Breach of Fellspire (Echoes of Aloria #3)

Will – They Bleed

Will

They Bleed

A rusted blade the size of a boat oar sliced through the air, missing Will Hawkson’s face by a fraction of an inch.

He didn’t blink. Ducking beneath the brutal swing, he drove his flashing daggers into the layered, filth-encrusted rags that served as the creature’s only armor.

Through the shredded fabric, his knives bit deep into the mummified flesh and exposed necrotic ribs.

The entire torso was a mottled landscape of decay and old slaughter that reeked with every impact.

Desiccated skin stretched over the skull-like face.

Sunken, sightless eye sockets stared blankly beneath stringy, wild hair.

As the creature’s mouth opened, exposing bared, decaying teeth, it let out a wet, garbled shriek.

Though it looked as if it had once been human, it didn’t sound like one.

Instead of falling, the massive, rotted body thrashed, heavy, shred-wrapped limbs striking out blindly.

The air, once sweet with Mellyrn loam, reeked of the metallic tang of old slaughter and the unnatural silence of the woods.

Will ripped his blades free, staring at the dry metal. No blood. What kind of creature didn’t bleed?

Heat flared instantly at Will’s back. Malin stepped up beside him, her palms glowing with condensed, white-hot magic as she took aim at the floundering beast.

“I have a clear shot, Will, just move…”

“Malin, stay behind me!” Will barked. Panic spiking his chest, Will stepped directly into her line of fire, putting his broader frame squarely between Malin and the beast. He planted his boots hard into the dirt, turning himself into a physical wall.

The creature would have to go through his blades before it touched his pregnant wife.

“Dammit, Will, I had the shot!” Stumbling backward into the ferns, she hit the ground and shot him a glare that flashed with a furious, indignant blue light.

Through the trees, Aldrik’s broadsword sheared through a creature’s neck, cleaving the head clean off. Taking the bloody cue, Will swapped his daggers for his sword. With a single, brutal arc of steel, he decapitated the thrashing monster in front of him.

Will’s boots slipped in a puddle of something thick and black that definitely wasn’t the ‘holy loam’ the pilgrims described when they begged Lady Anariel for help.

A week ago, when they’d first begun patrolling the capital’s borders to investigate the shredded remains of cattle and kin, he’d expected poachers or rogue drakes.

Not these silent, gore-streaked perversions.

The streams here were supposed to be clear as glass; now they were clogged with the same puckered scar tissue of the things trying to gut them.

A second creature lunged from the dense underbrush, its skin coated in wet, weeping red. It swung a giant mace, but Will’s superior training made dodging the clumsy, brutal strike effortless. He didn’t even get a chance to counterattack before the underbrush rustled violently.

More of them lumbered out from the tree line. Will held his ground in front of Malin as the horde multiplied. At least eight emerged, their rotting bodies coated in sickening shades of rust-red and pitch-black.

Aldrik surged into the gap. The old man didn’t waste a single step.

His broadsword flashed in a tight, brutal arc, splitting the nearest creature straight through the collarbone.

Using the momentum of the swing rather than fighting it, he seamlessly pivoted, driving a heavy boot into a second monster’s ribs.

The chest caved with a wet, bursting crunch.

Will caught his breath, his own combat instincts recognizing the terrifying efficiency of it. There was no frantic hacking, no panic… only a calculated master class in absolute slaughter.

Even still, the creatures didn’t slow down.

Levitating only slightly above the fray, Malin released a thick red flame, catching a thin, quick target mid-stride.

The thing screamed as it cartwheeled backward into the undergrowth, its rotting flesh ablaze.

The surrounding ferns instantly caught fire, the brush crackling violently as columns of thick black smoke began to choke the clearing, forcing Will to alter his footing to avoid the spreading heat.

Will slashed the first across the forearm, cleaving straight to the bone. The wound didn’t even slow the beast down, let alone kill it.

When the second one ducked, reaching up for Malin’s hovering leg, Will drove a brutal kick into its throat.

It stumbled, hissing.

“Go higher or get out of here!” he shouted. “I can’t concentrate if I’m watching your back!”

Malin’s jaw set into a hard, mutinous line. Her eyes narrowed, blazing with a furious, icy blue that burned hotter than the magic he knew she was holding back. “I’m not running, Will. My flames only work if I’m close, and you are suffocating my angles!”

He gritted his teeth, dodging another lethal swipe.

This argument had nothing to do with her strength.

His true motive was completely selfish. Every time a rusted blade swung within a foot of her, panic seized his chest in an iron vice.

If she remained in the middle of the fray, he would inevitably make a fatal mistake trying to guard her back instead of his own.

Across the clearing, Aldrik held his ground against three assailants. One had already lost half its face, but kept swinging its machete in slow, deliberate arcs.

Will forced his body into a combat rhythm.

Block, strike, pivot, scan for Malin’s position.

The divided focus sickened him. Unforgiving images plagued his mind, constantly flashing the worst possible outcome.

Malin in the dirt, bleeding out, their unborn child never getting a chance at life.

Worse was the crushing, selfish guilt. If she died out here, it was entirely his fault for allowing her to come out here in the first place.

The first blade to nick his thigh registered as an afterthought, too busy parrying a cross-cut aimed at his ribs.

The pain was cold and distant, an afterthought.

He drove his blade deep into the attacker’s gut, twisting the blade to spill its insides, but the creature didn’t even flinch.

It just kept advancing, stepping right over its own entrails to swing again.

Will slashed low, severing the tendons behind its knee, but the ruined leg somehow continued to support its weight.

Aldrik called out from across the clearing, voice barely winded. “Flesh wounds won’t stop them, Will! You’re wasting energy! Take the head or sever the spine!”

Will grunted his acknowledgment, a hot flash of frustration cutting through the cold adrenaline.

He should have realized that ten swings ago.

He had enough battle experience; it should have been second nature.

But his brain was so choked with the paralyzing terror of Malin getting injured that he was fighting like a panicked rookie instead of a seasoned warrior.

Forcing his focus entirely onto the rotting threat in front of him, Will changed his rhythm.

He feigned high at the creature’s face. As the beast rose its heavy arms to block, Will pivoted hard, dropping his center of gravity, and buried his second blade deep between the vertebrae just above its belt line.

He twisted the steel and ripped it free.

The creature instantly collapsed, its legs going entirely dead, though the upper body continued to claw blindly at the dirt for several seconds before finally fading into stillness.

Malin’s magic painted the air with ribbons of heat that twisted and snapped into defensive walls, but she was getting too close to the creatures. Suddenly, a pair of the bigger brutes broke from the pack, lumbering toward her blind spot.

Will intercepted the brutes, his boots digging into the loam to catch the weight of their charge before they reached Malin’s flank. His reward was two sharp slices across his forearm. It wasn’t serious, but the stinging pain was enough to snap his focus entirely back to the danger.

“Get higher!” Will roared, kicking one of the creatures back to buy himself a fraction of a second. “Take to the air or get out of the clearing!”

She gave him a glare so venomous that he expected his blood to congeal. “I’m not the one getting torn apart.”

He wanted to scream at her, to shake her until she understood that this wasn’t about doubting her strength or her fire.

It was about the paralyzing, suffocating terror of losing her.

He desperately needed her out of reach so he could actually fight without looking over his shoulder.

But before he could force the words out of his throat, Aldrik’s voice cut through the noise.

“Two more on your left!”

A fresh pair broke free from the tree line simultaneously. The first came barreling through the underbrush, a massive slab of a man with both arms ending in wicked steel hooks. It drove the jagged metal in a brutal, sweeping arc aimed straight for Will’s neck.

Will dodged hard to the right, attempting to flank the brute, but his momentum carried him blindly into the path of the second attacker.

Before Will could correct his footing, the creature brought its rusted blade up in a vicious, upward swing.

The dull, jagged steel bit deep into Will’s side, tearing through his leather armor and grating against his ribs.

Will hit the loam hard, his stomach violently rolling as white-hot agony flared across his torso.

Gasping for a breath that refused to come, he forced himself up, a hand instinctively clutching his bleeding side.

Ignoring the hot blood dripping through his fingers, he frantically scanned the chaotic clearing.

He found Malin just as a hulking creature tore a jagged chunk of stone from the earth.

It heaved it with unnatural strength. The rock spiraled through the smoky air and caught Malin dead in the center of her back.

The sickening crack stopped Will’s heart.