A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  Until the next time Sana cried out.

  After that, when the terror had died away, Marnie realised it was going to keep happening. That whatever Sana was doing, she was going to keep doing. And that hopefully it would be something to help them. But by then Sana was too far away for her to ask. Too far away to make herself heard over the din of the battle. And she had to focus.

  Each time after that when Sana stopped and let out another of her terrible cries to the heavens, it shook her. It shook all of them and brought everything to a halt for a few brief seconds. But after, they all kept coming back to that single truth. They had to fight. Fight or die. And so they threw themselves back into the battle. And the enemy did the same.

  In time Marnie found herself in a strange place. A black mood had fallen on her. She knew that they had no reason to think that they would win this battle. The city would almost certainly fall. Millions upon millions of people would die with it. But that wasn't what she was fighting for any longer. She would just kill as many of these foul creatures as they could before she either fell or was finally driven back through the portal. That was her promise to herself.

  There would be death.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Hendrick!”

  Hendrick was sitting in a hole in the ground when he heard his name called. Actually it was a post hole. He was busy digging out the foundations for his new house. And there were a lot of them. Forty eight post holes for the house alone, and the oast house was larger again.

  But this time his home would not be coming down. Never again. He had made sure of that. It was why he was building it in the unicorn's world. There would be no one to destroy it. Unicorns ran, they didn't destroy things. And he would finally have some neighbours who wouldn't care that he was afflicted. The only problem he had was one of ground levels. This piece of land was twenty feet lower than the matching piece of land in Styrion – his home. It was a big jump down to get here, and the return trip would bury him alive. It was why his first task before he had even started digging post holes, had been to build a small hill with a flat top to arrive on. Even with his magic it had taken him several days of hard work.

  The fact that he could hear someone calling his name made him think he'd miscalculated though. Apparently people could still find him here, even in this world of unicorns.

  Whoever had found him though, was invisible. Hendrick clambered out of the hole and spun around, looking for the caller, but could see no one. And it wasn’t as if there was anything for them to hide behind. This was a flat plain for as far as the eye could see. There were a few small bushes dotted here and there, the small hill he'd built, and several rather large piles of cut lumber, though none as tall as a man. Other than that there was only grass. Lots and lots of long grass. In time he thought he'd plant some gardens and a few trees to break up the monotony. But that day was a long way off.

  “Who's there?!” Hendrick shouted, feeling a little like a fool as he did so. But what else was he supposed to do? Maybe the man was behind the hill he'd built? True, it was nearly a hundred yards away and it would have been hard to hear anything from that distance. But still.

  “The Guild's at war!”

  This time Hendrick knew that no one was here. Because the voice was inside his head. That annoyed him. He didn't like the thought of anyone being in his head. But at the same time, he knew that he had to go. He could complain later.

  For a heartbeat or two, Hendrick felt a chill pass right through him. But then he realised he didn't have time to simply stand there and he long stepped to the hill, and stepped through the portal. A moment later he was back in Styrion, at the site of his former home. Then he spotted Tyrollan nearby and immediately knew who'd called him.

  “The Guild's in trouble?”

  “Indle portalled across to the Guild. The Mythagan are under attack and need our help. And as Sana said their ward stones are useless and they don't have enough spells. Two thirds of the Guild ran through Indle’s portal. They're fighting even now, and the feeling I get from them is that they're very scared. Some are dead. I don't know how much longer they can fight. Or survive.”

  “Where's the portal?”

  “Front yard of the Guild.”

  That was all Hendrick needed as he long stepped to the gate, hurdled it, and then long stepped the rest of the way to Burbage and the Guild. There he found the portal and ran through it.

  On the other side he stopped suddenly, shocked by the scale of the battle. And then he stared at the scene in front of him with a feeling of disbelief and horror. There had to be tens of thousands of the ghost dragons, just as Sana had said. Far more than he had ever imagined possible. They filled the sky and cast a shadow over the ground like that of thunder clouds. But it wasn't rain they were threatening those below with. It was death.

  The city beneath them was even larger than the ones he'd seen in his explorations of the past. But it was doomed. Nothing could withstand such an enemy. Already it was in pieces with flames shooting for the skies and towering buildings broken and falling to the streets below. Meanwhile the battle raged on. The skies were lit up with fire and light while ghost dragons fell from the skies like rain. But for every one that fell there were hundreds or even thousands more.

  Closer to him he could see bodies. They were everywhere. And too many of them were the bodies of people; not enough those of the ghost dragons. Some of them he feared, were the bodies of those he knew. But it was hard to be sure when the bodies were so terribly broken.

  He had heard Sana's words, and known that she was telling the truth. But he still hadn't imagined this. Nobody could have imagined such a nightmare.

  Hendrick didn't have time to spend standing and staring though. Even when his haste spell made everything around him seem to be frozen, he couldn't waste a single beat of his heart on pointless emotions like despair and horror. He had to act. And the first thing he had to do was speed up his allies. The more of them he could bring with him into his spell of haste, the more of the ghost dragons they could kill. And no matter how powerful he was he couldn't kill them all himself.

  He swiftly started hunting for all the people he could find nearby who were still fighting, and one by one started hasting them. And when they asked him what was happening, he just yelled at them to keep fighting.

  Soon he had brought about three hundred people under the umbrella of the spell, more than he had ever held before, and he could feel the limits of his casting being reached. But it didn't matter. Not when the ghost dragons started falling at an ever greater rate. Or rather dying – it was taking them a very long time to fall. In fact they were floating down even more slowly than feathers.

  It wasn't long before the skies around them for hundreds of yards in every direction were free of living ghost dragons. They had been replaced by lots of dead and dying ones slowly beginning their long descents to the ground. Still it was only a tiny fraction of the total. Most of them were flying over the city, a swarm of them thicker than any swarm of flies over a corpse.

  And that was exactly what they were, he thought. The city was dying. And there was precious little they could do about it. Most of their spells simply couldn't reach across those sorts of distances. Others had the same thoughts.

  “Form up!” Marnie screamed the command out at the top of her lungs. “We're going to march!”

  It was a plan. It wasn't a good one Hendrick thought. But then he didn't know if there were any good plans for a situation like this. But at least if they marched under the haste spell they could slaughter more of the ghost dragons.

  Before he had the chance to say anything the world exploded into a roar of unimaginable power and heart pounding dread. His heart practically ripped its way out of his chest in shock, and for a while he thought he was dying. It was a cry of something completely inhuman. The tortured protests of all the demons in all the underworlds screaming their anger at once. Of the world itself crying out in anger. The sound shook him to his very core.
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  “What in all the hells was that?!” He yelled it at Marnie once the cry had subsided, barely able to think.

  “Sana!” She pointed at a figure with flaming red hair in the distance just settling down over a patient. “She does it every few minutes. And no, you don't get used to it!”

  “I have never …!” Hendrick's words trailed off as he realised he didn't know what he even wanted to say. There simply weren't any words.

  “I know.” She shook her head as she held her staff out before her and concentrated on its green light. “But they don't like it either.” She pointed at the horde. And then she yelled at the others to form up again.

  Marnie quickly had them assembled into some sort of order, more a mob than anything more military, but at least they were together. After that she had them moving down the hill, bringing the battle to the enemy. Hendrick realised with a start that she was good at this. She had already been through one war and seemed to know how to lead others into battle. He didn't. He'd never led anyone anywhere. So he let her lead, and like everyone else just had to hope she knew what she was doing.

  Just as long as the ghost dragons kept falling out of the sky, that was all that mattered.

  And they were falling – if incredibly slowly. But he guessed that with every hundred yards that they advanced on the horde, another hundred ghost dragons gave up their lives. And most importantly, none of their army died.

  The only wrinkle in the attack was Sana, as every few minutes she'd let out another of those heart stopping, soul destroying yells, and everything had to stop. Marnie was right about one thing. You didn't get used to them. Each time, even when he thought he was ready, the cry caught him by surprise, simply with its power and the dread it inspired. He had thought he could handle it. But each time he heard the next cry he realised he couldn't. And it wasn't the sound that was destroying his peace. They were hasted and she wasn't. The cry should have sounded like nothing more than wind. But it still shattered them all. It was the magic contained within the sound.

  In that way he guessed, they must have crossed the first half league down the hill to the city, and behind them when he looked, there were the bodies of hundreds if not thousands of the ghost dragons. They were making progress. But it was coming at a price. He was tiring. He had never held so many in his spell of haste before, and it was draining him.

  It was then that he decided to stop his other spells, and concentrate only on that one spell. His dimensional arrows were tearing through the ghost dragons, but he could only kill one at a time, and the three hundred others could kill a great many more than him. They didn't need that help. They needed his speed.

  Others noticed his change.

  “Hendrick!” Marnie yelled at him.

  “I'm holding,” he yelled back. “I just need to concentrate.”

  He wasn't the only one in that position he thought. Marnie was also only maintaining one spell and looking somewhat drained. The lines on her face were deeper than before. Longer too. But they couldn't retreat and leave millions trapped in the city to die. They had to continue.

  So they did, and little by little half a league became a league. And then half a league more. But by then the sweat was pouring off him. It was pouring off the others too. None of them had ever cast so much magic for so long. And while the ghost dragons were falling out of the sky at a shocking rate, the numbers ahead of them just didn't seem to thin. Thousands of the creatures were dead. But tens of thousands lay ahead of them. And they weren't even half way!

  Meanwhile the city was falling in front of them. Flames lit up the sky. Buildings were crumbling. Thick black smoke was rising from it. Hendrick couldn't imagine how many were dead.

  It would have helped if Sana had stopped with her damned cries. But apparently she couldn't. The spell had been cast; it couldn't be uncast, or so she had told Marnie. And as she ran from one injured man to another, a diminutive figure in the distance, she kept releasing it. Every so often he would spot her suddenly standing up, throw her head back and let another of those terrible cries out before returning to work.

  Things grew worse. The first of the guild members fell, as exhaustion took him.

  It was a man with the markings of dull grey running from his foot up his leg. Magnetite. The magic of the earth and force, and potentially one of their shields if everything went wrong. Hendrick didn't know him; only his face. But he knew it was a bad sign. The first was down, and from here more were going to fall. As they headed further and further into the horde, they would have less and less with them who were able to fight.

  And then as if to add to his fears, Sana let out another of her terrible cries.

  After that their advance stopped. It had to. Because they all knew that as much as they wanted to keep going, they simply didn't have the strength. No one could fight this sort of enemy. And it was then that he finally understood what Val had meant so long ago when he'd said you couldn't fight a behemoth. He'd somehow managed to deceive himself into thinking that you could even after he'd seen the volcano appear in Styrion Might. Even after he'd witnessed the complete destruction of Malthas. He'd told himself, he just needed more spells. Some more gifted to fight. But finally he understood. There was no fighting this.

  Like a dog on the end of a leash, they had reached the end of their rope. Now they either retreated or they died.

  Marnie knew it too. He could see it in her eyes. The understanding that they'd simply fallen short and the terrible pain she felt at the thought of admitting it. She was almost on her knees and she couldn't admit it. It wasn't pride though. It was guilt. The thought of abandoning the people in the city. Of leaving them to die.

  But what else could they do?

  Two more fell, and they all knew the truth. Sana and the other healers ran to them, and tried to restore some strength to them. But they weren't looking any better than the rest of them.

  “We hold here!” Marnie finally made the decision. Their advance had ended. “World walker have you got enough strength left to open a portal home from here?”

  “Yes.” He bowed his head in shame. “It's an eight foot drop into a field of barley, but yes.”

  “Then do it, while you still can, and we’ll send our fallen home and make our last stand here. We'll hold for as long as we can.”

  Hating himself for his failure, Hendrick did as she said. He knew she was right. Everyone did. Soon the air was rippling off to the side as the portal came into existence. When it finally solidified, there was a collective sigh. One loud enough that they could all hear it even over the battle. It was an admission of failure. And then their first three fallen were unceremoniously rolled into it. Hendrick knew they wouldn't be the last to go that way.

  After that they carried on as they were, standing their ground and killing every ghost dragon that came their way. And all the while the safety of the portal beckoned to them. More dropped where they stood, one or two at a time, the last of their strength gone, and had to be rolled into the portal. And Sana continued with her accursed cries. He was truly beginning to hate them. So when she finally headed back towards them, he hasted her so he could beg her to stop.

  “Sana, please! They're hurting us worse than the enemy!”

  But then she turned to him, suddenly smiling. “That wasn't me.”

  It wasn't her? It took Hendrick some time to realise she'd even said that. And then still longer to wonder what she meant. Of course it was her! Who else could it be? But even as he stood there trying to work out what was happening, the sound came again, and Sana hadn't moved.

  “Sana?” Though she was smiling Hendrick suddenly became worried. He didn't know if he could stand a second mage with such a terrible spell.

  “They're coming!”

  “Who's coming?” Marnie asked. She looked worried too as she held her staff before her, its green light still shining, but not as brightly as it should.

  “I sent out the call. It’s the first time I've ever risked it. And I didn't know if
they'd come. I can't summon. I can only call and pray.”

  “Sana?” Hendrick tried again. She wasn't making sense, and even near to collapse he knew that.

  “But even if I had the ability to summon, I couldn't summon them. You can't summon those more powerful than you.” She continued, almost ecstatically, ignoring the rest of them.

  More powerful than them? Hendrick shared a sudden panicked look with Marnie. Just who or what had she called? And were they friendly? Because there was no way they could fight another battle. Most of them were dead on their feet already.

  Before he could ask, another cry split the sky, and this one wasn't just louder than before, it came with a light show. A crack of terrible thunder that almost opened the ground up beneath them and a blast of lightning so powerful that it blinded them all. What in all the hells had she called?!

  “Balls! Everyone to the portal. Now!” Marnie was quick to realise they were in trouble.