My entire body trembles as all of the archers and injured soldiers who had fallen with the city wall, crushed by its stones, stumble and drag their feet toward us. Alive when they should be dead. Naberius and belial and vaelfar advance with the same broken slowness. I can see the gory marks that killed them. The hoard is a shambling mess, but what unites them is the wicked magenta glow of their eyes.
We’ve fought the living, and now we have to fight the dead.
There’s a murmur of disquiet through the city guard, and even Leito wears a look of horror, the first crack I’ve seen in the bard’s cheerful demeanor. One soldier drops his sword with a metallic clatter and runs away, disappearing into the city.
It takes every bit of my courage to not follow. Three more soldiers are not so courageous.
A final erebus slowly flaps its black wings, entering through the hole in the wall and pausing a moment to regard the scene before it. It's hideous, and I tremble anew, my blood running cold. Its face is only a skull, like the skull of a bull with bull-like horns. Its robe is so black it seems to dim the area around it.
And just the sight of it makes me feel we’ve already lost.
The risen dead reach Jilli, Aleria, and the city guards. The dead
The demon flies to the melted rock that had once been lava, swallowing up the moraxus. Its skeletal hands begin to glow with black magic. The ground quakes and rumbles, and I wonder what new horror comes for us. The melted ground explodes into a spray of shattered rock, and a giant, blackened hand slams down onto the ground. It pulls the scorched corpse of the moraxus from the hole it has created.
It roars with scorched vocal chords, a sound that pains me, and opens its glowing magenta eyes.
It doesn’t matter how many demons we’ve defeated. Now we have to defeat them all again.
The flying demon turns as it finishes with the reanimated moraxus and casts its magic to the next group of corpses, creating wave after wave of grotesque creatures from those who were once fighting beside us. They twitch and drag themselves up. Those missing limbs crawl forward in any way they can. All coming toward us.
Blaize appears at some point, and she stammers. She grits her teeth and tries again. “Pull yourselves together, soldiers.” She says it as much to herself. “You’re protecting your families. These demons go no farther! For Phiur!”
The soldiers are slow to agree, but as small voices give agreement, they become louder, until they’re a shout. “For Phiur!” Weapons rise into the air.
Then the corpses beneath their feet begin to rise. Several men scream as dead hands claw at them. More scream when the dead bite the living.
I remember the soldier, the one I tried to save, the one back where Rent still stands. His corpse pulls itself up, slow, clumsy, but it gets to its feet.
“Rent!” I shout. I run back, my broadsword out before me.
He’s whispering a prayer and backing away.
The dead soldier matches his steps.
I stab it through the back. It doesn’t drop. Instead, it swings one arm around, clubbing me in the side of the head.
Stars spark before my eyes, and I try to shake them away.
Then I have to cover my eyes from the searing light of Rent’s spell. I don’t see it, but I feel the corpse drop for the second time. It nearly takes my broadsword out of my hand. Warm blood splatters my legs. I’m surrounded by the sharp iron smell of death. I swallow back the bile rising in my throat.
Rent steadies me with one hand while I wait for my eyes to clear.
“Just take a moment.”
I blink away the stars and tears, rubbing my eyes furiously. The sounds of combat rise around us, and I fear it draws closer.
I see Hax first. He’s on my other side. He has started casting his ice daggers again, this time at the reanimated amongst the soldiers and our friends.
I straighten and nod to Rent. I take another moment to assess and reorient myself.
“I’ve never seen a demon like that,” Hax says. Despite his concerned tone, his hands don’t slow, even when perspiration breaks out on his brow. “Hey, bard! How about a song?”
I thought Leito had been playing, but now I can hear his song. Its soothing effects soak into me.
“I’ve not either, but it must be an orobas,” Rent replies.
“What do you know about them?”
“Very little. Just that they lead the other demons, as much as chaotic creatures can be led, and apparently they’re necromancers.” Rent gestures all around.
“That’s not a lot of help, brother.”
“No, I don’t suppose it is.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it will matter much if that rotting moraxus crushes us all beneath its giant feet,” Hax says, his tone nonchalant. “So I’ll work on that with the twins–” he waggles his eyebrows and Rent rolls his eyes “–while you figure out something with that bloody necromancer.”
“Right,” Rent grumbles, but Hax is already gone.
“What should I do?” I ask, suddenly unsure. Part of me hopes he’ll tell me to stay.
“Stay here. You’re my only defense if those revenants come at me while I’m praying.”
I nod, raising my sword and turning to face the chaos in the street. I don’t charge into it, though, and for that I’m grateful.
Jilli and Aleria fight side by side, Aleria blocking with her shield, and Jilli cutting through the revenants with her giant sword. The soldiers all give the two women a wide berth to devastate the renewed enemy.
Hax leads the twins past Rent and I toward the charred moraxus. The giant risen demon is satisfied with stomping on the nearest buildings. Each stomp is met with screams and people running out of hiding and deeper into the city.
The orobas turns, and the dead moraxus turns with it. They both look at the three elementalists.
The twins make swirling gestures to either side of Hax. Fire springs to their hands, and it grows until I fear they’ll both explode into flames. They direct the fire before Hax, and he uses air to shape it.
The flames become a giant dragon.
“Aww, a dragon? You unimaginative hack!” Blaize shouts as she sinks her knife into the skull of one of the revenants. “Come up with something original!”
Hax flicks his gaze toward her with a scowl, and the dragon’s head turns too. Then it launches itself into the sky and flies up, past the towering dead demon. Its flaming wings flap and carry it higher until it’s above the moraxus and out of its reach. Then it dives, flaming wings tucked and gaining speed. The moraxus grabs a hold of it. The fire dragon roars, but instead of trying to get away, it explodes. The force of it removes most of both hands and the demon's head.
Still flaming, the moraxus collapses to the ground.
Leito’s song gets faster and the words run into each other, but I feel the effects more now. He joins Rent and I in the narrow alleyway. His clothes are bloody, and there’s red smears across the body of his lute, but still he plays and still his voice sounds like honey. He smiles at me, and I feel myself smile back.
The twins each kiss Hax on one cheek, and his smile widens. “Yeah, that was my fire dragon. Thank you very much.”
“Bah! You’re no fire mage!” Blaize says.
The elf appears on the shoulders of a risen alloces. Its wings are cut off, leaving just bloody stumps. It swings its arms around, but it can’t get to her. She yanks its head around by its long horn and slices its head clean off, leaping and disappearing as it hits the ground and bounces away before the body can follow.
But Hax is very much enamored with the twins and their attention. “Oh, you’re just jealous, because I have two beautiful women, and you just have one.”
Blaize blows a raspberry at the elementalist and disappears again.
“Pay no attention to her ladies. Just keep telling me how brilliant and talented I am.”
Leito finishes his song and exhales, pressing his hand against his lute strings to quiet them. “A librarian, eh? You seem a little young.”
I can’t believe he’s talking to me. “Oh, I-I’m not a librarian. I’m just an apprentice scribe,” I reply, lowering my broadsword so its tips faces the ground. My face burns. He’s talking to me directly, and I don’t know how to handle it. “I’d rather be a bard like you.” The words slip out before I can stop them. I clap my hand over my mouth.
Leito laughs, and it’s a musical sound. “It takes a lot of work to be a bard.”
“Bard!” Hax shouts. “Start another song. You need us to keep fighting, and we need you to keep playing.”
The twins giggle in unison, like his words are the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
“Ugh,” Blaize groans. She appears long enough to sink her blade into the temple of a risen belial missing an arm. Then she’s gone again.
“See? I’m so underappreciated.” Leito puts a hand dramatically to his chest. “But I’m sure we can continue this later.” He winks at me then strums his lute. The first chord is powerful, and it makes me draw a breath and tighten my grip on my broadsword as it revibrates through me.
Rent casts his searing light at a revenant that comes too close to us. His range is short, though. He seems frustrated with it.
“We can get closer,” I suggest. I feel bolder with Leito’s song going again.
He looks around, hesitant to leave our sheltered area, but he nods. Leito follows us, not missing a note of his song. I stay at Rent’s side with my broadsword raised.
A revenant risen from one of the city guards turns on us and shambles our way at its fastest speed, dragging one foot behind it. Its eyes glow magenta, and it groans, dribbling blood from its mouth. It raises a broken hand toward me, and I leap forward and cut the arm off.
Leito’s tempo increases, and I fall into a rhythm with my blade.
Its second arm comes forward, and I chop it off too. Now, it can only come at me with its mouth open, more blood dripping off its chin. The man was taller than me in life, and even with a hunched limp, the revenant still looms a head over me.
Leito’s voice rises, and so does my blade. It stabs up through the revenant’s chin. The twice-dead man crumples as I yank my blade free.
I’m feeling invincible, and I’m about to go engage a second enemy, but Rent holds me back. He points to Hax and the twins. Keahi and Noelani cast together, and Hax holds back, waiting. Then I see where they’re casting. The street turns molten beneath a large clump of revenants. They sink to their shins, then their waists.
Hax casts a frigid breeze and freezes the molten rock, trapping all of the revenants, humans and demons alike.
Hax says something, and the twins giggle again.
The orobas looks around, seeing many of its revenants have been destroyed or trapped. It makes a gesture, and black magic pops near the faces of the two moraxus that remain in waiting. They stomp forward, past the orobas, and roar as the last of the remaining city guards and our friends stand up to them.
I can only watch. My broadsword would be no more than a splinter to either of them. The city guards regard their weapons in a similar way.
One of the moraxus stomps through the revenants in the cooled lava. The risen dead don’t even see their end coming.
Jilli and Aleria stand out before the soldiers, as they have for the whole of this battle. Even larger than usual from Leito’s empowering song, they don’t even come up to the hulking demons’ knees.
Rent casts a protective shield around Jilli. He looks torn by the fact it won’t cover Aleria too, but he stays concentrated on it.
The two moraxus come to an abrupt stop when a dark gray storm cloud appears. It starts above them, but grows, swirling and rumbling with electricity. The cloud settles around their heads. Lightning crackles along its edges, booming and flashing. It reaches the crescendo of a deafening crack.
Both of the moraxus jolt and shudder.
I can see all three of the elementalists pouring their magic into the lightning.
I smell burning meat and hot sulfur.
One moraxus jolts free of the cloud and collapses, but the second one seems held upright by the electricity coursing through its body.
Keahi and Noelani pull back on either of Hax’s arms, and he releases his hold on the elements. The storm evaporates like a lost thought, and the second moraxus crashes to the ground.
Hax’s legs buckle, and the twins kneel to either side of him, tapping his cheeks and fanning his face.
The orobas flaps forward and calls black magic to its bony hands. It flies toward Hax and the twins.
Rent is running toward them, sputtering a prayer. Somehow, he gets the words out, and his hands glow with radiant light. He throws them forward, and the searing light shoots out, toward the orobas.
The final erebus casts a circle of black around itself. The searing light hits the shield but still knocks the orobas back. It recovers quickly and screams a rebuke at the priest. I can see the waves of sound pulse through the air.
Rent shouts and grabs the sides of his head. He falls to his knees. I don’t see any way to help. I look between the orobas and Rent, helpless.
So I run at the demon, my sword raised.
Jilli and Aleria are doing the same. Their legs are longer and stronger than mine, though, and they reach the orobas faster. Faster, but not first. Blaize appears behind the demon, and she leaps to sink both of her knives in its black shield.
The elf screams, and the shield knocks her away.
It brings Jilli and Aleria to a halt.
I help Rent back to his feet. He’s already whispering another prayer. It grows louder as he continues. I drop back as his hands glow. He’s closer this time when he casts his searing light against the orobas.
The shield disintegrates, and the orobas shudders, stunned. It’s only for a second, but that’s all the time Jilli and Aleria need. Both women thrust their swords. Jilli stabs it in the neck, and Aleria gets it through the chest. Its wings go slack, and the orobas falls to the ground.
The last erebus is dead.
~ * ~
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