35. Filippa
Filippa
Okay, so maybe coming out here wasn’t so smart.
Maybe it was a bad idea. Really bad. Just like the feeling I’m getting off that damn lump in the ground.
I stare at the sword Leah just threw to me. The one I fumbled and almost let drop into the mud. Ancestors, my grandfather would kill me if he saw that.
Except the general is dead. One of the greatest warriors of his generation, cut down in a fight. And now I’m standing under a raging battle as if I honestly believe I won’t end up the same way.
As if I mysteriously forgot how crap I am at this.
You didn’t forget, but you felt so fucking guilty about how you treated Leah you’re now following her like a little duckling wherever she goes, apparently.
The good news is, if I die out here trying to help her, we’ll definitely be even.
I watch Leah scrabbling in the dirt, pushing back piles of wet earth.
It’s too built up to be anything but deliberate.
But what could it be? Not a burial mound.
Both Infernum and Aradis collect their dead to be buried in their homeland.
There’s an embargo in the Concords against either side building fortifications or digging tunnels, so it can’t be either of those.
I try to think about what that leaves, but I’m distracted by an arrow whizzing within inches of my face. I throw myself to the side, ripping the shoulder of Hodges’s shirt and smearing it with mud as I go down.
Glancing up, I see that the arrow wasn’t meant for me but came from a Brigade soldier trying to take down the beast of a demon who’s bearing down on her.
He’s a wall of gray skin and rippling muscle, and in her panic the soldier’s arrows are going wide.
Another whizzes into the earth beside me, a few feet closer to Leah, who’s still intently focused on whatever the fuck we’ve had the misfortune to notice.
I swing Swiftwing as I scramble to my feet and back up toward her. If I wave this thing around enough, perhaps I’ll manage to block any wayward projectiles with sheer dumb luck. I like those chances more than if I actually tried to aim for anything specific.
“You find anything?” I call to Leah over my shoulder, my head on a swivel for anything coming toward us.
“Oh, I found something all right,” Leah says, her voice grim.
I turn to get a clearer look at what she’s staring at: a large metal drum, almost as big as a person, and covered in a scrawl of demon runes.
“Ancestors,” I hiss. “That can’t be good.”
I might not be a skilled fighter, but I grew up in one of Aradis’s foremost military families. I know a weapon when I see one.
Leah’s leaning closer to the drum, squinting at the runes. Almost like she’s…reading them?
How much time did she spend with the demons if she can translate their language?
“No.” She jerks her head up, scanning the sky. Her already pale skin has turned a ghostly white. “Shit. I think we need to clear the plains.”
The sword in my hand hums for a second before yanking my arm up, the steel crashing against an outstretched blade just by my right flank, the force of it vibrating through my bones.
“Neat trick,” growls the huge, gray demon looming behind me. I twist my neck to see the dead ephilium archer lying a few yards away—he’s dispatched her and now is coming for us.
“Filippa! Duck!” Leah screams, and I do. I’m great at ducking.
Leah sends a bolt of lightning crackling toward the demon. He can’t raise his sword in time to block it, and his whole body convulses as he hits the dirt, smoke rising from the tips of his curly horns.
“I need to show this to Syrus,” Leah murmurs, sitting back on her heels to examine the drum again as if she didn’t just level a demon twice her size.
Except maybe she didn’t completely level him, because just then a huge, meaty hand wraps around my calf, claws digging into my flesh.
I scream, Swiftwing trying to pull my hand into a position to defend myself, only for me to lose my balance and go toppling down beside him. He reaches for me again, and I try to conjure up my own lightning, sparks coming to my hands slowly, too slowly—
The demon’s head jerks back as a sharp crack whips through the air. He slumps to the ground, going limp, and I stare down at the stream of green blood pouring from his temple.
I drag my gaze up and fix my eyes on Hodges, standing there on the plains with his scavenger’s satchel and a look of fierce determination. There’s a slingshot in his hand.
Because of course he took a demon down without an ounce of magic. Just like he stood up to those bullies on the street last week when he was showing me around the city and I discovered he could throw a heck of a punch.
He’s ridiculously brave and stupidly capable, and I suppose I should tell him that while I still have breath to do so.
“Are you crazy?” I shout at him instead.
“Maybe.” He grins, lowering the slingshot. His smile is crooked, like it’s almost too wide to fit on his face. It’s the kind of smile I think I’d never get tired of seeing.
Ancestors, maybe he hit me in the head too, because I feel like a dazed fool, staring at him. I’ve not yet been able to get used to the way he looks back—really looks back, like I’m something he never gets tired of seeing too.
“Don’t I even get a thanks?” he says coyly, like he’s not in the middle of a fucking battlefield.
“Thanks, you madman,” I call as I pull myself to my feet.
Leah’s on her feet too, her eyes wide.
“Take him back to the city,” she tells me, grabbing my hands for emphasis. “You both need to get to safety as soon as possible.”
My eyes fall on the drum, the ominous energy of it thrumming through my system.
“What’s it going to do?” I ask.
She stretches her wings, searching the sky for someone—the demon lord, I think.
“If this fight keeps going like it does, it’s going to explode. Soon.”
Syrus
I have no love of war. I don’t crave the sight of a life ended by my hand. I don’t long to watch the light drain from my enemies’ eyes as I shed their blood across the scarred earth.
But for three hundred years, I’ve had to send my people out onto the cursed battlefields of Strata, unable to stand by their side, to defend the demons I’ve sworn to protect.
No matter how many hours I spent agonizing over my responsibilities as lord, there was a gaping hole in my ability to fulfill my duties to my people.
It feels good to rectify that at last, to unleash three hundred years of frustration on the ephilium troops.
My shadows dart between demon and pale-blood, choking ephilium throats, swallowing up their lightning.
I run through a soldier who’s moments away from slitting the throat of a Malicite, then rip another from the air before he can catch up with the Vylish demon he’s hunting and send him hurtling toward the earth.
All the while, I keep one eye on Leah below me, because my people aren’t the only ones I have to keep safe.
I drive an ephilium officer into the path of half a dozen Rancorites, letting them finish him off, then spot a flash of feathers down below.
A pale-blood woman with an elegant, curved sword has obviously taken an interest in Leah’s black wings and is now making a beeline toward her.
Leah hasn’t seen the soldier, too busy dispatching a big, gray demon with her lightning, so I dive toward the pale-blood.
The soldier hears me coming and lifts her weapon, the blade crackling with lightning, but she doesn’t have the strength to block my magic, and it rolls across the blade and down her forearms, tightening around her like a rope.
I leave her fighting the darkness. She might manage to shake the shadows loose eventually, if an opportunistic demon doesn’t find her first. I’m only focused on Leah now, kneeling beside whatever she’s uncovered. She’s alone, her cousin retreating across the plains with the scavenger boy.
I land beside her, a coil of dread running through me when I see the metal drum carved with Cyrax runes.
“Recognize any of them?” she asks.
I nod. “That one there,” I point. “And those two—they’re the same as the ones used in the possession ritual.”
“But this isn’t a spell to possess anyone,” she says, her words come fast. “It’s going to do something much worse. I don’t know what exactly but—”
“Whatever it is will come at the peak of the battle,” I finish, studying the rest of the runes.
“Yes. It’s set to explode at the point when it’ll cause maximum destruction, isn’t it?”
I nod. The Cyrax is old and obscure, and combined like this, the complete meaning isn’t immediately clear, but the spirit of it comes through.
This thing wants to rip through everyone on the plains until all that’s left is piles of ash, flesh, and bone.
This isn’t a weapon of war. It’s a tool of extermination.
“What do we do?” she asks. “I thought about breaking the runes like I did for you—”
“No,” I say sharply. “There are too many unknowns. You could just end up triggering it.” I look at the battle raging up above.
It’s already a ferocious fight, but if the battle suddenly got bigger—reinforcements arriving from either realm—then that could certainly set the magic off.
And that could come at any moment. But if we de-escalated it…
“We should warn them,” Leah says, following my gaze and echoing my thoughts. “If we can get everyone to retreat, it might never go off.”
“And if we can’t?
“We need to move it,” she says, brushing her fingers against the canister. “Get it off the plains and out of range.”
The drum is already mostly unearthed, but she starts to dig around the base to expose it completely.
“I’ll fly it out of here. I think there’s a barren stretch out east that would be safe from people. You find the nearest general and—”
“No,” I say again, my jaw tightening. “You’re not going to carry that thing out of here when it could go off at any moment.”