by Rosie Scott
“Join us,” I repeated, eyeing the remaining Alderi women with a look that said I wouldn't hesitate to do the same to them.
One of the women only nodded. The other simply turned to the chained slave beside her, pulling a key from a pocket to unlock his shackles.
I turned to the right, pointing toward the center of the city. “Go. Free your brothers. Recruit others. If you run across my army, do not hesitate to inform them you fight for Kai Sera.”
“So the rumors are true,” one of the women breathed, looking shocked.
“Go!” I yelled, emphasizing my urgency. The woman spun, rushing from the room and out of sight.
I turned back to the battle ahead. Many of my raised corpses had fallen. I called them to attention for another battle, watching as the golems and the dead pushed ever forward, before becoming cornered at the next intersection ahead as they were attacked from two directions, with the western wall of the cavern to their left.
Creatius le mist. A combination spell of water and fire swirled between my hands, the elements combining to create a cloud within a magical barrier. Reaching between a golem and an undead assassin, I released the energy, filling the area with a thick fog. It hissed as it expelled from my hands, billowing upward as it settled over a mass of confused foes.
The fog was so thick, I could no longer see through it myself. Sounds of Alderi being quickly slaughtered by the minions who did not need to see to kill reached my ears. Their enhanced eyesight could not help them see through such an obstruction. I watched over the thick cloud before me, though the only thing I could see were the upper flames of the golems. After a few minutes, sounds of battle ceased, and the flames above the mist came back to me, before the golems appeared towering over the remaining undead, out of enemies to fight.
After raising the dozens of dead in the intersection, I sent the corpses to the east to aid my living army. I dispelled the fire around the golems to avoid hurting my own soldiers, before I sent them as well. Then I built a fire wall at the street corner, blocking off the street from reinforcements.
Within an hour of battle, I had only taken and cleared one street. This battle was a massive challenge, but I only felt energized. From somewhere far to the north, I heard the last echoes of an ice explosion spell ring off of the cavern walls, and knew that regardless of how well they were doing, Calder's army was also in the midst of battle.
I ran to the east, building another fire wall at the next intersection. Our soldiers had cleared it, and one of the necromancers had already raised the dead, because the stone was covered in blood, but there were no bodies. I felt immensely proud of my army. They'd listened to my directions impeccably.
“Kai!” I spun when I heard Cerin's voice behind me. The necromancer ran toward me from the main street, blood dripping in his path from the edges of his scythe. “Where have you been?”
“Picking up your slack,” I called back in jest, before moving on to the next intersection, and blocking it off with more fire magic as my lover caught up to me.
“Stop disappearing,” he retorted, raising a few corpses nearby that the other necromancers had missed. “What will I tell Azazel if something happens to you?”
“Ha! So that is your concern,” I breathed, hurrying further east.
“One of them. Did you hear? Calder's army is farther south than we gave them credit for,” Cerin informed me.
“I heard his army's magic,” I replied. “How do you know where he is?”
“One of the flying shapeshifters was paralyzed mid-flight,” Cerin replied. “I protected her body until the spell released its hold of her, but she was forced to transform back to Vhiri due to a broken wing. She said she saw them while she was in the air.”
“Where at?” Using the flying beastmen as a means of communication between the armies was something I'd never considered. I was suddenly intrigued with the idea. It was an advantage we had overlooked.
“The main split of the river,” Cerin replied. “Water beastmen infest the rivers as we speak. You were right. They are a fortnight's distance from the entrance.”
I smiled to myself. Calder and Azazel were leading their army just fine without me. It was a fantastic sign. “If I remember the map right, we are still a fortnight away from each other. But their progress is heartening.” After a pause, I asked, “Did she say how they were doing in numbers?”
“No. I didn't ask,” Cerin admitted.
Cerin and I progressed eastward, blocking off streets and raising the dead, until we finally caught up to our army. I heard my name on a few voices, and found that our effort to recruit slaves and sympathizers was working, for many of the Alderi were seeing me for the first time.
“Kai!” Anto's scream came from behind me in the south. I found the orc in the midst of the street leading from the tunnel, his arm blades covered in blood. He had two arrows sticking out of the thick muscles of his chest, the black hair covering his pectoralis matted with his own blood. When he knew he had my attention, he turned to point south, where he and Jakan were clearing buildings. “We need reinforcements! We are being bombarded from the south!”
It made sense. The assassins had stopped coming from the north for now, but that was the section of city between my army and Calder's. Many of the warriors between the armies had probably already been sent to combat the others during the time they'd been in the city before us. Our biggest concern was the south.
My eyes fell upon the army before me. Nearly half of them were the undead.
“Men!” I screamed, my voice booming out above them. “May the necromancers among you defend this position! All others to the south!”
The undead filed forward into the enemies as the others heeded my orders. I continued hurrying through the masses of them, repeating my orders to those who had not heard me the first time. Hundreds of mages, warriors, and freed slaves ran to the south, prepared to battle alongside Anto and Jakan.
“I need energy!” An Alderi soldier skidded to a stop beside me. We had thousands of soldiers; I could not remember all of their names, but I did recognize the man as being a healer. His light blue skin was many shades lighter than most Alderi, so it hadn't been a huge surprise when he was predisposed to life magic. I reached out to him, giving him the energy of my prior victims until he felt refreshed and ran out of sight.
The streets were clear of all soldiers other than Alderi necromancers and their minions. There were masses of the dead, now, collected from prior massacres and even our own casualties. The hordes of them could defend this area alone. With a last order to the necromancers to request support from us if they had need of it, Cerin and I turned and rushed southward.
There were few necromancers fighting with Jakan and Anto, so Cerin went to work raising the dead, and I forced Anto to be still long enough to heal his wounds before giving him a shield and ward. I did the same to Jakan next, even though I saw Cerin's ward flicker as he was bombarded with Alderi magics. He could give himself a ward, so my main concern was protecting Jakan. I knew why the Alderi wanted to control Cerin, however; he was the only necromancer in this area other than I, and our own soldiers were mixed in with the dead. Our army could be demolished with a single spell.
With that in mind, I hurried toward my lover next, intending to give him a ward if he couldn't. He was in the midst of fending off multiple assassins, using his shield to block the hits of some, while his scythe crashed through daggers and smaller weapons with raw power. I pushed through the masses of the dead. There were so many of them, they were like a blockade in the streets.
Then, my shield disappeared completely, overwhelmed with hits. Panicked, I quickly regenerated it, though the new shield immediately flickered with weakness. I was outrageously confused, until I realized that the dead surrounding me had turned, and were pummeling my protection with dozens of hits.
My heart stilled with fear. I regenerated the shield again, beginning to build a leeching spell in my other hand before I remembered it wouldn't work a
gainst the dead. I could not use any of the elements to explode the dead around me, for our soldiers were intermingled between them.
My eyes found Cerin from just a few rows of dead away, watching with horror as his scythe swiped cleanly through the throat of one of our own soldiers, blood spraying outwards from around the man's exposed spinal cord. His silver eyes lifted, finding my own, just as cold and distant as when Judai had mimicked him over a year ago.
I fell into shock from fear, and my mind rushed for options. All around me, my own soldiers were being decimated by the dead. I regenerated my shield again, feeling at a loss to how to turn this situation back into my favor. I was so close to the man I loved, because I'd wanted to protect him from exactly what had happened. Now, he rushed toward me, his closest enemy, his scythe held with both hands, muscles rippling as he prepared to use it. On me.
Because Cerin had been charmed.
Thirty-five
Pleading with him would not help me. Cerin was not in his right of mind.
La terra te risa! I forced the earth energy at Cerin's feet. With a protesting crack, the rock beneath him jolted up, throwing him and the surrounding dead back from their pursuit. Cerin landed a few feet away, thrown into his own minions. I threw a charm spell at him, hoping that the spell could counter-act itself. As he hurried back to a stand and ran forward again, I realized it didn't.
I regenerated my shield as it weakened once more around me, just in time to see his scythe slice through the air before my torso with a metallic shing. Cerin's strength combined with the constant hits on my shield broke through the last remnants of the magical protection, and the sharp edge of his scythe hacked straight through the muscles of my side, just below my lowest rib. He'd meant to cut me in half, like he did with many of his kills, and if it hadn't been for the last of my shield, he would have succeeded.
I was stabbed through the back from one of the dead before I had a chance to rebuild the shield. Gods. Is this how I will die? I scrambled backward with a hand at my side, leaking from multiple wounds, pushing through the dead as Cerin pursued me. The excess energy from leeching throughout the battle thus far was fading, and I felt cool with a loss of blood. I threw a paralyze spell toward Cerin, but his minions protected him, one of them rushing in front of him to take the hit. The corpse fell before him from my magic, and Cerin simply stepped over it.
“Anto! Anto!” I screamed, scrambling backward as fast as I could. I hoped more than anything he could hear me over the sounds of our own soldiers dying around us. When I regenerated my shield next, my leeching high was completely gone with the use of energy. I felt sick with the pain of my injury, its bladed fingers reaching into the mind behind my eyes, causing me to panic.
Cerin reached around the dead before him, and a black funnel stretched between us, siphoning my life into his hand. My racing heart became irregular as his spell began to slow it.
“Anto!” I screamed again, shooting another paralyze spell toward my lover, risking using my own precious remaining energy to stop him. Yet another dead minion stepped before my aim, protecting its master.
My eyes frantically searched for enemies to leech from to combat Cerin's spell. I could find none. Alderi archers on roofs and in the high-rises around us were too far. Everyone around me was either dead, or an allied soldier in the midst of battle with the dead. I couldn't risk leeching from Cerin, for my spell was much more powerful than his, and could kill within seconds. I would let him kill me under the influence of illusion before I'd ever hurt him with a clear mind.
I heard a whirling noise spin rapidly behind me. Have they charmed our air mages? Why is a tornado behind me?
Then came the sound of blades splitting flesh. I was covered in splashes of blood, and in my fading mind, I could not quite understand why. The corpses beside me fell in piles of shredded flesh. Between fluttering eyelashes, I saw a flash of green rush by, spinning so quickly the body was a blur. Arm blades fanned out to crash with Cerin's shield, until the life magic flickered and faded to nothing. The funnel of black fell from my chest, but my strength was already fading, and my wounds were severe. Anto was fighting with Cerin, defensively blocking the hits of the scythe with his arm blades. Cerin bled heavily from his left forearm, where the orc's blades had shredded the pale skin after breaking through his shield. The arm shook with trauma as he held his weapon with both hands to try to block Anto's superior strength.
“Kai,” Jakan's voice was behind me. I felt my body get tugged back, and it was only then that I realized I'd fallen to the ground with weakness. The thief paused from pulling me, and I heard him fire a few bolts into the crowds of dead. Then, he yelped with pain, and I heard steel pull back from flesh.
My eyelids fluttered closed. The spitting roar of a bear flowed violently through my head, echoing painfully through a splitting headache. I had no choice but to give into defeat.
*
The echoes of battle were never-ending. Screams bounced off of stone walls, repeating until after those who made the noises were already dead. The roars of beasts surrounded me. A sizzling hiss blew fire into a mass of flesh somewhere nearby.
There was a great weight on my chest and stomach. It was warm. Hair brushed by the exposed skin of the nape of my throat, between the chains of the necklace I wore with Ricco's ashes. Below me was a mattress. I tried to remember what had happened. I knew I was in Quellden. I knew I'd been in battle. Then I remembered Cerin slicing through me with his scythe, and my chest seized in fear. But his scent filled my nostrils, warm and comforting.
“We can't keep this up. The beastmen need rest.” It was Vallen speaking. His voice was pained and fatigued.
“We've secured this section,” Jakan replied. “If you withdraw your people for the night, Anto and I can defend the weaknesses. All we need to worry about is the east and the south.”
“And most of your people are dead,” Vallen replied.
“...yes,” Jakan admitted. “But...” There was a pause, as if the thief were looking at me. “The dead are still our soldiers. Sympathizers rampage through the city to the south now, only adding to our numbers.”
“Raising the dead is the reason we already have hundreds of casualties,” Vallen argued, sounding forlorn.
“I will not let it happen again.” Cerin's voice was muffled against my chest, making me realize that he was the weight upon me, holding on to me as if he would lose me. “I will risk my life to regenerate my ward.”
“You need to,” Jakan pleaded. “Kai made the same mistake in Hazarmaveth. It is why Ricco and so many others are dead. You both need to stop underestimating the power of the so-called lesser magics.”
“I did not underestimate it,” Cerin retorted painfully. “There were dozens of Alderi hitting me with it all at once. When the ward is weakened at such a rate, you can barely tell until it's gone. I misjudged the timing.”
“One mistake killed hundreds, Cerin,” Vallen replied, stressing the severity of the situation. “You might have lost us any chance of taking Quellden. You nearly killed Kai—”
I felt Cerin squeeze me tighter. “There is nothing you can say to me which will make that hurt me more than it already has. Do not give into thoughts of defeat. Yes, hundreds are dead. I was charmed for what, two minutes? I have fought for hours against the enemy. My army of the dead is massive and grows by the minute. Thousands of enemies are dead in comparison.”
“Yes, and we arrived to this fight severely outnumbered, making those numbers not nearly as impressive as you make them sound,” Vallen said.
“Expel me from this army, then,” Cerin retorted. “Let's see how far you get without me.”
“If it weren't for me and the other beastmen, you would all be dead, and it would be thanks to you.” Silence fell over the room as Vallen's words sunk in. Then, there was a hefty sigh. “Hell...I'm sorry, Cerin. Our army already suffers. We don't need to be fighting.” Another short silence. “How is she doing?”
Cerin moved above me. “A
s well as she can be doing. She needs rest. Her wound...” he trailed off hoarsely, his fingers finding newly healed skin from where his scythe had cut through me. “...was severe.”
“I do not have the time to rest,” I murmured roughly, before finally opening my eyes. I was in the middle of an apartment. I figured we were in one of the buildings Anto and Jakan had cleared. Other than my friends, it sounded like we were alone here. Everyone else was outside fighting.
I struggled to sit up, but Cerin collapsed over me in a hug, keeping his face in my neck. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured desperately, his breath hot against my skin.
“Being at your mercy only makes me appreciate how you are always on my side,” I told him softly, turning my head to kiss his hair.
“I love you.” The words were muffled in my neck, before he rambled off more apologies.
“And I love you, Cerin, but we can't get caught up in apologies. Our soldiers are dying.” I glanced up to Vallen, who appeared ridiculously tall next to Jakan. “Thank you for coming to our aid.”
Vallen nodded softly. “The beastmen cleared out much of the street to the inner city before I realized how far back you all were. It is better to stick together and make slower progress than to lose everything.”
I agreed with that. With my face furrowed with concern, I asked, “How many of our soldiers are dead?”
Vallen shrugged, as if it were a simple question, but there was a lot of weight on his shoulders. He looked off to the corner of the room, where the apartment's previous occupant had a potted patch of fungi glowing in shades of turquoise and green. “Don't concern yourself with that, Kai.”
“And don't keep things from me,” I retorted lightly. “I've been awake for awhile, listening to you all bicker. How many?”
Vallen met my eyes evenly, and crossed his glistening cream arms. “Altogether? Seven hundred. Mostly warriors and mages. Four hundred, give or take, from Cerin and his corpses alone.”
