They split the party, p.5
They Split the Party, page 5
“Edelfric, Scourge of the Iron Forest,” Arman said.
“Who?”
“One of mine,” Arman said. “He’s got a grudge against Roland’s father going back decades.”
Edelfric had been a servant of King Roland I once but fell defending his king during a trip to the Iron Forest. He should have died. Instead, the magic of the forest had bonded to him, twisting him into a crazed plant monster who believed himself abandoned and betrayed by the crown. He’d spent years terrorizing both the royal family and the settlements along the forest until the Starbreakers had managed to tear him to splinters and toss what was left into Oblivion.
“You could have just said ‘bad guy.’”
“Fine! He’s a bad guy!”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and crouched down. From out of her back, a pair of ethereal, bright green feathered wings burst out, expanding out to their full wingspan and pushing back people all around her.
With a single flap, she catapulted into the air, kicking up dust in her wake. Immediately, people began to point her out in the sky.
“By the gods, look!”
“The Winged Lady!”
“It’s her! We’re saved!”
As the people cheered at her arrival, Elizabeth faded away, and the Winged Lady emerged. She was the knight of the crown, defender of Corsar. And down below, her husband slipped back into his old instincts like a familiar coat.
The Meshars were gone. In their place, Phoenix and Wings went to work.
Edelfric’s head whipped toward the sky, spotting the flying archer as her first salvo of arrows sailed toward him, splintering harmlessly against his skin. Thorns grew out from his body and the surface of the giant roots, slowly digging into the bridge. When they were the size of daggers, they started launching themselves at Wings.
As Wings nimbly weaved through the air to avoid Edelfric’s assault, Phoenix took in the rest of the situation. The guards from the gate were nearly here, for all the good they could do. With this many bystanders around, neither he nor the city itself could bring down any heavy weapons on Edelfric, which was what they needed. And if the Scourge wasn’t removed from the bridge, the roots he was summoning could tear the whole thing apart. The structure was already unstable, bits crumbling off and splashing into the water.
In only a few seconds, he pieced a plan together and rushed to meet the oncoming guard.
“Tell the cannoneers to get ready to fire!” Phoenix shouted. “We’ll give them a clear shot!”
The guards stared back at him, confused. At least one of them worked out that by “we,” he meant him and Wings, but even that guard didn’t take any heed in his instructions.
Phoenix groaned, worried for a minute that he’d have to do everything himself, when another root burst through the bridge between him and the guards. As they shouted in panic, he reacted. He aimed his wand straight into the base of the root and fired a blast at full power that punched a hole into the outer bark. With his free hand, he dug out a fire sphere and threw it straight into the hole he created, blasting the root apart in a ball of flame.
As the flaming remains of the tree root rained down around them, the guards adjusted their assessment of Phoenix. Someone ran off to carry his message.
In the air, Wings flew in a tight loop, narrowly avoiding a wooden tendril reaching out to grasp her. Below her, Edelfric literally dug his heels in, a tangle of thick roots and vines securing himself to the part of the bridge where he chose to make his stand. She loosed another arrow in response, this time propelling it forward with a burst of wind.
It barely sunk into Edelfric past the arrowhead.
Edelfric answered her attack with another hail of thorns that launched themselves from his chest, but they never even came close as Wings used a gust of wind to blow them harmlessly off course.
They were at an impasse.
“Wings!” Phoenix shouted to be heard over the sound of screams and stone cracking. “We need to clear the bridge!”
Wings looked down, taking in the sheer number of people still on the bridge. If the task daunted her, she didn’t let it show on her face. “Keep him busy!”
Wings shot higher into the sky, disengaging from her fight with Edelfric and leaving Phoenix to face him alone. His faceted eyes bore into Phoenix, his head listed to one side in recognition. Good. Phoenix could use that.
“YOU. BOY GLINTCHASER. HAS ROLAND CALLED YOU TO FIGHT HIS BATTLES YET AGAIN?”
“A lot older than a boy now,” Phoenix said. “And Roland abdicated. His son wears the crown.”
“SO HE IS EVEN MORE A COWARD THAN HE WAS BEFORE!” Edelfric lumbered forward. “AND STILL YOU SERVE HIM.”
“Actually, we’re kind of on the rocks these days,” Phoenix said. “I guess you don’t get much news in Oblivion. How did you get out anyway?”
“I WARNED YOU BEFORE. NO PRISON WOULD HOLD ME.”
“I guess you were right,” Phoenix admitted. He could feel the wind beginning to pick up. He didn’t need to stall for much longer.
He armed another fire sphere and threw it at the same time that Edelfric launched another barrage of thorns. The attack was swallowed up in the explosion, and Phoenix threw up a force shield from his bracer to protect against what little got through.
Edelfric roared in fury, his whole body beginning to grow as the plant life he had summoned over the course of the battle began to wrap itself around him. As another massive root broke through the bridge and raced out to meet him, Phoenix braced himself to take the blow on his shield.
It never landed.
Twin beams of light flared to life, searing into the oncoming root and splitting it in two before it could ever reach Phoenix. When the beams vanished, Phoenix turned in time to see Angel step out of the crowd, a radiant glow rapidly fading from her skin. Phoenix didn’t even have time to be surprised.
“Nice timing,” Phoenix greeted before pointing his wand at the ground and firing a string of spider silk from it to anchor himself to the bridge. “Now, hold on to something!”
Angel cocked an eyebrow but only until she glanced up, after which she immediately dug her fingers into the stonework of the bridge.
Wings dove through the air, straight toward the bridge as all around her, the winds whipped into an impossibly strong gale. When she landed feet first on the bridge, the winds rushed out from her, sweeping across the bridge and scooping up each and every person still on it. Hundreds of miniature cyclones formed, keeping everyone aloft high above the field of battle.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her whole body shook, and her heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s, but she held them. All of them.
On the walls, the guards saw their opening. Two of the cannons along the wall pivoted, making final adjustments to their trajectory before both firing. Twin balls of pure white arcane fire tore through the air, landing direct hits on Edelfric’s form. Bits of wood and stone sprayed out as the Scourge’s body was wiped off the surface of the bridge in an instant, leaving behind nothing but a smoking crater.
The blowback from the blast snapped Phoenix’s anchor line like a piece of twine, and he went cartwheeling over the edge of the bridge. For a moment, he tumbled end over end, too fast to even make sense of which way was up.
Then, all at once, he came to a sudden stop as a pair of strong arms scooped him out of the air. When the world finally stopped spinning, he was in Wings’s arms as she very gently guided them through the air back down to the bridge.
“You couldn’t have just backed up before the blast?” she asked.
“I knew you’d catch me.”
“I should drop you just for that.”
As soon as they landed and Phoenix was set down on his feet, Wings practically collapsed into him, exhausted. All around them, people were gently drifting down, guided to safe, solid ground at either end of the bridge.
Angel dusted off her hands on her shirt, sauntering over to join them. Elizabeth flashed her the biggest smile she could manage.
“Hey, stranger,” she greeted.
“Hey, yourself,” Angel replied with a nod of respect. “Hell of a move.”
“I have my moments.”
“So, you actually got my letter?” Phoenix asked.
“Contrary to whatever Brass might tell you, I do read my mail. Actually came at a pretty good time. Was looking for an excuse to get out of town,” Angel said. As she looked around, her face’s normal resting frown deepened. “We might wanna talk about this later though.”
Phoenix looked around. From the guards to the civilians, every single pair of eyes were on the three of them as an awestruck silence fell over the bridge. In another second, it gave way to cheers.
“Well,” Phoenix muttered, “so much for keeping a low profile.”
8
THE CALL
After everything they’d accomplished, the Starbreakers had earned the right to think of themselves as important. But they weren’t “ignore summons from the King and Queen of Corsar” important. So when a squad of royal guardsmen showed up at their collective home in Sasel and said their presence was required in the Pearl Palace and that they should come at once, they dropped what they were doing, grabbed their gear, and they went.
And that was how, for the third time in their lives, the five glintchasers found themselves face-to-face with the Crown of Corsar—King Roland and Queen Katherine. Even now, in their later years, the pair was as beautiful and fierce as they appeared on coins and in artwork. Their hair, though graying, remained the kind a painter could get lost in. The skin around them had more lines now, but their eyes were as sharp as ever. Both of their outfits, finely tailored and exquisitely decorated, also bore minor accents of armor, lending them the air of soldiers who hadn’t quite made the transition from fighting to ruling.
Then there was the third face.
With his wavy, burnt umber hair, piercing blue eyes, small nose, and strong jaw, Roland II managed to be the spitting image of both his parents, though he’d traded their quiet intensity for an infectious spark of life and energy. His legs, or rather, the devices attached to them, whirred as he walked.
A few years ago, an assassin had targeted the crown prince. The Starbreakers had prevented the assassination and saved Roland’s life, but it had been close. Roland’s spine had been injured, and by the time healing prayers could be administered, too much time had passed to restore full functionality. The prince could not, would never, walk unassisted. But rather than crutches or a chair, he made do with a set of arcane braces for his legs and back, designed and built by Phoenix himself.
Roland II shook Phoenix’s hand, nodding to the others. “Thank you all for coming.”
“Well, twelve people with magic spears didn’t seem like the sort of invitation you politely decline,” Brass pointed out before being elbowed by Angel.
Roland II apologized anyway. “I’m sorry if that gave the wrong impression. The situation is urgent.”
“What is it?” Phoenix asked.
The prince stepped aside to let his parents speak.
“We received word this morning that a machine of the Old World is attacking the kingdom,” Roland’s father said.
“What, like all of it at once? Think we’d have noticed that,” Brass said, earning another elbow.
The king continued. “It was found in Red Gorge, a mining town in the far east. The machine awoke and began attacking indiscriminately. In a matter of minutes, the entire town was destroyed.”
“The people?” Church asked.
“We hope and pray, but for now, we can only confirm one survivor,” Katherine said. “They were a member of the freelancer company the town had hired to protect against anything the miners might encounter. Their account is the original source of the information, though, scrying has since confirmed the town’s fate.”
Katherine tapped at the table in the meeting room’s center, and arcane glyphs and grooves carved into its surface lit up. In a brief shower of light particles, images took shape in the air. The Starbreakers were treated to a gallery of the utterly destroyed remains of a mining settlement. Buildings toppled, flattened, and burned. Rock faces shattered, or in some places, sheared glassy smooth and still glowing at the edges. It looked like Red Gorge had been hit by a thunderstorm, earthquake, and lance of divine light all at the same time.
“Red Gorge was only the first. We’ve already received distress messages from several neighboring settlements. Scrying shows the same results in every one of them,” Katherine said. “We’re still determining what exactly the machine is. But from everything the survivor and his company saw before the attack, we believe it might be something called a Servitor.”
“Renalt preserve us,” Church whispered.
The others were silent, but eyes immediately fell onto Snow, who just last year had become infused with the power of a Servitor Heart. She ignored them, staring straight ahead.
“We’ve already discussed the threat with our own forces and the Academy. But our son put forward your names as another option worth exploring.”
“Our best option,” Roland II corrected.
“Why us?” Phoenix asked.
It wasn’t that he thought they weren’t up to the job. After Snow had absorbed the Heart of Ice, Phoenix had learned everything he could about the Hearts and the machines they were made to power. If anybody could be called an expert on Servitors, it was him and his company. But Roland didn’t know that.
“Because freelancers have more firsthand experience and knowledge about the Old World than anyone else, and because the five of you are the best freelancers there are,” the prince said. “At least that I know of.”
“Well, you’re not wrong about that first part.”
“Or the second,” Brass added.
“But even we can’t take a Servitor,” Snow said, breaking the cold silence she’d been maintaining at the back of the group.
Katherine’s ears homed in on the knowing tone in Snow’s voice. “You know what this machine is?”
Phoenix briefly explained his research into Servitors and their Hearts. He even talked about how he’d looked into ways to drain the power of the Hearts, though he left out the part about how that last line of inquiry had become one of the many wedges that had driven him and Snow apart.
“The point is, one Heart could count among the most powerful artifacts ever discovered, and Servitors had multiple Hearts,” Phoenix said. “If we want even a snowball’s chance in the hells against this thing, we’d need . . .”
“What?”
“A lot.”
“Every resource we have is being devoted to fight this monster,” Katherine said. “If you’re as knowledgeable about this machine as you say you are, you’ll have whatever you need.”
Phoenix tried and failed to keep his expression neutral as one of the sovereigns of their homeland pledged them her full support. The Starbreakers were no strangers to gratitude from important people, but this wasn’t gratitude. This was deference.
He tried not to let that thought overwhelm him.
He looked back to the others. “Guys?”
“I think Roland’s right,” Church said. “With everything we know about the Hearts, we might be the kingdom’s best hope.”
Snow shrugged. Phoenix wasn’t great at reading her shrugs, but it wasn’t a no.
“Oh, come on,” Brass said, grinning like an idiot. “Do you even have to ask?”
“Fuck it,” Angel said. “Let’s kill this thing.”
Roland II beamed. “I knew we could count on you.”
9
ASSEMBLED
It was a short but tense flying skiff ride from the city gate to the Pearl Palace. Lupolt, who had come to bail them out of jail, kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, silently simmering the entire time. Not trusting himself to say something that wouldn’t just make things worse, Phoenix opted to keep quiet.
The skiff brought them to a small landing platform tucked away in the back of the palace, far from any major crowds and out of sight from most of the city. Only two guards were waiting for them, and they were all ushered inside without a word. Two empty hallways and a secret staircase kept them out of sight of anyone else inside. A lot of planning and effort had gone into making sure their arrival at the palace was as secret as possible.
And after the business at the gate, it was probably all for nothing.
The next door they walked through took them into a sitting room with no windows but several lightstone fixtures, including a crystal chandelier that kept the interior bright. Three people were already waiting for them, and one in particular leapt out of his seat to welcome them.
“There they are!” Brass announced. He held his arms out for a hug, but a glare from Angel convinced him to instead fold his hands behind his back. “I heard all of you got arrested without me! I don’t know whether to be impressed or hurt.”
Behind him, Arno stood up as well while Ink remained seated. The young-faced priest gave the group a soft, relieved smile as they arrived, as if he’d been worried about them.
“Hi,” he greeted, uncertainty tinging his otherwise cordial voice.
“Church.” Angel nodded to the priest, pointedly ignoring Brass.
Arno took note that Angel was still using his old freelancer name rather than his real one. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like we’re all here just for a reunion,” Angel said, eyeing Lupolt meaningfully.
“Lupolt,” Phoenix said. “We’ve played along this far. Can you tell us what’s actually going on now? Because if you called for us, I’m guessing it’s important.”
“Has he still not told you?” Ink asked. “How rude.”
Lupolt’s jaw set, and he glanced at a grandfather clock in one corner of the room, mentally calculating something. He grunted, clearly not liking whatever answer he came up with, and then folded his hands as he spoke in a quick, detached voice.
“One week ago, there was a security failure in Oblivion. The integrity of some cells was compromised, and a riot ensued. As of right now, there are dozens of inmates unaccounted for. Most are likely still somewhere on the island, but we believe a significant number have escaped into the world. I’ve called you all here to ask for your help recapturing them.”
