Chapter 26 #2
Saer pulled his head back as though struck. Wrath jerked her elbow out of Pride’s yielding hand, swinging her leg over and off her horse.
‘…what vengeance I can.’
A slithering realization crept into his brain as he realized. Runeak had only heard the recounting of Neyu’s death from Errshek.
Clearly, Errshek had relayed that Saer unmade her, but failed to mention Saer did it to spare the rest of the Daemoenica. If Errshek revealed that piece of Lucifer’s bargain, sympathies would shift away from him—to Saer.
Errshek withheld the pivotal information to save his own skin, and place the blame squarely on Saer’s shoulders.
The attack already underway, Runeak removed the bulk of her armor, then ran forward and shifted to her given form with a roaring war cry.
The sound deepened with her change and reverberated over the field, meant to spur foreboding into the hearts of those against Runeak’s forces while her own soldiers rallied.
I would have protected Neyu with everything I am, been anything, done anything.
But Runeak didn’t see it that way. Because Errshek had gotten to her, first.
‘...what vengeance I can.’
Light from the torches cast beautiful and dangerous shadows across Wrath’s scarlet flesh as she thrust her wings down and took to the air, diving straight into the center of the blooming fray.
A discomfort swirling in his guts, Saer touched his stomach and seethed.
Runeak landed amongst a throng of opposition.
Others might see it as careless, but Saer knew she’d landed precisely where and how she wished.
Wrath’s wings thrust out, their wicked talons impaling two, then three soldiers.
Her merciless claws raked and threw a handful more to the ground in torn, bloody piles.
Only one robust soldier cracked through her flurry, dragging a dagger through the powerful muscle of her thigh.
Enough to draw rivulets of the demoness’s blood before he, too, was discarded—crushed under her ebony hoof.
Runeak swept her palm over the bleeding laceration at her thigh, then flung her arm in an arc, splattering crimson liquid at the enemy troops.
Just as he attempted to swallow past a strained throat, Saer saw it.
Pieces of skin and armor burst with divine, white light.
Present for a blink, then gone. The emanation depicted a scrawling of unusual but deliberate patterns.
Words glowed upon contact with Runeak’s blood, then faded to nothing.
Saer held knowledge of many languages, but the flashes proved too quick and far away for him to determine if he could read them or not—disappearing like a stain of breath upon a mirror, the enemy left untouched.
The torches closest to Runeak flickered, faded, then snuffed out.
She shouted guttural commands to her soldiers, and more poured in from multiple sides.
Saer thought she pulled the torch blazes into herself, then realized most were extinguished before she had the chance.
Between the dancing light of remaining flames and intermittent flickering of mysterious silvery words, it took him many seconds to recognize another force dispensing the fire, and he only sussed it out when he pivoted to his heat sense.
The battlefield exuded chaos. Bodies scrambled and sparred in the low light.
Runeak burnt brightest with inner fire, the remaining torch blazes a close second.
Startling and surprising to Saer, every so often a sudden explosion of cold appeared out of nowhere, many times swallowing one or more torches next to the demoness, and sometimes striking her directly.
The iciness flashed with the same bright, worded patterns, though tinted azure from the icicles they left behind.
‘They have means of attacking and defending which are not weapons or armor.’
“The Hells.” Emotional discomfort forgotten, Saer squinted his eyes, leaned forward in his mare’s saddle, and drank in the scene before him. Someone or something attacked with…ice? Cold?
The humans, despite this mystifying new skill, never stood a chance against Wrath and her entourage.
The tents burnt with screams of agony contrasted by blood-thirsty cheers.
As the war waged on, soul energy coalesced, some dispersing away.
Others—those dedicated to Runeak—remained, observing, then faded from Saer’s sight.
Just as Ruki had been dedicated and only visible to him all those years prior, so the same held true for Runeak’s promised souls.
Saer stayed until the sky glowed with pre-dawn light and the victor of the scrimmage declared herself.
Runeak’s soldiers gathered the remainder of the opposition in front of her panting, bloodied, and magnificent form. They would be given the chance to join her or be slaughtered. She would take the dedicated souls back to Lucifer, then return. Thus, the cycle would continue.
Witnessing a harvest had never unsettled Pride, and yet the thought of staying this time made him jerk his gaze away.
Their time had come to an end.
Saer turned his horse around and dug his heels into her flanks.