Chapter 22 Traitor
TRAITOR
Ozirax
“Frank! What the fuck?” Kaly screamed, barely dodging the snapping jaw of the not-kewniq as they sprinted toward the—thankfully abandoned—edges of town. “This is not funny!”
“Spicy,” Ozirax shouted over the hissing beast. “Less antagonizing a god, a little more running.”
“I can multitask,” she snapped back, hot on Garion’s heels. “Can you? I thought you had a plan!”
Of course this was the woman he would fall in love with.
He shouted over his shoulder, “Get the monster out of Heck.”
“That’s only half a plan, you—motherfucker!”
Ozirax turned at her curse as she was swiping her sword blindly behind her. It glanced off the sharp claws of the enlarged monster, but he saw the splatter of red across its paw.
Kalypso didn’t break stride as she gained distance, but there was a wince of pain on her features right before the scent filled his nostrils.
Metallic. Sharp.
Human blood.
Her right hand swung up with the next pump of her arms, forearm wet and stained red.
“Kaly—”
“I’m fine,” she shouted, but at least she was smart enough to focus on their escape.
“She’s right.” Tonomoch kept stride with Oz, maces held tight in his grip. “I get that we’re leading the thing away from civilians and further damage to the city, but at some point we’re going to need to do something about it.”
Ozirax gestured toward the Veilwood, to the hill leading to the border of the Dreadmoor and their target. “We need to close the tear between planes. Two on the beast, two to stop anything more from coming out of the portal. I’ll handle the traitor.”
Thank all the gods that the transformed beast was more interested in Kalypso’s fresh blood, as if that were any better, but at least she could handle herself.
There were grunts of affirmation behind him, a shifting into better position as the top of the portal came into view, and the moment Ozirax saw Dolgeraus’s kneeling form, they split. Rand and Garion sprinted for the portal while Tonomoch fell back to help Kaly.
With the large portal into the depths of hell to his left, Ozirax turned right—toward the demon currently trying to open another small portal for the swooping mylioptera under his thrall.
His feet were fast and light, his sickle drawn, and his mind whirring with strategy. Dolgeraus’s back was turned, and as much as Ozirax wanted to lodge his sickle in the base of the demon’s skull, he needed the bastard alive to face the council for his actions.
It was rather unfortunate, then, that the not-kewniq chose the most inopportune time to let out a shriek and ruin Ozirax’s plan of tackling the traitor in surprise.
Dolgeraus turned, rune half completed, and Oz saw the new sparks in his periphery a moment too late.
The weight collided with him, too strong and fast to result in anything but an ungraceful tumble off target. Pain seared down his side as he rolled, ribs screaming as whatever had just slipped through the small portal continued to run over him in its attempt to escape.
And just as Oz was kicked free, he caught a glimpse of the hiriivi’s mad dash into the Dreadmoor with no other corruption from the rune besides a broken tine off an antler.
Dazed, he could have sworn that beast had looked familiar—from another glimpse down a weak portal as it paced in an alley. It’d had all its tines then, though.
Ozirax glanced down, letting out a curse.
Well, he knew where the piece of antler had gone.
Black blood bubbled out from around the broken shard where it had embedded deep in his hip.
Just a slow drip, with a pain vicious enough to warn him that removing the thing wouldn’t be enjoyable, nor be something he could heal quickly with one of his own inked runes.
This was a job for Rand’s magic, and since the healer was currently locked in battle with a scyphomoth, he was just going to have to deal with it.
He let out a shout of pain as he pushed to his knees, then his feet, legs unsteady underneath him. But that was a problem for future him, because Dolgeraus was storming forward—still a soft limp in his step—blade pointed toward Ozirax.
“You ruin everything,” he snarled, readjusting his grip. The sword looked too light in his hands, probably stolen from the barracks. “Sniffing around the summonings thinking that no one would notice.”
Ozirax lifted his sickle, trying and failing to put weight on his leg. “All of this for a fucking promotion?”
“It never had to come to this, but your pathetic human couldn’t even keep you from applying for captain. I warned her there would be consequences, but this is just further proof she doesn’t care. None of the humans do.”
Oz didn’t bother clarifying that the application hadn’t been his doing—at this point, it wouldn’t have done anything to change their predicament.
“You had to go sprinting into the Dreadmoor after Diaran’s squad.
Forcing me to rush and lose control of a lekguine, who took a chunk from my thigh.
The human’s nose wasn’t strong enough to pick up on it at the fundraiser, but it’s good to see your distraction over that pathetic creature kept you from finding out my secret. ”
Well, Ozirax couldn’t deny that.
“But it’s not nearly as bad as your injury.
” Dolgeraus circled, eyeing Oz’s hip and the blood spreading across his pant leg.
“I had no intentions of creating those portals inside Heck, but you left me no choice.” His tail whipped behind him, clubbed end a looming threat.
“And now that you and your squad have seen me, I will have to report the devastating news of finding your team dead at the edges of the Dreadmoor.”
Ozirax darted a glance at the squad. Kaly was causing a commotion, blood attracting more than just the not-kewniq as any monster who sniffed her way locked in.
Tonomoch was doing his best, the fluffy thing slowing with half a dozen gashes on its legs, but not enough to be considered successful.
And the two were spending more time protecting Kaly than doing damage to the threat.
Rand and Garion blocked the summoning portal, deftly dodging the fissure that had split the ground—no doubt the source of the quake.
Monsters continued to spill from the endless depths of the tear, but there was no change to the void’s size even in Dolgeraus’s distraction.
Which meant the rune was still active, burned into… his body?
That magic would be difficult to find, but it felt too obvious. He wouldn’t be able to maintain something that big on his body, and the magic would destroy him. It needed a better anchor, a draw of magic rooted in sorcery…
Dolgeraus shifted, almost imperceptibly, but not before Ozirax saw what the demon intended to hide just beyond the Dreadmoor border. The blades of grass had been burned, soil upturned in an indecipherable pattern at this angle, but still unmistakable as a summoning rune.
He’d bet every spike on his body that disrupting that patch of ground would stop the portal.
Dolgeraus took another limping step forward, not as inconvenienced by the injury as Oz was with his. “At least you will die heroes of Heck, closing that portal, not that I’ll give the human bitch such credit. No one here will miss that one.”
“It’s funny,” Ozirax grunted, shifting to better load weight on his good leg. “You speak as if you’re walking out of here unscathed.”
The demon growled, fangs bared. “I was denied a place in the guard because there are only limited spaces, forced to push papers and run messages for a grizzled old warrior with no vision for years. Then a human is given the chance that rightfully belonged to demons. Have we forgotten that humans are the reason we are stuck here? Severath made a mistake in bringing them back, and we give funds to house them? Feed them? Instead of protecting our borders from those abominations?”
In the distance, there was no change—no ability for any of Ozirax’s squad to break away and do anything but maintain their positions. No aid would come. No, it was simply his stupid injured self against a demon with years of determination and hate driving him.
Except Dolgeraus shouldn’t have picked a fight with a demon who had more rage in a single forearm spike than most demons carried in their entire lifetimes.
And he had a spicy human he was determined to see at the end of all this.
Ignoring the pain, Ozirax dug deep into his adrenaline and let it fuel his fight.
Maybe he’d not been this injured before, but he’d felt pain.
Fought through gashes and broken bones and concussions.
The antler in his hip was an obstacle, yes, but it was stemming the bleeding for now. Keeping him focused.
He launched forward, meeting Dolgeraus’s strike while punching forward. A dodge, a sweep of his tail, another clash of their blades.
Ozirax had to hand it to the male. He may have stolen a weapon, may have failed to get into the guard, but he hadn’t given up training. And with Oz at a disadvantage, it was proving to be just what the blue demon needed to keep the upper hand.
Whenever he could manage, Oz took in the scene behind him.
The fluffy creature was on its last leg—literally—as Kaly drove her blades into its shoulder, and Tonomoch yanked his mace out of a mangled mylioptera nearby.
Rand was panting, holding an arm over his stomach as yellow healing light illuminated the black blood running from his wound.
Garion used brute strength to push a screeching lekguine toward the fissure in the ground.
Just a little longer.
With every attempt to get closer to the rune, Dolgeraus was there, driving Ozirax back with fist, tail, blade. Pushing him farther from his target. Deeper into the Dreadmoor.
But there was one last chance. Give up a weakness in a final attempt to get to the rune.
Oz dove and swung his tail behind him, spikes digging deep into the male’s stomach.
Dolgeraus returned the favor with his tail as well.