AMETHYST 5.4: DREAD VAAHN
“That experience? Its like shall never pass before your consciousness ever again. All experience is singular. No moment is ever repeated. They ask me why I cannot reproduce under laboratory conditions the speeds I attain during an Incursion. My answer? It is a different experience. What else am I to do? What else can I say? Many are the laws of nature that bend before my will. But I cannot break my own nature. I am not a god.”
– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall
Shadows of souls, dressed in corpses. Mockeries of men. Wights.
I felt the anger welling up again, the wrath of Gilaela, now a living coil of white-gold energy inside my breast, my head, my horn –
They turned to face us, snarled their warnings, but it was too late for those who’d spotted us, and those who were roused by their cries. When we moved, we rode the storm-winds above a river of lava. When we met them head-on, it was with those who could not be seen except by the death they left in their wake. It was with the demons of hell and the silent servants of Shallowlie, the glowing blue lines that only the two of us could perceive, tearing invisibly through rank after rank. A vast white wolf, a huge silvery tiger, a tremendous snake sixty feet long and six feet thick, and a set of putrid vultures.
And, most importantly of course, the savage squirrels of the otherworld, our hidden weapon.
The wights were cut down in droves. We left the weave on the eastern edge of the courtyard and moved in with bladed shielding – we didn’t want to push the wights away, didn’t want to encourage them to flee through the streets connected to the courtyard’s far side. We wanted them here. We wanted to smash them, now. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, Timesnatcher and the other diviners were already engaged on the far side of the plaza, hemming them in.
But it wasn’t going to be so simple. They were fast to react, and powerful in those reactions. They didn’t have vampiric grace, but that didn’t stop those at the edges leaping thirty feet up the sides of buildings, taking handholds in the crumbled brick-work. It didn’t stop them springing back down on top of our eldritches, pulverising Shallowlie’s bone-golems – they even landed on our vultures when they descended to attack, and tore them into vast rotten pieces before we could bring our scythed chariot to bear on the crowd.
Khikiriaz, my bintaborax, Shallowlie’s incorporeal horde – these eldritches were a different matter. They couldn’t be touched, and fought with ease, destroying hundreds per minute. We also commandeered dozens of the citizens to fight against their own kind, actively hindering those who were attempting to flee – or mount resistance against – our onrushing tide of carnage. The wights registered as bound, but the will governing them was too weak to resist our influences – unfortunately, we both filled-up on them quickly, and could only bind more as the ones we’d taken into our control were annihilated.
My undead-finding senses were well-attuned now, working as acutely as my sense of orientation (currently horizontal) or sense of temperature (dropping chilly). The information was being conveyed directly into my consciousness, and I was instantly aware of the small group of wights that had turned against the tide, not retreating or regrouping but coming right at us.
“Shallowlie!” I cried over the tumult, the booms of wizards’ fireballs and the shouts in Netheric of their disintegrating targets. “Shallowlie, look!”
I pointed at them. Men and women, well-dressed, like the vampire-lord in Oldtown. Most of the crowd seemed to be dressed in clothing they’d worn in life, now tatty, but these stood out.
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They entered my hexagonal shield…
Illusions.
I’d seen this trick before. They –
“No, they’re real.”
… Wight-lords?
“Eight of them.”
The lack of rebuttal, the tacit agreement with my assessment, chilled me to the core.
Thrilled me, making my neck-hairs stand on end.
Eight archmages, their powers essentially robbed from them. Wights were no spell-casters – they had an icy touch, so the tales went –
But then, these lords had walked right through my defences without them even bending, buckling. And I got the impression they’d crossed the barrier with some serious ill-intent in mind – something to do with the way they were looking at me like they wanted to see what new appendage they could add to the effigy with my innards.
Even my reinforced circle would be empty air to them. They didn’t have to break my defences, like the vampire-lord had done so easily, like the arch-demon the night of the Incursion. They could just pass through.
Mockeries of men. Shadows of souls.
Zel blurted: “Imminent danger!”
I didn’t need that warning. Satyr reflexes handled it for me, moving me to the side as the first few pounced at me; the same eldritch musculature let me grip the clawed hand that came at my face, my fingers strong-enough to press into the frozen undead flesh, grind the supernatural creature’s wrist –
It – he – continued his motion and I continued mine in the opposite direction, so I snapped his bones at the elbow. The limb was too tough to come free; I flung him around like a rag-doll by his floppy arm, bringing him crashing into the ground.
Flooded with a feeling of catharsis, I used a burst of flight to spring over him, and, sensing the next coming at me, instinctively kicked out as I twisted.
I felt my heel connect with the next wight, whose own attacks had only just gone over my head. Then I had chance to look back, glimpse her falling heavily to the paved floor, long white hair streaming.
I could get used to this, I thought.
It was somewhat regretfully that I drew a pair of explosive daggers.
“Leaf!” Timesnatcher had to be in haste if he was using the link. “It’s Dimdweller!”
The gargantuan white wolf flickered and seemed to disappear; then a white osprey descended from a point somewhere close to where her belly had been located, disappearing beyond visibility into an area thick with fighting.
The thought of the dwarf, dying – I remembered Shadowcrafter, the dwarf-wight he’d obtained somewhere and used against me when I challenged him – and suddenly I didn’t need the daggers anymore.
The curiosity died away and the fire reignited.
When the next wight-lord came at me I headbutted him with the horn, transforming him into a pile of glitter, glowing as it cascaded on the frigid breeze and was whipped away.
The ones who were recovering from their initial attempts to strike me down, and the ones who’d stayed at the back, watching – I saw the way they all recoiled in terror at the destruction of their comrade.
How long till he returns from that? I asked.
“Hard to say. That attack is something else altogether.”
“Why thank you,” Gilaela said brightly.
“… My pleasure… Anyway, you could be looking at minutes, or millennia, even here… Not that they know for sure.”
I stared at the wights a few seconds longer, while they were frozen in indecision, then I made the choice for them.
I spread my wings and hurtled at the nearest dead archmage.
That did it; they broke, turning to flee.
Smiling grimly, I pursued. I was faster than them, and I had plenty of daggers.
The closest was boomed into non-existence, then the next, and the next –
Just as they thought they would escape, Shallowlie descended in front of them, serene undead mask taunting them.
“You ah noh going anywheh,” she said.
She threw a new weave to me, an inverted one, and we tied it in place before the four remaining wight-lords reached her, leaving them enclosed in the circle between us.
Even a single link, and suddenly the shield was impenetrable. The first wight went for her and was repulsed, thrust back with the same force with which he surged forwards, smashing him bodily into the ground, cracking the stone slab beneath him.
An immeasurably-brief moment later, two other wights tested it, only slightly more-cautiously than the first – they knew if they were going to break through, it would be now.
But, unbeknownst to them, the weave was already eight shields thick.
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