6

Arvendahl shouted in triumph as Grassfire tore through armor and flesh, puncturing bone like old paper. Not only here, but across the planes and through time, his sword bit deep… but it couldn’t kill. Not entirely. Instead, Grassfire’s hilt was wrenched from his grip as the traitor reeled backward and fell.

Then came the death song… two monstrous assassins… and his own fatal last-magic curse. Because kill him they might, but he’d drag them all down to the hells along with him.

Valerian fell, trailing blood and a fiery sword. Heard no sounds but his own racing heart. Saw nothing at all but the fight high above. Failed to notice that spinning, up-rushing ground till it smashed him like an ogre’s spiked club.

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“Ah! Well struck… for a feathery doxy and a cast-off whore,” the demon had sneered. “Now, it is my turn!”

Skyland didn’t shed blood. Instead, the demon melted Alfea’s spear, then gave rise to a myriad chittering, short-lived horrors; tiny, malevolent, tormented beings that exploded away in a droning swarm; biting, burning and clawing at Lady Alfea and Cinda.

The stench of battlefield rot and corruption, of entrails, loose bowels and spilt blood filled the air, staining the dawn. Over it all hung the dense smoke of a thousand pyres, smoggy pits where enemy dead were disposed of like trash.

“Vugrok,” Alfea repeated, reforming her diamond-tipped spear. “Half-dead and tossed on the flames as you writhed, vengeful and cursing. Vugrok, I name you once more!” (And that made three times.)

Skyland crackled with scorn, expanding to shroud the gleaming Quetzali and clambering ranger in billows of reeking dark smoke. Its voice and its taunting laughter seemed to come from every direction at once as the demon erupted like a bloated corpse, spewing a tangled shower of entrails that spattered both fighters with gore.

“Seralfea, dawn-maiden,” mocked Skyland, naming Alfea in turn. “Behold the fate of your partner-in-rut and your spawn!”

Next a sheet of icy-cold flame burst from the leering demon. Its blazing eyes locked with hers and with Cinda’s. Instantly, their vision shifted, magically changing to the perspective of somebody plunging out of the sky like a meteor.

Gut-shocked, they saw themselves tiny and bright, facing a skull-faced monster of roiling smoke… or were briefly surrounded by noisy giants in a dark and rumbling pit. Valerian, Bean; both in terrible danger. Worse, soon even that shaky vision darkened entirely. Were Val and the baby dead? Unconscious? There was no way to tell.

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Alfea could no longer see to defend herself as searing bone-talons locked tight, crushing her arms to her sides. Further down, Cinda frantically reached for Valerian’s mind.

‘Wake up! Open your eyes, Northerner!” she raged. “Help me to aim!”

The black arrow was back. She could feel it take shape in her hand, though (as yet) all was darkness. Then came a sliver of light; of half-parted lids, drifting shut and then fully open once more. Cinda spotted herself, crouching above on a floating boulder of rock, bow in one hand, more-than-she-seems in the other. Good enough.

“My lady,” the ranger called to her goddess, as she fitted arrow to string. “Lend your strength to this shot. Help me to aim through Valerian’s eyes.”

The arrow went terribly cold in one hand. Meanwhile her bow changed its weight and its shape in the other, seeming icy and pale as the moon to Val’s blurring gaze. Then two concerned faces appeared: an old half-elven cleric and a dark-haired young warrior. These slewed aside as a broken and bloodied Valerian squirmed in their grip and refocused.

She did not say ‘I love you.’ Didn’t have to. Just used his vision and drew on his flickering manna to line up that shot. Drew back the string, exhaled and released. The bow sang aloud. Once again, More-than-she-seems flew like a thunderbolt, seeming to catch fire in dawn’s rising glow. This time, that blackened arrow did not strike Skyland’s head, but the kernel of hatred that served as the demon’s foul heart.

Maybe it wasn’t just Frost Maiden’s magic. Maybe Hyrenn-Lord Winter and She-of-the-Flowers put in their own bit, as well. At any rate, that dwarf-forged arrow struck hard, plunged deep and erupted in questing tendrils of light.

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Further down, on the cliff, Valerian struggled in Filimar’s grasp, fighting off Vikran’s healing and rest spells. Couldn’t speak to tell them that he had to stay conscious, had to keep looking upward at Fee and Cinda. Too much damage and too little breath. But alive and able to help (if only by staying awake). Tough to rest anyhow, for there was a sudden commotion behind him. Filimar shouted,

“I’ll hold him off!” lurching to his feet with a grunt, as Vikran continued that sonorous heling chant. They had their battles, he had his.

Mentally hand in hand with Cinda, Valerian helped guide her bowshot, not needing to hear ‘I love you’ to know it was so.

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As for his lordship, Arvendahl dropped from that crumbling stone fist to the ground. Having pronounced his death curse, he’d won a few moments to plan a last strike. Against banshee and vampyre he summoned the monsters he’d leashed here for pleasure: manticores, trolls, an ogre and giant.

Nor was that all. Though Grassfire did not return to his hand, Arvendahl was far from helpless. Magic, he had and demonic slaves in profusion.

With a contemptuous gesture, the elf-lord tore a great boulder out of the ground. It burst from the barren clifftop with a sharp CRACK, trailing dirt and a shower of stones. High over that traitor and exile he lifted it, saying nothing at all. No gloating, no boasting, no smile. Just dropped the multi-ton rock like an anvil.

The banshee’s shrill wail sapped Arvendahl’s manna and strength, but not his sheer, blinding need for revenge. The transformed vampyre struck from behind as a warg-sized mountain of muscle and hair. It sank its fangs through his right shoulder and ripped, shaking its loathsome head like a terrier. Blood sprayed; his own and the vampyre’s, because Arvendahl’s dagger… wielded upward and back… tore straight through the monster’s ridged gut.

Moments later, the fluting, musical roar of a hunting manticore punctured the air. Next came a spray of venomous, whistling spikes…

…a dark airship…

…and a port in the lightening sky that dropped an entire warband of northern troops, their commander, their lord and his half-divine lady.

Starloft had entered the fight.