by D. M. Almond
Through the still calm, Corbin could hear his heart beating, throbbing like a drum in his head. Every vein in his body twitched with anticipation as he peered out over the wall, deep into the darkness. Every soldier in Fal was gathered on the walls and all there was to do now was wait.
Soon the Great Crystal would slink into its three-day slumber. They could only pray the initial attack came before that. Otherwise, the city would be hard pressed to defend against an enemy none could see.
The landscape below had gone quiet an hour ago, bringing with it a cold sweat on the skin of all those men and women who waited with dread-filled hearts up and down the walls on all levels of the city. Watchers peered out at the forest and canyons surrounding the capitol, searching with bi-scopes for some sign of the promised incoming threat. The cool night air was still, filled with the wafting aromas of food from the festivities that had come to a grinding halt once the war horns were blown. Inside Fal, citizens stood huddled together in their homes, fearing what was coming next. Leaving the feasts behind, every able-bodied man and woman was ordered to the walls and other defensive towers built around the inner city.
Logan’s stomach felt queasy and he gripped his bow so tightly that his wounded palm began to bleed again. He could not help but wonder if maybe this was all a huge mistake. What if the swarm had not actually been headed for the capitol after all? Why had they not struck yet? What were those monsters waiting for? There was no way for him to know that the swarm had found a nest of antrocs and had stopped to feast upon them, or that through sheer dumb luck he and Corbin had narrowly missed crossing paths with the monsters when they skirted the ruined chasms.
Maybe he should just go inside the city walls and leave all this defense nonsense to those more capable, like the Praetorian, who was crouching to his left and growling. Logan wasn’t sure when the man had begun the noise but was sure it was a recent event. He shot his brother a questioning look but was ignored as Corbin was peering intently out over the wall.
Logan scratched a tickle on his head with the tip of an arrow, searching the tree line for what could have them in such a trance. Out in the darkness, Logan could see only the still trees with their leaves shivering in the cool breeze. The canyons were completely still, like a graveyard of departed monoliths which had fallen in weird angles along the subterranean floor.
Banner’s growling rose an octave as he tensed up, gritting his teeth with a chalky grating sound. High above the cavern, their Great Crystal began flickering indigo light as it made ready to shut down, marking the beginning of the Culhada.
In the flickering light, Logan thought he saw something move below in the trees. Craning his neck, he tried to focus, looking at all the shaking leaves on the forest’s edge, trying to get a grip on what he was seeing. He could not get a sense of it and nudged his brother’s ribs with his elbow. Corbin too was peering at the moving shadows, up on the tips of his toes to gaze over the wall’s edge. He did not respond. Refocusing his vision, Logan realized his mistake just as the Praetorian howled to his men.
“Ready your arms, lads! Here the bastards come!”
The leaves were not leaves at all, but hundreds and hundreds of swarming insects feasting on everything they found in their path among the trees.
No sooner had the realization hit Logan then the swarm burst from the forest with lustful fury.
Corbin took a step back at the awful sight, working his way behind his older brother, whose jaw hung slack while his eyes looked ready to bulge out of their sockets. Corbin was not sure if it was to snap his brother out of it or to pump himself up, but he gave Logan a good hard slap to the back of the head. Logan’s bow let loose a single stray arrow, which floundered straight up into the air and came back down between his legs.
“What in the…!” Logan scowled, the proclamation cut off by the first insect to reach their wall.
“Now, lads, let’s show them that Falians are no easy lunch!” Praetorian Banner howled as he heaved his battle-axe through the air, tearing into the skex’s torso.
There was no time to cheer Banner’s kill as four more of the insects buzzed over to their section. One man’s gurgled screams were sickening as an insect ripped its barbed tail into his spine, pulling the poor wretch howling into the night air. Another plunged down at the Praetorian, who pumped his arms at the beast, beckoning it to fight.
As it swooped past through the night air, Logan could smell the foul odor of the insect, like pond water rotting a corpse, and it gagged him. The skex pummeled the giant man to the smooth stone ground as it landed, ramming into him with its side. Logan let his first, second, and third arrow fly in rapid succession, quicker than most men would even be able to steady a single shot. The beast screeched as they ripped between the folds in its plated exoskeleton, exposing its left flank. Quickly the monster shifted its ravenous ire to the little man who had just stung it, flinging its tail at Banner as an afterthought. The Praetorian was just getting to his feet as the tail came at him and had to throw his body into a mad roll to dodge the deadly barbed stinger.
Skittering across the wall, the beast reached a pincer out hungrily for Logan. He let loose another arrow, but it bounced harmlessly off the monster’s clawed appendage. He considered making a run for it then and there, but something hit him squarely in the spine. Almost bowled over, he barely caught a glimpse of his brother jumping off his back, flying head over heels, arcing through the air over the insect.
In the flickering strobe light of the Crystal, Corbin looked like some sort of monster himself, slashing up and down into the beast’s neck with his spear, splattering guts all over his torso while he pumped away like a demon. Logan thought that he would keep his complaint of being used as a launching pad to himself as he watched his brother dispatch the foul creature.
Behind the dying monster, the Praetorian and his men were working on another skex, this one slightly smaller than the first. A screech resounded in the air, and Logan let loose another volley of arrows, fatally wounding one of the monsters flying overhead. As it fell past, he saw that it was carrying the remains of a torn-up woman. He raced to the edge of the wall to watch the plummeting monstrosity with the soldier standing beside him. They could do little more than peer over the edge at the falling beast, helpless to save the woman.
One of the insects that had been skittering up the sheer face of the wall was just below them. It swung an oversized pincer across where they stood. Logan reflexively grabbed the soldier beside him and flung them both backward, landing on his pack as the man fell next to him.
“That was a close one!” he shouted to the soldier, who would never hear him, having had his head shorn cleanly from his shoulders.
Logan choked on his own vomit as the insect clambered over the side of the wall, claws whipping blindly ahead of it. He let an arrow fly as he scrambled backward, his back slamming against the stone of the narrow wall space. The arrow deflected harmlessly off the insect’s defending claw. He let another off, and it sank in deep near the skex’s exposed rows of eyes and tentacle-lined mouth.
Corbin rushed in toward the skex’s side, tucking his legs tightly up under him, and leaping over a swinging claw. He landed squarely in front of the monster, jabbing his spear straight into its gullet as Logan ripped through one of its eyeballs with another arrow.
Corbin pulled back on the spear, but it would not budge, forcing him to let it go as the beast flailed furiously up and down in agony. The hunter in him quickly danced backward, never taking his eyes off the monster, which was futilely trying to grasp the protruding spear with its claws.
Above them, new screeching rang out as two more of the insects rained down from the second level of the city. In the flickering light, Logan could just make out a hysterical soldier caught in one of the beast’s tails. Several men were running down the parapet toward them. Cursing to himself, Logan knew that he had to shift his attention away from his brother and the slavering monster half hanging over the wall to the incoming t
hreat.
He let loose a burst of arrows into the creatures’ exposed underbellies before they even came close. The soldiers around him also let their weapons loose, spears and crossbow bolts raining through the air, plunging into the creatures. One of the skex must have realized there was easier prey elsewhere and shifted its flight back up to another level of the city. The other stubbornly hissed, its mouth quivering in hungry anticipation.
Weaponless now, Corbin was shifting back and forth in a mad dance of survival, dodging the wounded beast’s grasping pincers. Working furiously on pure instinct alone, he danced forward into an opening then rolled to the side and leapt away from a crashing claw, all the while waiting for an opening. The beast’s tentacle-lined mouth had begun working the spear out, pulsing purple flesh gripping tightly around the shaft and slowly wrenching the spearhead away.
Corbin spied his opportunity. Somersaulting through the air, he twisted into a dive, lightly tapping off the skex’s waving claw to land back inside its reach and grasp his spear firmly with both hands. He knew it would be futile to pull at the weapon with the tentacles wrapped around it, so instead he shoved forward, throwing all his weight into it, crunching the spear deeper through the beast’s jaw. Squatting, he wrenched with corded arms straight up into the air, ripping the spear cleanly through the monster’s forehead. No death rattle emerged from the beast as it grasped into the air for nothing before slumping forward and almost bowling him over under its weight.
Logan had retreated amongst the soldiers as his quarry came in, the hazy blue strobe light of the Crystal dancing across its back. The group he was with pushed hard against the beast, stabbing it from all sides until the monster rolled off the edge of the wall, pulling large chunks of the parapet with it as it plummeted to its death. Another insect tried to flee the city walls, looking like a pincushion after its battle with the army above. Logan directed the men to attack, piercing the soft underbelly even further. That skex crashed dead, following its brood down the side of the wall.
All along the wall, fighting was ceasing as the brave men and women pushed the enemy back. The remaining members of the invading swarm were forced to retreat into the night. Cheers erupted at the victory.
“We did it!” Logan screamed, jumping up and down in celebration with the men and women around him. However, Banner walked by wearing a solemn look, silencing them. Glancing at Corbin, Logan motioned for him to follow over to the wall. The Praetorian was deep in concentration looking out into the night.
Logan felt confused, wondering why his brother wore an equally disturbing expression. “Take heart, Corbin, we’ve won the day. Victory is ours,” he said, clapping Corbin’s shoulder halfheartedly.
The Praetorian shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Logan. What we have won is no more than a minor victory. It would appear they were toying with us. Testing our mettle, so to speak, the cunning beasts,” Banner growled under his breath.
“But…how could you possibly know that?” Logan asked, waving his open hand at the dead skex littering the area.
Corbin directed his attention to the tree line again, where a larger swarm waited at the edge of the forest. The valley below was still teeming with their ranks. What they had faced was but a taste of the horde.
What in blazes are they waiting for? Logan wondered, horrified.
As Logan was about to shake his head, he received his answer.
Deep inside the city, the cogs of the great temple wound into place, and the bells chimed, announcing the new cycle had arrived. Overhead, the Great Crystal god Baetylus’ pulsating indigo light flared blindingly white hot for only a moment, forcing everyone to shield their eyes against its brilliance. That light quickly faded as a long haloed shadow of darkness stretched in toward it, the Crystal’s brilliance receding in the shadows’ wake back up to the ceiling where it floated. The halo surrounded it like a crown until finally it too was engulfed in darkness, leaving them all in the pitch-black.
The only lights that existed now were thousands of glowing red eyes peering at the humans from beyond the city walls. The eyes looked at them with an unmatched hunger and ferocity, even seeming to sparkle with malicious laughter, as the massive swarm closed in on the capitol.
“Baetylus help us all,” Corbin moaned.
