Chapter 93

“Soul of Rakhash…” Hialjia murmured as she saw the brilliant green light spark in Marcus’s palm. “He is…truly Gloomraava.”

“Jump, Hialjia!” Mari shouted while everyone else was blindsided by the sight—and the Yokun Zhurkin began to back off.

As Hialjia jumped back onto the lip of the Civilian plaza’s Southern Tunnel, Marcus barked one last telepathic command to the forces that were still covering the retreat of their comrades:

Stand back! Close your eyes!

He said it with supreme confidence that shook the vanguard of the Zhurkin, who themselves seemed to register the psychic impact of his very words before he aimed his sparking palm at the chain-links that held the metal platforms of the Civilian Plaza aloft.

“Shai-Alud!” some of the Zhurkin started shouting, exhorting their men to move back out of the way of the wild magic that surged in the glasses-wearing human’s veins. Yet as they tried to maneuver away from the strike they knew was coming, they found that the spiked armor of their brothers in arms kept them shackled to their positions. They were a sea of green-black skittles jostling together in fear, now, as they looked upon the one thing that all Yokun were taught was nothing more than an underground bogeyman.

“That’s right!” Marvin yelled over the din of their breaking morale. “Get ready for an ass whoopin’ you scale-faces won’t forget!”

The next sound to cut through the air was that of the Yokun sergeants roaring at their men to make a general retreat. Those on the ramshackle roofs of the civilian quarters had already seen their demise coming when the blinding, killing light of the human shot into the ceiling and snapped the chain links apart like they were mere threadbare ropes.

The entire edifice wobbled, houses began collapsing, and the Yokun men who could still stand looked up to see the snarling, grinning face of the ichor-covered minotaur standing on the lip of the Southern tunnel exit. The marksmen, meanwhile, were receiving orders to aim for the Shai-Alud.

Hialjia, Marcus telepathed as he quickly hid behind the great beast’s form. You know what to do.

The Tauron’s grin became a grisly, bloody snarl.

“Now the human is speaking Hialjia’s language.”

The Yokun closest to the Minotaur risked everything in a jumping strike to spear the chest of the beast before her hoof came down on the wobbling platform, but they did not expect the swiftness of a Tigran. While they lumbered forward to leap at the beast that was ready to annihilate their invasion, Karliah’s twin blades found their necks as she tossed them at point-blank range. Both the soldiers made it to the Southern Tunnel—as a gaggle of gargling grunts who were swiftly dispatched by the Pipers waiting for them.

“Now, Hialjia!” Mari screamed over the chaos.

With a roar that could strike fear into the heart of the most seasoned Norse Berserker, Hialjia’s hoof came down and sent a reverberation through the shaking, unsteady Civilian platform. The skittering lines of Yokun soldiers could do nothing but stare at the floor as it quickly gave way, and the entire edifice came toppling down into the chasm it was suspended above.

The Piper archers finally stopped their firing. The Hakkatov throwers ceased their bombardment. The Piper assemblage who could see past the shoulder of their comrades in the narrow Southern Tunnel simply stood and watched, mouths agape, as their enemies crumpled and fell with their old residences. The Pipers—Tigran, Yokun, humans, and Tauron all—stood and watched as the place they once called home folded in on itself and enveloped every screaming Yokun as they scrabbled to flee back the way they came—discarding any excess weaponry and even stripping off their armor if it helped them flee faster.

But it didn’t. Those that made it to the end of the platform quickly realized that they had started to climb vertically, and in the next second went sliding down into the abyss below, probably ending up in some God-forsaken part of the Underkingdom for all Marcus knew.

He looked upon the sight as something more than just a victory. Every Yokun soldier he watched fall to their untimely deaths, bestial screams issuing from their scaled throats, was a reminder that, once again, he was now doing exactly what he was best at.

And, looking at his glowing hand as the last echoing Yokun wails finally died, he saw that the light of the Gloomraav simply faded and died away, sinking into the grooves of his palm until it was summoned again.

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This…he thought. This is what I am, now…

“A fantasy General,” Mari murmured in disbelief. “And a magic one, at that.”

She took his hand forcefully as he shied away from her praise, and, turning towards her warriors, she thrust it into the air.

“What you have witnessed here will be spoken of for generations to come!” she bellowed down the Southern tunnel at the bewildered Piper forces. “This is the first great victory of our cause, accomplished through the strategic genius of the Shai-Alud himself! Look upon him and see what he brings—your freedom, my Pipers! Your freedom and your fire!”

A few bemused seconds passed, during which each and every former slave exchanged nothing more than fleeting glances at the other.

Then Marvin, the former slave-farmer, took Marcus’s other hand in his:

“’Mon the Marcus!” he roared. “Let’s fuck those Lizard Masters in their scaly arses!”

“HERE, HERE!” came the general cry. “HERE, HERE!”

“You’re…an eloquent one,” Marcus said, staring at Marvin’s fervent eyes, and his face caked with soot and Yokun blood.

“Marvin is good at…translation,” Mari giggled. “He’s a man of the people, and he always knows just how to speak to them.”

“Unfortunately…” Karliah scoffed. “But, while we’re on the subject, it seems our General has made some…interesting developments in that regard.”

The feisty cat’s already calling me her General, Marcus mused. That’s a start…

“I have something you all need to see,” he told the assembled Piper leadership. “But we’ll have to be quick.”

“Way ahead of you,” Mari winked, before commanding her soldiers to follow the tunnels, pack everything they can, and help the families and the sick who had made it through the Southeast tunnels towards their escape point.

“H…human man not so bad,” Hialjia wheezed, shrugging off shrapnel from the bullets that had impaled her rigid muscles. “But—why he talk like old Matriarch?”

“Aye, that’s true enough,” Marvin added. “How is old Jin’an, huh?”

Marcus hung his head, wiping the sweat that had gathered on his brow since he’d sprinted here to take command.

“I…can show you,” he said. “It’s her that you owe this victory to, not me.”

…

“…Damn…”

The Piper leaders looked upon the faded form of their Old prophet—the Matriarch who had been the life and soul of their movement before any of them had even joined it.

“…you.”

Marcus barely had time to turn before Karliah’s claws were at his throat, her teeth throwing purple-blooded spittle in his face.

“Karliah!” Mari screamed.

“…you did this…” the Tigran snarled, clenching his claws around Marcus’s neck. “You…you let her…you let her—”

“I—let—her—fulfill…her promise!” Marcus snarled right back, and as soon as the Tigran noticed that his hand was starting to glow again at her abdomen, she withdrew her readied natural weapons.

“Promise?” Mari asked.

“She—she said that her job was done,” Marcus told her and the rest of them. “She said she’d brought the ‘Snake’ and the ‘Rat’ together. And she gave her life to bestow her power onto me.”

“So that you could lead us!” Marvin yelped like a kid who had just solved their first jigsaw puzzle. “Damn…she was a real one. But…damn.”

The Tauron lay at the feet of the Yokun Matriarch, her crimson eyes closed and her head bowed, axe clenched beside her as though she were a crusader intoning a holy prayer.

“Hialjia’s job is finished,” she said. “She swore long ago to protect the great Oracle who freed her from the Masters. She listened to the Old one because she and the Pale Lady are great warriors. Now, Hialjia is truly alone.”

“Never, princess,” Mari said, coming to rest her hand on the great bulging arms of the beast. “You’ll never be alone, Hialjia. None of us will be. Not now. Not ever.”

“Tskithekot!” Karliah spat, glaring with hatred at Marcus before turning away and leering at the farmer instead. “What do we do without the old woman? She’s the one who always kept us one step ahead of the bastard Princes they sent after us. If not her—don’t tell me—we’re supposed to follow this filthy human?”

“This filthy human just ended a whole regiment of Clan Hitogi Zhukrin, Kat,” Mari replied before Marcus could get a word in. “Are you questioning his ability?”

“I – I’m questioning his commitment to the cause, my Lady.”

Mari chose to ignore the Tigran then, and turned simply to Marcus with her head held high. Strong and steady – even though she too clearly felt the pain of losing a woman who, from what Marcus could gather, was essentially a surrogate mother to her in this realm.

“Marc,” she said. “Are you with us?”

Feeling the hopeful eyes of the leaders upon him, Marcus simply rubbed the back of his neck and fixed his eyes on the woman he loved. He knew the answer, and he also knew that, by now, he was in far too deep to back out. He could see it in her eyes – as long as her people, these people, still had the threat of enslavement looming over their necks, Mari wasn’t gonna budge an inch.

So, like the old Yokun had said, it was up to him to see this campaign through. Even if it cost him what little humanity remained in his Gloomraav-charged being. Even if it meant following the trajectory of some ‘prophecy’ that was probably just a convenient narrative explanation for his appearance and triumphs on this world.

He met the eyes of every grieving warrior, and spoke now without a single hesitation.

“You have your General,” he told them all. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

***

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