"What did it do?" Aida cried as anguished tears ran down her face. Rage, sorrow, and confusion warred as she glared at the motionless, expressionless Aj, glancing back at them dispassionately, inhumanely.
Ghillie grabbed her chin and turned Aida to face her. What must be done. Eth had to know this was coming, right? She chose this.
"How could anyone choose this?" Aida said, leaping to her feet and wheeling towards Aj. "Hey, you! You, hey!"
Inro shouldered her aside so hard she fell over, the Dynast charging towards Aj's back. His shadow-wrought blade shifted like smoke. Hassani stepped into his path and he skidded to a stop, the one-eye'd warrior hoving tight to one flank while the woman spun a grenade-stone in a sling on the other.
"It will end, but it's not for you to do it," Hassani said.
"Out of my way, Inviolate, or you die too," Inro growled, looking past her towards the Aj.
"All of this happens, has happened, and will happen for a reason. And the Aj is the key to making it so."
"Everything's been broken since I was a boy. Since Ebon died. If the Aj is the key, then it needs to be destroyed," Inro said.
Aida turned to blast away an obnoxious pair of Legionaries as they charged towards her, missing the last of the Inro and Hassani's discussion. She turned back just as the fight started, Hassani's super-human timing and reflexes making a centuries-old warrior-Dynast look like an awkward teenager by comparison and his companions like toddlers. In a few perfect sword strokes, she blocked his shadow blade, shattered the one-eye'd man's spear in a detonation that left all of them bloody, parried a sling stone from the woman, rolled, and kicked her legs out from under the woman all in the same fluid motion. She stood with her ice blade held to the woman's throat as the man's companion groaned and struggled to pull himself from the mud.
In the distance, a unit of Keens thundered charged a Legion formation, arrows and spears shattering on their armor. A few string-armed Dynasts blasted them apart, but as soon as they did so found themselves riddled with fist-sized holes from the Keen's rifle-canons. Mancers charged out of the Legion ranks just before the Keens hit, slicing through rusting armor with paper-thin blades of blue energy, shifting endlessly through vaguely-animalistic shapes, and others somehow locking Keens in rigidly in place with a touch. Then they vanished in a cloud of rifle-cannon smoke.
On another front, a horde of Inro's warriors hurled exploding grenade-stones into a Legion shield-wall, arrows and spears shattering against their sparkling clay. Someone in the Legion camps wised up, unleashing catapults full of something like Greek Fire or napalm. However much the clay protected from impact, judging by the screaming, thrashing forms, it did little against being cooked alive. Then a rush of warriors thundered into the explosion-gapped Legion ranks. The battle lines dissolved into a thousand small skirmishes and Inro's clay-clad warriors not-yet engaged wheeled about to face a terrifying charge of strider cavalry crashing into their flank.
Closer to the Terrtle, a block of Keens advanced cautiously, some sort of megaphone-like device ordering the Inkies among Aida's people to surrender. Everyone fled their advance, even the Militant's tight formations backing away slowly in the face of the clanking mass of walking armor. Then the formation marched through a cluster of boulders and a group of boys with slings hurled what looked like sodden chunks of flesh out into their midst. Everyone then discovered the boulders were terrtles, the meat awakening them and sending them snapping out at the nearest Keens. As the Keens turned to chop at the terrtle's apparently stone-tough shells, a screaming mob of Inkies rushed forward with Molotov cocktails.
Most were gunned down on approach, but enough hurled their flaming projectiles to set the trampled Tangle about the Keens alight. Terrtles and Keens alike roasted in the blaze, their screams lost in a rippling volley of gunfire from packed ranks of Directory riflemen formed up behind them. Their bullets tore into Aida's people indiscriminately and Aida found herself shouting in rage and involuntarily lurching back towards the Terrtle.
A scattering of dead strider corpses shifted, revealing themselves as actually couple dozen Vibrants packing more flaming bottles. They caught the front ranks of Ink riflemen reloading while the back stood unable to fire through their companions. As densely massed as there formations packed, they could do little but shout, jostle, and scream as the firebombs erupted in their midst. While their companions screamed and writhed, most of those nearby dropped their weapons and fled. A few potshots hit the fleeing, shifting Vibrants, but most made it back to the relative safety Terrtle unscathed.
Aida happened to spot Wake and Sava circling each other across a stretch of body-strewn ground, combat raging all about them. Both of them screamed at the same time, some terrible sort of resonance building up between them. Everyone nearby clutched at their ears and even at her remove Aida winced as the sound fluctuated and shifted through discordant extremes of volume and frequency. Then, as the sound shifted too high for hearing but so high Aida could feel it, their bones shattered like glass, exploding out of them. Their punctured husks collapsed.
She found herself next to Inro, the man agonizing as he watched the Aj vanish into the smoke and dust, then glancing to where Hassani stood, holding her blade to the woman's throat.
"Let him go," Hassani said. "End this."
"Let the Inro go," the woman at Hassani's feet echoed. "Let past die or have no future."
"Your people can come with," Aida interjected, pointing to the rubble of the Terrtle's skull. Atop the heap, the Thorn jutted, intact. "We'll just-"
She cut off as the Thorn stretched to a massive extent, blurred, and whipped back. Shapeless, jagged, spined, taloned, and bladed shapes materialized out of the haze-shimmer of Vale transition. Screams and shouts began, the abominations launching in all directions to rend, tear, and bite. Shouts and screams from the opposite direction towards where the second Thorn was located whipped her attention around. A much, much larger mass of crawling, slithering, bounding, flapping dark chitin and tendon and flesh poured through the Tangle.
"Demons," Aida said, her blood chilling and goosebumps rising on her skin. "Goddamn. They're here now too."
"Monsters," Parathas corrected numbly, hugging his wife and children close. "Hopefully few demons among them for many are invulnerable."
Instantly, the human-against-human fighting halted, everyone who didn't immediately launch themselves at the creatures running away screaming. Aida stepped forward and glared into Inro's face. "We're retaking that Thorn, getting everyone we can together, and getting out of here before this place is as fucked as everywhere else. You have once chance to bring your people with or you can fight the demons for a chance to die trying to kill the Aj instead. Your call."
With that, she turned away and thrummed her strings to life, Ghillie suddenly at her right side again. A moment later, Hassani join her on her left while his family and fat friend trailed behind.
After blasting a few of the things to spatters of fleshy goo, Aida amplified her voice to a level she worried might break the strings. "GET TO THE THORN, NOW. THERE'S ONLY ONE CHANCE TO GET OUT OR YOU'RE STAYING HERE."
"What if there's more of these on the other side?" Parathas said, the scribe looking strange armed with a spear he'd picked up somewhere. His wife picked up a bayoneted rifle and even the kids carried knives that probably served more as security blankets than real protection against the horrors they faced.
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"We'll kill those demons when we cross them," Aida said before unleashing an arcing, ripping scream that mulched a wave of monsters in their path.
Something splattered all over her and she whirled to see Hassani standing behind her amid a pile of bony dark viscera that likely had been a monster a moment before.
"Thanks," Aida said, moving up beside a phalanx of Militant advancing like a brutal machine into the mass of monsters. Spears thrust and yanked, men stabbed between shields with short blades, slipped in mud thick with demon ichor and corpses of monster and man alike. A few were yanked from the their brothers by a stray tentacle, barbed whip, or pouncing horror, but somehow they maintained cohesion, plugged the gaps, and continued to advance. Aida screamed and shouted until her throat hurt, several strings snapped, and her legs ached with the effort of slogging forward into the gruesome mire.
The Militant advance slowed as exhaustion and wounds wore at them. Though the Thorn came in sight jutting from the Terrtle skull rubble heap, too many monsters still seethed between them and it.
"We're not going to make it," Aida said to Ghillie as the woman leapt away from turning a snake-milipede into a leaky, many-legged flesh tube. "But if we pull back, where is there to go?"
She turned to see what had seemed an endless, immense battle near the Terrtle was but a skirmish compared to the endless churning mass of monsters beginning to engulf the Legion camps. With their fortifications, massive numbers, hard discipline, and training, the Legions slaughtered every monster that crawled, slithered, bounded, or flew within range. Siege weapons hurled rocks, logs, burning jars, and spears as big around as her arm. Reinforcements streamed in to relieve exhausted soldiers on the front lines or carried wounded back to sprawling hospital tents. Dynasts plugged gaps, launched counter offensives, and bolstered morale with ripping string-blasts that arced monster pieces dozens of yards into the air.
But the monsters came on. They poured in endless profusion from the direction of the second Thorn, seemingly drawn to Rega's gleaming bronze ziggurat. At least it spared the marginally-armed mob around the Terrtle the worst of it, only having to fight the smaller masses which spilled from the Terrtle Thorn. Lumbering monsters the size of houses thudded, rolled, or churned amid their smaller brethren. Most died long before reaching the battered ditches and palisade walls to siege munitions or strider rushes darting in for Dynasts to shatter them and retreat to safety. But here and there a strider went down and a Dynast died. The ammunition piles stacked beside the siege weapons looked impressive, but they dwindled as she watched. An occasional flying horror made it through the withering storm of javelins, arrows, and sling stones to damage a catapult or tear a ballista crew to shreds before being put down.
Suddenly, a pure, sharp hum shook her bones. The white throne atop the ziggurat glowed and an ear-splitting cry so strong as to produce a shock wave punched out from the top of the ziggurat. The kinetic sound plowed a half-kilometer-long furrow through the monsters towards a demon that floated in the air in what looked something like a gown made of wisps of smoky energy, blasting the abomination into swirling motes of blackness.
But still they came on.
Her gaze skipped towards the mountainous Draggin as it roared in anger or pain, its colossal body swarmed with monsters that appeared the size of ants compared to its immensity. Then, with enough force to crevice the ground and jolt everyone off their feet for a moment, it lurched and rolled, crushing uncounted demons beneath its impossible mass. Distant volcano's belched forth fresh gouts of ash and fire at the impact, their rumble adding to that of its tumbling immensity.
Aida grinned fleetingly as she turned back to the fight to see the Militant formation no longer advancing, but slowly giving ground. Every warrior bled or limped, most gritted their teeth or shouted with the exertion of holding their shields against the press of dark flesh and sinew. A few collapsed with nothing left to give as she watched.
Aida rose her strings to their maximum, ready to save them or die trying when explosions suddenly ripped through the monsters. Painted warriors singing a ferocious, explosive war chant charged past her, slamming full-force into the monsters. Unlike the disciplined phalanx of the Militant, each warrior fought like a wild animal, laughing, snarling, or howling as they fought. Grinning as they died. Inro and his companions halted beside her for a moment and the woman looked Aida in the eye.
"One Tribe choose live. All go where the Mother go, even if that be death."
Inro nodded, grinned, and was off into the fray. As the monsters reeled under their ferocious onslaught, the ground trembled and she turned to see a wall of rusting metal charging forward on the Militant formation's far side. Gunfire rippled from their ranks, fist-sized balls of iron ripping through the monsters. They punched into the swarm with an audible concussion that Aida felt shake the ground like a bomb blast, their cleavers rising and falling like a mobile, early-industrial butchery machine on any monster dumb enough to come near.
Behind them, gray-garbed riflemen marched with bayonets extended, firing in sections at any creature trying to flank or break through the Keens ranks. Those strange caterpillar-walker machines crawled along behind them, heavy with baggage and surrounded by mobs of what looked like normal Inkie city-folk.
Maxem trudged through the mud as though it was nearly too much to manage and looked up at Aida tiredly. "Directory ordered us home to defend Ink. Monsters everywhere. They're using the people as fodder to wear them down while they fall back to their fortresses."
She shook her head and looked over at a mix of Inkies, ex-slaves, and locals fighting for their lives with improvised weapons against a scorpion-wolf-thing and shook her head. "I'm not fighting for them anymore. Once thought they served the people, but they'd sacrifice all of us just to buy themselves an extra day of safety before our cities are overwhelmed. I sent orders to escort as many as we can from the cities to the Thorns and come to this Thorn. Didn't expect it to be obeyed, but it seems I'm not the only one who felt this way. Don't know how many will make it here, but reports are it's just as bad there as here. Ink is doomed. You're our hope now."
With a sigh and a shrug, Maxem turned to look at the Keen's handiwork. "Or a novel variation of the same doom, anyway."
"Cheery, as always," Aida said, then ran with Hassani and Ghillie flanking her to join the fray.
The fight for the Thorn took what had to be hours by the drift of the suns, the fight prolonged by the Thorn regularly spiraling out to disgorge more waves of horrors. Hassani had taken the Earth 'nail from Aida and, with supernatural grace and battle prowess carved her way to the Thorn with that crazy ice blade. Apparently, touching the 'nail to the Thorn's base sufficed to turn it from a door in to a door out. The arc of the Thorn painstakingly stretched to what seemed like an impossible diameter as it expanded to encompass more and more of those packing in towards it. Not only were her people pressed about it so tightly they could barely move, Sect creatures, Mancers, Mune Collectivists, and Dynasts huddled tight. The Militant, the One Tribe, the riflemen, combat marcers, and Keens held a tenuous, bloody perimeter as the monsters began to surround them.
"We can't hold anymore. We have to go."" Ocyl's Seneschal Janali shouted from where she'd taken over holding the 'nail to the Thorn. Aida had no idea where the woman had come from, but was suddenly glad she was here. She glanced around for Ocyl but couldn't make him out in the chaos if he was there at all.
Aida shouted again, blasting a bus-sized octopus-eagle back into its companions. A hum shook her bones and left her trembling, whether from overusing the strings or something else she couldn't tell. All around the perimeter, the lines were barely holding. The few areas where their encirclement wasn't complete, monsters were murdering anyone trying to make it into the Thorn's reach. A quick, brutal mental calculus left her figuring that more were dying than were being saved. She nodded at Janali and the woman pulled the 'nail away from the base of the Thorn.
Immediately, everything began to shimmer. The monster horde redoubled their efforts, yanking people out or tearing at each other to get in before the Vale pulled them away. Aida tried to shout again and... nothing happened. She lurched back, touching the strings to find they'd all broken.
Dazed and exhausted, she backed up behind Ghillie and Hassani, her gaze drawn to the distant ziggurat.
Monsters had completely overwhelmed the Legion camp. The battered survivors made a desperate stand on the ziggurat's tiers, but the lower levels had already been taken. Another was overrun as she watched. Rega stood atop the Throne, her voice crescendoing and energy building visibly, the ash and smoke choking the air curling into beautiful resonant geometries about the ziggurat's apex. As the last line of Legion defense crumbled, Dynasts blasted about with their strings desperately, and her steel-clad Ferals took the brunt of the onrush of malformed shapes clawing their way up the ziggurat, Rega screamed.
Aida clamped her hands over her ears, but it served little to muffle the piercing, endless cry. The sound detonated the bodies of the Ferals and Dynasts inside their armor, sending them crumpling down about her. In rippling waves, the monsters likewise imploded, whatever their size, shape, or composition. The explosion rippled outward, sprays of viscera and bodies hurling a twenty meters up into the air as the shock waves echoed out from the ziggurat in all directions, rushing across and shredding what was left of the Tangle in a tsunami of sound. A moment before the wave reached Terrtle and Thorn, the Vale yanked them away.