The Black Tower (25 page)

Vellexa’s lungs felt like they’d been ripped out and trampled on.  Energy drained from her limbs.  The world was spinning, and sharp pain nested in her back, a colony of blades.  She struggled to stand, and though every limb burned she somehow managed to get on her hands and knees.  She tried to filter meaning from the barrage of noise and light.

The pit within the circle of stones was aflame, and thick charcoal smoke billowed into the soiled night.  The sounds of combat had faded, replaced by that of men in pain. 

Every breath she drew felt like it was filled with nails.  Vellexa trembled, and sweat and blood ran in her eyes.  She breathed in again, tried to find the Veil inside her, for it was foolish to hold back now. 

She looked around for the Count.  He was standing right over her.

“
Too bad, Vellexa
,” his hollow voice rang.  “
Now you’ll die for nothing.”

His iron hand reached for her.  Vellexa sat frozen, transfixed with the horror of his visage, the torn and mutilated skin and raw bone visible where his helmet had been torn away.  He was a corpse fused to steel, a clockwork skeleton.  His eyes were wide with inhumanity and madness and his iron jaw leaked grisly fluids. 

A shadow moved behind the Count, something born of claws and darkness.  Whatever it was drew his attention away, and in that moment Vellexa found her strength.  She pulled away as he reached for her, and his great metal fingers dug into the earth at her feet as she threw herself back. 

Cronak tore into the Count’s iron body with claws the size of knives.  Talons snaked through the chinks in the ruined steel and sliced into what was left of the once-man’s flesh.  Blood squirted from between the metal plates, rancid and thick. 

The Count moved with surprising speed and smashed Cronak’s face with a backhanded blow that sent the wolf flying into a cloud of burning smoke.  Shadows played across the ground, long and heavy.

Vellexa backed away, nearly fell, and righted herself.  The world was spinning.  Darkness and firesmoke closed in around her.  Her boot caught on a loose stone and she fell into the broken dirt and blood-mottled sand. 

The pit within the burning stones seemed to grow, stretching, an inescapable maw, darker and deeper than the sky above.  The heat was drowning her.  She rose to her knees, Breathed the Veil, willed it to take form around her so she could help her friend.

Cronak leapt to his feet with a snarl.  He swiped at the Count and ripped off a chunk of the man’s chest.  Gnarled jags of bone and iron came loose in the wolf’s claw.  The Count’s short-cropped brown hair was etched with gore, and his eyes remained blank.  Cronak’s glossy white fur was wet with blood that trickled from his wolfen nose and mouth. 

Vellexa turned and tried to snare the Count’s feet with a rope of invisible force, but at that moment pain erupted through her brain like someone had shoved a knife in her ear.  She screamed and fell, the contents of her stomach rising to her throat.  All she could see were the flames flashing through the walls of her skull.  Blood rushed to her head, and pressure built against the inside of her temple.

She saw her son in her mind’s eye, saw her own childhood.  She saw Markus, all she’d ever wanted, all her dreams made flesh.  All of it was slipping away.

Cronak raked the Count’s face with both of his terrible claws, tearing away flesh and iron in a spray of blood.  He moved fast, slashing and dodging out of the juggernaut’s reach.  The Count stared on, impassive, blood dripping from his ruined face.

The hand came down, anticipating Cronak’s motion.  He wrapped his metal hand around the wolf’s claw and crushed it to a pulp.  Cronak howled, his wolf visage ruined as the Count’s other fist smashed his jaw.  The wolf hacked and growled and tore, but he couldn’t break free.

Vellexa’s stomach heaved as she rose.  Waves of nausea threatened to turn her inside out.  Whoever it was inside her head had twisted and contorted her, filled her with numbing stabs of pain and regret.  It took all her will and magic just to remain standing, to resist the urge to fold in on herself and die. 

The Count punched through Cronak’s chest.  Bones and innards sprayed out.  The wolf let out a short and pitiful cry before it fell to the ground in a heap.

Vellexa screamed as Cronak shifted back to his human form, broken and twisted, dark hair matted to what was left of the broken skull, the torso almost entirely torn in half.

Pain drilled through her mind, but she stood, defiant, intent on meeting her fate head on.  She held her hands ready, and the glow of her power surrounded her body as the oozing shell of the man she’d once served approached her.

Kruje tried to stand.  Blood pooled thick in his mouth and ran down his arms, and splitting pain rang through his skull.

The Black Guild Tuscars put up their best resistance against the horde of Phage soldiers who’d appeared out of nowhere.  Steel and shouts rang through the smoke-filled air.  Kruje saw hints of sunlight up above, but tried not to worry about that.  He had plenty of other things that were likely to kill him first.

The giant rose from the ground, dizzy and unstable.  A Tuscar came at him, eyes wide with hate, but before it could bring down its axe Kruje punched it and jammed his fist straight into its stomach, ripping through muscle and flesh. 

Kar-Kalled filled him.  It was all that kept him upright, pure cold rage which filled him with a need to lash out and slaughter.  His body was riddled with wounds that would take time to heal.  He should have been in tremendous pain, but that would come later. 

A Phage soldier in dark armor slashed at Kruje’s chest with a wickedly curved blade, but the giant snapped it aside with one hand and threw his body on top of the hapless human, smothering the man beneath his immense weight.  The soldier’s bones snapped as he gasped for air through crushed lungs. 

Kruje rose, and kept moving.  The will to destroy held him fully in it’s grip.  This was what his kind had been like during the War of the Iron Crown, when they could barely contain themselves enough to not devastate the very empire they fought over.  The need to kill was strong, the urge to lash out undeniable.  He felt virulent, alive.  It was intoxicating.

He moved in a blur, barely registered his surroundings.  Two more Phage and a pair of Tuscars fell to the ground in bloody heaps; he didn’t realize until after he’d moved past them that he’d killed them all with a thick chunk of wood, the foundation beam for some long-collapsed building.  He pushed through the shells of ruined buildings, smashed apart the mortar and bricks and brought them toppling to the ground.  Thick red clouds kept him shielded from the sun.

He found his axe, and with it he felt unstoppable.  Bodies spattered beneath his onslaught.  He charged across the clearing, hewed through Tuscars and Phage even as they battled one another.  Arrows and bolts flew past him in a blur of razor edges.  Men skewered grey-skinned brutes on longblades and chopped them down with axes, while the Tuscars sliced humans apart with their
shek’taars
and throwing spheres.  Bodies crumpled and fell in a raucous din of ringing metal and gurgled war cries. 

Kruje sliced the head from a human and sent the body flying, then caught another man with a running blow that crushed his torso and spattered the remains across the sand.  A Tuscar came at him with a
shek’taar,
which Kruje crushed before swinging his blade up into the creature’s groin. 

He moved closer to the center of the city, back to within sight of the Scarstones and the gate to the Black Tower.  The Arkan was there – its sickly grey body dangled like a puppet as it stared at a human woman, who valiantly held her ground against both it and an augmented human remade with Vossian Veilcraft.  The Arkan’s back was turned to Kruje.

Kruje surged forward through clouds of blood and flames.  Dust flew up beneath his pounding feet as he charged around the edge of the hole.  The augmented human turned, his badly damaged face oozing blood.  He tried to warn the Arkan, but too late.  Kruje flew at the telepath and sank his axe deep into its ribcage.  The blow shattered withered bones and nearly cleaved the gangly creature in two.  Green fluid splashed all over the giant as the crumpled body fell to the ground.

The Veilcrafted human was nearly as tall as Kruje, and that iron body would make him a frightening opponent.  Kruje held his axe high and howled as the metal man stepped forward, each step stamping up clouds of bloodsoaked dust.  The man moved with blinding speed, but he only made it a few steps when icy blue vines of pulsing energy wrapped around him and tethered him to the ground. 

The woman was at the edge of death and nearly hysterical with fear and rage, but she wound the Veilcrafted tentacles around the human and held him tight even though the effort was clearly killing her.  The man turned and roared with an eerie metal voice.  Spikes popped from the backs of his iron fists, spewing venom and acid gore. 

Kruje didn’t hesitate – the moment’s distraction was all he needed to launch forward and bring the axe down on the man’s head, crushing it to a pulp.  The iron body shuddered and stood there for a moment, gears clicking and whirring as thaumaturgic fuel leaked from severed pumps at the base of the neck.  After a moment the corpse slowly sank to its knees, then fell forward in a noisy heap.  Black steam erupted from the mangled torso.

Kruje approached the woman, his axe held ready.  The fighting raged on behind him as the Phage started routing the Tuscars.  He knew he’d be a target again at any moment, but he watched the woman intently, waited to see just what she would do.  Kar-Kalled was fading, and as pain and exhaustion settled in so, too, did his ability to reason.  This woman had no desire to be there, that was clear, and the rage in her eyes when she’d restrained the iron warrior was pure.  His death had been a long time coming.

She watched Kruje, and then looked at the corpse of the metal warrior.  She nodded in thanks.

You’ll pay for this, Voss
, a voice said.

Kruje turned and regarded the crumpled Arkan, its eyes still glaring at him from what was left of its mangled body.  Bloody grease erupted from severed arteries where its torso had been split. 
All of you shall pay.

He moved to finish the bastard off, but before he could reach the Arkan it faded from sight like a nightmare, summoned back to its strange subterranean realm of madness and power.

Kruje stood there for a moment and watched the battle.  There were still a few Red Hand left, and they were doing a good job battling the remaining Tuscars, but there were still plenty more Phage. 

He sensed movement, and from the corner of his eye he saw the woman approach.  She was dark skinned, likely Den’nari, with a tattered black cloak and long black hair that had been burned and stained with grime and blood.  Her eyes fell on the remains of a dark-haired man with a mangled body, and then again on the iron warrior.  Tears welled in her eyes.

She called out to one of the Tuscars, a strong-looking brute clearly marked with the bone fetishes and iron brands of a tribal leader and who stood nearly as tall as Kruje; he wore blood-stained armor and wielded dual war-axes, and his skin was deeply scarred. 

“Kill the Phage,”
she told him in Tuscar, a language Kruje knew but hadn’t had cause to use in many years.  “
Leave the Red Hand be.”

The Tuscar bellowed the command as he turned and sent a throwing axe into the face of a Phage warrior who’d tried to sneak up on them.  His voice was so forceful he might have been heard outside the city.

Kruje nodded.  He turned to go find the Red Hand and ask them to do the same. 

“
Allies, then,
” he said to her in his own halting Tuscar.

She nodded.

“
Allies,”
she said.  She looked down on the iron warrior in disgust. 
“I owe you for that.  You’ve set me free.”

Kruje hoped that his working with the Tuscars and the Den’nari woman would be enough to convey to the Red Hand the truth of the newfound alliance and bring the fighting between their two parties to a halt.  He felt sure that Thaenn was dead even though he couldn’t find her body, and he didn’t recall any of the others speaking Voss, so he had to trust that his actions would be enough. 

To his surprise and relief, it was.  The Red Hand didn’t exactly come down to embrace the hands of their newfound temporary allies, but they worked together from afar, helping route the Phage and securing a perimeter in case any more unpleasant surprises arrived. 

Clearing the Phage from the city proved to be slow and dirty work.  They fought like ghosts, quick and deadly and almost impossible to track down, and even with their superior numbers the Tuscars had a tough time cornering the bastards in that crumbling urban labyrinth.  Kruje was exhausted within another hour, so he let his wounds heal between skirmishes. 

Vellexa proved to be a capable leader, and the Tuscar war chief, Fan’skaar, obeyed her commands without hesitation.  They pushed the Phage back and eventually retook control of the city square, though at great cost.  They wouldn’t be able to withstand another direct attack, not with just two dozen Tuscars and a handful of mercenaries, all of whom seemed more than willing and even a bit relieved to pass their loyalties on to the Bloodspeaker now that the Iron Count was dead and gone.

Without Chairos to support them, even the Blood Knights proved beatable.  The Phage retreated into the network of ruined streets.  The Tuscars kept hunting them, pinning them down where possible and wiping them out. 

The battle was eventually won, but it didn’t feel like much of a victory.  Dane was still gone, and since the gate had been destroyed there was no way to follow him into Chul Gaerog.  The only consolation to be found there was that no one else could use the
cutgate
, either. 

But that meant no one would be coming back.  No matter how he tried to look at it, Kruje had lost his only friend.

Perhaps it’s for the best
, he thought.  He stood there in the clouds of dust and smoke, his dark blood staining his skin as his wounds stitched themselves back together.  The sky grew dark, and the sounds of a larger battle drew close.  He’d have to leave soon, even if he had no idea what his destination would be. 

Kruje watched the hole and the smoldering stones around it.  The blasted cobalt chunks sizzled in the heated air and burned bright with vile cinders that smelled of brimstone and pitch.

I don’t know if I could have sacrificed your life, like the prophecies foretold,
Kruje thought to Dane. 
But I might have.  And for that, I am truly sorry.