Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  “Glad I can be useful.”

  An owl’s cry turned his head toward the center of their formation. Forrest stood over the body of an ashen gray owl, his axe embedded in the space between its enormous eyes. The bird shrieked and flailed its wings in its death throes. Forrest yanked his axe free, hefted it above his head, and put an end to its suffering with another blow that cracked deep into its skull.

  “This clusterfuck is hopeless,” the Vikar shouted. Blood darkened his shirt and coat, not that he seemed to care. “Retreat, everyone retreat! Save what lives you can and then go!”

  Devin couldn’t argue with that assessment. There wasn’t a shred of organization left between the soldiers and the city guards. Their numbers were halved, and they had no clue as to how many more dragon-sired might remain farther into Low Dock. Owls dove through their ranks, the avenria continued their hit-and-run tactics, and only the Goddesses knew how many lapinkin lurked in the sky, ready to spear another hapless soldier.

  “There,” Lyssa said, tapping his shoulder. Three city guards armed with spears had cordoned off an avenria in a corridor. They kept calm, a heroic effort in and of itself, and did not fall for her attempts to bait them out of formation. Together Devin and Lyssa rushed to join the guards. The avenria, seeing them coming, turned and fled, leading the five of them on a chase.

  “Wait,” Devin shouted at them. “Too far! We can’t get…”

  They emerged the next street over, and the avenria was not alone. Six men and women garbed in black stood ready with their hands raised and a prayer on their lips. The three guards tried to interrupt them, but the avenria held firm, her long blade shoving aside their spears and forcing a retreat.

  “Anwyn of the Moon, hear me!” the six chanted in unison. “Before me stands one who would take my life. Before me stands pride and vengeance. Strike them down. Teach them, through your holy lash, humility.”

  Horror washed over Devin’s mind as he watched the three guards cry out. Enormous gashes burst open across their chests, two to a man, as if invisible swords cleaved their flesh down to the bone. They dropped, their bodies immediately going into shock.

  “Ravencallers,” Devin said, the word foul on his tongue.

  “Only one shot left,” Lyssa said, her tone grim. She lifted her pistol and aimed it at the avenria.

  “Then make it count.”

  Devin dashed at the six Ravencallers. He couldn’t let them release another wave of prayers. The avenria knew the same, and she kept close to the Ravencallers, her sword ready to defend them. Devin ran, instinctively trusting Lyssa to hold her shot until the last possible moment. Right before reaching the avenria, he skidded to his knees, freeing up Lyssa’s line of sight. The eruption of her flamestone echoed through the night. Its aim was true, but their foe was no ordinary target.

  The avenria’s wings folded over her, predicting the shot the moment Devin dropped. The feathers vanished into shadow, the lead shot passed straight through to connect instead with one of the Ravencallers. The woman dropped, but five remained.

  Panic pushed Devin back to his feet, and he crashed into the avenria with all his might. Their swords crossed, once, twice, the chant of the five Ravencallers behind her a ticking clock toward his death. Lyssa couldn’t reload her pistols in time. It had to be him. He parried, slid closer, and caught the woman in the chest with his elbow. She was frailer than he’d expected, and the moment her upper body doubled over in pain, he cleaved through her neck, dropping her.

  Devin spun to face the remaining five Ravencallers. Their prayer was almost finished, and even if he could close the distance in time, they were not alone. A second avenria dropped from the rooftops.

  Except Devin recognized this new avenria was no friend of the Ravencallers. Evelyn spun as her heels touched down, her two sickles flashing red as they cut through the gathered men and women. Three died instantly, while two more turned and fled. Evelyn’s wings flapped once to launch her after them. She buried both sickles in the first, landed atop his collapsing corpse, and swung her arm left, decapitating the final Ravencaller.

  “Your leaders underestimated us dragon-sired,” Evelyn said, her back to them. “Then again, your race always have.”

  “Devin, get back,” Lyssa shouted. She’d finished reloading, and she pointed both pistols at Evelyn.

  “Lower your aim,” Devin said. “She’s a… friend.”

  Evelyn glanced over her shoulder. He could see little of her face due to her long hood and dark beak, but he swore he saw hints of a smile in those blue eyes.

  “Yes,” the avenria said. “Quite an unusual friendship, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lyssa’s pistol never wavered.

  “A friend,” she said flatly. “With those who took Low Dock from us?”

  “Do I look like I’m helping the Forgotten Children?” Evelyn asked. The old woman sounded exasperated. “Or do you doubt your own eyes?”

  Lyssa’s gaze bounced between the two of them, and after a long second, she lowered both barrels. Devin sighed with relief.

  “Do you know where more are?” he asked Evelyn.

  “I do. They’re making their way toward the church. I suspect those inside will be next once the battle finishes.”

  “Then I’m going with you.”

  Lyssa took a step backward.

  “I won’t have any part of this,” she said. “We need to rejoin the others.”

  “I’m not abandoning my sister,” Devin said. “You heard Forrest’s retreat order. They’re going to leave her to die.”

  “And I’m not abandoning our Vikar, not on the word of…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. “I’m sorry, Devin. Orders are orders.”

  Lyssa dashed back through the alley. Devin quietly watched her go.

  “Logarius will gather his forces once the humans have fled,” Evelyn said. “I will help you kill more human Ravencallers, but I will not fight my own kind. You face Logarius alone should he try to breach the church’s walls.”

  “Not alone,” Devin said. He took advantage of the pause to load flamestone and shot into his pistol. “Adria’s still there, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Such love for family,” Evelyn said, and this time he was certain she smiled darkly at him. “I would commend it, but I am not blind to the truth. It likely leads you to your death, Soulkeeper, but while you fight on, consider me your dark-winged guide.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The only thing keeping Tesmarie from breaking down in tears was the need to keep Tommy alive. If she could at least manage that, then perhaps this abysmal night would have a silver lining.

  “Hurry, hurry, this way!” she shouted at him and his friend, Malik. A trio of lapinkin gave chase. One of them soared high into the air, her spear at the ready. The faery’s eyes widened.

  “No, no no no,” she shouted, her wings buzzing in her ears. Her hands traced runes in the air as she flew, encasing an invisible bubble around the two men. When the lapinkin descended, her spear aimed to impale Tommy through the chest, she hit the bubble and then slowed as if her entire body swam through molasses. The rip of the wind through her clothes rolled in slow motion. Tommy glanced over his shoulder, saw the lapinkin there, and blanched.

  “Aethos glaeis surmu,” he quickly shouted, and with a wave of his hand formed a wall of ice that spread from one side of the street to the other. The lapinkin emerged on the other side of the time-slowing bubble and crashed unseen into it. Tesmarie winced, fearing the damage and broken bones the poor lapinkin most certainly suffered. If only there were a nonhurtful way to stop their fighting!

  The two men ran, while the two trailing lapinkin easily hopped over the ice wall. Tesmarie bit her lip. She’d already slowed the time about her considerably. Going further would put a significant strain on her physically, but she was starting to believe she had no choice. How else might she scare off their pursuers? Tesmarie summoned her moonlight blade. If she had to draw blood, then so be it…


  Blood. That was it! She quickly carved a symbol into the palm of her left hand, her teeth gritted against the pain. Once the rune was complete, she clenched her hand into a fist, words of magic flowing off her tongue.

  “Chyron aro ocpectu.”

  Chyron’s magic filled the rune, and then the blood.

  “Please work,” she whispered. Her wings carried her on a straight shot toward the lapinkin. They readied their spears, but they were clumsy, ineffective weapons against someone so small. Tesmarie danced around the bladed tips. When their spears failed them, gales of air blasted from their palms, buffeting her about like a leaf in a storm. The world spun, the sky and the street rotating above her head. Her back slammed against a wall, and she sobbed as her head whip-cracked into the building’s hard stone. Blood leaked from her clenched fist, and she refused to open it lest the magic be wasted.

  “It’s… going to… take more than… that,” she said as she hovered in a daze.

  “Stay back, faery,” one of the lapinkin said. A second gust of air flattened her against the wall. “You are misguided, but that alone does not deserve death.”

  The wind relented. Tesmarie slumped forward and dropped several feet before her wings caught her. One of the lapinkin resumed chasing Tommy and Malik. The other stood over Tesmarie, waiting for her surrender.

  “I might be misguided,” Tesmarie said. “But I won’t let you kill anyone.”

  She closed the distance between them and flung her hand in a wide arc, spraying her blood across the lapinkin’s furry face. Blue drops struck his eyes, enacting the long-pent-up magic. He stumbled back a step and lifted his spear. His eyes, normally a deep brown color, shimmered pink as he gaped around him.

  “What… where?”

  He stabbed at the air, striking nothing. The magic had taken his sight and transported it back almost an hour. Whatever he saw, it certainly wasn’t the current street, nor the two fleeing Wise. Tesmarie abandoned him to his confusion and chased after the final three lapinkin. Catching up would be no difficulty, but before she could, she saw Tommy with his hand outstretched, speaking the syllables of a spell.

  “Wait-wait-wait!” she cried. The lapinkin had his spear pulled back to throw, but Tommy finished quicker. Electricity sparked about his fingertips. Tesmarie pulsed her wings, and she clenched her hand to fill it with another spray of blood. The lapinkin was so close now, and still he’d not thrown his spear.

  “I’ll get there, I’ll get there, I’ll stop him, I’ll…”

  Even to one who moved so slowly through time, the strike of lightning that shot from Tommy’s palm to the lapinkin’s chest was an instantaneous blur. She squinted and turned. She felt the heat of the blast. She smelled the scorching flesh. The lapinkin’s death cry came out stilted and weak, his heart burst by the energy and his lungs likely charred. His body slumped. Tesmarie hovered above him, little diamond flecks dropping across his limp form.

  “Tes!” Tommy screamed the moment the spell ended. “Oh shit, I didn’t hit you with that, did I?”

  To his eyes her arrival beside the dead lapinkin had been no more than a blur. She shook her head and forced her attention back to the two humans.

  “I’m not hurt,” she said.

  At least not on the outside.

  She flew over to him, only now realizing how uneven her trajectory was despite her efforts to fly straight. The blow to her head must have been worse than she thought. Her feet lightly touched down on Tommy’s shoulder, and she grabbed his hair to steady herself.

  “We need to hide,” she said.

  “Here seems as good a place as any,” Malik said. He gestured to the boarded-up home at his right. At some point the wood planks over one of its windows had been smashed inward. Tommy climbed in first, followed by Malik. The older man stepped in gingerly, and he winced when Tommy helped him in.

  “Are you all right?” Tommy asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  Tesmarie flew in a circle, making a cursory scan of the home’s sole room. Like much of Low Dock, it looked hastily abandoned, with its bed in the corner stripped of sheets and the drawers of the solitary dresser pulled out and dumped on the floor. There was a small fireplace with a flue barely large enough for her to fly through. Tesmarie hovered to the dresser and sat down on the edge.

  “Why does there have to be fighting?” she sulked. “Low Dock is big enough to share, isn’t it?”

  “Forgive me for saying so, but that was a naïve hope,” Malik said. He sat upon the bed and wiped sweat from his pale face and neck. “I appreciate your attempts to spare lives, but when both parties are void-bent on killing one another, there is only so much one can do.”

  Tesmarie slumped her head onto her hands.

  “Doesn’t mean I still can’t try.”

  “I tried, too,” Tommy added. “I—I didn’t mean to kill that last lapinkin, I swear, only stun him. People can be hit by lightning and survive, you know? Sure, it’d hurt, but I thought he’d live, just a burn, he’d live…”

  Tesmarie smiled at Tommy. She might not be able to comfort herself, but damn it, Tommy was a cuddly stuffed animal, and it hurt her to see him so upset.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “He—he could have left you two alone. You weren’t fighting. You were running. He had to know that.”

  Tommy nodded but said nothing. She hoped it’d at least be something.

  “So how do we get out of here?” Tommy asked. “When do you think it’ll be safe?”

  Malik lay down onto his back and let out a groan. His hands clutched at his side.

  “I don’t think we do,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” Tommy argued. “If we… Malik, is that blood?”

  Between the robe’s dark brown color and the dim light, it was hard to tell, but Malik shifted his head up and down.

  “Took a cut when the fight started,” he said. “It’s nothing, I promise.”

  Tommy would hear none of it. He hurried to the bedside and pulled Malik’s hand away. A thick smear of blood coated the thick fabric.

  “Aethos creare lumna,” Tommy hurriedly whispered. A little ball of light appeared above the bed. In the sudden brightness it was clear Malik suffered far worse than he let on. His skin, normally a soft tan, was significantly paler. A hole had been punctured in his robe’s cloth, which Tommy ripped wider so he might see the wound. Blood soaked Malik’s entire side, which made it that much harder to judge the scale of the damage.

  “It’s just a cut,” Malik said, but his speech was starting to slur. “Let me sleep. I’ll feel better if I sleep.”

  “No, you stay awake, you,” Tommy said. Panic crept at the edges of every word. “Stay awake, damn it.”

  Tesmarie flew closer, her arms crossed over her chest. She felt so helpless. Tommy ripped the cloth further, then used a clean stretch of his own robe to mop up the blood. At long last he found the wound. It didn’t appear to be much, just a cut about the length of Tommy’s thumb.

  “It’s not deep,” Tommy said. “At least, I don’t think it’s deep. He’s just losing so much blood!”

  He tried tearing the bottom of his robe, but the tough fabric refused.

  “Here, I’ll help,” she said. Her moonlight sword carved through it with ease, allowing him to rip a large chunk free and then press it against the wound. Malik gasped against the sudden pressure.

  “We—we can handle this,” Tommy said. “Just some pressure, yeah? Stop the bleeding, then cauterize it with a little fire magic. That’s all.”

  Tears were starting to build in his eyes, and he sniffled. After a moment he pulled the cloth back and placed his fingers along the wound. He whispered the words of a spell, keeping the intonations as calm and quiet as possible to lessen its power. Fire plumed out from his touch. It burned the skin, cauterizing the wound. Malik cried out at the pain, but his strength was clearly sapped.

  “All right, you can sleep now,” Tommy said. “We’ll keep you safe, right, Tesmarie? Nice and
safe.”

  “That we will,” Tesmarie said. She smiled, determined to keep Tommy hopeful no matter how unsure she was herself. Her heart felt scraped raw from all the death and hurt.

  “All right,” Malik said. He chuckled despite his awful circumstances. “If you insist…”

  Tesmarie lowered herself to the bed and then sat. Tommy paced at bedside, his eyes never leaving Malik. The minutes wore on. Sometimes they heard distant screams and shouts, other times silence. Tesmarie shuddered at the thought of the battle raging all across Low Dock. The ambush had been expertly planned, but the Forgotten Children were still significantly outnumbered. Who would win? Her gut said the humans were outmatched. They had but swords and spears against the magical gifts of the dragon-sired. Malik and Tommy perhaps could have swung the outcome, but they were here in hiding, not out there fighting. Not out there killing.

  “Does it look like he’s getting paler?” Tommy asked. He gestured at Malik’s face. “Like, more pale than a few minutes ago?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “His breathing’s quieter, too.”

  “He’s asleep. Isn’t that normal?”

  Her friend shook his head, not convinced. He put a hand on Malik’s shoulder.

  “Hey, buddy, wake up and convince me you’re all right, would you?” Malik remained asleep. Tommy shook him harder. Whatever traces of calm he’d shown vanished. “Malik? Malik! Wake up, you stubborn prick, wake up!”

  Malik’s eyes fluttered open, and he muttered something garbled and indistinct before slumping. Tesmarie flew up a few feet, a frown locked on her face. What was wrong with Malik? The wound was sealed. He shouldn’t be bleeding anymore, and she told Tommy as such.

  “He—he must be bleeding inside,” he said. “Oh shit, oh shit, what do I do, Tes? What do I do? Do I reopen it and look? There’s—there’s intestines and stuff where he was stabbed. If one’s cut, if he’s bleeding out in his own body… shit. Shit. Shit!”

  He spun, his eyes wild.

  “Wait. You helped Jacaranda once, right? Tommy said you cast a spell, and her whole body went backward before being hurt. Hurry, cast the same on Malik.”