Chapter 110: Inertia

Goddess. What is that?

The stench reached him before the thought had finished forming. Lucian clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, and still it came through, thick and sweet and rotten, the smell of a swamp that had been left to curdle for a hundred years. His eyes watered. His stomach turned over.

The giant did not hurry. From every part of its body, from shoulders and back and the knotted length of its arms, long ropes of living wood unspooled and lashed out across the field. They did not strike like whips.

They sought. Each one found a throat, a neck, a gap in a gorget, and drove straight through.

Soldiers who had been running a moment before hung twitching in the air, lifted off their feet and held there like fruit on a vine. Thousands of voices rose together in a single sound that Lucian would hear in his sleep for the rest of his life, and no one, no one at all, slipped free of those branches.

A Sarnel soldier came stumbling out of the haze toward him. One arm hung wrong. Blood ran down the side of his face and soaked the crest on his chest, and he was waving his good hand at Lucian, shouting the only words he had left.

"Young Master! Run! That’s the Wendigor!"

That’s the Wendigor?

Run where? The Direwolves had closed their circle, and their jaws were wet. Every step they took pressed in tighter, their yellow eyes fixed on him with the quiet hunger of animals that already knew who would eat first.

Then a thin, high shriek sliced the air, a sound like a blade dragged across a plate.

A Bone Crawler shot out of the dust, low and fast, joints folding at angles that made Lucian’s skin crawl. It crossed the distance to the soldier in the space of a breath.

He had time to turn his head.

It tore him open where he stood. There was no mercy in it, no pause, only the wet sound of ripping cloth and flesh, and the soldier who had run through hell to warn a boy he barely knew went down in pieces across the mud, still looking at Lucian.

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: JAMES ANDERSON]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: EMILY CARTER]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: ROBERT MITCHELL]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: OLIVIA BENNETT]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: CHARLOTTE WILSON]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: HENRY PARKER]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: SOPHIA BROOKS]

[TOTAL CONFIRMED CASUALTIES: 12,437+]

The sound of the field dimmed as if someone had pressed a pillow over the world. In its place came a low, resonant tone, the toll of a bell under black water, and the air around Lucian grew cold and heavy.

? [HARMONY]

? [THE AWAKENING OF THE ARCHON NIGHTKEEPER DRAWS CLOSER TO SUCCESS!]

And then he saw the blood.

It was not simply soaking into the dirt. It was moving, rivulets of red slipping across the ground against the grade of the slope, running together into thin dark streams and sliding away across the plain as if something enormous, a very long way off, were drinking.

Something in Lucian came loose.

His blood ran hot. His hands shook, and the shaking was not fear. Mana boiled up through his body in a bright, uncontrolled surge, and the weight of his own limbs fell away until he felt lighter than the dust on the wind. He screamed, a raw, wordless sound, and cut down the nearest Direwolf in a single motion.

Sonata flared white. The arc of its stroke hung in the air a moment after the blade had passed, a bright seam of light, and the Direwolves recoiled. Their pupils shrank to pins. For the first time, they looked afraid.

Lucian did not give them time to remember how to be brave. He raised the blade higher, shifted his feet, and swung. Then again.

Then he pivoted on his heel and snapped his wrist toward the Bone Crawler that had killed the soldier, and the creature’s body shattered with a crisp, dry crack like a branch in winter, until nothing remained of it but a small, dull core lying in the dirt.

And as it fell, Lucian noticed something.

It did not turn to ash.

Neither did the Direwolves he had already cut down. Their bodies lay where they fell, solid and dark. Every account he had read said that Dark Beasts controlled by the Crimson curse crumbled to dust on death. These ones did not.

So they’re not truly Crimson-controlled. They’re the work of Rhaiven, mimicking it.

And they were weaker than they should have been. Real Crimson blood strengthened whatever it touched. These beasts had no such surge in them. Whatever Rhaiven was doing, it was a pale copy of the real thing.

He looked down at the soldier’s body. There was no breath left in it. His fingers curled hard around Sonata’s hilt, and for a moment he hated himself for every second he had spent frozen. If he had struck sooner, the man might have lived.

But regret bought nothing. And there was something at his back.

He had not heard it move. That was the worst part. It had crossed the whole field without a sound, and now a great shadow lay over him, and a smell like rotten honey stood in the back of his throat. Lucian turned, slowly, and looked up.

The Wendigor stood behind him.

Its face was something like bark and something like bone, and two small red eyes sat deep in it, unblinking, fixed on him. It was close enough that he could see the tiny cracks in its skin, close enough that he could feel the heat of its breath.

He drove mana into Sonata, and the tip of the blade began to shine. He had no plan. Every thought he had was a version of the same one: If I touch that poison, I die.

The creature took a step toward him.

Lucian lifted the sword above his head.

The creature lifted one great foot, brought it down beside him, and walked past.

It did not strike. It did not even slow. It turned its small red eyes on him as it went by, the look of something carefully marking a thing for later, and then it moved on toward the soldiers on the far side of him, and the cries began again.

Why? Why did it ignore me?

He had no time to find an answer. The Wendigor’s body began to blur. Its great shadow lengthened and thinned and slid down into the ground like a stain, and the giant simply dissolved into it, running across the earth at a speed no horse could match.

Toward the front of the army. Toward where Jeanne was.

Lucian ran.

He poured mana into his legs, hardening the bones, loosening the muscle, forcing every stride to cover more ground than it should have.

It was faster than any horse.

It was also tearing his body apart, and he could feel it, a hot ache in his calves, a wet rasp in his lungs. He did not care. He would not read his sister’s name on a list.

Up ahead, through a gap in the haze, Flemming could just make out the western fortress of Korven.

He could also see that the gate was shut.

"Open the gate!" someone screamed. "Open it!"

Nobody answered. Fists hammered on iron. Voices cried out to the wall above, and the wall stayed silent. The Zenith Shield had wrapped Korven in a lid of green light, and no gate would open beneath it; it could only be unlocked from the inside.

The men and women who had ridden here to be saved stood beneath the barrier like children at a locked door in the rain.

And there was no one on the wall.

"Who did this?" a commander whispered. "Why close the gate when reinforcements are at the door? Why is there no sentry up there at all?"

A representative of House Versys nocked an arrow and loosed it high, aiming for the rampart, hoping to draw some eye.

There was no response. The arrow struck the glow and dissolved into drifting gray dust.

Then, in the middle of that wretched silence, a voice rose from somewhere in the ranks.

"There’s something in the fog! Something moving!"

"What do you mean, something?" Flemming barked.

No one could tell him. The Miasma lay too thick, the light too strange, and the horde behind them too loud. Men began to cry out, one by one, and then fall, suddenly, as if the ground had pulled their feet out from under them.

Ulrich drew his sword. Jeanne drew hers. Eleonor started forward to help the fallen and found the fog in the way, and Luis stepped in front of her with a face she had never seen on him.

"Don’t move, Miss Eleonor."

"Luis, I can help them..."

"Don’t. Something is out there."

Arnold took his place on her other side. His hands were trembling, but he planted his feet and did not step back.

In the haze, a shape was growing. It swelled and rose, a darkness within the gray, and from its edge dozens of long, wicked branches began to unfold, each one dripping fat black beads of Miasma.

"It’s here," Arnold whispered.

Flemming did not wait. He swung out of his saddle and landed running, clapping his hands together twice, three times, and sparks leapt between his palms, bright blue-white, climbing up his forearms in thin crawling lines.

"Fulgurite Annihilation Fist!"

Lightning wrapped his body like a second skin. Static lifted the hair on every man near him. His gauntleted fist struck the first branch to reach him, and the branch burst apart in a flash of white.

He moved so fast that his outline smeared, a streak of lightning pounding through the branches one after another.

He was not alone. Jeanne turned her horse and shouted at her Sarnel soldiers to attack, and they answered, steel ringing out of the haze. Ulrich’s blade whipped from the saddle and cut limbs away in a blur.

Jeanne’s greatsword swept in wide arcs, knocking the thorned branches aside and breaking them against her blade.

"Hold the line! Hold!"

The branches halted.

Everyone stopped, breathing hard, staring. The silence that fell was far worse than the fighting.

And then they understood.

The branches had not stopped. They had simply stopped in front. Behind them, around them, closing in from every angle, the rest of the Wendigor’s limbs had been working all along, weaving a living cage of thorn and timber.

And behind that cage, within the gray, the creature stood, and the face in the middle of it was smiling.

"It’s trapped us!"

"A Dark Beast is not supposed to be this clever!"

They shouted at each other in rising panic. Flemming, who did not shout, who had never needed to, simply went for its throat.

He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, a thread of blue lightning. The Wendigor raised one arm almost lazily and brought it down.

THUD!!

Flemming flew. His body struck the wall of Korven like a thrown sack and slid down the stone in a long red smear.

The Supreme Commander, a Tier 8 Core, a man who had never once failed a mission, had been struck down by a single blow.

A terrible understanding rippled through the ranks. If he had been brushed aside like that, what would happen to the rest of them?

And while every eye was on Flemming, the rest of the horde fell on them.

"Ahh!"

Jeanne’s cry cut through everything. A Bone Crawler had slipped under her guard and torn into her. The two Elders at her side lunged to help, and in that instant the branches came up out of the ground and speared both Elder Tervis and Elder Petrov through the legs. They fell, roaring.

Ulrich turned to help his companions. The earth beneath his horse’s feet erupted. A Gloom Rat’s claws closed around his ankle, and with one terrible pull the captain was dragged under, vanishing into the ground in the space of a blink, gone before anyone could scream.

Jeanne called his name. Her voice was ragged. She was bleeding.

Eleonor flung both arms wide. From the center of her chest, the white-and-blue Grimoire bloomed, and a vast, shimmering blue bubble drifted out over the wounded, glowing softly.

Where it passed, flesh closed. Breath steadied. Mana returned to empty bodies. It was a blessing, quiet and warm, and the only gentle thing on that field.

"Caelum! Now!"

What almost no one realized was that Caelum had been out for some time already. Eleonor had called it before the Wendigor ever struck.

Now the whale rose to its full size, and its shadow fell across the field like a passing cloud, nearly as vast as the monster itself. White fins swept through the haze. Exploding bubbles burst across the remaining Dark Beasts, and they fell away from the army in heaps.

Then Caelum turned and drove its great tail into the Wendigor’s chest, again and again, and the giant staggered backward, roaring. Fury twisted that bark-and-bone face.

Far across the plain, Lucian ran, and through the gaps in the fog he saw two titans trade blows. And he saw a small, familiar figure stagger toward him through the haze, her armor split, one hand clutched against her side.

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: TERVIS]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: PETROV]

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: ULRICH]

[TOTAL CONFIRMED CASUALTIES: 52,938+]

No. Not them too.

He reached her as she fell.

Jeanne dropped onto the earth, and Lucian dropped with her. A dark film was spreading up from the wound on her hand, black threads crawling under her skin. The flesh around it had begun to rot. Dark Mana was chewing its way through her.

? [CASUALTY CONFIRMED: FLEMMING]

[TOTAL CONFIRMED CASUALTIES: 52,939+]

The names piled up behind his eyes like stones. Lucian gripped his sister’s hand and held it tight.

"Stay with me. Jeanne, please. Stay awake."

Her eyelids were heavy. She looked at him and tried to speak. Her lips moved. No sound came out. But he knew what she was saying, as clearly as if she had screamed it. Go. Get away from here.

"No," he said. "I won’t."

Her consciousness was slipping. He could see it, like a candle guttering in a drafty room.

He looked at Sonata. It was the only thing he had. He pressed his hand over the hilt and poured his mana into it, trying to connect the blade to her, to draw out the black mana in her blood as he had done for Sophia.

The sword shook violently in his grip. It did not pull. No matter how much power he gave it, Jeanne’s body kept the poison.

He threw back his head and screamed with everything he had.

"SONATA! SHOW ME YOUR POWER!"

The sword answered.

A flash of white swallowed the world. Sonata’s black blade split open along its length, and from within it a second form unfolded, pure white, its metal transformed from black to a blinding, silver radiance.

The light climbed into the heavens like a lighthouse beacon, beautiful and terrible, and everyone on that battlefield turned to look.

The yellow shard of the Kirana crystal in its hilt flared, bright as a small sun, and it began to pull. Dark Mana streamed out of Jeanne’s wound in thick, writhing ropes and was drawn into the crystal.

The Dark Beasts nearest Lucian fled. They tumbled over one another to get away from the light. Even the Wendigor, locked in combat with Caelum, turned its great head toward the beacon, and in that moment of distraction Caelum drove forward and shoved it away from Eleonor’s party.

But Jeanne did not wake.

Her vital signs were dropping. Lucian could see it, feel it, her pulse growing thin and faint under his fingers. He pressed two fingers against her cheek and bent to hear her heart, and he could not hear it.

"Why?" he whispered. "The Dark Mana’s gone. Why isn’t she healing?"

Her body was clean of the poison. But she had lost too much blood. Her organs were torn. It was nothing like what he had done for her mother. Sophia had only been infected, with no blood lost and no organs damaged, and so she had lived.

It isn’t enough. It’s not enough.

He refused to believe it. He lifted Sonata once more and reached for her.

A hand closed around his wrist.

Someone was standing behind him. Someone who had not been there a breath ago.

He heard Eleonor scream his name. Luis shouted. Arnold’s voice cracked with something close to terror.

"Lucian, look out!"

"Damn it, why is that flying man here?!"

Lucian turned slowly.

A figure stood over him in a green cloak, its hood drawn up, its face hidden behind a mask of polished silver.

It gave off no killing intent, no bloodlust, nothing he could have braced against. Its aura was simply different, so deep and so cold that every instinct in his body whispered that he was looking at something that was not entirely a man.

The flying man. The one Eleonor saw in the sky.

If it could fly, then it had passed beyond the final threshold of the body, an extreme transformation that turned flesh into something else.

But Lucian barely thought about that. Because the mask, and the cloak, and the way the figure held itself, were all familiar to him in a way he could not explain. He had met this man before, or something very like him.

"This sword is from the Void Age," the stranger murmured, almost to himself. "Hmm. And this silver hair. You’re a child of the Lysandra line, aren’t you?"

The Void Age?

Only he and those of Lysandra’s blood knew that name. Lucian’s mind ran backward through every scrap he had ever gathered, and snagged on a single group.

"You’re one of the Void Seekers."

No one else understood. Eleonor looked from one to the other, confused. Luis and Arnold started forward.

"Stay back!" Lucian shouted. "Get back! All of you!"

He could not explain it. He only knew that the man before him was far more dangerous than anything they had faced all day.

"Hahaha. I can hardly believe my luck." The voice behind the mask was warm and delighted, like a collector who has stumbled on a rare thing in a shop window. "A treasure and a specimen, both in one place. They will all be so jealous of me."

Then something red whipped through the air.

A thin, curling stream of blood lashed toward the stranger’s head, and he swayed aside as casually as a man avoiding a puddle. Lucian’s eyes went wide. He knew that technique. It was Crimson.

Behind him, someone was standing.

Lucian turned his head. It was Hugo. The Cardinal stood with his arms loose at his sides, in the white robes of the Order, but his eyes were red. A dark, pulsing red, the glow of a banked coal. His whole bearing was wrong. He stood like a different man wearing Hugo’s skin.

"Oh," the stranger said, tilting his head. "A body-control technique. Remarkable. I didn’t think anyone on this continent could use it."

"Let him go, you bastard."

The voice that came out of Hugo’s mouth was not Hugo’s. The tone, the cadence, the cold, sweet contempt of it, all of it belonged to someone else, and Lucian knew exactly who. He had heard it before. He had felt it in the pit of his stomach.

Lumina.

Hugo’s hand flashed forward, fast as a striking snake, and closed on Lucian’s sleeve, hauling him back from the cloaked man.

The stranger noticed. He moved his hand once, a bare flick of the wrist, and Hugo was thrown backward across the dirt as though a giant had swatted him.

But then the stranger went still.

"Oh," he said softly. "You’re only an imitator, aren’t you? That Crimson of yours is nothing like the Nightkeeper’s."