We pressed on through the district, stamping over uneven planks, dropped a yard then diagonally lifted another where some vines had torn and the tier had settled at all angles.
The screeches of the World-Eater’s fiends still echoed from beneath and above, vibrating the grand trees around which Ith-Korr was so precariously built. Alator had called it a pitiful peacetime city.
I’m sure he wasn’t complaining about the ease of the bounty we earned, or the soft bed he’d slept in last night. . . .
I tried to catch his eye while moving, but his attention was elsewhere. He twitched his head around, scrutinising every shadow for danger, listening intently to the cacophony of distant screams and battle that echoed through the fractured tiers. His blue eyes glinted something sharp and alert, the always-readiness that I so admired, and so envied, and so feared.
As we approached another broad open space, perhaps the last in the district, the air stilled for a moment as if the city was holding its breath. Tension brushed all our bodies, and I realised what was happening — the wind was being drawn in around us, towards the courtyard.
“Magic,” breathed Lenya from beside me, just barely keeping pace. The exhaustion and terror had already marked her face in blood and sweat; the sheer scale of the assault pressed on her. I gulped down air and steeled myself, refusing to share the same panic.
Instead, I nodded and we sprinted through, emerging into devastation. The courtyard was a shattered ruin. Perhaps once a bustling, happy (if struggling) space, it lay in smouldering chaos. The wooden planks that formed the floor were splintered and even more uneven than in the rest of the district. The massive, coiled vines, once vibrant, lay limp entirely, torn from their moorings high above. Their luminescent glow was replaced by a dirty red as dying embers played over them.
Smoke curled up from the charred remains of stalls and carts and . . . bodies. There were three dressed in the grey-green leather of the Wardship, which must have gone down fighting. Their ornamental vine-detailed spears lay broken beside them. Others were pinned beneath collapsed structures — small jungle-folk, wiry forms motionless, wide eyes vacantly staring out, and among them a few larger frames of desert-folk and even the hard-shelled coral-folk, dark leathery skin slick with blood.
Then the rush of energy was revealed: a deep crater marred the ground in the centre of the courtyard, a jagged pit pulsing with unnatural energy, and above it, a towering fiend hovered a yard from the ground. The same purple-black stretched skin covered metallic bones, and massive bat wings extended from its shoulders, but it stood twice as tall as the fiends we had been fighting so far, and its eyes dripped with black smoke.
Not yet aware of us, it raised an arm and along with the searing air, every shadow in the courtyard rushed up to his fist, then with a visible effort he extended one finger and a shanty house across the way EXPLODED into flame like a grenade had been set off within. Screams followed, and the heavy thudding of half a dozen light shapes as bodies were flung from within.
Its broad, jagged mouth split into a cruel smile and a black tongue licked out as if to taste the death it dealt.
A low growl came from Alator beside me. Where I had previously only seen rage and instant ACTION from him, he paused for a moment and glanced around, eyes flashing, considering options. I reached for the Analysis Card. As I did, I felt a very brief wave of dizziness — I realised something that I had previously suspected: it took my own energy to utilise this item.
// SYS ERR 69 : No profile found. Creating a profile based on available parameters. //
Fiend :
?, Level 21
Stats :
Str 12, Dex 19, Con 8, Mnd ?
Attacks :
Drain, Impact Barrage, Shadow Burst
Loot :
Void Claw, Void Essence
Weakness :
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Easily enraged under pressure
XP :
223
It was the first time I’d seen a Stat marked with a ‘?’ since Alator. SYS had told me that this meant its Mind was greater than six times mine, putting it at least at 25. But the rest of its Stats were well within my range.
Level be damned!
I made to rush forwards, but Alator held out a hand and gripped my linen armour, rooting me to the spot, then dragged me to the side of the building, just out of sight of the thing. Turning to him, his eyes were twitching with some deep memory. After a moment, he muttered:
“A-any insight on this one?”
Lenya pressed up behind me. Her limbs seemed caught petrified. I wanted to reassure her, but I didn’t have capacity in my thrill and surge of confusion.
Blowing out my lungs, trying to calm my blood a moment, I twisted myself away from his grip and peered around the corner. I opened my vision to possibility and instinct as I reached into the stream of my inner power for [Battle Tactics]. A few ways forward immediately popped into my mind, but quickly left again, and I studied it for a half-minute. As I did, its Weakness changed.
Weakness :
Holy ground
Are those Weaknesses enough? I don’t even know what HOLY means in this World. Can I manipulate it into forgetting its arcane power and facing me in close quarters? Would its Dexterity put it out of reach of my spear?
I held up the Bronze Spear of Blinding. The enchantment was not reliable enough to count on. I couldn’t recall exactly how many attacks I’d landed with it, but to my recollection, the blindness effect had only triggered once.
As the Skill faded, one image stayed with me: one of those awful explosions, cast with the flick of a long, blackened finger, bursting my chest and killing me instantly.
That sent enough of a chill through me to stop my impatience. I leant back into the side of the building to find Alator watching me and Lenya beside me at my feet, crumpled, hugging her knees, panting. I ran my fingers through my hair and my fingers came back slick.
“I’ve not got nothing, but. . . . That horrible smile hides a berserker’s temperament; if we can pressure it, it’ll start to react on instinct instead of with its mind, but it’s not like the beasts we’ve faced before — it’s got a terrifying mind.”
Alator nodded. His gritted teeth showed he was already painfully aware of all this. I gripped my spear.
“But it will tear down the entire city if we don’t do something. There are no members of the Wardship on this tier; they must be all fighting elsewhere. It knows to target the vines, and it seems to be killing for . . . fun.”
“It kills because it can. . . . Because it must,” came Alator’s dark, gravelly response.
“Holy magic might work,” I appealed to Lenya, who looked up to me through bleary eyes and a red face. Her words came staccato between breaths.
“I am not a cleric of the Kaila Leuxs — the Omen of Light. I do not accord any honours of divinity.” At our blank faces, she added, “I cannot perform miracles.”
“She will be no use in this fight,” Alator spat bluntly. Her forehead creased into a scowl and she tried to stand on shaking legs, but made it only six inches from the ground before falling back down.
“You’ve faced one of these before.”
“A few, yes. They killed . . . they took something precious from me.”
I let a moment of heavy silence pass between us, but the time wasn’t right to press. I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders.
“Anything to add?”
“They call themselves vampyri. They are not the greatest of the World-Eater’s soldiers, but they may be the most sadistic. Forgive my ugly hesitation. I did not expect to see one in an initial raid.”
He lingered a moment longer, then filled his lungs in a sharp pull and pumped heat through his body; I felt it radiate from his skin, and his eyes lit gold, spilling yellow smoke. As the energy settled, he straightened his back and turned back to me, eyes cast in a blue blaze.
“Will you still not take a weapon?” I asked him.
“Do you have one to give?”
I glanced down at Lenya, who held her staff like a lover to her chest, body racking.
“Well, no.”
“And you will not relinquish yours?”
“No.”
“Then off we go. It’s too far for surprise; we face it head on.”
I reeled, filled with terror and exhilaration, and stepped after him into the clearing.
The World-Eater’s servant still hovered ominously above the jagged crater, black ashy smoke still trickling from its eyes. There was a start of that same rush of magic as before, like the pull of wind that urges you to jump off a cliff, but it stopped suddenly as it noticed our approach. It turned slowly as we set ourselves a few paces apart, and raised its hands out to the side.
“More prey for this one,” its voice came snarled and rasping. Then its head snapped to one side and regarded us, and its black eyes widened — with excitement or something else, I couldn’t tell, then narrowed. “You are not of Barbican. Perhaps you are the reason I am here. Tell me, you two, have you looked upon the World-Eater?”
Without a word, Alator took low, almost to a crouch, thews bunched and a radiant heat blew about him. His eyes lit near white gold and the sweat danced to steam off his back. His lips peeled back over his wolf’s teeth and he responded only with a growl.
“Oh, but you — you are something familiar!” The thing extended a gangly black arm at Alator and pointed a gnarled, long, leathery finger. The arcane demon fiend threw its head back and cackled, jagged mouth widening ear-to-ear like a skull’s grin, and its other hand reached up, wiping ash from its face. “You’ve something of the Prowling Wheel about you! To think it would be me to put out the last Flame!”
At that, and I’m not sure whether I was glad to see it, Alator’s face twisted to fury. With a burst of light from his face like a solar flare, he shed what veil of humanity he managed to wear day-to-day, and fully became a beast. He launched himself off with both feet, cracking the plank beneath him, kicking an explosion of splinters behind him, and soared at the fiend.