Arc 1: Chapter 27: Smite

Arc 1: Chapter 27: Smite

When I stepped outside of the church, I no longer stood alone in Caelfall’s streets. The restless dead gathered in the bell tower’s shadow. Mistwalkers all, clad in the raiments of a dead kingdom, pallid faces framing hungry eyes.

Thunder rumbled above. A light rain began to fall.

“You were a fool to come back.” Vaughn, the Mistwalker commander I’d tailed on my first night in the village, faced me from the center of the street. Encased in a set of old, battered armor, he was near as tall as me, his wide shoulders made into metal hills by studded pauldrons. He held a heavy broadsword in his fist, the nicks of many campaigns marking its blade. He rode one of the brutish chimera the continental company had brought, which snickered at me, a purple tongue lolling.

Others surrounded him. A dozen or more, all of them forming a half ring around the front of the church, many lurking in the shadows of homes and shops. In the rain and mist, their armor seemed formed of pale shadows and their eyes gleamed with odlight.

There was no sign of Catrin. She’d betrayed me, then.

Perhaps this had always been her plan. Had she known what was inside of the church?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the task I’d been given. The doom in my hand. I tightened my grip on the axe.

I regarded them all, and saw a few take nervous steps back. The Wil-O’ Wisps lurking within my pointed cowl made the inside of the hood glow with eerie blue light, masking my face. More of that light spilled from the narrow gap down the front of my cloak, which I’d wrapped about myself. I couldn’t see the effect myself, but I imagined it was uncanny.

The Wil-O’ Wisps giggled playfully, the sound just on the edge of hearing, and more of the ghouls began to lose hold of their bravado.

“I’m here for Orson Falconer,” I said, my voice emerging from the elf light with a faint echo. “Step aside.”

“Sure.” Vaughn lifted his scarred blade. Unlike the others, he was unimpressed. “We’ll do that.”

Fine then.

I lifted my axe, and amber fire played along its edge. I ran the fingers of my right hand along the fae alloy, leaving tiny trails of golden light where I touched. “This is pure aura,” I said to the Mistwalkers. “It cuts you, and your spirits will lose their grip on those borrowed bones. Won’t take much more than a nick.”

Vaughn bared his yellow teeth in a snarl. “I’ve had enough of this. Take him.”

The Mistwalkers were veteran soldiers to a man. They didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter. I hadn’t expected my attempt at intimidation to work. Hadn’t wanted it to, really.

They’d earned this for the old troll, for the villagers, and for five centuries of murder.

I waited until the nearest ghouls were perhaps five paces away, then flashed into motion. I went forward in a rippling flurry of blood-red cloak and dancing faerie light, lashing out with the elfbronze axe.

The bell atop the chapel tolled. To this day, I have no idea who was responsible. Maybe it was Brother Edgar, the one survivor of that nightmare I’d failed to stop. Maybe it was the wind, or the tortured spirits bound forever within that desecrated hall.

Maybe it was the ghost of Father Micah, Caelfall’s last preoster.

The gladius of the nearest ghoul shattered, along with the hand holding it. The mercenary stumbled back, maimed hand burning with a molten light. I stopped my forward motion, brought the axe up, then down to cleave into the undead soldier’s shoulder.

“Orson told us you were some kind of holy killer,” the ghoul said, still laughing. “I admit, you put on a good show, but we’ve killed your like before. You tire like any man. Still...” He clacked his yellow teeth together. “I bet that’s some ripe aura in those bones.”

“I want one of his ribs,” another ghoul said. He was drooling like a hound.

“We’ll all get our share,” Vaughn growled, the same hunger making his voice rough. “Company rules.”

Discipline broke, and several of the undead mercenaries lunged forward ahead of their leader. Ready, I swung my axe up, and a sunburst of auratic light blazed to life from the runic blade. The ghouls stumbled back, screeching and blind. I sprinted at Vaughn — he was the most dangerous enemy present. If I killed him, the others would fall like chaff.

Eyes scorched, the Mistwalker commander spat something in a language I didn’t recognize. It was grating, harsh, a blemish on the fabric of the world. His iron sword began to boil with a green-black smog, the same power writhing up one steel-clad arm. He swung, and the smog boiled across the ground in front of him, erupting in a curtain of poisonous fumes. I barely stopped before barreling straight into the curtain, the edges of my cloak carried forward by wind and momentum. The edges of the red cloak sizzled where they touched.

Art. I should have expected a fighter as experienced as the ghoul vice-captain to have one. It reminded me of the choking smoke of battlefields, of alchemical craft erupting in toxic clouds that scalded the lungs and blistered the skin. A manifestation of a soul steeped in gore and iron hate.

I threw an arm over my face to shield myself from the fumes and leapt away, silently cursing. It was too late. Some of the fumes had gotten into my hood. My mouth became suddenly, horribly dry, and my eyes started to itch, then burn. Two or three of the wisps withered and died, dimming the light inside my cloak.

“Stings, doesn’t it!?”

Vaughn came through the black fumes, a titan of iron with yellow teeth bared in a macabre grin. The fumes clung to his armor and shaved scalp, writhing around his huge frame in a protective cloud.

The wisps in the cloak with me whispered fearfully. I couldn’t understand them, but got the message well enough — I was in trouble.

Vaughn brought up his sword, and once again it boiled with hateful fumes. His grin widened until it seemed to split his face in half. His skin was pallid as the corpse he should have been centuries before.

Before he could bring that finishing blow down, he staggered to one side. A look of confusion crossed his twisted features, then pain. He reached up with his free left hand, and found the elf-forged dagger embedded into his neck just below the right ear.

His neck twisted to one side, his features contorted into something truly nightmarish, and he fell to one knee. A strange keening sound came from his lips as the Banemetal tormented the ghost trapped inside his body.

“Thanks for giving me a bunch of darkness to hide in, you marrow-licking bitch.”

Catrin emerged from the billowing well of fumes, apparently unaffected by their bite. I could barely see her through the red haze my vision had become from that same poisonous smog, but her expression was nearly as frightening as those of the ghoul’s — her skin was paler, her hair bleached of color. When she peeled back her lips, her canines had elongated into sharp fangs.

She knelt down, ripped the Banemetal dagger from Vaughn’s neck, then plunged it into the back of his bald skull. I heard the sickening crack as the little blade punctured his cranium. A tinny scream escaped the ghoul’s jaws as his spirit finally came free of the body, twisting as silver flames devoured it.

It took another moment for my own magic to counteract Vaughn’s. My mouth and eyes still burned. I could see well enough, though the edges of my vision hazed. I turned to the rest of the ghouls, who were still recovering from my own flash of light.

My glove voiced a leathery whisper as it tightened around the axe’s grip.

The Mistwalkers stared at me and the dhampir, blank-eyed and bestial.

They fled.