Wrayth (13 page)

Then after that, all was darkness.

TEN

The Rossin fell and, snatching control of Raed’s body from the weak mortal, transformed in midair. The human’s clothes were ripped away, and the pack he carried tumbled down the shaft. None of that mattered. An eagle’s scream sounded in the nest of the Phia and he didn’t care. Raed had called on him again, a deep desire to survive might have driven it, but he had still done what was required. With every change he was one step closer.

The Beast was careful to hide his thoughts when the mortal wore the flesh, but when his royal host was subsumed it was liberating in all ways. He had tried to keep them away from the land of Ensomn, but he’d not been able to stop the fool. Apparently sibling bonds ran very deep.

Now, they were in the lair of the Wrayth and there was nothing to be done except get them out. The Shin was a name they had taken to hide their true natures, and it appeared to have worked well for them. A fortress. Ruling over a stupid population of people. It was an old trick, but still a good one.

The Rossin twisted his wings and surged upward toward freedom and the open sky. Only the narrow slice of moon gleaming through the steel grate stopped him crashing into it. He twisted midair like a falcon, and slammed his curved talons into the barrier. Then opening his wings wide, he heaved. The only thing that snapped however was his beak in rage.

Hanging there like an enraged bat was not his happiest moment in this realm. The Wrayth were cunning and so numerous that they were in fact a far more dangerous opponent than even Hatipai. The Rossin’s avian form was meant to fly, meant to dominate the air. It was not meant to be caged like this—but what was the other option?

His head twisted around, as he peered down into the darkness. He could smell the Wrayth below. He knew there would be a way out down there, for the peons to come and go. It was the only way he was going to get free of the Wrayth.

Folding his wings about him, the Rossin released his claws from the grating and dived into the darkness.

The smell of the Wrayth was stronger the farther he went; the reek of blood and flesh combined with the sharp odor of the geistlord itself. He transformed a moment before he reached the ground, and dropped to the dirt in his feline form. It was his most powerful shape; a thickly muscled cat the height of a human’s shoulder, with spotted fur and teeth made to rend. It also meant that he was silent and deadly—useful things in this situation.

As he moved forward, the Rossin crunched over the broken remains of Raed’s pack, and paused to consider. It was humiliating to even have to think about his host, but should they be trapped in a position as they had been just recently the weak creature would need his weapons and clothing. With a derisive snort through his nose, the beast took the pack in its mouth and padded on.

The heat down this deep into the Shin fortress was
terrible, especially to a huge beast covered in fur. It was the mass of flesh his fellow geistlord commanded that created such a hot, humid atmosphere. The Wrayth were not known for their kindness to any creature—even among other geistlords, but the Rossin was ready to hurt them in return. They had fought in the chaos of the Otherside, a battle of survival, and now it appeared they would continue it in this realm.

The Rossin moved deeper into the hive, his ears flicking back and forth seeking any movement. The smooth walls of higher up in the fortress had devolved into rough stone passages, but his massive padded paws took them with ease, though his mortal host might have had problems with the darkness and uneven terrain. Mortals often had problems with many things. When his plan came to fruition it might well be a relief to his Young Pretender.

The Rossin paused and inhaled. The stink of the Wrayth was now overcoming every other scent, and he knew that there would be many of them ahead. He clenched his claws, their creamy length puncturing the earth. A growl remained deep in his chest and largely unvoiced.

Shoulders scything, the Rossin eased himself still deeper into the Wrayth hive.

Many geistlords used humans as tethers to this world; from his own ability to hide within the bloodline of a family, to Hatipai’s method of actually birthing a half-geist child of her own to act as a link. The Wrayth’s method combined a little of both; as was immediately apparent when the great cat climbed through a breach in the earthen wall, and peered down into his fellow geistlord’s breeding chamber.

It stank of humanity—a lot of unwashed, highly sexed humanity. At least his own host did not reek as badly as the Wrayth’s—but mainly that was to do with sheer numbers. He had found his enemy’s breeding pit. Women, all of them with their belly’s swollen in various states of pregnancy, wore very little except the brand of the Wrayth. A
pair of claw marks on the shoulder. Their eyes were vacant and staring. Their skin white from lack of sun.

Moving among them were drones, males with the same mark upon them. All of them stank of the blood ties the Wrayth used. This geistlord was vast in number and the most dangerous of the Rossin’s enemies and kin. The great cat’s eyes narrowed, and his head sunk between his shoulders. He could charge down now among all those peons of the Wrayth, but there was a chance they could overwhelm him. He had rage, but they certainly had numbers.

The Rossin bathed in blood, grew strong from it, but for the peons and their geistlord blood was more than that. It was a web that bound them together in a vast network of people. Each child born here became another peon and carrier of the enemy. This was one opponent that the Rossin could not easily destroy—even with all his strength.

So instead, he chose to leave them. His host would have been greatly surprised; but the Rossin was more than a mere Beast. He had his own plans and means, and when he was sated by blood he could think and act as clearly as any of the other geistlords. It was the restriction of being tied in blood. The Wrayth had found their own way around it, and that rankled.

Still they had to breed constantly lest the geistlord within them weaken. It was a vulnerability that the Rossin could not yet think of a way to exploit.

Letting a little huff of annoyance escape through his gaping mouth, the Beast padded around the room of silent and pale-eyed peons. The Wrayth’s attention was not here—not yet. The Rossin could feel it above him, flitting about among other higher-level peons.

Deeper into the hive, the warmth was now so extreme that the great cat felt it laying like a blanket on him. He let his mouth droop open and began panting. New noises filtered from below, sounds that drew the Rossin; the echoes of human pain. Despite his caution, the geistlord found himself caught by curiosity and followed the sounds.

That was how he found the cells. Swinging his head from side to side, carefully placing his massive paws down as delicately as a house cat, the Rossin peered into them. These were pregnant women too, but not happy in their servitude to their Wrayth overlord. Even the Rossin felt something close to pity for these scraps of humanity tethered to the wall, their swelling bellies attached to wasted and wretched bodies.

The smell of them was strange; not merely just the reek of shackled humanity, but an odd mixture of Wrayth and something else. The cat stood at the bars of a cell and tilted its head, regarding the woman within, for a moment confused. She carried a Wrayth child, but was not of the Wrayth herself. She was something more trained, more powerful. She looked blankly back at the geistlord, broken inside and out, but there was a flicker of her past in there.

The Rossin’s growl was deep and threatening as all trace of pity was wiped away. The prisoner’s head jerked upright. She’d been a Deacon. Though she had no Gauntlets or Strop anymore, she still nursed a tiny spark of the Order within her. Many Deacons were presumed killed by geists, but obviously not all of them had been. Intriguingly enough, it appeared the Wrayth was occupied in some kind of breeding program—though to what end the Rossin could not tell.

If they had met in different circumstances he and this Deacon would have been enemies, now they were the same; trapped in the Wrayth hive. On the Otherside the geists consumed each other and the souls of the dead, but they did not shackle each other in such a way. The Wrayth had obviously learned some new skills in this realm.

The woman lurched forward, wrapping one hand around the bar while reaching out with the other toward the great cat. “Kill me,” she gasped, her voice a rasp of horror. “Take my blood. Take me!”

The Rossin flinched back with a snarl. However other women in the row of cells had heard their fellow prisoner’s
call. Soon a dozen hands were thrust through the gaps, opening and closing in supplication.

“Take me!” one howled.

“No, me,” other unseen women screamed.

“Have pity,” the first woman said, and her fingers actually brushed the fur of the Rossin.

Despite his love of blood and violence, there was something repellant about what had been done to these women. He backed away, hissing and growling in disgust.

Then, from down the corridor, came the sounds of many people coming toward him. He could hear feet slapping on the stone, and smell the Wrayth coming toward him.

It damaged his pride to turn around and run, but on the Otherside the geistlord had learned to do what it took to survive. The Wrayth were coming, and the Rossin fled down the corridors in huge bounds, yet he snarled all the way.

He burst out into another main room, and realized immediately that this was where the Wrayth wanted him. The cat spun about growling and roaring at the surrounding peons. They reeked of the geistlord, and they held sticks and polearms. Every one of them was pale and blank-eyed, but there could be no mistaking their intentions.

“Welcome, mighty Rossin.” A voice high in the vaulted ceiling caused the cat to jerk his head up; the female creature his host’s sister had been talking to. She was beyond even his reaching, leaning out to talk to him from a balcony of stone, decorated with lapis lazuli.

“Thank you so much for visiting.” The peons below bent like wheat in the wind at her voice, responding to the whims of the Wrayth.

The Rossin crouched, and even though he knew the pointlessness of it, sprang among them. He bit and raked his claws through their flesh. He broke bones and tore muscle, and even while he did, they did not scream. It was like cutting grass or biting water, and just as fulfilling.

Even though their blood flooded his mouth, it offered him nothing. Humanity should not be like this, and every part of the Rossin was disgusted by it. No strength came to him; the Wrayth’s power slipped out of the peons before he could absorb it. Finally, he stood shaking bits of rent peons from his jaws, blood splattered on his patterned fur, and a growl emanating from his mouth.

“Are you done?” the Wrayth above asked, her voice stained with amusement. “As always you are limited, and as you can see, we are not.”

The peons that were still capable formed up another circle. Some were dragging broken limbs, or their own eviscerated bowels, but they still moved to the controls of the geistlord in their bodies. At the same time, fresh peons from the rear came forward. They were carrying polearms, and on the end gleamed weirstones.

It was always this way; geistlord competing to devour geistlord. The Wrayth would have him and all the power that remained from Hatipai. However when the woman spoke, the words she let loose were not the ones that he expected.

“You will make an excellent experiment. Once you return to your host, we will find out what new lines he can form with our female peons. What interesting creatures might be made with your power and ours.”

She turned, and his host’s sister appeared on the balcony as well. She looked down on the snarling cat with such hatred that even the Rossin felt it.

He would not change. He would not surrender himself to that. He would breed nothing for the Wrayth. Then the peons were on him, pushing him with the weirstones, and where they touched, they burned. In this way they drove the Rossin out of the main hall and down into the hive.

Though he battered at them, charging, snarling, ripping an odd one or two down, they kept coming in a relentless fashion that he could not match. Eventually they pushed him, just by sheer numbers and determination, into a cell, much like the one their female prisoners occupied.