Ikelos (The Ephemeral: Book 2)

Chapter 51

I expected to see Leah and the other incarcerated women on our way out, but we didn't return to the surface. With a lantern in hand, Button-Up escorted us down another staircase to a barren, underground tunnel, and I could feel the earth shudder above us—a discord of footsteps, wagons, and detonations.

Oh for Patron's sake.

If I survived this week, I refused to ever set foot beneath the ground again. Life was too short to expect to be crushed to death or buried alive on a daily basis.

After a long trek of tremors and distant shouting, we reached a rusty metal door.  On a normal day, I'd be hammering Button-Up with questions about my destination, but I could feel the tension saturating the shadows, sense it, like vampire bats nesting in the darkest corners of a cave, and something told me not to disturb this colony.

Pushing through the door, the constable led us into a narrow corridor, his lantern revealing giant slabs of rock, debris, and concrete on either side of us.  In the center of the space, a steel staircase rose forty feet to an open hatch.  Daylight poured in through the access, and the world beyond rattled with the guttural roar of men, metal, and mayhem.

My mouth parted in awe, and I peeked around the metal steps to the hallway of darkness beyond. 

"Are we...inside the wall?"

The soldiers ignored me, dragging my dazed form toward the stairs, and with a knot of unease in my stomach, I began to climb.

You've got this, Kingsley.

Come what may.

Stepping out of the wall's intestines, I blinked against the gray colors of midday, my eyes too accustomed to the Ground's drab setting.  A snow flurry rode the wind, and I mourned my cloak and leather armor as a violent shudder traveled through my body.

When my vision adjusted, I could make out the stone walkway beneath my feet, the concrete parapets beside me. My hunch had been correct: we currently stood upon Havenbrooke's outer curtain, overlooking the heart of our nation.

Watching a war unfold.

Like applause to my comprehension, a bomb exploded in the valley below.  I flinched, stumbling several steps in Will's direction.  I struggled to absorb all the chaos around me, to process the reality of our situation.

Outside the capital, a battle raged unlike anything I'd ever seen before.  It was true pandemonium—a sea of armor, smoke, and blood—spanning the entirety of the grassy meadow, all the way to the tree line.

Back in Yellow Valley, we'd encountered a small battalion, and our men had still been outnumbered three to one.  But now...now there were over two thousand enemies at our doorstep. Enemies with blank eyes, rotting skin, and snaffled souls.

They'd erected a sister portal at the opposite end of the battlefield that shuddered with hellfire, crimson lightning, and the netherworld's deadliest creatures. Pots gathered where it pierced the sky, but they were too far from Havenbrooke to possess the citadel's populace.

For now.

In the meadow, the Pans clashed against a legion over four thousand strong.  The federates and outcasts fought side by side in triple line formation, turning demons to ash with swords, axes, glaives, spears, and arrows. Howling as they charged. Hissing as they fell to the earth. They wore steel greaves and cuirasses, shields and helmets, cloaks and leather, and together, they became a deadly wave of silver and crimson.

The front two ranks rotated in and out with those defending the gates, and I spotted Grismond and Beckett at the rear. Gris, covered in ash and sweat, destroyed every demon who dared breach the principes—whacking them over the head with his shield, driving his sword into their hearts with the force of a bull. If he were to tattoo the name of every enemy he slayed today, ink would stain every inch of his body.  At his side, Beckett wielded his twin blades, taking two, four, six down in several seconds.  Then he spun the swords like windmills in his hands, daring the next demon to engage.