“The Sidhe words for mask, role, identity, and body are virtually identical, with only a slight tonal variation, that human throats struggle to produce being the difference. This is far from a coincidence and offers us unique insight into the perspective and internal workings of these beings. They change forms and even fundamental behavior to suit both whims and necessities. But this ability is limited by what ‘personas’ a faerie owns, and many intelligent fae seek to better themselves by stealing another being's identity to add to their repertoire.” - From an essay penned by Hierophant Jacq DeJacq of the Ninth Temple.
“Is there anything more I can do to help you?” Asked Cole as he sat on worn shingles and clutched a hand to the healing bite mark on his neck.
Natalie shook her head as she finished tightening the last of the straps on Yara’s makeshift stretcher. “You’ve already helped me get her up here and given me too much blood.”
That got a weary sigh from Cole as he looked away from his lover out to the rooftops spread out below them. It was an hour past nightfall, and Harmas was shrouded by a thick layer of low clouds that completely blocked the moon and stars. Paladin and Alukah were perched atop the tallest tower they could find near the apartment from earlier. The several-story structure would serve as Natalie’s launching point in flying Yara out of the dead city. A plan that, despite its necessity, still made the couple nervous.
Yara hadn’t woken up the entire afternoon and evening. While she’d so far not displayed any signs of brain bleeds or other more serious complications, Cole’s knowledge of medicine only went so far. Of course, odds were, Yara’s Ancillia nature was responsible for her coma, as she’d gone into a similar state after feeding herself to Natalie back at Fort Carnum. But neither vampire nor homunculus had much desire to gamble on the thrall’s life. Besides, making contact with their allies back at the river barge would be good. Hells, maybe Natalie could even manage to fly Mina, Alia, Deborah, Grettir, and perhaps any willing members of the impromptu garrison back into the city.
“Well, I think she’s as secure as I can make her.” Muttered Natalie as she gave Yara one last look over.
Cole examined the stretcher as well, then made a noise of agreement before putting a hand on her shoulder. “Be careful. The bat swarm is dealt with, but we’ve got no clue about what else might be out there. If anything seems off, don’t hesitate to retreat.”
Natalie put her hand on his. “Same to you. Don’t go after Isabelle or Mak alone, wait for me to get back.”
It took more effort than he’d like to admit to make that promise. “I won’t.”
The couple embraced and didn’t let go, neither willing to end the moment. With a sigh, Natalie untangled herself first after offering a final kiss, then clambered up to the roof’s apex. Dark red mist started to flow around her, creating a bloody cloud that both hid and enabled her transformation. The crimson shroud slowly congealed into a new body, one with great leathery wings and large twitchy ears. A series of chirps and clicks issued from Natalie’s bat form as she got her bearings.
Cole watched as his partner examined her giant chiropteran body and found it acceptable. She’d not been totally certain she could manage this transformation without tapping into the stolen skills of Molek, but so far, so good. Natalie put her wing claws onto the roof’s ridge and, with genuinely shocking force, pushed herself up into the sky, creating a whoosh of displaced air. After two beats of her wings, she lifted off the tower and began to cautiously circle it. Her flight became smoother and more controlled with every orbit. Cole stepped aside and waited as Natalie climbed a little into the air before diving for Yara’s stretcher. Bat claws gripped the sturdy straps, and with the sound of fabric sliding against shingles, the Alukah pulled her wounded Ancilla off the tower’s edge.
Natalie dipped precariously as the Yara’s full weight pulled her downwards, and most of Cole’s muscles clenched in fear, but after a few exaggerated wingstrokes, the giant bat compensated and regained altitude. Judging by how far she’d plunged before evening out, climbing to the top of this spire had been overkill, but better safe than sorry. Banking left, Natalie turned west and set out. The night’s gloom quickly swallowed her, but Cole could still hear the flap of her leather wings.
Once the noise faded to nothingness, he let out a sigh and went over to his pack. When Natalie explained her idea of getting some extra height to help start her flight, Cole had thought of another use for the tower’s top. Inside his bag was a short telescope, along with a tiny tincture bottle and eye dropper. After taking a steadying breath, Cole put his head back and anointed his eyes with the bottle’s contents. Blinking rapidly, he powered through the momentary discomfort as his night vision drastically sharpened.
He hated using this stuff, as it left him dry-eyed and farsighted; both dangerous impediments to have during a fight, but not while trying to get the lay of the land. Peering out across the city with new clarity, Cole looked north, searching the shadowy skyline until he saw hints of illumination. The flicker of distant torches and the amber sheen of glowstones soon caught his eye. He’d spotted the royal palace of Harmas.
Sitting in the middle of the central island, the palace was a fortress town nestled within the larger city. It was where the city’s nobility had withdrawn to when the full scope of the plague became clear. It was also, judging by the myriad sources of illumination, that Cole noticed the last truly inhabited section of Harmas. Or perhaps, inhabited was too generous a word; maybe infested was more accurate.
During his and Natalie’s limited exploration of the central island, they’d found much evidence of nobility’s craven retreat from both their duties and their people, actions that made Cole think of the city’s elites in the same way he did the Duchies. These nobles had used the initial chaos of the pestilence to rob their own city blind of foodstuffs and other supplies. Then, they’d hidden behind the high walls of the palace, as plague and panic consumed the citizenry.
Lifting the telescope to his eye, Cole tried to get a better look at his target. The spyglass had been an unexpected prize from the apartment, one that, judging by the configuration he’d found it in, was meant for use spying on neighbors, not the heavens. Natalie had found this sign of upper-class perversion hilarious; Cole was just glad to have a useful tool.
After a bit of adjusting, he managed to get a better view of one of the palace’s high walls. The crenellated battlements sported large burning braziers every twenty to thirty meters, and were broken up by foreboding watchtowers with flat roofs large enough to mount balistas on. He didn’t spot any sentries, but as his gaze settled onto one of the braziers, he got the sense that the walls weren’t unguarded. The heart of each caged flame burned a pale violet instead of a normal white, and at the edge of the fire’s licking tongues was a bizarre heat haze of rippling and ever-changing sheets of color that reminded him of northern sky-fire. Faerie magic was at work here.
Deciding he didn’t want to find out what those bewitched braziers were capable of, Cole searched the wall for a portcullis or other entrance. One didn’t jump out at him immediately, so he gave one of the more visible towers a second look. Yes, there was a balista on the top, but he had no way of knowing its status or if there was anyone left to man it. Meaning flying into the palace would be an uncomfortably big gamble.
Since he wasn’t having any luck examining the defenses, he moved his focus onto the buildings behind them. Despite being called a palace, the structures at the city’s center had clearly been originally crafted for war. The elector’s court was hiding within a fortress equipped with all the thick stone walls, high towers, and clear strong points for defenders to hold.
But… the more Cole examined the sprawling castle, the more he realized the structure’s modern label might be more accurate. Great panes of stained glass had been set into holes carved in walls originally meant to withstand magical bombardment. Ridiculous bronze filigree decorated rooftops and gutters, providing excellent handholds for anyone brave enough to make the climb. Broad internal avenues, complete with elaborate gardens, showed signs of having a past life as narrow defensible pathways. Years of perceived impregnability had let the prince’s fortress go soft like a warrior past his prime. Still, this slow transition from a proper castle to an urban palace didn’t change the sheer damn size of it, nor who, or perhaps what, still inhabited it.
Strange, unearthly light shone from many windows, and stranger shadows cavorted upon pale marble walls. There was movement within the palace’s depths, a lot of movement in fact. Cole couldn’t help but wonder what might be the source of this activity. Were the royal court engaged in some unseelie ritual? The sort whose danger justified Mak’s madness? Was it merely the comings and goings of nightbird nobility? Or maybe just signs of servants, struggling in their task of maintaining a citadel amidst a ruined city?
The paladin squinted through his stolen telescope and found one of the larger windows, one that looked into what might be the palace’s great hall. A glow whose color shifted every time he blinked shone through the multi-story slit of glass, flickering in a consistent pattern, whose origin he couldn’t guess at. Movement from elsewhere pulled his gaze downward from the window, and in its light, he caught sight of what must be a garden courtyard. Sillioutetes were emerging from either side of the great hall and running into the courtyard, each leaving a trail of discarded clothing in their wake.
The light from within the hall was soon joined by a violet and pink-tinted pyre at the garden’s center, revealing a wild crowd clad only in unsettling animal masks. Dozens of these naked bodies circled around the growing flame, each dancing, cavorting, and in a few cases, simply fucking. The wildest of these ecstatics were marked by strange painted patterns and jumped across the pyre’s edges, soaring higher and farther than any mundane person’s legs could carry them.
Soon, the crowd had grown to at least a hundred, and their actions reached new heights of frantic energy. Cole watched as packs of dancers clustered tighter and tighter, before collapsing into manic orgies. While the fire leapers made more and more daring jumps, until one poor fool got caught on the pyre’s edge and took an ugly tumble that sent up a spray of sparks. As the leaper clambered to his feet, clutching at his burned body, the surrounding crowd laughed and pointed.
From another path into the courtyard came a bizarre procession, four burly men clad only in wooden deer masks, carried a hide palanquin between them. Sitting atop the litter was a portly old man clad in wreaths of dried flowers and a metal helm shaped like a swine’s head. Following behind the palanquin were half a dozen young men wearing hound masks and shuffling on all fours. Making up the procession’s rear was a man on horseback. Both the man’s skin and the hair of his steed were painted a deep green, while a crown and veil of oak roots and small bones sat upon his head. The crowned rider held a bronze spear up in one hand, its gleaming tip pointed at the fat man in the pig mask.
The palanquin bearers forced their way into the crowd with a series of shoves and kicks, until even its most besotted members got the message and cleared a path. Now, as the procession’s front reached the pyre, Cole noticed something else about the fat man; his hands and feet were bound, while his helmed head lulled to one side drunkenly. A terrible notion suddenly itched at the back of Cole’s mind, one born from this bizarre sight and fed by the darkest tales of the Iskani Imperium's wars against fae enslaved peoples.
Moving carefully, the litter bearers approached the fire so that they would be merely licked by its flames, but their burden would be set in its center. Staring with wide-eyed horror, Cole could only watch as the fat man and his hide blanket seat were dumped into the pyre. For a few seconds, the man didn’t react, but as the tanned skin beneath him started to catch, he began to struggle.
Cole looked away then, not wanting to see anymore. A shiver of deep revulsion ran up his spine, before deeper rage stiffened his back. This… this was an abomination of the highest sort, a blasphemous rite, grotesque by every measure of the most twisted imagination. Rubbing at his dry eyes, hoping to wipe away the last images they’d caught from the spyglass, the paladin gained a new understanding of Mak’s actions. How many similar atrocities must have occurred under his watch? Crimes the hunter couldn’t stop, let alone avenge. This didn’t excuse what his former mentor had done, but it at least offered context. The prince’s court needed to be dealt with, but not by stooping to their level.
Turning east, and away from the palace, Cole refocused on his more immediate priority: rescuing Isabelle and dealing with Wolfgang. Peering out at the most heavily infested of Harmas’s three islands, he looked for signs of activity. To his surprise, it didn’t take him long to find some. Dim light shone in the high windows of a large building that must have once been a temple. A faint stirring of hope filled Cole’s chest as he continued his examination. If there was anywhere other survivors to be found, then it would be such a place. When Natalie got back, they’d need to set out for the temple. Those hardy souls who hid behind its sanctified walls might be able to offer valuable information about both Mak and Wolfgang’s whereabouts.
Reaching into his pack, Cole pulled out his annotated map in hopes of identifying the temple. He conjured up a bit of light from his amulet and started examining the diagram, only for that little spark of hope to be turned into something much more desperate. Following Marcus’s guidance, he’d drawn a straight line across the city, one that pointed in Wolfgang’s direction. That line passed right over what had to be the temple Cole had been spying on.
The undead war priest’s crackling words echoed in the paladin’s ears. “I…can also feel where… where he’s invested himself. Somewhere once holy, somewhere he’s now stained with his corruption.”
“Fire-and-iron,” muttered Cole as the pieces fell into place. The light he’d seen wasn’t the sign of hardy survivors, but a mark of how horribly the temple had been desecrated. Wolfgang was squatting on freshly unhallowed ground, using it as a base to conduct jagged experiments upon Isabelle and Pantheon knew who or what else.
The homunculus wanted nothing more than to descend from his perch and march upon the temple. To smash open its doors and haul Wolfgang kicking and screaming into the sun’s glare. Cole’s mind started quickly going over the logistics of what he’d need to do to prepare, and how to best assault this latest vampire lair. But, as much as he wanted to gallop to Isabelle’s rescue, his promise to Natalie pulled on him like reins. Practicality and sentimentality were in rare agreement. He couldn’t afford to rush on ahead by himself, nor would he damage Natalie’s trust. Cole needed to wait, no matter how much it pained him to.
Rubbing his brow with a sigh, Cole continued examining the map when a thought struck him. From the way Marcus described it, Wolfgang’s lair was underground, and not necessarily the same place as where he was “investing his power.” Cole traced the line on either side of the temple and quickly found it also passed through a large manor located in the city’s easternmost section. Starring down at this, he wondered how much of a coincidence it would be if the apartment where they’d stayed earlier and interrogated Marcus was perfectly situated so the Dullahan’s guiding line would pass right through both temple and manor?
The paladin offered a small prayer of thanks to Master Time and folded up the map. If his theory were correct, he now knew not only where Wolfgang was conducting his rituals, but also where he slept during the day. This knowledge and the opportunities it presented soothed Cole’s desire to foolishly rush after his quarry. He could wait for Natalie, he could wait until day, he could wait just a little longer to rescue one of the women he loved.
But waiting for the right time did not mean wasting time, and Cole got back to work with the spyglass. Peering through its polished lenses, he started examining the eastern island more thoroughly, looking for possible routes or places of interest. It didn’t take him long to notice that many of the streets were flooded, but not by water. Turgid rivers of shuffling bodies flowed sluggishly between ruined buildings, in a constant march without purpose or destination. Bits of exposed bone or untarnished metal reflected the faintest of light, like the moon-touched waves, as different currents of shambling corpses merged, clashed, and split like the spring meltwater in a wild rapids.
Cole had heard of this phenomenon before, when a large swarm of ghouls got caught in a pointless, ceaseless march. The Tenth Temple scholars called it a corpse parade. He’d read accounts of them lasting for years, the member ghouls, steadily grinding themselves down through millions of footfalls until they were naught but haunted scraps of brittle bone. Traditionally, corpse parades meant the ghouls had managed to consume all warm flesh in reach, and were now driven on by sheer herd momentum, not dissimilar to ant spirals, which could spell the death of an entire colony.
Yet the more Cole observed the eastern island, the more he started to wonder if perhaps the corpse parade was a premature celebration of undeath’s victory. At the very southern end of the central island, far from where Wolfgang did his blasphemous work, there were the tiniest inklings of light. The dim gutterings of obscured candles leaked from a series of rotund buildings that sat right on the river’s edge. Could these be survivors?
A bitterness born of all he’d seen in this jagged city told Cole no, that he was just seeing signs of the other vampire agents or maybe even an outpost of the royal court. But the more he looked at the squat structures and the low stone wall circling them, the more he allowed himself to consider a more optimistic possibility. The monsters infesting Harmas would not need to hide their light. A fact the court’s bloody rite, and Wolfgang’s work at the temple, made clear. So who or what would hide behind old stone and shaded secrecy besides the last of the city’s citizenry? Of course, the answer could be yet another variety of horror, yet to be encountered. Still, considering the lucky observations he’d already made from this tower top, perhaps one last helpful coincidence was in order?
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Returning to the map, Cole checked the location he’d spotted and found it to be Harmas’s shipyard, where the keels of everything from trade barges to marsh punts were laid down. A location that he’d heard of in passing while taking one of those very barges with the Shohgard Pack. The locals and the riverfolk called the site the Loafyard, as, according to them, it churned out plain but serviceable vessels by the dozens, much like a baker might churn out simple bread loaves. But judging by the elaborate illustration of it on the map, Cole guessed the city’s elites once aspired for it to be a river equivalent of the legendary Concordian Arsenal, where a galleon could be built in a month. These pretensions aside, shipyards were usually reasonably fortified. To both keep unscrupulous employees from stealing valuable materials and to keep them operational during times of crisis. Potential survivors could certainly do worse for a holdfast.
As Cole added investigating the Loafyard to his already long list of tasks, a noise caught on the edges of his hearing. At first, he thought it might be distant thunder reaching him from across the Alidonar River, but then the low rolling rumble didn’t stop, instead growing steadily louder until its nature was clear. Hoofbeats, hundreds of hoofbeats merging together as dozens of frantic steeds galloped down ruined streets.
He spotted the sound’s source easily enough, thanks to the many torches held aloft by this newest threat. Hurtling down the main avenue from the elector-prince’s palace was what Cole could only think of as a raiding party. At least a hundred riders clad in little more than masks and swirling war paint held pink-tinted torches and glistening bronze weapons aloft. To the paladin’s horror, but not necessarily surprise, the party’s steeds were more of the fleshcrafted elk-things.
Thankful, he was far enough away not to hear the cries of those mutilated souls, Cole watched the riders through his spyglass. These were the frenetic celebrants he’d spotted at the castle pyre. They’d clearly finished with that jagged rite and were now onto the next act of psychotic debauchery. Or… were they? Old stories of older practices tickled at the edge of Cole’s memory and filled his guts with lead. The pyre procession had been rife with clear symbolism. Prey animals, deer and a pig, were being chased by hounds, who acted as vanguard for a spear-wielding horseman. The whole thing had been a grotesque parody of ancient magic rituals meant to ensure a good hunt. Which could mean these riders weren’t raiders, but hunters, and that begged the question: who or what was their quarry?
The hunting party was heading south, but was about to reach a plaza where they could go in any direction. With bated breath, Cole watched, expecting them to turn west and go in the direction Natalie had, but to his only momentary relief, they went southeast. It was then that he noticed the head of the party carried something other than a torch. Held before the horn-masked hunter was what could be mistaken for a large, poorly-made candle, except for how its flame burned black, and that it had fingers. Another Hand of Glory to keep the hungry dead at bay.
The riders were headed for the ghoul-infested eastern island, but why? He considered whatever bizarre alliance the Duchy agents had struck with the royal court was finally coming undone, or maybe Mak was finally resurfacing, and this was a setup for another of his traps. Before he could start to properly worry over what either of those options would entail, Cole caught sight of light and movement from a somewhat unexpected source.
Turning his spyglass to the Loafyard, he got a better view of what he’d seen between uses. Someone with a lantern was hurriedly running between the complex’s different buildings, clearly rousing the alarm. Cole’s insides started sinking down to his boots as he realized the hunting party’s quarry. Lunatic agents of the prince’s court had tried to kill Kit and Yara back when they’d been stuck alone in the city. Those masked madmen apparently considered the magi and thrall looters and squatters to be violently dealt with. Similarly, the dragonfly-winged baron, whom he and Natalie dealt with, spoke as if he were still enforcing law upon a living city. So it made a twisted sort of sense that the court would declare a royal hunt upon those survivors still persisting inside the Loafyard.
Cole shut his eyes and wasted a precious moment on a sigh and rolling his shoulders. Wisdom said he couldn’t afford to intervene; that matters with Isabelle, Mak, the Sage’s Stone, and whatever blighted powers Wolfgang now served were simply too important for him to risk everything on a few scant lives inside a city of the dead. But there was a very large gap between cold wisdom and simple truth. With that truth being that if Cole did nothing, a massacre, or worse, was about to unfold.
He reached out through his psychic link to Natalie, but found it obstructed; she must already be outside the city. With a grimace, Cole muttered. “Guess, I’ll just need to apologize to her in person then.”
Peering over the tower’s edge, then out towards the distant Loafyard, knew he’d never catch up to the hunting party in time; not unless he was willing to make a remarkably stupid gamble. Regardless of their flesh-crafted steeds and Hand of Glory, the riders would need to find or make a passable route. That would buy a bit of time, but not nearly enough for Cole to catch up with them, especially considering he’d need to find his own way through the ghoul swarm. No, his best option was to take a different path, one of his own creation.
Through a mix of holy preservation, his axe, and sheer bloody-mindedness, Cole half-climbed, half-fell down the tower, hitting the cobblestones in a plume of ice and mortar dust. Ignoring the near audible creak his knees made in response to this feat, Cole got moving, as his perilous descent had been the easy part of his plan. Heading straight east, the paladin pelted past abandoned buildings, stray packs of ghouls, and far, far too many piles of broken bones until he spotted his destination: one of Harmas’s innumerable quays. Clearly built to anchor pleasure craft and similar, the small wharf was now empty, the mad spirit of the Alidon River having drowned any vessel that once found a berth there.
With that comforting fact in mind, Cole reached the edge of the wharf and looked out across the dark expanse of the river. From this quay to the Loafyard’s docks was about a hundred meters, a narrow channel by the standards of ships, but a harrowing span for what Cole was planning to do: freezing a path for himself across the river. According to Mak, the spirit reacted sluggishly when its waters were frozen, hence why the ice bridge he and his cadre created worked so unfortunately well. But Cole lacked anywhere near the raw power needed to cast such a working, and even if he did, the disaster with the corpse-tide escaping the city would have him leery to try. So instead, he would be trying something on a much smaller scale, and praying it would be enough to get him across.
Cole went to one of the quay’s ladders and clambered down its worn rungs until he was a meter above the river’s lapping surface. Taking a deep breath, he called upon his power and coaxed it to manifest as pure cold. Frost grew rapidly on the ladder and the surrounding damp stone as the temperature around Cole dropped well past what these lands had seen even in the bleakest of winters. The hungry frost rapidly descended the quay’s side like alabaster ivy and reached the river’s surface. A layer of polished obsidian surged out from where stone and water met, creating a half moon of purest ice.
“Well, if this doesn’t work, maybe I’ll wash up by the garrison barge.” The paladin muttered grimly to himself.
With a silent prayer and hiss between his teeth, Cole stepped down onto the ice. Pale fractures spread along the river’s surface with an uncanny warbling sound, but thanks to a literal miracle, it held. Cole cautiously let go of the ladder and walked towards the half moon’s edge. More cracks spread, and a section behind him split off from the main mass, but the growing ice before him more than compensated for this loss. His plan was working, but gods alone knew for how long. So his tentative steps turned into careful strides, before evolving into a confident run.
The ice beneath his boots creaked and wailed as he hurtled over the river, fracturing into smaller sheets mere moments after he’d passed over them. When Cole had gotten roughly fifteen meters from the shore, he heard a loud splash from behind him. Sparing a glance back, he caught sight of a shape emerging from the water. No, not emerging, made from the water. In the dim gleam of his amulet, the shape resolved itself into a soldier, one clad in the scalemail and plumed helm of an ancient warrior. The water soldier raised a glistening arm that split into a dozen flowing spearheads, and hurled them at a broken piece of Cole’s bridge, splintering the ice with enough force to send slushy plumes three meters into the air.
“Fuck” The paladin muttered, while redoubling his pace. He got maybe five more meters before a sculpted wave suddenly surged up ahead of him. Shaped like a shieldwall, its crest a row of swords coming down in an overhand chop, the wave charged Cole. After turning Requiem into a halberd, the paladin channeled some of the bitter cold through its enchanted metal and slashed at the oncoming wave. The shieldwall stumbled and then collapsed into hunks of ice, letting Cole leap up and over them. He landed with a splash, as his weight forced his newest sheet of ice beneath the waves, but Cole kept his balance and kept moving.
More and more of the water soldiers emerged from the river, each new squad trying a different tactic to bring Cole down. Some fired volleys of sharp spray, others rode atop steeds crafted from redirected currents, while most struck out with waves of sword and spear thrusts. But, varied and vicious as this offense was, its different facets were slow and ill-timed, like an army might be if its officers were inept. Mak had been right, freezing the river did hamper the spirit.
The stone piers of the Loafyard were close at hand, Cole a little farther, and he’d be back on dry land. Unfortunately, his pursuer was also keenly aware of this fact. The roar of spring-swollen rapids sounded behind the paladin as an entire jagging cavalry charge bore down on him. Cursing and praying in equal measure, he made the final desperate sprint to a half-broken ladder dangling off the pier. Columns of watery spearman began to manifest around him, their mirror shields and glistening weapons arrayed to box the paladin in. After carving a path through this last line of defense, Cole pushed off the ice with all his might, leaping into the air, and leaving the glacial sheet he’d been on to be trampled by the river-born horses.
He caught onto the ladder with one hand and felt its half-rotten structure crack, but a surge of preservation kept it from completely collapsing. With a lot of effort and little grace, Cole scrambled up the ladder, as maelstrom lances struck against his back and legs. He clambered up onto the stone pier just as the cavalry smashed into its base, sending up a surge of icy river water to crash into him. Hands within the torrent grasped onto Cole, trying to drag him back into the river with the wave sluicing off the pier’s surface. Cole simply froze himself to the stone in response.
As the last of the river’s wrath dripped away, Cole slowly pulled himself free of his ice handholds and stood up. Cole sighed and shook some of the water off him like a weary dog. Thankful that his growing mastery of ice magic kept him from getting cold, the paladin stalked towards the Loafyard proper.
Passing by the forgotten scraps of ships that would never get to sail, he headed towards the large warehouses, shipworks, and other buildings. Most of the structures exhibited signs of modification, including both additive and subtractive changes. Some of the great barn-like works had been stripped of timber, while a large building that must have once been for offices sported boarded-up windows. Faint light escaped from those windows, and as Cole moved deeper into the yard, frantic murmurs reached his ears. People were moving about, working frantically to get them and theirs behind sturdy defenses. Painted by the dim glow of their shrouded lanterns, these survivors were sunken-cheeked and wild-eyed. Folks who had been pushed to their absolute limit, and were now bracing for yet another storm. So wrapped up in this mix of terror and desperation were they, Cole didn’t think any had noticed him.
“Who the fuck are you?!” Hissed a male voice from behind him.
Ah, maybe he’d been a bit hasty with that final assessment.
Turning slowly, Cole found a painfully lean man, brandishing a timber axe at him. His clothes were scraps that might once have been finery, while his head was covered in a grey-fringed mass of dark hair. In the man’s eyes was the type of crazed determination common to all cornered animals, a determination that faltered somewhat as the details of Cole’s appearance sank in.
Before this starved but still defiant survivor could raise the alarm about a flesh golem loose inside the Loafyard, the paladin lifted his amulet and spoke. “I’m a servant of Master Time, and I’m here to help.”
The poor man actually dropped his axe at that, keeping his toes by pure luck. Turning back towards the walls, Cole gestured. “The corrupted court is coming in force, I am going to stand against them.”
He started moving again, and after four strides, the haggard man picked up his axe and ran up beside him. “Where did you come from? Is help coming? Have the gods finally answered our prayers?”
Cole rolled his shoulders and drew Requiem. “They have, just not how you’d probably expect.”
The paladin dropped his pack and ran full tilt towards the walls. They were short and thin, capable of keeping out ghouls but not much more. Cole couldn’t risk them being breached, so he leapt up and, with his axe’s beak’s help, clambered atop the worn stone. Rows of sharpened timber had been stuck along the wall’s outer side, with a few sporting impaled ghouls still weakly struggling to get free of the spikes. A good reuse of ship timber, but not enough to stop what was coming.
Jumping past the spikes, he headed towards the long straight throughfare that ended at the Loafyard’s blocked-off main gate. This wide road was meant for wagons of material to move down; it would be perfect for the court’s hunting party. Sure enough, the sound of thundering hooves echoed down the street; the enemy was coming, but Cole had a few minutes to prepare.
He considered just unleashing another wave of killing cold, as he’d done on the carriage swarm, but that would be a lot of eggs in one basket. If any of these sidhlings had the magic or wherewithal to avoid that working, Cole would be spent when facing them. No, something a bit more subtle would need to be his opening move.
While moving down the street, he looked about for an opportunity to exploit, and it didn’t take long for one to catch his eye. A small stable sat at an intersection, its bent structure stinking of moldy hay and old death, but more importantly, hosting a handpump right by the road. With two blows of his axe, Cole cut the attached trough so its contents would pour out one side. After some creaking and gurgling pumps, the horse-headed spigot spewed water out onto the road. Cole used a little creative cryomancy to block any prospective drains while growing this new puddle into a street-spanning slick.
As the sound of hooves grew louder and was joined by wild laughter, Cole walked to the far end of his trap. Kneeling down, he touched the water and froze it solid. With that done, he grew Requiem to its full size and waited.
The flicker of unnatural fire cut through the night’s darkness as the hunting party turned a distant corner and began their final charge towards the Loafyard. Cole braced Requiem against the ground and offered a prayer. “Master Time, protect the living and protect the dead. Master Time, give us long lives and quick deaths. Master Time, keep our souls, and judge them truly.”
He could make out the details of the elk-steeds now, and felt a twinge of regret for what was about to happen. But it was better that those poor, mutilated souls face an ugly end, rather than forcing them to continue existing and enabling their riders’ evil.
Frosty vapors with a faint pale glow started to swirl around Cole as he put more power into his body, but if the hunters noticed him, they gave no sign. A chorus of cackles, shrieks, and whoops filled the air as the hunting party charged headlong right into the black ice Cole had prepared.
The first rider, the one with the Hand of Glory, lost traction and his steed started to stumble, its ill-made cloven hoofs skittering on the ice. This loss of momentum led to the following riders crashing into the first, knocking him and his steed to the ground, where they went under their follower’s hoofs. More elk-things tripped, some knocking into their fellows, a few joining the first’s fate, while a scant few managed to regain their balance. One of these unusually dexterous creatures escaped the growing mass of thrashing limbs and pained screams, and managed to reach the ice’s edge, just to find Requiem’s point awaiting it. The elk-steed tried to pull back at the last moment, and its skills finally failed it, sending its rider flying before being impaled on the halberd’s tip.
Cole grunted from the impact, but kept standing. With a twist of his weapon’s shaft and a kick of his boot, he freed Requiem and turned to the tossed rider. The near-naked man had landed badly on his shoulder and head, but was still stirring, which Cole put a stop to with a single strike. Refocusing on the hunting party’s main mass, he watched as the cascading collisions reached their conclusion. Over fifty elk-steeds and riders had been swallowed up by the disaster, with maybe a third of them intact enough to try and stand. Unfortunately, that left another fifty or so having avoided his trap, and now trying to pick their way through the mess of broken ice and bodies.
These more cautious riders picked up their damaged kin but left the steeds to shriek and thrash. At the head of this secondary procession was the green man from the pyre, his oaken crown and veil still in place, his steed the only actual horse. Or… maybe not. As Cole watched the animal, he noticed its head moved in perfect symmetry with its rider’s.
While brandishing a bronze saber at Cole, the green man said. “Mine dalliance with the undead is proving its worth, and the black-blooded peerage spake truth to us blue-bloods. A monster most foul has infested our city, a creature of scarred flesh and a frozen soul! One to be baited out with peasant blood. Have at thee, homunculus! Let us see if your claim of knighthood is more than mere delusion!”
It took several seconds for Cole to push past his confusion and reach the terrible truth contained in those words. The Loafyard’s survivors weren’t the royal court’s quarry; they were just the lure. For what better bait could there be for a paladin than innocents in danger?
Cole bit back a growl, then flicked Requiem’s head, sending a splatter of multi-hued blood onto the stones before the green man. “In light of what the pestilence has done to your bodies and minds, I will offer this one opportunity to surrender. Refuse it, and your debts of time will be settled.”
The green man laughed, his horse whinnying in unison, their mirth soon repeated by the other riders. “Yee speak of debt and pestilence, but know naught the truth. We have been freed from thy shackles, and embraced the truth our ancestors so foolishly denied! Now, let us discard the masks of civility and finish this hunt!”
To punctuate this, he reached up to his oaken crown and tossed it aside. As the circlet and veil struck the ground, a terrible change overcame the greenman. A soap-bubble sheen flowed over his body and that of his horse, before dissolving into a swirl of orange-green sparks. Where once steed and rider stood, was now a single being of unnatural shape. The green man’s new form, or perhaps, true form, had the basic structure of a centaur, with equine body and human upper-half, but with far more alien details.
Four arms stuck from his humanoid torso. Each was well muscled, bearing softly glowing tattoos and holding a different weapon. His face should have been inhumanly handsome, except for the extra compound eyes sitting above each eyebrow and the horselike whiskers covering his chin. Chitin covered much of the horse half’s body, and instead of hooves, it had the bristly, clawed forelimbs of a fly. The man half wore tanned hides beneath ornate plate armor, crafted from pieces of mossy bark and bronze chains. Upon his head was an open helm of the same construct, except that at its top were two sets of horns, one curling ram, the other carved from twisting oak roots.
Behind this chimeria, the rest of the hunters also doffed their masks, revealing other monstrous mutant shapes of all manner. Apparently, the dragonfly baron had been one of the least twisted of the city’s elite.
The green man scrapped his axe and sword together, sending a shower of green-orange-violet sparks flying. “On my honor as heir to Harmas and Alidonar, I, Duke Raglin Janic, swear to take thy head, Homunculus!”
Cole levelled Requiem at the corrupted noble and shouted. “Magni! Mortae! Mundus!”
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