Vincent watched as the twins ignited for a second time. But the creature ignored them and turned back to look at him. The feral expression perpetually frozen on its face was something ferocious. With its snout scrunched in a snarl, ears bent backward, with dilated orbs for eyes whose sockets were like fangs, it resembled a hairless, rabid coyote. As he met its dark eyes, he knew this…this was the entity behind the storms, the thing he had spoken to during the last flashback. He recalled the twitching bag of flesh hanging from the clouds like a puppet on strings. The way that thing standing before him moved...it was just like a marionette. It raised its arm to him just as the twins charged into it, their flames blasting the mist away.
“Oy...Tuls...” Mkari muttered. Tuls had taken refuge in a dark corner, muttering to himself. The twins pierced the figure in the chest with yellow blades, the air distorting with their heat. Bits of flesh immediately ruptured as steam exploded beneath the skin.
“Tuls,” Mkari repeated, placing his hands on the relos' shoulder. When he didn't get a response, he stepped on the wounded part of Tuls' tail, causing the ash-faced relos to cry out. “Focus on the pain,” Mkari said, “use it as an anchor.”
Tuls panted as he clutched his tail and looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Thank you.”
“Just a trick I learned.”
Outside, the creature's flesh caught fire. Jets of flame shot from its sputtering throat as the twins cooked it from the inside out, but it made no attempt to fight back. It had eyes only for Vincent. The twins cut their blades in opposite directions until they divided the creature's torso from its legs. Its smoldering halves dropped onto the ground. Smoke and steam rose up to intermingle with the gyrations of the storm.
Though its top half lay on its back, its snout never changed its orientation. It remained fixated on Vincent as though its head were fitted on a gimbal. Quivering, its arms rotated the creature's torso, flipped it over to align itself with the head. Then it lunged itself forward in his direction, dragging entrails behind it. The motion was so unnatural, Vincent flinched and took a step backward.
Oris brought his foot down on its back and ran the tip of his blade through its neck. Still, the creature did not stop. It dug its claws into a crack in the cobble and it pulled itself forward, toward Vincent, allowing the blade to bisect its spine. Even when Akhil chopped off its arms, it propped itself up with its wings and tried to crawl. But they were cleaved off as well.
The creature, seemingly giving up, clasped its mouth shut. But before Oris could decapitate it, Vincent felt something pass through him. It felt like a silent shockwave that had surged forth from the entity. Though it had no tangible effects on the environment, the others felt it as well. Something akin to the chiming of a bell rang through his head.
“Did you hear that?” somebody asked.
“Yes...what was that?” another asked.
“I don't know. But how is that damn thing still alive?”
The creature's head snapped its jaw and used its tongue to spin its snout. Akhil looked at it in disbelief. There arose shouts from the perimeter of the village. Vincent walked over to one of the windows to see what was going on, but Sperloc pulled him back. While Akhil was distracted by the commotion, the gray mist that had been spewing forth from the creature's head reached out toward its torso and legs. Three of them flew back together. The arms followed. The creature stood on its legs, renewed.
On The La'ark's order, a volley of arrows flew through the air and rattled it. But the thing continued to walk toward Vincent despite all of the shafts sticking out of it. The twins tackled it to the ground and embraced its body, allowing their heat to cook the creature. Vincent could hear its bones splintering and snapping from the thermal shock. Meanwhile, soldiers continued to shout from the rooftops, ringing bells. He saw some of them aiming their crossbows toward the ruins. Was something else attacking?
***
What are those things?
Slade watched as dark shapes darted over rooftops and down alleys. They were people, rushing forth. But their expressions, like the tantalons, were uncanny. Joy, confusion, and lifelessness hung on their empty snouts. Were they the inhabitants of Crefield? No…there were more of them, more than the population Crefield accounted for. Where had they come from? She leapt from the rooftop she'd been perched on, her veil fluttering around her form, keeping her concealed. The covers on her wings made it hard to glide, so she only attempted to do so on buildings that were close together. She hopped from roof to roof until she was out of range of the archers.
Normally, a tinge of excitement would have tickled her chest. But these were people...or at least they used to be. Now she was simply disgusted. Whatever they were now, the movements were impossible for any Falian to replicate. Limbs bent at impossible angles, the bodies contorted in ways that were completely unnatural. They leapt up buildings and scurried between the alleyways. Using her wings, Slade unhooked the crossbow from her back and placed it into her arms. She grabbed a handful of bolts and loaded them into the magazine, then she bit onto the pull-tab and drew the string back. She raised it into place, waited for the nearest of the creatures to get within range, then she let it loose. It dropped to the ground.
Already she had her next shot lined up. One after another, she dropped the creatures, but they just kept coming. Though they didn’t see her behind her veil, some began to break off from the others and run in her direction. She uttered an expletive and changed locations, firing off a few more bolts. When she was out, she sheathed the crossbow, grabbed Calimere's Light and summoned its blade. Three of them must have seen its glow because they came right toward her. With one hand, she grabbed a shryken and threw it at one in the middle, striking it right in the chest. As the ilium began to encapsulate it, she swung twice, dropping the other two. This was not good, the clothing slowed actions. Which was bad because while she was stronger than most women, her prowess came from her swiftness and precision, not her physical strength.
Feeling suddenly imprisoned in the cushy garments, she began to tear off its buttons. She was forced to kill a few more of the abominations before removing the rest of the jacket and tossing it aside. The weather bit at her with a chill that surpassed anything she felt before. But she allowed the ethnir from her blade to warm her. Feeling free, she faced the incoming horde of horrors and danced.
***
The scorched creature turned toward the twins, seemingly no longer interested in Vincent. Unseen lore held its limbs together in defiance of law. Fog spewed from the orifices in its body like a leaking sieve and the mist twirled along the ground at its feet. The plaza was becoming a lake full of malefic clouds. It twitched its gaze from one twin to the other and fell into a bow. Akhil was in disbelief. This “thing” should have been dead. But like the stormspawn, it seemed to defy death. Even now, with its scorched flesh hanging from its bones, it taunted them.
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Bells rang. Soldiers shouted. They were being attacked? Akhil waited for orders, but he didn’t take his eyes off the creature.
“Keep it busy!” The La'ark commanded, as if reading his mind.
“Aye.”
While she barked orders to the soldiers guarding the perimeter, Akhil reached out to his saluk. Two more visions joined his own. He became three. He was the warrior, standing poised in a corona of flames. He was also a spike and a weight, floating through the air, tethered together by a length of chain. Controlling two imaging conduits that were physically tied together was an extraordinarily difficult feat. When one object pulls on the chain, the other either has to allow itself to be pulled or move with it so that there’s slack in the chain. The mind often ends up fighting itself.
“Akhil the spike” took the lead. It bobbed in the air while “Akhil the weight” followed suit. Oris’ saluk joined in, circling around the entity in front of them both. Explosions rattled the backdrop. Flashes of light lit up the night. Stars were being thrown. A battle was underway.
Akhil the spike launched forward, pulling the weight behind it. The entity, seeing the attack, sidestepped at the last moment. But Akhil anticipated this, so he already nudged the weight to the side. The spike missed, but the chain did not. The weight crashed into the entity’s chest and sent it flying backwards. It landed on its wings and instead of standing upright, it ran around on their digits like an insect. Oris’ saluk came flying in, but the entity dropped flat to the ground as it passed overhead. Both of the brothers charged.
***
Crefield was built on the ruins of an ancient city. Its villagers were ignorant of its history, as their ancestors only saw a convenient place to live when they stumbled upon its skeleton. They built a new home over old foundations. A few of the villagers noticed the wells left over from the previous civilization, but nobody knew they were connected to an entire network that ran beneath the streets and which connected all the structures. Many of these passages had been buried by time, blocked by cave-ins, clogged by nests and mud. But a few still existed. Their empty tunnels were hallowed with disuse. But now, something slithered among them.
***
“Get back!” Menik pulled Vincent away from the entrance.
He retreated along the back wall when he started to hear the soldiers fighting. He didn’t know what was going on outside, but he could hear the clashing of swords and explosions going off. Menik slammed the door shut and locked it, then he did the same to the windows. Vincent's own personal guard stood ready to attack anything that came in. This was happening because of him. They weren't real. This was not happening. The conflicts and contradictions rent his mind. He needed to go outside and confront whatever the hell that thing was...but he was terrified of it. And yet...he still wanted to meet it.
“I took a peek. They are villagers...saw a few of them wearing Thalmin garments. The Thalmins are east of here,” Sperloc growled, “Whatever this is...it has been doing it to other villages as well, turning them into...whatever those things are. Even children...”
“Yes.” Menik said. His tone said he did not want to talk about it.
“They’re stormspawn,” Mkari said.
“Oh, your eyes told you that, did they?” Sperloc snapped, “I couldn’t tell!”
Vincent pulled his shryken out and closed his eyes. He could see the hierarchy, but he couldn’t connect to it. There were too many distractions. The screams penetrated his mind and left him shaken.
“So it can turn us into stormspawn? Why turn our people now?” Madrian asked.
“I don’t know.” Jeris said.
All of them jumped when something hit the door, and they raised their weapons. Vincent clasped the shryken. Would he be able to pull off another miracle like he did on the devourer's thread? He doubted it. He couldn’t concentrate on the hierarchy. The lore was there, but he couldn’t focus. He was freezing. He was useless, powerless.
“Hey,” he whispered to Madrian, “give me a weapon.”
***
As two battles waged above, one with an onslaught of scurrying creatures that used to be people, a second where two warriors attempted to kill an unkillable being, a third horror crept ever closer to the strange one. Occasionally, those with the glowing eyes could sense its presence slithering beneath their feet, but its malice was lost among all the rest. Its progress was slow and every so often, it had to squeeze through some narrow aperture. But it was relentless and malleable. Time and formlessness allowed it to slide though any passage, no matter how tight it was.
Everything that was happening above was just a distraction. Let them fight...let them fail to notice that something was crawling inexorably closer to the strange one. The entity reached the well it had been looking for and began to rise...ascend toward the house that the strange one took shelter in. It reached a grate that had been built over the well. No matter. It squeezed a hand through and began to undo the lock.
***
“Give me a weapon,” Vincent repeated. Madrian glanced at him and then at the shryken.
“Make use of that,” he said.
“I can't... I can’t focus on it. Give me a weapon so I can defend myself!”
“Vincent,” Menik said, “there is a closet in the other room. Go hide in it, lock the door.”
“You want me to hide in a fucking closet while you all are–”
Sperloc grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around. “Don’t be foolish. You have not been trained for combat, nor have you been trained to work in conjunction with the soldiery. You will only get in their way.”
Vincent tried to slam his fist into the shryken’s handle, hoping he could recreate what he did on the interstice thread, but nothing happened.
“I can't...I can't just–”
“–Cordell stop being a damn fool and hide!” Menik's roar filled the room.
Vincent opened his mouth to argue, but Menik and Sperloc were right. He had no experience at all. All he had was the shryken...and he could not even use it. The most he could do was encase himself and use it as armor. Feeling useless, he grabbed one of the nytic lanterns and looked for the closet Menik mentioned. When he found it, he opened the door to step inside. He froze at the threshold.
Inside the closet was a small well in the floor with a grate over it. The grate was open, and something was trailing out of it, covering the entire wall. At first, Vincent had no idea what in the hell he was looking at. It was moving and it was covered in scales, so he thought it may have been a bunch of snakes intertwined with each other. But then he recognized Falian snouts, hanging flaccid as if they had been deflated. Lower jaws drooped open. Empty eye sockets stretched. It was as if somebody had taken a bunch of rubber Falian costumes and hung them up all along the back wall. Slow undulations rippled the flesh as the skins slithered over each other.
“What the...”
Several deflated arms fell from the wall, grabbed his horns, pulled him in. Flesh wrapped around his helmet like a mass of pythons and twisted his head. He tried to cry out, but his throat was constricted. There was a violent wrenching. His neck snapped, then he dropped to the floor, lifeless.
Yet Vincent was not dead. He felt the twisting, and the snap. A brief jolt of intense pain shot through his entire body for less than a millisecond. But then he found himself stumbling through realm of polarized light. The echoes of the battle reverberated, traveling across dimensions. The colors of this place were wrong. There was light where there should have been shadows, shadows where there should have been light. However, the geometry of the place he found himself in was familiar. He was still standing in the closet, but his body felt intangible and weightless. Its humanoid shape burned with electricity. It was the same ethereal form he had used to hijack the shryken, the same one he used to undo the reticulum binding and kill Teresis.
He looked down at the floor and saw the outline of the dragonoid creature his mind had inhabited, the “Saedharu”. It was lying on the ground with its neck twisted at an impossible angle, a look of surprise on its helmeted, marsupian face. What the hell was happening? The things that attacked him, a wall of horrors began to slither around that body.
“Now we can talk...”