A deluge of memories far too fast to be assimilated flowed before Rik’s eyes. He saw the Terrarch’s youth, his initiation into his strange cult, and the operation that had transformed him into something other than human. He saw the pumps that had drained him of blood and replaced it with black fluid and the surgery that had replaced his internal organs with things torn from corpses and altered and grown in glass jars bubbling with nutrient fluid. He felt the taint that the Terrarch carried within him, cancer-like. He saw how the Terrarch’s eyes had been scooped out and replaced with new ones that had been stolen from dead men and changed to let their own see things that other men could not.
He took part of the stolen life force and forced it into the spells that made him faster and stronger. Time slowed.
It came to him that his victim did not even know what was killing him, saw him only as a deadly shadow. He was almost drained now and would not last much longer. Rik lashed out with his blade, severing the head with one blow. It rolled away across the floor, little more than a mummified skull to which a few wisps of hair clung.
Tamara danced across the room, far faster and stronger than a human. She had managed to sever the head of one of the guardians in the first moment of surprise, but the others swarmed towards her, unaware still of Rik’s presence, or uncaring.
Tamara’s movements would have been sight-blurringly swift to a normal mortal, but to Rik they seemed as slow as something happening in a dream. He had time to take in the precision of her attacks and the beauty of her technique as she dodged her foes.
They were as fast as she and as strong and he noted that their power came not from spells but from the modifications that had been made to them. They looked like Terrarchs but they were something else now, creatures modified by eldritch sorcery.
Rik swirled over to them, exulting in his power, he struck the head from one’s shoulders before it knew what was going on. Decapitation was a proven way of killing them. He did not want to experiment when facing creature’s as potent as any Nerghul.
The changelings were not stupid. They noticed what was going on even if they could not see Rik. Two of them turned and their blades slashed through the air where he had been a moment ago. He ducked their strokes and sprang backwards away, knowing that getting in the way of those razor edged blades would be fatal, even if it only happened by accident.
“I see something,” said one of the guardians. “The shadow of a shadow of a shadow. There’s another here, a sorcerer.”
Tamara took advantage of the instant of confusion to drive a stiletto through his eye. She left it there, buried in the brain and slashed a tendon. Her foe toppled and writhed, beating hands and feet against the paving stones like a lizard dropped on a hot skillet.
Rik swept towards his own assailants, slashing and cutting. He felt his stolen energy draining away fast. The many spells enwrapping him were taking their toll. He knew that he would have to finish this quickly or drain another foe, and with the edge of his life-hunger dulled by satiety, he was not sure that he wanted to do that again quite so quickly. He rained blows down on one of the guardians, a hundred cuts that would have drawn blood from any normal mortal but left his opponent with more slashes that a butcher’s block. The impact drove it back.
Its companion slashed at Rik, and its blade bit home. Pain surged up his arm, and the cloak of shadows flickered and dissipated around him. He invoked the healing spells Asea had taught him, and knitted his own flesh back together but he had lost the advantage of invisibility.
“There he is,” said one of the guardians. “We have him now.”
“Do you?” Rik asked, springing tiger-like on the foe he had driven back and knocking him to the ground. Straddling his opponent’s chest he placed his blade against its neck and pushed down, sawing the head partially from the shoulders. A swish of air behind him warned him of peril and he sprang just in time to avoid being pinned to the enemy. Instead, the guardian’s blade went through its companion’s breast with such force that it became embedded in the floor.
Rik attacked in that moment of defencelessness and slashed away the hand holding the blade, at the wrist. His foes may have been invisibly armoured by magic but their weak spots were at the joints of their limbs and necks, which had to remain flexible and thus vulnerable.
He shouted this information to Tamara, just in case she had not realised it herself, and set to work at butchery. He hoped that Asea would get here in time. He sensed there was something unstable about the Gate.
Sardec watched as the undead rolled forward in an irresistible wave of stinking, rotting flesh. Their feet made an awful squelching sound and their bellows breath whistled eerily. There was the thunder of musketry and the smell of gunpowder as the Foragers opened fire.
Their foes were packed so close that they could hardly miss. Walking corpses toppled to be trampled underfoot by their companions who kept on coming.
It seemed like only a matter of moments before they had reached the walls of the cottage. Sardec could see their yellowish faces, bloodshot eyes gleaming, the blood of old wounds running down their heads. He had faced crowds and regiments before but there was something about the silence of the undead that was deeply unsettling.
Silence was the wrong word, he thought. They did not speak. They did not shout. They did not whisper. They made no attempt to communicate. The only sounds that came from them were involuntary. The whistle of air from corrupted lungs, strange groans that might have been the emissions of animals. They looked like humans, but they came on like an army of ants, and whatever intelligence that was in their eyes was as different from that of humans as an insect’s might have been.
The door bulged as the weight of dozens of bodies pressed against it. With a crack it gave way and the undead monsters began to crawl in over the piled furniture. Sardec prepared himself for close combat.
The door exploded inwards and Asea entered. In one hand she held her lightning wand, in the other was a sword of truesilver. The runes on the blade blazed in the eddy currents of powerful magic. There was a brilliant flash, and the smell of ozone filled the air. One of the guardians fell, skin blackened, and then Asea spitted him on her blade. His flesh sizzled as the blade worked its way in; when it reached his heart, the chest seemed to collapse inwards as if bones and internal organs had liquified. If they were magical in nature that was quite possible.
Rik redoubled his efforts, fighting his way over to Asea and preparing to defend her. With the aid of her magic, the fight was soon over. Once they had done with the guardians, the sorcerers were easy prey. They never stirred from the ecstatic communion with the Mirror even as he killed them. They stood uncontested in possession of the gate chamber. In the distance, alarm bells rang.
Rik looked at his patron. “What now?” he asked.
“You and Tamara hold the door. I will do what we came here to do. After that is done you must flee.”
“What about you?”
“I will try and get out but if worst comes to the worst you must abandon me. You and Tamara have the means to get out. I do not.”
“I won’t do that,” said Rik. “I won’t leave you here.”
“I don’t think you have any choice in the matter, Rik, unless you are keen to die. Now take up your position. We must get on with it.”
He stared at her, not yet willing to do what she said. She shook her head and smiled. “I thank you, Rik, for what you mean to do, but your death will serve no purpose. It would suit me better if you lived. I have made provision for you in my will. Karim has the documents with him.”
“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”