Death

by Rosie Scott

  Most of the allies pulled into the storm were spit out broken and bloodied. Only one ba'al-kin survived being battered with debris by the mercy of its thick exoskeleton. When it was thrown from the storm, it hurried to right itself before it could land with careful flaps of its shredded wings.

  Zephyr and a few of the other griffon riders tried to calm the storm with air magic, but the twister was proving too strong-willed. Even though the Seran Renegades and the thousands of necromancers waiting in the ranks behind us weren't yet ready to attack, I moved forward anyway to aid them. Stretching my arms toward the approaching storm, I ordered it to calm its fury. Within a minute, the lowest reaches of the funnel retreated from the earth and back to the skies. When the tornado was gone, the skies rumbled. A sinuous purple-white bolt of lightning stretched horizontally through the skies, and finally, heavy rains fell.

  The precipitation impaired visibility as it scratched through the skies and splashed over bodies and surfaces in a thin mist. I pulled the hood of my thick royal green cloak over my head, feeling the extra weight as it collected water. Zephyr and the beastmen finally reached Comercio's wall, and they spread out to swarm all four sides. One of the griffon riders hovered over the eastern gate, holding black magic in one hand. When she cast the spell, black tendrils raced from her saddle and down to the wall where Chairel's own defenders rose again.

  Zephyr commanded the airborne necromancer to go farther down Comercio's exterior, and she did so, raising more recent casualties. All four walls of the capital city were soon in the midst of a civil war. Corpses resorted to using side arms and bows as melee weapons since they had been archers and mages in life and had little access to anything else. Wielding bows as bludgeoning weapons wasn't smart, but the dead no longer used their brains. Even if the corpses didn't succeed at killing foes, they were causing enough chaos that the Chairel soldiers were easy prey from above.

  Zephyr led the charge, using magic first and foremost to put gaps in the enemy ranks with lightning. Some strikes felled nearby corpses, but the necromancer on the griffon continuously raised them anew. On the southeastern wall, a ba'al-kin landed in the midst of enemy soldiers, its wings folding back over its shoulder blades with the sound of wet leather. As the rains splashed over the underground creature, the water tinged red from its perpetually bleeding flesh before it fell to the stone in sheets. Terrified shouts echoed out from the area as the humans faced something unknown to them, and then the ba'al-kin proved its power in a flurry of bladed swipes. Foes fell to the wall in shredded leaking pieces. When the necromancer flew over the area again on her griffon, the corpses she raised were ever more terrifying, for the black magic pulled mutilated parts together that bled freely as they fought.

  Holter's oozlum cry pierced the air as he flew back to Zephyr's side from scouting the border of the city. His life shield flickered, so Zephyr reached out to regenerate it. In mid-air, Holter turned toward the southern gate, flapping his wings forward once, gesturing toward it. Zephyr swooped an arm in the air before pointing south, and her griffon riders followed the direction. Griffons swarmed Comercio's southern wall, and then the riders landed their beasts before dismounting and fighting their way to the portcullis.

  With the south gate in an all-out brawl, Holter threw his attention into clearing the eastern wall. The oozlum-kin swooped down into the crowds of foes still fighting off corpses, grasping their heads with his clawed feet and throwing them out of the city where they landed with the sound of breaking bone. The more foes he removed from the wall, the more overwhelmed the survivors were by the dead. Just when the Chairel forces needed a miracle, yet another misfortune befell them. The rumbling of the southern gate reverberated through the rains, proving that Zephyr and the other griffon riders had taken it.

  The muted echo of a Fremont war horn traveled over the battlefield as Cyrus moved his forces toward the opening gate. In his army was a mix of Vhiri and Alderi necromancers in the frontlines, and elemental mages in the flanks. Uriel and Dax waited in the north for their own gate to open while Hasani and Rek were in the west. Between each of our armies and the gate were thousands of corpses we'd saved from the last battle. Thus, as Cyrus neared the gate to breach the city, his army doubled with the casualties of a fortnight ago. The hordes of dead were the first into the city, and the screams of battle soon were prevalent over the pitter-patter of falling rains.

  Riders mounted their griffons once more, and then Zephyr directed them to the eastern wall. Our gate would be the next to open. I turned to the soldiers waiting behind me and yelled, “Prepare to advance!”

  All at once, the grasses went dark with a blanket of death energy, and then thousands of tendrils hissed as they slithered off to the corpses lying over the fields. Groans and grumbles spiced the air as the dead rose and faced west, sensing the focus of their masters' attention. The sickly sweet stench of decay wafted over the battlefield seconds later like an afterthought.

  With a tremble, the eastern gate finally rose. I ordered my necromancers to send their dead forth, but I hadn't needed to. Thousands of corpses shambled toward Comercio like it was their saving grace. Within the confines of the open city gate, I glimpsed the remaining Chairel Army standing in the main street like a blockade, clutching weapons and preparing spells.

  The corpses in our frontlines picked up their pace once the magic within them sensed nearby foes, and the Chairel soldiers met their charge with dozens of ranged magical spells. Bursts of color lit up Comercio's eastern gate as they threw elemental bombs into the undead, and many fell, releasing the foul stench of burning decay. Magical tendrils raced past my boots as necromancers called the recently defeated dead back to attention. Corpses still burning from fire and impaled with ice and metal rose again.

  For the first time in over twelve years, the city of Comercio opened around me in vastly different circumstances than before. Soldiers charged forth to meet us over extra wide streets meant for high commuter traffic and the set-up of trader stalls. Many of the trading stalls had signs of recent use: advertisements announced deals or special inventories, groups of empty bins stained with evidence of leaking fruit, and the cheapest products left behind in last-minute decisions. Other stalls were empty, proving that trade in the once-magnificent city of commerce was faltering due to Chairel's war with Nahara and Hammerton's recent fall. Buildings a dozen stories tall towered over us, stone walls glistening with the rain and echoing the sounds of bloodshed back to our ears. The last time I was in Comercio, I'd felt solace that it was busy and large enough to get lost in. Now, as I directed thousands of corpses to pave a path through its spacious cobblestone streets, it barely felt like a challenge.

  Rumbling echoed over the battle as Zephyr and the others raised the northern gate, and then the western gate. By virtue of Comercio's set-up, the four main streets met and crossed at its center. Cyrus's army was in the intersection as my own approached it. The Chairel soldiers between us realized they were surrounded, and panic alighted in their eyes.

  “Surrender and I will spare you!” I yelled at the soldiers over our groaning corpses. I caught Cyrus's gaze as the king moved through the masses of dead in his own army to be front and center.

  “Many of your peers have surrendered and are safe,” Cyrus announced, pointing to the south main street and sweeping his arm across its width. As I finally neared the intersection, I gazed over the road he'd come from. While Cyrus had his corpses in the intersection like a blockade, the living members of his army were busy detaining Chairel prisoners of war. As the cornered foes before me noticed this as well, many of them dropped their weapons and raised their hands in surrender.

  It filled me with elation. Though the first battle in this takeover had been chaotic and painful to endure, my strategies for the second were so successful that our casualties were extremely limited. Few of our soldiers were at risk because they were in our rear ranks and we'd left the fighting up to the dead. Battling against necromancy had lowered Chairel's morale not only
because they fought the dead, but because our numbers were overwhelming. Each corpse they overpowered rose again and again. To continue to fight against an unlimited army was futile, particularly when maneuverability was low in the city. At least half of Comercio's remaining defenders already surrendered, and I hadn't yet cast an offensive spell.

  Cyrus walked up as our soldiers secured the prisoners of war in the streets around our army. His thick brown hair appeared almost black from the rains, and moisture lengthened it just enough that he had to pull his wet bangs out of his face to give me eye contact as he spoke. “Do you know where Edrys's castle is?”

  “No,” I replied honestly. Most of the buildings in Comercio were similar in size and architecture, and because its main streets intersected at its center, its castle was likely kept closer to its outskirts.

  Nyx walked up beside me and immediately shot coral-pink magic at the nearest prisoner of war. “Where is the queen's castle and what does it look like?” she asked.

  The soldier pointed northeast in his bindings. “Closer to that corner of the city. It is unassuming. You'll know which one it is by the fountain in the front and the stables on the nearest intersection.”

  Nyx glanced back at Cyrus and me with a grin. “You're welcome. Now, can I get a promotion?”

  “From cock-hunter to court jester, sure,” I replied. Nyx's laughter peppered the air as I turned back to Cyrus. “Can you handle the prisoners of war?”

  “Absolutely,” Cyrus affirmed, before he smiled warmly at me. “Go kill a queen, Kai, and be sure to remember every detail so you can relay it to me later.”

  “Will do,” I promised. I turned to the northeast to follow the soldier's simple directions, and the cobblestone beneath my boots trembled as my army followed.

  Twenty-two

  Comercio's castle hid well within a cluster of buildings that looked nearly identical. True to the soldier's word, a horse stable was kept at the closest intersection to the left, but it was quiet and empty. A circular fountain sat in the square before the castle's two front doors, its water level higher than normal given the current rainfall. Hanging from the building's exterior wall on either side of its front entrance were two high-quality pennants bearing the same design as Chairel's green and black flag. Sconces coated in calcint lined the castle's first floor, lighting up gray stone with firelight despite the pouring rain. Queen Edrys's home was twelve stories tall, and it was longer than it was wide, stretching three city blocks back from its front despite only being a third that size from east to west.

  Groups of the queen's most trusted guard attacked our army on sight but were quickly overwhelmed by corpses, leaving the castle and its surrounding streets eerily quiet. I turned to my friends and companions who waited for my orders.

  “Who wants to volunteer to watch this army and guard these streets?” I questioned.

  Azazel started to offer, but Calder reached up to his hood and tugged it forward in a casual salute. “Let me handle it, love. Haven't had to fight yet today. Might as well keep these clothes in good condition.” He smiled at Azazel and added, “You missed out the last time we killed a queen, anyway.”

  “We all did,” Azazel replied, speaking of Tilda.

  Calder snorted a chuckle and said, “I was actually talking about Achlys.”

  “Oh.” Azazel laughed. “It speaks highly of us that we've been so successful in our exploits that we can get easily confused between the rulers we've conquered.”

  “And may that luck continue,” Calder mused, before he casually leaned back against the castle wall, not caring in the least that it was soaked since we were all drenched. He reached in a pocket for a cigarette before thinking twice in the rain. Raising his eyebrows at me, he offered, “Have fun.”

  I looked over the army cluttered in the streets and announced, “I need a few dozen warriors and archers. Step forward!” Many soldiers abided by my request, walking through the masses of necromancers to follow me. Once enough of them stood before me, I directed, “Kill any hostiles, but leave the queen, her heirs, and her confidants to me. Aid first and foremost. We need to advance as a group.”

  Cerin, Azazel, and I prepared our small army for infiltration with life and alteration shields. Finally, I turned to the double doors of Comercio's castle and tugged on one of the handles. When the door didn't budge, Nyx laughed and asked, “You didn't think that would actually work, did you?”

  “I would have felt awfully stupid if I asked you to pick the lock and it ended up being open,” I retorted lightly, before motioning at the lock. “Do your thing.”

  Nyx smirked as she passed me and crouched before the door, pulling out her lock picking tools. After a moment of the tools scraping against the internal mechanism, Nyx stood back up. “Can't pick it. This lock has no tumbler.”

  “Ah, it's one of them old-fashioned warded locks, innit?” Maggie questioned, wrinkling up her nose with distaste. “I already know what my first job will be in Comercio, Kai. Upgrading this sorry excuse for an entrance.”

  I eyed her war hammer. “Destroy it, Maggie. Then upgrade it.”

  Maggie laughed, before pointing one giant finger to the lock mechanism. “Why don't ya make my job just a bit easier, love? Turn the lock to sand. It'll save me some strainin'.”

  I reached out to the lock, doing just as the engineer suggested. The metal lock hissed as it degraded, spilling onto the cobblestone in a pile of mushy dark sand. Destroying the lock left a wide hole in the door that cast warm interior firelight over our boots.

  “Now you don't have to destroy the doors,” Cerin told Maggie. “We can just open them.”

  “Aye, but that ain't no fun,” Maggie argued, glancing my way with a playful, pleading look.

  “They're hideous doors,” I commented in jest to give her the go-ahead, and the engineer grinned. Nyx and I walked out of the way, and Maggie grasped her war hammer with both hands, throwing it in an uppercut toward the center of the entrance.

  Comercio's castle doors crashed inward so hard they bounced back after hitting the interior wall. Splinters of wood and leftover metal dust from the degraded lock sprinkled before our view. Within seconds, multiple arrows flew from the entrance and into Maggie's shield, causing the magic to flicker before the projectiles bounced away and to the floor. Carbon arrows were streaks of black in my peripheral vision as Azazel retaliated with deadly accuracy before we even set foot inside.

  The castle entrance was completely open to all twelve floors with a hallway that continued ahead between two sturdy staircases leading to tiered upper stories. Each floor had a landing that led to its own hallway. The dark stone walls kept the entrance shadowed, and though the upper floors had stained-glass windows likely commissioned by the dwarves, little light shone through them due to the storm outside. An elaborate chandelier hung from the flat ceiling overhead, some candles flickered out from neglect. A lush emerald green runner ran down the first-level hallway.

  Archers shot arrows at us from over the railings of the landings, and warriors rushed to greet us in battle to defend their queen. Many defenders were already dead from Azazel's arrows, hanging limply over stone barriers or lying beside their weapons on the floor. One man was shot as he hurried down the steps to greet us, and his body took its time tumbling clumsily to the first floor.

  Maggie and Cerin were the first warriors to engage in melee. Maggie swung her war hammer up into the gut of a foe, sweeping him up and out of her way. His body flew back into the castle wall, his skull crashing into stone with a thunk before he fell and did not rise. Cerin screamed hoarsely with furor as he hacked his scythe straight through a soldier's larynx until the tip of the blade punctured the spine. He ripped the blade horizontally out of the neck, and the man fell like a dead weight, partially decapitated and gurgling his own blood.

  While my friends and soldiers took care of the immediate onslaught on the first floor, Azazel picked off the archers on the upper levels who attempted to rain their arrows into us from above.
On the second floor, a group of new contenders hurried forth from the depths of the hallway, spilling out onto the landing just above our heads.

  Explodis a bolta. Blue and purple light flickered over nearby allies as my spell built, veins of electricity forking out and multiplying until they crawled over the magical barrier between my palms like impatient beasts. I thrust the spell over the heads of the allies before me and at the railing of the second floor's landing, and the elemental bomb flew through the air, crackling and hissing threats. The colorful ball of magic hit the ledge and exploded, and tendrils of white-hot electricity scuttled over stone, hunting for the moisture in flesh. All at once, the group of reinforcements on the second floor halted their advance, rattling in seizure and dropping their weapons like baggage.

  I rushed ahead of the others and to the left staircase, thrusting chain lightning toward the soldiers jogging down it. Energy was rabid in the environment due to multiple air spells as I stalked up the steps one at a time, forcing the electricity into their ranks until bodies rolled down the steps on either side of my boots. I dispelled the magic once I was no longer pursued and regenerated my fading alteration shield.

  Black tendrils slithered across stone around me as Cerin raised the dead. Fresh corpses pulled themselves to their feet, some of them humorously stumbling over each other on the stairs as they fought to heed the necromancer's request. I glanced back, finding that the entryway was almost clear. I met Cerin's eyes and motioned to the top floor of the castle. Seconds later, the dead ascended the stairs.

  I was unfamiliar with the set-up of Comercio's castle, but if it were anything like the others I'd visited in the past, I knew I would most likely find the queen as far away from the entrance and as hidden as possible. Thus, with the small army following my lead, we fought our way to the twelfth floor, raising corpses in our wake and allowing the dead to roam the hallways free to attack at will.