Chapter 6: Harbinger
The Time: Present day, 720 A.E.
The Place: Central Saimr
It's not that Enahi is wrong—it really is quite stupid to engage opponents like this with no information and (at least for now) no reinforcements. But if there's anyone left that she could possibly save who dies because she's sitting around twiddling her thumbs, she'll be very cross with herself.
On a whim, Ari skids to a stop halfway down the hill and calls over her shoulder, "If you're scared, just stay there and wait for help to get here!" She winks, though Enahi probably can't make it out. "Gišva will take care of it!"
She can handle it by herself, probably. It'll just be easier if Enahi provides a worthwhile distraction, which she's surely capable of if her impenetrable hubris is any indication.
Something kinda-sorta like concern squirms around inside her ribs, but Ari quashes it ruthlessly. If Enahi is good at anything, it's being a proper nuisance in battle. The Holy Shadow is an art dedicated to creating diversions and punishing anyone who can't break through them. She might be the matron best-suited to facing two unknown threats, if only because she can disengage in a blink if she's overwhelmed.
Ah, what is she worrying about? If Enahi gets knocked around a bit, maybe it'll cut her ego down to a healthier size. Ooh, and maybe she'll faint like a flower in the breeze, and then Ari will have to carry her nobly back to camp in front of everyone—
Oh, oh, or maybe she'll wind up poisoned, like that one scene in To Court a Princess! And Ari will solicitously dab her brow with a wet cloth while she spills all her deepest darkest secrets in a feverish haze—
There's a fair bit of distance between them, but Ari can vicariously feel the way the air frosts over when her words strike the Lašar Commander's dignified ears. For a moment, Enahi is soundless in her apoplexy, positively quivering with rage. Before she can transmute fury into words, Ari blows her a kiss and sets off down the hill again.
The beast doesn't patiently wait for its newest meal to deliver itself; as Ari draws Varul from its sheath and wills its shape to change, the demon lunges forward with shocking speed and violence. Its misshapen legs strike the ground with a sound and force that rattles Ari's teeth inside her jaw, and she leaps away from the dark blur scrambling towards her just in time to avoid one enormous clawed hand slamming into the spot she vacated. Thick clods of dirt spray up in a dark cloud; the demon bellows with rage. Ari lands yards away, throwing out her free hand to steady herself, letting her joints go liquid to absorb the impact.
In her opposite hand, Varul is melting: globules of bronze shimmer and bubble, stretching and twisting and spewing gouts of superheated steam that considerately curl around Ari's hand without touching it. In mere moments, the plain dagger has become a moderately less plain glaive. Held upright, it is every inch as tall as the woman who wields it. Upon its head is a beautiful, wicked, single-edged blade, and the hook on its reverse side resembles a startlingly accurate finger-sized fang. A firm leather grip wraps around the haft, granting her a stable handhold.
A polearm will give her better reach and maneuverability than a sword. A bow might've been nice too, if Ari could hit the broad side of a barn with one. Somehow she doubts this demon will stand perfectly still while she spends thirty straight seconds lining up a shot from ten meters out.
The beast rears back, its glistening black sinew bulging and contracting as it steadies itself. In the very brief moment of respite this allows her, Ari's mind whirls.
Alright. Okay. She needs a plan of attack, but first she needs to understand what this thing is and what it can do. She's fought demons aplenty, but never one this big. Big demons tend to be old demons—and most demons in Ansera don't survive into antiquity.
Generally, greater demons are born from Calamitous Blooms. Once a sunseed spoils and warps, it will drive its host to ravening hunger, transforming them into a beast endlessly seeking to quench its anguish with bloodshed. Most of these creatures are either slain or starve to death on their own before they become serious problems, yet… despite its gluttony, this one doesn't brim with the frantic mania of a beast maddened by deprivation. It doesn't seem inclined to attack the two people hunting around the wreckage, either. Those must be its handlers.
If the demon isn't from this realm, then its masters likely aren't either… Ack, but it's one thing to summon a lesser demon from the Eight Heavens, and another thing entirely for a greater demon and two very capable diabolists to open a massive rift from the Eight Heavens to a lower realm uninvited! It can be done, of course, Sahan had explained that to her, but not without significant risk to both the caster and the realm they're invading.
Unless—they were invited, but by who, and how, and why—
The demon opens its mouth, and Ari has just enough time to spot the violet light swelling within its cavernous throat before a searing gobbet of True Flame shoots out towards her. With a curse, Ari dives out of its path, tumbling the rest of the way down the hill… less than gracefully. The ball of screaming violet fire strikes the grassy hillside and explodes with a blast of force that would've scalded Ari's skin clean off if she were just about anyone else. As it is, the wave of hot air buffets her backwards, and she throws up her arms to shield her face from flying debris.
Right. So this is a Harbinger-class demon, then—a monster capable of summoning the True Flame. She'd kind of been hoping those walls of fire were courtesy of the demon's handlers, but no such luck.
The beast charges through the blaze, which is already beginning to spread, its eyes wide and avid, curtains of raw flesh swinging. It runs hunched on all fours, its claws leaving deep furrows in the soil.
In the stillness between one breath and the next, Ari reaches deep into her core and… coaxes. This flame requires only the gentlest urging to spark. As soon as it answers her call, the anxious thoughts racing inside her skull slow to a crawl. Power like warm honey flows out from her core and takes a leisurely spill through her spiritual veins, tinging her ever-cycling stream of numina a deep, sumptuous red. The tension in her muscles loosens; the taut expression on her face relaxes into a serene smile.
All at once, the world is sharper and clearer and kinder. There's a song she can't replicate humming along her skin, tickling the inside of her ribs, ghosting kisses down her spine.
Give me yourself, it whispers, and I will give you unity. Let go of your suffering, and I will give you everything.
When the demon surges forward again, one hand outstretched, it's almost laughably easy to dart around its fingers. Ari spins, twirls the glaive over her shoulder, and Varul parts the air like a sigh. The impossibly sharp edge of its blade carves a trench into the back of that hand. Hot, putrid dark blood sprays breathlessly from malformed veins; where it splashes onto the ground, the grass shrivels.
Ari retreats like a minnow through a clump of rushes, like it's a step in a dance. The song between her ears softens with sweet joy. Her steps are so light that her boots hardly strike the earth. The seconds pass like they're reluctant to take their leave; the air on her skin is warm and tender.
The demon yowls, its breath sparking, but even as Ari watches the gash Varul left has begun to knit back together. She thinks, without any real urgency, that it's very unfortunate that she's run into a Harbinger-class demon with such potent self-restoration abilities. That was far from a fatal wound, but it wasn't a tiny scratch either. For it to disappear so quickly is… surprising.
Ah, well. Her smile doesn't fade. She could stay like this forever, just close her eyes and drift, let that beautiful song carry her away—
She won't, of course. The conscious part of her mind is small but experienced, and it's well-aware of the Bloodflame's dangers.
Ari laughs as the demon pummels the ground in a fury, screaming its rage with a cloud of embers. She twists between its strikes, fluid and untouchable, the rumbling earth beneath her hardly an impediment. It doesn't breathe the True Flame again, which means it's either too simple-minded to cast and sling blows (unlikely) or that there's a limit to how frequently it can cast (more likely). It takes a great deal of energy to heal that fast; it probably won't be able to cast and heal simultaneously.
With a clear, if simple, goal in mind, Ari slips beneath the demon's flailing claws and aims Varul at whatever its blade can reach: the beast's forearms, its thighs, its abdomen. Shallow, exploratory punctures and gashes; she never presses so deeply that she'll be unable to withdraw in time to avoid a blow. These wounds heal just as quickly as the first, but the beast doesn't draw back and it doesn't call forth its flame.
Which is all well and good, but the Bloodflame is not a patient friend. If this battle comes down to attrition alone, Ari is at a significant disadvantage. She's not channeling a great deal of power right this moment, but if she wants to seriously injure this thing, she's gonna have to up her output—and the more she channels, the faster the Bloodflame drains her.
She has some other options, but… this is the safest one, for now. The most restrained option.
In her periphery, somewhere off to her left, a tide of darkness swells and crashes, a wave of relentless shadow transforming Enahi's side of the playing field into a lightless smear. Ari's only distracted by it for a moment, but a moment is long enough for the beast to catch her with a side-swipe that sends her sailing back through the air with such speed she doesn't even realize she's been hit at first.
Ari manages to curl into herself before she impacts the wooden wall of a hut and explodes through it in a shower of splinters. Thankfully, this arrests her momentum enough that when she slams into the next wall, she merely cracks it instead of soaring straight through. She slides down, briefly dazed, until she hits something hard. The pain blossoms shyly against the wall of euphoria the Bloodflame has deployed around her, no more potent than the brush of a moth's wings.
"Ow!" she says cheerfully. The song in her head jingles like wedding bells, as though it's laughing with her. She sits up, looks around just enough to get a bare glimpse of her surroundings—single-room shack, straw tick mattress in the corner, cauldron over a fire pit, chimney on the far wall, a ruined shelf beneath her. And—oh! That might be useful…
As the demon thunders towards the hut, white foam dribbling from its jaws, something big and boxy hurtles through the hole in the wall. A chunk of brick wood stove smashes into the creature's skull. The sound is tremendous. Yellowed bone cracks and caves; one eye is pulverized into a pinkish paste. The demon's lower jaw detaches from a hinge, which renders its pained bellow all the more pathetic. It staggers back, collapsing to its haunches, one hand raised to shield its ruined skull as it screams.
Ari dips through her impromptu doorway and darts forward, grinning widely. With a single, powerful leap, she lands first on the demon's thigh, and then on its shoulder. Scrabbling around its thrashing neck for a foothold, she steadies the glaive in her hand and drives the point of its blade deep, deep, deep into the column of its throat. Half that bronze shaft disappears into its oozing black hide before the glaive can go no farther.
"Varul," she whispers, "Akhayr."
Feast.
The glaive shudders.
Ari manages to hang on for a moment longer before she's shaken loose, but she's done what she set out to do. As she hits the ground and leaps away once more, she glances up at the bronze gleam in the demon's neck. Wisps of steam whirl into the open air. The demon screeches, raising a hand to pull this irritant free, but as soon as its fingers touch that line of bronze they jerk back reflexively. The oily dark "flesh" covering them looks… decayed.
The demon thrashes and howls and lunges, its body working feverishly to repair the damage to its skull. Though Ari isn't inhibited by pain, and her trip through a wall did not shatter bone or burst organs, she is also not quite in the shape she was a moment ago. Like this, she's resilient and she can heal fast too, but she's not invincible.
In its mindless agony, and at her relatively sluggish pace, the beast manages to hammer her twice more. They're both glancing blows, but the pain feels a little more immediate this time. It doesn't stop her, but it's becoming more and more of a challenge to keep out of the creature's reach. It chases her with unerring ferocity, its remaining eye burning, its breathing frantic and interspersed with distressed moans.
Varul is doing good work, but it takes time. She just has to stay alive until it's done.
She'd turn and flee, but she's not entirely certain she's fast enough to outrun this thing in its frenzy, and she has to make sure it doesn't suddenly decide to turn on Enahi. Besides, if anyone managed to escape this shitshow, she can't risk leading the beast right to them.
How long has it been? It feels like hours. Sweat pools in the dip of her spine; her skin feels tight. The unconscious grin on her face is starting to hurt and she can't stop it, and the song in her skull is louder with every passing second. It's—fine. She's fine. She can keep going, she just has to be careful. This isn't nearly the hardest she's ever pushed herself with the Bloodflame, but every time she does this the recovery period wipes her out for days after, if she's lucky.
Dodge. Dodge. Dodge. Blood-dark froth drips down the beast's chest; the cloud of steam spewing from its neck is growing thicker and hotter. The wetness around the wound is… wetter? Than before? Probably? This thing is slowing down, but so is she. She could push more, surrender more of herself to the song, but that sliver of her rational mind twangs stubbornly. No, no. She shouldn't do that, then.
Over the demon's hulking shoulder, that swirl of shadows is alive. Flashes of light rupture in its depths, there and gone in an instant. Impossible to tell how that fight is going, but the fact that it is still going at all is… hopefully a good sign.
It's not distraction that trips her up this time, just good old-fashioned weariness. The demon roars and sweeps out with one hand, and Ari avoids it, but the other lashes out with morbid speed and she isn't fast enough. Those fingers clamp around her midsection like a vice. Her ribs creak; all her breath jets out of her lungs.
Uh-oh. Ari thrashes strategically with her limited range of motion, striking knuckles until the bone beneath the "flesh" cracks. But it's not enough. The demon, now heaving laboriously, lifts her up. Its jaw—partially recovered—yawns open, and that ominous violet light sparks in its throat.
Okay, okay, it's fine, she can survive this, it'll hurt but she can—
The expected flames never come. Instead, the beast makes an awful retching sound, its eye bulging. The True Flame gutters out. Ari has just enough time to be relieved before a tide of something else floods out instead: boiling, liquid darkness swimming with chunks of partially-dissolved organ meat drenches her from head to foot.
It burns, aghhhhhh!!!
The beast sways on its feet, trying to force its jaws shut, but it's helpless to stop the waves of melting viscera erupting from its throat. Ari slips from its twitching fingers and, blinded by gunk, narrowly avoids being crushed as the demon hits the ground with a thud. Its throat works convulsively to expel larger and larger chunks of meat—entire swathes of desiccated tissue clog its airways; the pool of shining dark blood spilling from its body grows steadily.
The demon seizes, seizes, seizes, its pitiful choking groans and snorts growing softer and more strained until, finally, with one last jolt, it falls limp. Flat on her back next to it, Ari miserably coughs up mouthfuls of putrid black ooze.
The song in her head grows quieter and quieter until it disappears completely, and the warmth in her veins recedes, leaving her empty and shivering. She doesn't move. She can't. There are dull booms somewhere in the distance, their sharp edges swallowed up by Enahi's shadows. She should… try and get up. Go help.
But there's a strange feeling under her skin, a sinking numbness that has nothing to do with the lingering weakness from the Bloodflame burning through her pneumatic reserves.
Is she fucking poisoned? She better not be fucking poisoned. She's gonna be so pissed if she's covered in monster slop and it poisoned her. Enahi was the one who was supposed to get poisoned! Not her! She doesn't wanna be the one divulging her deepest darkest desires in a feverish haze!
With great effort, Ari raises a hand and wipes her face. Mostly, she just smears the gunk around more.
"Varul," she croaks. "Come."
Nothing. She cracks one eyelid, then startles to realize she'd closed her eyes in the first place.
"Varul," she tries again, a bit more forcefully, "Bilim."
Silence. Well, silence except for the wet, visceral sound of Varul chowing down on demon goop. Ari sighs. Ahhh, she can't be upset. Varul so rarely has the chance to eat anything besides ambient energy these days. In Ari's hands, that incomparable holy blade—the Divine Famine, the Devouring Beast, Souleater, Spellbreaker, the Terror in the North Wind—is more used to chopping vegetables than raining death and destruction on her enemies.
She needs to get up. Where are the reinforcements? They're coming, right? Grand Matron Hvasira didn't send them off to fight a Harbinger and two interdimensional interlopers alone, right?
It's so dark. Why is it dark? Is that Enahi's fault? Oh, no, it's just—her eyes are closed again…
In the end, it's Ari who wilts like a delicate flower… a delicate flower absolutely soaked in monster puke.
***
A strange thing happens, after Ari faints. A few strange things, really.
The first strange thing is that the battle in the shadows comes to an abrupt halt. Being that this happens under a blanket of pure darkness, it's impossible to see what actually unfolds. Put simply: one moment, a lone young matron is valiantly but barely holding her own against two expert arcanists. The next moment, the lone young matron who is barely holding her own suddenly seems to hold her own quite effortlessly. One moment, there are three combatants. The next moment, there is one.
As the dark fog dissipates, two bodies lie limp on the grass. The third stands placidly between them, hardly a hair out of place. She sheathes the blade in her hand—a pristine silver shortsword, a suitable weapon for an assassin—and surveys the bodies expressionlessly, head tilted. After many long seconds, she strides forward and selects one of her enemy's fallen blades at random. Then, with careful, practiced movements, she presses the blade against her own skin and begins to cut. Not deeply, and not in any vital or especially inconvenient places, but angled such that it would be difficult—even impossible—to tell that another's hand did not gouge these wounds into her flesh.
After a handful of slices, the young matron repositions the blade exactly where she found it, removes her jacket, and begins—with calculated slapdashery—to tear off strips and apply them as bandages.
The matron raises a hand. The rift, that tear in the sky, begins to close.
The entire affair takes mere minutes. When it is finished, the young matron glances across the field of wreckage at the other two limp forms sprawled across the grass.
Anyone who has seen Matron Enahi in motion would describe her gait as "determined", or perhaps "rigorous". "Like a runaway horsecart", even. But when she crosses the field beneath the glare of the afternoon sun, she moves slowly, precisely, elegantly. There is strength in every step, an unyielding inevitability to every footfall, but there is also beauty and a sense of crushing timelessness. The stride of an immortal.
The matron comes to a stop above the insensate preceptor, her hands folded primly over her abdomen. She looks at the preceptor's slumbering form. She looks at the dead demon, dissolving further with every moment.
"Čiyvir emers," she says flatly.
There is a high-pitched, shrieking sort of sound from the general vicinity of the dead demon's neck. A beat later, something bright whizzes through the air—the matron takes a single, unhurried step back—and slams into the dirt in front of the preceptor. The glaive Varul is alight with stolen soulstuff, golden and resplendent, its once-plain shaft now writhing with ornate engraving. It hisses and rattles threateningly, and upon the flat of its blade a single silver eye opens, cat-like pupil contracting furiously.
The matron sneers. "You would dare?"
The glaive belches steam. The pressure of its aura withers the grass around it.
A single gloved finger catches the edge of that blade, and the glaive stills. Its eye darts back and forth, quivering with impotent rage.
"Impudent child," the matron snaps. "Čičmir."
The glaive shudders once, violently, in resistance, but it cannot overcome this command. Its eye begins to droop and then disappears entirely. The cloak of magic enshrouding it fades, and a beat later a plain bronze glaive clatters to the ground next to its master. The matron raises her hand again, and darkness swells beneath the demon's body. After a few seconds, it begins to sink. Before a minute is up, there is no trace of it remaining. The bodies of the interlopers are still untouched.
The matron sighs, the emotion attached to it indecipherable. Slowly, the matron nudges the glaive aside and crouches next to the preceptor. Blood seeps through her improvised bandages. There is blood on the preceptor, too—not the demon's, but her own. A deep puncture in her side, its recovery slowed to a crawl by the poison thrumming in her veins. The matron eyes this wound, tugs one glove off with her teeth, and reaches out.
Briefly, her pale, ungloved fingers trace the outline of this puncture, feather-light, hardly a touch at all. She thumbs the shredded fabric of the preceptor's coat, where the blood has already begun to dry and harden. She brushes the dirt and debris away. And then, with an exacting sort of languidness, one finger presses against the heart of the perforation. And keeps pressing.
The preceptor makes a harsh, aborted sound in her throat as her flesh squelches around the intrusion, her face twisting in discomfort. But she doesn't wake. That single finger pushes in until there's no longer any give in the tissue beneath it, until blood is welling freely up and over its knuckle. She twists and angles her hand to catch it. The preceptor turns her head with an incomprehensible mumble, brow furrowed, but the matron does not withdraw for a long moment. Her expression, had there been anyone around to try and decipher it, would still be unreadable.
Finally, as fresh red blood bubbles and weeps and pools in the divots of her curled fingers, the matron slowly pulls her hand free. The preceptor's expression loosens, but only somewhat. The matron examines her bloodied hand with some interest, turning it this way and that, admiring the crimson sheen coating her pallid skin. She dips her head and draws her hand to her chin—shapely lips just parted, nostrils flaring lightly—and then, very slowly, drags her tongue in a long, leisurely glide from palm to fingertip.
The finest tremor travels down her spine. A stifled, barely-audible sound catches in her throat.
It takes several passes to clean her hand entirely, but the matron never falters in her task, even sucking the pad of each finger past her lips to draw out the blood from beneath her nails. All the while, the preceptor shifts uncomfortably in the grass, her brows still furrowed as the aggravated wound leaks.
Once her hand is covered only in saliva, not a drop of blood to be found, the matron wipes herself clean on the preceptor's abused coat and replaces her glove. Then, she peels back one of the makeshift bandages on her wrist and lowers her mouth again. This blood, she calls forth much more freely, and it is as black and cold as the night sky—as lightless as the demon's, but richer, fresher, more potent.
When her mouth is full, she leans forward, waves of glossy dark hair tumbling across the preceptor's cheek as she presses their lips together forcefully, unbothered by demon blood or dirt and grime. With merciless efficiency, her tongue pries the preceptor's lips apart. The preceptor makes another small, helpless little sound, this one slightly less agonized.
With one hand, the matron tilts the preceptor's head back, with the other, she massages the line of her throat, triggering her automatic reflex to swallow. Half of the first mouthful of blood ends up leaking down her chin (it's impatiently dabbed away), but the second and third are swallowed without incident. After the fourth, the matron keeps their lips pressed together, idly stroking and twining her tongue around the preceptor's lifeless one, even occasionally sucking the tip of the preceptor's tongue into her own mouth. The slick sounds are obscene, the sort one might expect to hear in a brothel and not on a battlefield. With both hands now free, she holds the preceptor's head in place, never allowing her to turtle away from the relentless slide of lips and teeth and tongue.
In time, the matron grows more aggressive—perhaps frustrated, perhaps merely bored. Gentle nips turn to bites; the gentle pressure against the preceptor's jaw tightens to bruising. More blood blooms as the preceptor's lips and tongue split beneath the onslaught. The matron attentively licks it away, not a drop wasted.
Suddenly, she draws back with a snarl and buries her head in the crook of the preceptor's shoulder—not quite gasping for breath, but certainly breathing more quickly than she was moments ago. Her fingers are pressing very hard into the preceptor's jaw; her tanned skin pales beneath that grip. It takes visible effort for her to withdraw completely, and soon the reason is apparent—concerned voices, echoing from the treeline; the flare of several familiar auras; the growls and yips of unsettled barghests.
The matron sits upright, her face perfectly blank once more.
"Here!" she calls, her voice tremulous though her expression is indifferent. "Quickly. The preceptor is ill."