I’m becoming a masochist. Soon I’ll enjoy this.
Panacea’s power spilled down her arm into her fingers and brought to life the runes along the mace’s shaft. It filled the grooves Sil had painstakingly cut into the metal, pooled in the head, and was contained.
Her runework held strong as the mace became incandescent. It burned her palm, skin sizzling and cooking, the metal growing hotter by the heartbeat.
She only needed to hold on for a heartbeat.
The daemon was upon her. The earth shook with its strides, rattling teeth and bones as Sil forced herself to raise her weapon and bring her shield forward. She held the accelerant vial tightly bound in a barrier, her one lifeline.
Power still trickled through her. Scars on her arm reverted to crying, burning wounds. It didn’t matter just now.
“Come on.”
Her muscles tensed.
Time stretched out.
The daemon’s final strides took ages to land.
Her heart thundered.
It all came crashing down at once.
She couldn’t leap aside. There was no way to get clear in time, not at the size of that monster, not when it was this close, its horn aimed at her chest.
Instead, she swung.
It had been almost perfectly timed. The mace’s head screamed through the air, trailing white light like a comet streaking across the skies. Sil had been just a touch too eager, too hurried.
The mace impacted the rhino’s head just behind its massive horn. Panacea’s power exploded out with so much force that Sil’s feet left the ground. A blinding blast. A boom to end the world. And the rhino’s head was blasted apart, its entire horn shattered, the long snout of its muzzle shredded to ruin.
Sil was thrown back with equal force as the rhino’s head rammed into the ground, the rest of its great bulk flipping over to crash with earth shattering force. She saw it all happening in the same prolonged state of awareness as she sailed through the air. She would impact soon. It would hurt.
Instinct grabbed hold and she forced herself into a ball, hand and invisible shield covering her head.
Hitting the ground did not hurt.
Rolling head over heels until smashing against the far wall, however, did. Air exploded out of her in a wheeze. Something snapped in her back. Or in her chest. Pain hit like a hammer.
Consciousness faded.
Then returned with a painful gasp of air.
Her vision swam. Her arm had been shattered. She bled, turning the ground beneath to red mud.
I’ve survived another gamble. She would’ve laughed, if she had the air for it.
Through it all, she’d held on to two things: her mace, and the precious vial.
Before she could orient herself, understand where the monsters were, what millennium had dawned, or which way the earth lay, she shakily brought the vial to her lips and dragged out the stopper with her teeth.
Drinking took more effort than she thought herself capable of.
The impact of accelerated healing sent her into another faint. This one was interrupted by powerful hands shaking her awake. They dragged her to jelly-like feet. A thick voice boomed in her ear.
“—all mad?!” the voice growled. “Cinder and the lot of you, you’re all hopping mad.”
Sil was being dragged away. She dug in her heels and resisted, panic flaring. Was it daemon taking her away? She’d seen them dragging victims. The creature that had its hands on her was large enough to be one of the daemons, its head a crest of bone, the eyes yellow.
She shook her head, cleared it of the fog of war, and stared up into Commander Vilfor’s crag-like face. Concern shaded the vanadal’s yellow eyes.
“I’m alive?!” she gasped out.
“Not for long if we don’t move,” the vanadal spoke in his rumbling baritone. “You whacked it good, but it’s still kicking. It’ll be up in a beat.”
The state of the commander swam into Sil’s view and she gasped.
Vilfor was missing one of his upper arms—the left ended just above his shoulder, the stump ragged and uneven, bleeding thick purple blood. The rest of him looked as if he’d been trodden on by the rhino. Large black bruises marred his grey face, and his armour was dented, pitted, and torn asunder.
Sil found her feet and pulled her arm out of the vanadal’s grip. Instead, she leaned on him, pressed her hand to his chest, and prayed.
“I require this one be mended.”
When nothing happened right away, she began panicking. She’d been so full of vinegar earlier, demanding the goddess obey her, that she had spoken without thinking. It had worked, but now the prayer didn’t—
In a flash, the healing weave manifested and Vilfor’s wound knitted together. He’d lost the arm, but retained his life.
“Where’s the monster?” she asked, glancing about.
The blast had thrown her some thirty to forty feet, her impact gouging a trench through soft earth. She’d narrowly missed crashing against a whole bunch of unfriendly looking logs and wood axes. What a death that would’ve been.
A piercing bellow full of pain and anger and despair echoed in the air. Her head snapped in the direction it had come from.
The rhino lived. Half of its head had been blown clear off to leave behind weeping crater. One eye was gone. The horn had disappeared. Its lower jaw hung in two pieces, a wet, bloody tongue lolling almost to the ground. But it lived, and it stumbled drunkenly about, screaming in anguish. Soldiers stabbed at it but could do almost nothing against its thick hide. A kick sent one against a wall, crumpled like paper.
“We need to kill it,” Sil said as Vilfor stumbled out of the healing daze.
“You need to get into the ward,” the commander growled. He hefted one of his axes in the hand that remained, propping it up with his secondary arm. “I’ll handle the beast. See to the wounded.”
“Get bent.”
Sil rewove her shield and took stock of herself. She still had the mace, attached to her arm by the leather strap. It had cooled considerably. Scraps of her skin clung to the metal, the accompanying scars itching in her palm. Her clothes were torn. Her sides ached. And she felt the thirst that followed blood loss and forced healing. She had grown fresh, unyielding scars along her right arm, where Panacea’s power had escaped.
All in all, she could have looked worse for wear. The rhino might have stepped on her.
The beast turned its one good eye to her, recognition flaring in that bloodshot gaze. Its remaining nostril flared as it raised its head and bellowed pathetically. Soldiers scampered out of the way as it turned toward her and Vilfor and charged anew.
She wouldn’t dare another call to the goddess, even if she ached, bone-deep, to do it. Wielding the power with all the pain that accompanied it felt exhilarating. Even now, she longed to be burned on its pyre again.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Instead, she wove barriers in the creature’s path, her illum dangerously low.
“Get ready,” she called to the vanadal as he strode next to her, axe held out, eyes on the monster.
He wasn’t quite steady on his feet and she could guess what he’d been fighting to get in such a state. The monster closed in the distance quickly, thundering towards her, head bowed low, the deep wound in its skull suppurating.
Sil invoked a blessing of Cassandra on Vilfor, and refreshed her own.
“Wait,” she demanded as Vilfor stepped forward. “Hold your ground!”
The fortress’s wall was at their back. If her plan didn’t work and they mistimed their dodge, they would end as smears of bone shards and organ meat painting the inside of the Rock.
“Wait!” She kept weaving, pouring all into her barriers.
Vilfor growled, head held down, legs bent. He moved a half-step in front of her as if that would save her.
Would the impact be enough to finally kill the monster? She didn’t dare pray.
It crashed into the first of her obstacles, passing through the invisible wall as if it weren’t there. It roared in pain as it crashed through the next, then the next, each bleeding off some of its speed and momentum.
As it neared withing ten paces of her, the final barrier, the one she’d been pouring all her strength into, finally did what she hoped it would.
Sil had built a barrier twisting to the side. Not one, but many, reinforcing them as she kept pouring all her illum into the construct. Blood spurted from her nose as she forced herself to keep the design coherent: the barrier twisted aside like as slope on a mountain, built of interlocking invisible sheets, like a cresting wave approaching the shore.
The rhino ran straight into the curve. It found itself at first gently tugged aside, then more sharply, until that entire mass of monster careened to the side, its feet slipping out from under it as its own momentum carried it down the invisible slope. It went around Sil and Vilfor by paces, and rammed into the wall proper to an explosion of blood and brain matter.
Her heart broke at the pitiful moan of pain it let out.
“Go,” she urged Vilfor.
He was already turning, raising his axe, springing on the moment. He didn’t stumble when she put the first step beneath his tread. Nor on the second, the commander rushing forward on a rising invisible stairway.
He bounded up the steps, picking up speed, roaring. Sil barely kept up with him.
The rhino stirred. Kicked out a foot. Tried to rise. Moaned in agony.
Vilfor launched himself off the final step, axe held above his head, a roar exploding from his chest.
He slammed the black axe into the rhino’s exposed throat. Blood gushed out, thick and oily. Vilfor pivoted on his right foot, yanked the axe out, turned, and cut another gash like a woodsman felling a great tree.
The daemon kicked out and thrashed in agony. Sil set a barrier between Vilfor and the erratic legs as he kept chopping down. It was all she could do to keep him protected from the monster’s dying spasms.
With a final gurgle of agony, the rhino stilled and breathed out its last bleeding gasp.
Sil drew in a choking breath as Vilfor wrenched his axe free of the monster’s flesh, both of them panting with the effort of their labours.
“Get. To. The ward,” Vilfor choked out, speaking in gasps, barely able to form the words. “We have. Many. Wounded.”
“You have enough healers,” she answered and wiped her face on the ruined sleeve of her shirt.
She ran a hand through her bedraggled hair, drew it away from her face. Her adrenaline still surged and her hands trembled. Another near-death. She had no right to berate Tallah or Vergil, not when she was worse than either.
Her stomach cramped painfully as she allowed herself to uncoil just a bit. She drew in illum and its sharp taste sobered up her flagging strength. There was death and pain on the air. She couldn’t linger.
With this done, she had to find Vergil next. He would be where the fighting was thickest, in over his ears, too stubborn and stupid to run as he should.
But, she supposed, so was she now.
“Come, help me find the boy,” she demanded as Vilfor waded through the blood to stand at her side. “If I can find him, he’ll be a force to reckon with. We may hold on until Tallah returns. ”
“If she returns at all,” the vanadal said. He let out a deep breath, set his jaw, and lowered his head. “Stay behind me. Keep up.” He had no other arguments to add to his protest and was clearly too tired to oppose her will.
Sil could see how Tallah had bullied him into accepting her harebrained plan. Vilfor was a warrior, not a commander. He lacked nothing for courage and valour, could order men, lead from the front. But he was, like Vergil in many ways, simple, almost insecure in his role. She was surprised she hadn’t seen it earlier in the large warrior. For now, she followed in his wake.
He called for his men, rallied them to his charge, and waded back into the thickest part of fighting. They went around the ward, cut across the training fields, and headed for where the monsters were breaking through.
Already, the line of men and women holding back the flood was buckling. They were being driven back, step by step, more of the monsters escaping into the Rock. Corpses piled high. Beastmen dragged soldiers away, the wounded or the dying being thrown over the mass forcing its way to the fore.
That was all she managed to take in before a more immediate, pressing sight tore her attention away.
“Vergil!” She broke away from Vilfor’s wedge, and ran across the bloody field, barriers coming up to block the skinny, terrifying creatures lopping across the way.
The boy was atop a giant of a creature. She recognized it from Tallah’s description. It was impossible not to, given the white mask the daemon wore, and the raven wings the size of a man.
Vergil was perched atop its shoulders, stabbing down with his sword while the monster way trying to shake him loose. On instinct, she sent out the tether to help him.
The power bounced straight off him, as if refused by the helmet. It stopped her dead in her tracks, the tether feeding back painfully. It felt like being kicked in the ribs.
She ripped open a rend and pulled out what she knew to be her last accelerant. The rest had been handed over to Kor for use on soldiers. This was their very last, aside from whatever Tallah still held in her own storage. That would be a worry for later. For now, she readied her mace, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed.
“I demand your aid!”
She couldn’t do anything to the daemon without Panacea, and this was a perfect chance to kill the creature. It had survived Tallah, but maybe it wouldn’t survive Panacea’s unleashed might.
Heartbeats passed. Nothing happened.
Sil cursed under her breath. The daemon grabbed hold of Vergil’s leg and yanked him off its back. It threw him bodily across the killing ground, the boy crashing against a group of Vilfor’s soldiers, all of them going down in a pile.
She wanted to shout for him, but nothing would be heard above that infernal noise. A cloud of dust was up in the air, joined by smoke and ash, and it became hard to keep track of the boy in the chaos. The final rays of sunlight flared through the chaos.
Daemons came scratching at her barriers.
Vergil needed time to extricate himself from the pile as more beasts descended on them. Sil envisioned barriers to hold back the daemon in its tracks, try and stall.
Again, nothing happened. Her power flickered away, the last of her illum moving sluggishly through her veins, more refusing to be drawn in. She stumbled, suddenly aflame, heart hammering.
Realisation dawned. She recognized the feeling, the sudden block, the pulse going through her.
Sil grinned. Gripped her mace tighter. Forced herself into a run. Then a sprint across the daemon-chocked courtyard as her barriers failed.
She didn’t head for Vergil.
She headed for the daemon.
The black monster was intent on Vergil as the boy was coming back to his feet. He’d left his axe stuck in the creature’s head, blade buried halfway down its skull, the handle sticking out like some obscene ponytail on the monster’s bald head.
“Don’t look at me,” she huffed.
Words were being spoken, louder than the noise, as if unobstructed. They became clearer as she neared, coming from the black daemon approaching the boy.
“—dare disobey?” it was saying, musical voice lilting into a confused question. “I will strip your soul and feed it to the Prison myself. The master will—”
Vergil answered him with a roar and a charge, the downed men rallied behind him, weapons drawn. They all rushed with him. He went in swinging the sword, drawing long, black arcs of blood from the creature, lithely dancing among its powerful swings.
Sil raked mace’s head across her open palm as she ran, and the runes came alive. She wouldn’t have Panacea’s strength, but she still held some illum. All of it poured into the weapon and its head glowed with the infusion. That was based on Tallah’s rarely used technique of heating up her blades, distilled to a rune formula.
Just don’t look at me, she prayed as she dove aside from several feral monsters, rolled, picked herself up and kept running towards her target’s back. Keep. Watching. Vergil.
Her lungs burned with the choking miasma filling the air. Her eyes stung, not daring blink lest she lose the perfect moment.
As the monster raised its claws to swat Vergil away, she reached its back and smashed the mace with all her strength right between its wings.
Illum ignited for the second time. The spikes bit deep into the black, stone-hard body, and unleashed their load. A pulse of power exploded and the daemon was knocked forward, arms flailing, legs buckling.
Vergil’s Promise met its throat with a sound like an axe splitting wood. It didn’t manage to cut through, but the sword went in halfway through. Black blood squirted from the smoking wound.
“You dare?” the creature cried out. It turned, dragging Vergil with it. The boy held on to his sword, trying to pull it free, unable to resist the daemon’s strength.
“Run, Sil!” he cried out, heels digging through the earth.
Sil gasped out a breath. A feral grin split her lips. She straightened, opened her arms as the monster lunged, and closed her eyes. She embraced the coming pain.
Fire poured out through her chest.
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