Chapter twenty-four

Celieria ~ Orest

On the ramparts and streets of Lower Orest, Celierians and Fey fought side by side. Axes, swords, and war hammers swung, cracking bone, severing limbs. Magic exploded from shining hands. Fey'cha flew with blurring speed and lethal precision until the pearlescent gray stone ran red with blood.

But still the Eld kept coming.

Devron Teleos swung his ancestor Shanis Teleos's meicha hard, blocking the downward slice of a sel'dor blade. The blow rattled his teeth, but he merely snarled and slashed out with a red Fey'cha, angling the blade upwards, beneath the black scales of the Eld soldier's armor. His opponent screamed and dropped to the ground, dead in an instant from the lethal tairen venom forged into the lute'cha steel.

"Where the flaming hells are they coming from?" Dev shouted, whirling to battle another foe. Rain had warned him the Eld had learned how to use the Well of Souls to travel, but there'd been no whiff of Azrahn—nor warning of any kind—before the portals had appeared and poured twenty thousand Eld into their midst. The entire lower city was overrun.

Tajik vel Sibboreh swung his seyani long sword in his left hand and fired red Fey'cha with his right. "Scorched if I know, but so long as the maggots keep coming, I'll keep killing them." His red plaits swung about him like tails of fire, and his weapons moved at blurring speed. He fought like a demon. Nothing stood against him. His face was drenched in blood, his searing blue eyes an eerie sight in the mask of gore.

A tairen length away, a massive Eld soldier with biceps like tree trunks was sweeping a war ax like a scythe, sending gutted Celierian bodies flying.

Tajik bared his teeth in a savage grin, ran up a pile of rubble, and leapt across the melee towards the giant's back. Screaming, "Miora felah ti'Feyreisa!" he brought his sword down in a killing blow, severing the Eld's head with a single strike. The headless body remained standing for a moment, fountains of blood spurting up from its neck. Tajik turned his face into the shower and laughed.

All around him, Fey fought with lethal skill and eyes lit like savage stars. The sight filled Tajik with pride. Not one of the Fey had abandoned Orest, despite the nonsensical "retreat to the Fading Lands" krekk Tenn v'En Eilan had spewed across the Warriors' Path earlier in the day. Every blade under Tajik's command knew what his steel was made for, and it scorching well wasn't for retreating before the enemy even showed up on the field of battle!

A sel'dor arrow glanced off Tajik's shoulder plate. His eyes narrowed as he sighted a knot of Elden archers who'd made their way to the top of the city's inner wall. Magic blasted from his fingertips. Half a dozen archers burst into flame and tumbled off the wall.

Another wave of Eld came rushing around a rubble-strewn corner. Tajik greeted them with a clap of magic that brought a building tumbling down upon them. "You want death, Eld maggots? I'll give you death. This is for all the honorable and worthy friends you slaughtered! This is for my sister!" Ablaze with magic, he leapt into the billowing dust cloud and swung his sword in savage arcs, his Fey'cha flashing between each strike like bolts of lightning. "Come dance with the tairen, if you dare!"

Leaving Tajik to his slaughter, Dev ducked an explosion of Mage Fire that took out half a dozen less lucky fellows behind him and scrambled up a flight of stone stairs to the battlements of the outer wall to get a better view of the city. Lower Orest was in flames. Entire blocks of the city were burning with billowing clouds of thick, black smoke, and the screams and howls of battle rose from the conflagration.

From his vantage point, he could see Earth master Rijonn vel Ahrimor, the tallest Fey Dev had ever met, shaking a mile-wide swath of land like a carpet. He struck the ground with weave after pounding weave, sending huge shuddering ripples of earth racing out like waves on the sea, ripping buildings from their foundations, tossing enemy troops and massive siege weapons like flotsam. Nothing in his path could get through. Eld archers had turned the Fey's back into a damned pincushion trying to bring him down, yet the giant merely set his rock jaw and kept spinning his earthshaking weaves.

«Fey! Ti'vel Ahrimor!» Dev sent the order spinning across the Warriors' Path, then shouted to his commander in both voice and Spirit. "Take out those archers, men! Protect that Fey!"

«Lord Teleos! Get down!» A fist of Air slammed into his chest, knocking him to the bloody gray stone walk just as a massive sphere of Mage Fire shot past where his head had been.

Dev gave a grim wave to the white-haired, black-eyed Gillandaris vel Jendahr, Tajik's good friend, who was quite possibly even more savage and lethal than the red-haired Fey general. Magic blazed in Gil's hands, and with a heave, he flung his weaves over the crenellated stone. Dev scrambled to his feet and peered over the wall. Half a dozen Eld war barges floated in the middle of the mile-wide river, each carrying a full dozen blue-robed Primages who flung great balls of Mage Fire at the outer wall. Behind them, on the northern banks of the Heras, enormous trebuchets— where the Dark Lord had they come from?—launched explosive mortars against the outer wall.

Gil's weave hit one of the war barges, and his magic exploded with a concussive blast, sending shattered wood flying. «Fey!» Gil cried on the Warriors' Path. «To the wall! Five-fold weaves to the river! Sink those barges and send those Mages swimming!» He flung another weave of his own over the walls, hitting the same barge a second time, in the same spot. The hull cracked, and the Mages shrieked as the water of the Heras poured in.