34. Leah #3
I study the battle playing out, quickly realizing what she means.
The Brigade are fighting like—well—demons.
I’m not seeing the precision and neat tactics I expected.
Instead, it’s more like a roiling horde of golden armor and flashing white lightning.
It’ll surely lead to the soldiers burning out sooner, but right now the ephilium are like a wild flame, flaring as fiercely as it can.
“You’re right,” I say. “The Aradis troops are pissed.”
“It’s got to be because of the coup,” Filippa theorizes. “This is their first battle since then. If the seraphim still think Infernum was involved in orchestrating it, they’ll want to make them pay.”
It’s a smart assessment, typical for Filippa, but before I can say that, something catches my eye.
“That’s new,” I say. “What is it?”
Hodges follows my finger, squinting. “What?”
“That hummock—it looks like dirt’s been dug up there.” The landscape of this battlefield is constantly changing—new craters formed from weapons blasts and soldiers on either side falling out of the sky—but this seems different. Planned.
“I don’t see anything,” Hodges says.
I’m confused for a beat until it dawns on me that maybe he can’t see it. My eyesight has gotten sharper like my hearing, after all.
Before I can ask Filippa if she sees it too, there’s a rush of air behind us, and I whip around, only to see a certain demon lord has joined us.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Syrus as Hodges and Filippa both straighten up beside me. Filippa seems wary, but Hodges looks terrified, his eyes darting from me to Syrus and back again.
Syrus holds out his hands. “Your note said you were going to visit your scavenger friend, and then I heard the bells ringing, and I thought that maybe you’d go to the walls for old times’ sake.”
By now, I should be used to Syrus knowing these little things about me—being able to read me when I least expect it. I turn to my friends.
“Filippa, you’ve not met Syrus properly, so let me introduce you. Hodges, you always wanted to see the Lord of Malice in person, right? Well, today’s your lucky day.”
Hodges makes a choking noise, while Filippa just nods at Syrus. After everything I told her earlier, she’s better prepared for this meeting, even if she still looks cautious.
“Nice to meet you face-to-face at last, Hodges,” Syrus says smoothly, stepping forward to offer the scavenger his hand. “I hope you put that gold of mine to good use.”
I glare at Syrus. Neither Hodges nor Filippa are aware that Syrus has watched both of them before, inside my head. There’s no non-creepy way to mention it, so instead, Syrus has decided to have a little fun by bringing up some Infernum gold I gave to Hodges for doing me a favor a few months ago.
“Be nice,” I say firmly to him, as Hodges splutters a little.
“Well done for taking such good care of Leah’s cousin,” he says, giving me a look that asks, nice enough? Then he leans around Hodges and smiles at Filippa. “It’s good to see you’re on the mend.”
“Thank you,” Filippa says slowly, still unsure.
As entertaining as this is to watch, I find my eye drawn back to that hummock out on the plains.
It’s just a dark pile of dirt amid miles of gouged earth, maybe eight feet wide at most. It shouldn’t hold my attention, but there’s just something about it. My gut twists in an ugly way as I examine it.
“What is it?” Syrus asks, noticing my distraction. I point again.
“Filippa, do you see it? That hump in the ground?”
“Yes,” she frowns. “And now you mention it, it’s giving me a weird feeling.” She glances up at the soldiers clashing in the air. “Like something is about to go very wrong.”
“I think we should go check it out,” I say. My instincts are ringing like the bells on the city gates: an urgent warning.
Syrus shifts beside me. “I could point out that leaving the safety of Pax is a very bad idea for multiple reasons,” he says. “But that ephilium foresight of yours seems to override every other bit of logic, so I’d probably be wasting my breath.”
Despite his begrudging tone, I can see his attention is drawn out to the battlefield too. He’s watching the Infernum troops with a kind of yearning. “Still, if you insist on going out there without a shred of armor for protection, then I’m coming too.”
“Me too,” Filippa says.
“What?” Hodges straightens up. “No, Pip, you’ve only just healed. You can’t—”
She cuts him off in a way that I’m starting to notice is a pattern with them.
“Whatever’s out there is bad, Hodges,” she says, taking him by the arms. The contact momentarily robs him of words. “I can feel it.”
“You’re really going to go out there based on a feeling?” he murmurs, sounding bewildered more than anything. Then something occurs to him, and he looks at Filippa a little awed. “Is this, like, an ephilium thing? Like second sight? Is that what Lord Syrus meant about foresight?”
Filippa nods. “Yes, more or less. Listen, we’ll just check it out. I won’t get near the battle, I swear.”
Hodges stares at her earnest face before giving a defeated nod.
She shrugs off her cloak and harness as Syrus and I both conjure up our wings.
We might be leaving the safety of the walls, but I’m hoping that the ephilium will be too busy fighting for their lives to recognize me, especially if I stick close to the ground.
Of course, some of the demons will definitely recognize Syrus if they notice him, but none of the lords have flown out with the army today, and I doubt any lesser demons will dare attack him.
We glide down past the walls, staying low to the ground and far away from the fighting above us, skimming across the earth toward the hump in the landscape.
We land a few feet away from it. I turn to Syrus to see what he thinks of it, but his eyes are fixed on the battle, a look of yearning on his face.
The Infernum troops are struggling under the pressure from the ephilium, soldiers on the front line dropping like flies. I can see how badly he wants to help them, how he’s driven to protect, to do his duty to his people.
He’s never been able to fight alongside the demons before, shut out for so long from something he feels he should have been doing. Being so close now, watching the fight and not joining in, must be impossibly hard for him.
“Go,” I say.
His brow furrows. “No. I came out here for you.”
“Syrus, they’re getting destroyed. They need you more than I do right now. Filippa can cover me while I take a quick look at this thing, and then we’ll head back to the walls.”
He throws another desperate look toward his troops before his eyes lock back on me. He sighs, shoulders dipping.
“Syrus,” I repeat. “It’s fine. Now go.”
He nods reluctantly. “I’ll stay nearby in case you need me,” he says. “But thank you.”
His wings draw back and drive forward, immediately creating a gust of wind that propels him up into the sky.
“Come on,” I say to Filippa, tossing her Swiftwing as I jog the rest of the way to the hummock, trying not to breathe too deeply.
Even in just two weeks, I’d somehow forgotten the dreadful smell of the battlefield—the burning sharpness of scorched flesh mixed with the earthy tang of mud soaked in blood, piss, and shit.
The hummock looks even more out of place up close: long and rounded, covered in packed earth, but not pressed so tightly that I can’t pull chunks of it away with my hands.
Maybe this is crazy, coming all the way out here for this.
But my gut hasn’t steered me wrong before, and I’m not about to start ignoring it now.
So I fall to my knees and dig.