Across the river, Lust loomed through the smoke, a dark and deadly giant awaiting the return of her cruel heart. Alone amongst the titans it had been given a beautiful female countenance. Unsurprisingly, it had been named Lust by male magi. They were still men after all, still cursed to think with their cocks more often than was wise.
A knot of armoured Skallgrim blocked the far end of the bridge, their faces drenched in sweat from a forced run; they linked round shields to form a wall and hefted beaked war axes. A wild-eyed man with a face more scar than skin shrieked incoherent curses. I assumed it was the usual “I’m going to kick the shite out of you and fuck your mother” sort of boast. He began gnawing on the iron edge of his shield and frothing at the mouth, a vein pulsing angrily on his forehead as he worked himself up into berserk fury.
An old man and woman stood behind the shield wall, their cracked faces scarred with sigils and a motley collection of bone, hide and feather amulets around their necks marking them as Skallgrim shaman. The old woman opened her palm with a serpentine knife and began a droning chant in perfect Old Escharric. She sprinkled her blood in a circle. Not a good sign.
“Destroy those halrúna!” Shadea shouted, air shimmering in a sphere around her as she focused on protecting the activation key. The siege-breakers thundered towards the Skallgrim. A bolt of flame from one of our pyromancers roared towards the halrúna while the sanctors pulled us back to give the other magi room to manoeuvre on the bridge.
The male halrúna lifted a tattooed hand and a gust of wind deflected our firebolts to explode across the riverbank. It felt unnatural to be so close to magic and feel absolutely nothing; bloody sanctors! But the ghost of Lynas’ pain still throbbed in my head, and it would be far worse if they weren’t suppressing my Gift.
“How did they know we were coming here?” Martain said. Then his voice hardened. “More treachery.”
The six siege-breakers smote the shield wall like an enormous hammer, wood and steel exploding from an impact that catapulted a dozen Skallgrim warriors backwards through the air. A few fell screaming into the murky river where their armour – and other things – dragged them under. The siege-breakers thundered straight through what was left of their line, hacking a path through mail and flesh towards the halrúna. Their enormous swords wreaked bloody ruin, limbs flying, heads smashed to pulp. Axes clanged off thick armour as berserkers picked themselves up and flung themselves back into the fray.
Halfway across the city the Arcanum pressed their attack, sky flashing incandescent with fire and lightning and more exotic energies. Flocks of chitinous daemons fell as burning rain. Closer to home, fire and wind writhed around the halrúna as our magi struggled for elemental supremacy. The old woman’s murmurings intensified as she finished her circle of blood and began drawing unsettling runes inside. Bone charms around her neck blackened, somehow protecting her from the pyromantic flames raging all around.
A vicious melee erupted as the Skallgrim warriors used their superior numbers to try to drag the knights down so they could stab knives through joints in the siege breaker armour. They had no idea what they were dealing with and attached no significance as to why the wardens hadn’t joined the fight yet. Four tackled Eva and succeeded in knocking her down onto one knee. She headbutted one on the way down, helm exploding through his face to leave a spurting stump, and elbowed another, caving in breastplate and chest. As they fell away she rose clutching a third by the throat. Her hand clenched and his neck burst like rotten fruit. She proceeded to beat the fourth to death with his friend’s corpse, sounds of manic mirth bubbling out from her armour.
I’d never seen knights in a real battle before. It was terrifying and Eva was laughing. I was very glad she was on my side.
The enemy panicked and broke, leaving their halrúna to die. The male halrúna fell to his knees, drenched in his own blood, flames charring his skin as our magi overwhelmed his powers and protections. One of the siege-breakers charged the woman. She smiled and said, “My blood, your blood. My flesh, your flesh…”
A shiver rippled up my spine at her horribly familiar words.
A blade split her skull in two. Droplets of the dead shaman’s blood hung in the air, then began spinning around her corpse with increasing speed. All the blood shed during the battle streamed over the ground towards the circle and was swept up into the ritual. A spike of gleeful alien hunger pulsed inside me, growing stronger with every second that passed – anticipation, as if a part of me knew what was coming. I gripped Dissever tight but the sanctors now had more to worry about than me.
Shadea hissed. “Too late – back away.”
The whirlpool of blood drained down into the woman’s corpse, far too much for any human body to possibly contain. Dark magic pierced the Shroud between worlds and opened a doorway. The shaman’s belly bulged outwards and then ripped apart as something scaled with black iron emerged from a far-flung daemon realm.
The knight that had killed the old woman began backing away. A six-fingered hand tipped with metal claws burst from the old woman’s flesh and speared through her killer’s cuirass, exploding from the back in a shriek of steel. A second limb erupted from the corpse and buried claws in the ground. Sinews rippled and bulged as it pulled itself into our world. The reptilian daemon’s massive form squeezed through a portal of flesh and blood much too small to possibly allow it, sloughing off corpse-meat as its serpentine tail slithered free of the portal.
It was easily ten feet tall and twenty long, with a serpent’s head armoured in black iron crested with a jagged crown. Six golden slitted eyes opened and its jaw dropped in a mockery of a grin, revealing curved iron fangs the size of daggers. It tore the knight in two and tossed the halves into the river on either side of the bridge. Its eyes were not fixed in bone as ours were, instead freely sliding across flesh and metal plate alike to peer in every direction. Three eyes swivelled to look down at the male halrúna, now on all fours and weeping. A trio of forked tongues flicked out, tasting the air.
Shadea looked ill. Her wardens surrounded her in a nervous wall of steel. “It is a ravak queen,” she said, eyeing the black crown. “During the Daemonwar their kind led entire armies of lesser daemons through the holes in the Shroud. I fought against one and almost died.”
The creature’s spiked tail lashed in agitation, and a dozen small serrated claws opened out on both sides all along the thing’s torso like it was the bastard offspring of snake, scorpion and centipede. The creature’s claws wrapped around the Skallgrim shaman’s waist. Greasy vapour rose from its body as it lifted the old man to its maw, its flesh mottling with spots of grey as corrosion crept across the iron scales embedded in its flesh. Whatever power protected the shard beasts and the shadow cats from Setharis’ virulent air did not extend to this daemon.
“You dare summon me to this place of atrocity?” it hissed in perfect Old Escharric.
“Mercy!” he begged. “We had no choice. The Scarrabus have our children.”
Who or what are the Scarrabus? I’d never heard the name before. Perhaps this was who was behind the Skallgrim tribes’ sudden organisation.
The man screamed – briefly – as the daemon bit his face off and wolfed down the rest, jaw extending grotesquely as it swallowed the squirming man whole: clothes, charms and all. The young sanctors gagged.