Boom. Boom. Boom.
Sweat dripped from Dovik’s chin as he brought his twin weapons down on Macille’s shield over and over. The hammering of his weapons into the shield numbed his fingers, made him concentrate on keeping his grip. One mistake and he would need to begin this exercise all over again, and he knew as he stood panting, bringing his fire pokers down on the shield like a mad drummer, he would not have the strength left to do that today.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
He could see figures in the fog around him, a mass of people watching as he and Macille stood in front of the gate. He dismissed them, ignored the amusement and confusion in the eyes of the onlookers. Beneath the heavy slab of metal he beat on, Macille strained, his face red from keeping his defense in place. Despite the ache shaking up through his arms, despite the numbness pricking his hands like a thousand needles, Dovik felt his power building with each hammering blow he laid into the shield. As he panted, beating down with his weapons, he grew aware of a hidden benefit he had not predicted; he was not cold anymore.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Dovik accelerated his pace, barely giving himself a chance to breathe, smashing the shield over and over and over and over. Macille fell to a knee beneath his onslaught, but Dovik did not cease. A terrible thrumming sensation shook up through his arms, the weapons almost vibrating in his dead hands. He roared, his vision turning black at the edges as he pressed on, driving Macille’s other knee to the earth. The snow crunched into the ice beneath the heavy elf, and then even the ice began to crack and fleck as Dovik drove him ever downward.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
His arms were a blur in his vision, and Dovik became aware that he had stopped breathing. A display of ethereal armor appeared around Macille, repelling Dovik and his mad swinging, but that too began to fade, the magic cracking as his weapons fell upon it. Dovik heard the drums, the beat that sometimes came to him in the fury of battle, a driving rhythm that sped him on faster and faster. The spectral armor surrounding Macille shattered into motes of yellow light, and the man’s shield crunched into the ground, leaving him defenseless. The beating of the drum in Dovik’s head stilled, his weapons still swinging down. Dovik possessed enough awareness to haul against his own momentum, making his fire pokers swing down around the sides of the heaving man on the ground before him, twisting his torso to not lose the momentum.
Three quick steps brought Dovik in front of the gate. Carrying through with his own momentum, he bent forward, stabbing both of his weapons straight into the wood of the gate, each of the fire pokers sliding smoothly into the wood of either door. The magic placed upon the door was formidable, but ten full minutes of attacking Macille had built an incredible amount of magic into Dovik’s weapons–even he didn’t know what would happen. The wood of the doors warped as magic funneled into the gate, bulging like a bubble on the surface of a frothing lake. Dovik’s magic scorched through the enchantments within the gate, his pure destructive mana overpowering the guards meant to keep it in place. As the last of his mana poured into the doors before him, the wood continued to swell, straining to maintain its shape. Dovik became very aware that he was standing close to an unstable source of powerful magic.
A cry rang out through the crowd in the instant before the entirety of the gate exploded into splinters. The force of the blast sent Dovik’s body sailing back, crashing into the crowd of onlookers and bowling over three men before he fell to the ice and rolled to a stop. The world was silent, a ringing nightmare of blurry images and colors. Dovik staggered sideways, collapsing to the ice before he could find his feet. His eyes spun, trying to focus on any one thing, but fully incapable of doing so.
He became aware of a hand grabbing his shoulder and the feeling of pure life pulsing through him. Slowly, the daze began to lift, and he looked up to see Macille kneeling over him, the man’s gauntleted hand on his shoulder, a green light emanating from his fingers.
Dovik tried to speak but found himself spitting out a mouthful of blood and wooden splinters instead. He was left hacking as his body pushed loose a two-inch long piece of wood that had stabbed into the back of his throat. With a pop, the world burst into sound once more; there was yelling, commands given out in at least three different languages and people running.
“You did it,” Macille complimented, patting Dovik on the back before picking a piece of wood out of his face. “And look, you even kept your weapons.”
Looking down, Dovik found his fingers still tightly curled around the handles of his weapons and couldn’t help but chuckle despite the bloody drool leaking from the side of his mouth. “My mother would kill me if I lost these.”
“You nearly killed yourself,” Macille said, helping Dovik to stand. Dovik found it remarkable just how quickly the man’s magic worked to cure his injuries. He was thankful again that they had given the man that rune in the dungeon. “Did you have any idea that it would explode like that?”
“I thought it would explode in the other direction,” Dovik said.
Macille looked to think for a moment. “I suppose that it really should have. I think you might have that to blame.” The man pointed to a huge iron bar suspended from its fastenings in the stone wall where the gate used to be. Scorched wood still clung to rivets welded to the bar.
Still letting Macille keep ahold of his arm, Dovik stumbled toward the gate, a group already heading that way. At the head of the group, the tall elven noble Dovik had spoken to the day before, Graessa Mor, slapped the butt of a silver spear against the underside of the iron bar. A hideous crack shook the air as the bar sailed free, crashing to the ground just inside the courtyard.
Graessa turned, inclining his head to Lady Kit Auger Forendous, sweeping his arm as if to clear a passage for her. The faux-baroness marched through the hole in the gate, finding three men with swords standing in the thick fog of the courtyard, barring her path. A chorus of yelling echoed through the courtyard as more figures began to appear out of the mist. Dovik, finally making it to the front of the pack pushing toward the gate, found himself caught off-guard by the appearances of those inside. The uniform of the humans inside, the make of their clothes and the fact that they all seemed to have the same sun-kissed complexion, made them appear as if they were a single family. He spotted others, the odd elf and dwarf among their number, but they appeared far more homogenous than he had expected.
A man appeared from the fog, carrying a heavy ax in his hand, his green hair hanging in loose strands over his face as he marched forward. “So, you seek conflict!” the man roared, hefting his ax.
To the sides of Lady Forendous, her retinue of elven nobles stepped forward, a few retainers among them. Dovik spotted Macille’s brother there, standing sentinel in front of the onyx-haired woman he had noticed before. Unease settled in Dovik’s stomach as the press of men and women around him grew denser. To the back of the group, people were hurrying up the road in pairs or groups of three, adding to the swell trying to move into the courtyard.
“I seek your surrender,” Lady Forendous said, her words the perfectly schooled Castinian taught in the high places of learning, the kind that was spoken only by kings and queens. Despite her command of the language, Lady Forendous could not keep an air of annoyance out of her voice, as if speaking the language made her want to vomit. “Your band of beggars and starved men can not stand against us. Look, we already outnumber you two to one, and you have no warrior among you who is a match for myself or even the lowliest of my retainers. I’m certain your brother can attest to that.”
The man with the ax ground his teeth, the leather of his ax whining as his fingers squeezed tight around its haft. A tall woman standing behind the man laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. A long moment passed as the axman stared at the kressin. The man’s face set and he began to march forward, ignoring the surprised cries that rose up behind him. The man was by no means the greatest in stature among the odd humans inside the courtyard, but standing before Lady Forendous, he might as well have been a giant.
“You seek our surrender,” the man said through gritted teeth. “You are a woman that attacks unprovoked. Your tongue could not produce honest words if even the gods demanded them from you.”
“Your gods know better than to stand against my people,” Lady Forendous said, unfazed by the man seething in anger before her. “Surrender now, and I shall not kill any of your clan or the others that thought to hold the gate against us. All we wish to do is enter the tower and continue on our way.”
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Anger boiled in the man’s face as he stared down at the woman. On either side of Lady Forendous, her group of elven nobility held their hands close to their weapons, ready to cut the man down at the first sign of an attack. The whine of leather on the man’s weapon cut through the air, the wind seeming to finally still for the first time. Flecks of snow in the axman’s beard caught the light, and Dovik could see the moment he knew he had been defeated. With a snarl, the man threw aside his ax, letting it clatter to the icy stone of the courtyard.
“I, Coli Tempestus, yield to you,” he spat.
Lady Forendous quirked her head to the side, looking up at the man. “Kneel.”
“The Warriors of the Burning Snow do not kneel–”
“Kneel!” Lady Forendous yelled into the man’s face. From his distance, Dovik could see the air itself distort as Lady Forendous unleashed her soul presence, something that should have been impossible as far as Dovik knew. He was still in the first rank; there should be no way that he could see soul presences with his naked eye. What kind of presence must this woman have that even he could see it?
The man named Coli attempted to fight against the crushing magic that bore down on him with his own soul presence, but his defenses were quickly overwhelmed. A terrible snap pierced through the cold air as Coli’s left leg seemed to collapse in on itself, sending the man to a knee with a scream of agony. To the eyes of Lady Forendous, this was not enough, and she continued to pour her magic down on the man. Next, his left arm wrenched as he held himself on his hands and knees. Coli cried out again as he fell face first into the ice, his nose snapping, his blood joining and mixing with the crimson stain already on the spot where he stood. Lady Forendous brought her boot down on the back of the man’s head, cracking the cobblestones where he lay shaking in his agony.
“That is your place cur. It would seem that you have forgotten it. Perhaps your sponsors were too lenient, letting you think you could raise your station,” Lady Forendous cackled as she pressed the man’s head into the ground. For a moment, she cast her glare at the shadow of the tower looking out of the fog, sneering up at its edifice. She looked to Graessa, placidity on her face once more as the distortions in the air receded. “Break the ones inside the courtyard. Attempt not to kill any, but if it is unavoidable then so be it.”
“My lady,” Graessa Mor tried, his eyes wide in surprise. “Far be it for me to correct your personage.”
“Yes,” Lady Forendous said, halting the man before he could say more. “It would be far, much too far, above your station to seek to advise me or correct my order.”
The tall, willowy woman inside the courtyard stepped forward. “You gave your word, kressin! You besmirch your honor so easily!”
“There is no dishonor in breaking truth to your kind,” Lady Forendous shot back. “We will not kill you in order to avoid making trouble for our hosts, but we shall not allow you to continue in this contest. Line up dogs and take your beating. Our healers will make certain that you do not die.”
Graessa Mor held up a hand, motioning for the group of onlookers that began pressing forward. Inside the courtyard, the men and women there looked between each other, some tossing their weapons to the ice while others prepared for a fight. Despite her words, Dovik knew that the Lady Forendous was looking for a fight. She would not have beaten her foe so horribly after accepting his surrender otherwise.
As the retinue around Lady Forendous began to move the group forward to the gate, a sickening, squelching sound cut through the dead air. All eyes turned back toward Lady Forendous as a bloody gasp escaped her mouth. On his knees before her, Coli smiled up at the woman that had ruined his arm and leg, his one good hand stabbing straight through her. In the hand that had punched straight through the woman, Coli held a dark liver the color of gangrenous skin that dripped orange blood onto the ice. A dark power began to form around Lady Forendous, her retainers leaping forward, but before anything could stop him, Coli roared, swinging the woman’s small body sideways to crash into the broken gate housing with a bone-shattering crack.
The first to reach Coli as he smiled, looking on at the body of the woman he had shattered, was Kendon Esfelle. With one hand smeared in an iridescent orange blood, the other a twisted and ruined mockery, he ignored the hammer swinging for his head. The hammer blow landed on Coli’s face, jerking his head sideways. A snap broke through the air, and Coli tumbled back, falling still on the ice. Then, all hell broke loose.
Jess whirled as she ran through the fog looking for Samielle. Beams of light all the colors of the rainbow strobed through the courtyard as the group outside streamed in through the broken gate. A few among her group already ran forward to meet the enemy head on, but the overwhelming tide pushed them into the ground. Yelling echoed from the fog all around her, but worst of all, in her flight away from the gate she had found herself lost.
She ran into the fog, her eyes picking out the sparks of magic in the cloud of gray, herding her away from the indiscriminate magical decimation. The side of her foot collided with a raised lip of stone, and she barely managed to catch herself before she could spill over. Her hand touched down on a symbol embedded into a stone platform raised three inches off the ground, the symbol glowing faintly with magic. Jess recognized the spot; she stood at the corner of the raised platform in the center of the courtyard. She could see the steps leading up to the tower. As the roar of battle continued behind her, she could see more of the symbols spark to life.
As they had thought, once there were a hundred people in the courtyard, all of the symbols would be active. She needed to find Samielle before that happened. They could escape the chaos into the tower together.
Sparking danger creeped up along Jess’s spine, and she turned, her chakram swinging out toward the enemy she detected at her back. Without the sense for danger that her Dance Essentia afforded her, the strike of a hammer might have crushed her spine. The swing carried more force in it than she could turn with her thin blade, and the head of the hammer glanced off her shoulder as she rolled back. A sting like acid soaked into Jess’s shoulder as she rolled to her feet, but she grit her teeth against the burning pain.
A man stepped out of the haze of the fog, the same man that had killed Coli with his hammer. Kendon stepped forward onto the platform of glowing runes, sparing a glance down at the symbol lighting up beneath his foot as he leveled his hammer at Jess. There was no pity in his eyes, no emotion of any kind. The shadows that clung to the ice seemed to leap up toward him, each step pulling more ethereal darkness out of the ground to start climbing up his legs, pooling into his back and stretching away like to great wings of night.
Jess sprang forward, her weapon singing through the air as she struck at the joint between the man’s armor in his leg. Before her blow could land, a wash of burning pain stole over her, stinging her eyes, feeling as if fire had been poured on her. That time, Jess could not help but scream, her cries of pain mixing with the rest hidden in the mist. A solid hunk of metal landed against her chest as her swinging chakram caught only the air. Jess felt her feet leave the cool stone, the next sensation being her back colliding with the unforgiving staircase.
She blinked through the burning tears, seeing the man approach her, swinging his hammer back and forth in the air as it dripped a sizzling liquid onto the ground. The man held a shield in his left hand now, a magical construct of green metal, emblazoned with the laughing face of a devil. Jess watched as the nightmare walked her way; still, no hint at sympathy on his placid face.
Three steps before Kendon could reach her, a burning streak fell from the sky like a lightning bolt. Despite Samielle’s sudden appearance, Kendon caught the burning mace on his shield, the collision of the two making Kendon slide back two feet before he could arrest himself. Jess looked up at Samielle as the man huffed standing on the stone, his wings flapping behind his back.
“You will stay away from her!” Samielle roared.
Kendon Esfelle, light gone from his eyes, a swarm of shadows gathering and crawling over his body, turned and levelled his hammer toward Samielle. The dark wings on the man’s back flexed, the air crackling like lightning around him. Samielle brought his mace up ready to charge the man, when a beam of sunlight cut through the haze and straight through Samielle’s side, leaving a clean hole the size of a gold piece through his stomach.
“Sam!” Jess cried out, trying to rise.
“We will do as we please,” said an elven woman as she stepped up onto the stone platform to join the fray. Her glossy black hair whipped in the rising wind, the staff she leveled at Samielle glowing with white fire.
Light began to coalesce in the head of the staff as she pointed it toward at Samielle’s head. Before she could put a hole through him, Jess watched as an invisible wave of corrosion washed over Samielle, his hair curling as it was singed, his skin steaming as it turned red and began to burn. In the next instant, the form of Kendon had smashed into Samielle, carrying him off into the sky, vanishing into the fog.
Coriander watched as the two flew out of sight. She looked down at the lizardkin woman laying injured against the staircase in front of her. “Boys,” she said, unable to stop a laugh from escaping her. Coriander moved her staff to point at the woman’s heart. At least, she hoped that was where this creature’s heart would be. How was she to know the anatomy of such an odd creature? “Unfortunately, you chose the wrong side.”
As Coriander released the magic held in her staff, she found her beam of light pulled aside, raised into the air as it cut a line through the stone of the staircase rising before her. She blinked, turning to her side, finding another hand on her staff.
Jess saw the shock run through the homicidal elf as she recognized the woman standing next to her.
“This doesn’t belong to you,” Charlene said, jerking Coriander closer while the woman still tried to process what was happening. Charlene’s right hand engulfed in a blaze of fire as terrible as hell rose, slapping into Coriander’s face. An explosion of dragonfire boomed through the courtyard like the angry scream of a god, its force blowing the fog back from Charlene. The concussive force washing over Jess overwhelmed her, and the last thing she saw before unconsciousness claimed her was Charlene standing on the stone, clear of the fog, a look of murderous rage on her face.