Paul Kidd - White Plume Mountain

Lying stunned beneath the ashes, Escalla stared at the thing and felt her courage slowly deflate.

“Oooh, poop!”

Half-blinded, the monster reared aside as a human figure erupted from the ash below. The eight-foot abyssal bat dwarfed even the Justicar. Trailing dust, the Justicar’s black sword smacked into the monster’sgut. The blade rang as it chopped into stony flesh, black steel flashing as the blade beat aside the fiend’s claws and smashed down into its shoulder joint.Screaming in pain, the monster staggered backward, simply shook off a blast of flames from Cinders’ snout, and lunged to wrap its huge bat wings about theJusticar. Escalla gave a scream of fright and lifted up her hand, a spell half-formed, but froze in indecision as she saw the human warrior trapped inside the monster’s arms.

The Justicar’s face stood out in the stark shadows cast byhis own illumination spell. Trapped in the monster’s arms, the man roared andsmacked his shaven head straight into the creature’s face. He hit it a secondtime and then a third, blood streaming down his face from cuts made by the creature’s breaking teeth. As the creature’s grip loosened, the Justicar rakedhis boot down the beast’s long shin.

It relaxed its hold, and the Justicar wrenched one arm free to rip his fingernails down into the monster’s shoulder wound. The man rippedand tore at the exposed end of a bone, and the fiend threw the man aside in agonized rage.

The monster staggered one half-pace back. Gripping his sword halfway down the blade like a quarterstaff, the Justicar rammed the weapon’spoint into the beasts’ throat and twisted at the blade as it came free.

The monster still lived. The creature fought free and lumbered bleeding and howling straight toward Escalla’s hiding place. The faeriescrabbled backward and felt her back jam against a tree as she blasted her very best web spell at the creature. The monster ripped its way out of the web and lunged straight for Escalla, its needlelike teeth gaping wide enough to fill her entire world.

The Justicar’s shout echoed through the night. Steppingbetween the faerie and her demonic attacker, he decapitated the monster with one savage swing. Its fangs snapped shut an inch from the faerie’s throat. Escallablinked as the severed head thudded down onto the ash, gaping at her with its wide-open jaws.

Acid leaked from the corpse to burn a hole into the ground. With a shudder, the monster finally stopped beating its wings. The faerie stood up very, very carefully. With mincing, delicate little steps she withdrew from the monster’s maw. She wobbled her way over toward the Justicar as the manwinced and sank down onto the ash.

The girl blew out a dazed breath. She saw the Justicar holding onto his own ribs and came to stand at his side.

“You, ah, you do little spells, but you do good ones.” Shetouched a hand against her side where the acid had burned away a sheet of skin. Her flesh was now pure, seamless, and as perfect as ever. “Thank you. And the,uh, the warm ashes idea… pretty good.”

The man cursed and thumped a spell into his own flesh, hissing the invocation in annoyance.

The Justicar’s light spell lit up the island in a pure whitebrilliance. Covered in warm ashes from head to foot, Cinders, the Justicar, and Escalla looked like ghosts. The girl began to dust herself off, casting a frightened glance upward as something dark passed across the image of Luna, the larger of the two moons now riding the sky.

As light rippled reflections from the water, a distant hunting cry echoed through night. It was answered by an even fainter call from somewhere across the marsh.

Appalled, Escalla froze and stared up at the sky. “What are those things?”

“Varrangoins, abyssal bats, a type of demon-very dangerous.They’re hunting you.”

“Me?” The faerie blinked in horror. “Just me?”

“Just you…” Stark and dangerous, the Justicar simplylooked at the faerie. “Stick close to me if you want to live.”

The faerie nodded blank agreement. Ruefully inspecting the ashes clinging to Cinders’ wet fur, the man gave a growl. “Hey, Cinders, areyou all right?”

All right.

“Good. We’re going now.”

The Justicar tightened his cuirass and snatched his helmet. He whirled, swept up Escalla, and lumbered straight toward the water at a dead run. Escalla saw what was coming and frantically tried to fight free.

“Oh, oh, now look! Guys, it’s really cold, and the water andI really don’t agree with each other ver eeeeeee-”

The Justicar plunged beneath the water just as a black shape cut across the sky. Escalla snatched half a breath, almost drowning as the big man plunged her down into the dark, chill waters. Claws struck at the water, then an acid blast stormed down into the mire, but the Justicar had already darted aside, swimming slowly and powerfully like a leviathan from an ancient world.

Long suffocating seconds passed. Still underwater, the Justicar and Escalla sheltered beneath a submerged branch, shadows showing through the water as more bat-winged shapes passed mere inches overhead.

Terrified of drowning, Escalla thrashed in a mad dance of fear. Her lungs screamed for air, and she desperately lunged toward the surface. She was caught from below and hauled back down. The faerie thrashed, desperate for breath, then suddenly bulged her eyes as she felt the human covering her mouth with his own. She tried to spit the man away-only to have herself crushedtightly in place. She took a breath straight from the man’s mouth as a sinisterblack shape skimmed over the waters just above.

An instant later, the light spell stuttered and went out, plunging the whole marshland into darkness. Escalla and the Justicar hung beneath the water for a long moment more, then rose up through submerged branches and took swift stock of the upper world.

Hunting cries echoed in the night as the creatures searched the far side of the island. The bats found the slaughtered body lying on the island and lifted up a scream of rage. As the remaining monsters flew madly off into the swamp, thirsting for revenge, the Justicar slipped underwater once again and swam quietly away.

Surfacing, he cruised through the thigh-deep water, planting the faerie atop his neck where she could cling to Cinders’ fur. Escalla spatand blustered, scrubbing her tongue as she fearfully hissed into the human’sear.

“You kissed me!”

“You’re alive.” The Justicar’s growl implied that this couldeasily be changed. “Shut up.”

“You frotting-well kissed me!” Escalla tried to abrade thetaste buds off her own tongue. “I’ve kissed a damned human! That’s the mostdisgusting thing I’ve ever done!”

“Unlikely.”

The faerie bridled, was about to launch into a stream of curses, and then shrank against the human’s broad back as something dark flappedpast a line of distant trees. The girl looked about in dawning fear.

“You’ve seen these things before?”

“I’ve seen them. I’ve watched them over Iuz.” The Justicarcrawled through the water without even raising a ripple. “They’re hunters. Theylike to kill.”

“A-are those things really hunting j-just for me?”

“Just for you, and they take quite a bit of summoning.”

The Justicar rose dripping from the water to check the skies for sign of pursuit, then swam through a few mere handspans’ depth of water,never once leaving a trail.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who wants you to shut up.”

The abyssal monsters quartered and searched the waterlogged isles, spreading a chill of evil across the entire marsh, but the Justicar’sskills apparently had thrown them off the trail. Climbing up between Cinders’tall damp ears, Escalla clung to her two companions in fright. She swallowed, following the sounds of the demons hissing through the dark.