Chapter 9
Calamity
“You may be my daughter,” Trulnuroth had said, “but you’ve hardly a fraction of my power.” He’d pressed the stone totem into Calamity’s hand, just two of his fingers covering her palm entirely. “This will keep me close until you need it. Just call on me, and I will be there.”
For any other father-daughter relationship, it may have been a nice gesture. Touching, even. But Calamity knew that her father was interested in one thing only: power. And any apparent affection for his offspring was almost certainly because of her prophesied ability to bring him more of it.
That said, as Calamity fought back-to-back with Morgana in the underbelly of the Capital, finally dropping the enemy in front of her with three rays of scorching fire, the totem seemed to be calling to her.
Not literally – she would have been at least mildly alarmed if it had been whispering to her in the night or something – but she could really use more of that Prince of Pandemonium power.
The Varjo’s men were no joke; the shadow himself wasn’t even here in the maintenance chamber of the city’s sewers, but Calamity and her friends were losing the battle against his syndicate, and fast. Yorick was on the ground in a heap, bleeding; Eden was fighting off three shadowy dagger-wielders at once, using her arrows as melee weapons; and Liam …
yep, there went Liam soaring through the air, a reddish haze of evocation magic trailing after him, leading back to the spellcaster who had sent him flying.
Calamity watched as Liam landed hard on his shield, then stopped moving.
Calamity turned and held her thumbs together, summoning fire across her splayed hands, the burn exhilarating as she aimed the flames at the fighters in front of Morgana, hoping to catch the ones cornering Eden, too.
But she didn’t look to see if it had worked; she ran over to Liam instead, turning him onto his back and pressing her hands to the gash in his gut, just below his plate mail armour.
She wished desperately that she’d paid attention when Liam and Yorick had cast healing spells in the past – sure, Liam got his power from his oath, but Yorick had studied for it the old-fashioned way – but all she could do was clasp the wound together and wrack her brain for any useful knowledge about how to stop the bleeding.
Eden yelped as she, too, dropped to the floor, and Calamity felt a shudder of fear run through her. She might actually, genuinely lose her friends.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Calamity spared one hand from Liam’s bleeding torso to clasp the totem around her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, despite the battle raging around her, and whispered the only prayer she’d ever uttered, to the last person she wanted to pray to.
“Help me, Dad,” she said. “I call on you, Trulnuroth. Please.”
Suddenly, Calamity’s hand began to burn, and not in the satisfying way that her magic scalded her skin.
She tore the now-glowing totem away from her, snapping the leather strap, and flung it out into the room.
But instead of clattering to the ground like stone should have, it floated in the air, spinning in place, then burst into a bright, purple light so blinding Calamity had to cover her eyes.
When her vision finally cleared, there was a person where the totem had been.
She was tall and lean, all muscle and sinew, with green skin, speckles like a meadowlark’s egg over her arms and face.
Her hair fell to her shoulders in thick, rope-like tendrils, long, pointed ears sticking out from between them.
She was unarmed but for a simple wooden staff, and she wore no armour, though her hands and feet were wrapped in battered fabric.
She had clearly known a fight or two in her day.
Calamity held up her free hand to flag down the newcomer, who ignored her.
Instead, the stranger charged straight for the remaining syndicate members, who were all heading for Morgana, and unleashed the fury Calamity had seen coiled within her from the moment she’d emerged.
She pulled one back by the scruff and used the momentum to kick him against the wall.
The next was the lucky recipient of a surprise staff to the back of the head, making them crumple.
Then, a third assailant – though, who was the assailant here, really, Calamity wondered – took a brutal jab-cross combo to the face.
Calamity felt a stirring beneath her hand, and she looked down to see Liam’s eyes open, his chest rising and falling.
She exhaled sharply in relief. She looked around, her eyes searching for Yorick and Eden.
Yorick had propped himself up on an elbow, watching the fight, and Eden … yes, Eden was stable, too.
“Here, let me,” Liam said, reaching up to Calamity’s face, his fingers skirting a cut on her forehead, but she shirked away from him.
“You need it more than I do,” she said. “Heal yourself so you can get the others up.” Then she pushed to her feet, ready to help Morgana and this stranger her father had sent her.
By the time she reached the centre of the chamber, though, Morgana was doubled over in exhaustion, and the stranger stood over a pile of bodies.
Calamity could hear the patter of footsteps as one of the enemies ran away through the sewers, but she didn’t go after them.
Instead, she locked eyes with this mysterious warrior, who was holding her gaze with the oddest combination of intensity and disdain.
“Who are you?” Calamity asked, trying her best to keep her voice measured and even. “How did you get here?”
“I am Nashala,” the stranger said, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a smirk. “And your father sent me. The Prince of Pandemonium sends his regards.”