Mukyrt Menshen squeezed out another fanatical laugh. A death wail. Cyril wanted to ask it more questions. He wanted to scrape everything useful out of the monster’s head before discarding everything else. His rage warred with his good sense, hopelessly mixing him up.
“Your reign will end, creatures of the other side!” it warned. “The rightful gods will assume this world once more!”
The three arrows of light that skewered the monster flickered and shifted. Menshen was worming its way out of the spellcraft even as it spoke. Cyril’s own injury howled for attention. He couldn’t tell what Menshen had attacked, or how grave his injury was. The monster had opened his stomach from the inside out, popping it like a bloody zit. Even with the other warden's heroics, both Ysidro and Cyril were still in bad shape. Ysidro’s prison would fade if the old man expired. Spellcraft often failed to linger after the caster’s death.
Interrogation was a fantasy that Cyril could not entertain.
“Your suffering will overshadow my own!” Menshen wailed. “You deign to strike down a servant of the revered-!”
Cyril closed the distance between himself and the monster. He tore his claws across Menshen’s throat and that voice was silenced forever. Cyril stabbed Menshen a few more times just to ensure the thing’s death. It went limp. The sunlight arrows dissipated into faint beams of light rising into the sky. Ysidro must have died.
Cyril felt like he was not far behind. He dismissed his transformation and stumbled towards the closest house that was still intact. Menshen’s power had opened everything inside, cabinets, desks, drawers and doors. Cyril looked for some bandages, but the task demanded too much. He stripped the sheet off of a bed and leaned his open wound against it. He could not shake the sight of that light rejoining the sky. It looked peaceful.
When Cyril finally succumbed to unconsciousness, he was surprised to find his last coherent thoughts lingered on his students. Cyril hoped they were okay.
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Soraya’s head felt like a rung bell. The sensation only worsened when she tried to lift it. Her vision swam. The coldness that had plagued her arm was gone. Someone had tucked her into a bed. She thumbed her cut and felt a cotton bandage there. Soraya was in an undecorated bedroom. A thick, herbal scent plugged her nose. Someone was sitting nearby.
“Don’t try to move,” they said. Soraya disobeyed and turned to see Xin. He felt her cheek and then her forehead. “You’re safe.”
Soraya no longer heard the ringing of the bell tower. The alarm in Lyrique had ended. She could not easily tell how long she had been asleep, but the light outside hadn’t darkened into night. Soraya tried to ask questions, but her mouth was dry and she ended up coughing instead.
“Don’t make too much noise,” Xin said. He was whispering. “Or else-”
The door to the bedroom exploded inward. Wakahn and Piper wouldn’t let the other walk through it first and somehow both managed to squeeze through the narrow frame at once. Xin rolled his eyes and moved out of the way. Soraya didn’t sit up. Her teammates looked injured. Bandages draped Wakahn’s arm and something had singed Piper’s mangled hair. They were alive.
They talked over one another.
“Miss Hadessian! Thank goodness you’re alright-”
“Is that all your blood in the kitchen? You are mad for that-”
“-Xin told us some of what happened. I can’t believe you had to endure such a-”
“-I smoked this horse thing. And there were all these wardens casting crazy magic-”
Piper and Wakahn both tried to start a new story, but glared at the other. Their accounts of the day devolved into arguing with each other and Soraya was forgotten in an instant. It was a relief. She didn’t want to be coddled or nursed. Just hearing the two of them fight again was enough to make her laugh. And then cough again.
“That’s enough,” Xin said. “She needs to rest.”
“No, I don’t.” Soraya broke from her tightly wound bedding and sat up. “Are you okay?”
“The only serious wounds have been to your hand and my ego,” Xin explained. “Drink this.” He handed her the source of that herbal scent. The mug of tea must have cooled from its brewing. The drink was lukewarm and smooth, soothing the rough calluses in her throat. Soraya drank more of it.
“I’m just glad I was right,” Soraya explained. “I had no idea what was happening to you.”
“I’m glad you stayed behind to protect me,” Xin said. “Though in the future, I would insist that you use ink to draw your runes. The boss keeps plenty in his office.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Soraya noticed that Xin had changed clothes. She realized, with some embarrassment, that rolling him into a puddle of blood had probably forever ruined what he had been wearing. Her finger painting had caused another mess. At least this time she wasn’t getting screamed at for it.
“What do you mean?” Soraya asked. “Cyril used blood to draw his rune…”
Xin groaned and made a mental note to scold the older man for his half-baked lessons. “In a pinch, sure. But, you can write the runic language in any medium. Don’t bleed yourself dry in the future. Not over me, at least.”
Soraya’s face might have flushed red if she had the circulation for it. “Sorry,” she said. Xin’s eyes went wide and regretted saying anything. A girl saved his life and all he traded was critique. He almost couldn’t believe he had scolded her. Xin cringed and opened his mouth uselessly. He wanted to swallow all the words he’d let slip out of his stupid mouth.
Wakahn and Piper caught on to the fact and practically jumped down his throat, talking over each other again to yell at Xin. Wakahn admonished the young man’s tactless choice of words. Piper demanded he grovel before the foot of his savior instead of judging her methods. Xin accepted the verbal pummeling. Soraya watched on, embarrassed at first. It didn’t take her long to start laughing again. Xin couldn’t apologize to or thank his hero enough.
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Abine pursued the shadow of a monster overhead. A gwyll had possessed a seagull, morphing the animal into a much larger version of itself. Orange talons trailed under its fanned tail feathers and its bill had been extended into a long javelin. In the chaos of the invasion, it had swooped upon the public, spearing innocent people and pecking at their corpses.
The bulk of the monster incursion had been slain. Mostly by wardens from Migtrolio Marine. Their sorcerers had collaborated with the city guard to arrange for an evacuation and devise a plan to keep the monsters away from civilian crowds. Abine had been taking orders all day, pursuing rogue monsters and bringing them down. She had lost sight of the boss almost as soon as they had arrived in the heart of the battle.
The destruction distracted Abine from following the flying monster. Homes had been broken. Two of the piers had been completely shattered, unmooring the fishing vessels tied to them. A fire threatened to burn the row of bars and restaurants that hosted the night tables all through the summer evenings. Individual monsters were dangerous, but when they gathered into wild packs, destruction couldn’t be prevented. It could barely be contained.
For Abine, these large displays of devastation were not the ones that stuck in her mind. They were horrible, yes, but they were not what jumped to her head when she woke up in the middle of the night. They were not what haunted her in the quiet moments in the bath or eating or doing anything ordinary at all.
A small shoe lay in her path. A child’s. Abine ran over it and looked down. A foot was still inside the shoe, separated from its owner. A child’s. A little girl had her body sundered and would never run with her friends again. Never in the same way. That was if she survived this horror show at all.
“Incoming!”
Abine’s mind had wandered. She had lost the shadow of the gull monster. Another warden picked up the slack and floated next to the bird. He brought his leg down on the monster’s wing and its flight ended. The monster hurtled towards the ground, flapping desperately to defy gravity. The floating warden had vanished. Abine hurried towards the monster’s descent. It extended the broken wing, just enough to catch the air and begin a glide. It was flying too low. Abine snatched it out of the air.
Her transformation wreathed her upper body in white fur and endowed her limbs with incredible strength. Abine pounced on the low-flying monster and shredded its wings. The bird crashed into the ground, making a sound somewhere between a squawk and a cry. It tried to find its footing and flee from Abine. She would not allow it. Her claws pierced the bird’s back, digging into the squishy insides. Black bile seeped from the wounds, staining its white feathers. The monster died in her grip.
Abine heard a rummaging behind her. The occupied shoe was outside of a blazing house. Sounds came from inside the fire, and Abine moved to investigate. A hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“It’s empty,” Knoll said. “I just made sure.”
He was the warden that had shouted at her before. Abine had crossed paths with him a few times during the day’s battle. She’d watched him flit around making for a right nuisance to any monster unlucky enough to find him. Before her, he’d dismissed his transformation and appeared as a human.
Knoll showed what he had pilfered from the burning house. A stuffed rabbit. Its floppy brown ears were singed black and it was missing one of its button eyes. Abine’s shoulders dropped.
“It’s ruined,” Abine said. She accepted the toy tenderly.
“It’s a survivor,” Knoll said. He smiled. “I was hoping you could return it.”
“Abine!” Bu shouted. He had also returned to his human form. Abine couldn't find a scratch on him. Bu stood like an untarnished oasis amidst the wreckage of Lyrique. He smiled with some deep-seated satisfaction. The old man had practically begged her to take him to the fight with her speed. Bu waved at her as he approached. “Looks like we might be through here. State of emergency’s over. Mind giving me a ride back to the guild?”
Abine dismissed her own transformation. Her fights throughout the day had built a palpable mass of exhaustion in her body. She was hungry and thirsty and irate. That last quality was only soothed by Knoll’s unexpected gift. Abine’s back still hurt from the last piggyback ride she’d given the old man. “I’ve still got one more thing to take care of,” she said. She rocked the rabbit doll back and forth once.
Bu raised an eyebrow and examined the pair of wardens before him. The two seemed awfully comfortable so close to one another. Their shoulders scraped together without incident and the old man noticed the boy’s eyes wandering all over Abine after she returned to looking like a lady.
“You two know each other?” Bu asked.
“No,” Abine answered. She responded very quickly and did not introduce herself to the apparent stranger. She walked away to find the doll’s owner. Knoll didn’t answer, but smiled politely at Bu. The old man puzzled over what he’d seen, but didn’t press either of the wardens for answers. He complained, to no one in particular, about having to walk all the way back to the guild and got the journey underway.
He passed the crowds of evacuees all returning to a half-broken Lyrique. The wardens had repelled the monsters. It was their part to let the real people rebuild and recover.