by Davis Ashura
Aia slammed into the tiger. She was bigger, smarter, faster, and more ferocious. In seconds, her jaws snapped onto the tiger’s throat, and she disemboweled the creature. She gave the unformed a final shake before dropping the creature and padding toward William. She licked his forehead with her raspy tongue, leaving a bloody streak behind. *Stay here,* Aia said. *You’ve done enough.*
William ignored the throbbing pain in his arms, the bone-deep, burning sensation in his back, and levered himself upright. His vision swam, and he had to lean on Aia to remain on his feet. He took a pause to once again form the healing braid Ward had taught him. Blood still seeped from his wounds, but at least it wasn’t pouring out like from a faucet.
*What about the unformed?* he asked.
Aia gestured with her head. *Look for yourself. They’re in retreat.*
The unformed had broken. They fled south, still on foot and heading for Lakshman’s Bow and Jake’s magi. While he watched, their wretched remnants—no more than a dozen of them—collided with Jake’s magi. A flash of steel, of lashing Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, and the unformed finally took to the sky. Only eight managed to transform into falcons and wing their way to safety.
William snarled. No chance I’m letting them get away. He let the raging spirit dwelling within him, the red-eyed beast, surge to life. It allowed him to ignore his pain. He sourced his lorethasra and created the lightning weave he’d used earlier. The braids in his hands coiled and hissed like snakes.
William thrust out his arms and the weaves lengthened, streaming into the sky. The braids split into eight lances of lightning. Each one stabbed skyward and pierced a falcon. William smiled in satisfaction when many of the unformed screamed in pain. They transformed into falling pyres. They plunged to the ground, crashing as blackened corpses. All but four. Those had somehow consumed the lightning and raced away to safety.
William watched the birds for a moment. He swayed on his feet and heard both Rukh and Shon shout Jessira’s name in terror. They sounded like they were a mile away. Whatever had sparked their alarm, William couldn’t help with it. He had nothing left to give. He dropped to the ground.
Serena watched the unfolding battle on the beach, unsure of what to do or how to help. The mahavans were entirely focused on Jessira as she decimated their numbers. Seven of them were already down.
A flicker at the corner of Serena’s vision caught her attention. She shifted her gaze and her heart seized.
A white-hot lance of fire roared from Demolition. The Servitor and his Spear. It had to be. The air shimmered in the heat-haze of the Fire’s passage.
Serena shouted a warning. “Jessira!”
Jessira must have noticed the oncoming attack at the last moment. She held a hand out as if to stop the Fire. Something like electricity sparked from each of her fingers and encased her in the green webbing of her Shield.
The blast of Fire slammed into her. The webbing brightened and sizzled like meat landing on an overheated pan. Jessira dropped her sword, gritted her teeth, and thrust out both hands. More electricity bled forth. Her feet carved lines into the sand as she was slowly pushed back.
The Fire kept coming. Jessira’s protective webbing brightened further. It glowed red. Her face was a rictus of effort and pain.
The mahavans merely watched, seemingly transfixed.
Serena threw off her hesitation and rushed forward. She didn’t know if she could help, but she had to try. She called up a wall of water from Lilith Bay. Steam erupted where it contacted the Servitor’s Fire. A concussive blast knocked Serena off her feet, but she scrambled upright. She’d ended the Fire, but Jessira had been smashed twenty feet away. She lay unmoving.
The second time today. Serena hoped she still lived but finding out would have to wait. She still had to fight three mahavans. She recognized them, had trained with them, and counted one as an ally at one time. They all glared at her with faces full of hate.
“Traitor,” Brandon Thrum spat.
The words didn’t touch her. Serena smiled at Brandon. Sword ready, she taunted him, gesturing him toward her.
He surprised, losing his mahavan equilibrium. He shouted inarticulately and sprang forward, outstripping the others. He didn’t even bother using his lorethasra.
Sloppy to let his anger control him so.
Serena slid to the side and didn’t bother parrying. Brandon tried to spin and keep her in front of him. Too slow. She snapped off a question-mark kick. It crunched into Brandon’s head, and he face-planted, instantly unconscious.
Serena moved on.
Another mahavan, a young man, Quinn Clair, challenged her. He held a weave at the ready. Serena attacked. She feinted a diagonal slash. The mahavan bit and moved to parry. Serena pulled her strike and hit out with an arrow of Air. It whistled until it stabbed into the mahavan’s chest. He fell dead as blood fountained from his wound.
The final mahavan, another man, this one older, was Park Alawah.
Serena sent a feint. Park didn’t take the bait. He thrust forward. Serena retreated. Park sent a swift slash. Serena, unready for the man’s speed, clumsily managed a parry. She shifted, going with the flow of contact. Park, old but crafty, was ready. He cracked her in the head with an elbow. Serena almost dropped her sword. Her vision swam. She stumbled away, barely blocked a lunge, and evaded Park’s next attack on instinct alone.
She sensed a weave of Earth and Water beneath her feet and jumped aside. A spear of Air hurtled toward her. She called up Fire to burn it away. Park hurled another spear of Air. She dodged this one. Water softened the ground around her feet. She leapt away and rolled under a powerful overhand strike.
The momentary respite allowed her vision and balance to restore. Serena set herself and waited as Park advanced.
Fire screamed at her, but she snuffed it out with Earth. She doused another lance of Fire.
By silent accord, Serena and Park stepped back, each one measuring the other.
The momentary standoff ended.
Serena sent a questing slash at Park’s neck. He blocked it, but Serena saw a possible opening in his defense. His recovery was late. I hope. Serena sent another questing slash. Again, Park parried, but as she’d noticed a second ago, he was slow to recover.
Serena sent an upward rising slash that transitioned into a lunge. Park blocked the first but couldn’t evade the second. Serena sliced into his bicep.
Park winced, and his sword dipped.
Serena took the opportunity and attacked. Her strikes came hard and fast. A thrust. Parry a return. Diagonal slice leading to a hammer blow with her hilt.
Park reeled away, blood flowing from where she’d bashed him on the forehead. A line of Earth tripped him and he fell with a thud. Serena finished him off with a single thrust to the throat.
Park hissed out his last breath, and Serena paused then, taking stock of her situation. She stood amongst a field of corpses. Her head drooped over how many she’d killed and how little she regretted it.
Axel waited impatiently aboard Demolition and watched as four falcons winged his way. He recognized them as unformed. But where are the rest of them? Where were the hundreds of mahavans he’d sent to destroy the magi? He’d known their losses in today’s battle would be extravagant, but only these four? It couldn’t be.
And yet . . .
Axel hadn’t heard from Adam in hours, not since his brother had called earlier and said his forces were approaching Lilith. He worried now what the lack of further information might foretell.
Axel continued to study the unformed as they flew closer, and the entire time he continued to hope that these four weren’t the only survivors of the forces he’d sent ashore. Even outnumbered, his mahavans should have rolled the soft magi like a flood washing away a farmer’s crops. Perhaps the unformed speeding toward Demolition were the vanguard of his returning, victorious warriors.
Hope bloomed in Axel’s heart. He had to believe it was true. Otherwise, events had transitioned from worrisome to
dire. His fleet had already been obliterated—only Demolition remained afloat. He couldn’t afford it if his mahavans had also been extinguished. Axel scowled at the possibility, not bothering to hide his emotions as those weaker than he were forced to do.
The loss of his other ships had been the fault of the female World Killer, Jessira Shektan. Axel had seen her on the beach, and a shallow tingle of pleasure climbed his spine. He’d hurt the woman, possibly killed her—would have killed her if not for Serena’s interference. She’d interceded and saved the World Killer. Axel could have still slain Jessira, but the killing blow would have also resulted in Serena’s death.
He hadn’t been able to do it. Love for his daughters was the one weakness he allowed himself.
Axel threw off his morbid thoughts when he saw that the unformed would arrive in a few minutes. While he waited for them to fly the final half-mile, he returned his attention to Lilith.
The village burned. Fires raged on nearly all of its terraces, dull red to yellow in color, and a continuous, low-pitched, crackling rumble emanated from them. Thick columns of smoke lofted skyward, intermittently concealing the village. The buildings on top of the cliffs hadn’t fared much better. They too, burned, overcome by an inferno of flames and a thick pall of soot.
It wasn’t enough. Axel could still see hundreds of magi on Clifftop struggling to contain the blazes. Whether they succeeded or not, it didn’t matter to him. They lived, and he wouldn’t have it. They’d stolen his raha’asras and his daughters. They had attacked his home, and he knew they would try to do to Sinskrill what he had done to Arylyn. They would come for him.
But only if they can source lorethasra.
“Ready Executioner,” Axel commanded.
Mavahans raced about to carry out his order. It took two of them to lift the shell he had called for. It was a massive, bullet-shaped nomasra the length of a short spear and with the heft of a boulder. The mahavans set it within Axel’s cannon, but the bore couldn’t entirely contain it. The tip of the shell poked past the end of the barrel, glistening with an oily, black sheen.
Axel sourced his ocean-deep lorethasra and the scent of burning oil filled his nostrils. He’d long since learned to ignore its acrid scent. He quickly created braids as thick as his thighs. They gurgled, hissed, pulsed, and throbbed across his chest, torso, and abdomen. He sourced deeper. The braids thickened, and he collected them in his hands.
He sent the weaves into the shell, and it sucked them up like a vast desert. He kept pouring more and more of the Elements into Executioner. The shell finally warmed. Its oily blackness eventually built to a white-hot color too painful to stare at. It lit up, brighter than any previous munition he had fired and cast dark shadows all about. The cannon’s barrel couldn’t entirely contain the heat, and it also glowed dull-red.
Axel shielded his eyes and measured the moment. The shell whined. Its pitch rose higher and higher, became a banshee scream as it continued to shine ever brighter.
Now. Axel thinned his Spirit and released Executioner, which exploded from the barrel with a whoosh. It erupted skyward, trailing a comet tail of light during its ascension. Axel remained tied to it and guided its movement. It soared ever higher.
The magi tried to wrest control of it away from him. They might as well have tried to pry a bone away from a bear. Axel wouldn’t let go of the shell. He aimed it like a dagger at Lilith’s heart, at the center of the village. Executioner arched above the buildings atop the cliff, and Axel swelled its size. He inflated it until it bloomed as large as a hot air balloon he’d once seen in his time as a bishan in the Far Beyond. Soon.
Axel readied himself. Once he unclipped control of the shell, it would explode over the heads of his enemies. Not all the magi would be affected by what he intended, perhaps not even many, but maybe it would be enough.
Now! Axel exploded the shell and watched for a few moments as a nacreous cloud drifted across the buildings above the cliffs. He smiled in satisfaction. Good.
He turned away from the horror he had unleashed and called out orders. Demolition’s sails puffed with air, and they were swiftly underway.
Moments later, the unformed landed and transformed. Adam, Jeek, and two others.
Axel stood impassively as he prepared to receive his brother. He wondered if he’d have to kill his latest Secondus for failing him.
Adam did his best to avoid the fighting taking place all around him. He especially held his distance from the giant cats tearing through the unformed like a storm of claws and teeth. He’d never seen anything like them. He also remained at a distance from Travail, who swung a staff the size of a felled tree. The troll clobbered the unformed, braining or smashing them to bloody pieces. He even inched away from William in newfound respect. The young raha’asra blazed energy and danger, fighting with all his Elements.
However, nothing concerned Adam as much as Rukh. The man remained every bit as deadly as Adam remembered. He destroyed everything he came across, crushed unformed left and right. Nothing tested him or those strange cats.
Adam edged farther from the battle, eyeing it in alarm. It shouldn’t have ended like this. Despite his improvised plan, it still should have worked. He was a Walker. He’d listened in while the magi discussed the dispersal of their warriors. They had held back a large intercepting force north of Janaki Valley and cannon crews to defend Lilith itself. However, both were out of position, one too far north and the other on the wrong side of Clifftop. Adam had strategized accordingly. He’d left a reserve squad—a sacrificial force—to pin down the bulk of the magi forces centered near Mount Madhava. Another unit of cannon crews had been sent racing to Lilith to destroy the village and escape in the chaos. The unformed would have then swooped in and ravaged the survivors.
Given the fires raging over Lilith the cannon crews must have accomplished their part of mission, but Adam didn’t believe they’d escaped. He could see their bodies strewn on the other side of the broad bridge crossing River Namaste, along with a force of magi heading toward his position. As for the unformed—
A trumpeting elephant snapped Adam’s attention back to the battle. It was lost. The unformed had been destroyed. There was no point in remaining here.
“Unformed! Take flight and flee!” Adam shouted. He had enough energy remaining to transform into a falcon, and he hoped some of the others did as well.
Less than a ten unformed took flight alongside him. They beat their wings hard, fighting for height and speed. Adam believed they might make it free of the carnage when a light blazed from the ground.
He glanced back. His falcon eyes easily picked out a magus, William, holding a fistful of light that burned as bright as the sun. Adam’s eyes widened. Braids leapt into the sky. One touched his chest, sticking to him like a line of spider web. He reached for his lorethasra to cut the braid attaching him to William.
Lances of lightning surged up the sticky braids.
Adam had an instant to prepare himself. The lightning hit, burning like a branding iron. He shouted in pain. Panic threatened, but he managed to maintain his senses. He reached past the pain and held onto his lorethasra. He channeled the lightning, letting it flow through his body and into a quickly spun weave of Earth.
The lightning snapped off, and Adam breathed in relief. A second later, his relief became anger and fear when he realized that only three other unformed had survived the battle and the lightning. He cursed. What had William done? His attention turned to Demolition. The ship floated in Lilith Bay. It sailed alone. The rest of the ships burned.
Adam gaped. The fleet was destroyed. All the mahavans were dead. Nearly all the unformed were similarly destroyed. He cursed anew at the disaster that had befallen Sinskrill.
Selene huddled between Mrs. Karllson, Ms. Sioned, and about twenty other people in Mr. Reed’s tailor shop on Clifftop. Bolts of fabric lined the walls, and everyone sat on cushioned chairs, sweating in stale air that smelled of mothballs, hemp, and soot.
Lilith burn
ed all around them. Flames engulfed a building across the street, and Selene watched as people ran around trying to control the fire’s fury. Thick tendrils of smoke curled upward like a snake. It drifted apart, forming a curtain that wrapped the sky in a black shawl. The world contained the gloom of a perpetual twilight.
Selene tried to close her ears to the screams from outside, forcing herself to remember what it meant to be a drone, how to control her emotions and act like nothing bothered her.
But she was bothered, terrified by the events of the past few days, especially for Serena, William, and Jake . . . for all the people in her life. They were out there fighting her father and his mahavans. What if they died?
Selene immediately cut off the line of her thoughts. Her family, all her loved ones, would survive. They had to. But what if they don’t? What if father destroys Lilith?
Again, Selene sought to cut off the terrifying trend her mind kept taking. She took a deep breath, trying to keep her thoughts from tumbling into disarray like River Namaste over the cataracts. I’m not afraid of anything. Another deep breath. I’m not afraid of anything.
She repeated the mantra, and her heart settled. It slowed down and began beating more easily.
Selene exhaled in relief, but an instant later, another explosion made her yip in fear.
Mrs. Karllson reached over and gave her hand a supportive squeeze. “It’ll be fine. The mahavans won’t win.”
Selene wished she could believe her, but she didn’t.
More explosions blasted into Lilith, and Selene covered her ears and pressed her head against her knees. Fear quickly became rage. She wanted to scream. She wanted all this to be done with. She wanted her father and his mahavans to go away. Selene gritted her teeth. No, she wanted to kill the mahavans, destroy them all like they were trying to destroy Lilith.
