Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Schlik.

Yathil withdrew his sword with the sickening sound of wet gore, giving it a flick to the side to dislodge the viscera.

He looked up, briefly making eye contact with Julia, before taking off along the battlements in the opposite direction.

Julia's mind processed faster than she thought possible—aided by her perception, which felt as though it had slowed time for her alone. Her emotions couldn't keep up with the situation, so all she had in mind at this moment was a cold logic.

Why would Yathil kill Avelrûn? Even if he felt as strongly about sending the elves to their deaths unnecessarily as I, he wouldn't assassinate Avelrûn in cold blood. Did Avelrûn try to do something? Was his treachery revealed—no. Avelrûn wasn't the traitor.

The Nashiin knew which camp I would be striking, but not that our plan was to bait them into an attack. Yathil visited me the day I was leaving, when we sparred. He was fishing for information! It's so obvious now, dammit!

Avelrûn didn't tell him about the major operation or its goals, but he sent Yathil to wish me good luck, likely trying to play politician and pretend he had my best interests in mind. He's a politician—he was hedging his bets.

The Assembly had already approved at least a preliminary version of my plan. If it worked and helped the marsh, it wouldn't do to be obviously antagonistic toward me, so he wanted to provide himself an avenue—a backdoor—to pretend he was always on my side.

Damn, that's probably why he was so quick to send the troops down! The plan was mine—he wanted to grab the glory before it bore fruit, the idiot.

Yathil must've squeezed the target camp out of Avelrûn after failing to get it from me. He had no idea about the larger plot, so he didn't report it to the Nashiin.

He's been the traitor the whole time! Shit! What's he doing? Why did he kill Avelrûn and run—the Roots! He's going after the leaders of the defense!

Julia snatched her slate and connected to every thread, blasting a message out to everyone.

"This is Julia Nȳralin of the eastern quadrant! Yathil Shûratalûn-Veshari, Shield of the Fifth Root, has assassinated Avelrûn Shûratalûn-Veshari, Voice of the Fifth Root! He fled north along the battlements from Avelrûn's position on the eastern quadrant!

"I believe he means to assassinate the Roots—the leaders of this defense! I advise all Roots to watch out for Yathil and secure their personal defenses!" Julia yelled.

A cacophony of voices sprang out from the slate, all shouting at once. Julia couldn't make any out, but she wasn't listening to them anyway.

She glanced in the direction Yathil had gone, preparing to fly after him. However, a great grinding noise rose from the mass of undead below, accompanied by a light tremor in the ground.

"Fuck!" she shouted.

This section of the wall was now leaderless. She couldn't go running after Yathil and leave the defense to crumble, even without considering whatever was making those tremors. She could see soldiers hesitating to shoot the undead below, looking around in confusion as if their comrades might strike them from behind. If a Shield could assassinate its Root, how could they trust their fellow soldiers?

She spun around, making direct eye contact with Nadhem, who already had a dagger drawn.

"He's probably going after the other Roots. He's trying to cut the head off our defense. Stop him!" she ordered, pointing the direction Yathil had fled.

Nadhem nodded, and both he and Nadhrûn disappeared as if they'd teleported. Somehow, even Julia's enhanced perception couldn't keep up with their movements, but that wasn't her concern right now.

She grabbed her slate again, still ringing with a chorus of voices all shouting over each other. She took advantage of enchantments on her slate that weren't present on others and silenced all but her own voice.

"I am assuming command of Avelrûn's section of the eastern quadrant. There is activity in the Nashiin army that we haven't observed yet. I will provide more information as I learn it," she said, dropping the slate to hang from her waist, brooking no objections.

Briefly, she heard Seyatha's voice echo out of the slate, drowning all others.

"The Zal'Nadir are moving to secure the safety of the defensive leaders," she said, but that was all Julia heard before she leaned over the battlements and drew as much air into her lungs as she could.

"All Jadhariin forces fall back to the wall! Get out of there!" she yelled with a mana-infused voice.

The elves, militant and precise, immediately began cutting their way back to the wall. Julia's hopes of recovering them began to rise, but the tremors grew stronger, the grinding noise louder.

Clearing the line of fog in the back of the Nashiin formation, a Barrowlord—along with its retinue—approached, dragging a huge…orb?

It was hard to make out from this distance, but the orb appeared to be a sort of muted-brown in color. Its diameter was as wide as the Barrowlord was tall, and it seemed heavy enough that despite being dragged across ice, it was still making that horrid scraping noise.

The orb seemed to be the source of the low moan, and as it grew closer, Julia realized with mounting horror that it was a moan composed of several individual voices.

The orb was textured, with pits and grooves and hair. It had faces stitched together by skin, she realized. It was composed of what must be hundreds of bodies stitched together.

The villagers, Julia realized with anguish—these tortured souls moaning in agony, stretched across the orb, were the abducted villagers never found. This is what the enemy was doing with them—whatever this was.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

With shaking hands, Julia raised the slate to her mouth.

"Barrowlord and its retinue spotted dragging an…orb. Orb appears to be made out of the stitched together remains of the abducted villagers.

"Its purpose is unknown, but my sight can see—something inside. The villagers' remains are stitched around something I can't identify. I only know that it's bad," she said with sorrow.

Reports came in from the other portions of the wall, but none seemed to be seeing the same as Julia. Questions also came, but she had no time to worry about whether the Roots understood what she was seeing. She barely understood it herself.

A new scraping drew Julia's attention—two more Barrowlords appeared to the left and right of the first, both dragging similar orbs behind them. The two new Barrowlords were far away, but not far enough to be threatening other positions in the eastern quadrant—they were focused on Avelrûn's front.

Yathil, Julia thought with burning malice. Something had been arranged with the enemy. Yathil had done something to signal that this was the front to assault. But what—

"Oh shit," Julia whispered, realization dawning on her.

Ten Zal'Nadir soldiers mounted the wall, hurrying over to Julia's position. Ten individuals would suggest two squads, so Seyatha must have sent out nearly the entirety of the Zal'Nadir if every defensive leader was getting this many protectors.

"We're here to secure the defensive lead—" one of the squad leaders started, but Julia barely even registered their presence.

"MOVE! Get the fuck outta there!" she screamed in desperation over the battlements to the troops on the ground.

She turned around and motioned furiously to the remaining soldiers.

"Loose! Loose everything you have! Clear a path for your comrades on the ground! They must make it back to the wall!" she shouted.

Arrows and balls of fire and canisters filled with oils that combusted on contact were launched from the wall, decimating the undead nearest the battlements. However, the troops still making their way back were harried by the undead. The previously inert Nashiin now actively fought to prevent the soldiers' retreat.

Suddenly, a wave undulated through the mass of Nashiin, easily visible from Julia's elevated position. However, she saw what most probably didn't: a huge bolt of purple magic and energy. It passed through the undead in its path and swept them up in its current.

The wave propagated all the way to the front of the undead army before rebounding and pulling the Nashiin's bones back with it. The elven troops caught in its wake were battered and pulled along with the bones, as though they were caught in a landslide.

"NO!" Julia shouted, cracking the wooden parapet she was gripping in her despair.

The elves were pulled along with the wave, many dying just from the battering they were taking, before they slammed into the orbs. All three orbs were now surrounded by a whirling vortex of bones and—to Julia's eyes—menacing purple energy.

She watched in abject horror as the life drained from both the elves that had managed to survive up to this point, as well as the dead bodies of their companions—even the residual life energy remaining in their corpses not being spared. The living elves shriveled and seemed to dessicate rapidly, the dried skin peeling and falling from their bones like bark from a dying tree.

Once she'd seen the energy in those orbs, Julia knew they'd need a great deal of "life energy" to operate—the energy that Talnîr had once said she gave off strongly.

This was not something the Nashiin had access to, as far as Julia was aware. They were filled with that purple glow of unlife, not the energy of living creatures. Thus, they had to harvest it.

This would make those orbs prohibitively expensive, as they would quickly run out of energy and need to harvest more just to stay active. Instead of constantly harvesting life energy to power them, the Nashiin put them into a sort of stasis—a sleep.

They then only needed a small amount of life energy to reactivate them. That was why Yathil had convinced Avelrûn to send his troops into the melee.

They were to be the spark that reignited the abominations' flames.

The orbs became obscured by the tremendous amount of bone collecting around them, swirling and roiling like clouds. The bone began to collect in great limbs—six per orb—before falling to the ground, the impact from each limb shaking the earth like one of the enormous marsh trees had fallen.

When the chaos finally ended, Julia was left staring at horrendous, insectile bone abominations. They had six limbs made from the entire previously-assembled Nashiin army's bones.

The limbs wriggled like tentacles, the movement jarring and disturbing, and they seemed to slide around the central sphere—which was now covered in a thick layer of a sort of bone shell—uninhibited.

The limbs seemed almost to float upon the surface of the sphere, as they could slide around without being restrained by organic structures like joints or sockets.

The question remained why the Nashiin would create these horrors with life energy. Their native unlife seemed perfectly suited to creating these kinds of fell amalgam creatures. Julia had no time to ponder such a question, though.

The creatures bellowed a roar—though it was a roar composed of hundreds of individual death rattles—and the fog at their backs broke.

There stood three Barrowlords with their entourage—the same that had dragged the orbs—at the head of a new, massive army. These Nashiin were not the jumbled mass of shambling skeletons, with only the occasional advanced undead. Julia now realized those were always intended as sacrifices, not troops.

These were battle-ready soldiers. Skeletons wore pitted and rusted iron plates, carried swords and axes and pikes, and marched in a battlefield formation—pikes in front, skirmishing and replacement troops behind, and ranged and support roles behind those.

They advanced slowly and steadily, their crunching footsteps over the ice ringing out between the moaning roars of the bone horrors.

Julia picked her slate up slowly, sending her forcefully-calmed voice to all other slates.

"Bone horrors have taken the field. The orbs of stitched-together villagers stole the life from our own troops, who had taken the field, before absorbing the bones of the entire previous army.

"I believe this was Yathil's purpose. He convinced Avelrûn to send our troops down from the wall to be living sacrifices for these horrid creatures. Their capabilities are unknown at this moment, but a new Nashiin army has appeared behind them.

"This army is being led by—" Julia informed, but a bright light burst from the center of Veshari to interrupt her report.

The light was so bright that even Julia, as far away as she was, saw her own shadow projected onto the field before her. Turning around, she realized the huge tower of white light came from the direct center of the marsh—from Tirn'Aleya.

The Zal'Nadir beside Julia took one glance at the light column before rushing off the wall, racing toward it with all haste.

"What the hell is happening?!" Julia shouted into the slate.

Seyatha's voice came through, calm and stoic as always. It gave no emotions away, and it contrasted sharply with the message she delivered.

"Nashiin have invaded Veshari through the Root Tunnels—the ones that are only flooded, not collapsed. It seems Yathil let slip some of our most-protected secrets.

"The Zal'Nadir's mission is clear: we serve the Mother before all else. This invasion is currently nothing we cannot handle, but we will be forced to withdraw all our agents to defend Tirn'Aleya. You defenders are on your own for now.

"May Her Song carry us all in its Rhythm," she said, the slate falling silent.

This time, there was no chorus of shouting, no desperate voices asking for clarification. There seemed only an echo of Seyatha's voice filling the silence.

"You are on your own."