The Skybound Sea

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dawn came timidly over Jaga, unwilling to challenge the mist that slid through the forest. And the mist, sensing weakness, did everything it could to smother the light. The result was something that crept over the island like a slow-moving tide, washing out colors in a foggy gray.

Those ambitious fish that emerged early to peck at the coral and the sands, and those opportunistic fish that emerged earlier to prey upon the former, moved like motes of dust in light. They were bright and vivid against the gray, living grafitti on something perfectly bland and respectable.

The island was perfectly devoid of sound.

The island was drained of color.

The island was a gloomy hell of serenity with absolutely nothing to do but sit quietly in a perch of sturdy red coral and wait for something to happen.

Summarily, Kataria thought, it was the perfect time to put an arrow in someone’s gullet.

Or it would be once he decided to come by. She sat nestled amidst the coral, perched upon the perfect spot. Just enough twisted red branches to conceal her with a fair amount of space to offer a clear view-and a clearer shot-of the highway before her and a fair amount of space to wriggle out when everything went to hell.

Not that everything is going to go to hell, she cautioned herself. Goodness no. It’s all quite simple. He’s arrogant, unaware, uncautious. He’ll never see you and he won’t know what’s happened until you’re gone. All that could go wrong is the extremely unlikely event of him. . looking up. Then you’re dead. Or worse, alive and at his mercy and then you’re-

Stop, stop, STOP!

She clutched her ears, trying futilely to block out her own thoughts. There was a time and a place for self-doubt and it most certainly wasn’t when one was about to try to kill a sexual sadist who spewed fire and lightning like a chubby child spews cake crumbs.

Especially when that chubby child was composed of hundreds of berserker, sharp-toothed warrior women brimming with jagged metal and bloodlust and quite possibly-

Stop it again, she urged herself. What did you usually do in times like these? Shoot something? Right, right, that’s coming. What else? Ask your friends? Gariath would tell you to shoot something. Asper would tell you to pray. That works for her, doesn’t it? Right. Good. Start praying.

She opened her mouth for a moment. When no words came out, the thought occurred to her.

Pray to. . who, exactly?

Riffid was the obvious answer. Riffid would have been helpful. Riffid gave shicts nothing but the skill and the will to get things done. She sent no boons and offered no miracles. Riffid would have let her shoot and be done with it.

But Riffid was a goddess for shicts.

Riffid was down in the chasm, where Kataria had watched Inqalle die, where Kataria had spilled Naxiaw’s blood, where Kataria had chosen to protect a human. Riffid was taking Inqalle to the Dark Forest. Riffid was hearing Naxiaw ask for the strength to kill the traitor who shot him.

Riffid would not listen to her.

And when-and if-she walked away from this, she was not sure who would.

For a long time, she tried not to think.

A long time turned into a longer time. While her mind was content to remain silent, her body was slightly more vocal. She could persuade herself not to think about all that had happened, but his scent lingered in her nostrils, she could still feel the tension of his muscle as she dug her nails into him, she could taste his sweat, his blood, his skin against her skin as he-

This isn’t helping, she grunted inwardly. Thoughts of him were as distracting as thoughts of the others and one invariably led to the other. So, as she felt the need, she attempted to empty thought and body at once.

Pulling her pants down and positioning the jar, wouldn’t have been easy for anyone else but a shict. But it was a common practice amongst hunters to keep their waste, liquid and otherwise, off the ground to avoid upsetting the prey’s delicate sense of scent and alerting them.

Admittedly, she had no idea if netherlings even had a sense of smell or if their noses were just there to be broken, but by her third filling of the jar she thought she might as well keep going. And once the tinkle of liquid stopped, she hiked her breeches back up, sealed the jar, and let it hang from the straps she had used to secure it to her belt.

Well, then, she thought, if only shicts do that, you’ve still got. . something.

She forced her head silent.

And in that silence, she heard it. Her ears pricked up, full of the sound of iron upon stone, alien curses upon lips. It began softly at first, distant clanking and distant roaring. And then the kelp quivered and the coral rattled with the tromping of boots. The fish scattered, fleeing into folds of forest and shadowed holes. The mist slithered away into the trees.

And she saw them.

They came one by one at first, a few females in ratty armor wielding crude spears. They snarled amongst each other as they used their weapons to pry stones and debris from the ancient highway, kicking them into the forest as they cleared the path for the purple tide that came boiling up the road.

Rattling, clanking black armor grinding against armor as shoulder brushed against shoulder. Spikes masquerading as swords held hungrily in gauntleted hands. Shields with jagged edges clanged in eagerness. Long faces curled up in jagged-toothed snarls as the female netherlings marched forth, their impatient, foreign-tongued curses blending seamlessly with the sound of grinding iron.

In teeming numbers, rows of black-haired heads, columns of twitching purple muscle, masses of iron and spit and snarls, the netherlings came in a slow-moving wave of flesh and metal, their thunder barely contained.

And yet, contained it was. For all the very palpable hatred and anger they spewed into the air with every breath until it was choking, they did not fight, did not blink, did not even look anywhere but forward. Their milk-white eyes were thrust straight and sharp as the swords they carried, purposefully and violently pressed forward as though they expected their scowls to kill just as effectively as a blade.

And they weren’t looking up.

They were focused, Kataria noted, too intent on their distant battle to bear much ill will toward each other beyond the occasional growl. Something drew them together, united them, drove them forward as one, as only one thing could.

That was bad, for obvious reasons.

But at least she knew Sheraptus strode amongst them.

Which was also bad, for obvious reasons.

She tried not to think about those as the line moved on. They marched in order, of a sort. Thirty-three to a unit, as Dreadaeleon had said. Thirty-three angry, spewing, iron-clad creatures wholly intent on wholesale slaughter.

Thirty-three angry, spewing, iron-clad creatures driven by just one will.

Kataria slid an arrow from her quiver and strung it. No sense in drawing it in preparation; it would only make her arm tired, her aim shaky. She needed both strong for the sole shot she would get at this.

They continued to march. The warriors with their swords led the archers, that followed a trail of derision and scorn spat their way from those in the lead. The numbers were intimidating. She stopped keeping track of them by the time they passed the Shen’s number, which took an alarmingly short time.

By that moment, though, something else seized her attention.

Behind the archers’ grumbles and the warriors’ snarls, another unit came marching up in perfect, silent harmony. Clad in armor as black and shiny as a beetle’s carapace and covering them so that not a single trace of purple flesh could be seen behind the walls of glistening metal, they came. Their shields were tall, hammered to crescent shapes. Their spears were topped with cruel barbs.

As distressing as the sight was, the sound-or lack of it-was worse. They never said a word, never shared a single snarl of their less-clad companions. Their visored helmets betrayed no eye, no mouth, no sign of even a face as they marched in perfect, terrible synchronization.

Netherlings with discipline.

Worrisome.

Not half as worrisome as what followed.

Its groaning metal, creaking wood, and shrieking, roaring wheels could be heard for an eternity away. But it was only when the metal machination came rolling up, pushed by several grunting warriors, that she could appreciate the terror that came with the metallic cacophony.

A ballista, she had heard it called. A big bow mounted on wheels. Where the netherlings had found one, she didn’t actually know. She wasn’t even sure if it was a ballista. It had the bow part, but everything else was slathered in spikes and metal parts that had been punched on. Two giant arms of flexible wood were tied back at the sides of the engine, each one ending in a strange claw that clenched a jagged, twisted star of sharpened, unpolished metal.

She wasn’t quite sure if it would actually work or whether it was just there to look intimidating. It did, of course, but only because she knew netherlings had a talent for making anything into a weapon and making anything that already was a weapon into something. . like that.

And if it did work, the Shen would have to know. She studied it as it rolled past and up the highway, trying to figure out how it worked and where it could be struck. Once she was done here, she would have to hurry back and tell them. Maybe they could get to it before-

Her ears perked up. Her eyes widened. Her heart slowed a beat.

She couldn’t explain what it was about him: a sound too faint to be real, an aroma that couldn’t be smelled, a threat that was never spoken. But she heard him, felt him, knew he was coming.

And she nocked her bow.

They came in a knot: white-haired females dressed in gleaming, polished armor, carrying titanic slabs of sharpened metal half-heartedly pretending to be swords on their shoulders. They were bigger, stronger, more laden with scars than any other warrior that walked amongst them.

Carnassials.

And Sheraptus rode at their center.

Two other males flanked him, short and slender with white hair and red and purple robes, wearing arrogant scorn upon their long faces. Xhai rode ahead of him, looking twice as vicious as the great beast she rode. For all their fury and their hatred and their bare-toothed savagery, they paled in comparison to the specter that rode between them.

He was wearing white robes, shrouded in them like they could keep in whatever he was, seated so comfortably in them with a small smile on his face as though he belonged in something that was worn by holy men. It was a poor farce, a poor disguise.

Even if it wasn’t for the black crown upon his brow burning with three fiery stones, even if he rode something other than a creature of muscle and claws and jaws and six twitching ears the color of coal, nothing he wore could hide what he was. His cruelty stained the cloth. His viciousness seeped through it.

And he was right there.

Waiting to be killed.

Her fingers tensed around the fletching of her arrow when the cry came down the line, an iron-voiced howl that was echoed from unit to unit until it reached Sheraptus’s. The entire column came to a grinding, groaning halt. Curses were exchanged in alien tongues, inquiries made with what Kataria was certain were threats following. Xhai smashed her fist against the nearest white-haired longface and barked an order, they complied with a growled reply. The Carnassial sneered and reined her beast around, trotting over to Sheraptus.

“Something in the way ahead,” she grunted. “The low-fingers need more muscle to move it.”

“No hurry,” Sheraptus replied, his smile twitching.

Kataria hadn’t seen anything in the road on her way here. She didn’t care. The line had stopped. And he was right in front of her, stopped and smiling and waiting for an arrow in his gullet.

The purple of his flesh was vivid in the muted light. His jugular gyrated with each breath he took. And with each breath he took, it became bigger, a big, fat boil just waiting to be lanced.

She held her own breath as she raised her bow, drew her arrow back. The coral trembled slightly. The bowstring moaned in quiet anticipation.

On the road, the beast that served as Sheraptus’s mount twitched. Six ears fanned out like a dish as it swept an eyeless gaze about the road. She held her shot. Surely it couldn’t have heard her. . could it?

No time to wonder. The nervous wariness from Sheraptus’s mount spread to the others. And like a fire it spread to the netherlings. Xhai looked down as her mount’s ears extended and it emitted low, excited whines.

“QAI AHN!” she roared, drawing her massive blade from over her shoulder. The warriors around her followed suit, seizing their weapons and raising them before them as they huddled together warily.

Kataria held her aim. She held her breath back despite the overwhelming urge to panic and run. She kept her calm.

Right up until the moment she saw a flash of green out of the corner of her eye.

Something was down in the coral, moving. Something with weapons. Something with bright, yellow-

Shalake, she had time to think, you stupid son of a bitch.

“SHENKO-SA!”

The Shen came leaping out of the foliage, machetes in their hands, warcries in their throats, arrows chasing them like faithful puppies. The missiles struck first, sinking into netherling throats and exposed purple flesh. The longfaces fell with gurgles and cries of surprise, stepping stools of metal and skin as the Shen came leaping through the lines, waving their weapons.

One of them made a lunge for Sheraptus, machete held high with the intent of smashing it into his black-crowned skull. He loosed a cry, leapt from a fallen longface high into the air and, like a bird beneath a metal hawk, was snatched from the sky.

Xhai’s blade screamed not as loud, moved not as elegantly as the lizardman, but its howl was metal and unyielding and its edge was vicious as it clove the lizardman from his leap and sent him to tumble and bounce upon the earth.

In two pieces.

Kataria quickly scanned the fight. The arrows still flew, but those netherlings they struck did not fall. They snarled, as if it were mosquitoes biting them instead of arrows stuck in their arms and legs, and swung their gigantic blades unhindered by blood loss or pain.

The metal ate of scaly flesh, separated limbs, shattered spines, clove skulls. No blow was clean. No blow finished them. The Shen fell to the ground, their flesh sizzling and burning as the venom coating the swords ate them alive. They writhed, they wailed, they screamed for as long as it took the nearest netherling to bring a spiked metal boot upon their skull and stamp them out like wet ashes.

And Sheraptus watched it all with a serene smile.

Whole and complete, he sat upon his beast’s back, unharmed. What had Asper done to him? Had she been lying? He looked completely fit, even more full of arrogant cruelty than she remembered. Perhaps this was not worth it. Perhaps retreat was the wiser-

No, no, NO.

Kataria swallowed her shock, bit back her scream and took aim. Now or never, she told herself. One shot. In his neck. Before he knows it. Then I run.

She drew the string to her cheek, released it.

One shot.

It wailed as it flew.

To his neck.

He looked up.

And before either of them knew it, the arrow had found a mark.

It lodged itself into flesh with the sound of meat being tenderized and breath being stolen. It quivered eagerly beneath a purple collarbone, pleased with itself. A purple hand, too twisted to fit into a gauntlet, reached up to seize it and snap it off at the shaft.

Xhai, looming before Sheraptus like a wall of metal and iron, scowled up at Kataria. She snorted, broke the remains of the arrow with a twitch of her ruined fingers.

Kataria stared for a moment, slack-jawed and unblinking. Sheraptus merely raised an eyebrow at the shattered arrow falling to the stones. He looked back up to Kataria. And, as he held out his hands in what almost looked like it could be a gesture of benediction if not for the blossoms of fire blooming upon his palms, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

Until someone told her.

Now you run.

Her head knew, but her legs didn’t. She fell backward, tumbling from her perch, just as the sky exploded.

Fire washed over the coral as a tide, blackening her perch and shattering it. It flooded the forest, turning coral into pyres, kelp into sheets of flame. Kataria could see the Shen now from their hiding places. She could see Yaike as he looked up at her, as unaware that she had been there as she had been of him. She could see him yell something, she could see his eye reflect the fire, she could see his mouth twist and distort as his face became scaly green melting wax as the fire rose up around him in a titanic sheet.

Warriors were fleeing. Fish were swimming. Fire was racing to catch them both and winning, engulfing the forest and eating it alive. Kataria hauled herself to her legs and told them to go. They remembered now, they remembered how to run and how to not stop and how to tell her lungs that they couldn’t stop breathing even as smoke rose up in plumes around her and she couldn’t stop running ever as the fire closed in around her, behind her.

And then in front of her.

The wall of kelp went up in a glorious burst. The coral collapsed around her and in her path, forming a ring of blackening spikes and fire around her. It ate everything, all color, all light, all sound. The screams of the Shen dying were engulfed in the laughter of the fire. The greenery of the forest was bathed in red. The fish fell from the sky, their colors painted black with soot.

Kataria could feel the sweat mingle with her warpaint, streak down her body in long tears of red. She could feel her heart beat as it struggled to free itself from her chest. She could feel the breath beginning to leave her.

She closed her eyes.

She gritted her teeth.

And she prayed. To someone.

From far away, the forest screamed. Its voice was fervent and choked with ash. Its blood was painted in a cloud of black and red upon the gray dawn sky. It wailed through a shudder of kelp and a groan of blackened coral before it finally fell to a broken sigh of ash and embers and then fell silent.

Lenk wasn’t quite sure how long it spoke. Lenk wasn’t at all certain how long he stared at its black blood pooling in the sky, bright embers dancing in it. Lenk didn’t know what to say when he finally found the words to speak.

But they came, anyway.

“Kat?”

As though she might pop up behind him, wrap her arms about his middle and say “just kidding.”

He whirled about on the stone staircase, casting a furious scowl at the creature one step above him.

“What the hell just happened?” he demanded.

Shalake looked down, yellow eyes narrowed through the sockets of his skull headdress. He made no answer. Not as Denaos and Asper both turned irate and suspicious scowls up the stairs. Not as Dreadaeleon looked agog from the devastation to him. Not as Gariath shot him a sidelong glance.

Only when Mahalar cleared his throat from one more step above did Shalake speak.

“They failed,” the hulking Shen said simply.

“Who? Who is they?” Lenk demanded, ascending a step.

“The brave warriors who gave their lives in the ambush,” Shalake replied. “They will be remembered.”

From beside Shalake, Jenaji, nearly as tall and half as tattooed, seized the Shen’s arm.

“How many?”

“Twenty,” Shalake replied, shrugging Jenaji’s grip off. “Twenty who will be honored at sunset.”

“Honored as charred husks of overcooked meat along with Kataria because you are a stupid, scaly piece of shit who can’t follow an order!” Lenk all but screamed.

“I am the warwatcher,” Shalake roared back, looking down at Lenk and taking an aggressive step forward. “I do not take orders from you and I do not trust pointy-eared weaklings to do the duty of the Shen.”

“Whatever just went wrong happened because your warriors couldn’t be trusted not to send everything to hell!” Lenk roared.

The hulking Shen glowered as he removed his tremendous warclub from his back, the tooth-studded weapon roughly half the size of Lenk sliding easily into his hands like it had been waiting for this for days. Lenk responded, pulling his sword free and hoping no one saw his hands tremble with the effort.

On the steps below, the green crowd trailing into the sand of the ring, close to two hundred Shen warriors looked up in anticipation of the brawl- or decapitation-about to happen.

Mahalar cleared his throat.

Shalake’s glare did not dissipate, but softened considerably as he turned it toward the elder Shen.

“He challenges me,” Shalake snarled. “He accuses me. I have the right to-”

“Of course. Later.” Mahalar gestured with his chin. “After that.”

“Holy. .” Asper began. The rest of her words were lost in the sight that came from the forest, with a herald of smoke and fire.

Like children called to supper, the netherlings came racing eagerly from the forests in a stream of purple skin and glistening black iron. A stream became a tide as they poured into the ring, tearing the earth beneath their boots.

Legion after legion, long face after long face, they came. With shields on their arms, bows on their backs, swords slung over their shoulders, they came. In numbers vast and with bodies blackened by soot and flame, they came. They filled the ring, rushing until they came exactly halfway between the Shen and the forest and assembling into lines.

And there they stopped.

From the top of the steps, no sand could be seen. The ring had become a sea of purple skin, lit by the white of hundreds of empty eyes and hundreds of jagged-toothed smiles.

“KENKI-AI!”

The call boomed from Shalake’s mouth like a drum, echoing down the line. The Shen assembled on the steps drew arrows from quivers, nocked them into great bows of wood and bone. The Shen on the sands below seized their clubs in both hands, banged machetes against shields made from turtle shells and dried leather as they hunkered behind barricades brimming with sharp coral spines.

Lenk felt his attentions drawn to the center of the line, an insignificant white speck of froth amidst the purple sea. From this distance, he could pick the figure out. From this distance, he could see Sheraptus sitting there, smoke still trailing from his fingers and leading to the bleeding sky behind him.

And from a place tenderly close, Lenk could feel a scratching at the back of his skull.

“Kill him,” he hissed. “Kill him now. He’s right there. Shoot him.”

“Not close enough,” Jenaji muttered.

“Then rush out there and kill him.”

“Any chance we have relies on them coming to us,” Mahalar muttered. “We wait.”

Lenk knew the wisdom in that. He could see the line of shields and swords stretching out before him. He could see the arrows being drawn back by netherling bows. Any charge would be brief, futile, and end in him lying in a puddle of his own fluids. At the very best, he would die with his sword in a netherling’s chest. Probably not Sheraptus’s. It was a very messy suicide.

But something inside him dearly wanted just that.

“Roughly what we expected,” Yldus commented, “a small number in a fortified position. No other choice for them, really. The ring winds down at the other side, meaning we can only put so many of our warriors there before they start trampling each other.” He gestured to the brightly-colored coral fortifications. “And they set up those. . things to try and funnel us further. Smarter than we’d given lizards credit for.”

“Not a problem, I assume,” Sheraptus muttered, though only half paying attention. His attentions were turned outward, over the heads of his warriors, over the spiraling coral thorns, out to the distant sea. Something out there drew his eye as an itch draws a scratching hand.

“It was nothing we weren’t prepared for,” Yldus replied. “We can rip through those defenses with the. .” He paused and glanced at the monstrosity of metal and spiked machinery that stood at the center of their line. “What did you call this thing again?”

A female loading a star-shaped blade into the thing’s flexible, side-mounted arms looked up and shrugged. “I don’t know. It shoots stuff.”

“Of course.” Yldus sighed. “At any rate, the blades are thick enough to shred those barricades. Given time-”

“How much time?”

“A few hours or so. We’ll need to put the low-fingers and their bows up ahead so that-”

“And how quickly can you get this done?” Sheraptus asked, turning to the side.

Vashnear looked at him, then turned a stare out to the Shen assembled at the other end of the ring. He sniffed.

“Quickly,” he answered.

Sheraptus swung his gaze over to Xhai. The female grunted and turned to her nearest subordinate, another Carnassial clad in the storm gray armor of her rank. The Carnassial snorted in response, looking up through the thin slits of a skull-hugging helmet rife with spikes and jagged edges.

“Three fists,” Xhai grunted. “Three Carnassials. Whoever can get to the front first.” She spurred her cohort with an iron boot to the flank. “Go.”

The Carnassial snarled a response, barked an order to the rest of the netherlings. The hungriest ones fought their way to the front, leaving the weaker ones to clean up the soon-to-be mess.

Sheraptus wasn’t sure how they decided who got to charge. Amongst males, it was generally considered wisdom not to try to understand the finer intricacies of the females’ hierarchies. Sheraptus didn’t care, either way. His concerns were beyond the sea.

And drawing ever closer.

“Quickly, Vashnear?” he asked.

“Quickly, Sheraptus,” Vashnear said, spurring his sikkhun forward to take his place at the center of the assembling netherlings. “And with a great deal of mess.”

“What’s that they’re doing?”

“They’re moving. . fighting? Yes, fighting. No, now just moving again. . faster. . closer. Oh. Oh dear.”

“They’re grouping up, are they-”

“Attala-ah-kah, Jenaji. Attala-ah-kah.”

“They’re definitely-”

“KENKI-SHA! ATTALA! ATALLA JAGA!”

“Oh sweet Silf, they’re coming to-”

“QAI ZHOTH!”

They were all talking at once. The mass of green and yellow blending together around Lenk, the great wave of purple washing across the sands toward them, the blobs of pink and blue and black that reached and grabbed at him as he pushed his way down the gray slope.

It was hard to hear them. It was hard to see them. There were too many of them all and he only cared about one of them. And he was far away, seated atop a pitch-black beast and dressed like an angel from hell with a halo of fire and shadow.

And between them came the purple, countless bodies intertwining, countless mouths howling, countless swords in the air. There might have been a lot, there might have been a few.

He had to hurt them. He had to make them bleed. He couldn’t care about numbers or jagged-toothed smiles or the great metal birds flying overhead.

Arms caught him about the waist, a pair of bodies brought him low as the air was cut apart in a metallic wail. Flesh and bone exploded in a bouquet of red and white flowers as the great, jagged star tore through the Shen behind them, carrying through bodies and screams to impale itself in the stone stairs.

“Down! Down! Keep him down!” Denaos cried.

“There’s more coming, Lenk! Stop moving, you idiot!” Asper shrieked, trying to hold him down.

“JAHU! ATTAI WOH!” Shalake howled.

Shields went up around them, a poor defense against the jagged stars descending from the air. In the distance, between the scaly green legs, Lenk could see them hurled from great wooden arms on the netherlings’ ballista. He could see them fly into the air, whirring violently before falling like falcons, ripping through coral, shields, flesh, bones, sand, stones.

And still, the screams were drowned out. And still, the blood spattering the earth around him was nothing. Nothing compared to the rush of purple flesh and black metal charging toward them.

“ATTAI-AH! ATTAI-AH!” Jenaji screamed from the steps. “ATTALA JAGA! SHENKO-SA!”

His warcry was echoed in the hum of bowstrings, a choral dirge that sent arrows singing through the sky. Fletched with feathery fins and tipped with jagged coral, they rose and fell in harmony, their song turning to battle cry as they tipped and descended upon the charging netherlings.

They sought. They found flesh, digging into necks, thighs, wriggling between armor plates and jutting out of throats. Some fell, some stumbled, some tripped and were trampled by their fellow warriors. But one still stood.

A great hulk of a female, armor stark gray like an angel wrought of iron, swinging a massive slab of metal over a helmet flanged with spikes and edges. She embraced the arrows like lovers as they found a bare bicep, a flash of thigh, a scant spot of skin just beneath the collarbone.

She laughed. She bled. She lowered her head.

And she did not stop.

The Carnassial did not meet her foes. She exploded into them. A coral barricade was smashed into fragments, many of them embedded in her flesh to join the arrows as she met the cluster of Shen warriors full on. For a moment, their warcries died in their throats and their numbers were meaningless.

She swung her slab of a sword, cleaving shields in two, swords from wrists, heads from shoulders in one fell swoop. She stepped forward with each blow, driving the warriors back as more netherlings rushed into the gap she had cloven into the barricade. Those Shen that fell screamed, steamed like cooked meat as sheens of sickly green liquid gnawed at their wounds.

She threw her bloodied sword up. She presented a body wrapped in metal and kissed in blood and shards. She roared.

“AKH ZEKH LA-”

The fist struck her and rang her like a cathedral bell. The sword clattered to the ground next to the jagged teeth she spat out beside it. She blinked. She looked up.

Gariath’s black eyes met her first.

His fist came after.

He pounded her relentlessly, hammering blows into her face, into her body. His fists were cut upon her armor and his blood joined hers upon her flesh. And still she would not fall. And still she looked at him with a mouth shattered and a body bleeding and roared.

And his reply was the ringing of metal.

He clapped his hands against either side of her helmet, ignoring the spikes biting into his palms, ignoring her blows hammering his body, ignoring everything but the feeling of squeezing an old coconut between his hands. His earfrills were shut. He could not hear anything. Not the defiant roar, not the groaning of metal, not the sickening splitting sound that came before a thin line of blood spurted out from a much narrower visor and she hung limply between his palms.

She fell.

His wings flew open. His jaws flew open. His head flew back.

His roar was long, loud, and it spread like the fire on the sky.

The Shen took up his howl, bastardizing it with words and neutering it with order. Gariath’s anger was pure. It drove his fists into netherling jaws, thrust his claws into netherling flanks, brought his jaws to netherling throats. The Shen followed his example, machetes and clubs held high to push their aggressors back as arrows from the stairs picked off those unfortunate enough to get clear enough of the action.

“There you go, then,” Denaos muttered. “There are no problems that can’t be solved by letting Gariath do whatever the hell he wants to. Stay down and everything will be fine.”

Absently, Lenk wondered if he couldn’t begin to predict disasters by Denaos’s assurances that everything would be fine. For at that moment, a wounded sky was ripped further by the cobalt bolt of electricity that lanced over the heads of the warriors to strike at the staircase. An explosion of dust and stone fragments erupted, sending Shen archers flying from the staircase, their screams lost in the thunder.

Through the press of bodies and the spines of barricades, the male was visible. Far from the melee, seated atop his sikkhun, his burning red eyes were visible through the veil of smoke wafting from his fingers. The words he spoke were unheard, the gesture he made insignificant, the bolt of lightning that sprang from his fingers was neither.

It shot across the sky to rake at the stairs once more. No explosion came this time, no screams or flying bodies. Only a grunt of effort and the flapping of a dirty leather coat from a figure positively tiny against the cluster of Shen. Dreadaeleon extended two fingers and like a rod, the electricity snaked to them, entering his body with a cobalt crackle and a sizzle. The boy panted with the effort, his body shaking with the absorbed power, tiny sparks flew from his mouth.

He wouldn’t last to take another.

That, some small, bitter part of Lenk reasoned, was good enough to do what he did.

“Someone tell the archers to-” Denaos’s words were cut short by a cry of alarm as the young man slipped from his grasp. “Hey! Wait! WAIT!”

That would have been good advice, the more sensible part of Lenk realized as he leapt over a barricade, ducking stray blows and snarls as he charged past the melee. But that part wasn’t speaking loudly enough.

The part that had watched the fire in the sky, that had wanted to kill Shalake, that saw the forest burn with Kataria inside it was roaring now, laughing with a strength that dulled sense and reason and any part of him that told him this was suicidal stupidity.

He didn’t even feel his legs beneath him. He didn’t feel the sword in his hand. He didn’t feel how cold he was. There were netherlings coming toward him, those few who had stayed behind to guard the male. He could barely see them. He didn’t need to.

His sword knew where they were, his sword spoke in the ringing of steel and the splitting of flesh and told him he wasn’t needed here. It lashed out with mechanical precision, unaware of him as he was of it as he ran past them. It cleaved hand from wrist, opened belly from navel to sternum, found a throat and cut it.

No pause to avoid the stray blows of iron and fist that caught him. No need to. He wasn’t in control now. Something else was.

And in the back of his mind it cried out with a breathless shriek of joy the way it did in his nightmares.

And he didn’t care that the netherling male atop his beast turned a bloodred stare upon him and smiled broadly as he shouted something.

Not a word of power. No, this red-robed male was feeling bold. His words were for the beast beneath him and its six ears unfurling like sails. The creature’s gibbering cackle matched its master’s as it was spurred forward, claws rending the ground beneath it as it rushed toward Lenk, tongue lolling out from gaping jaws.

The motion was seamless, driven by numb muscles. He didn’t feel himself falling into a slide across the rent earth and under the beast, he didn’t feel the wind break as jaws snapped shut over his face. Every bit of awareness in him was for the steel in his hands and the great, furry underbelly above him.

Without a word, he twisted the blade up.

And thrust.

A wailing shriek poured out of the beast’s mouth as something warm and thick fell from its underbelly in black curtains. It reared back, taking Lenk’s blade with it. From beneath a shower of gore, he twisted as the thing bucked and stamped, ripping up stained sand and tossing its master from its back.

The male tumbled to the ground, cursing as its beast scratched and shrieked, trying futilely to dislodge the weapon from its gut. But neither he nor Lenk were concerned about it any longer. Lenk’s attentions were on the male’s neck, the male’s on Lenk’s hands wrapping around it.

“Don’t touch. .” the male tried to gasp. “Diseased, unclean. .”

No words for the male. No breath to speak them. No chance to wave fingers or spit ice or fire or anything else. There was no magic here. Only flesh. Only the purity of choking the life out of a monster.

And it was pure, Lenk thought. His hands fit so easily around the male’s neck. His windpipe felt big as a column to his fingers. He could see his own eyes in the male’s horrified stare, his own pupilless stare. He could feel his fingers turning gray, the color draining from his arms, his face. He could feel his body going numb, the warmth leaving him and the bitter, comforting cold that began to blanket him.

And he could feel that part of him, that small and angry part, growing large inside him. And it felt good to feel this way again.

“He dies.”

This numbing cold.

“He is weak.”

This bitter voice.

“And we cannot stop.”

This death in his mouth.

“You ever notice how easily we run away?”

Another voice. That one was smaller. That voice was another part of him that spoke weakly inside him. But it was insistent. It kept talking.

“You’re supposed to be doing things for yourself now.”

It was something that made him uncomfortable to hear.

“If you still want to run away, you can keep holding on.”

It wouldn’t shut up.

“But if she could see you now. .”

She would scream.

He let go.

Without knowing why, he released the male from his grip. Without knowing how, he fell breathless to his rear and felt a fever-sharp warmth grip him. And without even knowing who he was facing anymore, he watched the male hack and scramble to his feet, eyes burning brightly as he held out a palm and spoke a word.

The fire in his hand lived and died in an instant, sputtering to smoke as an arrow bit him in the shoulder. No Shen arrow. This one had black fletchings. his one sang an angry song and ate deeply of the male’s shoulders. This one was joined from the side of the ring.

Lenk was barely aware of her as she came rushing out from the forest, bow in her hands, arrows heralding her with angry songs. She was a creature of black ash and bloodied skin and red warpaint, overlarge canines big and white against the mask of darkness and crimson that obscured every patch of bare skin on her.

Maybe Kataria was alive. Maybe Kataria’s angry ghost had returned just to save him. Or maybe to take him back to hell with her.

But first, she would deal with the male.

Her arrows flew at him, begging in windy wails for a soft piece of purple skin to sink into. The male spoke word after word, throwing his hands up, twisting the shimmering air into invisible walls to repel her strikes. But she would not relent, and his breath had not returned. One would get through, eventually.

Unless she reached into her quiver and found nothing there.

The male found his breath in a single, wrathful word. He thrust two fingers at her. The electricity sprang to him, racing down his arm and into his tips. She pulled something from her belt and hurled it at him. Something shiny. Something golden.

He twisted his arm at the last moment as the thing tumbled through the sky toward him. The lightning left his fingers in a crack of thunder and a shock of blue. Glass erupted in the sky, fell like stars upon the ground.

The liquid that followed in a thin, yellow, foul-smelling rain, was decidedly less elegant.

For a moment, the entire ring seemed to fall silent. The battle seemed too distant to be heard. The world seemed to hold its breath. The male’s mouth was opened a hair’s breadth. His eyes were wide, white, and unblinking as rivulets of waste trickled down his brow and onto his crimson-clad shoulders.

And then he began to scream.

Over and over, breath spent and drawn and spent again every moment in utter, wailing horror. He stood frozen, ignoring everything else but the reeking liquid coating him. He stood screaming about contamination and filth and infection in every language he knew.

He didn’t stop until Kataria tackled him about the waist, pulled him to the ground and jammed her knife in his throat. His screams continued to escape in bubbling, silent gouts. She no longer seemed to care.

The sigh she offered as she rose to her feet seemed not weary enough to match the creature that had emerged from the forest. She was a creature painted gray and black by ash and soot, her eyes and teeth white through the dark mask painted across her face. Her body was likewise stained, the darkness broken only by scars of bright-red blood. Cuts criss-crossed her arms, swathed her midriff, tore her tunic and her breeches. Her hair was thick with dust and the netherling’s blood painted a long stain from her chest to her belly.

All that remained of the shict that had gone into the forest were the feathers in her hair and the dust-tinged sigh that left her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he replied, staggering to his feet. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed. “Plan didn’t work.”

“I know.”

“Kind of want to kill Shalake.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He glanced over his shoulder. The battle at the barricades had ended, the netherlings pressed back. “We should go back.”

“We should.” She swayed slightly. “You mind?”

He shook his head and turned around. He felt her collapse into him, no more strength in her to walk. Hooking his arms under her legs, he hefted her onto his back and began to trudge back, stepping over bodies and gore-stained sand.

He made a note to remember to go back for his sword once she was clear.

“So. .” he said, “that was what the jar was for?”

“Uh huh.”

“So. . uh, why did you bring it back?”

“What was I supposed to do? Just leave my piss behind where anyone could get it?”