Chapter 5 #2
What could possibly terrify them this much?
That was when I heard it.
I turned as a group of people tore around the corner of a building, some of them falling, scrabbling back up to their feet, shoving each other forward.
The sound that chased them was like metal on metal, a whisper that crescendoed to a screech.
The darkness seemed to distend out of an alley’s mouth, and a swath of those people were cut down like wind passing over grass.
When they dropped, they didn’t rise. Bodies bent, separated, fell part from part into pieces. They lay still, silent, and the cries of the living became more violent.
To my left, another metallic scream. Another swath of people was cut down, and I blinked against the maddening darkness, but saw nothing, only shadows flaring and fading as if they had come to life. What had cut them down?
Now I understood the chaos, the abject fear. People were being culled by something they couldn’t see, couldn’t understand, could only hear just before their lives were ended.
Monsters.
Some part of me wanted to chase after that guard and his torchlight. Another part of me wanted to shrink against a wall. But the part of me that acted was the most potent of all.
I ran toward the destroyed southern wall, toward my home.
I had to find my mother.
The southern district had never felt so dark, so foreign. I hardly recognized the streets and alleys. Buildings loomed like behemoths. Alleys shrank as narrow as creeks. What had once been as familiar to me as my own palms was now a strange killing ground.
Shrieks and cries ricocheted through the streets, pushing and pulling me along. Every time I veered away from one horrific sound, another seemed to return from the opposite side.
Whatever I had seen scythe down those people, it was ongoing. It was happening all around me. People I’d known all my life were dying.
I pushed through destruction. It seemed everyone was headed in the opposite direction of me, running and climbing over bodies and rubble and who knew what else lay beneath their feet.
Whatever this threat was, within minutes it had taught me one thing: I could die at any moment.
I kept running on the hope I would be spared. It was luck alone that would save me now. Not my short blade or my knife or my fists or my guts, just chance and the likelihood that, for once in my life, my height would serve me. Maybe I would go unnoticed.
Getting to my mother’s house was slower work than I’d planned. Throngs of people shoved me, thrust me aside. I ended up following the gutter along a street, running half in and out of the depression and nearly tripping all the while.
Along the way, the only landmark I recognized was the white pillar of the southern district. It still stood, but it wasn’t white; on this cloud-covered night it bore a green hue. Still, it helped me find my way when I needed it.
When I finally turned onto my mother’s street, I stopped hard.
This couldn’t be it. I must have gotten lost in the night, in the fracas—
There was no street here.
Only a gouge in the ground, vast and unfathomable, as if Nyros himself had hurled a flaming star to crash into my street in the southern district and destroy everything beneath it.
This wasn’t destruction. This was a crater.
I stared, shock and horror braiding themselves like two snakes in my chest. This was… It was…
I dropped to my knees on what remained of the cobblestone street, hands splaying over what lay beneath me. Yes, these were the stones I had played and fought and fallen on. This was my street.
And the house my mother had lived in was gone.
Not just broken. Not flattened. Obliterated.
So thoroughly erased I couldn’t even have told you which of the homes it was—they were all just shards now.
My mother never left her home after dark. Never, never. Which meant she had been inside it when the wall had come down.
That cursed noise sounded in my left ear—metal on metal—not far off, maybe twenty feet away. The sound angled toward me. Followed by footsteps: twin boots tapping on the cobblestones.
Those boots tapped toward me. They weren’t fast, but they weren’t slow; they were thorough and sure and consistent, like someone out for a walk.
“That’s one way to die.”
The voice came from behind me, baritone and full of gravel and foreign. Almost human, but somehow more complex and almost musical, like he could sing a dirge in the next second. One sentence was enough to know this was no night guard. Whoever lurked behind me wasn’t one of us.
It was one of them.
The footsteps came closer and only stopped when they were almost directly behind me. Metal sang from a sheath, and fresh pain pricked my back as something hard and sharp pressed up against my spine through my leathers.
I winced, still on my knees, and a thought entered my head, brief and overwhelming.
Just let them have you, Eury.
I could tell from the weapon’s prick that it was poised behind my heart. One thrust would kill me.
Clothing rasped, and that foreign voice sounded close to my ear. “Call to your gods.”
It sounded like a promise. It sounded like death.
My mouth remained closed, even as my chest swelled. I knew—with the same certainty I’d felt in my bunk—I wouldn’t do a fucking thing that creature asked. I’d rather die in silence.
So why was it that my hand went to the grip of the short sword at my waist? Why were my knees straightening, my body rising against every thought screaming to stay down?
I turned toward my killer, my hand still over the grip of my sword in its sheath. The creature held a blade as long as me, its tip as honed and treacherous as an adder’s tooth, pointed straight at my neck.
Before me stood a form wreathed in shadow, twice as tall as me. I couldn’t make out body or face, only that moonlit sword and the bone-deep sense of lethality.
“Call to them,” the creature said again.
I stared, my face stony. My head moved side to side almost imperceptibly, but the monster saw it.
Another screech sounded from our right, and one of those shadow creatures emerged around the corner of a building fifty paces off. It was headed straight for us—for me.
“Damn you—” the creature said. The sword rose, swinging it up with the ease and precision of a child’s toy. From the darkness, he switched his hold to a backhand.
I had seen that move before, in training; he meant to pommel me in the head. My hand went up to protect my skull, but I was too slow, or he was too fast.
Something struck my left temple. I was knocked off my feet, my whole world jarred by a searing white light.
Just before consciousness left me, I realized why I’d taken hold of my sword, why I’d stood and faced the monster at my back.
It was because of my mother’s words from earlier that day, and the promise I’d made to her.
I’d told her I would never sit down.