Chapter 24: Immovable Objects
I watch, as Lafleur changes before me. Not simply the corruptions of Sapphire into emptiness, but the protectors changed for the worst, marching together with what is left of my sister. One, two, three, four, and at last five shining lights, five Sapphire souls, five Mavi. Hopeful against hopelessness.
A Scion
Micah
Something was wrong.That was my first and immediate realisation when we at last came in view of the wall surrounding Powell's Square. We'd been travelling far slower than I would have liked, and I knew Delia would have arrived already, despite ours being the shorter journey.
I didn't blame Dee or Nyx. They had to be thorough. But something had been eating at me since we stood in the Aerie and found the bloodleaf missing from the circle of sacred flowers that had survived a millennium despite the goddesses being gone.
Vaelis had been to Greywatch, failed to find what she wanted, and she'd gone to the Aerie. We spent a sevensun just looking for more evidence. Then the moon of travel to what used to be Amber Sands. The two moons to the Black Lakes. The hideous walk all the way to the chasm that separated the marward desert from the eveward plains and valleys.
At every step, I demanded we travel more quickly, but they were certain, set in their ways. Tal was anxious as well, but she'd dealt with Nyx's careful approach and Dee's lax approach to time for too long to fight it.
So we at last caught sight of the wall surrounding Powell's Square, and I knew something had gone wrong.
Half the logs that should've formed an impenetrable barrier around the city were noticeably missing. Smoke still rose from the space like it'd been doused in fire and fear just a few suns prior without a drop of rain between. My heart raced and my skin turned clammy as Devouring soulfire covered my skin. It felt just like that sun five hundred years before, when we found the town levelled and I had to bury the dead.
A warm hand on my shoulder cut through the fierce burning all around me. Nyx. "They'll be okay, Em."
"Can you at least give me half a second to wallow in defeat?" I rolled my eyes as I turned to meet her careful expression.
Dee slipped her arm around mine. "No. But if you're so set on burning Lafleur to ash, I can let you. It'd just reset, and you'd feel like an idiot when you remembered your mistake."
I kissed her cheek. It was like letting my lips touch the universe. "You are insufferable, lovey-dove. Can you at least get us into the city to calm my fears?"
"Fine, Doll," she smiled, pulling me into Nyx's vast shadow, "but remember: you hate this more than you hate my smug attitude."
Deona's shadow walking was like coming up for air from the bottom of the sea, being tossed into the sun during the dark of night, and riding the back of a forest landaax, hanging on for everything you have in you. Every single time, I was nauseated and almost blacked out, but I wouldn't let another Jasmin be lost to the Devouring and its vessels.
She looked around us as I held myself together by a thread. After a few seconds, I could see clearly, and my heart skipped. The town looked like Amber Sands used to, every time the queen tore it to pieces until she snuffed out Mara. Barely holding on, only the loyal and resilient few still around to rebuild, half the houses empty or consumed with fear and death.
I wasn't even certain what we were looking for, and Dee wasn't either, apparently. She ran to the nearest door and began pounding on it. No answer, so she ran to the next. Eventually someone opened the door. A woman about Roisin's age. She looked strikingly similar to Davian.
Their conversation was obscured enough I couldn't hear it, but she gasped audibly at something. Perhaps the knowledge Delia and Roisin had come home?
Dee was at my side instantly, her shadow walking proving again a terror. "Davian's cousin," she said without much emotion. "Surprised I'd ask about 'two dead women', ever more surprised to learn the whole family were alive." She set a hand on my shoulder. "See, Doll. They aren't even here yet. You were worried about n—"
The shriek was unmistakable. We'd seen plenty of them on our journey. Devourers. Coming from the direction of Vaelis's temple. "I don't need to tell you, do I?"
She smiled broadly, took me in her arms, and stepped a second time into the darkness and onto a high cliff near the town. A horde of Devourers was advancing toward Powell's Square. Red flames rained down from the town's watchtower. Below that a massive silverthorn briar spread across the horde's advance.
"They're safe," I said before I spotted a greater terror. Delia and one of the Mavi were surrounded. "I know you're going to hate this idea, lovey-doll, but can you get me into their shadows?"
"I can throw you, but I'm not getting in the middle of that. We need Nyx." She lifted me from the rocks and put cold-flame behind the throw.
Careening onto the battlefield like that reminded me of a small warrior from the town we'd called home before everything went to hells for us. They were a good kid. The world was duller without them, even if it had been four hundred years.
Dee's shadow walking had a particular smell, a taste of copper and salt in the mouth, and a sudden chill as she vanished into the darkness. We only had to hold out until she returned with the others. Then everything would be okay.
A Lumber
Iron
The quake put me off my guard for a moment. Looking back was doom, so I kept fighting. Whatever the lizards were, Delia seemed ready and raring to get into the battle. But she was holding back. Why?When she was taken, I did as I could to take care of Roisin until she and Jasmin left. Nearly as soon, the town was under siege by harder and more intense conscription. A year in, we were overrun with whatever those beasts were, and now at last my prodigals had returned.
I'd fought hundreds in the course of a moon. Thousands since they showed up. And that witch, currently riding one of them, had the audacity to attack me for being 'the wrong one'.
Delia's back met mine. We'd never fought in this position, but it seemed the most tactically sound. I wouldn't argue it. Better to watch each other's backs than to watch each other fall.
"If we die this sun, Delia," I said around deep, laboured breaths, "I'm going to haunt your descendants until Lafleur passes into nothing."
"Well, Mrs. Reed," she was laughing, "I doubt we die this sun or any time soon. Do you see the shadow that just appeared on Ehler's Cliff?"
"Friends of yours?"
The beasts closed ranks around us, and our work resumed, heavy blades cleaving cleanly through the carapaces of the terrible things. Delia kept speaking as we worked.
"One of them brought me back from the dead," she said with a grunt. "Granted, she left me for dead first. But she and your sister were my foundation after I lost everything."
"Everything?"
"I forgot who I was. Didn't even pick up a sabre for a full year." She was up and over my head, turning me about as she made the leap. A mountain of the beasts were stacked up, giving me a moment to breathe as she kept going. "And I destroyed all of Lafleur."
"Now you're exaggerating." The wall fell once I caught my breath, and ever more of the things joined us.
"Am not. You can ask them about it in a second."
"Ask whom?"
In a flourish of darkness and unsettling flame unlike any cold-flame I'd ever seen, a distinctly feminine soul with brilliant fire hair tied back in an ivory ribbon landed beside me.
"Ask them," Delia laughed, still going at the beasts. How did she have so much stamina? How did I? "No time for niceties, but Micah Emera, this is Iron of the Sisters. Mrs. Reed, meet Em and get up here with me."
Whomever the person was, they held an ivory and obsidian warhammer that looked as sleek as themself. After a shallow bow, they began making their way through the throngs of lizard things with broad sweeps of the warhammer.
"Ladies, if you don't mind, follow me. We're going for Vaelis."
Delia didn't stop her work. She just tilted her head in the direction of the newcomer. "Go with them, Mrs. Reed. I need to get back to Roisin."
A Shade
Talia
Micah and Deona vanished into Nyxara's shadow, leaving us behind while we were still a good ways from the city. Well, 'city' might be a season too far for Powell's Square, but it was at least the appropriate genre of description.Nyxara told me she and Micah once visited this place when it was still scorched from the Fiend's rise. I wondered how much of her story was nightmare and how much was true, but Deona confirmed what she could of it, leaving the rest to my imagination.
"Wife of mine," Nyxara said idly, "how long before Deona returns begging for me to join the fray?"
"If it plays out according to Eliana's notes?" I considered for a breath. I had read those notes a hundred thousand times looking for any answer. "We have about twenty minutes. And you cannot go when she begs of you."
"A disappointment, but if it could be helped, it would." She took her warhammer from her back and traced her hand along the haft, Lysandra's old poems still etched deeply into every part of it. "She wrote one I never put into my journal. It was written for precisely this moment. Apologies I never shared, wife of mine."
"Tell me what it says."
"To my sister, for the one who comes after, at the time when the ones who follow stand." Her voice always softened to silk as she read Lysandra's words. A reverence for the past that was undeserved and terribly appreciated.
To my sister, for the one who comes after, when the ones who follow stand.
Trust in those you collect
When Elder Valley would collapse
It is not a warrior they need
But faith
"She was never a very good poet," I laughed, "though to be kind, Old Fleurian was not a poetic language."
"Certainly not." She put a hand around my arm and pulled me into her embrace. "Go to the others. I'm moving to the town. They need what only goddesses can provide."
"And Deona?" I raised a brow before allowing myself to melt into the shadows. I heard her reply as a whisper on a spring breeze.
"Let me worry over that detail."
I arrived to the fight already running. Micah and a woman who looked curiously like Kovar were pushing through the horde. The other woman must be the sister we had talked so much about. Iron. But she seemed more like Lynae than like one with a servant name.
"You are late, sister-in-law," Micah laughed without looking back. "Nyxi know her duty?"
"She does. And we know ours. Are we to neutralise her or kill her?"
"Honest?" A breath. Two. Three. "I don't think we can win unless the Huntress stands before her and proves Lafleur is okay."
"Then why is she on a tower?"
"Because a Huntress must choose to hunt."
I pushed Micah out of the way, letting them breathe for a while as I stepped into the mess and began the work of clearing our path. My hundreds of voidstem daggers awaited hands too happy to hold them once again, and I was not going to deny them the joy.
Precise strikes, just as Roisin had shown us in the Grand Temple. Quick. Efficient. Deadly. Clean.
We would win this time. We stood for once. Together.