Page 51 of Angel in Absentia
She could only imagine Idan raising his eyebrows in that High Council room at her proposal. Everyone had been shocked, but hearing a Lodain person offering their life for the greater good of the city was boring for him, just another example of her people being foolish all over again.
Maybe there was wisdom to be found in both perspectives, and she’d been right to come to Ruedom to perhaps discover thatoffering her life so casually was not the best choice after all. Maybe there was a third option she wasn’t seeing yet.
She turned back into the room, resting her glass on the counter. She leaned down, kissing Iris on the forehead before returning to her room to change into a light-blue Lodain tunic.
She packed up her bag, looked into the mirror, and allowed her hand to settle on the golden hairpin from King Kartheen’s castle that rested in the chain around her neck. She pulled it free and rested it on the counter, stepping back from her reflection and perhaps another version of herself she was at last ready to leave behind.
Like letting go of another shell, she felt lighter, and yet somehow more solid. She turned back into the main room, her bag and Ryson’s scythe hoisted over her back. She approached the door, opened it and looked back at the interior of the villa.
A few hours of quick riding and she’d be at her city before dawn. She looked over at Iris sleeping and at the city beyond the porch, thinking perhaps this could be the last time she saw Ruedom, but also perhaps not. She was no longer aching to survive and no longer eager to martyr herself. Life was mysterious, and she would be open to the days ahead, determined to find a way to live, and determined to see death in earnest, only when it truly came for her.
†††
She returned through the streets, still lively with music and bystanders until she made her way to the tunnels beneath the city. She presented herself to the tunnel guards and was provided with a strong horse before embarking on her own into the darkness.
The ride was long, and she was tired but thoughtful as the horses’ hooves drummed on to the first outpost. She exchanged the animal for another and bid farewell to the guards again, one Lodain and one Ruedain, before traveling on, eager to get to the city before sunrise. She wanted to at least get some sleep before approaching the High Council in the morning to confirm her return.
Several more gates later, she was surprised to find a portion of the tunnel completely collapsed. She guessed she was close, likely not far from Dawn Field, and dismounted, climbing up to a small opening and having to peel back several small boulders to make room to crawl through.
She squeezed out into the opening, vague sounds calling her up a nearby ridge where she caught a view of her city from a mile or so off. She could see the dark gap of Dawn Field, illuminated by a vast, elaborate wall of white lines.
Her city shone with the tracings of starlight, pulsing and flickering as walls of blessings wrapped the city in a beautiful, haunting web of ansra.
The wind tore at Clea’s clothes and carried with it the ring of the warning bell. Clea’s mouth went dry as she beheld her city in the night, hit with waves of darkness on all sides. A corner of the city grew dark, signaling that part of the blessed barrier had collapsed, worn out from the night’s onslaught, or the caster killed by a curse. Another warning bell signaled the breach of the walls, and a sea of black, an ocean of soldiers, spilled through the breach like an infection.
“No,” she whispered in horror before running back down the ridge. A hole had already been dug on the other side of thecollapse, a passageway more enemies had likely used to target the underbelly of the city.
It had to be the Ashanas.
Not yet,she urged as she slipped into the tunnel, charging in the direction of her city.It wasn’t supposed to be now. Not this soon, not yet.
And she couldn’t help hearing a version of Idan’s words, echoing in her ears:
It’s only a matter of time. Their city is a sinking ship.
CHAPTER 16
CARNAGE
HE ASHANAS WERE no longer Venennin, but creatures of another world. Corpses in motion, they moved with speed and severity, but their flesh was rotten and grotesque, their bodies gnarled into pieces. They were living rot that hungered.
Adrenaline and noise flooded Clea’s senses, combated only by repeated scenes of horror, disemboweled corpses and twisted lumps of flesh lying in wait in every entrance and corridor as Clea made her way toward the castle of Loda. Bolts of darkness met blades of light in fierce flashes of illumination and shadow, battling in a deadly rhythm. She moved swiftly, brandishing a sword blade from a fallen soldier. Her steel was a white torch, cutting through the rotten Venennin with practiced precision. Their shrieks echoed, cut short by searing light as she broke into one hub of disheveled fighting and then another as she moved from the tunnels up through the city interior and toward the castle.
The battle was winding down without a clear victor. Clea’s hair was strung together with sweat, traces of ash coating her skin as she turned into one alley and then the next. Covered in pieces of mismatched armor wrenched from fallen soldiers, she turned each corner with increasing haste, finding either friend or foe, a winner or loser of individual battles that had broken out like patches of infection throughout the city. She found one family, humans, all dead meals for a Venennin who tore and hungered at the half-frozen corpses as frost climbed along the shatteredwindows and doors of the house. It was an easy kill. Clea didn’t remain to absorb the fullness of the carnage, managing to kill another Venennin just as it had breached another house.
She gathered command of straggling soldiers, others recognizing her voice and congregating to her, and she directed them back out to secure the small villages of the inner city, taking another portion with her to the castle gates and then through them.
Minutes passed in seconds. Clea’s vision blurred at the edges as she saw but did not absorb the breadth of the devastation. Again, her journey from Virday repeated itself, and arriving back at a city that had once been a stronghold, she saw only its decaying duplicate. A bakery she’d once known was burning; a blacksmith’s cottage boiled with spreading decay; cobblestone streets were roiling with battle where civilians had comfortably walked for over a century. Every scene passed her by as she gave orders, familiar with the battlefield but unfamiliar with this place she’d once called home.
The corridors narrowed as she ascended inside the castle, dispatching one soldier or the next to aid in skirmishes left and right as she gathered others to her. With each turn, she found bodies, soldiers, servants, even scribes, strewn across marble and mosaic. Once beautiful walls were cracked and stained with soot and splattered infection, the interior still lit by layers of blessings that weakened any of the Venennin who dared enter.
The blessings were a powerful shield, lining every inch of the castle’s upper interior, and she knew them well, her father’s own power demonstrated by his ability to serve as the castle’s very walls. She knew his power and knew what it could mean when all at once the walls faded to dark.
Clea looked at the small group of soldiers that had gathered to her, mixed rank, some she recognized, some she did not. She issued an order with fervor, fighting back the tremor in her voice: “Go to the entrances. People are sheltering in the inner castle. Make this our fortress, filter who comes in,” she said. “Secure the interior. I’ll go up.”
Hesitation lingered.
“Now!” she shouted, surprised at the roar of her own voice, and they dispersed behind her. She whipped back into the hallways, rising through the final levels. She felled another Venennin on the way to the castle throne room, which served as its inner sanctum, her breathing ragged as she made her way through the final hallways. She struck down another Venennin, finding them strong but uncontrolled, consumed by their illness and hunger in ways that made them fierce and sloppy. Her opponents thickened as she cleared one hallway and then the next, Clea exhausted and still wild with adrenaline as she turned into the final walkway to the throne room doors.
