ARC 7: CHAPTER 39: ROSANNA'S SWORD

It all happened very fast. Too fast for mortal eyes to follow.

Vicar moved before I did. The hellhound, huge as he was, leapt with a blurring speed, a flash of black hide and cinders fast as wind.

But the abgrüdai moved faster than thought. Even while the creature itself remained perfectly still, almost statue-esque, its tail snapped out and hit the crowfriar dead on with a a CRACK! of impact. The power behind that blow was enormous — it must have been, because Vicar went flying into the depths of the room like a missile. He struck one of the columns, pulverizing it and vanishing beneath rubble and dust.

When the demon pulled its wickedly barbed tail back, its end was drenched in steaming blood. “That’s one,” it hissed even as its tail coiled again. “Now…”

It struck again with that unnatural speed. The tail was still one moment, then the air seemed to flash and pop.

Since it struck Vicar first, I had time to form a counter. Instead of trying to dodge or use my sword, I used Aureate Repulsion again — or whatever this new form of it should be called. I’d figure out names for my malformed spells another time, focus on surviving until then.

The air seemed to crack like glass, and the demon’s tail recoiled back as it struck against my will. Golden fire clung to the thorned appendage as it whipped back and forth as though to dislodge the scouring aura.

The demon unclasped its six-jointed fingers and let out a long, crocodilian hiss. I thought it had an enormous head at first, but realized the extra mass came from two huge, curling horns. The face itself was locked in a tight grin with flat teeth. There were no eye sockets, just calloused red flesh and two tiny holes like someone had used a thick needle to punch into the skin. Its nose was also a hollow cavity, so its face resembled a skull with leathery hide roughly pulled over it.

It looked much like Raath El Kur had, a very classical crimson fiend, only taller and thinner, a gangly thing with scarecrow proportions.

I recognized its voice. “Idiobi.”

“Hello, deviant.” The demon’s grin — more a rictus of pain than humor — stretched wider. Its tail lashed once, and the aureflame burning along its end finally snuffed out so the room became dark again.

I sent more fire along the length of my blade, turning it into an improvised torch. The burning weapon snarled as I swept it up into a guard. Idiobi’s still-sizzling tail twitched, but it didn’t strike. Instead, its horn-burdened head tilted to one side. Its teeth did not unlock when it spoke. Like back at Cyril’s keep, its voice seemed a hollow, ethereal thing.

“You do not have time to play with me, Alder Knight.” An arm near long as the creature’s whole body lifted to point at the doors into the Dead Saint’s crypt. “Things are wrapping up in there.”

Almost on cue, a flash of wind filled the room and the whole complex rumbled and shook. Flecks of stone rained from the ceiling. The air felt charged all the sudden, like during a storm.

I inwardly cursed. I’d wasted too much time dueling Vicar, and now this. Was Vicar dead? He hadn’t emerged from the rubble, and that blow had looked lethal.

“Aren’t you going to try to stop me?” I asked the demon.

“I was tasked to do so, yes.” The abyssal’s voice grew deeper, more sullen. “But I do not want you to miss what comes next.”

We stared off for a moment, neither of us moving. In order to reach the doors I’d have to go right past the fiend, easily within its striking range.

And demons are liars.

The smallest of movements from Idiobi made me act. It was little more than a twitch, a flex of its fingers, and then I snapped into motion. That lethal tail darted directly for my skull, but my sword turned it in a cascade of sparks — the end was strong and sharp as iron — and then I dashed forward while the appendage hung limp from the shock of impact. I swung, aiming for the mass of quivering intestines hanging from the demon’s skinless stomach.

What instinct warned me of the second attack, I couldn’t say. It wasn’t anything supernatural, just a scream of sheer instinct and perhaps a movement in the subterranean chamber’s disturbed air. A shape flashed out of the dark and I twisted in an attempt to avoid it, fouling the cut I’d aimed at Idiobi, who hadn’t attempted to dodge. It was long and sinuous, segmented like a caterpillar and thick as my arm, its flesh a pallid gray and hairy.

Its small teeth latched onto my arm, clicking into place around my vambrace. Its momentum carried the rest of its serpentine body — no, not a serpent but a millipede — forward and it suddenly whipped about and coiled around my arm and shoulders.

It wasn’t big, but it had the strength of a vice. I could hear my armor groaning under the pressure and feel it in my arm. And even as it gnawed at the layer of metal protecting my skin from its biting jaws, it growled out half comprehensible words in an unceasing string.

“Got you stupid fucking man whore break your bones eat you wear you idiot shit stained mortal think you can cut my head off I’ll—”

It was the parasite demon from Tol, the one I’d injured and made flee. It had my sword arm trapped, preventing me from swinging. I thought for a moment Idiobi would take advantage and attack, but it didn’t. Instead, the larger demon spoke with an uncharacteristic urgency.

“Screel, do not touch him, you—”

But it was too late. I forced my arm up and away from my face, fighting against the demon’s strength. Then, with an outburst of will, I wreathed myself in fire.

The conflagration was sudden and dramatic. Amber flames burst from my black armor, turning it a brassy sheen and scattering the antechamber’s darkness. Like a sudden bonfire in the midst of a starless night I burned, and the demon began to scream.

Its screams were terrible, very human and completely devoid of any restraint or shame. It squealed and screeched and writhed. It tried to let go, but the intensity of the heat against its pallid flesh melted it to my armor like meat on an iron grill. A horrible stench assaulted my nostrils and my eyes began to itch, but I refused to stop.

Moments later, Screel stopped its wailing and went limp. I used my left hand to peel it off me and then let its charred remains slap against the stone floor. It left chunks of cooked meat on my armor.

I turned to the other demon while tongues of golden fire continued to crackle along my frame. Idiobi hadn’t interfered, remaining just out of reach and staring at its burnt comrade.

“Still loved, I see.” Its voice was full of a seething, hateful mockery.

I glanced at my left gauntlet. I could feel the flames searing me beneath it. Not so viciously as they’d done to the fiend, but the familiar pain still made my fingers curl. Loved? I thought. It calls this love?

But it did tell me one thing; the Alder’s power was still hallowed. It still acted as a bane against the creatures of the Abyss. And why wouldn’t it? The power might be angry, turned caustic, but Tuvon had kept it safe all these years. Perhaps that was why he’d let me do what I did. Better to give it to a tarnished paladin and the dead than risk the Abgrüdai breaching his sanctum and corrupting it. A risk, and another responsibility.

He’d placed more faith in me than I’d imagined. Or perhaps it was just desperation?

I turned my attention back to the remaining enemy and stepped forward. However, Idiobi melted back into the shadows until only its calloused face remained visible.

“Hurry-hurry,” it hissed. “It’s nearly time.”

Another blast of wind burst out of the crypt. It wasn’t hot like I might have expected. No, this hell-breeze felt cold.

Idiobi laughed as it retreated. Growling in frustration, I tore my attention away and started pounding towards the doors. As I entered the tunnel within, I started to hear sounds ahead. Shouts, screams, iron clangs and a guttural snarl that made me think of forges and manic smiths. Someone was laughing.

I could make out light ahead, but I didn’t quench the flames crackling along my sword. I felt I’d still need them.

The tunnel ended, and I stepped onto a balcony overlooking a room that, while not as large as the antechamber outside, seemed so by stint of lacking the rows of columns characterizing that other space. It had a taller ceiling, and the walls were covered in niches full of bones. Those would be dead knights, generations of them who’d taken Saint Perseus as their patron and been voluntarily interred here posthumously to guard over the tomb in death.

The Cardinal’s sarcophagus sat in a position of honor at the center of the crypt. It’d been set on a raised section of the room, circular and twice as wide as the stone coffin set on it was long. The sarcophagus lay open and empty, with sheets of pure white cloth draped over it. The room wasn’t a moldering tomb, but swept clean and arrayed in a constellation of candelabras and tapestries, all beautiful and of the finest materials. Crimson banners and white curtains threaded with gold and emblazoned with scenes from the Exodus and the old crusades decorated every wall and hung between every pillar.

There were dozens of people in the room, only… not all of them were people. I saw the Cardinal first. It was hard to miss him. He wore gold robes of ceremony and a towering crown wrapped in white holly. A veil covered his dead face, and sleeves long as a lord’s cape winged him as he stood atop the dais with arms outstretched.

Next to him stood a pulpit of bloodstained cedar. I knew what must be on it.

There were others. I recognized Kale Stour, King of Osheim, by his crown more than personal familiarity. A powerfully built man with light brown hair grown long and a thick beard, he wore chainmail armor in a classical style reinforced with golden plate, and a sword was in his hand. He’d been injured, and what remained of his guard were protecting him while bloated fetterfiends prodded at them with bidents.

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There more of the torturers of Orkael. At a quick guess I thought a score at least, all misshapen, all burdened with chains, heavy bands, and nails bounded into their diseased flesh. Their surly grunts and chittering calls filled the air.

The crowfriars were there. Most had dispensed with their disguises, so I could make them out from the red-robed Priory clerics. The priors, priorguard, and lesser preosts of the Arda had been scourged. There was a pile of red and black-robed corpses callously tossed into a heap around the front of the dais, and blood slowly spread across the floor in a growing pool.

A vision of Hell. Only, it was just foreshadowing.

Dis Myrddin sat next to Cardinal Perseus and the pulpit on the edge of the platform, his hairy, bare legs swinging under his shawl of black furs. A long knife hung from his hand, dripping blood down into the bodies. That pile of bodies moved. Limbs twitched, jaws worked, sightless eyes lolled back so the whites showed. A power hung over that charnel, a miasma that reeked to my senses like blood and dirty fire.

On the other side of the Dead Saint stood the Scorchknight, the one Vicar had called Beren In Irons. The skull image hammered to the devil’s helm stared implacably at the butchery before it, the hollows of the mask’s eyes like cavernous pits full of an empty blackness. He didn’t move toward the mortals fighting back at the edge of the room, but kept close and guarded the pulpit. He held his hammer ready.

As I stepped to the edge of the balcony, the corpse pile seemed to pulse. A tide of deeply cold air stinking of death washed through the crypt. The spirit-fire crackling along my limbs dimmed at that blast, and I shivered.

I’d not felt truly cold in a long time. Not since before I’d sworn my oath in Seydis, but that wind stabbed like arctic ice. It passed quickly, and left behind a shivering energy in the room.

No, I had felt that before, relatively recently. Vicar’s councilor had used a power like it. This was the magic of the Zosite, the angels of Hell.

I searched the room and quickly found Delphine and the rest. The doctor stood with Maryanne and Eilidh near King Kale’s men, though the Orkaelin gaelors formed a barrier between the two groups. I only recognized Maryanne by her habit and mane of black curls, because she’d transformed into a bat-like thing, hunched and hideous with purple-gray skin stretched over a beast’s muzzle. Eilidh had retained a human shape, though her fingers were painted red and she bared a mouthful of sharp fangs.

The two vampires protected the doctor. Ormur perched on Delphine’s shoulders, partially transformed into his draconic shape and growling near loud as Maryanne. I could barely hear the wyrm-weasel over Dis Myrddin’s laughter.

The Cardinal’s voice rose over the cacophony of battle and terror. His voice crept through the sound, undulating between unnatural volume and falling into sepulchral whispers that somehow still made themselves heard. Beneath that supernatural voice, I could make out the sad tenure of an old, tired man.

“Fearful were the lords when our Immortal Queen spoke to them. Fearful were Her armies when they beheld the Fences of Urn and knew that death lay before and behind them. And yet! They did not stop. Their faith carried them through cold and through fire, and look at the wonders we have built!”

“I did not agree to this!” Kale Stour’s shout echoed through the tumult. He had a powerful voice, and it filled the room like thunder. “This is madness. It is profanity!”

The Zoscian’s on the pulpit. So far, no one had seemed to take note of me. The crowfriars were mostly congregated around the dais with the Cardinal and the scroll, a circle of ragged figures in all manner of garments, their only unifying aesthetic being shades of ash and charcoal. They were burnt figures, twisted and as monstrous in their way as the fetterfiends.

They were all chanting. I didn’t know the words, but knew where they were from and what they were trying to call. Had they already sacrificed enough? How many bodies did they need?

Not many more, I thought. Those blasts of power from the corpse pile weren’t from this world. The way was opening.

Where is Flora? I thought, not seeing the older vampire amongst the two with the doctor. I didn’t see Oraise anywhere, either. Had that bastard…

No. I caught a glimpse of a long black coat and a flash of silver when the transformed Maryanne shifted. The Presider stood with the others, protecting Delphine as I’d ordered.

But she wasn’t anywhere close to the Zoscian, and we were running out of time. Had Perseus already put his name to the damn thing?

My question was answered soon enough, when two fetterfiends shoved a man forward. I didn’t know him, but knew immediately who he must be by his elaborate crimson robes and circlet of office. Grand Prior Eirik wasn’t what I expected. He had sandy blond hair and a round frame that spoke of a sedentary life. Nothing like Horace, who’d been thin and grandfatherly.

As he stumbled to the pulpit, the sweating man nearly tripped and only caught himself by grasping onto the bloodstained stand that held the infernal scroll. He stared at it blankly for a moment.

Dis Myrddin leapt to his feet and pointed a grimy finger at the Zoscian. “Sign it,” he ordered.

The Grand Prior stared at the crowfriar for a lingering moment before running his gaze over the piled bodies of his subordinates and colleagues laid out beneath. He spoke with a thick accent, one I assumed he’d inherited from Kell, the land of his birth. “I… this isn’t what you told me would—”

“There’s no going back now, you fat dupe.” Dis Myrddin’s grin showed iron teeth. “Your soul already belongs to my god. Trust me, you want us happy with you when you cross over. Remember everything you’ve promised us? Everything we’ve given you? It’s time to pay your dues.”

He jabbed his finger violently at the scroll and spoke with such force that spittle flew from his lips. “SIGN IT!”

The other crowfriars continued to chant. I could see Melmoth and Krile in the circle. The Scorchknight stood like a statue of burnt black iron, guarding the pulpit.

The Grand Prior stared dumbly at the scroll, then began to lift his right hand towards it. He winced as something sharp I couldn’t see cut his finger.

I understood. Just as Delphine guessed, they had each member of the Priory sign the Zoscian and then slaughtered them, sending their souls to Hell and weakening the barrier between dimensions. Eirik would sign, and then they’d probably force the king to do it, and then finally the Cardinal himself.

No, not the king. He was here to witness the “miracle,” only they’d misjudged him. Kale Stour had a reputation as a zealous man, but he wasn’t a fool. He’d seen this for what it was and objected. The realization was a satisfying one, after seeing the Zosite make dupes of so many.

Just Eirik and the Cardinal, then. It felt like reality would split asunder any moment.

And yet, like with any Art not yet cast, it would only take a moment’s lapse in concentration to break it. I leaned my sword against the balcony’s railing, pulled my crossbow from the cracks in reality Catrin had shown me how to touch as her last gift, and took aim.

Eirik moved to sign. I fired. His head snapped back as the bolt took him through the skull and he became the second Grand Prior I killed.

Dis Myrddin watched the man collapse to the ground before his eyes twitched to me. They were bloodshot and wide with fury, their centers burning like hot coals. His unkempt beard flickered with points of fire.

“KILL HIM!” He howled, pointing a soot-stained finger my way. The Scorchknight’s iron mask drifted in my direction, the first time he’d moved since I’d walked in. He took a single step forward, and I could hear the tortured creak of metal ring across the whole chapel.

That’s right you bastard, I thought as I dismissed the crossbow and took up my sword. Focus on me.

A portion of the fetterfiends also turned away from the Osheimers and the Backroaders at the command. Seven of them split away and started moving towards the balcony, letting out eerie howls and bugles in a — for a lack of a better term — hellish stampede.

I’d struggled against just a handful of these back at Tol. Now I faced a small herd of them, along with an infernal champion on the same caliber as Jon Orley. Half a year polishing my sword skills suddenly seemed poor preparation for this.

But all I needed was to buy time, to keep the room focused on me. And if I could get to the cardinal, cut him down before he signed that contract and completed this ceremony…

The balcony at the underground chapel’s entrance had a stair on either side which curved down towards the chamber below. The fetterfiends stamped up these stairs from both sides, moving to surround me. Instead of turning to fight either group, I planted a steel-plated shoe on the railing, rested my sword on my right shoulder, and leapt. My red cloak flapped behind me as I took flight, and for a moment that seemed to linger I hovered over the chaos below.

But only for a moment. I fell, all my own weight along with more than sixty pounds of solid steel plate, chain, and greatsword dragging me down. Needless to say, I did not fall lightly. I’d used aura to propel my leap and reinforce me against the impact too, so when I hit one of the chanting figures near the dais I didn’t just knock him over — I broke him.

My sword slammed down into the crowfriar, sinking deep despite the lack of a sharp tip thanks to sheer momentum. I made sure he wasn’t still moving, then stood and ripped the blade free. The blood on the executioner’s sword hissed steam into the air.

I didn’t know if killing the crowfriars would do anything to stall the ritual, but figured it didn’t hurt to try. The next nearest gray-robed monk turned and produced a basalt dagger, only to have the blade shattered and the arm holding it split as my sword clove both in a savage uppercut.

She — this looked like a female crowfriar, though their burned features made it hard to tell — recoiled with a screech of pain. It was hard to believe they were bothered by pain at all given their ruined bodies, but the touch of aureflame seemed to hurt them just as it did to demons and undead. I carried the motion of that upward swing into a parry as another tried to stab me in the back, letting their toothy weapon skirt past my cheek. I turned and lunged, ramming the second with my shoulder hard enough to take them to the floor.

More gathered close, all of them holding evil little blades that looked more suited to ritual than combat. They were changing even as I watched, taking shapes that toed the line between beast and man. They became wolves and goats and jackals, their teeth sharpening and their skin sloughing away to reveal the horrors underneath.

“I was starting to wonder,” I said as I took a guard. “You’re not any different from them, are you?”

The crowfriars, the fetterfiends, the scorchknights, and every other monster Hell spat out were all demons too. It didn’t matter what names they gave themselves. Zosite, Abgrüdai, they all wanted the same thing. To devour us.

But I wouldn’t let them. They hesitated when I showed them the executioner’s sword and the flickers of fire sparking to life along its length. They got the message well enough. Get within my reach, and you feel this.

Don’t waste this, Delphine. But I couldn’t take my attention off the threats all around to see what she was doing, what anyone else was doing. While I’d placed myself close to the cardinal and effectively drawn the attention of near every devil in the room, I’d also planted my feet right in the middle of them.

Surrounded. Only…

I had a sword in my hands. There were people near me I had to protect, and only one sure way to do it. I’d earned many names in my years fighting, not all of them pleasant, but before all of them I’d been known by one. I felt that man stir from what seemed then like a long sleep.

Before I’d been a Knight of the Alder Table, before they’d called me Headsman or Bloody Al, I’d been Rosanna’s Sword.

I became him again, even if only for a short while.

The executioner’s sword hummed its song as I performed a set of cuts. It carried into another, and a third, a continuous series of sweeps that might have seemed wild to anyone watching. Aureflame mingled with arcs of infernal blood to trace the blade’s trajectory.

Devils died second deaths. A fetterfiend collapsed as I severed its leg at the knee. I took my left hand off the sword’s grip and grasped the creature’s curled horn, yanking it aside and using it as an improvised shield to check the charge of another. A crowfriar with a wolf’s head and hands locked in front of his chest as though in prayer yelped and then detonated into scraps of scorched flesh as I struck him. Though surrounded, the horde of burnt monks and beast-things flinched away, fearful of the spirit fire I wielded and from the speed of the sword in my hands.

“Come on!” I snarled as another smite boiled along my weapon and nothing came within reach of it. Something hit my back. It wasn’t hard enough to move me or cause any damage, but I turned in preparation to retaliate. However, my eyes flicked down to the object that’d been tossed at me as it rolled away. Strawberry blond hair fell back to reveal the severed head’s familiar face.

It was Flora.

The crypt shudderedas an iron boot stamped down, and the Scorchknight of Orkael strode forward to meet my challenge.

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