46. The Battle of the Siofra River
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Many thanks to @BinaryApotheosis for betareading and fact-checking.
"Oh, Prathik, when I saw the Fallen—I was so worried!"
"Dad! You're alive!"
"I am, and so are—Ah! What is that?"
"I am Parvati-9, a Lightbearer. I defended young Prathik from the Fallen and told him I would wait with him until you returned. It is good to see you still live."
"Thank you, Lady Parvati!"
"You are quite welcome, young one. Now that your father has returned, I should be going."
"…Wait. You said you defended Prathik? From all these Fallen?"
"Yes."
"…Could you continue to defend us? We have little with which to pay you, but all we have would be yours."
When they don't have a target to hunt, it seems like the silver tears and Fallen Hawks don't really know what to do with themselves. They wander aimlessly through Nokron's streets, with no clear patrol routes or squads.
It's difficult to hold onto invisibility long-term. It takes concentration—the kind of concentration that's very hard to maintain in the middle of a fight, even if no one can see you to shoot directly at you. Even running makes it hard—physical exertion takes attention.
Which is why I move slowly through the streets of Nokron, cloaked in the Void, completely unseen by my enemies. I'm not crouching, or coiled and tense, or anything else you might expect of someone sneaking around, because all of those things take focus, and all of my focus is on the Void. I just walk, my steps entirely casual—instinctive.
Left, Winchester whispers, and almost breaks my concentration. But having him guide me is better than trying to remember the path myself. I turn left.
It's a few more Winchester-guided turns before I find my way back to the church where I ran into Nikolai. The floor is still covered in silver fluid, but I don't see anything alive. There's nothing on the radar superimposed on the corner of my HUD, either, so I finally let go of my invisibility with a sigh of relief. The Void lets me go with a buff of dark mist and a few drops of condensation on my leathers.
It's not that they're not watching the church. They are. They're just watching it from outside, I passed the Fallen Hawks on guard on my way in. Which, if they were facing people who couldn't turn invisible, would actually be smart. This way they can potentially lure the Nox into making a break for it, whereas if they were in the church the Nox probably wouldn't take the risk until there was absolutely no other choice.
I roll my shoulders as I cross the sanctum. It doesn't hurt to push my Light to its limits, nor does it leave me feeling drained in any physical sense. But it's mentally exhausting. We all have our little rituals to get feeling back into the stressed-out gray matter. Grant pops every joint in his fingers. Thermidor pops the magazine in and out of his gun. I roll my shoulders. There are worse habits.
I knock on the wall. "Hey," I say—not shouting, because I don't want to call the army down on myself if I can help it. "Anybody on the other side of this?"
There's a beat of silence. Then, with a surprisingly soft grinding of stone on stone, the wall slides away. "Inside," hisses a Nox monk—not Nikolai—with a nervous glance over my shoulder. "Quickly!"
I follow him in and the wall slides shut behind me. "Barrett-12?" he asks.
"That's me," I say. "How are things down here? Any new developments?"
"A few more have made their way into the catacombs," says the Nox. "None of the Nightmaidens, alas. If there are any survivors save Lady Katerina and Lady Themis, they have not found their way to us."
"We can't wait any longer, I'm afraid," I say. "We need to get you all out of here—today."
He stares at me. "Out… to the surface?"
"Yep. We've got a plan. Take me to the Nightmaidens, they should hear this."
"And thou art certain the Followers shall honor their word?" Themis asks skeptically.
"Sure as I can be," I say. "Not like I've known them all that long myself. But they took some time to think about it. Those who come with us know they might be on a one-way trip. They volunteered anyway."
"They might be intending to bait us into a trap," Themis says.
"And any Nox here might be a double agent in service to the Will," Katerina says. "We can survive in these catacombs for a time, sister, but not forever. And we cannot hope to escape alone. We have no allies which we know we can trust, so we must trust those we can only hope will not betray us to our enemies."
Themis grimaces, but doesn't argue.
"If it's any comfort," I say, "Those Who Follow are only there for basic military support. All the key parts of the plan are on me and my team. I don't know if that's better, exactly, but you've already trusted me this far, right?"
Katerina nods, but her face is impassive. "If the choice is between placing our fates in thy hands and leaving them to the Hawks and the corrupted tears, then thy hands are far the better choice."
"Great," I say. "How quickly can you have everyone ready to march?"
"Grant us one hour," she says, standing. "Themis, thou shalt organize all those who were not soldiers ere this week. I shall gather the monks and swordstresses. We shall meet thee, Barrett, by the very entrance thou usedst to enter the catacombs."
Themis stands, gives Katerina a stiff but deferential nod, and marches out.
"I'll wait there, then," I say.
"Go," Katerina says. "Brother Daxos, go thou to the barracks and gather thy cadre. We march within the hour."
A little over an hour later, the wall slides open in the church again. I creep out, gesturing to the Nox to wait in the tunnel. A smoke bomb hides me from view as I step out onto the street. My radar picks out a little over half a dozen sentries watching the entrance to the church—mostly silver tears in sniper perches overlooking the street.
I take a deep breath as I unsling the Dead Man's Tale. "Ready?" I whisper to Winchester.
As a loaded gun, bud.
I take aim, exhale, and fire. The action shatters my cloak, but the tear splashes into so much silver goo. Before the others can react, I've taken out two more. I have to dodge a couple spears with a roll, but I take out the rest as soon as I'm on my feet again.
Then I holster my gun, reach for the Light, and close my fist around my burning Golden Gun. I raise it, aiming for the false stars hovering near the cavern ceiling, and fire three shots. Then I turn the gun down an alley and fire on a squad of Fallen Hawks just as they round the corner. "Move!" I shout over my shoulder to the Nox. "Soldiers on the outside, civilians in the middle! East, to the cliffs!"
My Golden Gun dissipates, but this isn't the Crucible, where there are rules governing how often I'm allowed to Super, and I'm… well, I'm in my element. There are people behind me who can't fight, not like I can. People whose lives are threatened for no reason other than that they're alive and their enemies want them not to be.
I am a Guardian. This is my wall, and the Light and the Darkness are my spears.
I flick my fingers, banishing the last embers of the Golden Gun, then close them again on the hilt of Silence. In my left hand, Squall crystallizes out of the air. I leap into the air to get a better vantage and throw Silence down the street to the west, freezing a gathering group of tears and Hawks in their tracks. Then I toss Squall south at another group. As it detonates, the whirling blizzard it unleashes tears them apart, then keeps going, wandering in search of enemies to destroy. It won't hurt the Nox—it responds intuitively to who I want safe, and who I want killed.
I land, already pulling out Osteo Striga. "Plenty of acceptable targets here," I murmur to the gun. "So keep the poison to them, got it?"
It warms under my fingers in anticipation. I take that as agreement.
There are hundreds of Nox. Way too many for me to just march at either the head or the tail of the group and expect to keep them all safe. So I jump around, using Strand to grapple to the front to clear a path, then jumping onto a balcony to fire over their heads at an enemy behind, before zig-zagging my way back down the line taking shots down alleyways at anyone trying to flank us. Fortunately, Nokron really isn't that big—not compared to the Last City, anyway—so even with a group this big moving as slowly as the slowest Nox survivors, it only takes us a little over half an hour to get to the cliffs. Which is still a really long time, and we do lose a few—to silver tears, mostly, sniping from the flanks wherever I'm not. But there's no time to mourn them, not when I have to get the rest of their people out of here.
The others meet us at the buttresses, a firing line of Those Who Follow already in place keeping away anything trying to get close enough to attack. It won't last—more Hawks and tears are streaming towards us, from all over the city, faster than our archers and spellcasters can take them out—but it might just last long enough.
I hit the ground just on the edge of the cliff. Far below I can see the Siofra River, lit from above by the same false starlight that illuminates the whole cavern, and in places brightened by strange spheres of pale blue light that drift lazily over the water, like will-o'-the-wisps or ball lightning.
The buttresses are broken in several places—they absolutely aren't holding anything up in this state—but I can follow them with my eyes and see where they meet a hill on the river's other side, probably a couple hundred yards away. And that hill, I can see, slopes gently downward, given a clear path down to the riverbed.
"Barrett!" Atrebal calls, fighting their way through the shuffling Nox to my side. "Canst thou provide us a bridge, as thou promised? This distance is larger than I remembered."
My lips twitch. "Size matters not," I quip, kneeling down. Over our private channel, Winchester makes a noise of disgust. I ignore him, pressing my palms against the rock of the cliff. I take a deep breath, reaching down deep into myself, into the very core of my being. I find the parts of my self that I wouldn't be able to change even if I wanted to and the parts that I never want to allow to change. The part of me that was forged by Shin Malphur after Sara died. The part of me that fused together in the depths of the Vault of Glass. The part of me that hardened like a pearl in an oyster as I stood in the abandoned bedroom of a biological human who had once been named Barrett in Eventide.
I gather all these things up, forcing them to the surface, and as I exhale, I bring their immutability into the world. Pale blue crystals spread from my fingertips, creeping along the marble of the two nearest buttresses. Whenever the spreading Stasis comes to a crack or gap, it spears outward in a sharp growth of crystal, closing the opening. It takes time, and it takes intense focus. It's easier than staying invisible for an hour was, but not by much—and I'm about to have to hold this for who knows how long.
But, at long last, the last gaps close. The moment I see that, I gasp out, "Go!" and shut my eyes. Distantly, I hear Atrebal give a command to the Nox. I hear them start storming across the bridges. But the sound fades away as I retreat inward.
It's not physically taxing, any more than holding invisibility was physically taxing. My shoulders don't shake with exertion, my nickel-alloy teeth don't grit. But I have to hold my mind perfectly within that core of myself that houses Stasis. I have to… not wallow in it, because that implies I'm disturbing it. It implies that I'm creating ripples in the lake of my subconscious. I can't afford ripples. I need to calcify it. I need to be nothing but those unchanging parts of myself, to let everything else fade away.
Eris Morn was right, all those years ago, to be afraid that Darkness would be a path to obsession and fanaticism. Not all Darkness—Strand isn't like that. But it was Stasis, or the echoes of Stasis, that led her to that idea, and that's exactly what Stasis is. Stasis is the pure form of Darkness that the Hive Sword-Logic tries to mimic. It's paring yourself down, honing yourself to only your essential components, refusing to change, to grow, to allow anything to exist within yourself beyond the essential ideas that make you yourself.
"Barrett!" Winchester's voice is barely audible, but it's enough to break my concentration. I gasp for breath as the crystals shatter.
"What?" I mumble, looking up.
"The others are all across!" shouts someone just above me. I look up to see Blaidd standing over me, his massive sword in the process of sweeping through three Fallen Hawks charging at him with spears. I see that they've already started climbing down the other buttresses. A lot of them fall as they try to jump the gaps, landing with distant, barely-audible splashes as they hit the distant river below at lethal speeds, but many more manage to reach the bottom. Those Who Follow are doing their best to keep them at bay from the other side of the river, but the enemy is gaining on the column of Nox descending towards the riverbed.
"Let's join them, then!" I shout up to the wolf-man, standing up and spinning around, pulling out the Striga and firing madly into the horde behind me. The burst of poison forces them back, and I take the opportunity. "Now!"
As one, Blaidd and I jump to the nearest buttress, which Blaidd and Those Who Follow have kept mostly clear of the enemy. We sprint down it, while I occasionally turn to fire bursts from the Striga to keep the horde behind us at bay.
It doesn't take us long to reach the other side. "Go!" shouts a shaman, gesturing for her people to move. "The Nox have already reached the ancient palace! The well is not far beyond!"
"Go," Blaidd tells me, in a voice that's as much a growl as words, even as Millicent appears out of the crowd of horned figures to stand at his side. "They'll need you at the fore. We'll bring up the rear."
I raise the Striga to him in salute, then turn and throw out a grapple, sailing over the heads of Those Who Follow in the direction of the Nox column.
Unfortunately, when I reach the head of that column, I discover we've stalled. Humanoid figures, like statues made of half-melted clay, are throwing themselves at the line of Nox monks and swordstresses. Atrebal is right at their head, and between slashes with their sword they throw out spells I've seen Trinovar use once or twice. But Atrebal tosses them out like candy—their throat expands like a frog's before belching out cones of dragonfire; a glowing tail appears behind them, sweeping out as they spin before vanishing again; a horn grows from their shoulder as they thrust it forward, before snapping off and fading away.
I land beside them after one such spell pushes the claymen back. "Guess you weren't able to get them to work with us?" I ask.
"Nay," they say grimly. "And the Hawks and tears draw nearer with every moment we are delayed here."
"Then we'd better stop being delayed." I draw my Arc Blade, sending Light coursing through it, and charge. The claymen shatter before me—a single blow turns one into a ceramic bomb, sending shrapnel flying through all the others around it. Several chunks of sharp clay ping off my shields each time I do this, but the Arc Light supercharges my defenses, keeping me (mostly) safe as I cut a path through them.
Slowly, we start making progress. I push the claymen back, opening a path between the crumbling stone walls of their ancient palace, until at last we break out onto the other side. And in the distance, I see it—the well.
It's a circular stone platform, maybe thirty or forty feet in diameter, right up against the wall of the chasm. It'd be hard to see, this far down—the false starlight is dimmer, here—except that it's lit brilliantly blue by the figure standing in the center of it. Her four pale-blue arms each hold a different spell, and even as I'm carving my way through the claymen towards her, she's keeping a squad of them away from herself with three hands while the fourth periodically shoots bolts of magic at those keeping us away from her.
I've never seen her before. But I have seen the doll Blaidd brought for Melina, and it looked exactly like her. Princess Ranni is here to help with the evacuation.
It takes us almost another quarter of an hour before we finally break through to her. The moment we do, she takes charge. "As many as can fit, onto the platform, now!" she calls to the Nox. "Warriors, allow passage to those who cannot fight! The top of the well is defended by mine other servants—we need only hold the enemy here!"
The Nox monks and swordstresses part to allow the civilians through, turning back around the face the armies bearing down on us—claymen, Fallen Hawks, silver tears, all in seemingly endless numbers.
I find myself standing beside Ranni at the perimeter, firing into the horde. I don't think the placement is a coincidence. "So," she says, almost conversational as a massive blast of bright blue magic flies from her fingertips. "Thou'rt Barrett-12, I gather."
"That's me, Princess," I say, taking aim with the Striga and holding down the trigger. The gun shrieks with cruel joy as the replenishing magazine feeds on death. "It's a pleasure, really. I appreciate your help with this."
"Fie, 'twas naught I was not well pleased to do," she says. "Blaidd is more than a mere servant to me." She shoots me a sidelong look, and I notice that her right eye is closed. More than that, I notice that there's a strange double-image to her, like a pale ghost that clings to her right side, its left eye overlapping perfectly with her closed right one. "And I owe thee, too. More than I can well express."
"Owe me?"
"I have thought dear Melina dead these many years," Ranni says. Her voice isn't quite a whisper, but it's quiet enough that I have to strain to hear her over the shrieking of the Hawks and the rattle of the Striga. "I knew her scarce more than a decade, hardly a droplet of time in comparison to all the ages for which I knew my other siblings and cousins. And yet… for those few years, she was the only remaining purity in the pit that was Leyndell. When she died… 'Twas as if the very last of Gold had left Marika's Order, leaving only the tarnish that had been growing for centuries."
"It's not like I brought her back to life or anything," I point out. "She was around. She found me."
"And yet, if thou hadst not left her to ride Torrent, I do not think I ever would have known of her survival," she says. "She could not travel far from south Limgrave without protection, and few but you would have protected her even while leaving her the mount which, I gather, hath granted her the ability to take visible form at all. When I heard that Torrent had been seen in Limgrave, I went to investigate, expecting to find a Tarnished had looted the resting place of my only innocent cousin. Instead… I found thee. Caring for her. And for that, I thank thee."
I shoot her a look while—for the first time in several minutes—reloading Osteo Striga. "When was this, exactly?"
"I saw thee at the Church of Elleh," she says, flinging a magic missile past me at a Hawk that got a little too close while I reloaded. "But at the time, I hid myself. I understood not what I saw and was suspicious. By the time I grew credulous, I had lost sight of thee."
"Fair enough, I guess. You're here now—that's plenty."
She smiles. "I am here now. I presume Melina is somewhere on the surface?"
"Last I heard she was in Fort Haight," I say. "That's my next stop after all this."
"Then it shall be mine as well."
"Lady Ranni! Barrett!" Blaidd calls from behind us. We both turn to see him waving from a mostly empty stone platform. "Come! The Nox have escaped! We are the last!"
"Very good, dear Blaidd," says Ranni. She walks slowly, on legs so thin and dainty I can barely believe they hold her weight. But to make up for her slow speed, she throws massive spells behind her every few steps to keep the enemy at bay. "Then let us be off as well."
As soon as she and I are on the platform, Millicent steps onto a pressure plate in its center, and the stone circle begins to glow and rise. I look down over the edge, watching the Hawks and claymen swarm around, falling in droves into the hole left beneath the well platform. There are corpses, of course, among the enemy forces—and not all of them are theirs. "Any idea how many we lost?" I ask Blaidd.
"Not the foggiest, I fear," Blaidd says. "I'm sure the Nightmaidens will have taken stock by the time we reach the surface." He lets out a breath. "I can scarcely believe we made it out of there, truth be told. My Lady—I did not realize you would descend in person. I would not have asked it of you… but I cannot deny my gratitude. Thank you."
"Ah, Blaidd," Ranni says, and her tone, even through her naturally cold, reedy voice, is warm and affectionate. "Where exactly dost thou think I would be without my shadow? I was well pleased to help… even if I may need to rest for some weeks hereafter."
"Then we shall bear you back to the manor where you may rest in comfort," Blaidd promises.
She smiles, and I notice suddenly that her body is shaking slightly with exertion. "I am… glad," she says. "Ah… I fear I grow weary faster than I hoped. May I take your shoulders?"
"Of course," Blaidd says warmly, kneeling down and lifting her up. As he settles her rail-thin, four-armed body atop his shoulders, I catch the first glimpse of sunlight above us.
Finally, after days of uncertainty and panic, we're back on the surface.
-x-x-x-
The Battle of the Siofra River
-x-x-x-
The Battle of the Siofra River
-x-x-x-
"Oh, Prathik, when I saw the Fallen—I was so worried!"
"Dad! You're alive!"
"I am, and so are—Ah! What is that?"
"I am Parvati-9, a Lightbearer. I defended young Prathik from the Fallen and told him I would wait with him until you returned. It is good to see you still live."
"Thank you, Lady Parvati!"
"You are quite welcome, young one. Now that your father has returned, I should be going."
"…Wait. You said you defended Prathik? From all these Fallen?"
"Yes."
"…Could you continue to defend us? We have little with which to pay you, but all we have would be yours."
-x-x-x-
When they don't have a target to hunt, it seems like the silver tears and Fallen Hawks don't really know what to do with themselves. They wander aimlessly through Nokron's streets, with no clear patrol routes or squads.
It's difficult to hold onto invisibility long-term. It takes concentration—the kind of concentration that's very hard to maintain in the middle of a fight, even if no one can see you to shoot directly at you. Even running makes it hard—physical exertion takes attention.
Which is why I move slowly through the streets of Nokron, cloaked in the Void, completely unseen by my enemies. I'm not crouching, or coiled and tense, or anything else you might expect of someone sneaking around, because all of those things take focus, and all of my focus is on the Void. I just walk, my steps entirely casual—instinctive.
Left, Winchester whispers, and almost breaks my concentration. But having him guide me is better than trying to remember the path myself. I turn left.
It's a few more Winchester-guided turns before I find my way back to the church where I ran into Nikolai. The floor is still covered in silver fluid, but I don't see anything alive. There's nothing on the radar superimposed on the corner of my HUD, either, so I finally let go of my invisibility with a sigh of relief. The Void lets me go with a buff of dark mist and a few drops of condensation on my leathers.
It's not that they're not watching the church. They are. They're just watching it from outside, I passed the Fallen Hawks on guard on my way in. Which, if they were facing people who couldn't turn invisible, would actually be smart. This way they can potentially lure the Nox into making a break for it, whereas if they were in the church the Nox probably wouldn't take the risk until there was absolutely no other choice.
I roll my shoulders as I cross the sanctum. It doesn't hurt to push my Light to its limits, nor does it leave me feeling drained in any physical sense. But it's mentally exhausting. We all have our little rituals to get feeling back into the stressed-out gray matter. Grant pops every joint in his fingers. Thermidor pops the magazine in and out of his gun. I roll my shoulders. There are worse habits.
I knock on the wall. "Hey," I say—not shouting, because I don't want to call the army down on myself if I can help it. "Anybody on the other side of this?"
There's a beat of silence. Then, with a surprisingly soft grinding of stone on stone, the wall slides away. "Inside," hisses a Nox monk—not Nikolai—with a nervous glance over my shoulder. "Quickly!"
I follow him in and the wall slides shut behind me. "Barrett-12?" he asks.
"That's me," I say. "How are things down here? Any new developments?"
"A few more have made their way into the catacombs," says the Nox. "None of the Nightmaidens, alas. If there are any survivors save Lady Katerina and Lady Themis, they have not found their way to us."
"We can't wait any longer, I'm afraid," I say. "We need to get you all out of here—today."
He stares at me. "Out… to the surface?"
"Yep. We've got a plan. Take me to the Nightmaidens, they should hear this."
-x-x-x-
"And thou art certain the Followers shall honor their word?" Themis asks skeptically.
"Sure as I can be," I say. "Not like I've known them all that long myself. But they took some time to think about it. Those who come with us know they might be on a one-way trip. They volunteered anyway."
"They might be intending to bait us into a trap," Themis says.
"And any Nox here might be a double agent in service to the Will," Katerina says. "We can survive in these catacombs for a time, sister, but not forever. And we cannot hope to escape alone. We have no allies which we know we can trust, so we must trust those we can only hope will not betray us to our enemies."
Themis grimaces, but doesn't argue.
"If it's any comfort," I say, "Those Who Follow are only there for basic military support. All the key parts of the plan are on me and my team. I don't know if that's better, exactly, but you've already trusted me this far, right?"
Katerina nods, but her face is impassive. "If the choice is between placing our fates in thy hands and leaving them to the Hawks and the corrupted tears, then thy hands are far the better choice."
"Great," I say. "How quickly can you have everyone ready to march?"
"Grant us one hour," she says, standing. "Themis, thou shalt organize all those who were not soldiers ere this week. I shall gather the monks and swordstresses. We shall meet thee, Barrett, by the very entrance thou usedst to enter the catacombs."
Themis stands, gives Katerina a stiff but deferential nod, and marches out.
"I'll wait there, then," I say.
"Go," Katerina says. "Brother Daxos, go thou to the barracks and gather thy cadre. We march within the hour."
-x-x-x-
A little over an hour later, the wall slides open in the church again. I creep out, gesturing to the Nox to wait in the tunnel. A smoke bomb hides me from view as I step out onto the street. My radar picks out a little over half a dozen sentries watching the entrance to the church—mostly silver tears in sniper perches overlooking the street.
I take a deep breath as I unsling the Dead Man's Tale. "Ready?" I whisper to Winchester.
As a loaded gun, bud.
I take aim, exhale, and fire. The action shatters my cloak, but the tear splashes into so much silver goo. Before the others can react, I've taken out two more. I have to dodge a couple spears with a roll, but I take out the rest as soon as I'm on my feet again.
Then I holster my gun, reach for the Light, and close my fist around my burning Golden Gun. I raise it, aiming for the false stars hovering near the cavern ceiling, and fire three shots. Then I turn the gun down an alley and fire on a squad of Fallen Hawks just as they round the corner. "Move!" I shout over my shoulder to the Nox. "Soldiers on the outside, civilians in the middle! East, to the cliffs!"
My Golden Gun dissipates, but this isn't the Crucible, where there are rules governing how often I'm allowed to Super, and I'm… well, I'm in my element. There are people behind me who can't fight, not like I can. People whose lives are threatened for no reason other than that they're alive and their enemies want them not to be.
I am a Guardian. This is my wall, and the Light and the Darkness are my spears.
I flick my fingers, banishing the last embers of the Golden Gun, then close them again on the hilt of Silence. In my left hand, Squall crystallizes out of the air. I leap into the air to get a better vantage and throw Silence down the street to the west, freezing a gathering group of tears and Hawks in their tracks. Then I toss Squall south at another group. As it detonates, the whirling blizzard it unleashes tears them apart, then keeps going, wandering in search of enemies to destroy. It won't hurt the Nox—it responds intuitively to who I want safe, and who I want killed.
I land, already pulling out Osteo Striga. "Plenty of acceptable targets here," I murmur to the gun. "So keep the poison to them, got it?"
It warms under my fingers in anticipation. I take that as agreement.
There are hundreds of Nox. Way too many for me to just march at either the head or the tail of the group and expect to keep them all safe. So I jump around, using Strand to grapple to the front to clear a path, then jumping onto a balcony to fire over their heads at an enemy behind, before zig-zagging my way back down the line taking shots down alleyways at anyone trying to flank us. Fortunately, Nokron really isn't that big—not compared to the Last City, anyway—so even with a group this big moving as slowly as the slowest Nox survivors, it only takes us a little over half an hour to get to the cliffs. Which is still a really long time, and we do lose a few—to silver tears, mostly, sniping from the flanks wherever I'm not. But there's no time to mourn them, not when I have to get the rest of their people out of here.
The others meet us at the buttresses, a firing line of Those Who Follow already in place keeping away anything trying to get close enough to attack. It won't last—more Hawks and tears are streaming towards us, from all over the city, faster than our archers and spellcasters can take them out—but it might just last long enough.
I hit the ground just on the edge of the cliff. Far below I can see the Siofra River, lit from above by the same false starlight that illuminates the whole cavern, and in places brightened by strange spheres of pale blue light that drift lazily over the water, like will-o'-the-wisps or ball lightning.
The buttresses are broken in several places—they absolutely aren't holding anything up in this state—but I can follow them with my eyes and see where they meet a hill on the river's other side, probably a couple hundred yards away. And that hill, I can see, slopes gently downward, given a clear path down to the riverbed.
"Barrett!" Atrebal calls, fighting their way through the shuffling Nox to my side. "Canst thou provide us a bridge, as thou promised? This distance is larger than I remembered."
My lips twitch. "Size matters not," I quip, kneeling down. Over our private channel, Winchester makes a noise of disgust. I ignore him, pressing my palms against the rock of the cliff. I take a deep breath, reaching down deep into myself, into the very core of my being. I find the parts of my self that I wouldn't be able to change even if I wanted to and the parts that I never want to allow to change. The part of me that was forged by Shin Malphur after Sara died. The part of me that fused together in the depths of the Vault of Glass. The part of me that hardened like a pearl in an oyster as I stood in the abandoned bedroom of a biological human who had once been named Barrett in Eventide.
I gather all these things up, forcing them to the surface, and as I exhale, I bring their immutability into the world. Pale blue crystals spread from my fingertips, creeping along the marble of the two nearest buttresses. Whenever the spreading Stasis comes to a crack or gap, it spears outward in a sharp growth of crystal, closing the opening. It takes time, and it takes intense focus. It's easier than staying invisible for an hour was, but not by much—and I'm about to have to hold this for who knows how long.
But, at long last, the last gaps close. The moment I see that, I gasp out, "Go!" and shut my eyes. Distantly, I hear Atrebal give a command to the Nox. I hear them start storming across the bridges. But the sound fades away as I retreat inward.
It's not physically taxing, any more than holding invisibility was physically taxing. My shoulders don't shake with exertion, my nickel-alloy teeth don't grit. But I have to hold my mind perfectly within that core of myself that houses Stasis. I have to… not wallow in it, because that implies I'm disturbing it. It implies that I'm creating ripples in the lake of my subconscious. I can't afford ripples. I need to calcify it. I need to be nothing but those unchanging parts of myself, to let everything else fade away.
Eris Morn was right, all those years ago, to be afraid that Darkness would be a path to obsession and fanaticism. Not all Darkness—Strand isn't like that. But it was Stasis, or the echoes of Stasis, that led her to that idea, and that's exactly what Stasis is. Stasis is the pure form of Darkness that the Hive Sword-Logic tries to mimic. It's paring yourself down, honing yourself to only your essential components, refusing to change, to grow, to allow anything to exist within yourself beyond the essential ideas that make you yourself.
"Barrett!" Winchester's voice is barely audible, but it's enough to break my concentration. I gasp for breath as the crystals shatter.
"What?" I mumble, looking up.
"The others are all across!" shouts someone just above me. I look up to see Blaidd standing over me, his massive sword in the process of sweeping through three Fallen Hawks charging at him with spears. I see that they've already started climbing down the other buttresses. A lot of them fall as they try to jump the gaps, landing with distant, barely-audible splashes as they hit the distant river below at lethal speeds, but many more manage to reach the bottom. Those Who Follow are doing their best to keep them at bay from the other side of the river, but the enemy is gaining on the column of Nox descending towards the riverbed.
"Let's join them, then!" I shout up to the wolf-man, standing up and spinning around, pulling out the Striga and firing madly into the horde behind me. The burst of poison forces them back, and I take the opportunity. "Now!"
As one, Blaidd and I jump to the nearest buttress, which Blaidd and Those Who Follow have kept mostly clear of the enemy. We sprint down it, while I occasionally turn to fire bursts from the Striga to keep the horde behind us at bay.
It doesn't take us long to reach the other side. "Go!" shouts a shaman, gesturing for her people to move. "The Nox have already reached the ancient palace! The well is not far beyond!"
"Go," Blaidd tells me, in a voice that's as much a growl as words, even as Millicent appears out of the crowd of horned figures to stand at his side. "They'll need you at the fore. We'll bring up the rear."
I raise the Striga to him in salute, then turn and throw out a grapple, sailing over the heads of Those Who Follow in the direction of the Nox column.
Unfortunately, when I reach the head of that column, I discover we've stalled. Humanoid figures, like statues made of half-melted clay, are throwing themselves at the line of Nox monks and swordstresses. Atrebal is right at their head, and between slashes with their sword they throw out spells I've seen Trinovar use once or twice. But Atrebal tosses them out like candy—their throat expands like a frog's before belching out cones of dragonfire; a glowing tail appears behind them, sweeping out as they spin before vanishing again; a horn grows from their shoulder as they thrust it forward, before snapping off and fading away.
I land beside them after one such spell pushes the claymen back. "Guess you weren't able to get them to work with us?" I ask.
"Nay," they say grimly. "And the Hawks and tears draw nearer with every moment we are delayed here."
"Then we'd better stop being delayed." I draw my Arc Blade, sending Light coursing through it, and charge. The claymen shatter before me—a single blow turns one into a ceramic bomb, sending shrapnel flying through all the others around it. Several chunks of sharp clay ping off my shields each time I do this, but the Arc Light supercharges my defenses, keeping me (mostly) safe as I cut a path through them.
Slowly, we start making progress. I push the claymen back, opening a path between the crumbling stone walls of their ancient palace, until at last we break out onto the other side. And in the distance, I see it—the well.
It's a circular stone platform, maybe thirty or forty feet in diameter, right up against the wall of the chasm. It'd be hard to see, this far down—the false starlight is dimmer, here—except that it's lit brilliantly blue by the figure standing in the center of it. Her four pale-blue arms each hold a different spell, and even as I'm carving my way through the claymen towards her, she's keeping a squad of them away from herself with three hands while the fourth periodically shoots bolts of magic at those keeping us away from her.
I've never seen her before. But I have seen the doll Blaidd brought for Melina, and it looked exactly like her. Princess Ranni is here to help with the evacuation.
It takes us almost another quarter of an hour before we finally break through to her. The moment we do, she takes charge. "As many as can fit, onto the platform, now!" she calls to the Nox. "Warriors, allow passage to those who cannot fight! The top of the well is defended by mine other servants—we need only hold the enemy here!"
The Nox monks and swordstresses part to allow the civilians through, turning back around the face the armies bearing down on us—claymen, Fallen Hawks, silver tears, all in seemingly endless numbers.
I find myself standing beside Ranni at the perimeter, firing into the horde. I don't think the placement is a coincidence. "So," she says, almost conversational as a massive blast of bright blue magic flies from her fingertips. "Thou'rt Barrett-12, I gather."
"That's me, Princess," I say, taking aim with the Striga and holding down the trigger. The gun shrieks with cruel joy as the replenishing magazine feeds on death. "It's a pleasure, really. I appreciate your help with this."
"Fie, 'twas naught I was not well pleased to do," she says. "Blaidd is more than a mere servant to me." She shoots me a sidelong look, and I notice that her right eye is closed. More than that, I notice that there's a strange double-image to her, like a pale ghost that clings to her right side, its left eye overlapping perfectly with her closed right one. "And I owe thee, too. More than I can well express."
"Owe me?"
"I have thought dear Melina dead these many years," Ranni says. Her voice isn't quite a whisper, but it's quiet enough that I have to strain to hear her over the shrieking of the Hawks and the rattle of the Striga. "I knew her scarce more than a decade, hardly a droplet of time in comparison to all the ages for which I knew my other siblings and cousins. And yet… for those few years, she was the only remaining purity in the pit that was Leyndell. When she died… 'Twas as if the very last of Gold had left Marika's Order, leaving only the tarnish that had been growing for centuries."
"It's not like I brought her back to life or anything," I point out. "She was around. She found me."
"And yet, if thou hadst not left her to ride Torrent, I do not think I ever would have known of her survival," she says. "She could not travel far from south Limgrave without protection, and few but you would have protected her even while leaving her the mount which, I gather, hath granted her the ability to take visible form at all. When I heard that Torrent had been seen in Limgrave, I went to investigate, expecting to find a Tarnished had looted the resting place of my only innocent cousin. Instead… I found thee. Caring for her. And for that, I thank thee."
I shoot her a look while—for the first time in several minutes—reloading Osteo Striga. "When was this, exactly?"
"I saw thee at the Church of Elleh," she says, flinging a magic missile past me at a Hawk that got a little too close while I reloaded. "But at the time, I hid myself. I understood not what I saw and was suspicious. By the time I grew credulous, I had lost sight of thee."
"Fair enough, I guess. You're here now—that's plenty."
She smiles. "I am here now. I presume Melina is somewhere on the surface?"
"Last I heard she was in Fort Haight," I say. "That's my next stop after all this."
"Then it shall be mine as well."
"Lady Ranni! Barrett!" Blaidd calls from behind us. We both turn to see him waving from a mostly empty stone platform. "Come! The Nox have escaped! We are the last!"
"Very good, dear Blaidd," says Ranni. She walks slowly, on legs so thin and dainty I can barely believe they hold her weight. But to make up for her slow speed, she throws massive spells behind her every few steps to keep the enemy at bay. "Then let us be off as well."
As soon as she and I are on the platform, Millicent steps onto a pressure plate in its center, and the stone circle begins to glow and rise. I look down over the edge, watching the Hawks and claymen swarm around, falling in droves into the hole left beneath the well platform. There are corpses, of course, among the enemy forces—and not all of them are theirs. "Any idea how many we lost?" I ask Blaidd.
"Not the foggiest, I fear," Blaidd says. "I'm sure the Nightmaidens will have taken stock by the time we reach the surface." He lets out a breath. "I can scarcely believe we made it out of there, truth be told. My Lady—I did not realize you would descend in person. I would not have asked it of you… but I cannot deny my gratitude. Thank you."
"Ah, Blaidd," Ranni says, and her tone, even through her naturally cold, reedy voice, is warm and affectionate. "Where exactly dost thou think I would be without my shadow? I was well pleased to help… even if I may need to rest for some weeks hereafter."
"Then we shall bear you back to the manor where you may rest in comfort," Blaidd promises.
She smiles, and I notice suddenly that her body is shaking slightly with exertion. "I am… glad," she says. "Ah… I fear I grow weary faster than I hoped. May I take your shoulders?"
"Of course," Blaidd says warmly, kneeling down and lifting her up. As he settles her rail-thin, four-armed body atop his shoulders, I catch the first glimpse of sunlight above us.
Finally, after days of uncertainty and panic, we're back on the surface.
