18. Fool Me Thrice

Lace waited impatiently, trying to see through the gaps in the walls. There was nothing to see, just shadows forming vague tricks of the eye.

Torchbearer was close by, and together they covered one side of the complex. Eagle-Eyes and Bits took up the other.

“Not to worry,” the leather-faced Hero said with a reassuring smile. “Excelerate knows his business. He’ll see them out safely.”

“I hope so.”

“Say, you look a little familiar. Have I met you before you joined the–”

“Nope.”

Torchbearer pursed his lips. “Oh. I see.”

Small throngs of ragged citizens crowded the alleys around them, staring. The hairs on Lace’s neck prickled. She gripped the handle of the sword at her hip. Torchbearer tried to shoo the people away, but they came back as soon as he turned around.

“It sounds quiet in there,” Lace said. “Is that… normal?”

Torchbearer shrugged, chainmail clinking. “It seems like a good sign to me. At least that means…”

A screech pierced the walls of the rundown complex, the echo reverberating through the ground.

“That sounded less good.” Flames alighted along Torchbearer’s forearms and crawled up to his shoulders. “Be ready for anything.”

More screams joined the first, coming from behind them this time.

Lace looked back.

The townsfolk charged towards them in a frenzy, tripping over themselves. They frothed at the mouth, eyes wild.

Lace drew her sword with a rasping sound. She held it out in front of her chest in both hands, gripping the handle painfully tight.

A large, broad-shouldered man lumbered into her. Her feet briefly lifted off the ground, and a moment later she slammed against the ground, sword flying from her grip.

The massive weight of the man bore down on top of her. He growled as he reached for a loose rock that lay nearby.

Lace kneed him in the crotch, but he didn’t so much as react.

Damn it! What is wrong with these people?

She readied an aero-blast, putting her fingers in the diamond-shape and compressing air until she had an invisible, whirling ball of wind between her hands.

Two more townsfolk descended on her, pulling at her arms and disrupting her focus.

Lace let fly. The wind knocked the man right off her, stone flipping through the air, and the residual shockwave was enough to make the other two stumble.

She felt a sharp tug at her tunic. She struggled against the grip but was dragged along the ground anyway, then hoisted to her feet.

“It’s me,” Torchbearer said, warding off a group of crazed townsfolk with the flat of a burning sword. “Don’t hurt them—these people have been taken by Beasts, but they're still alive.”

She had already lost her sword, now being trampled among the growing crowd, so there was no worry of her hurting someone.

This many Beasts, in Goldbrand? How is that possible?

Torchbearer was staving off most of the townsfolk with his burning blade, but they were slowly closing in, snarling and swiping at the air. More and more piled on in the back as they poured out of side streets and ramshackle houses. At a quick count, it had to be more than fifty.

This isn’t going to last.

“What do we do, master?” Lace asked. “They’re going to overwhelm us.”

“Can you gain us some ground with your Power?” he asked. “Don’t hold anything back.”

“Yes, master.”

Standing back-to-back with Torchbearer, she raised her open palms and called upon every sliver of air within her reach, forcing it downward in a sharp funnel towards her. It wasn’t long before she had a tight coil of wind circling around her, howling and tearing at her clothes.

She balled her hands and threw them out to the sides.

The townsfolk flew back all around her, toppling into one another and getting tangled as they attempted to rise back up.

Torchbearer clicked his tongue. He drew a large circle around them using the point of his sword, setting it ablaze. He raised his sword to the sky, and the flames rose higher than Lace was tall.

“They won’t cross this,” he said. “Spawnlings fear fire. It’s how the humanoids keep them in line.”

Lace’s posture slumped and she let slip a long exhale.

The townsfolk rose. They shrieked and screamed and growled, crowding around the circle of fire. Just like Torchbearer had said, they didn’t try to cross.

They were safe, for now.

“How long can you keep this up?” Lace asked.

“Indefinitely, more or less,” Torchbearer said. “But I don’t fancy the others’ chances. We need to figure something out before this turns into a bloodbath.”

Lace’s thoughts drifted to Kiren. She kept her guard up as the townsfolk circled their protective ward, testing for weaknesses wherever the fire waned. Whenever she spotted such a weakness she added a burst of air, making the flames rise taller.

Please, be alright in there.

*****

Kiren took a sword to the shoulder. The blade sank deep into his flesh, scraping bone.

He barked a curse and slipped his blade into the man’s stomach. There was a sharp tug as it snagged on his clothes, then slid right through his abdomen and out the other side.

The man’s mouth opened in a gasp, fleshy tendrils wriggling at the back of his throat. He grabbed Kiren’s shoulder with his free hand and pushed him up against a wall.

Fuck! I’ve gotta… get… the heart…

There was too little space. He couldn’t pull out his sword. His shoulder trickled blood, off-hand rendered practically useless by the severed muscle. His body couldn’t regenerate while the blade was still stuck in there.

A thin blade punched through the front of the guard’s tan uniform. The man fell away, twitching on the ground with monstrous tentacles writhing across his body.

Goldcoin stood in his place. He nodded tersely before moving on with a grand flourish of his rapier. He engaged in another melee, fighting three of the Beastly guards at once.

Excelerate zipped among Mug’s group of mercenary thugs, cutting open stomachs and severing limbs with only a long knife and his massive momentum. They swiped with their axes, hitting only air. Excelerate felled three of them in swift succession, and the rest routed to a corner of the room and took up defensive positions, flipping the table on its side for cover.

Around Goldcoin, the fight seemed to be flowing like a perfectly choreographed dance. Enemy strikes fell just short as he stepped around them. He landed cuts and stabs while hardly even looking as if he knew every parry and thrust he needed to perform before it happened. He took down a guard with a clean stab through the heart and flicked a shining coin into the air with his other hand. It bounced off the nearest wall and shot back into the eye of one of the remaining guards, setting him off balance just as he was about to strike. Goldcoin riddled him with quick stabs. The third fell soon after.

Kiren yanked the sword from his shoulder. It bled down his sleeve, but the cut quickly healed, muscle fibers reconnecting. He rolled his shoulders and tried a few swings with his new, second blade.

That’s better.

The four remaining guards gathered around Maxim in a tight circle, bucklers outward as they anticipated incoming attacks. The Elder wore a twisted smile as he surveyed the piling bodies.

What in all of Svarta is going on? Maxim died. I saw it.

He didn’t look wholly alive, however. Not truly. He was a shambling corpse, animated like a puppet.

The Beasts must have brought him back. Couldn’t be anything else, considering those little wriggly things.

Mug, standing at the other side of the room, looked utterly out of control. His gaze flitted from one man to the next. Him and the three mercenaries that were left huddled behind the table in a tight grouping, backs against each other.

You damn fool, Kiren thought. Just run.

Excelerate slammed into one of Maxim’s guards with a burst of dizzying speed. He jabbed almost imperceptibly fast, tearing a hole in the man’s chest. Heart destroyed, the guard fell as if his strings had been cut.

The other three threw themselves onto Excelerate, dragging him to the ground. Slippery, boneless limbs slithered out of their gaping mouths and tightened around Excelerate’s limbs. While he struggled, Maxim walked confidently across the room.

Goldcoin stood in his way, side turned towards his foe with his blade raised in a fencer’s guard.

“You’re Evangel, then,” he said. “Charmed. Care for a bet?”

Maxim pulled down his wooden mask without halting. “Very well. Let us bet our livesss.” A sharp, hissing tone had entered his voice.

Kiren readied his swords and rushed forward to assist the Hero.

Goldcoin reached inside his tunic with his free hand and gave a subtle flick of his wrist. A slender throwing knife embedded itself in Maxim’s shoulder. The Hero took a long step forward with his leading foot, thrusting with his rapier at the same time.

Maxim raised his hand and let the blade slide through his open palm, showing no sign of pain apart from a twitch of his lip. Rivulets of dark blood ran down the sword, alighting into sooty, crimson flames that traveled all the way up to the basket hilt with no sign of stopping.

Goldcoin let go of his weapon with a muttered curse and danced back a few steps.

Maxim raised his other hand.

Kiren reached the Villain and brought his main-hand sword down in an overhead swing, putting all his weight behind it.

Maxim’s left hand came off at the wrist, and the severed appendage flipped away through the air, landing on the floor with a dull plop.

Maxim let out a shrill scream that seemed to be a mix of real, human anguish and a chilling squeal of something else, something unearthly.

His severed limb sprayed blood. He swung it in a wide arc, becoming a wave of fire. Goldcoin slipped on his backside a fraction of a second before the flames would have hit him, but Kiren wasn’t so lucky.

The skin of his left arm sizzled and spat as his skin shriveled and his blood boiled. There was an initial, hot wash of pain, which disappeared almost immediately as his nerves fried.

“Fuck!” he swore, letting go of his swords to pat himself down.

Goldcoin started to get up off the floor, hoisting himself into a low crouch.

Maxim raised his severed left arm towards Goldcoin. A fleshy tendril shot out of his flesh, the sharp nib boring itself into Goldcoin’s shoulder. The tendril detached from Maxim’s body and wrapped itself tightly around Goldcoin’s torso, pinning his arms against his sides. He fell backward, cursing profusely.

Maxim looked back, peering across the room through his featureless mask. Excelerate had just about finished off his assailants and was slowly getting up with several bleeding wounds across his body.

Mug’s mercenaries were escaping through the window, clambering through one by one. Mug himself was last, spurring the others on while glancing back every so often.

Kiren finally got the fire put out, gritting his teeth at the charred flesh running all the way up to his shoulder.

Maxim walked towards the door.

“We will conclude this another time,” he said. “I have so much in store for you all. You shall make a fine bonfire to call The One Among the Stars.”

“Get back here, you fucker!” Kiren spat. He staggered after Maxim, but a sinewy appendage shot out of the man’s bloody stump, quick as a whip, and swept Kiren’s legs out. He fell hard, wincing at the burning agony running deep into his arm.

Maxim got through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Excelerate got up a few moments later. He moved sluggishly over to Goldcoin and freed the struggling Hero by cutting off the tendril that bound him. With a blur of motion, he threw his knife across the room and pinned Mug’s sleeve to the wall as he was about to leap through the window.

Goldcoin got back on his feet, and Excelerate fetched a new weapon. Mug struggled uselessly against the knife that pinned him to the wall.

“Hold it down for now,” Excelerate said. “I’ll be back.”

He slammed into the door with a burst of superspeed, knocking it clean off its hinges. Goldcoin followed, and they both disappeared down the hall.