Chapter 13 – The Battle of Angstroll Ferry, Part 1
The inn fell utterly silent as all eyes turned towards the open door. Framed by the inn’s light was a strange figure, only visible as an enormous, gaunt shadow. He stepped forward and slammed the door behind him, then stood still as his eyes roamed throughout the room. Zull and Zaphyr, sitting in the corner, instinctively shied away, averting their faces from the newcomer and hoping they would go unnoticed in his search. Vard noted their response, eyes narrowing as he quickly glanced back and forth from the twins to the new arrival. Sir Kyr continued sitting there calmly, his expression unreadable beneath his cloth mask.
The stranger threw back his hood, revealing a young man only a handful of years older than Zaphyr or Zull at most, dirty brown hair hanging across a face covered with half-healed wounds which slowly leaked a sickly black ooze. A shudder ran through the inn, which the young man ignored, grinning ferally as he walked over to where Solomun the innkeeper stood, who shrunk back in unconscious terror from the man. The newcomer licked his cracked lips with a pale pink tongue, then said, “You wouldn’t happen to have two young travelers staying here, a boy and a girl, would you? They would be impossible to miss, little more than children, with bright red hair.”
The innkeeper pointed a trembling finger towards the table where Zaphyr, Zull, and the others sat. “Wonderful,” Zull muttered to himself. “Sir Kyr, I am loathe to say this, but you were wrong again.”
“I was never the best judge of character,” Sir Kyr responded in an equally hushed tone.
The newcomer smiled hungrily and stalked over to their table, where he glared at Vard and said, “Move. This seat is mine.”
“I beg your pardon, good Sir,” Vard said amicably. “But I had claimed this particular piece of furniture as my territory long before your arrival on these premises, and as I am just about to begin a most fascinating game of mills with this young man, a rematch, in fact, I would desire to keep this seat until I-”
“Move, if you want to keep your tongue in your mouth, where it belongs,” the newcomer said through gritted teeth. Vard blinked once, then stood up hastily, knocking over the chair in the process, and proceeded to nonchalantly walk to the opposite end of the tavern, whistling to himself as he acted as if the entire conversation hadn’t occurred. The newcomer, grumbling incoherently to himself, set the chair back up and sat down in it. He leaned back and placed his muddy boots on the table, knocking the board of mills to the floor with a loud clatter as he did so.
“You should get those scars checked,” Zaphyr said sympathetically. “You might need-”
“Some hemomancy?” he interrupted.
Zaphyr blinked. “I was going to say some herbal salves. I know some leaves that could soothe the irritation.”
The man studied Zaphyr and Zull for a moment, then said aloud, “Yes, you’re definitely the two I’m looking for. I was worried the others would beat me here, but it seems my luck still holds.”
“Did the Master send you?” Zull asked. Zaphyr looked at her brother in horror, but the newcomer simply laughed, the sound grating and far, far too loud, making everyone else in the inn wince uncomfortably.
“You’re quite smart, for a child. My name is Zared Choler, and I already know your names, Zull and Zaphyr Tyrill,” he said, scratching idly at one of the half-peeled scabs on his face, to the twins’ disgust. “Which means your guard dog here must be Kyr.”
Zull frowned, concentrating. “Zared Choler…where I have heard that name before?” He suddenly blanched, almost trembling as he said, “The Zared Choler? The hemomantic killer?”
Zared smirked. “The same. I let you know that information so, when I say that I am going to kill both of you, your guard dog, and everyone else in this room, you understand that there is absolutely nothing any of you can do about it.”
Sir Kyr shifted slightly in his seat, hand slowly going to the scabbard at his waist. “Those words are both bold and vile, Sir. You would slaughter children in cold blood and countless other innocents aside?”
Zared smirked. “If you knew the kind of fortune that the Master was offering for their lives, you would have killed these children already yourself.”
Sir Kyr growled. “I resent that accusation, Sir.”
“You may resent whatever you want,” Zared said flippantly. “It doesn’t matter to me. After all, you are all going to be dead in a few minutes.”
Sir Kyr started to draw his sword, but Zull said hastily, “Wait, he’s trying to trick you into acting aggressively. He’s-”
Before Zull could finish his statement, Zared uttered a fiendish battle cry and tore at his own face with his dirty fingernails, reopening one of the half-healed wounds on his face. A thin rivulet of filthy blood emerged from this cut, which twisted itself into a needle thin point in Zared’s hand, which he then launched directly at Sir Kyr. Only by moving with superhuman speed did Sir Kyr manage to just barely dodge to the side as it struck the wall behind him, leaving a dirty scarlet stain where it struck.
“Moving that much blood with that much force…,” Zaphyr said, stunned, as Zared turned his confident smile towards her.
“Your brother was half right,” Zared informed her casually. “I am a hemomancer, yes. More precisely, I am the most powerful hemomancer in the world.”
“A bold claim,” Sir Kyr said, rising to his feet and tearing off his cloth mask to reveal his feral wolf’s grin. “Now, we shall see if your words match your mettle.”
Cries of panic began rising from the rest of the inn’s guests as they scrambled to get out of the way of battle between the wolf-headed knight carrying twin blades and the laughing madman covered in black-stained wounds. Zaphyr, to her dismay, noted that Vard was first among those to scramble out of the room, leaving the door open as the sudden flood of humanity followed behind him. Sir Kyr ignored all of this, focused on his new foe. Zaphyr and Zull moved forward to help, but Sir Kyr lifted a hand warningly, saying, “Stay back, children. As your protector, I will put down this madman myself.”
“Sir Kyr, he isn’t just a hired killer! He’s a hemomancer!” Zaphyr protested. “You need our help!”
“Listen to the children, little guard dog,” Zared said.
Sir Kyr charged forward, slashing with his swords in mighty arcs of singing steel while Zared tried to dodge by dancing backwards. Nevertheless, he wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the tip of one of Sir Kyr’s blades altogether, and the knight managed to give him a narrow cut across the neck. Zared grimaced, clasping a hand to his neck, before smiling gleefully at Sir Kyr.
“Every injury you give me,” Zared said, “simply adds another weapon to my arsenal.”
As he pulled his hand away from the wound on his neck, blood spurted forth from the wound, coalescing into a tiny knife’s blade of blood which, through Choler’s sheer will, managed to maintain its shape as he clutched it in his hand.
“A dagger made of your own blood?” Sir Kyr taunted. “What an ironic weapon. You can only wound someone after you’ve already been wounded yourself. You’ll never win a battle using strategy like that.”
In response, Zared hurtled the dagger at Sir Kyr, who effortlessly blocked it with his blade. However, as the blood dagger struck his sword, it returned to a liquid state, flowing around it before reforming behind the sword and continuing its former trajectory towards his face. The dagger struck Sir Kyr just below his right eye, exploding in a crimson splash after dealing a shallow wound which nevertheless sent him reeling backwards. Zared laughed in evident glee at his opponent’s discomfort.
“You don’t find me quite so amusing now, do you?” Zared said, all his former bravado drained from his voice and replaced with a cold fury.
Sir Kyr raised a claw to his wound, then held out one of his swords as he pointed the tip of the blade at Zared’s chest. “If anything, it only makes you more pathetic. How can you have this kind of power, and yet reduce yourself to a simple killer on a leash, doing whatever the Master demands?”
“You’re one to speak, guard dog,” Zared said, sneering as he did so. “Let’s see if you still feel the same after I’ve carved your heart from your chest with my bare hands.”
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Sir Kyr, sheathing his swords in an instant, lifted a now deserted table and hurled it at Zared, who dodged lithely to the side. The table hurtled across the room, striking the counter at the far end, destroying both in a storm of splinters. Zared crouched by the far wall of the inn, cackling loudly, searching the chamber for something he could turn to his advantage. By this point, the inn was totally abandoned save for the twins, their protector, and himself.
Zared suddenly bolted towards the fireplace, racing past Sir Kyr, who spun as he drew his sword and tried to strike him with it. However, the knight moved an instant too slowly, his blade slicing through the air immediately behind Zared. Having made it past Sir Kyr, Zared reached into the still burning fire and pulled out a log wreathed in flames. Ignoring how it scorched his palm, he hurled it at Sir Kyr.
Sir Kyr parried with his right sword, shattering the log in midflight. Then, while he was distracted doing so, Zared drew more blood from the wound on his neck and transformed it into another needle before throwing it at Sir Kyr’s leg, which it pierced cleanly through. Sir Kyr stumbled backwards, off balance. Zared, meanwhile, picked up another flaming log, cackling madly all the while, and threw it at Sir Kyr. This second log struck Sir Kyr in the side of the skull and knocked him to the floor, stunned. The log rolled away, stopping next to another fallen table, where the sparks and embers started small fires on the inn’s wooden floor. These flames began slowly spreading to consume everything around them, as Zull and Zaphyr watched in horror. Ignoring the blaze and the heat, Zared stalked over to Sir Kyr’s body, leering triumphantly down as he did so. Zared looked at his burned hands, then down at Sir Kyr, saying, “I said I would carve your heart out with my hands, and I am a man of my word.”
He knelt down and reached out towards the fallen knight, but before he could do anything else, he was startled to hear from behind him a shout of “Stop!” Zared, intrigued, stood upright and turned slowly, his grin fading into nothingness as he faced Zaphyr and Zull, backs pressed against the wall of the inn, faces pale yet nevertheless stoically determined.
“I almost forgot you brats were here,” Zared said with a sneer. “Wait your turn, children. I’ll kill you just as soon as I am done with your guard dog, over here.”
“Leave him alone,” Zull said calmly. “We’re the ones the Master sent you to kill, not him.”
“The Master never told me I couldn’t kill anyone else,” Zared said, an impulsive giggle escaping from his lips as he did so. “But, if you are so insistent on dying first, then I am more than happy to oblige you.”
Zared formed another razor-sharp needle of blood from his neck and hurled it directly at Zaphyr’s forehead. To the killer’s shock and surprise, the bolt of blood bent in mid-air, flying past the twins and hitting the wall behind them instead. Zaphyr stumbled, nearly collapsing, before Zull caught her in his arms and helped her remain standing.
“Impossible,” Zared said, grinding his teeth together until blood started to leak out around his gums.
“Very simple, actually,” Zull said, taking slow, heavy breaths, his lungs filling with heavy smoke. “Any new hemomancer can manipulate their own blood; the first thing they are taught is to manipulate the blood of others. I lack the strength to move that much blood at a time, but my sister, even as the half-trained apprentices we both are, could adjust the trajectory of your own blood just enough to miss us both,” Zull’s gaze met Zared’s own, and the killer found he looked away first. “We know your weakness, Choler. You just might be as powerful as you claim, but you’re completely untrained.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Zared raged. “I’ll still kill you both!” He moved to one of the abandoned tables, picking up a mug half-filled with ale that had been left there. He tossed the ale into the fires behind him, which leapt higher, eagerly creeping across the floor of the inn as they did so. He then shattered the mug on the edge of the table, leaving a jagged mass of clay in his hand. Taking one of the larger pieces, he viciously dragged it down his left arm, leaving a large, shallow gash which he drew more blood from, forming from it an enormous, curved blade which he clutched in his left hand.
Zared charged forward, slashing manically with his sword at the twins, who dodged to either side of his onslaught. Zared spun, now seeing that the twins were trapped between him and the blazing fire he had inadvertently started, and he grinned with vicious joy. “You can’t run much longer,” he told them tauntingly.
“We don’t need to,” Zull said, picking up one of Sir Kyr’s swords where the knight had dropped it.
Zared laughed. “You think that chunk of metal will protect you from me?” He lifted his own blade of blood above his head and brought it down as if to split Zull’s head in two, but Zull lifted his own weapon to block it. As before, Zared’s weapon started to turn to liquid to slip around Zull’s defenses, but Zaphyr, lifting her hands, concentrated with all her will on countering Zared’s control. Their attacker’s blade froze in place for a moment, before Zared exerted more of his own will against Zaphyr’s to try and overwhelm her defenses. He poured so much will into the blood blade, however, that it exploded harmlessly, splattering blood in every direction.
Zared howled in frustration, stretching his hand out to his side as his weapon slowly coalesced and reformed there. While his opponent was momentarily disarmed, Zull struck, batting at his opponent’s sides and arms with Sir Kyr’s blade as many times as he could. However, as untrained and physically weak as he was, all Zull managed to do was cut and nick his opponent over and over again, never dealing any serious wounds. Zared stared down at Zull with evident glee, drawing renewed frenzy and blood from each of his wounds to reform his blade that much faster. Then, he struck at Zull again. This time, Zull skirted to the side as the blade swung down, splintering the floor with the strength of the blow.
While this was happening, Zaphyr looked around frantically for something to use against the killer. Then, she noticed Vard, peering through the window of the inn, watching them all with horror on his face. “The mills,” he mouthed, pointing down. Zaphyr looked where he pointed and spotted the board of mills that her brother and Vard had been using only a few minutes before, lying harmlessly on the ground where it had fallen.
Picking up the board, she hurled it at Zared, striking him squarely on the side of his head. As Zared turned to glare at her, Zull took that opportunity to kick Zared in the stomach, making him double over and wheeze in pain. Zull stood up and, ramming his shoulder into Zared, sent him falling backwards into the fireplace, where he screeched in agony, rolling around and out onto the floor before lying still, flames still licking at his clothes and charred flesh. Vard, standing beyond the window, shouted, “You both need to get out of there! The building is going to burn down!” before promptly vanishing from sight.
Zaphyr, focused so on the killer before her, had only had time to consider the fires around her in a kind of intellectual sense. Only then did she truly feel the waves of heat in the air and the burning flames which by this point had spread from wall to wall and were threatening to consume the entire inn. Zaphyr started to hyperventilate, saying quietly, “it’s happening again, it’s happening all again,” before Zull grabbed her by the shoulder and started to shake her, but nothing happened.
“Focus!” Zull yelled at her, which finally startled her enough that she listened to him. “We have to get out of here.”
Tears running down her face, Zaphyr wrapped her arms around her brother, sobbing. Zull hugged her tightly, trying to comfort her, but continued saying in a quiet tone, “We don’t have any time to waste.”
“We have to save Sir Kyr,” she said through her tears. “We couldn’t save Gerok…”
“But we can save him,” Zull finished. “I know, but we will need to hurry.”
The twins stumbled through the blazing inferno to where Sir Kyr had fallen, throwing one of his arms over each of their shoulders as they tried to drag him between them. Zull still clutched one of Sir Kyr's swords, dragging it along the ground behind him. They managed to lift him enough that they could pull the knight along between them, and so the twins set out doggedly towards the half-open door to the inn, passing through the curtain of flames, hands held before their faces to block the worst of the heat as they did so. Time slowed to an agonizing crawl as they crept along, one foot after the next, across a floor covered with burning embers and shattered glass, adding the agony of slashed and burned feet to the rest of their misery. Nevertheless, the twins did not stop, but continued pushing towards the door, until they at last reached the outside, collapsing within a few feet of the open door. The cool breeze blowing off the river helped to soothe the worst of their pain, but even so Zull and Zaphyr writhed on the ground, agonized. Through the haze, Zull saw someone approaching, an amorphous figure that resolved itself into the sweaty face of Vard, looking sympathetically down at them. “I had to help the others reach safety first, but then I came back to look for you three. I ran to get some water to help at least try and douse the fires, but time I got back, you had already made it out here. We’re partners now, after all. It looks like you need some help.”
Zull tried to point towards Zaphyr, saying, “Her first.”
Vard nodded, wiping sweat from his balding forehead as he picked up Zaphyr, who had passed out entirely from the heat, and tossed her over his shoulder, walking a safe distance away from the blazing inn before setting her down on the damp grass. Then he returned and, grabbing Zull, did the same thing with him, taking him over and laying him next to his sister. A short while later, he returned for Sir Kyr, whose fur had been burned off in several places, leaving pink patches of singed skin, and added him to the pile, lying the sword Zull had kept besides him. The other, like Choler, was lost in the inferno of the inn.
“So, the mysterious knight was truly a beast after all,” Vard said thoughtfully. “The story grows ever more fascinating.”
Weakly, Zull sat up in the grass, and said in a cracked voice, “Thank you.”
“Don’t worry yourself over it. I am acting purely from self-interest, I assure you,” Vard said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Clearly, you three have a fascinating story, and I can’t very well get that story from you if you’re dead, can I?”
Zull laughed weakly at that, unsure how else to respond. He turned his head to look at the inn, where the fire had now spread to include the second floor as well and had even begun licking at the outside of the structure. Then, Zull’s eyes slowly widened in horror as he saw, through the open door of the inn, Zared Choler.
The killer stood there amidst the flames like a specter escaped from his grave, hunched forward, his eyes twin pools of firelight. He was caked in ash and blood from the countless wounds he had been dealt, his lips pulled back in a snarl far more feral than anything Sir Kyr was capable of. He lifted a hand, pointing a ghastly finger at Zull, then stumbled towards the open door. Zull lay there, blood pounding so loudly in his ears it drowned out all other sound, awaiting his fate, until suddenly, they all heard the loud, grinding snap of the inn’s structure giving way. In a single, ear-shattering moment, the ceiling and second floor of the inn came crashing down on Zared Choler, reducing the inn to a still burning pile of rubble with him buried beneath it.
Vard, who had been attending to Zaphyr’s injuries and missed Zared’s reappearance, looked up at the noise, whistling slowly as he did so. “It’s over, then,” he said.
Zull, relaxing his weary shoulders, said, “Yes. It’s over.”