Book 6 Chapter 24: Like A Hanging Sword

"Loyalty to an unworthy prince is treason against the Gods Above, for it places that prince before the teachings of the Heavens themselves."

- Extract from "The Faith of Crowns", by Sister Salienta

Four Named, three mages and forty legionaries.

It wasn't a large company to take into a demon hunt, but in hallways and narrow rooms being too many would be a disadvantage anyway. It'd be a lot more useful to be able to move swiftly and without getting in each other's way than to have another forty bodies to throw into the maw of the enemy. I'd have taken more mages if there were any to spare, mind you, but those didn't grow on trees. I'd sent runners out to gather reinforcements as quickly as possible and send them our way, but I doubted they'd arrive in time to make a difference - whether the demons got to run loose or not would probably already have been decided by the time the second wave made it to the fight.

We set out briskly even as I arranged our formation so that it wouldn't result in immediate collapse if one of the demons got the drop on us. A shield wall would be useless, so instead a tenth of regulars in a loose skirmish formation took the front. The sole tenth of heavies behind them, their tall shields meant to buy time for the soldiers behind them: crossbowmen, spread out both so they could fire from broad angle and so that Named would be able slip between them. Then came those same Named, Hierophant closer to the back where the three Gifted whose gifts he would be using stood, and behind that our rearguard of ten regulars.

The junior lieutenant was with those in the back, so that we'd still have an officer even if Lieutenant Inger died up front where she stood with the other tenth of regulars.

"For the four of us," I told the other Named, "the tactics are simple enough. I won't enquire too deeply about your bag of tricks or try to tell you how to fight with it, but I want our priorities established before we find the enemy."

Or the enemy finds us, I silently added.

"You are the seasoned battle commander among us," the Repentant Magister said, "and you've fought demons before. You will not be gainsaid."

I glanced at the Blade of Mercy, who silently nodded, and considered the potential powers struggle a done thing. Masego knew our business well enough and would not argue, though I still jabbed my elbow into his side to make sure he was actually listening.

"If we're lucky, the demons come at us from the front," I said. "Most of them are aggressive, in a tactical sense, which is where our first three lines come in: my legionaries will slow them down as much as possible."

My fingers clenched, knowing full well that the slowing would come through dead bodies and the corruption of the still-living.

"That's when we come in," I said. "After the crossbows fire, Lady Eliade and I will use what means we have to try to pin down the demon. Even if we succeed, it'll be temporary, which is when Hierophant will attempt a binding."

The Blade of Mercy shuffled on his feet, as if afraid he'd been forgot.

"There are no guarantees that will work," I said, "and even if it does, we can't simply leave the demon there: we need a killing blow, which will be provided by the Blade of Mercy."

Nods all round, until the Repentant Magister cocked her head to the side.

"I believe, Your Majesty, that your intention is not to try to slay all of these demons," she said.

It wasn't, because rolling the dice against eldritch abominations eight times in a row was a shit plan. Kind of her to indirectly reassure me she didn't believe me to be an idiot, though.

"No," I said. "We'll be trying to push through towards the room where the Severance was being kept. Hierophant, if you'd care to elaborate on why?"

I leaned a little closer.

"Simply, if you would," I murmured.

"There will likely still be ward foundations there," Masego said, "which I can use to trap the demons inside before closing the door on them."

He shot me a disgruntled look.

"Sword room good, demons go in," he peevishly added. "Much rejoicing. Was that simple enough, Catherine?"

"Rejoicing has three whole syllables," I replied without missing a beat. "A lackluster effort at best."

"Sometimes, when you fight other people, I root for you to get hit," he confessed.

"That's treason, you know," I gravely told him.

"It is not," he triumphantly said. "You kept saying that about a great many things, so I got my hands on a Callowan law codex. It's not treason to say you snore either, which you insisted to Indrani it was."

I heard the Repentant Magister politely cough into her hand to hide her laugh, while the Blade of Mercy looked away with slightly trembling shoulders.

"Tread carefully," I told him, "or I'll raise taxes on mage towers."

"I'll make it invisible," he defiantly said. "You can't collect taxes from an invisible tower."

"Don't think I won't contract it out to the fae if I have to," I warned.

He stared me down from the side of his head, before grudgingly nodding.

"Accusing you of snoring is treason," he offered.

Ah, selling out Indrani instead of admitting you were wrong. One of the classic retreat stratagems of the Woe, along with blaming anything from rain to mispronunciations on Akua's scheming.

"So is throwing wooden carvings at my court wizard," I granted him, magnanimous in my victorious tyranny.

He brightened at that, though for some reason Nephele's cheek went red. Had she thrown something at Masego's head? Curious as I was, now was hardly the time to ask. I'd leaned into the banter at least in part because it would distract the four of us - and also the soldiers all trying very hard to pretend they weren't listening - from the grimness ahead, lighten up the air some. But we were well into the Repository now and wariness was the order of the day from here on out. We passed through a sort of confluence of hallways, like a lesser Knot, where the marks of Named fighting against fae were evident. Nephele confirmed as much when I asked, as it had been her band that fought here, and added that there did not seem to be any missing bodies.

Thank the fucking Gods for that.

Hakram had fought here, I could tell from the way some tall rocklike fae had been slain, but I set the thought aside before it grew too dark. I'd done what I could by ensuring the Concocter was there for Archer to send as reinforcements. Shy of the Sinister Physician himself, she was probably the best healer in the Arsenal. We hurried along, quickening our pace to a near run, and we'd just passed the corpse of another fae when a shivering scream sounded in the distance ahead. I felt it go through my soldiers, my allies, through my own bones. It'd sounded human, or at least ripped out of a human throat, but there'd been something... wrong about it.

"At least one is out, looks like," I said, forcing my voice to sound even. "Advance with caution, swords out."

I'd offered up my calm and it was drawn from by those who needed it - there was no need for a harangue here, simple confidence would serve the same purpose better. From the corner of my eye I caught Nephele staring at the back of the neck of my soldiers, and I raised a brow. It was man, Callowan by the paleness and the flush.

"Lady Eliade?" I asked.

"Please call a halt," she quietly asked.

I did, and a moment later the Repentant Magister was at the legionary's side and asking him the permission to perform an exploratory cantrip. The light on the sorceress' fingers was barely visible and she spoke no incantation, but a moment later she withdrew her hand with a grim look on her face.

"We are facing a Host-Breaker," Nephele Eliade said.

I looked at Masego, expecting an elaboration.

"Demon of Terror," Hierophant said. "I know little of their kind, few in Praes have ever summoned them."

My fingers clenched at the words.

"They're that dangerous?" I asked, pitching my voice low.

If the Empire thought they were too risky to use, it boded very badly for out little crew.

"No," Masego replied. "But it is known they can be subsumed by Demons of Excess, which made them a highly unpopular choice among diabolists."

No doubt Wasteland nobility saw it as a faux pas, like a tasteless bracelet or using a floral poison during winter court. Nephele looked fascinated and sickened by what she'd gestured heard, but she focused on the dangers a hand.

"I know of them, Your Majesty," the Repentant Magister told me. "The Magisterium has used them for war in past years."

I nodded in appreciation, gesture for the Blade of Mercy to cease standing at the edge of the conversation and come in closer so he'd hear properly.

"What are we in for?" I asked.

"Fear, in essence," Nephele said. "It can be carried by sound or by sight, though like with all of their kind direct touch has the most powerful effect."

"That sounds dangerous and potentially lethal, but not horrifying," I said. "Which given my past experiences with demons lead me to believe means I'm missing something."

"Permanence of contamination, Catherine," Masego reminded me.

I blinked then finally put it together. He meant that the fear would never go away, and the contamination - the fear - would only grow worse with every scream or glimpse or touch. Yeah, that was closer to the kind of despicable fuckery I'd expected.

"There it is," I darkly muttered. "How quickly does the fear escalate?"

"My people say it comes in three steps," the Repentant Magister says. "Fear, which can still be treated by Light and alchemies. Dread, which puts men to flight they will never break from. And terror, which breaks the mind and ends only in death."

Charming. And it was starting to sound like fighting this would be a headache and a half.

"So we can't even look at it," I slowly said.

"There are enchantments which would protect people from the effects, if not for long and not against direct touch," she said, then bit her lip. "Yet I am in no state to lay them, not on so many. I do have an artefact whose effect is similar, but I did not make it to face demons and it will not protect nearly fifty people for more than moments. It has not the power."

"Trace the formula for the enchantment in the air," Masego said.

The Magister glanced at me and I nodded. Fine fingers left coppery traces in the air that Hierophant studied it for a moment before he sharply nodded.

"Now your artefact," he instructed.

Nephele, having discarded her hesitation, presented a ring in a pale and silvery metal, set with translucent stones whose shine was not natural.

"Ah, I see," Masego muttered. "Originally a torture spell, yes? To keep the mind from breaking under pain. The formulaic traces are still there."

The Repentant Magister, face grown ashen, silently nodded.

"It can be done," Hierophant decided. "Give me a moment."

Casually he reached towards one of the Proceran mages, seizing the man's magic with a ripple of will, and then he extracted the sorcery from the sorceress' artefact with a great deal more care. Lights spun up and formed themselves into runes - several wriggled their way out of my thoughts, which smacked of High Arcana - then rearranged themselves under Masego's dancing fingers and clucking tongue, before he finally let out a little noise of satisfaction. The runes collapsed onto themselves and formed into a series of small pinpricks of light that sunk back into the ring.

"There," the Hierophant said. "It will protect fifty people for a quarter hour, though the protection will be stripped permanently by contact with a demon. It will also break after use, Catherine, so spend it wisely."

The Repentant Magister was looking at him like he'd just knocked over a castle by blowing at it - split between disbelieving and awed. I sometimes forgot how brilliant Masego was, exceptional even among a people whose excellence in sorcery was legend. I thanked him and passed what we'd learned on to the two lieutenants, who in turn handled informing their soldiers. Advance resumed as I limped forward with the ring clutched tight between my fingers. Two corners we turned before another scream sounded and before it finished I broke the artefact - the demon sounded close enough to warrant it. There was a pulse of light and warmth, then a sensation like a wool in my mind.

"Quarter hour starts," I called out. "We finish this quickly."

The third corner we turned, mere heartbeats later, led us to the sight of the waiting abomination. It was far - knowing sight and distance worked in its favour? - and currently unmoving, at least as much as such a thing could ever be. Corruption had been a revolting twisting of flesh, but this thing was of a different mold. At its heart was a black, faded body that evoked a snake or a slug, but most of it was made up of translucent black veils that spread out like trails and tails and wings, ever moving. Five moon-round eyes, two angled on each side and a larger crowning one, stared at us like the glare of a lighthouse through the fog. Behind it I glimpsed delicate trails on the ground that were like smoke made liquid. Blood from a wound or secretions?

"Don't step on the trails," I warned.

It was unlikely that my soldiers got to hear the latter part of the warning, as before I was finished speaking some of the demon's veil-like layers formed a triangular mouth between the eyes and it began screaming. I felt the protective enchantment on me begin to wane, like parchment being picked at by a swarm of insects. The screaming did not stop, for the demon needed no breath, and just like that our battle had begun. I reached for the Night even as Masego wrested power from our mages one after another in quick succession, but first blood went to my crossbowmen. Without flinching they brought up their weapons and fired a volley in good order, seven of the ten bolts fired landing on the enemy.

Four of those went through the veils, including one through the 'mouth', but they passed if through them as if they were smoke and ended up clattering on the stone further back. The last three shots, though, sunk into the dark flesh at the heart of the monster and remained there. The demon was unlikely to have been wounded by this but it was still moved to act even as liquid smoke began to sweat out of its flesh around where the bolts had sunk in. Layers upon layers of translucent blackness unfolded, splitting into wings and limbs and hooks as the demon skulked up the side of the wall and onto the ceiling with unnatural lightness.

"Kytima," the Repentant Magister said, a slender wand of iron in her hand.

The metal length shivered and spat out burst of transparent sorcery that struck at the demon's body even as I began to shape the Night I had gathered and Masego began to incant in the magetongue. The host-breaker was knocked down from the ceiling, slipping and falling but landing below with insect-like deftness. It was still screaming, and when another salvo of bolts was fired upon it instead of trying to avoid it the demon simply convulsed. The four shots that'd tasted of its flesh went flying out and I hastily abandoned the cage of Night I'd been crafting, instead forming a sweeping scythe that would slap the projectiles aside. When the roiling Night came to touch the first bloodied bolt, though, it winked out.

Sve Noc had forcefully dismissed it from my grasp before it could make contact

Oh Merciless Gods, I realized. They're the Night, or close enough. So they're afraid that the taint might seep into it, and of what that would bring when it returns to them. It was not a senseless fear, I knew, but that was a hollow and bitter thing to tell myself as I watched the four bolts unnervingly find a targets. One glanced off a shield raised just in time, but the others sunk into flesh - neck or elbow or knee, the weak parts of the armour that brute force would be able to punch through.

My soldiers screamed loud enough that not even the demon's ceaseless hollering was able to drown it out.

I glimpsed their eyes turning white, the utter panic that seized them as their mouths foamed and their own screams served to amplify the spreading infection of the demon. Swallowing a snarl of bitter rage I swung out with Night, making a thick knot of it detonate in the air by the closest soldier's ear. Whether the shockwave killed or knocked her out I couldn't know, but before I could clear out a second the bolts fired into the demon earlier found flesh and my fingers clenched in dismay.

"Stop shooting," I screamed, but cacophony overruled me.

Hierophant stood utterly still behind me, save for his moving lips.

"Kytima," the Repentant Magister yelled again, knocking back the demon once more.

I put down another soldier with a detonation but the third taken had turned to flee and when the heavies got in his way he began hacking wildly at them, still screaming at the top of his lungs. The demon had landed almost flat on the ground when knocked back by Nephele, and instead of rising at full height once more it remained there and began slithering forward like a sea of tails and tentacles creeping along the ground. Gods, just the sight of it... A heartbeat later its veils burst open, like a peacock unfolding its tail, and the bolts it'd just taken went flying back. I was ready, this time: one after the other hanging orbs of Night exploded, scattering the bolts into the walls.

I only realized I'd missed the greater threat when one of the heavies struck down the last contaminated soldier and her blood went spurting out looking like liquid smoke. The soldier in plate began screaming in turn, clutching the dead soldier as he convulsed and so spraying smoke-blood everywhere. I lost four heavies in that heartbeat, but a lot more worrying was the single drop that landed on a crossbowman's cheek. I killed him without missing a beat, teeth grinding my mouth raw, and then I saw the Blade of Mercy pass by my side at a run and hatefully cursed.

"It has to be now," the boy screamed, and charged forward with his greatsword streaming behind him.

But the demon had never ceased moving and it'd taken advantage of the chaos to push through. On veiled limbs it slipped through the last regulars of the front and through the screaming gap in the heavies. The Blade of Mercy swung his blade at it, glinting with Light and blindingly quick, but it cut only through translucent layers and the demon's body tumbled among the crossbowmen. One, two, three, four - seven orbs did I weave out of Night, detonating them in a perpetual circle I filled as soon as it broke so that the abomination would remains stuck, but tendrils shot out and the Night shattered again as Sve Noc fled the demonic taint. A thief's power, mine, not a soldier's, and now my legionaries were paying the price for it.

The creature, still screaming, struck out at still-whispering Masego but the Repentant Magister blew it back - in part, at least, for it had been expecting the blow and it merely spun about some as it was mostly translucence that was blown through. I spun Night into a vortex behind it, sucking it backwards, but with a bat of wings is stayed in place and the Repentant Magister was forced to blow back another reaching hand, screaming the same word of power in a ragger voice. The Blade of Mercy had swung round, slicing through a taken regular as he did, and now swung at the demon from the back but the thickening glare of Light ate away at my own working - the demon fell to the ground, a single long limb extending as it tore through the Repentant Magister's torso.

Nephele began to scream, face twisting in utter terror in a vision that would stay with me until I died, and the Blade of Mercy's strike faltered at the sound. The Light trembled, the demon was ripped back by the strengthening anew of the vortex I had not ended, and the limb unfolded into a dozen wings of translucent black that clawed to Antoine of Lange's sides as they were torn away. Was he... No. His armour, I thought, his armour would have been thick enough no blood was spilled.

"Dry rivers and sunder mountains," the Hierophant said, his calm voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. "Scatter chariots and snatch sunlight: I command that you will be still."

The demon froze. Immediately and utterly, as if it had been the decree of Creation itself.

"Now," I screamed through the screaming, "now, Antoine."

"Burn, you misbegotten thing," the Blade of Mercy hissed, and his blade shone bright once more as it went down.

It was blinding to look upon as it went through the Demon of Terror. The veils evaporated, the black flesh shivered and boiled and went up in smoke as the wrath of the Gods Above came down upon the abomination and eradicated it through their chosen champion. Like a sun at midday, the Light swallowed the hallway whole and chased away my Night. When it faded, there was nothing left of the demon but the aftermath. Screaming soldiers, who I knocked unconscious as gently as I could with spinning orbs, and one more yet. Nephele Eliade had slumped onto the ground and she was bleeding, but the red was turning darker. Soon, I thought, it would be as liquid smoke.

She bit her lip until it bled to swallow the scream, and unto me she turned a pleading gaze. I knew what it was she was asking.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, as I brought up my staff.

I made it quick, quick enough it'd be painless. It was the least I could do.

"Handle the contamination," I told Masego without turning. "Please."

I felt him nod without turning and left him to it, as began the roar of flames and I closed my eyes. It was a weakness, but I would allow myself it. Just this once. I only wished that, even with eyes closed, the only thing I could see was not the look of grateful relief in Nephele Eliade's eyes as I killed her. I did not allow myself more than a few moments, though. Now was not the time for indulgence. Our losses had been... harsh. Not only was the Repentant Magister dead, but we'd also consigned to ash six of our ten heavies, two of our ten crossbowmen and eight regulars. Nearly half our company had died in its first engagement.

Against a demon, that couldn't even be said to be a bad roll of the dice.

Before the ashes grew cold we moved on, carefully stepping around the rivulets of contamination the demon had left coming there. It slowed our advance, but we were close to the part of the Repository where the Severance awaited now. The slight detour we allowed ourselves was taking the hall the Demon of Terror had not at a crossroads we stumbled upon, so that we wouldn't have to keep stepping around death and worse as we tried to hurry up. I was on edge the entire time, but it wasn't a demon we ended up running into. It was a woman, with striking purple eyes and black hair pulled into a topknot. Not someone I knew from sight, but the Concocter had been described to be before and her appearance was unusual enough. It was what she was dragging behind her that had my heart rising up in my throat.

A makeshift litter with an orc on it.

It'd taken me a moment to recognize Hakram, for most of him was now a raw and bloody wound. With unnatural precision and severity his flesh had been cut, from his upper thigh to the side of his now visible ribs to the shoulder stump that'd been made of the same arm he'd once mangled for Vivienne. He looked more than half-dead, skin pale and wan as sweat covered his armour-stripped body. His wounds were not bleeding, I thought, but neither was he in any way healed.

"Gods Above," the Blade of Mercy whispered.

"Hierophant," I began, but Masego had already been moving.

He swept past the Concocter, whose face showed only relief at our arrival, and I was left to speak with her as Masego saw to our friend.

"He'll live?" I asked her, even though it was not the most pressing of matters.

"For an hour," the Concocter said. "If I get him to the Sinister Physician before that, he'll make it through."

I breathed out. At least there was that.

"Lieutenant Inger," I called out. "Our heavies are to help the Concocter carry the Lord Adjutant to the infirmary in the Knot."

"Ma'am," the orc soberly saluted, then set to passing along the orders.

"The Mirror Knight?" I asked the villainess.

"Doing his best to contain the mess," the Concocter grimaced. "When I left the Vagrant Spear was still alive, and she insisted on staying after taking a potion."

I nodded.

"How many demons?" I pressed.

"I couldn't tell," the Concocter admitted. "They got to the fae, it was..."

She shivered at the memory.

"I would not have stayed even if asked," the purple-eyed alchemist said. "We weren't pursued, so at least one of them should still be alive."

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them. Not necessarily promising, but better than nothing. It'd have to do.

"Anything you need to keep him alive," I said, forcing myself not to look at Hakram lest my voice shake, "you have it. Use my name if you have to."

She dipped her head in acknowledgement.

"Concocter," I said, voice going low. "I am in your debt for this. I will not forget it."

She watched me, eyes considering.

"Neither will I, Your Majesty," she said.

Masego came back to me even as the Concocter and her escort of four heavies - half of them carrying the litter - left.

"He was struck by a demon, though I cannot tell which sort," Hierophant told me. "The Severance was used to cut the flesh, presumably to halt the spread of the taint. He will survive if properly tended to but there will be no reattaching the limbs."

I breathed out. Hakram would live. Masego himself had told me, and I did not doubt his words. The rest we could deal with when horror had been thrown back into the hole from which it had crawled out. We pressed on, our company thinned even further, until we had reached the threshold of madness. What I had expected to be waiting for us was two Named on the edge of annihilation, or perhaps a desperately fighting Mirror Knight devoured by grief at the loss of his companion, but what we got was different.

As we approached what had been the resting place of the Severance, we stepped into a charnel yard.

The corpses closest to us were fae, or at least had been. Several of the bodies were in hacked pieces, some of them twisted by what I recognized to be the touch of Corruption, and even those of the fae that had died without first being swallowed by demonic taint were a grisly sight. Carved through from head to groin or across the torso, spilling red or half a dozen other things as their faces remained frozen in ugly rictuses of surprise or anger. My boots waded through blood as I advanced, but other things too - red leaves, grown that as much from autumn as death, stuck to the bottom of my boots. There were precious stones and broken wooden shafts, silks and shattered dreamlike armours. The might of the Court of Autumn had come for the Mirror Knight, and he had massacred it.

Beyond those rested a thing that looked like a twisted afterbirth, hacked into and burned until it was no longer a threat. The remains of a demon, I thought as the lot of us walked through death. There was another, forced into a hole carved in the wall and both stone and corpse were scorched so thoroughly nothing could be glimpsed of the manner of demon it had been, Beyond it a few steps up led us to open steel gates and the last gasps of madness beyond. At the gates, where the Mirror Knight and the Vagrant Spear must have stood and fought, the blackened and scattered remains of another two demons could be seen. It was further in that the fighting still held, past the three stripes of burned flesh that had my heart stirring in unease to look at and the... hole that it hurt my mind to even think of. There I first found the Vagrant Spear, the Levantine heroine named Sidonia, ever barefoot and holding her tall spear as she let loose the occasional small burst of Light from it to prevent the last demon from escaping.

Christophe de Pavanie's face was calm, but his eyes hard. Armoured in polished silver plate from head to toe he was hard for the eye to follow - he was quick, quicker than a man in such heavy armour should be, and the mirror-like plate obscured his movements to even a careful eye. His shield was dazing to look at, a perfect reflection of all it beheld, but it was the sword in his hand that had my hair raising. Whistling softly as it cut through the air even when it did not move, the Severance sliced through a twisted shape of shifting mercury like it was butter. The demon screamed and tried to flee around the hero, but the Vagrant Spear drove it back with a burst of Light. One, twice, thrice did the Mirror Knight strike, his plate burning with radiance as the demon burned into molten remains from the glare of the reflection.

I no longer had to worry about madness swallowing whole the Arsenal, it seemed, which was a relief.

Less pleasing was the fresh peril that the day had brought to my door: if I fought the Mirror Knight, now, I believed I might just lose.