To Live Or Die At Lorelight Academy, page 43
“Will!” Farah calls through the earring.
I spin around, take aim, and squeeze the trigger, sending a crossbow bolt to slam into the forehead of one of the charging Infected closing in.
“Ya?!” I blurt out breathlessly, even as I slide on the tile floor, affixing the crossbow back to its place on my back with one hand as my other closes in on the rapier hilt.
“We’re stuck on the second floor! The Infected are—argh! Dammit! Will! You have to come get us!”
Shit.
We thought this might happen.
It’s the reason I climbed up here in the first place—the reason Plan Two splits us in the first place—in the event that one of us can get in and the other can’t.
Farah and Yin-Gata are stuck.
It’s up to me.
Before the three of us can go upstairs together, I have to go down and let them in.
An arcing sword nearly cuts my head off, but I bring the rapier up, flicking the blade to the side and striking back.
The Infected screams and I free my rapier in time to take a retreating step backward, parry another sword, and stab another mace-wielding soldier in the wrist, forcing it to drop its weapon to the floor.
Their numbers are dwindling.
It’s taken nearly even trick I have—even a chef’s knife—but their numbers are dwindling.
The numbers are still imbalanced enough to mean certain death.
I need to keep being smart. I can do this.
I have to keep playing it safe, and I can turn the odds back in—
“Will!” Farah screams into the earring.
If I survive all this, I’m going to spend a long time in a very, very quiet place.
“Hang on!”
I don’t know why I’m the one we sent up the tower.
I don’t know what kind of miracle I’m supposed to work, here.
“No miracle,” Burta’s voice tells me, smiling and shaking her head. “Just try.”
I run forward to meet the remaining three attackers. I charge the slow soldier dragging the mace behind him. Of all the things I don’t want to ignore in the chaos of combat, it’s a heaving heavy strike from that thing.
I slam my spellshield down at the crux of the monster’s arm, sending the mace to the ground. A crack tells me I broke its arm.
A spinning bash catches the soldier in the bottom of the jaw.
Its head turns all the way around, cracks, and he falls to the ground.
Two against one.
I can do this.
I parry a sword from a striking Infected, but another sword cuts at my thigh.
Pain lances in a red line across my leg. The part of my brain that isn’t fighting for its life flashes briefly with the image from physiology books of some dangerous places in the thigh where one does not want to be cut.
I scream a pain-filled, rage-filled scream of my own, and drive the rapier forward, closing in faster than the soldier’s backswing can retract and strike again.
I bury the dueling sword up to the metal-cuffed hilt in the Infected, and ram it backward. I shove it from the blade and it staggers back, its heel catching on the overturned bar cart. It’s out for now, and bleeding that strange, black blood.
I turn in time to dodge another cutting sword as the original sword-wielding Infected I first squared up against eyes me down and charges me.
“Will!” Farah shouts.
“Coming!” I shout back, and attempt a parry at another cut aimed at my midsection.
I have to leap back when the thin blade of the rapier finds itself unable to compete with the heavier sword in the soldier’s hand. I connected, for sure, but it did nothing.
My back is to the wall for a third time, though I’m no longer near the window.
The soldier squares off again, rotating forms.
It’s a bit of old life in there.
“We don’t have to fight,” I tell him.
It’s not that he ignores me. It’s not that he doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t speak my language.
The Infected is operating on a different spectrum of communication, existence, and humanity—half-remembered sword forms or not.
He charges once more, and I realize something.
He’s done the same cut every time—left to right, across his body.
I take a gamble.
It’s a familiar gamble now, and it’s multifaceted: I gamble that this disaster is just that—a tragic supernatural attack which caused death and, shortly after, created the living weapons I now fight.
The soldier—dead soldier—brings the sword back, and I bank on the fact that, despite what it might appear, it’s just this one strike the soldier in this monster remembers.
I feint forward, and the strike comes.
Right to left.
Right to left.
Please be right to left.
If I’m wrong, I’ll deliberately put myself neck-level with exactly where that sword is going to end up.
I’m already dodging to the right as soon as the area is clear.
The attack comes.
Right to left.
Please, right to left.
The tug of sword through flesh never comes. The Infected soldier’s blade does not snag on my neck.
It was right to left.
My bet pays off.
I lunge forward and skewer the last Infected through the temple, and it falls limp to the ground.
“Will!”
“Almost there.”
I draw Philip, recover Mitchell, and load a bolt in each crossbow. Five left.
Running low on bolts.
Running out of time.
Ignoring the stairway upward, I find the stairs leading down to the floor below. I wrap my arm around the banister and fling myself down the stairs to the fifth floor, ready to fight my way back down the tower.
Chapter
Thirty-Six
The fifth and fourth floors do not leave me unscathed.
But I get through, and finally reach the third floor.
A horde of Infected clump against a bronze door that bisects the third floor into two halves. They growl and scratch at the door, yelping and shrieking and dodging back and forth with their pale haunted eyes.
It’s like they’re just as desperate to open the door as I am.
Through the shifting crowd I spy the lock bolt. It’s almost three feet across. Not a chance the Infected can break the door open.
I frown.
The lock is turning from a warm orange color, like a blade straight from the forge, back to a normal colder color.
Farah and Yin-Gata must have tried using the device they used to get the outside door open to get this door open, too.
Why didn’t it work?
Not powerful enough?
Couldn’t get enough undisturbed seconds to concentrate on it?
Is…is someone dead?
“You still there?” I ask Farah.
“Barely,” Farah breathes. “More are coming.”
“The door is shut,” I say, stupidly.
“No, from—ugh! Behind us,” she says, between sounds of exertion. “That…battalion Sampson was so…so fucking happy about. They were in the forest, or spread out, or I don’t know, but he…he called them back over. They’re coming up through the tower. We can barely—we can barely hold them at the staircase to the third floor, even with the sentries.”
Oh.
Right.
The three of us, at the time of planning, had not assumed that Sampson had stolen a battalion of Regency soldiers.
At least we—Farah and Yin-Gata—have the sentries.
While I spend a few brief seconds coming up with my battle plan—my kill order—the sentries are the only reason Farah and Lulana are still alive.
There are twelve, to be specific.
Twelve sentries that must be actively magically invested in to work.
They’re on the other side of the door, fighting in the stairwell apparently, as Sampson’s army streams in from the base of the tower.
My foot hits the last step to the third floor, and I’m out of time to plan.
I decide to risk it all.
I can’t take out another wave alone. Not with the weapons and tools I have on me.
I sprint, arms pumping, teeth gritted, running as fast as I possibly can, despite the short distance across the room. I push past the Infected by the door, paying them as little mind as possible and aiming straight for the lock.
No defense.
No offense.
No stealth takedowns.
Get in, slide the bolt open, and back the hell out before I become so many red ribbons.
I gather what magic the tertiary affinity requires to use the Mirror Beam of Water. A half second’s worth of cold extends toward the lock. I don’t want to freeze it, but I don’t want to burn my hand on the partially melted lock.
The beam reaches the lock around the same time my hand does. It’s burning hot still.
Oh, well. It was a good idea.
I shove my hand through the sleeve of the jacket and slam the bolt back with a satisfying thunk, unlocking the door just as the crowd of Infected Regency soldiers realize I am among them. I leap back, eyes darting every which way for blades and claws coming at me.
A few pass by my head and the space where I was standing. A few Infected turn to follow me.
Then the bronze doors slam open, bashing away the Infected soldiers piled around it, battering them back and revealing a golem of metal plating and wooden segments.
Training sentries.
A smile tugs at my cheek.
I lash out with the rapier at an off-guard Infected, skewering it through the eye.
The blade is out in a flick of steel, tip driving into the chest of the next closest one.
At the same time, on the other side of the door, Farah and Yin-Gata resolve their own two-fronted war.
Soon the way between us is clear.
Since I’ve taken out the floors above, there’s nothing to catch us from behind as the training sentries and I fall back to Farah’s line.
“Hey,” I say, joining her at the front, battering away a blade aimed right at her face.
Farah’s face is beaded with sweat. She looks haggard, covered in scrapes, cuts, and dirt.
Not that you’re looking so pretty yourself.
Not that Farah’s face isn’t pretty. It is pretty. She is pretty. And—
Farah turns to stare at me, and my thoughts go mute.
“Let’s go,” she breathes, turning away and leaving me to follow behind.
Oh.
Other Farah is here.
Other Farah is a strange, sad, and hateful creature.
The admiration I feel for her grows more intense the more I realize how much inner darkness she has. She piles layer upon layer of kindness atop it. She lays it on in rows and weaves it over her, like layering woven bread.
But she won’t talk about all that dark.
I don’t know if it’ll ever turn light.
I don’t know if it’ll ever pour out of her, like so much black bile.
The layers of kindness and sympathy are gone.
Here, at Albright Tower, the darkness has finally claimed Farah Fox Kitt. I can see it in her face. I can hear it in the way she speaks.
I can feel it.
She dashes up the stairs.
I follow, taking one last glance behind, where the battalion is still pouring in.
My heart falters in my chest.
Like a thousand spiderlings bursting from an egg, Infected Regency soldiers pile and climb over one another to ascend the stairs and follow us.
They push one another out of the way—a screaming, shrieking, horde, digging crystalline claws into the walls and tile floor of the tower in their pursuit.
Yin-Gata follows last, heaving the doors shut with the aid of the training sentries under her control, and slamming the bronze bolt shut.
We three wince in sync as the Infected slam like heavy rain against the bronze door.
It groans and complains on its hinges, threatening to bring the entire wall around it down before the doors themselves open.
The bolt is misshapen now. Not a perfect fit for the hatch that holds it, ever since Farah and Yin-Gata tried to melt it away.
They’ve left that melting box behind them. Probably not on purpose. Things were hectic.
Farah and Yin-Gata are doing the same math and numbers I am.
I can see it in their eyes.
They reach the same conclusion that I do.
“We have to go—fast,” Farah says, and she’s already climbing up the stairs as fast as she can, ascending the tower to reap her revenge.
“YOU ARE THE DREGS!” Sampson’s voice booms as we climb the stairs, moving past the fourth floor and fifth floor. “THE DREGS! DREGS! DREGS! FILTH IN THE CORNERS! NO ONE ASKED ME TO CLEAN! YOU FORCED ME! YOU ALL FORCED ME! YIN-GATA! LORD REGENT! THIS IS UPON YOU! I AM INNOCENT! SHAME! SHAME TO FORCE ME TO MANIFEST MY GENIUS AGAINST YOU! I COULD HAVE BEEN MERCIFUL! NOT LIKE YOU!”
We pass through the sixth floor where I entered, kicking loose harpsichord keys and strings out of our way.
I dart to the window at the side of the wall—the one I’ve already been in and out of a time or two.
Outside is a horde unlike any we’ve seen—both in number and makeup. There are soldiers here. Even some on horses overgrown with spikes, their eyes turned a demonic yellow.
Hundreds?
Thousands?
The soldiers at the base of the tower crane their necks up to stare at me, opening their jaws to roar and shriek.
“Will.”
Burta’s voice again.
She’s coming to me more and more. It makes me feel like…like something is coming. Like maybe she’s here to…to keep me company.
Company where?
Company for what?
The thought of my parents in the icy water flashes before my mind.
Could I…could I die?
I shake away the thought.
“Will,” Burta urges again from the depths of my mind, as we take one last look at the horde of soldiers and horses and students and staff gathered on the grounds below.
Monsters.
Just monsters.
And Sampson wants to bring this out to the world.
“You need to make sure this never happen,” Burta says.
The sentence strikes me.
You need to make sure this never happen.
Ternian grammatical structure is an interesting thing. It’s easy to criticize Burta’s trouble adjusting to my language, but my opinion has always been…who am I to talk? I don’t exactly speak Ternian.
Burta has always had trouble with tense.
Past, future, present.
Now, in this world of Anastrophe, of pausing time—of dialing it back, of causality and branching paths and futures, tunnels and walls, and circling routes between the two—her verb tense issues now just seem…wise. Smart.
Inevitable.
“You need to make sure this never happen.”
“I’ll make sure. I promise. Even if it kills me.”
“No…Will…not if…no…”
I tear myself away from the window and follow Farah and Yin-Gata up the stairs. We leave three of the twelve sentries to guard the bronze door, even as it already begins to fail, and intercept the army on the way.
I move to follow. But before I do, I gather what Concentrate I can.
I don’t need to physically gather it anymore—bending down and pulling it from where it falls beside slain Infected. I summon it with an effort of will, and I can bring it with me, following me in the air around my head like a cloud, or a school of fish.
This new talent garners me an eyebrow raise from Farah.
“Resonance,” Yin-Gata says. “You have quite the affinity, Will. I have Scholars I want you to meet after this.”
“Sure,” I say, following her up the stairs.
After this.
The next room is laid out much like the first—black and white tile, spare furniture, Infected guards. This time, between myself, Farah, Yin-Gata, and the nine remaining training sentries, we dispatch them without much personal risk.
The floor above that one, however—floor eight—is laid out differently than the floors before.
And, unlike the floors above, we do not hear the rustling and uneasy growls of Infected.
My boot falls on step after step as I force myself up the stairs, yanking myself along the brass railing with my arm. My calves scream. It’s not just the flights of stairs, it’s the rushing down, fighting, rushing up—all this madness. I’m starting to get tired. I’m starting to get manic.
I’m starting to think of dying by the ruins of a ship, in the cold, icy water.
Farah can tell.
“Will,” Farah snaps, and her voice echoes twice in the pearl earring. “Keep it together until this is done.”
Right.
Right.
“Other Farah” or not, she’s right.
Whether it’s Farah and her drive to vengeance and violence, or Yin-Gata and her lone ability to use the Anastrophe, or me and my desperate need to live for Burta and my grandfather—and to somehow, if I possibly can, save these people—we need to keep it together.
Keep it together until all this is done.
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
In a way, the first thing we notice about the eighth floor is the lack of Infected. We didn’t hear them from the stairwell so, technically, that is probably the first thing our five senses notice.
But once we ingest the smell, it quickly becomes the dominant sensory factor.
We start to smell it from the top of the stairs.
I can tell it’s not just me—Yin-Gata blinks and stiffens. For a woman in medicine, I’m sure her threshold for disturbing smells is higher.
“Oh, my g—” I cough, and bring my shirt up to cover my nose.
Farah, on the stairs a bit closer to the room, staggers to the side and nearly retches, leaning against the railing of the stairway and shuddering.
