Ascending Shadows (The Age of Dawn Book 6)

by Everet Martins

  Isa’s chest heaved and sweat prickled from his skin, his muscles burning like acid, jaw set for murder. They tore down the road leading to the docks, seeming to stretch on forever. Demons growled, barked, and shrieked, sounding all too close. “Run!” Isa screamed at the hut where the villagers hid, saw pairs of eyes staring back at the approaching horde. He spared a glance back, a hideous figure not more than ten paces off. Too close. “You’ll die!” he threw at the villagers.

  His grip was iron around the dagger’s hilt. “Help Greyson!” he ordered Senka, running at his side. “I’ll give us some breathing room.”

  “Right! Don’t die!” She pounded down the docks, wood clattering under her feet, a dagger flashing in her hand.

  Isa spun, blood rushing through his temples. He drove the balls of his feet into the sand, snorted salted air in through his nose. A figure dashed ahead of all the other lumbering forms, making Isa’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. No different than Death Spawn, he told himself. Senka was right, just Death Spawn. He narrowed his vision, relaxed his breath, and watched it move as if passing through honey.

  Its flesh was bone white. Its head was a featureless mass of flattened flesh, no eyes, no mouth. Its limbs were long and lean, shape clearly that of a woman’s body. Its arms ended with rusted blades, one the length of a short sword, the other at least twice as long and broad, hooked at the end. Strapped to the back of its heels were some other type of blade. Axeheads, he thought. There was a barbed chain wrapped around her throat that trailed down between her flopping breasts, flesh red with scars. The chain wrapped around her back and crisscrossed down her legs. Triangular panels of exposed flesh were lifted back from her upper chest and abdomen, showing a patch of bleeding muscle beneath. The flaps of skin were secured by hooks embedded in her skin. Bits of leather strips were wrapped around her elbows, shoulders, and knees, the rest of her open to the world. The beast growled like a wolf, going louder with every approaching step, bladed arms whipping. As she drew closer and closer, sweat formed between his hand and the dagger.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he muttered, switching his grip from regular to overhand and back to overhand. She was tall, at least a foot taller than him.

  The beast stared at him as if it could see. He stared back. In a mighty leap, it soared above him, the short sword arm drawn back to run Isa through. He twisted his body, and its blade pierced only air. The demon’s foot fell with a thump, and Isa ducked to avoid a follow-up slash of its long sword. He slashed across with his blade, cutting it across the bicep. Unflinching at the cut, it swung with its other arm, air whooshing over Isa’s ducking form, and he cut it up the inner thigh, black blood streaking the air. It screeched, a sound coming from behind its mask of flesh, as it stabbed at his leg.

  “Isa!” a voice called from somewhere far off, another place, another time he couldn’t understand.

  He pivoted his knee with a hiss, and the creature’s ragged blade sliced him across the hamstring. A nick. He growled, his jaw crushing down. The beast hacked down with her enormous blade, drove his dagger up to meet it stabbing through her elbow, his bones colliding and cracking against the segments of iron connecting the blade to her arm.

  “Die!” he snarled and closed his eyes as blood spattered from its wound onto his head and down his face. His dagger had gone in easily, the soft spot where the ligament met the humerus. He twisted his dagger out and back, easily slicing through the soft tissue. Its arm flopped uselessly against its side, and it threw its head back in a screech of rage. Blood coursed over its exposed panels of flesh, sliding back down beneath it as if unaffected by the earth’s tug.

  Its rage meant its death. When emotion dominated the enemy, the contest was already won. It made no difference whether it was man, Tigerian, or beast.

  Isa aimed for its opened panel of flesh at its gut, stabbed deep, only stopping at the hilt, hand warm with blood. He was an artist. The dagger was his brush, black blood his favorite color. He dragged his dagger wide across its torso, thudding against bone where bone shouldn’t have been. Blood gurgled from the gaping wound, and it lurched toward him. He rolled back, and the vicious swipe of its long sword chopped into the sand. It whirled around in a series of spin kicks, blood spraying from its gut, trying to tear him open with the axe blades mounted on its heels. Its disabled arm tore loose from the weight of its weapon, rolling across the sand and spurting blood. He ducked one kick, jumped the other, blocked the third kick with both forearms. A snap came from his arm, filling with raging pain, the bone broken, weakened from his last block against its iron-bound arm. He kicked it in the gut wound, squelching and sending it back a few steps. A man screamed ahead of them, something long in his hands.

  Nadja charged out of the hut, ramming a wooden spear into the side of a bulbous creature. A heroic sacrifice. The beasts’ attention shifted to him, falling upon him, blood misting the air as they tore him to shreds. Gallena and Thelsa ran for the docks while they were distracted. They let out shrill screams of terror, their expressions stricken with mortal fright, bundles draped across their backs.

  Stawford ran after them, spear jabbing at approaching figures, trying to ward them off. Gikta was clutched in one of his arms, his legs squirming, cheeks painted with tears. Sand flew up behind them in a cloud of beige.

  “A bloody nightmare! Just a nightmare!” Stawford yelled and stabbed.

  The female beast twisted around and stumbled for the villagers, leaving a trail of black blood in its wake. Isa stepped to give chase, heard his name screamed again. He saw Senka, Juzo, and Greyson on the boat, starting to drift from the docks, frantically waving for him to come. He turned his back to them. Had to finish the job.

  He ran at the beast, the distance not more than a few strides. He kicked her in the lower back and sent her to her knees. He wrapped one hand around her forehead and jerked her head back, exposing her throbbing throat. He rammed his knife in above the length of barbed chain, felt it strike something hard. “Fucking bastard,” he growled. He sawed it back and forth, blade springing free, arm a river of blood, its head flopping over limp.

  The Beachmarsh women ran past the two of them, terror twisting their faces. Stawford fell. Isa saw a creature’s incongruously large mouth engulfing his head and shearing it off in a single bite. An absurd amount of blood sprayed from his neck, bathing the beasts in scarlet. The boy tried to run, made it a few steps before being impaled upon a ragged blade. His small hands wrapped around the edge protruding from his belly and stared at it with disbelief. Behind it all, the Shadow princess sauntered into the village, grinning, hips casually swaying as if taking in a morning stroll.

  “Fuck,” Isa breathed, let the lifeless body of the female demon fall from his grip. The demon horde roared at him for besting their champion, teeth gnashing, a pair of tendrils with eyes at the ends rising up. “Fuck!” He gasped and vaulted into a sprint. Never ends. Never fucking ends. His guts heaved, throat working like a smith’s bellows. He passed Thelsa and Gallena, shouldering them out of the way, almost throwing them into the water.

  “Hey!” one of them shouted. An imaged flashed in his mind of a lion chasing down a gazelle, pinning it and tearing out its throat. Nature wasn’t kind to the weak.

  Another grim thought occurred to him. They didn’t have provisions for more than four, even with four, they’d be stretched thin. Not enough water for six. He reached the end of the docks and leaped onto the boat.

  “Hold me!” he yelled and felt Senka’s strong arms wrap around his outstretched arm. He leaned over the edge and gave the pier a kick as the village women drew near. He lurched back towards Senka on the boat and regained his footing, arm grabbing at the mast.

  “Save us!” Gallena called, hefting her bundle, stopping at the edge of the pier. She yelped as she looked down at the docks. “Stawford! Gikta! No, no! Not him.”

  “Please!” Thelsa shouted, hand imploring. “Help us!” She leaped for the boat, fell short and splashed into the water. Her hand ca
me up and latched onto the boat’s side. Gallena jumped in after, her bundle abandoned and sinking. She spluttered and swam for the boat. The beasts reached the docks, their screams and shrieks of rage carrying along the shoreline.

  Isa glanced at Senka, who was staring wide-eyed at the creatures. “This can’t be,” she muttered. “What do we do?”

  Greyson had a paddle raking at the water, the muscles in his arms straining to get out to sea. “Help me! Get the other paddle!” he screamed. Senka bent down to take it, staring at Greyson for a long few seconds before she started to paddle.

  Juzo kicked the boom out to catch the wind on the sail, the boat tilting back as it started to accelerate. “Get them off!” he barked at Isa and started jerking on a rope.

  Thelsa reached Gallena and clung to her shoulders, legs flailing and kicking up water, her additional weight making the boat dip onto that side. “Please, please help us,” Thelsa begged between choking out water.

  Isa looked down as Gallena’s other hand came up and grabbed the gunwale. He saw her fingernails were lined with dirt, knuckles scarred from a life of hard work. Tendons stood out from her forearms like cords. Her face softened with the glimmer of hope at meeting his, pulling herself up.

  Demons half way up the docks.

  Her eyes were bright with tears, lips drawn down with quivering terror. He offered his hand to help, and she released a hand from the boat’s edge to take it. Her fingers wriggled for him, just out of reach of his touch. He jerked his hand back.

  “Life isn’t fair,” he said with a heart made of stone. He stomped on her other hand with his heel. She let out a desperate scream, hanging on despite his cruel blow.

  “No!” she screamed. “Want to live!” The words that would haunt his sleep for years to come. She tried to reach the gunwale again with her free hand, missed it, scrabbling at the boat’s side.

  “Sorry,” Isa whispered, raised his heel, tears hot in his eyes, and drove his foot into her clutching hand again. There was a snap as two of her fingers were bent the wrong way. Her hand slipped from the edge of the boat with a yelp, her head dunking under the water with the weight of Thelsa pressing down.

  The boat lurched away from the docks with the women now off, maybe ten feet away. The wind blew fortuitously hard. Everyone screamed as the beasts sprinted off the edge, leaping for the boat, falling short and plunging into the depths.

  The creatures descended upon the women, churning the turquoise water into red blooms. A human head emerged between plumes of water, limbs thrashing, a claw embedded in the side of her face. Who it was, he couldn’t say. Half of its flesh was gone from chin to scalp. He saw a mass of mangled tissue, bleeding sheets of muscle and bone exposed at the side of her head. He forced himself to watch as the head was dragged back into the water, a baleful white eye finding his for an instant.

  Something clattered. Arms wrapped tightly around him, Senka sobbing against his back. “You did what you had to do, did what you had to do,” she repeated.

  He looked back and saw Juzo staring at the shore. Juzo met his gaze and gave him a resolute nod, his expression hard. “Wait. Look!” He gaped and pointed.

  Isa flinched at the Shadow princess standing at the end of the docks. She was seething, body heaving. “Get more wind! Make this thing go faster!” He bent down and started to paddle with his hands, breaking free from Senka’s grip. She snatched up her paddle and dragged it into the water.

  The Shadow princess fell into a crouch, her eyes narrowed. A spear of violet light formed in her hand, arm drawn back. She growled and threw, a line of violet light arcing up and streaking across the sky.

  “Down!” Senka cried, and everyone dropped low.

  The spear struck the water a few feet away from them, roaring out with a blast of water. Isa dared to look up over the edge of the boat, another coming. “Stay down!” A gout of water washed over the boat. He cleared the stinging water from his eyes. Demons were still spilling from the docks, making the water squirm with their horrible forms, trying to get a scrap of the women’s flesh.

  There were snakes now too, hundreds, maybe thousands crawling over the grounds of Beachmarsh. Their numbers were endless, coming from nowhere and everywhere. They covered the ground with their violet eyes and hissing mouths. Isa stopped paddling. He rose up and stared, mouth falling open, tendrils of anxiety cutting in his guts. Their great sea of hissing carried over the water. Another fiery spear of violet came and fell short of them, the blast of water only serving to push them farther out to sea.

  “She’s out of range,” Juzo nervously laughed.

  Isa held his tongue and watched. He scanned his mind for some evasive action they could take and came up empty.

  “We made it,” Senka breathed and resumed paddling.

  Greyson was still madly paddling, panting with every stroke. “No time to rest.”

  The Shadow princess let out a shriek of the damned. It felt as if it penetrated his skull. He let out a moan, his ears ringing with pain. Through blurry eyes, he watched a drove of snakes fall into the water, swimming around her and wrapping her up in a protective cocoon of their flesh. All those glowing eyes streaked the air around her with their light.

  “She’s not giving up. Trying something else,” Isa said, unsure if he said it loud enough for anyone else.

  The Shadow princess’ arms thrust from the entrapping snakes, launching at least twenty of them into the air. Their bodies wriggled in the sky like living arrows, their mouths angrily hissing. They splashed down all around the boat like hurled stones, plopping into the water.

  Something thumped behind Isa, made him jump, the dagger falling out of his blood and sweat slicked hand.

  “Ah!” Greyson squealed in pain, kicked the Shadow snake to the aft. It was at least four feet long, rising up slow from between a pair of water barrels, softly hissing. Its flesh was covered in heavy scales with small spikes on each, shining in gradients of obsidian and violet. Its hooded head oscillated from side to side, lashing out to bite anyone who got too close.

  “Feign, Senka,” Isa breathed.

  “On it!” She made to lunge at the snake but stopped short while Isa simultaneously continued moving. His hands found its throat, controlling its wriggling neck and the mouth gnashing to bite him. Its fangs were coated in a dark green oily substance. Juzo stomped on its tail before it could whip him with its barbed end.

  “You little bastard,” Isa growled, his fingers crushing down, blood welling out, ignoring the waves of agony billowing out of his broken arm. He smashed its head on the edge of a barrel, blood spraying out the side. He smashed it again and again until its bones felt like they were mashed potatoes. Then and only then did he drop the snake over the side of the boat. It floated on the water for a time, its forked tongue floating, a violet pool forming around it and eventually sinking to the depths.

  They sailed farther from the shoreline, maybe a quarter of a mile away now. Beasts of shadow filled the sand with their gibbering language and writhing bodies. The group watched for ripples on the water, searching for any signs of Shadow snakes. It seemed the Shadow snakes had not learned how to swim. It was about time something had gone their way. The waters were mostly still, and the beautiful shores of Tigeria drifted farther and farther away. He reckoned they were in the far reaches of the north given the sky. They’d traversed straight through the middle of the continent.

  Isa slumped to the floor of the boat, covered in a garish mix of blood. “Anyone get bitten?” he asked, breaking a long silence.

  Shaking heads went all around, Greyson shaking his with far too much enthusiasm. “Let me see your legs. Heard you scream,” Isa nodded at Greyson with narrowed eyes.

  “No. Why? Still don’t trust me after all we’ve been through?” Greyson scoffed.

  “No, I don’t. Know what they say about liars…” Isa drew himself up, body screaming for rest, muscles twanging with tightness. “Please don’t make this harder than it must. I’m old. Tired.” He shifted
his gaze back to the shore, saw the glint of the Shadow princess’ armor reflecting the sun. “She doesn’t give up easily,” he muttered. He looked back at Greyson. “Well?”

  “Would you stop?” Greyson wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his head on his knees.

  “Just do it and be done. What’s the problem?” Juzo asked, sitting on the edge of the gunwale and peering out at the Far Sea.

  “Had enough of this mistreatment. No one ever trusts me to do anything. Just like my bastard father.” Greyson scowled.

  “Greyson, we have to be sure. Your evasiveness isn’t helping your cause,” Senka said from beside him, a water barrel between them.

  “Fine! Shall I strip bare too? Want to see the underside of my cock? Perhaps inspect my royal asshole?”

  Isa sniffed, staring at him. “Lift your pants.” He put his hands on his lower back, stretching his shoulders and chest with a wince. Everything hurt and throbbed with its own force of life.

  Greyson growled as he stood and grabbed the knees of his pants, pulling them up to show his legs. “Happy now, Tower killer?” Greyson glared at him, hands balled up in the fabric.

  Isa let out a sigh of relief. “Was that so hard?”

  “Fuck yourself.” Greyson sat with a thump, letting his body collapse. What Greyson didn’t show them was the throbbing lump on the back of his upper calf where he had indeed been bitten.

  Nineteen

  A Grudge

  “A wounded body will heal. A wounded heart is always scarred.” – The diaries of Nyset Camfield

  Senka pulled a blanket around tight against the Far Sea’s buffeting winds. Her hands were somewhat healed now, no longer throbbing and making themselves known upon every waking day. She wrinkled her nose at the salty tang of the sea, a smell that would remain ever foreign in her mind. That and the stink of chimney smoke rising up from the shores of New Breden. She had slept cradled in Isa’s arms, just for the warmth, she told herself, and hardly noticed his stench, even with her nose pressed against his armpit. She knew she smelled like a turd too, but that didn’t make the scent wafting off the city smell any better. It was also the stink of too many people huddled together, sharing too little space for so many. It wasn’t natural, all these buildings built so close to each other. She forgot how much she loathed living like this.