Vesik 04 - This Broken World (28 page)

Navigating the woods was much easier with the light, and it wasn’t long before we came out the other side. It was a wide field, and a modern structure was off to our right.

“It’s not at the lake,” Foster said. “Holy shit, it’s not at the lake.”

I started to ask him what he was talking about, but then I saw one of the massive tentacles swing above the tree line. Flashes of power and shouts came through from the opposite woods in muted tones.

I broke into a run. Nixie was in that mess somewhere. Foster took off into the air and streaked toward the scene of the battle. “Go!” I said to Sam.

She nodded and took off far faster than I could follow. It was no more than two minutes before I stumbled out the other side of the woods into a decent clearing. A low stone wall, just foot-high and made of piled rocks, cut the field in two. Trees had sparsely populated the grass, but now most of them were shattered and strewn about like toothpicks. I stared at the scene before me as I let my illumination spell fade.

Ward stood half-naked in the moonlight. His body was etched in ink and one of the wards on his left arm glowed. There were more wards carved into his flesh than I could even believe existed.

Aeros was wrapped up in one of the monster’s tentacles. I could see a nebulous ball of dust and fur trying to chew through the tentacle to release him. Jasper was making screeching sounds as he expanded and contracted. Aeros’s feet dug furrows into the earth as the Leviathan tried to drag him down the hill.

“Help Nixie,” Aeros said as Foster hacked at the tentacle beside Jasper.

Foster nodded, crouched, and launched himself into the air.

Nixie stood back-to-back with Sam, who had managed to pin one of the huge limbs to the ground by impaling it with dozens of tree branches. Nixie methodically sliced through it with a blade that glistened with black blood in the dim light.

Foster’s sword joined Nixie’s a moment later. Their combined strikes sent sprays of black blood across the field.

A flurry of tentacles struck out at Foster and Nixie, leveling what few trees remained standing. The pair deftly avoided each strike and returned to hack at the tentacle once more. The Leviathan’s gigantic black eye pivoted in its taut gray flesh.

A trail of broken trees led away from the Leviathan, likely ending at a lake. I ran toward Sam and Nixie.

“Jasper!” Ward said. “Move!”

The rabid ball of fur flowed away from the tentacle it had been gnawing at.

Ward laid his right palm across the upper left edge of his chest. The ley lines around us bent and flowed into him as the wards beneath his fingers glowed. As he pulled his hand away, thin streamers of bright blue power formed tracers from his fingers. In one violent motion, he struck at the air with the back of his hand. The field turned to daylight as four massive beams of power shot across the field and into the wound Jasper had opened.

The Leviathan roared, and it was as though a mountain screamed. So deep and so loud that the very earth shook around us. The Leviathan shifted its beak toward Ward. It lunged at him with surprising speed, but he easily dodged to the side. Black blood oozed from the wounds he’d punched through the Leviathan’s tentacle.

“Can’t you hit the body with that?” I shouted toward Ward.

“No! Too thick!” he shouted and dodged the beak. He touched another ward on his forearm. An electric blue blade ignited in his hand, so dense I would have thought it was a ley line. In the same motion he used to avoid the beak, he slammed the blade through the open wound. The last of the flesh gave way and the tree-sized tentacle fell to the earth and writhed.

“Ward!” I said, but I was too slow.

Another tentacle twisted above the Leviathan at an impossible angle and smacked Ward across the field. There was a flash of power before the man smashed into the tree line.

Jasper began chewing once more at the tentacle Aeros was battling. The Old God had caused great trauma to the appendage, flattening it in some spots, but it still held on.

I let the staff fall from my left hand as I picked up the focus with my right. The staff would slow me down too much. Foster, Nixie, and Sam seemed to have their side under control, so I ran to help free Aeros.

I forced an aural blade through the focus as I dodged a flailing tentacle. I felt the breeze through my hair as I raised the deep-red blade and struck beside Jasper. He chittered and used his teeth to pull the wound open wider. I got the message.

I brought the blade down directly into the wound, and nothing happened. It just
stopped.

Aeros grunted and flattened another piece of the tentacle wrapped around his chest. “You’ll need a soulsword.”

“Fuck,” I said a moment before I unlocked the hold I’d been keeping on my aura. A world of voices exploded around me. I gasped and rammed a soulart through the focus. A golden glow wrapped around the red blade and I shouted as I brought it down into the wound. For a split second, there was resistance, and then the sword carved a gory path through the tentacle.

“Yes!” Aeros said.

I let the soulsword expire, and locked down my aura again, stumbling at the sudden silence. I backed away as the Old God began to swing the tentacle around his head at a dizzying pace. He brought it down on the Leviathan’s eye.

I expected some damage, or an exploded eye, or something, but the Leviathan just blinked at us, and then pivoted its eye back to the others. The other tentacles reached up for our friends. For my sister.

“Sam!” I screamed her name, and the moment stretched infinitely long.

She’d torn one of the smaller tentacles away, but she couldn’t avoid the one that whipped around to grab her from behind.

Jasper’s chitters deepened. He didn’t just move. He changed. His entire body thinned into a reflective pool and then exploded. At once, his form swelled into a round reptilian ball and two muscular, scaly legs tore into the earth beneath him with their claws. Jasper launched into the air a moment before an enormous spiked tail swung from his elongating body. A slender neck shot toward the Leviathan’s head.

“Oh my fuck,” I said as Jasper’s long snout opened and closed over the beast’s face.

The claws on his hind legs tore away the tentacle that had Sam in its grasp and the gigantic clawed wings launched him into the air, all four of his legs dragging the Leviathan with him.

I watched, speechless, as the reaper carried away the Leviathan. It looked like he carried a dull moon dripping with mud. Jasper’s wings stalled, and I stared as he rotated once, pulling the Leviathan up over his own body, before whipping it into the ground.

The roar that came from the winged beast dwarfed the muted cry of the Leviathan. I put my hands over my ears and turned my head toward Sam. Nixie and Foster were still staring at the sky.

Sam was staring at me, unwrapping the last of the tentacle from her waist. I could see her shaking, and her tears glistened in the moonlight.

We both turned back to the beast in the sky. Jasper’s neck pulled back as his wings kept him hovering above the impact crater. When his head shot forward, his jaws opened wide, and a rolling stream of flame exploded from his mouth. Jasper roared again as embers and ash rose into the air.

The beast turned on his wings and glided down to land a dozen feet away. His wings folded back against his body as he stepped toward me. He paused and cocked his head to one side. His eyes were still the same featureless black orbs, set below a mane formed from metallic gray horns. He blinked, and reptilian flesh closed over his eyes before revealing the dark orbs once more.

I held my hand out to the beast. It knocked my hand to the side with a cold snout as big as my head. Jasper butted my chest with his nose and huffed before he fell into himself, leaving behind the small, round ball of fluff I’d known so long ago.

I registered the sniffle before I realized Sam had crossed the distance to us. She was crying as she scooped Jasper up. Jasper resumed his excited chittering and flowed around Sam’s neck. The sound was almost a purr.

Ward hopped over a severed tentacle. “What. The. Fuck.” He pulled a leather jerkin over his bare flesh. “How did Jasper pick up a Leviathan?”

“That was a dragon,” I said. “I just saw a dragon flambé a god damned Leviathan.”

“Reaper,” Foster said, whipping his sword at the ground to remove the Leviathan’s blood.

Aeros picked up a severed tentacle and tossed it deeper into the woods.

“Reaper,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d just witnessed. “Jasper’s a dragon.” I took two steps toward Foster and stared at him. “You didn’t tell me Jasper was a fucking dragon. A dragon!”

“He’s a reaper,” Foster said. “Dragons aren’t real.”

I narrowed my eyes at the fairy. “That’s a technicality.”

“He does look like a dragon,” Nixie said. “We used to call the fire lizards of the Burning Lands dragons.”

Foster sheathed his sword. “Fine. He’s a dragon. Now you all sound like Mike with his damned dragon scales. Can we talk about this later?”

Sam ran her fingers through Jasper’s fur. “The bug has a point.”

I nodded and stepped closer to Sam. I pointed at Jasper and said, “You keep her safe. She is not lunch.”

The fur ball exploded into a series of shrieking chitters.

“You insulted him,” Nixie said, sliding around beside me.

“Yes,” Aeros said. “He says he would never eat dead things.”

“Aww,” Sam said. “That’s so sweet.”

“Gods, you people are nuts,” Ward said. “Hugh warned me, I just didn’t understand.”

“You’re a hell of a fighter,” I said.

“I’ve had a long time to practice.”

“Pleasantries later,” Aeros said. His joints ground and shifted so he could look back through the western woods. “Something is happening.”

A flood of power washed over us and I squinted. My vision changed as if something had placed a wavy glass sheet between me and the rest of the world. “What was that?”

“Nothing good,” Foster said. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“I
will meet you at the ridge,” Aeros said. “Whatever is happening, it is happening there.” He sank into the ground. A pool of golden light shimmered for a moment, and then vanished.

Sam blurred into motion as Foster leapt into the air and glided over the trees. Ward followed Sam’s trail, and he was almost as fast as she was.

“Minas Illuminadda,”
I said, popping a ball of light up for Nixie and I to jog behind. “I didn’t know you were here.” We followed the light into the woods.

“I tried to tell you,” she said. “Something is strange with the ley lines here. I couldn’t send a message through the discs.”

“Call me next time.”

“Phones don’t work in Faerie,” she said, unable to keep a hint of amusement from her voice.

“Oh, right.” I hopped over a large fallen tree. Another massive fluctuation in the ley lines distorted my vision. I picked up the pace as soon as my vision cleared.

“Hurry,” Nixie said. Her armor caught the light and created tiny rainbows of color across its dark surface that I couldn’t see from a distance. Scales overlapped each other, leaving only her fingertips exposed.

We reached the first clearing. A figure with armor much like Nixie’s stood at the edge of the field. Alexandra’s long black hair was tied in a tight braid that barely moved when she turned to look at us. She motioned us to come closer.

“Damian, I need to—”

“Go,” I said.

She leaned over and kissed me fiercely before taking off at an impossibly fast run. I blinked as she appeared by Alexandra a moment later. I focused on the far side of the field. I could see Sam and Foster huddling at the tree line and I wondered why they’d stopped. I crossed the field at a fast run, made easier by the even terrain.

“What is it?” I asked.

Sam pointed deeper into the woods. “I can see them too.” One of the battlefield ghosts was moving slowly. Its arm was rising, a Springfield rifle propped against its shoulder.

“What the hell,” I said.

“We don’t know,” Foster said.

“Let’s just get past them.” I saw two more ghosts starting to move.

The spirits began to move in earnest as we forced our way back through the trees. A distant thunder grew without the flash of lightning. I heard the screams then, the battle cries, before the thundering gunshots drowned out the world. Wisps of gray slowly curled and strayed around the trees and underbrush before more shapes formed. More ghosts rose from the mists.

The first shot that fired from one of the ghostly rifles scared the hell out of me. We dove into some heavier underbrush and stared.

I could see men running now as smoke and gunpowder filled the air. The gray sheen of the ghosts faded, replaced by vivid color. I stared half in horror, half in fascination as a cannon shot exploded in mid-air, sending tiny balls of death ripping through a small Confederate line. Blood and viscera erupted from their bodies, cutting off war cries and screams alike. The sound of enormous bees, zipping through the air and running into things with earsplitting cracks, filled the air.

I shifted, glanced at Foster and Sam, and then ran for the edge of the woods.

Something tugged on my shirt and my arm felt like it had been stung by a huge wasp. I glanced down to find my sleeve was pierced and smoking. It took another moment to realize I’d been grazed by a bullet as blood trickled from the wound.

“Get down!” I said, my voice breaking into a scream as I called a shield.

Sam and Foster slid in beside me. Jasper was still wrapped around Sam’s neck. The reaper stared silently out across the battlefield.

“What the fuck is happening?” Sam was practically screaming into my ear over the constant explosions and screams.

“It’s too much power,” Foster said. “They’re pulling so much power it’s collapsing our timeline.”

“What?” I said. “That’s not fucking possible.”

“Look around you!” he said, gesturing to the charging ghosts. “Those aren’t ghosts any longer.” He picked up a rock and threw it at the nearest soldier. It didn’t pass through his head. It bounced off and the man looked around before crouching behind a pile of fence posts.