Chapter 177: Marvelous

The first tower was empty of anything, the log-frame structure with its perch just under the trees silent in the evening dark. That emptiness included the people who should have been manning it. I checked the ground below, while Seyari looked for evidence of a fight above.

At first, I saw nothing, but as I was about to give up, I noticed boot prints in the snow. They were near the base of a tree nearby, did not have prints leading to or away from them, and were on the side away from the city. From the position, the tower was clearly visible, including Seyari’s head when she popped up to look down at me.

“Find anything?” her voice whispered down, carried by a warm wind.

“Boot prints. Just one pair—nothing to or from.” I tried the same trick back up to her, but she cocked her head to one side and I swore under my breath.

Something I should’ve practiced, although stealth isn’t really my style.

Instead, I gestured to the boot prints, then back up to the tower.

“Someone stood there?” she guessed.

I nodded.

Seyari furrowed her brow. Moving quickly, she leaned over the railing and looked down, then across out into the trees. “Check back into the trees a little. I’ll look again by the tower.”

After another quick nod, I darted off into the trees, careful to watch where I stepped. Further back, I found more boot prints, and these had a loping trail, like a sprinter.

A sprinter moving through dense forest and uneven terrain.

Shit.

Shaking off any pretense of humanity from my movements, I dashed back to the tower and Seyari.

She saw me, and reacted faster than most any mortal could. Wordlessly, she jumped from the top of the watchtower and took to the skies, darting nimbly up between the trees until she’d cleared them. Moments later, I followed her.

Rising up from the center of the city of Astrye, a thin, vertical line of orange cut across the stars. The tip had paused its ascent, curving downward as the flare that had already been fired winked out and fell back toward the ground. Nearly in perfect time, I watched another ascend, almost lazily, from the castle.

Then another from the fields.

Further still, one rose from the forest to the east.

“He knew you were away,” Seyari said in a clipped, strained voice.

“But I came back,” I replied, mind racing. Two of us, four flares.

My wife decided for me. “I know the castle better; you go to the city.”

“Gotcha.”

We split off without another word. As much as it pained me, I needed to make a choice, and the city was obvious. More people, more infrastructure.

Not that our farms weren’t valuable, but they’d probably not be able to scorch the earth so quickly. As for the flare to the south, I hated that I could so callously deny aid. But… assuming those were also watchtowers, they knew the risks. If they had families in the city, they’d rather I went there.

Throughout this little mental battle, an undercurrent of wrath swelled. Someone had dared attack people under my protection. People who trusted me—for the most part—to lead them despite my clear status as an outsider and demon both.

My powers weren’t suited to protection, or finesse. They were suited to wanton destruction. But, that was where the bullish, single-minded nature of my kind of demon came in strong. Despite the proclivity of my magic and claws to slaughter, I would force them to discern and protect.

Round hole, meet square peg. Square peg, meet giant hammer.

I soared over Astrye like a low-flying comet. Already, I could see a sort of muted chaos. Lesser demons of all shapes ran through the streets, smashing through doors and windows and flowing down alleys. Entrancing magic broke like storm-driven waves against my Title, and at the first sight of a body in the street, my vision shifted red.

Sound had disappeared into a powerful spell, and I sought the source. In the tight confines of the buildings, I moved from sky to ground, crashing silently through the streets with little more finesse than my enemies. Any lesser demons I passed met my claws or my fire, and few survived the first hit.

Of people, I saw only glimpses, and I couldn’t tell if they were running from me or the lesser demons. Still, I bought time for more than one unfortunate soul with my fire and claws.

Most lesser demons that survived my initial attacks, I left for now. The flare was a warning few would see, and with the majority of the city asleep, a warning would need to be heard, not seen. Aura sight lit up the lingering spell, and I tried to follow Seyari’s teachings and move from the outside in, looking for the center.

I didn’t find it in the town square, rather slightly toward the farm-side edge of the city. The building where the spell was most concentrated was a squat, two-floor home with the bottom floor partially buried to conserve heat. The shutters were closed, and it looked for all the world to be just another sleeping home, save for one thing: the door was slightly ajar. Not enough to be open—more like whatever latch or bar had held it was removed, and it had naturally fallen in about a finger’s width.

Skidding to a halt, I barely stopped myself from shouldering it open anyway, and instead pushed my way up the few steps and inside, quickly and quietly.

Glowing eyes met mine. Two pairs—one a reflective and familiar lupael set, and another of a coldly pale color, arrayed perhaps half a meter apart.

“No closer,” a smooth, inhuman voice said, piercing the deafening silence.

My aura sight made me take a moment to focus in the pitch blackness of the room, and I saw in an instant what was going on. A room in disarray, a demon of envy, and a hostage. Did they know I was coming, or did this just happen? Or was this meant for someone else?

The young lupael boy was trembling, one of the demon’s pale-fingered hands across his mouth. Another arm wrapped his shoulders, and four more held ready, thin, long nails almost glowing with magic in my aura sight. The demon was dressed well, although the clothes seemed almost loose on their gaunt form.

The demon’s eyes glowed with aura sight. “You’re fast, Wrath, but not fast enough.”

I hissed, the sound lost.

The envy demon, pale nearly to the point of translucence and bearing no facial features other than a pair of overlarge eyes and wide mouth, leaned forward. “Go ahead. You know this child’s life is worth less than the town.”

“That’s not the point,” I growled, my words unheard.

“While you hesitate, more people are dying,” the demon sing-songed. “You shouldn’t be here, but you are. Will you waste your chance for the life of a mortal?”

I was hesitating. The boy’s eyes bore down, seemingly into my soul. Him, or the town. The town had my family and friends, and many more besides. The choice was obvious.

I felt a rush of air pass by my thigh. The demon’s head rocked back as something impacted it, ricocheting off, and I took the chance without a second thought.

Claws out, I leapt forward, pushing the child aside with wind magic as gently as I could. He slipped from the demon’s loosened grip and tumbled away. Not a moment later, my hands met the demon’s arms, raised up to block me in a last-ditch effort.

The demon had been fast enough to kill the child, of that there was no doubt.

My superheated claws met resistance, and my mind slowed against a mental onslaught. Together, we fell in a roll, crashing silently through a downed table and into a wall, me first. My tail pushed us off, as their arms shot toward my neck, scything.

I couldn’t block all of them, and pain lit up across my throat as it was torn open. Roaring soundlessly in pain, I brought my head forward so hard my neck felt as if it might snap. The back-curved bases of my horns met bone, and I felt it crack.

A moment later, the envy demon’s screech broke through the silence, and the world suddenly had sound. Our gazes met, theirs slightly unfocused, our faces hardly ten centimeters apart. Arms busy wrangling theirs, and tail blocked, I did the only other thing I could think of.

I leaned forward and bit.

Sharp teeth and fangs slid through flesh, and acrid blood wet my tongue. Nearly gagging, I bit down harder, and the moment my teeth met, I tore away. This time, the demon’s scream came away as a gurgle and I spat their throat out wetly onto the rough wood floor.

They fought, weakly, for a moment longer before I took their head.

Someone helped me. From outside, distant crashing sounds met with cries of alarm, spreading across the city.

Not alone.

I stood up and spat out a ball of fire to clear my mouth of blood, then hurried over to where the child had fallen. From the door, another pair of footsteps ran inside. I whirled, and met the white-gray hair and pale blue eyes of Brynna.

She was holding a crossbow at the ready.

“I didn’t know you knew how to shoot,” I said before my brain could catch up with my mouth.

She hefted it and walked quickly over to the fallen child. “Sis taught me. Couldn’t exactly take one of these when I ran to get help.” She leaned down as I walked to catch up, and placed a hand on the child’s neck. “He’s breathing okay, and his heart’s beating. Probably passed out from shock.”

“Can we get him somewhere safe?”

I looked down at the lupael child. His ears and hair were a neutral sort of gray, contrasting with the dark eyes I’d seen earlier. Like Brynna, he had no aura.

“Yeah,” Brynna started. “I can take him to a safehouse and we’ll take—”

She cut off, and suddenly the child had an aura. One whose weight and size seemed to fill the room with a sickening sort of power.

“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Brynna’s shoulder to pull her into a princess carry.

The young lupael boy’s form twisted and elongated like wet clay being pulled at an extreme speed. A malformed blade, gleaming wetly even in the dark, slashed across where her head had been not a moment prior.

Brynna let out a grunt and stumbled. Her head whiplashed with the force of my pull, and I felt her arm leave its socket. I pulled her closer, into a hug.

Blood flicked off the blade as it twisted into an arm, a fine shirt growing out like a bizarre second skin. “You fell for it, but you managed to save the mortal.” Envy’s voice bubbled out of their forming head, hissing like hot oil.

Against me, Brynna gurgled, and I felt a wetness down the front of my dress. I loosened my grip as she fidgeted, unwilling to take my eyes off the nearly-formed Envy. Immediately, Brynna’s hand shot to her bleeding neck, shaking.

I didn’t know how bad the cut was, and I didn’t dare check. With how fast the transformation had started, I know the other Sovereign was only feigning slowness for some reason or another.

A shiver trickled down my spine as their aura bathed over me, roiling like boiling sick: disparate chunks suspended together in a vile cloud, all the myriad colors wrong somehow. Envy’s a reaver. Dhias, that aura!

“One of yours for one of mine, Zarenna Miller,” Envy crooned, now fully formed. “Fair, is it not? Even if there wasn’t a war.”

“Fuck off,” I hissed, but my heart wasn’t in it. My instincts, for the first time in my new life, told me to run. Rage and fury warred with common sense. If I fought Envy here, I’d lose.

“Have you lost your rapier wit, Wrath? Would one mortal’s death affect you so greatly?” Envy smiled mirthlessly and took a blindingly-quick step towards me, then another. “If I recall, just moments ago you were willing to let a child die—until your dying friend intervened.”

Dying? I could still feel Brynna’s heart, thumping through her and against me.

“…Monster,” I mumbled, the word halting and hoarse.

The laugh that Envy uttered made my heart skip in the worst way as they moved directly in front of me, so close that Brynna’s tail brushed their legs and froze. “We’re both monsters, Zarenna Miller.”

I tensed, preparing for the worst, knowing that I’d hardly be able to stop him from hurting Brynna, whose blood continued to seep from between her fingers to run down my dress. A drop fell noisily to the ground, then another as she choked back gurgling whimpers and leaned more heavily against me.

“You’re wrong. I’m no monster, not like you are.”

“Correct.” Envy clapped a single time, hands steepled together right over Brynna’s flat-folded ears. “Yours is a tame breed, gaining strength through needlessly convoluted means. Though…” A clammy hand moved at blinding speed and jerked my neck up. I found myself staring into Envy’s color-shifting eyes, set into an almost-familiar-but-not-quite face. “I cannot deny its efficacy. You’ve mortals on your side, Wrath. Power you may wield that is not directly your own but nonetheless very real. The anticipation wounds me.”

“An… ticipation?” I wanted to look away, but I worried what I’d see of Brynna’s fading condition if I looked down. Envy’s eyes almost seemed to draw me in, and the blood on my chin dripped away from their silken sleeve like it was made of wax.

“Yesss,” the other Sovereign hissed the word and let go, pulling their hands together behind their back as they stood before me. “Tonight is a lesson for two. One to learn that he must not let his methods blind him, and the other that not everyone is so straightforward as her. Neither seem to understand.”

Brynna squeezed my thigh, rhythmically. I recognized the taps as code, but I hadn’t learned enough to tell what she was trying to say. So, I did what I could—I kept Envy talking. “What do you mean?”

Envy smirked and dropped my chin after pinching hard enough to draw blood. “Not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve, Zarenna Miller.” Their teeth were white. Uncannily white, like fresh snow.

I felt a feeling building, coming from Brynna. Instinctually, I knew what it was. Desperation. Fury.

A contract.

Could I agree by thought?

No. Not quite.

I only knew a little of the code Brynna was using, and I needed a bit more time. Time that my own fury was struggling to let me have. “Am I supposed to take advice from you now?” I felt my claws twitch, wrath leaking forth.

“I hardly expect you to, Zarenna Miller. You’re far too bullheaded.”

The contract finished, and I filled in the terms myself—Brynna had given me a blank bank note, so to speak, in a gesture of trust my heart fluttered at receiving. In exchange, she got a tenth of one percent of my power.

“If I were bullheaded, would I even bother asking?” I felt just a little confidence returning, even as my already inadequate strength ebbed by the tiniest fraction.

While Envy was thinking of a witty retort, and before he could notice the magic forming around Brynna, I struck. Throwing the lupael’s changing body aside, I leapt at the other Sovereign through a column of blazing crimson fire. Their face registered surprise, and as they fell apart into a black smoke, my fire tore at them, and my claws caught the tiniest hint of flesh.

A scream of pain echoed in my mind, and I stumbled onto my knees, momentum rolling me into the far wall so hard I smashed partially through it.

The single word that followed Envy’s shriek chilled me to the bone from the sheer pleasure it dripped with.

“Marvelous.”

***

Joisse tried to focus on her patient. Every sound was an invader rushing in, every errant motion a knife in the dark. Memories of her days as an instrument of nearly-mindless wrath clawed at her in a way they hadn’t in months.

Still, she kept her mind focused, taking her anger at herself and the situation out on the poison that lingered in the woman’s body. Just a few scant weeks ago, what felt like second nature to her would have seemed completely foreign.

In fact, had she not practiced, Joisse would never have succeeded in healing the well-dressed woman.

Her patient was relatively small and unassuming in her repose, dark, sweat-matted hair falling away from a jeweled bun to frame her face. Clearly wealthy. Joisse guessed nobility by her mother’s new dress and urgent flight home. Unfortunately, the young demon hadn’t even thought to ask for a name. Might not have had time even if she had thought to.

During the healing process, the woman’s horns had grown to about a human finger length, and her skin had flushed from cream to a sort of pale, almost robin’s egg blue. Joisse thought she was still quite pretty in her russet dress, but worried the woman might not think so.

Still, if Mom Renna had carried her here, that meant she was an ally.

The woman’s breathing evened out as Joisse found and conquered the last of the poison. Her patient’s mouth slipped open just a little as she relaxed, revealing pointed incisors. In truth, Joisse was certain only some of the effects were from her, and the rest from the poison.

The woman was certainly demon-blooded now, but as Joisse checked her aura and found it mundane, she hadn’t really become demonic.

At the next sound like a footstep, Joisse almost didn’t think to check as she slumped back in her chair. With one drowsy eye cracked open, she saw an unfamiliar woman slink in. At least, she appeared to be.

With aura sight still active, Joisse could tell the mystery woman was a demon, though she wasn’t sure which type. Frozen, the young wrath demon felt a modest wave of some kind of magic hit her.

Suddenly, she really wanted sleep. Or perhaps to just sit and stare for a while.

The burning anger she’d been reigning in railed against the feeling, the laxness in Joisse’s mind allowing it to slip its confines. When the woman, now holding a glowing knife, began to move to one of her patients, Joisse’s mental fugue snapped.

Snarling, she shot up in her chair and gathered magic in her hands. Just like her practice, she readied her magic slingshot. Still looking human, and still without visible aura, the other demon didn’t move in time.

The intruding demon’s eyes widened as a person-wide beam of impossible power slammed into her. With a horrid wail, she was lifted off her feet and thrown across the room, body pinned like an insect at the tip of a solid beam of crimson-tinged light.

Back first, the spell punched the demon through the stone wall and out into the night, leaving a line of light shining in the night. Even as the beam burned a perfectly-circular hole into her and shrank down its radius to a pinprick before disappearing, the demon’s body continued on up and over the walls toward the snow fields beyond.

Joisse stared down at her hands and blinked. Behind her, the patient she’d just finished healing stirred awake and immediately began shrieking.