Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

Glissa didn’t give the other vampires time to recover. She swung the Miracore like a bludgeon, collapsing the skull of the nearest bloodsucking fiend, which stumbled over backward and collapsed. The traumatized children scattered and bolted for cover. Glissa shifted her grip and grabbed hold of the heavy chain strung through the artifact and whirled the Miracore overhead like a flail on a very short handle. The chain decapitated the remaining vampires in one clean sweep, and three lanky headless corpses flopped, twitching, to the nursery floor.

“Bet he didn’t see that coming,” Bruenna said, wiping Yert from her eyes and face.

“Bruenna, I didn’t see that coming,” Glissa said. “But it worked.” The elf girl gently set down the heavy artifact. She still had work to do. Her sword appeared in her hand, and she stepped forward to face the nim that blocked the other exits but saw they were motionless and silent.

“Meyr mill mooing mum mey-”

Glissa reached back for Geth’s pack, but it wasn’t there. She looked over to where she had been standing before teleporting herself inside Yert and saw it rolling lazily back and forth. She ran over to the mumbling bag as Bruenna tried to calm the children and herd them away from the nim and back to safety.

“They’re still doing the last thing they were told,” Geth’s head said. “Look at them, the beauties.”

“Bruenna,” Glissa said, lifting the heavy Miracore aloft. “Do you know how to activate this thing? Can we order them to leave?”

“I hope so,” Bruenna said. She took the heavy, asymmetrical disk of the Miracore and held it in two hands, and closed her eyes. As the seconds dragged into minutes, Glissa started to wonder if this was really safe. This was god-like power, and Bruenna was only human.

Finally, the mage blinked. She looked as if she had just walked a hundred miles. “It’s done,” Bruenna said, her voice a croak. As she spoke, the nim blocking the exits calmly turned and scuttled away down the tunnel, claws hanging at their sides.

The mage handed the Miracore back to Glissa, who slipped the heavy chain over her head. The artifact was awkward and would make swordplay difficult, but she didn’t have much choice. She scooped up Geth’s bag and slung it onto her back, and placed a hand on Bruenna’s shoulder.

“I have to go,” Glissa said. “Tell them about the nim. It might be enough. Get the children out of here.”

The mountain shook again, causing the children to scream in unison again, and almost knocked Glissa off her feet. She stumbled backward into a pair of waiting arms. As the tremor subsided, the elf girl turned to see who had caught her.

“You weren’t going to say goodbye?” Lyese asked.

“Lyese, what are you doing here?” Glissa demanded.

“Catching you,” her sister replied. “And checking on the children. But it appears you’ve saved them already. Big sister, always looking out for me.” Something about the way Lyese said “big sister” didn’t sound right, but Glissa didn’t dwell on it.

“My Khana, Yert is dead,” Bruenna said. “We have a chance to turn the tide, but Glissa must go.”

“I know,” Lyese replied and wrapped Glissa in a tight embrace. “There. Now you can go. Come back as soon as you can.”

“I will, Lyese,” Glissa said. “Now get these kids someplace safe. Good luck. Both of you.”

“And you,” Bruenna said. “But none of us should rely solely on luck.”

Glissa shot from the side of the mountain like a goblin flamerocket into the sky. As much time as she’d spent in the air since that night the levelers attacked her home, she still relished the freedom of unfettered flight. It was her only option for reaching Memnarch in time now-Bruenna had warned her the teleportation gemstone was a one-use-only spell, and the elf girl had used it up when she killed Yert. But since they’d found the vampire necromancer so quickly, she still had plenty of time to reach her goal. She wore the Miracore tucked securely under her jerkin.

The flying elf cast her eyes down on the carnage that littered the battlefield. The mountains, flanked on one side by the shrunken Glimmervoid and on the other by the greatly enlarged Mephidross, were surrounded by chaos. Tiny black nim poured out of the mountain like needlebugs, following the orders Bruenna had given them through the Miracore. The nim collided with even smaller goblin and leonin warriors, who cut into the passive zombies with abandon. Great silver beasts chewed through the defenders, but so far the lines were holding-although they were starting to bend at some points. Glissa silently wished them luck.

The elf girl rolled and let her course gradually rise. She couldn’t afford to be delayed by aerophins or vedalken flyers. From this vantage point she could make out thousands of the construct beasts of every size and horrible shape. They hacked and slashed through goblin, leonin, and nim, leaving bloody body parts littering the field behind them. The giant, globe-headed vedalken that moved among them were unmistakeable even from Glissa’s vantage point. They were no longer holding back, and dozens of vedalken had entered the fray. Others rode hovering flyers, divebombing the defenders of Kark-Home and slicing into goblin, human, and leonin with well-placed bolts of blue energy.

No two constructs looked the same, and many looked big enough to swallow a goblin regiment whole. But those were insects compared to what the defenders had informally dubbed “quake-beasts.” Three of them clung to the sides of Krark-Home. The huge constructs had ovoid bodies with no discernible head, supported by over a dozen radial segmented limbs. The quake-beasts’ claws tore large chunks of raw iron from the side of the mountain as larger grasping legs dug deep into the ore, which gave them the appearance of enormous leechbugs on a mile-high vorrac. At each tapered end of the ovoid a pair of pitted silver hammers pounded the mountain mercilessly, sending tremors into the tunnels below.

An even louder explosion drowned out the din, and Glissa saw a ball of orange flame heading straight for her. She couldn’t tell where it had come from, and didn’t have time to look. The elf girl got out of the way just in time as a massive hunk of molten iron shot past. She turned to follow its trajectory.

The projectile reached its zenith then dropped back down toward the mountain. It struck one of the quake-beasts in the middle of its ovoid body, and both exploded in a conflagration that made Glissa shield her eyes even at that distance. The shock wave from the blast immolated nearby trees and knocked combatants onto the ground.

“What was that?” Glissa wondered aloud. She scanned the mountain, trying to spot the source of the huge hunk of molten iron. Had the quakes triggered a volcanic explosion, or had someone been trying to hit her?

Another blast erupted from the mountain, and this time Glissa made sure to backtrack the projectile’s path. The ball of flaming metal had emerged from perfectly round, bowl-shaped cylinder mounted on the side of a cliff, and pointing straight up. This second shot wasn’t as accurate as the first, and slammed into the mountain several hundred feet from the nearest quake-beast and started a small wildfire. She spotted tiny goblin warriors climbing around the side of the cylinder. Glissa wasn’t surprised that the Krark had built such a massive weapon. Slobad would have loved it.

Slobad. Distracted by the battle, she’d forgotten her immediate task. She forced her eyes forward and accelerated as much as her will would allow toward the Tangle. Glissa intended to enter the interior through the newest lacuna, Yshkar’s recommendations be damned.