“Wait a moment,” said the Master Ranger, standing, a dark and vicious fury coming into his face. “Didn’t you come here claiming godhood? How dare-”
I surged forward and grabbed him by the front of his furs, lifting him up off of the ground with one arm and holding his kicking feet above the fire. "Listen to me, ranger. The gods are a lie. That doesn't mean your people don't need them. So no one outside of this room is going to find out the truth about Ravanur or Palamun. I will speak for the Great Mother, and the Deepseeker here will speak for the Father. The tribe may believe the lies and the legends because they need that faith to get them through the day."
I noticed that the corners of the Master Ranger’s boots were beginning to blacken, so I set him back down on the stone, and then stabbed my index finger into his chest, hard. “We’re not going to rob your people of their belief, but no one in this room gets to sit back and wait for two ancient people to save us. Ravanur and Palamun did everything that they could to save this people and the rest of the universe as well. They gave their lives up and consigned themselves to eternities of torment and futile struggling. It’s time to give them a rest. It’s time for us to take charge, and prove that our world is worthy of the sacrifices that they made. Do you understand?”
I waited for an answer, glaring at the old alpha predator with all the menace I could muster. The room was silent. Volistad and Nissikul were standing, but nobody moved. I could tell that Perwik was thinking about violence. But he hadn’t moved a muscle. It was time to bring him back in. “You did your people a great service already. Thanks to you, this whole mess hasn’t become something worse. We need your experience for what is coming next. Your people can’t do this without you.”
The Master of Rangers remained still for one long moment more before the fury went out of his face and his shoulders slumped slightly. “Alright,” he said, somewhat grudgingly. Then he showed the very tips of his fangs, and his voice dropped to a threatening growl as he added, “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
I assumed he was going to say something about how I would never raise my hand against him again. So I was completely surprised when his next words were accompanied by a highly amused smile. “You have to deal with the priests.”
The tension in the room broke, and we all laughed. I was relieved. The first step had gone somewhat smoothly. But this wasn’t the end, far from it. We still had a centuries-long war to win.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Joanna
Bedlam
Volistad pinpointed the location of Barbas’ new tower that evening, using the surprisingly robust sensor package still functioning aboard the Heaven’s Hawk. Initially, I was surprised that the old bird could still take readings when she was buried over a mile underground. Then Volistad/Palamun smugly explained that he had had tiny drone swarms in amongst the wind spirits for centuries, and it made a lot more sense. We had a target.
Nissikul drilled her Stormcallers relentlessly over the next several days, preparing them to perform the specific techniques that would be necessary if we didn’t want to be smeared across the ice by railgun fire. I had no doubt that Barbas would expect us to come, and I had even less of a doubt that he would be prepared. He had already lost one Terraforming Engine to the Erinye attack, and he would be ready to repel another such assault. I suspected, however, that Barbas wouldn’t be ready for exactly how we would be coming for him. While the Stormcallers drilled and the rangers prepared their weapons, while Volistad toiled beneath the mountain, I went to the surface and practiced a little surprise of my own. My powers seemed only to be growing as I stretched them. I knew there would be an upper limit for what I could do, but I hadn't hit it yet, and I was determined to bring everything that I could muster to this fight.
At night, when the work was done, and I returned, sweaty and exhausted, to the village to collapse into the furs in Volistad's hut, I would find him waiting for me. His desire for me was unaltered by his own exhaustion or the work he had been doing down in the ancient spaceship laboratory. We made love every night that week, and I was sure that half of the village heard my cries. But I didn't care. I couldn't care. I had a mission, I had a home, and I had a fantastic lover. I didn't care about the gossip.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Joanna
Bedlam
The morning of the assault came in a frenzy of activity. Rangers and ordinary warriors scurried back and forth through the tunnels of the village, preparing their weapons and gathering their squads. I waited with the rest of the Council at the chosen mustering ground of the main village entrance and fielded questions from the various leaders as they made the strength of the Erin-Vulur ready to fight. The priests I now commanded were in fine form during all of this, helping to organize and coordinate the muster. Most of them wore maces at their waists or carried spears. They would not be joining us in the fight. Instead, they would be ensuring the safety of the noncombatants of the tribe, ensuring that no horrible threat could circle behind us and exterminate the heart of the Erin-Vulur. We were going to do this right. We were going to go out there, hit the Dark One wearing Barbas' face, and then we were going to save this world. But there was one order of business that had to be dealt with before we left.
Vassa fell heavily to his knees before me, shaking in the cold and spitting curses between his chattering teeth. I waved for the priests escorting to leave him there, and they backed away, leaving him shivering on the ice before me.
"Vassa Atralad. You stand accused before your people of conspiring with the Dark Ones, and assisting them in their campaign to scour the Erinye from this world. You brought one of the foul Children of the Eater King into the village, and in doing so, you exposed all of the Erin-Vulur to danger. You have used the honorable position given to you to advance the cause and support the efforts of the great enemy of your people, and so I name you Traitor before all of these witnesses. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Vassa tried to rise and spit in my face, but I froze his tongue in his mouth with a minor effort of will. He fell to the ice, strangling on his own tongue, on his own spit, asphyxiating for the second and final time at my feet. I wouldn’t be letting him go this time. I looked over at Perwik, who nodded grimly. “Your last words are noted,” said the Master of the Rangers, ignoring the struggles of the former High Priest of the Erin Vulur.
"Bring me the next one," I ordered, and the priests dragged Lot before me, kicking the dying Vassa out of the way as they came. In the week since Lot had been unseated, the former Elder Stormcaller had lost a lot of weight. He had only been eating when forced, and his eyes had gone dead. When the priests released him, he slumped to the ground before me and refused to meet my eyes. "Lot Ekenad," I addressed to him, not softening my tone one iota. Somewhere to my right, Vassa's struggles were slowing. "You are accused of failure in your duties as Elder, and of betrayal of the trust of your people. You tried and failed to kill me. You are not being judged for the attempt on my life- after all, the Great Mother herself proclaimed that no outsider should be allowed to come to her world except for her express decree."
I stepped forward and seized the old mage by the chin, forcing him to look at me. “You are being judged for failing to seek the counsel of the Great Mother in the matter, as you were taught. You cannot be judged too harshly for this failing since your predecessors had long since forgotten the location of Ravanur's temple. In the absence of word from the Great Mother, your duty stood the same as it had for generations. Kill the interloper. But you failed. And not only did you fail to kill me, but you betrayed one of your own, accused him of the crime of corruption, and tried to murder him." Lot's empty eyes might have been focused on me, but I couldn't tell. With the blank, empty black stare of a Stormcaller, his eyes could have been anywhere. Even so, I thought I felt them meet mine. I let go of him, and he slumped back to the ice. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Lot didn’t say anything. He sat like a deflated ba
lloon, slumped to his knees. He didn’t even try to speak. I frowned. What was wrong with him? I reached out with my senses and concentrated on him. Beside me, Volistad and Nissikul were doing the same. I realized it in a moment of frozen horror. Lot didn’t have a heartbeat. The corpse lurched up off the ground in a spasm of blind violence, leaping towards me with claws outstretched for my throat. I reacted without thinking, stepping forward and meeting the lunge with my fist, putting my whole weight and strength into a strike to the dead man’s chin. His jaw broke like thin ice, and he soared away from me in a tangle of limbs, tumbling for several meters before sprawling out on the ice. I clenched and unclenched my fingers. Not bad.
Nissikul was already moving forward, a black hammer forming in her hands. The former Elder’s corpse twisted and lurched to its feet with an insect’s unnerving grace, but it didn’t get another chance to attack before Nissi came in swinging. Her hammer crushed Lot’s skull and sprayed gore all across the onlookers in our gathered army, slamming the withered old body to the ground with punishing force. She should have seen it coming. The headless body burst, suddenly, the ribs springing wide open like a trap and releasing a wriggling, metallic insect that promptly sprang for her face. She was off balance and was unable to dodge, and with her one arm caught up holding the hammer, she wasn’t able to stop the Eater’s Spawn from latching onto her face. It pierced her flesh with its needle-point legs and immediately started trying to force its way into Nissikul’s mouth. Volistad and I surged forward, but just then, at least fifty other Erinye standing amidst our army burst into frenzied violence and attacked everyone around them.
The whole scene erupted into chaos. Volistad, still screaming for his sister, was borne away by the crush of the panicking crowd. I tried to push toward where I had last seen Nissi, but even with my incredible new strength, I couldn't force my way through a crowd of panicked frenzied warriors. All around me, more and more Erinye went dead in the eyes and began tearing apart everyone around them. It was a complete bedlam. It was a bloodbath. We were all going to die. I had to find Volistad. I had to find Nissi. I had to-
Elder Perwik hit me from the right and bore me to the ground, snapping furiously at my face with his fangs. I got an arm between his body and mine and forced the snapping jaws away from my face. With such a close look at the inside of his mouth, I noticed something that I hadn't seen before. Perwik didn't have a mouth full of ursine fangs, like any of the other Erinye. His teeth were sharp, to be sure, but instead of an orderly collection of carnivore's fangs, his mouth was filled with a double row of razor teeth, like those of a piranha. His breath was foul and reeked of old blood as he shrieked a horrible, high-pitched cry into my face. I reeled back before the insane attack, trying to get a grip on my sword. Perwik gave me a wide demon's smile and tried to snap at my throat again. Forget the sword, said a voice inside my skull, and I reached up with my mind to the waiting storm lying dormant in the clouds. It was always there. It just needed a reason to serve. I gave it that reason.
Lightning blasted down, striking Elder Perwik and flinging him away from me. He shrieked again, the sound so very unlike the roar of an Erinye. His eyes bored into mine as the electricity seared through his body, and I saw it. He was fully awake- fully aware. He wasn't a puppet corpse or a temporary vessel like Kotikedd. He had not been corrupted. He had never been Erinye. And his spawn were all around me. "You!" I screamed. “What are you?”
The monster before me didn’t answer, but I didn’t need him to. He didn’t shed his Erinye shape so much as he unfolded. I looked upon a segmented, metallic monster as tall as a man, with a terrifyingly human face and a wide shark's mouth. His armored body was covered in hundreds of little tendrils, and even as I watched, the world seemed to warp around him in a wave as a shudder passed through that forest of little appendages. From his brow grew a neat circle of curling horns, so distinct in their pattern that I no longer had any doubt of exactly what he was. I was standing face to face with the Eater King.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Volistad
Bedlam
I was forced away from Nissikul by a tide of bodies as everyone tried to fight or escape at the same time. I knew what had happened and it made me sick. Last night, when Joanna and I had been attacked, we had been lucky. We had destroyed our attacker. So many others in the village had not been so lucky. Our search had been pointless- the victims had already been lost long before we had scoured the village. And now Nissikul- I screamed my defiance into the press of bodies and began trying to bull my way through to where my sister had fallen. It was no use. The cavern we had chosen for the muster had just become an abattoir. Already my nose was thick with the stench of blood and viscera. Above it all, a horrifying shriek rose, a sound like nothing I had ever heard before. Old retired rangers had described it to me before in their tales around the campfires, but I had never thought that I would hear it in the flesh. It was the call of the Eater King. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be that- we had slain that monster fifty full cycles ago, long before I was born. Right? Right?
There was a sound like localized thunder, and bodies shattered into the air over the crowd, only to come spraying down in pieces all around us. I screamed. Everyone else screamed. We were all one gigantic, screaming entity, trapped in a hell of our making. We were all going to die. But no, no I wasn't going to die standing here and screaming. Joanna could take care of herself. I had to find my sister. I had to find Nissikul.
There was another blast of terrific noise, and more bodies rained down in pieces on the panicking, struggling crowd. It was coming towards me. With some effort, I forced several terrified, blood-smeared bodies out of my way and moved in the direction of the disturbance. What are you doing? A voice screamed in my head. Maybe it was Palamun; maybe it was the last shreds of my common sense. Either way, the answer was the same. I was moving towards danger. It was what a ranger did, and what a champion did. I was moving towards danger, and I was going to find my sister. You are going to die. Maybe so. I seized a frenzied, dead-eyed priest by the throat and broke his neck in my hands. Expecting the follow-up, I drove my fist into his chest just as his ribs sprang apart like a trap, and I crushed the Eater-Spawn against the ruined corpse. The remnants of the flesh puppet fell around me and were trampled by the crowd.
A third blast of thunder and shower of gore. Closer. I could almost make out the source of the noise- I saw him. He stood grinning amidst the screaming and dying, at the end of a red-smeared path made from pulverized Erinye. It was Joanna’s spirit, Barbas. He was no longer an indistinct image over a crude body. I knew this demon to be the real thing. The genuine article. As I took a step towards him, I saw the source of the noise. It was a smaller version of the same gauss rifle that Joanna had mounted on her tower and used to kill a burug in a single shot. Barbas met my eyes, his manic smile widening further at the sight of me, and he leveled the gun at my chest.
Nissikul came shrieking out of the crowd to the demon’s right, her face in bloody tatters, and her cheek torn open to the bone. She had summoned a replacement arm of witch-ice, though her plate was still forming around her. Catching Barbas by surprise, she swung her black hammer into his chest with all of her might. He reeled and pulled the trigger. The shot missed me and turned five of the struggling warriors beside me into a cyclone of meat and blood. I lunged straight towards Barbas, my path mercifully clear, and I stepped up onto the upper rail of the great weapon, driving my clawed boots into his chest in a double-kick that sent me sprawling backwards. I turned the motion into a somersault and kept my feet as the blood-drenched monster reeled. Nissikul hit him with her hammer again. This time, she had had her feet beneath her, and the glowing head of her hammer sent Barbas hurtling from his feet, throwing him two or three spear casts through the roiling crowd.
“Nissikul!” I crossed to her side in a rush. “Are you alright? Tell me you’re alright!” My sister only glared at me with her empty black eyes, a growl bubbling up from her chest and sending
blood spraying out from the ruin of her face. No, no she was not alright. She was in a great deal of pain, and she was very angry. The armor finished closing around her, the featureless black helm sealing about her bloody face. She nodded to me, and we both turned towards where Barbas had fallen.
The demon clambered to his feet, the smile gone from his face. He had been wearing strange garments: a shirt, a coat, and trousers with a single strip of cloth tied around his neck. Now the cloth was burned and torn, and I could see the body beneath. Where Nissi’s lightning had burned him, dark skin peeled away and revealed hard metal muscle. I swallowed hard. It was not going to be easy to take this thing down. Even as that thought crossed my mind, I was unslinging my bow from its place on my back and fitting an arrow to the braided metal string. Nissi charged, static electricity gathering around her in a halo, and without stopping to think about it I fired an arrow over her shoulder at Barbas’ eye.
The demon snapped his hand up in a blur and caught the arrow between his fingers. As Nissikul came in, swinging her hammer for his head, he seized her shoulder- the false one, and twisted, stabbing my arrow through her armor as if it hadn't been there and burying it in her gut. She screamed, but even with an arrow in her gut, she was still fighting, and so was I. I advanced, firing arrow after arrow at Barbas with all of the terrifying force of my metal bow. At the same time, Nissikul let her false arm break away from her body, robbing the demon of his grip. Barbas managed to deflect two of my arrows, but the third transfixed his hand and hit him dead in the eye. Before he could regain the initiative, Nissi whirled, as deftly as if she hadn't just been stabbed in her stomach, and struck Barbas backhand with her hammer. He crashed to the ground in a corona of expanding electricity.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 39
