Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 6: Chapter 17: Kindling

I stared at the wall for a moment, like a fool, but Catrin was gone.

Not gone. Slipped back into the Wend, and…

“Upstairs. Now!”

My voice came as a harsh bark. Both Mallet and Beatriz, confused at what just happened, snapped to attention as I bulled past them toward the stairs leading up to my quarters. I had my axe in hand, the damp branch grating along my leather gloves. The stabbing pain in my knee barely registered as I stormed up the stair and burst into my office, the two soldiers close at heel.

I entered into a scene of chaos. Penric sat against the wall near the door, his crossbow lying a distance away. He clutched his side, and blood ran through his fingers. Lisette was on the ground as well, unconscious. No doubt Catrin remembered our confrontation with her and Olliard a year earlier, and had known to take the cleric and her binding threads out of play immediately. The young priest had blood running down her neck from a wound on the back of her skull, probably from clipping the table on her way down judging by a red mark there.

Catrin faced off with Emma. My squire stood between the angry dhampir and Hyperia with her saber drawn. The princess remained bound to her chair in the middle of our auratic barrier. Ostanes stood near the window, his hands folded into his sleeves. While he still wore the monkish crowfriar garb, he’d returned to his human form. He glanced at me and offered a grimace, but did not move to interfere.

I took in the whole scene and spoke to the two at my back. “Get Penric and Sister Lisette. Make sure they don’t bleed out. Let me handle her.”

They moved to obey. Catrin clutched her elven dagger, the banesilver gleaming unnaturally in the room’s bad light. It still had Penric’s blood on it. Emma’s sword was a far longer and more effective weapon, but I knew Catrin could be fast and vicious in a fight.

She saw me in the doorway, and a pained expression touched her pallid features. “Alken,” she almost keened. “Just let me do this!”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said as calmly as I could with my leg screaming and two of my people lying in pools of their own blood. “I’ve found another way. To save you, to stop all of this.”

Catrin glanced at the crowfriar. She must have recognized what he was, because her face twisted further. “No. I won’t let you sell your soul for me. You don’t deserve that!”

“I’m not selling my soul to anyone,” I said soothingly, like I would to calm a frightened animal. Even as we spoke, I took a cautious step forward and held out my left hand. “Yith is in your head, Cat. He’s whispering to you, isn’t he? Changing what you see, muddying your thoughts? Listen to my voice and push him out.”

She shook her head, a red tear forming at the corner of her eye. “I can’t. He’s in me, Alken. I can feel him under my skin.”

That made a thrill of terror go through me. An ugly memory flashed through my thoughts, of Kieran’s abused corpse erupting as Yith emerged, wearing the poor boy like a sack.

“He’ll leave if she dies!” Catrin bared her fangs at Hyperia, who stared back with wide eyes. “I know why you won’t. You’re trying to take care of everyone, but they don’t deserve you.”

“Catrin…” Emma adjusted her guard, taking a step to one side to better block the vampire’s path forward. The back of her fine boots almost touched the barrier’s outer circle. “Listen to us. We have this under control already. We’re going to help you, but if you make us we’ll knock you out and tie you up until you’ve cooled off.”

Catrin gave the girl a fond look. “Oh, droplet. I’m glad he has you. You’re good for him, you know? You keep his head on straight.”

Emma nodded, her expression never changing. “Yes. And you are good for him, too. Don’t make us hurt you.”

Mallet and Beatriz had retrieved the wounded. Beatriz dragged Lisette nearer to the door. When she caught my eye, the guardswoman grimaced. I got the message. It’s bad. Penric looked conscious, at least, but he’d taken a bad cut.

I forced myself to focus on Catrin, and took another cautious step forward. Almost in reach now. Just one lunge, and I could grab her and keep her from shifting back into the Wend. She had to move fully into a dark shadow to change location, so all I needed to do was stop her from moving.

But she was fast. Faster than me, especially with my injuries. Perhaps an auratic command? I didn’t have much power still. My spirit would be depleted until I rested and let my body heal.

No time for that.

Indecision, fear, anger, hunger, and a dozen other twisted emotions all writhed on Catrin’s undead features. She bared her teeth, shook her head furiously. “I know! Shut up!”

No one had said anything, but I could guess who she spoke to. “Don’t listen to him, Cat. Listen to my voice.”

Hyperia caught my attention. She threw a pointed look at the candles, and I got the message. She was Yith’s master. With the barrier gone, she could command him to stop.

Or she might just turn him on us and make her escape. Even with her desperate situation, being free and having some power in negotiations would be vastly preferable to her present circumstances.

She was still an enemy. I could talk Catrin down, or subdue her.

Another step. One more, and I could grab her. It would hurt like hell and she’d fight me, but we were so close to ending all of this. Once Ostanes had Yith bound, Lisette could help me purge his mark from Cat’s flesh without the demon interfering.

If Lisette wasn’t dead already. Damn it, how had this all gone so wrong?

“Enough! They didn’t warn me you were a sentimental fool!”

Ostanes moved, striding forward as his flesh peeled and blackened to reveal his true form. “I’m not going back empty handed because of this sickly sweet nonsense!”

He lifted a hand, and a burning sigil flared into scarlet brilliance on his ruined palm. A grim heat filled the air, the stink of sulfur intensified, and I tasted something burnt and metallic in the back of my throat. There were several flashes of sickly yellow light, then chains of black iron burst from the walls at various points. Each had a barbed blade on the end, and they all converged on Catrin like hungry serpents.

“Stop!”

Even as I shouted, I dove forward to tackle Catrin out of the way. A chain carved along my cuirass, leaving a burning hot gash in the metal. Each link of the thing was sharp, and it ground against my armor with an ear splitting screech and showering sparks. But it missed its target, punching into the wooden floor instead. The floorboards began to smoke.

Catrin dodged the others, and me, dashing forward with vampire speed. She caught the crowfriar by the neck, her sharp nails digging into his vertebrae. Her glamour fell away with her rage, and gone was the cheerful Cat I knew. Her skin turned an ashen gray, her lips peeled back from a mouthful of sharp, crooked teeth, and her eyes became blank and red like a fiendish shark’s.

I thought she’d tear into him with those fangs. It was worse. Instead, she vomited on him.

The spew contained some blood, but it mostly consisted of crawling bugs. There were a hundred kinds. Spiders, centipedes, beetles, wingless flies, stranger things I had no name for. Ostanes started to scream, but the shout quickly died under that torrent.

Catrin let him go as she backed away and started coughing. The man sunk to his knees while a living carpet of tiny red monsters swarmed over him. I saw his mouth work once, and a hand lift as though to reach for help.

And from the swarm, congealing from blood and the bodies of those lesser creatures, even collecting scraps of shadow and dust from the walls, the hunched and jewel-eyed form of a nightmare rose up behind Ostanes. Huge enough to nearly scrape the ceiling, with a curled back covered in bristling black spines and multi-faceted eyes that showed our warped faces back at us, the demon let out a dry laugh.

Ah, clever!

But you are weak, Alder Knight.

Wounded.

Four of Yith’s segmented arms, much like the limbs of an arachnid save that they ended in six-fingered hands, grasped Ostanes by his arms and shoulders.

Speak your words, gaoler!

Bind me.

Oh…

Is there something holding your tongue?

Ostanes could not speak. His throat was full of insects, choking him. He’d become a bloody mess under that biting mass, but still lived. Even with his eyes gone, he struggled against the grip holding him.

I took up Faen Orgis and dashed forward, ignoring the pain in my leg. He was in my reach. I could—

Catrin let out a scream, one of her arms twisted sharply to one side, and like a puppet on invisible strings she slashed at me with Shivers. I barely avoided the blow, surprised both by her speed and the sudden attack. The elven blade scraped my jaw, drawing blood but not cutting all the way to the bone.

She slashed again. I knocked the dagger out of her hand with a swing of my axe and it clattered against the wall in a flash of sparks. Catrin stumbled back.

Behind me, I heard a shuffling noise and a gravelly voice. “Down!”

Without thinking I ducked. The heavy twang of a wire string slapping a bolt forward filled the room. Mallet held Penric’s crossbow.

I’d had Lisette use some of our gold powder to bless all the lance’s equipment. The bolt struck Yith in the shoulder, and flared into a pale rose-gold fire. The demon hissed ominously, the sound like a thousand cicadas chirping in anger. To the right, Emma leapt over the ritual circle and slashed at him with her Carreon sword. It glowed a bloody scarlet as her own angry blood gave it a burning edge.

Her technique, improvised by observing how I used aureflame behind many of my attacks, made her sword howl like an iron wraith. She lopped off one of the demon’s bristled arms near the shoulder.

Yith took the still living, half eaten body of Ostanes and used him like a club, slapping Emma away. She went flying, landing against my desk in a heap as her sword tumbled from her hand.

Catrin remained in my way, her limbs twisting horribly as Yith puppeted her. Her eyes were wide with fear as her neck twisted sharply to one side.

“Alken,” she pleaded. “Help me!”

Bloody tears streaked her face. The beetles crawling on her all had wrinkled faces on their shells, and they whispered in terrible little voices, laughing and singing like a chorus of demonic children. Some of them repeated her plea, mocking her. I could hear her limbs creaking. Something snapped, and she let out a choked cry.

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The terror in her voice and the sight of her pain made me hesitate.

Just as Yith knew it would.

It can stop!

With one hand the demon held Ostanes up by the neck, studied him a moment, then extended its proboscis and sank it into his skull. The orkaelin missionary began to deflate as Yith ate him, sucking out his organs like a spider.

He ate the crowfriar’s soul. I watched it happen. The demon suddenly flared with hellfire, and swelled even larger. His voice lost its gleeful, almost childish edge and transformed into something ancient and crooked.

It can stop.

You know how.

Hyperia remained in the ritual circle. She was struggling against her bonds, cursing and spitting, but Penric and Mallet had fashioned a very good chair. Mallet was loading another bolt behind me, but some of Yith’s swarm of insects had reached him and Beatriz. I could hear them shouting at each other behind me, distracted by the need to defend themselves.

Some of the insects were getting close to Penric and Lisette, both wounded and helpless. The old archer saw them and started scrambling back in terror.

Hyperia’s voice suddenly rang out. “Yith Golonac! I command you to stop!”

Apparently, verbal commands still worked even from within the barrier. Yith paused, his enormous body going still. All of the insects halted as well, and a disconcerting silence consumed the room. Hyperia glared at her treacherous minion, more angry than afraid. Her hair was even more disheveled now from her attempts at escape. Insects crawled around the barrier circle, but none passed the outer ring.

“Free me!” Hyperia screamed, her eyes wide and furious, spittle flying from her mouth.

Ostanes was dead. With him went our compromise. I saw it in the princess’s gleaming, almost feral eyes — she would let none of us leave this room alive. Yith was back in her power.

I’d failed.

No, not yet. I could still smite the demon. I just needed enough strength for one, certain blow. With a whispered word, I flared with golden fire and took my axe in both hands. The whispering bugs trying to find gaps in my armor burned away. With Hyperia’s command, Yith stood frozen and shivering, visibly fighting against the order that would ruin all his own hopes of freedom.

When the aureflame wreathed me, Catrin flinched and whimpered. The sight made my heart clench, but I forced myself to focus.

I had a chance.

Emma was starting to rise on the other side of the circle, but she looked dazed.

My steps quickened. Thump, thump, thump. Hard boots over a floor stained by blood and dead insects. One leap, one blow, and this would be done. Just a little more strength, a little more effort. The aureflame seemed dim and came fitfully, but I wreathed my axe in it and for the first time in many years I prayed to God.

I wondered later if that was my mistake. Our God had been gone for centuries, and even if She weren’t She’d probably have hated me.

She was not listening.

The shard of bone sticking out of my knee shifted, and the bright flash of pain that followed made me shout and stumble. I missed my swing, and Yith’s beak snapped out. It carved through my right ear, almost slicing it from the rest of my head. I slashed half-blind, and the demon lost another hand. He reeled back, flaring with the hellish flame he’d stolen from Ostanes.

“Yith! You treacherous bug, stop her!”

The demon and I both turned, and my heart almost stopped as I saw Catrin stepping into the circle. She avoided the candles and white chalk lines with cautious steps. Yith no longer held her limbs hostage.

He couldn’t, I realized. It had to be her choice, or his bonds wouldn’t allow it. Yith shivered, then in a voice mixing both sullen venom and a dark glee he answered his mistress.

I cannot, my lady.

We’d warded that circle against him. Physically, he could not cross it and obey the command.

But Catrin wasn’t a demon.

“Catrin, stop!” I started towards her, but Yith breathed a plume of hellfire at me. I threw up an arm and backpedaled, feeling my armor warm dangerously at the touch of that infernal heat. Yith cackled.

She cannot hear you.

She wants to save you.

Would you like to know who she sees in that chair?

Yith crawled towards me, his buzzing voice a low croon.

I’ve showed her the form your old paramour once took.

Oh, she was pretty!

The leech hid her jealousy well.

Yith rose up to his full height, his crystal eyes now a sulfurous yellow.

But as I once told you.

I crawl in the hollow places.

Catrin took the princess of Talsyn by her hair. Hyperia struggled helplessly to no avail.

I tried to go forward again, not caring if I broke the circle or if Yith’s fire melted my armor to my flesh. A string snapped, and my vision went white for a moment. Caught mid stride, I put too much weight on my left leg and went down with an agonized cry. I caught myself, propped my axe on the floor to keep upright. My right shoulder felt stiff. Glancing back, I saw Mallet on the floor, dead or unconscious. Penric stood above him with his crossbow.

His eyes were empty pits, eaten, his face split with a macabre grin. A red beetle with a face on its shell skittered over his forehead. He brought up the crossbow, another bolt already loaded.

Beatriz came up behind him, her face pale with effort and terror, and swung her pick into the archer’s skull. Like the bolts, it had been sanctified with blessed gold. The possessed corpse spasmed as the creatures inside of it began to burn.

I turned away from the scene.

In the circle, Catrin bent down and sank her fangs into Hyperia’s neck.

She barely took any blood. She bit down savagely, getting a mouthful of flesh, then jerked her head to one side. It took barely the space of a breath, sudden as I might take a hunk of bread off a loaf. Hyperia stared at her killer, shocked, as blood bubbled up through her lips. She was missing nearly a third of her jugular, red quickly ruining her fine dress.

I watched all my hopes of peace drain her life blood onto the floor, the light in her eyes fading out and her struggles ceasing as Catrin held her. I could not see the dhampir’s face with her back to me, but I think she whispered something to the dying woman.

And Yith howled.

FREE!

UNBOUND!

UNCHAINED!

A series of iron shrieks filled the room, and no less than a dozen crimson spears flared to life and struck the bloated fly through from every direction. Emma was standing, one hand on the desk to support herself and the other forming a clawing gesture in the air. She breathed hard, blood trickling down her face.

“I’ve got a new cage for you!” She snarled.

The blood she’d put on her sword had scattered everywhere when she’d swung it before. Clever girl. The spears did form a sort of cage, penning Yith in even as they stuck him in place. But they wouldn’t hold forever. Only so long as Emma’s concentration did.

The bolt in my shoulder grated against a bone when I tried to move. My teeth clenched. I ignored it and my screaming leg and took up my axe.

It was just pain. Just flesh. The only thing I’d ever truly had control over was my own body, and I would not allow it to fail me here.

Just pain. Just weakness leaving.

I’d sworn that I'd send Yith back to Hell.

I’d made an oath of it.

But the fire in me was so dim. The Lindenwurm, and perhaps days on end of fighting and stress, had left me near empty. Once, the Table provided its own constant source of power, a distant ray of sun warming my back where I walked. But it was gone now, broken, leaving me with only a pitiful share of its flame.

But I’d dredged up a great fountain of strength during my battle with Laertes. Where did that come from? Where had it gone?

I’d reached deep then. I did it again, sending my will into the core of my own soul. I barely recognized it. Tuvon’s people had changed me forever, torn my spirit apart and resewn it with golden fire. Touching it hurt. It blinded. It repudiated.

It hated me, because I’d failed it.

No. I felt cool hands on my face, their tips sharp. Warm breath on my cheek where freshly riven wounds were dug into my flesh.

You have to know that I do love you. That wasn’t a lie.

Part of me kept wanting to believe it, just as I’d refused to push Cat away even when it would have been wise. I kept courting the darkness, trying to find…

What?

The Alder’s flame hated me for that, for refusing to let go of that wanting. When I asked for more, it charred me in return. It was happy to be a weapon, to keep me strong and healthy so I could fight, but it would not bestow that gift to others anymore. Whatever embers I’d been left were angry and bitter.

Damn that fire, then. If it would not stir at my direst need, then I would throw kindling onto it.

The room around me was dark, the candles dimmed, the lanterns by the door flickering and sporadic. Catrin was kneeling by Hyperia’s body, sobbing. Beatriz was shouting something. Emma held Yith in place, but with one flex he shattered three of her pikes. She shouted in pain as lacerations tore at one shoulder, the broken magic sending deadly feedback her way. The rest of the shrike spears weakened, white cracks marring the glowing red of their forms.

I needed strength. Aura. There wasn’t enough inside, but…

Where the dark inspiration for what I did next came from, I could not say. Without knowing whether it would work, I focused on the darkness pooling beneath me, much of it from the demon’s swollen presence in the room, and with bared teeth I thrust my axe in.

I didn’t try to find the sinking sense of peace Catrin had taught me. I imbued the weapon with aura, punching into that darkness, breaching it. Immediately I felt the cold of the Wend creeping into my arms, but the aureflame fought it, warming me.

A losing battle. The flame was too weak. I had just enough left to lace my breath with it and speak to the beings who inhabited those hidden paths Catrin had let me touch.

The very same paths my tormentors used.

“You’ve been dogging me for over ten years. Well, here I am. You want this fire?”

I glared into the darkness, and saw something like distant shapes congealing in it. Faces, hands, stretched mouths, grasping fingers.

“Warm yourselves.”

The Dead surged forward in an eager, hungry tide. The breach I’d made into whatever hinterland they were lost in was small, but at their advance reality itself seemed to crack around the edges of that window. The floor beneath me gave way like brittle rock or broken glass.

The darkness solidified, then became something other than darkness. Cold swept into the room like a stygian wind, making the steel covering my body frost and shrink against my frame. Hands, twisted and inhuman, black as the space between stars, clutched at my wrist, my arms, my shoulders, my legs, my neck.

The Alder’s fire reacted to the presence of those damned souls. It flared to life, acting to protect me — and itself — and at its repudiating touch many of the dead balked and retreated.

Again, I commanded them.

“Warm yourselves.”

They howled at me, needful and frustrated at once. The aureflame lashed out, striking a burning line across my jaw. This was not what it was meant for. I grit my teeth and kept my focus.

“Take it. Warm yourselves. Come into the flame.”

Most of the ghosts I’d drawn forward retreated, angry and frightened by the blessed fire. They were drawn to it like moths were, but they could not touch it.

But some — the angriest, the most violent, those who’d been so twisted by rage and madness they no longer looked human — took the risk the rest fled from. With wails and howls and desperate, hungry cries they threw themselves into the fire I offered.

And the flame took them. They added to it, and it surged and roiled, flaring with sudden furious strength.

It changed. It scoured me. It turned from a sullen, molten color into something closer to white gold, then paled more into an eerie, ghostly sheen. I felt that altered flame flow back into me, and…

It did not warm me. It did not light my world and provide surety and strength. It was cold, and desolate.

It was angry.

So was I. We fed one another with our bitterness.

I stood, and lifted my axe.

Yith and Emma both paused their struggle. Emma’s eyes went wide in shock. When I passed Catrin, she shivered and looked up like I’d called her name. Her red eyes turned bone white as they reflected the light, like it drained their color.

I was cloaked in ghostly white flame, a living torch, but I did not light the room. What natural light there was seemed to dim around me, like I absorbed or even repelled it. With every step, the floorboards beneath me cracked and rotted like they aged a hundred years in a moment. Yith’s scarlet insects crumpled into husks where they drew too close.

In the flame, seething voices hissed and whispered. The faces of grinning skulls and fanged animals formed in the flickering tongues around my shoulders, urging me on.

Yith stared at me, and in his reflective eyes I saw myself a dozen times over. Within the blazing torch of ghost flame, I looked pale and gaunt, almost a dead thing myself.

Perhaps I was, but I could only care about one thing then.

What have you done, Alder Knight?

I didn’t answer, just kept walking forward.

This is necromancy.

Blasphemy.

Your own gods will snuff you out.

“Maybe,” I said with the voices of the dead echoing my words. “But you won’t be around to see it.”

The pain in my ribs, shoulder, and leg weren’t gone. It just didn’t seem to matter anymore. I wasn’t even sure it was me moving my own limbs.

Yith rose up to a truly monstrous size, filling my world. His many limbs and hairy, leathery hide cracked and split, revealing a putrid fire within. In four of his remaining six-fingered hands, scarlet blades appeared as he shaped the power he’d stolen into deadly phantasm.

He struck with all four blades at once, like a giant mantis taking its pray. I stepped forward, not entirely by choice, and no longer stood where he’d stabbed. His blades went into the floor, embedding themselves there.

I was right underneath him, both hands on my axe. The wraith fire sank into Faen Orgis. When I swung, the dead howled in unholy triumph. Maybe I did too. Perhaps some of those angry shades had followed me all the way from Caelfall, waiting for the chance to take their revenge.

A burning white line shot through Yith from the tip of his skull to the thorned end of his bloated abdomen, tracing the line of my cut. It burned into the ceiling, the floor, the barricaded window. The boards on the window cracked, rotted, and erupted. The spirits of the damned screamed out of the tower through that breach and announced their vengeance into the storm.

And the storm fell quiet.

Yith collapsed at my feet. The hellfire inside his body dimmed. Shrunken and twisted almost beyond recognition, my foe lifted his head. I could barely see him through the pale, dancing light. Burning shades gnawed on his flesh, eating him like a pack of hungry dogs. Or, more ironically, like insects.

“Ah, look at you. A shadow in truth.”

I lifted my axe and adopted a headsman’s stance, holding the burning weapon in both hands and twisting my body to face the demon sidelong.

“Tormentsister did her work well. The slut is probably touching herself in Hell right now, celebrating this moment…”

His words washed off me like so much air. “You can deliver a message for me to the rest of your kind when you go to your Pit. Tell them that if any show their face in my homeland, I will find them.”

I swung, and took Yith Golonac’s head in one swing. There was a roar, a high keening wail, and the wraith fire became a whirling inferno. It spread, crawling over the floor to form a circle around my feet.

Emma’s voice broke through the blaze. “Alken!”

I turned to her.

The fire closed in to drown me.