by Joseph Lallo
Lain knew precisely what was needed to enter this place. He'd had targets within the castle before. Silently he stalked to a tiny barred opening at the base of one of the castle walls. It was ancient, corroded, and to the trained eye, carefully bent. The castle guards never guarded it, because it did not lead into the castle. The assassin surveyed his surroundings one last time before wedging himself through, dropping lightly into an inky black and burning cold cell. It was the dungeon. This particular cell no longer had an occupant, not because the north hadn't enough prisoners to fill it. It was because an uncovered window to the frigid night and bed with no blanket was as effective, if not as efficient, as any executioner. After a moment of his skilled efforts, the cell door swung open and the assassin sprinted down the labyrinthine hallways.
The gems mounted in Ivy's weapons were burning like radiant sapphires. As she drew nearer to the castle she'd been forced to put them to use more than a few times, and each time with a dash more precision. A mind honed to rhythm and grace had carefully entered the weight and shape of the blades into its many equations and made the proper adjustments. Leaping turns, diving rolls, hand springs, and slides all returned to their former flawless state and now carried a deadly bite. Any fear at all was lost in the exhilaration. The nearmen were now little more than sluggish and rather fragile obstacles to her, no longer a cause for concern. Alas, her artful navigation of the narrow alleys and crowded streets had not gone unnoticed. With a force that shattered the cobblestones of the street, one of the dragoyles struck the ground before her.
Having emotions with consequences as significant as hers had quickly taught Ivy a single mindedness that would have been the envy of any wizard. To avoid being overcome by fear or anger she devoted her whole mind to the task at hand, in this case following Lain and reaching the castle. Thus, the rampaging and out of control change that had seized the dragoyles had managed to escape her notice. In her mind these beasts were still under Myranda's control, a misconception strengthened when the monster's first act of business was to trample the nearmen between them. The unsuspecting hero attempted to simply slip past the hulking beast. A heartbeat later it was only through the combination of sensitive hearing and razor sharp reflexes that Ivy avoided having her head ripped from her shoulders by a powerful swiping claw.
“Easy, now, Myranda, it's me!” Ivy said as she backed away from the beast.
A second monster dropped down behind her.
“What . . . what is this?” Ivy stammered.
Fear had managed to catch up with her and was making its presence felt both in her blue aura and her weapons. The blades began to reconfigure themselves to suit the emotion, curiously curling and twisting until they resembled the long curved blades of a scythe. Both dragoyles snapped their maws open mechanically and hissed a stream of black acid. Ivy crouched and sprang into a long, graceful back flip. She peaked just over one beast's head and carefully shifted in air, crossing her blades and lowering them. At the same moment she landed she crouched, planting her feet on the back of the creature's neck and hooking her blades around it. Before the momentum of the flip was spent she stood again, carrying herself into a second flip and neatly shearing the monster's head free.
The malthrope landed and watched as the dragoyle dropped lifelessly to the ground. Ivy's mind treated itself to a brief surge of amazement and joy before it allowed the image of the remaining dragoyle, mid charge, to be processed. The beast hadn't managed a second step toward her before the fear finally took hold. She turned and bolted toward the wall of a rather tall building, now little more than a fear crazed streak of light. The newly curved blades made the purpose of their shape clear as they bit into the wall, permitting a streak along the ground to become a streak ascending a wall. She reached the top of the wall and continued upward, the momentum of the climb carrying her into the air above the city like a beacon. A beacon that gave a single target to the crazed minds of the remaining dragoyles.
There was a very strong, very precise wind tearing through the streets below. It dashed silvery centipede-like creatures against walls, hurled insect-mawed panthers into the air, and even churned up the earth outside the gates to tear apart spider-legged worms. Ether had decided that Demont's lesser creations must be destroyed. The nearmen and dragoyles were atrocities, but they at least did justice to their stolen forms. They had a perverse sort of purity. The lesser beasts burned at Ether's mind. They were combinations, unions of one creature and another, or of a creature and an element. The hybrids were small, evasive, and they sullied nature. The humans and other Chosen might have overlooked them, but Ether would not. Indeed, she had not. As she gathered herself into a vaguely human shape and swept the city one last time, she felt only the dragoyles and the nearmen left to be dealt with. However, within the castle, she felt something more. Something that had turned her away once before. Something that needed to be dealt with. She whisked toward the castle.
Myn touched down in the castle courtyard. The inhuman guards who opposed them were reduced to ashes by a carefully aimed blast of flame. Myranda climbed to the ground and thrust her will at the door. A ripple of magic visibly distorted the air, but it splashed uselessly against the door. Myranda focused her mind and released another volley. This time the air crackled, but still the door stood. There was a magic far more powerful than hers set against her.
“Myn, can you get us inside?” Myranda asked.
The dragon turned to the door. She retreated until the gates of the castle wall were at her back, then slowly lowered her head. Iron hard muscles under gleaming red scales propelled the massive creature to frightening speed. When she struck the door it was like a crack of thunder. Wood splintered and creaked. Rust-encrusted metal twisted and warped. The very frame that held the doors in place buckled, but they held. Myn shook her head and retreated again. A second time the ground shook and the walls shuddered, knocking free months old ice and snow. A third and final charge hit like a battering ram. The ragged remains of the door exploded into debris as Myn blasted through.
A red carpet slid and bunched under Myn's claws as she tried madly to stop herself. Myranda rushed in after her. This was the castle's entry hall. Once again Myranda found herself in a place that, as a girl, she could only have dreamed of seeing. Unlike her mad dash through Castle Kenvard, this place actually met and surpassed the dreams of her youth. Intricate tapestries lined the walls. War banners hung proudly. Suits of ornate armor worn by kings and noblemen stood at attention between massive, towering columns that disappeared into the darkened vault above them. The air was warm, and the smell of burning candles still hung in the air. This place was empty now, but it was alive. Perhaps just minutes ago there had been servants and guards here.
Myranda turned. Ropes had been thrown over the edge of the wall. Boots scratched against the wooden gates of the castle's outer wall. The hordes outside were fighting their way past their own defenses to get in. Her eyes turned again to the wonders around her. This was the true history of her people. The very history that had been stripped from them. Marble was engraved in ancient languages. Above the hallway leading into the castle proper was a map of the world that still bore the old borders, the old names. The world before the war. Here and nowhere else, the identity of the north seemed to have survived, and it was about to become a battlefield. Already it was scattered with the splintered remains of the door.
“Myn, you won't fit through the hallway, you have to stay here . . . but I have another job for you. You see this? All of this? This must not be destroyed! Myn, keep those soldiers from entering this place. I'll be back as soon as I can,” Myranda stated.
Myn shot out the shattered door and planted herself just outside, a predatory gaze focused on the wall. She heard the echoing footsteps of her friend retreating down the hallway behind her and longed to follow, but Myranda had spoken. Her talons flexed in anticipation, splitting the stone of the courtyard, and her mighty tail swept and coiled. The scent of the enemy soldiers was in her n
ose. It was a scent she would never forget. The D'karon creatures came in many shapes, but there was a quality of the scent that never changed. It was out of place, not a part of nature, and it was etched permanently in her mind. Dragons have a long memory, and the scent of those that had killed her was not one she was going to forget. She intended to return the favor.
Deacon finally forced his way to a staircase. When he'd wrestled the doors of the church open, he somehow had expected to find it empty. What he found instead was a huddled crowd of aristocrats and dignitaries. These men and women hadn't known a moment of true hardship in their lives. The war was, to them, a distant thing. Something others dealt with and hardly worth noticing. Now it was on top of them. Deacon's arrival found them pressed against the opposite wall, not a single one of them willing to risk holding the door shut against the onslaught. When it was clear he meant them no harm, the pleading had come. In the space of a few minutes he'd been pulled in every direction, had half of the kingdom offered to him, and had to turn down many a daughter and dowager's hand in marriage in exchange for safe passage from this war zone. It continued as the more desperate of them followed him up the steps.
“Please,” begged a round, red faced man dressed head to toe in silk. “I own a great deal of land. Help me to escape and you may name your price. Be reasonable!”
“I mean to help all of you, now stay back! This could get dangerous,” Deacon said, pulling free of the man's insistent grip and rushing up the stairs.
The heavy footfalls followed him for a half a dozen steps before wheezing to a stop and slowly thumping away again. Deacon spiraled up the steps, urgency and duty driving his failing limbs. Soon he was high enough that the battle was just a distant clamor below him. At what had to be the top of the precarious flight of stairs was a locked door. It did not remain locked for long, the merest whisper from his skilled mind springing the delicate mechanism open. He rushed inside. There were ropes nearly as thick as his arm leading into the darkness overhead. He cast a spell at the bell itself, but the massive piece of brass barely budged. Reluctantly he grasped the heavy rope and heaved. His feet lifted from the ground, and slowly the roped drifted down.
The voices below rose in terror once again and the sound of pounding footsteps echoed up the tower. In the back of his mind he realized that he'd not managed to heave the brace back into place. The bell thumped faintly. He leapt and heaved the pull again. As a second weak ring echoed down the tower, but as it echoed back up, it was joined by a familiar voice.
“Stop!” Caya cried as she finally made it to the landing. “No need for that. The monst . . . the prodigy is doing an excellent job.”
“Ivy? How?” Deacon asked, slowly releasing the pull.
“She's leading them on a circuit around the city, zigzagging through the streets. I've never seen anyone move so fast,” Caya explained.
“She's changed . . . what color is her aura?!” he asked urgently.
“Blue. Does it really matter?” the veteran asked in puzzlement.
“Blue is fear. It doesn't last long. Please, you've got to help me ring this bell!” Deacon begged, leaping to the task again.
“I don't understand,” she replied.
“Ivy can only stay that way for so long. When she tires she'll be helpless. They will tear her apart!” he cried.
Caya dropped her sword and grabbed a hold of the rope. Ivy was still a monster. She and Lain were malthropes. From time immemorial they were enemies, the plague of humanity. She'd never seen one before, but the tales of her parents and her parents’ parents were vivid. Malthropes had blood on their hands that Caya could not ignore. As a race they were the lowest of the low. It didn't matter. Ivy may have been a monster, but she'd saved the lives of Caya's troops. Both Ivy and Lain were putting their lives on the line for a cause she'd devoted her life to. As a race they were irredeemable. As individuals, they were godsends. They were owed a debt that could not go unpaid.
After a third pull the bell rang out, clear, and LOUD. The sound was bone rattling, knocking dust from rafters and rolling over the city. Citizens cowering indoors raised their heads. Undermine soldiers tightened their resolve. The dragoyles turned their hollow eyes to a single point. In their unguided minds the flaring blue form that had held their attention was instantly replaced and utterly forgotten. Leathery wings nearly tore themselves from their sockets in a frenzied rush to direct the beasts at this new target.
Inside the tower Caya and Deacon retreated to a lower landing, where a door led to a rooftop. Deacon threw it open and stumbled outside, Caya behind him. He scanned the city madly. There, at the far end of the town's main street, too many massive black forms to count were making their way toward them with maddened, mechanical thrusts of wings. Behind them, unnoticed, a brilliant point of blue faded away. Deacon breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you!” Deacon shouted between tooth-shaking clangs of the massive bell.
“It was my duty! I only wonder why you'd needed me! Surely your magic could have done the job,” Caya cried.
“What?” he called out.
“I say, why couldn't you have used your magic!?” Caya repeated.
“Haven't the strength. Keeping us disguised and hidden during flight here, the shield, and now with no crystal? I can barely think!” he admitted.
“You haven't . . . you . . . YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT WE'VE JUST DRAWN THE ATTENTION OF EVERY LAST ONE OF THOSE MONSTERS AND YOU HAVEN'T A SPELL TO CAST AGAINST THEM!” Caya raved, pulling her sword.
Deacon nodded, fumbling through his bag.
“I can understand wanting to end your life on a high note, but I would have appreciated a bit of warning! I'd have preferred an audience for my death!” Caya fumed, as she gripped the sword tightly. “Ah, well. At least we'll take a building full of cowards with us! Shame it being a church!”
Deacon did not answer. Partially because taking his hands away from his ears to rummage through the bag had cost him what was left of his hearing, and partly because he was busy running some calculations. He pulled the small, clear vial from the bag and pulled it open, smelling it. It certainly smelled like the substance he knew as moon nectar. He recalled the portion of his education devoted to it. Collected from the leaves of special herbs only on the nights of blue moons and eclipses, moon nectar was nothing short of condensed, distilled magic. He hadn't taken it from Entwell. Even in Entwell there simply wasn't this much to be had. There was no telling where it came from, it would have taken ages, perhaps thousands of years to collect this much. Had he been more certain that it was what he believed it to be, he'd have sent the bottle with Myranda. Now, well, if it turned out to be poison, whatever death it might bring to him could only be an improvement over the one heading toward him on rough leather wings. One drop, he worked out, would provide him with all of the strength he'd squandered and then some. His body might just be able to contain the strength in two. Slowly he put the edge of the vial to his lips.
“Trying to gird your loins? No sense being genteel about it,” Caya said, quite literally to deaf ears.
In a smooth, practiced, and at any other time, predictable way, she placed a finger at the vial's base and tipped it up, pouring the entire contents down Deacon's throat. The wizard silently swallowed. Even facing the death sentence it represented, he would not allow himself to waste a drop. A moment later the sensation began. It was a fire, though the word falls far short, that burned in the center of his mind and the pit of the soul and built. He shuddered as he tried to spread the effects, feeling as though if he allowed it to remain concentrated it would burn a hole through all of reality. The liquid had been the spark, and his spirit the tinderbox.
“Strong stuff?” Caya asked, eyes wide as Deacon turned slowly to her, his eyes already taking on a brilliant white gleam.
“Get your men and bring them indoors,” he calmly instructed, his unstrained voice louder than the bell and gaining dimensions with each word, as though it echoed not through space but time as
well. “I do not know what is going to happen, but it is going to be spectacular.”
With that Deacon paced toward the edge of the roof and, without hesitation, off of it. Caya had opened her mouth to warn him, but something about the crackling, glowing footprints he'd left a few inches above the roof behind him made her realize it would be a waste of breath. Reluctantly pulling her eyes from the spectacle, she rushed down the stairs. Deacon hung past the edge of the roof for a moment, then he was atop the tower. He hadn't appeared to move at all, as though he'd remained still and all of existence had shifted to accommodate him. Once in place, he turned his mind lightly to a spell.
The mystic act reached Myranda as a distant, brilliant flash of light. The flare was impossibly bright, somehow gleaming through the stone walls of the castle. It lasted for less than an instant, so briefly that she dismissed it, but she could not dismiss its effects. Myranda's trip down into the heart of the castle brought her against spell after enchantment after curse, as though the very castle itself was composed of the blasted things. They bored at her soul, pushed against her from all sides. But now they were gone, every one of them, swept away by Deacon’s will. The door ahead of her swung open.
A thousand questions and a hundred concerns fought for a place in her mind, but Myranda ignored them. She could not afford to waste this opportunity wondering if it was a trap. Already the spells were slipping back into place and the door was closing. She dove for it, gathering the might of her body and mind to keep it open. It was enough to halt it, but only just, and not nearly wide enough to slip through. Slowly the enchantment against her strengthened and she began to lose ground.
