She brought the flint bangle on her wrist to a striker, kneeling with her torch before her. Once, twice. Come now, the third strike should do it, she thought.
‘Hold, dawn soldier,’ came a voice in the darkness.
Fire and ashes, Amberly cursed herself for letting herself be snuck up on, hand going for the longsword on her hip.
‘I said hold!’ the voice hissed once again. ‘Shitting hells, if I were here for a fight girl, I wouldn’t stop to introduce myself.’ A silhouette emerged from the dark of the stairwell headed down. It was tall, masculine. It looked as if he was wearing some kind of horned helmet, but she couldn’t make it out clearly in the darkness.
‘And just who would you be, stranger? Out for a morning jog amongst the dead?’ Amberly said, keeping her tone light and jovial as the man stepped from the dark, a hole in the ceiling made a spotlight of what little sunlight could break through. A familiar figure, if one that made her slightly uneasy, even now. Red skin, tattered wings at his back, eyes of pure black, seeming to drink in any light that fell upon him and ram horns sprouting from the sides of his head. A devil. He was dressed in a mix of leather and chain, his clothing fine and beautifully made, his black hair stylishly waxed back.
‘No, personally, I prefer a route with fewer rats and a lot less mould,’ the man quipped back, a playful grin on his lips.
‘Good morning, Laes. What brings you to this lovely neighbourhood?’ she asked, taking a step closer to meet him in the spotlight.
The devil had been a friend to her for months ever since he had rescued her on a whim. She’d wound up way in over her head against a cult of fiend worshippers. He’d been there on the command of someone higher up in Hell who wasn’t happy with fiends ‘moving in on their territory’. Since then, the pair had always seemed to run into one another and, while not the most conventional duo, they’d started to share information to help the other and their respective allies in the fight against demonkind. Seeing him here sent a rush of both stress and relief through her. If Laes was here, her hunch was right. The children were here.
‘I’m here for the same reason as you, Amberly; the child-stealers crossed a line they shouldn’t have, and now, I’ve no choice but to step in. But, they already have demons down below. Too many for me to handle alone.’
‘Demons?’ Amberly clenched her hand around her hilt and her face twisted in rage. The Morning’s Fury hunted many things, but none brought fury from her like demons. Just the word…
‘Yes, demons. Now, don’t light that blasted torch unless you want the whole of the Abyss to know we’re coming.’
She swallowed her fury and forced herself to focus. With just the two of them, she knew running in yelling bloody murder would just get them both killed. She knew that. She told herself that again and again, but it wasn’t easy. Every impulse in her body told her to run past the man, to dive headlong into that which took all she loved away from her, but, after a few moments, she managed to quell the rage.
‘Okay, Laes, I’ll follow your lead.’ She gestured into the dark as her blade hand stiffened about the hilt. ‘Lead the way.’
Syline was alone.
The young noble daughter wandered the halls of her family home, bare feet padding against the marble tiles. Portraits of her parents and landscapes of their nation, Russenholde, hung dark upon the rosewood walls. Dust hung heavy in the air, and cobwebs thick in every corner. She called out for her sisters, her mother, her servants, anyone. The only answers she received were her own echoes bouncing back at her from the darkened corridors. So it had been for the last three weeks, any time she shut her eyes, she found herself here, in this necropolis, this terrible, haunting rendition of her home.
She couldn’t shake the sense that something had changed this time. Each breath was becoming more and more difficult, her throat felt closed off and each step made her body ache all the more. She was so cold, so damnably cold. She was making for the parlour and its grand fireplace, when she heard a great wail. That was her mother’s voice.
Heartbeat pounding in her chest like the drums of war, Syline threw herself up the stairs, sprinting down the hall to her mother’s room. Her mother lay upon the bed, clutching at her stomach with one hand. Black blood spilled out between her fingers. With her other hand, she reached out to Syline.
‘Mother!’ Syline screamed, rushing to her side. Not knowing what to do she grabbed her mother’s hand in hers. The air shifted, dust flitting in a new direction. Syline held a corpse’s hand. Its face twisted in a rictus of horror, empty eye sockets staring at something the way Syline had come. Trembling, Syline turned.
Something stood by the far wall. Its flesh was grey and pallid, veins flush against the skin, eyes sunken in their sockets with dried blood rimming around them like old tears, and hair hanging slack like some terrible hag from a horror tale told around campfires. In its grasp, it held a grey hand, severed from its owner. Syline screamed, feeling her thoughts empty from her mind, her entire body frozen as she realised what she was looking at. She was looking at a mirror. That realisation hit right as her hideous double caught flame within the mirror. It flailed as it burned and, panicking, Syline did too, before realising, whatever terrible inferno had affected her reflection, it had indeed affected it alone.
In moments, on the other side of the glass, her double was naught but embers and ash. Syline cast a look at the corpse on the bed beside her, seeking comfort where there was none to be found, before, legs quivering, she began to move towards the mirror. Her foot creaked on the floorboards. A crack splintered up the mirror, glowing with heat. Another, then another, spiderwebs of fractures laced their way across it. Syline turned to run but was too late. The mirror exploded into fire and ash, covering her, burning her as shards of glass filled the room, lacerating across her back.
She would have screamed, but she could barely draw breath as the figure swirled into being in the doorway, given flesh by the ash and dress by the flame. A woman clad in hellfire with bone-pale skin stood before her. Her body shifted and reformed constantly. Lips split to reveal fangs as she took a step forward, flames spreading beneath her gait.
‘Give it to me,’ the woman snarled. ‘Give it back!’ She reached out for Syline with grasping claws emerging from the conflagration.
Syline just froze. She would have died had she not been yanked aside by a being larger still. Cloaked in the night, his features naught but eyes gleaming like stars, his grip kind, reassuring, cool, in contrast to the blistering heat of the woman. Around his neck, the symbol of a bridge crossing the globe.
‘Run,’ the god told her, ‘or ruin shall fall.’
The being stepped to interpose himself between her and the ash and flame. Behind him, Syline saw the window. She ran to it and leapt through the glass into a blizzard. Compared even to the shards tumbling around her, the blizzard hit her like a thousand knives, lungs burning with the cold as snow ripped across her, blinding her and leaving her body in freezing agony. She crashed amidst the falling glass into the tundra below, sinking deep into the snow. Compared to the terrible heat of being near the woman, she found herself freezing. She struggled to lift herself from the snow, but more and more of it fell down atop her until all was cold. So damned cold.
Syline woke up screaming. She lay on her back under at least a few feet of snow. A warmth that had filled her all night, was slowly beginning to fade. She couldn’t remember casting it, but she must’ve managed a spell to protect her from the cold. She knew if she had not cast it, she would only be a frozen corpse found by scavengers, but, as it was, winter’s chill was just beginning to creep through her sodden clothes.
She found she could at least move her arms, the space around her large enough to wiggle and shimmy them until she had them in front of her chest. Taking a shaky little breath, she started clawing her way up through the snow. When she got out, she’d have a thousand new problems to face but, for now, the most important was getting back out into the sunlight. Overall, it took her only about three minutes of shimmying, clawing and pushing to clear the snow above her enough to sit up. Her torso pushing clear of the cold and she looked around, eyes squinted as she squirmed and kicked to clear her legs enough to pull them out after her torso.
She was outside the city, right at the edge of the treeline. Sat in a mound of snow that had piled up beside a large oak, its leaves weighed down by last night’s blizzard. She could see the walls to the north of her, perhaps a fifteen-minute walk away. Syline started to take stock: she had broken into the Petrov’s private sanctum, read its spell-book full of illegal spells, been attacked by the Petrov matriarch herself and managed to cast some terribly powerful teleportation spell that had thrown her clean out of the city.
The weight of these events hadn’t really hit her while she’d been digging herself out, but recalling them now, left her needing to lean against the tree for support.
Lady Jane had said the sentence for stealing the book would be death, but the book was full of illegal spells. If she could let the king or a court mage see it and show them where she’d gotten it, everything would be okay. Everything would be okay once she reached the king. A thought flashed to her mind. She looked down and spotted the book lying closed in the hole she’d just vacated. Quailing at the thought of it being destroyed, she hurriedly grabbed at it and brushed it free of snow. She did a cursory check of the pages, making sure none had been too damaged by the snow before putting it in her satchel. It was a tight fit getting it in there alongside her journal, her own spell-book and The Dragonslayer’s Lance. After a few moments of trying to get it in, she sighed and tossed the tawdry tale into the snow. At the moment, she couldn’t care less about finishing it.
With the book safely away in her satchel, she let a little bit of pride enter her heart. Anatoly would have never thought she’d be able to cast a spell like that! Sure, she had passed out afterwards, but she’d done a lot of casting leading up to it, and she’d still managed to do the incantation perfectly! While someone was trying to kill her no less! Some part of her knew she was just trying to distract herself from how scary this all really was, but still, she allowed herself a moment’s smugness at her masterful casting.
Doing one last brush down of herself, Syline set her eyes on the southern gate and set off wading through the snow. She didn’t go unseen as she approached the walls. A young girl in dark blue robes tended to stand out against the stunning white of fresh snow. When she was about a minute out from the gate, she spotted a man in shining chainmail descending from the wall, coming to meet her.
Thank the Wanderer, she thought. If she could get a guard to escort her to the king’s court, then she could bypass any troubles she might face along the way. Any worries of the Petrovs trying to stop her would just slip away if she had a guard with her. It’s not like they could go against the king’s orders as openly as that. She waved to him, beginning to jog through the snow in his direction. The guard waved back and stepped out of the shadow of the wall towards her. Something seemed off though. The way he trudged towards her. The way his hand rested squarely on his sword’s hilt. The way his eyes sat on her, predatory, like a wolf watching prey.
She pulled up short. A terrible sense of dread filled her; the Petrovs had many, many connections. It was rumoured that the merchant family smuggled goods into the city without paying a tariff. Who knew how many of the guards they had in their pocket. She couldn’t go back home. The risk of getting caught would be too great. She was no sneak-thief; she had no confidence she could steal her way through the city in the night. She had to get out of here. The guard was –
The guard had started running. He must’ve sensed her hesitation and wasn’t going to let his prey get away. He had drawn his sword and held it ready as he sprinted through the snow towards her. He wasn’t trying to capture her; he was trying to kill her!
Twice in two days was too often to have people running at you with death in their eyes. As much as it terrified her, Syline was almost just as angry. This was ridiculous! She’d done nothing wrong! They were the evil ones, not her! Almost without thinking about it, she drew her sword, if only to show she’d not go down so easy. Fear still plagued her heart, however, and at that moment, no spells came to her lips; she could remember no incantations that might get her out of this jam.
The guard was ten paces away, closing fast and he brought his sword up for a downward swing. It was up high, gleaming in the morning light. It was an easy counter for her, and one that her body acted upon before her mind was truly aware of it. Slapping his blade aside, she made a jab at his forearm, only cutting a nick in his clothing, trying to scare him back. He took a half-step back to avoid further blows as she leapt away from him, trying to put distance between her and the man.
‘Why’re you doing this?!’ she yelled, anger outplaying fear, affront defeating fright. She searched her brain and found an incantation, one fresh in her memory from the day before. Murmuring the words, she fetched her wand from her pocket, and the finger of flame extended from it.
