“What the fuck happenedout here?” Araes replied, lunging through an open doorway. Panic flashed across Nikos’s tanned brow as he plunged into the courtyard. Men and monster alike flew through the sky with agonizing screams. Dirt speckled faces, bloodied and lifeless, littered the ground. It wasn’t the rebels that lay there slain, however. It was the no-rank, Larken, and countless other familiar faces of the 15th.
“Holy gods…” Niko trailed off, watching the brutal fight ensue. Death wielders in various states of decay clicked their unhinged jaws before pouncing on their prey.“What happened to the rebels?”
“Niko…thosearethe rebels,” Araes cried, pointing to a death wielder shrouded in a familiar quartz cloak. Before Niko could reply, however, another creature leapt for him. Araes swung his sword, shutting himself down, and sliced cleanly through its neck. Its head rolled to the muck, collecting blood-soaked mud in its path. “Sword up. Let’s go.”
Niko nodded and flanked right. Araes slowed his breathing and dove into the writhing sea of clicking, guttural death cries. A creature lunged for him, swinging its elongated arms toward his neck. The lieutenant dove left, letting his leg take the motion. His leather sole connected with bone in a stomach-churning squelch.
“I thought these things were blind,” Niko called, plunging his sword into a death wielder’s chest. “How the fuck are they tracking us?”
Araes dodged another as it leapt across the yard, chattering hungrily. He pulled the dagger from his calf and sent it twirling over his shoulder. The steel landed its mark, straight through the creature’s hollowed, black eye. An inhuman groan escaped its lips as it collapsed.
“The chattering! I think they’re communicating somehow with the vibrations,” he said, sliding a tarnished shield toward a pinned no-rank. The boy caught it, just before the death wielder above him could swing for his neck. The copper bit into flesh and sliced its head clean off.
There was war between men, and then there was this. Fighting alongside fear unleashed the true brutality of violence. Araes dove into chaos again, hacking and slicing and stabbing with each step. Although his death count rose with each sword swing, he didn’t mark these kills on his mental list. These things were already dead, slain once then twice. Eos above, please not a third time.
Araes glanced at a fallen soldier. He recognized the man’s face, now ashen and lifeless, but never learned his name. In his palm was a rebel’s discarded dagger, the ornate sun on its hilt bloodied and crusted with entrails. Another death wielder clicked behind him and the lieutenant dodged its oncoming attack, rolling beside the corpse and skidding to a halt in ankle high mud.
He raised his weapon, preparing to strike, but the twitch of the dead soldier’s pale fingers froze him mid step. Niko, from Araes’s left, leapt for the death wielder and plunged his blade cleanly through its chest.
“Keep your head, brother!” Niko said, wiping sweat from his brow. Araes didn’t respond, however. The words were stolen before they could reach his lips. The soldier, once dead and limp beside him, now jerked and moved with inhuman movement. Although his features were similar to that during life, his eyes were now depthless black holes. His skin stretched over bone as he unhinged his jaw. A low growl rumbled in his throat as he rose on broken legs.
“What the fuck…” Niko breathed, backstepping away from the dead soldier. “...is happening?”
“I don’t know, but don’t touch those damned daggers. We have to tell Haidee and the others,” Araes replied, kicking a golden hilt across the yard. The blade skipped along the muck and clanked against the keep’s outer wall.
Niko nodded and plunged left, while Araes went right, diving behind the fallen soldier’s chattering attack. He raced through the yard, the silver sword now an extension of himself as it swung violently through monsters and limbs and throats.
His commanding officer was at the far end, encircled by death wielders. Their bodies were a near-impenetrable wall around her, but they were distracted, gnawing on one another as if they couldn’t distinguish the difference between predator or prey. He burrowed his way through, scattering limbs and heads with each powerful movement.
“Captain, wait!” he cried, knocking the dagger fromHaidee’s hand.
“What are you doing, Lieutenant? Trying to get us killed?” she asked, sending an elbow toward the oncoming death wielders. Its teeth crunched as it connected with the force of her weight. With the open opportunity, Araes plunged his sword through its chest, watching its lungs collapse beneath nearly translucent flesh.
“Those blades must be cursed. They’re creating more of them!” he said, through gritted teeth.
Haidee grimaced, but retrieved a mud stained sword lodged in the muck.
“Good gods, you’re sure?” she asked, swiping her weapon across a creature’s kneecaps. They splintered and the beast knocked to the ground.
“I saw it happen with my own eyes,” he replied, cracking his boot over the death wielder’s grayish nose.
“Alert the others, Lieutenant. I’ll take care of these ones,” she said, panting.
He grunted a response and dove behind a rotting wooden crate. She wasn’t their commanding officer for nothing. Haidee held her own against the wriggling mass of death wielders. She roared and lunged into battle, becoming a vicious weapon of steel and blood.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling a second heartbeat thrum in his chest. It pumped softly, washing him in warmth.
It wasn’t the adrenaline coursing through his veins or an illusion from boots trudging through the mud around him. That heartbeat washers. From hundreds of miles away he felt his goddess’s touch, smelled her lilac scent. The bond tethered their souls together, never wavering, never fading.
A third pulse fluttered through his veins, but he couldn’t quite distinguish it from hers. Not yet, anyway.
Without a glance back, Araes leapt into battle once more, alerting the few remaining soldiers of the daggers.Their numbers dwindled and his muscles fatigued past the point of total exhaustion, but he locked in, becoming a gear in the well-oiled machine the 15th trained to be for years. He would hold the keep, even with untrained no-ranks and unseasoned soldiers.
He would not yield. Would not break.
Because there was life outside of his own. A heartbeat worth fighting for. The world was a cold, dark place around him, but with that beacon of warmth lighting his way, he knew it was worth protecting.
† † †
