Triah
“SIR, ANOTHER ONE HAS appeared near the Trinacrya, at the center of the city.”
Carrieri held up a hand to the man who had just approached him, and turned back to his conversation with Captain Deregard. “Split your platoon. Take half of them to the Fiftieth Circle, the other half to the Thirty-Ninth by the shore. Take out those two threats.”
Carrieri stood in the courtyard of the Legion’s central barracks, soldiers and officers and messengers swarming around him. Snow fell gently from above. Normally, he took joy in the first snows of winter. While the cold and inconvenience got old quickly, their first appearance was always welcome.
Tonight, he had no time to notice such things.
“Yes, sir.” Deregard saluted, but before he turned Carrieri gripped him by the shoulder.
“If more of those monsters show up, take them down. Understand, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.” Deregard’s face was pale, but his eyes were hard with determination. If Carrieri had a hundred more men like Deregard in his army, he could conquer the Sfaera.
“Good. Now go.”
Carrieri turned to Illaran. “How many does that make?”
“Five inside the city, sir.”
“Five.” Carrieri swore. He wiped sweat and snow from his brow. “And we have no idea what is causing them? How to stop them raining down on us?”
“No to both accounts, sir. Although the lights at the top of the Cliffs of Litori continue to shine.”
“Can we get a squadron up there?”
“Sir… there are five in the city, but there are over a hundred on the cliffs.”
“Canta’s bones,” Carrieri muttered. There hadn’t even been that many at the Battle of the Rihnemin.
“Is the Chaos Queen causing this?” Carrieri demanded. “I thought the Rangers retreated yesterday. Isn’t that what our scouts told us?”
“Yes, sir. But perhaps she didn’t go with them.”
“What about the city walls? No attacks?”
“Not from the tiellans, no, sir. The Odenites battle their own monsters; two or three have dropped in among them as well.”
Carrieri swore again. “Is there anyone these daemons aren’t attacking? What of the Rodenese fleet?”
The fleet had begun moving inland earlier that night, when the light show had started up. “They’ve changed course, and were last seen heading toward the northern pass. We think they’re going to attempt to scale it and fight the monsters atop the cliffs.”
“What in Oblivion is going on?” Carrieri muttered. “What regiments haven’t been deployed yet?”
“Root, Orb, and Thorn.”
“Send the Root Regiment to the cliffs,” Carrieri said. “But don’t let them engage that nest of monsters, not if they can avoid it. We must see what the Rodenese are up to. Goddess, we must see what in Oblivion is going on up there.” He knew it might be a suicide mission. It could be a trap; the tiellans might fall on them from the trees, and the Rodenese from the cliffs. All while daemons slaughtered them.
He remembered, bitterly, when he had retreated from the Battle of the Rihnemin. He hadn’t thought the tiellans had enough left to counter the dozens of monsters they had been fighting together. He hadn’t counted on Winter being… whatever in Oblivion she was. Perhaps she had called the Outsiders down on his city as revenge.
Carrieri could not help but wonder how things might have been different if he had stayed to help the tiellans fight, instead of leaving them to die.
“Get the Orb Regiment as well,” Carrieri said. “I’m sure we’ll get more reports of…”
Carrieri trailed off. In the midst of the falling snow, a strange blackness twisted above him—a blackness very different from the night sky around it, and not just for the absence of falling snow. This blackness glistened, oscillating.
Both Carrieri and the psimancer dove out of the way as a black shape dropped from the portal, contorting around itself until it coalesced into a sinewy black form with claws and teeth and jaws that seemed far too big for its already massive stature. A long, snaking tail whipped out from behind the monster, covered in black barbs.
“Form up behind me!” Carrieri shouted. His disoriented soldiers backed away from the monster, staring up at it in terrified awe. “Form up!”
This time his order galvanized the soldiers into action.
“Loose ranks,” Carrieri said, “spears and shield up front, archers in the back. We’ll turn this thing into a bloody pincushion. Illaran, you have no place in this fight. Get my orders out, and inform me of any updates.”
Illaran nodded, unable to take his eyes off the roaring monster.
“Go,” Carrieri said, and then Illaran was off.
The monster roared so loudly it made Carrieri flinch, the sound some twisted hybrid between a deep, booming bellow and a high-pitched inhuman scream.
Carrieri drew his sword and rushed at the monster with a war cry of his own, his soldiers charging behind him.
* * *
Snow continued to fall lazily, dissolving in the water of the bay below, as Cova and her Reapers marched up the mountain pass. Beasts as big as small ships roamed the clifftops. Her scouts reported some in the city, as well as the Odenite camp. What Cova had seen through the spyglass on her ship, and the way the monsters were described to her, reminded her of a rumor she had heard in Izet, from the time the old Emperor Grysole had been killed: massive daemonic bodies had been found beneath the rubble of the imperial dome alongside that of the emperor. Her father had kept the whole thing quiet.
Whatever her father had been involved with—daemons and monsters and Scorned Gods—had something to do with what was happening now.
And atop the cliff, in a twisting array of colorful light, even more terrifying monsters battled a tiellan women—which must be Winter Cordier. Cova knew enough of legend to know that the Nine Daemons, in their true forms, were on top of the cliff.
If the tiellans were still up there, they did not stand a chance. Cova had heard nothing from Winter or Urstadt of any plans for such… Goddess, what even was this? The end of the Sfaera?
Once she had read the signs, she knew it was in her best interest to help. She prayed Carrieri would recognize the threat, too. If the Daemons defeated Winter and the tiellans atop the cliff, they would barrel down toward the city and destroy Triah completely—eventually, they would destroy the entire Sfaera. The Nine had no good intentions for the Sfaera, or its peoples.
The pass narrowed quickly as it curved into the cliffs, taking a series of switchbacks before reaching the top, about half a radial from where the center of the clifftop battle was, near the southern edge of the cliffs that faced out over Triah.
Cova ducked her head and marched, worried her troops would not arrive in time.
* * *
Knot, Cinzia, and Jane had only been able to find two horses quickly. They galloped up the path to Litori. Cinzia rode behind Knot, her arms wrapped tightly around his middle.
“Mind sharing with me what exactly it is you’re planning on doing once we get to the clifftop?” Knot asked, turning his head so Cinzia would hear him. He hoped they weren’t riding into the jaws of death for nothing.
“I just need to hold the gemstone, and it will take me into the Void.”
Knot frowned. ? How would Cinzia possibly get into the Void? She wasn’t a psimancer.
“The gemstone provides a connection to the Void for me,” Cinzia said, either sensing or anticipating his worry.
“And once in the Void?”
“Once in the Void, I’m going to kill the Nine Daemons.”
Knot spurred his horse onward, eyes narrow.
“I can tell you all about it,” Cinzia said, “after it’s done.”
Assuming we survive all this.
Cinzia’s arms tightened around his waist.
The nearest Outsiders turned their sleek heads, each one full of fangs and a pair of dull eyes, to take in the approaching riders.
Knot took the reins in one hand and drew his sword. The Outsiders would make quick work of the horses; he debated whether or not to tell them all to dismount when Jane rode out ahead of them.
“Jane!” Cinzia called out, but the Prophetess did not look back.
Jane’s blonde hair streamed behind her as she spurred her horse, one hand raised, palm forward. For a moment that was all there was: a woman riding toward a dozen monsters.
Then a hot, white light blasted forth from Jane’s palm. Knot remembered a similar beam of light at the Odenite camp outside Kirlan when Outsiders attacked; he had only seen the light from a distance, but the white heat was the same, and outside of Kirlan it had obliterated one of the Outsiders.
As it did here.
The beam cut directly through two Outsiders caught in its path; anything caught in the light disintegrated. The arm and tail of one Outsider evaporated, and it roared in pain, while the head and torso of another did the same, and the beast’s remaining parts fell lifelessly to the ground.
“How close do we need to get?” Jane shouted back at them.
“Canta Rising,” Knot whispered. For a moment, he had the tiniest hope that this might work.
* * *
“Eward! Now!”
Astrid pulled both claws from the Outsider’s back and flipped backwards into the air, clearing the monster just as a volley of three dozen arrows turned it into a pincushion.
She landed in a crouch, ready to pounce again, but the beast wavered, then tumbled to the ground. The earth shook with the impact. She grabbed the sword that Eward tossed her and drove it into the Outsider’s eye to be sure it wouldn’t get up again.
“Nice work!” She and the Prelates had become a decent team; this was the third Outsider they had taken down that night. Astrid provided a distraction—something she could do easily enough, given her enhanced speed at night—dealing what damage she could, while Eward’s Prelates stuck it with as many spears and arrows as possible.
“Wish there was time to celebrate it,” Eward said, looking east, “but we’ve got another one near the river.”
Astrid followed his gaze. Sure enough, another dark form rose, and she heard the low rumble of its roar, felt it in her chest.
“Shit,” she whispered. When would they stop?
She glanced up at the cliffs. The spiraling lights were no longer organized and symmetrical; they flickered, dancing around the clifftops. There was a fight going on up there. She needed to be a part of it.
But the people here needed her, too. She could not very well abandon them.
A large shape—far larger than any of the Outsiders she had seen thus far—dropped from the shimmering portal in the sky, falling toward the cliffs. When it finally struck the cliffs, the entire Sfaera seemed to shake.
She had seen one of these, once before. Beneath the dome in Izet, a massive Outsider, perhaps ten times the size of the others, had risen. Winter had pulled down the entire dome on the thing’s head to defeat it.
And now one stood atop the cliffs.
Another whistling sound, and another dark shape plummeted toward the cliffs. The Sfaera shook again, and another colossal form rose.
These huge Outsiders were slightly different in form than their smaller counterparts; while the Outsiders Astrid was used to fighting walked on two legs, using their fore claws as weapons, the huge ones rose on all fours like gargantuan lizards; jaws large enough to swallow the smaller Outsiders whole sat atop thick necks, and tails wove back and forth, covered in dark spikes.
One of them snaked its head up toward the sky and issued a bone-shaking roar, the likes of which Astrid had never heard. The Prelates around her clapped hands over their ears, cowering away from the sound.
“Shit,” she whispered again. They were barely holding their own against the Outsiders down here; there was no way they could do anything against those monsters.
Astrid attempted to summon Radiance, as she had many times already, but the blade still did not come.
Goddess, what good was the power if it took her a dozen more lifetimes to learn to control it?
“Astrid…” Eward stared up at the cliffs.
“We can’t do anything about them right now. Let’s get to the river. Take care of the Outsider there. Then we’ll see what we can do about…”
Astrid shook her head, a quake running down her spine as another beast roared.
“…then we’ll see what we can do about that.”