Oathbreaker ch. 10.13 - Reunion (Patreon)

Hello, lover.

My axe slowly lowered as I faced the hooded shape holding Lisette captive. For a long moment, I couldn’t find my own words as we faced one another from no further than the length of that small bedroom. The closest we’d been in twelve years.

There’d been other encounters since her return the past winter, when she’d resurrected beneath Baille Os as Delphine wrote on the yellowed flesh of the Zoscian and moved the very engines of Hell to grant her wish. We’d faced one another then, but the three-way battle between the Osheimers, the Crowfriars, and the Abgrûdai had forced her to take the doctor and flee while I remained behind. Then we’d met again those months before outside Tall Carreweir, when she’d killed Evangeline. Then again, I’d been robbed of any answers.

I’d expected her to appear earlier. To find me and take her revenge. To haunt my dreams, literally, using our old bond to ghost into my mind and plague me with nightmares and hate. That had been how her shadow operated during the time it was in my head.

And yet, there’d been nothing. Just silence. Until now.

My heart beat fast and my thoughts were fractured, but I surprised myself by returning the demon’s greeting with something that resembled calm. “Hello, Fidei.”

The hood shifted a fraction. I still couldn’t see what lay beneath it, though I felt the face within watching me. She had one hand around Lisette’s throat and her other arm crossed over her ribs. The grip seemed almost gentle, sisterly, but the cleric held herself painfully still.

I took a steadying breath. “Let her go, Dei.”

Lisette winced as the demon’s sharp nails caressed the soft underside of her throat. The hood turned, the hidden face regarding the young cleric now.

“You want me to release this pretty necromancer? Is she your plaything, then?” The hooded gaze came very close to Lisette, who feebly tried to lean away without success, held tight by that seemingly light grip as the demon inhaled. “I don’t smell you on her.”

The voice was exactly as I remembered. Calm and smooth, a playful lilt tinted with the faintest hint of amusement. It had an effect on me. I shook it off — actually shook myself to clear my head — and made my voice firmer. “This has nothing to do with her. It’s between you and me, Shyora.”

Her sharp fingertips paused as they brushed along Lisette’s cheek. “So, you’ve learned my name.”

“Yith told me before I destroyed him.”

“Hm. You’ve made quite a habit of slaying demons. Kur. Yith. Me…”

“I know many of your names now,” I told her. “Pernicious Shyora. Bather In Blood. Lady Wurmwing. Heart-thief. Tormentsister.”

She laughed softly, the hood shaking from the movement within. “All that time I spent trying to make you appreciate knowledge, and it took murdering me to make a scholar of you? I might’ve enjoyed the irony under other circumstances.”

“Killing you doesn’t seem to have taken,” I noted.

The voice inside the cloak became more serious. “No… though I owe you for ten years spent in Hell. For that we will have a reckoning, my heart.”

I extended my empty hand. “Let’s have it now. Release the girl. I’m right here, Dei. We—”

That false calmness in Shyora’s voice vanished, and her words lashed out like tongues of scorching fire. “There is no we. This was about us when we stood together on the walls of the Archon’s city on the eve it burned, but that is long ago and far away, my love. This is not about us anymore, and I will not expose my heart to your steel a second time.”

I winced. “I—”

“If you want to save this witch,” Shyora purred, tightening her grip on Lisette and drawing a whimper from the cleric, “then throw your weapon aside and give me that little king on the bed.”

One of her talons drew a red line along the side of Lisette’s neck. The cleric squeezed her eyes shut. I glanced at the still unconscious Calerus.

“So,” I said with a dull feeling. “You’re back with Reynard.”

“He left me little choice. Now will you be a good little soldier, or do I need to peel the petals from this pretty flower?” The hooded face came sidelong with Lisette’s, so they both stared at me in parallel. “Another blond. I didn’t choose my last form for your preference, but it’s good to know I was on the mark.”

“Don’t do it,” Lisette pleaded. “My life isn’t worth one of the Accord’s leaders, Alken.”

Shyora scoffed. “So noble. She doesn’t know what I’m capable of, does she? Do you know what I’m capable of, my knight?”

The room filled with the sound of serpentine hissing. The demon’s pilgrim robes rustled, and something emerged from them. At first I thought it was a long, sinuous tail, but then I saw the forked tongue and the glassy eyes. The snake began to wind itself around Lisette’s legs. When her eyes lowered and she saw it, she started to squirm and whimper in terror.

“Enough!” I took a step forward. “Let her go.”

“Or what?” Shyora — who I’d once known as Sister Fidei — laughed cruelly. “You’ll send me to Hell again? Been there, done that. Best make your choice quickly, before Daobog finishes with your friends. He is not as patient as I am.”

I tightened my grip on Faen Orgis, squeezing hard enough that the strong wood creaked. “Hurt her, and I will not hesitate.”

“Like you hesitated back then?” I saw the hint of a cold smile inside the hood, full lips framed by a pale chin. “Poor, confused weapon. A bleeding heart inside an iron shell, still hoping that someone might love it if it kills enough. Have you killed enough yet, my knight?”

Before I could make a decision, Lisette made it for us. Using the fingertips of one hand, she made a net of auratic strings — an incredible feat of focus — and her Art manifested in a flash of humming gold. It was small and weak in comparison to the prodigy’s norm, but her sutures banished the room’s gloom and splintered the stillness. They wrapped about the demon’s neck, her arms, five lines converging on a single point.

It only a lasted a moment. Lisette couldn’t bring the proper strength to bear without balancing her aura through the proper ritual, but Shyora let out a hiss of anger and her serpent mimicked the sound. Its fangs bared and dripping venom, it lashed out.

I didn’t shout or plead, just moved. The moment I saw Lisette cast, I was flying over the rotten floorboards, axe raised. If I could reach them before those fangs sank in, lop off its head…

The wall next to the pair exploded. My vision was lost in a cloud of dust and splinters, and I flinched back from the shock of the eruption. My vision was lost for a moment, but when I managed to squint through the haze I saw an incredible sight. Hendry, his eyes blazing like blue fire, came through the destruction like a juggernaut. He held a hammer in each hand, and Vicar was on his shoulders, the living pelt’s jaws open wide and orange hellfire glowering inside his maw.

The demon also had its attention caught by the young knight. Raising a sleeved arm like a shield, Shyora had her attention torn between Hendry and me. Hendry hadn’t been quite facing the enemy when he came in and had to turn to track her in the dust, so I got to her first. As I drew in close the hunched shape looked up at me. She’d dropped her captive, and Lisette had slumped to the floor, ducking low to get clear I assumed. Had she been bitten? Was I too late?

My axe was raised and ready to swing. There was no thought in it. My mind was a void.

But the demon was no easy prey. She moved with impossible speed, lunging forward and into my guard. She shifted her weight with the speed and accuracy of a serpent, almost as though the body beneath the robes was itself snakelike. She got into my reach, her hands around my throat and a bare foot against my stomach. Thrown off balance by this sudden change in weight, I began to topple back. At the same time, her snake-headed tail came up, emerging from beneath the hem of her robes, its fangs bared and dripping an acrid substance aimed right at my throat.

She’s got me. My axe was useless at this distance, and I’d lost my balance. I wore no armor to protect me from those sharp fangs. Inside the cowl, I saw her face — it was her face, as I remembered it. It was twisted with fury, pupils burning like copper flames. The snake struck.

And stopped inches from my left eye as Lisette’s golden strings caught it. She’d manifested no complex shape this time, the auratic lines running directly from her fingertips to the serpent’s neck. It struggled and hissed furiously, but Lisette bared her teeth and pulled, almost like a fisherman on a net.

Hendry came in then, his hammer swinging directly at the demoness herself. She turned her attention from me and released my throat, kicking me hard enough in the chest that I went stumbling back. It wasn’t supernatural strength, but I was already off balance and she had the advantage of leverage on me. I slammed into the bed-frame, hard enough to send a flash of pain up my hip. I grunted and caught myself just as Shyora landed a few feet to Hendry’s left, between him and Lisette. Vicar’s cinderous eye tracked her, but he didn’t dare use hellfire inside the house.

Shyora broke Lisette’s sutures with a lash of her hand, freeing the snake, then turned as Hendry stepped forward to swing at her with one of his hammers. He let out a shout with the motion, all of his considerable weight and power levering to bear as he torqued his body.

The demon’s pale hands came up and caught Hendry’s hammer by the hilt. She didn’t do it easily — she strained against his strength, her arm shaking as the steel tip of the hammer sunk by inches toward her skull, but she remained still and planted. Her flesh sizzled and steamed where it clutched the hammer’s metal handle, but she did not let it go. The young man only had time to widen his eyes in surprise before those dark robes rustled and there was a flash of motion.

Blood sprayed across the wall. A great wing emerged from the demon’s cloak, massive and leathery, sporting veined membrane a hellish shade of red that ran into leathery black flesh. There were long ridges in the wing, and three knuckles like on a finger near the base, middle and end. That final knot of strong muscle sported a long, sharp claw thick as a dagger, and it was that which punctured Hendry through his right shoulder.

Hendry was lifted bodily, raised like a doll despite all his weight of mortal muscle and devil iron. He looked more shocked than pained. The hammer in his right hand clattered to the floor with a loud thump.

“No!” Lisette cried out.

I was already moving to help him, but the demon flexed that monstrous limb and sent Hendry flying into me. It was like being hit by a siege door. We both went down, and I barely avoided braining myself on the bedpost. I did manage to catch him and roll into the fall, coming up on a knee at the end and raising my axe to defend us both.

The demon loomed in the middle of the room. Unsettled dust and moonlight framed her dark shape as a second fell wing emerged. The cloak slipped back as the wings spread out, hooked claws rising above the hooded head, the monastic robes loosening to reveal pale, smooth skin that almost glowed in the hazy touch of the moons.

She spread her hands — the monastic garb almost made it look like she were raising them in supplication — then she crouched and leapt straight up, punching a hole through the roof and vanishing from our sight.

“The others,” I said breathlessly. I was still staring at where the demon had stood. The hole she’d left in the ceiling was a smoldering ring, as though a fiery missile had gone through it.

Lisette stumbled towards us. “But, Hendry…”

“I’m alright,” he croaked, then groaned with pain. His head was on my knee, and he’d managed to keep hold of his second hammer. His face was twisted with pain, and blood had already started soaking through his shirt.

“Tend him,” I ordered Lisette, then pulled Vicar from Hendry’s shoulders and laid him over my own. “I’m going.”

I didn’t wait for them to answer. I didn’t even check on Calerus, just marched through the gap Hendry had made in the wall and out into the alley between that house and the next before turning to the street and breaking into a run.

“Alken…” Vicar began.

“Save it,” I snarled.

He did. The devil fell silent and we moved onto the road between the houses and the river. The change in just the past ten or so minutes was incredible. There were the smoking corpses of Woed everywhere, more than a dozen of them, and there were spots of muddy track that looked like they’d been turned into pits of bubbling tar. One of the houses had fully collapsed, the stone chimney lying in a crumbled heap across a whole section of the street, and the mist had cleared for more than a hundred paces around the scene of the battle, almost forming an arena.

Emma was supporting Tzanith with one shoulder. The elf was injured — one of her arms had been flayed from elbow to wrist, and mercurial faerie blood fell with alarming volume onto the ground. Sidsel, having taken a broken neck like it were a scraped knee, stood defensively in front of the other two, her sword held up in a two-handed fencer’s grip. Her checkered House Ark cape was torn and speckled with blood and her neck looked like a knot of agony, but she stood steady.

Daobog squatted in the middle of the street before them. The enormous demon-beast was like a small house himself, wide as he was tall, his tusked head staring at the battered trio with the blank malice of a hungry toad. He seemed unbothered by the faerie-arrows stuck in his thorned hide.

He’s been playing with them, I realized. Stalling so Shyora can take Calerus.

Even as I thought it, a winged shape descended to alight on the toad-demon’s back with dainty feet. Pernicious Shyora stood revealed then, naked, her disguise discarded on the wing. She looked like a pale, beautiful woman in her early thirties, long-limbed and lithely built. Her hair was such a light shade of yellow as to be nearly white, worn long and unkempt, blond curls drifting on a phantom wind in surreal, almost gorgon-like animation. That distracting nakedness only drew more attention to her less human features. Her fiendish wings must have been five meters in total span, making her seem larger than she really was. A large serpent, its scales shimmering between shades of violent, crimson, and black, emerged from the base of her spine like a tail, its weight suspended easily in the air so it coiled and curved in unsettling configurations around the demoness’s lean human body.

That snake-headed tail formed a spiral around the succubus’s shapely legs as she balanced on Daobog’s head. Her clawed wings flexed threateningly, but her tone was light, almost playful.

“What is this?” She swept her gaze over our battered company. Her eyes were such a deep shade of red as to look black in the night, so the hellish light at their centers seemed like points of fire in dark pools. “I see a vampire, a Briar witch, and a bug hidden behind a glamour. My oh my, this is quite the hareem you’ve collected!” She saw me standing behind the rest and flashed even white teeth with sharp canines. “Has it been so hard to fill the emptiness I left behind, my love?”

I stepped past Tzanith and Emma to stand beside Sidsel. “It’s done, Dei. You don’t have Calerus, and you can’t beat us all. Reinforcements will be here any minute.”

Sidsel threw me a sidelong look. “You two know one another, I take it?”

There seemed little point prevaricating. “We used to be together.”

Funny, how ashamed I used to be of that. Now the admission came easily, even to my own surprise.

The vampire opened her mouth in a silent ah. Shyora only scoffed. Her wings folded in to cover her nakedness in a parody of modesty, one hooked claw hiding her mouth almost like a lady’s fan. The small motes of abyssal light at the centers of her irises shifted to the pelt on my shoulders.

“More and more surprises! Is that you, 44 Iron Vicar Reborn in Inferno? What happened to you? You look… rather less than you were.”

Vicar’s gravelly voice passed by my ear. “I am surprised you remember me. You seemed less than lucid during our previous conversations.”

Shyora’s eyes narrowed. “Torture will do that. But I recall your scent and your voice.”

Her words were becoming steadily angrier, and I felt a sharpness in the air. That’s the best way I can describe it, like there were a million invisible razorblades all around, barely brushing against my skin and threatening to cut. I felt a flash of heat in my left eye and winced.

“You could not stomach me, but you let that rest on your shoulder?” The demon’s words were strained, dangerously brittle. Almost hurt.

What could I say? I wanted to tell her that things were changed. That I’d done and learned things that had challenged my view of the world and the powers that moved around it. I wanted to tell her that I was ready to listen, if we could only speak without all this posturing.

But it was far too late for all of that. This encounter had convinced me. She was here as his agent, and I would not let her take the Vyke or harm my charges. So I kept my silence and waited, and bought time.

“These others are no match for Daobog,” she told me, her manner cooling. “You might be able to threaten either one of us alone, but together I think we can overpower even the mighty Headsman of Seydis.” At my surprised look, she let out a peel of laughter. It was a harsh sound, a high cackle that could have put a storybook witch to shame. “Yes! I’ve learned some of your names as well. Did they not celebrate your heroism after you slew the vile seductress and raged so gallantly against the dying of the light? No?”

Though her words were playful, the expression in her eyes above the veil of her wing was full of bitter resentment.

Daobog rumbled and interrupted us. “Enough of your play, Pernicious. We have a task to complete.”

Shyora pouted and studied her sharp nails. “So we do. Shame. I’d hoped for more time to catch up, but there truly is no rest for the wicked, is there?”

I swiped my axe to my side and let aureflame crackled along its edge. “I won’t let you.”

She bared her sharp teeth. “Stubborn as always. Very well, then. I always did prefer it rough.”

Her wings spread and her taloned fingers began to move in liquid motions almost as though she were plucking the strings of an invisible harp. The air filled with a discordant hum and a buzzing energy that made my teeth ache. Baleful fire began to play along the outer edges of the demoness’s wings. I smelled copper in the air and tensed.

Before her spell could be completed, another sensation passed over the street. It was like a cool wind, light and energizing, following by a static charged feeling. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and Sidsel shivered violently at my side.

I heard Tzanith breathe a sigh of relief. “I was worried they wouldn’t notice in time.”

Who? I almost asked the question aloud, but then I heard the thump of a heavy oaken staff striking the ground. Before I could so much as turn to look behind me, someone was walking forward to my right. He’d simply appeared on the street, just like back at the castle in Rosanna’s study.

He looked like a common pauper. He wore a brown vest over a yellow shirt, and a lumpy hat at an angle over his brow. The staff in his hand was common, almost bland, the kind any traveler might use to ease the burden of a long road. He wasn’t tall or thin or particularly handsome, but the world seemed to lean into his step.

“I’m afraid you aren’t welcome here,” Wynn told the two demons. His tone was polite, but his gaze was steady. A soft wind seemed to emanate from him.

Daobog’s toxic-green gaze fell on the wizard. “I do not fear you, Magi.”

Wynn only shrugged. “Then you are a fool. What about you, dear? Want to push this?”

The succubus lifted her chin as she appraised the mage. “I’ve seen greater than you, Wynn Hexer. But I see that we’ve bitten off more than we can chew.”

Daobog disagreed. “We can take them.”

“No,” Shyora said calmly. “There’s another Magi inside the house. They have us.”

When I glanced at Wynn, he nodded. “My wife is with the others. We will speak about why you have dyghouls and vampires in your company, Headsman.”

“Sure.” I scoffed and turned my attention back to the demons.

Shyora’s glare was cold and distant. “You and I will have our reckoning soon enough, my knight.”

“I’m ready whenever you are.” The words weren’t just empty bravado. I said them quietly, meaning every one.

Wynn lifted his staff. I raised my axe. The others brought their own weapons to bear, Emma flicking her blood-dagger and Tzanith’s silver bow humming musically. Shyora bared her teeth and her viper-headed tail hissed.

Daobog’s bulbous neck suddenly expanded, tripling in size, and he vomited up an acrid cloud of black smoke. A foul reek like every bog and garbage midden in the world filled the air and my eyes began to sting. Both Wynn and I gagged, backpeddling, and the wizard spat a word and swiped his staff. The black fog blew away in a powerful gust of wind, strong enough that I had to brace myself against its force.

When the dark fumes cleared, the two Abgrûdai were gone.

“Damn,” Wynn said with a sigh as he coughed and waved a hand in front of his face. “I’d hoped to get more information from them.”

“Those were two true demons,” I said, blinking my eyes against the stinging sensation from the demon-fog. “We’re lucky to be as unscathed as we are.”

Wynn nodded and pursed his lips. “I’m surprised you stalled for us to get here rather than go in with your steel blazing. I’m used to a bit more bullheadedness in warriors.”

I shrugged. “I knew either you and your wife or Ioannes would sense that there were Abgrûdai here. They weren’t making any effort to hide themselves.”

When Yith had infiltrated Garihelm, it’d suppressed its presence and I’d only known it was lurking in the city because of residue it left where it took one of its victims. Demons could hide themselves almost completely by folding up their true shape inside objects, corpses, or even living people. But Daobog and Shyora had come in their full aspects, ready for a fight.

They wanted Calerus dead very badly.

Wynn was still watching me. “That one demon knew you.”

I turned away from him. “A lot of demons know me. I’m an Alder Knight, and I’ve banished several of them.”

Before he could interrogate me further, I turned to the others. “Emma, Hendry is hurt. Lisette is seeing to him, but I think Penric might be in a bad way too.”

She nodded calmly. Emma rarely showed worry or concern — she felt them, but not the same way many other people did. She had some injuries, including a trio of gashes in her left shoulder that had shredded the shirt and needed tending, but she’d stifled the bleeding by using her Art to clot the wounds.

Sidsel was watching the wizard with the wariness of a cat stuck in the same room as a large dog. I was surprised she was still there, but she seemed to be waiting for my permission to go. Her brother still hadn’t made a reappearance since the night they found me, which made me suspicious, but I had other concerns just then. Tzanith saw my look and stepped close to me.

“That was her, wasn’t it?” She asked me in a quiet voice.

I nodded. The old claw-marks over my eye were still burning with a slow, steady pain. “It was. Are you alright?”

When I nodded to her wounded arm, she just smiled tiredly. “It will heal. Daobog is strong, but he only touched my glamour. It hurts, but it’s not permanent.”

Glamour was as real to elves as their own flesh, but I accepted her assurance. I let myself worry for her, for Emma and the others, ignoring my own concerns. Easier to fret over their wounds than my own. Better to look at the situation in front of me than focus on my still-beating heart and the sense of lingering regret. I felt the fading of pain in my left eye like a loss.

“Then let’s go and see to our guest. Calerus has some explaining to do.”