To Rule The Zones, 14/?. NC-17.
Title: To Rule The Zones (Edge of Dawn Sequel)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz belongs to Frank Baum and all of the modifications belong to SciFi.
Rating: NC-17 for language and lovingly rendered sex.
Pairing: DG/Cain, Azkadellia/OMCx2
Warnings: This takes place after the SciFi movie and after my story "The Edge of Dawn." This does refer to events occurring within that story, so you need to read that one first.
Summary: DG wanted to start a war with Lurlaine in the Mirror Zone. Little did she realize that it would lead to a war in the OZ as well...
Prior chapters can be found here.
Azkadellia awoke and rubbed at her eyes. It was calm and peaceful, and she could hear the flowing water of a river. That possibly sounded right, as there was a river near the southern edge of the Dawn Sanctuary. Still, something didn't feel right, and the Wheelers' confusion didn't help matters any. She pushed herself to her feet and took in the sight of her tin men, pants rolled up past the knee, sitting at the water's edge and fishing.
She smiled at the sight of them, and pulled off her boots and stockings. That rather looked like fun, actually. She tossed the garments aside and sat in the space between them, her skirts billowing around her legs. She dangled her feet over the edge of the riverbank, letting the cool water flow past her feet. Aliana sighed happily, feeling the flow of water. Cliara merely rolled her eyes at them both and tucked herself back into a recess of Azkadellia's mind.
"I was hoping you'd join us," Callan said with a smile. "The Wheelers are getting antsy. They don't know where we are, and we can't read your map."
"You can't?" she asked, surprised.
"Not a drop of magic in any of us. That thing only gets visible when a magic user is holding it, apparently," Della replied with a shrug.
"And we tried sticking your hand on the corner," Callan added. "Didn't quite work."
Azkadellia summoned the map from their piled belongings. The Wheelers looked discomfited by the map sailing through the air, and shied away from them. She spread the magical map across her lap and looked at the Mirror Zone. "All right. Now that I'm looking at it..." She frowned. "I need to see where all my generals are," she complained.
As she said the words, dots and names appeared on the map. She looked at Callan and Della with a grin on her face. "This is lovely. I can still coordinate things from here, even though Lissa's group is the only one where they should be."
"But we knew this was a possibility," Della remarked. "I'm sure everyone was expecting it."
Azkadellia nodded. She kicked her feet aimlessly through the water for a moment. "All right. We'll just shuffle roles around based on where they are. It's the only way to do this quickly, so that Lurlaine can't gather more forces." She started weaving a small pink message bubble, adding the ability for the recipient to send a message back to her if desired. "We're the farthest away, at least," she murmured as she wove. "So I could always just move us along with a spell now that I'm rested enough."
"Think the Wheelers would want to go up in the air?" Callan asked, snickering at their disquiet.
"Be nice," Azkadellia chided with a smile. "You're nobility, you know. You have to set an example." She ignored Callan's snort and the shake of Della's head.
Using the map as a reference, Azkadellia crafted message bubbles for every group. The trolls and golems had to move due east for nearly eighty drays. The thieves and Goren's group of shadows had to move northwest for just over forty drays. The Ventra and Tari Clan had to climb the mountain range separating the Vale of Tears from the Dawn Sanctuary's border. Hanja and the Wheelers had to move southwest for thirty drays. Salan'ri's group had to cross the Slingwell Swamp and then move ten drays north.
"We're by the Towaco River. We'd have to follow it a hundred drays," she murmured, tracing it along the map with her finger. "Really, it wouldn't be much to make a bubble for the lot of us," she mused. She looked up in time to see the first bubble returning. One by one, they returned, and each group was clear on their directions to get to the Dawn Sanctuary. None needed any additional help to get there, and were eager to start battling the Sanctuary's defenses.
Callan kissed Azkadellia's cheek. "Oh! What was that for?" she asked, turning to look at him in surprise as she rolled up the map.
He smiled as Della pushed her hair back from her shoulders. "We're going to eat something first," he said, nodding toward the pile of fish they had caught. "Then we're going into battle. You can take care of yourself, too, you know."
"You forget," Della said with a shrug, moving to start descaling the fish. "But then, I suppose that gives us something to do."
Azkadellia let them help her up to her feet. She could feel the cool mud squish between her toes and looked down at them. "I'm not exactly a princessly princess anymore, am I?"
"You're our princess," Della replied, looking up from the pile of fish. "Don't let anyone tell you any different."
"And is it really that important to have all that decorum here?" Callan asked, grinning at her. "I mean, really, it's just us. And those guys back there are scared of your shadow."
Azkadellia sat back down on the ground beside them, this time closer to where they set up camp. "I suppose I'm just worried this won't work."
"You're being overly careful," Della told her. "Not necessarily a bad thing."
She kissed his cheek. "Thank you."
"Time enough to beat up the bad guys," Callan murmured, leaning into her on her other side. He slid his hand along her waist possessively. "We'll be fine."
Azkadellia smiled and let them take care of the meal. They had a point. No one knew how fortified Lurlaine was at baseline, so it might be a difficult set of battles ahead.
***
The golems were large and didn't feel discomfort at all. They easily carried the trolls across the eighty drays to the edge of the Dawn Sanctuary. Being not all that intelligent, however, they kept right on going and smashed through the physical barriers at the edge of the Sanctuary. Hani sighed and shook his head, but supposed that he shouldn't be too hard on the creatures. The desert wasteland that had once been Homespun Valley would have been uncomfortable to cross without them. "Let us down before you keep going!" Hani called out.
Some of the golems managed to stop briefly and lower the trolls to the ground. Hani had never been this far away from the Low Realms before. He had certainly never been to the Dawn Sanctuary, had never been close to anything so bright and green and so obviously made of magic before. In the Mist Parish, there were steep hills and cliffs, rocky soil and roaming bands of creatures struggling to make ends meet. The Dawn Sanctuary was its antithesis, like nothing he was used to. If he was the type to admit to being uneasy, this was the kind of place that would do it. He was out of his element here, in the middle of magic he wasn't used to.
He pulled out his sword and let his lip curl in anger when he saw the sylphs coming closer to him and his men. The golems kept going, only remembering that they had to move due east. They were large and cumbersome creatures, lumbering forward. Their maws gaped wide, dripping mud and slime, their hands reaching forward for something to hold onto. Forward, they knew, Destroy and kill.
Hani swung upward, slicing the arm off of a sylph. It let out a high pitched shriek as translucent blood poured from the wound. He stabbed forward with his sword, his other arm pulled back as a counterweight. The sylph's remaining hand closed over the sword, and Hani could tell that the creature was trying to weave a spell onto the blade. He roared forward and struck the sylph's head with his own. The sylph was fragile, and crumpled at the contact, spell unfinished.
Grunting, Hani pulled his sword out of the sylph's chest. He was surrounded by his fellow trolls, each armed with knives and swords, being attacked by the sylphs living in this part of the Dawn Sanctuary. Hani stepped on the neck of the sylph he had bested, feeling the snap of bone beneath his boot. "To victory!" he called out, raising his sword.
His men answered in kind where able. "To victory!"
It had been millennia since the trolls had been involved in a battle of this magnitude. It felt glorious, and he couldn't understand why he had been so resistant to Azkadellia's request before. It didn't matter if she wanted to put a sham princess on a sham throne. The thrill of the battle was upon him and his men, and that was all that mattered.
Hani moved forward, shouting at a sylph ahead of him. The sylph was smarter than some of its compatriots, and had tried to grab a sword of its own. The two swords clashed, magic-imbued bronze sliding across Hani's cold iron sword. He bared his teeth at the sylph's smirk of triumph, and dug in his belt with his free hand. He pulled out his cold iron short sword and plunged it straight into the sylph's neck. The startled sylph couldn't even scream, couldn't even draw in a frightened breath. The cold iron kept the wound from sealing shut, and it bled freely once Hani pulled out his short sword. The sylph dropped its sword and pushed its fingers against the wound that couldn't close. It gaped at Hani, dropping to its knees helplessly as he turned away to attack another sylph.
He laughed as he moved forward with his men, as the sylphs came in waves. The trolls were armed with cold iron, and the sylphs were either armed with imbued bronze swords or staffs. Some of the sylphs carried no weapons at all, but tried to weave magic spells of protection on their people. They were easily cut down; it took concentration to weave large spells, and they were completely defenseless otherwise.
Hani was covered in translucent sylph blood. It evaporated to steam when it touched the cold iron of his weapons or plates of armor woven into his clothing.
"Faerie scum," Hani snarled, plunging his sword into another sylph's retreating back. It wailed an inhuman cry, and he kicked the sylph off of his blade.
He and his men numbered just over a hundred, and the sylphs were easily in the thousands. They had been overconfident, hadn't even thought to check what kind of weaponry they were up against in this fight.
He laughed when one imbued sword sliced along his arm. He didn't even feel a thing, and the sylph was so focused on its strike that it left its defenses open. Hani swung around in an arc, lopping off the sylph's head easily. Once more forward, into the fray, stabbing and striking at the sylph battalion, parrying blows easily. Cold iron did more damage to the sylph than imbued bronze could ever do to a troll.
"Hani!" one of his subcommanders cried, pointing to his right arm.
He looked down at the wound he had received from the bronze sword. The edges were puckered and blackening, almost smoking. The blood had congealed and turned green, looking almost like pus. Hani pressed his lips together in distaste and then lifted his short sword. He pressed it along the wound in the hopes that the cold iron would counteract the magicked wound somehow. It burned like unholy fire, worse than any medicine or stitching his people knew of, and was likely the kind of pain the sylphs felt at the touch of his weapons. The smoking had stopped when he lifted the short sword from his arm, and the pus-looking blood fell from the wound. It was still puckered and black, and likely wouldn't ever heal properly.
Hani nodded his thanks at his subcommander and let out a howl of rage. Trolls of his line millennia ago had been known as berserkers, and he could suddenly understand why his ancestors would want to wreak such havoc.
"Kill the faerie scum!" he shouted, raising his swords. He ran forward into a knot of sylphs approaching, and knew that his men were doing the same. No magicked wound would slow him down, and no sylph would get the better of him.
He was Hani Somme Annan of the C'vali tribe of the Mist Parish, recognized leader of all the lost people of the Mist Parish. He would not let some insignificant sylph be his downfall, and he would not let the glory of the Low Realms be lessened in this fight against the Queen Lurlaine.
The Dawn Sanctuary was going to fall, and he would make sure of it with his last breath if he had to.
***
Alec Page kept his grip on his knives tight. He didn't trust this Shadow Brigade general, though Goren had made no move to double cross any of the thieves in his guild. It was Page's way not to trust anyone, to second guess and mistrust everyone that crossed his path.
It was the forest, too. The Everlasting Forest was strange, and not just because there were no such things in the Dead Wastes. He'd seen trees before, even clumps of them that might be considered a grove. The Everlasting Forest was deep and dark and too green, too quiet, and too unsettling. It was almost like being watched without anyone there. Goren had said that the Queen Lurlaine had shadow faeries in her employ, that she had been known to weave horrid magicks around the opposition. And the Everlasting Forest didn't take kindly to strangers that might do it harm. None of the men Goren collected or the Thieves' Guild would do damage to the forest, but it was a forest. You couldn't talk to a forest. You couldn't reason with it. Page didn't care if it was imbued with magic from the soil on up to the top of its crown. Trees were trees and they were not creatures to reason with.
He trusted in his knives. They were solid steel and tipped with cold iron. Everyone in the Low Realms had something cold iron on them. It was protection against the faeries, against the magic Lurlaine could employ. Cold iron kept the weavings from being stable.
Of course, Lady Delia's weavings were different, but there was something else about her that was simply fascinating. And not just that Page wanted to move beneath her dress. No, there was that feeling he had that something was amiss with her. Something not quite right, something that was important. She was unaffected by cold iron, reacting as any mortal human would react to it. She wasn't faerie, then, but her magic affected faeries. Her magic did strange things in the world, and it was unlike anything Page had even heard about. Too bad her guards were continually at her side. He would have liked to see what a human witch was like when bared to the skin.
Page paused when he heard a lonesome cry through the treetops. There had been no birdsong, no creature calls, no warble of predators moving in on a hunt. The forest had been preternaturally silent, and they were nearly forty drays into the travel. The forest should end soon, and they would be at the Dawn Sanctuary.
Page didn't want to think about how strange that place would be, especially after running through the Everlasting Forest.
The lonesome cry overhead was answered by a similar cry. And then it multiplied, and the hairs on the back of Page's neck stood on end.
Someone is hunting us.
Page whistled to his men to hurry, and picked up his pace. The Shadow Brigade members with Goren wouldn't have to worry. They were shadow men, impossible to hunt in that form. It was Page and his men that would have to worry if they were hunted, Page and his men that would be torn limb from limb.
There was a break in the trees ahead, and Page could almost breathe a sigh of relief. There was a river, the river that encircled the Dawn Sanctuary and was the very border of the forest that they were looking for. Their travels through this godforsaken forest were at an end.
He saw a dark shadow swoop down out of the trees and pick up one of his men, not even ten feet ahead of him. Shrieking, the man flailed and kicked at the shadowy assailant. His bow and arrow fell to the forest floor uselessly, and the glint of his knives in motion did nothing. His shrieks died off abruptly, and the forest fell silent once again.
It seemed as if nothing moved for hours. Page and his men were waiting for someone to make the first move and draw the shadows down.
The river was just ahead, less than a dray, and it taunted Page. They had crossed the entire length of the fucking Everlasting Forest, and now, with less than a dray left, a predator was starting to make its move. Perfect.
He let out a low whistle. It was a cautionary whistle, letting his men know that he didn't know what the hell was happening, but they would likely have to fight.
His men began to move after a moment, when the forest seemed silent. Page stepped silently forward, his knives at the ready in a tight grip. He wouldn't go down that way, kicking and screaming and flailing like a victim. He refused to be caught the way his marks were, unawares and unable to fight back. He was the leader of the Thieves' Guild, and he had made the guild successful in the Dead Wastes. He wouldn't go down like a youngling with no experience just because the forest was full of filthy magical beasts.
The shadows swooped down as his men began to run, and it was like they were plucking the men from the forest floor like fruit. "Goren!" Page yelled. "Stop them!"
"They're not ours!" Goren replied, partially materializing next to Page. "I don't know what they are, but they're not part of the Brigade."
Page could see darkness descending for him, and opened his mouth to shout, his arms raised and ready to strike with his knives. But Goren enveloped him into his shadow, and Page could feel his entire body shift.
Some of the other Shadow Brigade members were doing that, enfolding the thieves they could see into themselves and trying to move past the shadows descending from the treetops. Page couldn't move, couldn't feel his body. He could feel the cold fingers of terror along his spine, the sensation of his heart beating so hard he thought it would break through his chest wall.
The Shadow Brigade members slid out of the forest and crossed the river. Only when they were on Dawn Sanctuary grounds did they shift back into physical forms. This released the bound thieves, and they went tumbling down to the grassy ground.
"What in bloody hell?" Page gasped, coughing and looking at the forest's edge. The shadows between the trees were menacing, and he thought for a moment that he could see eyes and teeth and leathery wings within the darkness.
"Feral creatures," Goren said, looking back at the forest as well. "Not like the mobats of stories, but something much worse."
"Mobats don't eat men!" one of Page's men cried, shoving at Goren. He was trying to burn off his fear, they both knew.
Goren shook off the man easily, shaking his head. "No, but there was nothing else alive in that forest. I think we were lucky they waited as long as they did."
Page rose to his feet and took stock of his men. He'd lost seventeen to the feral mobats of the forest, and he spat on the ground. "I say it comes out of the Queen's hide."
His men raised their knives in agreement, and they broke out in a run, heading for the heart of the Dawn Sanctuary.
***
The Ventra and the Tari Clan had no trouble crossing the mountains separating the Vale of Tears from the Dawn Sanctuary. Hanja and the Wheelers easily crossed the Silversong Grove, the wheels eating up the drays. They each landed in their respective areas of the Dawn Sanctuary and immediately began to attack anything that moved near the fence. Mattoon had said that their victory against the Dawn would mean they would get their women and children back, some kind of territory as well. The Wheelers were vicious as a result, surprising Hanja and the collected Shadow Brigade soldiers she controlled.
Salan'ri crossed the Slingwell Swamp and traveled the ten drays north. There was no opposition at that area of the Dawn Sanctuary, so those Shadow Brigade forces were able to move along the main thoroughfare easily, heading for the central palace.
The palace was surrounded by a high wall of green stones, and courtiers at the gates refused to open them. Salan'ri merely smiled and reverted to his true form. He was a full dray tall, with eight serpentine heads and eight tails descending from his back.He had moved between various Zones before settling on the Outer Zone with his other Shadow Brigade brethren. He knew in one Zone he was called the Yamata no Orochi, and fearsome stories had been told about this demon. None of them were true, but he did enjoy the tales immensely.
Salan'ri grasped the courtier at the gate with one of his heads and began to tear the pitiful creature apart with his others. Someone else was ringing an alarm at the gate, and he could hear the sound of thunder in the distance. Only, the ground shook at the same time, so it wasn't likely a storm of some kind.
From this height, he could see from the palace to the outer rim of the Dawn Sanctuary. There were battles all around the palace, with dead and wounded faeries all around.
There was a roar above, and Salan'ri could make out the form of a dragon flying overhead. Ah, so his traitorous cousins remained in Lurlaine's employ?
Oh, he would enjoy this indeed.
The Ventra, Tari and Wheelers were in combat on the ground, and it looked to be a fairly even fight between the Shadow Brigade and their allies and the forces from the Dawn Sanctuary. He thought for a moment that perhaps the dragon was merely a scout.
The thought was proved incorrect when the dragon overhead opened its mouth to take in a great mouthful of air.
Salan'ri recognized the markings on the dragon's belly. It was Montale, his eldest cousin and the first to take Lurlaine's side when the courts split in two. Montale had been the first to disown Salan'ri and his brethren, to mark them outcasts within the great serpent hierarchy. The wyverns had been next, and they were obliterated in the last war. If his entire body had not been reformed into shadow, Salan'ri and the other Orochi would have been obliterated completely as well. He technically had died long ago, as did all the other Orochi.
Salan'ri rose up to his full height and then launched himself at Montale's soft underbelly. One of his eight heads sank its fangs deep into the air bladder. Without air to mix with the dragon's inner fire sacs, it wouldn't be able to shoot its deadly flame jets. One of his other heads laughed, and another sank its teeth into one of Montale's lungs. Try to fight with that! he thought, free heads looking about to be sure they didn't crash.
He didn't see Montale's daughter rush into place behind him, jaws snapping on his tails. Salan'ri howled in pain as his tails were broken off and spat down to the ground beneath them. Montale was losing height, and his daughter tried to pull at his wings and help lift him. She avoided Salan'ri's jaws easily enough, then flew off when Montale made a rasping noise of disapproval at her. She swung back into the air, then blasted Montale and Salan'ri with a jet of white hot flames.
As the ground rushed up to meet them, Salan'ri couldn't regret a thing. At least Montale was dead, and the ground beneath them was clear.
The earth shook with the impact, the hand to hand combatants on the ground thrown. Salan'ri couldn't disentangle himself from Montale's broken body, and he shouted up curses at Montale's daughter. The bitch dragon merely circled the fray, then headed back for the palace.
Salan'ri closed all of his eyes and let the fire take over. He couldn't move, and he was too far broken to hope to shift to his shadow form. Perhaps he could have stopped the damage sooner if he had done that in midair, but it was too late now.
At least Montale was dead. He could rest easy knowing that.
He could hear the sound of grunts and swords and bodies falling to the earth beside him. It sounded as though the war was truly happening, and this time Lurlaine couldn't simply turn her back on the devastation. They had taken it to her home, to the very gates of her palace, and it wasn't some awkward valley being razed to the ground.
It sounded like a glorious battle. Salan'ri could only regret not killing more of his traitorous dragon cousins before his death.
***
***
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz belongs to Frank Baum and all of the modifications belong to SciFi.
Rating: NC-17 for language and lovingly rendered sex.
Pairing: DG/Cain, Azkadellia/OMCx2
Warnings: This takes place after the SciFi movie and after my story "The Edge of Dawn." This does refer to events occurring within that story, so you need to read that one first.
Summary: DG wanted to start a war with Lurlaine in the Mirror Zone. Little did she realize that it would lead to a war in the OZ as well...
Prior chapters can be found here.
Azkadellia awoke and rubbed at her eyes. It was calm and peaceful, and she could hear the flowing water of a river. That possibly sounded right, as there was a river near the southern edge of the Dawn Sanctuary. Still, something didn't feel right, and the Wheelers' confusion didn't help matters any. She pushed herself to her feet and took in the sight of her tin men, pants rolled up past the knee, sitting at the water's edge and fishing.
She smiled at the sight of them, and pulled off her boots and stockings. That rather looked like fun, actually. She tossed the garments aside and sat in the space between them, her skirts billowing around her legs. She dangled her feet over the edge of the riverbank, letting the cool water flow past her feet. Aliana sighed happily, feeling the flow of water. Cliara merely rolled her eyes at them both and tucked herself back into a recess of Azkadellia's mind.
"I was hoping you'd join us," Callan said with a smile. "The Wheelers are getting antsy. They don't know where we are, and we can't read your map."
"You can't?" she asked, surprised.
"Not a drop of magic in any of us. That thing only gets visible when a magic user is holding it, apparently," Della replied with a shrug.
"And we tried sticking your hand on the corner," Callan added. "Didn't quite work."
Azkadellia summoned the map from their piled belongings. The Wheelers looked discomfited by the map sailing through the air, and shied away from them. She spread the magical map across her lap and looked at the Mirror Zone. "All right. Now that I'm looking at it..." She frowned. "I need to see where all my generals are," she complained.
As she said the words, dots and names appeared on the map. She looked at Callan and Della with a grin on her face. "This is lovely. I can still coordinate things from here, even though Lissa's group is the only one where they should be."
"But we knew this was a possibility," Della remarked. "I'm sure everyone was expecting it."
Azkadellia nodded. She kicked her feet aimlessly through the water for a moment. "All right. We'll just shuffle roles around based on where they are. It's the only way to do this quickly, so that Lurlaine can't gather more forces." She started weaving a small pink message bubble, adding the ability for the recipient to send a message back to her if desired. "We're the farthest away, at least," she murmured as she wove. "So I could always just move us along with a spell now that I'm rested enough."
"Think the Wheelers would want to go up in the air?" Callan asked, snickering at their disquiet.
"Be nice," Azkadellia chided with a smile. "You're nobility, you know. You have to set an example." She ignored Callan's snort and the shake of Della's head.
Using the map as a reference, Azkadellia crafted message bubbles for every group. The trolls and golems had to move due east for nearly eighty drays. The thieves and Goren's group of shadows had to move northwest for just over forty drays. The Ventra and Tari Clan had to climb the mountain range separating the Vale of Tears from the Dawn Sanctuary's border. Hanja and the Wheelers had to move southwest for thirty drays. Salan'ri's group had to cross the Slingwell Swamp and then move ten drays north.
"We're by the Towaco River. We'd have to follow it a hundred drays," she murmured, tracing it along the map with her finger. "Really, it wouldn't be much to make a bubble for the lot of us," she mused. She looked up in time to see the first bubble returning. One by one, they returned, and each group was clear on their directions to get to the Dawn Sanctuary. None needed any additional help to get there, and were eager to start battling the Sanctuary's defenses.
Callan kissed Azkadellia's cheek. "Oh! What was that for?" she asked, turning to look at him in surprise as she rolled up the map.
He smiled as Della pushed her hair back from her shoulders. "We're going to eat something first," he said, nodding toward the pile of fish they had caught. "Then we're going into battle. You can take care of yourself, too, you know."
"You forget," Della said with a shrug, moving to start descaling the fish. "But then, I suppose that gives us something to do."
Azkadellia let them help her up to her feet. She could feel the cool mud squish between her toes and looked down at them. "I'm not exactly a princessly princess anymore, am I?"
"You're our princess," Della replied, looking up from the pile of fish. "Don't let anyone tell you any different."
"And is it really that important to have all that decorum here?" Callan asked, grinning at her. "I mean, really, it's just us. And those guys back there are scared of your shadow."
Azkadellia sat back down on the ground beside them, this time closer to where they set up camp. "I suppose I'm just worried this won't work."
"You're being overly careful," Della told her. "Not necessarily a bad thing."
She kissed his cheek. "Thank you."
"Time enough to beat up the bad guys," Callan murmured, leaning into her on her other side. He slid his hand along her waist possessively. "We'll be fine."
Azkadellia smiled and let them take care of the meal. They had a point. No one knew how fortified Lurlaine was at baseline, so it might be a difficult set of battles ahead.
***
The golems were large and didn't feel discomfort at all. They easily carried the trolls across the eighty drays to the edge of the Dawn Sanctuary. Being not all that intelligent, however, they kept right on going and smashed through the physical barriers at the edge of the Sanctuary. Hani sighed and shook his head, but supposed that he shouldn't be too hard on the creatures. The desert wasteland that had once been Homespun Valley would have been uncomfortable to cross without them. "Let us down before you keep going!" Hani called out.
Some of the golems managed to stop briefly and lower the trolls to the ground. Hani had never been this far away from the Low Realms before. He had certainly never been to the Dawn Sanctuary, had never been close to anything so bright and green and so obviously made of magic before. In the Mist Parish, there were steep hills and cliffs, rocky soil and roaming bands of creatures struggling to make ends meet. The Dawn Sanctuary was its antithesis, like nothing he was used to. If he was the type to admit to being uneasy, this was the kind of place that would do it. He was out of his element here, in the middle of magic he wasn't used to.
He pulled out his sword and let his lip curl in anger when he saw the sylphs coming closer to him and his men. The golems kept going, only remembering that they had to move due east. They were large and cumbersome creatures, lumbering forward. Their maws gaped wide, dripping mud and slime, their hands reaching forward for something to hold onto. Forward, they knew, Destroy and kill.
Hani swung upward, slicing the arm off of a sylph. It let out a high pitched shriek as translucent blood poured from the wound. He stabbed forward with his sword, his other arm pulled back as a counterweight. The sylph's remaining hand closed over the sword, and Hani could tell that the creature was trying to weave a spell onto the blade. He roared forward and struck the sylph's head with his own. The sylph was fragile, and crumpled at the contact, spell unfinished.
Grunting, Hani pulled his sword out of the sylph's chest. He was surrounded by his fellow trolls, each armed with knives and swords, being attacked by the sylphs living in this part of the Dawn Sanctuary. Hani stepped on the neck of the sylph he had bested, feeling the snap of bone beneath his boot. "To victory!" he called out, raising his sword.
His men answered in kind where able. "To victory!"
It had been millennia since the trolls had been involved in a battle of this magnitude. It felt glorious, and he couldn't understand why he had been so resistant to Azkadellia's request before. It didn't matter if she wanted to put a sham princess on a sham throne. The thrill of the battle was upon him and his men, and that was all that mattered.
Hani moved forward, shouting at a sylph ahead of him. The sylph was smarter than some of its compatriots, and had tried to grab a sword of its own. The two swords clashed, magic-imbued bronze sliding across Hani's cold iron sword. He bared his teeth at the sylph's smirk of triumph, and dug in his belt with his free hand. He pulled out his cold iron short sword and plunged it straight into the sylph's neck. The startled sylph couldn't even scream, couldn't even draw in a frightened breath. The cold iron kept the wound from sealing shut, and it bled freely once Hani pulled out his short sword. The sylph dropped its sword and pushed its fingers against the wound that couldn't close. It gaped at Hani, dropping to its knees helplessly as he turned away to attack another sylph.
He laughed as he moved forward with his men, as the sylphs came in waves. The trolls were armed with cold iron, and the sylphs were either armed with imbued bronze swords or staffs. Some of the sylphs carried no weapons at all, but tried to weave magic spells of protection on their people. They were easily cut down; it took concentration to weave large spells, and they were completely defenseless otherwise.
Hani was covered in translucent sylph blood. It evaporated to steam when it touched the cold iron of his weapons or plates of armor woven into his clothing.
"Faerie scum," Hani snarled, plunging his sword into another sylph's retreating back. It wailed an inhuman cry, and he kicked the sylph off of his blade.
He and his men numbered just over a hundred, and the sylphs were easily in the thousands. They had been overconfident, hadn't even thought to check what kind of weaponry they were up against in this fight.
He laughed when one imbued sword sliced along his arm. He didn't even feel a thing, and the sylph was so focused on its strike that it left its defenses open. Hani swung around in an arc, lopping off the sylph's head easily. Once more forward, into the fray, stabbing and striking at the sylph battalion, parrying blows easily. Cold iron did more damage to the sylph than imbued bronze could ever do to a troll.
"Hani!" one of his subcommanders cried, pointing to his right arm.
He looked down at the wound he had received from the bronze sword. The edges were puckered and blackening, almost smoking. The blood had congealed and turned green, looking almost like pus. Hani pressed his lips together in distaste and then lifted his short sword. He pressed it along the wound in the hopes that the cold iron would counteract the magicked wound somehow. It burned like unholy fire, worse than any medicine or stitching his people knew of, and was likely the kind of pain the sylphs felt at the touch of his weapons. The smoking had stopped when he lifted the short sword from his arm, and the pus-looking blood fell from the wound. It was still puckered and black, and likely wouldn't ever heal properly.
Hani nodded his thanks at his subcommander and let out a howl of rage. Trolls of his line millennia ago had been known as berserkers, and he could suddenly understand why his ancestors would want to wreak such havoc.
"Kill the faerie scum!" he shouted, raising his swords. He ran forward into a knot of sylphs approaching, and knew that his men were doing the same. No magicked wound would slow him down, and no sylph would get the better of him.
He was Hani Somme Annan of the C'vali tribe of the Mist Parish, recognized leader of all the lost people of the Mist Parish. He would not let some insignificant sylph be his downfall, and he would not let the glory of the Low Realms be lessened in this fight against the Queen Lurlaine.
The Dawn Sanctuary was going to fall, and he would make sure of it with his last breath if he had to.
***
Alec Page kept his grip on his knives tight. He didn't trust this Shadow Brigade general, though Goren had made no move to double cross any of the thieves in his guild. It was Page's way not to trust anyone, to second guess and mistrust everyone that crossed his path.
It was the forest, too. The Everlasting Forest was strange, and not just because there were no such things in the Dead Wastes. He'd seen trees before, even clumps of them that might be considered a grove. The Everlasting Forest was deep and dark and too green, too quiet, and too unsettling. It was almost like being watched without anyone there. Goren had said that the Queen Lurlaine had shadow faeries in her employ, that she had been known to weave horrid magicks around the opposition. And the Everlasting Forest didn't take kindly to strangers that might do it harm. None of the men Goren collected or the Thieves' Guild would do damage to the forest, but it was a forest. You couldn't talk to a forest. You couldn't reason with it. Page didn't care if it was imbued with magic from the soil on up to the top of its crown. Trees were trees and they were not creatures to reason with.
He trusted in his knives. They were solid steel and tipped with cold iron. Everyone in the Low Realms had something cold iron on them. It was protection against the faeries, against the magic Lurlaine could employ. Cold iron kept the weavings from being stable.
Of course, Lady Delia's weavings were different, but there was something else about her that was simply fascinating. And not just that Page wanted to move beneath her dress. No, there was that feeling he had that something was amiss with her. Something not quite right, something that was important. She was unaffected by cold iron, reacting as any mortal human would react to it. She wasn't faerie, then, but her magic affected faeries. Her magic did strange things in the world, and it was unlike anything Page had even heard about. Too bad her guards were continually at her side. He would have liked to see what a human witch was like when bared to the skin.
Page paused when he heard a lonesome cry through the treetops. There had been no birdsong, no creature calls, no warble of predators moving in on a hunt. The forest had been preternaturally silent, and they were nearly forty drays into the travel. The forest should end soon, and they would be at the Dawn Sanctuary.
Page didn't want to think about how strange that place would be, especially after running through the Everlasting Forest.
The lonesome cry overhead was answered by a similar cry. And then it multiplied, and the hairs on the back of Page's neck stood on end.
Someone is hunting us.
Page whistled to his men to hurry, and picked up his pace. The Shadow Brigade members with Goren wouldn't have to worry. They were shadow men, impossible to hunt in that form. It was Page and his men that would have to worry if they were hunted, Page and his men that would be torn limb from limb.
There was a break in the trees ahead, and Page could almost breathe a sigh of relief. There was a river, the river that encircled the Dawn Sanctuary and was the very border of the forest that they were looking for. Their travels through this godforsaken forest were at an end.
He saw a dark shadow swoop down out of the trees and pick up one of his men, not even ten feet ahead of him. Shrieking, the man flailed and kicked at the shadowy assailant. His bow and arrow fell to the forest floor uselessly, and the glint of his knives in motion did nothing. His shrieks died off abruptly, and the forest fell silent once again.
It seemed as if nothing moved for hours. Page and his men were waiting for someone to make the first move and draw the shadows down.
The river was just ahead, less than a dray, and it taunted Page. They had crossed the entire length of the fucking Everlasting Forest, and now, with less than a dray left, a predator was starting to make its move. Perfect.
He let out a low whistle. It was a cautionary whistle, letting his men know that he didn't know what the hell was happening, but they would likely have to fight.
His men began to move after a moment, when the forest seemed silent. Page stepped silently forward, his knives at the ready in a tight grip. He wouldn't go down that way, kicking and screaming and flailing like a victim. He refused to be caught the way his marks were, unawares and unable to fight back. He was the leader of the Thieves' Guild, and he had made the guild successful in the Dead Wastes. He wouldn't go down like a youngling with no experience just because the forest was full of filthy magical beasts.
The shadows swooped down as his men began to run, and it was like they were plucking the men from the forest floor like fruit. "Goren!" Page yelled. "Stop them!"
"They're not ours!" Goren replied, partially materializing next to Page. "I don't know what they are, but they're not part of the Brigade."
Page could see darkness descending for him, and opened his mouth to shout, his arms raised and ready to strike with his knives. But Goren enveloped him into his shadow, and Page could feel his entire body shift.
Some of the other Shadow Brigade members were doing that, enfolding the thieves they could see into themselves and trying to move past the shadows descending from the treetops. Page couldn't move, couldn't feel his body. He could feel the cold fingers of terror along his spine, the sensation of his heart beating so hard he thought it would break through his chest wall.
The Shadow Brigade members slid out of the forest and crossed the river. Only when they were on Dawn Sanctuary grounds did they shift back into physical forms. This released the bound thieves, and they went tumbling down to the grassy ground.
"What in bloody hell?" Page gasped, coughing and looking at the forest's edge. The shadows between the trees were menacing, and he thought for a moment that he could see eyes and teeth and leathery wings within the darkness.
"Feral creatures," Goren said, looking back at the forest as well. "Not like the mobats of stories, but something much worse."
"Mobats don't eat men!" one of Page's men cried, shoving at Goren. He was trying to burn off his fear, they both knew.
Goren shook off the man easily, shaking his head. "No, but there was nothing else alive in that forest. I think we were lucky they waited as long as they did."
Page rose to his feet and took stock of his men. He'd lost seventeen to the feral mobats of the forest, and he spat on the ground. "I say it comes out of the Queen's hide."
His men raised their knives in agreement, and they broke out in a run, heading for the heart of the Dawn Sanctuary.
***
The Ventra and the Tari Clan had no trouble crossing the mountains separating the Vale of Tears from the Dawn Sanctuary. Hanja and the Wheelers easily crossed the Silversong Grove, the wheels eating up the drays. They each landed in their respective areas of the Dawn Sanctuary and immediately began to attack anything that moved near the fence. Mattoon had said that their victory against the Dawn would mean they would get their women and children back, some kind of territory as well. The Wheelers were vicious as a result, surprising Hanja and the collected Shadow Brigade soldiers she controlled.
Salan'ri crossed the Slingwell Swamp and traveled the ten drays north. There was no opposition at that area of the Dawn Sanctuary, so those Shadow Brigade forces were able to move along the main thoroughfare easily, heading for the central palace.
The palace was surrounded by a high wall of green stones, and courtiers at the gates refused to open them. Salan'ri merely smiled and reverted to his true form. He was a full dray tall, with eight serpentine heads and eight tails descending from his back.He had moved between various Zones before settling on the Outer Zone with his other Shadow Brigade brethren. He knew in one Zone he was called the Yamata no Orochi, and fearsome stories had been told about this demon. None of them were true, but he did enjoy the tales immensely.
Salan'ri grasped the courtier at the gate with one of his heads and began to tear the pitiful creature apart with his others. Someone else was ringing an alarm at the gate, and he could hear the sound of thunder in the distance. Only, the ground shook at the same time, so it wasn't likely a storm of some kind.
From this height, he could see from the palace to the outer rim of the Dawn Sanctuary. There were battles all around the palace, with dead and wounded faeries all around.
There was a roar above, and Salan'ri could make out the form of a dragon flying overhead. Ah, so his traitorous cousins remained in Lurlaine's employ?
Oh, he would enjoy this indeed.
The Ventra, Tari and Wheelers were in combat on the ground, and it looked to be a fairly even fight between the Shadow Brigade and their allies and the forces from the Dawn Sanctuary. He thought for a moment that perhaps the dragon was merely a scout.
The thought was proved incorrect when the dragon overhead opened its mouth to take in a great mouthful of air.
Salan'ri recognized the markings on the dragon's belly. It was Montale, his eldest cousin and the first to take Lurlaine's side when the courts split in two. Montale had been the first to disown Salan'ri and his brethren, to mark them outcasts within the great serpent hierarchy. The wyverns had been next, and they were obliterated in the last war. If his entire body had not been reformed into shadow, Salan'ri and the other Orochi would have been obliterated completely as well. He technically had died long ago, as did all the other Orochi.
Salan'ri rose up to his full height and then launched himself at Montale's soft underbelly. One of his eight heads sank its fangs deep into the air bladder. Without air to mix with the dragon's inner fire sacs, it wouldn't be able to shoot its deadly flame jets. One of his other heads laughed, and another sank its teeth into one of Montale's lungs. Try to fight with that! he thought, free heads looking about to be sure they didn't crash.
He didn't see Montale's daughter rush into place behind him, jaws snapping on his tails. Salan'ri howled in pain as his tails were broken off and spat down to the ground beneath them. Montale was losing height, and his daughter tried to pull at his wings and help lift him. She avoided Salan'ri's jaws easily enough, then flew off when Montale made a rasping noise of disapproval at her. She swung back into the air, then blasted Montale and Salan'ri with a jet of white hot flames.
As the ground rushed up to meet them, Salan'ri couldn't regret a thing. At least Montale was dead, and the ground beneath them was clear.
The earth shook with the impact, the hand to hand combatants on the ground thrown. Salan'ri couldn't disentangle himself from Montale's broken body, and he shouted up curses at Montale's daughter. The bitch dragon merely circled the fray, then headed back for the palace.
Salan'ri closed all of his eyes and let the fire take over. He couldn't move, and he was too far broken to hope to shift to his shadow form. Perhaps he could have stopped the damage sooner if he had done that in midair, but it was too late now.
At least Montale was dead. He could rest easy knowing that.
He could hear the sound of grunts and swords and bodies falling to the earth beside him. It sounded as though the war was truly happening, and this time Lurlaine couldn't simply turn her back on the devastation. They had taken it to her home, to the very gates of her palace, and it wasn't some awkward valley being razed to the ground.
It sounded like a glorious battle. Salan'ri could only regret not killing more of his traitorous dragon cousins before his death.
***
***