Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) (2 page)

But one thing I had learned long before was to deal with one problem at a time, so I returned my attention to the scene of battle unfolding before us.

The bulk of enemy forces (which were impossible to assess due to the persistent, dark cloud hanging over them) were less than a hundred meters away from the wall now, and there was no telling what strategy they would employ when they arrived. The missile-hurling juggernaut’s head stuck out above the cloud, and it was quite clearly headed for the Main Gate of the Middle Wall. While the towering thing would take a while to reach it, there appeared little doubt that it would succeed in doing so eventually.

Finding no imminent threats, I ran to Aemir’s side where he clutched at a huge gash in his side caused by the flying monstrosity’s bird-like talons. It was a horrible wound, to be certain, which would likely claim his life in a matter of days from infection. Worse, however, was that it would prevent him from fighting effectively if left untreated. He leaned up against the wall, giving me easier access to the gash.

I tore away his layers of shredded clothing. “I told you to wear some local armor,” I growled, “these rags are useless to you in a fight.”

Aemir laughed. “You believe I would fare better wearing plates of metal?” he asked scornfully. “I could not move in that walking tomb; speed is my weapon!”

I would have rolled my eyes if the situation weren’t so ridiculous already. I could move my right arm, but I didn’t want to take the time to remove the focus key from my right hand, so I placed my left hand on Aemir’s wound. I closed my eyes again and focused.

This time was more complicated, as I didn’t have a focus device like the Spell Key to rely upon. But supplying the energy required was much easier since it was a part of the initial spell-casting process. I summoned up the image of the patterns and symbols in my head which would achieve the desired effect, and while the process was slower than the last spell I had used, it was a much simpler effect I desired. Quickly enough, the image of concentric circles coursing with energy surrounded my hand in my mental landscape, and I infused them with what I knew was the proper amount of power, causing them to glow with an almost golden aura.

After the spell structure was complete and stable, I thrust my hand forward onto his wound, and once again the image that had been in my mind flashed into reality just before it disappeared into his wound, which made his entire body glow with a yellowish light briefly. Aemir winced at the effect, which generated a significant amount of heat but within a few seconds the wound in his side was completely closed, leaving him with a mess of bloody clothes but an otherwise intact body.

“Yet again, you have my thanks, Master Mage,” Aemir said graciously as he stood to his feet.

I scolded him with my eyes but I knew it was pointless to argue with him, especially at a time like this. I stood with him, feeling the draining effect of yet another hasty summoning of precious magical energy, but thankfully there was still plenty more where that came from.

Down along both sides of the wall there were flyers—at least a dozen by my count, two of which were battling Magos Antolin, my house’s Master…and therefore, effectively, my Master.

He had erected a similar shield of energy to my own, but in his hand he wielded an off-white staff carved completely out of stone. The blue and red lines of marbling running up and down its length were pulsating hypnotically, with the blue ones flashing more brightly whenever his shield was impacted.

Antolin thrust his staff toward the nearest flyer, and there was a great flash of red light which illuminated the entire field below. For a brief second I could see just how many enemies had come to besiege the castle. They were fewer than I had feared, but far more than I had hoped. I began to run calculations in my head to estimate their number after the brief light had disappeared, and in less than a second I guessed their force to be five thousand; more than enough to bring the castle down if time was with them.

The flyer which had been viciously trying to breech Antolin’s defensive wards was nowhere to be seen after my master’s impressive display, but the second one had not yet abandoned its target. From my vantage point, I could see that it had flown below Antolin’s view in front of the wall, and it looked like it wanted to come up over the wall at the last instant in order to surprise its quarry and catch my Master unaware.

I raised my right arm, wincing at the pain caused by the gesture but even through the pain I used the power of the Spell Key to summon up the great, complex structures necessary to unleash another bolt of raw, magical energy. Something distracted my attention momentarily, and I shook my head to see what it was.

A small figure was leaping along the battlements of the wall, no taller than a child. He carried a spear in his hands which was longer than its bearer was tall, and the little man’s focus was quite obviously on the flyer which had nearly sprung its trap on Magos Antolin.

The little man fearlessly leapt from the wall to intercept the upcoming creature, and his knee-length, shaggy hair flew wildly behind his head as he planted his foot in the metal ‘stirrup’ built into the spear near the tip. His timing was perfect, and the foot-long metal ‘tip’ of the spear sank into the flying monster’s back, causing the creature to spasm as it crested the wall.

The flyer’s momentum was enough to bring it up over the battlements, but not much more. Its left wing appeared flaccid, and it began to spin in the air as it went up and over the wall entirely, taking the small figure with it as it sailed into the space between our wall and the main castle wall.

“Dancer has always had a flair for the dramatic,” observed Aemir dryly as the small figure removed the enchanted spear from the monster’s back and leapt off long before the flyer impacted on the cobblestones below.

I nodded as the small figure managed to assume the same posture with his tightly-gripped spear as he had used to impale the flyer, but this time he stuck the tip of his spear into the cobblestones, apparently breaking his fall enough that he merely rolled away from the spear instead of breaking every bone in his lower body.

“Have to give the little man some credit, though,” I chided before I looked up at where the High Sheriff was stationed on the main castle wall behind us. “He knows his limits; there’s no way he survives that fall without making the most out of Sky Splitter’s powers.”

Aemir nodded reluctantly. “It is not his skills I dislike,” he said as he tested his sword arm, “but the pageantry; battle is not a show.”

My eyes broke from Dancer’s form as he gathered his spear and made for a nearby stairwell and I looked to the top of the Inner Wall. Stationed next to the High Sheriff was the unmistakable figure of Baeld, wearing spiked metal armor which appeared to almost glow in the silvery moonlight. He was over seven feet tall, and had to weigh at least four hundred pounds even without the armor. His massive greatsword, which would have been essentially impossible for any normal man to wield with even both hands, he held loosely in one. His impossibly black skin, which resembled the color of dry charcoal, reflected none of the moonlight which illuminated the rest of the battlefield.

A flyer had gone over our position and made its way directly for the High Sheriff, but Baeld would have none of it. He stepped between his charge and the flyer, lashing out with his massive sword and severing one of the monster’s arms before the flyer’s bulk crashed into him. What ensued was a mighty struggle, and the soldiers atop the inner wall backed far away from the deadlocked titans.

I had heard that Baeld had about as much finesse as a landslide, and that observation was proven more than accurate after a brief struggle. The flyer’s scorpion-like tail lashed about in search of a target before the midnight-skinned giant grabbed the flyer in a bear hug which trapped one of its wings in Baeld’s long, herculean arms. Without warning, Baeld pushed off over the battlements, plummeting toward the cobblestone surface some eighty feet below with the monster firmly in his grip.

The flyer thrashed violently as they fell, stabbing with its talons and tail, but Baeld’s armor protected him from the worst of it. Still, I doubted that his armor would protect him from the fall.

They crashed into the stones, their combined bulk weighing in at an easy half ton, but Baeld was able to keep the monster between himself and the stone surface. The result was a sickening crack of bone being crushed against stone and both figures lay motionless for several seconds.

Impossibly—at least for a normal human, which Baeld could never be confused for—Baeld stirred and slowly stood before turning back to the gatehouse, obviously intent on making his way back up to the High Sheriff’s side. Almost as quickly as he stood away from it, the body of the monster he had driven into the cobblestones transformed into that same thick ooze which seemed to compose everything else we were fighting.

“It would appear that Dancer is not the only one with a flair for the dramatic,” Aemir quipped. “Are all people in these lands so flamboyant?”

With eerie timing, the small, hairy form of Dancer appeared, complete with the short spear which was easily a foot longer than he was tall. “Dancer not dramatic,” he snapped at Aemir, “Dancer Master of Giants and Slayer of Dragons!”

“That was not a dragon you killed in the forest,” Aemir corrected him dryly with a wag of his finger, “it was a snake…with wings.”

“Gentlemen,” I snapped, which thankfully got their attention. “I believe we have bigger things to worry about,” I said with a wave of my hand at the approaching force.

Dancer seethed, and while it’s normally hard to take a four foot tall man seriously, we had all seen just how deadly he could be when the terrain was with him—which it was at that particular moment. Aemir reluctantly nodded before Dancer turned to the wall and, using his spear, vaulted deftly up on top of a short section of it which was almost as tall as he was.

“Incoming!” yelled the lookout again, but I had spotted the incoming missile before he had alerted us to it this time.

This missile was clearly aimed at the area of the inner wall manned by the High Sheriff’s personal force, and it looked like this one might have the angle and velocity to make it. That the next one might actually make it all the way into the inner courtyard, which was filled with the frightened populace of the town surrounding the castle, was terrifying.

The civilians within would be unable to defend themselves against such a monster, and there were too many helpless people packed together to allow the soldiers stationed there to move quickly enough to respond before the death toll skyrocketed.

The black ball impacted on the upper corner of the battlements, creating a shower of stone shards like the one that had happened right in front of me a few minutes earlier. Predictably, the ball turned into ooze shortly after impact and writhed its way up and over the ramparts where it was met by the soldiers stationed there.

There was no panic on the faces of those men, as they had endured several attacks like this one, and they went to work preventing the thing from moving onto the walkway they inhabited. But the monster had closed range this time, and its lashing appendages claimed two soldier’s lives in the first instants.

But they had looks of grim determination on their faces, and they appeared to know that they would succeed in dismembering the thing before it was able to claim further life.

“’Master of Giants’ you may be, but I doubt you could ‘master’ the one out there, Dancer,” Aemir joked with a tilt of his head in the direction of the siege juggernaut. “It is quite large, after all,” he pressed.

Dancer’s eyes had found the target as soon as he had leapt up onto the wall, and without breaking his gaze on it, he shrugged. “Size not matter,” he retorted acidly, “big target make easy target.”

“Jezran!” boomed the amplified voice of Magos Antolin, the sheer volume of which got my immediate attention, to say nothing of the fact that he was clearly demanding my presence.

I quickly made my way toward his position on the battlements, followed closely by Aemir and Dancer. “Yes, Master,” I replied when I made it to his side.

“The juggernaut must be brought down or the gate will certainly fall,” he replied, his voice thankfully reduced to a normal volume. A smirk crossed his normally impassive features before he added conversationally, “How confident are you in your Summoning skills?”

I felt the color drain from my face. I had actually failed to complete the Treaty of Binding with the ‘entity’ whom I had previously engaged in formal negotiations…but I hadn’t told anyone of that failure for a myriad of reasons.

“In truth, Master,” I began hesitantly, “I haven’t quite got those ones mastered.” I really hoped he didn’t ask (or, perhaps a better work would be ‘demand’) that I try anyway. Summoning a supernatural creature into a physical manifestation required a huge amount of power and a commensurate level of concentration, and to date I hadn’t even displayed the skills of a novice in that particular field, forgetting about the fact that I had failed to secure the services of a suitable entity.

Antolin shook his head in disappointment, with his hairless scalp reflecting the moonlight almost as well as a mirror would. “What of your latest Dream Casting?” he asked patiently as battle erupted between a group of soldiers and a flyer less than fifty feet away.

I shook my head. “I haven’t found a way to consistently repeat its effects, Master,” I said bleakly. I knew this wouldn’t go over well later, but it was the truth.

My Master’s eyes narrowed. “We shall discuss your study habits at a later date,” he said darkly, “as well as your apparent affinity with forces you clearly do not understand,” he finished with a nod to the disk-shaped Spell Key strapped to my hand.

I shrugged my shoulders, half indifferently and half despairingly. I really didn’t have time for his cryptic nonsense. I knew he wouldn’t be happy when I used the thing, but what choice did I have? My own talents apparently lay in the realms of Somnomancy and Augury, meaning dream magic and certain divinatory spells, both of which had limited use on the battlefield. My latest attempt at bringing my Somnomancy to a fight had been met with mixed results, and I hadn’t figured out how to repeat even that much yet. I could try it if all else failed, but I wasn’t sure that even if it worked I would survive the experience.