Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (34 page)

Sundered nomads swung weighted nets and edged whips and fired arrows into the dust storm.  Ronan moved through the battle like a ghost himself, hacking down Skaravae with such grim efficiency they were unaware of his presence until he was already on top of them.

The shadow forces fell back behind the bladed elephants.  Pyrotic fliers joined hands and formed a dancing wall of flame.  Cats and lizards and Sundered riders caught fire and burned to death.

The Witch’s spirit bombarded the Pale with razor projectiles and ice bombs.  White bodies fell hard to the desert floor.

Ronan spied Creasy in the distance, hacking his way through Skaravae atop one of the massive horned pachyderms, his spirit blazing around his body like crimson fire.  Skaravae turned their ebon bows and fired at him, and one of the fliers directed black lightning so it struck the warlock in the back.  Creasy slumped, and plummeted to the ground. 

Ronan shouted and flew forward.  He sent his kodachi through the side of a Skaravae’s head and cut another down with his katana.  His muscles burned, and sweat ran in his eyes.

Only four of the elephants were left, but they plowed through the remaining nomads and Pale in an ecstasy of carnage.  Their massive feet stamped bodies to gory pulp and their jagged tusks ripped soft flesh into sprays of red.  Flying Skaravae sawed through their enemies with chains of bladed darkness, and Pale warriors returned fire with razor spears and bone claws.  Clouds of choking dust covered the field.

Ronan saw Creasy stand.  The warlock was shouting someone’s name, and Ronan realized he was calling for Jade, whose spirit blazed like wildfire across the rickshaw on the largest walker.  Ronan sliced through dark figures and leapt over corpses.  The air was a catastrophe of motion and noise.  An explosion sounded overhead, and another Skaravae fell from a flaming elephant’s back. 

He heard the Black Witch’s voice in his head. 

You lose
, it said. 

A spiral of edged power rained down.  Ronan threw himself back as the guillotine net barely missed him, but it tore straight through a pair of Sundered and left only smoking meat remains.

A Skaravae hovered down from a dying elephant, veins and tendons scored with flame while sparks rained from its fingers.  Triple lances of dark lightning shot from the sky and punctured through the last of the Pale, impaling them with electric blades.  They screamed as black flames immolated them.  The Skaravae warrior floated low, his black face twisted into a smile until Ronan sliced his head off with a clean swing. 

The last of the monstrous pachyderms fell with a deafening crash.  Flames swept over its grey body, crackling as its skin exploded.  Cats ripped the last Skaravae to shreds.  The rickshaw on the burning elephant’s back slowly came apart, strap by strap and blade by blade.

The battle was over.  The Skaravae were gone, some having left their host bodies behind.  Even after the occupying spirits had fled the Sundered hacked the dazed Nezzek’duulians down, spearing them or running them through or letting their animal mounts maul them.  A choir of screams rang through the darkness.

Ronan ran over to Creasy, who knelt down in the grass over what was left of Jade.  She was barely recognizable for all the burns and cuts covering her body.

The swordsman’s eyes went to the city.  The Black Witch was there.

“
She still has Laros,” Creasy said.

Ronan nodded, and hoped the Black Witch was listening. 

I’m coming for you, bitch.

NINETEEN

CHAIN

Less than a dozen from the Skyhawk had survived. 

And if we don’t move fast, soon there won’t be any
of us left
, Cross thought
.

Danica led them back through the twisted halls of the dark citadel.  It had once been a place of worship, but now it served as a redoubt for the Eidolos, a cruel and tentacled beast whose undulating ebon form pulsed and slithered through the underbelly of the city.  The thought that it had slowly twisted the minds of Raijin’s citizens and plundered their bodies for its insatiable hunger filled Cross with rage.

Careful.  It manipulates emotions.  The anger you feel is what it wants.

He and Danica were at the front of the party, with Flint and Shiv right behind them.  Reza brought up the rear, while six soldiers and Wiley were all the others who remained.  The wiry surveyor was so panicked he could barely move on his own. 

“Jesus….Jesus, God, oh Christ fuck we’re gonna fucking die…”

“
Shut the hell up and move!” Reza told him.  “Or I’ll just shoot you now so you won’t have to worry about it.”

They escaped the citadel within a few minutes, emerging into a liquid night pregnant with bleeding stars.  Collapsing storm clouds stained the atmosphere, and thick moonlight cascaded down like sheets of white rain.

The city felt alive.  Cross sensed motion all around them, spirals of dark energy which siphoned away the stability of Raijin’s structures.  The buildings seemed less solid, almost molten, and when the survivors took to the streets the ground was unstable. 

The city was coming apart, slowly collapsing like ink in water.  Raijin’s air was sweltering, and its buildings were taller than before.  The roads had filled with polluted fog flecked with black debris.  The air tasted like burning asphalt and broken glass, and Cross’s skin itched like he was covered with mites.

They stopped, confused.  He and Danica both clearly remembered the ziggurat standing directly across from the city gates, but that no longer seemed to be the case.  Wiley became more panicked with every second they spent wandering the changing streets.  Shiv watched the atmosphere fearfully, and her eyes glazed as she witnessed the Eidolos’ foul power rearrange Raijin. 

“
It’s keeping us here,” she said.  “It’s hunting us.”

“
Then we have to find it before it finds us,” Cross said, and though everyone looked at him like he was crazy they all knew that he was right.  The beast that had devoured Raijin now had its sights set on them, but it was also afraid because it knew they could hurt it, too, and for some reason it couldn’t control them.  Only Cross knew that Soulrazor/Avenger was protecting them, even if he didn’t know why.  It had its reasons.  He was just grateful it had kept Shiv and Flint alive.

Keep us alive a while longer, okay?

The Eidolos was everywhere and everything, the pulse of the city, as untouchable as a shadow.  Cross had only encountered one once before, in the Whisperlands, but the power of that Eidolos paled in comparison.  This creature’s hold on Raijin was absolute, more than telepathic – it was in control of the city itself, its geometry, its structure.  It shaped the metropolis to its whims.

They followed Shiv.  She was somehow attuned to the psychic flow in Raijin, to the waves of power issued by the black beast.  Cross only hoped it wouldn’t be too much for her.  He and Danica were right beside her, navigating the molten midnight streets.

“He’s tapped into the spiritual energies of the entire region,” Shiv said.  “Magic flows faster here, more powerful, and the Eidolos has figured out a way to manipulate it.  The more souls it consumes the stronger it becomes.”

No one questioned how she knew this.  Flint looked terrified, but he was fast learning to accept the fact that his daughter had powers and knowledge no one could explain.  Cross gave Flint’s shoulder a reassuring pat, a reminder that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

The city fluctuated.  There were no longer any people about, likely all dead or puppets.  Cross wondered if even the Masters of the City had been real when they’d met them or if they’d been just been extensions of the Eidolos’ form, flesh marionettes based on the semblance of something that had once been.  He doubted he’d ever know.

The group of Southern Claw survivors made their way through darkening city streets, alert and anxious.  At any moment some aspect of Raijin could reach out and snatch them up.  They felt the Eidolos breathing all around them

Cross’s nerves with alight with fear, but for some reason he had the feeling the creature was holding back, likely still wondering what they could do to it.  He held Soulrazor/Avenger out and lets its subtle arctic fires illuminate the area.

They moved fast through the melting city.  Everything was shadow-drenched and distant, like they walked through a charcoal drawing.  Nothing was tangible or real yet the barriers were undoubtedly there, hedging them in, twisting and turning to keep the escapees from going the direction they wanted to.  Streets doubled back and led nowhere, roads went on forever, walls that hadn’t been there before suddenly blocked the way.

“It’s playing with us,” Cross said. 

The buildings converged in a wedge of molten architecture.  They ran past dry fountains and bleeding holes in the road.  Shiv continued to lead the way, unafraid, her eyes gone white and her body surrounded by a nimbus of power.  She followed some arcane weylines or flux flows only she could see.  The rest of the group was right on her tail, guns pointed out at the shifting city, as if that would actually protect them. 

She’s too young to be burdened with this power
, Cross thought. 
Too young to be this cursed
.  He wondered if that was what his mother had thought the day Drogan had saved his life and declared him a warlock.

They tasted blood and soot as they passed smelted towers of iron. 

“This way,” Shiv said.  Danica gave Cross a concerned look, but he just nodded for them all to follow, and held his blade ready.  He felt like he hadn’t slept in months.

They pushed deeper into shadow, past the central square and through the heart of the city, down a road leading them through long-emptied markets and into an industrial sector where metal ribs splayed and the dark streets were coated with coal dust.

The air was shifting, like they were surrounded with motion even though everything was standing still.  The sound of cracking stone and bending metal groaned like a ship as the architecture grew ugly and contorted.  Once smooth and sinuous towers buckled and smelted like candle wax, oval doorways twisted into a mockery of faces, jags and girders sharpened to knife edges. 

Shiv led them through it all.  She might have been born in the city for the skill with which she navigated its increasingly erratic infrastructure, and her mystical sight allowed her to avoid walking them into Raijin’s violent changes – splayed clusters of doors turned to blades, roads become pits, cross-streets latticed with razors.  Everything curved inwards like a funnel of sparks.  Shadows and bloodstains filled the air.  The buildings loomed inward, impossibly bent like gaping trees.  Cross, Danica and Flint were right on her heels, and everyone else was just a few paces back.  The group moved fast and kept each other in sight, waiting for Raijin to snap in on them.

“This way,” Shiv said again, and she moved with such speed through the narrowing maze of twisting metal and stone it was hard to keep up with her.  “Just ahead, he’s moving, we’ve almost caught up with him.”

“
Wait,” Danica said.  “Shiv, slow down.”

Danica stepped up to a twisted brick wall and pressed her palm against it.  There was a snap of thaumaturgy.  What little light was available bent in towards her and coalesced into a burning gel.  Cross felt power creep along his skin and tasted hex fumes as Danica shaped her spirit around the group in a pulsing shield of blood light.  Her golem appendage anchored the phantom construct.  It shifted, tenebrous plasma dragged in a slow and restless mass. 

Her spirit cleaved to each of them, a shell of nearly translucent armor that barely illuminated their bodies like dusk silhouettes.  Cross felt Danica’s power and presence cling to him like a sheet of burning oil. 

He looked at Danica.  He had no idea just how powerful she’d become.  “You’re protecting us,” he said.  He couldn’t imagine the effort that must have required.  Sometimes channeling a spirit seemed so distant to him, a lifetime ago, but he still remembered the exhaustion, the demands placed on the body, and he knew for certain that even fully rested he never would have been able to protect almost a dozen people at once, and not only did Danica not seem fazed by the effort, she still looked like she was itching for a fight. 

“I’m tired of people not making it home,” she said.  “We’re getting out of here, Eric.  One way or another.”

Cross felt a second energy signature push against him.  He saw Shiv’s eyes, and understood she was helping Danica, somehow lending her strength, allowing the witch to do things that normally would have been beyond her reach.  Shiv’s aid coupled with the bloodsteel appendage allowed Danica to protect them and not burn herself out in the process.

“What the hell is going on?” Flint asked Cross.

The rest of the group had caught up while Danica was working the shield into existence.  Reza and the other soldiers regarded the pulsing shield around them with awe and a small amount of fear.

“Shiv is helping Dani shield us so we can kill that damn thing,” Cross said.  He gripped his blade tight, and steeled himself.  Adrenaline pumped through his veins. 

“
Fuckin’ A,” Reza smiled.

“
Terrific,” Wiley said. 

“
Look at it this way,” Cross told the surveyor.  “If you survive this you’ll have a hell of a story to tell.”

“
If I survive this,” Wiley said, “I’m never leaving my house again.”

Everyone checked what weapons they had.

“Okay, Shiv,” Cross said.  “Where to?”

“
That way.”  She pointed straight ahead, her eyes grey.  Flint watched his daughter with terrified concern. 

They had only a few rifles and some knives, but it was better than nothing.  “Everyone stay close,” Cross said.  “If you have a gun, be ready to use it.”

“They’ll work against this thing, right?” Reza asked.

“
I sure hope so,” Cross said.

“
Not the answer we wanted, thank you,” Flint said brusquely.

They moved ahead and to the left, through brown alleys covered with shadows and past doorless buildings that seemed much further away than they really were. 

Shiv led the way like she was playing Hide and Seek, Danica’s red glow pulsing around her with every step.  She called back to them, but the shadows were suddenly screaming in dull bursts like feedback, bass beats in their skulls.  The air pulsed and darkened and for a terrible moment Shiv was gone, drowned in the murk, but as they closed the gap she was there again, her simple brown clothes stained black with soot as she pointed towards the head of what used to be an alley, now the edge of some vast cliff.

“
There!” she shouted.

A mass of tentacles writhed and twisted uncontrollably, their grisly black skin leaking oil and puss.  The mass withdrew the moment they saw it, shifted and vanished around the corner.  The Eidolos.

“Watch out!” Cross shouted. 

Possessed citizens emerged like ghosts from the edge of the darkness.  Everyone started shooting.  Tentacle-tethered bodies lit with sparks as weapon fire brought them down.  They didn’t look human anymore, more like old puppets, husks of dead skin bursting with dark ooze as bullets ripped them apart.

“It’s getting away!” Shiv yelled, and she grabbed Cross by the hand and rushed forward in spite of her father’s protests.  More shots rang out as Raijin’s controlled populace surged forward with blades and primitive rifles.  Alleys led off to the obscurity of the city’s brick and cement guts.  At the limits of their vision was the mass of flailing shadows, a thing existing only half in the physical world and half in a realm of pure darkness. 

Cross and Danica were next to Shiv, and Flint was right behind them.  The others followed as close as they could while using their rifles and sub-machine guns to keep the possessed foot soldiers at bay.  Even Wiley had a pistol, firing and screaming with abandon.  The air was a storm of gunfire as they madly dashed across blood-damped stone. 

“Where the hell is it going?” Danica shouted. 

Cross glanced back and saw two of the men consumed by the city, sucked into its jagged geography.  Even though the small band managed to keep the possessed Nezzek’duulians at bay the Eidolos manipulated Raijin’s structures and used them to lash out at its pursuers, and for some reason Danica’s shield wasn’t enough to hold those attacks off.  Blood exploded from the shadows.

“Look out!” Cross shouted. 

It was too late.  Reza and Wiley jumped forward, but the remaining soldiers were pulled off into the cackling dark.  The growls of the Eidolos echoed through their minds. 

“Keep moving!” Flint yelled.

The Eidolos was just ahead, suddenly vast, tearing a hole in the air with ganglia and razored appendages until the alley was gone and its shadowy bulk pushed through into some sort of clearing. 

They ran after it and fell into cold wind.  Raijin was behind them, on the other side of an impossible rip between realities.

Reza came through, as did Flint.  Wiley screamed as he was pulled away by bladed darkness, lost in the errant shadows.  Danica was at Cross’s side, and Shiv was right in front of him.  They were all that remained, each surrounded by Danica’s shield, which had allowed them to survive the step through the caustic gate even if it hadn’t been enough to protect the others from being ripped apart by the city. 

The Eidolos loomed over them, a moving sliver of night.  It seemed to be everywhere, a formless and all-encompassing mass.

Where are we?

There was no moon and no clouds in the inky-black sky.  Cross saw crested stone towers, natural minarets standing like stalagmites in the black wasteland.  He tried to make sense of their surroundings – it was clear they were no longer in Raijin.  The city had been left behind, for the Eidolos had tried to escape through a gate to some grisly monolith of stone columns and deep caves.  Cross smelled oil and bat waste, tasted subterranean wind and felt a razor chill.

We’re in the Nethermost.
             

Crowns of stone and dangling chains hung overhead.  Towers of spike surrounded an island at the head of a foul and gushing river.  The walls were so distant they seemed to be aspects of an ebon sky.  The earth shook, and flecks of black dust fell from above like twisted steams of rainfall. 

Cross smelled glacial ice.  What he’d at first taken to be stars were actually glowing crystals embedded in the distant walls, giving off dull algae-colored light.               

They stood on the edge of a rampart in some long-forgotten battlement, a fat curtain wall littered with the shattered remains of siege equipment.  The broken stone bespoke of uncounted years of disuse, and the fortress was dark and cold.  The wall dangled over the precipice of the fast-flowing river and felt unstable, like it could break at any moment.  Gaps underfoot displayed their distance over the gushing black waters.  The ground was slick, the air icy.  The wall was maybe ten paces wide and forty feet long and came to an end over nothingness, a crumbling bridge to nowhere. 

The Eidolos occupied most of the space on top of the wall.  It had them backed against the broken fortress, and was closer to the edge than any of them, but Cross saw how its sickly tentacles slithered down and grabbed hold of the stone, granting it solid purchase.  The creature was impossible to look at directly, a dark splotch of shadow so cold and utterly black it pained the eyes. 

And now you die
, a voice said, deep and solid, a hammer in his brain.  Cross’s head throbbed.  His knees buckled and his chest tightened.  Nausea cracked through his ribs like he’d taken a blade in the gut. 

The others fell to their knees, wracked with psychic pain.  Pale drool leaked from the monstrous creature as slathering jaws moved closer. 

In his mind Cross saw people he loved die, and he felt their anguish.  Agony ripped through his chest.  Tears flooded his face. 

But he was alive.  That avalanche of hurt should have turned his mind to jelly and stopped his heart from beating, but Danica’s shield saved them. 

Reza was the first to fight through the pain and struggle to her feet.  She blasted the Eidolos with the shotgun at point-blank range, spattering black skin and blood milk.  The beast growled and lashed out at her, barely missing, but the distraction was enough for the rest of the group to slough off its attack and gather themselves.  Cross felt like his head had been dipped in cement.  Flashes of phantom hurt rippled down his arms and legs, echoes of other people’s suffering.

Danica launched ruby flames at the creature.  Heat and fire cascaded up the chimney of flesh.  The writhing Eidolos’ body was outlined for the briefest of moments, a whirling cascade of funneling black.

Cross gripped his blade and moved forward to finish it off, but he didn’t get there in time.  Danica’s power broke and sparks rained down.  Something slashed at her like a dark stain.  Her painful cries echoed in Cross’s head as she staggered forward, struggling to stay upright.

Soulrazor/Avenger came down and sliced several of the Eidolos’ shadow limbs from its body.  Writhing tentacles fell into open air and crashed into the river.  Darkness struck him hard in the face and snapped his head back, but Cross bared his blood-stained teeth and hacked again, ducking beneath flailing tentacles, the dual sword guiding his movements. 

Danica recovered and ripped Claw free, but before she could strike the Eidolos spun round and threw her and Cross back.  Cross landed near the edge of the rampart and felt the open space beneath them as his shoulder painfully slammed into the rock.  Darkness cobwebbed over Danica, and she slumped to the ground. 

Flint howled and fired his rifle, and Shiv covered her ears.  Reza rushed at the Eidolos with the shotgun blazing, but this time its tentacles struck her hard and threw her against the curtain wall.  The stone cracked from the impact, and Reza’s body slid down in a trail of blood.  Flint fired again, and a bolt of darkness shot out from the column and threw him backwards.  Shadows leaked from his mouth.  Shiv ran after him, screaming for him to get up.

The air swam.  Cross couldn’t find the strength to rise.  His arms tensed with electric shock and his vision flashed in and out like he was bobbing on the surface of a choppy sea.   

He fought through the pain, picked up Soulrazor/Avenger from where it had fallen to the ground and forced himself to stand.  Everything tilted.  He felt stone shift beneath him, heard chunks of the unstable structure plummet to the icy waters below.

Danica also rose.  The Eidolos loomed over her, grew tall like a giant rearing slug.  Cross heard oozing in the darkness.  Shadows spiraled and lashed at the witch.  He leapt in the way, deflected the limbs with his blade.  Bone-chilling cold shot through him.  He felt his heart gel in his chest as his veins turned to ice. 

Chains of darkness wrapped around his limbs.  Blood dripped from his eyes.  He felt Danica’s spirit rip at the tentacles, felt his blade cut on its own accord, desperate to free him before he melted away.

The darkness is eating me
, Cross thought.  Everything was fading. 

“
Release him,” Shiv said.  Her voice was powerful, and seemed distant.  The chains slackened, and Cross fell to the ground.  He sensed the Eidolos’ emotions, felt its fear.

He saw Shiv, but not through his own eyes, more like watching her from afar.  She stood her ground, looking so small and unassuming, her green and brown clothing torn and stained by dirt and oil.  She stood before the tower of darkness, her eyes pulsing with an ice-white shine.

“You’re a coward,” Shiv told it.  “You hide behind puppets and torture people for fun.  And when you’re cornered you panic and hide like a little girl.”

Cross felt the air ripple.  “Shiv...” he said.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Shiv told the Eidolos.  “Now I know what you are.  And you can’t hide from me.”

And why would I hide from you, child?
the Eidolos growled.  The psychic echoes rattled Cross’s skull, and the beast lashed at the Kindred with shadow-dark appendages. 
You’re nothing.

Cross recovered his blade.  The ground shook from the force of the Eidolos’ telepathic tremor. 

“Listen!” Danica shouted. 

A drone of sound built in the darkness of the cavern, rising to a crescendo.  The dimensions of the curtain wall seemed to strain as the noise grew louder.  The air turned electric with hex and death.

“You’re a murderer, Jor’rekkikan’theranos,” Shiv shouted.  Her voice was tremendous, louder than the oncoming horde.  The Eidolos reared up, grew, its remaining tentacles pulsating like fans of iron flesh. 

Shiv roared in a voice not her own, an inhuman cry of rage.  Cross saw a horde of ghosts claw their way up from the pits, a tidal wave of spectral force.  The air tensed, poised.  For a moment nothing moved, and the cavern was gripped by a terrible stillness, like glass about to break. 

Shiv gasped.  Cross moved to reach her, but that army of lost souls pushed him back.  The cyclone of dead spirits unrolled through the air of the cavern, all of the Eidolos’ victims, every creature eliminated by its murderous acquisition of Raijin.  Those lost souls fell upon their killer in a storm of claws and teeth. 

The cavern shook.  Chunks of stone ripped from the fortress.  A wave of necrotic wind knocked Cross back and sucked at his strength.

The Eidolos made a last desperate push.  Shadows bled like burning sludge.  Shiv screamed in pain, but with that last scream her spirit army’s murderous frenzy finally pushed through.  Blood fell over Shiv like black rain, but she stood resolute, pale eyes glaring at the grisly mass of darkness, watching as the spirit armada tore the creature to shreds. 

The air turned brittle and cold.  A thousand death cries rattled all at once.  Shiv reached out her hand, spread her fingers, and whispered something Cross couldn’t hear, and at that motion the spiral of spirits twisted and tightened like a noose of ice, constricting the Eidolos until it broke.  A blast of ghastly white light shot out in waves of frozen ember.

After a moment, everything went silent and still.  The air turned cold, and gradually the darkness melted away, leaving them all bathed in grisly light.

Cross heard the sounds of the wilderness return, the distant thunder and desert winds.  He stumbled to his feet and saw the open portal behind them, a natural doorway leading straight up a long and twisted tunnel and back to the city, which had bent and refolded to its original shape, just normal buildings once again.