Erienne screamed in frustration.
'You can do it!' shouted Denser.
He and Eilaan joined the fray. Both mages held FlamePalms. Denser leapt at a reaver pacing along the floor, bearing it to the ground. He took a claw across the face but buried his palm in its mouth. The mage fire took hold quickly, bursting from its eye sockets. He stood and turned, the next creature punched him from his feet.
All sense of cohesion had gone now. The room was full of wings and screams. Blades flashed in the shimmering light. Rebraal saw Hirad grappling with a reaver, plunging his sword into its side and ripping it clear only to see the creature come back at him and backhand him across the floor. The Unknown and Ark had one by the arms. Ark savaged his mace across its face. The Unknown stabbed it through the chest and up into its nerve ganglion and they threw it aside.
Rebraal ducked a tail, stood and straight-punched his assailant in the gut. It doubled up and dropped to the ground. Eilaan's hand clamped around its neck and charred the veins in its head. At his feet, Erienne's arms moved in slow motion. A strike-strain appeared in front of her but Auum's hand was faster and it bounced from the wall right and spun into the gap.
Evunn was bleeding from a cut on his neck. The reaver in front of him ducked his blow and landed its tail on the side of his head, knocking him off balance. It reared to strike Erienne but Hirad's body flashed across Rebraal's vision and the scream of frustration was all he needed to hear.
He turned towards Evunn. The TaiGethen was scrambling to his feet, Auum guarding him, his hands and feet doing the work for both of them. Reavers still flew in. Ark and The Unknown had moved closer to Erienne now and The Raven had formed a circle around her. She was still casting, her movements fluid now, but still she had not released.
Rebraal lashed out at a strike-strain pair, catching them both and beating them aside. One disappeared back over the gap, the other struck something far more solid.
'Karron!' he yelled.
They had stormed across the bridges and were running hard at The Raven. Hirad had killed the reaver he had dived on and stood in time to block the first hammer strike. The Unknown and Thraun
flanked him, sword and mace thudding home, sending the creature stumbling back.
Auum drop-kicked another in the chest while Evunn fenced away pincer limbs as best he could, blood running from his neck and temple. Above them, reavers gathered for one more attack.
'Now would be a good time, love,' said Denser, staggering back into the circle, a bruise the size of an egg coming up under one eye. He held his sword at ready but the reaver coming at him wasn't going to worry about it. The demon lunged with its pincers but had failed to notice either Eilaan or Ark. The former Protector chopped down hard on the searching limbs and Eilaan drove FlamePalm into its chest.
Ul-karron by the dozen were streaming into the attack. The Raven backed away, the circle around Erienne tightening ever further. With blood running into his eyes, Evunn missed a strike and took a glancing hammer blow in his thigh. He went down. Auum stepped across him. His hand whipped out and grabbed a pincer, his foot speared low into its abdomen and his blade sliced into its spike.
'Keep it steady, Raven!' called Hirad, but his voice was weary. 'Just a litde more time.'
But they had no more time. The reavers screeched and dove, the karron charged. A reaver claw connected with the back of Erienne's head but with a scream of pure release, she cast.
Green luminescence fountained from her hands, face and chest, boiling into the space around her. It coalesced into multiple spears that shot away, each targeting a demon heart. Reavers and karron were impaled, their bodies sloughing flesh while the spears dissolved inside them. Rebraal saw one pass straight through him and sink deep into an ul-karron forehead. The creature fixed him with a stare of incomprehension as its mouth collapsed and its face fell like slime over its chest.
More of the light pulsed from Erienne. Stronger and stronger it came, each pulse jolting her body and drawing shuddering cries from her throat.
'Erienne, stop,' shouted Denser but she couldn't hear him.
The spears still rattled away across the gap, seeking their targets, but around Erienne a coil formed. It gained in intensity at frightening speed. Rebraal shielded his eyes from the glare but was captivated by what he saw. Where they stood, the demon conduits started to moan and shiver. Their bodies bucked and twisted as if they were trying to break shackles far too strong for them. All too human faces stared out of the light, eyes imploring mercy.
The coil around Erienne tightened and flew away. It struck the nearer demon, travelled up its body, across the arc and into the second in less than a heartbeat. It bled into the canopy of light and down into the gap. The conduits struggled, suffocating as the coils pulled tighter and tighter. Eyes bulged from sockets and breath was forced from tortured lungs. They pleaded for the pain to stop and stop it did.
Erienne opened her eyes, closed both fists and uttered a single word.
The world went black and the wind began to howl.
The karron were coming. Blackthorne could hear them pounding on the doors that led down to the kitchens. It hadn't been two days. Ferouc had beaten them. Too many demons, too few defenders and no respite. Incessant and draining, the karron had attacked. He had lost men in the grand hall, in the cloisters by his council chamber and in the banqueting hall. He had fought the enemy all the way down the stairs to the armoury and around the corner to the quartermaster's stores. He had held them at the servants' chambers and driven them back briefly but the result had never been in any doubt.
And now he and the thirteen that were left with him were holed up with no place left to run. Blackthorne was tired beyond belief. His left arm was broken and bound to his side so he could still strap on a shield and his left leg bore deep cuts raked by a karron spike.
But still he stood in the middle of the line, waiting for them. Still the ColdRoom was in operation and he could take some of them with him. He heard timbers splinter and the sound of karron feet tramping down the stairs. He knew Ferouc would be behind them, far enough to avoid harm himself.
The first hammer on the kitchen door sprang a hinge but the second barely made an indent. The third was more a gentle knock
and there was no fourth. He heard squawks and shrieks echo about his castle. And then he heard nothing at all.
He took a pace towards the door and stopped, wondering how long it would be before he dared believe that they had won.
Hirad found that there was light. It came in from the fires surrounding the entrance to the edifice and from those that still burned around the mouths of the dead Kaan dragons. He opened his eyes against the gale. The conduit demons were screaming in terror that had no end. Their bodies were being stretched into the arc that joined them. Little by little, they were picked apart. Their heads distended, their legs split and their bodies twisted and elongated. How they still lived he didn't care but that sound they made cut him right to the bone and he prayed for it to stop.
From the gap he heard a sucking sound. Above, the darkened canopy bowed inwards, its centre drew closer and closer to the gap. It touched and shattered and for a moment the room was filled with a dazzling light. The conduit demons wailed their last and were sucked into the arc which fed at dizzying speed into the canopy which in turn was snapped up by the gap. The howling of the wind reached a crescendo, then with a bass thud that slammed through Hirad's skull the gap closed.
He lay where he was for a moment, listening to the sound of his heart and feeling the energy drain from his body. He had no more to give but then, there was no more he had to give. And yet he felt no joy, no victory. Instead he felt cheated. They had closed the path to Balaia and cut off the demons' power. The mana would dissipate through the Balaian dimension and the demons would not be able to sustain themselves for long. The Raven had saved their world and yet for them there was nothing. Sha-Kaan was silent.