Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Sixty Seven: A Siege

When the rune net on the outer wall fell, Jordan went blind for several agonising seconds.

Unspoken all around him groaned at the pain. They hadn't even reached the castle, and already the group had brought down more demons than he had been able to count while he watched from the safety of the rune paths. This, however, the nets couldn't save him from, and it felled him like it did everybody else.

"You alright, boy?" Yddris's voice was strained, and came from somewhere nearby, though he wasn't certain how close through the ringing in his ears. He tried to blink away the green aftershocks of the collapse to little effect. Ren's claws had dug deep tracks into his neck in her fear, and the burning on the outside joined the hollowed-out, torched feeling of the inside. It was just like he had felt after first manifesting, and the reminder wasn't a welcome one.

"Can't see," he said. His throat hurt with the urge to be sick, and he stumbled to a nearby wall to steady some of his dizziness. The pounding of Nictaven's current was all around him, inside his chest, his head, his ears.

"It'll clear," Yddris said, and his voice came from the left this time. "The headache might take a few days." At Jordan's groan, he added, "If it's any consolation, we're all stuck with it, too."

Through the fog of confusion, Jordan became dimly aware that he couldn't hear demons anymore. He could hear screaming, but it was human, and the streets had otherwise fallen eerily quiet.

"Where did they go?" he asked. His vision was returning to him, albeit slowly, and the darkened streets were regaining some shape and form. The runes all around them, which had flickered out and back on again right before the blast, had returned to their usual brightness. The only evidence that anything had happened was the scattering of groaning Unspoken around them.

"That will have killed a big proportion of those demons," Yddris said. "The bigger ones might have survived it, but they'll have at least been knocked out cold. This is our chance to get you in, boy, might not get another one. Hurry!"

Yddris led him at a near-jog the rest of the way to the castle, and a few of the other guild members trailed behind them. When they reached the wide stretch of road that led to the gatehouse, however, they all ground to a halt.

It was like a battle had been waged on the castle's entryway; demons of all shapes and varieties littered the cobbles like some huge, grotesque rockslide that had entered the city. Jordan winced as his boot heel crushed a dead thrall's skull and he skipped away, scraping it off on a clear bit of ground and trying to hold his stomach in. There were demons here he had never seen before, and an alarming number of them. Small, skinny ones with great flapping jaws, a huge titan of a thing with a face like chewed gum, and several varieties of wight he hadn't yet seen in person. And they were legion; corpses littered the ground as far as the eye could see in both directions, only absent in eerily well-defined channels where the rune paths were drawn. Beside him, Yddris took in a sharp breath.

"Nict's balls," he breathed. "Look at them all."

"That certainly is a swarm," Nika said, coming up behind them. "Night take me, I've never seen so many in one place."

"Get inside, boy," Yddris said, shaking off some of his shock and giving Jordan a rough push towards the wall where the demons had breached it, a huge hole beside the guard tower. "Knock on the gate, let them know we're here. They should let you in, but if they get mouthy, tell them I'll put a word in with Harkenn about it."

Jordan nodded, frowning. The gate was in front of them. There was no second gate. But he didn't question it, only held his breath and hurried along the nearest rune path, jumping at every movement he saw in his peripheral vision. The first few times, it was only other members of the guild arriving at the scene. Then some of the bigger demons stirred.