Cadrianna
WIND WHIPPED AT the flags furling around the tallest spire of the citadel, oiled fabric cracking in resonating cadences.
Moonlight shone down upon the northern edges of Silk Circle; shadows of pitch bestowed by Gargantua above blanketed the fortress-like villa. A single window alight in the citadel’s tower, the slight hum of aethecite engines filling the silence. There was movement beyond the tower’s window, followed by the lilting laughter of a woman.
A shadow detached itself from the stone wall of the main bailey. A scourge of the Fallen’s Imperium. Clothed in black-painted firedrake armor, her footfalls were silent in muffled boots. Stopping after each step, her head tilted toward the sky, listening.
Cadrianna paused as the gruff voices of guards carried through the air.
“Oriin speared Luciatt again,” a soldier said, husky and laced with scorn. “Heard she’s gone and got fil’t with child.”
“Why you let that swine touch your sister’s beyond me,” a second reprimanded, tone deeper and guttural.
Goblins. Cadrianna loathed goblins.
“Can’t stop her from the pricks she wants to mount,” the first goblin griped. “Tried once, got a kick to the seedpods to show fer it. Ungrateful bitch, that one is. Rest my mam’s soul.”
“SOUNDS A FUN CONVERSATION,” said the Strix in a sultry tone in Cadrianna’s mind.
“Just because you have your own sheath,” Cadrianna whispered back to the daemon blade gripped in her hand, “doesn’t mean you’d know thing one what to do with a cock.”
The Strix cackled within the void beyond. For a daemon, the Strix was all banter before the spillage of blood.
Calculating the distance to the goblin guards solely on voice pitch alone, Cadrianna hefted the black-bladed dagger. The Strix was a twelve-inch-long blade with a handle of onyx in the shape of an owl, two rubies for eyes, one on the pommel. Borne a daemon of Nocturne’s Pit, the blade was sentient, full of bloodletting desire, and an eater of souls.
And, achingly annoying as men would say.
Flexing the fingers of her other hand, Cadrianna counted thirty feet to the goblins, no more. Cranking her neck side-to-side brought soft pops. A roll of her shoulders slowed her breathing.
This was her element, her fancy.
“SHALL WE?”
Cadrianna whispered a spell borne of the void as the velvet touch of the darkened mist around her coalesced. She pulled upon the aether, drawing it close, the hardened scars upon her breast smoldering as she burned her Void Form aetheurgy. Heeding. And willing. The aether came to her, spilling out of her body in a blackened mist, blood dribbling down her abdomen as the familiar sounds of wailing souls filled her ears. The mist flitted about her shoulders, making her body light as a feather as a slice within the veil between Life and Death parted.
Savior and giver, protector and shield, her Void Form aetheurgy.
Smooth as silk, she stepped into the void. Mist swirled around her in the realm of Death as she moved. In the world of Life, a torrent of black air, a tornado of translucency moved across the bailey as she traversed the void. A flurry of nothingness, anyone looking saw only what they should: an empty courtyard while she void walked.
The goblins stood a mere dozen steps away in the realm of Life, in front of carved oak doors. Cuirasses of blackened bone armor from Filfangin—the goblin homeland northeast of the Imperium of the Fallen—were adorned with the Fallen’s sigil: a red moon. Greaves over leather trousers, and helms atop their ugly skulls. Their misshapen noses and pointed ears protruded inelegantly. Both had an array of piercings between nose bridges and bumpy earlobes. They carried six-foot-tall spears and had wheellock single-shot pistols and bone swords holstered and sheathed on their belts.
The churning mist drowned out their voices, only an inferno of angry souls of the void sung in her ears. Cadrianna was close now, could see their chests rising and falling in the real world, parched lips moving, knurled hands raised in gestures. She could smell their ungodsly musk through the swathe of mist, even in the void, free of doubt, free of fear, full of boorishness. The knowledge of their doom nonexistent.
“O YES. MORE SOULS FOR NOCTURNE, MY LOVE.”
This was her life, the endless swarm of flesh awaiting Nocturne’s Pit. She was the dagger in the night, the hand of the Fallen. Innocent or not, her sworn duty.
Close enough, the wails of the dead reaching a fever pitch, she summoned once more her Void Form, ending her void walk by stepping through the veil between the two planes. Mere feet from the unwittingly goblins, the blackened mist swarmed her, hiding her. The Strix flew from her hand by her silent command, spinning around her and separating into six blades. Hooting echoed within the mist, winging along the mist like the owl of its handle.
The goblin on her right stopped, turning as if sensing her. “Yo—”
One of the Strix’s blades rammed in the gap between the goblin’s helm and cuirass. Black blood spewed in a radiant arc as he crumpled to the ground, the blade shivering in his neck.
“What?” The other instinctively swung his spear, tip swishing over Cadrianna’s already ducking head.
Unfortunately, the strike found her shoulder, piercing her clavicle where her armor was fastened, and set her skin aflame as the mist howled. Blood dribbled down her arm, blackened mist danced about the wound, the aether of her Void Form sewing it back up. Savior and giver, protector and shield.
Cadrianna kicked at the goblin's off-balanced leg, which sent him to his knees. She yanked the bone sword from his belt, drawing the razor-sharp ossein across his exposed neck as she willed the remaining blades of the Strix into his back. The goblin jerked as the blades dug deep, black ichor oozing as he fell.
She swung about with the bone sword, scanning the rest of the courtyard and the walls above. Nothing moved, no sounds. Only her and the corpses at her feet, the mist of the void prowling about the bodies like carrion birds over a battlefield.
“O NOCTURNE, MY LOVE,” came the lusty voice of the Strix as it slurped the souls of the dead goblins. “SO GOOD. SO BLOODY. SO FRESH.”
“You have issues,” she said as she looked up at the tower of the citadel, tossing down the bone sword. “Serious issues.”
“SAYS THE WOMAN WHO REVELS IN THE GAME.”
“I do not revel. I do this only for Brynn. Now, be a dear, and clamp the void up, I’m thinking here.”
“DON’T HURT YOURSELF.”
Cadrianna pursed her lips, for the Strix would trade barbs all nightturn otherwise.
The citadel was a behemoth of stone; all villas in Silk Circle were. However, this keep was more akin to a fortress, augmented by dire fear of attack in the aftermath of the Fall, while still trying to remain faithful to old architectural designs. Crenellation atop fifteen-foot walls led to parapets and spires, arches of steel and stone. Battlements lined with hand-cranked aethecite cannons instead of cypress trees and gardens like most other villas. More goblin guards stalked the walls, but as shadows within the shadows.
Dropping the shroud around her, Cadrianna willed the Strix’s blades from the dead bodies, reforming into one. Contentment from the blade filled her mind as she grabbed the hovering weapon. The blood it craved, and blood it had received. Souls devoured. Kneeling beside one of the dead goblins, Cadrianna pulled a key from the loop on his belt. Placing it in the lock of the oak doors, she pushed with gloved hands, a slight groan of oiled hinges.
She slipped inside.
