Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ven and Eujin stoop on the battlements of the Ferelin temple in Ashmark as the sun set behind them.

They’d arrived not an hour beforehand, barely making it within the outskirts of the city before the poor horse they’d been riding collapsed dead from exhaustion, its body lathered in foam and jerking softly as it breathed its last. The head priest of Ferelin-Shei met them at the door of the temple, and when they presented the writ Torstein had given them, along with a description of what had happened there, his face grew grave and he beckoned them in.

The rate at which the town prepared for an attack was absolutely astonishing to Ven. From the time they’d arrived until now, the entire town had taken refuge inside the temple, nearly a hundred men and women had been armed with pikes and muskets and bows, and all aspects of the place of worship had been battened down, locked up, or braced. By the time the sun had dipped below the horizon, nothing remained but to wait in grim silence, prepared for the worst, as a few volunteer scouts rode out on horses.

Despite all of this preparation, and the fact that Master Eujin was standing beside her, his scarred face as stoic and implacable as always, Ven could not stop her hands from shaking. She tried meditating, but despite her best efforts, she could not clear her mind enough to get herself to calm down. Seeming to notice this, Master Eujin rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be fine, kid. Just stay close to me, alright?” He said.

Ven swallowed hard and nodded.

“It’s going to be just like sparring.” He said. “Once you get into the flow, it gets easier to manage.”

“Alright.” She said, not fully capable of believing him, despite her best efforts.

She turned her attention back towards the horizon line. Then, she saw the scout riding back. She pointed it out to Master Eujin, who nodded and signalled to one of the nearby battle-priests. The man nodded and ran off to alert the rest. The scout rode at a full gallop, and was within the city outskirts within a minute. Even before Ven could understand what the man was saying, he was already calling out something.

Master Eujin tensed next to her, and she turned to look at him.

“What is it?” She asked.

Before he could reply, Ven finally understood what the rider was saying.

“Attack’s coming from the north! Hundreds of wraiths are on the move! To arms! To arms!” He called, riding around the side of the temple.

Ven’s eyes grew huge.

“Hundreds?!” she squeaked.

“So it would seem.” Master Eujin said quietly.

Ven braced herself against the stone battlement in front of her. She suddenly had the overwhelming urge to vomit. She looked out in the direction the scout had ridden in from, and there she saw it. It looked like a thick, writhing black tide rolling inexorably towards them, growing wider and darker the closer it drew.

“Swiving hell…” One of the men on the battlements next to them said under his breath. Another dropped his musket and ran, making it a dozen paces down the length of the wall top before a battle-priest knocked him unconscious with the butt of the pistol in his hand. The priest then climbed atop the crenelation beside him, and called out to the rest of the defenders on the northern wall. From the sounds in the distance, similar orders were being given on the other walls as well.

“First row muskets, hammers back! Don’t fire until you see the yellow of their eyes!” He said. “Second row muskets, standby to fire!”

Master Eujin drew Scarlet Whisper from its sheath, resting it gently by his side. Ven followed suite with her own blade, also pulling the Krin knife from its thigh sheath into her free hand. Something low and deafening loud thundered from somewhere nearby, causing Ven to flinch. She looked in the direction of the noise to see a large cloud of smoke wafting away from a large swivel cannon mounted in the temple’s belfry. The shell it fired screamed through the air before landing in the midst of the approaching horde. It exploded in a blinding flash of fire, sending a shower of limbs and bodies skyward from the impact.

“Are you ready, kid?” Master Eujin asked.

“No.” Ven said quietly.

He looked down at her and gave her a crooked grin.

“That makes two of us.”

He looked out at the rapidly approaching mass of wraiths as the first musket volley fired all around them.

“When they get close, I’m leaving the walls.”He said. “I want you to follow me.”

“But why would you leave the walls?! The point of walls is to use them!” She protested.

Eujin laughed.

“You’re not wrong. But you and I are far more use to these people down in middle of those things than we are just standing here waiting for them to come. And if we’re going to get a second chance at Sevastian, we’re not going to get it by playing safe.” He said.

Ven hated to admit it, but she knew he was right, on both counts. She swallowed hard again as the second volley of muskets fired.

“Alright.” She said. “I’m with you.”

They watched as the tide shifted from a shapeless mass of black punctuated by glowing yellow dots into distinct, twisted creatures, each which ran, crawled, or flailed inexorably towards the temple.

“Alright, here we go!” Eujin said, hurdling over the battlement in front of him and off the wall.

Ven took a deep breath and jumped after him

Here goes nothing!

The two of them landed hard on the ground a couple dozen feet below, just in time for the first of the assault to arrive. Master Eujin flew into a blur of activity, Scarlet Whisper a singing aura of death as he waded into the ranks of the wraiths. Ven’s mind froze as the first of the monstrous creatures reared up before her, and without thinking, she willed the dagger in her hand into action as she dove out of the way of the creature’s scythe-like claws. The blade found the beast’s eye, and it shrieked and stumbled as the weapon burrowed through it and tore out the back of its head in a jet of black ichor. On instinct, Ven sprang to her feet and followed through with her sword, carving deeping into the wraith’s leg and sending it sprawling to the ground. With a leap, she sailed onto its torso and buried her blade deep into the monster’s chest. It wheezed and jerked before falling limp, and she leapt from its corpse just as another one of the things set upon her.

Ven grabbed another pair of knives with each hand from sheaths across her chest and pulled them free, sending them flying to join the other in the air. The five blades whirled around her in a blur, cutting and stabbing at the wraith as she charged at it, her fear now totally subsumed behind countless hours of practice. The beast swatted helplessly at the knives as they tore great gashes in its body and limbs, too distracted by them to stop her from lopping its head clean off with one powerful stroke.

One by one, the two of them cleaved their way through the hoard, leaving an ever-widening trail of black bodies and black blood behind them. It seemed like, for a brief moment, they might actually have the upper hand in this fight, that everything was going to work out okay.

Then, in a cacophonous eruption of fire and noise, the belfry of the tower exploded behind them, sending a shower of massive stone bricks skyward. Ven and Eujin both turned in unison to see a dark shape floating in the air above it, vast jets of Thaumaturgic energy pouring from each of his hands. It was Sevastian, a pair of vast, bat-like wings keeping him aloft as he tore the temple apart with magic like it was no stronger than the shell of a hen’s egg. He laughed maniacally, fully in the throes of Thaumaturgic ecstacy, and fell into a dive where he disappeared out of view inside the now-shattered sanctuary of the temple.

Ven’s blood ran cold. She had never seen such a ridiculous display of power, even from Master Eujin. She hadn’t even known such a thing was even possible. She turned to Master Eujin, who for the first time since she’d even known him looked actually afraid.

“What is he?” She asked, dodging another wraith’s attack as her swarm of knives cut it down.

“He’s an Yyshani.” Master Eujin said. “I always knew he had the blood in him somewhere, but I never… I didn’t know he was full-blooded….”

She came over to stand beside him. The rest of the wraiths, seemingly commanded to rush in to follow Sevastian, left them be.

“What’s an Yyshani?” Ven asked.

“The Yyshani created Thaumaturgy.” Master Eujin said grimly. “The reason blightwraiths happen, the reason they look the way they do, it’s because the magic was never designed to be used by any other race. The magic corrupts other races because it warps their bodies to take on Yyshani traits. That’s why they turn black, and why they get yellow eyes. But pure-bred Yyshani, they don’t get brands. They get the ecstasy, but they never lose their minds, Ven. Their bodies can take on wraith attributes, but they control what they are, and they decide when they go away.”

The blood drained from Ven’s face.

“Oh swive…”

Master Eujin took a deep breath.

“Prepare yourself, kid. This is going to be so much harder than we imagined.”