Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  A squad of Ravencallers that had lurked near the Sisters’ Remembrance turned her way, curses on their tongues. An extension of Adria’s hand sent all nine souls ripping through the group, the Ravencallers’ mere flesh no obstacle to the power of the heavens. Light rolled out from her in waves, somehow hardening into a substance like glass that slashed through the unarmored skin of the avenria. Nothing seemed beyond her. Nothing seemed capable of stopping her. Devin knew she was his sister, but looking upon her now, he saw only a phantom resemblance to the woman he knew. This being was a goddess incarnate. She was a terror, an unstoppable whirlwind of holy power.

  “Devin! To me!”

  He turned, the cry pulling him out of his awed daze. There, down one of the smaller streets west of the burning cathedral, he saw Evelyn waving for his attention. He lifted his arms, trying to gesture his confusion for what she wanted.

  “Logarius!” she screamed, and then she dashed down the cobbles.

  “Logarius?” Jacaranda asked. “What of him?”

  “She’s not led us wrong yet,” Devin said. He glanced back at his sister and the destruction she unleashed. “Adria can handle the rest here.”

  The two sprinted after Evelyn, leaving the last chaotic remnants of battle behind. With her dark wings, she was naturally camouflaged in the night, and her speed was greater than their own. He quickly lost sight of her and had to guess as to her direction. The sounds of the cathedral battle faded, and he strained his ears listening for the beat of wings or the thud of a boot. Soon he heard the familiar cry of steel on steel, and the two made a beeline toward the source.

  Devin felt a jolt hit his heart from the sight spread out before the two-story home. A pair of avenria lay dead on either side of its doorway, their dark blue blood spilling out across the cobbles. Evelyn sat with her back against the doorframe, her head bowed low over her chest and her arms relaxed at her sides. Her wings splayed out limply behind her. More blood coated her gray clothes.

  “Evelyn?” Devin asked. He knelt beside her and gently touched her shoulder.

  “Oh,” she said, stirring as if from a dream. “It’s you. I must have dozed off.”

  He couldn’t say for sure, given the differences in biology, but he’d wager based on the look in her eyes that she’d suffered a concussion.

  “Where’s Logarius?” he asked, but only after she’d gathered herself.

  “Inside,” she said. “The fireplace. You must…” She stopped and grimaced, her left hand releasing a dagger to clutch her waist. Devin glimpsed a tear in her shirt, and plentiful blood surrounding the area. “My son is in there. He’s going to release the void and let it swallow everyone and everything in Londheim.”

  “We’ll stop him,” Jacaranda said. “Don’t you worry.”

  Evelyn grabbed his coat when he tried to enter the building.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This was my burden, and I failed. Don’t let my blunder cost thousands.”

  “We won’t,” he said, gently taking her gloved hand and squeezing it. “I promise.”

  The two passed through the door and into the main living room. Devin knelt before the fireplace, and sure enough, the back of it had opened up to reveal a painfully familiar dark tunnel. Together they crawled within and ran in silence. Time was of the essence. The void was a hungry, vile entity. To let it slip past the stars’ protection and greedily feed upon Londheim was an unfathomable fate neither could allow to pass.

  Everything of the dome within was as Devin remembered. The walls were covered with a field of stars. A triangular well rested within the center of its barren stone floor, collecting a spider silk strand of starlight that dripped down into it. A lone avenria stood at its edge, his hands raised high above his head. His continuous keening cry flooded Devin with shivers. Shadows curled around the edges of the well, which was cracked and crumbling.

  “Enough, Logarius,” Devin said. He drew his sword and readied it in both hands. “We won’t let you destroy the city.”

  The avenria’s hands lowered to his sides, and the hilts of the sickles buckled there. Devin recognized those weapons. Whisper-Song, the sickles of his mother. Somehow he must have taken them from her.

  “Destroy the city?” Logarius asked, tilting his head. “I am saving this city. The void won’t go far beyond this district. Your cathedral, your keepers and slavers, let them be taken into darkness so we may keep our home.”

  “Your stolen home,” Jacaranda said as she slowly walked the edge of the room, searching for a flanking position. Logarius watched her from the corner of his eye but showed no apparent fear of her.

  “Again with this drivel. Do you know why we were imprisoned, humans? Do you know why all of our kind were banished for centuries by your beloved Goddesses?”

  “I don’t,” Devin said. “But the Sisters would not have done so without reason, that I am certain of.”

  “Oh yes, they had their reason.” Logarius gestured to the well, and to the second tunnel leading to the even grander chamber that had housed Adria when she underwent her transformation. “You were made by the Goddesses, but the dragons are our creators, our fathers and mothers. Yet those dragons spent centuries creating this. Machinery harnessing the power of the stars to grant your people control over souls. A way for you to exist without need of the Sisters. Freedom from the chains that have held you enslaved to their whims. So when the Sisters discovered their plan, when they discovered they might no longer be needed by their precious little pets, for first time in their celestial existences they felt fear.”

  Anger built with Logarius’s every word until he physically shook with rage.

  “We were imprisoned because of you. Our beloved creators tried to help you, to save you, and for that we suffered. Can you even fathom our hopelessness, humans? Can you comprehend our rage? Imagine if, despite all your prayers and devotions, the Sisters turned and gave the world to us dragon-sired. Would you still serve loyally? Would you worship the beings who openly denied you a future? Or would you rage?”

  He pointed one sickle at Devin and the other at Jacaranda.

  “You say we stole Low Dock from you. I say you stole the world.” He jammed the hilts of his sickles together, locking them in place and extending them into a singular double-bladed weapon. “Come bleed upon Whisper-Song. Let fate decree which of us committed the greater crime.”

  Logarius spun on his heels, his wings flaring out wide so that shadow enveloped his form. The momentary obfuscation allowed him to shift his attention to Jacaranda unnoticed, deeming her at his flank a greater threat. She staggered backward, surprised by the switch and immediately forced onto the defensive. Her weapons moved with precision, but the sickles were such strange weapons, far from the usual sword or dagger she might have faced.

  Devin dashed in, refusing to let Jacaranda fight alone. Logarius quickly shifted, using cover of his dark wings to provide a screen to his movements. Steel clashed against steel, Devin’s overhead chop an easy thing to push aside despite him throwing all his strength behind it. Jacaranda cut for his waist, missed, and received a kick to her sternum for her efforts. Logarius tried to follow up with a fatal slash with his curved sickles but Devin denied him the opportunity. He grit his teeth against the strain as the muscles in his arm bulged, seemingly sheer willpower the only thing keeping his sword in the way of that downward strike.

  “So much shit about fate,” Devin said upon finally shoving the avenria away. “Just admit you want to kill me and enjoy it.”

  Logarius’s blue eyes narrowed. A smile was impossible on the avenria’s beaked face, but he suspected he received the equivalent when his foe spoke.

  “You are right,” he said. “I will very much enjoy ripping that wagging tongue of yours from your throat with my beak.”

  Logarius swirled back into motion. Whisper-Song looped with him, constantly turning so that the two sickles appeared one singular, blurry circle of burning steel. Devin parried the first cut at his chest, then a second at
his throat. Despite his every instinct warning him to retreat, he knew he had to keep up the pressure. Should the avenria get the chance to engage one on one, there was little doubt among any of the three there who would come out victorious.

  Devin had fought together with other Soulkeepers, with bonds forged over hard, aching months under the hot summer sun in the training field of the Cathedral of the Sacred Mother. He knew what it was like to rely on another, to anticipate their moves and try to act accordingly. Fighting with Jacaranda was wholly different. He didn’t always know what she’d do when a gleaming sickle cut her way. She might parry, she might step aside, or she might even contort in ways that seemed to defy physics, ducking her head underneath strikes while twisting and shifting her feet to dance herself out of harm’s way while still maintaining her speed.

  What he did know was that he trusted her without hesitation. If he found his feet out of position, she was there to pull Logarius’s attention aside. Should he falter, lifting his sword to block what turned out to be a feint, one of her short swords would lash out and deflect a lethal blow. When he went on the offensive, battering Whisper-Song with chop after chop, he knew she would either pause to catch her breath or join right in alongside him, overwhelming the avenria with raw energy.

  That trust, that perfect synchronicity, finally garnered them the first blood of the fight. Devin chopped overhead in a mighty swing, forcing Logarius to dodge aside rather than try to block with his sickles. Jacaranda was ready for him, cutting off the easy path of retreat. He turned, trying to bat aside her short swords while he danced away from Devin’s strike. She was faster, and the end of her blade cut across the avenria’s arm, spilling blue blood upon the pale stone.

  A keening raven-cry was Jacaranda’s reward for the cut. Logarius spun faster, and he used his wings as an additional weapon. The feathers turned to shadow and passed across Jacaranda’s eyes, blinding her. Whisper-Song’s long handle struck her neck, Logarius planted his feet, and then he pulled. For one horrifying moment Devin thought he was about to watch Jacaranda’s head be sliced off, but her instincts were up to the task. Instead of trying to get out of the way of the sickle, she moved with it, colliding her body with the avenria’s.

  Logarius fumbled a moment, his weapon much too long and clumsy to be useful at such range. His beak struck the side of her face, drawing blood, and then he shifted Whisper-Song so its handle was between them and shoved. A dazed Jacaranda tumbled to the ground. Devin immediately shifted his sprint so he slid to a stop just before her, his sword up to block a potential killing blow.

  That attempt never came. Instead Logarius retreated back to the center of the domed room and to the opposite side of the triangular well. Whisper-Song struck the well’s side with a heavy crack. The walls shook with its reverberations. The air split just above it like a scab upon reality covering pitch black darkness. Six-fingered hands reached out from within the mass. Logarius chopped them off at the wrist, then raised his open palm. Shadows wafted off his scaled fingers, lashing the tear, sealing it away.

  “We were given mastery over the void,” the avenria said. He turned his attention to the severed hands thrashing at his feet. “Made protectors and saviors for a humanity that loathes us. Our very existence is a sick joke.”

  The hands broke apart like ice beneath warm sunlight. The formless mass they became swirled about Logarius’s legs, across his chest, and settled upon his hands as they gripped Whisper-Song’s shaft.

  “You place blame upon us for things we never demanded,” Devin said. He helped Jacaranda to her feet and prayed her injuries were not too severe. “If you would rage against the dragons and the Sisters, then do so, but this is neither.”

  “Their time will come,” Logarius said. “Even the arrogant Goddesses will be forced to show their faces once their beloved humanity is threatened with extinction. For now, we’ll start small. With this little district. With you.”

  The avenria ripped Whisper-Song apart at the midsection with an audible clang of metal. The void essence flowed from his hands down to the sickles, bathing their blades entirely. With every swish and movement, the sickles left a trail of shadow to linger in the air. Devin braced his legs and raised his sword, unsure of what it might mean. Jacaranda spaced herself from him, preparing to flank yet again.

  Logarius lunged, his body rotating to give his weapons strength. Devin raised his sword to block. Both void-cursed sickles connected simultaneously, but they did not slow. They did not ring out with the sound of metal on metal. Instead the void ate straight through the steel, severing his sword in half.

  That’s not fair, Devin thought as he staggered backward. Logarius continued turning, bringing the sickles up and around for another slash. Devin dove away, hit the ground in a roll, and reached for his pistol. A lead shot was his only hope now. Jacaranda saw his desperation and jumped between the two to defend him, but there was little she could do to battle against a foe whose very weapons could break her own. Her honed reflexes were her best bet, and she twisted and ducked beneath strike after strike while constantly seeking an opening. Twice she cut through the fabric of the avenria’s shirt or trousers, but never deep enough to draw blood. The creature was too fast, and too well trained.

  “Down!” Devin shouted as he rose to his feet, his thumb cocking the hammerlock to his pistol. Jacaranda reacted immediately, granting him a clean shot. Logarius didn’t try to dodge. Instead he swirled his sickles before him, the void presence floating off them. The flamestone erupted with a deafening blast in the confined room. The shot should have struck Logarius directly through his left eye. Instead it reflected off a shield of absolute darkness.

  “Such meager tools,” Logarius said. “Your race cannot hope to stand against our innate gifts.”

  Jacaranda tried to stab him while he gloated. Logarius released the shield, the void presence returning to his sickles. This time he was prepared for her attacks. His first slash cut her short sword in half, and when he followed it up with his other hand, she blocked on instinct. The short sword dropped in pieces, same as her first. She retreated immediately, cursing with every step.

  “Not fucking fair,” Devin said as he pulled another flamestone from his pouch. It seemed Logarius had no desire to allow another shot. He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, feinted Devin into a dodge, and flung his wing like a disrespectful slap across Devin’s entire body. He hit the ground hard on his left hip, and his cry of pain was stifled by a kick to his teeth.

  “Our victory is coming,” Logarius said as he lorded over him. “No matter the cost, we shall pay it gladly.”

  Devin reached for his broken sword only to have Logarius stomp on his fingers with his boot. He screamed, fearing them broken. Jacaranda dove at the avenria despite being unarmed. A swift kick to her midsection ended her attack. She plummeted to her knees and retched. The shadows beneath Logarius deepened, as if his wings were a river of darkness that flowed unending to the stone.

  “You’ll kill thousands of innocents!” Devin screamed at him. “Men and women who did you no wrong!”

  Logarius shook his head. His wings shimmered.

  “Do you not listen?” he asked. “A future for our kind, no matter the cost.”

  The shadows behind him elongated, and from within them rose a hooded face, wings, and long, curling daggers.

  “Some costs are too great,” Evelyn said. The sharp points of her daggers thrust into the small of his back. “And we pay without joy. Only blood.”

  Evelyn guided him to the ground, her daggers remaining lodged into his wiry frame. Logarius gasped and twisted to look upon the face of his mother as he collapsed. That much hurt, that much betrayal, was more than Devin could bear, and he quickly turned away.

  “You all right?” he asked Jacaranda. Blood dripped from her split lip, and already he could see bruises forming across her stomach through her ripped and torn shirt.

  “Could be better,” Jacaranda said, accepting his offered hand to stand up. She
leaned on him for a moment, and Devin took the opportunity to kiss her forehead and hold her close. When they separated, he looked to Evelyn, who knelt over the body of her son. Her wings curled about her, draping both in shadow. Soft whispers floated off her tongue as she stroked her son’s head.

  “Evelyn,” he said, wishing he knew what to say or do to ease her hurt.

  “Please,” she said. “Leave an old woman to her grief.”

  Such a simple request, but it was all either Devin or Jacaranda could offer, and so they gave her that solitude in the chamber of magic, stars, and the void.

  CHAPTER 40

  Dierk’s heart was in his throat as he followed the squad of city guards toward the smoldering cathedral ruins. He’d been kept abreast of the situation when the attack first started, and once it was deemed safe, he’d subtly hinted to his controlled father that he would be the one to visit. He knew to expect significant damage, but he could hardly focus on that. Adria Eveson was also at the cathedral, and he could not wait to meet her again.

  Gawkers and gossipers formed a surrounding ring about the cathedral grounds, the area far too large for city guards to fully cordon off. A few gruff shouts forced the crowd to make way. Dierk arrived at the front steps leading up to Alma’s Greeting and surveyed the damage. The bell tower that housed the Mindkeepers was a hollowed-out husk. The south-facing wall was charred but not too badly damaged. Worse was the cathedral proper farther inside. Its stained windows were melted and broken, its roof collapsed, and its stone sides smeared black with char. Seemingly every empty space nearby was occupied with the body of a soldier, guard, or member of the church. Blankets covered their faces, granting them some sort of dignity as they awaited their funeral pyre.

  “Thank you for coming,” a Faithkeeper told him, bowing low and shaking his head. Dierk didn’t know his name, nor did he particularly care. The man was waiting for him, though, so he smiled and tried to be polite.