“Gods, I’m telling you to stop,” she said, pulling hands back, balling her fists, and snorting.
His head cocked. “And I’m telling you I’m doing it.”
“No.” She pushed his arm down.
Damien grunted, shaking her off again. “Yes.”
They stood there, glaring at one another, the scroll between them.
“It seems we’re at an impasse,” he said. “And you forget which of us is technically enthralled.”
Amma could feel her face scrunching up, her heart beating faster with the truth of what he said and also the fear of what would happen if he did exactly what he planned to do, without her. “At least let me help. Use me.”
A flicker of the waxing moon Ero reflected in his violet eyes as they took her in. For a moment, he looked hungry, starved even, and like he might devour her right there. “Use you? How?”
Her mind worked, unsure. She had no arcana herself; she barely had any real power at all besides her name and her station, little more than a symbol that others swore to protect. “The thing I’m best at,” she said suddenly, the idea practically coming up with itself.
He needed only a moment to understand what she meant. “You’ve certainly had a lot of practice being a damsel in distress. You want to play at being my kidnapping victim?”
Amma grinned and then narrowed her eyes at him. “If I do, it’s got to look completely real. You can’t justpretendto take me and run away—you have toactuallytake me when you escape.”
Damien took in a deep breath through a clenched jaw. “It would be my pleasure.”
Taking the scroll in both hands, Damien turned to the balcony and held it out before him. The Chthonic words were like music, a lilting but low hum that came from deep in his chest as he read them aloud. With each word, the ink lifted itself off the parchment into a smoky, swirling haze, each line a new wisp that coalesced together above the scroll, ever moving with arcana.
Amma felt the magic then, touching at places that hands couldn’t, tickling behind her ribs and at the back of her throat. She’d been this close to him before when he cast but had never experienced arcana this way, and it was exhilarating. She watched how he stood even taller, eyes glinting amethyst and lids lowering like he no longer needed to see the words to know what to say.
As his voice grew, there was a rumbling, faint at first, and then a long, low crack like the falling of a tree from far off. The sky, dark but clear moments before, moved with a storm cloud sweeping in and over the moons. Amma’s heart raced, unsure if it were for fear of the object he used, knowing from her research what it was supposed to do.
Meant to call on the spirits of those lost to war, the Scroll of the Army of the Undead was evil. It would animate bodies scattered and buried and forgotten, their sacrifices to be rekindled and their souls forced to again walk the earth and live how they perished. It was a cruel thing to do when it came right down to it, to force men and women who had been so brutally cut down at the whim of some king to be shunted back on this earth just to serve again with no will of their own. But as the ground split out in the heart of the orchard where the trees had been cleared and where death had already taken stake, Amma forgot all that and focused on the glint off something bone white as it caught the moonlight that peeked out from behind swirling clouds.
As Damien continued to read, Amma grabbed the edge of the balcony, leaning over it to squint out into the defiled orchard. Those—those were fingers crawling out of the ground, and that was an arm, and then a skull, and a ribcage until an entire body had climbed out of the earth, devoid of flesh, of blood, of anything except the weapon strapped to its side. She should have been terrified to see it, to see the things meant to stay completely internal moving on their own, but something sparked within her, excitement and awe, as fog rose up around the skeletal soldier’s feet.
Lightning crackled across the sky, the orchard bathed in daylight for a split second, a burst of thunder just on its heels, and then there was another form and another and another at the growing pit’s edge, stumps cracking and falling into oblivion as the trembling of the earth continued. Skeletal forms of all shapes crawled out of the infernal pit. The stench of rot and burning filled the air as more bodies long gone from earth repieced themselves on the soil of where the liathau had been felled too soon. Some were massive and hulking, and some were small and stout, while others were four legged and even a few of those had human torsos, all carrying swords, axes, bows, halberds. They climbed from the ever-growing pit to stand in long, unending lines, multiplying faster than Amma could possibly count.
When Damien’s words finally fell away, the clouds blotted out the moons completely. Darkness swallowed up the orchard where the undead army had convened. There was a wind whipping over them, freezing cold, clouds moving at an impossible rate overhead, shadows against an even deeper blackness.
Amma turned back to Damien in the dark, able to see him in the slight light that found its way out of the keep at their back, and she noted the ink had gone from the scroll, leaving it blank. Instead, a haze was hovering just before him, coming together to take the shape of a raven, its feathers made up of a transparent smoke. Damien held up a hand, and it landed on him.
“Strike down and clear out only those who wear the Brineberth crest. Chase them out of Faebarrow lands.” Damien’s voice was a searing heat, cutting through the newly-frigid air.
The raven took flight, its wispy body sailing over the balcony toward the orchard and disappearing into the dark. The last of the arcana Damien had expended hung heavily in the air like a blanket, encircling the two of them and keeping them safe from the impending horror that stalked silently toward the keep.
A sound from the distance, a rattling like many leaves crunching underfoot, was coming closer, followed by a more distinct scraping, and then in a sliver of moonlight from between the clouds, there was movement at the keep’s wall. A shadow against the shadows dragged itself up to the top of the wall, and in the courtyard below, a lone Brineberth soldier was wandering toward it, lit from behind by the glow coming from inside the keep.
Atop the wall, the humanesque figure stood there in the dark, strange with its thinness and jerking movements, and then all at once it collapsed over the wall’s edge to tumble to the ground of the courtyard some thirty feet below. With a clatter, the bones broke apart on the earth, scattering.
Amma’s mouth opened, and a frail squeak of despair fell out. “They’re skeletons, Damien,” she said. “They’re just bones. How are they supposed to hold up against actual soldiers?”
Damien placed a hand on the railing, eyes piercing into the dark. “Wait.”
The guard was careful to head toward where it fell, stopping when he reached the first piece and picking it up from the ground. Like he were holding a dead thing, and to be sure it was, but in the dark he couldn’t have known, he clasped the rounded skull by its top, turning the face toward him at arm’s length. Too shocked to react, he stood there with a skull in hand that had, from his perspective, apparently just been chucked over the keep’s wall, looking back at it like it might move on its own.
And then it did.
The jaw snapped, and the guard dropped it, jumping away from where it landed with a yelp. Unsheathing his sword, he stood ready, and from the shadow of the wall, a figure traipsed, slow and nearly whole again, the skeleton only missing its head. As it came closer, the guard took matched steps back, but didn’t flee, nor did he scream, the horror of it seemingly too much, and the skeleton plucked its own skull from the courtyard’s soft grass and sat it back up on its neck.
The guard had a moment of bravery then, which is, of course, quite similar to stupidity when all is said and done, and he rushed the stack of bones, thrusting wildly forward with his sword. The weapon pierced the skeleton, and the guard ran it through until he was right up against it, the blade fitting neatly between the ribs.
