He tried to swallow the vomit roiling in his throat. He tried to ignore the fever burning behind his eyes. Wouldn’t do to break down now, start pissing fire and vomiting acid in front of the Shen and lose all this hard-earned respect he didn’t have.
“Look, Gariath-”
That was as far as he got, a meek whimper lost amidst the shriek of arrows and guttural howls. Gariath said something in response, something about this being the only way, about having nothing left. Dreadaeleon didn’t hear. His brow suddenly began to burn, the vomit clawed its way to his throat and he got the very distinct feeling that things were about to go very, very wrong.
“NAK-AH! SHIE-EH-AH!”
He couldn’t understand the Shen’s warning. He didn’t have to. He knew what was happening even before the magic started.
At the far end of the ring, the other male spoke a word. Lightning flew from his hands, leaping out to gnaw angrily at the stone ankles of one of Ulbecetonth’s towering statues. It increased with each breath, its electric teeth pulverizing the granite and sending out clouds of powder. Stone snapped. The Kraken Queen let out a moan as she toppled forward.
Another word, the air rippled, the statue was suspended above the male, smaller, less grand than Sheraptus. He visibly tensed, grunted as the invisible force from his hands kept it aloft. Dreadaeleon could sense the strain, the weight. But only for a moment. After that, another surge of power from somewhere distant coursed through him, sent bile spilling out his mouth and onto the stone.
“Sheraptus,” he choked through vomit.
This lesser male grunted, threw his hands and the statue. It flew through the air, was caught, hovered there. A great monolith the size of a spire hovering over the netherlings like a crown.
It didn’t take an incredible amount of intelligence to know what was happening.
“Shoot,” Dreadaeleon gasped. He pointed a trembling finger. “Shoot! He’s there! In there! SHOOT HIM!
“Shoot!” Gariath roared to Shalake. “SHOOT HIM!”
“KENKI-SHA! KENKI-SHA!”
The command was carried on the scream of arrows, flying one after the other until there was not a space of bare air in the sky. Desperation in every shot, the arrows flew, shattering against the statue, shattering against the shields. The rare netherling went down, the others shuffled to fill in the bare space. In those moments, Dreadaeleon could see the white robes, the broad smile, the eyes burning bright and red.
A gap in the firing. The arrows slowed for a moment. The netherlings seized their chance.
They split apart, revealing him. His hands extended to either side in lazy benevolence, as though he were delivering some great truth instead of holding several tons of stone over his head with the burning heresy upon his brow. His smile was soft and easy, his eyes relaxed and calm despite the fire leaking out of them.
His word was gentle.
As he raised his hands and threw.
The statue went flying through the air, rising up black against the storm clouds brewing overhead. It seemed to hang there for a moment.
“Can you move that?” Gariath asked, looking up.
“No,” Dreadaeleon said, wiping his mouth.
“Huh. We should probably move, then.”
“SCATTER! SCATTER!”
“SHIGA-AH! ATTEKI MO-KI!”
“NO! NOT LIKE THIS! NOT LIKE-”
The statue fell.
Their screams were eaten alive. Their wails disappeared into clouds of dust. The frantic struggle to escape, the clawing over each other, the desperate prayers to someone else, all had ended.
Their bodies lay, as broken as the fragments of stone that rained from the sky.
TWENTY-NINE
The world and he choked together. Blood and dust rose up around him in great curtains of red and black. It throttled vision, smothered sound, strangled him from within as he crawled across the earth. The shattered barricade lay amidst the bodies, cutting hands and feet of those who still ran in panicked confusion. He could hear the screaming only in hairs’ breadths, their voices lasting as long as they lingered near him.
The sound of metal, however, he could have heard for miles.
Without a noise beyond the rattle of their boots and the whisper of their spears sliding into flesh, the netherlings moved through the dust, their shadows black. Mechanically, they sought the survivors scrambling to flee, spared a killing thrust, and moved on.
Maybe he was just too insignificant, crawling breathlessly on his hands and knees, for them to notice. Perhaps they were so focused on their goal, as they charged past him and toward the stairs-or where he thought he remembered the stairs were, it was hard to tell-that they simply couldn’t be bothered with him.
Or maybe they see a guy in a dirty coat with a mouth stained with puke crawling around and trying not to piss himself and they just don’t have the heart to finish you off.
Do not question good fortunes, lorekeeper.
A cricket chirped in the back of his skull.
Greenhair! Where the hell have you been?
Watching, lorekeeper.
Ah, was it a good show, then? Saw what just happened? Are all the broken and mangled corpses quite a sight?
What horrors that man has wrought are nothing to what is coming, lorekeeper.
Oh, good. I was getting really bored with the godlike, limitlessly powerful wizard hurling giant statues around.
Cease your weeping, loreekeper. That thought came with a surge of agony, like someone screeching at him. I require a wizard, not a sarcastic worm. I need a hero.
He had no thoughts for that. None that came with words, anyway. She didn’t seem to need them. Whatever it was that surged inside him, she sensed.
Come to me.
No words that he could hear in his ears. A song without language beckoned him, drew him to her. Weaving his way between the iron legs and the bodies falling around him, he followed the song.
The curtains of dust thinned as he crawled out and clambered to his feet. Still more of the black-clad warriors brushed past him, charging into the fray. The screams of the dead and the wounded were fainter here, smothered beneath the gigantic statue of Ulbecetonth that lay, her smile spattered with crimson, upon the stone steps surrounded by sheets of dust and screaming.
The bulk of the netherling force was still midring, as though waiting. Sheraptus was ambling back to them atop his sikkhun, back casually turned to the slaughter, as though it weren’t even remotely the most interesting mayhem he had seen.
Of Greenhair, there was no sign. Nor thought.
Or there might have been. It was hard to hear himself with all the thunder. The clouds were roiling, roaring, groaning. And amidst them, all he could hear was the slow and steady sound of something.
A heartbeat?
No, too fast. Footsteps. Feet? Many feet.
Coming his way.
The gibbering alerted him first, the slathering cackle that turned him about and then sent him lunging to the ground. The sikkhun came roaring past a moment later, its claws tearing up the earth and its wailing laughter cutting the air as it rushed past him.
He looked up, met Xhai’s hateful glare for a moment. And a glare was all he got, spared the great blade in one of her hands and the thin, pale spear in her other. Those were weapons meant for a nastier job than whatever it would take to finish him off. And that job lay in the dust cloud as she charged after the black-clad warriors.