Chapter Nineteen
Sergiy strode over to pluck his spear out of what had appeared to be a tree at first glance, but ended up being a shadowling's disguised form, its scent giving it away. He shook his spear, shaking off the dissipating creature.
"Markos, report," he called out.
In his wolf form, his brother nimbly scaled a short cliff to get to him. "Still no sign of any kings, warlord. It's all just mindless trash so far."
He growled, his tail flicking back and forth. "There are enough shadows present that a king should have been here. Surely there aren't this many shadowlings here by happenstance."
His brother nodded as they walked back to rejoin his Nightwatch pack. "True, especially when the shadows have all been warped into the same kind of mimic beast. Do we have a guess as to which type of spirit king?"
"Subterfuge, perhaps, but it's best not to guess or we might underestimate it. I can't say that I've encountered these shapeshifters before, though."
Some were like octopuses when slain, others like slimes, or creeping vines. They all had the ability to change both shape and color, blending in with their surroundings. They could be scented, though, and foes like these were part of the reason why shifters made the ideal guardian.
Sergiy was about to take flight when he felt an intensity from… Marka, it felt like, soon followed by a calling howl.
'Come, see something of interest,' the howl said.
Shrugging, he took flight and glided down the path, Markos bounding between rocks and over shadowy chasms just behind. He landed in a clearing where multiple piles of dust were even now trickling away back into the shadows, and the 'interesting' thing was obvious.
"Behind, behind, get behind, ha ha, behind—" a humanoid shadow was repeating, skewered by Marka's broadsword, held aloft by that sword. It seemed to be just repeating the same phrase over and over, with intermittent laughter.
"This one tried to slip past the group," she said. "It didn't try to attack or hide at all."
Sergiy frowned, then turned to scan the area. "Was it headed to the anchor?"
"Not the one we came through," she said, pointing down the hill, instead of up where half of Yacob's pack was holding down their camp.
Sergiy approached the shadow, leaning down to stare at its face. It was humanoid, yes, but entirely made of black, shifting shadows, so its real form was indistinct. In one moment, it appeared as the silhouette of an old man with lined features, in the next, a chubby youth.
"No intelligence?" he asked.
"Doesn't seem so," Marka said.
As Sergiy reached a paw out to look it in the eyes, it suddenly lunged for him, its upper body darting out in the shape of thorny brambles. "Behind, be—!"
Its voice was cut off as Marka dragged her sword upwards and out through what remained of its head, then horizontally across its neck. A tangled ball of vines fell to the ground, soon followed by a body made up of the same. Both began their swift transformation into dust.
"Keep an eye out for more of these, if you can," he said aloud. "Maybe follow one to where it's going, next time. It could have been trying to get to its king, and if we…"
Sergiy cut himself off, then held up a paw when Marka started to speak.
Yacob's position by the anchor. It felt wrong, like the position was under attack, but he didn't sense anyone with hostile intent.
He was already in the air when the howling began, muffled sounds that barely cut through the oppressive atmosphere, but the intent was clear.
"Rally at the camp!" Sergiy called out, pushing the command out to the packs. Marka and Markos picked up the howl as they ran, following him in their wolf forms.
Yacob flickered into existence as Sergiy landed, shifting into the Umbral realm from the other side.
"My lord! It's the keep! It's being overrun, with at least two kings!"
Sergiy felt himself grow cold inside, as if the teeth of a shadow creature had bitten clean through his chest. He felt his own alarm echoing through his bonds with his packs, and they picked up speed.
He snarled, gripping his spear more tightly as he turned to the dozen already gathered. "Back across!"
Shifting himself across the void, the colors of the real world were almost painfully vivid. He strode forward to the humvee and its two shifters, one of which had a radio out.
"Report!" he ordered, gesturing with his spear, feeling it as other guardians began crossing the veil.
"Bastion is under attack, two kings, defenders are divided, most holding up in the Great Hall, others out to rescue stragglers and staff."
"The manor house," he said. "Fuck!"
Incursions did sometimes breach into their world before the guardians could muster, and sometimes one or two shadowlings made it as far as the keep, but the gates had never been breached en masse in his tenure. As such, there were dozens of employees that stayed at the manor, including families, believing it safe.
News was spreading, and the feedback from his drake senses felt almost like they were the ones under attack.
"Markos, Marka! Take your packs to the keep. Yacob—"
"I'm going, too," the big werewolf growled, slamming the head of his mace into the ground, towering over him.
Sergiy snapped his teeth up by Yacob's throat, and the werewolf flinched ever so slightly, just a swiveling of his ears, but it was enough. Dominance reasserted.
"You're staying. Leave a few here to guard this anchor, but take the rest to scour the area, find out where they're coming from. A second incursion might have occurred simultaneously. Bea and Findlay, stay here on comms, keep Yacob informed in case of a change in plan. And for spirits' sake, get out of the vehicle already! You're sitting ducks in there."
Yacob howled, summoning his pack to him. He began gesturing, dividing up his guardians, and Sergiy turned back towards the path.
"Go, brother," Marka said. "We'll follow. But go!"
Sergiy didn't hesitate, running towards the edge of a nearby cliff and shifting into his drake form as he leapt off of it.
He flapped his ephemeral wings, headed for home, hoping that he wouldn't be too late.
◆◆◆
The air whistled past his ears as he flew. Ten miles as the wolf travels wasn't half that by dragon-flight, but every second that ticked away was excruciating.
He only had two bright thoughts. One, he could faintly sense the other twenty-odd guardians of his and Summer's packs. They were alive and fighting, which was all he could make out at this distance; he tried pushing out hope towards them. ' Reinforcements are coming! Hold out!'
And two…
Even more greatly than his guardians, he could feel his mate. A living fire in his chest, that caused his breath to stutter, thinking about how he was doing. He was alive. He had to be. He'd feel it if he weren't, right? Surely so, that's what the tales said.
But so many others could be hurt that he wouldn't know about. His mom, his dads. All the staff that he'd grown up with, his unofficial aunts and uncles, like Leona and Teresa.
Russ.
He couldn't feel Russ. He wasn't a guardian, had never gone with him to fight incursions, nor been part of the many rituals that Roland had performed to link them together.
But at one time, Russ had still been his , almost a mate, almost but not quite a fire in his chest. A warm ember, maybe, that he could feel whenever he closed his eyes and listened to his heart. But Sergiy had turned him away, years ago, and the ember had cooled until he hadn't been able to feel him any more, and was only now, at last, starting to reignite.
You need to be okay, Russ.
As he approached the keep, he saw that it wasn't just a trick of the eyes that caused it to be aglow in moonlight. Though the moon was only half full, the area was lit up as if it were a full moon on a cloudless night. Flying up over the walls, he saw the light periodically intensity in places, like spotlights on a stage.
Landing with a thump in front of the castle, he could feel that Bastion's reserve forces were divided on three fronts. The Great Hall, the western training ground, and the manor house.
Listening to the howled messages, he galloped towards the manor, finding his mother and several guardians fending off multiple shadowlings, protecting a huddled group of men, women, and children. Roaring, he leapt upon one shadow, tearing it to shreds with his claws before shifting into his werebeast form and pulling out his spear.
"Mom! Two packs are on their way!"
Quick as a whip, her red wings lashed out to crush a writhing tentacle to the ground, then leaped to the side, crushing another beneath her feet.
"I hear you!" she said. "We're evacuating to the Great Hall. Guardians, keep the people safe as we move, watch for moonlight."
Sergiy bounded up next to her, looking at the manor house. "Is that everyone from inside?"
His mother pointed, and he saw three corn husk dolls flitting like hummingbirds out of the manor's front door. They stopped in front of his mom, standing on each other's shoulders.
"All clear," he heard one say in Rosemary's voice.
"Thank you, witch. Your situation?"
There was a pause, and then it said, "Holding, but tiring."
The dolls then moved at a rapid pace to the main castle, vanishing into the darkness in a blink.
"Come," his mom told him, leaping up to fly towards the front of the formation, acting as bait for the creatures. They blended neatly into the ground as grass or pavement, but became visible when they struck, giving the guardians split seconds to react. Every now and then, though, the light in an area would enhance, highlighting the camouflaged creatures and breaking their disguise.
"The moonlight?"
"That's the Celestial witch. He and the Hearth witch are doing something across the entire keep to find the beasts for us. What happened, warlord? Were you overrun?"
Sergiy leapt back into the group of people, spearing an extended vine before it could grab the leg of a child, then slew the creature before rejoining his mother.
"No. We killed dozens of beings like this, but there was no king. You have two?"
They were at the main entrance to the keep, now, with several other shifters holding the threshold. Piles of tentacles and appendages lay strewn about the area; outside of the Umbral realm, shadowling corpses faded slowly.
"One slain, named Strength, one still roaming free," his mother said, her body tense as she watched the staff and their families rush towards the safety of the keep.
Then there was light, following one of the young women. With her back to him, and in the relative darkness, he couldn't quite place her. Maybe a sister to Chaz, one of the cooks—
His mother shifted into her human form, charged between the group, and then bodychecked the woman into the stone wall of the keep.
Sergiy trusted his mother explicitly. "Spear!"
He tossed his weapon to his mother, and quick as she was, her thrust struck the wall where the woman's chest had been just a mere second ago, but now had a torso shaped like a donut. Cackling, the woman moved up the wall almost like a liquid, using hair and sprouted hands to crawl through a broken window.
"That was the second king! Deception, we're calling it, and it leads the bulk of the forces."
"Should I follow?" He made ready to fly up as she handed him back his spear.
"It'll already be gone. We'll hunt for it later as a group, when everyone's safe."
He nodded, deferring to her judgment. She'd been a warlord herself for decades, and she knew the situation here better than he did.
Once everyone was past the threshold, guardians included, they pulled the doors shut.
"To the Great Hall!" his mother commanded.
With his mother at the front, Sergiy took charge of the rear guardians, leading them in protecting their flank, spearing a few of the shadowlings that tried to drop down from ceilings, or emerge from one of the many side halls.
When they arrived in the Great Hall, Sergiy took stock. There was the scent of blood, and lots of it, from many different sources. There were upended tables and benches, some of which were used to block off the kitchens, but many were just pushed out of the way, leaving a clear space in the middle of the Hall that would be harder for shadows to slip past. Staff were grouped in the middle of the room, but any that were shifters themselves were in their werebeast forms, acting as a second line of defense. There were glad cries as the ones from the manor appeared, moving to join their friends and loved ones.
It hurt to see his home like this, but he forced down the guilt and the ache and snapped to action. Passing the word that two more packs would be arriving in another ten minutes helped with morale. He took reports, and did a head count as he moved past, until he came up to Roland where he was watching over two of the witches, Lux and Rosemary.
Two witches, not three.
"Where's Russ?" he asked his High Priest, the first words out of his mouth.
Bruin could be felt a short distance away, along with a half-dozen guardians, so hopefully…
"My son's with the Green witch in the infirmary," the big black wolf snapped back, then nosed a phone on the table. "Some folk were injured and needed immediate aid, so we forged a path there, but now they can't leave. The halls between are too dangerous, but at least we're in contact."
He needed to get to them.
"The spirit king, Deception," he said, looking at the witches. "I just saw it enter the castle through a third floor window above the keep's entrance."
"It moves too fast to keep a trace," Lux Manus said raggedly. He was standing within an elaborate chalk circle, eyes closed, pivoting slowly in place as he traced glowing sigils in the air with a pair of crystal wands.
Rosemary knelt on the ground beside him, reclining out of exhaustion, it looked like. She rolled a handful of runestones, then waved her hand over them. "It is no longer on the third floor."
"Blast it all," Roland said. "Keep trying. If we find it, this'll all be over."
The witches seemed too tired to respond, even to nod.
Sergiy at last turned away, and went to the Great Hall's entrance where his mother was organizing a group for an infirmary run, and to reinforce their position. Gregory was beside her, managing communications with two phones and a radio. Kneeling on the floor and whining, he saw his bat'ko holding pressure on a groaning man's belly wound. One of Summer's guardians stood by, waiting to transport him.
"I'll lead us," Sergiy said. "Mother, you stay here. We can hold two positions with the forces we have, and when Marka and Markos get here, we can start the hunt for the king."
His mother nodded, and Sergiy stepped to the fore. It would be himself and three guardians as the fighting force, and two more guardians carrying the two worst injured, including the belly patient.
"Let's move, guardians!"
They were attacked immediately upon exiting the Hall, and Sergiy felt the sting of lacerations as he spun his spear, trying to stab a vital area and not merely a disguised mock-up of a head or heart.
They made some forward progress, then even more when Sergiy decided to shift into his drake form, charging down the hall and using his greater mass to simply pounce upon or crush razor-sharp limbs.
As they came upon the foyer before the infirmary, he saw guardians struggling to hold the line, blood coating the stone floor from wounds that were already healing. But at the far end, he saw a flash of red and green.
Binding stone,
Hold fast the darkness.
Easy prey.
With a sound like waves crashing upon the shore, the walls, floor, and ceiling seemed to ripple, like a rock tossed into a lake, and any shadow limbs in contact with them were held fast.
Russ, in his large wolf form with his tail between his legs, bit through extending tendrils, helping hold the line while the guardian's dispatched the shadowlings.
Russ's whines were nonstop, and his ears were flattened entirely back, but he still positioned himself protectively between Bruin and the shadows, and was still here , on the frontlines.
Howling, his group surged forward, clearing the immediate area. The two guardians carrying the injured swept past them and into the infirmary proper, a room that smelled bloody and from which cries of pain could be heard.
"Russ!Bruin!"
Just thirty feet away, now. He saw them look back at him, weary and wary. And bloody. He snarled in anger, seeing it, seeing it drip constantly from Russ, and his ears could hear his favorite wolf's labored breathing, and the alarming gurgle that accompanied it.
More shadows were coming down the far hall, he saw. He was about to charge forward to help, but then heard a high-pitched scream.
It came from the floor above. Not staff. His drake senses could tell it was a guardian, and by its pitch,it was Bridget, his second-in-command.
He wanted to help his mates. He wanted to keep them safe. They weren't warriors. They were kind, and gentle, and this shouldn't be their fight.
He wanted to go to them, and he tensed his legs for a leap.
The scream came again, part battlecry, part pain. The shadows ahead were approaching, but now there were four fresh guardians making a wall of fang and claw and metal, and his mates were being shepherded back into the infirmary.
He saw Russ look at him, tilting his head.
Spinning on a back paws, Sergiy shifted into his weredrake form and charged out through a shattered window. He didn't so much as take flight as he merely leapt twenty feet up with the aid of his wings, hurling his spear through a window. A single flap of his wings had him following after his weapon, and he bit through a barbed stinger just before it could pierce through Bridget's torso.
Jerking his head savagely, he ripped off the end, tasting ashen grit in his mouth. He roared at the thing, a twisting of constantly moving tendrils that blocked the entire hall, connected to the floor, wall, and ceiling. It was like staring at a fan moving in slow motion, or a garbage disposal, with the way that many of the tentacles had sharp edges like barbed concertina wire.
A face formed in the middle, an optical illusion made of disingenuous pieces. It alternated between a mouth screaming in pain, and a mocking 'oh' of surprise.
"You do not belong in this place, spirit," he said, pulling his spear out of the wall. Bridget, in her wolverine werebeast form, formed up beside him with her chain weapon.
The spirit king shifted part of its body, and claws scraped down chalkboards, a grating sound almost like laughter.
" Oh, you poor little tentacles wrapped in meat," it said with the rustling of leaves. "I was invited. "
Sergiy was brought up short. Most spirits couldn't lie. The cleverer ones could use subterfuge, omission, manipulation, sure, but the providence of falsehoods lay entirely with mortals.
Then again, this particular spirit king was Deception.
"Fuck your invitation! As Lord of Bastion, I'm telling you to go. Bridget?"
She must have taken his saying her name for permission, because she snarled, bloody froth at her mouth, then hurled her meteor hammer down the hall. It smashed one 'foot' of the spirit, pulping it between her metal weapon and the stone wall. With a jerk of the attached chain, she pulled the end of her weapon back.
Sergiy took point, brandishing his spear and guarding the two of them. Even with one useless arm and a game leg, Bridget was deft enough with her weapon to work around, behind, and even between Sergiy's legs, harrying the spirit.
Deception was not large for a spirit king, and it couldn't afford to lose much mass to meteor hammer and spear. It made one clever feinting attempt, backing up down the hall like it were fleeing, but Sergiy could still smell a dozen tentacles camouflaged on the walls and ceiling, and chasing it would be like voluntarily stepping into the tendrils of a sea anemone or a venus fly trap. Instead, he thrust his spear through one of the tentacles and into the floor, preventing it from fleeing further, and Bridget's ranged attacks forced it to return.
The spirit seemed to realize that it wasn't making headway, and attempted to truly flee, discarding limbs as it went out of a window, landing among several of its minions. Sergiy flew out the window after it, carrying Bridget in her small animal form.
He might have lost sight of it, then, but the two of them had bought enough time for reinforcements. Moonlight shone directly over the king, and a half-dozen or so husk dolls constantly surrounded it, following it as it moved, screaming its location. When at last it seemed to take a stand, it and a dozen or more of its minions against just two guardians, there came the howls of Marka and Markos, and two full packs descended upon it. Out in the open, and diminished as it was outside of the Umbral realm, short work was made of Deception.
Sergiy watched as its serrated limbs wilted, and its last conscious act seemed to be dedicated to making a mocking dragon's face.
◆◆◆
The next couple of hours passed in a haze.
He asked after Bruin and Russ, first. They were both alive, if injured, but the way that they'd looked when he'd abandoned them—
No. Don't think about that. Keep moving.
The next matter was to clear the keep of any other hidden foes. With both spirit kings slain, the rest of the trash became easier to deal with. Markos and his pack led the way, taking every able-bodied shifter to check each room of the castle, then the manor and the grounds, sniffing out any hidden monsters.
Rosemary confirmed their findings, using her dolls to point out a couple of trespassers that they might have otherwise missed. The Hearth witch was exhausted to the point where simply staying awake was painful, and was subsequently carried to a spare cot, watched over by Marka.
Yacob sent word that it had not just been the upper Black Ridge anchor that had been activated, but also the lowest one. He'd cleared out both sites of what shadowlings remained, but once he heard that the kings had been slain, he'd used the anchors to seal the breeches back up and reported that he was heading back.
Roland had been thunderstruck, claiming he hadn't known a second rift had been opened. With dust-covered claws and maw, he promised to look in on it, and his mother had concurred, saying she'd help.
Then there was the clean-up of the shadow corpses. Their bodies faded slowly outside of the Umbral realm, but fire or bright light greatly sped the process up, searing away even the dust. Lux said that once dawn arrived, he would walk the castle, scouring any leftover stains with a Sun charm of some kind. Roland had then pointed out that if had that kind of energy, he could help with the infirmary, and Lux had reluctantly agreed, with the provision that if he did the ritual at noon, instead, it would take almost no energy to perform.
At three a.m., Sergiy stood in the middle of the Great Hall, watching the staff stubbornly move about despite injuries, sweeping up glass shards from broken windows, righting tables and benches that had been used as barricades, and shining handheld spotlights on all the furniture, vaporizing the shadow dust. Leona had stepped into the room, her arm in a sling, and declared that she'd have finger food and drinks available within the half-hour, before bustling back to her kitchen domain.
He couldn't put it off any longer. Sheathing his spear, he entered the infirmary.
The smell of blood and other bodily fluids filled his nose. Every bed was filled, and the nurses busied about, checking over patients. Two nurses apparently had the job of just cycling through the beds; it probably took half an hour to take vital signs and check bandages of all of the patients, and by then it was time to start back at the top.
He found Teresa speaking on the phone to Town's hospital, finalizing the receiving of a half-dozen critically injured staff, now that they were stable enough for transport.
"We can do that, my lord, yes?" she demanded more than asked.
"Yacob's already ready for you," he said, pointing at the infirmary's triage area where the werewolf made an appearance. "He has the helicopter and two humvees ready to go, and his pack will provide security the whole way to Town."
Teresa gestured, and two nearby nurses began organizing the transfer of the patients to litters for the shifters to carry outside.
Teresa looked up at him impatiently, and Sergiy cleared his throat.
"The toll?"
"No one's dead, thanks to those howling dolls. The shadows might've expected to find us sleeping in our beds, and not ready with claw and fang. That said, among the staff, we've got about seven or eight that are going to be disabled for quite some time, even with the best healers. Couple missing fingers that might or might not reattach, plenty of scars to go around. Probably a permanent cane or two. But we're tough, my lord. This could have happened at any time."
He frowned, looking over her head, paying attention to the ones being taken out, memorizing the faces of the ones he'd failed.
"And the guardians?"
"There were a few seriously injured, but they've all been stabilized thanks to the Green witch. I don't think there is a single one from yours or Summer's packs that are entirely uninjured, my lord. But they're all expected to recover in time, with new stories that they'll be happy to recount. I expect half can be moved from bedrest to light duty within a couple of days, most of the rest after another week.About two weeks for full recovery."
"Thank you, Teresa."
"If that's all my lord, please kindly go and rule two yourself."
Silently, he stepped to the side. He watched the last of the injured staff being taken out, then realized that he was still procrastinating. He walked down several more rows, then behind a half-way pulled curtain to where a haunting pipe melody had been playing for probably the last hour, which stopped abruptly as he approached.
"Sergiy!"
Bruin was sitting in a chair beside a bed, ashen enough that he almost looked more like an ill human than a green orc. Strewn about the floor and the bedside table were various implements of his, including dull crystals, a few herb cuttings, empty glass jars, and a stained mortar and pestle. He made to get out of his chair, leaning forward, but then seemed to suffer a wave of dizziness, going blank in the face.
"Stay there," he said, taking a step closer to reach out a hand, which Bruin took weakly. "How are you? Are you both okay?"
Sergiy felt a hand touch his arm, and he looked over to see Russ's eyes open, looking up at him. The injured werewolf smiled tremulously.
"Ser," he said, sounding relieved. "You're okay."
Sergiy swallowed. Russ looked small in the bed, his shock of red hair matted to his forehead. Bandages covered his chest, already red with blood in places. He looked more spent than he'd ever been, and was only able to hold his arm up for a few seconds before letting it drop. Every breath he made was followed by a whistling exhalation.
No. Russ was supposed to be big , not small, and not injured in the infirmary.
"But you're not," he said thickly. "Your whole chest is bandaged, your arm, your shoulder. And your breathing isn't right."
"I will be fine," Russ said drowsily. Probably side effects of medications. "Just scars. Like you."
Sergiy pulled his hand and arm away, and saw Bruin frown.
He couldn't. He just couldn't. Russ wasn't supposed to be hurt. His mate shouldn't be hurt, either, even if it just looked like superficial lacerations.
"You two need to leave as soon as you're better," he ordered, trying to piece together words from the white noise in his head and chest. "I can't keep Bastion safe for you. We'll work something out. You two can live in Town, and visit sometimes, maybe. Or I'll visit you."
He took a step backwards, and saw Russ looking lost.
It was his worst nightmare realized, the same one he'd imagined five years ago.
He opened his mouth to make an excuse, to claim that he needed to patrol, or check in with Roland, or… but whatever he said would be a lie, because the truth was just that he needed to leave.
Closing his mouth, he turned around and walked away, pretending that he didn't hear his name being called, rushing to find a duty to busy himself with.