The streets of Vornstrom were empty.
The wide lanes of the capital felt far too large and the buildings too tall, as though Eni was at the bottom of a vast canyon. Without anyone to give the city its life, it felt coldly impersonal, the graceful spires that soared overhead an empty boast from a long-dead emperor. There were still some glimmers of the Vornstrom Eni had known; here and there were abandoned street carts, filling the air with the incongruously mouth-watering scents of spira and moretum, and as she passed in front of a bath house she spotted a beautifully embroidered silk shawl laying crumpled and abandoned atop the cobblestones.
The wind was bitterly cold as they hurried along, the clouds overhead a leaden gray as they unleashed flurries of snowflakes. The trees lining the winding avenues rustled mournfully as they shed their leaves, their autumn colors vivid and bright against the gleaming snow. Eni fought back a shiver but at her side Tin was utterly unaffected, his bare chest showing each of his even breaths.
Their honor guards were keeping a steady pace around them, the colonel in the lead jogging briskly as she made turn after turn with utter confidence. She had introduced herself as Ovetsiv and named each of her soldiers much too rapidly for any to stick in Eni's head before they set off. Fidelius had flown off to report that they had successfully entered the city, the Avian quickly vanishing into the teeming flock circling overhead. Eni tried to focus on following the ewe and nothing else, but the sounds of battle could not be denied.
The deeply musical twang of ballistas releasing was accompanied by the heavy whistling of boulders from catapults, the shouts of mammals and calls of Avians sounding far too close even as the group made its way deeper into Vornstrom. There came a sudden flash of light from the outer wall, quick as lightning, followed an instant later by a deep rumbling roar that Eni felt in her chest.
The paw of the same dingo who had questioned Tin flew to his neck as he pulled out a small charm of the Mother on a fine silver chain, his fingers squeezing it reflexively. "They're already firing the brimstone batteries," he murmured, his brows furrowing as he glanced backwards.
Some of the younger soldiers nervously did the same, and Eni couldn't resist the urge to look herself. "Eyes forward!" Colonel Ovetsiv bellowed crisply, and although the guardsmammals obeyed almost instantly Eni couldn't tear her eyes away.
The wall was just visible between the gaps in the graceful buildings; it couldn't have been more than half a mile away but the setting sun and the falling snow made the solid stone seem hazily distant. Each percussive blast of a brimstone battery was accompanied by a whirling cloud of smoke that caught the light of the next volley, glowing like a lamp. The defenders were dark blotches, only standing out because of how lightly-colored the wall itself was, but they weren't all Eni saw.
There were legs.
She could hear Begotten screeching and roaring as their enormous bodies were torn to pieces by round shot, the red hot glow of the iron shells dancing across her vision. The monsters were climbing the walls, and the terrible din of the artillery grew so frequent that each volley was nearly indistinguishable from the next. Had Renald perished? Had Aza failed? Terrible fears filled Eni, punctuated with each blast.
"Eni!"
She jerked at her name; Tin was grasping her arm, pulling her along as his gaze met hers, his face hard and yet not without sympathy. She swallowed hard and nodded reluctantly, desperately trying to blot out what she had seen as they kept running. The street lamps were coming to life, the clever automatic system bathing them in their pleasantly warm glow, but it wasn't enough to overcome the flash of the brimstone batteries. The colonel leading the way was the very picture of focus, her eyes locked forward as she took them around a fountain that had frozen over in the sudden chill.
Eni's feet slipped and scrabbled on the smooth black marble but she remained resolutely upright, her arms pumping as she skittered across an empty plaza. They were passing a tea house she recognized; she had spent a pleasant afternoon in it years ago reading a copy of On Ontological Principles she had found for the Archivist.
A frown crossed her face as reality defied her memory; the cozy chairs outside the shop were scattered and overturned, shards of shattered ceramic and frozen puddles of teas visible where patrons had abandoned their drinks in their hurry to flee. The ewe guiding them slowed down slightly as she weaved her way through the mess, and ahead Eni could see the broad street narrowing as the buildings grew closer together.
The apartment buildings had cheerful wooden façades, elegantly carved and brightly painted in deliberate contrast to the austere stone of the public buildings. It was a contrast Eni had always loved, one that was as unique to Vornstrom as its tile mosaics and the dizzying array of aqueducts that radiated through the city like the strands of a spider web, and there should have been colorful lamps glowing in each window to complete the picture.
Instead, everything was dark and silent, the rapidly accumulating snow muffling sounds and softening the lines of the intricate woodwork. Their destination was still too far away to see, the citadel of Wondobar obscured by seemingly endless miles of closely packed buildings. Eni only hoped that its own walls would stand long enough to keep the civilians inside safe until she and Tin were finished with their terrible task. She didn't know what would await them where the Faceless Kings maintained their lonely vigil, her stomach twisting into knots as awful possibilities occurred to her. Perhaps the strange hare who had given her the small golden statue had been another deception, another terrible game that the Visitor was playing. In the moment, Eni had been certain that her guest had meant to help her, but with the added distance of time her certainty had eroded somewhat.
She pushed down her doubts, trying to be as steadfast as she possibly could, and she wished she had the breath to ask Tin how he managed. Keeping up with him and their escorts was pushing her almost to her limits, every bruise and ache she had gathered on their ride to Vornstrom making itself known as she did her best to hurry, her satchel bouncing up and down on her back. At some point her bed roll had come loose and fallen off, but whether it had been on horseback or on their sprint through the city didn't matter. It was only extra weight, and Eni would happily sleep on bare rock if it meant they had succeeded.
Eni squeezed her eyes briefly shut and shook her head slightly, marshaling her thoughts; she could feel her mind wandering as she searched for anything to keep her attention off the burning in her legs or the pounding of her heart, but the last thing she wanted to do was falter. She focused on her breathing, not reaching for her power but simply staying aware of herself, visualizing the blood in her veins as it flowed through her. She could almost see it, as though her body was a vast and three dimensional map, and—
From behind there came a great burst of light, brighter than the sun, and then Eni was deaf.
There was no other way to describe the force of the noise that hit her ears; it was beyond anything imaginable, so crushing that there was room for nothing else in her mind. Her vision blurred as her eyes shook like jelly in her skull, her lungs pulsing with the shockwaves, and Eni was thrown from her feet as the ground underneath quaked.
Tin caught her just before her head struck a paving stone, the wolf kneeling as he clutched at her arms, but she could barely feel his fingers. A flash of heat had passed over her, boiling warm compared to the frigid air, and Eni numbly noted that she couldn't see her breath anymore. She reeled, swaying drunkenly in Tin's arms as her balance swam unevenly, her throbbing ears filled with a high-pitched ringing.
Tin's lips were moving but she couldn't make out the words, and she stared at him in mute wonder as she strained her hearing. Behind Tin, every window visible in the apartment building had shattered, the street littered with shards of broken glass. One of them had slashed Tin's chest, leaving a vividly red line across the creamy white of his fur, and Eni fumbled for him, trying to feel how deep the wound was.
Her fingers only left bloody streaks in his fur; his skin was unbroken and whole, his muscles firm against her touch. She tried to speak but even her own voice was lost to the din filling her ears as he gently pulled her upright, brushing fragments of glass off her head. Eni tottered, crying out as she wobbled on unsteady legs, but Tin held her firmly until the ground felt solid again. Her entire body felt bruised as she looked around for the soldiers, sucking in an uneven breath as her eyes met those of a deer.
He was sprawled across the pavement, blood oozing from where a piece of glass the size of Eni's palm had embedded itself in his neck along a narrow gap his armor didn't cover. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath, gingerly touching his wound as he tried to sit up. The buck had the worst injury by far, but the other members of the Emperor's Guard had not survived unscathed; the dingo had a painful-looking gash across his forehead and an impala was clutching an ankle twisted at an unnatural angle as she grimaced. Rivulets of blood were streaming down the face of the colonel from half a dozen shallow cuts, her wool soaked and dripping as she staggered toward Eni and Tin and bellowed something.
Her voice seemed to be coming from deep underwater, but as Eni strained the words at last became comprehensible. "Can you run?" Ovetsiv asked, and it took Eni a moment to understand before she nodded.
Her entire head was throbbing, warm trickles of blood flowing out of her ears, but as her equilibrium came back she felt far less shaky on her feet. The ewe nodded crisply before turning back to her troops. "Leave that in, Pequin!" she snapped at the buck, who was still touching the shard lodged in his neck, "Come on, help me get Treiva up."
Between the two of them, they got the impala back to her feet, Pequin carefully supporting her as she leaned against him and stood on her one good leg. Eni could only stare back the way they had come; the distant outer wall was hidden by a cloud of dust, and even as Eni watched she could hear debris raining back down to the ground. Flaming scraps shot across the sky, falling with a dream-like slowness as they swirled and mingled with the snow.
"What happened?" Eni asked, gaping at the devastation.
"Powder magazine exploded," Ovetsiv said grimly, and Eni's heart sank.
"The Failure of the Sudden Flame," she whispered, and the ewe nodded.
Over two hundred years ago, before the Slayer had even been born, the catastrophic failure of a brimstone battery had set off a chain reaction that devastated the defenders standing against monsters in a series of massive explosions that had torn apart solid rock and left a crater that was still visible.
History repeated itself.
Eni didn't want to imagine the damage that had been done, but she had seen illustrations from the long-ago battle. Perhaps Vornstrom would be more fortunate, but her stomach still churned as she thought of Aza and his forces, desperately fighting their way to reinforce the brave defenders on the wall. Ovetsiv's soldiers had been watching warily, but at Eni's words the dingo turned his head and spat.
"The artillery did this?" he said, his injured face suddenly hideous as it twisted furiously, "We shouldn't have trusted anything made by fucking foxes! Odds are—"
"Enough, Kellis," Colonel Ovetsiv snapped, and although the ewe was much shorter than the dingo he still straightened reflexively at her words, "The monsters must have overrun the powder magazine. I don't care how crafty you think foxes are, they couldn't have planned for that."
A note of grim humor had come into the sheep's voice, her tone steely as she faced her squadron. "This doesn't change our mission," Ovetsiv said firmly, "We—"
"Why not?" Kellis interrupted, and his voice cracked on the words.
The dingo looked suddenly and desperately young, his face lost and confused as he turned to look at Tin. "Why can't you stop this?" he begged, his eyes bright with unshed tears, "Can't you— Aren't you the Master of Magic?"
"No," Tin replied, his voice almost too low to be heard, his eyes not meeting the dingo's.
Kellis groped for Tin, collapsing to his knees as his fingers slipped through the fur of the wolf's chest. "Would only make it worse," Tin continued, all of the soldiers looking at him despondently, "Only one way to end this: I slay their master. Anything else…"
He trailed off, apparently unsure of how to continue, and Eni jumped in. "They'll just keep coming," she said, "Ti— The Slayer and I have to keep going. We… We can't stop."
Her heart broke as she uttered the words, watching as all the hope seemed to be squashed out of the soldiers. She knew what they wanted, because it was the very thing she had desperately desired not too long ago. They wanted the Slayer to do it all, to emerge from the mists of time and mete out justice, striking down the wicked and protecting the innocent.
But he couldn't do both.
It was the part of the stories everyone chose to ignore. No one wanted to think that their city could be the next Drispas, the next example of their hero arriving too late. At Tin's feet Kellis wept openly, his composure completely destroyed. Ovetsiv was the first to move, the ewe walking to stand in front of Tin, and for a moment Eni almost expected the sheep to slap him.
Instead she bowed, her wooly head dipping low as she prostrated herself before Tin. "Then we've wasted too much time already, sir wolf," she said, and she grabbed Kellis's shoulder.
"On your feet, ensign," she said, but the order was almost kind.
The dingo staggered upright, still blinking away tears as he tried to hold himself at attention. "Kellis, Treiva, and Pequin," she barked, indicating each in order, "The Slayer can't stop and protect our city. You can. I want you on fire suppression. This entire district is going to go up like a bonfire if we can't get some water on it."
Eni saw that the ewe was right; some of the buildings nearby were already smoldering from the falling debris. Hungry flames were beginning to lick across the woodwork, smoke coming out of the eaves of apartments in plumes. "As for the rest of us—" Ovetsiv began, but she was interrupted by the far off rumble of drums followed by a sound Eni had only ever heard once before.
Monsters had breached the walls.
The sirens wailed, a deep bass pressure accompanied by a keening overtone that sent chills down Eni's spine. "Mother's milk!" a kudu lieutenant swore softly, his eyes widening, and Eni could feel the force of will Ovetsiv was exerting begin to slip away.
The ewe's expression tightened, her chin jutting up defiantly as she continued loudly enough to be heard over the unsettling alarm. "I want those eyes as sharp as your spears, soldiers! We're taking the Slayer to the vermin lord fucking with our city!" she roared, "Come on!"
The cheer the soldiers let loose was rather ragged, but they fell into formation nonetheless and were soon off running again, the three members that the ewe had excluded setting off in a different direction. Eni quickly lost sight of Kellis's contingent as Ovetsiv led them onward, but she murmured a silent prayer for their success. The sun had slipped past the horizon but it was still much too bright, the combination of street lamps and burning buildings giving everything a sickly orange tint as they desperately raced for the citadel.
Every now and then Eni could hear the distant shouts of mammals, getting closer as they fell away from the ruined wall. She was sure the defenders were heading for Emperor Wordermund's former citadel, and she hoped they would make it.
Tin had seemed utterly confident as he described their mission to the doubtful ensign, but Eni wondered how much of it had been feigned. The wolf certainly didn't look uncertain as he sprinted at her side; he seemed assured in a way that Eni had never seen, his movements tightly economical as he dealt with the uncertain terrain. There were more windows that had shattered from the concussive force of the powder battery explosion, but Tin's feet effortlessly touched only the safe spots, his balance perfect as he ran. In other places, shutters or signs had been knocked loose, some of them burning, but he leapt them gracefully, his pace never slackening even as Ovetsiv ran as hard as she possibly could. At times, Tin was right on her heels, but even as they crossed block after block he wasn't panting for breath.
Tin's chest was rising and falling so shallowly that it was as though he was simply taking a stroll, the bloody paw print Eni had left on his gleaming fur barely moving. Around them, the soldiers in their heavy armor were clearly struggling as they ran up the gently sloped ramp of a graceful pedestrian bridge that crossed a stream. Sheets of cloudy ice covered the surface of the water, but as they neared the far end Eni felt moisture on her face.
Despite the chilly temperature it was still welcome and refreshing, and she blinked as she looked about before at last identifying the source. They were in the shadow of an aqueduct, its imposing and yet elegant supports gleaming in the flickering light of the fires burning behind them, and it was raining water down upon them. It was misty and cool, and although the pipes and channels of the waterworks were much too high to make out in the evening gloom, Eni realized that the team Ovetsiv had dispatched had succeeded in their goal.
She pushed herself on even harder, but as they entered another neighborhood on the far side of the river the sheep stopped suddenly, swinging her weapon up and giving a wordless command to her soldiers. Before them was the first Begotten Eni had seen inside Vornstrom, the creature nearly the size of a hippopotamus, but it was completely still. Its eyes were cold and dark, its horrible grasping legs splayed out at odd angles as the bulk of its body rested crookedly against a haberdasher's shop window.
"Is it…" the kudu lieutenant asked in a hushed tone, his fingers tightening around his polearm as he considered the beast.
"Dead," Tin said flatly, but before the soldiers could celebrate he cocked his head back and sniffed at the air.
"More coming," he added, and Eni wearily began running again.
The closer they got to the citadel, the closer the battle became. The creatures must have moved with unfathomable speed, because the corpses were a more frequent discovery. None of them was particularly large by the standards of the swarm outside Vornstrom; the first they had seen was also the biggest, and the way the smaller ones had died was no mystery.
Some of their bodies were still burning with the alchemical tar Avians had dosed them in, the sticky resin still hot enough to melt glass as the flames sputtered against cobblestones. Others were barely more than foul-smelling hulks of ichor, consumed entirely by the casks dropped on them. Eni felt fiercely proud of the defenders, but as their destination at last came into sight in the distance a vague unease began to fill her.
All of the monsters were too small.
Perhaps it meant only that the larger beasts had been slower, or that they had been easier targets and dealt with before they could get closer to Vornstrom's heart, but all of the monsters Eni had seen outside the city had been enormous; even the tiniest of them had been quite a bit larger than what they saw within the walls. Some of the corpses were puny, barely larger than Eni herself was, and she turned the idea over in her head, trying to figure out an explanation, until they turned a corner and the puzzle answered itself.
There was another monstrous corpse before them, but it wasn't quite a Begotten. It only had five legs, but they were terribly mismatched, the two on one side completely lacking the wicked claws of the three on the other. Its limbs were strangely slender, almost graceful, and atop its misshapen head it seemed almost to be sprouting branches like a tree. The creature's maw was open, revealing a number of rather blunt teeth mixed in with its fangs, and the ichor that oozed from its wounds was both red and black.
"Mother's mercy," Ovetsiv gasped as she came to a halt, the ewe's eyes wide as she considered the terrible thing before them, "It… He was a moose."
She was right. Scraps of an Emperor's Guard uniform still clung to the malformed corpse, and one terribly mammalian eye stared blankly at the sky. One of the moose's antlers had begun to recede into his skull, like a seedling sprouting in reverse, but the other was perfectly recognizable for what it was. The dead mammal's skin was terribly scabrous, his fur having fallen out in uneven patches, and the flesh it revealed was horribly mottled and bulging with dark veins.
The ewe looked sickened as she took a step back, and when one of her soldiers reached out to tentatively poke at the corpse she snapped at him. "Burn it," she ordered, "With honors."
The goat almost looked as though he was about to argue before he began muttering a rapid prayer to the Mother under his breath, striking a match and setting the sad remains ablaze. "If he wasn't already dead," Ovetsiv asked quietly, turning to Tin as she caught her breath, "If he was just… half-monster. Could you have cured him?"
It was the very same question Eni would have asked, but Tin only shook his head minutely, his eyes sorrowful as he considered the fallen moose. "The Mother weeps," Ovetsiv murmured, "So this is why you don't let them get their ichor in you."
Eni's stomach turned at the idea of Aza, twisted and deformed as he began turning into the very thing he was fighting, and she hoped she had done enough. The ewe still looked stricken and Eni was sure she was thinking of the three soldiers she had sent off, two of them too badly injured to run, but the colonel took in a deep breath. "We're almost there," she said, "Turn right at that intersection and keep going. Just another half mile, dead ahead."
The sheep smiled crookedly. "Good hunting, Slayer," she added, "You don't need us anymore; we're only slowing you down."
Tin didn't deny that he could run faster than the ewe or any of her squadron, but he reached out and squeezed her hoof in his paw. "Good hunting," he repeated solemnly, and then he turned away, sparing a glance at Eni.
She nodded and set off after him, running as fast as she could to keep up with the wolf as they headed for the final corner. Her heart felt both terribly heavy and wonderfully light; with only Tin at her side she felt as though she could go on forever, especially as the Faceless Kings at last came into view. The enormous statues were illuminated from below by a number of lanterns, which also lit up the wall of the citadel behind them; Eni could see mammals with torches peering out into the darkness of night, readying themselves for the inevitable.
Tin put on an extra burst of speed, his legs moving so quickly that they were nothing but a hazy shape as his tail streamed out behind him, and as Eni caught up an enormous shape suddenly stepped out of the shadows. A Begotten the size of three wagons moved towards them with a peculiar lack of grace, its movements unsettlingly mechanical as it advanced. Eni could hear shouts and cries from the citadel, and a few flaming arrows headed their way but fell woefully short.
Eni pulled her trident free even as Tin unsheathed his whip-sword from around his waist, but before he could strike a voice spoke.Â
"All-King," it said, and the Begotten before them collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
The creature's awful red-black body hit the ground with a terrible crash, torn open in dozens of places, but torn wasn't quite the right word. There were holes in the monstrosity, but they were neat and circular, oozing ichor that steamed and hissed as snowflakes touched it. Each one was wider than Eni's thigh, as though it had been struck by a round shot, and something like an octopus from a nightmare was pulling itself out from the wounds.
Zathos reformed slowly, its body pulling together as it emerged from the corpse as a seemingly endless series of tendrils that wove themselves back together until the monster loomed over them. It was enormous; the tip of Zathos's chin was more than two feet above the top of Tin's head, and its glowing eyes were like dinner plates as they swiveled and focused.Â
"Time is against us," the creature said simply, its voice as childish and unsettling as ever, and Eni took in a deep breath as she pulled her satchel off her back and took out the golden statue.
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