He fought the urge to retch, trying to remain stiff in his training. But it was a battle he didn’t know if he would win.
A red of the deepest garnet blinked where Amaranth’s eyes had been. Forming now over the blood was a hard substance, almost like marble. It knitted shapes, soon resembling a body, limbs and torso. Coarse hair grew from the form, spikes of ivory pierced the mane. Face parting in serrated teeth. Limbs ended in claws.
The distorted head reared back and unleashed a ghastly shriek that sent cold needles throughout his body. A daemon from Nocturne’s Pit, molded from the soul of the dead vicar who had once been a pure disciple of the Pentax.
“Zenith, protect us,” he whispered. A fear rose within him.
Harlequin sobbed harder behind her muzzle, limp against the binds holding her.
Solanine reappeared from whence the sinner had gone, covered in a sheen of sweat and fresh blood. Hair was tangled as if just woken from sleep. Dark bags surrounded the all-onyx eyes. The daemon borne of the vicar knelt before the sinner, eyes glowing crimson in fealty.
The big man with the scarred face and shorn scalp laughed and stepped behind Harlequin, yanking her head back violently. He gave the girl a kiss on the forehead and raised his eyes, expectant for another soul to be torn from this realm in the violence of Void Form.
O Justice, I have to. Had to give in to save the Bloodless. Forgive me, O Zenith. O Mother. “Cyan,” as he broke down into tears, shedding all pretense of resistance. Finally, he would give in. “My name is Cyan.”
Evander released Harlequin’s hair, disappointed. Solanine stroked the daemon’s head that had once been Amaranth the Pure, a true devotee, and Cyan’s sister-friend.
“You just saved her life. For now.” Solanine lifted the daemon’s chin. “Not tell me, where is the girl?”
“The girl?”
“The one you sought to return to Kalderim. To your beloved Icterine the Unfettered. Where is she?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Fingers holding the daemon’s jaw. “Find her, my pretty. Find her and bring her to me.” The daemon’s vile face split in a diabolical grin before suddenly disappearing back into the void.
Cyan the Defiant wept.
XLII
Lojen
LOJEN GROANED, WONDERING if any of the others were having as difficult of a time as he was.
His thigh burned and his calf pulsed where the spellbound rounds broke through his exoscales. His entire body hurt and by the Arbiter, even his tail felt like it had been shattered in multiple places. He gave it a tentative wag, it protested but otherwise appeared to still be in one piece. Thankfully.
Rolling to his side, Lojen saw the crash, which explained why he felt like he got tossed off the back of a Kanjan mammoth, over an ice cliff, and slammed into each glacial boulder on the way down. The airglider lay in a smattering of pieces. Pilotbox separated from the crumpled wings. The hull was dented, gaps shorn straight through like jagged teeth. The aethecite engine vomited smoke. Both Wick and the female lapin lay amongst the wreckage.
With a claw across his somersaulting abdomen, he shuffled over and dropped like a sack of aethecite next to Wick. Lojen checked his vitals. The lapin’s breathing was normal, whiskers twitching. From shoulder to chest, Wick’s fur was matted with blood, almost as black as the tunic he wore. “Wick?”
The lapin jolted upright, instantly grabbing his wounded shoulder. “Buggers, that bloody hurt.” Button-sized eyes found his. “You seem in one piece, drakken.” Eyes like saucers. “Where’s Ancantha?”
Lojen pointed some feet away to where the doe lay. Wick scrambled to her and nuzzled his nose into her neck, gently and—to Lojen’s weary eye—lovingly. Ancantha moaned and Wick hugged her tightly.
“Ancantha,” Wick whispered. “Don’t worry me like that, hear?”
Her furry paw stroked Wick’s face. “Wick.”
As he leaned back into the rubble, Lojen took stock of their situation. Buildings rose into the starlight and the moon sat high in a three-quarter oval beyond Gargantua. But it was silent, the only sound was the crackling of aethecite pellets in the combustion furnace of the airglider’s engine.
Where are all the people? he thought.
His watchface was cracked but an aerescreen ticker told him it was almost midnight, and yet, no one—Drenth or Imperium—had come out to investigate the crash. It was eerie, for the mega-city had been nothing short of bustling in the entire time he’d been in there. Now, it was almost like a city of shattered lights. Vagrants should at least have shown themselves, for the crash was prime pickings for looting and scavenging.
Something didn’t feel normal about it, as if the world was about to fray.
He shifted because something was poking into his side, and he realized it was the tip of his father’s horns. The pack with the horns and Hammer was buried under one of the airglider’s seats and said seat had been forcibly ripped from the hull in the crash. Twisting with a grunt, Lojen dug the sack out. Relief washed over him now that he was holding the cherished horns.
With the utmost reverence, Lojen ran a claw down one, tracing the curve like he had when he’d been a hatchling on his father’s lap. Fond memories of the horns atop his father’s proud head arose from the depths. Memories of him and Ruane listening to stories of wardkeepers of old. Of heroic deeds chronicled.
A sudden urge to put the horns to his stumps swam through him, but he resisted, not yet ready to test his worthiness. Not until he found the others. But most of all because he had lost the Seal of Terris.
He glanced upward and found the massive belly of Gargantua. It wavered on its two remaining tethers, creaking loudly in the still night, mocking the Gutter King and his rebellion. Tiny specs floated around the giant fortress like gnats on a carcass, but when a pinprick of light turned to a beam, Lojen realized they were airgliders.
Searching the mega-city for them.
Lojen surveyed the surrounding buildings of the city. They, like the airglider, were broken and worn. This told him they were in the northern boroughs of Drenth. He tried to place the buildings against his knowledge of the city. Probably Stanktown or the Smelt if he was any judge.
Which meant they were far enough from Imperium eyes, but that didn’t give them enough freedom to lounge around. They still had a job to do.
“We have to get going,” he announced.
“Ready when you are, Lojen.”
Shoving the horns into the sack for safekeeping, Lojen tore two long strips of leather from the broken airglider seat and began tying them around his wounds, grunting as he knotted the stiff material tight. Standing, he tested the strength in his leg. Pain shot through from foot to spine as he put his weight upon it. With a sigh, he reached down for the sack and the Hammer.
