I drew my sword as he touched his shoulder, his sheathed sword materializing by magic.
He was already calling orders. He had worked it out in the air: where the pressure was worst, where to send each member of Bismyth, what opportunities the terrain would give, and what it would cost.
We were side by side. One day, we would fight as true equals. I wouldn’t need his arms to fly or his hand to steady me.
The city opened around us, built of old stone. The streets were wide near the wall and narrowed inward, the geography of a city built to funnel trade and currently funneling monsters instead.
The eastern wall was not quite a wall anymore. Some monster had hit it hard enough to bring down a twenty-foot section, and dust still hung in clouds. The breach spread damage outward; roofs partially collapsed, a fountain in the nearest square broken and leaking a spreading sheet of water over the cobblestones.
As we landed, the sea disappeared beyond the wall except if one had a view through where monsters had broken down the wall. Waves crashed against stone, the scent of salt threading through the smoke.
Bismyth was already moving. Fear and Anayla both called orders, taking different sides of the battlefield. Kiegan and Sera went left toward a cluster of defenders who had been pushed against a storehouse.
Asrael and Dairen moved straight toward the worst of the breach where Obsidian was fighting, hard-pressed and tired. Fear touched my shoulder, and I went with him, following Az and Dairen.
“It’s a Wrack,” he told me as we went toward one of the enormous sea monsters, a thing with a hard shell and nasty claws. “When it lunges for the kill, its neck is vulnerable.”
“For the kill,” I echoed.
“I won’t be killed,” he promised. “Watch for the opening. Go left.”
Obsidian didn’t acknowledge us. They shifted, making space in their formation without breaking it.
The Wrack turned toward Fear, as if it sensed the greatest threat. It lunged.
I drove my sword into the soft place behind the jaw. The Wrack let out a roar, turning on me, but Fear and the Obsidian shifters were faster than it was. I drew my sword loose, splattering blood as they went to work.
Then the Wrack was gone, and we moved on.
I intended to stay close to Fear, but I lost him in the chaos and smoke. I stopped, looking around, trying to figure out where to go next.
A young man with dark hair was being dragged by some multi-tentacled thing, part of his body already eaten, and an Obsidian shifter went after the monster, cursing. I ran to help, but the Obsidian shifter was already chopping off yet another tentacle by the time I reached his side.
“Help those two!” he barked at me, pointing.
A mortal woman with a pike and a low Fae were fighting another monster, the Fae bending shadows to make it look the wrong way while the pike came from the other direction. It was clever, and it was barely working.
I reached for Lightbringer, the reflex I couldn’t stop, the knock on the door that was always there, and found what I always found: warmth, banked and enormous and unhelpful.
Fine.
I had my sword and my Bismyth training and whatever madness had propelled me from Stonehaven to now.
When the creature turned from the mortal woman’s pike and lunged toward me. I met it with my sword.
I slashed at it roughly, barely better trained than this mortal to fight, but when it lunged at me, I caught it on my sword, my reflexes so fast that it amazed me. The monster’s dull eyes seemed to meet mine, its claws reaching and spiny tail flickeringtoward me. I pulled my sword loose and stepped back in one motion, fast enough to elude its attack.
I heard the mortal woman murmur distantly, “So it’s real. She’s not quite mortal.”
The creature went down slower than I wanted and took me with it in a way that was not elegant but ended with me on my feet rather than underneath it, so small mercies. My shoulder hit cobblestone. My head made intimate acquaintance with the road as well.
The world spun dizzily, and I thought for a wretched moment that the myth-in-the-making might vomit over the cobblestones.
The low Fae reached out a hand and grabbed my arm without hesitating, and I got up.
The fight kept going.
Near the breach itself, where the rubble from the wall was still chest-high in places, were horrifying fast monsters, small but moving in a pack so large they seemed one massive being as they swarmed over the wall. Kiegan and Sera went to meet them, alone for a moment, and then there were Obsidian shifters on either side of them.
