Circle of Reign (71 page)

Aiden saw them coming low against the horizon from the east when the next bolt of lightning shot through the sky. The Alysaar looked like slithering shadows no more than a man’s height above the trees. Thousands lay in the way between him and the coming onslaught, thousands of his people. They fought valiantly against the demon spawn swarming all around them, but they would fall as soon as the flying blades of bone, scales and wings cut through them. He would not let this attack go unanswered.

“East! From the east!” he shouted. “Down!” His words were barely audible to himself amid the cacophony of battle.

Knowing he could not save those in the kill path, Aiden sprinted toward the Alysaar battery. He was angry and apprehensive all at once but did his best to capture those frictions and redirect them. He did not fully understand this process, but did it all the same. His sword vibrated in his hand, which he knew by now to be somehow related to the friction. As he recycled the emotions, his velocity increased twofold.

A female Borathein at the tip of their attack wreaked havoc upon those in her path with a sadistic laugh. Aiden had his target. When he jumped, his height was far more than he had anticipated and he momentarily had a sense of vertigo. The feeling was reminiscent of the night Thannuel died when he had chased Lord Kerr’s assassin through the woods. That chase had not ended well, but the master of the hold guard was determined not to lose control this time.

He refocused and found the banshee of a woman. The arc of his flight carried him over the snapping jaws of the woman’s Alysaar and onto its back. Aiden excused the rear rider from his saddle with a vicious volley of elbow thrusts followed by a spinning roundhouse kick to the jaw. The scream as he fell was only heard for a split second.

The woman turned her head over her left shoulder and let go of her reins. She spun up, faced Aiden with a short blade and demonstrated amazing balance and agility. She struck out deftly against him as the Alysaar piloted itself, weaving in and out of the other aerial obstacles and debris. Aiden countered after a parry that he was sure would open her throat, but the woman blocked the blow with her dagger flush against her forearm. He was stunned at the banshee’s swiftness. While lacking the speed of a wood-dweller, her movements were fluid and graceful, never ceasing. It was like a dance. She stabbed and swiped at him, but Aiden ducked and brought her up by her leg.

His grip was iron around her calf as he brought her legs above her head, holding her upside down. The short blade fell from her grasp in her surprise. Aiden sheathed his sword and found her other leg in one motion. Next, he swung her around and around as if she were caught in a hurricane. She vomited amid her screams. With deft footwork, Aiden spun his way up the Alysaar’s neck with her still in hand and the demon threw its head back in protest.

“Dance around this!”

The momentum flung the woman right into the exposed razor-sharp beard of her own mount, impaling her entire midsection. Her squirming stopped instantly and the Alysaar threw its head down as if it had sneezed, forcing the corpse into a free-fall.

Aiden pulled back on the reins hard, and this time he achieved some obedience from the fiend. As they climbed into the black sky, he saw a man circling in a holding pattern. His beard was rife with all manner of pieces of death woven into it. Doing his best to stabilize the writhing animal under him, he plotted a vector directly toward the man.

He must be the head!
If he could take him down the battle would turn to chaos on the side of the Borathein. He hoped, anyway. Squatting down, he prepared himself to lunge at the barbarian’s Alysaar. Aiming for a wing close to the body would be his best chance in avoiding the mouth and talons of the creature. The sword would remain sheathed, keeping both hands free. Expending a great deal of the friction he had built up inside him, Aiden shot toward his prey.

But the Borathein leader was prepared. His Alysaar swiveled in midair as if on an invisible axis, bringing the Borathein rider upside down. Simultaneously, the Alysaar rotated its wings on the shoulder-like joints 180°, enabling the wings to function properly and flight to continue despite now being upside down. The move took less time than a blink. The large man swung a huge mace that Aiden too late tried to counter. Not having earth or trees for a counterpoint, he was unable to change his trajectory and the mace caught him full under the arm.

The force was unbelievable and Aiden felt his ribs give way under the blow. Hot searing pain shot up through his side and radiated into his arm. Breath evaded him. It was too much for him to capture and recycle before it took root and his face contorted with pain. Before he could fall, the bearded man grabbed him by the throat—still upside down—and head-butted Aiden in the eye, splitting the thin skin around it. Muted stars filled his vision as he went limp. Through the milky expanse obstructing his vision, Aiden thought he saw a short blade come to his face. The blazing pain that danced through his nerves left no doubt as the Borathein warrior traced the knife from his bleeding eye socket down his jawline. Aiden screamed and thrashed wildly, but the man’s strength was immense. He felt a chunk of his flesh start to be peeled away.

“I will have your face, betrayer!” Shilkath yelled in Sentharian.

An arrow from below pierced the wood-dweller’s shoulder, the arrowhead erupting through his skin like a volcano of blood. The surprise of it caught Shilkath off guard. A second arrow hissed by his ear and, in reflex, he let go of the long-haired Arlethian. Unconscious from the pain, the wood-dweller fell through the darkness.

The Deklar righted himself on his massive Alysaar. Hawgl screeched thunder.

“There will be others,” Shilkath promised. “Many others. We will adorn ourselves in their flesh.”

The Alysaar screeched again. Shilkath now had a taste of the battle. He had held back and commanded from on high, but with this first taste he could restrain himself no longer. Leaning forward, he grabbed the reins tightly in his left hand and his mace in his right. He spied a group of children who were mostly doing little good, but there were a few who were effective enough.

“Dive, Hawgl! Dive! Let us feast on the tender spawn of traitors!”

Their charge was terrible. As his mace crushed skulls and bodies he became stained with blood and brain matter. Hawgl tore women and children to shreds with his petrified bone talons, preferring the feel of their softer flesh to the men. Three wood-dwellers leaped atop Hawgl, but the Alysaar turned his side parallel to the earth too quickly for the trespassers to find hold. Two fell and the third dangled desperately from the short stubby tail of the Alysaar. Hawgl leveled out. Leaving the reins, Shilkath turned and stood over the Arlethian. He reached down, grabbed the man by his hair and lifted him up to his height with a single arm. The wood-dweller screamed in pain, clawing at Shilkath’s arm and kicking.

“Pathetic!”

He shook his captive from the crown of his head violently until the momentum of the Arlethian’s swaying body snapped his own neck. The Borathein leader let the corpse fall as if it were no more than a dead fish, and laughed. Shilkath roared with gleeful ferocity as he dove and banked, spilling the life of his enemies upon the treed canopy until it became slick with dark fluid and reflected the shimmer of approaching dawn. Only then did Shilkath realize the color of the forest was wrong. It was paler. Gray.

“The serpent Tyjil has worked his trick,” he mused and was once again impressed by it.

Tyjil sat below the Changrual Monastery in the expansive cavern he had discovered over thirty-six seasons ago. He was a different person then, nine years past. Well, in as much as a name defines someone. He found that he much preferred Tyjil to Rehum. Tyjil was strong and focused where Rehum was desperate and largely a fool.

He removed a Triarch leafling from a satchel. This particular sample came directly from Calyn’s immediate vicinity. It’s how the
Influence worked, requiring some connection to the body to be affected.

Memories of his first experience demonstrating the Influence came to mind. A dark night in the Arlethian forest with a small audience. He had not been strong enough to alter a large portion of the forest when he demonstrated the Influence six years ago for Shilkath. He was now. This particular conjure of Influence would mean the end of the Arlethians.

The Ancient Dark swelled inside him and he touched the Triarch leafling. The now familiar blue luminescence shone—the Living Light within the leafling. He extracted it and took it into himself. When he had drawn all the Light out, he was granted access to the tree from which the leafling had been taken. Like a plague, he forced his access through the tree and then the intertwined roots of the forest around Calyn.

“Oh, the exquisite joy!” he cackled as he ripped through the forest. Tyjil felt the changes as he snuffed out the Lumenati spark of life from the trees, leaving cold and dead stone in his wake.

As he pushed farther, he saw the brightest Light. It was blinding and he knew it was the Tavaniah Forest. He tried to push there but was rebuffed soundly. He tried again but could go no farther, dammed by a barrier of some create. The Light caused him to squint with his physical eyes, though he was only seeing it in his mind.

“Soon,” he promised. “Soon I will be strong enough to pierce you. Soon I will have my own army of those that serve the Ancient Dark. Yes, soon.”

A sound interrupted him. Rocks being misplaced and moved, he thought. Startled, he came cautiously to a wall where the sound emanated. His brow furrowed with curiosity, he brought his torch closer to inspect the wall when he saw a stone fall free, followed by a hand reaching through.

Thurik bit through an enemy’s beard and found hot flesh underneath. With a forceful whipping of the wolf’s neck, the trachea came free. Hedron scrambled around a tree faster than his immediate opponent could follow and stabbed him through the side. The pale man died with a yelp. Hedron had never killed anyone before this battle, though he had tried when his mother fell under attack. He discovered it was easy as breathing when properly motivated—something Aiden had whispered to him before the battle. He did not feel any regret in his actions, no remorse. The rightness of it propelled him.

He saw Lord Hoyt caught between two assailants, but Master Gernald was there in an instant. Together, they ended their enemies and moved on to the next. Despite valiant efforts, they were doing little damage to the overall enemy force. The trees forced a bottleneck of sorts and allowed the Arlethian and Southern forces to meet them with less peril, but they were being forced back into the flames that engulfed more of Calyn as every minute passed. Hedron knew they could not press upon their enemy.

The three wolf cubs toppled another Borathein and savagely dispatched him amid screams. Hedron felt a cold sweat on his neck as he heard a yelp of pain followed by a whimper. Alabeth lay on the ground with a spear in her left rear leg. Huksinai and Thurik killed the offender and circled around their sister, viciously snapping at anyone who dared approach. Though she was alive, Alabeth did not move.