Chapter Six #2
Gods, even three shadow blades nearly brought him to his knees. Embarrassing.
Trained to stay in Benjamin’s peripheral, Sikras darted toward the hazy figure he knew to be his brother-in-law despite lightheadedness stealing the surety of his path.
Fire’s light warped the shadows of townsfolk and enemies alike, and he waited for his vision to resume focus.
It was the only way to ensure his ethereal blades dissipated into the nostrils of a foe rather than a terrified civilian.
But damn, that debility was murder on his body count.
He was pretty sure Benjamin had already killed three people by the time one of Sikras’s shadow blades found the ear canal of a man wielding a rusty machete.
In defense of his abysmal death toll, it took time for the blade’s slow poison to turn the organs necrotic once it entered the lungs and blood stream, but still . ..
When the attacker fell to his knees, gasping and clawing at his throat, Sikras stopped to cup his chin. “Shit. I forgot we needed one of you alive.”
Oh, well. No sense wasting a perfectly good corpse.
After another flash of intricate hand gestures and a whispered, “An’stisei tus necrouz,” Sikras called soul and essence back from Enos, and the freshly killed body returned to fight under a new commander.
Right up until a Red Sentinel severed its head from the shoulders in one clean strike.
“Come on!” Sikras balked, seconds from a chastising rant, before another lash of magical recoil crackled through his chest like lightning.
This one did bring him to his knees. Even more embarrassing.
The taste of iron in the back of his throat was familiar. He focused on each breath as his fingers ran over the rough, stone ground for his dropped scythe, while the city spun around him. He barely felt the pressure of Benjamin’s bony fingers on his arm as he pulled him to his feet.
“I told you not to do anything stupid.” Benjamin shoved the scythe into Sikras’s hand.
Tremors threatened Sikras’s knees as he used both Benjamin and scythe to steady himself. “No, you didn’t.”
“It was heavily implied.”
“Take up your complaints with your brothers-in-arms,” Sikras said, testing the integrity of his legs as he stepped forward. “They killed my minion.”
“In their defense, he literally looks like the enemy. Up until five seconds ago, he was the enemy.”
Sikras’s eardrums pulsed as Red Sentinels charged forward, some in formation, others not, crimson scarves waving behind them, as they crushed through oncoming bodies like axes through ice. He frowned. So many bodies. The coppery stench of blood did nothing for his headache.
At least the R.S. left a lot of material to work with.
“An’stisei tus necrouz.”
Black mist erupted around his palms as he ripped two newly detached spirits from Enos and tethered them to their fresh corpses.
Battle left no time for the theatrics he would flaunt to his clients.
Sikras had to act fast if he wished to spare the dead the confusion and horror of returning to a mauled body.
Denying them access to their minds seemed cruel, but if he had learned anything about mercy from Vessik over the years, it was the most generous thing he could offer.
Aside from leaving them to die in peace, of course.
“Xechname.”
The two corpses shed their expressions of horror and turned, blank-faced, to attack a small pack of advancing skeletons.
Sikras bristled at the sound of a scream. A citizen of Vinepool? One of their attackers? A Red Sentinel?
Oh, no. That scream came from him.
His flesh burned like acid despite no outward signs of trauma. Small tingling pricks were the only sensations in his otherwise numb legs. Flecks of blood flew out his mouth from the force of his cough, and Benjamin caught him before he hit the ground.
“Dammit, Sikras, what did I just say?”
Benjamin’s chastising words sounded so garbled, so far away. Sikras’s mind felt suspended in a sea of thick, stale water, bobbing on waves that threatened to drown him if he didn’t concentrate enough to keep it afloat.
Another agonized scream became a much-needed focal point. Fortunately, it wasn’t his this time.
Unfortunately, it seemed to come from Helspira.
He spied her in the distance as she landed on her side with a thud. The force of her landing disarmed her, and her sword slid across the smooth stone street and rested outside her reach.
Shit. He couldn’t just let Benjamin’s new companion keel over.
It was, after all, hard for his undead brother-in-law to meet good people these days.
Instinct compelled him to assist, but even if he could stand under the force of his own power—which he swiftly learned he could not when gravity pulled him back to his knees—he would have been too late.
For it became all too apparent that Helspira needed no one’s help at all.
With a snarl, the demon pushed up. Three long strides and she jumped, latched onto her skeletal attacker’s ribcage, and ripped skull and spine from the torso.
Before the body’s remains hit the ground, her fingers dug into the underside of a living man’s jaw so forcefully that her claws punctured clean through and exited his parted, shrieking mouth. She ripped off the mandible and used it as a projectile, striking another attacker in the temple.
Still reeling, Sikras gawked, sentiments shifting in seconds from surprise—“Oh!”—to intrigue—“Oh?”—to disgust—“Oh.”
Benjamin hastily stood. “Heads up.”
Sikras tore his focus from Helspira just in time to catch Benjamin shielding him from an oncoming head. Having swatted it from the air with his sword, it struck the ground, stopping short at Sikras’s boot.
“Gah!” Scooting backward across the cold cobblestone, Sikras struck it with his scythe to send it rolling into the fray. “Disgusting.”
“Keep it up,” Benjamin scolded, “and you’ll look worse than what’s left of that guy. Stop casting spells, dammit. You’re spent.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sikras frowned, gaze trailing outward to find the torso to whom the head belonged. It wasn’t far. Still unable to stand without rippling agony, he crawled on hands and knees and stopped beside the corpse to inspect the attire.
A tattered burlap tunic. Mismatched footwear.
The stench of manure. The calloused hands of a laborer.
Sikras scanned the ground for a second body, a third, a fourth.
There were many, felled easily by the skilled hands of Saelihn’s soldiers.
Every corpse who the Red Sentinel had brought down confirmed his suspicions.
These were no knights, no paladins, no rangers, no trained men and women of war.
These were commonfolk. Farmers, fishermen, bakers, cobblers, weavers.
Explosives, coupled with the darkness in which they had arrived, amplified their intimidation, but when stripped of the shadows’ mystery, he saw them for what they were: no more fit to wield a blade than a child.
Surely the Red Sentinel would make short work of the rest.
And they did.
Sikras outstretched a hand, a silent request for aid.
With Benjamin’s assistance, he stood. Caught his breath.
Waited for his body to filter the nausea left from magical recoil.
What felt like a century was likely only a minute or two.
Somewhere in the distance, a horn bellowed.
He recognized the sound from old battles won—the prevailing signal of victory over the enemy.
With a sweep of his hand, the two remaining shadow blades vanished.
Only the fatigue of battle remained—which was particularly annoying given how little he had participated.
Four short years ago, the thaumaturgic backlash would’ve felt like tiny pinches.
Today he felt like an angry horse had kicked him in the chest.
Sikras slicked the sweat from his face and rounded his shoulders. “We should see if they left anyone alive. It’s the only way we’ll know for sure if these people have ties to Vessik.”
“Really? If these people have ties to Vessik?” Benjamin stooped to pluck a sun-bleached skull from a fallen, undead minion. “How many necromancers do you think are skulking around our kingdom? I know you make it look fun, but I assure you, it’s not a popular career path.”
“Okay, fine. It’s obviously Vessik. But what are all these townsfolk doing fighting alongside his undead?
And how did he raise so many? Vessik could scarcely raise two or three corpses throughout the course of our apprenticeship.
Never mind the technical skill required to pull that off, but how would he survive that much thaumaturgic recoil? ”
“Moreover,” Benjamin interjected, “why is he attacking Nyllmas now? And Vinepool, no less? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It might make more sense than I’d like to admit,” Sikras mumbled.
The hypothesis made him cringe. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Vessik had attacked them when Sikras had responded to Saelihn’s summons.
Vessik must’ve had eyes on him this entire time.
Maybe it wasn’t the Druidic spies sent by Saelihn over the years; maybe those rats and birds belonged to his old friend.
“Either he knows Saelihn forced our hands, and he wants to act before she convinces me to bring the full power of the Cat’s Eye upon him, or he’s amassed enough of an army to think I’m no longer a threat. ”
Benjamin sheathed his sword. “Neither of those scenarios are comforting. How many untrained civilians does a guy need to mount an army threatening enough to revolt against the Cat’s Eye?”
“In my current state? About three.”
Emerging from the dark coated in blood, Rowan marched toward Sikras, an accusatory finger thrusted outward. “How many more of Nyllmas’s people have to die before you do your job?”
“Oh, Rowan. Good. You survived.” Cynicism coated each word as Sikras rotated his stiff shoulder and shrugged. “If it’ll make you feel better, these people needn’t stay dead. Their valiant return is but a whispered spell away.”