Chapter XXXIII
XXXIII
The borith typically measures between one and two meters long.
It has no eyes or ears. Orifices at the base of its tentacular arms serve both digestive and reproductive functions.
These orifices also release a venomous mist when the borith is frightened, which causes severe burns when it contacts human skin.
The borith is not susceptible to death by dismemberment, as it can regenerate limbs seemingly endlessly.
Some form of magical disintegration, for instance baelfyr, is necessary.
Panicking, Vic stared at Xan, who met her concerned gaze with his own. She hastened to stand, adjusting her clothing with shaking hands. She wobbled a little, and Xan steadied her.
“We need to go,” she said. “There are still people here.”
He rubbed her back before releasing her, looking reluctant.
Vic faced the door and eased out the muscles in her hands.
She felt reinvigorated but still exhausted.
Drained, that was the word Xan had used.
She knew from lessons that using too much magic too quickly could be fatal, especially for Mades.
Vic swallowed, and Xan’s eyes followed the movement of her throat. The intimacy of the exchange settled hard over Vic. She was vulnerable, raw, and he was helping her. Knowing eyes caught the expression in hers, and Vic thought he understood the gratitude she couldn’t voice.
“Where should we go?” Vic asked. “The apartments?”
Xan shook his head and stepped in front of her. “Front door,” he said, his voice almost a grunt. “Anyone looking to escape will head that way.”
He put his hand on the doorknob and turned to Vic with a determined expression. The Chief Sentinel was back, though worry lingered in his eyes.
“You’re gonna move fast, okay?” Xan said. “Faster than you’ve ever moved before. Straight to the front door. You need to get out of the castle.”
“No, I want to help—”
“You need to get out,” he repeated. “If you lose me, keep going.”
Vic couldn’t think about leaving Xan behind. She wouldn’t, if it came to that. He had come back for her, and they would leave together. She would help him get the others out—that was the only way she would leave. But Vic nodded anyway, because Xan wouldn’t open the door if she didn’t.
“Stay behind me,” he said, and he flung the door open.
In the hallway, the crushed corpse of the arachni held Vic’s gaze for the instant it took her to realize she’d puke if she looked any longer. Peeling her eyes away, she followed Xan when he started running in the opposite direction.
Sound filled the castle. Orcans tore through the halls, sniveling at doorways, looking for a meal. The roar overwhelmed Vic, and she struggled to focus on what she needed to hear: the approach of feet nearby, people who might need help.
But the screaming had stopped. Vic tried not to dwell on what that might mean.
When the wall veered left, they followed it. Another long corridor stretched in front of them, and Vic recognized one of the paintings. They were on the first floor, near the dining hall. The exit was close, maybe two or three hundred meters away.
Something rattled out of an apartment ahead of them, running so quickly it couldn’t slow when it hit the hallway.
Its legs went out from under it—there were too many of them, all akimbo in the air as the creature stumbled—but it didn’t need to right itself.
It clung to the walls on sticky feet and faced them.
It was as tall as the ceiling, with a squat, crab-like body and a long, serpentine neck that bent and twisted to keep its head level no matter how the body moved.
Xan ran forward, untouched by the panic clawing up Vic’s throat, and unsheathed a dagger from his belt.
The creature gnashed at him with pointed teeth.
With its neck so long, it could bite him without Xan getting a clear shot at its abdomen, and Vic knew its only weakness lay in thin ridges between belts of iron-hard armor covering its belly.
But before the thing’s teeth could reach him, Xan dropped into a slide, like a runner crossing home plate.
As he glided under the Orcan, Xan raised his dagger, slicing twice lengthwise.
A gush of brown liquid doused Xan as the beast brayed and fell on its side. Xan eased out from under it and jogged back to Vic.
Its blood sizzled and steamed on Xan’s skin. He leaped over the lifeless Orcan and encouraged Vic to follow. She eyed its open mouth as she passed, teeth sharp and gleaming with rotten black at the center.
They were nearly there. One more hallway, and they’d be at the exit.
But when Vic rounded the corner, she slammed to a stop.
There was blood on the floor.
Red blood.
Human blood.
In steaks across the floor and down, leading into a meeting room off the main hallway.
Xan tried to pull Vic away from it, but she shook him off and followed the trail of blood.
Too much blood. Too much for one person.
In the darkened corner of the room something hunched. With sinking horror Vic recognized the laetite. White skin, spiked and sharp. Nearly human arms, tipped in claws as long as her hand. A face like a blooming flower, full of teeth and blood.
Vic refused to recognize the sound when it hit her. Chewing, bones breaking, the wet smacking of flesh against teeth. She stood in the doorway and stared at the monstrous shape in the corner, and the thing underneath it, the crumpled mess of blood.
She recognized the cloak as the garment the servants wore. But the person’s face was out of view, blocked by the laetite sitting on its chest.
Vic stared at the pile of bodies beside it. Not just one servant, but several.
They had almost made it out.
Xan tugged on her arm again, and the movement made the laetite’s head jerk up.
It spun toward Vic with its mouth stretched wide in a roar, displaying rows and rows of blood-dripping teeth.
The window behind it exploded.
“We have to go,” Xan said in her ear, but Vic couldn’t drag her eyes from the creature as it climbed up from the servant’s body.
There were cracks in the wall near the window now, like the castle was breaking apart. The fissures spread, loud as screams, toward the creature, forcing it to step away. One of the servants’ bodies fell into the crevasse.
“Now, dammit,” Xan shouted, and he pulled Vic backward into the entrance hall.
The air was full of smoke. Something big was on fire.
Black clouded Vic’s vision and she coughed.
But Xan’s hand clung to her arm, and he tugged her through the murk.
Vic sprinted toward the hazy outline of the front door’s archway. She didn’t take her eyes from her escape, and she did not see the Orcan coming.
A beast with a body like a squid streaked through the air in front of Vic, and Xan’s hand was torn away from her arm.
Vic fell with the strength of the pull and screamed for Xan, who lay under the Orcan that attacked him, a borith.
Two other boriths descended upon Xan’s prone form, and Vic ran forward—unsure how to accomplish it but determined to free him.
He was pinned to the floor, and they were going to kill him if she didn’t do something.
Until Xan’s form slipped out of reality.
In an instant, he became the shadow she’d seen so often. With no transitory form, he flicked out like a light. A second later, the creatures surrounding him were flung back. A gust of wind like a hurricane hit Vic, and she stumbled as Xan solidified beside her.
He had a deep burn on his arm, several inches wide and oozing, which Xan appeared not to notice as he squared up. His eyes roamed the smoky room, looking for more enemies to fight. Vic spun beside him, searching for the exit now that she’d lost her bearings.
She had less than a second’s warning.
All around them, a crowd of Orcans gathered.
There was no pause. No delay. No moment of hesitation before they pounced.
The creatures came at them in a fury, all intent on the same goal. They would tear her and Xan apart.
Vic took a hurried gasp before the monsters were thrown back by a wall of shadow. The blast stunned them, threw them aside like insects slapped out of the sky, but they weren’t dead, and they would get back up.
“New plan,” Xan announced as the creatures began to rise. They stirred around Vic and Xan, pulling themselves up on knobby, bestial legs. “You run. I’ll hold them off.”
He pushed her in the direction of the door and ran toward the Orcans.
But Vic couldn’t move. She stared as Xan advanced on the throng like the god of death delivering vengeance. At the edges he blended out of shape, and shadows concealed his form.
Tendrils of darkness carrying magic struck the beasts as they pounced, but Xan couldn’t get them all. A handful of Orcans grew close enough to attack him, and they ripped and tore at his shadowed form.
Vic couldn’t watch. She couldn’t look away.
She couldn’t leave.
Not when this was her mess as much as his.
Vic ran behind Xan, unarmed and unsure how to help.
But she was not powerless. She didn’t know how to control her newfound abilities, but Vic trusted that somewhere, deep inside, she could figure it out.
She threw herself at an Orcan before it reached Xan’s side and tackled it to the ground. It fell with a screech, and Vic landed on top of it. A face like a mantis’s looked up at Vic, dazed for an instant before its pincers began grabbing at the air in front of her.
Not knowing what else she could possibly do, Vic punched it.
The massive insect’s head crumbled with the crunch of a breaking exoskeleton. Vic pulled her fist from the hole she’d made and tried not to gag at the thick liquid oozing off her knuckles.
Vic clambered to a crouch as another creature closed its jaws around her elbow.
Here was where the instinct kicked in.
It came out of Vic fast. The whole thing must have lasted less than a second, but time slowed to a crawl as she felt a bundle of thread unwind within her chest. A single string plucked from the mass seemed to exit through Vic’s sternum.
The skin at the exit point contracted around the thread, which thrummed with life as it wriggled in the air.
Vic felt the knot inside of her twist as it made room for more to follow.
The thread went where Vic thought it ought to, and it lashed at the Orcans like a whip.
Where it made contact, they burned. It hit their bodies like a flame, and they fell.
At the same time, the floor split again.
With a deafening roar, stone broke in the center and crumbled, sending dead and half-dead Orcans tumbling into the space beneath the entrance hall, a gaping hole in the ground dragging them to hell.
And Vic could feel it, an extension of her body like her own hand forcing the floor away, breaking stone and tearing the castle apart.
When the sensation ended, Vic stared at the burned bodies of the Orcans where they lay, adding smoke to the room. It was still. For now.
“Jesus Christ,” Xan swore.
He grabbed Vic’s arm and pulled her forward.
She stumbled.
She was exhausted. How had she forgotten?
In the distance, she heard the heavy steps of more monsters come to call on them, though Vic couldn’t muster the energy to care. Xan was shouting something Vic also couldn’t find the energy to care about. He wrapped an arm around her waist, dragging her to the exit.
When Xan shouldered open the front door, the cold hit Vic with a slap, and she tripped.
She took Xan with her, and they fell down the snow-covered steps on their sides, limbs tangling as they hit each other and every step on the way down.
Vic landed, coughing, in the snow. She stared up at the stone face of Avalon Castle and marveled at the creatures filling it. The doors swung shut behind them, but Orcans pawed at the windows, seeking exit.
Orcans crawled behind the glass, fighting one another in their search for prey. Fire burned on the second floor, lighting the night. It was chaos. Pure chaos.