Chapter One Hundred and One
The Roaring Heart
Michael, Lain, Sidney, and Jack stood at the front of their small force and watched as the entire army of Nikereus pounded toward them, chanting Fiend-Speak war-songs in an ominous monotone.
The sabotage teams were supposed to move in, inflict their damage, then join up with the Jack’s distraction force. As of thirty seconds prior, Rose’s team, Nicky’s, team, Magnus, Nydol, and Karmine’s teams had all returned. But not Oliver’s.
Sidney stepped out toward the approaching array, taking deep breaths as the ground trembled beneath her feet. She turned her back on her enemies, an act of Mhairian war-culture as old as the empire itself.
It was said Mhairians began every battle, even down to one-on-one duels, with their backs turned, as a sign of respect, for it would be the only time their enemies should see them in a fashion of retreat. From the moment swords were drawn to moment victory is declared, Mhairians faced their foe, even if fate decided that the victory is not their own.
Sidney looked out over her array of soldiers and to Jack himself. In his full Riniglacian Javen armour, despite how much he’d let it wear and dull, in the moonlight, he was unmistakable. His armour shone like starlight, the way Brightsteel was supposed to. She’d grown up on stories about the Mace of Mhairia.
She never told him, of course. After all, he’d spent all his time spinning a long web of lies, and then despite all that, he kept the armour. Most people who wanted to bury their past did a more thorough job of it. Sidney supposed he was honour-bound or something of that ilk, the way most Riniglacians were, or perhaps that’s just what he’d say if the truth ever came out. In fact, the young Mhairian woman just thought it was who he was. The armour was as much a part of Jack as the scars beneath them.
Sidney caught his eye and became aware that the oncoming army was close behind them, so she sighed and smiled as she pulled off her helmet, let her allies look upon her face.
“I spent most of my time growing up thinking about heroes. About warriors, discoverers, inventers, and adventurers!” she called loudly. “The problem was that by the time I grew up, I realised all those things I read were just the parts people wanted to talk about. The great moments of valour and justice and righteousness... but conveniently, they didn’t talk about the traitors. The cowardice. The lies and the schemes and the desperation. Makes for a shit story, all that.”
The masses chuckled somewhat, doing their best to focus on her, despite the horde nearly a hundred paces away.
“But the truth is, things like bravery aren’t badges we take off and put on when it suits us. No... it’s a piece of us. It lives in our hearts, just like our fear, just like our love and hate, it’s the steel within us. It can break. And sometimes it does.”
The footsteps thundered even louder, and Sidney pushed her quarterstaff into the mud as the rain thickened and poured and sang upon her armour. Unarmed, she stepped toward her battalion and shook her head.
“But not always. Sometimes it weathers all odds. It bears through the darkest nights out. Sometimes it withstands the greatest hardships and the cruellest evils. Sometimes… our steel-” she touched her heart fiercely “-shines clearer than the gold in a polished crown, and sometimes it rings out louder than the bells of Riinin cathedrals. Sometimes, it deafens, even the foulest fucking roar!” she shouted, pointing venomously at the approaching Obthraien army, and the Legacy crowd bellowed in response.
She continued, shouting, “Our hearts are the iron inside the forge! We are not cold and lifeless and waiting to break like those fuckers out there!”
Michael and Lain raised their weapons, screaming alongside everyone else.
“Our minds are wreathed in the pain and hardship of our world!” she cried, stepping back and ripping her weapon from the ground. “The pain that makes us who we are! One that they couldn’t rival with a cycle in a torturer’s dungeon! It is a pain we carry! A pain we have the privilege to carry! So, I’ve got one thing to say and two things to ask!”
Sidney ripped her quarterstaff out of the mud and raised it high.
The hundred and more soldiers screamed, brandishing their swords.
“I will carry every single one of you if I have to!” she bellowed and then in amongst the roars of her friends, she asked, “Will you carry me?”
The Legacies roared and stomped their feet, rivalling the very quake brought on by a hundred times as many enemies.
“Look to each other! Look at your friends! Your family! Will you carry them?”
The voices echoed out like a stadium, and even the furthest stars in the sky that night could hear them.
“Voe Armoni!” she roared so loud her throat went raw.
“Ka aey!” the battalion screamed back.
For the briefest moment, Nikereus’ ten thousand mind-warped immortals, looked upon the contingent of only one hundred and fifty Draendicans. And in their hearts, they were completely and utterly aware of the fact that they could not die. And yet they feared death anyway.
Jack stepped forward, raising his mace as the army roared within forty feet of the Legacies and he shouted, “Light-Casters at the ready! Legacies, reinforce!”
Michael and about a dozen others, including Marken the axeman, stepped forward with their palms up high as the entire battalion laid their hands on the shoulders of those in front of them, fastening their strength like links in a mystic chain.
As Michael watched the horde of Mountain Wolves and Shade Hounds tear toward him, he felt the energy of the hundred or more soldiers moved through his muscles, and while a pain lingered somewhere deeper in his body, he could scarcely feel it above the weightlessness of his own strength. He looked to his fingertips, and saw multi-coloured lights streaming through his veins, leaving him almost silent in awe.
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The very breath Michael took was alive within his lungs, and the rain falling on his flesh was warmed by the heat coursing through his veins. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the orchestra of power, rippling through his allies.
In the grey light beneath the clouds, as a storm raged through them, they looked like gods.
Jack’s face came alight with veins burning through his eyes as he bellowed into the night, “Engage!”
Michael’s head snapped forward as an arcane tidal wave flooded out from their palms, slamming into the vanguard of Creations and driving many into the ground, forcing others back, and plainly obliterating many under the raw strength of the divine light.
The entire army staggered as the back-ranks crumpled up against the halted frontlines, and Jack screamed above the noise of the cries and shrieks, “Volley! Volley! Volley!”
Bow archers, spearfolk, and crossbow rangers launched their projectiles through the night sky as the hurricane of light held the monsters at bay. The rain of steel fell with a chorus of screeches and bellowing cries as dozens of creatures melted into the soil.
The endless sea of forces caught behind Nikereus’ frontline roared and kept moving forward, forcing their own vanguard into the vaporising Legacy-light.
High upon the dark roof of the keep, Jack spotted three ballista-operators waving two torches each in a wide arc, and the commander rapidly cast vocal magic, tinting his eyes blue as he shouted, “Commence phase three!” so all the Legacies in amidst the madness could hear him.
The thin Legacy force kept up their rain of arrow and crossbow-bolt fire, while the magic-wielders at the face of their array gave a brighter surge to their Arcancy, filling the entire valley with the agonising screams of Shanii. As they did so, the Draendicans shifted and turned, slowly marching toward the main gate whilst forcing the hordes of Creations away under the strength of their combined power.
Michael’s hand was growing numb as the collective, raw magic surged into his fingertips, and no more than five strides away, he could see the feral, enraged faces of hundreds of Obthraie as well as dozens of Shade Hounds and Mountain Wolves, all unable to advance through the mystic power.
Michael turned as his skin and muscles began to burn and screamed over the roar of war to Jack, hastily reloading a crossbow before he fired it into the skull of a charging Mountain Wolf. “Jack! Signal the gate-crew!”
*****
As the massing armies of Nikereus marched off toward Jack and Sidney’s distraction force, Sarah and Aroha, followed by three other soldiers, moved low in the dark across the muddy fields.
The first Lillian, the fortress restorician. She was dressed in light, dark leather armour and her shoulder-length hair was neatly tied back. Beside her was Kirkley, a young man with a closely trimmed, no nonsense haircut, serious eyes, and a heavy Riinin chain around his neck. The last of them was a young wall guard, named Karmony. Her curly red hair jostled in the wind as she ran and her kind, round face was filled further with dread every step of the way.
The five of them moved at a hushed pace as they splashed through mud, nimbly darting over the crushed wildlands as lightning flashed through the sky and thunder raised the hair on their necks a moment after.
As they ran, Kirkley had one hand on his cross-guarded broadsword, and the other on his Riinin chain, to keep it from jingling as they moved. Under his breath he spoke, though the words were merely for his comfort. His face was cleanly shaven and his chestnut eyes, flecked with green, looked black in the shadows.
Sarah glanced at find him looking over his shoulder as he ran. She held her gaze on him as until the young man looked back and saw her, colouring slightly embarrassed.
“Just worried about Marken,” Kirkley muttered, his words softly ringing with his Leverest accent.
Sarah nodded understandingly and said, “Come on,” turning them left toward one of the few larger war-tents in amongst Nikereus’ empty encampment. A hundred paces or so away and with no immediate enemies in sight, Sarah picked up the pace, knowing time was no luxury.
They bee-lined for a shadowy, black-canvas pavilion, closed off on all sides with a dark flag flying from the peak of its roof. The flapping banner was white, with a simply-designed pyramid on its face, though in the dark all details were obscured.
As they approached, a small squadron of six Obthraie warriors came marching from the other side of the pavilion, blank of face, holding tall, stone spears in their grip.
Lillian grabbed Aroha and Sarah, whispering, “Stop! Up ahead.”
The Legacies got low to the ground and Aroha gritted her teeth, irate by her poor night-vision as she loaded an arrow and whispered, “Thanks. I know you’d probably rather be back at the compound, but you’re handy to have around.”
With the ends of Lillian’s bob-cut pulled back, the sharp features in her face made her look hawk-like. She lowered herself onto her elbows and drew her fists up. Onto her fingers, she pulled on a set of polished, bronze knuckle-dusters, with a short, rounded spike for each knuckle on her hand. Engraved on every available inch of the tan metal were runes of strength and withstanding, and the moment her fingers slotted into place, they glowed eagerly, like fired coals.
Lillian glanced at the two warriors and tightened her fists. “I’ve mended enough bones.”
Sarah nodded to the young woman and drew her curving sabre. “That’s what I like to hear. Ari, Marken, Karmony, y’all up for a dance?”
Karmony Black ran her palm over the wood of her oaken staff. As her hand moved, it shone with purple light, lightly casting a sheen up onto her round face and messy red hair. She gripped her staff with both hands and softly said, “Let’s do it.”
Aroha smiled and pushed herself up, nocked arrow in hand. “Follow my lead, friends.”
They rushed into the moonlight as Aroha fired her arrow through the breast of the first Obthraie, shouting, “One!”
Sarah twisted and dodged a spear-lunge to the chest, grabbed the weapon and ripped it out of the Soiltorn’s many hands before slicing down their chest, and sending them to a plume of ash. “Two!” she yelled, only to turn and duck a second spear.
Kirkley drew his bright sword and murmured to himself as an Obthraie locked their gaze on him. “Rii, grant me clarity in times of doubt. Gror, grant me strength in times of weakness. Yue, grant me wisdom in times of ignorance.”
The rain swept over him as Karmony let out a blast of serene energy, freezing her own Soiltorn opponent with a cloud of contentment before striking them across the temple.
“Arh, grant me your talent in times of limitation.”
Sarah parried a spear-tip away from her face as Aroha leapt forward and drove her dagger into their side, slamming the soldier to the mud.
Kirkley looked into the creature’s dark, obsidian eyes. “And Thall, Seraph of demons, Master of Darkness, Corruption, and Evil. Harbinger of chaos, and the destroyer of God’s work… Come forth and be reunited in the realm of thy Lord.”
The Soiltorn screeched and reared to barrel toward Kirkley when Lillian slammed her bronze-knuckled fist in its head, sending the Creation exploding into the soil with a flash of red light pulsing from her veins and knuckle-dusters.
The restorician looked at the mess of the creature and then blankly to the irate holy man. “Oh, I’m sorry, were you not finished?”
“Why are you like this?”
Lillian shrugged. “I don’t know how Marken puts up with you and your dramatic bull-”
“Shit.” Sarah saw the shadows on the ground began to shift and gripped her sword tightly again.
As they had on the day of arrival, the dark bodies began to pile together and reform, like the tide of a beach slowly bring sand back to a castle it had washed away.
Karmony looked to the tent and then shouted to Aroha and Sarah. “Go, we’ll keep them busy. And be quick, I think we’re almost out of time.” She turned back to the great array of Nikereus, to see it re-directing its course in pursuit the battalion of Legacies with a wall of brilliant light between them.