by Jada Fisher
“Alright, let’s see what we can do.”
The first undead rushed her, all shambling limbs and empty eyes. She brought up her sword, thrusting it forward and trying to cut across his torso. Her blade cut through him like he was little more than parchment paper, and instead of blood or gore, there was just a cloud of putrid air released from his core.
Oh, that was disgusting.
She ignored the urge to wretch and instead brought her magic shield up, blocking a blow behind her. She spun, swinging her blade in an arch, pushing her magic out again.
It hit several of the thralls around her, making them burst into much less disgusting clouds, but then there were more behind them. And more behind them. And her grip on her magic was still somewhat uncertain.
Great.
She raised her blade again, parrying one blow and whirling to deflect another. She swept at an arm, and then a leg, snapping one bone and cleaving off a barely-there limb from another. But unlike a human opponent, the dead continued on as if nothing had happened.
Of course, a dead person wouldn’t feel pain. She should have known that. The only way to take them down was to immobilize them or just make them stop existing with her magic.
She jumped to the side, back to Crispin, bringing her sword down on the skull of a very broad skeleton with only a bit of flesh still on them before slamming her shield into another. There was no moment to rest, and she kicked the skeleton off her blade before falling to a knee and thrusting her blade into a fresher one.
She sank into her movements, almost in a meditative way, taking down soldier after soldier after soldier. They really were in a range, from just having died a few minutes earlier to ones that looked hundreds of years old. How were they supposed to fight someone who could reanimate the body of the dead so easily? Although Ukrah couldn’t spare enough of her attention to look to Cassinda and the singer, she could hear that their fight was still raging.
The creatures were closing in more and more, however, and her pulses of magic were beginning to do less and less. Were they acclimating? Or was the singer shielding them on top of herself?
Ukrah didn’t get an answer. What she did get was an entire path cleared as a huge ball of writhing plants went flying by her, taking out a swath of the thralls before it lost momentum.
When it finally did still, the plants fell away to reveal a swaying Cassinda. She was somehow even dirtier than before, sweat and blood mixing with the filth on her.
“Alright,” she murmured, advancing again. “Maybe I’m starting to get tired.”
Ukrah’s gaze flicked to the singer, expecting a response, but she too was leaning against one of the only remaining upright pillars of the room, breathing hard. “You have so much wasted potential.”
“I don’t know about that. I seem to be using it just fine against you.” The singer snorted, and Cassinda just wiped at her brow, smearing dirt and blood. “So, you want to tell us your name before I put you down?”
The woman’s gaze flicked from her to the others, head tilting. “You really think that you’re going to win this, don’t you?”
“Considering that it’s three of us versus just one of you, yeah, I can say I’m pretty confident.” Cassinda pulled her hair back, braiding it casually as if they were just talking about taking a ride out to the orchard. “We have a cute little birdie too. All you’ve got is minions who already died once. Not exactly the best cavalry.”
“Foolish. Foolish, foolish, foolish. But I suppose I can do you the honor of my name before we are reunited. I am called Lystri of the Shattered Claw Tribe, and I will be the one to save our world.”
“Huh, a presumptuous title.”
“Actually, not at all.” She stood once more and raised her hands. Ukrah could feel her magic lance out again, but it was different from her enticing melody. It was more dead rising, she was sure of it, but she could feel it stretching out far beyond the room. It was leaching into the entire city.
Ukrah didn’t even want to think of how many dead there could be buried in and around a city that had been around since long before she was born. Far too many for any of them to handle, even if they were refreshed. Maybe Ukrah could have done something if she still wasn’t coming off the effects of a sigil, but as it was, she was lucky that her shield was only flickering slightly.
“Cassinda,” she hissed, turning to fight off the advance of another group of undead. “We won’t survive that onslaught. We’re not even through with this onslaught.”
“Don’t worry,” Crispin said, gripping her ankle. “I got this.”
Ukrah looked down, surprised that he had somehow ended up beside her. She hadn’t gone far from the dais, so she could protect him, but she thought that she had traveled further than she had.
“What are you—”
But then she felt it. His magic trickled out, not like a wave or a cloud or a wall, but something much more mischievous than that. It skittered along the floor, sinking in before rushing up the walls and then covering the ceiling.
But the singer seemed unperturbed, standing in one spot as she continued her complex spell. “Really? And what is the spirit of fortune and hope going to do in the middle of a battle?”
“I don’t know about the middle of the battle,” Crispin said, squinting as he looked past Ukrah up at the ceiling. “But I’m pretty sure that I’ll be plenty useful in ending one.”
The singer snapped back, Ukrah could see her mouth open and her lips move, but a truly thunderous crack filled the air, cutting off all other sound.
“W-what are you doing?” the woman asked, sounding truly surprised for the first time since Cassinda had shown up out of the earth itself.
“You gave such a good performance tonight, you really did. In fact, you could almost say that you brought the entire house down.”
It was such a non sequitur that it startled a laugh out of Ukrah. Looking down, she saw the broad grin across the boy’s features. “Really?” she asked.
Give the boy a gift to be akin to a reincarnated god and he uses it to make puns. No wonder none of us could tell what he was for so long.
Another intense boom and the entire ground shook violently, throwing everyone from their feet, including the singer and the undead. Ukrah held out her hand and Cassinda scrambled over to her on hands and knees,
“You… You’ll kill us all!” the sin— Lystri cried, fighting to get to her feet, but the dirt under her bucked, throwing her back onto her own behind. “Do you want to doom our whole world?”
“No, just you,” Crispin said, looking up again and furrowing his brow.
The result came quickly, the ceiling shaking even harder as huge chunks began to fall. Huge fissures broke into the wall, lacing up the sides like fingers coming to crush the entire room.
“There’s no way you’ll— You’ll die! All of you!”
“No, I got a pretty good feeling we won’t.”
The singer turned and ran toward the exit—a set of stone stairs that Ukrah hadn’t noticed earlier. But before she could get more than just a few steps up, a huge piece of the hall collapsed, cutting off that exit.
“Huh,” Crispin remarked, his face growing pale once again. Ukrah could feel that his hand around her ankle was growing clammy. “That’s some bad luck, isn’t it?”
He let out a weak chuckle, as if he was the funniest thing in the world, before the ceiling gave one last crack and descended in a wall of debris.
12
From the Ground Up
For a long series of moments, Ukrah’s entire world was darkness. It wasn’t a quiet, peaceful sort of darkness either, but one full of screeches, crashes, and rumbling collisions. It reminded her of the cave collapse, but worse, because she knew that she should be crushed into a fine pulp. But her heart kept on beating, and with every beat, she kept on surviving.
It seemed to last for eons, just a cacophony in the black. She could feel Crispin still gripping her ankle, and Cassinda’s body under hers, the
three of them huddled together in the storm. If it weren’t for them, she almost would have wondered if she were already dead.
But eventually, the tumult ended, and after that, the noises halted. For the first time in ages, there was quiet, and all Ukrah could hear was the sound of their ragged breathing.
“So…we’re alive,” Cassinda murmured from below Eist. “But also buried alive. Mixed bag here.”
“Don’t worry,” Crispin said, his voice sounding quiet, like he was barely holding on. “We’ll be fine.”
“You’re handling this very well.”
“Eh, I think I’m too dead to overreact. Once we’ve had a good rest, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to panic.”
“You seem very sure that we’ll be alright.”
“Yeah, well, I got a feeling. And so far, my feelings have been pretty darn accurate. But we probably shouldn’t talk so much. We don’t exactly have a ton of air, I’m guessing.”
“You know, it would be a certain kind of irony if we survived everything just to end up suffocating to death here,” Cassinda remarked idly, not sounding upset at all.
“As long as that other vessel is dead too, that’s all that matters.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Ukrah murmured, mindful that she was using up precious air as she spoke. “If we all die, that’s an awful lot of vessels that are suddenly gone. The world could end before they find others to inhabit, if they’re able to inhabit any others at all.”
Besides, she didn’t put it past these witch hunters to not have set some sort of failsafe up like consecrated ground, or a rune that allowed them to snatch up all the vessels anyways.
But then she felt something in her chest, a familiar, soothing sort of camaraderie that made the sinking feeling in her stomach stop. “Voirdr?” she asked, looking up as if she could see anything. Which she absolutely couldn’t.
“You feel your little guy?” Crispin asked, his voice barely audible. “That’s good. It’s gonna be my turn to sit in the healer’s room while everyone waits on me.”
“Am I the only one who doesn’t regularly get horribly destroyed during these little adventures?” Cassinda asked.
The dirt above their head began to shake, some of it raining onto Ukrah’s hair. “In fairness, you’ve only gone on about half of the jaunts that I have, and I was mostly fine after Eist was kidnapped.”
“Right. I’ll remember that one time right after I finish counting all the bones you’ve broken while out and about.”
How bizarre that they were joking around while the floor above them continued to shake. They had no idea what was on the other side—it could just be more witch hunters come to destroy them—but Crispin seemed happy, and she could feel her connection with Voirdr growing bit by bit. It was a far cry from fighting for their lives, and the change of it made her a bit giddy.
A particularly large clod of dirt pelted Ukrah right on top of her head, but before she could sputter an exclamation, a single ray of light broke through.
It was followed quickly by more and more light until a bright red paw was reaching down, claws just above their heads.
Ukrah reached up, grasping the extended claws with both hands, allowing to it to pull her up and into the fresh air.
She gulped down huge drafts of it, not knowing just how stale the air had been where she was huddled. Rolling onto her stomach, she looked down into the hole she had been pulled out of to see that one of the pillars had fallen sideways, making a little pocket of protection that had saved the three of them from being crushed into a fine paste.
Huh, how lucky.
Ukrah was all set to watch her two friends be rescued when she heard an excited yip behind her and then suddenly, she was pounced on. She knew better than to be alarmed, however, and laughed as Voirdr licked every bit of her face.
“I’m so sorry I keep doing this to you,” she said, petting his sides, minding his growing spikes. “I really don’t mean to, I promise.”
He just whined, pressing himself into her further, licking and licking. She was going to have one hell of an abrasion on top of everything else, but she didn’t mind. Especially since, for a moment there, she’d been certain that she was never going to be able to see him again.
There was a plop next to her and Voirdr finally stopped bathing her face only to do the same to Crispin. Because, of course, he was worried about his mama.
“Be delicate with him, little man. He’s been through a lot,” Ukrah said, covering her eyes against the blinding light of the outside. Hadn’t it been nighttime when they’d last been outside? How long had they been unconscious? How long had they been fighting for their lives!?
A shadow fell over her, and she pulled her hand away to see Eist, hand extended. She took it, allowing the slightly smaller woman to pull her to her feet. The desert girl wobbled a little, but otherwise managed to stay upright.
“What exactly happened down there?”
Ukrah opened her mouth as if she was going to respond, but then she realized that she just didn’t have the energy to explain it all. “Later,” she said with a breath. “Maybe once we’re all home.”
“But what happened to the other vessel? Is she alive? Do they still have her?”
All Ukrah could do was shake her head. Had everything that had happened been real? It didn’t feel like it could be. A vessel killing other vessels to absorb their power? It seemed far too cruel, too convoluted, to be true. “Later.”
“Alright, but I’m going to hold you to that.”
Ukrah sat up in her bed, looking out at the stars that dotted the night sky. Much to her surprise, they hadn’t gone home. No, they’d used what was left of the day to fly to the capital, where they found the house of Ain’s family.
It was an older woman, at least in her fiftieth year, who greeted them, smiling and seemingly pleased as punch that they were there. Ukrah figured that she must not know how close her son came to death, and she didn’t intend to tell their hostess.
Her smile only diminished when she realized how hurt they were, and she instantly busied herself with sending for healers and ushering them to her guest rooms. That was how Ukrah found herself in a fresh, soft bed in a large room, Cassinda and Crispin asleep on either side of her. Voirdr was asleep at her feet, snoozing happily since he was once again reunited with his rider.
She really did need to stop getting separated from him. It was going to give him a complex. But at the same time, being away from him and his magical influence in a battle certainly gave her a more fighting chance.
Perhaps it was something that they would put a bit more work into, because it was definitely becoming more and more of an issue. Eist had never been so separated from Fior when they were younger, and he was still a hatchling. Then again, Eist didn’t get into any grand-scale battles until Fior was capable of flying on his own. And while Fior was clearly a legendary dragon, it wasn’t quite the same as being responsible for the first black dragon since the last one had betrayed their kind.
Huh… Betrayal seemed to be a common theme. That was something to think about when she wanted to be particularly upset.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t taken many hits, the redhead had passed out almost the moment she’d laid down and had slept through the entire day and into the night. It seemed that the fight had consumed up far more energy than the girl would normally expend, and her body was forcing her to recoup it.
Crispin was much the same. The healers had cleaned him and gotten him into bed, telling him that he just needed to stay up so they could remove his sigil, but he passed out as soon as he was flat on his back.
They’d managed to still get it off, somehow without disturbing him, and since for once Ukrah was the least hurt, she found herself fielding questions while the two of them were passed out.
But she didn’t give many people answers. She wanted to talk to the other two and all come to a consensus about everything that had happened. Because, somehow, Cassinda and Crispin had
both been vessels the entire time and somehow not even Tayir had known.
Ukrah chewed at the bread that had been brought to her, thinking hard. There was no way that the singer had survived, and yet she must have. Ukrah was fairly certain she would have been able to sense if another vessel, even an enemy, had fallen. She was sure that she would have felt the world lose two spirits at once.
But that carried its own set of connotations.
For the record, I’m amazed that we’re all alive.
Ukrah dragged her gaze from the Margaidian sky to see Tayir sitting on the windowsill. He was looking worse for wear as well, his feathered ruffles and some scratches on his beak.
“You’re not the only one,” she answered. Taking a deep breath, she affixed him with the most serious stare her body could manage. “Did you know?”
Did I know what?
“Any of it. That Cassinda and Crispin were vessels. That another vessel was out there, trying to hunt us down. That vessels could even absorb each other.”
No. None of it. The spirits have always been separate because there are checks and balances. There have been fights, disagreements, of course, but there was balance. It was the disruption of that balance that began our decline.
“So, what, did no one ever think it was possible or did literally no one know about this before? She said she found the ritual, which means that there was some record of it somewhere and yet you, a guardian, didn’t even know about it?”
It appears my knowledge was incomplete. Perhaps an enemy of the spirits is the one who came up with it. Perhaps it won’t even work.
“I don’t know. It seemed to work pretty well when she was animating people from the dead using the magic of another vessel.”
You have a point there.
“Ugh, I could hear you in my dreams,” Cassinda groaned, rolling onto her side. Ukrah looked over to her to see that the woman’s eyes were still closed, although there was a grimace clear on her features. “Could someone get me some water? It feels like I’ve been sucking on wool.”
