Crown of Ash bs-4

by Steven Montano

  They quietly made their way across the ruined city, through d rifts of grey smoke that smelled of ash and cinder. Wooden walkways creaked overhead, weighed down with hoarfrost and iced mold. The buildings were dark and smooth and seemed to suck in what little light remained.

  They heard voices up ahead, and Kane signaled everyone to stop. He nodded at Jade, and she sent her spirit to scout. The team had stepped in to the shadows of leaning cylindrical towers clustered near the center of the city. The g aping holes in the towers revealed their twisted rebar innards.

  Kane smelled axle grease and vehicular fumes. He heard a churning engine just around the corner of the nearby building. Ronan and Maur stood ready, but Jade was locked in concentration, and almost seemed to be in pain.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “My spirit is having trouble…” she said. “It’s like he c an’t get any further…something’ s blocking him.”

  An explosive b last ripped through the air. Metal flew out of the closest tower behind them. Noise rang through his ears, and ice dust fell across his eyes.

  “Contact!” Ronan yelled, and he leaned around the corner and fired.

  “You think?!” Kane shouted back.

  Gunfire cut the air apart. Maur and Jade dropped to the ground.

  A n other explosive shell ripped into the tower behind them.

  “Jade, do something!” Kane yelled.

  “I can’t…it’s like my spirit isn’t there…God…”

  “Shit, ” Kane said, and he fired his M4 around the corner.

  “Move back, ” Maul said.

  The Gol pushed past Kane, calmly stepped up to the corner of the building, and tossed a grenade at the source of the gunfire. Shouts of warning rang out, and Kane heard a vehicle back away. He poked his head out just in time to see a Scarecrow aim its cannon right at him. A dark armored Hummer and a small group of Revengers stood behind the undead. O ne of them looked familiar, and Kane realized he knew him: it was a former inmate in the prison named Gath. Kane didn’t have time to wonder why he was dressed as a Revenger.

  The grenade went off, and the Hummer flew backwards. Its back end cr ashed into a nearby building.

  The explosion made the Scarecrow’s shot go wide, and instead of hitting Kane it blasted away a chunk of stone high in the tower wall.

  Several Revengers flew through the air and landed in bloody heaps. O ne was missing his legs, and another had lost an arm.

  Gath’s chest had been blown open. H is corpse smoldered.

  T he Scarecrow r a n straight at them. Kane and Ronan shot it in the face. B ullets smashed into its grinning skull. The gaunt undead raised its cannon and aimed while it charged, undeterred by their assault.

  “ Duck!” Jade yelled from behind them. Her spirit came out of nowhere and drilled forward, a lance of green acid that impaled the Scarecrow and filled the air with ghastly fumes. The creature withered, and its gun lowered to the ground.

  Kane ran up and snatched the weapon away. The rifle was heavy and almost 4-feet long, but he swung it around, dropped prone and balanced it on a loose rock to help him aim. Revengers fired at them from a block away. The Hummer roared to life.

  The 20mm cannon ripped backwards. Kane felt the impact in his shoulder, and his eyes watered from the sound of the sharp crack as the shell launched. The front section of the Hummer exploded. Oil and water shot up from the shattered engine block, and the dead driver flew forward through the broken window.

  Ronan leapt over Kane and ran at the other Revengers, firing as he went. Maur tossed another grenade as Jade’s spirit hammered the Revengers with cold black nails. Men fell screaming. Those that survived were mowed down by Ronan.

  Kane hefted up the cannon and brought it with him. He felt stronger than he had in some time, and full of vitality. He could have hefted that thing around anywhere.

  Careful, he warned himself. That’s not natural. You know where that strength is coming from.

  At th at moment, he didn’t care.

  Smoke drifted over them as they moved across the street and up to the building the Revengers guarded, a pale structure that looked like an industrial plant or a factory. They saw an open set of damaged steel doors at the bottom of a short iron staircase. Steel yellow barrels leak ed phosphorescent ooze. Kane smelled gas. The space beyond the open doorway was black and still.

  “There’s something down there…” Jade said.

  “Uh, that’s sort of why we want to go in…” Kane said.

  “No, you don’t understand…there’s something down there. Something powerful.”

  They looked at each another. Explosions hammered Voth Ra’morg’s outer walls. They hear d explosive bursts of gunfire and Razorwing calls. The ground shook from the battle outside.

  “Then that is where Maur needs to go,” the Gol said, and he stepped forward. Ronan nodded and followed with a W hat the hell, why not? look on his face.

  Jade hesitated.

  “You don’t have to go,” Kane said as he stepped close. “ You don’t owe us anything.” He nodded at her. “ Find a place to hold up. We can take care of this.”

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. He realized it wasn’t fear that held her back — she’d been an enforcer for Klos Vago and t he Shard, after all, and she’d doubtlessly done and seen things that would have given him nightmares — but something else.

  She’s making a choice. She’s deciding if we’re worth putting herself in this much danger.

  After a moment, she moved towards the stairs.

  “You’d better be worth it,” she said. Kane stood there, dumbfounded, before he turned and followed her inside.

  Cold shadows filled t he building. Ronan lit a flare, but even that did little to combat the darkness.

  Old machines l ittered an underground industrial graveyard. The light from the door behind them was muted, stifled by the black interior.

  Jade couldn’t send her spirit ahead. Kane wasn’t surprised: he knew T he Revengers had their ways to combat mages. He only hoped she’d be able to call on it again when it mattered.

  The air smelled like the underside of a car. T he floor was covered in frozen sludge pools and slicks of ice grease. Shell casings, iron filings and shattered steel were everywhere.

  They found a closed trap door in the floor. Ronan’s flare revealed footsteps in the sticky f ilm on the ground and debris that had been pushed aside. A small group had recently passed through the area.

  The y opened the door and found a n iron ladder that led straight down into metal darkness. Kane took the lead and descended the ladder two rungs at a time. His heart hammered, and his breaths were fast. Tension mounted in his arms.

  We hear you

  God damn it, not now.

  We hear you know you feel the lust the pain in your heart in your blood your soul the pain that stabbing hurt the want the desire blood your blood her blood hers hers yes hers

  Kane came to ground in a half-completed basement. He stepped away from the ladder and punched the steel wall, hard. P ain shot down his arm, and b lood ran from the broken skin on his knuckles. H is eyes regained their focus. After a moment the voices were unintelligible again, just faint whispers at the edge of his thoughts.

  Pipe junctions issued steam jets and dripped semi-petrified drops of greasy water. Yellow bulbs lit the area the color of old bones. They hear d a boiler somewhere nearby, and the air smelled like a urinal.

  They went just a few feet away from the ladder when they came across a section of wall that had been ripped open by some powerful force. A series of natural tunnels made of dark shale waited on the other side of the hole. Drifts of ebon dust fell across the low and n arrow passage. They saw m urky blue light in the distance, a glow the color of icy milk.

  “What the hell? ” Ronan said.

  “Maur is tired of strange shit like this.”

  “You and me both, pal,” Kane echoed.

  “We must be close,” Jade said. “My sp
irit is going crazy from all of the thaumaturgic activity coming from down there.”

  Kane looked down the tunnel. He felt like they were nearing an end. For some reason, he didn’t want to step through. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he saw Ekko. His heart ached.

  Without a nother word, Kane entered the tunnel.

  He felt like he’d st epped into a freezer. The stone underfoot cracked like brittle ice. He tasted salt and the tang of frozen blood. Everything was so still he was almost afraid to move, for fear that the tunnels would collapse at his touch.

  T hey follow ed the source of the light. The ice-wreathed walls glowed like a distant moon. Tiny cracks in the walls held glittering blood crystals like small red diamonds.

  Kane’s skin was raw with cold, and his breaths frost ed as they left his aching throat. He shive red and pulled his dirty armor coat tight er around his body. He shook his gun to dislodge the ice shards in the barrel.

  The tunnel emptied into a dark and massive chamber that looked like it had been the sight of a recent bombing. The walls were scorched and twisted. Shadows swam against the stone.

  A ring of torches illuminated a sharp pillar made of monstrous dark ice skulls. Kane saw the bones of horned things, flat-headed beasts, creatures with tusks and snouts. He recognized some of the skulls as those of Gorgoloth or Vuul, but many were foreign to him, forgotten creatures from other worlds.

  Each skull had been carefully packed and sealed in to place with some reflective organic glaze. The smoothed exterior of the ten-foottall structure flickered with dirty yellow light. There were no exi ts from the room except for a dark and mist-filled pit that somehow held the pillar aloft. T he bone edif ice drifted at the center of that purple and b lack morass of shadow fumes. Deep sounds issued from the pit like rhythmic metal pounding.

  “Drop your guns!” Rake shouted. “Or we’ll drop your girl.”

  The Revengers stood on the other side of the obelisk, at the far end of the chamber. Kane recognized Rake, the little — s een leader of T he Revengers and the man in charge of Black Scar. He was accompanied b y a number of other Revengers, among them Geist, his half-Doj henchman; a dark-haired wo man with tattoos on her face and arms; and Burke, the false Burke, supposedly a vampire named Krage, but his semblance to the Burke they’d seen just minutes before was almost exact, save for the fact that this Burke was unscarred.

  A pair of Scarecrows h e ld a chain attached to a massive Talon beast ’s neck and six arms. The brutish creature scrambled against its bonds and growled noisily. It desperately wanted to get at Kane and the others.

  Cross was there, unconscious and strapped to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs like he was a baby in a papoose.

  And t hey saw Danica… what had once been Danica.

  “Black!” Ronan shouted.

  “What have you done to her?!” Maur shouted.

  Kane looked at her in horror. T he transformation that had been forced on her was stark. Blood stained the side of her leather armor. Her hair had gone almost white, and her glazed eyes glowed like sparkling ice. Her flesh was frosted. She looked something like the angel avatars the team had faced in the Bonespire, th os e undead machinations that Korva had used to try and capture Soulrazor, but in lieu of angel’s wings Danica had been given a n arcanemechanical arm, an animated appendage of blood-colored steel and iron. The flesh was visibly raw where the limb had been fus ed to her shoulder.

  C rackling energies whirled in her grip. Drops of caustic fire fell from her golem fingers and turned the ground white.

  “She’s better now,” Rake said with a shrug. He was so casual about the situation, like he was getting ready for a friendly game of cards. “We had to rip her spirit away, then give it back to her. It was the only way to make her a suitable sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice…” Kane said.

  Oh, shit.

  “ This nice little tower of skulls here generates a portal,” Rake said. “ It belongs to the Shadow Lords, t he mages who breached the hole and found a way into the Whisperlands. After we pass through, we’ll use Cro ss as a tool to track down the O belisk of Dreams, and then we’ll use Danica to destroy it. ” He paused, tapped a fingerless glove against his lips, and smiled. “Of course, you won’t be there…”

  Black’s eyes flashed with hot light. The metal burned against her skin. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

  “Jade!” Kane shouted.

  One of the Revengers, the dark-skinned and rail-thin woman, stepped forward. Kane saw her eyes flash, and he realized she was what interfered with their magic. She was a Fade.

  He saw Jade’s face, saw her panic as she failed to call her spirit. H e grabbed her and threw them both to the ground.

  Left, quick! a voice shouted in his head.

  “Left!” he shouted.

  Ronan and Maur followed them. All four barely dodged a barrage of steaming razors. Danica’s angry ghost folded into bleeding fog.

  The Revengers loosed their weapons, and the Scarecrows leveled their cannons.

  “Ronan, ” Kane shouted. “K ill that bitch!”

  Ronan didn’t hesitate. Even as Revenger assault rifles and Scarecrow 20mm cannons took aim, Ronan drew a kukri, dove forward, and used the full force of his body to cast the weapon through the air. He landed hard on the ground just as the blade punched through the Fade’s skull and snapp ed her head backwards.

  At the same moment, Danica fell to the ground in a heap.

  “Ja de! ” Kane shouted. “Now!”

  The sound of g unfire roared through his ears. Kane saw blasts and bullets flash towards them. H e balled up his body, read y to be torn apart.

  Jade’s shield threw back shrapnel. A glittering star storm of white explosions flashed less than a foot from Kane’s face.

  Rake pushed past the Scarecrows. The air was alight with hex rot and electricity. Swirling black winds kicked up a n icy storm.

  Danica stood up, and shouted. Her eyes glowed like an exploding star. Re ve ngers turned and fired at her.

  Geist growled and charged at Danica with a h eavy steel hammer. S he lashed them with wave s of spark and steel. Broken slivers and hot embers ripped through armor and flesh. Geist and most of the Revengers were dead before they hit the ground.

  Rake saw the attack coming at the last moment and turned his own spirit to deflect hers. Energies collided in a pillar of liquid flame. Rake fell back. His cloak burned and his armor smoked.

  Kane and Ronan leapt forward and engage d the Scarecrows. Jade dropped the shield and was about to blast the undead when Kane remembered that Cross was tethered to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs.

  “Wait!”

  Chains snapped, a nd the Talon sprang forward. The dark-skinned brute was the size of a male gorilla. Knotted black muscles str ain ed with rage, and its six fists pounded the dirt. A decorative gold and iron mask had been surgically fused to its fanged face. T he creature issued a guttural and blood-curdling howl.

  The Scarecrows fire d again. Jade hammered one of them with a blast of sub-arctic air. Ebon flesh peeled away as it fell to the ground.

  Duck!

  The voice came just in time. Kane barely dodged one of the Talon’s incredibly long arms. Claws the size of steak knives raked against the stone. Kane jumped back.

  DUCK!

  It was Danica’s voice inside his head. Kane flattened himself against the floor.

  A screaming cone of fire and force tore the Talon open. Its chest cavity twisted and exploded in a mass of skin and molten guts. The beast’s howls rang loud and long as it fell to the ground.

  Kane looked at Danica. Her steel arm smoked, and her body was shrouded in a corona of white fire.

  “How did you do that?”

  You were bi t t en, her voice told him. So was I. That’s how they kept me alive when they hacked off my arm. But I’m not going to T urn.

  “Neither am I,” he snarled, and he rose to his feet.

  Jade and Rake did battle with arcane b
lades and hex missiles. Their attacks spiraled and bounced off of one another, sparked green and red explosions that smelled like a furnace.

  Maur dodged around the perimeter of the battle, trying to get a c lear shot at the Scarecrow that held Cross. Ronan circled the same undead and looked for an opening, his blades ready; h is wrapped face and dark hair made him melt into the shadows.

  Cross was tightly secured to the Scarecrow’s back, but he was still unconscious.

  Ronan found an opening. He raced in and sliced the Scarecrow’s cannon in half.

  Kane! Help!

  Burke was gone. He was Krage now, a vampire with pale eyes, pale r skin and enormous claws. He held Danica by the throat and dragged her towards the obelisk.

  Krage’s vampire servants poured grave dust and unholy oils in a perimeter around the obelisk. T hey were preparing s ome ritual to breach the barrier to the Whisperlands.

  “Hey asshole!” Kane shouted. He aim ed the cannon at Krage.

  Duck, he thought to Danica.

  The recoil threw him back. Danica pulled away and scream ed as Krage ’s talons tore out of part of her good shoulder.

  The shell took Krage in the chest and tore him in half. Bloody meat and bone fragment s splattered all over the obelisk.

  One of the other vampires thr e w vials of blood to the ground and chant ed in some sibilant alien tongue. T he other one leapt on top of Danica. They grappled, and claws slashed into Danica ’s ribs before Kane could find a shot.

  He felt Danica’s scream more than heard it. T he force of it tore through his chest and filled him with loss.

  “Dani! ” he shouted. He dropped the cannon and ran.

  He heard a scream behind him. Jade fell to the ground. Blood seeped from her mouth and nose, and the side of her face was burned.

  A fi st of light crashed into Kane’s side. H e felt his ribs crack. Blinding pain spread up and down his body. He went to his knees and fell inches away from Jade.

  “Nice try,” Rake said, but he wasn’t talking to Kane or Jade, but to the vampires. “We knew the Ebon Cities would try to beat us to the Obelisk. Too bad.” The red-headed warlock held his clenched fists together. Whips of razor light shot out and tore a vampire’s head from its shoulders. The last vampire bore her fangs and soared at Rake with a dark-bladed scimitar in hand.