Pale Lights

Chapter 173 46

Chapter 173 46

Pale Lights

Planning was mostly about balancing odds. Mitigating negative outcomes, improving one’s chances of success by narrowing scope and removing risk. Yet no matter the work done, no plan was ever perfect.

Song knew that better than most, having spent what felt like most of her life falling just short of where she needed to be, of matching the standard that would finally see her father’s face gladden and her mother smiling for more than the ghost of a moment. The smallest of mistakes, of imprecisions, could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. So Song had known, going in, of all the turns where their plan could tumble off the road. She had embraced it anyway, because no plan was perfect and Izel had conceived of one that cut through the worst of the risks.

She still felt like her guts were being put through a laundry wringer when she saw that red flare going up so soon after the blue one.

“Gifter render them aid,” Lieutenant Navpreet muttered, tone pitying as she watched the red fireworks fade. “The beast must have been lying in ambush.”

“They have the means to chase it off,” Song made herself reply. “Even caught off guard, I expect victory of them.”

Nenetl was a fine tactician and a careful woman, her Navigator allegedly one of the finest logos-wielders among the second years and Izel himself had put together that odd-looking field dispenser for his aether spikes. Song had thought the device looked like a fat and ungainly pistol, but both the other tinkers in their alliance had seemed impressed so she would defer to their judgment. They had the arms to harm the Lord of Teeth and the eyes to see it coming. It will be fine, she told herself.

Gods, let it be fine, else the cart had run right off the road on the first curb. She cleared her throat.

“Is everything ready, lieutenant?” she asked instead of letting fear keep carving away at her.

“See for yourself, ma’am,” Lieutenant Navpreet replied, gesturing for her to come along.

Of the three companies, the one Song had been put in charge of was the one with the easiest path but also the most dangerous position: it was why she had a whole half of the Garrison contingent along, artillerymen and regulars both.

Unlike the fast-moving forces under Sebastian, Song’s own troops were now entirely dug in. They’d marched up the paved street on the edge of the Nests until they reached the vantage point their scouts had picked out last week, a broad space backed by a warehouse with a collapsed roof but a still-standing high wall that few lemures would be able to cross. The blackcloaks had moved into place swiftly, fortifying the place in minutes by stacking then-empty gabions – wickerwork cages that were promptly filled filled with dirt, debris and wood – up and down the road while the side facing the canal became a reinforced cannon battery.

Falconet cannons were propped up against the gabions and loaded with grapeshot to cover their flanks to the north and south, supported by a firing line of muskets, but those would not be the decisive arms. That honor would go to the two large bronze culverins pointed eastwards, which Lieutenant Navpreet was now bringing her to inspect.

Each was twice the length of a grown man and almost as large, they’d had to be carried on wooden, wheeled gun carriages that’d been a nightmare to get in place even after a week of building passages for it. Not only must they pulled by men – horses would attract lemures – but one’s axle had broken just a minute out of the brushlands and needed replacing before the column could resume moving, costing them nearly a quarter hour.

Every second of it had felt like someone was cramming nails under her fingernails, Song all too aware that the entire plan rested on the ability of her company and Nenetl’s being able to shut the doors on the dantesvara’s lair on both sides. But they had made it, gotten those beasts in place and pointed down at the mouth of the Lord of Teeth’s lair.

The heavily pierced Someshwari patted the closest culverin fondly, as if it were her favorite nephew.

“These bastards are the latest model out of the Rookery,” Lieutenant Navpreet told her, “with bronze trunnions affixed - those protrusions there that let us pivot it up and down – and instead of notched mires to adjust elevation these have the modern screw-turn.”

Song had read two artillery manuals as a primer to her command in this operation, so she had in fact known what trunnions were and was aware that ‘notched mires’ were wooden blocks with painted notches on them that could be added or removed to adjust the elevation of cannons. Presumably the screw was considered an improvement by virtue of being less rickety. The Someshwari lieutenant cleared her throat.

“No matter where our friend pops up, we’ll have a shot lined up within ten seconds,” Lieutenant Navpreet swore. “My life staked on it.”

All our lives, Song thought, but prudently refrained from saying as much. Tristan had warned her the artillery lieutenant was less than sanguine about her assignment and Navpreet’s every half-suppressed twitch on the way here had backed the assessment. Song would still rather have the officer concerned this was all going to be the disaster than the one who was sniffing after glory, as the third company did. Not that Camaron had seemed worried. Let him throw his men at our foe if he wishes, he’d told Song. There’s glory enough to go around, and I’ll no balk at letting him soak up the casualties for me.

“Good,” Song said.

She folded her hands behind her back.

“We do not need to kill it,” she reminded the other woman. “Only wound it enough it cannot run from the Skiritai.”

“Assuming it doesn’t just ignore them and charge us,” Lieutenant Navpreet said, hand fiddling with the silver pin on her collar.

“That’s what we’re here for.”

Song cocked an eyebrow, turning a look on the three newcomers. Maryam was in a fine mood today, despite the dangers yet ahead. Her Navigator walked on light feet – and Hooks besides her even more lightly still – and she’d spent much of the march talking with her sister and Jayati Banerjee. The haughty Someshwari might not deign to speak with a mere Captain Ren beyond the mandatory, but she’d been noticeably friendlier to her fellows. Song had overheard some rather unkind sniggering about Diego Calante’s recent stay in the Meadow and complaints about something called ‘Ada’s Knot’, which was apparently the worst thing since the Kingdom of Malan.

“We can slow the beast down if need be, lieutenant,” Jayati Banerjee agreed. “This is not a concern. Merely count yourself lucky you were paired with the better Banerjee.”

Lieutenant Navpreet offered her a pretty smile in a salute, though after turning away Song was rather sure she’d heard her mutter ‘no such thing’ under her breath. The silver-eyed captain turned to fully face Maryam.

“Did you need something?” she asked.

“Ruo’s back from his skulking,” Maryam said. “Says there’s movement to our south.”

Song grimaced. And now came the great danger of their position: while it had been comparatively easy for them to reach this place and bring with them the means to fortify it, they were forty-five people occupying open grounds on the edge of the Nests. Their numbers would scare off most of the lesser lemures, but it was only a matter of time until pack hunters or something larger came to have a look.

Despite their numbers the makeshift outpost was not so large that it took more than a minute for Song to reach the southern line, where she found Ruo Xuan Liu and Rong Ma quietly talking by the falconet.

“Warrant Officer Liu,” Song flatly said. “I hear you have a report.”

Implied in her tone was how he should have found her to deliver it.

“Mistress Ren,” he replied in ever-so-slightly accented Cathayan. “I have some matters of import to relay.”

It was an effort not to glare. The way he spoke the word for ‘mistress’ was very closer to the title of Zi in Machin, which was a generally respectful address but at its root a courtesy reserved for aristocrats. It was said that in some of the old families of Wendi royalist sympathies ran deep, that the abolished Duchy of Wendi was yet toasted behind closed doors. Liu was a common surname, mother to a hundred clans, but every part of Song’s gut screamed that Ruo Xuan’s clan must be one of those hidden yiwu traitors.

“Do so,” she curtly said.

They were interrupted by another flare going up to the east, green fireworks spreading. Song let out a tense breath: the plan was proceeding as planned. Nenetl’s company had driven the dantesvara back into its lair and shut the door behind it.

“A dominant ireltxo is stirring up its warren,” Ruo Xuan said, claiming back her attention. “I heard it kill a challenger, so as soon as they are done feeding I expect them to be headed our way.”

“How many?” Song asked.

“I could not get close enough, mistress,” the Mask said. “Yet I heard more than five.”

Song’s hands clenched. Five they could handle. The pigmen had thick hides, but they were not particularly quick and the falconet would blow right through them. It was what would come after that was a concern: the noise of that battle might just draw something worse.

“Rong,” she called out. “You may trap the southern approach. Take two soldiers with you and make it quick.”

The tinker lit up, saluting hastily, but Song saw no such enthusiasm on the face of the blackcloaks around them. Not only because few desired to leave the safety of gunline to help scatter around tinker traps, but because Song had just ordered their main path of retreat to be strewn with said traps. They were going to have to hold this outpost, like it or not. She spared Ruo Xuan a curt nod, heading back to Lieutenant Navpreet just in time to see the third company sending up their green flare. They were in position, then.

“Light ours,” she told the lieutenant. “And get ready.”

The green fireworks exploded above their heads, scattering into sparks, and Song checked her rifle one last time as she came to stand by the cannons. The Khaimovs and Jayati came to join her.

“It should be any-”

The air shook for an instant before the sound caught up – a wave of noise that swept over them, for a moment swallowing the world whole as the ground trembled beneath their feet and a blinding flash of light seared the air. Song squeezed her eyes shut just in time, opening them to the sight of a massive plume of smoke and falling debris. Across the canal bed, on the high grounds beneath either mouth of the lair, a gaping and smoking hole had been blown open.

Hunting the Lord of Teeth in its own lair would have been ruinous, small companies forced into twisting tunnels and caverns where the creature would overwhelm them in moments, so Izel had found them an alternative: blowing open the roof.

And it had worked. In the crater, past the smoke, Song could make out several caverns that had just been wrenched open. There was, however, no sign of the dantesvara. No purple flare from the eastern company meant it wasn’t trying to break out their way, and that left only one option.

“Navigators to the front,” Song shouted, shouldering her rifle. “Cannons at the ready!”

A heartbeat later, as if summoned, the dantesvara’s horned head came out of the shadowy entrance. It was, Song saw with a start, heavily wounded. A chunk of its head was gone, the bone spur at the base of its left horn peeking out, and as it slipped out of the cavern she saw one of its front legs was gone at the joint. Its mane was nothing more than a few burnt out strands and it had half a dozen patches of its dermis eaten through by salt and phosphorescent munitions.

The first shot out of the culverins missed by less than a foot, smashing into the wall and spraying shards of stone on the monster, but that’d been the chance: it slipped into the water, fleeing out of sight even as Lieutenant Navpreet shouted to reload. A dantesvara could stay under for as many as ten hours, Kang had taught them. Too long for the blackcloaks to be able to stay here and wait it out, assuming it wouldn’t simply head to another part of the city.

It was gone, finished. Unless-

“I can’t find it,” Jayati Banerjee tightly said. “Light it up for me.”

“There,” Maryam replied. “You have to-”

“The Teeth-Gnasher Slain, Choked To Death,” Jayati spat out in Samratrava, hand whirling through strange patterns of Gloam until she crushed the final glyph in her own hand.

Song waited patiently, rifle at the ready. One, two, three, four-

The dantesvara’s head surfaced and it let out a sky-shaking roar of fury. Song would have been miffed as well, to have the very air in her lungs fouled by a curse. She snapped her shot without hesitation, landing it between its eyes, but it was not lead shot or salt munitions she had aimed. Instead a bright, pale light burned on the Lord of Teeth’s head, the tinker mixture burning up not harming the creature on the slightest.

It wasn’t meant to.

“Pivot, pivot, pivot,” Lieutenant Navpreet shouted. “Aim at the light! Lorenzo, turn that screw faster or I’ll make you eat the goddamn thing – there! Fire!”

Flame was touched to the blowholes, a nail-biting heartbeat passing before the culverins belched out their shots and kicked back like the world had slapped them for it. The first shot only clipped its horn, sending up a geyser as it careened into the bay, but the second hit the dantesvara right in its chest. Flesh tore, bone shattered and ichor sprayed. Song cleaned out the barrel of her rifle, reaching for the lantern munitions again, as she heard Maryam and Jayati talk in clipped tones about something that sounded like seal and cycle.

Not that it mattered. Before Song could snap a second shot at it, the creature gave up the game and with a great heave dragged itself back into the mouth of its lair. It slunk into cover, disappearing into the dark, and Song let out a heavy breath. Gods, they’d done it. They had kept the door shut on the western flank. Now the Lord of Teeth had nowhere left to go but where they meant for it to be.

She turned to ask Maryam how long the curse would continue only to find her friend frowning, a worried-looking Hooks besides her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The aether in there feels... odd,” Hooks said. “The Lord of Teeth has been doing something for all those weeks.”

“Odd how?” she pressed.

“Not thin, exactly,” Maryam muttered, “but maybe bri-”

She was interrupted by the sound of muskets firing, Song’s gaze turning to the southern gunline – where, behind the gabions, blackcloaks had shot at an approaching pack of irelxto. A full dozen of the pigmen, she saw with a grimace, and while they’d been slowed by the trip-traps they would need ordnance to chase off. And beyond them, in the heights of the Nests, Song caught movement. Beating wings. Harpies, she thought. Let it be only those, and not that thrice-cursed griffin that had apparently been haunting the hunt since the start.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Song told Maryam. “We have to hold here.”

Else the dantesvara would be able to flee into the water and escape the noose. And, should the worse happen and the third company be driven back, then Song’s battery would be needed to cover the retreat their retreat as they fled back up – and perhaps even attempt to kill it one more time, of it pursued far enough.

“It’s all in their hands now,” Song grimly said. “Trust them to end it for us.”

--

Angharad had noticed that Skiritai often had a routine, a secular rite they went through in the moments before the plunge.

Musa was nigh-inaudibly drumming his fingers against his knee to the rhythm of Redeemed Will We Be – amusing, considering it was an hymn and he was about religious as your average chair – while Jeronimo kept rubbing his thumb against the pommel of his left-hand dagger, sliding along the curve of the horns on the goat head. It was some ancient Chelae spirit, she’d been told, a patron of his homeland. Shalini’s own rite looked like simple caution, at first, but no one needed to check their pistols as many times as she did - even when they had four.

Angharad wondered what her own rite was. She did not think she had one, but was she merely as blind to it as her fellows seemed blind to theirs?

“Eyes up,” Sebastian Camaron said. “The outriders are returning.”

She could feel the change even without looking, the way weights shifted and their attention sharpened. Violence coiled and ready. Most of them had come with sidearms of their own, but today the core of their armaments was the same across the five of them: a steel-tipped hunting spear in the Malani style, fit for both throwing and thrusting, as well as a long and double-edged dagger.

Angharad had reluctantly set aside her saber, knowing it would be of little use against the Lord of Teeth, and instead complemented her equipment with a shorter ixwa stabbing spear secured against her back. The ancient Malani fighting spear was hardly ever used for war, these days, but its spearhead was well-suited to punching through thick hide and flesh. Its use would only come later, though. First they had to bring down the beast, and by Sebastian Camaron’s plan it was not they who would open the dance.

While the broad lines of the engagement had long been agreed on, the tactics had needed to be adapted on the spot to the lay of the battlefield revealed by Awonke Bokang’s munition barrels. When the powder mixtures were blown, it had collapsed the better part of the ceiling over two caverns: one stretching towards the right and the other towards the left, with an oblique wall between them that’d been right in the middle of the explosion and was half-leveled because of it.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Those two caverns and the rim of the breach blown into the ceiling would be the arena in which they fought to slay the Lord of Teeth.

It was not as split-up a ground as it seemed. The oblique partition wall, on which Angharad and her companions were crouching, had been hit hard enough that the debris had formed rough, jagged slopes on either side that their squadron had used to climb up. One could move from one cave to the other through there, if slowly, so Sebastian Camaron had elected to split the regulars into two separate gunlines facing the west.

Between both caverns there were five tunnel mouths, three in one and two the other, but in each cavern one mouth was facing east and thus could be forgotten about – Song’s company had fought the dantesvara to the west, so they knew the monster would be coming from there. Beyond that it was difficult to predict which tunnel the beast would use, however and thus which cavern they would fight in.

Angharad had considered reaching for a vision, when the beast first failed to appear and it became obvious a short glimpse ahead would not suffice, but there’d been a rub: she could not say so without outing her contract, which she would not.

Sebastian Camaron had thus sent outriders into the tunnels to draw out the beast instead, which in turn made burning her sole vision of the day pointless. Sending twelve souls into the dark tunnels made what was to come too fluid, the two glimpses ahead she’d taken contradicting each other, so Angharad had resigned herself to patience instead.

Their perch atop the wall separating the two caves had them well positioned to join the fight no matter where it erupted, though Angharad hoped the dantesvara would come through the cave to the right despite its two west-facing tunnel mouths. The collapse in that cavern had been thorough enough the rubble made a slope reaching from above ground to the cave floor, the same they had all used to descend, and it was stable enough that Captain Shange was able to deploy ten men in firing line halfway down.

The cave to the left was larger, but there was a large puddle of water by the sole west-facing tunnel mouth that would slow the outriders when they went through and the east-facing mouth on the other side of the cave was narrow enough it would funnel together the gunline should they be put to flight. They would be easy meat for the Lord of Teeth, should it chase them into the tunnel.

When she caught a flicker of movement to the left Angharad pushed down a swell of resignation, angling the bottom her spear to help push her up from her crouch, but blackcloaks that emerged from the dark and rushed through ankle-high water were not hurrying in the way of those fleeing death – Awonke Bokang, among them, shouted something in thickly accented Antigua while gesturing to the opposite side of the wall.

That made the meaning plain enough, and even as Camaron ordered the gunline below to redeploy Angharad pivoted towards the cavern to the right, as did the others. Just in time to catch sight of a shaking lantern light cutting through the dark, the blackcloak holding it running out of the tunnel mouth as fast as his legs could carry him. Tristan was half a step behind, shouting something at the soldier just behind him as she – gargantuan deformed fingers whipped out of the dark, snatching the dark-haired soldier by the waist and squeezing her abdomen.

It burst like an overripe peach, guts flopping out even as the Lord of Teeth carelessly tossed her aside, and Angharad knew then that the fourth blackcloak to have gone down that tunnel would not be returning either.

“Steady,” Sebastian Camaron said. “Wait for my command.”

The tactics now were simple. There could be no ambushing the dantesvara when it saw them through the aether instead of its eyes, but while the creature was clever it was still a beast.

As Tristan and the other blackcloak banked hard to the side, the Lord of Teeth came into the light – through the gaping hole above the silver glow of the Orrery moon shone down, and the Glare lanterns scattered across the caverns cast its shadow into warped relief. The dantesvara was still that creature of nightmare, that ashen horse-like head with three curving horns, bulging equine eyes and a crocodile’s lipless jaw at the end of scaled form tall as three men, and it moved to startlingly fast for a creature so large.

But it had been mauled.

A third of its head was gone, a wound torn through muzzle, nostril, jaw and even all the way through the eye – all of it bleeding ichor. It even lay bare a chunk of teeth at the corner of the jaw and the bone spur at the base of the left horn. The mane covering its neck had been torched and its right horn was half-snapped off, but more importantly its left front leg had been taken off at the knee so it was moving on three legs.

And that wasn’t even the wound bleeding the worst: the thick grayish flesh flaps beneath the head, covering its throat, had been shot through by cannon. A ragged, bloody hole had been punched through the flesh and movement had torn it up even further, opening a wound down the flaps that revealed the rows and rows of teeth going down the monster’s gullet. That mangled horror of an injury was bleeding ichor mixed with spit and mucus like a fountainhead, trailing on the floor and getting smudged by its feet.

Angharad’s heart caught in her throat, for this was rather more damage than any of them had expected the beast to slink in bearing. The flanking engagements had been fiercely fought and now the Lord of Teeth was coming here a battered thing. The Skiritai knew better than to think it entirely glad news.

Rare was the beast that did not become twice the horror when it could feel death had come knocking.

Yet for that first heartbeat death rode even closer to Tristan and that Garrison man, for the dantesvara’s eye was yet on them and it reared back for a lunge that would snap them up – only for an order to resound from the opposite end of the cavern. The two below had banked out of the way for a reason, and now that they were out of the way Captain Hernando Shange’s firing line pulled their triggers as one.

When the guns let out sharp cracks and plumes of smoke the Lord of Teeth let out a cry, as much in surprise as in pain, because for once the firearms had hurt. These weren’t muskets, Angharad thought with a smile, but He Sha Qiang rifles straight from the Republics. At this range, they punched through the monster’s hide and thick dermis as if it were paper – if it ignored the riflemen too long, it would be shredded by a hundred bites.

Angharad saw the hesitation, the moment where fear warred with cleverness inside the Lord of Teeth’s brains. The monster could see the squadron perched on the heights, a potential threat, but already the riflemen were reloading and those shots had hurt. And in a beast’s mind, fear beat out everything else: with a roar it charged across the cavern, ignoring Tristan and the other survivor as well as the waiting slayers to hammer into the firing line.

They all rose to their feet, eyes on the enemy. Gauging the speed, the angle.

“Wait for it,” Sebastian Camaron said as the dantesvara tore through the distance. “Wait and – now.”

They moved smoothly, nearly as one. There was no room to take a running jump, so Angharad simply raised her spear and leapt. The air screamed around her, cloak snapping behind, and the dantesvara was half a blur but after a seeming eternity tumbling through the air she hit the creature’s scaled back. Rolling down it all too quickly, she ripped free her dagger and slammed it into the dermis – it stuck in, and though it did not get all the way through it secured her a grip.

It also nearly wrenched her arm off, but she swallowed the groan of pain and pulled herself up.

Angharad had been the leftmost of the squadron, so she was furthest down the back and caught only a brief glimpse of Musa standing unsteadily atop the burnt-out husk of the mane to slam his spear into the Lord of Teeth’s neck. She felt that impact - the creature’s limbs spasmed as it let out a noise like a shriek, toppling forward like a cart hitting a bench. But Musa must not have cut through the full cluster of nerves, for though the dantesvara’s mangled head hit the bottom of the slope even as the gunline retreated its back limbs kept flailing.

They were very much not paralyzed.

“Mierda,” Jeronimo cursed, just ahead.

Arms rose and fell, Angharad’s among them as she punched down her hunting spear into the dantesvara’s flesh, grunting with effort and pushing ever deeper until she felt the small pop and pressure slacking when she reached one of the lungs. There would be no fleeing into the water for the Lord of Teeth now, no matter how the battle here ended. She held on tight, bracing for the-

Screaming, shrieking, wailing, the Lord of Teeth pushed up its back legs, trying to throw them off, and Angharad held on to her spear and knife and it tried to buck them like a dog shaking off water.

She snarled as her dagger came loose and the spear’s wooden shaft cracked, slamming the blade back into the dantesvara’s flesh with all her strength and almost flipping forward from the movement. She had to kick down to prevent her feet passing over her head – but the angle she came down on half-slid her ixwa spear out of its sheath, and inevitably it continued slipping out before tumbling down the creature’s side. And some’s luck still went worse than her own.

“Musa,” Sebastian screamed.

Musa was flying, shaken off the neck, and headed right for the wall back first. Part of Angharad winced before she even heard the wet crack sure to follow, the broken back and likely neck, but instead to her utter disbelief Musa Shange hit the wall like a wet rag and began sliding down, still falling from heights but no longer to be cracked like a thrown pot. There was something on the stone, what looked like woven bright colors in dizzying patterns, and she heard someone being noisily sick up atop the oblique wall.

No time to see more, not when the dantesvara was writhing against the ground like an angry snake and now they must move onto the fallback plan: ahead of her, Angharad saw Jeronimo begin knifing his way up to the third spear – the one Shalini had rammed in - while Shalini moved towards the second, Camaron’s, and Camaron himself climbed towards Musa’s spear at the top.

Rifles fired from the heights drowned the cavern in smoke as the other gunlines reached the top of the wall or rim of the crater and began unloading down into the dantesvara – but only with their guns. Grenades, alas, had too high a chance to hit one of them as well. They could not easily come into play before the squadron had finished its task, the crippling of the dantesvara so it would be as a fish in the barrel for the regulars.

Groaning, fingers aching and burning at the joints, Angharad caught the edge of the fourth spear shaft but the monster bucked the other way and it slipped through her fingers. Swallowing a scream, even as she began to slide off the back, she ripped her knife free and stabbed it again – just in time for the creature to reverse, sending her the other way.

She caught the shaft with her legs, dragging herself up to hug it and swallowing drily as it was almost wrenched out from her weight. She was still luckier than Camaron, who tumbled off the neck right next to the snapping mouth of the beast. That bought them all a moment as the Lord of Teeth drew back to try and swallow him, but its front legs were dead so it had to wriggle like a worm and the captain of the Ninth slid between a leg and belly to get out of the way, Angharad catching a flicker of light as he did.

Trusting he’d make it, she moved from the fourth spear to the third even as the procession up the neck continued. Her lover was almost at the top, hand closing around the long knife Musa had plunged next to his spear before being thrown off and - there was mute sound, like an explosion. As the dantesvara bucked with a scream of pain, Angharad realized that the Camaron had somehow found the time to throw a short-fuse grenade while getting out of the way.

“Fuckfuckfuck-”

Shalini rolled down the dantesvara back, Musa’s knife in hand – it must have come out - and Jeronimo reached for her but the cloak slipped through his fingers. Angharad grunted, catching a groaning Shalini’s stomach with her arm, and feeling herself slipping back acted on instinct Taking what little footing she still had she threw Shalini forward, tumbling down back past the fourth spear, and she narrowly caught on to her own even as above Shalini’s wrist was caught by Jeronimo and he dragged her past him as the dantesvara bucked again.

It angled its head down, rear legs up like a bucking horse, and with a wild shout Shalini Goel rose from the roll she’d been falling into and tossed aside Musa’s knife to begin running down the creature’s neck lest she fall off instead – and impossibly, absurdly, even as she ran past the neck wound her hands blurred.

One, two, three, four. Pistols barked one after another, and after the fourth shot in the very same spot already opened by Musa’s dagger the Lord of Teeth’s back legs gave a mighty twitch and dropped. The shift of weight tossed up Shalini like she was on the edge of rocking boat and she went flying, landing on the slope and half atop a blackcloak. Broken limbs almost certainly, Angharad thought, but she would live.

Another volley from the heights, smoke rolling in like fog as bloody holes were torn all over the creature’s head and neck, and the Lord of Teeth shrieked as it felt the noose tighten.

Only instead of rolling around as she had expected – Angharad was preparing to leap off, their task was done – the creature bucked up its body one last time. It rose, rose, its mangled horns hitting the ceiling and one of them snapping as it tried to slam its way backward. Angharad and Jeronimo were left to dangle off the spears: hers cracked even further, beginning to splinter, but his snapped outright and as he fell by her she snarled and offered her hand.

Yet Jeronimo de Aznarez hardly even seemed worried, snatching his feathered hat out of the air and slamming it back on his head as he produced two knives from his sleeves to ram into the Lord of Teeth’s back. It wasn’t enough, one snapped and the other tore out, but by the time he slammed a third knife into the creature’s back and it slid out he’d slowed his fall enough to hit the ground in a hard fall instead of one that would smash his legs like kindling.

A sharp whistle had her looking aside, and there she found among the rocks that Tristan – his black cloak seemingly melding with the shadows - had been the one calling out. He threw something at her, and out of reflex she caught it. Another hunting spear, he must have taken it from the reserve above.

“Go forward,” he shouted.

She was about to ask why when she caught movement from behind – Ferranda and the last outriders finally reappearing, having waited to take the beast from behind. So when the creature toppled back forward, drawn down by the inevitable grasp of its own weight when it failed to angle backwards enough, she threw herself forward as well. Angharad’s boots slipped on slick black ichor and she tumbled, Shalini’s javelin shaft hitting her in the stomach and snapping from the impact, one sharp edge punching into her coat and scoring blood from her side as she got tangled.

The creature might well have killed her for that, if not for the grenades thrown at its back legs by Ferranda and the three Garrison soldiers. The explosions tore through the dantesvara’s haunches, shredding the muscles even as the creature tried to roll over, and Angharad wrenched herself free as it screamed again. Another volley thundered, bullets whizzing past her like hail as she rose back to her feet.

She saw it then, the path. The death of the Lord of Teeth, the set end from which she walked back to her own body. Angharad Tredegar breathed out, wiped the blood and ichor on the side of her face and hoisted her spear before she began running down the creature’s back.

She pulled on her contract, once. Released it near immediately and drew again, almost once a step. Light as a feather, looking ever for the same thing even as she felt her veins heat up. And so when the dantesvara wriggled off its belly, tipping to the side, she was already leaping – landing on the side of its body to continue in an unbroken stride, casting her contract ahead. One, two, three pulls and it flopped back down but she nimbly skipped and hit its back against as hit the floor, barely losing half a step to the quake.

Shots from behind, from the sides, from above. She could barely see from all the smoke, so she would have missed it if not for her contract. The way the dantesvara’s neck clenched as it prepared to smash its head against the slope, as much to get rid of her as topple the blackcloaks firing from it. But she saw one thing more and that was enough for her to discard the thought of leaping off.

Because even as the Lord of Teeth reared back its neck, Anghard tore through the curtain of smoke at a run and on the other side was waiting Izel Coyac - standing there, looking exhausted and raw, and as he met her eyes he pulled the trigger on his bulky machine.

It bucked against his hand and Angharad barely caught sight of a ripple in the air before another chunk of the monster’s head vanished like morning mist: throat and jaw and the side of the head, ichor went gushing out as the side of the skull was laid bare with quivering pieces of flesh dangling off the side. The neck flopped back down, cut through and Angharad screamed as she raised her spear and leaped, twisting her arms so that the whole weight of her strength and momentum would be behind the spear.

It slammed at the base of the bared neck, where the spine went into the skull, and Angharad buried two thirds of the spear in it until she felt brains squelching and the Lord of Teeth’s roar snuffed out.

The barest fraction of a moment passed and even as the great beast slumped to the ground with a shuddering quake Angharad Tredegar was struck by lightning. It coursed through her veins, lit her up like green Tratheke glass – or so it felt like, and as she was crowned by glory she felt the Fisher smile somewhere very, very far away. It was done, she knew. By taking the final blow she had cleared the debt of the dead, freed herself from the ghosts gnawing away at her. Even Maryam’s binding curse was lifted.

Startled, delirious cheers erupted around. She could not see who shouted them through the smoke, the entire scene turned otherworldly for it – as if some tribunal of spirits were applauding – but Angharad slid down the dead beast’s head on shaky leg, finding a pair waiting for her at the bottom. Izel looked like he was barely keeping upright but he was smiling, but Tristan was frowning as he stared at the dantesvara.

“Is she freed yet?” Angharad croaked, finding her mouth dry as dust.

“No,” Tristan muttered.

And as Angharad joined them, she saw Izel’s face turn grim.

“There are complications: that thing wasn’t a Lord of Teeth,” he told them. “It was a construct.”

They both turned confused gazes on him, Angharad hearing approaching steps and flicked a glance in the direction to find Ferranda and a pair of soldiers coming their way. She spared the captain a nod of thanks, turning back in time to hear Tristan interrogating Izel.

“- uct of what?”

“Solidified aether,” Izel replied. “It is why my spike did damage when it should have merely stunned.”

“Will it... disperse on its own now?” Angharad asked. “The creature counted as slain by the reckoning of at least one altar."

“I’m not sure,” Izel muttered. “Devils don’t melt when they die, so I expect-”

There was a sound like a pane of glass shattering. She turned, hand reaching for a knife she realized she’d left in the beast, only to be stopped cold by what she saw – or, rather, what she did not. The false dantesvara’s corpse was gone, and a few feet above the ground a massive, pulsing sphere of translucent power was roiling.

There was a cracking sound, and her eye caught on the ground. There was a fracture on the cave floor, like a wound spitting out hot air.

“Run,” Angharad shouted, grabbing an unmoving Tristan by the arm and dragging him.

Like frost on a window, cracks spread throughout the cave floor. From the corner of her eye she saw Ferranda and the others run back to the tunnel mouth, narrowly ahead of the fissures in the material, and Angharad lengthened her stride. Another step and her boots hit the bottom of the slope leading up to the evening sky, blackcloaks up on the ridge shouting and pointing, and she released Tristan to catch Izel by the elbow when he stumbled, harshly dragging him up.

Unnecessarily, it turned out. The spiderweb of cracks reached the bottom of the slope but went no further, like a tide having reached its apex.

“That is what it tried to do on Misery Square,” Angharad hoarsely said. “Collapse the square into the aether and all of us with it. But it is dead, how could it-”

“Someone made that construct, Angharad,” Izel said, panting. “And they must have put something else in-”

“She’s in there.”

Angharad’s head whipped back. Tristan’s gray eyes were on the roiling sphere, whose ripples were growing ever more violent.

“I can feel her,” her friend whispered. “I think she can feel me, it’s like she’s reaching out.”

Before the sentence even finished, a translucent tendril whipped out the aether sphere and smashed into the ground. A span of cave floor exploded in glass-like shards, revealing a lightless void without an end, and the destruction swept out like a flood as tendrils continued whipping out every which way like the sphere was throwing a tantrum. Angharad cautiously pushed her friends further up the slope, and in this her reflex proved apt – as the floor disappeared, the slope began sliding into it. Not yet an avalanche, but if it kept up...

Only Tristan pushed away her hand off, heading back down as small stones slipped past them, and when Angharad turned to grab him she heard a shout of warning. There was an impact against the middle of her back, but even as she tumbled forward a part of her went cold. That had not been a rock.

Someone had just pushed her.

She fell in a roll, swallowing a scream a hard edge was rammed into her open wound from earlier, and turned to find a familiar face. Some wild part of her had expected Sebastian Camaron, or perhaps Yaotl Acatl, but instead she was sneered down at by Cao Wei as the ghost kicked her in the chest. She fell down a foot further, hands scrabbling for something to hold on as the parasite followed.

“I figured it out, Tredegar,” Cai feverishly told her as the mirror-dancer scrabbled back to her feet, painfully aware of how close she was to the edge of a gaping void. “Why I can touch you. The seal your friend put on – it severed me from everything, even the Acallar. I don’t need to go back, to show up in uniform to my own execution. It showed me how I can go my own way, all I need is y-”

A stone going through her head interrupted her, Izel snarling something in Centzon, but besides that ripple Cai Wei was unharmed. Less so when there a snap from the other side of the cavern, a small burst of light and a hole was punched through Cai Wei’s stomach. Ferranda, Angharad dimly realized, had shot her with salt munitions. With a howl the ghost threw herself at Angharad. She ducked out of the way but there was no room and Cai did not need to stand on anything, nor she was she truly moving. They both toppled back, half of Angharad’s dangling off the edge as Cai struggled to push her past the-

An open paper cartridge was smashed into the back of the ghost’s head and Cai’s eyes went wide before she peeled away with a scream of pain. Angharad swallowed a scream of her own, toppling back but a hand snatched her by the collar and began pulling. She heaved and twisted her legs to help, Tristan pulling her off the edge and onto the slope even as rocks continued sliding around them. The thief panted, tossing aside the last of the salt cartridge he’d been wielding.

“Come on,” he said, helping her up, “we need to-”

Angharad saw him stop, the way his eyes lit up even as she finished getting on her feet and turned. She saw, then, how the sphere of aether had ceased whipping about ands was now... dripping down into the void in thick strands, like honey. And the dripping had made holes in the surface of the sphere, revealing half a hundred different colored shapes held inside.

They spirits burst out through the gaps as the aether continued to drip down, like birds let out of a cage, and among them was a familiar silhouette – Fortuna herself, the spirit of luck in a fine red dress. Yet the color of the red seemed faded, and even as Fortuna came to stand before them, laying a hand on Tristan’s arm, when the spirit spoke no word was heard. Angharad thought it was only her, but her friend also seemed confused.

“Fortuna?” he slowly asked.

Behind them, Angharad saw the last drop of the aether sphere disappear down into the void.

And with it, as if drawn by invisible ropes, all the spirits that had burst out were dragged back into sight and down into the deeps.

“No,” Tristan screamed. “No.”

And, to Angharad’s horror, even as Fortuna was pulled away he grabbed the spirit’s arm to hold her back. For one beautiful, absurd moment it worked. Angharad reached out for him, to help him get his patron out-

And then the invisible rope was tugged at harshly, and as Tristan Abrascal refused to let go of Fortuna he was dragged down into the void with her.