Spellscribed resurgence, p.13
Spellscribed: Resurgence, page 13
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Wrach chose only three additional wolves to join him. They were all experienced hunters, and they were the best trackers of his assembled forces. They had helped provide supplemental rations to his forces when their movement outpaced their supply lines. They had also consequently had the most exposure to the humans of Ironsoul.
Of the three, only Runa volunteered. She wanted to try to catch up to Bridget as well, and helping Wrach finish his task at Sunken Tower would get them on their way faster. She had also finished mending from her prior injury and wanted to prove herself.
Wrach looked to his three hunters and gestured for them to follow. As the only volunteer, Runa took the leadership role under him. The act of determining an Alpha was instinctual, something they knew and accepted deep in their bones that the barbarians had never quite gotten the hang of. After all, they were capable of recognizing strength, but if they had the same instinct of the wolfmen, then there would be no need for ascension rituals or challenges to the throne. They would be able to just know who was best suited to be leader.
The entry to the lower levels was two disparate sets of broad stairs that spiraled around each other down the tower, in a ring about half the radius of the building. Rooms and hallways honeycombed the tower the rest of the way, and the massive size of the place had made the circular stairs seem endless as they descended down floor after floor. Each step was only four inches down from the last, and each step was six feet wide and two deep. It made for a smooth, gradual descent that would be almost like walking down a gentle hill.
The doors to the upper floors were guarded, and two dinner tables had been repurposed as stairwell barricades from which two crossbow-wielding warriors were posted. Torches had been lit along the walls, but only for the first two floors below them. After that, they were in darkness.
"This place is strange." Runa observed, speaking Ulfreau. "The stones feel solid, but we know there is more space beneath us."
"I cannot hear more than forty feet ahead or behind us." one of the other hunters replied, his ears swiveling from front to back as he scanned for any sounds other than their party. "It's as if the place has consumed it."
Wrach continued moving, sniffing the air as he advanced. He didn't have any source of light ready yet, but each of the wolves had quick ways to make fire if they needed it. Instead, they moved in the dark and used their superior senses of smell and hearing to try to find any survivors in the darkened section of the tower.
They didn't have to go far. Only six floors below the ground level, Wrach and his pack picked up the scent of human occupation. There was the smell of blood, but also other bodily functions that carried on the air in ways that were impossible for humans to detect.
"Here we are." Wrach stated. "We should scout their numbers before we return."
There were no sentries, which was surprising to him. Light was shining out from under the next set of doors, so they got into position around the door before Wrach tested the handle. It was unlocked. Questioning the strangeness, but still needing to complete his mission, he pushed the door open slowly and moved in.
They slipped into the main area of the floor, and almost immediately found three soldiers sitting around a table. Wrach drew one of his short swords with a silent snarl on his lips, but the three men reacted in a way that made him hesitate.
The man closest to him turned his head and smiled dreamily. "Oh, hey!" he said, his voice slurred and drunken. "We gosh shome new guesht."
The other two lifted their heads and blinked at them blearily. "Tha's good." one of the others said, lurching to his feet and wobbling. "She'd wanna shee new gueshts."
Wrach spared a glance back at his own people, and was met with three marginally alarmed looks. None of the four knew how to handle this kind of response to their presence. They had been expecting alarm or aggression.
"Lesh... go show them around." the one man who stood said. "C'mon get up."
"Nah." the third man said, resting his head on the table. "Ah'll jus rest here a bit. S'ok?"
The standing man shook his head, but turned away from the group and shuffled down a corridor. Wrach gestured for Runa to wait, and went with the man alone. As he walked through the opposite door from where they had entered, he heard the other man speak to them. "Hey, did you know you're fuzzy? I want to touch it."
"Ancestors, let Runa be able to handle this." Wrach muttered.
The man led him down a series of turns and halls that would have been confusing if Wrach hadn't already had a superior sense of direction and could navigate by scent. A smell of perfume started to permeate the air as they got closer to wherever the man was leading him. Wrach sneezed; it was heady stuff, almost tickling his nose but it smelled only like a spring rain. It was strangely familiar, but he couldn't place where he had smelled it before.
"Where are we going?" Wrach asked.
The man slowly turned to look back at him. "Oh, we're going to see the bossh." he said. "She's... sho pretty. You'll… you'd like her."
Wrach didn't need his sense of smell to pick up the lustful pheromones coming off of his guide. Just what was going on in there?
The man came to a pair of double doors. If Wrach was right, this would be the same room on this floor as General Kurgen had been inhabiting above. He mentally prepared for a fight, remembering the size and dimensions of the coming room. And if nothing had been changed, there could be upwards of a dozen attackers.
With a grunt, the man put his weight on both doors, pushing them slowly open. Wrach didn't remember them being that heavy, but then again the man was heavily intoxicated.
The room beyond had been cleared of most furniture, excepting a large couch against the far back wall that was piled with dozens of pillows and cushions. A lone female figure lounged across it while several more men in Ironsoul armor and weapons were scattered about the room, sitting or lying down passively. The large room was dimly lit, and he could only see that the woman wore a fine red dress and had dark corkscrew hair.
"Bossh!" the man called. "We have guests."
"You fool!" the woman hissed. "That isn't a guest!
Wrach tightened his grip on his short sword. That voice sounded like someone he knew, but it seemed wrong, somehow. He took a step forward as the woman rose to her feet.
"I could still be a guest." Wrach said cautiously. "I don't want to fight if I don't have to."
The woman took a step closer. "Then put your weapon down." she demanded.
Wrach hooked his little finger through the ring at the pommel and let the blade drop down, withdrawing his finger when the point reached the bottom. The blade hit the sandstone with a 'plink' and fell over with a rattle. "Done." he replied. "Let us talk."
The woman was close enough now that he could see her face. Wrach was surprised to see it was the one he had met before.
"Selene?" he asked, taking a step forward. The woman was most definitely Selene. She had the same curvy figure, pretty rounded face, and spirals of naturally corkscrewed hair; though her eyes appeared to be red colored in the dim lighting, and her hair had a purple sheen. Two of the corkscrews of hair looked almost like horns along the side of her head. Now that he was within twenty feet of her, he could smell that she was the source of the rain scent, but the faint undertone he couldn't determine before was strong enough now. He could detect the faintest whiff of sulfur under the woman's natural perfume.
Selene looked momentarily confused, blinking at him wide eyed before her languid expression returned. "Ah… Wrach." she observed. "We meet again."
"Selene." Wrach said, still confused but on alert for danger. "You've been gone for nearly a year now. What happened? Where have you been?"
Selene smiled "I lost myself for a while." she explained, coming closer. "But I've found myself now, and it is such a relief to be free of my… older self."
Wrach could tell something was wrong. She was close enough now that she could reach out and touch him, and he was able to see that the pupils of her eyes were square. "You do seem different." Wrach observed. "Are you all right?"
"Yes. Never better, in fact." She replied, indeed reaching out with one hand to touch him. Wrach didn't move, but braced himself for any number of things to happen. He had only heard tales of demonic possession in the short time he had been living in Balator before the campaign to conquer Ironsoul had begun, but the best he could tell was that one of Endrance's companions had been taken over.
She caressed his shoulder and trailed her hand down his breastplate. Faint wisps of golden light swirled around his body where her hand touched, but none left him. He felt a faint tickling sensation, but he was opposed to any kind of magic the demon would use on him and balked at the subtle invitation to let her touch him.
Her face hardened almost instantly. "Why won't my power work on you?" she asked. "You aren't like the others."
Wrach tilted his head. "Why would you try to use your power on me?" he asked. "What does it do?"
Selene stumbled back from him, her hand touching her forehead as if she were about to swoon. "No." she stammered. "No, no no! Why would I?"
Her posture changed again. "No. We should kill him." she growled to herself. "He'll take away our food."
The woman staggered, now clutching her head. What he had thought was a black leather cape turned out to be a pair of wings that snapped open, spreading wide and knocking over one of her docile soldiers. "No! You promised! No one dies remember?"
Wrach saw for a split second that she was struggling to gain control from the demon and knew that if he was going to escape, now was his chance. He didn't want to hurt the woman, and this would be the only way he could get out without violence.
He whirled, crouching low and snatching up his dropped weapon in one smooth motion, while pushing off with his powerful legs. He heard a screech behind him and felt something scratch across the back of his breastplate as he darted through the doors. A line of heat burned on his back and he was surprised that she had managed to cut through the steel. She must have had a concealed weapon of incredible sharpness.
He fled down the corridors, taking each turn with animal alacrity. He kept a measured breath, and paced his movement so that he wasn't risking tiring himself or crashing into a wall. He discovered the door to the chamber where his pack was waiting was closed, and knew if she was chasing him he'd not have time to try to get the door open. He accelerated, throwing his full weight at the door.
The door was reinforced with metal banding, which should have resisted his attempts to push through it. But the stone around the door bolts had not been maintained for several hundred years and the bolts snapped, tearing out small chunks of stone as the door crashed to the ground and skid two feet further into the room with Wrach riding upon it. He scrambled to his feet to find his pack had drawn their weapons and were looking at him with wide eyes. The two men hadn't even stirred from the table.
"Retreat." he growled in Ulfreau. "Demon."
The pack withdrew from the room in reverse order, the two hunters in the back guarding the door from the other side as Runa lifted an axe and pointed at the two men at the table.
"Stay." she commanded in the common tongue before backing out of the room.
Wrach pulled himself up from the broken door and slipped out, looking back down the corridor. A pair of red eyes glowed in the dark, watching, but not following out further. His superior hearing picked up the faintest of whispers.
"Go."
Wrach nodded, turning and following the pack up the stairs for two floors before stopping them. "Pause here." he ordered. They gathered together, crouching in the darkness as they waited to see if they were followed. After thirty minutes of sitting in the darkness and not seeing or hearing any pursuit, Wrach sighed.
"Clear." he said, rubbing at his shoulder. He was pretty sure he had dislocated it hitting the door, but he had been ignoring the pain while they were in danger. Without having to be told, Runa moved to his back and checked the bleeding of his wound. The cut on his back had been lightly bleeding and none of the hunters could miss that smell. They had known he had been hurt, but could tell it was not a serious wound by the small scent of blood in the air.
"Your pretty armor will need patching." Runa observed. "But it seems to be a clean cut. As thin as a nail."
"Whatever it was, it was sharp." Wrach replied. "I didn't feel any resistance when it hit me."
"Good thing you managed to dodge then." Runa replied. "Or you could be dead."
"What are we going to tell the general?" One of the other hunters asked, he didn't appear alarmed anymore. Half an hour outside of the strange floor must have helped calm their nerves.
Wrach refrained from shrugging, wincing as Runa patted him on the back. They would have to wait until they were safe to disarm and remove armor to treat the injury. "We tell him to barricade off that area." he said. "And that we wait until we can get someone to come collect her."
"Collect her?" Runa asked. "The demon?"
"She's… one of the Draugnoa." he said. "Endrance would be heartbroken if we killed her."
"Another one who knew Endrance." Runa murmured. "Was he really that important?"
Wrach's tail twitched once. "In the great tales of our pack, who knows?" he asked in response. "All I know is that he's the only reason we were able to finally recognize our right to live among the rest of Balator. That seems important enough for me."
Chapter Twelve
Bridget rode her horse at a trot, keeping the swarm of insects just far enough behind that she could hear their droning buzz and clicking run to a quiet background noise. Whenever they started to catch up to her, the sound level would rise and they would speed it up. She figured out how to operate that way after the first night she tried to rest and found that the sand hornets did not stop, even after twelve hours of movement.
The sand hornets were a tidal wave of dark chitin, buzzing wings and spikey mouths that rolled steadily northwest at the speed of a trotting horse. Any living creature that was caught in their path was quickly snatched up and torn to pieces to feed them, but luckily whatever path the queen had set them on had been steering them away from any villages or small towns. Bridget and Tanya had to rush ahead seven times in the first three days to get shepherds out of the way before the swarm consumed them alongside their sheep.
Tanya and Bridget had decided to ride ahead and rest while the swarm caught up to their position. It wasn't a sure thing, though, since the bulk of the sand hornets moved at a constant, steady speed. It only meant that they could rest their horses for, at most, a few hours before they had to race off ahead of them again. Hour by hour, they skirted the edge of the hornet's path, watching as Ironsoul's capital city grew ever closer.
On the fifth morning, Bridget awoke to the sound of the swarm growing dangerously close. They had made it to the long rolling grassland area around the capital city, and had pushed their horses a little harder that night. The two horses were tethered by their reins to a stick shoved in the dirt, while their packs had served as pillows and they again slept in their gear.
She jumped to her feet, her pack left on the ground. The horses were still tethered and began to panic as Bridget could see the line of insects in the distance. They would reach their position in minutes.
"Shit!" she shouted. "Tanya! Where the hells did you go?"
She found her almost as soon as she was done speaking. Near the small fire they had made to reheat their trail rations, the woman was slumped across the ground. The fire had burnt out naturally, and the metal pan that Tanya had said she would clean after their meal was turned out onto the ground next to her. She must have fallen only minutes after Bridget fell asleep. They both had been running themselves ragged, so she was not surprised, but it could potentially cost them their lives.
She ran over to her fallen sister and scooped her up in her arms, only noting when she stood that the woman's eyes were rolled back in her head and blood had dried into blackened streaks down her nose.
"Tanya!" Bridget cried out, shaking the unconscious woman gently. "Wake up!"
Tanya's eyes fluttered, and only one eye shifted. "Muh?" the Draugnoa moaned, almost entirely unresponsive. Bridget cursed, looking up at the oncoming swarm and realizing she didn't have time to get her tied to her horse's saddle and lead the two out of the way. She shifted the woman so that her wooden arm was carrying Tanya's weight, and drew her short cleaver with her left. She ran over to the horses and cut the tethers with a swing, not even bothering to look back.
She ran off at an angle, equal parts away from the swarm and across from them. She remembered what Joven had told her about running for cover from avalanches, and knew that going in a straight line would only get her smashed. Still, the goal of running from cascading snow was to try to reduce the chance of getting crushed or to get to nearby cover. Here, if the 'avalanche' caught up to her, she'd be torn to pieces and eaten.
Her stride carried her up one hill and down the other side, her breath already heavy from hauling her unconscious sister Draugnoa at a full run. Her legs were already burning, but she didn't have a chance to even look back. Green grass was trampled over, and small shrubs were nearly torn up as she powered through them. Behind her, she heard the squeal of one of the horses and a keening screech that Bridget remembered from when the sand hornets had attacked her years before.
Minutes of panicked flight passed, and she was starting to have trouble keeping up her running speed. She slowed to a trot, sparing a few seconds to look behind her. The sound of the hornets had only receded somewhat, but it appeared that she had managed to run far enough to the side that she was not directly in the path of destruction. Now she'd only have to hope that they weren't desperately hungry enough to go out of their way to eat her.
As she was looking towards the wave of sand hornets something behind her lit up the area brighter than the daylight. The bright light was almost instantly followed by a earth shattering explosion of sound and a shockwave that caught her in the back, knocking her forward. Bridget spilled to the ground, Tanya tumbling several feet forward. Tanya remained where she fell, but Bridget pushed off the ground, looking back towards the city.
