Captured Sky

Wings unfurled, abuzz upon her back, Naereah hung above the senseless battlefield. She glared down at the coiled mass of tendrilled flesh—dipping, rising, contorting—four of its vines lashing up to meet her. A violent hum beat her ears as she twisted clear, air screaming past in her narrow escape.

Below, Anton cracked his burning whip against Rexford's scarlet plating. Bethany severed beating lashes, wheeling curves of light through the smoky whips. Eudora was lost to the frenzy, whirling her spear above her head before bringing it down with brute finality to keep Rexford in place. Aurelia, by contrast, had slipped away with the Lord-Mayor's men. Anger tightened Naereah's chest at the woman's desertion, yet she could scarcely fault her—for the battle was lost, after all.

The cultists had been routed, yet their purpose was fulfilled. The world itself was breaking. Boulders drifted skyward as though they had forgotten the ground. Fissures, bleeding gold and white, tore space apart. The stone sky of the catacombs had split wide like a throat forced open in a scream. Spectral light flooded the breach, framing their war as though fought in the afterlife—a realm they would soon greet, should salvation fail to come.

Havoc was her salvation; she had sent him away. He had torn her free from the fleshy world of the monster she now hovered above. But when the stone sky peeled back—when she felt that power she could only name wrong, when she heard the cries across the city and saw living mountains tear through spires and rises—she had given him no choice.

He claimed he was a man who would hunt all the monsters. She yearned he would become the one to save the most lives. Whatever her hopes, she had known well the words that would move him: cut down Dracule before he reclaims his strength.

So here she was, weaving past a thrashing storm, heart racing in fear as reality pulled itself apart. Still, she had her part to play: stand by her allies and survive. Give her hero someone to return to while he strove to save the day.

The columns that had formed a path across the vast chamber cracked and fell. Moments later, the debris drifted skyward. Maggot-strewn fur partitions tore loose in the upheaval, unveiling a splintered door—and before it, an altar.

A man capped in a top hat caressed a woman's face with the back of his hand. The woman was dead—split open from below, a bloodied rent carved through her throat, her pale arm hanging limply over the side of her stone bed.

Naereah's eyes flashed wide as the man strode from the altar, impassive to the cultists strewn across the ground—barely breathing, entrails spilling out. He halted at a clearing. Leaning forward, as though inspecting the very air, he brushed his fingers beneath his chin before straightening once more.

His hand jutted forward. He gripped at nothing—yet when he drew his arm back, a shimmering veil tore loose. Behind it, bodies were nailed to the ground, forming a ring around Lord-Mayor Atticus, who stood at the centre, tar streaming from his eyes.

Encircling the bodies, monstrous shapes wrapped in bindings formed a second ring. A cold hum of tainted power spilled from the dead into Atticus, the black ichor pulsing in time with the rhythm of the draw.

'Liar!' Atticus wailed as his gaze met the stranger's. His cry tugged Naereah's focus, scarcely granting her time to dip beneath a gutting strike. 'You promised me the world,' the Lord-Mayor raved.

'I promised nothing but revenge—and you have it,' the stranger countered. 'Are not your betters now nailed at your feet? And is the woman tight in your grip not among the countless who scorned you?'

It was Aurelia, pinned to the stone—nails biting through the backs of her knees, her hair bunched together in the Lord-Mayor's fist.

From the door came a thundering roar. Claws—black as obsidian jewellery—splintered the great frame. The Beast was not yet set loose, but it was coming. And as it dug in, reality's fracturing worsened.

'Our Master's gratitude for your beneficence,' the stranger proclaimed, drawing a white lantern from the shadows and holding it aloft before him. 'Know that your sacrifice will pave the way for a brand-new world.'

Naereah dived out of the path of collapsing stone—the tendrilled mass having struck past her to shatter the remains of the breached stone sky. She twisted clear of a tower of flame spewed by Rexford, then struck back, driving the point of her lance into his armour. Sparks lit the air. Rexford's guard broke. Anton's flaming whip lashed tight about his neck, and Eudora's weighted spear cracked against his skull—sending weightless bone and brain drifting through the air.

Caspian fell next, though it was not Naereah's cohort who brought him to heel. The stranger in the top hat shone his lantern at the Lord-Mayor's men as he droned a theatrical chant—arms raised toward the heavens, head canted toward the light. His lamp swept across those nailed to the ground, drawing pale phantoms from their nostrils and mouths. When the beam passed over Caspian, the smoke from his pipe collapsed to the stone. He collapsed with it. His ghost tore free of his flesh and, with the others, was swallowed into the lantern.

'It is nearly all over,' the stranger said.

He pressed his thumb past the Lord-Mayor's lips, and when he drew it back, Atticus twisted—writhing as he swelled in size. His skin crusted over with bark. His fingers lengthened into branches; his toes spilled into roots that burrowed into the bodies ringed about him. And as those nail-bound victims withered, leaves sprouted along his branches. They shone green, then flushed red, before bleaching white as inked sap bled in rivulets down toward the trunk.

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'Focus!' Bethany barked from below, sending a wheel of light against the tendrils set to cleave Naereah in twain.

'Why struggle?' the fleshy horror asked with twinned tongues—one a man's, the other a woman's. 'Our Master has already awakened. Even now, our Prelate binds the key. It is over!' the creature wailed. 'All glory be the Master. All praise to the Adversary of Life.'

Sweltering heat rushed down like a waterfall. Darkness seized the sky. For an instant, a lightless star eclipsed the night. That terrible power Naereah had felt from afar burned away. Even the stranger halted his ritual, pausing only to sneer toward the heavens.

Havoc.

Against impossible odds, he still fought. The woman who would stand at his side could do no less.

Lightning surged through her lance as she drove the point down into the mass. It writhed beneath her strike; Naereah did not relent. Anton scored bloodied lines across the creature, and Bethany and Eudora hacked at its twisted vines. Having dispatched the last of the cultists, even Harper and Peregrine joined the fray—leading the surviving host against the monstrous thing.

The stranger cast a glance toward the battle, dropped his hat, then turned back to the cursed tree. Fixing his lantern upon one of its branches, he angled the light toward the great door.

A hand of shadow tore free from the toppled hat. In an instant, it cleaved a dozen fighters, then gripped Eudora's head within its palm. With the faintest squeeze, her skull cracked open. The fingers closed, complete—and the savage warrior crumpled to the ground.

'No!' cried a cloaked, gaunt man.

Naereah had known him as Eudora's attendant; the top-hatted fiend knew him as prey. He levelled his staff at the stranger, fire, water, earth, and wind twisting at its knotted head. Yet before he could unleash that primordial fury, the reaching shadow snaked about him, wringing his innards through his mouth, ears, and eyes.

'Bless you, father, for they have sinned,' the monstrosity sang, coiling its vines about a man's neck and waist before wrenching him apart, spilling his entrails across the stone.

Death stalked the night. All hope seemed lost. The dwindling host barely held against the shadows and the whirling flesh. From the door, the Beast clawed deeper into the world. Where its touch fell, light bent and curved like a fractured mirror. Screams and roars shook the night beyond the unsealed catacombs. And as the shadowed grip tore toward Naereah—its fingers splaying about her, seconds from closing—she knew, in that moment, she would die.

But the fist did not close.

She tore free of its hold.

Emerald light fell from the heavens. It lanced through the tendrilled mass, causing it to convulse and split apart. The halves slumped to the ground—two heaps of writhing flesh. And when the meat grew still, it remoulded into the shapes of a young man and a woman.

A hooting whistle cut through the sky. A many-eyed owl hovered above the chamber. Atop its back, a woman stood. She smiled. She waved. She leapt from her mount, her descent slowing as a verdant glow unfurled about her.

'You did wonderfully, sweetie,' the woman said, drifting beneath the night's glow as she approached Naereah.

Naereah recognised her at once, though her mind refused to accept what she saw. Annalise—the Seer of Nightmare—who, only months ago, had come prepared to spill her blood.

'How are you—'

'Hush now,' Annalise cut in. 'It only matters that I'm here. And that this struggle is over.'

A defiant roar rose through the night. Naereah drifted upward, eyes widening as an army marched across the city's chaos. From one quarter, mages battered back titan beasts with the full force of the elements. From another, mystic artillery hung in the sky, shelling Spawn and Abominations in a ceaseless, shattering assault. She turned to see monstrous hordes rot and collapse as a robed host advanced through the streets. And from the far side, White Coats rode white mounts, carving their way across the city—demons falling as they went.

She returned her gaze below, where Annalise whispered into the Stranger's ear. He nodded once, then sank into the shadows—reappearing beside the young woman and man—before vanishing with the two into the dark.

With a flourishing wave, the Seer extended her hand toward the Beast. It broke free. For an eternal moment, the world came undone in hues of fractured light and colour. But in the next moment, the Beast slipped into the Tree that had once been a man. The two fused as one. The Seer drowned the bark in vialled blood and, with a snap, crack, and tear, the Tree folded into a wooden slate which Annalise held against the light before making it vanish with a wave of her hand.

'Who—who is she?' Bethany stammered.

'No one you would care to know,' Anton growled, his chest heaving as his fists tightened into hard knots.

'Oh, don't be like that,' Annalise cooed, as she approached. 'We shared some laughs, didn't we? Hmm? Maybe two or three?'

Anton lunged. The Seer lifted a hand, and he froze mid-stride.

'Okay—maybe just one.'

'She's the devil!' Anton roared.

'She saved our lives,' Bethany corrected. 'Thank you.'

The Seer dipped a mocking curtsy, then rose from the ground.

'I really must be going. I don't imagine the fleeing cult will be best pleased to learn that I've come as a thief, not as some envoy of some god.' She drifted toward her waiting owl, but halted mid-flight, gazing down at Naereah, her blue eyes locking with Selenarian black. 'I have a message for Havoc. Can I trust you to deliver it?'

Mouth agape, Naereah only nodded.

The Seer spoke her vision.

'Tell him that I hope to see him again—five years today, by the gates of hell, at the dawn of the Heretic's War.'

With that, she mounted her owl and soared away.

Silence gripped the chamber. Every gaze turned skyward. The sky rumbled. A golden light lit the night as day. A deafening roar tore through the air. And Dracule's distant power fled—racing farther and farther away.