by Rosie Scott
“Nah,” the seated dwarf replied, “but I never imagined ol' Tilda would be workin' with anybody at all. Yet here we are.”
The standing dwarf shrugged as if he couldn't disagree with that.
Six warships left. My eyes followed the two which had just boarded as they moved into place in the deep blue waters of the cove. The vast majority of the warships were easy targets. I decided to give them no more time.
I reached out to my right side, and my fingers lightly grazed off of Nyx's left arm, alerting her that I was advancing. I walked up just behind the seated dwarf as slowly as I could and glanced over at the other standing beside the ammo. Just behind his stocky body, a hovering ball of coral-pink energy was summoned in thin air, but Nyx waited for my signal.
Persuadua. The bright energy grew in a fog above my palm, and as soon as it was fully prepared, I sent it into the man's back. Nearby, Nyx did the same.
Scchff! The stone rattled beneath my feet as the cannon was fired. I was left a bit unbalanced, having not expected the dwarf to act so quickly. The sound of the cannonball's release wasn't nearly as loud as I'd thought it would be for such a massive weapon, but I took a few steps back nonetheless. My eyes followed the ammo as it arced through the air, its trajectory crackling through the sky like an oncoming storm.
Yelling echoed from the harbor as the dwarves looked up to see the cannonball racing toward their own ships with a death wish. The ball hurtled through the blue sails of a galleon, exploding the top of its mast into thick splinters before continuing toward the next ship ahead. The heavy ball hit the quarterdeck of the second vessel with a resounding clink, and I saw a handful of dwarven bodies explode outward from the impact, blue armor contrasting with sprays of red blood.
My heart raced in my chest as I waited for the reaction of my foes even as the two charmed dwarves reloaded the cannon. The air was thick with distant screams, but our enemies appeared to just be confused. Perhaps they thought it was merely a costly mistake.
Scchff! Scchff! Scchff!
In a beautifully patterned succession, the cannons leading up into the mountain fired one after the other as the assassins followed my orders. The bright blue skies above were marred with streaks of black as over a dozen more cannonballs flew toward the Hammerton Navy. The first clanged off of the iron-sides of a battleship and ricocheted into a line of galleon sails, ripping and tearing as if the ammo itself had a hatred for blue. Water exploded up from the ball as it finally submitted to the ocean. Another cannonball tore through the upper deck of a vessel, landing on the hardwood and continuing to roll forward by momentum alone, leaving dozens of dwarves without legs before it burst through the railing and disappeared.
DING! DING! DING! DING!
The alarm bells in the harbor blared as the dwarves tried to come to terms with the recent developments. The ships closest to the port were frantically maneuvering back to shore, eager to get out of the targeted zone. Two galleons were slowly sinking as newly broken hulls were overtaken with water.
The cannon in front of me fired again, and as soon as the noise of the weapon dulled its echoes in my ear, I heard the rush of approaching footsteps. To our left, dozens of dwarven soldiers hurried toward us.
Shik! Shik! Azazel released black arrows into the group of them like the ammo was an inconvenience to hold on to, and the bodies started to pile. Dwarves held weapons with nervous glances, bewildered. They were being attacked by their own people, and now arrows were flying from thin air.
Corpa te risa a multipla. Tendrils of death magic escaped my invisible fingers and raced across cobblestone, seeking the recent dead. Corpses rose to immediately go to battle with former kin, pulling themselves out of puddles of their own blood.
“Nec...” one of the dwarves began before the word faded out with fear. “Necromancer!” He screamed, turning to direct his voice toward the harbor. “Necromancers are in the city!”
I dispelled my invisibility. I no longer needed it. Eyes were wide and gazes were fearful on my own as the dwarves slowly realized who stood before them.
“The city's been compromised!” One of them screamed, before scurrying away from the battle to deliver the message to the harbor. “Kai Sera is in Olympia!”
I gave myself a life shield, before ripping the war horn from my belt. The creaking of a sinking Hammerton warship echoed out from the harbor, but my next call was determined to rise far above it. I took in a breath so deep my lungs burned and sent my request for aid through the skies.
HUUURRRNNNNN!
The war horn traveled through streets and over land and sea alike, echoing several times off of cold mountain rock. I had no doubt both armies could hear the call, for the mountainside helped to amplify it.
I looped the horn back to my belt, before refreshing the charm spell on the dwarf beside me. I noticed that Nyx had dispelled her invisibility, so I protected her with life magic.
“Kai!” Azazel shouted, even as he continued shooting arrows into the oncoming dwarves. “Dispel my illusion!”
I reached out to him to fulfill his request and give him a shield. In the streets ahead, it was pandemonium. Directions were being screamed. Soldiers were rushing to battle. In the midst of it all, the assassins of my army dispelled their invisibility, further surprising our foes once they found themselves in open battle with the Alderi. As if to make matters worse for them, many of the assassins were also necromancers, and the corpses they'd worked hard to hide during the night were shambling forth out of the shadows.
Cannonballs continued raining down on the vessels along the coast, and blue ocean waters were spotted with debris and bodies. Many dwarves were still alive and swam frantically toward the harbor from sinking ships. The massive iron-sided battleships were all still standing, though they bore the scars of being repeatedly hit. By the time our navy arrived, I wanted the battleships to be all they had to contend with. For the galleons were being brutalized by cannon fire, and those that escaped the worst of it were delivering their soldiers back to shore, where they immediately began moving north to our location.
For now, the entire army of Olympia was focused on me.
Good, I thought, building an air spell in both palms and stalking toward my foes. Come and get me.
Lightning crackled and hissed in its magical barrier like an impatient beast. I waited to release it until I was facing an entire street full of rampaging dwarves. I thrust both palms forward, and many of them dodged into alleyways.
Sss...
An arc of purple-blue lightning raced outward from my hands, growing in length until it rolled past the stone of the buildings on either side of the street, blackening gray stone in a horizontal line. Dozens upon dozens of dwarves began rattling in electrocution. The lightning fizzled out at the next intersection, leaving the air newly refreshed with energy. Even still, I was fatigued from a full night without rest or food, so I shot death bombs from my palms next. With a new high massaging my temples, I raised the recent dead, boosting our numbers for the oncoming onslaught.
“Hey, show-off!” The voice was Than's, which surprised me since I hadn't heard from her since before we'd entered the tunnels. It was the first time I'd ever seen her, for she'd always been invisible. Than was bald and tall for a female Alderi at just over six feet, and her skin was almost as dark as Mirrikh's. She started to undress near the cannon, pulling off clothes with no regard to propriety. Blood red tattoos along both of her arms displayed a wide variety of art including crossed daggers, severed limbs, and nude Alderi men.
Noting the odd situation, I replied, “You're a shapeshifter?”
“I am.” Than kicked off two worn boots, standing fully naked as she asked, “Watch my back as I transform, will you?”
I gave her a terse nod, backing up to be closer to her as I continued to leech and regenerate allied shields. Than fell to the ground, breathing heavily as the crackling of bone echoed through the air. Then, with little warning, her rib cage burst through her chest, bone ripping
through black flesh and red muscle alike. Harsh screams of agony shattered my eardrums as her bones began to thicken and darken, marrow building upon marrow over her body as her muscle rapidly reconnected under a new exoskeleton. The cobblestone beneath her was covered in blood and flecks of broken skin. It was as if her skeletal system was pulling itself out of her body while attempting to swallow her whole because as it ripped out of her skin, the bone lengthened and grew at a rapid pace as if it meant to encase her.
Only when blackened bone covered her entire head and grew forward and back in an elongated fashion did I realize Than's blood-kin.
Ba'al.
I'd fought alongside the beastmen plenty of times and had come to care for many, so I usually disliked when they were the victims of bias. People said the beastmen were insane. Masochists. Brutes. As I watched Than's transformation from woman to blade demon, I realized I was inclined to agree. Not that any beastmen would ever take offense to that.
Than screamed in her new form, her voice now the metallic echo of a tortured soul desperate for restitution. Two thick, bleeding wings whipped out to both sides with splatters of blood, boasting a wingspan of fifteen feet. Cries of fear and confusion rose amongst the dwarves as they came to face a creature which was unknown to them. A throwing ax spun through the air and ricocheted off of the black exoskeleton encasing Than's head. The ba'al-kin was deathly quiet as she tilted her head in the direction the weapon had been thrown from. I took the hesitation to give her a shield, figuring her to be using her blood-kin's echolocation to find the dwarf responsible.
Than found him with little problem. The ba'al-kin folded both wings in at her back, deciding to leap toward the man instead. While the blade demons were slow in flight, they were frighteningly quick on their legs, and their awkward anatomies only made their fast, hobbling gaits ever more terrifying. Than's target mumbled out curses as he tried backing away from the approaching beast, grabbing two more throwing axes while leaving behind a trail of urine over the cobblestone. Another ax was thrown, but it bounced off of the life magic, its handle hitting one of the man's own comrades before landing on the ground harmlessly. The other was clutched tightly as the dwarf prepared for melee battle, but he never got the chance to use it.
Than did not even bother using her claws. Lowering her bladed head like a raging bull, the dwarf was impaled by the pointed exoskeleton on the tip of the ba'al-kin's head just before she flipped it back, throwing the stout man up into the air. The dwarf spun in a momentum granted only by the demon's superior strength, surrounded by a spraying circle of his own blood before all of the dwarves nearby were splattered in red. Even before the corpse hit the ground, Than was tearing through dwarven defenders.
“There are more of them! Gods, there are more!” I couldn't see who yelled it, but I figured the voice was dwarven. Between shooting arrows into the crowds, Azazel glanced my way and pointed back toward the ocean.
I turned. The cannons of Olympia had all stopped firing on the Hammerton Navy because all of the charmed dwarves had been compromised. Nonetheless, the majority of the dwarven vessels were not seaworthy even if they weren't entirely destroyed. The otherwise calm coastal waters were cluttered with debris and broken ships. The beautiful blue skies above the destruction darkened as thousands of airborne beasts flew toward Olympia like a welcoming plague.
“Calder,” I breathed, his name rolling off my tongue with anxious relief. Calder had not only heard my signal, but he'd also sent an entire segment of his army to aid us as soon as we'd requested support even though his ships would take longer to get here. I could still not see our navy on the horizon, so I directed my next question to Azazel. “Do you see the ships?”
“Barely,” Azazel replied, dipping low to tug an arrow from an eye socket. When the organ came with, he kicked it off of the arrowhead with a boot. “Rest assured, they are coming. Calder's desperate to prove his worth to you, Kai.”
It was times like these that I realized my undying loyalty to those I loved could pay me back many times over. I regenerated Nyx's shield before I replied, “Yes. Sent every last bird and wyvern in his damn army. Hope they have someone to lead them, or else it will be chaos.” The Alderi had always had problems with working together and communicating, so chaos is what I expected. In either case, the reinforcements would help us immensely.
“Air and sea,” Azazel replied. “You might not be able to see them from here, but the dwarves still swimming to shore are finding it really difficult about now.”
I re-examined the waters near the harbor. Some of the dwarves swimming frantically to land from sinking ships were screaming as they were pulled underwater by unseen beasts. Sunlight glinted off of the light bluish-gray fins of multiple shark-kins which roamed the seas looking for prey.
“Well, this plan is working out...” I hesitated and glanced over at Nyx, one eyebrow raised mischievously. “...swimmingly.”
Nyx sighed, rolled her eyes, and threw one of her throwing stars into the crowds ahead. “Don't ever talk to me again,” she lamented sarcastically.
Azazel chuckled breathlessly at the terrible pun. “Don't get comfortable yet, Kai. As soon as the dwarves get over their shock, they will gather themselves and defend this city with a vengeance. And thanks to all the intel we collected on our way here...” Azazel paused to shoot his bow, the arrow piercing the eye of a dwarf and stopping his advance short. “We have an idea of what some of their special weapons might be.”
Nineteen
The Eteri Navy surrounded Olympia's harbor like flies to a fresh corpse still glistening with juices. The galleons were all protected with white life magic as Cyrus, Uriel, and Dax took precautions against the dwarven battleships still defending the harbor. Perhaps the Sentinels also expected resistance from the shoreline defenses, but the cannons now belonged to us. The eastern edge of Olympia was cluttered with corpses which swarmed the streets. We had some casualties, of course, but every casualty was simply another soldier. The dwarves were fighting valiantly through the undead. As much as necromancy was feared and loathed here, they had done their best to mentally prepare.
Azazel, Nyx, and I were trying to fight northward. The majority of Hammerton's army was in the middle of the city, and the most significant fight was happening in the harbor and the land directly surrounding it. In the midst of it all was Calder.
The king of the underground stood just behind the wheel of a battleship as he redirected the huge vessel to shore from a skirmish. In the waters beside his boat, two dwarven battleships rocked quietly, both quarterdecks stained with blood. Calder's navy of beastmen had not only offered protection to the other navies of galleons by taking the brunt of the damage in naval battle, but now he intended to deliver the giants straight into the midst of Olympia.
Being on the sea again after years underground had invigorated Calder, for he was reluctant to give up the wheel to Maggie as the ships neared the shore. Maggie finally wrestled the wheel away from him, pointing at the nearby shoreline and yelling things at him I couldn't hear from our distance, though I could see her smiling. Calder finally shrugged away with a charming grin and shouted directions out to his crew, most of whom were already in their beast forms. The beasts all jolted forward as the battleship arrived on shore, and a few of the sailors lowered the door. Dozens of giants rushed out directly into the streets of Olympia, and the cobblestone streets vibrated with their charge. At the front of the army was Marcus, proving that my decision to give him such a responsibility was respected by the other Sentinels.
Calder fell to his hands and knees on the quarterdeck, his skin hardening into scales and muscles thickening. His loose clothing tightened before it ripped and fell away from his body in strips. His beastmen soldiers rushed past him to leave the ship from below deck, and by the time I saw him again, he was in his lizard form. Calder stood at the bow of the vessel, reptilian blood red eyes watching over the chaos on the docks. His long, thick tail twitched with excitement for battle. In both scaled hands,
two orbs of swirling death magic grew.
Calder had learned necromancy, but as he'd told me before we'd separated in Monte, he hadn't yet had a chance to leech. I was morbidly curious to watch Calder attain his first leeching high. It had been a decade since my first, and yet I still remembered it. Calder had expressed his enthusiasm for wanting to know what it felt like. After all, he had a lust for power that was similar to my own. Calder had risked his own life to learn how to shapeshift, and then he'd risked it many times to take the underground and free his brothers. Now, he had access to the most powerful element that existed, and its effects were like a drug. Calder had a propensity for getting high; it was possible that leeching would not only give him a rush of power but that he would become addicted to its ability to dull the pain from transforming. I had taught him enervat in Monte, and as I watched him prepare to use it with both hands, I inwardly wondered if that had been a mistake. After all, if anyone was susceptible to giving in to mind-altering effects and losing control, it was Calder.
Calder leaned against the railing of the ship, red eyes darting around the battle on the dock below. He remembered my teaching of the spell and how to use it from a distance, so perhaps he was calculating exactly where to shoot the magic.
Then, all at once, both death bombs shot forward into the crowds of dwarven soldiers. Black fog exploded outward, crawling over heavy armor before sinking into its vulnerabilities and stealing lives from fleshy vessels. Two groups of dwarves fell dead on the dock almost as if in agreement with the plan, and Calder's eyes widened with the realization that I hadn't lied about the spell's magnificent power. The black magic raced back toward his reptilian chest, imploding into him with the life force of nearly three dozen men.
