Chapter Fifteen
Helspira
THE BETRAYAL ON SIKRAS’S face was seared into her brain. Helspira stuffed the scrolls into her satchel and squeezed her eyes shut. Unfortunately, that only gave the mental image of his devastation free rein to play over and over.
She couldn’t keep her eyes closed for long. Not with the enemy advancing.
Her blade met the stomach of a woman wielding a makeshift spear. When Helspira ripped it out, a brief flicker of realization and fear lit the woman’s face. Whatever mental manipulation spell she had been under must’ve faded shortly before she took her last breath.
No time to mourn. Helspira buried the mixed sentiment and charged forward.
How many? Roughly four dozen. For every body the sentinels felled, another seemed to rise from the snow.
Banneret Rowan cut through the crowd, mangling corpses beyond recognition, tossing severed heads and arms as far from the torsos as he could.
What seemed like savage brutality was the sad reality of their battle strategy.
Corpses that couldn’t find their limbs or heads made impractical minions.
If the sentinels robbed them of their usefulness, the odds of Vessik reanimating them diminished.
A dark green mist sank into the nostrils of a living attacker in front of her. He gasped, gagged, clawed at his throat as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Dead by shadow blade. That could only mean one thing.
Helspira scanned the battlefield, shocked to see Sikras hadn’t fled.
His movements were languid, he looked paler than ever, and an arrow still dangled from his arm, but he remained.
Ben was all but glued to his side, slashing and slaying any who dared to get too close, but Sikras shouted to him over the fray, “Find the cleric and keep him safe. If you want any of these assholes to make it out alive, we need to make sure the healer doesn’t die. ”
“You’re not a front linesman,” Ben retorted, severing the skull from an undead’s spine. “I need to make sure you don’t die.”
“This arrow isn’t just for decoration, Benjamin. I’ll need the cleric as much as anyone else when this is over.”
Even with her demonic hearing, she couldn’t decipher what either man said next. Probably due to the deafening explosion.
Helspira landed on her side, a short trail in the snow from where her body slid.
The stench of charred flesh and ogre whiskey hit her senses first. The volatile alcohol made for a potent explosive when married with fire.
Vision steadying, she spied thick plumes of smoke billowing upward, slow to dissipate and unveil the carnage.
The screams sounded like whispers in her buzzing ears. If Vessik had hoped the explosions would tip the scale in his favor, he was wrong. With many sentinels wielding massive shields to take the brunt of the blast, it seemed more of his own minions had suffered than the queen’s soldiers.
Her heart drummed like a thousand stampeding beasts as she willed her eye to see through the smoke.
She found Rowan tearing through townsfolk like a madman.
Ben—Ben?—yes, she recognized the scarf and cloak, pushed himself back to his feet.
He scoured the battlefield in a frenzy, movements panicked, skull rotating, searching.
Sikras. He must’ve lost him in the chaos. At least Ben was still standing. By all accounts, Sikras must’ve survived too.
Helspira’s gaze darted from blood-red snow pile to blood-red snow pile until she found him in the distance, one hand clasping his scythe, the other dangling limply at his side.
He made it to his knees, tried in vain to move his arm, but nothing, nothing happened.
His lips moved; she still couldn’t hear, but she saw.
They moved again. Same words, no results.
It must’ve been a spell. Yes, he was trying to cast a spell.
Why wasn’t it working?
She tried to run to him, but a searing pain ran up her leg. Only then did she notice the shrapnel in her calf. No time to focus on that. Not when she saw the dawning fear in Sikras’s eyes as he tried to shout the spell over and over.
The ear-piercing screech in her damaged eardrums was constant.
She dug her knuckle into her ear and squinted, suddenly making sense of Sikras’s alarm.
A man trudged toward him, dragging a long halberd behind.
It left deep imprints in the snow as he advanced closer, closer, repositioning the steel before him.
It clicked then why his spell wasn’t working.
His arm was broken. Fingers twitched, barely, but not enough to fall into the unforgivingly specific positions required by casters to channel magic.
“To ensure a spell is always intentional, it must be paired with a precise hand movement and matching verbal component,” Cecil had once told her.
Sikras tried in vain again and again to manipulate his fingers into the artfully choreographed gesture he needed, but nothing.
He was dead in the water.
And even without a jagged shard of metal inches deep in her calf, she would never make it in time.
Unless ...
Helspira scrambled to dig out the scroll, tossing the fake into the snow.
Quaking fingers trembled to rip off the thin, glittering string and unravel the delicate paper.
Now was no time to trip over Siapharian pronunciations.
Struck by the stench of old parchment, she steadied herself and spoke the words.
Seconds remained. It had to work. It needed to. But given how much fear infected her heart, it could’ve easily beat a hundred times by the time she reached him.
Sikras
NOTHING. USELESS, USELESS fingers. Honestly, the audacity of the human body, with its fragile ligaments and bones.
“Stay back.” With his functioning arm, he positioned the weightless scythe before him. “Or feel the wrath of my weapon that I definitely know how to wield.”
The threat fell on deaf ears, almost as if the advancing enemy knew a two-handed weapon was useless to a caster with no combat skills and one functioning arm.
His opponent edged closer. Closer. The pointed tip of the halberd locked into position. Several more seconds and it would be buried in his chest.
“Shit, shit, shit—” Sikras pinched his eyes shut and huffed.
He had died before. Definitely wouldn’t recommend it.
But he feared less for his own life and more for Benjamin.
The securities he put in place to stabilize his soul during sleep and unconsciousness were one thing, but death .
.. There was no concentrating on the spell in death.
The only hope he had was meeting Dionus in Enos. Could he punch a god in the face without a physical body?
He was about to find out.
Eyes still closed, Sikras sucked a stream of air through his teeth.
Tensed every muscle.
And waited.
When searing agony in the form of steel didn’t come, he waited some more.
Either his attacker needed to work at his speed, or he was drawing out things to be unnecessarily cruel.
Emboldened—and perhaps a bit impatient—Sikras opened one of his eyes.
Pink hair. Pointed ears. Textured horns. The back of Helspira’s head was certainly low on the list of things he expected to see.
Lower still was the sight of her extended sword arm, her blade buried deep in the throat of his would-be attacker who choked out a mouthful of blood.
“Helspira?” A short, compulsory laugh came from nowhere, and with the scythe’s aid, Sikras stood on shaking legs. “Blood and bone, you saved my—”
When she buckled at the knees, he dropped his scythe, his arm instinctively wrapping around her waist. He tried to ease her fall, but the dead weight dragged him to the ground with her.
“Hels?” Eardrums still throbbing, he could barely hear his own words as he knelt behind her. Only when he cradled her back against his chest did he see the flash of the buried halberd’s steel and the long pole protruding from her abdomen.
“No-no-no-no-no,” he whispered, frantic, unsure.
What did he do? Remove it? Leave it? Dammit, why did he focus so much on postmortem rituals and not more on .
.. err ... not-dying rituals? His mind flooded with spell phrases, cantrips, useless lore about Siaphara, how to bring a body back from the dead, but not a single practical memory on how to prevent one from perishing.
Even if he knew the right spell, his fingers wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t cast to save his life. Or hers.
Her prosthetic mocked her pain with its lifelessness, but in the black and red of her demonic eye, he saw her fear. Her agony. She locked onto his gaze as if it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the waking world.
Mouth dry, heart pounding, he tightened his grip around her. “Why?”
Helspira’s throat bobbed when she swallowed. Saliva? Blood? Both? Her trembling hand found his, and she squeezed. “Nyllmas needs Catseye more than it will ever need a demon from Chthonia.”
Sikras wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled her hand to his chest. “Is this a bad time to tell you that I have eight lives left?”
“You might,” she choked out, her eye shimmering with unshed tears. “But Ben doesn’t.”
Sikras inhaled sharply. She was right. It was a gamble that he could invoke one of his spare lives, crawl back from Enos, and resurrect Benjamin in time to retether his spirit to his bones, before Dionus claimed him.
“I just wanted to save Nyllmas.” Her voice squeaked out as a tear stained her cheek. “I never wanted it to be at the expense of Ben’s life. He’s my friend too. Please. Believe me.”
Her plea, desperate and sincere, hurt as much as the helplessness that plagued him. “I believe you.”
“Good.” Her head collapsed against his arm, eyelids fluttering, voice weak. “I'm so sorry. For everything.”
“Keep those eyes on me, okay? Listen”—he lowered his head until it hovered inches above hers—“we’re going to save Nyllmas. I promise. It’ll just have to wait a little bit longer. Now, you promise me something. You’ll hang on, okay?” He searched the field, the bodies, trying to find Benjamin.
She said nothing.
Sikras called out for Benjamin, then looked back down. “Promise me, Hels.”
Her breathing labored, and her eye rolled into the back of her head.
Stomach sinking, he held her against him with the only arm that allowed it. In the fray, he couldn’t spot Benjamin. But he did find Rowan.
The banneret ran a woman through, his sword emerging clean out the other side.
Red Sentinels advanced, cutting down enemies with precision, driving those who still stood back toward the gate.
It seemed as if they had finally gained the upper hand, felling enemies faster than they appeared, with the banneret dismantling the corpses and rendering them useless.
Pressed against him, Helspira’s breaths slowed. Authority overrode panic, and Sikras shouted to Rowan, “Fall back!”
Marred by the blood of his victims, Rowan looked the part of a devil. He rounded on Sikras from the distance separating them, drenched in red, teeth bared. “Are you daft? Vessik is right through those gates! We end this today.”
Sikras snarled. He didn’t have time to argue. Helspira didn’t have time. “Then, end it alone. I’m falling back.”
“You can’t be serious. Thrice a failure? Thrice a letdown to your kingdom?” Rowan glowered at Helspira’s limp body knowingly. “Hers is but one life. One life that would have betrayed you, no less! You’d doom the whole of Nyllmas for a single soul?”
A familiar darkness filled Sikras, spreading like a slow poison. “You give me far too little credit, Rowan. I’d doom all of Siaphara.”
Rowan cursed and turned away. He shouted a war cry and gutted another foe before advancing.
“Sikras!” The clack of rattling bones rose above the screams as Benjamin emerged from the fray and ran over, coated in blood. “Shit! Is she okay?”
“No. We need to get her out of here.” Sikras leaned her into Benjamin’s arms as he seized his scythe to help himself upright.
“Please, Ben, I know you don’t want to abandon the R.S, but I’ll fight Vessik.
I’ll kill him. I’ll stab him in the fucking face, whatever you want.
Please, please, just find the cleric, threaten his life, if you must. Make him fall back into the forest with you, however far you need to go to ensure safety. I can’t—”
“Hey.” Benjamin silenced him, readjusting Helspira in his arms. “I have your back. And I have hers. Tell me what else you need.”
“Even with demonic healing abilities, she won’t last long unless—” A frenzy of screams cut off Sikras as another explosion near the village gate blew Red Sentinels backward, like they were ashes in the wind.
His broken arm tried and failed to shield his eyes as their surroundings molded in a temporary orange glow. Smoke from the explosion cleared, and seemingly from nowhere, carved into the wood at the gate’s entrance was a giant glyph depicting a jagged symbol.
A constant high-pitched tone accosted Sikras’s eardrums. He scarcely detected the voices of baffled survivors who gathered their weapons and charged the gate to fight.
But, for every Red Sentinel who bolted into the threshold, a surge of lightning sprang up from the ground, coursing through armor, blood, and bone.
It took the deaths of three sentinels before the remaining soldiers backed away from the gate.
Sikras narrowed his eyes. Such powerful magic. Fuck. How was Vessik doing it?
No time to figure it out.
“Damn it all!” Rowan cursed, kicking the severed head of an enemy, as he stormed from the gate. “We had them on the run!”
Tension pulled at Sikras’s shoulders as he stepped backward. The R.S. would never advance now. Not with an obstacle of this power. They had lost too many in the fray, and there was no telling what awaited on the other side if they even managed to bypass the glyph by scaling the village walls.
They would have no choice but to fall back.
Sikras snapped his focus toward Benjamin. “Find the cleric. I won’t be far behind.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Ben asked.
“I think I can buy Helspira some time.”
Benjamin hesitated and adjusted his grip on her. “What are you going to do?”
“Try and mend some old fences.” Sikras stole a final, concerned glimpse of Helspira as he squeezed the scythe’s snath. “If that doesn’t work, I’m not above falling to my knees and begging whilst rending my tunic for dramatic effect.”
“If anyone can pull off dramatic, it’s you. If the cleric survived,” Ben said, “I’ll hold a place for you in the line.”
A cursory glimpse of the survivors made Sikras cringe. By the looks of it, it would be a long line.
With Helspira in his arms, Benjamin started for the forest. He cast a knowing glance over his shoulder. “Good luck, Sikras. Tell Death I said hi.”