Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 19Arc 6: : The Back Halls

Emma helped me get my armor back on, despite Lisette’s misgivings.

“You’re not fully recovered,” the cleric insisted. “You should rest. Let Emma and I—”

“I need you here to tend to Beatriz,” I told her. “We’ve lost enough tonight, and you’re hurt too.”

Lisette hit her head hard when Catrin knocked her out. She seemed stable, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of losing my entire command.

“Besides,” I added, “I’m not going to just sit around and wait for the sun to rise. I need to know what’s going on outside.”

We were on the tower’s main level. Emma stood by the door leading out to the bridge which linked the dungeon tower to the rest of the Fulgurkeep. She had one hand on the arm of the figure next to her. Still clad in a burgundy dress ruined by blood, Hyperia wore a bag over her head. She seemed complacent and hadn’t yet said a word, but we were watchful of her. Dyghouls sometimes never regained their full faculties, depending on how much damage was done to the ghost.

The bag deprived her senses, which I hoped would keep her confused and slow down the process. It wasn’t as good as a grave. I’d heard of some risen who took days to realize they were still trapped in their own corpse, even weeks, but doubted we’d be that lucky.

“So what is the plan?” Emma asked tartly.

“Make our way back to the court. If everyone is feasting and having a grand time, we’ll end up looking foolish and I’ll have to face the music for the princess’s death. If the castle is full of enemies, we cut our way through everything that looks at us funny until we reach the Emperor.”

Lisette looked startled. “Do you think the castle will be full of enemies?”

I considered it, feeling more sure of myself with every moment. “Vander was going to accuse the Vykes of sedition and murder in front of several hundred people, many of whom are members of the Ardent Round. In addition, Hyperia will have been missing for hours. Our original plan was to secure her cooperation and take her before the court, let her talk Calerus down before he did anything rash. It’s too late for that, now. There were also Mistwalkers lurking outside the city the other night.”

Hyperia’s words lingered in my mind. Calerus is my king, and if you think our homeland is without strength then you are sadly mistaken.

I looked at them both. “I think it’s very likely that Calerus has gone ahead and launched his coup. With several hundred undead mercenaries, he could take and hold this fortress indefinitely.”

Emma looked unconvinced. “The gargoyles would warn the keep of any undead approaching.”

“A lot of them were killed by that thing Jocelyn turned into. I don’t think we can rely on them to protect us.”

“The palace is well warded,” Lisette argued. “The Church has been sanctifying its halls regularly since the war.”

“That’s not full proof, and you know it.” I didn’t mention that I suspected the Royal Clericon might be a traitor. Before saying more I paused and turned to the door. “Do you hear that?”

They both listened. Emma replied first. “No. What is it?”

“I can’t hear anything,” Lisette said.

“Exactly.” I started towards the door. “The storm’s stopped.”

Just as I’d feared, the downpour which had battered the city for most of two days had ceased. The night was unseasonably cold, and a deep and consuming veil of fog encircled the Fulgurkeep.

I couldn’t even see the water beneath me as I crossed the bridge. I suspected that if I stood on one of the walls facing the city, I’d fail to make out the rest of Garihelm. The towering edifice of House Forger’s ancestral home rose above us, little more than a shapeless black shadow through the drifting clouds rising into indistinct and dizzying heights.

It reminded me of Orson Falconer’s keep, floating on its dead lake in an unnatural fog just like this one. Dread coiled in my gut like a fat serpent. Was I already too late?

Lisette remained behind, tending to our sanctuary. We’d agreed the tower could act as a fallback point if we needed to send survivors of an attack elsewhere. Emma strode behind me, slowed somewhat by our silent prisoner, though she had little trouble keeping up with my limp. We said nothing as we moved onto a stairway cut directly from the dark rock of the main island. It wound up a ways, narrow, treacherous, and slick from two days of rain before sinking into a doorless entry dug out from the island itself, not much different from a cave.

The Fulgurkeep was enormous, and ancient. In old days when the Forgers drove out the troll king who’d dwelt within the island’s caves, they’d discovered a vast wealth of metals within. These became the bloodline of the great smithies from which the clan took its name, allowing them to outfit a mighty army. Over generations they’d laid the stones of the castle complex, building it over the clustered isles flaring out from the lagoon.

Huge as the ‘Keep was, the mines beneath were larger. They went deep, probably as deep as the labyrinthine undercity sleeping below the lagoon. The ones closer to the surface were incorporated into the fortress’s structure, fashioned into winding stone halls and solid vaults containing the armories of House Forger.

Emma and I made our way through this maze, tracing a path we’d learned well since we’d been given the isolated tower at the island’s edge as our base of operations. Neither of us said anything, keeping our focus on the path ahead and wary of danger.

We encountered no one. The dark hallways were silent, eerily so, and our footsteps were overloud in that echoing space.

Emma broke the silence at little more than a whisper. “She’s going to be alright. Catrin’s tough, and I doubt this will break her. She probably has more sense than half the population of Urn put together.” ℞åɴỐＢΕṥ

“I doubt that. She got involved with me.”

“You give yourself too little credit. When you’re not being a brooding brute, you can be quite endearing in an odd sort of way. Like a big grumpy dog.”

“…Thanks.” That was the second time someone had compared me to a dog. Third, if I counted Hyperia’s insult.

“If you keep worrying about her, it’s going to hurt your focus. The demon is gone. She’s not a hostage anymore. You freed her.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say what I knew. Those who become the victims of demons are never really free. They dig their way too deep.

“Alken…” Emma hesitated. “What happened back there, what you did…”

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“You should forget that.”

If the Church found out I’d used unsanctioned necromancy, they’d come down on me hard for it. Then again, they already believed I was an apostate and probably worse yet, so maybe not. Still, I wouldn’t let Emma become collateral if I could avoid it.

My squire sighed, exasperated. “Alken, I’m the disciple of Bloody Nath and a warlock myself. I’m not going to judge you, but…”

“But?”

“There’s a reason practitioners use ritual to bind supernatural beings. Without those protections, then…”

She fell quiet a while, then changed the subject. “So we’re going to find Rosanna, right?”

I glanced back at her. “That’s not what I said earlier.”

Emma met my eye knowingly.

I turned my attention back forward. “Rosanna was probably with her husband. That means she had Kaia, the Twinbolt, and half a hundred other elite soldiers with her. She’s as safe as she can be.”

I tightened my grip on my axe. “We’re going after Calerus. Hyperia might have had Yith, but her brother was always the leader of this. He’s the goring King of Talsyn, even if the rest of the realms don’t know it. If we stop him, then his allies will scatter.”

I hoped. Calerus couldn’t keep the secret of his father’s murder forever, but if he performed an act of strategy worthy of the Condor of Talsyn then it wouldn’t matter. Claiming the Fulgurkeep would do it.

But I’d tipped his hand early, before he’d gained prestige and strength by winning the tournament. He was on shaky ground, deprived of his sister and their pet. If he failed tonight, then the realms would forsake his banner.

I could still stop this. Not as clean or bloodlessly as I’d wanted, but there was still hope.

We navigated a spiral stair, which brought us up to the main levels of the Fulgurkeep. The corridors opened up here, the claustrophobic spaces below giving way to regal passages carved with artistry and elegant architecture. Some of these were still being worked on, as masons from across the eastern world labored to improve the Emperor’s place of governance.

A low hanging mist carpeted the floor of those halls, thick enough our ankles vanished into it. Emma noted it too, and her left hand — the dominant one — lifted her heirloom sword into a guard. Her right hand remained on Hyperia’s wrist. The undead princess stirred, mumbling something beneath the bag.

I’d been right. This was no natural fog. Several hours had passed since I left the audience chamber. Most coups, if successful, were over very quickly before proper resistance could muster itself.

Control your fear. You don’t know what’s happened, not for sure.

But I had to expect that any resistance to Calerus would be coming from inside the fortress. With the fog, I doubted the rest of the city was aware of anything happening inside.

“Movement ahead,” Emma whispered.

I heard it too. The rattle of armor, muffled by the mist and distance. In these echoing halls, it could be difficult to tell how far a sound came from.

“Be ready, and keep her close.”

Emma fell back a step, letting me take the lead. I lifted my axe onto one shoulder, all my concentration bent forward. I reached out with my will, testing the space ahead with my aura. It obeyed me readily, almost eagerly, like it were hungry for a fight.

That was different. But I didn’t sense much, only a creeping sense of cold and something like the haze that came with bad sleep.

“The mist is full of od,” I said to Emma. “I think there’s a compulsion in it. It’s subtle. Keep your focus, just like I taught you.”

“Understood.”

The ensorceled mist had another effect. It muddied my spiritual senses, made it so all I sensed was that veil. Which meant…

The only warning I received was the flutter of leathery wings and the faint scraping of claws on stone. My muscles tightened on reflex, and I swung before even thinking about doing so in an overhanded chop as something dropped from the ceiling a ways ahead and swooped down at me like a diving owl.

My axe bit with a jarring impact, slamming the thing into the ground at my feet. It was big, all leathery gray-green hide and wrinkled like a very old man, with a long neck and a lamprey mouth. No arms, just membranous wings and taloned feet. It kicked and struggled a moment before I planted my sabaton on it and ripped the axe out with a squelch and a spray of dark blue blood. Another swing ended it, and it deflated beneath me.

“What is that!?” Emma spat. “Another demon?”

“It’s a chimera,” I said. “I’ve seen these before, at Caelfall. They’re ambush predators.”

How many more were there, waiting to dive from the high ceilings above? The rafters, arches, and statuary gave them plenty of spots to hide.

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Hyperia mumbled under her mask. She was starting to become more aware of herself, which meant we were running out of time.

More noises ahead. It didn’t sound like the leech-headed chimera, but humans. Humans in armor. Soldiers, but for which side?

We started forward again, turning at the end of the hall and finding ourselves at the end of a long passageway with a cavernously high ceiling. Chandeliers hung above, growing smaller all the way into an indistinct distance. The mist seemed to glow like it caught bright moonlight, allowing us to see well ahead.

A junction broke the otherwise uniform passage, with the statue of an armored magistrate centering it atop a pedestal. And like a phalanx of soldiers protecting that stone figure, a group of people stood shoulder to shoulder and fought off their attackers.

There were nine of them, mostly Storm Knights in brassy armor and sea-blue cloth. But not all. One towered over the others, dressed in a bright red and yellow doublet tailored to fit his hulkish frame, which was starkly at odds with an almost child-like face and platinum blond hair arranged into neat curls.

At first, I couldn’t tell who they were fighting. Then, the mist seemed to congeal behind one woman into a ghastly grinning face with huge, ivory teeth. Dull gray armor of archaic design followed, then a spiked morningstar, and the Mistwalker slammed his weapon down on the back of the knight’s head. Her helmet crumpled, along with the skull beneath, and she fell limply.

There were more. They faded in and out like ghosts, solid one moment and little more than vapor the next. The Royal Steward barked an order in his sonorous voice, and the knights formed up into a ring with their tall shields upraised.

I went forward at a jog which quickly advanced into a sprint. My half-healed injuries protested, but the pain was manageable. I swept my axe back, keeping the blade low so it cut the hanging mist.

I let the searing warmth in me out, and Faen Orgis flickered with auratic fire. It seemed brighter than usual, closer to a pale, almost white gold than amber.

A Mistwalker congealed ahead with his back to me, lifting a javelin to hurl into the squad of knights. Its tip shone a cold blue with odlight. I suspected it would pack a punch capable of tearing right through steel plate.

He never threw it, though. I lopped his head off with one swing, barely slowing as I lunged past. One of the ghouls spotted me and shouted, pointing. He died next as I smashed through his banded shield and punched him with my off hand hard enough to cave his nose right into his brain matter.

Ghouls are hard to kill, but the aureflame scoured their spirits right off their dead flesh. When they realized the danger, they started flinching away and going on the defensive. That allowed the Fulgurkeep garrison to push back.

One of the Storm Knights raised his fine sword, revealing the inlays of blessed gold worked into the lower portion of its blade. A single flickering serpent of yellow lightning formed around it, and when he swung that bolt lashed out. It sunk into the body of a legionary and detonated in a bright flash. The creature’s smoking, charred body tumbled to the ground.

The Royal Steward held no weapon. As it turned out, he didn’t need one. He grabbed one of the ghouls distracted by my fire-branded axe by the throat. He lifted it, the struggling corpse eater’s neck completely engulfed in the huge man’s powerful fist. Then, almost disdainfully, the Steward turned and smacked the ghoul’s head into the statue’s stone stand. He did it again, and again, not stopping until there was almost nothing left of the mercenary’s skull but bits of meat.

He studied his work critically, like a dissatisfied artist, then dropped the still twitching Mistwalker.

When the ghouls realized they were outmatched, they retreated back into the fog and vanished like ghosts. I glanced back to check on Emma. She was unharmed, and still holding our prisoner.

The Steward’s pipe organ voice drew my attention back to the group we’d saved. “Hewer, is that you?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

His cherubic face wrinkled with confusion, then his mouth popped open into an almost perfect O. “Ah. Then the one in the court earlier was an imposter.”

“A distraction,” I said. “What’s going on? I’ve been… preoccupied.”

The Steward glanced at the figure my squire held, whose face remained concealed beneath the bag. “I see. This all began a few hours ago. Lord Vander was addressing the court, then Prince Calerus suddenly started acting… strange.”

“Strange?” Emma asked.

The Steward lifted a heavy eyebrow at the interruption, but continued without comment. “He made little effort to defend himself from Vander’s accusations. He seemed distracted. Then, all the sudden, it was like he’d become ill or taken some blow to the head. He spoke to the Emperor, demanded to know what he’d done. None of us knew what he was talking about.”

I glanced at Emma, and saw my same thoughts reflected in her eyes. Were the twins connected in some way? When Hyperia died, did Calerus know in that very moment? The timing seemed to line up.

“Chaos broke out,” the Steward continued. “This damned fog flooded into the chamber like a tidal wave. I was in the court, then after this swallowed me I was elsewhere in the castle. I collected these soldiers and have been trying to make my way back, but we keep running into obstacles.”

As though to demonstrate, he lifted his gore-smeared right hand and pouted at the ruined sleeve of his fine shirt.

“Palace is full of monsters,” one of the knights said.

“Keep your head,” the Steward admonished him. “You are the Emperor’s elite, not some peasant infantry. You’ve trained for this, man.”

“This mist is enchanted,” I told them. “The Mistwalker Company uses it to travel about. Seems like they can transpose others through it, too. They scattered the court around the castle to make it easier to claim the ‘Keep, is my guess. They can go where they please while the rest of us are left lost and confused.”

One of the knights slumped. “Then how do we get back?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated inward. Again, I noted how fresh my magic seemed. Yet something made me hesitate to shape Art with it.

What was my alternative? I regarded the group and said, “I can keep the mist from working its mischief on us. Stay close and keep up.”

They gathered about. The Steward looked suspicious and impatient but indulged me for the time being. I lifted Faen Orgis to my lips, concentrated, and whispered part of my oath into its blade. At the same time, I imagined the shape of the power I wanted to conjure. It came to me like a daydream, or a sudden flash of inspiration, as all the phantasms carved into my aura did.

The Art I shaped wasn’t meant for battle. It was a warding technique, used to safeguard the user from particularly hostile supernatural environments. I’d been taught to employ it if I ever strayed from a safe path in the Wend, but felt it might work here.

A pale, calm light spread around me to engulf the group. Several of the knights murmured in surprise. I blew on my axe like I wanted to chase the fuzz off a dandelion. A wave of light flew from me down the long corridor, looking like nothing so much as the ripple over still grass that marked the passage of a strong wind. That glow remained, scattering the mist into bare eddies like a ray of warm sunlight had burnt it off.

The aureflame didn’t lash out or scald me. It didn’t flare out of control and compel me to fight it back down. It was calm. Focused.

No. Not calm. Eager. When it went out from me, it felt something like loosing a hunting hound off its leash.

“What’s the matter?” Emma whispered to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Turning to the others I said, “The way forward should be safe, but keep your guard up.”

“There’s a path out onto the battlements down this way,” the Steward told me. “We should be able to reach the level with the audience chamber from there. It’s only a floor above us.”

The Fulgurkeep wasn’t one single fortress, but a collection of castles interlinked by the craggy cliffs of the island and an array of overlapping bridges. It was intentionally confusing, designed to slow invaders while the defending garrison would know the best way to navigate it.

But the Mistwalkers had turned that advantage against us, their sorcerous fog allowing them to move about at will. Worse, they’d brought chimera. What else?

We moved with the Steward directing me. There was no resistance, but we found several gruesome scenes. Nobles, knights, servants, foreign merchants and other visitors staying in the palace for the summit. Their corpses were scattered about, butchered while they’d wandered lost and confused in the haunted corridors.

Every moment I expected to see Rosanna among those dead. When would I find one of her children, or even the Emperor lying pale and cold where the invaders left them?

“The Vykes have killed themselves,” one of the knights spat furiously. “This will mean war. Every clan in Urn will seek to punish them for this treachery. They were here under truce!”

“Only if we drive them out,” I said. “If they hold the island, Calerus may as well be the new emperor. Ghouls don’t need food and water, just corpses to eat, so sieging them out is a losing game. This is the greatest fortress in the subcontinent. They could fight back any army if we let them have it.”

I was half talking to myself. Perhaps I was becoming manic.

“Then let’s not let them have it,” the Steward suggested pointedly.

No conversation after that. We went up a short flight of stairs, finding more corpses at the top. I recognized some of them as tourney knights, but none I knew by name. They would have been at the feast if everything hadn’t gone ass up.

“Took some of the bastards with them,” one of my companions noted with grim satisfaction.

He was right. There were at least half a dozen ghouls in pieces in the hallway. Jocelyn told me the Lost Legion contained less than five hundred members. How many did we have to kill to defang them?

More than this. Some of the ghouls still lived, their unholy vitality compelling them to try and move even when missing limbs or spilling their organs out onto the stone. These we finished off, an ugly task that took minutes and clearly hurt the group’s morale, but I didn’t want them troubling us later.

“They’re not immortal,” I told the knights. “Do enough damage and their ghosts will come loose.”

To demonstrate, I sank my axe into the skull of one Legion trooper without imbuing it with aureflame. The creature shuddered, then a luminescent mist spilled out of its injuries and sank into the ambient fog. That fog seemed to gather around me for a moment, cold and sharp where it met what little skin my armor exposed, then faded.

“Just like wights,” one of the older knights said in approval. I guessed him to be a veteran of the Fall.

The others checked their gear. One of the knights rubbed a brittle looking piece of rock over his sword. His blade took on a brighter sheen and crackled with yellow lightning as the piece of stone broke apart, passing the Art trapped within it into his weapon.

“A fulgurscale,” one of the knights explained when she caught my curious look. “We gather them from the islands around the castle. It’s dangerous to search for them, but lets us wield lightning.”

“Only the Twinbolt has the technique naturally,” another of the Storm Knights noted with a shrug.

Emma was watching me with an expression I couldn’t interpret. When I asked her what was wrong, she shook her head.

“You’re not limping anymore. You were earlier.”

She was right, I realized. In fact, I felt even stronger than when we’d left the tower.

We moved out onto the battlements. Built from the rocky cliffs that supported the main complex, they consisted of switchbacking stairs and narrow walls guarded by parapets. The waters around the ‘Keep were too treacherous for ships, so these all faced the bridges connecting the island to the lagoon city.

But I couldn’t see the city. Just a deep, consuming fog that turned the world beyond the castle walls into a strange, shifting limbo. It was an uncanny effect, and one of the knights near me shivered.

I didn’t blame him. There were many stories of mists just like this swallowing entire castles, towns, or even countries and dragging them into the Wend. Looking out over the walls, part of me could believe the Vykes had ripped us right out of the waking world. Did the Lost Legion have that power?

Pushing the disturbing thought from my mind, I inspected the surrounding castle. We stood at the top of a switchback of stairs leading down to one of the curtain walls. It terminated at a defensive tower that I recognized. The Empress’s Bastion wouldn’t be far beyond it.

I somehow doubted Rosanna would be lucky enough to be transported to her home ground. Still, it helped me get my bearings in the fog. The guard tower was two stories tall above the parapet beneath, with a single entrance at its base and a stair wrapping around the side about halfway before connecting to another section of the main fortress. The Steward pointed at that little bridge.

“There’s an access to the upper halls there. It will bring us above the audience chamber. There are balconies looking into the throne room.”

I nodded. It seemed like a good place to see what was going on there without drawing too much attention to ourselves. Still, this was very open ground and made me uneasy. There was no good cover until we got to the tower. Neither did I like how quiet it was. I could barely hear the waves against the island below, like the fog muffled the sound into some indistinct, faraway impression.

The oldest knight in the group, the one I’d taken to be a Fall veteran, saw the same thing I did. “Best we not all march out and make it easy on the marrow eaters, eh? Declan, Ariel, you two go first. Casper, give them your scales.”

There was no argument. The two scouts each took a handful of fulgurscales and slipped them into pouches at their belts. Ariel, the only woman in the group, didn’t have a shield and she kept three of the rocks in her left hand. Declan lifted up his tall kite shield above his head and took the lead.

I didn’t like anyone going ahead of me. It wasn’t about pride, though I’d once been that way as a young man. I was the vanguard, the one who bled first because I could recover from it. But these were soldiers, knights, and their home and lord were threatened. I wouldn’t dishonor them by demanding they not take risks.

“So you’re him.” Ser Lochwine, the veteran, spoke to me while we waited at the top of the stair in the doorway’s cover. “The Headsman.”

“That’s what they call me,” I agreed without taking my eyes off the wall below.

He scratched at the graying beard bristling out of his burgonet. “No one said you were a ginger.”

One of the knights snickered. I decided I liked this dry old soldier. The Steward sighed in impatience.

Declan and Ariel made it down to the wall, covering one another and moving with a furtiveness that belied the full plate they wore. One of the knights next to me cursed our lack of an archer, which made me think of Penric. I tightened my grip on my axe, trying to keep my mind away from what’d happened at my tower.

Hyperia mumbled under her bag. Emma cast me a worried glance. So far no one in the group had asked about our charge, but there were more than a few nervous looks.

Declan reached the tower’s lower door, checked it and found it unlocked. Ariel scanned the walls of the castle above us, squinting into the fog. She was tossing the rocks in her left hand up and down in what seemed like an idle motion. They slipped inside, and then we didn’t see them for several minutes.

Every second felt an eternity. I wanted to move.

Declan appeared on the top of the tower and lifted his sword. It was clean. One of the knights let out a sigh of relief.

“Remember your training,” Lochwine told the group. “Two at a time, cover each other with your shields, watch for archers.”

“Stay in the middle,” I told Emma. She wasn’t wearing full armor and Hyperia wore none. The steel-clad troop would act as a solid barrier that could close around them if needed.

On that note, I looked at the giant Steward. He also didn’t wear armor, and was too big to be easy to cover.

He also wasn’t a fool. “I am ready to die for my lord if needed,” he told me calmly. “I will block arrows with my own body if it gets us to our goal.”

I hadn’t particularly liked this man since I’d met him, but just then I decided I might respect him.

I went out first with a pair of the Storm Knights behind me, another pair taking up position behind Emma and her charge. They moved quick, in formation, and kept their shields up to cover as much of their bodies as they could. The light rattle of our armor echoed mutedly across the parapets, quickly swallowed in the lazily shifting brume.

I wished I hadn’t left my helmet behind. It would have been a hindrance in the confines of the hallways, but out here it might save my life.

Once I was down on the curtain wall, which curved slightly until stopping at the corner tower, Roland waved at me. He pointed, and following his gesture I saw what drew his attention. There were lights burning on the Empress’s Bastion, shining brightly to break through the thick fog. They formed odd shapes and shone a clean blue through the gray veil of mist.

They were phantasms, I realized, formed entirely of aura.

One of the knights laughed. “The Fulgurkeep’s banners! Only our own people can wake those up. There are survivors there!”

I barely had time to feel the first surge of hope at that statement when dark shapes began to detached themselves from the walls above, and started to fall upon us.