by Eric Vall
“Where from?” Renuad asked.
“Varle,” I called.
He nodded. “I’ve always wanted to see those walls of yours. They sound impressive.”
“Oh, they are, believe me,” I said with a smile. “I was in awe the first time I saw them too.”
“What brought you here? And where’s the rest of your squad?”
Nia looked back at him and bit her lips, brows furrowed. Varleth just snorted. Boy, he just couldn't be nice, could he?
“We were on another mission,” I began. “Rift opened at Harrow’s Gullet if you know the place.” Renuad nodded, so I continued. “When we went to the Shadowscape, we were ambushed by these three strange monsters. Supremely powerful with magical cries that were painful and made Nia’s ears bleed. They looked like giant gray worms with shadowy wings and large, powerful legs. Does that sound familiar to you?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say it does. What happened?”
“Well, they weakened us with their cries, then dove through the rift and closed it behind us. We were left stranded in the Shadowscape with an incoming horde of monsters.”
I gritted my teeth at the memory of it. The ramifications of monsters being smart enough to make ambushes… it was terrifying.
“That’s… monsters aren’t supposed to be that smart,” Renuad said plainly, his eyes wide and his large lips set in a frown.
I nodded. “That’s what so worrying. We managed to escape and followed those monsters to our airship. One of them led us here, and well, here we are.”
He considered that for a moment as he looked forward. “Could they be related?”
“Seems likely,” Varleth chimed in without his usual vitriol attached. “I find it hard to think it a coincidence that we were ambushed by a cunning monster strategy on the same day that your xanyarstone walls failed to prevent a rift from opening.”
“Yeah, that is far too big of a coincidence,” Nia agreed. That was when a crowd of ghouls rushed toward her through the smoke ahead, but she gathered a large fireball in her hand and hurled it at them. It seemed to grow larger in the air before it exploded at the feet of the ghouls. The blast incinerated them like they were nothing as it kicked up a cloud of dirt and stone.
“Coincidence or not, we can’t dwell on it now,” Varleth continued as if nothing had happened. “We have to close this rift, and then we can worry about such… troubling thoughts.”
He was right. None of this would matter if the whole city fell.
“Shouldn’t be much further,” Renuad said.
That was good, because I was tired, and I didn’t want to walk across the whole town. This needed to end, and quickly.
As we got closer to the rift, the monster presence increased, as did the body count. Waves and waves of grunts rushed us from all sides. Nia handled the front, as the sizzle and explosions of her fire magic, the crashing of her earth spells, and the whoosh of her wind echoed through the air. Renuad bounced in and out of my vision to fight where he deemed it necessary to hold the line. His body ballooned to impossible size, his whole torso and arms bulging with muscles. He was a sight to see as he tore apart hapless monsters with his bare hands. He accumulated cut after cut, gash after gash, but the wounds didn’t seem to bother him.
Meanwhile, beside our continuous wallerdon escort and the bullet bass that hovered above our heads, my daggerdillos perched atop my wallerdons, where they shot their spike-like quills at the incoming monsters. With them were my ice imps, who sent icy spears sailing through the air to impale any monster that came within range.
Nothing got close as my monsters shot up their fellow monsters like pin cushions. I was starting to feel like this would be too easy, mounting fatigue aside, but then we came to the rift.
We all sucked in a breath when we came upon the battered square. There were hundreds of chatteroshi crawling over every surface like a swarm of ants, their small impish bodies and bladed arms wriggling over one another. Through the various hues of their skin, one stuck out. Blood red.
Beneath the swarming mass of them, bodies littered the pavement, mangled and mutilated with blood everywhere. It was a massacre. The stench of the carnage assaulted my nose even worse than the foul stench of the massive rift before us. And it was massive too, bigger than the one I’d encountered at Ralor’s Stead those few months ago before my life had become complicated.
With so many chatterroshi, the sounds of their chittering and chewing filled the air with a heavy din that made my ears vibrate. The only blessing in it was that they didn’t hear us immediately. Nia summoned some flame and was about to throw it in the middle of the horde, but there were so many that I knew it would hardly put a dent in them.
I put a hand on her shoulder and stepped past her. She lifted an eyebrow at me curiously.
“Let me handle this, Kenefick,” I said sternly.
She dropped her hands. “Are you sure? You are good, Gryff, but there are so many of them…”
I grinned. “Don’t worry, I got something perfect for a crowd like this.”
Nia trusted me, so she nodded and stepped back next to Renuad, who narrowed his gaze curiously at me. That was understandable. He’d said himself that he wasn’t used to summoners fighting, let alone taking the lead in a situation like this. It was time to wow him as Nia had told him earlier.
I recalled all my monsters as what I was about to do would take all of my control and mana. I was already exhausted, and this would only prove to exacerbate that fact, but it had to be done.
With them gone and the weight of controlling all of them at once eased off my shoulders, I pulled out a slender pale-green crystal. I gripped it tightly for a moment, took a deep breath to calm my tired, labored breathing, then I lobbed the crystal at the head of the crowd of gnashing chatteroshi.
It didn’t take a lot of mana or concentration to summon the monster within or to order it to do what it did best. But controlling it… that was another matter altogether. What appeared was a large butterfly about the size of my hand, with elegant, glowing green wings that looked like they were lined with silver.
Renuad clicked his tongue, skeptical. “What is that little thing?” he asked.
“A kalgori…” Varleth’s voice trailed off in sudden concern. “Are you sure about this, summoner?”
I didn’t look back at him. I just stared at my little flying friend as it flew over the heads of the chatteroshi who suddenly seemed interested in it.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’ve used it before.” Then I looked back at the three of them. “You may want to step back though.”
They did so. Nia had seen what the kalgori could do, or at least, she’d caught glimpses of it. She was in her own fight the last time I used it at Helvetia, so it was tough to say if she saw the whole thing play out with me and the rambler.
I calmed myself and reached out to the kalgori with my mana and gave it a gentle nudge. It fluttered wildly, almost excitedly, at my order.
My monster started to glow a tad brighter, and then it multiplied. One became two, then four, then sixteen, then more and more until there were hundreds of glinting, fluttering wings to match the chittering of the chatteroshi below. The kalgori like this, a swarm of butterflies dancing in the air, it could be – was – beautiful. Until they began to kill.
The kalgori began to swirl together, each one carrying a gust of wind. They swirled and swirled together until they were a literal tornado. The chatteroshi were picked up one after another as they clawed helplessly at the air. They looked so small then, so much like the childish bodies they possessed, but they were death, and they would have caused the death of us, if given a chance.
A splash of red came quickly, the first cut of the blade storm. Then another. And the carnage began.
Kalgori wings were lined with razor-sharp edges, so when they swarmed like this, flying at the speed they were, they could eviscerate nearly all foes. They did just that. The storm of blades whirled around the square, pic
king up chatteroshi left and right, turning them to sprays of blood and gore in the blink of an eye. The blood mingled with the gale of the tornado until it was a funnel of red.
I could hear Nia gasp at the scene behind me. I didn’t blame her, for it wasn’t a pretty sight. The chatteroshi were slaughtered spectacularly, and their impish cries filled the air in a din of pain, before quickly being snuffed out.
It was now, with the kalgori in a frenzy, that they became hardest to control. Even the most skilled summoners could lose control completely, and the storm of death would keep on swirling to consume anyone in its path. I knitted my brow in concentration to keep that from happening, though it wasn’t easy. The little kalgori’s will had exponentially multiplied, and they resisted wholeheartedly. Still, I gritted my teeth as sweat spilled down my face and stung my eyes. I wouldn’t let it have its way.
I pushed all the mana I could into it to compel it to stop without draining myself completely. Finally, the multitude of glowing wings began to blink out of existence, and the tornado died until only one butterfly remained. Only dismembered body parts of the chatteroshi remained, and they fell to the ground and began to break down. The blood that had so thickly swirled with the storm of kalgori fell and splattered the already blood drenched square, and us as well.
My companions cursed with disgust, but it couldn’t be helped. I found myself laughing a little.
“I should have warned you that that was a possibility.”
And then I dropped to my knees and sucked in the copper-tinged air. I wanted to curl up and sleep, and my body ached from exerting so much mana, but we weren’t done yet, unfortunately.
Nia grunted, her hair stained red by the storm. “Remind me to kill you if we don’t die in that rift.”
I returned that sentiment with a cheeky smile while Renuad was nearly speechless. “That… that was…”
“I told you if you stuck around,” Nia told him as I regained some of my strength, “you’d see something amazing.”
He put his hands on his hips and smirked. “That you did.”
My lover came to my side while Varleth walked slowly through the blood to the rift. She put an arm around me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Just need to catch my breath.” A moment later, I stood with her, and we all gathered before the massive rift. This was it.
The city was still in flames, the air stifling, choked with the smell of smoke and blood and death. The distant sounds of screams echoed across the city, and gunfire and the clanging of swords was an ever-present din. The only way to stop all of this was to close this infernal thing. Whatever lay within, we would handle it and save the city.
Varleth looked back at us. He was pale and tired, but determined. His sword swirled with black banisher magic.
“Are you ready?” he asked us.
We all nodded grimly.
“Good, masks on,” the banisher said with a curt nod.
So we clapped on our masks. Renuad didn’t have one, but he didn’t seem like he was ready to stop now. If we did this quickly, he would be okay. Nia and I had certainly weathered the smell of the Shadowscape without the masks’ protection for a long time.
With that, we strode into the Shadowscape for the second time today and hoped that this time, things would be more straightforward.
What a thing to hope for.
Chapter 5
The area here was different from the one we’d just come from. The storefronts were blown out and in ruins, more so than in the real world. Some buildings were collapsed completely, their skeletal remains shrouded in shadow. The statue that sat in the center of the square was half crumbled from decay and covered in rust while the cobblestones beneath us were cracked to the point that it felt like we were standing on gravel.
It was as grim as I had expected. At least the bodies were all gone and with those, the smell of blood, though without our masks, the odor of the hell would have been overwhelming. Small blessings.
We didn’t count them too quickly, for we only took a few steps into the Shadowscape before we were attacked.
A tremendous chorus of howls rang out around us. Perched atop the rooftops was a pack of wolves, but that was ridiculous. Natural animals didn’t live in this blasted hellscape. A moment later, they stood, revealing humanoid bodies and limbs far too long for their lean muscular bodies. Lycans. They resembled the werewolves of pre-Enclave legend, but they lacked the hair of their legendary counterparts. Instead, their skin was sickly grey, with sparse, stringy hair lining their bodies.
They were devilishly fast and pounced on us before we could hardly get a cry of alarm out. I only had enough time to summon a wallerdon to my defense before the lycans arrived. The lead one slammed against the wallerdon with a loud bang, and my monster lurched back. But the lycan wasn’t done. It swiftly recovered and bounded around my shield.
I was prepared though and had already summoned two cementrolls who threw themselves at the lycan. They pinned it to the ground and poured forth their liquid cement over the lycan’s body, sticking the beast in place before the cement finally hardened. It was completely trapped.
There was nothing fancy about what I did next. I unsheathed my short sword, gripped the hilt tightly, and jammed the blade through the lycan’s head. It twitched for a single moment before it went still and began to dissolve into the pure magical essence that all monsters were made of, their fate when they died in the Shadowscape.
With my lycan down, I went to help my companions though it was hardly necessary. Nia crackled with electric energy as the lycan she’d zapped to death began to fade next to her. Varleth stood on one knee, sword plunged into the earth as he sucked in a breath. He looked ragged and paler than after he’d opened the rift at Harrow’s Gullet. I hoped he had enough left to fight on and close the rift. Otherwise, we were in trouble.
Renuad’s face was contorted from pain and obvious disgust at the smell of this place. He had his hands on his knees and tried to calm his breathing. Three terrible gashes from the lycan’s claws ran diagonally across his chest. Otherwise, he was fine.
“That was a warm welcome,” I said.
“Surprising,” Nia added.
Varleth nodded at that, then pushed to his feet. He cracked his neck, then started striding east. “Come on, the Catalyst stone isn’t too far, but we don’t have a lot of time.”
That much was true. So without further delay, we followed after him.
We traveled for several minutes, but we were met by no resistance whatsoever. There was nothing, only a heavy, eerie silence that settled over us. With such a big rift, and one that was inside of an enclave, I expected wave after wave of monsters, but since the initial lycan welcome, there was nothing. It was unsettling.
“I do not like this,” Nia commented, her voice sharp and tense.
“Yeah,” I replied in agreement, every muscle in me tensed tight with anticipation. “Do you sense anything, Varleth?”
He shook his head. “We’re getting closer to the Catalyst and to something powerful, but for now I can’t feel anything else. We should stay cautious though. Some higher grade monsters can hide their presence. We can’t rule that out as a possibility.”
That was not a cheery proposition, but we had to steel ourselves and push forward, on guard and alert for any movement whatsoever. Perhaps this was a boon from the Maker, and we simply had nothing else to fight in our mission to close this damn rift, but that seemed highly unlikely.
Eventually, we made our way to a market with a large, dry fountain at the center. It was empty of monsters as well. Here, the buildings were less ruined and more so just dilapidated and abandoned. The windows and doors were boarded up, the chimneys were crumbled piles of chipped brick and mortar, and the shudders hung at odd angles from their hinges, barely hanging on.
Varleth stopped beside the fountain and pressed his hand to the rusted copper of it. “We’re not that far away now. But...” He pressed a hand to his head and shook it. “... somet
hing isn’t right.”
“What is it?” I asked as I reached for some crystals. I had a bad feeling as well.
“The powerful feeling. It disappeared…” Varleth’s shoulders tensed as his right hand tightened on his sword.
“Is that… good or bad?” Renuad asked cautiously beside me. He slowly began to add bulk to his shoulders and arms, sensing a fight.
Varleth turned back to us. His eyes were narrowed, and his teeth gritted in a tight grimace. “It’s bad.”
Suddenly we heard a ferocious bellow of a roar that shook the square, followed by tremor-like stomps that bounded our way. We all looked and found the source. What shitty luck we had.
At first glance, it looked to be a fire-eye, like the one I’d fought at Ralor’s Stead so long ago. It was as tall as any church and as wide around too. It was a wall of muscle, thick red skin with that large, glaring eye that pierced the gloom. Wicked teeth stuck out from its lipless mouth. But then, as it rose to its full height, the differences between this beast and a regular fire-eye became immediately clear. This one was even larger than the last one I had fought, and that a crown of resplendent horns that seemed to be made out of solid gold erupted from its head. A faint blue aura rippled around the immense cyclops, something I had never seen before, but I had the feeling that it probably wasn’t good.
This wasn’t a ‘mere’ fire-eye, this was a king fire-eye, a more powerful and advanced form of the mighty cyclops.
The king crashed through building after building as if they were feeble wooden fences. The closest wall was too close to Nia, and she had no time to move as the fire-eye exploded through that as well. Stone and dust littered the air, and the spray of debris knocked the beautiful blonde woman back with a yelp. As the fire-eye lumbered toward her, I realized Nia wouldn’t recover in time.
I had to act.
I clutched one of my small crystals and threw it as fast as I could. The king fire-eye cocked back its fist, but before it could swing, my crystal exploded in a flash and out came one of my bullet basses. The cyclops swung, but the bullet bass encased Nia’s body in metal just in time. The king fire-eye’s blow smashed into her and sent her flying through the wall of the building next to us. Metal or not, that wouldn’t feel great for her, but I knew that she would be alive, and when she got back to her senses, she would be pissed.
