V ivian was no longer human, just a mangled mass of meat and black leather.
The thing that held her was a twisted nightmare of flesh and shadow, every part of it wrong in some skin-crawling way. Its fingers were too long and too human, with too many joints that bent in too many different directions. It was tall enough to cast a shadow over us. Most horrifyingly, it had no face—what should have been features was instead a blur of nothingness.
It was the kind of horrifying that sent every primal animal intuition in me screaming, Either kill that thing IMMEDIATELY or get as far away from it as you possibly can.
Chaos erupted around us—soldiers springing into action as more of those things appeared across the cliff line, walking out of nothingness. They were everywhere at once.
The creature dropped Vivian and went for me.
I barely evaded the creature’s grasp. The restraints binding my ankles shortened what needed to be a long stride. I stumbled. Hit the ground hard. Rolled.
A sickening crunch filled my ears. Excruciating pain tore through my foot.
Fuck.
Clawed fingers locked around my ankle. The creature leaned over me and a burning smell filled my nostrils. Its face, a strange void of shadow, lowered close to mine. That darkness gave way to a hundred other images
—a little girl’s face, surrounded by fire. A teenage boy wearing broken glasses.
I needed to look away. I knew that I needed to look away, but I couldn’t,
I—
A voice that was everywhere and nowhere at once whispered, I know
you. I know you. I know you.
Wake up, Max!
I was jolted from my trance. On instinct, I tried to use magic, and was rewarded with only a burst of burning pain beneath my skin. The Stratagrams—fuck.
I looked around, eyes landing on Vivian’s discarded spear. If I could just
—
Merah let out a roar as her weapon impaled that faceless head. The
creature shrieked.
My ankle was free. I had only seconds. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I dove for the spear. The creature had turned on Merah now— Ascended above, that spear through its head hadn’t been enough to kill it?
—encircling her with claws.
My bound wrists made wielding a weapon clumsy. But the movements came easily. My body knew what to do, even if my mind no longer did.
With all my strength, I buried the spear beneath the monster’s raised arms—into, I hoped, its heart. The hit met less resistance than I would have expected, as if its flesh was already half decomposed.
The creature let out a bone-rattling howl and dropped Merah, whirling to me.
It was sheer luck that I managed to keep my grip on the spear’s handle, yanking it from the monster’s flesh. That I was able to move fast enough as it dove for me—
—And that the creature leapt at just the right angle for the point to go plunging through its throat, tilted up, tip protruding from the back of its skull.
The monster slumped. I didn’t know if it was dead, or if I had only seconds before it would come for me again. I whirled to Merah, who limped towards me. “Unchain me,” I demanded.
“I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”
“For fuck’s sake, either you unchain me or you’ll need to explain to the Queen how I ended up dead,” I spat.
After a moment of hesitation, Merah cursed and knelt beside me. She released the restraints around my wrists, then ankles. As soon as they were free, I stood, ignoring the pain that snaked up my left leg.
I muttered a thank you and pulled the spear from the creature’s body with a sickening wet pop. “Let’s—”
A smear of black.
Blood spattered my face, and Merah was just… gone. I dropped to the ground, rolled, barely dodged another set of claws. The creature that grabbed her was even larger than the first one. It crushed her in its hands like she was nothing. Her blood rained down over my face. I leapt to my feet even though my injured leg screamed at me for it—tried to drive my weapon into its guts, but the monster scuttled away into the chaos before I could stop, Merah nothing but tatters in its grasp.
The whole thing took seconds, and I was left there alone, in an eerie moment of stillness among a maelstrom. I looked down at my unbound wrists, unbound ankles. Then to my dead guards. And then I looked to the docks, not so very far—to all the boats left abandoned by fleeing fishermen. This was my opportunity. All I had to do was fight my way to the shore.
And then go…
…somewhere.
But somewhere that was, at least, not Ilyzath. That was good enough for
me.
I grabbed the spear and turned to take one more look at the chaos
around me. Dozens of these monsters dotted the shore, and they ripped apart Ara’s military as if they were rag dolls. Now I saw why the Queen was so desperate.
I started to move, but I only made it halfway across the field when I froze.
My eyes landed on a blond boy in a military uniform locked in a fight he was losing. He held a bloody sword in one hand, and magic glowed in the other. Neither was enough.
The world stopped.
The boy was in the opposite direction of the docks. And yet, I was moving before I realized it. I crossed the battlefield in a wild sprint, the pain of my ankle a distant thrum.
The creature had the boy in his grasp by the time I reached him.
In moments, he would be dead. I could not let that happen. I would not let that happen.
I plunged my spear into the creature’s throat—and fire tore up its length.
The creature let out a high-pitched, bodiless shriek. It moved for me. I danced backwards. Dodged. Seized the opening it afforded me.
I couldn’t see through the flames. But I was fighting based on something deeper than sight now, something more like intuition. I didn’t know how I had called my magic to me. Didn’t care at this point. I drove my spear between its ribs, deep into its core. Fire roared from my fingertips and through the veins of the spear.
The creature’s shriek became an echo. Its body ruptured, moving in a thousand different directions at once, as if the boundaries between its form and the air had been disrupted. Licks of flame tore through its shadowy insides.
I held on for as long as I could, until I couldn’t maintain the connection to my magic any longer. Then I withdrew the spear and fell back, just in time for the creature to release a final wail and collapse. The flames fell away. My breaths came in ragged, aching gasps.
I turned around. The boy was on the ground, staring up at me with big blue eyes through tendrils of fair hair. Ascended above, he was young. Too young to be wearing a military uniform.
Certainly too young to die here.
I knelt beside him. There was so much blood that at first, I couldn’t see the wound. Closer examination revealed a slash that cut across the boy’s entire abdomen.
Fatal, maybe. Unless he got to a healer fast.
I looked around to see only a mass of violence and chaos. No one was coming for him out here. But…
My gaze lifted towards the Towers. There was lots of death between us and there, yes, but the boy would certainly die if he stayed here.
I ripped my shirt off over my head. “What’s your name?” I asked the boy.
A wrinkle of confusion deepened over his brows, which framed terrified blue eyes. “Wh-what?”
“Name?” I asked again. Finally, he rasped out, “Moth.”
A flicker of recognition passed through me, gone before I could look too closely at it.
“What kind of a name is that?” I asked, giving him just enough time to look indignant before I pulled the shirt around his wound, tight.
He let out a wordless grunt of pain. Beads of sweat broke out over his face.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t let you bleed to death before we get where we’re going.”
Ascended, it was odd, the way the boy stared at me.
“You aren’t going to die today, Moth,” I said. “We’ll get you to the Towers and get you to a healer there. But you can’t walk. So… I won’t lie, this is going to hurt.”
He swallowed and gave me a grim nod.
Brave kid, I thought, with an odd sense of pride. “Ready?”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I picked up the boy and hoisted him over my back. Fuck, I was out of shape. I felt his body go rigid with pain, but to his credit, he didn’t make a sound. And then I ran, bobbing and weaving through dying men and attacking creatures.
I didn’t believe in miracles, but if I did, the fact that we made it the other side alive would qualify.
Once we made it to the Towers, I gently let him down and grabbed the nearest person I could find wearing a healer’s patch.
“He needs help,” I barked. “Right now.”
The man nodded, a little frantic, and hurried away.
But before I could turn, the boy grabbed my wrist, stopping me. “Max,” he rasped out.
I blinked in surprise. He knew me—?
“Find Tisaanah,” he choked out. “Alright? She’s looking for you.”
Tisaanah. Something inside of me rattled at the name. “I don’t—”
“Listen,” he said, face blotchy with exertion. His grip was shockingly firm. “They… all remember you. They’d all still… follow you. Alright? Understand?”
I wasn’t sure that I did. But I nodded all the same as the boy’s grasp slipped away and his eyelids fluttered.
“Get yourself patched up, Moth,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of life left to live.”
By the time I stood, the boy was no longer conscious, and a healer crouched beside him.
The violence had gotten worse even in those few minutes, as the monsters seemed to push towards the Towers. More of them now poured from the cliffs, decimating groups of soldiers.
A streak of shadow had swept from the far entrance of the Tower of Midnight—the Queen—surrounded by darkness that eerily resembled wings, wielding two long knives. She cut through the fighting like a meteor slicing through the sky.
Maybe I could still get away. Maybe. I could barely see the shore. But what did I have to lose? Death might be preferable to returning to Ilyzath.
I fought, moving fast. I didn’t even try to kill anymore, only defend myself enough to slip by. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Queen’s head turn—saw her gaze land on me. Her course changed, the path of her destruction coming closer.
My steps faltered. That was a moment of distraction I couldn’t afford. Pain tore through my leg—the same one that had already been injured. I was looking at the grey sky.
And then I was looking at a faceless beast.
Fuck.
I recovered fast. But now, once again, my attempt at using magic rewarded me only with terrible pain, and no fire. A strike to its throat had the creature stumbling but quickly righting itself.
I began to roll out of the way and—
The creature’s clawed hand came crashing down on my leg, digging deeper into the flesh. Then the other pinned my shoulder. It leaned over me, its face coming close to mine, as if… curious.
We have been looking for you, the wind seemed to whisper.
I angled my spear and, with all the strength my injured left arm would allow, thrust it through the creature’s body. It met no resistance, flying through its shadowy flesh as if it were nothing but fog.
I almost laughed. Ascended above. To think I was so fucking close.
The creature had no face, and yet, I could have sworn that it smiled. It leaned in closer.
And—
It screamed, releasing me. It reared up so fast that at first my addled mind couldn’t put together what I was seeing.
A sword.
A massive sword, piercing through the creature’s body, the black-blood- soaked tip protruding from its navel.
The creature flailed as the sword hoisted up in one powerful movement, gutting the beast—nearly cutting it in half.
Everything was blurry shapes, now. I was losing so much blood.
The creature fell, and a man kicked it off of his sword. Then he approached me. The bloody sunset silhouetted him, but I could make out a dark, critical stare, a set jaw, long black hair bound in a braid over one shoulder.
It’s funny how I had spent so much time trying to remember people and failing. And yet, this man’s name came to me easily, like a flame illuminating a darkened room.
I heard the Queen’s voice gasp behind me, “What are you doing here?” Brayan’s gaze snapped up, hard and cold.
“Why,” he hissed, “is my brother imprisoned in fucking Ilyzath?” My vision went dark.
