Lighter Days, Darker Nights (Rune Breaker)

by Porter, Landon

  Without preamble or warning, he launched forward. Ru anticipated it and two fist-sized balls of flame leapt from his cupped hands, arcing out in opposite directions a short distance in front of him before coming together with a sudden roar of air igniting. Blue-white flames blossomed out from where they came together, forming a massive spider's web of flame in the air.

  Immurai stopped short, masked face leering through the flaming web.

  Ru? Taylin was back again. Something's wrong.

  It's me. Ru informed her. I'm the source of the disturbance, fighting the demon who sent the bandit king you defeated.

  At the wagons? She asked.

  Ru continued to keep Immurai at bay, trying to formulate an effective attack spell while holding the psychic conversation. Of course not. The Murderyard.

  That's you? She started to pry further, but something more pressing came to mind. But no, Kaiel says there's trouble at the wagons. We're going there now. I need you there.

  This is more important. He tersely informed her.

  Taylin's emotions rankled in the link and he felt her anger and frustration with him. Ru, the children are at the wagons and half the people who normally protect them are here right now. You have to go there now and help!

  “I know that look.” Immurai said mockingly. “Receiving orders from the new master? In the middle of our friendly reunion? How rude. Allow me to focus your attention.”

  The demon raised his arms and brought them together. “Forgotten soldiers, scream with the rage of your demise. Take blood price from the ungrateful generations that followed after. Bones of the Earth: Rise.”

  Ru felt the arrays of ere-a and nekras respond before any visible signs of what they were meant to do manifested. First came the mist; thin and low to the ground. It might have been mistaken as natural by the lay folk, but even those with no training could tell that it was a dingy, dark gray on closer inspection. Looking yet closer, they would see that it was seeping into the ground, not out of it.

  In reality, the 'mist' was raw, concentrated nekras: dark anima that had been attracted to and pooled over the Murderyard during its years as a battlefield, witnessing hatred, pain and death. Serving as a training yard maintained it, as young recruits suffered the hardships and stress that molded them into soldiers. Normally it was harmless—unless someone were to gather and use it for harmful purposes.

  Something disturbed the ground off to Ru's right. A human (or demihuman) spine surfaced from the dirt like an eel breaching the surface of a lake. It was too dark to be bone because it wasn't; the bodies of the dead had long been taken for burial or cremation, so Immurai bound the dark anima to the rock itself, forging it into skeletons to better serve his ends.

  Ribs followed the spine, and then came the limbs and skull. The nekras-mist drew close around the thing as it lifted itself from the clods of dirt, becoming the ghost of armor and a sword.

  If the crowd was panicked before, their terror reached a crescendo as dozens of the constructs rose from the earth around them, striking with ghostly weapons that cleaved flesh and splintered bone just as well as if they were made of steel and wood.

  I'm dealing with something more important. Ru told Taylin. The flash of anger that followed that was so intense, it made even him wince.

  Nothing is more important. Ru, don't make me order you.

  “No.” Ru barked, unaware that he was speaking out loud.

  “Oh my. Even with this level of provocation, I still don't have your undivided attention? The hand that holds the leash has a firm and crushing grip on other things, I see. No matter—I didn't do this for your attention anyway.” Immurai chuckled, a dry, metallic sound.

  “Go and tend to your master. I'm sure he'll give you a scrap or two for being a good dog. I do wish I could say it was pleasant to see you, Rune Breaker, but now I must go and greet my friend.” He waved around them at the growing chaos and especially the fleeing wealthy elite. ”Solgrum did so well arranging this feast for him, even if he wasn't aware.”

  With that, he turned and strode away, disappearing into the press right in front of a trio of guards who won though just in time to lose him again.

  “You wretched—“ Ru started.

  I'm sorry Ru, but they need us. I order you to take us to the wagons. Taylin said, anger boiling in the link.

  The link twisted, ready to punish him if he refused. Ru snarled wordlessly and redirected his fire shield into a burning whip that he bought down across the back of the nearest stone skeleton. The conjured fire enveloped it, sapping the nekras animating it just as it raised its sword to finish off a man on the ground. Without motive force, it toppled over on top of its victim, catching his vest alight.

  Ru paid no attention. “Burn your eyes, girl.” he grumbled before teleporting to her.

  Chapter 13 – Matasume the Wind

  Kaiel shouted a word in a pre-Vishnari dialect. It leapt from his throat as a cone of deep, drawn out noise that vibrated a pair of the skeletal warriors apart.

  His throat was getting sore, his lips grew numb and his jaw was aching. He'd divested himself of all weapons in deference to Solgrum's request; even his half-flute, in the name of being a good guest. Because of his attempts at being polite, he was left with using the raw Words and Song to defend himself and others.

  That was a skill for fully vested loremen and took years of vocal training to be able to do without destroying their voice. The invasion of the Murderyard by the undead forced him to do far too much with too little skill and he was paying for it.

  A cough interrupted his next draw of breath and he couldn't work up the saliva to balm his dry and burning throat. His side of the circle he, Taylin and Brin had opened up for themselves quickly began to collapse with five new stone skeletons lurching forward to fill the gap left by the last two.

  Someone grabbed his shoulder and he nearly swung a fist at them before realizing it was Brin.

  She was resplendent in a suit of mystic armor conjured with Reflair's aid. It looked like a coat of scales forged entirely from glowing, white mist somehow forced into rigidity and altered into a full length gown. And as beautiful as it was, it was just as functional. Where she touched one of the skeletons, the suit banished the nekras animating it, causing it to topple apart as inert rock.

  “Can't.” Was the only word he managed to choke out.

  Brin just nodded her understanding, then pulled him back behind her, between Taylin and herself.

  Eloquence was the least of his problems, but it did rankle him that he wasn't able to explain himself. Still, he took his moment of respite to heart and dropped down to one knee. Left with no foci and no voice, he fell back to basic rituals, drawing the pattern in the dirt with his finger.

  Anyone who was taught anything about magic knew the basic patterns and how to activate them 'manually'. That is, by drawing them physically and willing one's personal energy into them. They were taught to anyone expected to survive away from a town or farming enclave more than a day, and in places with formal mundane education like Rizen, the patterns were a universal early lesson.

  Kaiel drew the pattern: an arc with the edge facing toward him, connected to two more inward curving lines on either side, which met at the top and closed the shape. This formed the most common pattern for akua, elemental water. Around it, he drew a circle with four short lines extending outward from it at equidistant points around the circumference: the manifestation pattern, crea.

  As he had not time to add modifiers or an array to cause the spell to gather water from the environment, it depended on him to put his own personal energies into it. Leaning forward over it, he hummed, a deep, rich mnemonic while cupping his hands over the pattern.

  It didn't take long. Akua Crea didn't need much to work; just some concentration and power. The water manifested directly over the pattern as a rainstorm localized in a space only about a foot in diameter. Some of it collected in his cupped hands and he drank it slowly, careful not to gulp lest he irritat
e his throat.

  Seconds later, the spell spent itself and faded.

  Kaiel raised his head to see where he could do the most good. Brin was holding her own. The coat of light made her literally untouchable by such simple, constructed undead. So he checked on Taylin.

  Her dress was ruined beyond repair, having been both torn by the weapons and claws of her foes, and covered in the dust of their crushed pseudo-bones. At first, he thought she was fighting barehanded, but closer inspection revealed that her hands had become covered over with thick, red scales and her nails had grown into blackened claws. She had worked out that the spell animating the creatures was seated in the spine, and was now striking at those exclusively.

  He recalled the wounds received by the King of Flame and Steel all those weeks ago. In the aftermath of the battle, he hadn't had time to investigate. Was Taylin dragonsired? Why hadn't she mentioned it before?

  Asking would have to wait. Without Kaiel forming another point of defense, the skeletons were closing in on the sides. He dashed out the pattern with his boot and stood to defend once more. Except he found himself not needing to.

  Ru Brakar appeared in front of Taylin just as she felled another skeleton. His face was the image of rage and he floated high enough that he was glaring down at her like a stern proctor staring down a disruptive student. For a moment, even as a pair of skeletons clawed at his back and chopped at him with an ax, the two of them refused to look away, no doubt locked in a heated argument in the link.

  Then, without preamble or diverting his gaze, Ru thrust his hands out to his sides and unleashed twin jets of fire into skeletons on either side. The heat didn't extend beyond the flames themselves, but were hot enough to cause the rock bones to melt and run under its intensity. Molten rock pattered to the ground like searing rain where the monsters once walked. Here and there, the dry grass caught fire.

  “Now, as ordered, I will transport you all to the caravan.” A seething spite in his voice still rang in their ears as his form dissolved into a cloud of black smoke that rolled over them.

  Kaiel pulled the edge of his cloak up to cover his nose and mouth and backed up into the center of the cloud with Brin and Taylin. “There are more efficient and less disgusting smelling ways to do this.”

  “He's upset that I ordered him away from a fight.” Taylin muttered. Her hands had returned to normal, though she continued to flex them anxiously.

  “Against Immurai the Masked.” Ru's voice came from all around. The smoke began to thin, allowing glimpses that confirmed that the chaos and horror of the now all too aptly named Murderyard was replaced by the wagons and stillness of the caravan. The nir-lumos camp looked all but abandoned. Those who weren't attending the ball were either in the city, out hunting (on Grandmother's orders), or had gone to sleep early; secure in the protection camping close to the city's walls and the wards erected against strangers by Grandmother and Signateria afforded them.

  “The same Immurai the Masked that marked the King of Steel and Flame?” Kaiel asked. Was he still hearing the battle going on in the Murderyard all the way on the other side of the city?

  “Indeed.” Ru said spitefully.

  “That can't be a coincidence.” said Kaiel. “Nor can whatever made Signateria signal me.”

  The smoke dissipated to tendrils and Brin let out a choked gasp. Her eyes focused on the scene before her: Issacor pressing an attack on Layaka with powerful blows that would have dismembered the girl if she wasn't dodging with fluid grace that was almost inhuman.

  “Nothing that's happened in this city has been a coincidence.” She said tightly, then called Reflair's name. The spirit ceased its maintenance on the radiant armor and became gossamer tendrils that trailed from her ankles and wrists and neck like the finest of spellworked scarves that were the height of fashion in Mindeforme.

  They granted her not only extra litheness, but speed as well. Before Issacor could swing more than a handful of times more, Brin imposed herself between him and her charge.

  “What in the seven interlocking hells do you think you're doing?!” She demanded. Without a weapon, she readied her fists, his armor be damned.

  Issacor checked his next swing, startled by her sudden appearance, but as a trained warrior, he never took his eyes off the enemy. Stepping into Brin's first swing, he bought his sword down behind her, flat against her back as gently, but also as quickly as he could.

  Three flechettes went clink as they were deflected by the blade. The noise didn't go unnoticed by Brin, who span on a heel to see what had just happened. It was easy to spot the three poison coated projectiles lying on the bare ground, weeping their deadly payload into the dirt.

  Her eyes widened and she looked to Layaka with a mixture of shock and hurt. “Layaka?”

  “Partha.” The cruel, sneering voice was almost unrecognizable as Layaka's. “Trinion Partha. You don't know the real me... but your friends do.”

  “Odds, bods, hammer and tongs!” Ru exclaimed. “The old man; the village elder.”

  “What exactly is going on here?” Kaiel wondered aloud.

  Taylin ignored them both and threw herself into the air, winging toward Signateria's wagon. Kaiel followed her gaze and spotted what she'd noticed before the rest: Issacor wasn't the only person in the fight. Signateria was outside of her wagon, holding a shivering Motsey and an unconscious Rale close while she fought to save Gruwluff's life from the poison.

  “Signa, what happened?” She asked breathlessly. “Are the children alright?”

  The halfling woman bowed her head. “They'll live; she was trying to take them, not kill them. The poison she used there was weak enough that Motsey's fighting it.” Despite the fact that she was shaking with rage and working a spell on the stricken wolf, she took a moment to hug the boy.

  Taylin wanted to hug him too, but there wasn't time. “I'll make sure this never happens again.” With that oath, she rose, pulling her wings in tightly to her back. Then she reached out to the ball of bitterness and malice that kept a permanent residence in a dark corner of her mind.

  Ru, I need my sword.

  Of course, he refused to make it easy. His thoughts swam in reproachfulness. Why not abandon the field for petty reasons instead?

  It's important now. Layaka is trying to take the children.

  It was important then! Ru's voice roared in the link. Just because you didn't recognize that importance does not erase it from existence.

  Taylin let him feel her anger and disgust at his behavior, but couldn't hide her desperation to protect the children. Do not force me to order you again. Please!

  Instead of replying, Ru vanished, teleporting away. The link told her that he was at her wagon. Her eyes fell to Issacor, single-handedly deflecting Layaka's attacks while ignoring the wounds on his back.

  Something stirred in her. Why couldn't she be bound to someone like him instead of the selfish spawn that had just abandoned all of them out of spite?

  Suddenly, Issacor wasn't alone in their defense. Brin stepped in beside him. She'd grabbed a goad normally used to urge the halflings' draft animals on in bad weather for a weapon. It wasn't the Barratta, but still the telltale luminous mist from Reflair issued from it. Brin herself looked like Taylin had never seen her before; grim and on the edge of rage. The lie of Layaka had cut her deep.

  “I need to fight too.” Taylin muttered.

  “Same, but without weapons, we're both in a bad spot.” said Kaiel before he turned to Signateria. “Did you keep them near, like I told you?”

  The halfling blinked in confusion before nodding. But she wasn't about to take her hands off Gruwluff while her spell leeched the poison from him. “In my belt. Right side.”

  Kaiel plucked a pair of brass handles, like those on a cabinet, from her belt pouch and walked to the wall of the wagon.

  “What are those?” Taylin asked.

  “You've never wondered where all those books I have stay when my wagon lacks space for more than a small shelf?”
He was trying to be witty, but the half smile he gave her didn't touch his eyes as he fit the hinges into imaginary slots in the wagon. “I am one who seeks a truth larger than mere reality. In the name of knowledge, open these doors.” With that invocation, he pulled the handles in opposite directions...

  And opened a hole in the side of the wagon. Dry, cool air wafted out into the night. Inside was a group of drawers; two as tall and narrow as Kaiel, and five stacked up to the side to match that height. Each had a brass handle identical to the ones used to open that magically created space.

  A snarl from Brin drew both Kaiel's attention and Taylin's. She'd grown tired of defense and charged Partha, swinging the hook of the goad at her midsection. Partha reacted by stepping into the blow, warding off the hook with a flechette in one hand while slashing at Brin's arm with a shortsword in the other.

  Brin checked her charge and knocked the slash away by swinging the butt of the goad around, then planted it in her former friend's midsection, sending her crashing to the ground. Partha instantly rolled and turned her fall into momentum for a sweep that took Brin down as well.

  Face transformed into an impassive mask of concentration, Kaiel pulled open one of the stacked drawers, revealing it to be a long rack of scrolls in tubes. Without having to look, he grabbed the one he needed. The vellum unrolled smoothly in his hands, its surface covered with a complex web of overlapping circles and eldritch symbols; a spell diagram.

  An incantation poured out of him as if he had no control over it, old words that made something in Taylin's blood call out. Her arms started to itch as the scales started to show.

  Ru's sudden return to her side made her heart leap and it was only a supreme effort of fighting her reflexes that kept her from clawing his belly open. Something poked her in the ribs.

  Just as the link told her, there stood Ru Brakar, and he was proffering not only the Western Brand, but a second sword. This one was in a crudely made leather sheathe. He answered her confusion by simply thrusting both at her, hilt first.

  Issacor had closed with Partha now, preventing her from poisoning Brin while the spearwoman got to her feet. Partha danced away from him and leered in a way that looked unnatural on her youthful face.