Duskfall (58 page)

Winter heard the beginnings of a rumble in the monster’s chest as it swiped at Astrid, faster than Winter could blink, and the girl careened across the room into one of the huge marble pillars. It burst, crumbling into hundreds of pieces.

Astrid stood, shakily, but if the monster could do such a thing to her, what hope did any of them have?

“In the name of the emperor, we command you to cease!”

Winter looked behind her. The doors to the chamber opened, and almost two dozen Reapers marched in. As they saw the creature by the throne, the soldiers froze.

“What in Oblivion…?” Winter heard one of them mutter. But, to their credit, they moved quickly into formation. They drew their bows.

For a brief moment, the only sound was Knot’s footsteps as he ran towards Winter. The Reapers kept their bows drawn, aimed at the Outsider. The creature slowly shifted its gaze from Winter to the Reapers, black eyes gleaming. Then the Outsider’s maw opened wide and it screamed, loud enough for Winter to cover her ears and cringe.

“Fire!” one of the Reapers shouted.

Knot reached Winter just as the first volley struck the beast. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Winter stared at him hollowly. Of course she wasn’t all right. Lian had just died. She had just experienced… she couldn’t even think about what had happened in the dark. And now a monster she could not have imagined in her wildest nightmares was looking at them like a hungry child looked at freshly baked cherry tarts.

“I’m fine,” Winter said.

The Outsider screeched as the Reapers’ arrows struck. It stamped its feet in anger.

“Liar,” Knot said.

“Complaining never helped anyone,” Winter said. Despite her promise, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the pouch at Knot’s waist. Still there. Still full of
faltira
. If she could just have one crystal, she might be able to help…

“No, Winter. We can get through this without that.”

Then Knot smiled. He turned to face the Outsider. “Besides,” he said. “I think I’ve learned a few things about myself in the last few days.” He nodded at the Reapers. “Hopefully we can use them to get out of here.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Winter turned to see Astrid limping towards them. She looked tired, but other than her limp mostly uninjured.

In the distance, the Outsider leaped from where it stood by the throne, traveling nearly two-thirds the length of the chamber to land amidst the Reaper formation.

Winter swore. The creature had leapt at least fifty rods. The thing crashed into the Reapers with a screech, scattering them, but the soldiers recovered quickly and attacked, hacking away with their weapons while a few of them hung back, firing arrows. With each swipe of its long claws, with each whip of its tail, the Outsider incapacitated more and more soldiers. The Reapers screamed, at first in bloodlust, but soon the screams turned to panic, and soon, too soon, they were silent. Crushed armor, broken weapons, and bloodied bodies were all that remained.

“So much for our distraction,” Astrid muttered.

The Outsider picked up one of the bodies at its feet with a massive claw and lifted the Reaper, stuffing the man into its maw. Metal and bone crunched and screeched, and in seconds the Outsider swallowed what remained of the man. Winter watched as a bulge sank down the thing’s snakelike body. Then, the Outsider’s head swiveled along its neck, and, once again, it looked directly at Winter. Winter saw the blood on the thing’s claws, on its teeth. She saw the way its huge mouth turned up. She could have sworn it was smiling.

“I can handle this,” Knot said.

“You’d better do it quick,” Astrid said. “I think another one’s coming.”

Winter’s eyes widened as she turned back to the strange portal. Astrid was right. Another form dropped to the floor, and as the shadows coalesced they formed another Outsider, similar in form and size.

Knot stepped forward. “Astrid, hold off the new one. I think I can kill the first, but I need time.” As Winter looked at him, she realized that he was suddenly… different. More in control. Despite his bruises, his filthy clothing, he looked calm.

“I’ll do what I can,” Astrid said. Then, she sprinted off towards the new Outsider.

Winter was about to ask what she could do when she saw, in the distance, the Reaper’s discarded weapons rising around the Outsider. She blinked. For a moment she feared that it was some sort of magic that the creature was using, but as a sword slashed through its thigh and a spear embedded itself in the thing’s shoulder, Winter knew.

Canta rising. He did it.

Knot had remembered how to use psimancy.

The Outsider screamed as a mace smashed into its jaw. Then its gaze shifted from Winter to Knot.

It knows
, Winter realized. It could sense psimancy, somehow. It knew what Knot was doing. But it was too late. The Outsider had already been wounded heavily by the Reapers; blood dripped from dozens of wounds. Knot sent weapon after weapon into the creature, slicing through the thing’s hide, crushing bone and muscle.

Winter sensed, almost immediately, that her own psimantic power was greater than what Knot was using at the moment. She couldn’t help but sense it, just as she couldn’t help but feel the compulsion to suddenly reach for Knot’s pouch and take the frost. She resisted.

While Knot did not appear as powerful as Winter, the
subtlety
with which he used telesis, the intricacy of the patterns, the continuous motion of each of the objects he controlled, was incredible. A weapon that Knot held in one
tendron
suddenly flew forward, slicing straight through the Outsider, and was caught on the other side of the creature’s body with another
tendron
only to be flung back through the Outsider again. At the same time, almost a dozen other
tendra
hacked and slashed and stabbed as the Outsider screamed, fighting a dozen invisible foes. Winter could not see the
tendra
, of course, she could barely sense them, but as she watched she could imagine their patterns.

It was beautiful.

With one final moan, the Outsider fell to the ground. The floor shook.

Astrid screamed. Winter turned. The girl was darting around the second Outsider, avoiding blow after blow, leaping over the thing’s tail, sliding underneath its heavy footsteps.

“There’s more!” Astrid shouted.

Winter looked at the twisting shadow-portal above the throne, where two more dark forms emerged, taking form as they fell. One of them had two sets of horns on either side of its head.

Winter’s jaw set.

“Get me one of the bows and a quiver,” Winter said. “I can help.”

Knot hesitated, then nodded. A bow and quiver veered through the air towards her, and Winter caught them.

“Stay back,” Knot said.

Winter nocked an arrow to the bow. She watched as Knot gripped his sword, a dozen bloodied weapons seemingly flying through the air around him as he sprinted towards the monsters.

* * *

At first the power had been invigorating, cleansing in its pure burn. It had come easily, as if by instinct. Knot suspected that when he had broken whatever barrier Kali had woven around him the night before, in the fountain square, he had somehow opened a gate for his telesis. He had sensed his power easily since that night, except in the presence of the Ceno monks. And he, or at least his instincts, remembered.

Knot rushed towards the Outsiders, pushing his
tendra
ahead of him, watching as the weapons plunged through the second Outsider that Astrid faced. All fifteen of the weapons carved straight through the creature, bursting through in a bloody mess on the other side. The beast wavered on its thin, sinewy legs, then crashed to the ground.

Two down
.
Two to go.

“More coming through!” Winter shouted behind him. “We have to close the portal!”

Knot glanced at the shifting blackness. Four more shapes—
four!
—fell to the floor. Knot took a ragged breath. He could sense something there, around the portal. Something familiar, but he was not sure what.

Knot dodged, rolling to the ground, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a large claw. Immediately Knot gathered his
tendra
and sent them at the creature, a bloodied weapon held in each. The Outsiders shrieked and howled all around him. They were all similar in appearance, with small variations—one had long, curved horns, another’s claws were far larger than the others’, another seemed to have some kind of bone armor growing from its hide. The marble floor shook at their footsteps. Knot slashed at the arms of one of the Outsiders with his sword, severing the thing’s claw at the wrist. The monster screamed, but only for a second. Astrid leapt into the air, landing on its hunched back, and plunged her fist—and the length of her entire arm—into the back of the thing’s head. The monster went limp as Astrid leapt again, only to be swatted in midair by an oversized claw and sent flying across the throne hall into another pillar.

And then, something changed; a shift, a slight change in the air. Knot wielded fifteen different
tendra
at once, advancing on the four Outsiders that had just dropped from the blackness.

He needed to close the portal. Something nagged at him, something familiar, but he had no time to think. It was something about his
tendra
, something he should remember. Something about a connection.

Before any memory could emerge, the whole world went silent.

One minute he could hear the screeching of the monsters, the whispers of his weapons slicing skin and scraping bone, the sound of his own breath popping in his ears. Knot had just begun to hear another sound, a great, deep roar, far louder and far deeper than the screeches of the Outsiders, as another shape—larger than all the others—formed in the portal. In one moment, Knot heard all these sounds. The next, there was nothing. No sound at all.

The change caught him off guard and he hesitated. And Knot knew, the moment he hesitated, there would be a consequence.

A massive claw struck him, and then Knot was flying through the air. The blow must have been glancing—he fell to the marble quickly and slid to a stop. Shakily, Knot rose to his feet, trying to retain control of his
tendra
. His weapons had been carried with him, as if he had been holding them in his hands. He advanced on the Outsiders once more.

He needed to close the portal, but the new shape, far larger than any of its predecessors, was already tumbling to the marble floor with a great crash. Cracks spread from the point of impact. Still, he kept fighting, using the power that surrounded him, enveloped him, burned through him. His chest and bones vibrated, and despite not being able to hear, Knot knew the huge creature coalescing beneath the portal, growing larger and larger, had roared once more.

Another shift, this time to his entire body. He had no control over his limbs. Knot went limp, falling to his knees, head lolling. He felt so empty, so hollow. There was nothing inside of him.

But he could still see, so he still fought. His physical limbs were nerveless, but his
tendra
obeyed. He attacked the Outsiders instinctively with his
tendra
, but there was nothing he could do against this many. Out of the corner of his eye Knot saw Astrid rushing towards the Outsiders again only to see one vault across the room and land on top of her. Another Outsider leapt against a pillar, propelling itself downward, crushing into the Outsider that was already on top of Astrid.

Knot wanted to shout, to scream and warn her, he wanted to help her, but his
tendra
were already occupied fighting off three more of the creatures.

There was nothing he could do.

In a burst of bright blood, Knot saw a shape dart straight up, through the abdomen of one of the Outsiders and through the thigh of the other. Astrid sailed through the air and landed in the distance, covered in gore.

Suddenly Knot’s body shook, convulsing, and he thought he was dying for a moment until his head lolled to the side and he saw that Winter was shaking him. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her mouth moved, she was shouting, but Knot heard nothing. Behind Winter, a dark form towered above them both, taller by far than any of the Outsiders that had yet emerged.

And then, blackness.

* * *

Winter had sobbed when she saw Knot fall. One moment, he had been fighting, winning, it had seemed, and the next one of the monsters had thrown him across the throne hall.

“We’ve lost,” Winter whispered, crouching over him. “We are lost.”

At least three of the Outsiders still remained, closing in on Astrid. The portal was still open, and the huge shadow that had fallen from it moments ago now rose up, rumbling a low, sustained growl. Winter looked up. The monster towered as tall as the pillars that held up the massive dome. Huge legs, thicker than the pillars themselves, loomed to either side of Winter. Four more limbs, legs or arms, Winter was not sure, planted themselves around her, and the ground shook. The massive monster’s jaw gaped, as large as the first Outsiders that had emerged. The creature’s slow-forming, deafening roar pulsed in her chest. More Reapers rushed into the room, but Winter knew they were running to their deaths. If two dozen of the soldiers could not handle one of these creatures, it would take an army to even injure the massive monster that towered above them.

Winter looked down. She could not believe it. She couldn’t believe it would end this way, that it—

There, at her feet, was the pouch of
faltira
.

Winter had made her choice, she and Knot had made it together, and she had chosen not to take it. She had
promised
not to take it. And, looking down at the pouch, Winter truly didn’t want to. She remembered seeing in a way that was completely outside of herself what she had become. The woman lying in blood and vomit in the alley. The woman jumping out a window. The woman who had betrayed those she loved, forgotten all but the
need
. Winter knew what it had done to her, what it had done to her friends. She hated the drug. As much as she loved it, as much as she craved it, she hated it even more.