“Fuck you.”
“You know what these things are. How does it work? Do they have their hosts’ memories?”
“Some, I guess.” Keltis shook his head. “They aren’t the same people afterward. That’s why they take people no one will miss—homeless kids, prostitutes, beggars, and what have you.”
Maddox considered this. “Why did they try to take me? I’m an Archwizard and people might notice if I started acting strangely. And why all the murders if they want to keep a low profile?”
“The fuck should I know?” Keltis said.
Maddox drank from the bottle. The wine had a hint of blood from Keltis’s nose. Maddox winced and tossed the bottle to the floor. “Whatever. Why didn’t you report this to the Investigator?”
Keltis cast a steely gaze. “They paid me, better than I could earn working the presses or digging in the mines. Do you blame me?”
Maddox shrugged. “Yeah, kinda.”
“Must be nice being you,” Keltis retorted.
“How many of them are there?”
“They’ll kill me. By the Host, I’ve said too much already.” He looked frightened.
Maddox put his hand on Keltis’s broad shoulder. “Like they killed Lawrence?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“I promise you. Nothing bad will happen.”
That was probably the worst thing Maddox could have said because, exactly on cue, a scream erupted from the other side of the Atrium. Sword flew through the air as the curly-haired girl flung him like a ragdoll toward the broken railing above them.
“Fuck me,” Maddox said.
T
WENTY-
T
HREE
Battle Buddies
S
WORD
Oh, I’d rather be a sword than a lacy dress
Because they offer no protection
I’d rather be a sword than a romance book
Describing men’s erections
I’d rather be a sword than a petticoat
Because they go out of fashion.
And I’d rather be a sword than a sausage link
Because they’re no good for slashin’
With a heave and a ho
and a thrust and a blow,
all the heads will roll,
and the bell will toll.
I’m a big-ass fucking swooooord.
—VERSES FROM SWORD’S BATTLE SHANTY
MERE SECONDS AGO,
Sword had been having a pleasant chat with Samantha. They were talking about their kids. Sword had had a family once. His host had been a farmer with a beautiful wife. They loved each other. He had a son, whom he named Son. When the farmer died, the son became Sword’s wielder. It was a pleasant interlude in a life filled with pain and loss. He shared this fact and gently prodded for information.
Then he was soaring through the air after Samantha picked him up and tossed him overhead toward the upper balcony. He processed this, the trajectory, the momentum. It would hurt a lot if it didn’t outright kill him. Nothing to be done about it, he supposed.
He stopped in midair. Below him, Maddox, bless his troubled soul, had caught Sword with his seal, arresting his movement. From his vantage point, he could see Keltis and Maddox sitting on the couch having a heart to heart.
“Nice save.”
Maddox nodded. “I’m an Archwizard, remember?”
Samantha pulled a dagger from her boot and chucked it at the Archwizard with great force. Sword tried to warn Maddox, but the knife hit before words could form. It clanged against the barrier of Maddox’s Warding Seal, ringing out like a gong. Maddox still stumbled back from the impact, and Sword dropped to the ground.
He landed on his feet and absorbed the fall. He drew his blade.
Samantha charged toward them.
“This has a really simple counterattack,” Maddox observed.
“Go for it.”
Samantha lifted in the air, legs still kicking, and hung there. The expression on her face was a mixture of shock and frustration as she flailed against the invisible force holding her aloft. But with nothing to grab onto, she was basically neutralized. Simple, but effective.
“All that strength…” Sword tsked.
Maddox nodded. “In such a light, liftable body.”
“She might have a ranged attack,” Sword cautioned.
Samantha, resigned to her elevated position, smirked. She parted her lips and let fly the worms. Putrid twitching tentacles burst from her throat. Maddox was ready for her. He called a wine bottle to his hand and splashed it on the tendrils. Their slimy flesh burst into smoke, and they retracted. Samantha convulsed as a chorus of keening wails emerged from her ululating throat.
“Yeah,” Maddox said, “we know about that.”
“Then you know we are never alone,” she said.
Sword readied his blade.
The walls and pillars around them throbbed like a living organ. Above him, the doors to the rooms rotated like massive dials, and the building seemed to grow an additional story. The walls pulsed with dull red veins of glowing light as the open section of the Atrium sealed shut.
“It’s a glamour,” Sword said.
“No shit,” Maddox replied.
“Thousands and thousands of years we’ve lived beside you,” Samantha said, “repurposing the bodies of those you discard, reveling in the sensations you deny yourselves. Did you think we learned nothing of the Old Magic in our time? The Harrowers whisper to us.” She emitted an ear-splitting shriek that was in no way the product of a human throat.
One by one, all the doors in the Palace opened. A couple dozen extremely attractive men and women sauntered out, stretching their limbs as if just waking from a nap. They wore revealing outfits of every description: from lace bodices to elaborately configured leather harnesses.
Sword brandished his blade, dug his feet into a fighting stance, and yelled something he had said only three other times in his five hundred years. “Run!”
He covered Maddox as they turned to bolt toward the door—only it wasn’t there. A plain wall, an oak credenza with a vase of flowers, and an oil painting of a duck stood where the exit should have been.
Sword whipped around as one of the Proteans ran up behind him, arms outstretched. They were tremendously strong and favored close quarters. He tried to think how he could use that to his advantage, so he executed a strike against his attacker’s muscular, hairy legs. He was sharp enough to sever one at the knee as he danced aside.
Maddox backed toward the wall and flung his hands like he was being attacked by invisible bees. Mages called the superfluous use of hand gestures “orchestrating.” It supposedly helped with focus. Proteans flew into the air and crashed down as Maddox tossed them. They stood, pulled out whatever broken furniture had impaled their bodies, and calmly resumed their attack.
“Keep them off me!”
Sword had to parry and weave through the closest ones as Maddox flung them away. If Sword could risk it, he cut off a hand or an arm. One touch from these things meant near instant death. Soren’s body in its current state was quick and healthy, nearly the equal of a Patrean foot soldier.
He realized, with some horror, that they didn’t feel pain. It made them clumsy combatants at least. They casually recovered and reattached their severed limbs, which were riddled with writhing purple worms. They didn’t even bleed that much, making them extremely durable. Decapitation worked best.
He swung his blade in a broad arc and took off three heads in one perfect swing.
“Wooo!” he shouted triumphantly.
He had taken down five. Another twenty remained.
Sword licked his lips. “See, buddy? I told you if you stick with me—Incoming!”
It was only a matter of time before these things switched to throwing shit. A busted chair hurtled through the air toward him, and he swatted it with his sword. Bad idea. The chair splintered apart, but the force knocked his own blade into his forehead, chipping bone and creating a nasty gash.
“Use my Warding Seal!” Maddox called out.
Sword hated resorting to magic, but he didn’t have any good way out of this fight. He invoked the barrier as a small table with an ornately hand-carved base flew at him from the left. It exploded into pieces against the barrier, but the recoil sent him stumbling back. He felt the pool of magic drain from him noticeably.
“Find us a way out of here!” Sword called to Maddox.
Sword charged into the thick of them, blade whirling in his hand. They couldn’t hit him if he had cover from friendly targets. It wouldn’t buy much time, but he’d gone out in bigger blazes of glory than the present one. He slashed in every direction. Thrusting was useless.
There were too many to properly avoid. Hands gripped his arms and shoulders, pinning him in place. They squeezed, sending the pain of dozens of stress fractures screaming through his body. He was thrown to the ground, and a tall dark-skinned man straddled his stomach. The Protean leaned in for a kiss, but Sword knew what was coming. He couldn’t move, and his blade was pinned.
Sword clamped his mouth shut as the worms extended from his assailant’s mouth. The worms, Sword noted, were also incredibly strong and easily forced their way past his lips. Maddox was shouting something, but it was hard to hear as the creatures slid down his throat and esophagus.
It didn’t feel unpleasant. In fact, he wanted more of it. Reflexively, he returned the kiss, craning his neck to meet the man’s mouth like a lover. Now it was the Protean’s turn to recoil in horror. Soren’s incubus body flowed with raw power. He felt his scrapes and bone fractures heal as he worked his hand free from the ones that held him. The bodies weren’t magical, but the worms inside were dripping with raw biomancy.
He drank it all. Protean worms dissolved into a stream of raw purple energy, which he drank. The man slumped forward, an empty husk of warm skin around a skeleton.
Sword laughed. “I want more.”
Drunk on stolen theurgy, Sword willed his captors into the air, flinging them toward the ceiling. He glanced over to Maddox who was being held, arms twisted behind his back, by two women in matching red lace. His face looked bruised.
Sword stalked toward them as seven Proteans fell back to the earth behind him. He cracked his neck and readied his sword.
“Not another step forward or they rip his head off,” a voice called out from the balcony. He turned to see the manager, Sybil, standing above watching the battle. Her dark features showed no emotion.
“Sybil,” Sword said, wiping his mouth. “You have no leverage. Maddox can’t die. And I don’t think I can either.”
“Ow!” Maddox winced as one of his captors twisted her thumb into his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean I like doing it.”
“You invade our home and murder our hosts. Why?” she asked.
“You killed me.” Sword leveled his blade tip toward her. “You killed him and you chucked us into the slave pits to rot. Your people perpetrate killings across Dessim. Lawrence was your employee and you sewed his face on the back of his head. Don’t talk to me of ethics.”
Sybil pleaded, “Those people were chosen for a higher purpose by the Seedmother. It selects but a handful every hundred years. How does that compare to the murder that happens every day of your own people due to war or starvation?”
Sword shrugged and said sarcastically, “You raise a very valid point. It’s still a shitty thing to do, and in this case, it’s also illegal.”
Sybil continued, “We are not violent creatures. It is the vessel that becomes violent when bearing the Seedmother. We need your bodies to exist in this world your ancestors created, a world that was once ours. The madness is vexing, but it is from that madness that a future for all generations will be born.”
“In the stomach of a crazy person.” Sword chewed those words, bobbing the tip of his blade slightly.
“That is an ugly,
human
way to put it, Soren.” She turned.
Maddox piped up, “Hey, here’s a crazy thought. Why not just lock your lunatic up somewhere so he, or whatever, can’t go on a murder spree?”
Sybil smiled. “The madness, as you call it, comes from your human biology just as it did for the Harrowers when Achelon brought them through. But the Seedmother’s vision has brought us Soren and a human immortal. With these tools we can raise the Harrowers and reclaim the world that was taken from us. The path is clear.”
She didn’t know the half of it. Sword had shared Maddox’s head for the better part of the past year. He knew Maddox had seen visions of magic capable of doing exactly that. A second Long Night led by a cult of worm fanatics promised to be just as bad as the first one, if not worse. Coming here with Maddox might have been a bad idea.
Sword planted his feet and readied his blade. “You serve the Harrowers? That’s not going to happen as long as I exist. I am the Valor of Crigenesta, the Vorpal blade of Arrix, and the Sword of Saint Jeffrey. I stood against Vilos in the battle of Bamor and defeated him.”
“So… it is the blade that gives you your defiance,” Sybil mused. “A blade can be taken and the Harrowers’ great enemy eliminated. What remains is flesh… which is pliable.” She raised her hands slowly above her head and outstretched them quickly.