39. 2
“We’re under attack,” the soldier stammered.
“No fucking shit.” Magnus released him, shaking his head in disbelief. “Unless you’ve any further useless insights, get to the fucking wall.”
The man sprinted away, looking more than relieved to escape the situation.
“We need to get to the barracks.” Magnus stuffed the skin back into his satchel, then snatched the bread from Rist and stowed it. “We might be hungry later.”
“Who do you think it is?”
“Maybe the elves weren’t satisfied with just Catagan.”
A fourth explosion sounded, and Rist’s heart stopped. “That was the north wall.”
Magnus looked into Rist’s eyes with a raised eyebrow, signalling for him to elaborate.
“Neera is on watch tonight. She’s stationed on the north wall.”
By the time Rist and Magnus were anywhere near the north wall, the city was in absolute pandemonium, bells and horns sounding endlessly. Screams rang out all about the city, and the harsh ring of colliding steel drifted down the occasional alley.
They didn’t stop.
A man vaulted from a side street, almost knocking Rist to the ground.
“Sorry,” he said, holding his palms up for a moment, frantic, a wrap of dark cloth covering his face. “I didn’t mean to…” His expression shifted, and he must have realised who Rist and Magnus were because a flicker of steel flashed low, and it was only by luck that Rist caught the man’s forearm before the blade was firmly lodged in his side.
Rist lifted his gaze from the knife to the man’s eyes that stared back at him, more fear than hatred or anger. He held that gaze for a fraction of a second before Magnus slammed his fist into the side of the man’s head with a crunch .
The man dropped to the ground, motionless.
Rist stood there, still a bit in shock, the mead slowing his mind, while Magnus dropped on top of the limp man.
Magnus pulled the cloth from around the man’s face, grabbing his cheeks and turning his head left and right.
“Not elves, lad. Rebels,” he growled, rooting through the man’s pockets for anything that might be of use. The man grunted and twisted beneath Magnus. The Exarch grabbed the knife that now lay on the ground and rammed it into the man’s neck without a second’s hesitation, pulling it free in the same motion and getting to his feet.
Rist stared down at the body.
“What?” Magnus gave Rist a pointed look. “He was literally about to do the same thing to you. Come on, we don’t know how many of these bastards are out tonight or what else they’ve got planned.”
Rist could see the flames through the buildings, bright and raging. But it was only when they drew closer and emerged into the open street that fronted the base of the walls that he realised the full extent of the attack.
The northern gatehouse was entirely consumed by a raging inferno. The flames spread for at least a hundred feet across the walls in both directions, devouring two watch towers that lay in their path. Sections of the stone had been completely broken free from the gatehouse and towers, jutting into the ground through the cobbled stone and cultivated patches of grass.
Everywhere Rist looked, people were dragging bodies from the rubble and flames, soldiers and citizens alike; it mattered little.
Even more bodies were scattered across the street, broken and twisted in unnatural ways, bones protruding from torn flesh, blood and gore splattered across the stone. Some had died from the impact after being blown from the walls, others had been crushed beneath debris. Quite a number still burned, black and crackling in the flames.
“She’s all right, lad. Women are like cats, nine lives the lot of them.”
Magnus’s reassurance had little effect on Rist. Neera had been stationed here. He had no way of knowing whether she’d been in the gatehouse, on the walls, or on the towers. Logic dictated that she was likely dead. Rist cared little for logic at that specific moment in time.
Without much thought, he rushed forwards, leaving Magnus to chase after him. Rist turned over every body he could find, flames burning around him. His heart beat like a charging bull, stopping for a brief moment just before he turned over each body, relief flooding him when he saw a face he didn’t recognise. Some were burned or mangled beyond all realms of recognition. But none wore Neera’s armour.
Rist glanced over his shoulder to see Magnus following suit without question, dropping to one knee and holding the stump of his left hand to his chest while he flipped over bodies.
A woman screamed as Rist turned her over, her hair incinerated down to her scalp, the right side of her face bloody and smoking, flesh slopping. She wore no armour, only a tunic and a pair of charred trousers. Not a soldier, just someone walking the wrong street at the wrong time.
“It’s all right,” he said, swallowing, his breaths quick and sharp. He rubbed at her unburnt shoulder, trying to calm her – failing. She shrieked and groaned, turning to convulsions. Rist cried out. “Healer! We need a Healer!”
The only answers were more cries of the same. People screaming, others calling for help.
“Is it her?” Magnus dropped to the ground beside Rist, manoeuvring to get a look at the woman.
Rist shook his head. “No… but she needs help. She’s?—”
“She’s dead, Rist. She’s gone. We need to keep looking.”
Rist hadn’t noticed the woman go still in his arms. He laid her back down gently, closing her too-still eyes. With screams, shouts, and crackling fire still sounding all around him, he whispered, “Heraya watch over you.”
“And The Saviour take you into his light,” Magnus added, his voice softer than Rist had ever heard. That softness dissipated as he got to his feet, the light of the fires burning in his eyes. “This isn’t rebellion. This is butchery. Most of these people were just trying to get home.”
“Rist!”
Rist’s heart fluttered at the sound of Neera’s voice, and he turned to see her marching towards him through the flames, four soldiers at her back in red and black leathers. He pulled her into his arms. “You’re alive.”
“I was checking on a disturbance when the gatehouse exploded,” she said, pulling away, her hands lingering on his shoulders. “Came back to find it like this. We’ve been trying to pull the bodies from the rubble. There are just so many… They were Alamants, Rist.”
“What do you mean? Who were Alamants?” Magnus moved closer.
“The explosion. It was Alamants who caused it. I was close enough to feel the Spark. It was weak, but there was a group of them, a hundred at least, linked together. We caught some of them and other rebels trying to escape.”
“Alive?”
“Not anymore.”
“Bastards.” The muscles in Magnus’s face twitched, his fingers clenching into a fist. “Fane grants them amnesty, lets them roam unchecked, and this is what they do? They burn their own people? Set fire to the walls that keep their city safe? Void take the lot of them.”
Footfalls sounded as more soldiers flooded into the streets, mages with them. Healers scrambled to the injured, Craftsmages rushing to the crumbling sections of wall, the thrum of the Spark crackling in the air. The Battlemages sprinted to Magnus, who sent them scouring the streets for the rebels and Alamants.
“Kill them on sight,” he said, staring into the eyes of the Battlemage closest to him. “If you see them in a group, don’t think, act. Alone they are weak as children, but if they link…” He gestured towards the blazing walls. “Don’t let that happen again. The people of this city are ours to protect. Do you understand?”
“Yeh… yes, Exarch.”
“Supreme Commander Tambrel, have you seen her?”
“She took a contingent to the southeast wall, Exarch Offa.”
Magnus nodded, dismissing the man. As more soldiers arrived, he sent them to the walls to help pull the injured free and clear the bodies.
“What is the point of this?” Magnus muttered to himself, taking in the chaos.
“Does there need to be a point?” Neera asked. “These rebels just kill and burn. There’s nothing noble in what they do.”
“There’s always a point, Sister.” Magnus squinted through the flames, watching. “Always. I’ve seen enough rebellions to know. Their resources are limited. They won’t waste them for no reason. There is a ‘why’ here somewhere, we’ve just not seen it yet.”
The thrum of the Spark intensified, rippling in the air, power building. Rist looked about, searching for whatever had caused that surge. The Healers and Craftsmages were weaving threads over threads, pulling on each elemental strand, but they were not the source. Their power was steady and constant; this was shifting and building, clouded by the threads of the other mages.
“What is it?” Magnus grasped Rist’s shoulder, looking into his eyes. “Rist. You feel something. What is it?”
It was then Rist realised what was happening. He could see the threads of Fire, Spirit, and Air swirling about each other, growing dense, thick, welling into a sphere near the base of the gatehouse – where the mages worked and people were still pulling the injured from the rubble.
“No!” He leapt forwards, dragging threads of Spirit through him and launching them. But he was too late. A ripple of power swept through the air, followed by the crackle of lightning and then an explosion of Fire and Air.
The sound consumed everything, flames sweeping outwards like a tidal wave, debris crashing down everywhere.
Rist ignored it all and opened his mind as Garramon had been teaching him, feeling the power of the elemental strands. He grasped the strands of Fire, Air, and Spirit, unravelling them, channelling them through his body and into the world. He pulled so deep his own blood felt like fire in his veins, his skin like ice. He pushed the pain down and swirled the threads around himself, Neera, Magnus, and anyone within reach.
The sweeping flames poured over the shield – over the Sparkward – like waves crashing over a glass dome. Rist slammed his eyes shut as the fire turned the world to nothing but a bright burning light. The drain pulled at him the moment the flames hit, dragging the power from his bones to hold the ward in place. He could feel chunks of stone slamming against the barrier, shattering to a thousand pieces, sending tremors through his body.
As the flames faded and the pressure bearing down on Rist’s soul ebbed, the roar of the fire was replaced with an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of crackling and agonising groans.
Rist opened his eyes and drew weighted breaths, his brow slick with sweat. His arms hung heavy, shoulders slumped, but he still felt strong, far stronger than he would have if he’d tried that a few months ago.
The first thing Rist looked for was Neera. He found her at his right side, staring back at him, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword, the other on his shoulder. The briefest of smiles graced her lips before vanishing at the sight of what stood before them.
Everything was on fire. Corpses littered the ground, blazing, flesh and cloth crackling as it burned. The injured and the people who were pulling them free, the Healers, the Craftsmages, and everyone else who had come to aid: all dead. Here and there a survivor crawled beneath blocks of shattered stone that had shielded them from the flames. But those were few and far between. They’d never stood a chance.
“That would have been us,” Magnus said, nodding to Rist. “I wasn’t quick enough. There’s an Arcarian in there somewhere, lad.”
Shouts sounded from all directions as people rushed from nearby buildings, sharp steel in their fists. The Spark pulsed from several of them, weak but still there.
“Aaagh. Come to clean up the stragglers.” A wicked smile stretched Magnus’s lips. The Spark surging from him as strands of red light ignited into life in his hand and took the form of a glowing blade. “Come to Magnus, you fucking rats.”
The Exarch surged forwards, crashing into the rebels with no heed for self-preservation. Magnus dodged the swing of the first attacker’s axe, then carved through the man’s forearm before hacking off his jaw and leaving him to slump to the ground. The next rebel fared no better, Magnus’s níthral cleaving his leg at the knee before plunging upwards through his throat and out the back of his skull. Magnus was a man possessed. Anything that came near him fell in a heartbeat, his red blade carving open chests and severing limbs.
Rist, Neera, and the soldiers turned to face a group charging them from the rear, steel ringing as they collided.
A man wielding a massive black axe careened towards Rist, the weapon carving through the air in a devastating swing. Rist reached for his sword – a sword that wasn’t there. It was back in the barracks.
Without thought, Rist snared the axe and held it in place with a thread of Air. The man stood there, frozen, tugging at his axe to no avail. The rage in his eyes faded to fear, and suddenly Rist felt a pang of sympathy for the helplessness before him. Against the power of the Spark, this man was nothing.
A tingle ran down his spine, and Rist shifted to dodge a shard of rock that had been launched at his head by an Alamant rushing towards him. He pivoted and hurled a sphere of air into the Alamant’s chest, sending her hurtling into the flames at her back. A roar sounded to his right, and he pulled on threads of Earth, dragging a section of stone from the ground and launching it upwards.
When the Alamant had attacked, Rist had released the threads of Air holding the axe-wielder in place. The man now hung suspended from a stone spike that impaled him through the chest. The rebel coughed, blood spluttering from his open mouth. He took one last rasping breath, then the life left his body, limbs slumping, head lolling forward.
Rist pressed his hand to his chest, feeling the gemstone pendant hanging beneath his tunic. A voice in the back of his mind told him to harness the life Essence that flowed from the man’s body, but he couldn’t. Something about this particular death felt so pointless. And yet, to let the Essence drift away, to let it fade to nothing… How was that any better?
The shifting of dirt beneath boots sounded behind him and he twisted to avoid a spear thrust. The steel tip sliced through the belly of his tunic but missed his flesh. Rist whipped a thread of Air into his attacker’s side and heard bones crunch as the woman was lifted from her feet and bounced across the stones, her spear skittering away. She lay there, twitching and coughing up blood.
A pulse of the Spark rippled to his left, and before he could react, threads of Air wrapped around him, coiling and twisting. The first thought that flared in his mind was panic, but that quickly died when he realised how weak the threads were.
He slid thin threads of Spirit down through the threads of Air that held him, watching them melt away. When he turned, he found himself looking into the eyes of a man who’d seen at least ten summers more than he.
The man stared at Rist blankly, eyes wide, mouth ajar. He was twice Rist’s size, thick-muscled with a black beard dense as a bush. He held a short axe in his left hand, but instead of charging, he sent threads of Spirit, Fire, and Water into Rist. The threads pushed through Rist’s tunic, through his skin, and into his bones. He could feel them flooding him, feel his soul quiver at their touch.
The man was trying to burn him out.
Rist’s natural instinct was to push back, and so he did. There was no struggle, no moment of panic where either man wondered who was stronger. Nothing like that. Rist overwhelmed the Alamant completely and utterly.
A piercing white light burst from the man’s eyes as he collapsed to his knees, screaming and writhing. Rist tried to pull back, tried to stop, but it was far too late. The skin around the Alamant’s eyes bubbled and smoked, burning to black as the white light seared forth.
The shrieks that clawed their way from his throat sent a chill down Rist’s spine. And then they ceased, and the Alamant fell onto his side, arms splayed, tongue hanging from his open mouth, eyes burned from his sockets. Rist felt the pendant calling him once more, heard that little voice telling him to draw the life Essence, to save it. But again, he let it drift away.
To his right, Neera pulled her sword from a woman’s belly, flames pouring from her hand and washing over another man who charged towards her. A rebel hurled himself forwards and caught Neera in the side with the swing of a hammer. Neera stumbled sideways, and the man struck her again, this time in the chest. She tripped over a body and hit the ground hard. Rist could feel threads of Fire whirling around her, but he was already there, charging, his feet moving before he even had the time to think.
A woman came hurtling at him from the right with a battered sword. Without breaking stride, he caught the blade mid-swing with a thread of Air, wrenched it from her hand, spun it, and rammed it back down through her neck and out her back.
Rist wrapped threads of Air around the throat of the man with the hammer, hauling him across the ground. The man’s feet hovered over the stone and burning bodies, his hands clasping at his throat.
Rist pulled the rebel through the air until his fingers were wrapped firmly around the man’s throat. Dark eyes stared back at him as fists slammed down on his arm. But Rist tapped into the gemstone around his neck, the feeling of ice shooting through his veins, the world growing quiet and dim before bursting to life. He let the Essence flow through him, and the man’s slamming fists became nothing more than a nuisance.
Neera leapt past Rist and took a rebel’s head from their shoulders as they made to run him through with a spear.
“We give our lives to keep you safe.” Rist tilted his head to the side, trying to glean some sort of answers from the man’s eyes. He closed his hand tighter, the cords of the man’s neck tense beneath his fingers, only the slightest of gasps dragging air past Rist’s grip. “She stood on that wall, watching over this city while it slept, and you tried to steal the life from her veins.”
“You…” the man choked out through ragged breaths. “You…”
Rist loosened his grip.
“You’re fucking scum.” He glared at Rist, eyes wide with bitter rage. “You and your bitch will burn. Your whole fucking empire will burn.”
The Essence in Rist’s blood flared, and he squeezed, feeling a snap . The man’s body went limp, and Rist drew the fading Essence into the gemstone around his neck, a red glow pulsing beneath his tunic.
As soon as Rist realised what he had done, he released his grip and let the lifeless corpse crumple to the ground, nestled between a burning body and a lump of broken stone. He stared down at the body, feeling the Essence surge through him, feeling as though he could tear a hole through a stone wall with his bare hands.
Soldiers rushed in around him, shouting, swords drawn, swarming over the remaining rebels who had charged from the buildings. Several of the Battlemages who had been sent to scour the streets followed only moments after, the air crackling with the power of the Spark.
Neera grabbed Rist and turned him to face her.
He let go of the Essence, feeling its absence as it faded from his veins, and cupped her cheeks, his hands trembling. “Are you all right?”
She grunted and looked down at where the hammer swings had dented her armour. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Are you… all right? I saw?—”
“I’m fine,” Rist lied. He hated lying in any capacity. But lying to Neera was worse somehow. He had omitted things to her before, like when Garramon had given him the Essence vessel and he’d not told her, but he’d never outright lied. He wasn’t fine. The smell of the Alamant’s burning eyes still lingered in his nostrils, the image of the man impaled on the stone clung to his mind’s eye, and the sound of the snapping neck cracked over and over in his ears.
With all the death he’d seen in the last two years, all the blood, and loss, and darkness, he’d only taken two human lives. The two Lorian soldiers he’d killed when trying to flee Camylin. And even then he’d not known what he’d been doing, he’d been terrified, scrambling for his life, barely able to move. This was different though. The ease with which he had killed these people shook him. They were not Uraks or Bloodmarked or ferocious monstrosities trying to tear him limb from limb. They were people, people fighting for their home. People who were nothing but fodder to the Spark. Even the Alamants. Rist had forever been curious as to just what an Alamant could do, how weak their grasp on the Spark truly was. Now he knew. Together, in groups, they could cause mayhem. But alone, they were akin to children running with knives, just as likely to kill themselves as others.
And then he remembered what they had done, the lives they had destroyed so mindlessly, the innocent people they had targeted, and his sympathy withered.
Magnus approached from the street, covered in blood head to toe, flames still blazing at his back. Behind him, the last of the rebels were being cut down as they ran. There would be no prisoners that night, of that Rist was sure.
“You two all right?” Magnus’s chest rose and fell as he drew heavy breaths. He wiped at the blood on his face, only succeeding in smearing it further.
Rist gave him a sharp nod, pulling away from Neera.
“I still can’t figure out why.” Magnus scanned the bodies around Rist and Neera, his gaze lingering on the Alamant with burnt-out eyes. He raised an eyebrow at Rist, asking a wordless question, to which Rist responded with another nod.
“There must have been hundreds of Alamants together,” he said, looking back at the destruction in the street and the walls, the raging flames and charred, broken corpses. “I’ve never seen them cause this kind of damage.”
As Magnus spoke, a shiver ran down Rist’s spine and he inhaled sharply.
Both Magnus and Neera snapped their gazes to him.
“Fuck.” Magnus sighed. “What is it now?—”
A shockwave of the Spark swept through the air, tangled with Essence, followed swiftly by the sound of an enormous explosion. Rist watched in horror as the ground shook and clouds of fire burst from the walls of the High Tower, chunks of stone soaring through the air to crash down into the city. Another explosion and a section of bridges and walkways near the base erupted in flames.
“They drew us out,” Magnus said, his jaw slack and eyes wide. “They fucking drew us out.” He pushed Rist forward, then Neera, turning and roaring, “To the tower! To the tower!”
As Rist, Neera, and Magnus sprinted towards the tower, the thrum of the Spark in the air grew so powerful it felt only moments away from stopping his heart. It was like entering the city for the first time all over again, but somehow this was even greater, like the air itself was alive.
Magnus and Neera could feel it too, he could see it in their eyes. With each step, each vibration through his legs, that sensation grew and grew. He had felt the power of the Alamants by the walls. There was no way in the gods this was them. Even if there were thousands, they couldn’t wield raw power like this.
Flames raged across the tower, black smoke billowing into a cloudless sky, horns roaring. The tower’s base came into view as Rist and the others turned onto the main thoroughfare. The gates were already open, a host of Praetorians standing in the street outside.
“Why haven’t they gone in?” Neera shouted, panting.
Garramon and a clutch of other Battlemages emerged from a side street, their hands and faces marred with blood and soot. He grabbed Rist by the shoulder, his voice wracked with worry. “You’re all right?”
Rist nodded sharply, words escaping him.
“Garramon, the tower.” Magnus tilted his head towards the flaming tower and broke into a run once more.
Rist, Neera, and Garramon followed, along with the other Battlemages.
As Rist ran, he could hear nothing but the roar of the Spark, the edges of his vision blurring to a dull haze, every hair on his body standing on end. He flicked through the pages of Druids, a Magic Lost , whispering the words as quickly as his lips would allow, trying to find calm within the chaos. But when he stepped through the gates, everything faded into a sudden stillness amidst the storm.
The air was crisp and sharp, each breath like taking ice into his lungs. And for some reason, there was no sound, not even the whistle of the wind. Just silence.
Before him, Fane Mortem stood in the central courtyard at the foot of the tower, his black and red robes billowing as though he stood amidst hurricane winds. Five of the Chosen in their gleaming silver plate, crimson níthrals in their fists, stood about him in a circle. Threads of each element swirled around the emperor, pulsing, power sweeping from him in waves. Fane’s eyes were closed, and bodies were piled about him. Screams echoed in the night as Fane’s threads of Air pulled rebels from the tower’s windows, their bodies bursting into clouds of bone and gore as they hit the stone.
Alamants charged from the archways in the tower’s base, their eyes igniting with white light as soon as they set foot in the courtyard, threads of Spirit searing their veins.
Fragments of debris and shards of shattered bone whirred, slicing through anything that moved, threads of Fire setting flesh alight. Hundreds of threads layered over each other, twisting and turning, coiling like snakes. It was a symphony of death, a horrific, terrible work of art Rist hoped would never be painted again. Awe inspiring and gut churning, both.
The sheer display of raw power just didn’t seem real. How could any one soul wield such immense power?
As the bodies piled around him, bone and blood painting the stone, smoke drifting from burnt-out eye sockets, the emperor stood at the centre of it all with his eyes closed, hands outstretched, expression unchanging.
Whichever rebels were fortunate enough to evade the emperor’s power were cut down in a heartbeat by the Chosen, crimson blades cleaving bone as an axe would a branch.
When the final bodies hit the stone and the thrum of the Spark settled, sound once again returned to Rist’s ears, but there was nothing more than snapping flames and hushed whispers, bells and horns fading into the night.
Fane Mortem opened his eyes and strolled through the canvas of corpses, a frown on his face as he surveyed the yard, the High Tower still burning and smoking behind him. He stopped barely two feet in front of Garramon, shaking his head as he looked back. The emperor inhaled slowly through his nose, then sighed and turned his attention to those before him.
“We’re fighting too many wars at once, old friend,” he said to Garramon. “It’s time to burn the rats from the hole.”