Chapter 6: Harbinger
The Time: Present day, 720 A.E.
The Place: Central Saimr
Itâs not that Enahi is wrongâit really is quite stupid to engage opponents like this with no information and (at least for now) no reinforcements. But if thereâs anyone left that she could possibly save who dies because sheâs sitting around twiddling her thumbs, sheâll be very cross with herself.
On a whim, Ari skids to a stop halfway down the hill and calls over her shoulder, âIf youâre scared, just stay there and wait for help to get here!â She winks, though Enahi probably canât make it out. âGiÅ¡va will take care of it!â
She can handle it by herself, probably. Itâll just be easier if Enahi provides a worthwhile distraction, which sheâs surely capable of if her impenetrable hubris is any indication.
Something kinda-sorta like concern squirms around inside her ribs, but Ari quashes it ruthlessly. If Enahi is good at anything, itâs being a proper nuisance in battle. The Holy Shadow is an art dedicated tocreating diversions and punishing anyone who canât break through them. She might be the matron best-suited to facing two unknown threats, if only because she can disengage in a blink if sheâs overwhelmed.
Ah, what is she worrying about? If Enahi gets knocked around a bit, maybe itâll cut her ego down to a healthier size. Ooh, and maybe sheâll faint like a flower in the breeze, and then Ari will have to carry her nobly back to camp in front of everyoneâ
Oh, oh, or maybe sheâll wind up poisoned, like that one scene in To Court a Princess! And Ari will solicitously dab her brow with a wet cloth while she spills all her deepest darkest secrets in a feverish hazeâ
Thereâs a fair bit of distance between them, but Ari can vicariously feel the way the air frosts over when her words strike the LaÅ¡ar Commanderâs dignified ears. For a moment, Enahi is soundless in her apoplexy, positively quivering with rage. Before she can transmute fury into words, Ari blows her a kiss and sets off down the hill again.
The beast doesnât patiently wait for its newest meal to deliver itself; as Ari draws Varul from its sheathand wills its shape to change, the demon lungesforward with shocking speed and violence. Itsmisshapen legs strike the ground with a sound and force that rattles Ariâs teeth inside her jaw, and she leaps away from the dark blur scrambling towards her just in time to avoid one enormous clawed hand slamming into the spot she vacated. Thick clods of dirt spray up in a dark cloud; the demon bellows with rage. Ari lands yards away, throwing out her free hand to steady herself, letting her joints go liquid to absorb the impact.
In her opposite hand, Varul is melting: globules of bronze shimmer and bubble, stretching and twisting and spewing gouts of superheated steam that considerately curl around Ariâs hand without touching it. In mere moments, the plain dagger has become a moderately less plain glaive. Held upright, it is every inch as tall as the woman who wields it. Upon its head is a beautiful, wicked, single-edged blade, and the hook on its reverse side resembles a startlingly accurate finger-sized fang. A firm leather grip wraps around the haft, granting her a stable handhold.
A polearm will give her better reach andmaneuverability than a sword. A bow mightâve beennice too, if Ari could hit the broad side of a barn with one. Somehow she doubts this demon will stand perfectly still while she spends thirty straight seconds lining up a shot from ten meters out.
The beast rears back, its glistening black sinew bulging and contracting as it steadies itself. In the very brief moment of respite this allows her, Ariâs mind whirls.
Alright. Okay. She needs a plan of attack, but first she needs to understand what this thing is and what it can do. Sheâs fought demons aplenty, but never one this big. Big demons tend to be old demonsâand most demons in Ansera donât survive into antiquity.
Generally, greater demons are born from Calamitous Blooms. Once a sunseed spoils and warps, it will drive its host to ravening hunger, transforming them into a beast endlessly seeking to quench its anguish with bloodshed. Most of these creatures are either slain or starve to death on their own before they become serious problems, yet⦠despite its gluttony, this one doesnât brim with the frantic mania of a beast maddened by deprivation. It doesnât seem inclined to attack the two people hunting around the wreckage, either. Those must be its handlers.
If the demon isnât from this realm, then its masters likely arenât either⦠Ack, but itâs one thing to summon a lesser demon from the Eight Heavens, and another thing entirely for a greater demon and two very capable diabolists to open a massive rift from the Eight Heavens to a lower realm uninvited! It can be done, of course, Sahan had explained that to her, but not without significant risk to both the caster and the realm theyâre invading.
Unlessâthey were invited, but by who, and how, and whyâ
The demon opens its mouth, and Ari has just enough time to spot the violet light swelling within its cavernous throat before a searing gobbet of True Flame shoots out towards her. With a curse, Ari dives out of its path, tumbling the rest of the way down the hill⦠less than gracefully. The ball of screaming violet fire strikes the grassy hillside and explodes with a blast of force that wouldâve scalded Ariâs skin clean off if she were just about anyone else. As it is, the wave of hot air buffets her backwards, and she throws up her arms to shield her face from flying debris.
Right. So this is a Harbinger-class demon, thenâa monster capable of summoning the True Flame. Sheâd kind of been hoping those walls of fire were courtesy of the demonâs handlers, but no such luck.
The beast charges through the blaze, which is already beginning to spread, its eyes wide and avid, curtains of raw flesh swinging. It runs hunched on all fours, its claws leaving deep furrows in the soil.
In the stillness between one breath and the next, Ari reaches deep into her core and⦠coaxes. This flame requires only the gentlest urging to spark. As soon as it answers her call, the anxious thoughts racing inside her skull slow to a crawl. Power like warm honey flows out from her core and takes a leisurely spill through her spiritual veins, tinging her ever-cycling stream of numina a deep, sumptuous red. The tension in her muscles loosens; the taut expression on her face relaxes into a serene smile.
All at once, the world is sharper and clearer and kinder. Thereâs a song she canât replicate humming along her skin, tickling the inside of her ribs, ghosting kisses down her spine.
Give me yourself, it whispers, and I will give you unity. Let go of your suffering, and I will give youeverything.
When the demon surges forward again, one hand outstretched, itâs almost laughably easy to dart around its fingers. Ari spins, twirls the glaive over her shoulder, and Varul parts the air like a sigh. The impossibly sharp edge of its blade carves a trench into the back of that hand. Hot, putrid dark blood sprays breathlessly from malformed veins; where it splashes onto the ground, the grass shrivels.
Ari retreats like a minnow through a clump of rushes, like itâs a step in a dance. The song between her ears softens with sweet joy. Her steps are so light that her boots hardly strike the earth. The seconds pass like theyâre reluctant to take their leave; the air on her skin is warm and tender.
The demon yowls, its breath sparking, but even as Ari watches the gash Varul left has begun to knit back together. She thinks, without any real urgency, that itâs very unfortunate that sheâs run into a Harbinger-class demon with such potent self-restoration abilities. That was far from a fatal wound, but it wasnât a tiny scratch either. For it to disappear so quickly is⦠surprising.
Ah, well. Her smile doesnât fade. She could stay like this forever, just close her eyes and drift, let that beautiful song carry her awayâ
She wonât, of course. The conscious part of her mind is small but experienced, and itâs well-aware of the Bloodflameâs dangers.
Ari laughs as the demon pummels the ground in a fury, screaming its rage with a cloud of embers. She twists between its strikes, fluid and untouchable, the rumbling earth beneath her hardly an impediment. It doesnât breathe the True Flame again, which means itâs either too simple-minded to cast and sling blows(unlikely) or that thereâs a limit to how frequently it can cast (more likely). It takes a great deal of energy to heal that fast; it probably wonât be able to cast and heal simultaneously.
With a clear, if simple, goal in mind, Ari slips beneath the demonâs flailing claws and aims Varul at whatever its blade can reach: the beastâs forearms, its thighs, its abdomen. Shallow, exploratory punctures and gashes; she never presses so deeply that sheâll be unable to withdraw in time to avoid a blow. These wounds heal just as quickly as the first, but the beast doesnât draw back and it doesnât call forth its flame.
Which is all well and good, but the Bloodflame is not a patient friend. If this battle comes down to attrition alone, Ari is at a significant disadvantage. Sheâs not channeling a great deal of power right this moment, but if she wants to seriously injure this thing, sheâs gonna have to up her outputâand the more she channels, the faster the Bloodflame drains her.
She has some other options, but⦠this is the safest one, for now. The most restrained option.
In her periphery, somewhere off to her left, a tide of darkness swells and crashes, a wave of relentless shadow transforming Enahiâs side of the playing field into a lightless smear. Ariâs only distracted by it for a moment, but a moment is long enough for the beast to catch her with a side-swipe that sends her sailing back through the air with such speed she doesnât even realize sheâs been hit at first.
Ari manages to curl into herself before she impacts the wooden wall of a hut and explodes through it in a shower of splinters. Thankfully, this arrests her momentum enough that when she slams into the next wall, she merely cracks it instead of soaring straight through. She slides down, briefly dazed, until she hits something hard. The pain blossoms shyly against the wall of euphoria the Bloodflame has deployed around her, no more potent than the brush of a mothâs wings.
âOw!â she says cheerfully. The song in her head jingles like wedding bells, as though itâs laughing with her. She sits up, looks around just enough to get a bare glimpse of her surroundingsâsingle-room shack, straw tick mattress in the corner, cauldron over a fire pit, chimney on the far wall, a ruined shelf beneath her. Andâoh! That might be usefulâ¦
As the demon thunders towards the hut, white foam dribbling from its jaws, something big and boxy hurtles through the hole in the wall. A chunk of brick wood stove smashes into the creatureâs skull. The sound is tremendous. Yellowed bone cracks and caves; one eye is pulverized into a pinkish paste. The demonâs lower jaw detaches from a hinge, which renders its pained bellow all the more pathetic. It staggers back, collapsing to its haunches, one hand raised to shield its ruined skull as it screams.
Ari dips through her impromptu doorway and darts forward, grinning widely. With a single, powerful leap, she lands first on the demonâs thigh, and then on its shoulder. Scrabbling around its thrashing neck for a foothold, she steadies the glaive in her hand and drives the point of its blade deep, deep, deep into the column of its throat. Half that bronze shaft disappears into its oozing black hide before the glaive can go no farther.
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âVarul,â she whispers, âAkhayr.â
Feast.
The glaive shudders.
Ari manages to hang on for a moment longer before sheâs shaken loose, but sheâs done what she set out to do. As she hits the ground and leaps away once more, she glances up at the bronze gleam in the demonâs neck. Wisps of steam whirl into the open air. The demon screeches, raising a hand to pull this irritant free, but as soon as its fingers touch that line of bronze they jerk back reflexively. The oily dark âfleshâ covering them looks⦠decayed.
The demon thrashes and howls and lunges, its bodyworking feverishly to repair the damage to its skull. Though Ari isnât inhibited by pain, and her trip through a wall did not shatter bone or burst organs, she is also not quite in the shape she was a moment ago. Like this, sheâs resilient and she can heal fast too, but sheâs not invincible.
In its mindless agony, and at her relatively sluggish pace, the beast manages to hammer her twice more. Theyâre both glancing blows, but the pain feels a little more immediate this time. It doesnât stop her, but itâs becoming more and more of a challenge to keep out of the creatureâs reach. It chases her with unerring ferocity, its remaining eye burning, its breathing frantic and interspersed with distressed moans.
Varul is doing good work, but it takes time. She just has to stay alive until itâs done.
Sheâd turn and flee, but sheâs not entirely certain sheâs fast enough to outrun this thing in its frenzy, and she has to make sure it doesnât suddenly decide to turn on Enahi. Besides, if anyone managed to escape this shitshow, she canât risk leading the beast right to them.
How long has it been? It feels like hours. Sweat pools in the dip of her spine; her skin feels tight. The unconscious grin on her face is starting to hurt and she canât stop it, and the song in her skull is louder with every passing second. Itâsâfine. Sheâs fine. She can keep going, she just has to be careful. This isnât nearly the hardest sheâs ever pushed herself with the Bloodflame, but every time she does this the recovery period wipes her out for days after, if sheâs lucky.
Dodge. Dodge. Dodge. Blood-dark froth drips down the beastâs chest; the cloud of steam spewing from its neck is growing thicker and hotter. The wetness around the wound is⦠wetter? Than before? Probably? This thing is slowing down, but so is she. She could push more, surrender more of herself to the song, but that sliver of her rational mind twangs stubbornly. No, no. She shouldnât do that, then.
Over the demonâs hulking shoulder, that swirl of shadows is alive. Flashes of light rupture in its depths, there and gone in an instant. Impossible to tell how that fight is going, but the fact that it is still going at all is⦠hopefully a good sign.
Itâs not distraction that trips her up this time, just good old-fashioned weariness. The demon roars and sweeps out with one hand, and Ari avoids it, but the other lashes out with morbid speed and she isnât fast enough. Those fingers clamp around her midsection like a vice. Her ribs creak; all her breath jets out of her lungs.
Uh-oh. Ari thrashes strategically with her limited range of motion, striking knuckles until the bone beneath the âfleshâ cracks. But itâs not enough. The demon, now heaving laboriously, lifts her up. Its jawâpartially recoveredâyawns open, and that ominous violet light sparks in its throat.
Okay, okay, itâs fine, she can survive this, itâll hurt but she canâ
The expected flames never come. Instead, the beast makes an awful retching sound, its eye bulging. The True Flame gutters out. Ari has just enough time to be relieved before a tide of something else floods out instead: boiling, liquid darkness swimming with chunks of partially-dissolved organ meat drenches her from head to foot.
It burns, aghhhhhh!!!
The beast sways on its feet, trying to force its jaws shut, but itâs helpless to stop the waves of melting viscera erupting from its throat. Ari slips from its twitching fingers and, blinded by gunk, narrowly avoids being crushed as the demon hits the ground with a thud. Its throat works convulsively to expel larger and larger chunks of meatâentire swathes of desiccated tissue clog its airways; the pool of shining dark blood spilling from its body grows steadily.
The demon seizes, seizes, seizes, its pitiful choking groans and snorts growing softer and more strained until, finally, with one last jolt, it falls limp. Flat on her back next to it, Ari miserably coughs up mouthfuls of putrid black ooze.
The song in her head grows quieter and quieter until it disappears completely, and the warmth in her veins recedes, leaving her empty and shivering. She doesnât move. She canât. There are dull booms somewhere in the distance, their sharp edges swallowed up by Enahiâs shadows. She should⦠try and get up. Go help.
But thereâs a strange feeling under her skin, a sinking numbness that has nothing to do with the lingering weakness from the Bloodflame burning through her pneumatic reserves.
Is she fucking poisoned? She better not be fucking poisoned. Sheâs gonna be so pissed if sheâs covered in monster slop and it poisoned her. Enahi was the one who was supposed to get poisoned! Not her! She doesnât wanna be the one divulging her deepest darkest desires in a feverish haze!
With great effort, Ari raises a hand and wipes her face. Mostly, she just smears the gunk around more.
âVarul,â she croaks. âCome.â
Nothing. She cracks one eyelid, then startles to realize sheâd closed her eyes in the first place.
âVarul,â she tries again, a bit more forcefully, âBilim.â
Silence. Well, silence except for the wet, visceral sound of Varul chowing down on demon goop. Ari sighs. Ahhh, she canât be upset. Varul so rarely has the chance to eat anything besides ambient energy these days. In Ariâs hands, that incomparable holy bladeâthe Divine Famine, the Devouring Beast, Souleater, Spellbreaker, the Terror in the North Windâis more used to chopping vegetables than raining death and destruction on her enemies.
She needs to get up. Where are the reinforcements? Theyâre coming, right? Grand Matron Hvasira didnât send them off to fight a Harbinger and two interdimensional interlopers alone, right?
Itâs so dark. Why is it dark? Is that Enahiâs fault? Oh, no, itâs justâher eyes are closed againâ¦
In the end, itâs Ari who wilts like a delicate flower⦠a delicate flower absolutely soaked in monster puke.
***
A strange thing happens, after Ari faints. A few strange things, really.
The first strange thing is that the battle in the shadows comes to an abrupt halt. Being that this happens under a blanket of pure darkness, itâs impossible to see what actually unfolds. Put simply: one moment, a lone young matron is valiantly but barely holding her own against two expert arcanists. The next moment, the lone young matron who is barely holding her own suddenly seems to hold her own quite effortlessly. One moment, there are three combatants. The next moment, there is one.
As the dark fog dissipates, two bodies lie limp on the grass. The third stands placidly between them, hardly a hair out of place. She sheathes the blade in her handâa pristine silver shortsword, a suitable weapon for an assassinâand surveys the bodies expressionlessly, head tilted. After many long seconds, she strides forward and selects one of her enemyâs fallen blades at random. Then, with careful, practiced movements, she presses the blade against her own skin and begins to cut. Not deeply, and not in any vital or especially inconvenient places, but angled such that it would be difficultâeven impossibleâto tell that anotherâs hand did not gouge these wounds into her flesh.
After a handful of slices, the young matron repositions the blade exactly where she found it, removes her jacket, and beginsâwith calculated slapdasheryâto tear off strips and apply them as bandages.
The matron raises a hand. The rift, that tear in the sky, begins to close.
The entire affair takes mere minutes. When it is finished, the young matron glances across the field of wreckage at the other two limp forms sprawled across the grass.
Anyone who has seen Matron Enahi in motion would describe her gait as âdeterminedâ, or perhaps ârigorousâ. âLike a runaway horsecartâ, even. But when she crosses the field beneath the glare of the afternoon sun, she moves slowly, precisely, elegantly. There is strength in every step, an unyielding inevitability to every footfall, but there is also beauty and a sense of crushing timelessness. The stride of an immortal.
The matron comes to a stop above the insensate preceptor, her hands folded primly over her abdomen. She looks at the preceptorâs slumbering form. She looks at the dead demon, dissolving further with every moment.
âÄiyvir emers,â she says flatly.
There is a high-pitched, shrieking sort of sound from the general vicinity of the dead demonâs neck. A beat later, something bright whizzes through the airâthe matron takes a single, unhurried step backâand slams into the dirt in front of the preceptor. The glaive Varul is alight with stolen soulstuff, golden and resplendent, its once-plain shaft now writhing with ornate engraving. It hisses and rattles threateningly, and upon the flat of its blade a single silver eye opens, cat-like pupil contracting furiously.
The matron sneers. âYou would dare?â
The glaive belches steam. The pressure of its aura withers the grass around it.
A single gloved finger catches the edge of that blade, and the glaive stills. Its eye darts back and forth, quivering with impotent rage.
âImpudent child,â the matron snaps. âÄiÄmir.â
The glaive shudders once, violently, in resistance, but it cannot overcome this command. Its eye begins to droop and then disappears entirely. The cloak of magic enshrouding it fades, and a beat later a plain bronze glaive clatters to the ground next to its master. The matron raises her hand again, and darkness swells beneath the demonâs body. After a few seconds, it begins to sink. Before a minute is up, there is no trace of it remaining. The bodies of the interlopers are still untouched.
The matron sighs, the emotion attached to it indecipherable. Slowly, the matron nudges the glaive aside and crouches next to the preceptor. Blood seeps through her improvised bandages. There is blood on the preceptor, tooânot the demonâs, but her own. A deep puncture in her side, its recovery slowed to a crawl by the poison thrumming in her veins. The matron eyes this wound, tugs one glove off with her teeth, and reaches out.
Briefly, her pale, ungloved fingers trace the outline of this puncture, feather-light, hardly a touch at all. She thumbs the shredded fabric of the preceptorâs coat, where the blood has already begun to dry and harden. She brushes the dirt and debris away. And then, with an exacting sort of languidness, one finger presses against the heart of the perforation. And keeps pressing.
The preceptor makes a harsh, aborted sound in her throat as her flesh squelches around the intrusion, her face twisting in discomfort. But she doesnât wake. That single finger pushes in until thereâs no longer any give in the tissue beneath it, until blood is welling freely up and over its knuckle. She twists and angles her hand to catch it. The preceptor turns her head with an incomprehensible mumble, brow furrowed, but the matron does not withdraw for a long moment. Her expression, had there been anyone around to try and decipher it, would still be unreadable.
Finally, as fresh red blood bubbles and weeps and pools in the divots of her curled fingers, the matron slowly pulls her hand free. The preceptorâs expression loosens, but only somewhat. The matron examines her bloodied hand with some interest, turning it this way and that, admiring the crimson sheen coating her pallid skin. She dips her head and draws her hand to her chinâshapely lips just parted, nostrils flaring lightlyâand then, very slowly, drags her tongue in a long, leisurely glide from palm to fingertip.
The finest tremor travels down her spine. A stifled, barely-audible sound catches in her throat.
It takes several passes to clean her hand entirely, but the matron never falters in her task, even sucking the pad of each finger past her lips to draw out the blood from beneath her nails. All the while, the preceptor shifts uncomfortably in the grass, her brows still furrowed as the aggravated wound leaks.
Once her hand is covered only in saliva, not a drop of blood to be found, the matron wipes herself clean on the preceptorâs abused coat and replaces her glove. Then, she peels back one of the makeshift bandages on her wrist and lowers her mouth again. This blood, she calls forth much more freely, and it is as black and cold as the night skyâas lightless as the demonâs, but richer, fresher, more potent.
When her mouth is full, she leans forward, waves of glossy dark hair tumbling across the preceptorâs cheek as she presses their lips together forcefully, unbothered by demon blood or dirt and grime. With merciless efficiency, her tongue pries the preceptorâs lips apart. The preceptor makes another small, helpless little sound, this one slightly less agonized.
With one hand, the matron tilts the preceptorâs head back, with the other, she massages the line of her throat, triggering her automatic reflex to swallow. Half of the first mouthful of blood ends up leaking down her chin (itâs impatiently dabbed away), but the second and third are swallowed without incident. After the fourth, the matron keeps their lips pressed together, idly stroking and twining her tongue around the preceptorâs lifeless one, even occasionally sucking the tip of the preceptorâs tongue into her own mouth. The slick sounds are obscene, the sort one might expect to hear in a brothel and not on a battlefield. With both hands now free, she holds the preceptorâs head in place, never allowing her to turtle away from the relentless slide of lips and teeth and tongue.
In time, the matron grows more aggressiveâperhaps frustrated, perhaps merely bored. Gentle nips turn to bites; the gentle pressure against the preceptorâs jaw tightens to bruising. More blood blooms as the preceptorâs lips and tongue split beneath the onslaught. The matron attentively licks it away, not a drop wasted.
Suddenly, she draws back with a snarl and buries her head in the crook of the preceptorâs shoulderânot quite gasping for breath, but certainly breathing more quickly than she was moments ago. Her fingers are pressing very hard into the preceptorâs jaw; her tanned skin pales beneath that grip. It takes visible effort for her to withdraw completely, and soon the reason is apparentâconcerned voices, echoing from the treeline; the flare of several familiar auras; the growls and yips of unsettled barghests.
The matron sits upright, her face perfectly blank once more.
âHere!â she calls, her voice tremulous though her expression is indifferent. âQuickly. The preceptor is ill.â
***
Pronunciation Guide
Akhayr: Ah-KHA-eer. âFeastâ, in the Heavenstongue.
Bilim: Bee-LEEM. âComeâ, in the Heavenstongue.
ÄiÄmir: Chich-MEER. âSleepâ, in the Heavenstongue.
Äiyvir emers: Chee-VEER eh-MEHRS. âStupid girlâ, in the Heavenstongue.
GiÅ¡va: GEESH-vah. âElder sisterâ, in theHeavenstongue.