Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  Devin dipped his hand into his bag of spellstones.

  “Wait to fire until my shot hits first,” he said as he slid a white and yellow spellstone into his pistol. “If it works, it’ll stun the whole lot of them.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  He pulled the hammer all the way back.

  “Then your aim will need to be a lot better than mine.”

  Lyssa lifted her brace of pistols and waited. Devin aimed his pistol at a spot on the ground in the rough center of the dragon-sired and pulled the trigger.

  The roar of the stone echoed in his ears, but that noise was a pittance compared to the dome of sound that encapsulated the five dragon-sired. Both gargoyles dropped from the sky, and the rest collapsed to their knees with their hands clutched over their ears. The dome broke within a heartbeat, and in the ensuing silence Lyssa’s pistols thundered, their aim true.

  Devin didn’t bother reloading his pistol, for he couldn’t compete with Lyssa in that regard. Instead he rushed with his sword in hand, all while counting in his head.

  One, two, three, four…

  At five, Lyssa’s pistols sounded again, one shot tearing straight through a gargoyle’s eye, the other blasting off the jaw of an avenria. Devin tore through the remainder of the group with a vicious spray of blood, ending their lives without resistance.

  “Go, hurry,” Devin shouted back to his group, which had grown in number during their short trip to the center walkway. The men and women sprinted to the safety of the keepers. Devin loaded his pistol and watched the skies. Sure enough, a lapinkin dove after them, and he put a shot straight through his chest. The impact shifted the windleaper’s path enough so that it crashed a few feet to the side of his intended prey, one of his legs snapping as he rolled.

  The rest safely arrived. Devin joined Lyssa in sprinting the final distance to more of his fellow keepers. Vikar Caria of all people greeted him, and Devin bowed his head in deference to his superior.

  “Your pistol,” Caria said. “Somehow it uses magic.”

  “That it does,” he said, not bothering to explain how or why. He turned his attention to the collapsed Alma’s Greeting while rummaging through the pouch with Tommy’s spellstones, seeking one appropriate for the situation.

  “Stand back,” he shouted, settling on a pure white stone Tommy had described as an earthquake on demand. Hoping that meant what he thought, Devin loaded it into his pistol, cocked the hammer, and drew aim upon the left side of the gate. After a pause to whisper a prayer to the Sisters, he pulled the trigger.

  The pistol jerked hard enough backward, he feared it’d sprain his wrist. Stone crumpled inward as if the wall were struck by an invisible boulder, and then the entire gateway began to shake. More cracks spiraled outward, growing in size and depth until the mangled wood and stone of the gate shifted and crumpled to reveal a slender opening.

  “Praise the Sisters,” Vikar Caria said.

  “Make sure you keep on praising them,” Devin said as he shook his stinging arm. “We’ll need your prayers to get these people to safety. Keep defensive and the bastards should start seeking easier prey.”

  “And what will you do?” she asked.

  “Distract them,” he said with a grin.

  He ran for one of the ladders leading to the top of the surrounding wall, Lyssa at his heels. Once atop the wall, he better surveyed the battle. It seemed a similar situation had formed at the western-facing Lyra’s Door, with attempts to escape halted by the dragon-sired. Soulkeepers gathered just inside the gateway, holding formation with a handful of Faithkeepers and Mindkeepers blessing them with prayers. Smoke clouded the air from the constant discharge of their pistols.

  The gateway meant little to most of the dragon-sired, but it still held back the foxkin and the Ravencallers steadily gathering in opposition. Fires burned all across the cathedral, and owls dove for vulnerable novices or keepers who had not yet reached the safety of the groups. So far the Soulkeepers could only watch, for they faced opposition on all three sides. Avenria flanked them while leaping through the wall, striking down a few men and women, and then retreating back through the stone to the outside. Lapinkin dove straight into their numbers, relying on the shock of their impact to avoid lethal counterfire from the pistols.

  It was a losing fight unless something swayed the flow of battle. Devin chose one of the swirling blue stones inside his pouch and slid it into the chamber of his pistol, hoping to do just that.

  “Surprise is our best weapon,” he told Lyssa. “Keep them off me so I can focus on the gate.”

  “As if I need to be told,” she said with a wink.

  Devin cocked the hammer all the way back and aimed.

  “Just making sure. We’re about to be very, very popular.”

  The hammer fell, piercing the spellstone. Blue smoke flashed out of the barrel, marking the exit of a shimmering sapphire orb. It crossed the distance within the blink of an eye and struck the ground at the bottom of the steps before Lyra’s Door, instantly detonating. Shards of ice with jagged points grew in all directions as if they were upon the back of a frozen porcupine. Foxkin and avenria screamed as they were impaled upon the shards, macabre decorations upon a crystalline creation glowing in the moonlight.

  “Incoming,” Lyssa said as he slid the next spellstone into his pistol, this one a mixture of gray and black.

  “Handle it.”

  A powerful shock wave rocked Devin’s pistol in his hand. He saw no projectile, but a group of Ravencallers that clustered behind the front lines crumpled as if struck by an invisible hand, legs shattering and arms twisting in strange directions without apparent cause.

  “Handle it?” Lyssa mocked him as a gargoyle crashed down toward her from the sky. She deftly avoided its landing, and her pistols boomed out their deadly protest. Devin brought his attention back to the larger battle. The next spellstone he grabbed from his pouch was an ugly mixture of pink and brown. He racked his mind trying to remember what Tommy had described it as. Something about time.

  “Fuck it,” he said, pulling the hammer back halfway to expose the hole into the chamber. “Let’s hope you know what you’re doing, Tommy.”

  With Lyra’s Door so viciously defended, the Forgotten Children again attempted a flank, this time with a trio of avenria that simply walked through the wall using their shadowy wings. Devin aimed at the nearest of the three and held his breath. A collection of novices had tried to slow their advance before a Soulkeeper could come to back them up, and the avenria were butchering the young men and women. There was no time to wait for an opening. He pulled the trigger.

  Unlike most spellstones, this offered no kick. The effect, however, was immediate. Time slowed to a crawl in a spherical radius around where he’d aimed, catching all three avenria as well as five novices. To the two Soulkeepers who had rushed over to join in, the avenria were suddenly easy prey for their pistols.

  “Devin!” Lyssa screamed, stealing his attention. The gargoyle lay dead at her feet, but her focus was on the sky as she rapidly reloaded both pistols simultaneously. “A little help here!”

  He had a half-second to follow her gaze before dodging for his life from a lapinkin slamming down upon the wall. The thick spear shattered through the stone with ease and then caught. The lapinkin clung to the spear’s shaft and rotated forward with it, using her momentum to slam both her heels into Devin’s gut. His feet left the ground, and as he sailed backward, the lapinkin extended her hand. Wind buffeted his body, carrying him several more feet toward the edge of the wall.

  Shiiiiiit, his panicked mind wailed as he frantically reached out for anything to hold. His fingers closed about the top rung of the ladder. When the wind stopped, his body swung downward. Devin had no choice but to absorb the blow of the ladder against his chest and legs. He sucked in air through clenched teeth as his shins hit one of the rungs. He holstered his pistol, grabbed the top rung in both hands, and vaulted himself back up to the wall.

  The
lapinkin had pulled her spear free and positioned it toward the ladder, but it seemed he’d recovered quicker than she’d anticipated. Devin batted the heavy point aside with his wrist just before she could thrust it in for the kill, slid sideways along the shaft to close the distance, and slammed a fist directly into the bridge of her flat nose. She staggered, dazed, and Devin used that moment to finally draw his sword and bury its blade into her gut, its sharp point easily puncturing her leather armor.

  Devin quickly ripped the sword free, kicked the lapinkin’s corpse off the side of the wall, and turned. Lyssa faced off a second lapinkin, her short sword eager to kill but the spear’s long reach proving formidable. One slipup and she could dance in and destroy him, Devin knew, but with the lapinkin able to harness the wind, it made any sort of attack a tremendous risk. The wall wasn’t wide enough for him and Lyssa to fight side by side, either.

  He drew his pistol. Lyssa was so close. She only needed a distraction.

  “Duck!” he shouted, his pistol extended and the hammer cocked all the way back. Lyssa dropped immediately, anticipating a shot that never came. More importantly, the lapinkin heard and reacted with blistering speed. His spear pulled back and his hand extended, slamming Devin with a wall of air that was shockingly solid. Blood spilled from his nose, and if his pistol weren’t empty of flamestone and shot, his aim still would have been ruined.

  Lyssa was back on her feet in a flash, rebounding with the grace of a dancer. The lapinkin had overextended himself, and with how large and heavy a spear he wielded, he had no chance to compete with her speed. Her short sword cut across his face and neck, bathing his fur in a sudden shower of blood.

  “Annoying bastards,” Lyssa said. She kicked at one of the spears that now lay atop the wall. It barely budged.

  “Imagine a full army of them working together,” Devin said, shuddering. His attention returned to Lyra’s Door. For a moment he feared he’d suffered a blow to the head when grabbing the ladder, for a large black splotch blurred his vision. It was only when he saw it move that he realized what he looked upon. A cloud of black mist floated above the cathedral steps toward Lyra’s Door. Devin feared nothing good would come of that cloud when it settled over the keepers holding the line against the Forgotten Children. He half cocked his pistol to open up the inner chamber and then scanned for the source.

  There, atop the Sisters’ Remembrance. Three Ravencallers stood in a triangle beside the great statue of Anwyn, their arms raised heavenward as they recited their prayers. Such a blasphemous sight atop the mausoleum sickened Devin’s stomach. He had only two spellstones left, and he pulled out a black and yellow one Tommy had called “bouncy lightning.” He hoped it meant what he thought as he sighted the nearest of the three Ravencallers and pulled the trigger.

  A thick blast of lightning shot across the gap between them, striking the Ravencaller in the chest before leaping to the woman beside him. It leapt into the third, then circled back around one more time, crackling through the bodies of all three. They dropped, their bodies charred and smoking.

  Still, the damage from the three Ravencallers was already done. The black mist had settled over the many keepers, and they hacked and coughed as if breathing in thick smoke. A trio of owls dove in unison toward the back line of praying Mindkeepers and Faithkeepers, seeking to take advantage of their suffering. Devin reached for a spellstone but already knew he’d be too late.

  The ball of flame that exploded in a ring above the mist, killing one owl and scattering the other two, was very much on time.

  “Close one,” Lyssa said as she pulled her other short sword free from the gargoyle’s body.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  Lyssa frowned with confusion for only a moment before she pointed toward the street between the Sisters’ Remembrance and the nearby Scholars’ Abode. A small squad of city guards had arrived to join the fight. In the middle of their formation, looking small and insignificant compared to the burly men and women around them, stood Tommy and Malik. The two men had their hands raised, and a new barrage of magic leapt from their fingertips. Lightning lit up the sky, unerringly striking through a magnificent owl preparing for a dive. Devin grinned and pumped his fist until he realized how the dragon-sired would react to their arrival.

  “We need to be down there,” he told Lyssa. “If the forces in Lyra’s Door don’t charge, the dragon-sired can turn on Tommy and overwhelm him.”

  Lyssa hopped off the side of the wall and landed lightly upon the soft grass.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” she asked.

  Devin half slid, half fell to the ground while using one side of the ladder as a guide pole. Once his feet touched ground, he sprinted after Lyssa, catching up only because she momentarily slowed. Up ahead the battle continued in earnest. Vikar Forrest helmed the defense, the giant man bellowing orders as often as he swung his enormous axe. Devin knew he couldn’t override any orders by his Vikar. His only hope was that his urgency swayed the man’s opinion. Thankfully the black mist had faded by the time he arrived, sparing him that particular unpleasantness.

  “Those are our spellcasters!” Devin shouted over the din, and he grabbed at the sleeve of Forrest’s coat. He pointed to the road that split the Sisters’ Remembrance and the Scholars’ Abode. “They won’t last alone. We have to help them!”

  “Shouldn’t you be in jail?” the Vikar asked, nonplussed.

  “I can go back if you’d like.”

  “Piss on that.” Forrest slammed his axe down so he could lean on its handle and grab a quick breather. “You want us to charge out to the streets, then we’ll charge, so long as you fucking lead it.”

  Devin drew his sword and saluted, a mad grin spreading across his lips.

  “Then may Anwyn have mercy on our souls.”

  CHAPTER 38

  When Evelyn was forty years old, she’d led a group of nine avenria into the port town of Wardhus with fire and murder on their mind. They ignored the rows of homes, cluttered and dirty in a way only humans could make. They easily sneaked past the guards stationed on watch, for the avenria were at home in the shadows, whereas human eyes could see only when the stars were kind to bless them with light. Once spread out, they set fire to the many boats, ten at a time, a little splash of oil and a kiss with a torch all that was necessary. They’d set fire to thirty boats and then fled beyond the city’s walls to watch them burn from afar. It didn’t matter that there were people asleep on those boats, nor how vital the supplies were to the life and safety of the people living there.

  All that mattered was watching something the humans cherished burn.

  “We are more alike than you may ever know,” Evelyn said as she watched the grand cathedral catch fire from her perch atop a nearby chimney. “And that is why I must save you.”

  She spread her wings as she jumped, using them to guide her fall. The entire grand cathedral was consumed with fire, and the smaller, adjacent buildings that housed the various keepers were now starting to crumble as well. The surviving human remnants were gathered into two groups, barely holding off the combined forces of the Forgotten Children at the southern and western entrances. No doubt Logarius thought himself achieving a great victory, but he was blinded by rage. He was consumed by hate.

  Her son did not see his dead brothers and sisters scattered across the stairs leading up to the three main gates, but she did. He did not see the future cost. Humanity had a way of absorbing defeats and letting them fuel their retaliation. He might think a glorious victory would greet him at the dawn. Instead, he would face a mob armed to the teeth and seeking vengeance. Belvua would not be safe. The Cradle itself would never be safe.

  In response to the Wardhus fires, an entire human army had secretly dispatched by boat from the east and sailed into port. While the avenria slept, the army surrounded the nearby forest that they’d made into their home. At the time, Logarius had been leading a guerrilla campaign in the northwest against encroaching settlements. He’d entrusted h
is daughter to Evelyn’s care. The forests were supposed to be safe. They were too dense and easily defended, and their lumber and game were vital to Wardhus’s survival during the harsh winter months.

  And yet the army burned hundreds of acres of it down to ash and cinder.

  There was no safety from humans, Evelyn had learned. It was their greatest strength and vilest curse. When their blood was boiling, and their hearts filled with rage, they could make mountains crumble, and to the void with whoever might die beneath the rubble. Her granddaughter’s little lungs had been unable to handle the sheer amount of smoke as Evelyn carried her during their panicked escape for the forest’s edge. She’d passed quietly, peacefully, just a small, still bundle in her arms when clean air finally greeted them. The same peaceful death could not be said for those the humans captured while fleeing.

  Yes, she understood her son’s rage. She knew why he believed himself forgotten by the dragons who’d made them. But he had not witnessed humanity’s full potential for cruelty. He had not seen how freely they would sacrifice of themselves to ensure their opponents suffered worse.

  “Even now they fight you,” she whispered as she surveyed the emerging battlefield. She suspected the city guard had responded quicker than her son had anticipated, along with the aid of two spellcasting humans, which together forced the Forgotten Children to fight on two fronts. The bulk of the conflict was currently focused on the western-facing portion of the cathedral’s triangular outer wall. Lyra’s Door had a dozen Soulkeepers holding strong, and twice that many Faithkeepers and Mindkeepers backing them up. It seemed they had started to embrace the power they had once wielded in the wars of old, for she heard their hymns floating across the battle, healing wounds, protecting fallen humans, and blinding foes with searing light.

  Logarius would not take such resistance lightly. She searched for her son, knowing he’d want to be close to the action and yet still far enough back that he could direct forces to each emerging threat.