Riven was getting tired. Real tired. Really, he should be in bed by now, sleeping on a hard mattress with a pillow that felt as though it was stuffed with rocks.
Dreams of a poor bed didn’t last long though. He was ever frightened some demon would pop out of the darkness and assault him. Damn him, but he should never have brought that Sept crystal with him. It caused nothing but trouble, and now it was apparently preventing him from using his Essence. Hadn’t he had it with him at other times and still used his Essence, albeit unconsciously? Now he seemed to be cut off entirely. Or maybe he just hadn’t been in any serious danger just yet.
It was the stupid hole Mhell had made. The hole had grown larger, the ground around it trampled, churned to broken earth, bearing the marks of the demon horde’s passage. Fiends. Only Fiends. Had to be. Even if Riven was too late, surely Viriya and Rio could hold them off.
But then, the villagers certainly couldn’t. Darley definitely couldn’t.
Outside wasn’t much more encouraging. The demons’ trail was obvious and it led back the way Riven had come, all the way to the village likely. Maybe they would even destroy the greenhouses, who knew.
And Riven? He was out here, adrift like a piece of ash lost in a blizzard. Even if he ran as fast as he could, there was no way he’d make it in time. Not like this. Not on his feet.
Taking in a deep breath, Riven rushed to his left. The Frontier Guards, They were his only hope, the only thing he could think of doing to really help. Not only would he get a horse there—another horse, since he hadn’t returned his last one—he’d be bringing in reinforcements. There would be shouts and yells. Riven was the saviour! Riven had brought the calvary!
Thank the Scions he met no demon anywhere. He ran and ran, keeping himself close to the fence at all times and silently praying that he come upon a Guard post soon. He’d settle for a Guard too if it came to that.
“Hey!” someone shouted, making Rivne freeze. “Who goes there?”
“It’s me.” Riven waved both his arms, trying to make himself visible and unthreatening. There was so little time to waste. “I’m Riven Senolan Morell. One of the Essentiers who came in earlier today.”
The Guard didn’t reply until he’d gotten close, a Sept lamp shooting up it’s light all of a sudden. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“No time to explain. Take me to the Captain.”
“But—”
“Now!”
The Guard was taken aback by Riven’s vehemence, and quickly turned to lead him away. But there was no point in blindly charging into the night.
Riven stopped the man. “How far is he?”
“Er, at least quarter of a league from here.”
“Damn it, we don’t have time to run a quarter league. Is there no other way to reach him?”
“We can send a flash post message.”
“That’ll have to do. Let’s go.”
The man nodded then hurried away. Riven kept pace. Every second they wasted was another moment the demons neared Rattles, another moment they might have already reached it and started its destruction, another heartbeat the village was closer to its demise. Thank the Scions, eternally so, that there didn’t seem to be any demons anywhere nearby. For all anyone knew, there might be Fiends all over the countryside.
They reached Guard’s post after another few minutes. Two more men were lounging in rickety chairs, but they all shot to their feet as Riven and the Guard entered with the force of a hurricane.
“This way,” the Guard told Riven, leading him to a small table. A metal contraption shaped like a typewriter sat on it with two pipes going out of either end, one to the left and the other to the right. “What message do you need to send, Essentier.”
Riven snatched the pen and paper and muttered as he wrote for all three Guards’ benefit. “Demons have breached the fence. Rattles in grave danger. Hurry! Reinforcements needed immediately.”
“Demons?” one of the Guards asked.
Riven thrust the brief letter to the Guard he’d come with, who swallowed down his wide-eyed surprised and bent towards the contraption, He rolled the letter into a tight scroll, then shoved it into a small, cylindrical canister, screwing in the thing metal cap he’d removed beforehand. Then he inserted the canister with the missive back into the machine, dialled a few numbers on the side, then pulled a lever. There was a flash of fiery light , then a blast of steam from vents in the back. The rushing sound of heated and pressurized water followed, and the canister finally rattled off inside the pipe leading to the right with the speed of a cannon shot.
“How long will the message take to reach him?” Riven asked. The rattling suggested the flash post wasn’t used very often, nor was it properly maintained. He just had to hope it wouldn’t get stuck in the middle somewhere.
“Six minutes. Would be faster, but some of the intermediary flash stations aren’t functional.” His eyes lowered as he said that, voice growing quiet and apologetic.
There was no time to dwell on the matter. Riven had done as much as he could. “Do you have a spare horse?”
“Yes, sir. Right this way.”
The horse outside looked a little too old to be out spending days with demons so close. Not that any Deathless ever attacked animals. He pulled himself on its placid back, testing the pull of the reins and jostling his arse until he had reached the correct posture he was aiming for. He’d have to send a letter to his old riding master, telling him how many mounts he had mastered in such a short period of time.
One of the Guards joined him. “We want to come with you Essentier. If that was all right, of course.”
“That would be great but don’t you have to look after this place.”
“I’ll remain behind,” said the Guard he had first met. “The others can accompany you Rattles. Sounds like that’s where they all are.”
It didn’t take long for the two Guards to bring in their own horses, which looked little better than Riven’s own. Old and tired and not very confidence-inducing. But they had to make do what they had, so Riven pulled his horse around. He whipped the reins and the horse shot towards the village, deep into the bowels of night.
#
The greenhouses were fine. Nothing had been touched and there wasn’t even any sign of the demons’ passage. The glass structures were unharmed, and even the two guards were snoring softly, peacefully, and unaware of the lack of peace everywhere else.
One of the Frontier Guards woke them up. Bleary-eyed and barely conscious though they both were, the Guard had explained the situation as fast as he was able, then ordered them both to come to the village soon as they were ready. Riven and the Frontier Guards had ridden off, leaving their many questions behind them. Rattles was more important.
Rightfully so, because the village was glowing. It had been set afire.
Riven’s horse came to a halt all on its own. At least, he didn’t recall pulling its reins to force it to stop. His eyes were focused fully on the village ahead of him, buildings blazing, homes burning, dirt roads flooded with fiery light.
“No,” one of the Guards whispered. Then his voice grew louder. “No!”
Faint came the thought that maybe the Guard had family there. A wife and children, perhaps. Father, mother, sister, brother, and all his friends. The place he’d grown up in, the world he had known, was vanishing, turning to ash right in front of his eyes.
“Wait!” Riven called. “There might demons!”
The Guard didn’t hear him. Or maybe ignored him outright. He charged into the inferno, and Riven followed, muttering curses all the while. The other Guard came alongside, face grim. Riven got the sense it was it wasn’t a hardened heart so much as his inability to express his shock.
They didn’t get far. A scream ravaged their ears from above, and their horses staggered to a stop on their own with wild whinnies. Riven was thrown forward, but he clung to his mount’s neck, refusing to let go. In the few seconds he took to gain back some measure of control, the demon swooped down like a falcon.
The Fiend landed right on top of the Guard who had rushed ahead. Riven shouted pointless warnings and orders to get himself out of the inextricable situation. The other Guard was no better. The demon started mauling their prey.
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Riven cursed. Damn, but this horse was only hindering him. He let go of the reins, then jumped down, bringing out his gun, cocking it, then firing a round at the demon’s back.
The Sept bullet lodged in their scales, but there was some small damage. Little pieces of Sept dribbled out from their back. Another shot followed, this one from the other Guard who had also dismounted. It had much the same effect. A hole that spewed Sept, but no real injury to the demon. They got no attention. Instead, the demon kept pummelling the Guard into the ground.
Riven cursed, then ran forward. Maybe shooting point-blank would grab the monster’s attention. The Guard followed, late but with equal effort.
With no warning, the demon whirled. A guttural roar blared out of their mouth, the force of which pushed Riven to the ground. His skin crawled and his ears rang, vision swimming like he was drunk. He got off another shot, but without even looking he knew it had hit nothing.
The roar abated, but a different sound took its place. One far more chilling. Riven stared up just in time to see the demon grabbing the sill-alive Guard, and flying off into the sky.
“Hey! Hey!” Riven pushed himself off the ground and ran forward, hardly heeding where he stepped. His eyes were fixed on the sky ringed by the flames from the burning buildings. “Come back here!”
He got off more shots. The Guard joined him, screaming and shooting together until their magazines were empty, their throats hoarse, and their voices reduced to croaks. None of it mattered. The demon had risen too high, and met no obstacle as it flew off with the Guard in its clutches. Flew off, straight towards Frontier.
Riven didn’t know how long he was staring up at the sky. People were either being incinerated in the flames or carried off by the Fiends, and he, Riven, was powerless to stop them. Helpless to do anything. Just as the Guard had been taken, so too would everyone else.
“What do we do, sir?” the other Guard asked. His voice wasn’t just croaking now, but gasping, and his eyes were teary and red-rimmed as well.
“I don’t know…” When Riven replied, he tasted char. His breaths were becoming short. The smell of burning was so present, he’d forgotten the smoke would kill him as fast as the fire, if not more so. “I—we have to find others. Stop all this.”
“But we can’t,” the Guard despaired. “I can’t. And—and neither can you. I thought you were an Essentier. Why couldn’t you do anything? Why?”
Riven stared at him. The reply was right on the tip of his tongue but Scions forbid he let it out. “I don’t—”
The thunder of horse hooves interrupted him. Riven silently thanked the Scions for their gracious intervention, and stepped away from the Guard. Didn’t matter if one was gone and the other had been reduced to a gibbering mess. The cavalry had arrived, Wilsall leading a full contingent of the Frontier Guards to the rescue.
“Essentier Morell.” The Captain didn’t get off his horse. A subtle indication that Riven should mount his. “Do you know what’s happening here?”
Riven swallowed, hiding the motion as he got back onto his saddle. “What matters is that we need to round up the villagers and get them to safety.” His voice was shaky, and he coughed. Maybe they’d blame it on the smoke. “The demons are everywhere, and we need to fight them off. Let’s go.”
A brilliant green flare erupted a ways just beyond them, cutting off whatever question the Captain was going to follow up with. Riven whipped the reins and pushed his horse towards it. Green of that shade could only mean one thing. Viriya.
They found her fighting a blue demon under the glaring light of the blazing tavern. Wilsall was about to order his soldiers to help, but Riven held up a hand, indicating them to refrain. He got a lot of stares at that, but he pointed at Viriya.
The fight was no contest, really. Viriya swerved past any and every attack that the demon threw at her, dodging with the grace of a ballet dancer and a fencer combined. At one point, she brushed her glowing green hand on the Fiend’s back, and the demon staggered back. Then they went frozen. They appeared to struggle in place against some invisible force restraining them, when another emerald flare went up inside the burning building. The demon screamed as they were dragged into the flames. With a shattering crack, the impact brought down the tavern’s roof right on the demon, and the whole building collapsed into a burning ruin. A bonfire to encapsulate the chaos.
Viriya dusted soot off her uniform as she approached them. She was a total mess. Her hair was unkempt and singed at the edges. Burn holes dotted her uniform all over, her skin black and red and oozing blood where the flames had scorched her. but her eyes were defiant as ever.
“Why do I get the feeling you know what’s going on Riven?” she asked.
“Where’s Rio?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, maybe considering whether she ought to push it at this time or not. Thankfully, her better judgement won out. “I don’t know where Dorvhaes is, and frankly, I don’t care. The demons are running off with the people and I couldn’t be everywhere—”
Her voice caught at that, and she stared around. For just a second, Riven thought he spied what looked like tears. But then she stared back at him, back at them all, and her face might have carved from marble. “Now that you’re all here, there’s a better chance to get to the survivors. We need to split up, and cover as much as ground as we can.”
“Of course,” Wilsall said. He had to bark out his orders to pull his troops’ attention from the wreckage of the tavern. Most of them stared slack-jawed, switching between the tavern and back to Viriya.
Riven didn’t pay attention. “Viriya. Where’s Bartle?”
He saw the “who” forming on her lips, but then she pressed them to a line, realization lighting up her dark eyes into the green they really were. Or perhaps that was the flames everywhere. “I’m not sure. Back at his home I suspect. We found the girl—”
“I found her, but that’s another story.”
Viriya screwed her eyes at him, but Wilsall spoke first. “We’re ready whenever you are.”
“Then it’s time we split up,” Viriya said.
After a brief discussion, it was decided that the Guards would go in twos and scour the whole village. Viriya and Riven would set off on their own, Riven assuring he was quite capable and Viriya obtaining the horse of the Guard who’d been carried off. Riven had spared the other Guard who had come with him a momentary apologetic look.
Both Viriya and the Captain had looked like they wanted to poke him for more information, but with their main plans settled, Riven pulled his horse away. Bartle and his daughter could be suffering who knew what. He’d wasted far too much time already discussing matters. It was time to find them, and make sure they hadn’t been demon-napped as well.
Riven didn’t get far before he was confronted by more demons. Two of them had corralled in a family of a man, a woman, and two small children. The firelight made the demons glow with the colour that dyed their scales, but the family was swathed in their shadow.
Bartle. Bartle and his daughter. He didn’t have time to waste on every single case he met if he wanted to ensure their wellbeing. But damn it all, he couldn’t just leave them.
He remembered the Sept crystal this time, taking it out of his jacket and thrusting it inside a saddle-bag. The old bay mount had better not run off, for there was no time for Riven to tie it to something. And even if he could, no point in making it burn.
Riven jumped down from his horse and brandished his gun after reloading the cartridge. “That’s enough.”
The Fiends turned, cold eyes glittering like merciless stars. They stared at him, faces contorted into twisted grins. Then they advanced. Apparently, he hadn’t been considered much of a threat. He swallowed. His Essence had better work, now that the crystal was no longer with him. Scions, he’d break down into tears if it turned out to have some lingering residual effect.
But the demons kept coming, and Riven felt nothing. He closed his eyes. Survival. Maybe it wasn’t life or death for him just yet, but it was for that poor family. Their survival was at stake here. It had to come. It had to be there. If not for him, then for—
The leading Fiend yelled as he charged. Riven tore open his eyes, heart clenching so hard it pained him, and threw up his arms. The pressure came. It possessed him, then erupted from him, a golden shield forming in the air as auric lines whizzed through like innumerable little strings sewn by some invisible seamstress. The Fiend hit the shield then bounced back hard to land on the ground.
Riven blinked, then wasted no time shooting the demon in the face as his shield dropped. He howled, rolling on the ground as he clutched his face. One down, one more to go.
Growling, the other demon backed off. Her arm began to glow, her long dark hair turning shining white like starlight. She waved her arm, and a wave of cold blasted Riven. He shivered, then staggered, rapid breaths misting in front of his face. If this kept up, he’d die of frostbite. He had to run. Had to get away.
No. If he ran, then what point was there in his Essence. What use would it be to him if he could escape on his own? He needed to stay. He needed to face this head-on, make sure he survived. Damn Essence wouldn’t work any other way.
Even if it meant he turned into an ice sculpture.
But he would die. The cold wouldn’t let him keep his eyes anymore, and he was losing feeling all over, and it was impossible to move now he had become frozen. Maybe his Essence couldn’t protect him from the elements and was only good for physical attacks. A statue. Dead, and eternal. Maybe even Deathless if that Deadmage had been right.
The pressure shot out of him again, lines of gold twisting and turning in the air. They formed a different kind of shield this time, smothering him in a light gold blanket, and all of a sudden, the cold was gone. Disappeared, as though it had never been. The only traces remaining was within him, but the fires all around were rapidly banishing the last vestiges of the chill.
The demon’s eyes had gone wide. She waved her arms once more but Riven’s shield prevented the wintry aura from overtaking him again.
Riven grinned, and as the shield collapsed, he fired his gun. The demon clamped her hand right over the hole in her chest and staggered backwards. No time to waste. The other Fiend was getting a grip on his pain and would be back up any moment. He cocked his pistol, and fired over and over. He emptied the cartridge, then replaced it with another. Hopefully, his Essence hadn’t eaten up to many of the Sept bullets. He didn’t stop until the demons, or what remained of them, had stopped moving. In seconds, they crumbled to glowing dust. Dust that refused to glow for very long.
Letting out a deep breath, Riven looked up. “Are you all right?”
The family was staring at him like he was a demon too. Like he hadn’t just freed them from two Fiends who were surely bent on killing them, or at the very least, kidnapping them.
Riven tried again. “Do you have a safe place to go? It’s not safe out there, so you need to hide somewhere.”
“We thank you, sir,” the man said. Then he shepherded his family along, keeping one eye on Riven as they left.
Riven stomach churned. That gratitude sounded less grateful and more reluctant. And after he had saved their lives too. Sighing, he set off down the street. He had to forget that altercation. Bartle and his daughter might need him yet. He had to ensure their safety first and foremost.
The horse hadn’t left. He mounted it quickly, then galloped off. More screams struck out from the distance, shrieks of fear and pain mixed with the yells and cries of bloodlust and chaos. Riven didn’t heed them. A left here, another left up ahead, then a right two intersections down if he remembered right. Bartle and his daughter couldn’t be far now. Scions, let them be alive, safe, hidden away from the demons marauding through the village.
A door burst open nearby, and even as the horse charged past, Riven caught the horrific scuffle—a woman being torn from a man’s grasp by a demon, the man thrown back into the house, a child caught in another demon’s arms. Riven should go back. Turn his horse around, charge straight into the house, and fight off those Fiends just as he’d done with the other family. But he rode on, face burning, eyes stinging. Just the smoke. Had to be.
Behind him, a shrill scream joined the chorus of burning, manic, demonic howling. A scream that didn’t blast out through the area, but rather, fell with the weight of mountain range from the sky.