After the Storm: A Slice of Life Fantasy Adventure, page 25
Ysolde’s whistle knifed across the square. Shields snapped together. A row of spearheads rose in one clean line. I planted Ashwaker, drew a steady breath, and shoved hard. Compressed air hit the front rank of dead like a cart and bought us five paces.
“Push on three!” Ysolde shouted. “One, two, three!”
We rolled the formation forward. Spears punched. The meat-walkers folded, drawing back.
I slid left and ripped a tight blue arc through their ranks. Bone and rank flesh popped as they fell in putrid puddles. With another blast, the alley on our right cleared. From the council steps, Hinzbel ordered volleys and stitched the second rank with quick, practiced calls.
“Left! On me!” Ysolde snapped.
She led a wedge through the stinking corpses. Her blade worked low: knees, ankles, throats. Two recruits kept her flanks tight, while Eleya’s wash countered another necrotic smoke bomb. The thing would have turned the square into a choking pit.
The ghoul lieutenant stepped into the west lane now as if he wanted every eye. Black armor. Black staff capped with a clawed crown. Hood pushed back just enough to show a dead grin. He raised the stick and pointed at me.
He wanted to gloat. And that was my chance…
“Stay on the line,” I told Ysolde. “I’m going. It’s the only way to stop this slaughter before we lose more people!”
She flashed a quick, mean grin. “Win fast.”
“Always.”
I ran straight at him. He walked to meet me, slow and sure. The dead parted for him.
He snapped the staff, and a lash of dead light hissed across the stones. I caught his magic on Ashwaker’s butt spike and dumped the necrotic mana into the paving.
That surprised him. There weren’t a lot of staves like Ashwaker that could absorb and discharge mana like that. He was starting to realize who he was up against.
He flicked his fingers. Bone spikes shot from the ground under my boots. I hopped, touched Ashwaker’s tip to the stones, and flattened the next rise with a tight burst of counterspell.
He hauled a fist back. A rust-black hand tore up through the street and tried to grab my ankle. I kicked it clear and stamped the spike down. Lightning ran off the staff and blew the hand into grit.
“Not good enough!” I shouted as I blasted lightning at him.
He laughed without sound and conjured a ward. My lightning slammed into it and partially broke through. He staggered back, surprised again at how his ward was unable to fully stop my spell. With a growl, he swept the air again. A fan of greasy smoke rolled at chest height. My eyes watered. Eleya’s voice hit from behind me, calm and sharp. “Down!”
I dropped. Her wash flew over and turned the cloud to harmless wet.
“Thanks,” I said without looking back.
The ghoul clapped a palm to the black crown of his staff and fed it a charge. The staff pulsed, and he pointed.
Every corpse within arm’s length twitched toward me.
Good.
I made a ring of counterspell.
Ashwaker’s tip bit the stone. A white-blue loop opened at waist height. I shoved it outward, slow and steady. Every brainless undead that walked into it was rebuked and became just a corpse again.
“Rraaaaah!” the ghoul snarled, seeing his own doom. He stabbed forward. The lash slammed into my ribs. Heat flared through the old lightning lines under my skin. I bled the blow away through Ashwaker and kept my feet. He pulled again, trying to turn it into a tug-of-war.
“Enough of this,” I said. “Give that here.”
I yanked. Hard.
The ghoul’s hand—now without a body attached to it—still gripped the staff as it flew over to me. The ghoul himself was right where he’d been, staring wide-eyed at his wrist ending in a stump.
I lifted the staff a hand’s width with telekinesis, then brought an arcane shear down the middle like an ax.
The black crown snapped. Half of it fell and bounced on the stones.
I could see the Man in Ash break at that. He screamed soundlessly and made to run at me, enraged enough to not even consider using his magic.
I smiled and raised Ashwaker.
Telekinesis pinned him down, kept him in his spot. My free palm came up and I drove a bolt through his shoulder. He jerked, staggered, and tried to draw mana for a feeble counter.
“No,” I said, and shoved the next arc of lightning clean into his chest.
Light under his skin flared. Brands on his ribs writhed like a bag of snakes. He tried to counter the charge, so I dumped more mana, then cut it with an arcane stop and left the power trapped under his skin. He started to swell from the inside. Panic flickered through dead eyes.
“Say good night,” I told him.
A moment later, he exploded.
As chunks of the ghoul’s putrid flesh rained down around me, I smiled and slammed Ashwaker’s spike into the ground, blasting away excess mana in a way that made the paving stones burst.
Around me, everything stopped.
The nearest skeletons collapsed as if someone had cut every rope keeping them in motion. Meat-walkers sagged and toppled. A half-dozen already in motion face-planted and slid on their own rot.
The silence hit hard enough to make my ears ring. A single arrow thumped late into a dead man’s back and stuck there with a quiver.
“Hold!” Ysolde yelled.
The men held, almost confused at the sudden end. A moment later, they began cheering.
Chapter 35
Smoke drifted low over the square. The cheers had burned off fast, replaced by the blunt work nobody ever sang about. We carried the wounded to Eleya’s tables. We draped the five dead in the green. All in all, five were not many, but I hated the number anyway.
Eleya moved among the wounded. Her hair was down, her face streaked, her robe tied once and already stained. Her hands did the same small miracle a hundred times: paste, wrap, breathe with the patient until the eyes steadied. When a young recruit gasped at the sight of his own blood, she tipped his chin, smiled, and fed him three sips of blue tonic. He stopped shaking. She was doing good work.
Ysolde kept the square from tilting back into panic. She wore her sleeveless tunic and leather skirt. Her shield still hung at her shoulder. Fresh nicks marked her pauldrons. She set pairs on lantern duty and slots on the towers, and she had some of the unharmed recruits run the perimeter of the village to make sure nothing else was hiding and to bring in any remaining necrotic bombs so we could neutralize them.
Meanwhile, Lulu turned into everybody’s favorite boss. She brought water skins into shaky hands, fed anyone who forgot their mouth could work, and even kept the kids laughing with her hijinks.
It took the rest of the day to put out the fires, clear out the rotting remains, and tend to the wounded. I worked with the villagers to the best of my ability, and what little healing magic I knew I used to help the wounded.
When the worst of it was done, I took a walk with Eleya and Lulu to look at the damage. There was more smoke hanging over the village, and Lulu’s bakery stared back at us with a black mouth where a door used to be and most of the rest charred beyond repair. The shop sign lay charred in the street. She picked it up. It cracked at the hanger and came apart in her hands.
She tried to do the Lulu thing and make a joke. Her lips moved. Nothing came. She pressed the board to her chest. Then she looked at me with a wet, goofy smile, and it hurt.
I took her in my arms.
“We’ll rebuild,” I said. “Bigger and better.”
“I’m getting stupid tears all over your stupid sexy stinky armor,” she muttered.
I chuckled. “It’s fine, Lulu. It’s alright.”
She jerked with her tears as she leaned into my hug. Eleya joined as well, and we stood like that for a while.
The next casualty was Eleya’s little house. It had caught fire where a pot smashed through her shutters. The roof was gone, and most of the rest was burned out too. Smoke curled, slow and mean, from the rafters that still stood.
While there was sorrow in her expression, she took it better than Lulu. Truth was, she’d been practically living with me ever since we’d shared our first night together. She’d even moved most of her herbalist supplies to my home.
She stood for a while, and I wrapped my arm around her. The silver streak in her hair flashed in the sun. “Well, it’s gone,” she said, soft, almost private.
“You’ll stay with me,” I said.
She nodded, then shot me and Lulu a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I will.”
I looked at Lulu. “You can bunk with Ysolde,” I said. “No argument.”
Lulu did not bother arguing. She dove into me and hugged hard, hair mashed to my jaw. “If she snores, I’m gonna push her into the pocket realm, though,” she hummed, “bed, sword, cranky temper and all!”
That woke up a real laugh out of me. Eleya stepped in close. She set her hand on my chest and looked up at me. She was dead tired and still gorgeous. “Thank you,” she said. “Your bed is mine.”
“I can live with that, Doctor.”
We went back to the green and helped the villagers. Minuine’s folk were there as well, and their contributions had made the last of the boundaries between them and the people of Aerenvale fall away. They had bled with us, and they were here now, to help and to rebuild.
They’d earned their place.
After a long day, the walk back under the chestnuts felt good. Having fought for it, I felt Aerenvale was even more of a home. My place was not fancy, but it stood, and it would offer all four of us a roof. I pushed the door with my boot.
“In,” I said. “Dump anything that hurts and sit.”
Eleya walked into the kitchen and ran her palm over the maple counter like it was medicine. She exhaled once, long, and the lines around her mouth eased. Lulu marched straight to the big table, set her charred sign in the middle like a family crest, hopped onto the bench, and flopped against Ysolde’s shoulder. The moon-elf rolled her eyes and gave Lulu’s braid a tug, gentle.
I squeezed Eleya’s hip. “I’ll walk the fence. Make sure we’re safe.”
“I will boil water and start on dinner,” she said, sly in spite of the day.
“On it,” I said. “And get those lazy bums to help”—I nodded at Lulu and Ysolde. “Time they start earning their keep.”
“Who are you calling lazy?” Lulu said. “Mister-I-explode-ghouls-by-looking-at-them! Did you burn a single calorie during that battle?”
I laughed as I walked out. “I burned a lot of things. Not sure about calories.”
I headed back out into the late light and walked the perimeter and reset every single rune that was supposed to keep us safe. At Gold Circle, I had plenty of mana left for that.
I started at the rail where the first alarms had sung in my skull. I laid my palm on the post and felt the low hum as I reset them. I moved to the next and the next. If a rune had fired, I cleared any debris and whispered it back to life.
I ended at the gate and listened to the quiet of my property, feeling the tiredness settle. I headed in with that weight off my shoulders. Inside, the delicious aroma of dinner drifted to meet me.
The next morning found us at Remembrance Grove. Dew beaded on the grass, and the white-bark trees held quiet over the ring of flat stones. Charms hung for the dead clicked softly in the breeze, and villagers lined the outer path in their best.
We had lost five of our number. One of them had been one of the wood elf refugees who had come with Minuine. The price for freedom had been paid in blood, and now we would remember their sacrifice.
I walked in with Eleya on my right, Lulu on my left, and Ysolde just behind. Eleya had pulled her hair high, that thin silver streak bright against ginger. She wore a green dress that hugged her hips and set off her pale skin. Lulu went with a cream dress that hit high on her thighs, hair in two loose braids, lips glossy. Ysolde had swapped her battle leathers for her clean sleeveless tunic and a short dark skirt.
The Elder Council stood near the center stone. Kaluin had a dark coat and a jaw set like a brace. Hinzbel’s sleeves were rolled as if he might take notes if the dead had requests. Oleiga looked like she owned the place—blue dress cinched tight, platinum blonde braid thick over one shoulder, eyes warm and steady.
We gathered in silent respect—all of Aerenvale’s people in a half circle around the elders, who in turn stood around five smooth stones placed in the grove, names of the fallen carved into each in flowing elven script.
Hinzbel lifted a hand, and the low talk died. “We’ve had to stand here too often,” he said. “Today, we add fewer names than we feared, but more than we wanted. Fewer than we feared, because people did hard work when it counted. More than we wanted because others came to destroy us and our way of life.”
Kaluin stepped forward. He spoke, and the words carried without effort. “Place your tokens. Speak your names. Honor our ways.”
People moved slowly and took their turns. An old elf set a carved spoon on a stone and whispered something to it. Two kids tied a red ribbon to a branch, then stood back and stared at it, too shocked still to cry. Minuine stepped up with her folks and laid a woven piece of thatch for the one of their own number who had fallen—a basket weaver by trade.
Ysolde honored the dead on our behalf—they had been men who had trained with her—and she had a personal token for each of them: an arrowhead, a small carving of an elk, a chestnut, a worn whetstone, and finally a bracelet of strung beads.
When all was done, it got quiet again. Oleiga turned toward me. “Liam Rivenhart,” she said, and the grove looked my way. “You cut down an army in our lanes, then helped tend to the people who were hurt by it. You kept our doors open. We are grateful.” She tipped her head. “Eleya, Ysolde, Lulu—you were exactly what we needed.”
I cleared my throat. “We did our jobs,” I said. “All of us. We’ll keep doing them.” I brushed my fingers over the small oak strip I’d set here weeks ago, Camling’s initials scratched on the side. Then I nodded at Minuine. “And let’s not forget Minuine’s people. They fought as hard as we did. They deserve to call Aerenvale home.”
Approving nods. Even Kaluin seemed won over, despite his distrust of strangers. He, Hinzbel, and Oleiga exchanged looks, and Oleiga turned to Minuine.
“Liam is right. You are welcome to call Aerenvale your home.”
Minuine nodded gracefully, and I could see the tears forming in her eyes.
After that, we all stood quiet together for some time. Then, people began to talk—to remember. This was the wood elven way of honoring those who had passed. People came to us as well, in ones and twos: farmers, a pair of teenagers, a mother who wiped her eyes. An old elf I’d barely met gripped my forearm and said, “Strong work,” and that was that.
Kaluin, of all people, stopped in front of me, looked like he tasted something bitter, then said, “Good work, Sheriff.” It was as close to a hug as he was ever going to give.
Oleiga waited for the line to thin, then came over and clasped my hand. She squeezed hard enough that I felt it. “The council would speak with you soon,” she said. “We need to make plans for the future.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Her eyes burned over me as she looked me up and down. “By the end of the afternoon, please,” she said, then gave me a smile and gracefully slipped into the crowd, talking to villagers.
“She is such a cougar,” Lulu stage-whispered to Eleya.
“Technically, all elves wanting to date humans are,” I said.
“Um, I’m not even a hundred,” Lulu objected.
“Exactly,” Eleya said.
We ate simple food on the grass after—bread that Lulu had somehow found time to bake at my place, cheese, apples. We weren’t as lively as we always were; the Remembrance Grove had left an impression, and each of us was lost in contemplation.
That was fine. It didn’t always need to be chaos and banter.
When we finished the food, Eleya hooked her fingers into mine and tugged. “Come on,” she said. “Home. I’m making you lie down for ten minutes.”
“Ten?” Lulu asked. “He gets thirty. Then I’m making pancakes. Celebration pancakes. With sexy blue pocket-dimension strawberries.”
Ysolde smirked. “I’ll take watch at the lane while you two mother-hen him.”
“Hen?” Lulu gasped. “Excuse me. I am a peacock.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” I said.
We left the grove slowly, arms brushing, and headed home.
Chapter 36
By late afternoon, I returned to the Council Hall, properly refreshed and rested.
The hall ran warm with sun, and the benches were half full with folks who wanted to hear the elders speak their piece after Aerenvale had braved the attack.
Hinzbel sat with a ledger open. Kaluin stood as straight as a lance, arms folded. Oleiga rose when I walked in and offered me a warm smile that made me think of Lulu’s comment. There did indeed seem to be some kind of interest in her eyes.
Eleya was with me. She had tied her hair up and wore a simple green robe. Ysolde was already busy with the recruits, and Lulu had gone to wrangle kids and feed them, while parents were rebuilding and cleaning up.
Oleiga motioned me forward. “Sheriff. We lost much less than we would have without you, thanks to quick work,” she said. “Now the other matter.”
“The amulet,” Kaluin said, like he had been chewing the word all day. “We now know it attracts the wrong kind of attention.”
I set my hands on the back of the front bench. “I want to move it to the pocket dimension.”
Hinzbel blinked. “The pocket… your new garden?”
“It is a sealed space,” I said. “No entrance unless you lay a hand on the arch and speak the codeword. I already veiled the door. We store the amulet in there under the same three layers: no scry, no teleportation, no necromancy. Between the gate and the wards, it is safer than my cellar.”
Kaluin’s mouth thinned. “You still do not wish to destroy it.”
