by Riley Storm
Everyone knew the purpose behind such a spell. True sunlight was the anathema to Faeries, and if it touched them, they would be sent back to their own plane of existence. By blocking it, Korred was preparing the way for his army to assault the Manor. It was almost time. Soon, the final battle would begin.
But before that happened, Korred needed to find his mate. She needed to hear something, something he had to tell her before the fighting swept him up—in case he wasn’t given the chance to say it again.
“Rachel,” he called once more, but his hope was fading that he would find her before it was too late.
Where are you, Rach?
Khove wanted to see her smiling face one last time. Once the walls were breached, he knew the fight that would follow would be brutal, and leave an impact upon him for the rest of his life.
Although he hadn’t been present at the battle of Novarupta in 1912 when the combined forces of the shifters had finally defeated the mages for good, ushering in the longest period of peace anyone could remember, he’d heard about it from those who had been there when he was younger.
The stories that had been described to him were enough to give him nightmares. Shifters lived somewhat longer than humans, usually reaching into their twelfth or thirteenth century with relative ease, and so plenty of veterans of that fight had been around to relay their tales of horror.
Khove knew that simply by scale alone, this fight would be smaller, but he suspected it might be more vicious. Korred was—simply put—insane, and he wanted them all dead, not defeated.
Thunderous clangs filled the hallway, dashing all prior thoughts from his head. The alarms rang out constantly, meaning only one thing.
It had begun.
He abandoned his quest for Rachel, sparing only the briefest of moments to close his eyes and sent her a mental message composed of but three words. Then he turned and dashed for his reporting area, sword firmly strapped to his back.
As he neared the Grand Hallway, he encountered more shifters, most in battle gear as they flowed outward to the secondary and tertiary lines of defenses. Faces were grim, and banter was almost nonexistent. These men knew what awaited them out there, and though they went to defend their homes, there was no joy, no anticipation of the fight.
Too many were going to die this day to sing battle songs of ancient heroes and busty maidens. No quarter was going to be asked, and none given.
It was time to end it.
***
“My Queen,” Khove said, pulling up smartly in front of the rest of the Queen’s Own as he arrived at his command.
The other seven guards came to attention at their commander’s presence, and he returned their clenched fists with one of his own. It felt good to be back among his men, among those he trained with, drank with and stood guard with on a daily basis. Moving around the city had been a nice change, but this was where he belonged.
Be safe, Rach.
“Let’s go see what we’re dealing with, shall we?” the Queen said, gesturing up the Grand Hallway toward the exit.
Khove snapped out orders and the eight men of the Queen’s owned assumed an eight-pointed shield around their liege. Weapons were still sheathed, but their fingers twitched, ready to draw uranium-lined steel from lead sheath and drive it home into their enemies at a second’s notice.
Without speaking, Khove motioned two guards toward him as they approached the doors, and the two men dashed forward, opening the doors cautiously and slipping outside to ensure it was safe. A moment later, three bangs sounded the all-clear. Khove moved forward, pushed open the door and walked outside.
He stepped into a hellish nightmare.
The skies were black. Not dark, but black, devoid of light. Below them, a golden dome covered the property, a massive ward that touched the farthest reaches of their lands. Here and there in the sky, the shield dome flashed red as something struck it from the outside.
Wind whipped through the property, stirring up snow and making it difficult to see. The shield could repel magic spells or creatures designed to attack the property, but a simple gust of wind would move right through. Khove had no doubt Korred was encouraging the winds outside of the dome as well, making it worse.
A big explosion in the sky shook the ground, but the shield held. For now. Khove wondered for how much longer. Looking around, he saw most of the shifters had dispersed to their assigned positions by now, but not all. Nearby, two figures stood conversing.
Khove recognized the Magi and his mate.
“Kasperi!” the Queen barked from inside her ring of protectors. “Report.”
“Just probing attacks so far, my Queen,” Kasperi replied. “The ward is holding. We’ll see for how much longer, I suppose.”
“You believe it will fall?” the Queen asked quietly, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the wailing of the wind.
Khove’s chest tightened as the Magi shook his head. “No, my Queen. I know it will fall. Korred wouldn’t return if he didn’t believe he could take it down.”
“How is that possible?” she asked. “The ward is the work of dozens of Magi over centuries of rule.”
“And Korred had nearly thirty uninterrupted years to study it, Your Highness. If he’s been planning this for that long, he knows what it will take to bring it down. The only question,” Kasperi said quietly. “Is what’s taking him so long?”
Khove stiffened. “Look.” He pointed skyward.
A lone figure had appeared in the sky over the dome, surrounded by an ugly purple haze.
“Purple magic?” Khove asked. “Has anyone ever heard of that?”
There were no’s all around. Where had Korred found such power? What did it mean?
A lance of purple energy stabbed outward and impacted upon the golden dome.
“No,” the Queen gasped as tendrils of darkness spread out from the impact point.
The purple lines branched out crazily in all directions, but where they surrounded gold on four sides, the energy of the dome tumbled from the sky, as if it were a pane of glass and the energy was cracks. It started slowly, but then spread faster, until the entire shield came down, its golden protected energy fading out as it fell into nothingness.
“Well I guess that settled that,” the Queen said, the first to snap out of her shock at what they had just witnessed. “The ground attack will come soon.”
There was barely time to breathe between the Queen finishing her statement and an explosion of red to the west as the forces there unleashed a flare high into the darkened sky, to indicate they were under attack.
The Queen nodded and pointed. “Let’s go!”
None of the guards moved, though several did dart their eyes toward Khove.
“Khove?” The Queen was looking between him and the others. “The Western front is under attack. They could use our help.”
“No,” he said quietly. “We can’t do that, my Queen.”
“Why not?” she fumed. “My family is out there. They are fighting, and they will be dying.”
“I know,” he said. “But we must wait. Trust in your men. They are well trained. Your Captain is a fine warlord, and your Champion is out there as well. Our lines will not soon falter. But I would bet my guess that this is but one of several feints.”
“You think he will split his forces?” she asked incredulously. “That’s the worst thing he could do.”
Khove nodded. “I know. But he’s too smart for his own good. Korred will think it necessary to try and draw forces away from one side or another. He is not a tactician, for which we must be utterly grateful, or this fight would quite possibly be lost before it started.”
“We must do something,” Kaelyn growled, pacing back and forth inside her tiny circle of bodyguards.
Blue lightning flashed across the sky to impact upon the ground near the western wall.
“My Queen,” Kasperi said hurriedly, green energy swirling around his feet. “That is my signal.”
He and his m
ate rose into the air holding hands. Khove watched as the Magi thrust his sword forward, while his mate Amber pointed her staff into the sky. Twin beams of green energy shot forward, combining into one before reaching skyward and impacting upon Korred’s purple shield.
A moment later, a thunderous explosion reached out from the heavens, battering at his eardrums. Khove watched the magical duel get underway, sending his well wishes to Kasperi and his mate. They were new to their position, but they struck hard and fast, proving to all who could witness that they would not back down when their home was threatened.
Red flares went up to the south and the north as well as more of Kasperi’s forces assaulted the walls. The east was oddly silent. Khove wondered if that was because no attack was coming, or if their enemies were waiting for the Queen to strip forces from there to send to other locations.
“Take me to the command post,” Kaelyn snapped, obviously tired of standing around.
“My Queen,” Khove protested. “You—”
“Do not presume to tell me what I need to do,” the Queen of High House Ursa growled at her head bodyguard, eyes blazing with jade fire. “This is my House. These men fight to protect all that it contains, including me. I will not micromanage the fight, but I will not cower inside. Is that understood?”
Khove knew better than to argue, and he nodded sharply. “Of course. To the command post.”
The nine shifters jogged out onto the driveway and then followed it around the Manor into the underground parking garage. The entire time, Khove kept his eyes out, scanning not only the property to their right, but the windows of the Manor on his right. He hoped that maybe he would get lucky, and at one of them he would see a certain heart-shaped faced, blonde hair, and a pair of unnaturally blue eyes.
He saw no sign of Rachel however, and all too soon they were entering the underground garage, which had been transformed into a fortified command post. Two manned heavy machine gun posts were set up outside, and a dozen more shifters knelt behind sandbagged walls.
“Send reinforcements to the north wall! Tell all positions to retreat to their secondary defensive lines. Activate plan Charlie-Able!”
Khove skidded to a halt as he heard Kirell, the Captain of House Ursa and the man in charge of her defense barking orders. If they were retreating to the secondary defensive lines already, then things were not going well at all.
Screams and explosions sounded in the distance. Khove turned and ran back up to the lip of the driveway to face north. Far away, at the edge of the tree line, he saw the fortified positions of the north side’s secondary positions.
They were already under attack.
“North side isn’t going to be able to fall back!” he shouted. “They’ve already broken through!”
A moment later, Kaelyn was at his side, the Queen looking as well. “They’re not going to hold,” she said quietly.
The battlefield was a nightmare. Fae streamed out of the forest. Here and there, trees shuddered aside as some magical construct shouldered its way out onto the battlefield, towering two or three times the height of a shifter.
Khove watched with horror as the wave of attackers slammed into the line of stalwart shifters. Here and there it was thrown back, but there simply were too many of them.
A dozen shifters went flying past as the Captain’s reinforcements were deployed, racing to the north side, but Khove knew it wouldn’t be enough. Apparently, so did his Queen. Without warning, she started after them.
“Well, are you coming or not?” she shouted. “This is our House!”
“Dammit,” Khove growled, then waved at his men. “You heard your Queen. Let’s get some!”
Eager growls swept over the Queen’s Own, and they, along with their liege lord, charged into battle.
39
A group of Fae cut them off before they could reach the battle lines, slicing in from the left to intercept the Queen’s Own. The fifteen or so Fae clearly didn’t realize who they had trapped, however, because they closed with eagerness, throwing caution to the wind as they went for the kill.
Khove stepped forward, sword in hand, and he and his men gave the faeries a proper greeting and welcome to Ursidae Manor. Purple blood fountained as he casually lopped off a hand, then a leg. The troll-like creature howled with pain, but didn’t give up. Not until Khove separated its head from the rest of its body, the injuries and radiation spewing from his sword combining to banish it back from whence it came.
One of the largest centaurs Khove had ever seen reared up at his side and powerful hooves impacted on his arm as he tried to block the blow. The impact sent shivers up his arm. Khove’s hand went numb and he dropped the sword.
Another member of the Queen’s Own swept in from the right and sliced the creature in two with one powerful hack, freeing Khove to lunge up and tackle the elf that had been going for his savior’s back, a wickedly curved knife in hand. The two hit the ground and rolled. Khove grabbed the elf’s arm, snapped it at the elbow and drove its own knife into the elf’s chest. The creature died with a blood-filled exhale.
Getting to his feet, he retrieved his sword and the Queen’s Own formed up. He noted with disapproval that Kaelyn had acquired a sword from somewhere. Not only that, but it was dripping purple liquid. He didn’t say anything, because there was no need.
All around them, the battle raged fierce. Overhead, the blackened sky flickered with echoes of mostly blue and green, but every so often a blast of red would light the near-night sky. The duel in the heavens was ongoing and seemed to be a stalemate. Unfortunately, Khove couldn’t say the same of the ground war.
The shifters were being pushed hard. They’d already fallen back to their secondary lines on three fronts. Only the east appeared untouched, though they too had retreated. Each concentric ring collapsed tighter around the Manor, which allowed more shifters to defend a smaller space. The lines tightened and held firm as reinforcements arrived at the worst-hit areas.
Khove and his men moved forward with the Queen. Off to his right, a group of asps went by, doing battle with a particularly large Faerie that was old enough and strong enough to use magic as well. A nasty green bolt incinerated one of the asps who was too slow to move, but in return a quartet of red energy bolts impaled the attacker.
Up ahead, the lines were a maelstrom of death. Many of the shifters fought in their animal forms, the untrained members of the House doing what they could to deal out maximum damage. The guards and former guards of the House were noticeable simply by the fact they all held swords and worked as a unit, slicing through their enemies.
But the Fae were more numerous than any would have believed, and the beleaguered north line wavered and nearly cracked. Then it stiffened and threw back the Fae as the Captain’s reinforcements worked their way into the lines.
He, his men and Kaelyn hung back, watching the flanks and darting forward to eliminate any that slipped through. Khove knew better than to try and keep his Queen away from the fighting, but conversely, Kaelyn knew well enough to stay back from the lines themselves. It was a tradeoff on both their parts.
“What now?” Kaelyn asked.
“That.”
Khove nodded to the forest as a quartet of creatures crashed through the last line of trees and angled down on the shifters. They could have been elephants, except they were easily twice as big, and had huge tusks that swept forward nearly to the ground. Someone had lined those tusks with razor wire, with more of it strung between them, like a lawnmower.
“Well shit,” Kaelyn muttered.
“Look,” one of the Queen’s Own whispered. “It’s Klaue.”
A figure strode forward from the shifter lines, standing apart from the others. Khove watched intently, noting the glowing light in the Champion of House Ursa’s left hand. Experienced as he was, Khove had no idea what the man was planning.
Fae fell back at a trumpet, leaving the lone shifter standing in the way of the oncoming tide of death.
Golden light s
prang forth from Klaue’s hand a moment before he slammed the light into his chest, and began to change.
“Holy shit,” someone said flatly. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
The light infused the Champion’s body, and even as he changed, he grew. And grew. And grew. The ground quite literally jumped as Klaue fell onto all fours, his bear now easily half again the size of one of the elephants.
“Earmuffs!” Khove shouted, dropping his sword and clapping hands to his ears.
Then Klaue roared. The sound was tremendous, a physical wave that hit both sides like a jackhammer. Anyone not protecting their ears fell to the ground screaming, while even most of the shifters grunted and were driven to one knee by the unholy thunder.
Khove kept his eyes open, watching as the Champion lunged forward and engaged the elephants like a murderous wolverine. The earth trembled and shook as the titanic combatants slammed together and backed away.
One massive paw the size of a car slapped out and grabbed an elephant under the chin. Klaue bellowed once more and somehow lifted the creature from the ground, whipping it around and crushing a second as it charged.
Then the massive beast howled in pain as a third elephant’s strike went home, one of its tusks sinking in deep into Klaue’s flank.
“Forward!” Khove heard himself shouting as the gargantuan bear tumbled back.
The lines rushed forward, catching the Fae by surprise, and the shifters swept the smaller creatures aside like wheat before the scythe. They didn’t stop there. Guardsmen lunged forward and threw themselves at the fourth elephant before it could close. Men simply leapt upward and plunged their swords deep into its flesh.
Others jumped higher, using those swords as stepping stones to propel them to the top. Swords rose and fell. Axes hacked and dropped. The mighty creature shook itself violently, sending shifters sailing away, but it was too late. A tide of bears rose up and took the beast down, crushing it under sheer weight.
Nearby, Klaue reached out and snapped off the tusk that was inside of him. Clumsily, due to a lack of thumbs, the bear pulled the tusk free. The elephant clearly knew what was about to happen and tried to back away, but it was too late. Klaue slammed the tusk down on its head, driving it deep into the creature’s skull and killing it.
