URSTADT FLINCHED AS ANOTHER horrific roar thundered through her, then spurred her spooked horse on. She caught glimpses of the bright colors of the Nine Daemons through the trees on occasion, heard the sounds of fighting, and was hungry to join it.
She rode at the head of fifteen hundred Rangers, with Rorie at her side. Winter had ordered them not to come back under any circumstances, but once they had seen the supernatural lights in the sky, Urstadt had said to Oblivion with circumstances. Rorie had quickly agreed. Loyal as they were to their queen, the Rangers were not a force to mindlessly follow orders, especially when it put their leader, who had done more than most to free them from tyranny, in danger.
A few hundred Rangers had chosen to stay behind; some under the pretense of holding their position, others stubbornly holding on to Winter’s orders, while a few admitted freely they had no desire to ride back into a battle where monsters roamed. Every single one of the Rangers present with their company had been there for the Battle of the Rihnemin. Every single one of them knew what they were facing.
When Urstadt broke through the forest onto the plains of Litori, she had no time to take in the battlefield. Three Outsiders snaked their heads around, sensing the movement from the forest. The moment they saw Urstadt and the Rangers, all three of them took a running leap toward the tiellan forces.
“Form squads!” Urstadt shouted. After the Battle of the Rihnemin, the Rangers had prepared almost daily for another fight with Outsiders. She hoped the training would hold up now.
Snow drifted down around her as she he spurred her horse forward, the Rangers fanning out behind. Urstadt gripped her glaive but even through her gauntlet she could feel the cold of the weapon. Such things did not bother her so much, but she worried how the tiellans would fare while fighting in the cold. Her horse whinnied, shaking its head, but she leaned forward and patted the animal, whispering soothing sounds, unsure whether the horse could even hear her through the cacophony. Tiellan clan horses were well trained, but even they could only handle so much.
Urstadt and Rorie, along with eight other Rangers, formed a squad, and Urstadt took point, rushing at the nearest Outsider that had just leapt in front of them. Urstadt leaned in the saddle, spurring her horse to the side just as the creature clawed at her. She jabbed it with her glaive, and Rorie followed with her lance.
Outsiders swarmed around the clifftop, hundreds of them. At least two colossal monsters, far larger than any of the other beasts that swarmed around Litori, roamed the cliffs, towering above the others. To the east, something else was happening. A beam of white light, some kind of weapon, sliced through Outsiders as if they were paper; Urstadt could not discern much else than that. Near the edge of the cliff, a swirling battle of color raged. Eight colors, to be precise; for eight remaining Daemons.
Winter had to be there.
Urstadt spurred her horse forward and thrust her glaive into the closest Outsider’s ribs. Her squad had already stuck the thing a dozen times over; hot red blood dripped from a dozen wounds. Urstadt’s horse reared as the Outsider turned to face them. With a tug, Urstadt used the horse and the Outsider’s momentum combined to tear her glaive from the side of its chest in a wash of fresh gore. She struck again, this time where the neck met the jawline, and her glaive pierced deep. As she pulled it out, the Outsider stumbled, then toppled to the ground.
The other squads had made quick work of the other two Outsiders that had attacked them. They had also attracted the attention of half a dozen more.
Out of the corner of her eye, Urstadt saw movement toward the north. Movement that was not the shining, sinewy black bodies of Outsiders. Soldiers crested onto the cliffs from Litori’s Pass.
She doubted Triah would send troops by that route; if anything, they’d send another regiment up the wider pass to the east.
That had to be Cova.
The distance between the Rangers and the Rodenese was greater than the distance between the Rangers and the swirling battle of colors where Winter must be, but the Outsiders between the Rangers and Rodenese were far fewer and more spread out; no more than two dozen, all told, while they would have to fight their way through five or six dozen, including the two immense devils, to get to Winter. The beam of white light to the east still shone, and seemed to be on the move, but that was an unknown quantity.
Roden, at least, was Roden.
Another roar from one of the massive beasts shook the ground beneath Urstadt’s feet.
Oblivion, she would be deaf before this battle ended. If she didn’t die first.
“Fight to the west!” Urstadt shouted when the roar subsided. “Unite with those forces!”
As they rode toward the approaching soldiers, Rorie rode up beside Urstadt.
“Those are the Rodenese forces.”
“They are,” Urstadt said.
“They hate tiellans.”
“Not all of us do, Rorie.”
“But Winter—”
“We need help first,” Urstadt said, “if we want to help the queen. We will stand the best chance of reaching her if we unite with Roden. Even if they only sent a tenth of their soldiers, that more than doubles our numbers.”
And we’d better pray to whoever might listen that they sent more than a tenth.
Rorie nodded reluctantly.
As Urstadt spurred her horse onward—the animal, given the option, certainly seemed more optimistic about this trajectory than she had going toward Winter—she hoped she had made the right decision.
She patted the horse’s neck again. “Don’t worry, girl,” she said. “We’ll be heading to Winter soon enough. I hope you build up the courage by then.”
She hoped the same for herself.
* * *
Cinzia and Knot rode behind the Prophetess, Jane’s white light disintegrating any Outsider that dared cross their path.
Goddess, why hasn’t she used this power before? We could have destroyed the Outsiders easily, Cinzia thought.
But even Jane could only wield so much power for so long. Already the light was starting to fade.
“Jane, stop here!” Cinzia shouted. This would have to be close enough. She dismounted, and Knot followed, his sword drawn. He looked down at it, eyes wide. It was, perhaps, the first time Cinzia had seen him at a loss as to what to do.
“I don’t know what I can do to help,” he said.
Cinzia took his face gently in both her hands, and brought it to hers. They kissed, and a light, airy elation filled her, as if, for the briefest moment, the weight of all that happened around them, the doom and the death and the Outsiders and the Daemons, was lifted from her, and in their place she was filled with light, and with love.
When she pulled away from him, she could not stop the smile spreading wide across her face. The weight was already returning—the weight of what she was about to do, of what she had to do if they wanted the Sfaera to survive—but it was not as bad as it had been moments before.
“I’ve let Goddessguards protect me for most of my life,” Cinzia said, stroking his cheek as she stepped away from him. She reached for the gem in the pouch at her belt. When she withdrew it, a bright red glow burst from the stone, illuminating everything around them in a vibrant crimson.
“It is time I returned the favor.”
* * *
Urstadt and the Rangers made solid progress, driving their way west through the Outsiders toward Cova’s army. Cova—or whoever was leading the Rodenese—must have noticed what they were trying to do, or had the same idea, and Roden made headway toward them, too, the Reapers in dark blue tunics and dark gray lacquered armor leading the vanguard.
The Rangers cut through the monsters efficiently; they suffered inevitable casualties, but Urstadt would be surprised if they lost more than one tiellan for each monster taken down by a Ranger squad. Some squads, including her own, took down monster after monster repeatedly without losing a single Ranger. There were a few squads, however, who met with disaster, losing half a dozen or more Rangers in a confrontation, almost always because another Outsider blindsided them from the south.
Although their progress drew more beasts to them, hundreds of the monsters didn’t engage at all. Instead, they clumped together in great groups, some stalking about, others standing perfectly still. This included, thankfully, the two massive Outsiders.
A shape, much larger than the other Outsiders the Rangers had been fighting, fell from above. The more common, relatively smaller Outsiders fell from just a half dozen rods in the air or so, but the huge ones toppled down and down from at least a hundred rods, if not more. The enormous shapes had time to pick up speed, and gave everyone around time to notice, to hear the great whooshing whistle as it careened toward the ground, screaming with momentum. This one’s impact shook the very foundations of the Sfaera, and Urstadt’s horse stumbled, then almost immediately panicked, practically sending Urstadt flying. She calmed the animal, as did the Rangers all around her with their own horses to varying degrees of success, but they were all painfully aware of where the massive beast had landed: almost exactly between the Rangers and the Rodenese Reapers.
Their way was blocked.
The Outsiders that stalked the ground between the two armies were dwarfed by the rising shape that had just landed among them.
The new Outsider was different than the other two who had landed and now milled about farther south on the cliff; it was perhaps just a touch smaller than its two massive cousins, but instead it rose on its hind legs, and looked very much like one of the smaller Outsiders in appearance: long, muscled arms with a set of claws on each the size of spears; powerful hind legs, and a long, swinging, spiked tail, with an unspeakably large head at the end of a twisting, sinewy neck.
The dragon was Roden’s sigil, and Urstadt had seen many depictions of the legendary creatures from the Age of Marvels, in paintings, tapestries, sculpture, and more—serpentine winged beasts, with great claws and teeth, spouting flames from their mouths.
These massive Outsiders were not unlike dragons. Twisted, misshapen, perhaps—the Outsiders had none of the elegance of the artistic depictions she had seen, but instead were lopsided, malformed versions, without wings or the breath of fire. It seemed physically impossible that the Outsider that had just landed should be able to lift a head of such size, even on a neck as large and powerful as that. And its teeth, which protruded at all angles, were absurdly long; perhaps twice as long as a man, and thicker at the base than a man at the shoulders.
Snaggletooth stood slowly, rising to its full height—taller than the other two behemoths because it stood on its hind legs— and issued forth a roar the likes of which Urstadt had never heard, or imagined she would hear, in her worst nightmares, let alone in her lifetime.
But, unlike the other two behemoths, this one wasted no time. It lowered its gaze at the tiellan forces and charged forward, sprinting toward them.
Urstadt felt a warm trickle run down her legs, wetting the underclothes she wore beneath her armor.
“Regroup!” she screamed, her instinct kicking in as she wheeled her horse around. “Form a line! Get ready to—”
But it was too late. Snaggletooth was upon them.
The monster roared again, a deafening ringing in Urstadt’s ears. As its jaws opened, Urstadt met the blackness inside.
* * *
One moment Cinzia was on the Sfaera, looking at Knot, gripping Canta’s Heart in both hands, and then with a puff of red smoke she was back in the starry Void.
Just as Canta had told her, the Nine Daemons did not appear anything like the other star-lights in the Void. Instead of tiny points of light, they were more like great burning suns, or multidimensional eclipses, more accurately: bright spheres of light whose outer edges burned with color, but inside were black, far blacker even than the Void itself. The closer Cinzia got to them, the more clearly they appeared. That was why Canta had told Cinzia to get as close to the Daemons as possible in the Sfaera before sinking into the Void.
Nine of those dark suns burned before her now. And there was a tenth: a dark burning star, different and larger than the others. Cinzia would have thought it more powerful if she did not already suspect what—or who—it was.
It had to be Winter.
The lights moved about one another in a strange dance, sometimes colliding, sometimes weaving around one another, with Winter’s dark star always the catalyst, the center of everything.
A white mist outlined Cinzia’s hands, her body, her feet, even her dress; it was as if she was looking down at nothing but a glowing silhouette of herself. Instead of the gemstone she had been holding in the Sfaera, she now gripped a dagger, with a shining gold blade and bright red jewel in its pommel.
Take the dagger. Strike down your enemies. Let light back into the Sfaera.
Canta had told Cinzia those words, so similar to the ones she had heard when she cut her own hand, ridding herself of Luceraf.
But now, Cinzia’s hands shook as she moved.
For all her talk, for all her fear, she still hesitated now, when it came to the possibility of killing. Even if the being she was about to kill was a Daemon.
In her mind’s eye, Cinzia suddenly saw a face: her old Goddessguard, Kovac, the way she remembered him, graybrown beard and bright blue eyes, smiling at her. But, in an instant, that face changed. The eyes shifted into something horrible, something evil, leaking iridescent green smoke—how she had last seen him, possessed by Azael, trying to kill her.
A dagger appeared, protruding from one of Kovac’s eyes, and the light in the other went out—both the evil green light, and the calm blue that Cinzia had loved as much as her own father.
Do it for Kovac.
Cinzia stepped forward, finding the nearest glowing sun. This one was a black gaping wound surround by burning green light: Samann. Envy. All of the rage and loss Cinzia had felt in the moment of Kovac’s death came rushing back to her.
Gripping the dagger tightly, Cinzia thrust the weapon into the black center of the burning green orb. Just as she had thrust Kovac’s own dagger into his eye, killing him.
She had been half afraid the green light would burn her, but her ethereal limbs felt nothing as her hands passed through the flame, burying the dagger in the dark center of the light.
For a moment, nothing happened. Had Canta sent her on a fool’s errand? Or, worse, did Cinzia’s doubts hinder her ability to do what was necessary?
Samann’s light trembled, the movement increasing until it vibrated intensely, so quickly it almost became a blur. In a silent, fierce explosion, the light burst outward in an angry, flaming ring of bright green. Again, Cinzia felt nothing, heard nothing, only saw the light ripple outward. But the light did not return or reform; after the explosion, nothing was left. The strange sun-like light was gone, completely dissipated.
Cinzia stared at the space where Samann’s light had been.
Had she just killed one of the Nine Daemons?