The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker) (13 page)

A scant moment later, there was a sound that reminded Taylin of the gunshots she'd heard during the fight with the King of Flame and Steel and the link registered Ru's pain. The ribbon of light guttered out, plunging the world back into comparative darkness.

All chanting had stopped among the soldiers, but some were cheering upon seeing Bashurra put down. That stopped too when the bulk of the demon once more began to rise.

Even laid open by the incredible power of the Rune Breaker, Bashurra the Crevasse got back to his feet and shouted into the night sky. “I will commend the tactic! Distraction. Ambush. Overwhelming force. All well and good, but you forget: you are fighting the future God of War! I can recover from these hurts. And then I shall revisit them a thousand times upon you.”

“Heh.” Ru's voice seemed to come from the entire night sky. He sounded steady and strong to everyone but Taylin, who felt the strain and damage done to him in the link. “Who said I was done?”

The snow at Bashurra's feet boiled and suddenly, frost began to grown in fern patterns from the demon's feet, up his legs, and all the way up to his chest and arms, literally freezing him in place.

Ru appeared back at the front lines next to Taylin. His left side had been torn to shreds by the scythe when it exploded: his left arm was flayed from hand to elbow and hung useless with a two-foot section of haft driven through the bicep. His hip was laid open in three places by shrapnel, and smaller chunks of the haft protruded from his ribs on that side.

He looked up with annoyance at Taylin through a cascade of dark, viscous blood bubbling from a wound in his forehead. “Since I have met you,” He said in a measured tone, “this arm has taken a disproportionate amount of damage.”

Tal Eserin looked at Ru's ravaged figure in shock. “Someone bring a healer!”

“Save it.” Ru snapped. Reaching up, he tore the piece of scythe out of his arm without looking as he cast about for Percival. When he found him, looking down at him from one of the
hwacha
wagons with as much shock on his face as Tal Eserin had, he barked out: “That ice will not hold him long and that wound will not slow him for much longer after that. Whatever you intended to do, do it now.”

Percival fixed him with a glare for daring to order him around in front of his command, but realized that there would be better times for recriminations. Instead, he faced forward. “Captain,” He nodded to Tal Eserin, “Prepare aerial charge. Everyone else, prep to receive incoming foe with a size advantage.”

He took a moment to make sure that the soldiers were moving into action as instructed, still uncertain of just how deep his authority went. It went deep enough, he saw, as everyone quickly fell into their much-practiced roles. Nodding, more to himself than anyone else, he pointed out across the floodplain at the immobile form of Bashurra. “
Hwacha
two and three: fire!”

Crews of minotaurs took up levers on the sides of the
hwachas
and put their weight against them to turn the hulking beehive-like frames until the half-elven gunner called out that they were on target. Then the gunners produced chemical fire pots and used them to light the braided fuses that branched out to enter every cell of the honeycombs.

Taylin ignored Tal Eserin forming up the aerial forces a few yards away; she was entranced by the
hwachas
and their fast burning fuses. She had no idea what they were and what they could do, but the gunners and aiming crews cleared away from them with a swiftness that indicated that they were dangerous to say the least.

When the first fuses disappeared into cells, nothing happened at first, and she found herself leaning unconsciously closer. Then white smoke started to pour out, accompanied by a violent hissing like a cave filled wall to wall with vipers. Less than a second later, a white streak leapt from the frame and into the night sky, trailing white vapor and a tongue of flame. Another followed, then three, then a dozen others, then scores. The
hwacha
and the wagon it rested on disappeared in a cloud of white smoke as the last of its payload was sent aloft. The second device, number three as designated by Percival, unleashed its own fusillade just before the first was spent.

“What was that?” she wondered aloud.

“
Hwacha.
” supplied a strange voice. Taylin resisted flinching when she turned to see that the speaker was a young, blonde hailene man holding a heavy looking gun with a stock like a wagon tongue. He raised his brows at her expression, but nodded toward where Bashurra stood.

Small explosions were happening, some in the air above the demon, some on the ground around him, but mostly they were exploding against him, tearing out hunks of smoking flesh as the creature screamed curses. Down the line, Percival called for one and four to fire.

“Fire arrows.” the hailene explained, “A
hwacha
can send two hundred in a go.” He grinned a vicious grin worthy of a mercenary holding a huge firearm. “You should see what it does to infantry columns.”

“You should see what I've done to cavalry columns and entire armored centuries” said Ru, lurking up from somewhere behind Taylin. She'd lost track of him while she was enchanted by the workings of the
hwacha.
He'd healed his body, but left his clothes bloodied and ragged. She assumed it was just for bravado with all the soldiers around.

The hailene blinked. “Why would you find disabling one or two watchmen impressive?” He asked, deftly ignoring the first part of the boast.

Ru growled in his throat. “Not 'sentries', 'centuries': units of men, one hundred strong!”

“I've never heard it called that.” said the hailene, shifting the weight of his weapon. “Hailene call 'em sortie flights, though you'd have to scrape for a tribe big enough to field one. We call 'em battalions, the Callenis call it a 'small, diplomatic envoy'.”

He laughed at his own joke, shrugged, and turned back to the assembling group of soldiers who were awaiting Tal Eserin's command.

There weren't many. Out of the whole army, there seemed to only be a little over thirty hailene, plus two more dragonsired; a gold like Tal Eserin himself and a black-scaled woman who was carrying a pair of guns like the ones Taylin had seen mounted on spiders and ceratos, but never carried in hand. She was holding them like outsized pistols. They were supplemented by a handful of human and half-elven battlemagi using
vin
to stay aloft.

Among them, there were only about six firearms, a few heavy bows of hailene design, and a single crossbow, which Taylin figured was extensively spellworked from all the ornamentation on it. The rest, all hailene, carried polearms, from the uniform halberds she remembered from her days on the ships, to glaives, to a single
naginata
. It wasn't the kind of armaments Taylin would have expected to be arrayed against a demon of Bashurra's reputation.

Tal Eserin, however, looked at them with satisfaction on his face. “Alright.” He said, using a bit of
vin
to make his voice carry. “The plan is to charge, lay as hard a concentrated hit as we can on the brute, then switch to harrying tactics. The enemy can heal rapidly at the moment, but General Cloudherd has someone working to disable that. Once he bleeds freely, we switch to our topple drill: swarm, drop, kill. Understood?”

The soldiers saluted as one.

“Excellent. We charge on the final volley from the
hwacha
.” He raised one clawed hand, heel forward, and crooked his middle two fingers as he whispered a quiet chant. The wind moved around the soldiers, catching in robes, whipping at tassels, and most importantly, pushing upward on everyone, including Taylin and Ru.

Interesting
. Ru said in the link, floating to Taylin's side.
He uses the same core structure for this as I do for my levitation spell. Only it is spread among many and instead of full flight, he merely negates the force of gravity: useless for ground based creatures, but it grants fliers incredible maneuverability. I shall have to make a note of this.

Taylin wasn't so sure about the spell. She felt herself starting to float, not really leaving the ground, but with the full knowledge that it no longer bound her. It was like flying, but without motion, which was disconcerting.

As long as you never use it on me,
she told him.

The fourth
hwacha
hurled its payload skyward, serving as the call for the charge. Tal Eserin didn't even bother sounding his own call: he simply fanned his shining wings, and brought them down in one gigantic thrust that launched him skyward at a speed Taylin could only imagine.

All around, the other soldiers took to the air too, and with only slight hesitance, Taylin followed them.

***

Many spirit docents that she had heard of made heavy use of synchronicity: the means by which they voluntarily allowed their spirit companions to possess and work their will through them. In such a merged state, they could become forces to be reckoned with; a perfect blend of raw discarnate power and the expertise of a spirit, unfettered by the limits of their old flesh.

Brin rarely used it, and even then, usually only with Reflair. Unlike other docents, she usually only kept the one companion, mostly because she was uncomfortable being a medium for spirits who would be strangers.

To create the seal over Idarian Homestead, however, she had to synchronize with the homestead's spirit. It was painful, like stretching muscles one was unaccustomed to moving, only the 'muscles' in question extended into the very core of her being, and 'stretching' them entailed running a volume of discarnate energy through them that she had never even attempted to marshal before.

A bridge had been formed (another thing major spirits seemed to know how to do instinctively), a conduit that punched through the Afterworld, past the depths of the Seven Interlocking Hells, all the way to the Well of Souls, and led through Brin, out into the material realm.

Energy poured out, and it was all Brin could do to grasp onto it with her innate powers and wrestle it into a shape in her mind's eye.

Wizards used complex symbolism and diagrams to work their power, priests were forced to be content with the forms sent to them by the gods, and practitioners in the tradition of the Bardic College dealt in ideas and stories just as thick as the wizards' formulae. Docents, when not working through their spirits in a way that mirrored priests, were limited to brute force and direct constructions.

As such, Brin shaped the geyser of power flowing up from the well into something like a closed parasol, rising up above the homestead from her position. And as more energy poured out, she began to slowly open it, sending the parasol's ribs and webbing to rake down deep into the land, collecting the
nekras
that had sank into it and poisoned the air—and driving it out.

The process of purging the
nekras
was slow, but it was necessary to perform the sealing. Brin only hoped that it wouldn't be too slow to help the others.

'There have been some unexpected results in our animal trials; drastic behavioral shifts uncharacteristic of the base species. Rietta believes that these are flaws, but I am convinced that they are absolute proof that what we have created is closer to the original phenomena than we could have dreamed. According to the missive I received this morning, the Emperor agrees.'

~ excerpt from the journal of Lena Hiddakko.

***

Something in Taylin thrilled at throwing herself into the air, weapon in hand and surrounded by comrades, all with a common, clear purpose: to destroy the enemy. It was the same part of her that loved fighting and had to be restrained from killing every hailene master she'd ever had... until the time was right. That same part which laughed when she finally got to do just that.

But though the air was filled with the rush of wings and voices intoning spells, it was different in so many ways from her days in slavery. The chorus structure was missing. No one was flying in a neat, efficient 'V' with the shocktroops like Taylin at the fore and spellcasters in the rear. There were no barked orders, just shouts in mercenary code back and forth, describing intended courses of action. There was no captain threatening and striking them if they made a misstep. Most importantly, this fight was one she chose of her own free will because it was right.

Tal Eserin passed her on her right, shouting in mercenary code to the other battlemagi and pointing at Bashurra.

The demon knew they were coming and was working a spellcrafting even though he was half covered in ice and still healing the great bloody wounds left in him by the
hwacha
. The ground behind him turned to bubbling mud and belched up great hunks of sodden earth that rose up in an arc above his head.

Steam rose from those clods as they were reshaped into humanoid faces: mostly hailene and half-elves, but one or two minotaurs as well. Each was twisted into a death mask that showed more agony than the Seven Interlocking Hells could provide. Heat shimmered off them and began to melt and crack the ice entrapping Bashurra.

Tal Eserin shouted something and Taylin didn't have to know the code to know that it roughly translated to 'brace for attack'. With a powerful gesture and a string of arcane words, he called forth a nearly invisible screen that angled toward the sky to deflect attacks and traveled along ahead of the charge. Other battlemagi began doing the same, but none could conjure
vin
as extensively and powerfully as the Windmason.

Bashurra grunted dramatically and flexed, breaking the remaining ice apart with his great strength. “Let's match strength for strength, little army. Your Air Screen against my Trauma Barrage.” He waved one hand above his head and the mud faces burst into flames before lurching with great speed and little stability toward the oncoming charge. They vomited up bilious, black smoke along the way.

This isn't just a direct attack.
Ru said in Taylin's head.
Avoid the hit and what comes after.

“I need more explanation than that Ru.” She hissed under her breath. But he didn't answer. Not before the barrage reached them. They hit the screens with jarring force, bringing a few down immediately and continuing through. Others exploded into smoke on contact.