Pale Lights

Chapter 178 51

Song would not have thought of it if she had not read ahead in The Sea of Shapes.

The fresh reminder that Hooks' physical form was a construct and that she was in truth moving through the aether yielded an interesting thought: what, exactly, stopped her from 'flying' as high up as the length of Maryam's logos allowed? The answer was 'not a thing', so the younger Khaimov was sent up into the sky to survey the entire span of the scrapyard.

She'd had to borrow one of Ishanvi's coal sticks to draw on the floor, but at Song's feet now lay a rough sketch of the trash labyrinth ahead of them. Hooks had even marked two potential exits, one of which she believed might lead to the wasp hive structure – the kobalos lair permanently attached to the aether furnace. If that was true, then they were a single room away from the halfway mark of the Trench.

Unfortunately, the room in question was a battlefield.

Song looked down at the strokes of coal on the floor, the lay of pathways and the two larger clearings where an X had been traced. The two most furious fights, by Hook's reckoning: one was a large open field of scrap where a host of kobaloi were besieging a smaller force of revenants in a fortified position, while the other was a small hollow where a dozen paths connected and the onjancanu was fighting off revenant incursions trying to get past it.

Both were broadly to the west, though the latter was significantly closer to the center.

Song stared down at the map, mastering the urge to worry her lip as she held her arms folded behind her back. An idea had begun to dawn, but she needed one last report before she decided.

"We could punch through those eastern paths in twenty minutes-"

Song did not startle, though her arms tensed behind her. Tristan was getting disquietingly better at sneaking up on her.

"- but if that were the plan, you wouldn't be asking for me," her Mask finished. "What do you need?"

Song flicked him a look, gauging the way he stood. Loose-limbed, but in an almost forceful way. Tristan had a grip on himself, but he was itching to push forward. As far as he was concerned every hour spent on anything but advancing was one frivolously spent. He'd agree with her, see the sense in it: only the unambitious settled for a mere two birds per stone.

"How close are they?" Song asked.

A pause, not for him to recall the information but to lay down her question on the floor of his mind as the first piece of a new puzzle. He was assembling a fresh conclusion, and it was fascinating to watch it happen. A glance at the coal map, at her, back at the map. A frown.

"Tall Bibek was at the crossroads," Tristan finally replied. "I give it even odds he saw me."

Song hummed even as her Mask drummed a hand against the arm he'd just folded. It wouldn't matter even if the Eighth's crew had not seen him, she thought. If they headed into the room with the dropping floor instead of the right one, the moment Captain Pillai saw that the room's traps had not been triggered he would know to double back and head towards the scrapyard instead. But it also means the hourglass has been flipped, they are right behind us.

"Lahiri's crew?" she asked.

Tristan shook his head.

"They got waylaid, Scolomancia shifted a killing room in their way," he said. "I didn't get a good look at its insides, so it's guesswork how long it'll take them to clear."

It'd only had the time to waylay them because of Angharad's suggestion of passing the wounded into their care, Song thought. Still, the trade had been worth it. Only one of the two crews would be easier to handle, and Saran Pillai's was arguably the weaker of them as well.

"It will last long enough the god will be able to lay down another path if it wants to," Song said. "Only Pillai's crew will make it here in time."

His eyes narrowed as he turned back to the map. As expected, the piece she'd just given him was enough for him to figure out the rest. Planning with him, sometimes it felt like cocking a gun. The satisfying click of everything coming into place exactly as it should, the promise of violence when the trigger was pulled.

"That room is going to be a death trap," Tristan warned, pointing at where the revenants were being besieged. "We'll have to slip between it and that crossroads, but Scolomancia put its warlord where the roads knot for a reason."

"You think the onjancanu is there to block of a path to the anteater," Song guessed.

That was unfortunately feasible. That creature being there and too precious to risk was the only reason the god hadn't cut its losses and left them here to face the revenants alone.

"Then if we get too close to that path, it will leave the crossroads to cut us off," she muttered.

"Smalls rooms and narrow paths are better grounds to fight an onjancanu," Tristan pragmatically said. "But we're going to need heavy hitters for that. And we will need to fight it, because unless I read you wrong you'll be needing access to that path."

He crouched to point at the long, oblique ravine of scrap that began just south of the crossroads and reached most of the way back to the large yard near the entrance. That ravine was one of the two eastward paths that did not lead right into dead ends, and the one Song had marked in her mind as the one she would need to use.

"We have four Navigators," she replied. "It is a risk, but you've seen what a coven can do against greater beasts than an Old Tyrant."

He cocked his head to the side, gray eyes searching.

"You're telling me this," Tristan decided, "because you know I'm the only one who won't try to talk you out of it."

Song looked away.

"Well, you didn't misread that," he acknowledged. "But I'll caution you that we can't play it too loose with the wounded. Izel would consider it a line crossed and Angharad would almost certainly object."

Song dipped her head in acknowledgement. If the path was not properly secured, she would call off the entire affair.

"Stay safe," she told him. "The real delve only starts after the aether furnace."

"We're going to have to work on your encouragements sounding less like threats," he drily replied, but he was smiling.

Song let him slip back into the rearguard without another word, composing herself. It would work. The Eighth might develop a grudge over it, but she had not forced them to chase her tail. If you set the helm after seeing the wind, you didn't get to complain about where that wind brought you.

She wiped the lines of coal with her boot.

--

Gods, but it was a shame they'd come here to fight.

Izel wished it had been to explore, because where others saw a pile of sharp edges and rust strewn with garbage he saw a veritable treasure trove. And not even from a purely material standpoint: the large mounds of scrap metal had layers from different times, a fascinating glimpse of the occupants of Allazei over the years. There were bronze rods of antique make and crucible steel blades, gears of Antediluvian alloys and pillars of cheap Second Empire brass.

You could read a manuscript's worth of history from the way one particular pile was half furnace iron and half cast copper pieces, run a finger down the implied trade routes and discoveries. One could tell a lot about a people by what metal they used and how they used it.

But they were here to cross, not to linger, so instead Izel tightened his grip on his pistol and forced himself not to stare too much at the improbable Lierganen brass jewelry he saw – a trading trinket before the Second Empire swept over the isle, or a sign Allazei had been swimming in so much brass that they were... No. Focus. He could wait until they were back to camp and ask Ishanvi if she had a reading recommendation about the Kingdom of Sologuer.

"We won't be climbing the piles unless our captains turn into fools, so you can stop staring fearfully at them," Emergency Rations said.

The short Tianxi then pulled at his beard.

"You useless coward," he casually added.

Just ahead there was a sharp crack, a musket firing, followed by an immediate shot back and a shriek. Izel's eye strayed to the tunnel ahead, its arched ceiling come into being when two piles of scrap fell against each other.

"Using your contract on me could be considered a breach between our brigades," Izel replied after dragging away his gaze.

"Just a one?" Emergency Rations muttered. "I thought for sure that would..."

He shook his head, offered a bright bandit's smile.

"And that can't be true, because Ren uses her contract on all of us constantly," Rations said.

That- huh. Well, that was not actually untrue.

"Coyac," Thando Fenya sighed, rubbing two fingers against his forehead like he was staving off a headache. "You do not need to tolerate this. Xical very clearly ordered him to find out what makes you tick."

"You could make me stop with the threat of violence," Emergency Rations noted, then turned an expectant look on him.

Another crack, shouts and what sounded like gibberish. He did not flinch.

"I will do great violence to you, if you do not cease," Izel tried.

The twin unimpressed looks leveled at him made him squirm a little bit. As did the scoff from the side, when the Savant from the Forty-Ninth finally acknowledged she was there standing besides them. Xiadani Jobe – it was passing strange, seeing a traditional Seven Valleys name appended to a surname like Jobe – was not pleased to have been assigned to their unit and Izel could not blame her.

She was a conscript, and of her cabalmates one was sequestered behind a wall of Navigators while the other had already been wounded badly enough to be sent the way of the First Brigade.

A sharp whistling sound from ahead had all four straightening.

"It's our turn," Thando Fenya said. "Ready yourselves."

None answered, but Emergency Rations idly spun his axe to loosen his wrist and Xiadani checked her pistol for the third time. He breathed out, reaching inside his knapsack to feel out the grenades waiting there, and tightened the strap back just in time for the second whistle.

"Go," Thando Fenya hissed, and took the lead.

They ran into the shadow cast by the arch of half-toppled scrap towers, boots rasping against the layer of dry rust and dust in faint puffs of red, and headed back into the dull glow of the Trench. Izel blinked, eyes getting used to the light, and stepped into the madhouse.

The yard looked like spilled guts, a fat and towering piled having dribbled out a field of rotting wood and broken weapons. On either side of the pile narrow corridors flanked by scrap piles allowed in the enemy – black-cloaked revenants kneeling with their salvaged matchlocks on the right side, kobaloi all over the left with barbed javelins and skittering feet. Facing them, behind low mounds of scrap students crouched with their muskets and traded shot to keep their foes from pushing into the yard.

Their destination was just ahead, across the mounds and past the length of the yard, another arching passage heading west. The four of them ran towards it, spread out so they would be harder to shoot.

"-sweep the heights," Imani Langa barked, "if they get in javelin range we'll all regret-"

Thando was most ahead, but when his steps stuttered long enough for him to pop a pistol shot – he barely looked where he was aiming, but the kobalos shriek of pain told Izel he'd landed his shot anyway – Emergency Rations went past him. Izel brushed past Thando as well, stopping only when he heard a thump. Behind, he saw that Xiadani had slipped on oil-slick dust and he doubled back to help her up.

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She took the hand, and he pulled her to her feet just in time to hear crack, crack, crack as a furious musket exchange drowned the yard in smoke and a man shouted in pain ahead of them.

Emergency Rations, his cloak was shredded and his leg bleeding. Cursing, Izel moved towards him even as Xiadani shot right past to join Thando under the arch. He grabbed Rations by the arm and dragged him towards the nearest mound of scrap, the man gritting his teeth as Izel bent over to lessen his profile. Thando popped out of the arch to fire again, but it was clear the man had not intention of heading back into the fire to help beyond that.

The blackcloak pressed against the slope of the mound was familiar: Cressida spared him half a look and a nod before flattening against the scrap, waiting for the smoke to clear enough she could see what she was shooting at. Izel stayed behind the cover, helping Rations bind the wound.

"Wait," Cressida quietly said. "The smoke has thinned. Any moment now-"

Gibbering shrieks, and out of the white a pair of mail-decked kobaloi came out bearing barbed spears. Cressida promptly fired her musket in the first one's head, reaching for her pistol as the second closed the distance only for Izel to grit his teeth and half-rise long enough to fire his own. His grip had been off, he went wide, but the kobalos swerved to the right – and was shot in the chest by Imani Langa from further down the line, collapsing with a shriek.

Izel bent down to grab Rations' arm, the man reaching for him, but any thought of making a run for it was killed by the cracks from the distance. Two shots only buried themselves into the mound with sprays of garbage, but the third passed over the cover and whizzed a few feet past Izel's head. He hastily dropped back down.

"Why are they focusing fire on us?" he hissed.

"We think they only have animal smarts," Cressida replied as she reloaded her musket. "That in the absence of tactics they follow set instructions, so Cai Wei told them to focus fire on anyone wounded."

Izel cursed, and they remained stuck behind the mount for two more volleys. Emergency Rations' ruddy, leathery face slackened from the twisting pain it'd worn earlier after the man unwound a paper and swallowed the small round pill in it, but unless whatever that'd been had also healed his leg their odds of making it across unharmed remained unpleasantly low. Izel went pawing at his pack, undoing the strap, but it slipped out of his grasp and he cursed. Pushing himself down he placed his hand on- huh.

Was that... He withdrew his fingers, finding he'd been leaning on a piece of doorframe. And while there must be hundreds of these around but this one, while a dark blue, had a very particular sheen to it. Sharper than polished metal, as if pushing light away. This was, he realized, a piece of tomic alloy. Without hesitation he tore it out of the mound, breaking off the mundane metal frame holding it and wrapping it with cloth from his bag before stuffing it in there. What a find, he giddily thought.

Right, his bag. He'd been reaching for it for a reason.

Izel removed one of the grenades, the one with the two crosses and the circle, then pulled the strap on his bag before reaching for his matches.

"On my mark, look away from the front," he shouted.

"Izel?" Cressida asked.

"When I throw, start running," he told Emergency Rations.

The man nodded, getting into a crouch that had him wincing. Even wrapped, that leg looked bad,

"Izel."

"It'll be fine, I got the recipe from Awonke," Izel impatiently replied.

He scratched a match, but his grip had been too strong. It snapped, so he had to scratch another. Fire! One, two, three, four...

"Izel."

"Mark," he shouted, and tossed the grenade the enemy's way.

Cressida cursed, Rations broke into a limping run and Izel followed a moment later – just in time for bright, pale light to burst. There were screams and shrieks, as the powdered palestone added a touch of Glare to the burst that was most unpleasant to both lemures and whatever those revenants qualified as. Izel slung Rations' arm over his shoulder for the last stretch, the two of them making it across a dozen heartbeats before a furious musket exchange began in their wake.

He stood there for a moment, propping up Emergency Rations as the other two approached, and panted. Already one wounded and they were barely a quarter of the way through the serpentine route Song had picked to cross the scrapyard.

Izel could only hope easier grounds lay ahead, else they'd have more corpses than not by the end of the crossing.

--

The stone hit the metal scraps like a cannon ball, sending sharp pieces spilling all over as the ground shook and the Old Tyrant bellowed in rage.

"What is an onjancanu even doing here?" Bingwen whispered, having gone pale.

"Scholomance uses it as warlord of sorts," Maryam replied, peeking from behind cover. "You'd think Wei would end up stuck with it instead of us, though."

The ravine between them was narrow and the heights on either side just high enough they could not easily be climbed. Not that Maryam was inclined to go climbing: the scrap here was packed tight, almost compacted, but the work was uneven so there were sharp protrusions apt to carve right through their fighting fit. The Old Tyrant was on the other side of the ravine, which he was too big to easily cross, but there was a slight complication regarding that.

The sort of bowl where the monster was raging, along with his pack of kobaloi, was the path Song had charged them with opening. If they failed here, the entire westward advanced was fucked.

"I think that clearing in the scrap leads straight to the anteater," Shumise quietly said. "It would explain why after we ran into a single kobalos Scholomance pulled back so large a chunk of its forces to put in our way."

Maryam hummed. The onjancanu was already no small thing, as difficult to replace as the anteater for the god in the walls, but Shumise was right that the twenty-odd kobaloi screeching along as if to egg it on must represent a significant portion of Scholomance's remaining kobaloi. A fifth, a fourth?

"Whatever we do, it has to be fast," Alejandra reminded them. "We don't know how long our flank will be able to hold."

Maryam worried her lip. Angharad, along with most Skiritai, had set out to block the revenants from cutting off the path the vanguard had cut through. And since her friend would know that if she gave ground there would be a revenant ambush waiting for their comrades when they caught up, she was all too likely to keep that fight going beyond what was wise.

But it'll be even worse if we can't drive off the onjancanu, she thought. They blackcloaks would end up bottled between their two enemies, getting whittled down by skirmishes until only retreat remained on the table.

"If we chase off the big bastard, the others will run," Hooks opined. "Kobaloi are cowards."

"We?" Bingwen snorted. "Since when is a leashed Gloam creature-"

"As far as I'm concerned," Alejandra cut him off, "Princess is more of an Akelarre than you are. She's been around longer, and she hasn't been making idiot child decisions."

"We can put it to a vote, if you'd like," Shumise added. "That is the republican way, yes?"

Bingwen let out a scornful noise and looked away. Maryam smothered a smile, sending a grateful look at Alejandra. The other woman shrugged it off, as if to say it hadn't been intended as a favor, just her honest opinion. Like that didn't make it worth twice as much.

"My sister and I can put strings on it," Maryam contributed. "But we'll need someone to do the hammering once it's held in place."

"I don't have a lot of Signs with the depth of damage for that," Alejandra admitted. "Shumise?"

The dark-skinned woman hesitated.

"I can do the Mirrorwall," she said, "but it'll only hurt it should it swing at the walls, so it pairs poorly with your strings."

And it was a Sign sequence with a notoriously temperamental backlash, Maryam thought. You had to match the power being swung at it with the right degree of Gloam density poured into the Sign, because if there was too little it would shatter and if there was too much it would solidify and turn brittle. That was easy enough to manage against critters, whose strength was not all that different from men, but an onjancanu was a different story.

Back on the Bluebell, that dabbling sailor had lost an entire arm when his Mirrorwall was broken and it wasn't even the worst backlash Maryam had ever heard of. There was an old story going around the guild about a journeyman trying to use a Mirrorwall to protect a shield a ship from a leviathan and exploding into red mist when the Sign broke.

"I am capable of using the Leaf-Scattering Ji," Bingwen suddenly said. "But it will take me six breaths to muster, and I must be within forty feet of it."

Maryam had never heard of that Sign before – sounded Tianxi, unsurprisingly – but by the look on her face Alejandra had.

"That's not a Sign," Alejandra Torrero said. "It's a sect technique."

As in those roving warriors that the Tianxi used as irregulars and monster hunters? Maryam had thought them to be like junak, wandering knights with occasional boons from gods. This was the first she heard of any of them using Gloam.

"I was once part of an unorthodox sect," Bingwen stiffly replied. "I have used the Ji before, it is powerful enough to pierce thick hide."

"How much of a punch does it have?" Maryam asked.

"It can pierce or slash, but not both," he replied. "It pierces about two inches deep, but the impact will expand."

Huh. That actually sounded too flexible to be purely Ancipital in nature. There must be a secondary effect beyond raw Gloam manipulation.

"Get the eye," Hooks and Shumise said at the same time, then flashed each other a grin.

If blinded and wounded, then the Old Tyrant might well retreat. That seemed a feasible plan.

"My sister and I bind it," Maryam summed up, "you two cover Bingwen's approach and he strikes the eye. That seems functional. All agreed?"

Nods all around, though Alejandra snorted.

"This would be much easier if we had Skiritai to throw at them," she opined.

There was a slightly saddened noise of agreement from all. Militants really were the handiest covenant to have around. Their conversation was called to an abrupt end when there was noise ahead: the onjancanu, while they plotted, had realized that tossing stones in their general direction would not be enough to make them come out. It'd changed strategy, haranguing a pack of kobaloi into entering the ravine.

That was a problem, considering Maryam would also need to go in there to get close enough for stringwork.

Alejandra and Shumise, unmoved at the sight, took the front. Bingwen moved to join them, but Maryam put a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait," she said.

He shot her a hard look.

"There's too many, they can't-"

"Wait," Maryam simply repeated.

Ahead of them, kobaloi poured into the ravine. No larger than children, wearing patches of mail and scratched helms over coarse padded rags. Their weapons were simple, hatchets and blades and rough crossbows, but no less lethal for it – twice over for being smeared in filth that would poison wounds. They moved so quickly, so lightly on their cloven feet that there was a predatory air about it. A lone kobalos was a cowardly thing, but a pack of kobaloi on the prowl felt like wolves.

There could be no spreading out in a narrow ravine so instead they rushed forward, devouring the distance in mere breaths. The only reason no bolt had been loosed was that those in front bore only blades.

Shumise pulled ahead, fingers trailing black, and a heartbeat later the lead kobalos ran into thin air and bounced off. It pulled back with a shriek, swinging at thin air, then turned to shout at the others only to find most of the pack was looking up. There, Alejandra Torrero's own Sign was coalescing: a squat, dog-sized cylinder of Gloam. It finished turning solid a heartbeat before a kobalos aimed its crossbow up and shot at it, to Maryam's gleeful smile.

The bolt got stuck in the cylinder, as if it were solid, then a heartbeat later the Sign burst.

The Scattershot exploded into a shower of Gloam shrapnel, every single piece aimed down. The shards didn't go through armor, only marred it, but every piece that touched flesh carved through it like butter. Screams and panic, the kobaloi began to pull back only for the hulking shape of the onjancanu to appear at the end of the ravine. The great one-eyed giant had in hand the bottom half of an old pillar, and after a roar that stopped the kobaloi cold it tossed the pillar at the two Navigators.

Maryam tensed, breathing in sharply, but there was no trace of panic on Shumise's face and that settled her. She watched as flowers of Gloam bloomed around the other woman's fingers, fed into the Sign to adjust the density just before the pillar hit the invisible wall – and, with glee, she saw it sink the bare quarter of an inch into the Mirrorwall before it was shot back right into kobaloi like a cannonball.

It splattered at least five of them in an instant, cartwheeling through them after it hit the floor and killing twice as many as Alejandra's Scattershot had. Maryam saw Shumise break her Sign after, though, and shake her fingers as if they had gone stiff.

"Now we go," she said, releasing Bingwen and striding past him.

Another Scattershot was forming above the fleeing kobaloi – though it was doubtful Alejandra would get lucky enough for them to trigger it for her twice – but the onjancanu was not impressed. It grabbed one of the pulped corpses, hefting it experimentally, and was about to toss it when Hooks and Maryam stepped in.

Weaving the strings felt so easy now. Like she was pulling them out of her own arteries from some coil, feeling out the strength and thickness before they ever left her body. Hooks's hand spun them for her and Maryam cast them through her own shadow, feeling out the resonance in the onjancanu's own and connecting them by the string before pulling it further out, all in the span of a single flickering thought. She gauged the angle, sending the string up his back and then back the front to wrap around the wrist hand holding the carcass, and by the time the monster tried to shake it off she had three more strings tied.

To his feet, to his other arm, and as the Old Tyrant roared and swung low to underhand the dead kobalos at her she pulled at the strings with both hands, Hooks' arms emerging from her back to do the same. Left to redirect the momentum, up to pull the hand in and right to... the monster's hand smacked into his own brutish face, smudging ichor over the skin and beard.

A pistol shot was followed by the second Scattershot bursting, triggering a fresh wave of shrieks from the remaining kobaloi, and even as the Khaimov sisters pulled at strings like demented puppeteers to keep the onjancanu off-balance Bingwen was standing behind before them in a strange stance. One foot was angled back, the other forward, and with his back straight he drew both palms back and slowly began arcing them forward.

He trailed Gloam in the air as he did, but with Hooks in her eye Maryam could see he was not pulling it in from around them – it came from inside his body, bleeding out through his nav. Is that why he has segments in it? It took precisely six seconds from the beginning of the arc to the end, and when both hands were in front of him the arc of Gloam pulled taut into an odd polearm that bore a spear tip with a crescent blade on the side.

Bingwen flicked his wrists and the Gloam construct flew like a lightning bolt, driving into the onjancanu's eye until the spear was all the way in. Huh, Maryam thought. Well, that'd punctured the eye and the monster certainly was screaming but was that-

After a second of delay, the ji violently exploded and a spray of ichor and eye jelly burst out.

"That's more like it," Hooks approved.

They cut the strings, letting the blinded monster rage at its surroundings as all four Navigators warily pulled back. A kobalos was kicked into the wall as the onjacanu threw a tantrum, smashing everything in sight, and Maryam winced when it started smashing at the sides of the clearing hard enough it made piles collapse. She was beginning to feel the burn, but they couldn't afford to let it rampage like that forever – it'd break down every wall and make the clearing impassable.

She traced a question at her sister, who slipped out of her with Gloam already forming in halos around her hands.

"Rooks?" Hooks asked.

"Hounds," Maryam replied. "They've got more bite."

It was her own joints that began to ache when Hooks pulled deep of the Gloam, crafting the raw stuff of entropy into one of the least among the invocations they had learned from the Cauldron: a pack of baying, Gloam-black hounds formed at the end of the ravine and immediately began lunging at the onjancanu as the other Navigators moved to shield Maryam.

The monster swept a few hounds aside and the surviving kobaloi helped him pick off others with javelins and blades, but when it pulled back its hand and realized that pulping one of the hounds had spread Gloam over a finger and was now eating away at it like acid the onjancanu balked.

It bellowed hard enough to shake the air, then with an almost churlish air kicked at another wall before striding westward past a towering pile. Where the anteater must be holed up, Maryam guessed. It was pulling back to protect it. The kobaloi followed after it, gibbering plaintive cries, and after a long moment silence fell.

They were gone.

"Next time," Shumise finally said, "we hold out for a Skiritai escort."

There was laughter, but even as she agreed Maryam was left to wonder – if Song had thought this could be handled by Navigators alone, how bad was what Angharad had been thrown at?