Here is a short story, one I’ve written some years ago, presented in three parts. This is the conclusion.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
7th Late Spring, 59th year of the Company Calendar
Somewhere in the Viridian Coast
III.
“Gods of the salt and earth,” Raulo whispers in shock. Scholar Tayyip risks a peek outside as well, and sees a city come alive with vaguely human shaped figures, all rushing up the street towards the temple complex. He has never seen so many Broken in one place in his life. No other ruin has had even half so many, and these are only what he can see from here.
“Captain!” Sami’s voice booms out, punctuated by a loud grunt and the sound of a melon bursting as he brings a loose stone down on an assailant’s head. “There’s too many coming up from these hallways!”
“Fuck me a thousand ways,” Raulo whispers. “Company, back! Up the tower stairs! Wayfarers! Up the stairs! Briana, my heart’s siren, for the love of our fathers’ clans, get back and get up the stairs! Weston, down from there lad, make for the tower!” Raulo has his carbine out, is firing, though not able to match the speed Esma displayed earlier. Together, they all pull back towards the stairs.
“Cesar, go, run!” Sami calls out, finally managing to free his knife. The knife would be a sword in any but Sami’s hands - the blade is three feet in length, as tall as Tayyip - and slams it home into the body of one of the Broken grappling with Cesar. Cesar stumbles backwards, grabs his empty carbine, turns and runs for the stairs. Sami bellows, lunges forward into the shadows where Tayyip can hardly see, green ichorous blood flying into a shaft of sunlight, and then Sami is running across the open room towards them, Broken chasing a few steps behind.
Tayyip has seen Broken before, but this is Danil’s first clear sighting of the monsters. All of them are different in their particulars, all of them vaguely human but twisted. One looks to be as much snake as human, one looks like a hyena upon two legs. One looks like its flesh is made of clay, one looks as if its bones pierce out of its skin at every joint. One is Tayyip’s size, another as big as Esma. All of their eyes glow violet. They bear crude arms, stone spears, shortbows, maces and clubs. They come forward in silence but for the drums and horns.
Esma stumbles at the stairs like a drunkard, falls, shakily pushes herself up, and then falls again. Tayyip can hear her repeating “Fucking Broken bastards!” over and over, half angry shout, half sob. Sami scoops her up, throwing her over his shoulders, an impressive feat of strength even for the giant Dalcian. The rest of the company at the stairs lets out a volley at the nearest Broken.
Dozens more Broken come pouring in through the open door and from the shadowed hallways.
The company turns and runs up the stairs, Raulo bringing up the rear. Natalie has already gone up ahead - she is the pathfinder, her job is to find them a new path. Danil keeps tripping and falling in his panic, but Briana hauls him roughly to his feet each time.
The Broken chasing them slow at the tower entrance, fighting each other for precedence and causing a tangle. Broken have a crude hierarchy and unnatural bloodlust; when roused out of their stupors the warbands fight each other as much as anything else. The Wayfarers reach the heights of the southern spire, stand upon the top of the tower with the blue sky above their heads, a fatal fall to all sides.
Esma groans in pain. She has vomited on Sami during the ascent, who pays it no mind. Tayyip’s eyes go wide when he sees the disturbing amount of blood mixed in with the bile. Sami sets Esma down, leaning her against the wall. Weston is at Esma’s side, pulling a packet of white powder out, spilling it down onto her open wound. They all know it will do little good. Whether enough of the poison got into her bloodstream to kill Esma is something they will just have to wait to find out, now.
“I can’t fucking see,” Esma half whimpers, half growls. “Just a little point of blue, all blurry. Faith, I can’t see! Broken bastards. Bastards!”
Weston tries to calm her.
Natalie is crouched, working with a crossbow and rope. She is fitting the rope to a bolt. Raulo sees what she is doing, shades his eyes to judge the distance to the nearest trees.
“The big sentinel pine there, then?” he asks her, and she nods. “Long shot, Natalie. And the angle is too steep, it’ll hardly be any different than falling all that way.”
Natalie ignores him and stands up, aims, fires the crossbow bolt. Raulo takes her meaning. What other option do they have? They watch the bolt sail through the air, rope uncoiling behind it. It thunks solidly into the distant pine.
Raulo looks to Esma. Weston is whispering to her, telling her what Natalie is doing. Raulo looks to Briana. Briana gives a small shake of her head, her eyes pained. Raulo looks to Tayyip. Tayyip has never seen such desperation before.
“Leave me a carbine,” Esma says. Her voice has gone calm. “Can’t see, too dizzy to stand up, but I can hear the bastards if they come up the stairs.
“Esma…” Raulo says.
“Captain,” she cuts him off. “Fucking up for it, all right?”
Raulo closes his eyes, squeezing them tight. He hands her his carbine.
“Wayfarers are always up for it,” he says quietly. Each of the others in the company choruses it back, a salute of sorts to Esma.
Natalie has prepared a few quick makeshift handles for her zipline - just cloth looped a couple of times and a bit of animal fat where it will be in contact with the rope.
“Tayyip,” Danil says, staring wide eyed at the zip line. “Tayyip, you can do the maths, too. That angle is too sharp, our velocity–”
“Scholars,” Natalie interrupts. “Now is not the time for maths. Here, all of us die. There, some of us might survive. We’ll make splints for our broken bones and hobble down the mountain.”
Sami takes a step towards Danil. Danil takes a step back, holding his hands up.
“B-b-but if you take me, then Esma, well, you’re the only one big enough to carry her, you have to take her, and I can’t be moved w-w-while I,” Danil says.
“Esma has made a different choice, Scholar,” Sami says gravely.
Danil stamps his foot, the childish gesture very odd in the adult man. “No, listen, this is irrational, the only–”
“No, you listen, you son of dockside whore, you don’t have any say here–” Raulo starts, but then is shocked into silence.
Danil closes his eyes, speaks an arcane keyword, opens them again and cold moonlight shines from his iris. The white of his eye has turned black, stars fall across the void where the white once was. The earth begins to shake, violently, tossing everyone but Danil to their knees. The ridgeline below them with the pine tree they have secured their lifeline to begins to crumble, the earthquake knocking the rock loose.
The ridge collapses.
As it falls, the earth gathers into the shape of a wave, all of the trees save for the one lone pine upon which they have pinned their hopes collapsing into the rocky scree. That one pine stands tall, is instead buoyed up as the wave of earth crests, bringing the tree just that much higher and closer, just that much that it might truly save them now. The earth falls quiet, but rumbles and tremors still vibrate through the stone, as if it is held just at the point of collapse.
“I was trying to say,” Danil says, voice strained, eyes a night sky, “that the only logical option is for me to stay behind - that way the fewest number will die. I will not have ignorant rustics arguing with me. Holding the earth like this takes more concentration than you can possibly understand, so kindly take Esma and Tayyip and get off this tower before the Broken come up and kill us all. Do not touch me - if I tried to go with you I would lose concentration and we would all fall to our deaths.”
Raulo is stunned. Tayyip likewise is frozen in wide-eyed shock, though not at Danil’s abilities - he knew what school his colleague was from.
“What under the blue sky did you do?” Sami asks in wonder.
“Druidic magic,” Tayyip answers for Danil. “Scholar Sokolov is a member of the Circle of the Moon and Stars. He is a leading expert on arcane constellations. Danil…”
“Go, Tayyip,” Danil says. “This is much harder to do during the day.”
It is Natalie who breaks the silence. With a murmured, “Scholar,” and a nod of thanks, she hooks a piece of cloth around the zipline and jumps off the tower. Weston follows, and then Cesar. Briana steals a quick kiss from Raulo, pinches his butt, and goes next. Sami grabs Esma, wraps her in his powerful legs, tells her to hang on, and follows. Each murmurs, “Scholar,” before they go with a nod of respect for Danil. Tayyip waves Raulo off, and Raulo positions himself at the line.
“You’re still an ugly whoreson,” Raulo says to Danil. Even Danil can’t mistake the affection in the Saeralin’s voice.
“Well, you’re a - a pirate dog,” Danil says back.
Raulo laughs. “That I am, Scholar, that I am.”
With a whoop Raulo is gone, hollering all down the line.
“I will make sure the University knows what you did, Schol–” Tayyip starts, but is cut off.
“Tayyip, I saw something in the mosaic,” Danil says. They both pause as they hear clattering on the stone steps below them. The Broken have started to work out who gets to go up the stairs first, and are coming. They are slow and stupid things, but remorseless.
“I saw something in the mosaic,” Danil continues. “Elements of a ritual. I didn’t have time to study it properly, I can’t know for sure, but Tayyip… don’t let just anyone see this tower. Promise. If you come back–no, when you come back, let no one else see this tower. Not even another from my circle. I trust only you.”
“I will, Danil, I promise,” Tayyip says. He turns, goes to the zipline, hesitates. “Danil…”
“This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Danil says.
“Faith!” Tayyip curses, though he can’t help but laughing, but then has to wipe at his watering eyes. “Faith. Death is a journey, Scholar. When I join you in the Beyond, I look forward to seeing what new knowledge your journey has brought you.” And he jumps.
When the Wayfarers and Tayyip are down - no broken legs between them - they hurry off the trembling ridge. They have only made it a few dozen meters away when the earth gives way, collapsing, tearing their sentinel pine tree down behind them. The eight survivors all turn to look at the southern spire. They can see human shapes, arms rising and falling, spears stabbing.
A storm cloud gathers over the tower, the cloud blackening in the space of a few heartbeats, lightning flashing down. Thunder booms through the mountains, rattling the trees so hard pine needles flutter down around the Wayfarers like snow. Rain falls from the cloud, lightning shoots down onto the tower. A gust of wind picks some of the Broken up and tosses them over the parapet. The storm rages for only a few more short minutes, and then is gone, the black clouds breaking apart and drifting away into the empty blue sky, the flashes of lightning now only afterimages burned into irises.
“Natalie, take us to the closest healer you know of,” Raulo says quietly. “Let’s get Esma taken care of. You’ll be right as rain before long, Esma.”
Tayyip turns to follow the Wayfarers down the mountains, his heart heavy and morose. A dead colleague, a wasted expedition, made all the more bitter for coming so very close. He thinks he has nothing to show for this, that all was in vain, and fears he may not be able to put together another team to return.
He is not quite right.
In the adrenaline of their escape, he has forgotten the small sketch he made–the sketch of a dragon from a breed never before seen.
He has no idea the storm this small sketch is about to unleash; no idea that his hastily taken notes will usher in the greatest hunt the Viridian Coast will ever see.
The hunt for the White Dragon.
That’s it for this one. I am currently thinking I will share one or two more short stories from this setting while I continue to settle in to my new place.