Tim Akers - The Horns of Ruin

The long, complicated length of my sword flashed, the power springing from the floor and coalescing against the blade. I swept it down and a brickwork of light traveled across the train, cutting the Fratriarch and Cassandra off from the attackers. The bug-eyed men looked the wall up and down, its light winking brightly off their lenses. When they looked back in my direction I had moved. I stood at the rough opening that had been torn in the car, swinging my sword in the slow circles of a balanced guard.

"Wall behind you, sword before you," I snarled and smiled. "Nowhere to go, boys."

The fallen attacker stood slowly. He moved his arm sparingly, and the dents around his shoulder leaked blood. He watched me warily. Odd curls of cold fog wisped out from under his mask.

"Three to one?" I asked. Their absolute silence was getting to me. "I am comfortable with those odds, now that I don't have to worry about the Fratriarch." I slid from balanced guard into a more aggressive stance. "Let us settle our differences, as warriors do."

The air filled with the roaring drone of engines. Behind the shimmering wall, Cassandra's eyes went wide, even around the shock. The Fratriarch grimaced, then put a hand on the girl's shoulder and began invoking. Reluctantly, I glanced behind me.

A dozen more, their bulbous green eyes bright as they arced toward the train from the ground on columns of black smoke. These men wore two barrel-wide burners on their backs, flame flickering around the turbine blades as they whined forward. Couldn't hold off this many. I looked back at the Fratriarch.

"Go!" he yelled. His voice was muffled behind the wall of light.

"If I leave you, the invokation will unravel."

"Girl, I have my own tricks." He planted his staff and leaves of metal began to tear through the ruined carpet from the car and swirl around him like a tornado on an autumn day. The leaves slapped together into a rough, hollow column around the Fratriarch. He drew the girl close to him. "Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, Eva Forge. Remember."

The last metal flake fell in place, and I dropped the wall. Light continued to flash from the column. Other invokations, other wards. The Fratriarch was Morgan's First Sword, his greatest scion in the world, I reminded myself. One of the framework towers that held the monotracks up over the city was nearby, and I jumped to it from the car, leaving the old man to take care of himself. Third mistake. That was probably the big one.

I clambered down as the flying goggle-men adjusted their trajectories to intercept me, jumping the last twenty feet. The arcane strength of my legs cratered the cobblestone street when I landed.

Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. A fateful thing for the Fratriarch to say, I thought as I jogged away from the elevated tracks. There were small crowds of injured civilians still clambering down from the train and dispersing into the city. Trying to get away from the fighting. Lots of screaming, lots of blood, but there were no threats among them. No hidden assassins. It made me think briefly about the Betrayers. This was nothing like their usual attacks, their small teams, their knives in the backs of their enemies. No time for that now. The distant moan of emergency sirens echoed beneath the urgent roar of the burnpacks of the attackers that were even now descending to the ground. They landed in the streets, fire and smoke haloing around them, scattering the already panicked civilians like leaves before a forest fire. I ducked into an alley.

In some ways, Erathis was Morgan's greatest battle. The Rethari horde that had been rolling through the northern provinces spread out when it came to the unpopulated Erathisian grasslands. Morgan led a cadre of Paladins on a monthlong campaign against the horde. They traveled on angelwings, hitting the Rethari in unpredictable places with crippling force and speed. Morgan led his company against the Rethari weaknesses, and also against their strengths. Wagon trains and armored columns fell to Morgan's blade. They even tore down a couple of the Retharis' divine clockwork totem-men. The Rethari gods cracked under Morgan's assault.

I watched the bug-eyed men spread out, searching for me, ignoring the civilians. The three up top called down in strange, static-laced voices from the train above. Outnumbered but mobile, I moved, searching for a weakness to strike. The comparison that the Fratriarch made was apt. As always, there was wisdom in his words.

I circled away from the elevated track, lacing new invokations into the air around me as I went. My armor tightened in memory of Morgan's Hundred Wounds, and my blade gleamed as I bound it with the Sundering. My step lightened as I invoked Morgan's march against the city of Ter-Trudan. When I felt appropriately buffed, I returned to the site of the crash from a different direction. Three of the strange men were standing in the wreckage of the ruined building, glass grinding under their feet. One of them was carrying some sort of heavy bullistic, awkward loops of ammunition twisted around his waist and shoulders. The street was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of idling burners. I came at them low to the ground, running forward in a squat, silent, hiding in the smoke of their burners until I was upon them.

"The Warrior stands!" I shrieked as I rose from the smoke behind them. I had one in half before he could raise his blades. The second offered feeble resistance, batting away my attack with his bladed gauntlets before he succumbed to a trio of armor-crumpling strikes across his chest.

Thunder rolled between the buildings as the backpedaling gunner slewed his bully around and let tear. Smoke vortexed out in whipping tendrils as the slugs ripped toward me. The hardened air of the armor invokation shuddered, knocking the breath from my lungs. Each shot hammered a little closer, the shell of my protections shimmering in protest. The metal of the noetic armor gleamed with heat as the friction of the attack sluiced off of them, the runes entangled within them failing one by one.

I went to one knee and rolled, buying seconds as the gunner corrected the stream of fire, his shots skimming off the edge of my protective shell. He dug up cobbles, shards of stone cutting my legs as I focused my defense on the impossible torrent of lead and fire. I braced my heels and sprang forward. Slugs hammered across my blade, nearly knocking it from my hands. Only the blessing of Morgan made me strong enough to hold on. The tip of the blade nicked the barrel of the gun and his aim faltered, stitching a line into the building behind me. I brought the sword around, and the backswing struck the firing chamber. The gun exploded, washing away the last of my protective invokation in a wall of fire. The gunner staggered back, windmilling the shredded rags of his arms. I stepped forward and struck him cleanly through the chest.

"Damn unnatural weapons," I spat. My hands and legs were shaking, and curls of smoke wisped up from the tired runes of my pauldrons. I went to one knee. There was blood and ash in my mouth. The air around was a ruin of smoke. The static voices of the fallen man's comrades began to drift from the surrounding alleyways. I struggled up. My chest felt like a trampled wicker basket.

Morgan, on the Fields of Erathis. His greatest victory. The hordes of Rethari undone, the grasslands fed with their dark blood, their gods shattered into wreckage, their armor broken. The Fraterdom saved, all by the hand of Morgan.

But also by the body of Morgan. The Fields of Erathis, where treacherous Amon crept through the night, among the smoke and the confusion and the bloodletting. As Morgan slept, he came. Jealous Amon, the Betrayer, the assassin. Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, murdered by his brother.

I blinked sweat and fear from my eyes and slipped away. More of the strange men came into the square. More bullistic weapons, more bladed gauntlets. More than I could handle on my own. I looked up at the mono car, where the Fratriarch still waited, bound by his wards, shielded. For now.