The blades surmounting my shields weren’t enough to chew through their armour. I hung in the mouth of the alleyway halfway up the building, fighting for my life. We were still moving but we had slowed, slowed too much. They took advantage of us when the weave around the Winter Door suddenly dropped, sending me and Shallowlie into spasms, almost halting our flight. The deathknights were hacking at my blue lines with swords that streamed purple essence into the wind, striking with their spears that caused even my strongest outer defences to wither away. I was doing my best to stretch my barriers up and down into the empty spaces above and below me, and behind me, her back to mine, Shallowlie was doing the same. Her ghostly eldritches were barely serving to distract the deathknights, and despite their immaterial nature they too were being destroyed when our foes chopped them down.
Sandwiched between the two of us were a male magister-wizard whose name I hadn’t picked up yet, a dark-haired, dark-eyed youth, and Fangmoon, the young druidess panting in my ear.
She was scared – we all were. She’d fought the vampires, the ghouls without an issue. But this was something else entirely.
Maybe we should’ve followed Zakimel – should’ve flown upwards. Within twenty seconds we’d been trapped, and though they couldn’t penetrate my circle, not with seven different stars rotating inside it, I couldn’t harm them either, not much, not enough. In a matter of a dozen explosive heartbeats they’d swarmed around us, stopping us from fleeing again. We were being compacted into a space that couldn’t hold four bodies. This was it, the end – and we had to be faring better than most of our companions. Most of them were probably dead already; we had two sorcerers here, after all. The three enchanters I’d left behind must’ve been the first to go, as the telepathic links had dropped almost instantly…
Even as I prepared to die, I felt the agony in my chest, knowing I’d left the enchanters to a fate worse than death.
Was that what was in store for each of us? Transition to one of them, one of the living dead? Was it not enough that Mund lose a champion, but it had to also gain a powerful enemy at the same time?
Would it be worth testing the reports, attempting to step through Etherium or one of the other planes, seeking escape?
But if I changed… if I found a way to enter Mund, Evil Kas might get up to, well, anything. Might be responsible for…
No. I couldn’t think it. They wouldn’t desire that, anyway, would they? Wouldn’t we be competition? Surely they’d just dispose of us in some ordinary manner, reanimate us as zombies if they really wanted to. Let our souls travel on.
Our souls… the enchanters’ souls… were they spared? Or were their souls bound to the shadowland now, for easy access back to their bodies?
I couldn’t take it, bear it.
This was going to end, right here, and in our favour.
I poured all that hatred and disgust, panic and pressure, into a single force-blade. I brought it sweeping around, preparing to watch it glance off the nearly-impenetrable armour.
“That’s more like it,” Zel said fiercely.
It chewed deep, this time, shearing off a deathknight’s arm at the elbow. He made a sound, then, nothing more than a grunt, echoing horribly through his non-existent flesh, his staring skull. But it was a grunt of shock, of dismay. I saw the way he looked aside, as if to seek assistance, seek a plausible explanation for how this meagre boy-sorcerer had ripped off his limb.
It didn’t matter. I heard his expression of dissatisfaction and it quadrupled my resolve; I was extending the blade with pure confidence now, whipping it around again –
It broke three spear-tips free, broke a gauntleted hand – and buried itself in the neck of Sir Grunty.
Sir Grunty became Sir Headless, helm and skull flying free, his spinal cord left protruding visibly like a fat bony finger in the gap between his shoulder-plates.
The wizard threw a globular gout of searing heat into the path of his zombie-horse, immolating it instantly, sending it crashing out of the nethermist to the alley floor.
Shallowlie loosed a scream of defiance and hurled her own blade into the deathknights hemming her in, achieving some success.
Fangmoon was still panting, still watching, unwilling to enter the fray. A decision I well-understood. It would almost certainly have meant her death, arch-druid or not. Even her bark-like skin and unbreakable bones would be annihilated by a nethernal weapon like those the deathknights wielded. I’d seen what Winterprince had done to the heretical druid in Firenight Square. Fangmoon was vulnerable. All too vulnerable. The shields were her only option.
If we could’ve found time to put a weave together – if we’d had two moments’ respite – I could’ve started working on their nethermist again, finding a way to transfigure its patterns in my mind…
We turned a corner, then another; I was facing backwards, but I doubted even my sorceress colleague could tell where she was going.
When Shallowlie’s shield failed she took a burning blade in the shoulder, and the half a dozen who’d gotten ahead of us grouped up, set their lances and charged her.
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“I can do this,” the druidess pressing against my back thought, and I heard her – so the enchanters were still alive…? Why had they dropped the link earlier, then?
I turned my body, still looking at the company of deathknights no more than three seconds from smashing into Shallowlie – and I knew I had no other option.
I drank deep of the danger-sense, swallowing as much of Zel’s power as I could.
Fangmoon had put her hand against the wound in Shallowlie’s shoulder, and I flew around them in a tight arc, bringing up my hardened force-blade –
It foiled the first deathknight, spilling him out of the cloud to the rubble below, wounded.
The other five merely tightened their formation, continuing, aiming for my heart and head. I knew that my shield couldn’t take a hit like that – I started bringing my spike around to break the lances but I was too slow, and –
And the satyr’s power availed me. I felt it surge into me, loosening my limbs, reflexes that were completely separate from Zel’s danger-sense.
I reached through the circle and caught the closest spear-tip between my hands. Fairy-healing reassured me the blood pouring from my palms would stop eventually. Satyr-strength let me hold tight, leverage sylph-flight to flip my body over the lance, turn horizontally in the air to meet them –
Sorcerer’s-hunger drank the amethyst power in the spear-tip – and then it was nothing but sharp iron –
Sorcerer’s-shield arrested their motion – letting the horses continue beneath me, sending the middle four deathknights flying back out of their saddles, snapping their stirrups –
The one nearest me as I hurtled through the air – I surged towards him, screaming – his lance was twelve inches from piercing Shallowlie’s head – thrusting the unicorn-horn into his hauberk at the neck, which gave way like the heavy armour was paper and the insubstantial horn was the world’s sharpest knife.
I followed him as he too tumbled from the saddle, glitter pouring out of his helm, and I knew I had to stop, had to turn back, catch the sixth of the charging deathknights –
Fangmoon had become a huge flying tiger, striped silver and black, and she pounced through the air, hopping over Shallowlie. She batted aside the riderless horses, closing her tremendous maw around the remaining deathknight and wresting him from the saddle.
Shallowlie seemed to have been healed, and she was slowly erecting her barriers once more; as I watched them stutter into life again, I saw over her shoulder that the magister-wizard behind her was about to be taken apart. More deathknights were arriving to reinforce the ones who’d followed our small band as we fled – the ones I’d knocked from their saddles had landed heavily but they hadn’t been dissuaded; they were regrouping, calling their zombie-steeds back to them…
I summoned my atiimogrix down there, heard his ridiculous laughter drifting up to me as he started to engage the deathknights.
“Come on!” I mind-shouted at the others, and we increased our speed.
As we threw together another hastily-constructed weave and the arch-wizard covered our retreat with more lava, I looked upwards, pondering it again.
Where are we even going? Should we go up? Would we be able to see the others do you think?
“I don’t know, but –”
Zel quietened as Fangmoon came through:
“Feychilde! Your hands! Give them to me, quickly!”
I’d hardly noticed – the lacerations were still too fresh, too biting to ache much – but I was dripping blood into the streets as we flew. That could have been a bad idea. Not that the deathknights needed it to track us right now – a horribly-silent swarm of them were only a few paces behind us, following right on our heels.
The druidess flew alongside me, a dropping-massive metallic tiger sailing the chill airs, seemingly with little difficulty.
The wizards’ spells were more powerful than I’d considered – that, or this magister had bolstered her augmentations.
“Press your hands on me.”
“You can’t do this from a distance?”
“Not that kind of wound!”
I’d already been reaching out for a twist of force from Shallowlie – as soon as I tied it and passed it on, I reached out and touched Fangmoon’s fur on her right flank. I felt a tingling sensation, like I’d fallen asleep on my hands and they were just waking up again, and a murky greenness surrounded them.
Suddenly, a voice in my head, whispering:
“Stop… talking… with… minds…”
“Wh-who was that?” the arch-magister asked fearfully, still hurling more fire at the deathknights behind us despite the shakiness in his voice.
I had absolutely no idea – the voice was so low the message was almost indecipherable, never mind identifying the source.
Fangmoon said almost the same thing as the magister.
Then, a little louder:
“It’s… Rosedawn… Just… stop… no!…”
The last word, the ‘no!’, was whispered in a tone of abject terror.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“Stop using the links!” I called to the others. “We have to talk out loud!”
There was no point keeping my voice down, the deathknights were almost on top of us again and we were lost; we might’ve been circling around to the same place we were ambushed for all I knew.
“Damn it!” Fangmoon roared, the daunting feline maw making the sound far more dreadful.
“Dey ha’ been listeni’ to us?” Shallowlie asked.
“Tracking us through the link!” I almost snarled it. “Killed the enchanters!”
“Killed them?” Fangmoon repeated. “What do you mean, killed them! Oh no…”
I suddenly felt an awful anger rising up, like the magma the wizard was throwing, as though my belly were the pit of some vast volcano undergoing a tremendous upheaval, spewing rage up into my chest, lapping higher and higher within me, threatening to burst out of my chest except it couldn’t – it could only rise, climb until I felt I would weep it from my eyes and I –
This was our fault – we should have known, from the way the link stopped working – we should have thought, thought something –
I felt myself detaching my hands from Fangmoon’s fur – the green light was fading and they were healed now, I knew. I had work to do instead.
I halted in the air.
No way to speak, communicate this plan. I screwed my eyes shut.
The others faltered. That was okay.
No need to run. Easier this way.
Zel didn’t say no this time. She watched me from within, a lump of morbid fascination inside my soul.
In the darkness granted by my closed eyes, I sensed the undead. I sensed the unliving horses, the burning weapons.
I let the deathknights reach me, and lowered the unicorn-horn towards them, meeting them head-on.
Even with my eyes shut I saw the tidal wave of golden light that burst from my forehead, the miniature sun that blinded me.
As if from a vast distance I experienced myself screaming, screaming in the air and barely holding myself aloft – then I sensed the furred limbs of the druid curl about me, felt the winds of wizardry bear me away.