Wurm War

by Christopher Golden

  The combat mages around him were still fighting, casting spells against the Wurm only to have magic and fire hurled at them in return. Then Timothy heard a thunderous roar, a cry of passion, and looked up to see another Wurm coming in. He raised his sword again but this one attacked the other Wurm, bellowing liquid fire at them, burning the nearest and then grappling with him in midair, talons slashing.

  Only when he saw the familiar pattern of horns upon her head did he recognize Cythra. Verlis’s mate began to tear at her enemy, driving him down toward a lower battlement.

  “There are more coming!” Telford shouted.

  Edgar cawed, wordlessly voicing the same message. Timothy looked up and saw the others coming over the top of the mountain, and he steadied himself.

  It was difficult to tell from below, but he gauged the size of the thing at forty feet, quadruple the size of any other Wurm. The fire that drooled from its gaping maw set the trees on top of the mountain ablaze, and its wingspan was as wide as the monster was tall. There was madness and hunger in its yellow eyes. It began to laugh and the sound was like the distant rumble of a coming storm.

  “By the three moons!” Telford shouted. “How can this be? What sorcery could create such a colossus?”

  The answer to the question seemed so simple to Timothy. The Spawn of Wrath, he thought.

  “Raptus,” he said, almost under his breath. Then he turned to Telford. “It’s Raptus.”

  That was the moment in which he knew that the troops that had assembled under Romulus’s banner were not going to be enough.

  We’re going to lose.

  Chapter Eight

  Shouts and screams were all around. The sun was rising in earnest now and the gigantic Raptus looked almost like a massive statue come to life. The towering Wurm launched himself from the mountaintop and took flight. The air displaced by his beating wings buffeted the fortress of Twilight. On a battlement off to Timothy’s left, a mage was knocked over the edge by the power of that wind. He caught himself with a quickly cast spell, otherwise he would have been dead, dashed against the rocks below.

  “By the moons, how do we fight that?” shouted one of the Legion Nocturne.

  Timothy shuddered in fear. If the callous, battle-hardened Legionnaires were afraid, they really were in trouble.

  Raptus laughed again as he flew above the gathered combat mages from the Spiral and Sectus guilds and the Order of the Winter Star. There were other troops there, but they were all one force now, all one army standing in resistance to the Wurm onslaught.

  But the Legionnaire was right. How could they stand against this?

  Working together, a group of combat mages threw up a shield that covered much of the battlefield below. It spread across both sides of the wall and even across the river. Many of the Wurm were on the ground already, fighting hand to hand with the mages, talons drawing blood. Wurm had been killed, but many more of the mages had already died. The mages had far greater numbers, but the Wurm were more ferocious and more physically powerful.

  Wurm sorcerers flew above the mêlée and cast dark magic down into the midst of battle, undoing the protections and wards of the combat mages wherever they could.

  Then Raptus struck. He landed inside the gate, at the base of the mountainside fortress. With a single blow he struck out and shattered the open gates and a portion of the wall.

  Mages moved in to attack. The Wurm sorcerers did not bother to aid him, and that ought to have been reason enough to worry. It meant that Raptus did not need their help. His entire body, tall as the trees in the forest, seemed to leak dark, blackly shimmering magic. It emanated from him, powerful enough that Timothy could feel it brush the nullifying field his own body produced. A wave of nausea passed through him and he knew, in that moment, what evil felt like.

  “Die, deceivers! Die, betrayers!” Raptus roared, and the words shook the very foundation of Twilight. “Die, mages!”

  With a wave of his hand, Raptus sent a flash of sickly yellow magic spilling over the combat mages and acolytes that surrounded him there at the base of the mountain. The most powerful of them remained standing, shielding themselves with magic that would have made the Wizards of Old proud. Lord Romulus was among them, tall and strong. The rest were thrown to the ground, disoriented, and Timothy could see their hands moving, gesticulating wildly as they tried to summon attack spells to try to retaliate against Raptus. Some of them succeeded, enchantments bursting to light around their hands. Romulus seemed to carve a ball of bright red light from the air, and it shot at Raptus, but dissipated as it touched the magical aura that burned around the gigantic Wurm. Most of the others were still too shaken to muster much power.

  Raptus spread his wings out over them, casting the shadow of death on them, and then he bent down and vomited out a river of churning, viscous fire that swept over the mages around him like a tidal wave. Timothy could see those mages powerful enough to withstand the assault like islands in the firestorm, but dozens died in just a few seconds of fire and hate.

  The battle raged on, but he knew then that it was over. Twilight was going to be destroyed, and unless they found a way to retreat, all of her defenders would eventually be killed. They had no choice but to try to escape, to fall back to Arcanum and try to devise a way to defend the city against the Wurm invasion and their leader, transformed by the Spawn of Wrath.

  He looked up, searching the skies. Wurm were in aerial combat with Verlis’s clan. Cythra was covered in blood, but he didn’t think it was her own. She was perhaps three hundred feet above and just to the left. But Cythra was not the object of his search. Timothy kept looking, even as he heard combat mages barking orders.

  At last he saw Verlis, twisting through the air, locked in mortal combat with one of Raptus’s raiders.

  Timothy spun to Telford and Edgar.

  “Walter, get back inside. Get downstairs and gather all of the people you can find. No one can remain inside Twilight. Get the mages on the towers and battlements and get them all to join the battle outside. Twilight is lost. The war is out there for the moment.”

  Telford stared at him. “They’ll never listen to me, Tim. I’m just an ordinary mage. I’m no warrior.”

  “Tell them the order comes from Romulus himself,” Timothy snapped.

  The stout, gray-haired mage shook his head. “Romulus will kill you.”

  “You wanted me to use my head to protect your people. That’s what I’m trying to do. Trust me!”

  Telford hesitated only a moment longer, and then he ran back the way they’d come, entering Twilight and calling for an evacuation. His shouting was swallowed by the stone fortress in an instant, but by then Timothy had turned his attention to his familiar.

  “There’s Verlis!” he told the rook, pointing into the sky. “Go and bring him here, Edgar. And hurry!”

  Timothy raised his sword and shield as he watched Edgar tearing across the sky, a black streak racing toward Verlis and his opponent. Verlis had now spun his enemy around and was clawing at the Wurm raider’s wings. Fire spilled from the enemy Wurm’s snout as Verlis reached around and broke his jaw. Timothy watched as the injured Wurm plummeted from the sky. High above, Verlis turned at Edgar’s approach, the rook a black smear against the sky from this distance.

  The boy heard the clatter of nearby combat and turned to see that the two mages still with him on the battlement were trying to fight off a Wurm that had dropped down from above to surprise them. He was about to attack with his Malleum sword when he saw the ball of bubbling orange-brown light that sprang up in the outstretched palm of the Wurm. This was no raider, but one of Raptus’s sorcerers.

  Lips pressed tightly into a grim line, Timothy sheathed his sword and ran at the beast. He was not in time to prevent it from unleashing its magic. The sorcerer struck one of the Legion Nocturne mages with its brutal war spell. The mage had been focused on the physical fight, wielding a huge ax, and had not been prepared for the magical attack. He screamed as it hit him, the
dark magic causing his entire body to shudder. All the moisture seemed to go out of him, and his entire body withered where he stood. He fell, tumbling over the edge of the battlement. The other Legionnaire cried out in fury and anguish and renewed his attack. The mage summoned a spell, sketching at the air with his fingers and chanting ancient words, but he was going to be too late.

  Timothy held his shield on his left arm. With his right hand, he reached out and grabbed hold of the Wurm’s tail.

  The sorcerer’s magic winked out like a dying star, as though it had never been. In the moment of its panic and shock, it did not think to use its fire to attack. The remaining combat mage ran it through with his iron sword.

  “You!” Timothy shouted. “Orders from Lord Romulus! Withdraw from Twilight immediately. We have to fall back to Arcanum!”

  Denial and rage burned in the mage’s eyes, but he did not argue. It would be a terrible blow for the Legion Nocturne to have to retreat, but if Lord Romulus commanded it, they would do so.

  Now all Timothy had to do was get Romulus to actually issue that command.

  The mage disappeared inside one of the arched doorways that led into Twilight fortress. Timothy heard a familiar cawing and turned to see Edgar and Verlis descending. Cythra was right behind Verlis, glancing around as though challenging Raptus’s raiders to attack her. But the enemy were otherwise occupied, battling those of Romulus’s troops that had not yet been destroyed.

  “Timothy, you have a plan?” Verlis shouted over the roar of battle as he alighted at the edge of the battlement.

  The boy ran to him. The Wurm’s eyes were grim and expectant, but behind him Cythra was distracted, ready to get back to the fight. Edgar landed on Timothy’s shoulder, cawing softly, head twitching crazily as he watched for attack.

  “We can’t win here. Not today. We weren’t prepared for what Raptus has become. We’ve got to try to withdraw with as many of our troops as we can, get word back to Arcanum and try to ready the city. The Parliament will find a way to battle Raptus, but there’s nothing we can do here.”

  Verlis spread his wings, and fire jetted from his snout in anger. He shook his head, but now it was frustration not rage.

  “I hate that you speak the truth,” he said. “What do you propose?”

  “Take me down to Romulus!”

  Without waiting for further explanation, Verlis made a rapid clicking noise to Cythra and took wing. With the strong, clawed hands that had just slain one of his own distant kin, he grabbed Timothy beneath the arms and drove them both over the edge of the battlements. Edgar cawed wildly and flew off, trying to keep pace with them. Timothy thought for a moment that they were simply falling, but then he felt Verlis thrust out his wings and arrest their descent.

  They soared low over the bone-strewn battlefield. Raptus had moved on, pushing past the walls and attacking a regiment of Sectus mages who faced him boldly from the edge of the river. Already fire was spewing from the gigantic creature’s mouth, and mages were dying. From this vantage point, Timothy was even more astounded by the size of Raptus. The monster towered above them.

  Around the ruin of the gate a small group of mages had gathered. There were several Spiral Guild mages and at least half a dozen who wore the symbol of the Winter Star. All of them were also clad in Malleum armor and carried weapons of the same metal. There were four Cuzcotec with them, the creatures seeming even smaller now in comparison to Raptus. They were gnarled, weathered mages, no more than four feet tall, and they skipped about like apes. But they were obviously powerful, or they would already have been dead.

  Some of that group were attacking Raptus from behind, combining their spellcasting to try to forge a bit of magic that would do some damage to the gigantic Wurm general. Nothing seemed to be working. A small section of Raptus’s right wing had been burned and still glowed like embers in a fire, but that was barely a scratch and hadn’t even gotten his attention.

  Wurm raiders dove from the sky and harried the archmages on the ground. At the lead of those fighting off these Wurm attackers was Lord Romulus. Another figure moved beside him, almost disappearing with each motion, the sunlight seeming to bend around him. If his appearance had not been so unexpected, Timothy would have recognized him right away. But it was only when he saw the black markings shifting across the body of this partially invisible figure that the truth hit him.

  “Ivar!” he shouted.

  Verlis dropped him at Romulus’s side. Timothy drew his sword and began to hack at a Wurm that was about to unleash a blast of liquid fire on the Nocturne Grandmaster. Some of its flame was turned on him, but his shield protected him, even as Lord Romulus—twice Timothy’s height—let loose a spell that knocked the Wurm from the air with a cracking noise that sounded as though the attack had broken all of its bones. It tried to rise but cried out in pain, unable to move without agony.

  “Boy, what are you doing? You’ll be killed out here!”

  Timothy ignored him, going to Ivar, who was on a Wurm’s back, choking it.

  “You’re alive!” he called. “Ivar! You’re alive!”

  The Asura rode the Wurm onto the dirt, where it lay unmoving, and then rose. His skin returned to its natural hue and he smiled, reaching for Timothy. As Ivar embraced him, Timothy felt a spark of hope ignite inside him.

  “I forced myself not to even think about you. I didn’t dare.” Then he pulled back and looked up at Ivar. “What of Grimshaw? Is he allied with Raptus now?”

  “Grimshaw is dead.”

  Lord Romulus roared and leaped in front of them, throwing up a magical shield of shimmering blue energy. A Wurm crashed into the shield and was repelled, stunned. The thing staggered back and the Cuzcotec jumped on it, long ropy tendrils of sizzling magic choking and binding it.

  Then Romulus spun on them. “Yes, Grimshaw is dead!” he snapped at Timothy. “Or so the Asura was just telling me. But we’ve no time for details now. We’ve got to fight! And you’re going to be killed here on the field!”

  Verlis roared nearby, and Timothy looked over to see him and Cythra attacking a Wurm that had dropped down on them from above. Edgar was cawing and darting about the Wurm’s head to distract it.

  “Listen to me!” Timothy shouted at Romulus. “You’re wrong. We can’t fight. We’ve got to retreat. All of the mages have to make one concentrated attack on Raptus and stagger him if possible, just enough time to buy us a moment to withdraw.”

  “What?” Romulus bellowed. “We’ll likely all be slaughtered. Look at what he’s become!”

  “Maybe!” Timothy snapped, looking at both Romulus and Ivar. “But if we stay, we will most certainly all be slaughtered. If we can make it back to the city, we can tell them what’s happened and hope the Parliament comes up with a way to stop Raptus.”

  The sky seemed to open up with thunder but it was only the sound of Raptus unleashing another torrent of liquid fire. The banners of the Order of the Winter Star went up in flames as twenty or thirty more mages died.

  Romulus hesitated.

  “We’ve got to go now!” Timothy told him, deciding it would be a mistake to reveal that he had already begun to spread the word of a retreat.

  The Grandmaster of the Legion Nocturne looked at Ivar. The Asura nodded. Timothy was right. They both knew it.

  Romulus shouted his fury to the sky.

  Cassandra rose with the sun, bathed and dressed, planning to go up to the watchtower for a report on city security and to discover if there’d been any word from Twilight. She picked up her brush and stepped out on the balcony. Running the brush through her hair, she gazed out at the city of Arcanum. Her temporary residence in the Xerxis was on the fourth floor and had a view of the broad courtyard in front of the main entrance to the parliamentary compound. If she looked to the right and craned her neck, she could see the great spire atop the Xerxis, but the watchtower was behind her, and she had no view of it from here. To the left there were grand homes and the embassy towers of dozens of different guilds. And st
raight ahead there rose the spires of elegant residential buildings, houses of faith, and the training centers for hundreds of different tradecrafts. In the distance she could see the hills on the outskirts of the city, August Hill the tallest and most prominent of all.

  Arcanum. Her home.

  As she brushed her hair, Cassandra let her mind wander, and her thoughts were of Timothy. Without even realizing it, she set the brush down on the balcony rail. Peering into the distance, she fancied that she could see all the way south to Twilight. She knew how foolish it was for her to be so concerned about the fate of one boy when the whole world was in peril, but she could not help it. An image of Timothy’s face floated in her mind, eyes alight with the intensity he brought to his inventions and his arguments with Parliament.

  Cassandra bit her lower lip.

  He would be all right. She couldn’t allow herself to consider any other alternative.

  “Enough,” she whispered to herself.

  Smoothing her robes she began to turn to go back into her quarters, but then she saw something just out of the corner of her eye that drew her attention. On the southern horizon, as high as August Hill, there were three dark shapes against the sunlit sky.

  Wurm.

  Cassandra shook her head slowly. It had to be members of Verlis’s clan. Perhaps not all of the adults had gone south with Lord Romulus after all. There was no way—

  In the distance she heard a bell begin to ring, a deep, sonorous sound that carried on the light breeze. Another picked up the clangor and then another, and soon every bell in Arcanum was ringing. The three Wurm were flying at incredible speed, passing over the city, headed toward the Xerxis.

  The bells were an alarm.

  Cassandra spun and ran back through her quarters. She did not bother with her brush or the doors to the balcony, leaving them wide open to the sunshine and the breeze. Nothing mattered now but action and speed. She slammed the door to her quarters behind her as she raced out into the corridor and then sprinted for the stairs. Other mages were already spilling out of their rooms, some with weapons. She ignored them. Cassandra had to find out what was happening, how large the attack force was, what this meant for their troops at Twilight, and whether or not the city was prepared.