Chapter 10
Vessa
Vessa was dragged violently through the snow at an impressive and deadly speed.
If she survived this, she would have to kill Kedar immediately. He would be insufferable.
Snow kicked up in her wake, and between it and the ice chips pelting her face, she had no visibility.
Worthless, Kedar had said. She growled as she fought against the intense air resistance enough to sit up.
The wide, fleshy tentacle wrapped tightly around her ankle looked as if it was bruised—purple and black.
What in the depthless Pits had her in its grasp?
The unknown creature swung her around hard as it turned sharply. Distant lightning flashed blue somewhere in the storm, and for the briefest moment, it revealed the silhouette of the beast.
“Fuck this!” Vessa roared as she swung at the tentacle with her raze sword. The first strike barely nicked it as the creature swerved. She flew over a snowbank right as she tried to slice it a second time. She caught air and landed hard on her ass as she came down.
Abs burning as she fought the air resistance once more, she swung her sword with all her might and fury. The sharp blade severed the appendage. A mournful howl rent the night not far from her.
When she finally slid to a stop, it was on the edge of two worlds. Behind her, the blizzard still seethed—a wall of relentless white and freeze. Before her, it was clear. Nothing but an untouched ocean of snow.
But not for long.
Electric blue lightning cracked through the sky and lit up the silhouettes of dozens of Orcru marching in the distance.
They had brought an entire gods damn war party to deal with her. The other two had merely been their overconfident scouts. And now they were Vydera meat.
Vessa swung her blade in a lazy arc. At this point, being abducted by a tentacle-wielding beast and attacked by an ice-thriving horde wasn’t nearly as shocking as it should be.
She’d wanted a fight, and here it was.
Hairs on the back of her neck rose. She dropped into her fighting stance seconds before a large mass leapt through the storm and landed before her.
The beast scrabbled until its claws gripped into the packed snow.
The true coloring of the creature’s sleek fur shifted between white, gray, and black, allowing it to practically disappear.
But its four unblinking crystalline eyes gave its positioning away as it creeped in front of her.
This was what had dragged her through the snow?
Vessa wrinkled her nose in disgust. There was no part of her being that wished to know where the tentacle-like appendage had come from on it.
It was some ungodly amalgamation she’d never seen before.
Its face was similar to a hound’s, except it had no external ears, and its nostrils were mere slashes on its snout.
With a hunched back and limbs that were too long, it moved in an uncanny way, as if it had seen another creature move on all fours and decided to imitate it.
Its legs were formed with hocks, but its arms were strangely human-like, down to its hands with long fingers tipped in sharp claws.
The beast stood to its full height with an animalistic snarl. It had to be at least ten or eleven span tall. It looked down at her, sizing her up, its jagged teeth on full display.
War cries and commands were taken up from the horde at the same time. The first rank pulled away from the greater mass. They’d be upon her soon. Lightning sparked down from the sky behind them in dancing, vivid-blue bolts.
Vessa smiled. It was a good night for a battle.
Her hand tightened around the hilt of her raze sword as she lunged toward the creature. One of its long arms swiped out to meet her, claws racing toward her torso. While retracting the blade, she ducked at the last second. Before the beast could react, she extended her steel again. Into its side.
The howl it let loose rattled through her as it viciously lunged at her. Vessa danced away, putting space and her blade between them—its jaws snapping closed on air in her wake. Silver blood covered the steel of her raze sword like metallic ink.
Right then, Kedar uncloaked beside her. He stood not even a span away, his crimson-lit plasma dirk in hand.
“By the Nine, announce yourself,” she snapped. “I could have killed you.”
“I see you’re alive,” he drawled, turning his head to the side with his chin tilted down to take her in. His eyeshields burned red, and she had the distinct feeling he was checking her for injury.
“Of course I am, and look how productive I’ve been. I found the end of the blizzard and this welcome party was waiting for me on the other side.” She waved her hand casually at the war band rampaging toward them.
The beast took a stumbling step back. Its diamond pupils dilated and affixed on Kedar’s plasma dirk with something like… fear? Respect? It let out a low-pitched chuff between heavy sniffing.
“What in the Pits is it doing?” she asked.
It touched two claws to its cheek and brought them down in some unknown gesture. Kedar mirrored it with his fingers.
Then the creature fully disappeared.
“Uh, what?” Vessa asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you were feeding it, too, and it knows you.”
Kedar huffed out a laugh. “This is not my doing. My ancestors made a pact with the Dark Star ones long ago. It must have been indebted to an Orcru here, but their oath to the Xaal outweighs all else.”
Before she could fully digest his response, he bounded forward to meet the horde. Vessa stared at his back—and those powerful legs—in honest bewilderment. If she awoke to find this was all a fever dream, she wouldn’t be surprised.
Until then, she had Orcru to kill.
She ran forward on the far left side of Kedar, letting out a Seken battle cry.
A reckless energy filled her. There was something thrilling about being outnumbered.
The feeling reminded her of fighting the Zaram.
Kedar looked at her sharply before bellowing his own war call.
How many times had they done the very same thing in the past?
When he collided with the Orcru moments later, his impact staggered half a dozen of them back. He was an entire force of nature.
Vessa took a more singular approach. The first Orcru to reach her was dual-wielding short axes, and a string of thick saliva hung from his tusks.
She leapt at him, and her foot connected with his chest in a powerful kick.
Her opponent reeled backward, his weapons sent flying, and he brought a handful of his comrades down with him as he crashed into the snow.
One of his axes landed square in the face of another Orcru.
“Already at four,” Kedar bellowed from somewhere inside the mass.
She narrowed her gaze as she dodged a club swinging at her head. Was he…? They used to count their kills in big battles. Competing to see who could get more, they would shout their numbers across the battlefield at each other.
Vessa couldn’t let him win.
Quickly, she stepped on top of the downed Orcru and stabbed him through the heart. The two pinned beneath him met similar fates. “Four,” she called. Axe face counted, too.
“Six,” Kedar shouted.
Shit. He couldn’t be right and win the kill count. “Five,” she called out as her blade cut off an Orcru’s head in one fell swoop. “Six!” That one had practically impaled himself on her sword.
Vessa and Kedar fell into an old rhythm.
She couldn’t see him, but she knew he was there.
An unexplainable synergy existed between them.
During the war against the Zaram, even her father, who had greatly disapproved of how close she was to Kedar, told her he’d never seen a pair move like they did.
Like they were one soul in two bodies, dancing before the gods.
They’d saved each other countless times. Shored up the other’s weak side. They were mere extensions of each other. Seamless.
It still felt the same.
Kedar was an enemy to her now, and seven years had passed, but they fell into these old ways of being so easily. Effortlessly.
Vessa twirled out of the way of a thick-bladed sword rushing to meet her.
Lightning struck far closer than it had been just moments ago.
Too close. The electric-blue bolt cracked into the ground between two Orcru just spans from her.
Its force was so strong that it sent them flying and shook the earth.
Thunder boomed and rolled as more powerful flashes struck around them.
Others stopped to peer at the clear, steely sky.
The brutes snorted and grunted as they looked between each other nervously.
A familiar voice called out from the rear of the party, commanding them to fight. To bring her and Kedar in—dead or alive. Ogg Braqq.
Vessa could feel the electricity in the air. “Nineteen! And watch the damn lightning!” she called out to Kedar. Like they were still comrades.
Just as Vessa turned to take on the adversary rushing her from behind, another bolt of lightning struck. It hit the crown of the Orcru’s hairless head with a sickening crack.
Time stopped.
Then sped up all at once. The impact blew her back violently.
She flew through the air. Then crashed to the ground. Her breath left her in a hard grunt; pain exploded through her back. Her ears rang. Her head spun.
It took her longer than she cared to admit to sit upright.
She’d landed in a basin where the wind had pushed snow into high banks on one side.
Before her, that unsettling lightning danced through and around the mass of Orcru.
It was chaos. They’d left the blizzard but entered an altogether different kind of storm.
Bolts lit up the dark skies, and the continuous claps of thunder became their battle music.
And she wasn’t out of the fight yet. Ogg Braqq, with his chest armor that only emphasized the girth of his stomach, plowed his way toward her.
With him was an eager war party commander with strands of saliva trailing from his tusks, as well as a slower Orcru who was taller and broader than them both.
Lovely.
She gained her footing, shook the ache from her limbs. The ground she was forced to defend was slicker. But her disadvantage was theirs, too.
They slowed their approach, eyeing the ground she held.
The war commander was dressed in armor that fit him well and covered his most vulnerable spots.
His tusks were chipped, and he had more scars on him than her and Kedar combined—evidence that he’d survived plenty of battles.
He was the real problem. The ogg was just a figurehead, and the other would be easy to outmaneuver.
“Come on, then,” Vessa growled, looking between them. She pointed her raze sword at the ogg. “How about you first?”
The horde leader’s brow dipped low, practically concealing his eyes. His hands tightened on his axe’s hilt before he motioned for his war commander to move forward. “Want her squirming, Jogo,” he barked.
“Jogo smash, but not break,” he asserted.
Vessa swung her blade in an arc. There was a competition to win. She couldn’t hear Kedar anymore, but she could only imagine how much time she’d already lost.
Jogo stepped toward her with his axe in hand. His first strike was fast and aimed at her knees, but she dodged and managed to keep her feet beneath her. Her turn. She pressed the assault, but he blocked every single one of her strikes, handling his axe with ease and alacrity.
Finally, a challenge.
Lightning struck closer as Jogo attacked again. She blocked and dodged his fast arcs and, when she found an opening, brought the tip of her blade across his stomach.
The gash opened wide, but it wasn’t deep enough. Jogo roared and brought his axe slicing down. The sharp edge missed her and smashed into the ice instead.
And then she heard it.
At first the sound was near-silent, a deadly warning. Vessa looked down at her feet, then the Orcru’s. This wasn’t just packed snow. She’d invited her opponents to join her on ice with death beneath its surface.
Jogo didn’t seem to notice or care. Letting out a war cry, he swung again.
Cobalt flashed in her peripherals. Too close. “Stop,” she growled, sliding back slowly. “We have to get off the ice.”
But it was too late.
Lightning struck. It hit the surface behind Jogo with a rending crack.
A geyser of water shot into the air—a violent release of pressure.
Another bolt crashed down and another. She had to move.
Fissures spread out like a living thing, reaching, reaching.
And thick ice shattered all around—nothing but delicate glass breaking into a thousand pieces.
A sound like a giant’s bones being snapped in half, and a chasm groaned open.
She and Jogo jumped off from the shifting mass below them and crashed down on another.
They both lost their footing, but Jogo slipped at its edge.
Axe forgotten, he clawed at the crumbling surface.
Vessa tried to rise, but she smashed into the ice again as Jogo grabbed her ankles.
In his panic to get out, he dragged her back.
Her boots hit the freezing water, her calves.
Even through her suit, she could feel the stinging, burning threat.
That solemn promise of what was to come.
The cold, watery grave beckoned.
The ogg struggled to maintain his balance as he searched for solid ground. The other Orcru tried to follow his horde leader, but the ice was a living, moving thing now. It gave out beneath him. Fed him to its dark master below. He never reemerged.
Pressure bent her spine—a hand crushing her.
Jogo was trying to use her to climb out, but there was nowhere to go.
Her breath fogged in front of her face as she tried to find purchase.
Tried to buck out of Jogo’s grasp. Her nails scraped hopelessly against the frozen surface and her blade was of no use to her.
With every move she made, more pieces crumbled away beneath her, determined to give her to the hungry abyss. Her knees hit the water.
Vessa couldn’t stop the inevitable.
“Fuck it,” she growled.
Jogo fought wildly against his fate. Freezing water sloshed over her back. Gods, this was a shit way to die, but it didn’t matter. If this was the end for her, she was taking all these bastards with her.
She reared her sword arm back and let her blade fly with all her strength. In the seconds it took to find her mark, the ice beneath her split open—hungry to devour her. But her raze sword hit true. Right through the retreating ogg’s skull.
He teetered forward, then back—unaware he was already dead.
He fell.
Vessa was dragged under before his body hit the water.