Chapter 13 #2
She swung Beloved, an axe blade cracking through a skull of the closest undead, plates of its bone shattering and falling into the skull cavity.
It staggered and Cerise whipped Beloved in a wide arc, cleaving through the ulnas, clavicles, and ribs of the half dozen skeletons that surrounded her.
The bones flew from their bodies, stretching the purple-green magic that kept them assembled.
The threads of energy expanded then contracted, yanking the dislodged pieces back in place with a loud, hair-rising crunch as the fragments ground together.
There would be no destroying these undead. Not without killing Vraethik.
“We have to push through!” Cerise yelled.
Oberon seemed to discover the same thing she had, his spearhead popping through a skull with such force that it took it off the top vertebrae, only to be jaggedly returned to the body with the magic threads of muscle.
They heaved, swung, and stabbed with all their might, but the unbreakable bones formed a frigid, impenetrable wall.
They pressed harder and harder against them, until all Cerise saw was the fling of bones and stretch of necrotic magic, the swelling, oozing black heart of Azkanix growing behind them.
Icy, sharp, splintered fingers raked at her body, yawning jaws snapped at her face.
Sweat bloomed on her skin despite the cold clothes sticking to her body, Beloved slick in her palms. Now encircled by the undead, they had nowhere to run, only the hope that they would shatter enough bones to escape.
As she attacked and lunged in wide circles, slashing and crashing through the never-ending horde, fatigue turned her body to mountain stone.
She fought through her slowing, aching muscles, the pulse of pain in her leg that begged her to rest, the sound of her crackling knee uncomfortably similar to that of the undead’s own chittering joints.
Through her peripheral vision, the prince also seemed to wane.
Sweat matted his gleaming, golden hair to his face, expression wrenched in a frustrated, hopeless scowl.
He twisted around just as a skeletal claw lunged for his neck, stabbing the bony hand in half.
But as he turned, another undead leapt for him, maw gaping wide to clamp onto his shoulder.
“Oberon!” she yelled, twisting toward him with Beloved outstretched, ready to shear off its skull before it could tear the prince’s flesh.
She twisted her body too fast, too awkward, turning her torso before her legs, causing her knee to bend and wrench in a way no joint should.
The knee popped as it slid out of place and then snapped back in, and she screamed with the agony that lanced through her.
She collapsed, blind with anguish, hands meeting the cold earth a moment before her face scraped against the ice.
The skeletons trampled over her as if she was dead already.
Their freezing metatarsals pounded and scratched her back as they skittered to Oberon, a surprising heft to their undead forms pushing Cerise deeper into the snow, keeping her pressed to the ground.
With a twinging in her knee, she shoved her arms beneath her, hoisting herself to her feet despite the corpses stampeding over her, gritting her teeth in the effort to rise despite the pain, despite the weight on her back.
One scrambled over her leg, crushing the damaged joint against the tough ground, another surge of pain blinding Cerise.
Arms wobbling, she pushed up once more, and through the curtain of her deep red hair, she saw the horde of skeletons overtake the prince, their clicking and clacking bones cascading in wide arcs through the air as he swung the spear.
But their bones always bounced back into place.
His fearful, desperate eyes met hers. And when the corpses overtook him, shuttering out her view of the prince, Cerise’s heart sank as deep as it had when Azkanix’s curse first fell upon the land.
The skeletons vibrated. Their bones dropped and scattered in a pile around the prince. The purple-green necrotic magic in the bone heap thrummed, and as it moved, the skeletons shifted, their forms and rearranging into a new, grotesque shape.
Rising to its legs of stacked skulls and femurs, hooves made of shoulder plates, a massive, skeletal horse stretched up.
Cradled inside its compact rib cage, composed from dozens of human ribs, lay Oberon.
His long, thick limbs hung limp, fingers dangling through the cage.
Barely visible fog puffed from his parted, slack lips.
Unconscious.
The horse reared its head, neck of human vertebrae and skulls clicking and grinding together.
It bolted away without a second glance at Cerise, heading toward Vraethik and the oozing black heart of Azkanix, kicking up snow crystals in its wake. Oberon’s body thunked against the ribs with the cadence of its horrendous gallop.
Every fiber in Cerise burned.
Her organs enflamed, fire wrapping around her heart and searing through her muscles. Eyes stinging, fists scraping against the ground, and with shaking arms, she shoved herself upright, clenching her jaw against the nearly incapacitating torment in her leg.
Maybe she’d just chop the wretched limb off if she survived this.
She grabbed Oberon’s dropped spear and faced Azkanix’s rib, the skeletal horse traipsing a lazy trollop toward the necromancer.
Vraethik, poised at the edge where the rib’s necrotic glow ended, lifted his arms and wound magic from himself through the pool at his feet, up the bone where the Lich God’s heart continued to pulse and grow.
No skeletons stood around Cerise. They were all part of that grotesque beast.
Vraethik was distracted, certain his horde would destroy them, his back turned.
She could charge him now. Throw the spear through his evil heart.
Her eyes flicked to Oberon, unconscious within the horse’s fragmented ribs.
In the time it would take to slaughter Vraethik, he too could die.
If Vraethik sensed her approach, he could order the skeleton to constrict, plunging all the bones through Oberon’s body.
If she failed, and Vraethik killed her instead, Oberon would surely perish.
She didn’t know why the skeletons hadn’t already crushed him, but whatever purpose Vraethik had for the prince couldn’t be good.
Perhaps Oberon and her would rot away together on the blighted earth.
The fire in her chest raged at the thought. At the idea that this world would continue spinning without his gaze searching the sky, looking for ways to end this curse. Without his stupid, flirtatious smirk. Without his kindness and compassion, of which there was too little of now.
No. She wouldn’t allow the possibility of his death to pass. She needed to free Oberon from that cage. Give him a chance to escape before confronting the necromancer.
Cerise sucked in a deep, bracing breath, summoning her battle fury and beckoning it to cascade through her body, dimming the pains and fears that coursed through it.
She charged through the plains, each slap of her leg against the ground like a hammer reverberating through the joint.
But she kept her focus on the horse, on the too-good prince within.
The horse stopped beside Vraethik, the skeleton reforming once more, bones clanking together as the magic threads vibrated and moved, shifting Oberon inside a rectangular cage.
Vraethik stepped to the prison, unsheathing a gleaming dagger and carving thin, careful lines through the prince’s arms. His blood trickled down, staining the snow and bones.
Time was running out.
She slipped Beloved onto her back, still gripping the prince’s spear in one hand. Unstrapping the absorber from her waist, wrapped in multiple layers of wool so it didn’t suck the heat from her body, she stripped it down to one thin cloth, the absorbed cold biting into her skin.
She ground her teeth together, blacking out all sensation except the whip of frigid wind through her hair, against her cheeks.
She conjured images of her sister, of her love, compassion, and companionship through the nightmare of their lives.
Images of Oberon followed, of his caring hands on her wounds, bright smile, and tender words.
When he’d needled so close to her heart she didn’t know, but thoughts of him and Eirwen drowned out her body’s threats of collapsing beneath her feet.
Cerise launched the absorber toward the bone prison, sending up a prayer to Zyrdriel for the first time in her life.
Please, Zyrdriel, let this work. If you ever had any love for my sister, let this free him.
With the other hand, she flung the spear at the necromancer with all her might, hoping to at least stall him long enough for her plan to succeed.
The spear pierced through Vraethik’s shoulder, the necromancer stumbling from the sudden force.
At the same time, the absorber and necromantic magic collided, screeching through bone bars with the sound of grinding glass.
The absorber sucked in the heat surrounding it, including the necrotic purple-green threads that maintained the cage.
Bones shifted, trying to purge the absorber from itself while keeping Oberon within.
Zyrdriel’s artifact vibrated, humming and clanking against the bones as it snatched the magic away from it, the pale blue of the trapped cold within soon swirling with sickly purple-green.
Vraethik sneered, wrapping a hand around the spear’s shaft and yanking it from his shoulder.
He turned toward Cerise, his face contorted with hate.
Threxilon shoved its tusks through the shifting bone bars, huffing and snuffing as it tried to shove away the absorber, tusks shearing Oberon’s pants, cutting his legs.