Chapter Text
“I’m heading to the front lines,” Bracken announced, when it became clear that the demons were targeting the shrine. “Warren and Vanessa, I want you with me. We'll form a wedge, with the astrids harrying from above. Our goal is to distract Gorgorog’s honor guard and isolate him from the other demons.”
Warren locked eyes with Vanessa. His jaw was set in determination but his eyes held that glint of a challenge, the one that said keep up if you can but also I've got your back.
Vanessa grinned fiercely. “Let’s go kill some demons.”
Bracken must have used his telepathic communication with the astrids to rally the rest of his mis-matched battalion, because in less time than it took Vanessa to tighten the straps on her armor troops of fairies, astrids, unicorns, and other warriors of the fairy realm had arranged themselves into formation.
Bracken raised his horn blade in the air and began the charge. The astrids and fairies took to the air, and all weapons were drawn as they advanced on the demon horde.
It wasn’t long before their approach was noted, and one of the greater demons shouted an order, sending several of the swiftest demons to engage them. The astrids and fairies took them on first, and Vanessa followed with the other earth-bound fighters.
Vanessa had been in plenty of fights, but no battles, she realized. Not like this. The moment before she was close enough to land her first blow stretched and the roar of her allies and enemies engaging around her sharpened. She could pick out every cry, every clang of blade on blade, and the tearing of flesh when the blades found their marks. A fairy crashed down to her right, one of her wings torn and mangled. The demon whose spear had brought her down advanced on her, another spear ready as she fought to gain her feet, but Warren stepped up beside her in time to knock the fatal blow aside.
And then the battle arrived, and Vanessa lost track of allies and enemies and the shrine and the wider shape of the battle. The demon in front of her, wolf-like and snarling with no weapon but teeth and claws, was all she could see. The gray assassin’s curved blade slashed towards its muzzle, which was already bloody with someone else’s blood, and the beast dodged under her swing and towards her legs. She dove right, barely keeping her feet. The beast’s momentum gave her the split second she needed to drive the sword into the side of its neck.
The curved shape of the blade tugged her arm in an unexpected angle as it slid into the creature’s neck, and it didn’t pierce as deeply or easily as it should have. Vanessa threw all her weight against it to force it where she knew the demon’s artery should be. Blood spattered her face and the demon howled and gurgled. She had to pull with more strength than she would have preferred to loosen her blade. This weapon was made for slashing, not stabbing, she admonished herself as she tore the sword out of the bloodied, shaggy corpse and swung it towards her next assailant.
This one, a demon who was barely more than a silhouette, seeming to absorb all light, raised a pitch black sword to meet hers. As the blades rung together, blood and gore from Vanessa’s previous kill splattered the dark demon’s face, highlighting features in red that hadn’t been visible before. The blood-stained lips drew back in a smile.
Vanessa pushed into the demon, driving with all her strength against their point of contact to push both swords higher and higher above her head. The sound of adamantine sliding against adamantine reverberated through the air, vibrating her teeth. When her arms were nearly straight, high over her head, she released the pressure on her blade and ducked down directly into the demon, knocking it back off its feet with all her weight. She pulled herself up and swung her blade around to slice cleanly through its midsection, releasing a flow of shockingly red viscera onto the ground.
That was more like it, she thought as she finished the slice cleanly and swung the curved, graceful sword directly into the hamstring of a large, scaly demon who was engaging with Warren and the fairy with the injured wing. Although his scales were hard enough to stop the sword cutting more than an inch or two deep, the distraction was enough to give the fairy an opening to stab her long, straight sword directly through the soft base of its chin and into its skull.
Vanessa spun around, but there was no one to fight. They’d broken through the first wave of demons. “Forward!” Bracken yelled, and they rushed on towards Gorgrog and his honor guard, who were gaining ground towards the shrine, slowly but surely pushing the fairy army back.
That first wave of demons had been the cannon fodder, Vanessa realized. The demons that came at them now were larger, faster, and much more terrifying. The astrids flew closer to the ground now, tightening ranks with the others. The astrid who had been assigned to protect Vanessa gilded just before her, his feet nearly brushing the tropical foliage that covered the ground. She and the astrid worked together to engage demon after demon, and still they seemed barely to be gaining any ground.
A huge demon grinned and laughed as it repelled their attacks easily with the massive reach of its polearm, keeping them dancing back, unable to so much as scratch it.
Vanessa barely saw Bracken coming before the tip of his shining blade stabbed through the demon's gut, the bright silvery point disappearing as fast as it had sprouted but leaving the demon falling to its knees, heavy enough to shake the ground beneath her feet, blood spewing from its still grinning mouth.
Vanessa heard Warren yell out something to her left, and spun in time to see his astrid pulled from the sky by a massive cruel hook wielded by a four-armed snake demon, who grabbed the astrid in a crushing embrace with one set of arms once the set wielding the hook had brought him near. Warren rushed towards his astrid and so did Vanessa and hers. The snake demon’s face was impassive as it wrapped another set of meaty, boneless-seeming arms around the astrid’s neck. The demon opened its mouth wide enough to stretch over the astrid’s helmeted head.
It must be unable to unhinge its jaw, Vanessa heard herself observe, as she rushed towards the scene only to be blocked by another snake demon rearing up in front of her. It has slithered towards her so low to the ground she hadn’t even seen it coming, distracted as she’d been by the plight of Warren’s astrid.
Vanessa dug her foot into the ground and pulled herself back in time to dodge the swing of its hook weapon, and nearly fell to the ground. Regaining her balance, she stayed low and slashed a shallow cut into the snake’s torso, drawing a line of green blood. She followed the movement past her opponent, staying just beyond its grasp. She brought her sword up and cut off one of its grasping, scaled hands as it reached for her. The hand went flying, and the snake demon flinched back, hissing in displeasure. She saw her own astrid slam down into the snake from behind, knees first, driving the thing into the ground where Vanessa brought her sword down like an axe to sever its head.
Vanessa’s astrid had already re-alighted and was speeding through the air to where Warren and the great fairy knelt beside their own defeated snake and Warren’s astrid, who had been extracted from the snake’s mouth. The astrid sat up as Vanessa approached, but his arms were held at odd angles and he couldn’t grasp his weapons. The snake must have cracked bones with its constricting embrace.
Vanessa’s astrid called something out in the fairy tongue and a pair of great fairies flitted in to bear the wounded astrid away.
“Stay with us,” Vanessa’s astrid instructed Warren, whose grim face bore a streak of green blood. He nodded, adjusting his grip on that gaudy sword of his. She noticed a dark stain spreading over his upper left arm.
“You okay?” she asked him, as the two of them assumed positions on the astrid’s flanks and pushed back towards Gorgrog’s entourage.
“Better than my astrid,” he said. “You?”
“I’m good,” she said, surprised to register that she had not yet been injured.
As she took a breath, Vanessa saw that behind them, a stream of fairy realm creatures were emerging from the shrine– not another round of the reinforcements that had swelled their ranks here and there throughout the battle: these were mostly smaller, unarmed creatures, running away from the battle. Refugees, abandoning the fairy realm. The battle’s generals in their silent conversation must have decided that the demons were on the verge of breaking through to the shrine.
They were losing.
But Bracken’s force wasn’t retreating yet. They pushed through another wave of lesser demons and Vanessa registered the astrids and fairies tightening their wedge formation, presumably on Bracken’s orders. Vanessa felt suddenly very small between her stern, gold-armored astrid and the massive dryad who had assumed a position on her other side.
The wedge pushed through the greater demons, fighting so tightly Vanessa had to be careful not to run into her allies as they pushed through Gorgrog’s great demons. And suddenly, there he was: the demon king, huge and horrible and looking completely impossible to kill. A dozen or so of the astrids and great fairies took to the sky and fanned out as they flew towards him. The dryad who had been fighting beside Vanessa strode away, and she saw that most of Brackens’ force were now adopting a new formation, creating a ring around Gorgrog and pushing the rest of the demons out and away from their king.
“We are to join Bracken,” Vanessa’s astrid instructed them. The young unicorn was approaching the demon king with a small number of dryads and other unicorns while the astrids and fairies tried to distract him from above. Vanessa and Warren and their astrid made their way towards the fight. Vanessa heard Warren let out a strange laugh, and she didn’t need to ask what was so funny. The demon king swatted at his flying assailants like flies. Vanessa didn’t think she could reach the top of his shaggy ankle if she leapt.
Gorgrog seemed focused on the battle in the air, at least. Bracken approached him from the side, and took a running leap to stab Gorgrog’s calf, drawing a bellow of rage from the demon king, who swept his massive sword towards Bracken and the others on the ground, catching one of the dryads under the arm and lifting her ten feet off the ground before the slice separated her from her limb. The dryad flew back another thirty feet, landing among the larger battle that formed a ring around their own.
Vanessa tore her eyes away from the dryad to meet Warren’s, and the two exchanged a nod before rushing forward together to join Bracken’s assault, slashing and stabbing at the demon king’s ankles and dancing back before he could register who of his many small opponents had landed a hit. It felt more like a carnival game than a battle, and it made Vanessa feel very, very tiny.
Suddenly, the demon king looked up at something beyond Vanessa’s field of view, and, enraged, landed a kick that sent Bracken flying backwards. Vanessa and Warren and their astrid dashed back to form a protective line in front of him while he regained his feet and his breath. Before they could make it back to the battle at the demon king’s feet, a radiant figure swooped in overhead, flying without wings. The strange warrior connected her small blade with Gorgrog’s and somehow managed to hold her place in the air against the massive force of his blow. Gorgrog’s new enemy shone so brightly it hurt Vanessa’s eyes to watch her, and the sound of their blades ringing together was painful in her ears.
Bracken surged to his feet and rushed back towards Gorgrog, his face betraying a deep, sorrowful kind of fear.
“The fairy queen,” Warren said. Vanessa drew in a breath.
“Look out!” Vanessa’s astrid warned. Behind them, the greater demons were pushing with renewed vigor to break the line that separated them from their leader. She and Warren turned back to face the other demons, deciding without discussion that they were of more use here than dodging the demon king’s steps as he fought a legendary immortal being who hadn’t been seen in this world since Zzyzzx had first been sealed.
Vanessa dashed beyond the reach of an insectoid six-legged demon and lunged to engage a hulking, multi-headed monster that was advancing on Warren and their astrid. She only managed to slash it shallowly accross its side but provided enough distraction for the second it took Warren to plunge his blade deep into its belly.
Vanessa didn’t wait to see if the demon was finished, instead spinning back towards the other one. Pincer-jaws clacking, the demon advanced on her, swerving to one side then the other as it sized her up. She sprang forward to strike just as it veered to her left, a scorpion-like tail flashing out to pierce her side. Pain seared out from the point of contact like white hot lightning. Her vision blurring at the edges, but she nonetheless kept her sword’s trajectory true and felt more than saw it break through the demon’s hard carapace. She wrenched away and the demon scuttled back, hissing and shuddering, its tail jerking erratically as it died.
Vanessa scrambled to her feet, burning pain surging from the wound in her side. She could feel it now: poison, creeping up through her, spurred on with every movement she made, dulling her senses. She pushed the numbness and the pain out of her mind and stepped back, finding firm footing to meet her next foe.
As soon as one demon had fallen, a new one scrambled over its body towards them. The three of them fought together to slay foe after foe, but still they were forced backwards, closer to the fight between Gorgrog and the fairy queen. Vanessa dared not turn back to see who was faring better.
A demon with no eyes rose over the body of its fellows. The hollow sockets of its skull honed in on them and the mummified flesh of its mouth pulled back in a rigor mortis grin. It let out a dry, voiceless cackle, and lunged towards her, striking at her with a barbed javelin. She parried the attack, dodging to the side. Something rolled under Vanessa’s step, causing her to stumble. She had tripped over a bloody, severed arm, at least half again as long as a human’s. The dryad’s. Vanessa shuddered as she pushed herself back to a fighting stance and turned towards Warren and the demon.
Warren cried out and staggered back as the skeletal demon drove its javelin deep into his belly. His sword fell from his hands as he grabbed for the shaft of the weapon on instinct, his face a mask of shock. The astrid swooped in to drive the demon back, and the monster grinned wider as it wrenched its weapon away, pulling Warren with it several paces before the javelin came free, the spiked barbs spattering red blood as they ripped out of his grasp. Warren fell to his knees, blood pouring from the wound in alarming volume.
The demon didn't have time to raise its now freed weapon before Vanessa decapitated it viciously. The astrid flew to engage an oncoming attacker, giving Vanessa cover to drop down beside Warren. He groaned, his eyes staring without focus on the bloody mess of his hands.
"Get up," she told him, taking his arm.
"My sword," Warren said, the words quiet and slurred.
Vanessa sheathed her own blade and picked up Warren's from the ground. It was lighter and longer than the gray assassin’s weapon, and it felt right in her hand.
"I'll hang onto it," she told him, sliding her left arm around Warren’s waist and hauling him to his feet, gritting her teeth and holding steady as he cried out in pain.
“Kendra,” he slurred, holding up a tattered, bloody hand to point towards Gorgrog and the new figure charging him with a sword bright enough to blind. And somehow, beyond all reason, it was Kendra. She fought the demon lord with a ferocity and strength that Vanessa certainly couldn’t credit to the irregular lessons she’d given Kendra that summer.
“We have to help her,” Warren slurred, a trickle of blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth.
Vanessa squeezed him a bit closer, pulling her gaze away from the larger battle to seek out their astrid. Her head pounded and her fingers were beginning to go numb. She spotted the winged warrior, engaging two large, fierce demons, cutting them off from joining their king’s battle.
Pulling Warren with her, Vanessa moved towards the conflict, swinging her blade at the nearest of the two demons hard enough to sever most of its arm. It spun towards her, and she drove her sword deep into its chest, tugging Warren along with the movement and making him stumble and cry out in pain. Free of distraction, the astrid finished its remaining opponent.
A huge, horned beast lumbered towards them, brandishing a massive ax.
"Can you stand on your own?" Vanessa asked Warren. He nodded, jaw clenched. She ducked out from under his arm and stepped between him and the approaching demon.
A ground shaking crash sounded behind them, and for a moment everything stilled. The demons muttered, then yelled out at each other across the battlefield. The one who had been marching towards them stopped a moment, staring out over their heads.
“Gorgrog has fallen,” the astrid intoned. His placid face held a tiny hint of awe and surprise as he turned his head to survey the battle behind them.
“Get him out of here!” Vanessa yelled, snapping the astrid’s attention back. She steadied Warren as the astrid stepped forward and lifted Warren into his arms. Warren reached a bloodied, ruined hand out to her, and mumbled something that might have been, “Help Kendra,” but she stepped away, out of his reach, and turned to the giant demon, whose attention was on them once again.
“I will bring him to a healer,” the astrid promised, and the sound of his wings beating behind her announced that he had taken flight.
Vanessa dashed to engage the gargantuan demon, hoping to buy the astrid enough space to fly free out of reach of the monster's huge ax.
Something had changed. The demon army was flowing in one direction now, with more speed and purpose than before. The huge demon only swung a few clumsy strokes at Vanessa before veering away to join the flow of the army. A great fairy pursued the demon a few dozen paces, then gave up and flew back.
Out of nowhere, a wrinkled, cackling hag rushed in close enough to slap a hand against Vanessa's cheek, holding her face and locking eyes with her. Before she could think, the stifling darkness of the Quiet Box had closed in around Vanessa. She couldn’t move. She was alone and trapped, but still somehow the screaming sounds of the battle surrounded her, louder and louder, burrowing deep inside and blocking out all other senses. She forgot to breathe. She thought she might have been laughing, or maybe crying, but she couldn’t hear it over the battle. She knew the sounds of death and horror were coming from within her, that the chaos and death and fear had always been with her. There was nothing but her in the whole universe, no one and nothing but her and the blackness and the sound of war.
Then the madness released her and she fell to her knees in time to see Bracken driving the hag off, his arms and torso criss-crossed with silver-bleeding wounds. The demon laughed, locking eyes with Vanessa as she backed away from the unicorn and melted back into the chaotic throng.
“It’s time to retreat,” Bracken told her, offering her a hand. She didn’t hesitate to take it, and he pulled her to her feet.
They made it a few hundred yards together, gradually falling behind the main group of their allies, all of whom had wings or supernaturally long strides. Vanessa wondered if Bracken was too injured to match their pace, or if he was actually slowing himself down to ensure he didn’t leave her behind.
A handful of enemies broke off to attack them and to keep them cut off from their path of retreat but their vigor was waning-- they had some new objective now. A tall, lanky demon with a spiked chain was tempted enough by the two stragglers to veer towards them, and they swung around to meet it. Vanessa feinted a dodge around the demon and it swung its long chain down like a whip, overbalancing just enough to allow her to dart under the length of its arm weapon and slash a deep cut across its belly, releasing a sickening spray of blood and gore. Bracken was right behind her, leaping impossibly high to stab the demon in its heart, colliding with his enemy hard enough to topple it backwards, saving Vanessa from being crushed by the weight of it as it fell.
Back to back, the narcoblix and the unicorn fought their way through a disorganized crush of lesser demons towards an outcropping where astrids were ferrying the wounded to safety, and a pair of astrids swooped in and lifted them away from the battle. Vanessa watched from above as the rest of the astrids and great fairies guarded their retreat and then disengaged one by one. Now that she was above the battlefield, she saw that the bulk of the demon horde was indeed moving in one direction-- towards the shrine, which was no longer guarded.
Above it all, dragons flew, breathing long bursts of fire and lightning and acid down on the demons, swooping along their flanks and harrying any who broke free of the army, driving them back towards the main wave.
The astrid deposited Vanessa on a ridge, where other allies were gathered. Vanessa stumbled, her head spinning from blood loss and whatever poison was trickling through her veins. Her limbs felt stiff and heavy. The astrid bearing Bracken alighted beside her and set the unicorn down. He was bleeding heavily, but he was able to stand unassisted. A female unicorn rushed to him, holding the Sands of Sanctity. The unicorn poured sand over Bracken and embraced him tightly once the wounds had closed, exchanging a few words with him in what Vanessa assumed was the secret fairy language, and then rushed away with the Sands.
Vanessa let out a quiet, bitter laugh. The unicorn hadn’t spared her a glance. Thankfully, Bracken turned to walk towards her. “Let me stabilize you,” he offered.
“Please.”
He took out his horn, no longer in its sword form, and held it against her side, squeezing his eyes closed. She felt a deep, shocking heat spread through her, and gasped. Sensation returned to her limbs and she could feel the wound on her side stitching itself back together. It still ached and throbbed, but much less than it had.
“You’ll still want to get to the Sands if you can,” Bracken told her. “But you should be all right now.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa said.
He nodded at her, smiling a stilted smile. Then he looked over his shoulder, no doubt responding to a call she couldn’t hear. “I have to go.”
He hurried towards where Vanessa spotted Seth, sitting up amongst a cluster of wounded allies. Other unicorns and great fairies worked to heal the less grievously wounded. The unicorn with the Sands of Sanctity was conferring with the Fairy Queen herself, who tended to an old, withered man.
"Vanessa." She turned to see Warren, still covered in blood but walking steadily towards her, his wounds now healed.
She took a step forward, but found herself lost for words, a feeling she wasn’t quite used to. "I have your sword," she said, holding it out to him, lamely. Without a word, he took the sword, sheathed it, and pulled her into his arms. Strong and alive, Warren drew her close, supporting some of her weight.
She wrapped her arms around him, letting her chin rest on his shoulder. "The others?” she asked, focusing on the rhythm of his breath.
“We all made it,” he told her. “All that coming to terms with our deaths is turning out to have been a huge waste of time.” Warren laughed, incredulous. “We’re going to win.”
“Of course we are," Vanessa told him, shaky. "You should have known I never would have let myself end up on the losing side.”
He laughed again, pulling her closer. "I missed you," he whispered, barely audible. She could feel his exhalation against her ear. A little sob tore out of her throat, and then she sobbed again but it came out like a laugh, hysterical and teary.
Warren pulled away and she forced herself to release her grip on him. He pushed her back a few inches, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes searching her face. She thought for a moment he might kiss her.
"You're wounded,” he said. “We need to get you to the Sands." He put an arm around her and began to walk her towards the healers.
“I’m fine. Bracken purged the poison.” Still, she let herself lean into him as they made their way through the crowd. “What’s happening?”
“The fairy queen abandoned her realm. The dragons are driving the demons through the last open shrine. When they’re all inside, we’ll lock the door behind them.” He grinned at her. “It’s working. We’re going to make it.” He laughed again. “We saved the world.”
“Well,” Vanessa said as he lowered her to a seat near a freshly healed, dazed-looking Trask. “Someone did, anyway.”