Racing forward felt like slow motion. She spied a man in the chaos, rusty sword in hand. Friend or foe? Only seconds to decide.
Eviscerate him.
Her demonic impulse craved death as always. It was rare for Helspira to agree, but when the man advanced on a shrieking woman who shielded a small child with her arms, she knew he needed to die.
She took no pleasure in death. She had seen too much of it in Chthonia. Senseless slaughter atop senseless slaughter. But if demons were fated to be instruments of annihilation, she would at least direct it at those who threatened her peace. And she would do it in the most-human way possible.
After all, blades were far less horrifying than true demonic rage.
Leaping between townsfolk and target, Helspira’s sword met flesh. From stomach to spine, her steel felled her mark. The man’s blood barely hit the cobblestones before she flourished and severed the legs of two undead assailants with one sweeping swing.
“Damn, Hels, save some for me,” came Ben’s disembodied voice as he plunged his sword into another assailant’s chest. “It’s been four years, you know. I’m a bit rusty.”
She smiled, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “I smell decay toward the leathersmith. No doubt there’s undead in that direction. Join me?”
“I would, but”—Ben looked over his shoulder—“I can’t wander far from Sikras. He’s only fought once without the full force of his power, and ... Let’s just say, I need to ensure he doesn’t do anything idiotic.”
A sound point. Though Helspira had only marginal knowledge on the arcane after her fleeting relationship with Cecil, she had quickly learned why precious few of Siaphara’s inhabitants pursued a life in the thaumaturgic arts.
Magic gave, but it also took. Cecil had told her countless tales about the cost of certain spells. When the recoil from one uttered invocation could mean the difference between a simple headache or death, a life dedicated to magic was a dangerous one, indeed.
Sikras
AHEADACHE? ALREADY?
“Come on, I didn’t evencastanything yet,” Sikras shouted skyward to the gods, to anything that would listen.
Whatever. If his body was going to rebel, at least he would give it a reason.
Leaning the scythe against his chest to free his fingers, they flexed and moved in a series of memorized movements, the precise choreography to summon shadow blades. All that remained was the verbal component and—
“Lepides skion.”
Gray-green smoke lifted from the ground like a fog, mingling with floating ashes and embers. The mist took the vague shapes of daggers, a pathetically small collection of three that swirled around Sikras like a slow-moving cyclone.
Then came the recoil.
Thepop, snap, crackin his veins felt like little explosions, each one pulling a strained groan from his clenched teeth. Heart pounding, he pressed his hand into his chest to recover, to catch his breath.
Gods, even three shadow blades nearly brought him to his knees. Embarrassing.
Trained to stay in Benjamin’s peripheral, Sikras darted toward the hazy figure he knew to be his brother-in-law despite lightheadedness stealing the surety of his path. Fire’s light warped the shadows of townsfolk and enemies alike, and he waited for his vision to resume focus. It was the only way to ensure his ethereal blades dissipated into the nostrils of a foe rather than a terrified civilian.
But damn, that debility was murder on his body count.
He was pretty sure Benjamin had already killed three people by the time one of Sikras’s shadow blades found the ear canal of a man wielding a rusty machete. In defense of his abysmal death toll, it took time for the blade’s slow poison to turn the organs necrotic once it entered the lungs and blood stream, but still ...
When the attacker fell to his knees, gasping and clawing at his throat, Sikras stopped to cup his chin. “Shit. I forgot we needed one of you alive.”
Oh, well. No sense wasting a perfectly good corpse.
After another flash of intricate hand gestures and a whispered, “An’stisei tus necrouz,” Sikras called soul and essence back from Enos, and the freshly killed body returned to fight under a new commander.
Right up until a Red Sentinel severed its head from the shoulders in one clean strike.
“Come on!” Sikras balked, seconds from a chastising rant, before another lash of magical recoil crackled through his chest like lightning.
This onedidbring him to his knees. Even more embarrassing.
