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FORTY-FOUR
<h2 style="text-transform: uppercase">LANA</h2>
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After being healed by Tomford, Lana ran along the wall in search of the masked men and women. Thys followed along on his own two legs rather than blinking around, wanting to conserve his strength.
She assumed the threat would come from outside the city’s walls, but a white light flashed by followed by an undulating darkness.
Lana threw a dagger over the parapet and into the face of a green-skinned, human-like monster with protruding tusks, then pointed. “Down there!”
Thys blinked down to the street before she finished speaking. Lana jumped. She caught herself on a gust of wind, then conjured a thin, white platform to catch herself before taking a final leap down to the street. She rounded a corner and found her friend standing over two bodies, one robed in white and one in black.
“That was fast.”
Thys bent over and wiped the thin blade of his short sword on the white robe, staining it red. “They didn’t even see me before I put them down.”
“Braggart.”
Lana was about to turn to leap up onto the rooftops to get a better view of the city when something large fell from the sky, demolishing a nearby building. Dust rose into the air.
“That was no boulder or ballista bolt,” Thys said.
“No,” Lana agreed, setting off.
Coughing, she entered the cloud of dust.
“Watch out!” Thys suddenly shouted.
Something shot out of the dust cloud and struck her arms, throwing her back out onto the street. She rolled until smacking hard against the wall of a building. Everything hurt. Blood ran down the side of her face.
Miraculously, her arms weren’t broken.
“What was that?” she groaned, getting up into a sitting position.
Thys appeared by her side, his clothes and hair covered in dust. Flecks stuck to his eyelashes. “Something big.”
The dust settled as someone walked out of the ruined building. A man clad in black robes, torn to reveal two long, slender limbs pocketed with oozing sores and pinkish splotches. His hood was down, but he wore a mask. As he walked, his whole body swayed, his arms moving like pendulums.
“He’s not so big,” Lana said.
The black robes bulged around the newcomer’s midsection and Lana hurried to her feet. In the air above them, more objects arced down into the city. They were all white and black. A new strategy then, not a single person’s mad idea.
“Be careful,” Thys said.
The man in black spoke in a hoarse, growling voice. “Little humans. Kneel or die.”
“I’m not human,” Thys said, blinking to the man. Light reflected off the rhinn’s blade as he rammed it into the side of the robed man’s neck in one smooth motion. When he pulled the blade back out, a thick stream of blood pumped out in an arc. Upon touching the ground, it stopped and solidified.
“So be it,” the man said. “You have chosen death. I am Diedrick of The Council. Prepare to meet your doom.”
Thys struck again, this time into Diedrick’s back. More blood poured out, but the results were the same. Once it touched the ground, it solidified.
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To Lana’s surprise, the congealed blood lashed out at Thys. She threw several conjured daggers. One hit the man in the chest, another in the stomach and leg, with the final one striking straight into Diedrick’s face.
Blood gushed out from every wound, enough to fell a normal man. Instead, he shrugged off the attacks. The daggers slid out of his flesh before dissolving into motes of light.
Thys couldn’t keep up with the multitude of blood-formed limbs slashing the air like living, red vines. One lashed his back and the force of it drove Thys to the ground. Diedrick stomped down hard but missed as Thys blinked away.
Thys appeared by Lana’s side, breathing hard and holding a hand to his lower back.
“What do we do now?” Lana asked.
The blood limbs tore off the man’s black robe, revealing a bare body that looked to be in the state of decomposing. Rotting flesh hung off of him.
His arms were the least affected part of him. Lana gagged as he clawed at his skin, drawing more blood and creating multiple thin tendrils. He formed a blade from the blood of one arm and shield in the other.
Diedrick laughed, his whole body writhing from the motion.
“I’m going to try something. Keep him busy for me,” Thys said, disappearing from view.
Lana threw more daggers, having little other option. They all stuck into their enemy’s newly formed shield. Nothing happened.
Diedrick advanced on her with a mad gleam in his eyes. She refused to let fear get the better of her. Instead, she formed a spear out of white light and charged, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her opponent calmly raised his shield, waiting for her strike. At the last possible moment, she jumped and launched herself forward with a blast of wind at her back.
Lana used the gust to power her thrust as she drove her spear into the shield. She lost her grip immediately when the tip got stuck in the solidified blood. Tripping over her spear, Lana slammed into Diedrick at full speed. Pain wracked her shoulder as she bounced off him. Diedrick held firm.
“Amusing, but this is the end for you,” Diedrick said, pulling her spear free.
With a yelp, Lana rolled to the side, dissolving the weapon so it couldn’t be used against her. Diedrick stumbled as it disappeared.
Thys appeared beside him in the middle of a swing, wielding an enormous battle axe rather than his thin blades. It chopped through several bloody limbs and wedged itself into Diedrick’s rotting flesh.
The sheer weight of the weapon sliced their enemy in two. Diedrick’s confident smile disappeared as his eyes rolled back and the two halves of his body slid apart. His extra limbs grafted from blood resumed their normal state, splattering to the ground.
“About time,” Lana said, panting.
“Took some time finding this,” Thys said, dropping the battle axe. It clanked loudly against the ground.
They limped away to locate more masked invaders.
“Not so fast.”
Lana’s eyes widened, and she turned back to find Diedrick back on his feet. His torso was held together by a multitude of thin bloody tendrils. His mask was gone, revealing a lopsided face where the flesh had rotted off his skull on one side.
“How are you alive, you bastard?” Thys asked.
Diedrick cackled, spitting blood. “We are just beginning, my pretties!”
Impenetrable darkness bloomed along many of his blood tendrils, as well as at his chest.
“It’s like Sarien’s,” Lana whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t let it touch you.”
“How do we beat him then?” Thys asked.
“Cut off his head?” Lana suggested, conjuring a shield of light before throwing a dagger at the darkness. It was swallowed, disappearing without a trace.
Diedrick rushed at them, his darkness held at the ready.
“Better think of something,” Thys said, lifting his blades.
Lana set her jaw. This couldn’t be the end.
Diedrick suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, one of his many limbs caught on something behind him. Frowning, he tried to yank himself free. When he failed, he released his magical hold on his blood, severing his own makeshift limb. He turned to rush at them again, but found his boots stuck to the ground.
“Why don’t you children allow me to deal with this one?”
Lana turned to the new arrival. She was a young, fair girl. “Who’re you calling a child?”
“Roots?” Thys asked, his eyes on the ground below their opponent.
The rhinn was correct. Strong roots grew up his legs.
“You’re a grower?” Lana asked.
“Something like that,” the girl confirmed.
“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”
“A single Slayer won’t be a challenge, no matter how much he’s chosen to taint himself.”
“A what?” Lana asked.
“You bore me,” the girl said.
Before Lana had a chance to protest, the girl grabbed both her and Thys. The world shifted around them, and they appeared in a different part of Fyrie.
The girl gave Lana a measured look before disappearing. Lana shivered. Her eyes were not of a young girl, but something much older. Ancient.