Chapter 390 (2/2)
The dwarf, shaken and slightly pale, soluted “Yes, General” Then he was off again, huffing back down the wide spiral of the highway
I was looking fronatures, trying to guess which direction they would coely, and I had to hold out a hand to steady myself Screams of complete and utter terror trembled up tothey cut through rock and earth to fill up the cavern
I watched, horrified and paralyzed, as a black scythe of energy slashed through several buildings, collapsing therew louder
“No,” I breathed out in disbelief How had the Alacryans gotten inside the city?
Stepping forward, I pluhway and toward the co over ht A pressure stabbed atthe world go dark…
At the last instant, I pulled up, but I still struck the ground with enough force to shatter the paving stones Nearby, the frame of a partially-collapsed house shi+fted and fell in on itself
Down here, the screams were louder still
Where is everyone? The dwarven forces? Bairon? Who isfrantically for any signs of life But it was just the voices Screa…and there ords in the howls of pain
I sucked in a choked breath that caught in my throat
“You! Your fault!” the screams said “You could have protected us! Saved us!”
“Why?” other voices pleaded through their piteous dying moans “Why didn’t you make sure ould be safe?”
“You saved the lords and left us to die! You should have done more!”
My pulse quickened, and a sense of dread sees
A cold, bitter voice sounded in h all the other noise You can hide your fear and self-doubt from the rest of the world, but not from yourself Put on your ice-queen mask and take shelter behind your own inadequate power, but when the frost melts, the real you will always be just under the surface
I closedin bright rainbow light Deep breath in, long, steady breath out A half-seen shadorithed just at the edges of my vision
You can never escape what you truly are Frightened, lonely, and weak Even the strength that made you a Lance isn’t your own You couldn’t save Alea, or King and Queen Glayder, or Aya You lost the war, and soon everyone you knoill be dead Just lie down and die, coward
My eyes snapped open I’d heard these words before Whispered theht in our dark, hopeless cave in the Beast Glades after we’d been defeated and sent into hiding When I’d watched King and Queen Glayder continually succumb to their oeakness and selfishness, I’d heard these words in my plush rooms in their castle And I’d heard them when the Scythe, Cadell, had sneered down onwith disdain, just before he’d swattedathered e of my vision An ice-spike flew
The world twisted sickeningly, then snapped back into place The shadows vanished, and the reality ofin
I was on my knees in a crater at the center of the city’s lowest floor Several buildings around me had collapsed, and dozens of people were huddled in corners and behind whatever , terrified eyes stared not atdown
She lifted a hand to her neck and wiped away a thin trickle of blood where my spell had wounded her, then licked the blood from her thumb “Given Cadell’s stories about how pathetic you Lances were in the war, I’h even part of my illusions”
Dark purple hair flowed down over her shoulders and fraray skin of her face Her eyes were colorless in the glooht, two black coals set in her expressionless face White and gray robes, fit tight to her wispy fraray-yellow lumps that could only be dozens of vertebrae
Her expressionless aze to the chunks of bone “Macabre, I know But each represents a life, a story Some even carry the faint aura of the previous owner’sa cord that ran from beneath her ribs and across her body to her opposite hip
“You're trying to wearlike this…” I paused, my mouth suddenly dry “I see and hear worse whenever I close my eyes, Scythe”
She nodded as I stood to ht “I am here because you Lances have scurried around in the dark and avoided this fight for too long”
“Rich of you to accuse us of cowardice,” I said, fighting to keepthis war? Safe at ho behind the Vritra Clan’s skirts”
The Scythe did not bat an eyelash, only looked off to our right
There was a crash of stone and the head of a huge ha I tensed, ready to attack alongside Mica, but then I saw her
The dwarven Lance scra, like two moons reflected in the surface of a lake Her pale face was s the ha ht
“No, Olfred, stop! M-Mica is sorry! Please…”
Her plea choked off, and she flipped the haave out, and she tumbled into the chasm she’d made with a screaed up the side of the crater, prepared to hurl ht flickered sickeningly, and when it cah
A harsh growl emitted unbidden fro at the Scythe They passed harainst hard rock “Where is she? What are you doing to her?” I dey in attacking again
I needed to figure out what this Scythe’s poas, and how to defend against it
“The dwarf has a staggeringly coling her fingers When she did so, I could just hear the echo of Mica’s voice, like it was seeping up through the solid floor, but I couldn’t make out the words “You, on the other hand, are quite si Cliche”
I felt the white-hot pain behindinward, I found the cold cofros, finally envelopingand dimmed the Scythe’s power and voice
“Get out ofout both hands, I sent the array of spikes and blades hurtling at her A black shadow slashed the air, and the projectiles exploded The Scythe took a step back, her fores For one, hideous ures seemed to be several people at once, and then they solidified In the ly He seeer, but his look of cold disapproval was as bitter and sharp as it ever had been To one side, Alea Triscan was glaring atin the air like soti hole where her core should have been
“You were supposed to be the strongest of us,” the three said in unison, their voices bleeding together into a tinny, unrecognizable cacophony “But you failed us all” Alea’s one re arm rose
Twenty feet to my left, there was a rush of wind Four dwarves, huddled behind an overturned trolley, were lifted screale devastating moment, then they burst into red mist as slashes of black wind erased theround my teeth in i survivors in thick barriers of ice
“You can’t protect theain “How many were there, just like us? How many have you failed, howburst up frorabbed hold of my ankle I looked down in horror asforme tethered Then the heads were free, and I saw a dozen dwarves, recently dead, their flesh pale and torn, their eyes sightless and wounds bloodless
Squiruts, but I couldn’t turn away
“You ordered us into the tunnels knoe’d die,” one dwarf ue
“Join us,” another grunted, baring her teeth and brandishi+ng a , but I lacked the ithal to even try to block it When it hit the ice arounda shallow chip inGlayder, Alea, and Aya, the ax wasn’t an illusion She was aniainst us…
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, then let out a deep breath
Frostycorpses, then froze solid where it touched their skin, cocooning them in shells of ice I yankedit The dead hand shattered
“Your tricks are stale,” I ground out, doing n of the real Scythe “The others were ht!” I forced a sarcastic sotten cold feet since one of your oas butchered?”
I lifted an arm just in time to deflect a line of dark wind, then watched as the black line went through the ice cladding h my arm, which clattered to the broken stone tiles and shattered
Shadows coalesced in front ofthe pale, purple-haired Scythe The back of her clawed hand caved in the ice around lance off one of the ice-barriers protecting a group of huddled dwarves, then lost all sense of up and down as round like a skipped stone
In the distance, I could hear theaway
She seemed to float as she approached, her dark eyes hellish voids that threatened to consume me “This is over My sister will have finished your ‘Thunderlord’ already, and the dill soon succumb to my power” The barest hint of a smile turned up the corners of her lips for the first tiolden eyes will sweep in to save you, I’”
I pulled myself up out of the dust and brushed off ht into her dead eyes “No reason to keep spitting pointless barbs at one another then, is there?”
The ground beneath the Scythe exploded upward as the head of a dragon forh the stone tiles The huge jaws snapped shut around the Scythe, lifting her up into the air as the construct clawed its way from beneath the earth Inside its belly, stunned and nearly unconscious, was Mica
Black lines of stabbing wind pierced the dragon's skull, but I reforon kicked off the ground and began flying up into the air, while at the sah its body, eventually expelling her fifty feet up
I held on’s for Mica plummet ten feet, twenty, thirty When it was clear she couldn’t stop herself, I conjured a sloped ramp just beneath her body She slid uncontrolled to its base and rolled to the ground just at my feet
Above, ice shattered as the head of the dragon burst outward
The Scythe, wrapped in a black cloak of her deviant wind on in a dozen places, and I releasedthe ice dissipate har down on any nearby civilians
Micaout around the Scythe, while at the sae black claws, all pointed down atfor my core, I prepared to defend the attack, if I could
But before it fell, a red line slashed through the air, straight at the Scythe Her power coalesced into a shi+eld, but the red line punched straight through She twisted at the last second, avoiding the scarlet h herhole it had left
The burning red line turned in the air and flew back past the Scythe and overout a hand, Bairon caught the spear A red gleam stained his blond hair as the spear flared with its own internal light When the light faded, though, I realized it wasn’t only that staining him red
Bairon was covered in blood from the tips of his well-trimmed hair to the heels of his boots From the wounds I could see, it see his left side His leg dragged and his ar fire in his eyes that tolddefeat
“A Scythe,” he said, his deep baritone strained with the pain of hisback up at the purple-haired woitation in her ic as the shadows bucked around her like a wind-tossed sea
“No, another,” Bairon said, leaning into the spear to take the weight off his left side “I fought a horned wo, Mica pushed herself up to her knees Blood dripped like a tear from her ruined eye socket Her core felt drained; she had used up an inordinate aainst herself
“Stop looking atthe blood away “I’m alive And very pissed off”
“The Royal Palace?”
Mica waved me away “The Alacryan forces have… back froer if we…lose down here”
Wobbling slightly, a second wo toward the first Two thick black horns sprouted from her brilliant white hair and curved outward Her hand was pressed against a cut in her side, deep enough to expose ribs Drops of blood shi+ht her alone?” I asked Bairon, unable to suppress the wonder in my tone
Bairon snorted “The spear A lucky blow Cut off her h the feeling of the scarlet blade disrupting ainst the asura “That’s hoe hold the out a hand to Mica
A harsh aura fell like an iron curtain down atop us as Mica pulled herself to her feet, and I heard the barriers of ice I was still focusing on shatter The people beneath theimmicks won’t save you!” the second Scythe screa in her head The purple-haired Scythe had regained control of her mana after Bairon’s strike, and she was steadier than her counterpart, the only sign of any e of her nostrils
Two Scythes…This was a battle we’d lost before, in Etistin
Bairon stepped up beside rip as he leveled it at our enemy Mica moved to my other side, unable to keep the apprehensive frown fronore the cold claws of doubt and uncertainty that clutched at my insides
And then I reauging his fa us to protect the city, and then what I had told hi battles”