Chapter Twenty-One
Helspira
HELSPIRA TORE HER BLADE through another body.
Her grunt turned into a gasp when, around her, Sikras’s minions fell like dead leaves off a jostled branch.
Their bodies, once keeping the onslaught of approaching enemies from passing the threshold into Vinepool, skidded into the snow with a clatter, unmoving.
He must have died again. Lost concentration on his spell. But they would rise when he crawled back from Enos. They had before.
Helspira held her breath, the battlefield draped in the illusion of silence, as she watched, waiting for them to get up.
“These things gonna help us or not?” Rowan shouted as he drove his sword through a manipulated sentinel’s chest.
“They’ll get up,” she yelled, pulse wild in her wrists and neck. “They always get back up.”
She waited.
Waited.
Gods, it felt like an eternity.
Still, they did not rise.
Helspira’s grip slipped on her blood-soaked handle when she lowered it. “Something’s wrong.”
Rowan freed a war cry as he detached the skull of another enemy from its spine. “Then, you better make sure that sonofabitch didn’t lose his last life before he finally came to his senses.”
The thought destroyed her, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t break her vow. “I can’t leave Ben.”
“His bones will be fine.”
“I promised,” she shouted, arms shaking. Not only that, she did not trust the banneret. Not fully. Not with this. Not with Ben.
In the chaos, Rowan cursed and knelt beside the remains to spread out Ben’s cloak. He delicately placed the bones atop it to fashion a makeshift cloth satchel, then thrusted the bundle into Helspira’s hands. “Think you can run with thirty pounds of skeleton?”
Bag of bones in one hand, sword in the other, Helspira stared, jaw agape. “I ...” She glimpsed the remaining horde and bit her bottom lip. “I can’t just leave you. The Red Sentinel is duty bound to protect the city.”
Rowan huffed. “Then, it’s a good thing you’re not in the Red Sentinel.”
For all those they had killed, plenty remained, and without Sikras’s undead minions to help ... Helspira shook her head. “You’re one man, Banneret. I can’t leave you here alone to bar them from entering the gate.”
Darkness flashed in Rowan’s eyes as he squared his shoulders. “I’ve taken on a lot of rage since my daughter died. Only two things in the world promise to numb that sting. Killing”—he wiped off his blade’s blood on his pants—“and dying. Either way, I come out on top. Now, go.”
Run. Unleash yourself.
Helspira stepped from him, throat dry, adrenaline rising. She faced toward where she had last seen Sikras head, gripped the cloak tighter, dropped her cumbersome sword, and, with the speed of a demon, she ran.
Sikras
TURNS OUT, THE NOVELTY of killing someone—even someone you really hated—wore off after they died the first fifty or so times.
To Sikras’s joy, Ithusa was relatively easy to slaughter; ever a being of incredible power with few natural enemies, it seemed she didn’t dedicate much effort into perfecting her defenses.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was barred from using magic against him, but even her offensive moves were of little threat.
With only so many ways one could swat their frenzied claws at their opponent, her movements grew more predictable each passing minute.
Sikras flourished his fingers and uttered, “Airoumai eis ton aera.”
A circle of snow spiraled and levitated above Ithusa, melted at the snap of a finger, and rained down to drench her dark gray flesh. She slicked the wetness from her body, bottom lip extended. “If you’re trying to get me wet, sweetheart, I respond much better to sultry conversation.”
“Never was good at flirting,” Sikras said, positioning his hands. “But do let me know if you feel a spark.” Following his verbal command, a bolt of lightning cracked down from the sky and sunk into the bones of its water-logged target.
Ithusa convulsed, flesh charred, and her body hit the ground, curled and withered.
Sikras watched. Waited. It wouldn’t be long until she came back. And it wasn’t.
From the lid of her soul jar, a dim glow squeezed through the cork. It snaked up her wrist, her arm, and sank into her chest. Another poor soul consumed and forever lost.
Lurching, Ithusa sat upright, pointed teeth bared through her burned lips.
Sikras held up his hands, arbitrarily counting on his fingers. “Help me out here, Ithusa. It seems I’ve lost track. How many times have I killed you? Fifty-six? Fifty-seven?”
“Awfully cocky for a man who has less than nine lives left. I have one thousand, one-hundred and fifty-eight souls in this jar.” She scowled. “You’ve a long way to go, Catseye.”
He cracked his knuckles, wiggled his fingers, and adjusted his neck. “I’ve got all day.” Lies. Factoring in the lives he had already lost, and the time he’d spent slaughtering her over and over, according to his calculations, he had roughly three hours and change. “Entonos fos.”
Shielding his vision before the blinding flash appeared, Sikras counted in his head, waiting out the spell, until the illumination receded. He caught Ithusa in his gaze, her pupils pinpricks, panicked by her loss of sight.
Without mercy, he continued, “Kinoumenes rizes.”
Roots crested through the snow and wove up and around her legs, her torso, her neck. Veins bulged in her throat; blood vessels burst in her eyes. She tried to gag, tried to scream, but the pressure of the roots stole her oxygen in a deliberately sluggish, merciless manner.
Sikras frowned. How long did it take someone to suffocate? Two minutes or so? Ugh. Even if it only took twenty to thirty seconds to kill her each time, he would still run out of hours before his lives were spent. “Dilitiriodeis ravdoi.”
From the roots, needled barbs appeared and sank into Ithusa’s flesh, like a thousand little daggers. When her body turned flaccid in the roots, they relented.
There. That had to be close to sixty. Goody.
Over a thousand more opportunities to torture the wretch that had the audacity to burden his loved ones, which was all well and good in theory, but damn, even with the full power of the Cat’s Eye, this was exhausting.
Sikras knuckled his lower back and bent his knees, with a groan.
“Fun as this is, we have to speed things up.” He could continue killing her after Imri’s and Vessik’s souls were freed.
And, begrudgingly, the souls of any townsfolk who happened to be stuck in there with them.
The only way he could end Ithusa in time to resurrect Benjamin would be to ensure she had no remaining souls to consume.
Sikras hated manipulation spells. Loathed them. Killing a person? No problem. But infringing on a being’s free will left a bitter taste on his tongue. Still, he showed no hesitation as deft fingers struck the proper poses. “Genua. Kneel.”
A surge rippled across the ground, the spell’s force tugging at Ithusa’s legs. Penetrating her flesh. Constricting her muscles. Commanding them to kneel. She snarled, lashed, fought against the spell’s influence.
The recoil hit him, nothing more than a flinch. Sikras huffed. She could fight it all she wanted. Catseye could recast all day long. “Genua. Kneel.”
Another current struck Ithusa, paralyzing her in place. Sweat slicked down her forehead, and her talons flexed at her sides. Her knees shook, clawed hooves turning up the snow, the soil. Still, she did not kneel.
Growing impatient, Sikras stepped forward. “Genua,” he rasped. “Kneel!”
Ithusa buckled to the ground.
Hyper-focused on the vial, he advanced, until he stopped before her. “Dimittis,” he whispered, outstretching his hand upon the spell’s completion. “Hand it over.”
Ithusa’s arm quaked as she fought the magic’s compulsion.
Her elbow snapped inward, her hand swallowing the vial.
She screamed when her manipulated body ripped the chain from her neck and, trembling, unfurled to offer Sikras the vial.
“I’ll consume them,” she threatened, snarling. “Imri and Vessik.”
“You won’t,” he said with calm confidence. “Only a fool would eat their one bargaining chip.”
He almost had it. Almost touched it with his fingers, before she beckoned forth souls from the vial.
Glowing, slithering lights that squeezed through the impossible seal of the cork and snaked up her fingers, her arms, until they sank into her skin.
With renewed vigor, she fought the spell’s influence, just enough to toss the vial from his reach.
Sikras recognized a desperate last-minute attempt at victory when he saw one. Discarding the soul jar wasn’t just a frantic ploy to avoid handing it over; it was a trap, a distraction to break his focus.
It worked like a charm.
No matter. He didn’t have time for regret. Not when it may well have been one of the only opportunities he was afforded to save Imri and Vessik.
A whispered spell stopped the soul jar mid-flight. “Claudicare.” With a jerk of his arm, it flew into his open palm.
Another incantation encased Sikras in a domed shield, just in time for Ithusa to crash into its side. She snarled, clawing at the translucent enclosure with everything she had.
Sikras inspected the jar with a considering hum. An arcane lock. He felt it. Kneeling, he placed the jar in the snow to free his hands to gesticulate a spell that would pop it. “Opertae.”
A loud click echoed inside the dome. Easy. With nothing to bind them, Sikras plucked the cork and waited for the souls to flee their prison.
They did not.
“Come on,” he muttered, then flinched when the structure of his dome rippled under Ithusa’s raw fury. It wouldn’t bar her long. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind to search the jar’s contents. He discovered, then, why the souls were not abandoning their cell.
Arcane locks. Arcane locks on every. Single. One. He would have to free them individually. The only issue with that being the pissy half-god clawing at the foundation of his protective barrier.