16: Of Monsters

*Content warning: fantasy battle with some light descriptions of blood, mild fantasy violence.

Niamh arrived at the Mageguild Demesne gates to find Captain Hawke waiting for her in the gathering night. He removed his helmet and was sweating and sickly pale in the magelamp light.

“Well met, sir,” Niamh said and looked at him, concerned. “Are you well?”

“Keeping on, soldier,” Captain Hawke replied with a tight smile. “I hate feeling powerless. I need to be in there, helping, but here I’m sick down to my toes,” he added, expression darkening.

A familiar voice met Niamh’s ears. “Don’t you worry; I’ve got my eye on him.”

“Moya,” Niamh said. “Source be praised, I’m glad to see you.” Niamh looked closer at the other woman. Moya’s skin was healthy and clear, and she looked the same as ever. “Are you safe from it, then?”

“Didn’t lay a finger on the thing.” Moya’s smile faded, her brown eyes serious. “What is happening?”

“I have news,” Niamh said. “You all must listen well, since our lives depend upon it.”

“Gather close,” Captain Hawke said. “You’re being briefed.”

A complement of soldiers knotted tightly around Niamh—a dozen armed fighters, none of them from the Northgate expedition, except for Moya.

Niamh explained the situation, ending with the words of power Kate had told her to use.

“Write them down if you need to . Spell them however you want, however you’ll remember since it’s how you say them that matters. Kate tells me they should force the monsters to turn flesh and blood, making them vulnerable. Kill them on sight—and don’t even bother with swords. Use arrows, scepters, anything with lightning magic.”

“So whatever did this is in there?” A woman questioned from behind Hawke, her voice hesitant.

“We must assume so,” Captain Hawke replied.

“We have to keep other people from entering the complex,” Niamh said, looking around the group. “Jeron told me we will probably find what we are looking for in the moot chamber—the objects of power there will draw it.”

Captain Hawke nodded. “Orders are this—all of you from Lion Company are with me guarding the perimeter for as long as I can last, then you’re on your own. Nobody enters or leaves without my explicit command. The rest of you, Eagle Company, go with Niamh. She will guide you from there. Understood?”

The soldiers saluted in reply.

Niamh and Moya marched through the headquarters where they’d gathered only weeks ago for that first briefing. Everything was eerily silent, and there were no passersby. Nobody spoke. The soldiers shifted from foot to foot, armor jingling or creaking in the quiet.

“This way. We’ll have to start out single file, so stay alert,” Niamh said, feeling strange giving orders. “And from here on, no need for salutes, rank and file, any of it. Stay alive. That is your order.”

Niamh took the lead. She closed her mind to everything but the mission and focused on helping the people she cared about.

Because in the end, I’m helping him. Jeron, the man I think I might be starting to love.

As they moved closer to the moot chamber, the air grew tight, and a low humming buzzed against the unnatural stillness.

“Keep going,” Niamh said. “Practice those spell words in your mind. Have them ready, arrows on the string, and prime your weapons now.”

Niamh reminded herself of the three short words, always in the same order.

Esh, Karesh, Zah.

Esh, Karesh, Zah.

Niamh shivered. She noticed their steps slowed the closer to the chamber entrance they came. She pressed forward, Moya quiet at her back.

Marching in the wake of such power was like moving through chilled honey or swimming against a current. The air was sick with magic, and Niamh’s mind felt like it was folding under the weight.

“I’m going through. Stay alert, all, and the Source be with you.”

“And with you,” Moya murmured, along with several of the other soldiers.

When Niamh arrived on the other side of the moot chamber entrance, there was no flash of identifying light like last time. She hurried away from the entry so that the others could file in.

Her breath caught at the sight that met her.

Loremaster Olangah, Novice Rexi Briseas, and many other members of the expedition lay scattered about the floor, eyes closed, motionless.

“Are they dead?” a young soldier asked as he started forward. Moya held him back, lips thinned in a stern frown.

“Don’t move. Not yet,” Niamh warned, her voice low.

Something perched in the middle of the room, surrounded by the unmoving figures of colleagues and friends.

Niamh swallowed, her mouth dry with fear. Her stomach dropped to her feet, her blood chilling in horror. Though the sickly green light surrounding it was familiar, she had never seen such a creature. She had only known Kraah were real after Loremaster Olangah briefed her mages, and when Captain Hawke and Jeron had brought the dire news to her sunny hospital room.

It was alien. Utterly terrifying.

The monster ignored her, focused with an otherworldly and sinister patience on the Loremaster. It barely seemed to exist in this dimension—its profile faded in and out of sight like a reflection of a thing projected from the far reaches of a nightmare.

Niamh looked back at the other soldiers, who stood frozen in fear.

“Now?” Moya asked, gripping her bow.

“No. Wait, only on my mark,” Niamh ordered.

The demon was muttering near the Loremaster’s head, teeth bared. It shifted into focus, more defined. Niamh thought she heard words in the snarls and gibbers.

“Follow, but guard only,” Niamh whispered.

Several soldiers moved closer to her, their weapons drawn.

“Hsssssssssss.” The Kraah shuffled, uttering a reptilian hiss that grew louder the longer it went on. The noise was terrible—like nothing in Ahra.

Shadows swirled around it. Niamh watched, unbelieving, as a horde of ghostly, rat-sized creatures detached from the Kraah’s shadow, solidifying before her eyes. They also hissed, but it was the foaming hiss of rabid animals. The creatures surged toward Niamh and her guards, claws scratching over the wooden floor as they ran.

“A distraction?” One soldier asked, voice trembling, but Niamh did not have time to answer. The shadow-rats—they truly had taken the form of enormous, slavering rodents—were upon them, biting at their ankles, herding them away from the Kraah and Loremaster.

“Get them,” Niamh barked out, crushing one with her prosthetic foot.

Chaos erupted around her, a flurry of beastly teeth and claws, swords and bows, cursing soldiers. Niamh did not have time to think. Waves of the creatures skittered from where the Kraah stood, still turned away from them and focused on its mutterings.

“So many,” a man exclaimed behind Niamh, sweeping his sword through two of the creatures at once.

“You two,” Niamh said, nodding towards a pair of soldiers behind her who were in the thickest mess of the teeming monsters, “keep them away from the others for as long as you can. Call for help if you need it. The others, with me. Advance towards the big one.”

She surged forward with effort through the shadow-rats’ corpses, kicking and slashing at stragglers as she made her way toward the Kraah. It still did not notice her. There were not enough soldiers to fend off endless waves of the Kraah’s summons. Best to do away with the root of the problem, she thought, frowning in disgust.

“It’s time. Say the words—now!” Niamh pushed forward still, intoning the words Kate had taught her.

“Esh, Karesh, Zah!”

The creature swayed where it hunched over Loremaster Olangah’s head. It was as tall as a person, but not at all like a human or elf. Its entire body was a flat, matte black construct gobbling up the surrounding light. Though it walked mostly upright on two leg-like protrusions, its six other limbs arched and jointed like a spider’s from its central mass. Unlike a spider, there were no eyes that Niamh could see. Jagged fangs filled its gash of a mouth.

It really was a Kraah, like the Loremaster had told them. An aether-demon, messenger of the Voidsinger.

A nightmare from Ahra’s darkest myths come to life.

“Esh, Karesh, Zah!”

Around Niamh, the soldiers chanted the words as they had been taught. Nothing happened.

Niamh shouted the spell again, voice breaking on the words. The Kraah hissed something in its unfamiliar speech, a serpentine tongue darting out and flickering in the air. The creature shimmered, its body blurring into focus.

“It’s more solid now,” Moya cried out.

“Keep chanting—move to attack on my order,” Niamh said and stood side by side with Moya, arrow at the ready.

The Kraah spoke suddenly in a voice not its own—a mortal voice, familiar. She froze, and Moya stared in shock.

“So I have found the key after all,” it growled, or laughed—Niamh could not tell which.

“Who are you?” Niamh’s voice was tight with fear.

“The messenger,” the Kraah said in its borrowed human voice. “The seeker of the key. Don’t you remember me? Sage Belden? I… succeeded.” The creature snarled and then blinked out of being.

Niamh paused in shock. How had she forgotten that strange, hungry look on Belden’s face right before the attack on the Mageguild? He had known what he was getting into. He had welcomed it. And now, they were all paying for his recklessness and greed.

Niamh’s thoughts faded to dust as the creature reappeared inches from her face, its spider limbs scraping over her armor and pinging against her artificial leg. One spindly but powerful leg angled toward her and caught in the braid at the back of her neck.

“Get off of me!” Niamh shouted, shaking in fear as she scrambled to back away.

The Kraah’s contours shifted in and out of focus until it coalesced into a revolting amalgamation of Belden’s decaying flesh and something insectoid and cruel. An approximation of a face formed where the fang-crammed mouth had been.

“You were not the key.” It hissed the words, syllables garbled by its decaying tongue. “The metal-minded beasts were not the key. But near the star-portal, I found the key and claimed him in service of my master. We will bring The Singer here. We will make the world right again, we the Void-Called. The Singer will cleanse.”

How was it even speaking? Was its mind its own, or was something else working through it? Why was it even telling her this?

Because monsters always think they are right, Niamh thought. And because it thought they were all about to die.

There was no time to puzzle this out. Niamh coughed, sickened by the creature’s stench. They could not yet attack the beast, since it was a faint shadow. They had to wait until it gained substance. She resumed chanting the words of power, at first weakly, her voice gaining strength as waves of anger and disgust washed over her.

How dare it threaten those she loved, threaten her newfound home?

“Esh, Karesh, Zah!”

An image of Jeron flashed in her mind—an image of the kind and handsome leymage who had reminded her of her own strength. She thought of all the soldiers who were there with her, terrified but still fighting. Of those who could not be here, sickened, possibly dying and helpless to do anything to stop it. Hawke, Moya, all people she cared about.

“Esh, Karesh, Zah!”

Niamh stared levelly at the Kraah, hurling the words of power into its face. It blurred once more and then suddenly stood before her—horrible, and real.

“Now!” Niamh lunged toward the creature.

It leapt away, all skittering legs and growls, its talons scratching along the wooden floor in a jerking motion that was the stuff of nightmares.

The soldiers charged, all but the two still picking off the last of the shadow-rats.

What followed was a blur. Niamh lunged, stabbed. A carapace as stubborn as steel covered the Kraah. Her soldiers cried out in shock as magically treated arrows and crossbow bolts ricocheted off the creature.

Niamh and Moya leapt and parried, dodging the motionless people scattered on the floor.

“Get them out of the way!” Niamh yelled. Soldiers detached from the fray to move the bodies against the wall.

“Projectile weapons are useless,” Moya cried out as she ducked a sweep of razor talons. “Lightning scepters and mage-treated swords only.”

“Hey, they’re still alive,” one woman said, right as the Kraah leapt at her and sliced a claw through the air, carving a red gouge on her cheek.

“Alive? That’s amazing!” Niamh cried, joy sudden and bright against her fear. She did not have time to celebrate, lunging to block the wounded woman from the Kraah.

“Horrible beast,” Moya snarled, hacking at the thing from behind.

Niamh watched the soldiers chipping at the creature’s hardened hide, lightning scorching its shell, none of it really making a dent. The metallic smell of blood was thick in the air, the sleeping figures propped against the wall or slumped on the floor not yet out of harm’s way.

“I can’t let it get them,” Niamh murmured, frantic. “They’re alive. I have to save them.”

Everything has a weakness… I just have to find it.

“Keep it clear of everyone passed out,” Niamh barked out.

The surrounding soldiers took their places near the sleeping bodies.

Niamh moved directly in front of the Kraah and with a grunt of effort, kicked her truesteel foot up into its underside, the metal catching in softer flesh. Skin tore, and the room stank of death and curdled blood.

“What the—” Niamh staggered backward as the creature screamed.

“STAR-METAL,” it screeched, then uttered a stream of words Niamh did not understand.

“It doesn’t like the truesteel,” Niamh grunted and kicked up again, this time twisting her leg so her foot went deeper. “Keep it distracted and hit where it’s already weak.”

Moya, understanding what was going on, focused her attacks on the cracks of its carapace.

The Kraah shrieked. It slashed wildly, razor-tips of its spider’s legs sweeping at Moya and Niamh’s faces. Both soldiers attacked it repeatedly, weakening it with each slash.

It keened, frenzied, but with less power.

Another soldier rushed behind them and jammed his lightning-scepter into one carapace-crack, sparks sizzling underneath the creature’s shell. For an instant, the creature’s voice sounded almost human… almost like Scholar Belden.

“Where I failed, others will succeed. You cannot stop us. The Void-Called will bring her to us, and all will burn. The Harbingers will guide us.”

The Kraah shuddered, collapsed to the floor, and then went silent.

Niamh poked at it with her foot, testing, but the body suddenly burst into heatless flames, leaving behind nothing but ash and a charred spot on the floor. No blood, no shadow-rat corpses, no sign any of this had happened at all.

The silence that followed was profound.

Niamh scanned the room. Everything was warmer and brighter, magelamps kindling to life. Loremaster Olangah stirred, and groans and exclamations of pain clamored from all around the room. The spell faded into nothing.

“They’re awake,” Moya said and sagged with relief.

Niamh stared at her, awestruck. “It sounded like Belden. We killed it.”

“Killed it and all its little nasty friends dead,” Moya agreed, looking down at her blade as if she couldn’t believe it.

Niamh could not help noticing there was not one speck of remnant gore—just faint scorch marks like the ones on the floor.

She sighed with relief. “Four of you, rally to me.”

Three men and a tall Xereth woman, the one with the bloody cheek, gathered around her, waiting for orders.

“Go let Captain Hawke know to send in the healers—go with them back here, too. I think we’re safe for now, but I’m not taking chances.”

The soldiers fled the room, exhausted and relieved. Niamh’s mind wandered to Jeron, stuck back in the city with Kate. Spikes of worry pinged in her mind at the thought of the man she cared for still suffering.

“Valiant Starsong,” a familiar voice called weakly from across the room. Loremaster Olangah smiled up at her from where she sat propped against a wall.

Niamh hurried over. “Yes, ma’am.”

“It is so good to see you.” The Loremaster noticed Niamh’s prosthetic leg, nodding to herself. “You and these soldiers saved us. Had you arrived any later, we would not still be alive.”

Niamh tilted her head down so she could look into the older woman’s eyes. “Are you unharmed, Loremaster?”

Olangah sighed. “I think so. We’ll all recover. All except for Belden, I’m afraid.” She looked away.

“Loremaster, what did he—did it want? I don’t understand how this all happened.” Niamh was not ashamed of the fear and confusion in her voice. The creature had been terrible beyond understanding.

Olangah fixed her with an owlish gaze. “I’ll need to speak with Archmage Miir and do more research, but my guess is what it has always been—to travel to our world and devour and destroy as all the legends would say. Kraah made it through the portal somehow. We disturbed the site, which Mechanae had probably found before we even arrived. Belden, well. You saw the rest for yourself. Now, I need a medic. And tea. And a week’s worth of sleep.”

Niamh patted the other woman’s arm lightly.

“It’s good to have you among the living,” she said.

“Thank you, Niamh. Now go. See to the others.”

Niamh nodded her thanks. She checked in with the remaining soldiers, then briefed Captain Hawke. As soon as she could, she ran faster than she had since even before the accident to the nearest portal, ignoring the darkness of night, the chill in the air. She had to see Jeron, and she would not wait.