THE SNAGGLE-TOOTHED OUTSIDER smashed into the tiellan forces, sending men and women flying as it rammed into them with its head, then swept up a good half-dozen at least in a single chomp of its jaws.
It roared again, and even from behind the sound was devastating. Cova covered her ears, cringing until the roar died away and the monster swiped at the tiellans’ front line with one of its massive clawed arms, taking out another dozen soldiers. A group of Rangers rallied, throwing spears at the beast, but their weapons had little effect.
“Your Grace, we must get you away from the battlefield,” General Horas said. “You cannot be here, not with a monster like that. I recommend a full retreat.” He nodded to his second, who turned, about to relay the order, but Cova stopped him.
“No,” she said, with as much confidence as she could muster. Horas was the better tactician by far. She had little experience at all in the matter. But she knew what they needed to do. “We press on. Form up archers, and have them concentrate all fire on that Goddess-damned snaggle-tooth. We are going to help those tiellans.”
“But, Your Grace—”
“If we don’t take care of that mammoth creature now,” Cova said, meeting her general’s gaze, “it might come after us next, and then we will have two thousand fewer allies to fight alongside us. It is now or never, General. If you don’t agree with me, you can leave.”
The general opened his mouth, but Cova spoke right over him. She was not about to let him off that easily.
“And if you choose to leave, I’ll have you executed on the spot for refusing to follow orders, and desertion.” She raised her sword. “I’ll do it myself if I have to.”
The general, face pale, looked from Cova to the Snaggletooth, then back to Cova again. Slowly, he nodded.
Before Cova could say anything more, a very different sound echoed through the night. A single, all-encompassing thump, like the boom of thunder but louder and felt in the chest and bones far more than heard by the ears.
Canta Rising, what was that? Was there not enough going on already? The sound seemed to have come from the light-battle ensuing to the south.
General Horas, also shaken by the strange blast, nevertheless saluted. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Press the attack.”
“Right away.” Cova’s army reformed, focusing on the Snaggletooth.
She hoped to Oblivion she did not live to regret her decision.
* * *
Winter did not know what had happened. One moment, she was fighting the Nine Daemons, hundreds of weapons at her disposal. Fighting the Nine, even with the arsenal she controlled, was like attacking wisps of smoke. Literal smoke, in Hade’s case, but no matter who she attacked, they managed to evade almost every strike.
Strangely, the Nine did not seem focused on attacking her, only on defending themselves. As they entwined, Winter noticed they had begun to look more human. Their forms diminished, their monstrous features fading. Samann’s wolf-like face softened, shedding some of its hair, the nose shortening and ears shifting and shrinking.
When Winter first attacked, the Outsiders seemed surprised. It did not take them long to recover; Iblin barreled forward, but his actions were strange. He didn’t try to crush her, or pummel her to death. Instead, he seemed more interested in stopping her, grabbing hold of her, although Winter could not imagine what he would do to her if he was successful. Similarly, Samann and Luceraf sought to disable Winter with their claws and talons, but never attempted a killing blow.
Winter found it far too easy to avoid all of them.
Bazlamit, on the other hand, tried a much more roundabout method. Her bulbous, globular form shimmered and vibrated, and then split into two separate halves, and suddenly Winter faced her old mentors, Kali and Nash.
“Stop what you are doing, Winter,” Kali said. She wore what Winter always recalled her wearing: black leathers, tightly fitted, with her curved Nazaniin sword at her side. This was the version Winter had best known her as, the tall version with dark hair and striking blue eyes.
“We only want to help you,” Nash said, and the emotion that bubbled up at seeing him surprised her. He looked exactly the same, including the scar on his cheek, the circular blades at his belt.
With an effort, Winter ignored them, fighting on.
Hade and Estille evaded her advances, but didn’t attack at all.
Nadir’s onslaught worried Winter the most, though it, too, seemed far from lethal. Winter could not see the Daemon’s attacks, but she felt an immense pressure in her mind, building and building and building, as if her brain were expanding in her skull and there was no way to release the force. As if her own blood were boiling her brain alive. As if she were losing control not only of her grip on reality, but on herself and everything it meant to be her.
Fortunately, Winter discovered that her acumenic tendra came in handy when defending herself from Nadir’s attacks.
Azael was the most mysterious of all of them. He simply stood still at the center of it all, unmoving, as the fight blazed around him.
Something is not right. Winter could feel it in her marrow. The Daemons should be trying to demolish her, send her to Oblivion, but they seemed far more interested in something else, something Winter could not discern.
As she fended off Nadir’s attacks with her acumency while simultaneously keeping up her telenic offensive against the others, she noticed new arrivals getting closer.
Her eyes focused immediately on Knot, walking up toward the Daemons as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Winter’s heart twisted in her chest—he would be crushed before he even understood what was going on. Winter fumed with fury, concern, and confusion all at once. What in Oblivion had brought him here, anyway?
Jane, the priestess’s sister, was with him, an almost blindingly white light bursting forth from her hands. Stranger still, she caught a glimpse of something else: a flash of movement, a trick of the eye, a woman who was there and then was not there, and looked vaguely familiar.
Finally, as Samann twisted his lupine form to swipe his large paw at her, something else happened.
The Daemon disappeared.
The battle all around her stopped, the Daemons turning to stare at the place their brother had been in confusion.
Winter was sucked toward the space Samann had once occupied, as if his sudden absence pulled everything around it inward, desperately trying to fill the space that was now empty. A peculiar sound accompanied the shift, a soft, grating pop, the way her ears had popped when she had climbed the Sorensan Mountains.
The power of Samann’s disappearance—his death?— affected the other Daemons, as they skidded toward the vacant location until the power dissipated.
In that moment, Winter saw another shady flash of movement, as if the falling snow had settled on someone’s head and shoulders for a brief moment, and then rethought the fact that there might be a person there at all, and continued drifting toward the ground.
Winter closed her eyes, and let herself fall into the Void.
* * *
In the Void the woman sees the sun-stars, the residue of the Daemons in the space she has come to know and love. But there is something else there, too, unexpected.
A woman.
The priestess, Cinzia Oden.
Is she a psimancer? No. Cinzia Oden drifts through the Void, not as a typical star-light, nor the ersatz version of herself, the way the woman or Kali or other psimancers appear in the Void, more or less similar to how they appear on the Sfaera but ever so slightly transparent, with footsteps echoing ripples of light with each step.
No, this is like looking at a sketch of the priestess, of pale white light, stuttering through the Void, on occasion not even visible at all.
The priestess moves toward one of the nine—eight remaining suns, and suddenly the woman notices her dagger of gold and crimson, almost giving off its own light in the Void. Unlike the priestess, and even unlike the woman herself, the dagger looks real; not a sketched outline of light like the priestess, nor a projection of itself like the woman, but something that exists completely and wholly.
With a lunge, the priestess thrusts the dagger into one of the dark suns, and for a moment nothing happens. Then, in a bright explosion the sun sends out a shockwave of silvery burning light.
The silvery sun is gone. Bazlamit is gone, just like Samann had gone before her.
“What are you doing here?” the woman asks, and the priestess turns to respond, the white outline of her face fading in and out of the Void.
“I am killing Daemons,” the priestess says, her voice echoing as if she were speaking from the bottom of a long, deep well. “Keep distracting them, and I will kill them all.”
But how? the woman wants to ask. And with what?
But there is not much time. The priestess, it appears, has the same goal as she does. They must end the reign of the Nine before it begins. They must save the Sfaera.
So, she nods to the priestess. “Work quickly.” And then she goes back to her body, battling Daemons.
* * *
Urstadt blinked into consciousness.
It was night. It was snowing. Cold bit at her face, pain split her skull and burrowed through her shoulder. She tried to move, but something held her down. Snowflakes drifted down, the shimmering darkness straight above, and over an unmoving hump a massive shape roared, the sound piercing through the already loud cacophony of battle.
The damned Snaggletooth.
Urstadt’s head cleared, and she remembered the monster’s mouth gaping before her. How was she still alive? She tried to move the dead weight on top of her. It took her just a moment to realize it was Rorie, or part of her at least, torn in half at the waist by Snaggletooth’s teeth or claws or Oblivion knew what.
Rorie must have been, at least in part, why Urstadt was still alive.
A very different pain pierced through Urstadt’s body, more acute than the pain in her head, and far deeper than the pain in her shoulder. Rorie had been a good soldier, but more than that, Urstadt had grown fond of her.
With an effort that sent a jolt of fresh pain through her shoulder, Urstadt rolled Rorie’s torso off of her, and kicked away another tiellan corpse on her feet. Urstadt struggled to stand, breathing in the fresh, cold air, in time to see Snaggletooth’s huge foot stomp down on three mounted tiellans, crushing all of them at once, and then swiping at another squad advancing on it.
Canta Rising, the Rangers did not stand a chance against that thing.
Urstadt had to regroup the tiellan forces, but the battle had moved north of her, where Snaggletooth now dealt with more tiellan squads. In the distance, a small ray of hope showed itself in the form of the Rodenese Reapers, now advancing on Snaggletooth in a loose formation, archers continually peppering it with arrows that glanced off its hide. They could likely overwhelm the gargantuan beast eventually with sheer numbers, but that assumed very little intervention from other Outsiders, or the two—no, Urstadt realized as she looked south, five more towering dragon-like beasts lingering around Litori. Three more must have dropped while she was unconscious.
Urstadt swore, looking about for her glaive, but found nothing. Her sword rested intact at her hip, but that would do little good here. She needed something else, something…
Her gaze found what she sought. When making the war machines to assault Triah, the tiellan engineers had made a few ballistae as well. After dismantling the War Goddess, the tiellans had left most of the other siege engines intact; they’d posed no threat to Triah from atop the cliffs, anyway. This ballista still appeared operational.
The bolts were scattered across the grass, knocked flying by a dead tiellan Ranger. She picked up one and carried it to the ballista, then lined up her shot.
Snaggletooth twisted around to claw at a group of approaching Reapers, snapping its tail out behind it at the same time and cutting through a line of tiellans.
Urstadt pulled the ballista’s trigger.
With a deep snap of the drawstring the bolt shot forward. Urstadt squinted but lost track of it in the night. For a moment she thought it had hit Snaggletooth but had no effect; then, an Outsider behind and to the side of Snaggletooth shuddered and fell, the bolt protruding from the side of its head.
Urstadt cursed, and retrieved another bolt. This time she waited until Snaggletooth turned sideways, swiping its tail at a squad of Reapers, and then she fired. The bolt plunged into Snaggletooth’s shoulder.
The colossal monster snapped its jaw down on a group of Rangers, leaving shredded body parts and horses where tiellans on horseback had once been, and Urstadt was worried the bolt would have no effect, when Snaggletooth shuddered and craned its massive head around to look at the wound. Upon seeing the bolt, Snaggletooth snaked its head upward toward the stars and roared so loudly the snow seemed to stop in fear.
Snaggletooth’s head lowered, and its gaze scanned outward from its wound, settling on Urstadt and the ballista.
Urstadt swore and cranked the winch lever as fast as her fatigued muscles would allow. She slid a new bolt into place as Snaggletooth thundered toward her, its giant maw open.
“Rot in Oblivion, you son of a bitch,” Urstadt muttered, then pulled the trigger mechanism.
The bolt shot up and forward, but did not have much room to travel. It embedded itself in Snaggletooth’s eye the full length, only a few fingers of wood and fletching protruding from the now rapidly leaking gooey surface. The gargantuan beast fell to the ground with the sound of a deafening thunder clap; Urstadt only just managed to leap out of the way as it slid to a stop, and was still.
* * *
Between Jane’s cascading beam of white light, Winter’s onslaught against the Nine, and Cinzia as she wove in and out of reality, assassinating Daemons, Knot felt incredibly useless. He attempted to attack an Outsider once that got too close to Cinzia’s position, but Jane’s beam of light had swept over the beast before Knot could get within reach.
And yet, he had never been more proud.
Jane’s power mystified him. He had no inkling of how she did what she did, but she clearly wielded great power. He and Jane had certainly had their differences, but he was grateful to be on her side.
Winter’s power astounded him. He knew of all she had done, knew she was behind the massacre in Navone and the destruction of the imperial dome in Izet, but she had to be using not just dozens, but hundreds of weapons at the moment. More than any living psimancer could conceive, let alone control. But Winter’s attacks on the Daemons were both fierce and masterful.
What Cinzia did made his hair stand on end. He only caught glimpses of her, but her shadow moved from one Daemon to the next, and the orange, yellow, and red lights winked out, one by one. Each imploded in another reverse thunderclap, drawing everything near it inward before it collapsed into nothing. At times Knot glimpsed the gemstone Cinzia carried around in both hands, but at others he could swear she held a dagger, bright golden blade glinting.
“Enough!” Azael shouted, his voice burning deep. “I thought you were going to save the Sfaera. Instead, you have doomed it.” The Daemon turned to the remaining three. “Hade, Estille, Luceraf. We must regroup. Salvage what we can.” The black, hooded figure, once so imposing, seemed hardly more than a man in a dark cloak, now.
“I hope you understand what you have done before it is all over,” Azael said. He indicated the Outsiders all around them. “I could have managed the destruction these would wreak, had you let us continue. But now I cannot. I leave you to reap what you have sown.” Azael hesitated, then spoke again. “They will be drawn to the largest congregations of people nearby. Protect them if you can.”
Then, in a cloud of dark smoke, Azael, Hade, and Nadir were gone, and Jane, Knot, and Winter were left facing a field of Outsiders.
In an instant, Cinzia’s visage flickered, then reappeared completely, as she shoved the gemstone back into the pouch at her belt.
“What happened?” she demanded. “Where did the others go?”
“They left,” Knot said, his voice quiet. To his side, Jane teetered, then collapsed. Knot barely caught her before she hit the ground.
“Where? Where did they go? I have to—”
“We have more immediate problems,” Knot said, nodding at the Outsiders.
Whatever had kept the beasts relatively passive, whatever had kept them from grouping and overwhelming their attackers, was gone, now. They all turned to look at Knot, Cinzia, Jane, and Winter, black eyes gleaming, maws dripping rancid saliva.
“Oh Goddess,” Cinzia whispered.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Knot said, already suspecting there was no hope. Jane was incapacitated in his arms. He looked to Winter.
She shook her head slowly. “I cannot handle this many, even at my strongest. I’m practically burned out, Knot. Any further use, and I’m afraid… I don’t think I would make it.”
Knot growled in frustration. There had to be something. “Cinzia, can you—”
“There might be something else I could try,” Winter said, her eyes darting toward the Outsiders enclosing on their position. “Gather close to me, all of you…”
* * *
Astrid took a running leap and launched herself into the night, everything slowing around her. Snowflakes almost froze in place in the air, only disturbed as she crashed through them. The Prelates below and behind her became momentary statues, drawing bows, thrusting spears, shouting orders. And the Outsider that stood tall before her slowly turned its head to meet Astrid’s attack.
It turned too slowly.
Astrid collided with the side of the Outsider’s head, her claws digging in to the monster’s flesh for purchase. Prelates jabbed spears up into the monster’s ribs from below as Astrid scrambled to the top of its head. She gripped herself in place with her feet, raised both hands high, and brought them down on the top of the Outsider’s skull with as much force and strength as she could muster.
Both fists pierced the Outsider’s flesh, then with a sickening crunch smashed through its skull, bits of bone and gore flying.
The monster went limp beneath her, and Astrid leapt away as it fell, landing awkwardly in a roll of mud and snow and blood. When she pushed herself to her feet, she looked for Eward.
“What’s next?” she asked, shaking filth from herself as she approached.
Eward looked around, then met the eyes of an incoming group of Prelates.
“No more reports, sir,” one of them said.
No more reports. Had they killed all the Outsiders in the Odenite camp already?
Astrid turned to look at the cliffs. The raging war of colors was gone, as was the shimmering portal that had once twisted above the cliff.
“Did they actually win?” Astrid asked, to no one in particular. But it couldn’t be true. Hundreds of Outsiders still swarmed the clifftop, and a few, three or four at least, of the massive monsters.
“There don’t seem to be any more Outsiders appearing in the camp,” Eward said. “I think the portals have closed.”
But as he said the words, the air around them crackled with energy.
“What the Goddess-damned Oblivion,” Astrid muttered, taking a step back. Something was coming.
A cloud of black smoke billowed out of nothing. Astrid braced herself to pounce, glancing at Eward, who nodded, sword raised, signaling the remaining Prelates to form up.
Three shadows emerged from the smoke. Three shadows, but four people, Astrid realized. Knot, carrying an unconscious Jane, Cinzia walking beside them, and behind them both, the Chaos Queen herself, Winter Cordier.
Astrid couldn’t stop the wide grin spreading across her face.
* * *
As Winter stepped into the Odenite camp, tendrils of black smoke wisped between her fingers, trailing along her arms.
She glanced at Knot, but he did not return her gaze.
At least I got us out of there. She honestly had not thought it would work, but after using the travelstone, something had itched within her, until she’d attempted weaving all three tendra—her telenic, acumenic, and voyantic tendra—together. In doing so, with some practice, she had managed to recreate whatever force the travelstone allowed her to access. The act had taken every last bit of power she had; it was all she could do to remain standing without help, but she’d be damned if she showed weakness now.
Before Winter could process what had just happened any further, a small form rushed past her, colliding with Knot. It was Astrid. The girl pulled Knot and Cinzia close to her, hugging them both tightly.
They looked for all the world like a pristine little family finally reunited. A stab of jealousy pierced Winter’s heart.
“That’s the last time I let you two go anywhere without me,” the girl said.
A young man, not far behind Astrid, hovered over Jane.
“What happened? Is she all right?”
“She’ll be fine, Eward,” Cinzia said woodenly. Then she seemed to notice her tone, and added with more compassion in her voice, “I think she just exhausted herself.”
“Doing what?” A group of women had gathered around Jane, taking her from Knot toward some kind of makeshift field hospital.
“Protecting me,” Cinzia said.
“What happened here?” Knot asked. “Did you defeat the Outsider?”
Only then did Winter become aware of the massive dark corpse just a few rods away.
“Oh…”
“That wasn’t the only one, I’m afraid,” Eward said. “We’ve killed a half-dozen of them at least. We’ve lost a lot of people. The disciples have been healing, but even still… many Odenites are dead.”
Winter clenched her jaw. Many were dead because of the Outsiders. The Outsiders were here because of the Nine Daemons.
And Winter had summoned them.
“There are four Daemons left alive,” Cinzia said through gritted teeth.
“You killed five of them?” Winter asked.
Cinzia only nodded.
“Wait,” Eward said, “what are you talking about? Cinzia, you killed the Nine Daemons?”
“Five of them,” Winter said. “Perhaps.”
Eward did a double-take, and now stood dumbstruck, staring at Winter.
“You’re… you’re the Chaos Queen.”
Immediately, the Prelates around them all shifted, reaching for weapons. Winter herself tensed. She had not thought about what her presence here might mean; she had only wanted to get everyone out of there as quickly as possible.
“Put down those weapons,” Cinzia said. “She helped us defeat the five.” Then she turned to face Winter and Knot. “But we need to find the other four. We have to finish this.”
Knot inclined his head, but Winter was not so sure.
“Something is not right about all of this,” Winter said, wavering slightly. Bloody Oblivion, she needed to rest. “Did you hear what Azael said? He said, ‘I thought you were going to save the Sfaera.’”
“Because you summoned them in the first place?” Cinzia asked, a sharp edge to her voice.
“Regardless,” Winter said, her voice hard, “something was not right, even from the beginning. They seemed to think summoning them would do something good for the Sfaera, not cause its destruction.”
“Of course they would want you to think that,” Astrid said, “They’re the Nine Daemons.”
“Perhaps,” Winter said, “but I think there was more to it than that. What they said, how they acted… they hardly even attacked me, even when I went after them with everything I had. They mostly just defended themselves, and one another.”
Winter remembered Azael’s frustration, his sadness as he and the remaining three Daemons left.
“Azael did say something about managing the destruction the Outsiders would cause,” Cinzia said, “but I do not know if that means anything.”
“We can discuss details of the battle later,” Knot said. Winter followed his gaze to the cliffs, where the remaining Outsiders— hundreds of them, including the huge ones—were working themselves into a frenzy, moving toward the cliff’s edge. “But we have to keep in mind the war is far from over.”
As he said the words, something changed in the Outsiders on the clifftop. Their frenzy stopped, and they all stared down at the city. An eerie silence filled the night, accented by the softly falling snow. Dawn was close.
“Azael said that, when left to their own devices, they would seek the largest congregations of people,” Cinzia said.
The moment of stillness did not last long. With a roar, one of the Outsiders leapt from the cliff. Cinzia stared, wondering whether the thing had just leapt to its death, but as she squinted into the dark, the shape sprinted down the cliff face as if it were a horizontal plane, as if the force of the Sfaera did not pull it down toward it—or did not pull it down fast enough.
Two more followed that first Outsider, and then three, and then dozens were sprinting down the Cliffs of Litori, roaring as they went.
Winter was vaguely aware of Knot and Eward giving orders, forming the armed men into ranks. She felt Cinzia’s gaze on her.
“You are powerful,” Cinzia said. “You are the Chaos Queen. Can you stop that?” she asked, pointing at the charging Outsiders.
Winter followed Cinzia’s gaze, her eyes wide. Slowly, she shook her head. “I… with a rihnemin, perhaps I could, but the humans destroyed all the rihnemin here. I have some crystals left, but I could only do so much against them before I burned myself out, or died in the process.” Even that was a generous estimate; Winter would not last more than a few minutes in her current state.
“So burn yourself out, or die in the process,” Cinzia said quietly, her eyes uncharacteristically dark.
But Winter recognized the pale horror on Cinzia’s face, the sense of sheer hopelessness. Hundreds of Outsiders remained, including at least five or six of the huge versions of the beasts. Now that they were charging, she did not know how they could be stopped. The entire Khalic Legion could stand in their way, and the Outsiders would slice through them like sickles through wheat.
They did not stand a chance. None of them did. It did not matter that Cinzia had killed four of the Daemons today; the Odenites and the people of Triah would all die anyway, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.
* * *
Cova oversaw the retreat of her soldiers with mixed feelings.
The monsters that had previously been uninterested in the fight had changed their tune when the light-battle had ended. The portals had snapped out of existence, at least—but the remaining Outsiders had threatened to overwhelm her people, even when they managed to unite with Urstadt’s group.
The tiellans were a spent force. They had brought a few hundred Rangers with them, all wounded, an injured, weary Urstadt the only human among them. Tiellans had been outlawed from Roden for decades, and she wondered whether her people knew how to act around them—in the aftermath of battle was one thing, but once they had recovered, how would things stand? She had ordered those taking the tiellans onto their ships to treat them as they would any ally, but she worried nevertheless. It might have been a poor decision on her part.
But what else could she have done?
Cova boarded her ship, watching as the last of her soldiers boarded theirs. Then, they hauled up anchor and made their way out to sea, the snow drifting all around them, melting into the waves.
* * *
“Grand Marshal…”
In the courtyard of the Legion’s barracks, Carrieri inspected the body of the Outsider. The hide was like a shark’s skin: smooth to look at, but rough to the touch. He half expected his hand to be covered with dozens of tiny lacerations when he pulled it away, but he was uninjured.
“Grand Marshal, you need to see this.”
“Another one?” Carrieri sighed wearily. He had received no reports of new Outsiders dropping from the sky in the city for the last half hour or so. That seemed a good sign, but he was far from ready to dismiss the threat.
Carrieri followed Ryven up the barracks’ observation tower. It was not that high up—at five stories, not even as high as the Merchant’s Tower—but enough to see over most of the buildings in the city. The lad pointed to the cliffs, where the lights of the Nine Daemons had burned only moments before. Now, Litori was dark.
“What is it I’m supposed to be…” but then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw it. The cliffs appeared unusually dark. But as Carrieri squinted, he saw the cliffs moving.
The hundreds of Outsiders at the top of the cliffs poured down toward the city, sprinting vertically down the cliff face itself, packed so tightly the cliffs became a swarming waterfall of dark horror.
The daemons were coming, and Triah stood helpless in their path.