Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  “There you are.”

  He was opposite Alma’s Greeting, leading a squad of his Forgotten Children against a large group of humans who had escaped through the rubble of Alma’s Greeting. Her son’s wings were spread wide and his arms lifted in a chant. Shadows crawled from his wings along the ground like vipers, growing sharp fang-like protrusions as they reached the defensive outer line. The devotions of the keepers kept back many, but not all. They tore at the legs of the Soulkeepers, bringing down two. Seeing that power used on the humans was a splinter stabbed into Evelyn’s heart. Avenria were created to protect humans from the void, and yet her son wielded the void’s own power as a blade against humanity.

  Evelyn drew Whisper-Song into her hands and leapt with a mighty beat of her wings. They carried her across the battlefield, and she did her best not to notice the dead dragon-sired that lay scattered upon the cobbles, killed by keeper prayers or a Soulkeeper bullet. The dead humans far outnumbered the dragon-sired, but Evelyn knew humanity could endure such casualties, for their kind blanketed three-fourths of the Cradle. Could the same be said for the dragon-sired?

  Evelyn tucked her wings and tilted her body so she dove heel first. Though she could have struck him unnoticed, she chose to land just behind Logarius and instead bury Whisper and Song into the backs of two human Ravencallers assisting with their own curses.

  “My, my, my,” she said, and she yanked her sickles from the bodies. “What a troublesome little boy my son has become.”

  The deep shadows across Logarius’s wings retreated as he turned. His throat clucked a bitter laugh.

  “Just as my dear mother taught me. Have you come to witness our victory? Or would you yet again plead for me to show mercy to the undeserving?”

  Whisper and Song shimmered with blue fire as her knees bent and her head dropped low.

  “Can you fault a woman for trying?”

  Dagger met sickle, almost casually, a playful hit to start a battle neither desired. The two danced through the heart of the sprawling chaos, a little whirlwind of shadows and feathers. She parried aside a thrust, dashed past three city guards locked in battle with a foxkin, and quickly turned to parry another. Her son was faster than her. Youth was on his side, which meant focus and experience had to be on hers. She forced him back with a curling overhead chop, then blindly leapt backward with an accompanying flap of her wings. The moment he tried to follow, she pivoted her body, dug in her heels, and met his charge.

  His long daggers were positioned perfectly to block her sickles, but she’d expected as much. Her true focus was her elbow that struck the side of his beak and her knee that slammed deep into his gut, robbing him of breath. Perhaps if she pressed harder, she could break him, even kill him, but guilt robbed her of that killing instinct. Instead she backed up, her mind racing for a way to convince her son of his folly. He needed little time to recover, and his attacks renewed with a fresh surge of anger and strength. Evelyn blocked once, twice, then cut at his neck to force out a dodge.

  “You damn monsters!” a charging Soulkeeper shouted as he swung an enormous axe in a wide arc as if he meant to cut through the both of them. Evelyn dropped to her knees and arched her back like a dancer, furious that she let the bulky man get near without her noticing. The heavy steel flashed overhead, and she cried out as it nicked a gash upon the bridge of her beak. Her son reacted quicker, and with much greater aggression. He somersaulted over the axe, his wings turning to shadow so the axe head passed through them without drawing blood, and then landed upon the Soulkeeper’s shoulders with his heels. Logarius’s weight brought the Soulkeeper down. His daggers took his life.

  Evelyn flexed the muscles in her lower back to pull herself up to a stand. Blood trickled down her beak, the pain a vicious sting that watered her eyes. She jammed Whisper and Song onto their hooks at her belt and sprinted, buying herself precious seconds to recover as her son finished off the Soulkeeper. She passed through the battlefield, her mind awash with sounds that transported her centuries into the past. She’d led so many raids against human settlements that these sights, these cries, were commonplace. The constant chorus of flamestone. The way humans howled in pain when they received a blow they instinctively knew to be fatal. The solemn prayers piercing the cacophony, bringing the power of the Sisters to counter the inherent magic of the dragon-sired.

  A hunting cry stole her attention to an owl diving overhead at a trio of Mindkeepers with hands lifted in synchronized prayer. A half-second before the owl grabbed them in his extended talons, his body exploded in a shower of gore against an impassable holy circle that shimmered into existence. Evelyn looked away and pretended not to feel the splash of blood upon her clothes. Pistol shots echoed, and she felt a tug on her sleeve from a bullet missing her skin by less than an inch. Behind her, a fireball exploded in the sky like a ruptured star.

  Need higher, she thought. Need to face Logarius alone.

  Evelyn shifted her path again, sprinted straight for the outer wall surrounding the grand cathedral. Though her wings could not grant her flight, they could boost her leaps. Evelyn soared ten feet, kicked higher off the wall, flapped her wings again to push her back toward it, and then dug the sharp metal claws of her gloves into the stone. Another flap of her wings accompanied her pull, breaking little chunks of rubble free as she vaulted herself all the way to the top of the wall.

  Too close to Alma’s Greeting. The wall was unsteady, much of it cracked, and the chaotic fight underneath posed too much of a threat. She ran, her son at her heels. Up ahead, the battle at Lyra’s Door raged, but here, near the corner, things were quiet, almost peaceful. At last she turned and drew Whisper-Song so she might face her son.

  “Don’t you understand?” she asked as she wiped blood from her beak. “We haven’t reawakened to take back what was ours. This isn’t some glorious return for our kind. Humanity has set its roots deep over the centuries. We cannot yet fathom their numbers. You use my book to foster a war that will only lead to our destruction.”

  Logarius paced at the wall’s edge, his daggers twirling in his fingers. She recognized the habit, one born of unease. So many times she’d scolded him, insisting he’d give away his emotions during a fight. She thought she’d broken him of it, and perhaps for a time she had. Right now, it felt like both of them had regressed to when they were younger, he her student, she his teacher, and a tranquil forest the only witness to their constant duels.

  “You truly believe we can lead a peaceful coexistence?” her son asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it is our only hope. Your way leads to extinction.”

  “Not if the dragons help us! Not if they rage against the Goddesses like we know they can!”

  Evelyn sadly shook her head.

  “I once held congress with Viciss and Gloam. Just as the dragons made us, the Goddesses made the dragons. They will not betray their maker.”

  “You’re wrong!” Logarius seethed as he paced. “We were forced into slumber because they betrayed the Sisters. The dragons are not of one mind in this matter. Some would see to humanity’s extinction, and it is no impossible task. Do you know why we reawakened? The real reason for our return?”

  Her son settled into a low stance, his wings folding around him like a cloak. Behind him, a fresh wave of Soulkeepers pushed out Lyra’s Door, backed by the glowing hands of multiple Faithkeepers deep in prayer.

  “We’ve returned because the Goddesses can hold us back no longer. Now is our time to stand tall and claim our rightful place, no matter how great the sacrifice. I won’t live my life in fear of their retribution. I won’t forgive them for what they’ve taken from us. Centuries passed, but they are still the same stagnant, simple-minded beasts they’ve always been. Let us cleanse them from the world. Once they are gone, the Goddesses will have no reason to care for the Cradle. They’ll leave us in peace, to live in the world that should have been before their interference.”

  “Your hope is beyond foolish,” Evelyn s
aid. “It’s suicide.”

  “Sitting around hoping the humans accept us as equals is suicide. This is the only life left for us, and we must claim it in blood.”

  This was it. There would be no retreat, and no convincing her son to withdraw. He leapt upon her with unmatched ferocity, his daggers displaying every shred of skill she’d passed down over the countless hours of training. She blocked a cut with Whisper, failed a parry with Song that left a stinging cut along her forearm, and then kicked at his midsection in an unsuccessful attempt to gain space. Instead he absorbed the blow and drew closer, closer, his every move meant to draw her hands out wide. Too late, she realized his goal. Too late, for his hands were upon her wrists and his daggers dropped upon the stone wall.

  He slammed his head against her, beak to beak. Hers, already brittle with age and now wounded from an axe, suffered far worse. Pain whited out her mind. Blows rained down upon her. A heel to her knee crumpled her to the stone like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The handles to Whisper-Song slipped from her fingers. Panic forced her to move, to ignore the pain, but she was so disorientated she didn’t even know which way to dodge. By the time she stood, she was disarmed. By the time her vision cleared, there was a blade at her throat.

  “Submit,” Logarius said, his chest heaving with his every breath. “Swear your loyalty, before I must live with your blood on my conscience.”

  Evelyn pulled back her shoulders and stared her son in the eye. She would not cower, nor would she beg. Whisper’s edge hovered an inch from her throat, its blue flames licking at the soft feathers there. Blood trickled from the crack near her left nostril. Her leg ached like the void, and she wondered if she’d cracked her kneecap during their tumble. She felt every one of her many years weighing upon her back like jagged stones. She could not lift her wings, so they wrapped about her shoulders like a heavy cloak.

  “Stop this murder,” she said. “We won’t survive the long road through hatred, only through desperate hope.”

  “Hope?” he asked. “Why do you think I perform this butchery? Hope is what I fight for. The hope that a world exists free of humans, so that we may live in happiness. A world of peace. A world for our children…”

  Evelyn stepped closer so that the sickle’s edge pressed against her neck.

  “That isn’t the world you’re creating,” she said. She gestured to the bloody carnage and fields of corpses. “This pointless death is. If this is the world you’d seek, then cut my throat, my son. There will be no place for me within.”

  Whisper’s blade trembled. Tears slid over the midnight feathers at the corners of Logarius’s eyes.

  “Humans will never accept us,” he said softly. “Let us at least die raging against the world that would burn us upon a pyre.”

  Evelyn finally saw a spark of the little avenria she’d raised in those rare peaceful months before the long war. Before she’d sold her own soul for blood and slaughter. She reached out and gently stroked the side of her son’s beak.

  “If we are to die, let us die whole. Let us die pure. Not as murderers of children and innocents.”

  She watched Logarius’s chest shudder. Whisper pulled back an inch. He could not meet her eye. He was at a loss for words. So close, she knew. So close to stepping back from the abyss he had welcomed with open arms.

  The western sky lit with pale light, and the realm of souls trembled. Together they turned and bore witness to a power that never should have been granted to human hands. Death followed, and it shook both avenria to their core.

  “You would have me hope,” Logarius said. “I see no hope. I see only our end.”

  Song’s hilt whipped against the back of her head, crumpling her to her knees as her son cried out for his Forgotten Children to flee.

  CHAPTER 39

  Devin led the charge through Alma’s Gate, roaring a battle cry. A gargoyle leapt into his path, and Devin fired one of Tommy’s magical shots straight down its throat. Frost covered the gargoyle’s upper body. Shards of ice ruptured its belly, and its dying shriek was but one of dozens echoing constantly through the night. Two other Soulkeepers who’d accompanied him crashed into a trio of foxkin, their larger weapons beating back the smaller creatures.

  “Down!” Lyssa shouted at his side, having matched him step for step. Devin dropped immediately, trusting her enough not to ask or hesitate. A lapinkin’s spear cut where he’d been, and it seemed the earth shook upon the creature’s landing. The spear dragged along the ground, slowing the lapinkin’s momentum, and during that brief opening Lyssa descended upon him with her short swords. Her first slash severed his wrists, denying him a chance to harness the wind to his defense. The next three were all across his throat and chest, killing him.

  Devin pushed back to his feet, his hands moving with practiced ease. He had a single shot left of the magical ammunition Tommy made for him, a red and black orb whose only description he’d received upon asking was “really scary fire.” Devin slid it into the chamber and fully cocked the hammer. If there was a better time to discover what exactly that meant, he didn’t want to find out.

  “Stand back,” Devin ordered the other two Soulkeepers who had accompanied their charge. Tommy had formed a curved wall of ice surrounding him and Malik as their only defense, but it wouldn’t mean much to the lapinkin and owls that hovered in the air above. Malik’s hands were in constant motion, and Devin watched multiple owls veer aside when diving, seemingly confused or frightened. An intriguing defense, but whatever it might be, the lapinkin weren’t affected. Heart in his throat, Devin watched three dive in unison, their spears leading.

  His pistol swung up on instinct. He gave no thought to his aim, instead trusting his training. His finger squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell, and the flamestone split in half, releasing the spell. Devin glimpsed a crackling orange orb no bigger than a sunflower seed streak above the battlefield. His aim was true. The orb struck the center of the three diving lapinkin and ignited.

  All light from the stars vanished beneath the sudden inferno that erupted in a perfectly contained sphere dozens of feet wide. Flames rolled across its surface, which was somehow translucent, allowing a glimpse into black lightning arcing from its center. The three bodies trapped within were dark shadows, and they dissolved into ash that blistered away into nothing against the heat. All the while it emitted a roar that sent the rest of the owls veering away.

  The spell blinked out of existence, its absence leaving a deafening calm in its wake.

  “‘Scary fire,’” Devin whispered in awe. “Holy shit, Tommy. Next time give specifics.”

  Despite the distance between them, he could clearly hear Tommy’s excited “whoop” as his friend leapt into the air and pumped his fist.

  “Do you see that?” he shouted, as if all of Londheim hadn’t just witnessed the eruption.

  “Dear Sisters above, that was insane,” Lyssa said. She grinned beside Devin and twirled her pistols. “Got any of those for me?”

  “All out,” Devin said. He holstered his pistol and gripped his sword in both hands. The rest of the Forgotten Children were regrouping, their attack clearly not going as planned. The prayers of the Mindkeepers kept guards and Soulkeepers fighting through wounds that should have been fatal. Flamestones erupted in a constant chorus from those Soulkeepers, making every dive from the owls, lapinkin, and wasps a potentially fatal mistake. The Forgotten Children were all vicious fighters, but with the pouring in of city guards that had accompanied Tommy and Malik’s arrival, they were now significantly outnumbered.

  Sadly the damage looked already done. The great cathedral burned on all sides. The roof had collapsed in multiple locations, the stained glass charred black, the walls crumbling underneath supports no longer able to hold the weight of so much stone. It made Devin’s heart ache seeing the destruction.

  “We should join up with Forrest,” Devin said, and he nodded toward where the Vikar was leading a squad of four Soulkeepers against the largest group of foxkin a
nd avenria on the steps of the Sisters’ Remembrance. “If we can scatter the—”

  He froze. A lone combatant tore through the foxkin before Vikar Forrest could arrive, having ambushed the dragon-sired from behind. The world slowed for a brief moment, and then Devin’s legs were pumping, his heart pounding, as he rushed past his Vikar, past the Soulkeepers, and wrapped his arms around a blood-soaked Jacaranda.

  “You’re all right,” he said, holding her against him as relief swept away a thousand lingering worries. “I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Busy,” she said, returning his embrace. “I’ll tell you all about it later. What in the Goddesses’ names is going on out here?”

  Devin stepped away to survey the battlefield. With the foxkin brought low by Jacaranda, Forrest had veered his men farther south, engaging with a growing force of Ravencallers and avenria. Lyssa had joined them, he noticed, instead of staying with him. Had she noticed Jacaranda as well?

  “The Forgotten Children are trying to burn down the cathedral,” he said, turning back to her. “Sadly I think they’ve succeeded.”

  “Not that your church deserves it, but point the way, and I’ll help defend it,” Jacaranda said.

  “We could certainly use the help,” he said, and then kissed a clean spot on her forehead. “Follow me. I think there’s still—”

  He had no time to finish the thought, nor did his plans for the battle matter, for they quickly became irrelevant.

  Adria arrived, and she announced her presence with the strength and fury of a storm.

  Nine souls swirled around her in a protective orbit. She guided them with ease. Whenever a foe dared to approach, be they dragon-sired or Ravencallers, the souls would veer off and burn straight through their chests. Various prayers from Lyra’s Devotions sang from her voice in volume far beyond human capabilities. Lapinkin fled, but not fast enough to avoid their bodies bursting into flames so hot it charred them down to the bone in seconds. Blinding light lit up the sky above, sending owls and gargoyles crashing into rooftops with each searing blast that leapt from her upraised palms.