Anton Strout: Stonecast

“Followers of Kejetan, hear me,” I continued. “There are those of you who have long been with him. I doubt my words will appeal to any sense of reason in you. But for those of you who find yourself new and afraid in your service to this mad lord, know this: This is not your fight. Your lives may be spared if you turn from the false promises of this man. Mark me, I will only offer you this option once.”

The room erupted in conversation and shouting, some of the crowd attempting to disengage from it. Caleb grabbed my arm and dragged me behind Stanis’s wings.

“Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?”

I shook my head. “Remember, we don’t have to beat them; we don’t even have to fight them. We just have to keep them engaged.”

“Right,” Caleb said.

Before either of us could move, Stanis stepped away from us toward his father.

“What is the matter, son?” Kejetan said to him. “No longer feeling special in a roomful of your fellow creatures?”

“Do not call me your son,” Stanis said. “You lost that right centuries ago.”

“And you lost any chance you had to rule by my side when you choose to stand with their kind,” Kejetan shouted, pointing at Caleb and me.

The alchemist moved closer to me, whispering.

“What part of not engaging them did that hunk of stone not understand?” he asked.

I ignored him, trying to draw the focus of Kejetan back to me.

“Really hating on humanity,” I shouted, before Stanis could escalate this any further. “Do you forget where you come from, Kejetan? Do you forget how you were created?”

“I have no need for humanity,” he said. “Except as servants to my higher form. When I was stuck in that jagged stone body for centuries, all I could do was sit and watch your kind squander their lives, toiling in this world with the mundane. There is no nobility in you.”

“If you’re the paragon of nobility,” I said, “I think I’ll pass.”

Kejetan waved his hand, and the circle of gargoyles closest to his throne broke away and ran toward us, but Stanis dashed in front of them, blocking their way. Their claws and fists rained down on him as the shouts of the scared and confused filled the room.

I had hoped to avoid this, but all I could do was watch in horror as the fight in Stanis slowly went out of him because of the superior numbers of his attackers. Many of the newborn gargoyles ran off in horror, leaving only the most dedicated human and gargoyle Servants of Ruthenia remaining. The ones surrounding Stanis grabbed at him with their clawed hands, restraining him.

“If humanity has nothing, what do you have?” I asked Kejetan. “Followers, dedicated only because of the promise of eternal life. A promise that you have failed on yet again, and without that, what do you really have? Empty dreams filled with empty promises.”

Kejetan stepped down from his throne, eyeing me as he crossed the floor to his son. He grabbed Stanis’s face in his clawed hand. “And what do you offer us, Miss Belarus?”

I didn’t truthfully know what to say that wouldn’t get Stanis’s head crushed in, but luckily I didn’t have to speak.

“What does she offer you?” Rory’s voice spoke up out of nowhere. “How about us?”

The entire room turned to the empty space off to my right. Ten feet away, the air shimmered like I was looking underwater. Rory’s shape appeared, slowly coming into focus like a film projection.

I looked off to the door behind her, wondering if Marshall was coming through it. Or maybe he was inside already.

“We good?” I shouted out to her.

“We’re good,” Marshall’s voice called out from the far end of the throne room. I focused on the sounds coming from the only exit other than the ones behind Rory and me. Marshall came into focus by the door, a vial raised to his lips with one hand, the other one holding the spray nozzle attached to the container on his back.

“Nice touch with the invisibility,” I said, looking over to Caleb.

He nodded. “It was. But it wasn’t mine.”

Rory came over to us, holding up an empty vial of her own.

“Courtesy of Mr. Blackmoore,” she said.

I smiled as Marshall ran over to join us, spraying the ground behind him as he came. “Surprise!”

“Somebody’s been doing his homework,” I said.

He blushed.

“I’d have to turn in my Dungeon Master’s Screen if I didn’t figure out how to at least mix an invisibility spell,” he said.

I started to laugh, but a much darker laughter filled the room, booming over mine.

“So this is what you have to offer as opposition?” Kejetan asked, letting go of Stanis’s head. The rest of the mad lord’s pack still held their grip on him, but Stanis kept his head up with a grim determination on his face. “You mean to stand against me with whom?” He looked to Caleb. “First, a traitor to me, his greatest benefactor. Who will line your pockets now?” Kejetan turned to the rest of us. “And three other humans . . . ? A shopkeep, a dancer, and a stoneworker. Did you really expect to come here and challenge us with only one gargoyle against my multitudes? Did you hope to beat us down one by one?”

“Oh please,” I said. “Give me some credit. I am of the Belarus blood, after all.”

“And don’t worry about my pockets,” Caleb said. “‘You never know when one well will run dry’ . . . especially one so foul. It’s practically a freelancer’s motto. I’ll be fine. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“You dare—”

“Oh, we dare,” I said, the anger rising hot within me. “You’ve prolonged your life, but every last piece of your existence is driven by fear. The fear you strike in others. The fear you strike in yourself . It’s so all-consuming that you’ve spent centuries hiding away, chasing after revenge and power, but never living, never learning.”

“And why should I not have vengeance?” Kejetan asked, wrapping his hand around Stanis’s throat this time. The secrets your family stole were still mine, and they have been denied to me far too long.”

“No,” I corrected. If we were going to pull off getting out of here alive, I needed to turn Kejetan’s anger against him. “The arcane and the alchemical are not something you made. They’re things you accumulated, gained through intimidation and murder. Alexander’s child, your own son. And you wonder why my father took them from you? You wonder how your son chose to love Alexander more than you ?”

My words had the effect I desired. Kejetan’s face became monstrous with rage, and he lunged for me across the throne room.

The sudden opening of his wings struck terror in me, but this was what I had wanted—him away from Stanis.

Caleb’s hand went into his coat and from within he pulled a clear vial filled with purple liquid. He unstoppered it and let a single drop fall to the ground on the spot Marshall had sprayed on his way over to us. I only hoped he and Rory had covered as much of the ship as they could have with the amount of Kimiya we had made. The rest relied on Caleb’s transformative mixture.

My mind and arcane will were already reaching out, searching for the one thing I needed to isolate in this freighter and finding it—my arcane connection to stone . . . and it grew every passing second as the steel of the ship began to transform all along the path of Marshall and Rory’s trails. I breathed out my words of power, the rest of my will and energy bridging the newfound connection.

Kejetan was in a full-on run toward me by then, and the deep part of my primal brain wanted to flee, but I stood my ground, focusing on the gargoyle’s feet as they hit the floor of the ship. As his right claw came down, I rushed my will into the spot below it, what had become a stone floor itself rising up around his foot, twisting over it, encasing it.