention, and she set off toward it. Through the haze of blowing sand, she made out the shape of a horse and a cabriolet. The owner fought to calm the animal enough to get it into the stall built onto the side of his home and business, but the storm had the animal terrified, and it resisted his efforts.

  Kiera prayed that she could convince the man to take her home. It would be foolish of him, but money, when offered in sufficient quantity, made fools of all men. She hobbled toward the struggling man and mount, but she found that the cab had already been detached. Even if she could bribe him to weather the storm for an exorbitant fare, it was doubtful he could harness the animal back up before the creature caught up with her.

  As if to dispel any illusion to the possibility of escape, Kiera felt a frigid band wrap around her ankles and pull her to the ground. She cried out and saw the cab driver glance toward her, but if he could see her, he clearly had no intention of coming to her aid and resumed his focus on controlling his valuable animal.

  Kiera’s free hand clawed at the baton that had fallen from her grasp, but Dorian hauled her in like a harpooned great worm. She fumbled for the other baton nestled in its sheath at her side. Dorian stepped on her wrist as she whipped it free and reeled back to strike him. He placed his other foot on her chest and smiled through the obvious pain she and Bertram had caused him in their battle.

  “I am going to take your soul,” Dorian cackled. “I will savor your torment for days, maybe weeks, before I extinguish you to oblivion.”

  Her necklace sent electricity traveling down her arm and arcing into the foot pinning her to the ground. The power pulsed in time with the lightning tearing across the sky. Dorian hissed at the pain but would not release his hold. He dispelled the shadow lash around her ankles and used the energy to create a minor ward to shield himself from the girl’s pitiful sparks.

  Kiera aimed the butt of her grapnel gun at the creature looming over her and triggered the rear-facing grapnel. The device struck Dorian in the chest, the tiny bits of mage glass sparking in protest as they punched through his ward. The impact was hard enough to elicit a grunt of pain but not enough to knock him back.

  “Savor this tiny victory,” Dorian said as he stared at the metal mushroom stuck to his chest. “It is the last one you will have in this life.”

  The Necrophage raised his lance to impale her and draw her soul into one of his stones. Kiera craned her head to look behind her, pointed her grapnel gun at the struggling horse across the street, and fired. Luck was with her. The grapnel struck the already panicked animal in the haunch and stuck fast. The horse whinnied in terror at this newest source of torment, reared, and bucked free of its handler’s grasping hands.

  The horse lashed out with both back hooves, one of them striking the poor man in the stomach. As bad as that was for him, the resulting effect was far worse for Dorian. The animal took off at a gallop, its hooves pounding the stone street with as much force as it could muster.

  Kiera ejected the spool an instant before the line went taut and dragged the Necrophage down the street at a bone-shattering pace. She rolled onto her stomach and watched Dorian disappear into the storm. Her last sight of him was of his body smashing into the side of a building when the horse careened around a corner.

  The nightbird struggled to her feet, flashed her signature rude gesture in the direction in which the creature and horse had disappeared, and hobbled down the street toward home.

  CHAPTER 25

  Top Hat did not put Russel down until they reached his waiting carriage several blocks away. He dropped Russel unceremoniously onto one of the seats and sat across from him.

  The odd, deadly man glanced at the bandage tied around Russel’s leg and raised his eyebrows. “How’s the wound? You are far too important to let bleed out.”

  Russel averted his eyes and rocked in his seat with his hands clasped tight to his chest, fingers twitching. Top Hat studied the boy with his odd tinkerer’s hat and lenses, wondering if all arcanists were in some way defective. Certainly the ones he knew were. Perhaps that was the nature of their ability, that some part of their brain had to be sacrificed in order to attain their unique skill.

  The young arcanist remained silent the entire ride despite Top Hat’s few attempts to engage him, not even bothering to sign his displeasure. The carriage clattered down the street, stopping at the heavy gate barring access to Fred’s manor, and rolling inside before halting once more a few seconds later.

  Grasping the back of his shirt collar, Top Hat pushed Russel out of the carriage and guided him inside. Russel’s eyes wandered over the mishmash of gaudy decorations, furniture, and baubles as his captor shoved him ahead of him. A man opened a door, and Top Hat shunted him inside, closing the door behind them.

  Fred stood up from behind his desk, walked over, and smiled down at the boy, his gold tooth gleaming in the light. “So this is why our men failed so dramatically to exterminate Kiera? He certainly doesn’t look like much, does he?”

  “No, but he cobbled together a rather impressive workshop out of little more than garbage, so he does not lack for ingenuity. Of course, then there is this.” He removed Ashlea’s arcanstone from his satchel and held it aloft.

  Fred’s eyes went wide as he took hold of the stone and cradled it in his large hands as if it were made of the most delicate porcelain. “How did he come by this?” He directed his fierce countenance toward Russel. “How did you get this, boy?”

  Russel stared back with a defiant glare.

  “Make him answer me,” Fred ordered.

  Top Hat said, “I don’t think he can speak, but he can communicate in a mix of standard, thief, and what I assume to be some sort of proprietary sign.”

  Fred turned his scowl back to the boy. “Where did you get this? Answer me!”

  When Russel refused to respond, Top Hat reached down, clamped a hand around Russel’s leg wound, and squeezed. Russel cried out, and only Top Hat’s restraining hand on his arm kept him from falling to the floor.

  “You belong to me now,” Fred said, his voice low and flat. “You are my property to do with as I please. Whether I treasure and protect you like a priceless valuable or beat you like a stubborn rammox is entirely up to you. Now, how did you get this stone?”

  Russel ground his teeth as he fought past the pain and his own recalcitrance. “Twinkle star. Flash, zap, dream time. Took it from masked man.”

  Fred looked at his cohort. “What in the Tormented Plane does that mean? Are all arcanists defective?”

  “It certainly appears to be a common problem,” Top Hat replied with a shrug, and held up Russel’s flasher. “I think he may be referring to this. It produces a strobing light that causes some disorientation.”

  Fred put the stone back in its box, placed it on the desk behind him, and took the flasher. He turned the device over in his hand, studying it. “Brian, come in here,” he shouted at the closed door.

  The door opened, and
a man stepped into Fred’s office. “Sah?”

  Fred took a couple of steps toward Brian. “Look at this,” Fred ordered, closed his eyes, and pressed the button.

  The fingernail-sized piece of mage glass flashed a rapid pattern of light and winked out a second later. Fred opened his eyes and found Brian standing stock still, his eyes vacant, and a tendril of drool running out of the corner of his mouth as it slowly reached for the floor.

  Fred slid the flasher into a pocket, snapped his fingers before the stricken man’s face, and smiled. “You are clever indeed. We shall see what you can do with a proper workshop and assistants.”

  “There is one other thing,” Top Hat said. “When I captured him, I was attacked by some sort of…projection.”

  “Projection?”

  “Yes, like a phantasm of a girl. She struck me with electric shocks until I threatened the boy. I believe she came from inside the stone.”

  “Inside the stone in what way?”

  Top Hat shrugged. “I cannot say. It may be nothing more than that, a projection created by a lonely boy who wanted some female company he could not otherwise attain. I just thought it interesting enough to mention.”

  “Odd is certainly the word, just odd. But as long as he makes me weapons capable of defeating Rafferty and Nimat, he can make an illusionary harem for all I care. Still, we don’t want anyone to learn I have the stone, so best get it as far away as we can and quickly. Take the boy downstairs, Mr. Ridley. We won’t be able to fly out of here until the storm breaks.”

  Top Hat nodded and guided Russel out of the room. Fred walked over to Brian and snapped his fingers in front of his face once again. When that failed to elicit a response, he slapped the man hard enough to knock him back. Brian stumbled but managed to catch himself before falling.