The Serpent and the Shattered Sword, page 8
Every blade’s stab, every halberd’s slash, every spear’s impalement sent fresh souls into the beyond, adding their stories to the swirling canvas of crimson and black. War cries drowned out mortal pain and death, leaving Semera only a few ranks back of it all. In her grip, a hard leather object. Familiar. Oblivion, ready to taste what it desired most.
Though Zahra couldn’t shout, trapped as an observer within, her throat burned as Semera hollered to the soldiers surrounding her in a tongue she couldn’t understand. As the burning in her mind receded, it began making sense. Her mind was absorbed into that of the demoness. Their knowledge was one, though their minds were separate.
“We almost have them! Forward, drive them back!” she hollered. A commander, essential to the formation she led. Deep within her lines, Zahra didn’t know the scores of soldiers that waited behind her. An endless sea that swallowed the great plain whole, desiring to claim the last island waiting in its center.
The rock, holding back the wave of the inevitable.
“This is the moment where we restore the balance. Each of them shall earn their just comeuppance. Let their free will dig their graves. Hold nothing back, men!” Semera hollered.
Like an arrow fired from the Embrace above, she saw a ray of light shoot down through the dark clouds, breaking the sky into luminescent blue before it was blanketed once more.
Within seconds, blinding flashes erupted from amongst the group far ahead. Red, green, amber, and blue followed, bursting from the shield of light.
Then the counterattack began.
Soldiers surged forward, driven back by the brilliance of pure starlight. The luminance of the approaching enemy shielded them from the crushing shadow. Corporeal bodies wielded ethereal blades. Storm. Fire. Earth, and Water. All collided in raw force.
Semera’s right shoulder slammed into the earth as a black mass surged past, aiming to stem the loss of life. Aegill, a specter until that moment, descended onto the battlefield. His target was clear, and he meant to take the one life that would end this rebellion himself. Towering, resolute, and unmatched in power, he surveyed the wave of light and removed the circlet of pointed shadow from his helm.
“The day does not belong to us,” he told her, his voice rumbling through her like thunder. An absolute surety. Near Semera, he beckoned to the others: Calos, Réus, and Ardyn. Each appeared out of the surrounding crowd, with Calos crashing down into a black vapor atop a group of their own soldiers–stealing away their lives with the spread of his black mist to regain mortal form.
“Sire?” Réus asked. “We’ve engulfed their strength tenfold.” He looked beyond Aegill, seeing the wave–their purported ruination, only minutes away. “Perhaps if we can turn their flank–”
“No,” Aegill’s voice cut through, deep and unyielding. He thrust his crown into Ardyn’s chest. “I charge you with this, harbinger. Lock it away where no light shall touch. Years from now, our time will come. They shall pay for what they’ve done, and their descendants with them. One day, swords shall cease to cross, but in their stead, turn against one another.”
Ardyn took the crown without hesitation, admiring it in its hands, and moved across the battlefield like wind. Soldiers fell in its wake like dry grass. The shadow of the cosmos’ harbinger fled west, followed by a streak of blue light vanishing over the horizon.
An intercept.
“Calos, Réus,” Aegill said, with her hand on her shoulder last. “Semera. This is our time. You know what we are fighting for, and what will come if we fail. If this is where we meet our end, then we take them with us. It is our wrath that shall spare us all inevitability.”
“It’s been an honor, Your Grace. To have fought by your side,” Réus replied, his hand striking his chest. “To have walked in your time.”
“The shadow shall rise again,” Calos hissed. “When our day comes, be ready to answer my call.”
Semera, lost for words, nodded, leaving the unspoken fear locked within her heart, unable to express her pain. As the four turned, they faced down the light. Aegill cast off the curtain between them, ready to battle their enemy beyond the veil, to spare their soldiers fighting.
One by one, lights emerged through the shroud of night.
Kaata to Réus.
Siblina to Semera.
Drea to Calos.
Aten to Aegill.
The shadows rushed forward, their enemy disappearing into a blinding flash. Semera stopped, shielding her eyes from the light that cut through her. As it faded, she was unable to remove her hands from her face.
Held. Bound. Immobilized. Her vision stolen.
No shadow. No light.
Adrift. Alone in the veil.
The solidity of the ground took her weight as the pain of cold stone throbbed in her cheek. Her mouth–coated in the unmistakable metal tang of blood, and the repulsive taint of the sheyde that worked through her.
Semera, she thought as she lay motionless on the ground. What did you show me?
“It was only to be the crown. I needed you to know it was real.” She burdened Zahra’s body with the sting of pain, infuriated that her captive lingered in her memories longer than she should’ve. “But the rest is a transgression. Moments of a past life that were never meant for you.”
You...were afraid. For them.
The burn of Semera’s pain filled her throat, restricting its walls against one another in a cinching embrace. Her flowing hatred was a retaliation for the realization of the demoness’ own humanity. “I was nothing but loyal to him.”
It’s...alright, Zahra thought, holding on to her coherence through the blinding burn in her veins. The wildfire infected her nerves, running unchecked. You loved your...family. As I love...mine. We are...no different.
Semera loosened her grip as Emile rolled Zahra over. He tapped her on the cheek, shaking her shoulders to coax life back into her.
“Zahra. Zahra! Look at me.”
“I’m...alright. Just...shaken, is all.”
Emile helped her up against a wall of stone, tipping a waterskin to her lips to wash away the white residue lingering around her mouth. She drank it down, forced by the demoness within, who realized she’d need to play into the human essence of her victim if only to keep her alive. “Thank you. I needed that.” She looked up to him, meeting his look of concern with one of gratitude. “Can you...help me up?”
Zahra, legs trembling beneath her weight, stood and clung to Emile’s arm. The bulge of muscle beneath the dark tunic he wore spoke of decades of swordsmanship. Enough, even, to match hers. His arm pinned her against the wall until she regained her bearing, sufficient to let him know it was all right to ease off.
“Is everything...okay?” Flynn asked, hiking up from behind Emile to check on her. The coarse gravel crunching beneath his boots brought her jaw into a tight clench, hearing every scrape of rock against one another. Further down the path she caught Teora’s glance. Judging, and unsure.
“She senses something,” Semera told her. “Do better.”
“Fine,” Zahra replied, satisfying both her internal tormentor and external companion with the remark. She patted her hands against her cloak and armor, and gave a tap to Aetherion at her waist, noticing nothing was missing before taking the lead. Her sword’s hilt responded with a desolate strike back against her palm.
Not wanting to delay any further, she bade the group onward, sparing a smile for Teora as she passed. Though it wouldn’t be enough to throw her off Semera’s scent, it was a start.
The next hour’s padding along the trail beneath the city brought the sound of water. At first a distant trickle, then a rushing torrent echoing off the walls. Far below ran a river, its destination unknown. Still, they pressed on, southward to an antiquated building carved into the damp rock. Concrete pillars jutted from the river, anchoring a dock where a row of decayed skiffs waited.
One stood out: wood brace with metal, sturdy despite its need of repair. Over Zahra’s left shoulder, a glimmer of light promised escape. Two by two, the Fates slid the hull along the gravel toward the waves, stopping when an unseen clamp beneath held it fast. Flynn and Emile tried to budge it; Zahra at the rudder had already given up.
Her foot nudged a tarnished silver patch. Pressing it into the stone revealed buried armor. Along the beach, small mounds rose and fell like foothills.
A loud thud drew her eyes up. Teora had pulled a door from its hinges, cheeks flushed like after summer sparring, and strode inside the carved building. Zahra followed, instructing Emile and Flynn to remain behind. Beneath the stone threshold, droplets plinked on her pauldrons, echoing in the uneasy quiet.
Yvella’s aura illuminated the room. Nets and tackle hung decayed and rotting. A square edifice carved into the wall overlooked the river’s passage. Coins lay rusted and scattered; tattered clothing and oxidized weapons littered the floor. The place, once a boat shed for the Waymaster, was now a tomb. In a corner, skeletons huddled together, still intact despite years of decay.
Their boat, Zahra thought, differed from the rest. It’s reinforced. Modern, by an extended stretch. Pillagers?
“Thieves,” Semera replied.
As she kneeled beside them, Zahra pulled away pieces of tattered cloth. Dark but discernible royal blue, or rather, the color it was years prior. She handed the article to Teora, who studied it, drawing the same conclusion.
Evenglacia?
“This is gettin’ weird,” Teora told Zahra, flinging the cloth back onto the skeleton and recoiling into a chair that buckled beneath the limpness of her weight. Curling into herself on the floor, Teora’s eyes wouldn’t leave the intruders’ cadavers. “First the Gatehouse, now this. Did the Evenglacians pour through the city and pursue the survivors across the open ground? How many are buried beneath the snow and ice?”
But these aren’t soldiers. It couldn’t have been the Evenglacian massacre we saw at the Gatehouse.
Zahra looked the pair over, placing her hand against the skeleton slumped into the concave peak of the corner, studying the carved indentations. Two arrows hung limp from its ribs. The cause of death: shots straight to the heart. A clear stone had been refined into an arrowhead, a gem she’d never seen before. But as she studied further, her thoughts turned toward the macabre. And much darker revelations crawled up her spine.
A rusted knife had rolled just outside the hand of the skeleton, slumped against the other, its head resting on what was once a comforting shoulder. Beneath, a black stain had pooled on either side of legs lapped over one another, knees bent inward.
“One shot the other, then turned a blade on themself,” Semera told Zahra as her hands ran over the bones of the wrist. “Smaller shoulders: a woman. Brother and sister, or wife and husband. A secret known only to time now.”
But it doesn’t explain why, Zahra thought in response. Arrows to the chest and cut wrists. Her hands moved from the smaller skeleton to the larger one, tracing it over with her fingers once more.
“Are you almost done?” Teora asked, getting herself off the damp floor, tucking her white-knuckled fingers into the pits of her arms, and padding toward the door.
A shock went through her fingers as they traced over the grooves in the skeleton’s neck. Two sharp and deep, with two others flat, and puncturing between them. After withdrawing her fingers, she noticed an inscription scratched into the wall she’d been unaware of.
“Uhh...Zahra...” Teora muttered from the doorway as the Clerracian took the knife from the floor and scraped away the top layer of dirt from the inscription.
‘Don’t disturb the sand,’ the first line read.
“Zahra!”
‘Don’t wake the dead.’
“Zahra!”
“What?” she hollered, shooting up off her heels and turning to Teora, who fell backward. Zahra sprinted to the door, propelling herself through the threshold, finding the mounds of sand and rock rising, like new life breathed into mourned memories.
Emile and Flynn backed toward the boathouse, weapons drawn, as tattered tunics of white and blue, with mixed sets of armor and weaponry, peered from the sand. Eyes of iridescent blue shone through skeletons packed with grime.
Opposing armies clashed on the same: Clerracians defending, Evenglacians pressing forward. Zahra drew Aetherion, undeterred by the Army of the Dead. She surged past Emile and Flynn, pushing toward the chaos.
Her blade sliced through a former countryman, severing him at the spine. His torso toppled to the sand. Horror struck her as the corpse clawed itself upright, hand by hand, dragging toward her with a hunger that made her stomach knot.
With notice of the marks found on the corpse within the boat shed, her mind strayed...Is this what it became in his last moments? The reason for its death?
“A great evil dwells within this planet,” Semera told Zahra as they watched the blue-eyed determination of the creature draw closer. “Zeion was once afraid of this evil, and locked it deep within the thickest of rock, in the darkest of reaches. I would believe it bleeds out...that it hungers for us. But those eyes...I know them.”
Before her eyes flashed the Sword of Fire, its wielder burying the tip through the skull of the undead, extinguishing the life in its azure eyes. Kaata’s Flame coursed through it, determined to erase every trace of the abomination from the world. Emile touched his hand to her pauldron, ensuring she could continue to fight.
With her firm grasp removed, she threw it away. Slashing Aetherion upward, Zahra tore the jaw from an Evenglacian soldier. She drove her boot into it, and though she kicked the fiend onto its back, it gave her no chance to breathe before standing to fight. In the moment she’d gained, her eyes looked down at the charred remains of her first engagement, finding it lifeless. A death, but only one.
And there were many.
Ten rose, then another group. A hundred began stalking toward them by Zahra’s snap estimate, and there was no barrier between them to defend against the coming horde. Yet somehow amidst the dead, hope was kindled.
Flynn joined the fighting, leaving a cowering Teora behind. His aura glowed brightest, and the rocks of the shore rose between the dead, heaved into the air. Drea, through the circular motion of Flynn’s hands, swirled the rocks into a vortex above, gathering strength. Stronger and faster, they whipped around.
Zahra and Emile stopped the approaching dead. The Blade of Light cleaved each, slowing their advance, while Étincelle brought them to ruin and ash. Above the swirling chaos rose the collapsing and snapping of stone. Another wave of undead writhed free of their collapsed earthen prisons, descending toward the dock and cutting off any egress toward Clerracia above.
Ordering each of them to the ground, Flynn unleashed a hailstorm of stone like a thousand bolt slingers at once. The shrapnel tore through the undead, hard enough to puncture holes in steel armor, clear through the other side, leaving exit wounds of shattered bones. The wall of rock leveled the field, but wasn’t enough to bring the endless sleep of permanent death upon them.
“Well,” Flynn said, looking to Emile as beads of sweat dripped from the crown of his head and watered the ground. “You’re up.”
“Didn’t you already do this, once?” Zahra asked him, alluding to the firestorm in Namelle that claimed the life of Artim, the Viscount of Essea, before her very eyes.
“There’s a part of that missing, if you hadn’t noticed,” he said, his expression souring at the nod to Alira. But this wasn’t a time for such worries. The ground before them crawled, sputtering as though they’d kicked a hill of ants, and driven the colony to madness. Another wave descended toward them from the hillside, and their only chance was to get the boat to the river.
Zahra sent Flynn and Emile ahead, the only two with Illuri support, while the other cowered. She dashed into the boat shed, dragging a protesting Teora with her. Pulling her dark cloak over Teora’s eyes, Zahra took comfort in the scrap of their boots across the dock planks.
With Kaata and Drea’s help, Emile and Flynn shoved the boat into the water, pulling the others aboard. They took up the oars, but the overloaded vessel barely budged, its boards soaked and heavy. The river’s flow was blocked around the bend ahead.
A dead Clerracian’s hand shot out from the water. Zahra seized the helm and severed its neck. The skull dropped into the river. Shifting her weight pushed the corpse off the boat and freed it enough to nudge the hull forward. She thrust the helmet into Teora’s hands, keeping her mind occupied.
The boat lodged in another silt bank. Emile and Flynn waded in, soaked to their knees, pushing with no success. Zahra jumped out, pressing against the rudder. The wood groaned but barely yielded. She grabbed Teora by the nape and dragged her forward. “We can’t move this without you. You’re going to have to push.”
As Teora’s hands fell from her eyes, she screamed at the sight of the undead rising from the bed of the river. Hundreds stalked into the water, their moaning overtaking her ears as they threatened to drag the Fates to a watery grave.
“Teora!” Zahra hollered, her feet slipping away in the loose gravel beneath her feet as she heaved against the hull of the boat. “Any time now!”
“Push...” she muttered beneath her breath, as Zahra lambasted her for pointing out the obvious. She unslung her trident from the rope around her shoulder, its stone growing a vibrant blue as it struck the surface of the water.
“She can’t,” Yvella said, her aura spreading through her body, growing bright enough to blind those around her. “But I can. Get in, and brace yourselves.”
The Illuri rose, walking across the water toward the approaching undead. She drove the trident through the surface, chanting a spell that rattled the cavern floor. A loud crack echoed from the far end, and the water rose above Zahra’s knees, lifting the boat from the silt.
The Fates heeded the word of the Illuri and piled into the wooden vessel, using the sides of the hull to pinch themselves in. The water rose around them, lapping against the boat and lifting it from the silt.
