That elf is crazy.
Cyrus ran on, encouraged by the realization that there was, at least, some help. He reached the front of the line, nearing panic, and had his sword in the wrong hand to even strike a blow at the last t.i.tan as he breezed past, running on air. Instead, he caught the nape of the helm, the flowing bit of steel that protected against attacks to the back of the wearer"s head. He slapped its edge as he went by, knocking the helm forward. The front, normally designed to rest on the t.i.tan"s forehead, fell down to cover his eyes as Cyrus ran past, not stopping to deal a deathblow.
He paused as he looked down at the spectacle below. A wave of emotion hit him as large as the t.i.tan advance, relief of a sort that was as unexpected as any t.i.tan ambush.
Vara was attacking the knee of a t.i.tan below, the one he"d blinded, holding back the advance on this front. The t.i.tan stumbled, all those behind him halted as they b.u.t.ted against his back. Cyrus moved with fleet feet, avoiding the inevitable fall of the creature. It was still blinded by his handiwork as it came down to its knees, and Vara leapt to finish it with a practiced cut across the throat.
Others were coming to the side, though, and this was the most surprising sight of all, Cyrus thought. Fortin held that line, somehow having cut through under the ranks of the t.i.tans to Vara"s side, with another standing just behind him. Andren stood in the rock giant"s shadow, a short sword in his hand and a wary look on his face. When he saw Cyrus he waved quickly with the sword, beckoning him down.
"Looks like you"ve got it under control here," Cyrus said as they backed closer to the arena wall. The tier above them was empty in the Emperor"s box, and Razeel"s corpse was off to the side, still headless. Terian was right; no healer can fix that.
"Don"t use it as an excuse not to help!" Vara cried as a t.i.tan fell next to her, tripped by the corpse of her last kill. She buried her blade in its temple, and it roared, so she struck it again. This time it fell silent and stayed that way.
"Do you need a healing spell?" Andren asked, waving a hand at him. Light danced from his fingers and a curious tingle ran over Cyrus"s body. "Just in case."
"I"m fine," Cyrus said, turning to face a roaring t.i.tan as it leapt over the fallen bodies of the last two comers. When it landed, Cyrus found himself face-to-breastplate, as inopportune a place to be as any, so he ran higher as he saw Vara go low, spearing it with her sword in the side of the hip while Cyrus distracted it and drew a furious backhand that missed him so closely the wave of air that followed in its wake spun him around, disorienting him.
When he came back around, Cyrus swung at the face lunging toward him. He caught it below the eye with Praelior, withdrew the sword, and went back again, this time at the eye itself. Landing it prompted a howl, and the t.i.tan started to sink. Cyrus planted his blade squarely in the middle of the forehead as it dropped. It moaned like a troll as it died, falling backwards, probably breaking its knees as it folded over.
"This is getting out of hand!" Vara shouted as another came forth. Cyrus was too quick for this one, however. He went for its face; it flinched and started to dodge back, dragging its head away and leaving its beefy neck exposed at a forty-five degree angle. Cyrus swung and was rewarded with the familiar splash of red spray and the t.i.tan fell over exactly like its comrades.
The battle.
Oh, Bellarum, the battle.
Perhaps I have missed this.
As the t.i.tans before him scrambled over the growing mound of their own dead to mount another attack, Cyrus used the spare seconds to look back toward the entry to the arena. The tunnel still seemed jammed with the Army of Sanctuary, but hints of the war that must have been going on out in the city beyond were suggested by the ripples of motion through the forces Cyrus could see.
He caught a glimpse of Larana weaving through the air still hurling spells, and Curatio standing his ground, a bright blaze of lightning blasting from his fingers, rendering his face in flashes of white. "What the h.e.l.l, Curatio," Cyrus muttered. "Not even trying to hide it anymore."
There was a roar from within the tunnel, and Cyrus watched a thousand bright lights flash into existence. It took a moment for his mind to interpret what he was seeing. Wizard teleportation orbs? The flashes of the spell energy taking hold as people seized the orbs and disappeared in a burst of light began a moment later and ran through the tunnel. It seemed to move in lines, until the entirety of the army up to the corps fighting around Curatio disappeared.
"What the-?" Cyrus breathed, blinking in astonishment. I didn"t call the retreat! What"s going on here?
t.i.tan feet appeared at the farthest reach of the tunnel that Cyrus could see, following fast behind a small figure running at top speed ahead of them. Cyrus noted the flash of robes and realized it was Ryin, sprinting with an alacrity Cyrus was not used to seeing from the druid, the hem of his robes whipping behind him. He did not stop until he reached the knotted circle of Sanctuary defenders around Curatio, at which point he turned and held a hand up to his throat, voice coming out amplified by some spell that Cyrus did not know.
"KORTRAN IS BURNING," Ayend"s voice sounded, "OUR ARMY OUTSIDE HAS WITHDRAWN SAFELY, THOUGH ONLY BARELY. THE ENTIRETY OF THE t.i.tAN ARMY IS NOW SWARMING THE TUNNEL." He locked eyes with Cyrus and the electricity he communicated was as potent as one of Curatio"s bolts of lightning.
The entire rest of the t.i.tan army? Coming here? Cyrus swallowed heavily as the action slowed for a moment. That explains the retreat; without heavy spellcaster support our normal armies can"t stand against that. He swept a gaze over the arena and saw more than a little fresh blood in the gaps between t.i.tans where he could see sand. h.e.l.l, we"ve got some of our best here and we"re still having a time of it ...
"Sound retreat!" Cyrus called, bellowing out over the carnage of the battle. "Let"s get the h.e.l.l out of here while we can!"
A scream of rage followed Cyrus"s order, and he swung his head round to find Talikartin still swiping ineffectually at Terian. The guardian yelled something, a shout of some word in the t.i.tan language that Cyrus did not understand, and a ripple ran through the scene of the battle.
"Cyrus!" Vara cried. "Get down here, now!"
He spun to look at her, catching sight of Terian diving for the ground as well, running in a steep dive to join them. Cyrus did not think, did not ponder, merely acted, and ran as swiftly as he could toward Vara.
He was only ten feet above the ground when the t.i.tan cessation spell draped itself over the battlefield and stripped the Falcon"s Essence from him.
Cyrus. .h.i.t the ground with a hard thump as Vara left it in a leap. He watched her sail through the air gracefully, once more striking down an attacking t.i.tan with a swipe of her sword so perfectly aimed that the t.i.tan did not even manage a riposte. She used his breastplate as a springboard to return to the ground, landing only a few feet away as Cyrus struggled back to standing.
"You all right?" Vara asked, tugging at his arm and helping him return to steadiness.
"Not really," Cyrus said, back to a balance a moment later. He looked at the formidable odds arrayed against them, and realized that without Falcon"s Essence, he could no longer even survey the full battlefield of the arena. He was limited by the mob of t.i.tans in front of him, so numerous that they blotted out any view of Curatio or the rest of the Sanctuary force still standing.
If they"re still standing.
With a breath of horror, the full weight of what had happened slammed home on Cyrus as the next wave of t.i.tans moved in on him and his small party. With a cessation spell over the battlefield with the tyrants, we"re trapped here among them.
No fire to burn them.
No lightning to drive them back.
And no teleportation to get us out of here ... alive.
How do you find a wizard with no vestments? Cyrus wondered as he drove his blade into a swiping hand, cleaving two fingers loose and causing the t.i.tan attacker to stagger past Cyrus. He nicked the back of the t.i.tan"s leg as it pa.s.sed, and it tripped into the hard stone wall of the first tier, the clang of its helm upon impact ringing through the air over the clamor of battle.
If I were aloft, I could just look for the big b.a.s.t.a.r.ds chanting under their breath, he thought, moving to finish the t.i.tan that he"d just knocked over. He aimed for the neck as usual and was rewarded in the same way as always, though this time he mostly managed to dodge the stream. He did not, however, manage to duck under the panicked t.i.tan"s hand as it reached to staunch the flow of its lifeblood, and the clipping strike sent Cyrus spinning into Andren.
"Oof!" Andren cried as Cyrus slammed into him, knocking them both to the ground. Cyrus was the first to recover, pushing up on one arm. "Watch where you"re going!" Andren said, looking more than a bit put out.
"Thanks for the soft landing," Cyrus said, adjusting his helm slightly before turning to get back to the battle. "Let me know if you see any wizards."
"These t.i.tans all look the b.l.o.o.d.y same!" Andren called as Cyrus watched Fortin tear the knee off a t.i.tan and then smash the bone into the jaw of the very same enemy, like a small shield.
"Exactly my problem," Cyrus muttered, finding himself with a brand new challenger as he staggered to the left to cover their flank while Vara dealt with a t.i.tan that came right up the middle at them. No vestments, no robes. They all seem to be wearing armor, at least all that I"ve seen. He plunged a sword through a slow-moving t.i.tan"s knee and did some kneecap removal of his own, though his was incomplete and left hanging, unlike Fortin"s. "Is the cessation spell still on us?"
Andren"s answer came back a second later, nearing panic. "Yes!"
"Okay," Cyrus said, taking on his next challenger as Terian came staggering out from between the legs of the t.i.tan at him. The dark elf swung his axe and sent the t.i.tan stumbling. Cyrus narrowly avoided being caught under the enormous thing, the creature"s hip clipping him as he dodged its shadow.
"Sorry," Terian said, sweeping into place next to Cyrus. "But it was either take him down or wait for you to do it while the next one behind took a free shot at me." That very t.i.tan swung at Terian and he met it with an overhand chop that split the t.i.tan"s hand in half. "Hope that wasn"t his dominant hand, or he"s going to be so irritated at me when he gets back to the barracks and has some alone time-"
Cyrus lunged forward and plunged his sword into the t.i.tan"s exposed abdomen as it clutched at its wounded hand. Blood dripped down, and the smell of disgusting rot, fouler than nearly anything he"d smelled before, told him he"d struck its bowels. He dodged sideways, ripping with Praelior as he moved, and the t.i.tan fell on a growing pile atop their last kill. "I don"t think that"s going to cross his mind later, strangely."
"Still no sign of healers for these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Terian said, "not that I"m complaining!" He paused, striking again with his axe against the hip of a t.i.tan pa.s.sing to attack Vara. "Please, please, don"t answer my complaint, fates."
"Now you believe in fates," Cyrus muttered, scrambling back from a particularly aggressive t.i.tan attack. "It"s almost as if you lost your faith in the G.o.d of Darkness."
"Can"t imagine what would have prompted that," Terian said dryly, laying his axe into the back of the knee of the t.i.tan attacking Cyrus. "Maybe it was that I got to know him entirely too well to respect him anymore."
"I have a similar problem, I find," Cyrus said with a muted smirk.
"I-" Terian began.
A fearsome bellow from Fortin drew both of their attentions, and Vara"s as well from where she plunged her own blade into the face of a t.i.tan coming at her. She came to the ground, breathing heavily, the toll of killing the ma.s.sive things now obvious. Cyrus looked past her and found Talikartin moving on the rock giant, finally through the crowd and coming to attack.
"Death is coming for you, foes of Kortran!" Talikartin called, his expression one of rage mingled with joy, some hybrid Cyrus could recall perhaps feeling himself on early battlefields, some strain of vindictive anger crossed with the thirst for b.l.o.o.d.y revenge and abject excitement as battle played out before him in thrilling spectacle.
I"m fighting giants and winning. Their blood soaks me. The war roars within me, and the fight goes ever on.
Isn"t this what I"ve always wanted?
Fortin screamed again and charged at Talikartin. The rock giant came up to the t.i.tan"s waist, planting a craggy fist right into his hip. Talikartin grunted and blanched from the impact, bending slightly at the middle from the force. He brought around a punch of his own in reprisal, however, and Cyrus watched it land against Fortin"s face, knocking the rock giant back a step of his own.
Rather than let Fortin recover, Talikartin pursued. He hit Fortin again, this time in the chest, and the sound of air rushing out of the rock giant"s lungs was like a bellows being pushed in a smith"s shop. Talikartin struck again and again, raining hard blows down upon the creature that stood so short against him. The power of the strikes was unquestionable, and Cyrus could hear the cracking of rock.
Fortin staggered, striking out blindly in an attack that hit Talikartin in an undefended thigh. It tore his trousers but did nothing to the skin beneath, and the t.i.tan reached down and seized Fortin by his small neck, lifting him into the air. It looked like a labor for Talikartin, but the t.i.tan did it, slowly levering the rock giant up until he could grasp him with his other hand, grabbing him around a leg.
Within his grip, Fortin struggled, but it was a futile effort. The rock giant looked dazed, some of the fight taken out of him by the ruinous blows. "You are strong," Talikartin said, staring into Fortin"s eyes. "I am stronger," he said with a rush of hatred, and he lifted Fortin up and brought him back down again, slamming him over his knee- Fortin broke cleanly in half at the waist, black fluid pouring out of either side of him as Talikartin tossed the split pieces. One hit the wall of the arena and bounced near Andren, the other came to rest at Talikartin"s feet.
The t.i.tans around them roared in appreciation at the battle they had just witnessed, and Cyrus did not realize that he had been holding his breath until he made to let out a cry of outrage and had no wind with which to do it.
"Uh oh," Terian said.
"We"re a bit screwed, here," Andren opined.
"DIE!" Cyrus screamed, and he charged across the dirt arena floor, vaulting over the femur of something ma.s.sive and using the other end of it to stage a leap at Talikartin, who waited with great satisfaction.
Cyrus had telegraphed his jump too much, he realized belatedly, rage feeding him poor strategy. Talikartin saw him coming, his trajectory obvious, and there was little Cyrus could do once in the air to alter it. The t.i.tan still stood, smirking, waiting, and moved only slightly so that Cyrus would impact upon his breastplate- When Cyrus. .h.i.t the quartal breastplate, he had already prepared himself for the impact. He huddled up and let his right pauldron lead him. It struck, the force of impact transmitted through the armor, through the chain mail beneath, mostly dissipating somewhere between the two. Cyrus. .h.i.t the padding hard, the nearly immovable wall before him that was Talikartin forced a step back from his impact.
Cyrus dropped to the ground some ten feet, absorbing the impact again through his knees. He felt the pain and used Praelior to help ignore it, hoping that somewhere down the line he might get a healing spell to fix whatever minor problem he"d just caused himself. Now he was at Talikartin"s feet. The t.i.tan had probably meant for him to be here, but also probably intended him to be a bit more stunned. Talikartin himself was stumbling back a step, arms trying to balance his unwieldy frame.
Now Cyrus found himself in a curious position. Talikartin wore thick metal boots, unlike the rest of the t.i.tans, but they only stretched to just below the knee, and Cyrus stood a tiny bit higher than that- He rushed in and stabbed Talikartin in the knee like he"d done to so many other t.i.tans, not even worrying about simply going deep; he dragged his sword around as he ran in a circle like the t.i.tan"s calf and shin were some maypole that he was trying to wrap festively.
Well, I certainly brought out a different color, he thought as he opened it up.
Talikartin staggered again, his balance utterly failing before he had a chance to recover it. He went down, falling to the ground on his back, rattling as he landed on something. Cyrus heard the shattering of bone but was under no illusion it was Talikartin"s. He saw plainly a piece of something"s rib cage jutting out from under the t.i.tan"s shoulder as he ran up the breastplate to the t.i.tan"s stunned face.
"EVERYBODY DOWN!" Another magically aided voice boomed out over the arena, this time obvious as Curatio"s. Cyrus swept low, jumping off Talikartin"s breastplate, halted by the force of the suggestion. He used the t.i.tan as cover as a flash of orange too bright to be the braziers in levels above filled the air.
Snakes of fire swept over Cyrus"s head, darting less than ten feet above where he crouched at the side of Talikartin. They swept lower as he cowered there, watching magic fiercer than any he"d ever seen before writhing as though it had life of its own above him. The flames coursed with energy, popping and cracking, showering him with something akin to sparks from a flint, and Cyrus needed only sweep his eyes around once to see corpses of t.i.tans caught aflame, burning around him as the sky on fire began to recede.
What the h.e.l.l was that?
"AHHHHHH!" Talikartin"s howl prompted Cyrus to move. Cyrus sprang to his feet, stumbling away from the t.i.tan, who sat up now that the flames had receded, his face burnt to a crisp and his armor glowing from the heat of the magic that had just been used.
A flash of blue burst in front of Cyrus as wizard magic sent a teleportation orb to him. It hovered in front of him, winking into existence like some grand joke. Cyrus scanned the arena to find every t.i.tan contained therein either on fire and screaming or dead and aflame. Most of them were not taking it nearly as gracefully as Talikartin, at least those few still alive.
"Cyrus!" Vara screamed at him, and Cyrus spun around. She stood with Terian and Andren, blue orbs in front of them all, the healer crouched over the portion of Fortin that had landed near him. Cyrus watched as he grabbed the orb of teleportation in front of him and disappeared with half of Fortin"s corpse into the wizard spell.
Cyrus sent a last look toward the tunnel entrance as he sprinted toward Talikartin"s feet. He caught sight of Curatio there, hunched over, a half dozen defenders still around him. Cyrus waved a hand and saw them start to fall back, a wall of t.i.tans just behind them in the tunnel. He blinked and looked closer, and saw J"anda atop the shoulders of one. With a look back at Cyrus, the enchanter saluted, and then disappeared into the light of a spell of his own.
"I will kill you for this," Talikartin said, and Cyrus turned his head to look at the t.i.tan even as he vaulted over Talikartin"s legs and came to rest on the upper body of Fortin. The rock giant"s red eyes stared up dully, black liquid pooling beneath him and streaming down his lips like magma. "For this insult."
"You come at me, I come right back at you," Cyrus promised, meeting the eyes of Talikartin. They were hazy, slightly burned, but not so badly that they would not heal naturally. It looked to Cyrus as if Talikartin"s scarred skin had spared him the worst of the burns inflicted on the others. "We can do this dance forever-or at least until one of us is dead."
"It will be you," Talikartin mouthed, cracked lips b.l.o.o.d.y as he forced his way to his knees. He grasped at his own breastplate and the sizzling sound of flesh burning against hot metal filled the air. "I will do whatever it takes to destroy you and yours utterly, completely. This war-is not over," he said, and with a growl he raised a hand to strike at Cyrus.
Cyrus caught the glimpse of Vara and Terian disappearing in the flash of teleportation, and he knew that Curatio and the others had already left. For a split second he considered fighting back, on his own, in the arena of war in the middle of Kortran.
To the death.
To the end.
The way I was always meant to.
But as his eyes met the dead ones of Fortin with a glance, Cyrus stooped and wrapped his arms around the dead rock giant, seizing the blue light of the teleportation spell. He felt the world of war disappear around him, as though burned away by some magic, and found himself hugging tight to half the corpse of a rock giant on the floor of his quarters, and he let himself take a peaceful breath at last.
"I would say that was a rather successful sortie." Vara"s voice surprised him, and he pushed up to all fours to find her standing before him in the Tower of the Guildmaster.
Cyrus just shook his head, looking down at the dead rock giant. I"ll need a healer for him. Need to get the rest of him back to Andren. He sighed, exhausted. "I don"t think I would call it that at all."
"We killed Emperor Razeel," Vara said. Dawn was breaking over the horizon, the sun coming up in the eastern sky, an orb of red setting the world afire. Soon it"ll burn, all right, Cyrus thought.
"You killed him," Cyrus agreed, but reluctantly; not for the credit, but for the rest of the thought that followed.
"Yet you seem ... dispirited." She c.o.c.ked her head at him, curious at his despondent reaction, surely.
"We failed," Cyrus said after a moment"s pause, and let that sink in. "If we"d killed Talikartin, maybe-but we didn"t." He knocked off his own helm and let it rattle across the floor.
"What are you saying?" Vara asked, coming a knee next to him. The sweat dripped down her face along with the blood, and he knew if he sought out a mirror, his countenance would be just the same.
"This isn"t over," Cyrus said, shaking his head. "Not even close. Not by a long, long ways."
"You went all the way to Kortran and struck at their temple?" Ehrgraz"s voice was harsh and furious, smoke pouring out of his nose. "You are a special sort of fool, Cyrus Davidon, and when I say that, it carries some weight, for my own people are the most complacent group of fools on Arkaria who sit and wait for death to come for them. You are not that sort of fool, no, you are the sort that seeks death out all on his own-"
"I didn"t wait around for them to come out and meet us," Cyrus said. It was a few days after the battle, and the hot summer winds still swept around the Plains of Perdamun as Cyrus stood upon the wall looking into the furious yellow eyes of Ehrgraz, who had swept in on the morning wind. Cyrus had a suspicion based on the dragon"s somewhat controlled demeanor early on, that he had already heard of the attack on Kortran, calmed himself and was now becoming enraged once more at the further hearing of it. "I-"
"You were supposed to draw them out of the front gate," Ehrgraz spat, sending sparks out from behind a forked tongue.