Traces of necrotic dust were found on foliage several miles away, and it was the same variety found in the exhaust generated by Ebon Cities’ warships. There was just enough residue found to serve as proof that vampires had been in the area, and recently.
At 1300 hours, shortly before Danica’s dream visions told her the Ebon Cities would launch a devastating offensive against Thornn, Elias Pike led the 4th, 5th and 9th Platoons, Tiger Company, in a pre-emptive strike against what appeared to be little more than some empty plains outside the city.
Black had offered to get the team involved, not only to prove that she stood behind her words, but because it really was their city, regardless of what she might have said. It had become their home, and it was a human city, one way or the other. Mercenaries or no, Cross had assembled the group to do good, to help in the war effort, and it would have been a dishonor to him to do anything different.
But Pike, surprisingly, trusted her, and so Black and the others made their final preparations to leave while they watched the battle transpire on the cracked and blurry screen. They were able to appreciate the tactics of the situation from their distant vantage.
Had the vampires launched their attack, the outer city defenses wouldn’t have had time to respond. Even the automated cannons and flame launcher sentry posts would at best have put up token resistance. Undead and gargoyle soldiers could have penetrated the walls, and then the real damage would come.
The fact that the Ebon Cities sent two full Wings meant they had a tactical advantage. While one Wing drew the city’s defenses towards them, the second cloaked Wing could move in.
It was a brilliant plan, so long as they avoided detection before they began the attack.
Mortar blasts tore the earth in two stretches of open ground north and west of the city. Explosions tore up and down the plains. Plumes of smoke exploded into the sky. Raw flesh and bone matter came down in clumps, visible only after the bodies were destroyed. Detonation fumes rose from the frosted ground.
The rhythmic bursts could be heard from well within the city, and it was eerie to watch the events unfold on screen.
Bloodhawks strafed the pre-sighted area with motorguns and chain cannons. Mages assembled on the walls with their spirits cast around them like capes of cold fire. Flame cannons were powered up, and M2 Brownings were re-positioned to more efficiently fire into the sky near Moon Gate.
Only the soldiers of Tiger Company deployed. The entire sizable and well-armed contingent of the city guard that manned the area was pulled all of the way back to Centertown and held in reserve.
Ebon Cities crafts appeared after the strafing began. There was no way to tell if the cloaking devices had been disrupted, or if the vampires simply determined they were no longer needed. Either way, the subterfuge had come to an end, and Danica watched with apprehension as crawling war machines with bone carapaces and bladed cannons phased out of thin air. Their treads cut into the earth like claws.
Vampire warships floated close to the ground. Their turbines blasted the earth black with vile energies while thick chains dragged skeletal remains through the dirt.
Razorwings mounted by groups of vampires armed with bone rifles and razor swords soared overhead.
A single Coffin – an aerial troop transport shaped like a massive iron box and decorated with sharp guns and rotating beds of spikes – appeared near the back-end of the vampire forces. The large vessel was doubtlessly filled with zombies, war wights, kaithoren and murderwraiths.
Clawed reptile beasts with short crenellated horns and translucent green eyes pounced to the front of the assault. They ripped into the stone and literally ran up Thornn’s walls.
Gargoyle shock troops swathed in black-and-green armor and equipped with razor nets and caustic bolas roved in aerial gangs.
Undulating flesh wings and dripping tentacle beasts that spun and lashed at the air filled the ranks of the undead forces.
Even with the scores of bodies and destroyed ships left in the wake of Thornn’s preliminary strike, there was still a small army of undead outside the walls.
The shooting started, and the air ripped apart.
Very little of what transpired after that was visible on the screen in the mansion. Dust and haze and drifts of arcane steam obscured clear vision of the battle. Explosive blasts of lightning and flame shook the city. Hex energies turned the air thick. Black bursts of smoke fell over Thornn.
Machinegun fire and charged corrosive blasts echoed in the distance. Vehicles rammed into one another, and armored reptiles howled. Gargoyles from separate sides of the battle cackled and cursed at one another in their garbled and ancient tongue.
Gol-piloted dirigibles floated by, surrounded by small clouds of messenger homunculi. The sky was crowded with war spirits and angry ghosts.
Black walked to the window of the observation room. She could see most of Centertown from the mansion, but the walls where the fighting took place were distant, just a dark line against the afternoon sun. The sky was pale where it wasn’t dominated by iron clouds. The wind was cold and smelled of gunsmoke and blood.
The team was restless.
Black knew that Kane and Ronan wished themselves at the battle: they wanted, needed to be a part of that fight, to be there with the regular soldiers as they defended their home.
Surprisingly, it was a feeling she struggled with herself. Danica Black had been alone for most of her life. Even when she was in a relationship, her mind always focused on what she needed to do to keep herself safe, to protect herself when, inevitably, it would all fall apart. It was what kept her distant, and alone.
I’ve never believed in a cause. All that ever made any sense to me was protecting myself. Leave it to a damn stubborn warlock to change all of that.
Kane and Ronan walked over to her.
“Dani,” Kane said, but she put a hand up and stopped him.
“I know,” she said.
“Do you?” Ronan said, but Black gave him a silencing look.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I do. But right now, this isn’t our fight.”
“Like hell it isn’t….” Kane started, but she cut him off.
“We’re a part of the Southern Claw,” she said. “And being part of a team is knowing your place, and your role.”
She pointed at the bomb-blast horizon, at the drill-heads of raw spectral power and the smoke that billowed up from earth-shattering explosions that went off just on the other side of the outer walls. The battle came into clearer view as the assault advanced to the upper walls.
A reptilian crawler ripped through the sandstone and was gunned down by a dozen heavily armed soldiers. A vampire warship soared overhead with two Razorwings at its back, and all three of them were torn down by M2s and arcane blasts of fire and stone. Draconians fell with wretched cries and splattered on the ground. Airships crashed in the northern section of the city and sent up clouds of poison flame.
“There are soldiers out there dying…doing their job,” she said. “That goes both ways. We’re not asking them to go to the excavation. That’s our job. We have to respect theirs.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ronan said.
“Yes it does,” Black said. “There’s more to fighting a war than rushing in to try and be a hero. If we get killed, who in the hell is going to find Cross?”
They both wanted to argue, but she knew they wouldn’t.
“So we just…wait?” Kane asked with a bitter laugh.
She turned back and watched the walls. Flak 38s tore the Coffin out of the sky, and flame cannons incinerated undead troops as they fell. A Bloodhawk exploded over the Moon Gate and sprayed a blast of debris that killed dozens. The walls shook, likely, she guessed, because one of the vampire tanks rammed them from the outside. The Gol dirigibles moved into position and dropped hexed napalm. The sky turned hot white, and she smelled the heat even from half a city away.
“No,” she said, and she turned back to them. “Run through the checklis
t. Get ready. Because it’s time for us to leave.”
Awake.
He stares into a sky of ice stars. Something cool touches his skin, a semi-frozen liquid.
Awake. Not dead.
He sits up.
He is without form. Shadows fuse and melt together and become his fingers, then his hands. He watches himself apparate from the void.
He is cold. This place is filled with snow mists, but the air is dry and solid. Darkness surrounds him, an empty field of midnight both vast and constraining, an infinite prison. Black shapes flitter in the distance like carbon birds.
Sensation returns to his shadow body. He feels cold water soak through his boots, and an iron chill scratches his skin. He rests on a small mound of silt earth, a lump of dissolving clay packed with rock sediment and fragments of bone. The waters are dark and sluggish and filled with eyeless fish.
Where am I?
He stands, slowly.
The ground shifts and dissolves beneath him, and he fears if he remains still for too long he will sink.
The moon is a pale eye, so distant it looks false. Dark trees loom like crippled beings in the moor. Small islands of black dirt and cracked stone litter the landscape.
Shapes move and lurch in the distance, silent shadows fused to the eternal backdrop.
The cold and sterile swamp seems to go on forever. The air is silent.
Avenger lies embedded in the mud.
Soulrazor is there, as well. The black blade is not complete. The hilt and lower half are gone, leaving only the long tip jammed into a bed of sharp stones.
Black smoke oozes from the broken edges of the sword. The whispers of things long dead float in those vapors. He hears the lunatic mutterings of a distant realm, the dread lapping of ebon waves against the shores of his reality.
He sees cracks in the shell of the universe. He senses dark things slither through like ooze serpents, and they coil around his legs, hold him firm and freeze his skin. He is aware of distant intelligences, an alien collective so utterly unfathomable that just the shadow of its presence robs him of his strength.
We come, a voice says, but it is not human. It makes the words understandable to him by pushing them through his. You will die.
His eyes and ears bleed. He throws himself back and away from the voices, out of the grip of that demonic presence. He falls into the water.
He sits there for a moment, exhausted and freezing while he catches his breath. Silt floats through his fingers, and the icy liquid turns his skin blue. His clothes are soaked, and they cling to his body like a frozen cloak.
Another splash sounds. It takes him a moment to realize he is not alone in the frozen quagmire.
A silhouette approaches. It wears a thick cloak, and even through the black mists he sees glowing daggers where its eyes should be. It carries a jagged half-blade.
Jennar.
The world twists and bleeds as The Sleeper’s vessel approaches. The sky and land are drawn towards Jennar’s body, crumbled like paper and pulled in his wake. The ground tilts and shifts.
He stands and holds Avenger ready. Its shine seems feeble compared to the darkness that approaches.
He is without his spirit. She has forsaken him, somehow, torn herself away and left him to face this evil alone.
I can’t do this on my own. I’m not strong enough. Even with only half of Soulrazor, he…
Half of Soulrazor.
The evil that once hid inside him is gone. It has already detonated. Somehow, he’s survived, or he hasn’t, but either way he is here now.
He no longer has anything to fear from that black power.
Without another thought he reaches down and picks up the Soulrazor shard. Its touch burns him, and he screams.
He seea a formless darkness, a miasma of melting onyx stars and seas of liquid skin, eyes like pits and pits like eyes, molten faces as large as continents, turgid inverted seas that melt pyramid drops of corrosive matter into skies of grey fire, glaciers of bone and islands of thought, razor angels and giants like mountains.
The vision nearly cleaves his mind in two. Blood sluices down his hand where he grips the shard of the onyx blade.
Jennar’s shadow draws close.
He holds Soulrazor’s broken tip to Avenger’s sheared edge. They fuse together with ease, as if they’d always been meant to unite.
The metal sizzles and fuses with a sound like cracking ice. Black steel melts into gaps in the white metal. The pieces lace together and dry cold into a single smooth weapon, a hand-and-a-half sword. The weapon is light and thin, and it nearly disappears in the air when he turns it sideways. It is so sharp he can feel its razor edge even without touching it. A jagged line of steaming grey marks the joining of the two pieces, a spectral scar that churns with unstable energies. He feels the joining of opposing powers, a stark polar conflict.
He holds the weapon ready. Lunatic whispers fill his mind. He hears the song of angels, and the growls of primordial and ancient beasts. He looks to the distance, past the false sky and into the void that drips down the horizon.
He sees through Jennar’s façade now, sees that the man is no more, that he has been gone for some time. What hides within that body is an aspect of The Black, a shadow presence. It is only a servant, a messenger. It is a taste of things to come if the hole between the worlds is fully breached, a glimpse of the devastation that will spread if The Black is allowed to invade.
The air bleeds cobalt. He hears a throb of drums in the distance, but it is only the beating of his vast heart. The unman flies at him, and their swords clash.
The smell of burning metal fills the air. Black sparks fall and sizzle in the water. The world shifts. The disc of reality they stand upon hovers over the edge of the void.
The ring of steel slices the air apart. His muscles scream from the pressure. Without his spirit he is far weaker than The Sleeper/Jennar, and his opponent’s barrage of attacks drives him back.
The air churns and thickens until it is almost solid. The water at his feet boils, and the atmosphere congeals and collapses like sludge rain.
The vast intelligence of The Black screams through his mind. Cuts appear on his arms and legs, and his warm blood spills into the water.
He falls.
This has happened before. The last time he battled The Sleeper, Avenger was whole, and there was no Soulrazor.
A sense of loss fills him, a pain that twists like a knife into his heart. The ground crumbles. Stars made of red light crash down and perforate the landscape.
I can’t win, he realizes. He faces a vast power. Even this shred of it is too much for him to handle. It is too much for any mortal, any living creature.
The blade in his hand stirs. Dark steam runs up his arms like smoke snakes. Its touch is cold and toxic, and it burns his skin even as it fills him with raw strength. He feels power build behind his eyes and in his muscles, a knotted presence that ripples inside him like an infestation.
I am not a mortal, he realizes. I can’t be. I’m not alive. I’m not dead. I’m not undead.
I’m trapped.
Somehow, that resignation heartens him. His fear dissolves, and losing his fear allows him to embrace the power that soils his soul. His mind would not allow the bastard energies of Soulrazor and Avenger to take him over. He has resisted, kept them at bay.
He takes a breath, and surrenders himself.
Ripples of life and death explode out of his hands. Heat boils the water to nothing, and they are left on a crumbling desert floor. The sky recedes, burned back.
He is a crossroads, an amalgam of flesh and spirit, of darkness and light. He is the doorway to the void, and the gatekeeper who ensures the door will never open.
The black and white sword grows massive in his grip. He sees flashes of other realities: alien landscapes like crystal snow, undead skies of pale fire, a black ship occupied by a seething tentacle mass, underground cities that dangle like massive stalactites and drop citizens into a swirl
ing void, waterfalls of souls, liquid spirits that flow upward en masse, drowned angels swept up to the sky.
Like Jennar, he has become a vessel.
He uses his hybrid blade and severs Jennar’s hand, the same hand Danica Black had once removed, now just a wisp of shadow that burns like a dying torch.
Ugly power escapes Jennar’s form. Black parasites spill into the air.
He lashes out with Avenger/Soulrazor. He feels metal crack and fall away. The sky shrinks, turns pale like soured meat. Black lightning arches overhead.
The two combatants bleed darkness.
In his mind he sees this fight played out, not just between the two of them, but between the ones that came before, the ones they have become.
The White Mother, and a figure he does not know, something made from darkness.
He is lost. He tries to remember why he fights, what he is trying to protect, but the knowledge won’t come. He is forgotten in that moment. He has become stuck in a perpetual and violent dream.
Jennar wounds him again. It’s the last blow The Sleeper lands.
With a hollow cry he breaks Jennar’s weapon. Black light blinds him, but the heart-scent of his foe is there, trapped in his primal senses. The souls in the blade scream, and he sends Soulrazor/Avenger into his opponent’s chest.
Will we have this battle again?
The world falls. He sinks through the dust. His sense of direction is gone. The floor of the world becomes the ceiling. He plummets through a sea of sand and into a sky of tears, from a sea of tears into a sky of sand.
His vision polarizes. The sky freezes dark, then light.
He falls. His skin is no longer his.
His body fades through vortex worlds. He is a plummeting star. What is left of Jennar drifts behind him, a wash of dark dust.
He tumbles through melting skies.
Cross woke on his back. Rain fell onto his face. Its touch was cold, and he coughed and jerked violently. His skin was frozen, and his back felt twisted. He pulled himself upright.
He’d half sunk into the mud. He didn’t recognize the area, at least not at first. It was a sandy beach littered with old logs and shattered shale. The sand was dark and thick. He smelled seawater and kelp, and tasted smoke on his tongue.
Soulrazor Page 24
