‘Not bad yourself, hellspawn,’ Amberly teased in reply.
She blinked back the black spots in her vision, hastily praying to her god for healing as two more demons rushed in. The wonderful warmth, her god’s touch, filled her and the pain in her wrist faded just in time for her to meet their charge, and just in time for Laes to vanish in a burst of flame. Their claws were like a storm of blades and the creatures were terribly strong. She met the oncoming blows with a swing of her flaming blade, claws tearing rents in her breastplate. But the flames were anathema to creatures such as these, and the one she had struck screeched at the burning, blistering line she’d left along its chest, golden flames lapping from the open wound. The other one would have been far more problematic had Laes not chosen at that moment to burst into being behind it, his blade embedded to the hilt in its spine. That blade was more than its money’s worth, for even one burning with her god’s light would have trouble inflicting such a blow.
With a roar, the half-devil ripped his blade free and tore it across the back of the other demon’s knee as it turned to face him. Amberly took that as her chance. As the creature squealed and fell, she sliced deep into its neck, viscera spewing forth. But the blade did not strike deeply enough, and the demon still had the strength to swing out with both claws, catching both devil and paladin across their thighs. Its claws only scraped off her armour, but they cut deep into Laes’ leg as he finished it with a downward slash to its skull. That was three of the four. The last stood upon the crypt of broken, skinned children, hissing black words in its abyssal tongue, words that tainted the air and hurt Amberly’s ears. It raised its hand and a line of pale yellow streaked from its finger towards Amberly’s breast.
Laes shouted two words and a shield of red light spawned over Amberly. It absorbed the brunt of the spell, but still, she was left with a searing wound on her shoulder; the flesh blackened from contact alone. That arm wasn’t having a good day, but at least it wasn’t her sword arm. Laes incanted another spell of his own, forming a ball of ash and fire in his palm and hurling it for the beast, right as Amberly flipped her sword and flung it like a javelin for the creature in turn. The demon leapt to the side to evade the fireball, but only succeeded in throwing itself into the path of the sword, which skewered it through its gullet and sent it sprawling, its spine cut.
Laes hobbled over to it hurriedly, cursing with every step, his free hand clutched to his wounded thigh. With one strike, he finished the beast.
‘Laes!’
Just in time for one of the cultists to leap at his back with a dagger. The blade cut into the devil’s flesh but, without magical properties, didn’t seem to press in far enough to cause more than a flesh wound.
‘Oh.’ Laes turned to face the man, the movement twisting the dagger out his grasp. Hell and Heaven alike had come for the cultists, and many of them were already running, but the ones that stayed had fear and madness in their eyes. They knew their only way out was to kill the two here or die and descend for the reward from their demon lords.
‘You should not have done that,’ Laes told the fool with the dagger, yanking it from his back and sending it skittering across the floor.
The man turned to run, but Laes was quicker, catching him on the small of his back with his blade. Spine cut, the man’s legs went out from under him. The half-devil made a point to stand on his neck and make sure he felt every last moment before he rammed his blade into his heart.
What followed after was more akin to a slaughter than a battle. Laes used his magic to mop up any on the run, whilst Amberly cut a path through those who were foolish enough to stand and fight. Only one of the cultists was smart enough to attempt to surrender. All that got him was the pommel of Amberly’s blade to his temple. She left his unconscious form on the floor to focus on finishing the rest. She had almost forgotten about the figure in the shadows until one of the cultists called out to them.
‘You said you would help! You said the mothers would protect their children! Why have you abandoned us?!’
But the figure was already gone. Mention of “mothers” inspired a thrill of worry in Amberly, however. The Mother’s Hand were an infamous cabal of vampires spread across dozens of nations. When one of their members entered into a region, there was no telling what damage they could inflict, controlling men and beasts alike from behind the scenes to match their unknowable agendas. The most infuriating thing about them was how difficult they were to nail down. By the time their presence was discovered, they had usually already disappeared. Such as was the case with the mystery woman in the shadows, but with her already gone, Amberly decided to put her out of mind for the time being. She’d tell her superiors and see what they made of it. For now, she focused on a far more enjoyable task, mopping up the remaining cultists.
When they were finally done, Laes and Amberly walked back towards the room with the children. Even the half-devil was thoroughly winded.
‘Okay, Laes…’
Laes looked at the paladin beside him curiously, wondering what she wanted. She was about to reply when the smell of this place finally caught up to her. Adrenaline had kept it at bay until now, but all at once, her stomach started doing flips as her gorge rose. She collapsed to the ground, vomiting violently across the floor. The half devil took a step to the side to avoid getting it on his boots.
‘Take your time…’
‘I was going to say… Oh, Soel…’ She made the mistake of looking up, catching eye contact with one of the dead, skinned children. A fresh wave of bile coursed up through her throat.
‘Let me guess. You were going to say, “You’re wonderful, Laes. Please take me to dinner”,’ he said, offering a hand to help her up.
‘I’ll let you think that if it brightens your day.’ She groaned as he pulled her to her feet, both their eyes catching on the hall at the same time. The light of torches was growing closer. Boots on stone echoed down the hall.
‘More cultists?’ Amberly mouthed to Laes beside her, wiping her lips clean of vomit as the pair of them turned to face the growing light. A few of the children behind them were crying, but Amberly had to suppress a snicker when one reached out to touch Laes’ leg and the half devil practically leapt out of his skin.
‘Thank you, Mr Redman…’ the little boy said. Amberly managed a little smirk.
‘Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever kid. Just keep quiet for now, okay? You’ll all go home soon.’ Laes said, taking a step away from the door to put him out of reach of the children.
‘Not a kid person?’ Amberly teased him as the pair readied their swords.
Whoever was coming down the hall was about to come round the corner. She wasn’t honestly sure she could handle more of this: what the demons here were doing, what the people here were doing. Regardless of the satisfaction she got today, this place, those poor skinned children, all would haunt her dreams for years to come.
The next day was immediately off to a better start than the one before. Syline woke up, tucked in against a tree, with her new raven friend dozing happily in her arms. Thanks to the location of her little campground, she’d been well protected from the elements over the night, and her fire had burned for a good hour or two after she dozed off. To get ready for the journey ahead of her, Syline caught two more rabbits for her breakfast with her arcane missiles. She apologised to them, but this time, she shed no tears. They suffered much less than they would have at the teeth of a more bestial predator. This island seemed rampant with rabbits; she could have easily caught five or six more, had she wished it. The place mustn’t have had much of a predator population for the animals to breed so freely. She prepared them in the same way she had prepared the one the previous night, and her little raven seemed happy to chow down on the parts of the rabbit she herself wouldn’t eat: the guts, gristle and the like.
As she was enjoying a rabbit kebab, a thought occurred to her.
‘I suppose I need to give you a name, don’t I?’
Her raven looked up at her silently, rustling its feathers.
She ran a hand down its spine as she thought to herself.
‘How about…’ she giggled gently to herself. ‘Corax, it means both raven and battering ram in the old trade tongue. What do you think?’
The raven let out a caw at her, before hopping up her chest to nestle into her scarf.
‘I’ll take that as an “I love it, Syline, you’re great at coming up with names”,’ she told the raven, snickering. It was a bit of a silly name, calling a raven “raven”, but, if anyone asked, she’d tell them it meant battering ram. It’d probably just confuse them more.
After breakfast, she opened up her spell-book and studied four spells to memorise for the day’s journey. Three or four was her limit for what she could generally remember off the top of her head. The arcane tongue was one that seemed naturally evasive to bring to mind, as if it didn’t want to be remembered by mere mortals, and it didn’t help that hers was a wand intended for beginners. Its crystals and ink could only be readied for eight spells at most. She could have relied on the book theoretically, as her focus for the day, but she always preferred casting with a wand than a tome. When casting, one always needed to have some kind of focus on them, something filled with the ink of the arcane, harvested from rare deposits in the earth. When a wizard prepared themselves for the day, they had to ready their foci to cast the spells they had in mind – a calibration of sorts that took a great deal of mental control to shape the ink within, lest the foci be destroyed, potentially catastrophically.
Syline had met a man who had lost a hand like that. Spell-books required no such thing. Once a spell was written in a spell-book, the complex enchantments hidden within the spine and covers kept the book attuned to anything within its pages.
With so many choices available to her, thanks to the archmage’s tome, she took a fair while to make up her mind on what she’d choose for the day. In the end, she settled on her arcane missiles, a spell that would cause her to vanish from sight for a few moments, a spell that summoned a horse made of magic and her fire dagger. Considering her plan, she expected that the ability to summon a horse would be one she’d be very glad for by the time the day was out. At least today, she’d be setting off with a full stomach, and she wouldn’t be alone.
Syline had a map of the kingdom in her room and didn’t find it all too hard to recall at least the basics of it. She knew if she headed south and slightly to the east for about half a day, she should be in sight of one of the lumber islands. One named Winter’s Fang after the huge, magical ice wolf the settlers had famously slain when they’d arrived on the island. She intended to head there and see if she could hire someone to act as a bodyguard. Lumber islands didn’t have the larger cities’ guard forces, so there were often adventurers and mercenaries hanging around them looking for work, dealing with monsters her father’s forces didn’t catch.
She had her coin purse in her satchel, and enough gold to surely win someone’s loyalty. She just had to hope none of Lady Jane’s hunters would think to look over in that area. She had to trust they’d think she was a foolish, scared girl just running down the main roads. It was a gamble, but having a swordsman to protect her would be worth the payoff even if more did come for her. A wizard’s power grew exponentially with a protector to give them room to cast longer spells in combat, and having an experienced warrior would make her feel much, much safer in this journey.
With Corax riding in her scarf, Syline packed up her satchel and headed for the edge of the island. Facing out over the frozen rivers, she grasped her wand and ran through the incantation to summon forth her steed. When the last word left her lips, the horse came cantering from an illusory fog. It was beautiful, made of nothing but blue light, a huge and mighty steed indeed, already fitted with a saddle. It trotted in place before her, eager to run. Syline was glad for the riding lessons she’d taken in her younger years as she climbed atop the arcane stallion and set off at a canter. She let it go no faster than that for risk of stumbling on the ice, but at least atop the steed, she’d only be draining her magical reserves, not her stamina.
