46. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
The third guard recovered from his shock and drew his weapon, but Talyn pulled back her blades and sliced at him.
His head went flying into the air before hitting the ground with a thud.
She felt his warm blood spray her face and splatter her shirt, but she ignored it as she looked down at the two blades in her hands.
Gods above. She had no idea how Samhail kept his swords this sharp, but she wasn’t planning to give them back to him now. She’d barely felt any resistance when the sword had sliced through the man’s neck like it was nothing more than a column of water.
The men in the cages suddenly all yelled at once, and movement in Talyn’s periphery caught her attention.
She whirled to see a dark blue hand sweep through the air toward her, and she threw herself sideways out of the way just in time to avoid serious injury.
One sharp claw grazed her upper arm, though, leaving a thin cut that soaked her sleeve in blood.
Talyn wheeled to face the last guard and cursed her luck that he’d turned out to be one of the symbionts. It figured she’d left him for last so he’d had time to turn.
And now she had an open wound. She’d have to be careful. If she remembered correctly, that’s how the symbionts entered someone’s body, through a bleeding cut.
The symbiont slashed at her again, and she swung one blade to deflect the blow.
The sword cut through the creature’s arm to leave a deep gash, and it screamed in pain, a terrible high-pitched sound that hurt her ears.
Had the thing been human, its arm would’ve gone flying, but with the hard blue shell on its body, the sword – while it had done more damage than a normal blade – hadn’t fully severed the limb.
An otherworldly roar like nothing she’d ever heard before sounded from somewhere behind Talyn, and she turned to see several men fly into the air as if they’d been thrown.
Samhail towered above the tents as he swept his massive stone-like arms at the soldiers who tried to attack him.
Occasionally he picked a man up and threw him across the field.
Talyn turned back to the symbiont in time to dodge another swipe of its claws, but she didn’t have time to deal with it anymore. It looked like Samhail had things in hand on his end, but she wouldn’t take any chances.
The villagers in the cages were screaming and rattling the bars, seemingly trying to break free to help her, but she wished they’d just be quiet. She wasn’t used to fighting with so much noise.
She ported behind the symbiont and slashed one blade across its back before driving the other with all her might into its torso where its heart should be.
The creature let out another ear-piercing cry, then the dark blue symbiotic shell began to drip from its body, mixing and swirling with the crimson streams of its human blood.
Talyn didn’t wait to watch the body fall. She yanked her sword from its torso and ran for the cages. The men inside were all shouting, and she caught snippets of incredulity mixed with delighted cries of praise.
Talyn spotted the keys on the belt of one of the dead soldiers and grabbed them to unlock the first cage.
“Get back to your village,” Talyn ordered the men as they piled out of the first wagon. She noticed now that there were even a few women among the group.
She ran to the other three wagons and opened them as well, then turned to head toward Samhail.
She was stopped by a hand on her arm. She nearly struck out at the person who’d grabbed her, but she held her swing just in time. It was one of the women she’d just released.
“Come with us,” the woman said.
Talyn shook her head. “I have to help my…”
She stopped, not quite sure what to call Samhail. Her friend? Her companion? Technically he was still her captor, but that didn’t seem like the right way to describe him anymore.
“Just go,” Talyn said to the woman. “Get back to your family. We’ll take care of things here.”
The woman hesitated, then turned and followed the group of villagers hurrying away.
Talyn broke into a run, heading toward where Samhail’s head moved above the camp. She sprinted between the tents, stopping only when stray soldiers or symbionts crossed her path. They all inevitably fell under her blades, some quicker than others.
By the time she reached him, Samhail had fought his way to the edge of the camp, and he was surrounded by at least thirty soldiers and five symbionts all still trying – and failing – to take him down.
In his gargoyle form he was about nine or ten feet tall, and the soldiers hacked and slashed at whatever parts of him they could reach.
Their blades only glanced off him, sparking on the stone of his body.
A few men with crossbows tried to shoot him, but the bolts bounced off and fell harmlessly away.
There was an ever-growing pile of bodies that littered the ground near him as their blood soaked into the dirt to create a thick, reddish mud.
Puddles of blue from now-dead symbionts also spattered the area.
Whether Samhail had given up any semblance of trying to spare the soldiers or whether he simply hadn’t been successful, she didn’t know.
For a moment, Talyn just stared at Samhail as he swiped his arms across a group of men, bowling them over and likely breaking half their bones in the process.
She was mesmerized by the beast in front of her, all fury and wrath.
He was beautiful in the way raw, unchecked power can sometimes be beautiful, the way a storm of ferocious wind and rain and lightning can be both glorious and terrifying.
His eyes glowed with an eerie blue light, and they held her attention as she watched, so enthralled that she didn’t see the attack coming in behind her.
Thankfully Samhail did.
His bellow of warning made the symbiont who’d been rushing toward Talyn draw up short.
The pause gave her just long enough to whirl and realize it was there, although not long enough for her to dodge when it swung.
Its claws caught her across the abdomen, and she fell backward as her own blood seeped into the already-splattered front of her shirt.
Burning pain seared across her stomach as Talyn clutched at it and looked up at the creature.
Its attention wasn’t on her, though, but on the giant form she now sensed behind her.
Talyn tilted her head back to see Samhail looming over her, his wings splayed menacingly, and his maw open wide to bare sharp fangs.
The roar that Samhail let loose vibrated in her chest and sent an icy chill trickling down her spine.
The symbiont tried to launch itself at Samhail, but the gargoyle caught it around the waist and lifted it into the air.
Without pausing, he ripped the creature’s head off, and Talyn gasped as the body hit the ground with a thud next to her.
The head rolled away to rest up against a tent, and the blue shell seeped away from it to reveal the wide-eyed expression of horror on the man’s face beneath.
The sound of steel striking stone rang out behind her, and Talyn turned on the ground to see the few remaining soldiers and symbionts still hacking or clawing at Samhail.
A sweep of his tail crunched bones and sent the last of them flying into the air where they landed in heaps of their own limbs and didn’t rise again.
Then all was quiet.
Talyn looked around as she held a hand over her stomach, but none of the soldiers stirred. All appeared to be either dead or knocked unconscious. She had a feeling that any who were still alive would wish they were dead when they came to.
Samhail’s snarl drew her attention, and Talyn lurched backward as he took a step toward her.
His body began to shrink, and the gray stone-like skin slid back down his arms as if it were being sucked into the tattoo-like markings around his wrists.
White hair sprouted from his head and spilled down his back and chest even as the blood-covered claws at his hands and feet pulled back in.
The pale blue glow flickered out of his eyes and the huge spiral horns on either side of his head curled back up behind his ears.
Between his legs, what had once been a stone codpiece-like bulge swung free into his cock, and Talyn might have laughed at the sight of it if she didn’t think her stomach would hurt.
Then Samhail was kneeling beside her, fully back in his human form. His beautiful, blood-covered, naked human form.