Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Thirty-Seven

Tali

Rabid Dog, above the Karhes

24th of Tantus

They were unprepared for the summons to the bridge. Since setting down on the outskirts of the mercenary army and delivering Verden's prisoners, Tali and Shira had kept to their room. No one interfered with them save to deliver them breakfast and dinner without comment. The rest of Katja's small fleet had peeled away to hunt for more prisoners, leaving Rabid Dog the sky's sole dominator.

A few hours after breakfast, with the stifling boredom of the day only just starting to tighten around Tali, Katja demanded their immediate presence and sent a couple of her crew to escort them through the ship. Tali considered that it would be a simple thing to be free of Rabid Dog and its captain in that moment; all she'd have to do was exercise her aasiurmancy. Either force the ship to land and leave that way or try to replicate her earlier worldstriding. Even the two men escorting them could be handily overcome with a blast of fire.

But Shira had warned her against it before they'd left their room; it would be just as easy to accidentally crash the ship and kill them all or lose control of herself. It was, her mentor argued, the reason she wanted Tali trained by the Jalin.

The mercenary captain dominated her usual spot in the bridge's centre, though this time a man accompanied her. When Tali's eyes fell upon his face, her heart jolted and her breath hitched.

Though no longer the ten-feet tall, winged, armoured monster who'd torn Alzikanem apart and thrown chunks of Sinnis at her, she recognised him at once: the Novhar, wearing the skin of a mortal man because the bridge would be too crowded in his natural form.

Only the stark silver of his hair and the shimmering strength of his presence marked him as something more, because the rest of him was unremarkable. He resembled an Imperial, plain-faced aside from his distinctive hawk nose and ancient grey eyes. Neither tall nor short, muscular nor lanky, fat nor thin, but something in between.

She wondered, briefly, if her mother had possessed this aura in her mortal Dontili body. If her father had ever suspected Katrin was more than she claimed.

Katja turned at her entrance. The Novhar moved slower, his attention seeming to shift in glacial increments towards her and Shira.

"This girl?" the captain asked.

"You did indeed locate the runaway," the Novhar said, his world-old eyes hammering Tali in place. "This one has given me much trouble."

Tali backed up, halted against the unmoving body of one of her escorts, who shepherded her further into the room.

"She's behaved for me," Katja said. "Maybe you just don't have a way with children."

The Novhar scoffed. "And you do, Westervelt? Did your father not flee with your daughter because he was afraid you were going to hurt the girl?"

Katja's dirty, fine-featured face twisted into an angry scowl. Her mouth opened to deliver a replying insult, but the Novhar spoke right over her, addressing Tali. "You will come with me now, girl. I will consider your pointless flight the actions of a scared whelp and forgive you for fighting back in Sinnis. From now on, you cooperate."

The mercenary captain interposed herself between the Novhar and Tali. She wasn't quite sure how Katja could stand before such a powerful creature and not bow her head in fear. "She's not yours to take," the woman said. "She's coming with me to see Indro. You know he'll have a use for her."

"Indro will respect my wishes. He knows my plans, just as I know his. I have been searching for this whelp ever since her birth."

Tali remembered the day of the execution in the square at Sinnis. How Indro had locked eyes with her and then, mere moments later, this Novhar had found her. It seemed clear they worked together in some capacity, though it appeared as if they weren't strictly allied. The thought gave Tali pause; she would have to consider them two separate enemies with two separate agendas, both of whom coveted her.

"Perhaps I have my own plans," Katja said.

Beside Tali, Shira shifted on her feet, easing into a fighting stance. She had no weapon—having lost her blade during Verden's destruction—but neither did Katja.

"Perhaps your plans are irrelevant," the Novhar replied. "And I doubt you will be able to stop me from taking her."

The air in the bridge crackled with impending violence, and Tali could almost see how the fight would play out as Katja, Shira, and the Novhar stood poised for the first blow. Katja would strike first, Shira second, the pair only cooperating accidentally. The Novhar would no doubt kill them a heartbeat later, tearing out of his mortal skin to pull them apart by hand, or eviscerate them and the entire ship with his aasiurmancy. Tali would be his prisoner then, with no one left alive to help her.

None of that happened, though.

The ship shook before the conflict erupted, throwing everyone sideways. Tali scrambled to her feet and backed away, using the distraction to put space between herself and the Novhar. When she glanced around the bridge, she saw several screens flashing, the people controlling them trying to regain their seats.

"What happened?" Katja demanded. She'd returned to her post and adopted the demeanour of a battle-hardened commander, all but ignoring the immortal looming behind her.

"We've been hit," one of her crew replied. "There's another ship out there."

"The damage?"

"Superficial," was the answer. "A hit to the lower starboard flank. Took out a couple of our canons. The aftershock was worse than the impact."

"Why the fuck did no one spot it?"

"It came up behind and below us, angled into our blind spot."

Tali shared a glance with Shira as the mercenary captain oversaw the response. The Novhar, still dominating the room with his presence, looked only mildly interested in the attack. If they wanted to try and escape, now seemed opportune.

She was about to slink towards the doorway when Katja gasped. "That's a fucking mercenary ship," she hissed, one arm extended towards the bridge's window, to the sleek, knife-like expanse of a craft hanging in the air in front of them. Though still distant, its smaller size was obvious. It was, Tali guessed, a much newer cloudskimmer model. Judging from the way it swung its entire length to face Rabid Dog's port side, it was aerodynamic as well.

"Who is it?" Katja demanded. "Does anyone recognise it?"

The woman's face had flushed an unnatural red, her mouth flapping open and snapping shut as she tried and failed to bark out commands, to seize control of the situation, to do anything but stare, uncomprehending, at a ship that should've been an ally.

"It's the Maelstrom," an officer said. "It's one of ours, taken from the Drasken Sky Fleet last year."

"It's not wearing Drasken colours," Katja hissed. "Why is it attacking us?"

A burst of light blossomed along Maelstrom's angled flank, and Rabid Dog rocked again as the aasiurmantically-powered cannonball hit. The ship groaned, the sound harsh and keening, like the toppling of a building extended over tens of seconds rather than an instant. Then, without warning, Rabid Dog's nose dipped and the entire ship lost whatever ethereal force had been holding it aloft. Tali felt herself dropping, the floor beneath her suddenly heavy and fragile and moving down into the abyss of empty space between her and the plains.

"Fire back!" Katja bellowed, finding her voice at last.

"The engine's been hit," one of her crew said, their voice thin with barely concealed panic. "Compromised."

"How much power left?" It wasn't Katja who asked, but another mercenary. The captain was struck speechless, almost senseless, by the news.

An answer: "Enough to coast to the ground. The landing will be hard, but not fatal."

Katja swore. "They did that on purpose. The bastards want us alive." She turned around to the Novhar, an ugly scowl marring her face. "Can you stop them?"

The Novhar heaved his shoulders in a shrug, and Katja started to reply. Tali didn't hear what she said, as she'd already inched out into the hallway beyond the bridge, Shira right behind her.

"We'll have to get out quick when we land," Shira whispered as they scurried down the hallway.

Tali halted at the first crossroads and Shira overtook, choosing the righthand corridor, heading in the opposite direction from their room. They stumbled when the ship creaked again, their progress becoming a halting run when the hallway tipped downwards. Tali chanced a glance over her shoulder and wasn't surprised to see the mundane silhouette of the Novhar's mortal form in their wake. His pursuit was inevitable. As inevitable as Erun's invasion of her dreams. As inevitable as everything that had happened to her since Alzikanem's destruction.

Tali sped up, clipping Shira's heels. Without having to turn around or clarify, her mentor accelerated as well, knifing into turns whenever they presented themselves, entombing themselves deeper within Rabid Dog's bowels.

Adrenaline kept Tali numb to the threat at her heels, but she felt the dangerous froth of energy in her veins and the not-so-distant call of her aasiurmancy. Her forearms buzzed with the need to act, her palms itching as if magic already poured from them.

Not here. Not in the confines of a flammable ship. A ship already tumbling from the sky and peppered with canon-shot.

Shira burst through a set of wooden doors, and they found themselves in the yawning expanse of the main deck. Crewmen bounded up and down, trying in vain to secure canons that had been knocked out of place as the ship continued its perilous descent. Tali leapt aside as one of the canons, a malicious hulk of rusted metal, spun on its wheels and slammed past her. It pinned a mercenary up against one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof overhead, and the man burst like a squashed fruit. Blood splashed upwards in a sickly cloud.

The moment's distraction lost them whatever lead they'd gained on the Novhar, and only Shira's forceful shove sent Tali tripping out of the way of a shimmering blast of magic. The aasiur, manifested as a shard of ice the size of a stonehound, speared a cluster of mercenaries and severed the canon they'd been tying down from its restraints.

"No more running," the Novhar yelled. "I tire of your cowardice."

Shira yanked Tali to her feet and pulled her along the deck. Tali couldn't drag her eyes away from the impaled mercenaries, not even with the architect of the slaughter right behind her. One of the men was still alive, clutching at the tip protruding from his chest and moaning weakly. One of his fellows was pinned to his back in a morbid embrace. He'd been bending down at the moment of impact, and the ice had mangled his skull.

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The ship pitched forward again, then raised its nose and collided, finally, with the plains in a world-ending earthquake. Tali toppled to hands and knees, and beneath her, the deck cracked and splintered. Overhead and to the sides, the wood and metal comprising the deck's roof and flanks sundered. In the flush of adrenaline, Tali looked up and saw the storm of jagged material as the streaks of shooting stars across the night sky. She'd thrown her arms over her head and expelled a burst of magic before she could think. It was instinctive, a rudimentary umbrella of air between her and Shira and the lethal rainfall.

Most of the rest of the crew not already felled by loose cannons were struck down by the deadly shards. When the ship settled into its grave and its deathly keening halted, Tali glanced around and saw the deck had fully collapsed further back, the entire expanse twisted and mauled until it resembled a shattered ribcage. The Novhar had disappeared into the sundered guts as surely as Heller had been devoured by Verden's bowels.

Their flight from the ship proved easier after that. Rabid Dog's surviving crew rushed through its fractured carcass, trying to assess the damage, account for losses, and arm themselves for the inevitability of Maelstrom's final blow. The impact of the landing had torn the thundership's nose from its face, and Tali and Shira climbed down through the gaping wound unmolested.

Beyond the carnage, Maelstrom was landing, its sleek body performing the graceful descent denied Rabid Dog. Rabid Dog groaned behind them. She spun on her heels in time to see the twisted beams of metal and wood peeled apart and the ten-foot frame of a winged Novhar prowl out into the crisp night air.

"Fuck," Shira hissed, then seized Tali's hand and pulled her into a stumbling run.

After so long spent aboard Verden and the thundership that had felled it, Tali's feet were unused to the undulating grassland. Fear spurred her, lent her speed, but she still felt sluggish. Her aasiurmancy lingered at the edge of her perception, promising relief if she'd just surrender to it.

A blast of something punched her hard in the back, sent her flailing like a ragdoll. She sprawled in a heap, winded, her spine screaming from the impact, her lungs gasping. Shira stopped, turned, started running back for her. The Novhar strolled after them as if he had all the time in the world.

Tali raised her hand, mouthed at her mentor to run, tried to gasp the words past her locked throat. Still the Novhar approached.

She couldn't let Shira die. Had to get on her feet and push her mentor away. Had to make Shira flee before the Novhar tore her apart.

The Novhar was barely twenty feet away now, demonic wings spread in victory, a rictus grin warping superhuman features. He snapped one hand outwards, aimed at Shira, and the ghostly glow of unformed aasiur emanated from his palm.

Rather than fry Shira where she stood, the Novhar bellowed wordlessly and turned away, arm hugged to his chest. When he straightened to assess the damage, Tali saw a dagger impaling his palm.

Another one struck, rebounding harmlessly off an armour plate. The Novhar snapped his head in the direction of the throw, and Tali's eyes followed. All she perceived was the glimmer of another blade and a blur of shadow, black against the dark green of the plains. The dark mass pounced upon the Novhar, the smiling flash of the dagger whipping out from the shadows and connecting with the upraised arm the Novhar used to block.

Though more than three feet taller than his attacker, the Novhar stepped back from the onslaught, his hand dripping blood red as any man's. The shadows slipped away, and Heller's stern countenance emerged.

"You dare interfere, mortal?" the Novhar demanded, and lashed out his undamaged hand.

A lightning bolt scythed at Heller, who threw himself into a roll and regained his feet with the litheness of an athlete. Tali took a heaving breath—her first since the blow to her back—and climbed unsteadily to her feet. The Novhar bore down on Heller, hands spitting electricity, and struck again. Again, her uncle dodged, throwing up a veil of shadow to mask his movements. Tali clenched her fists, unclenched them, felt magic coursing through her veins, banding her bones. It waited there across the divide, calling to her.

Shira took her hand, encased it in her own. "No, Tali. You might hit your uncle."

She hadn't thought of that. She'd been a heartbeat away from unleashing it.

Shira stepped forward, then juddered towards the Novhar, flashing in and out of sight as she flexed her idomancy. Heller spied her before the Novhar did and threw a cloak of shadow at the monster to blind him as Tali's mentor landed a solid kick at the back of his knee. The armour plates prevented damage, though the joint still reflexively buckled. The Novhar fell forward into Heller, who stabbed downwards with his dagger. Found a gap between the plates and wrenched. The Novhar growled and punched out, but Heller had already abandoned his weapon and ducked out of the way.

Tali watched as Shira and Heller danced around the immortal and traded blows with him, running him in circles, spacing themselves around him to ensure he had to guard two sides at once. They kept too close for the Novhar to use aasiurmancy, though the immortal's strength was lethal enough on its own.

Her uncle slipped up first. He moved under another swinging arm, but came too close, pressed his advantage too far. For his troubles he received an armour-plated knee to the chest, and Tali swore she heard the crack of ribs as he collapsed.

She screamed and lunged as the Novhar turned to Shira, grabbed her by the throat, held her aloft.

"I'll squeeze the life out of you," he seethed. "Then I'm going to crush your friend's head under my foot."

Tali was too far away to intervene. Too unskilled in aasiurmancy to even consider using it.

Helpless. As always.

The Novhar started squeezing, and she saw Shira's mouth open in an unconscious gasp for breath. Saw the panic flare in her mentor's eyes. Saw the wild way her hands clawed at armoured forearms.

Suddenly the pair were separated, Shira dropped, the Novhar thrown back. A bright bloom of power between them. No, not between them. Aimed at the Novhar, Shira dealt only a glancing blow.

Two figures approached from the direction of Maelstrom, one with hands still hissing with the aftershocks of thundermancy, the other with palms ready to conjure. Tali at once recognised the other two members of her uncle's cadre. Mariska, the Drasken thundermancer who'd cleaved the Novhar away from Shira, wore a familiar manic smile. The youthfulness of her features afforded the grin a strange kind of menace, and the woman glanced Tali's way just long enough to wink at her.

Beside Mariska, two heads taller, loomed the Vasipan Tornjak. Her father had once described his stonehounds to her, and Tali imagined Tornjak to be a humanoid version of those canines. He'd been the first non-human she'd ever encountered, and his smile, equipped as it was with sharpened fangs, made her shiver even now.

They moved in to support Shira.

"This is an interesting development," Mariska barked in her coarse voice, sneering at the Novhar. "What the fuck is that?"

The immortal scowled. "That was rather rude of you," he said. "I did not provoke an attack from either of you worms."

"You 'tacked our boss, 'ough," Tornjak said. His muzzle and pointed teeth made of his words a lisped jumble. Tornjak cocked his head in Heller's direction and offered a quick wave. "A'right 'ere?"

By then, her uncle had pushed himself into a sitting position. He swiped away his friend's concern. "Been punched harder, believe it or not."

"Surprisingly," Mariska said, "we do."

The Novhar snarled, lifted a hand, and trained it at the woman. Tornjak reacted instantly, raising clawed hands and tensing for a fight. Beside him, Mariska allowed trickles of lightning to enfold her forearms in a clear threat. Across from them, Shira and Heller, who'd climbed to his feet, completed the four corners of the square enclosing the Novhar.

"You think you can take on all four of us?" Mariska said.

Rather than voice a reply, the Novhar pivoted and aimed a blast of flame at Heller, who he'd likely judged to be the weakest link. The blast was arrested mid-arc when it smashed into a clump of stone suspended in the air in front of Heller's face. With a throaty chuckle, Tornjak wrenched the projectile back towards the Novhar. It collided with his chest armour, leaving behind not even a dent, and then dissolved into magical energy when Tornjak released his hold on it. By then, the immortal warrior had focused on his next opponent.

Shira ducked beneath the fireball, then skipped forward beneath the Novhar's reach. Tali noticed she'd plucked up one of Heller's thrown daggers in the confusion, and she rammed it into her attacker's calf, pushing it between two armour plates. Though unable to force it in far enough to cause debilitating damage, the Novhar still fell to one knee, taking a swipe at Shira as he did. She danced away in time for Mariska to sling a barb of lightning at the Novhar's unprotected head. Tali watched in awe as the Novhar raised his hands to catch the lightning, then tugged apart as if trying to tear a hole in the air. Mariska's hissing bolt fizzled to nothing between his palms.

Though the repeated use of their aasiurmancy must've drained them, the four mages continued their onslaught, trading blows of fire and stone and shadow with the Novhar, who effortlessly turned their strikes aside.

Heller dived in to reclaim the blade still jutting from the monster's leg, but his wounded chest made him falter with the movement, and he was too slow to recover. The Novhar grappled him, threw him on his back, and set a heavily armoured foot down on his ribcage.

"Watch, for this is what happens to those who challenge us," the Novhar bellowed, holding both hands out to prevent the rest of the cadre from intervening.

He pressed down and Heller let out a strangled wheeze. Tali cried out in reply, and the Novhar glanced over his shoulder at her. "Pay close attention, child. I want you to remember this." Manifested fire wreathed his hands as he aimed them to Heller's face. "I think I will boil your brain and melt your eyes."

Tali focused her fear on the Novhar, desperate for a flame of her own. The aasiur bubbled just beneath her perception, but it refused to heed her call. As the Novhar leant over Heller and made to cradle his head in inhumanly large hands, she snapped her own palms shut, as if she could stop what was about to happen with sheer willpower alone.

A sound like a thunderstorm erupted, and something deep within Tali wrenched painfully. All at once, the Novhar's pyromancy disappeared like a snuffed candle. He fell backwards. No, was thrown, Tali realised, and crumpled in a heap a good ten feet from her injured uncle.

As one, the cadre rushed forward and pulled Heller to his feet once they'd ascertained the Novhar hadn't crushed his ribs. Her uncle looked to her and coughed. "What did you do?"

She stammered, searching for an answer as she clutched her chest. "I couldn't conjure any aasiur," she said, wincing at the fading twinge of discomfort behind her ribs. "I was desperate. I thought maybe I could stop him."

Her uncle glanced towards the fallen Novhar, and their gazes followed his. When he rose to shaking knees, the Novhar cradled one hand to his chest. Tali saw with a jolt of shock the skin of it had been blackened to a crisp and his fingers were gnarled and brittle.

"You manipulated the aasiur he conjured," Heller said, hushed. "You forced it back into his hands, into him, where it's not supposed to go. It backfired, quite literally."

"It must be her Novhar half," Shira said. "Only the Novhar can manipulate someone else's conjuring, turn it against their own body like that."

Like the Novhar had done with Mariska's thundermancy, pulling her lightning apart before it could strike him.

Mariska chuckled. "Sounds fucking useful," she said, and Tornjak nodded his agreement.

The Novhar hauled himself to his feet with an audible groan. The cadre fell into defensive stances, save for Heller, who curled around his wounded chest. Their immortal assailant locked his eyes with Tali's, his gaze a promise; he wasn't done with her. His pursuit wouldn't end tonight. Would likely not end until she was either in his custody or dead.

His other hand, less blackened, he lifted and aimed at the group of them. Without thinking, Tali moved to stand in front of her uncle's cadre and extended her own hands, palms bared and fingers stretched. She heard the rustle of grass as the mages behind her straightened to support her.

"I'll force the fire into your chest, if you try anything else," Tali said, anger whetting her words.

The Novhar's ancient eyes skimmed across the cadre, assessing his chances against four trained mages and one untrained Valhir. He finally settled on Tali, the intensity of his grey stare flaying her down to the core. Tali divined her own destruction in that gaze. She saw, in the way he narrowed his eyes, the infinite ways a powerful monster such as he could dismantle her, naïve and unpractised as she was. Saw the flash of abyssal rage that prophesised her murder as the Novhar decided capturing her alive was no longer worth the risk. Noted the twitch of one brow as the creature no doubt toyed with the idea of leaping forward and scything all five of them down where they stood.

But then his expression flickered, and Tali understood the injury she'd dealt him made this fight too uncertain. He extended his charred hand, stretched the fingers with a grimace. "I would treasure whatever peace remains to you. Soon, you will all be a faded memory." With a sole pump of his wings, the Novhar rocketed skywards and vanished into the night sky.

The four combatants remained poised for what seemed to Tali like an agonising eternity. They all seemed to relax in unison, and Shira turned to face Heller. Her features danced with grief and anger and relief as she regarded her captain.

"We thought you were dead," Shira said. Tali could see the woman wanted to drag her uncle into an embrace but held back for fear of hurting him. She settled instead for a soft pat to the shoulder, as awkward as it was endearing.

"I didn't fall far when the street collapsed," Heller replied, wincing with each word. "Enough to knock me out until after the mercs had abandoned the City. When I woke up, Torn and Risk were combing the wreckage."

"We got a good deal on that beauty back there," Mariska said, hooking her thumb in the direction of Maelstrom. "We were following Verden's scheduled route when we found its corpse. Found this lucky bastard having a nice little nap inside." She made to thump Heller's back, then thought better of it.

"Where we 'eadi'g 'ow?" Tornjak lisped.

Heller and Shira shared a look. "Drasken, I think."

Mariska rolled her eyes. "And when are we going to address the monster we just scared off? I wasn't being quippy when I asked what the fuck it was."

Heller waved the thundermancer away. "There'll be time for that, Risk. Though I doubt we 'scared him off'."

Her uncle looked Tali's way, and her eyes were drawn to him properly for the first time since he'd revealed himself. She hadn't allowed herself to believe him still alive, not when she'd seen him fall. But there he was, bloodied and beaten from the fight and likely sporting bruised ribs, but alive. Not an unidentified carcass in the twisted ruins of a butchered Shifting City.

She ran over to him and hesitated, unsure what to do. He gingerly lifted an arm and folded her into an awkward half-embrace that was, in that moment, possibly the grandest gesture she'd ever been shown.

Tali was just a scared child, having faced down her own demise too many times to count, having seen too much death and caused too much of it herself, held close and safe now in the arms of her father figure.

For a moment, for as long as their hug lasted, nothing else mattered.