54. Catchup

Lace hurtled through the air.

She tried to throw up a wall of wind to stop her fall, but her frame of reference was all thrown off, and it served only to send her into an even more uncontrollable spin.

She braced for the inevitable crash and shut her eyes tightly.

She hit the ground. It was surprisingly…

Soft.

Lace checked various parts of her body for injury. Her ribs smarted a bit, but nothing else seemed torn or broken.

She opened her eyes and found herself on her stomach, face to face with Faith.

The Sprite had grown to the shape of a full-sized woman. Her body was pliable, yet Lace could clearly feel it beneath her, a pair of firm breasts pressed against her.

“That wasn’t so bad for a first try,” Faith said. Her blank features formed those of a smirking woman, eyes and mouth and all. “Let’s reset.”

Faith vanished, and Lace fell the last bit of the way to the ground. She slowly got up, brushing off the outfit, and found the minuscule version of Faith hovering around her.

“I thought this was supposed to help me catch up with the Purifiers,” Lace said. “Right now, I’m falling further behind.”

“Patience. No one ever learned the power of flight all in one go. Now c’mon. Reset.”

Lace nodded and readied herself for another try.

*****

Maxim gazed around him at the ritual site.

Twelve Heroes were bound by their hands, hung from the ceiling around a summoning circle drawn in human blood. Their apprentices lay in a pile in the middle, throats slit, to serve as the kindling.

The choice of locale was somewhat ironic, but in the end, fitting. They were inside a temple dedicated to the Creator. His spawnlings were busy clearing away the pews.

Maxim took a moment to regard the inside of the temple. Clean, white architecture, domed ceiling, wooden catwalks on both sides of the wide hall.

At the end of the hall, behind the altar, a stained-glass window looked down upon its absent congregation. It depicted the Creator’s making of the world, a stark-white figure surrounded by splendid color.

There was a time when Maxim would have been awestruck by such a sight. Now, the presumptuousness of it all made him sick. That a supposed god would present himself in this way, then leave his faithful subjects to fend for themselves. Oh, he was supposedly dead. But if Maxim had learned anything from his present state, it was that death wasn’t an excuse for anything.

The spawnlings had completed the preparations.

Maxim moved to the center of the temple, to stand before the summoning circle.

It was time for the ritual to begin.

He hesitated for just a moment. He glanced up at the depiction of the Creator in its stark, splendid whites.

Then he steeled himself.

And he started chanting.

*****

The next half an hour felt like half a day. Even with Songbird working through their ranks, playing on his lute to sap away their fatigue and fear, the sheer number of Beasts that pressed against them served as an ever-present dampener on their spirits.

Kiren was one of the lucky ones. He had sustained countless cuts and stabs, but his regeneration was still keeping up, and his latent mutations made it difficult for the spawnlings to pierce his skin in any meaningful way. The others, however, especially the apprentices, were being swapped out for fresh replacements when their wounds grew too grievous to go on fighting.

Soon, there wouldn’t be any replacements left. Their numbers were dwindling fast, and the defenders atop the walls didn’t seem to be faring much better.

Kiren was expecting Bloodhound to sound a retreat into the Guild Hall any minute now. They simply didn’t have the manpower anymore to hold onto the whole complex.

Kiren spotted a spawnling that was trying to sneak up on Haden and clove it in half. The big man nodded in thanks when he took notice and returned the favor by blocking an incoming tentacle meant for Kiren’s head with the rim of his fraying shield.

Haden was absolutely covered in blood, both his own and that of the monsters. He was bleeding profusely from a dozen wounds, perhaps more, but he refused to be cowed, standing tall like the male image of Paragon herself.

He should have quit and let himself be replaced long ago, and yet he kept on fighting alongside his aunt and the dwindling gate crew.

Titaness swept up a spawnling in her massive fist and threw it against two of its ilk, causing all three to topple back into the seemingly endless ranks of spawnlings beyond the gate. Teeth gritted with pain, she fell on one knee, causing the earth to tremble.

Kiren and Haden rushed to her side and dispatched the several spawnlings that tried to capitalize on her weakness. Counter stepped in to support them, and they were able to clear a zone around the B-Rank Hero where she could recover.

“Retreat to the Guild Hall!” Bloodhound barked from atop the wall. “Make your way to the Guild Hall immediately!”

“Unmaker’s tits,” Kiren swore. “Haden, get your aunt on her feet. We have to go. Fast.”

Defenders were already making their way off the walls, crowding the staircases. Spawnlings were tight on their heels, having scaled the ramparts.

Rather than moving as a single unit, some of the more skittish apprentices simply cut and ran, heading across the courtyard. The Heroes that were left struggled to hold the spawnlings back while everyone else got organized.

Haden tried to help Titaness back on her feet. Kiren pitched in, trying to hoist her up by the armpit, but her weight was simply too much even for the both of them, and she fell back on her hands and knees.

“Leave me,” she croaked.

“No,” Haden said firmly. “Never. Get up, because I’m not leaving you.”

Titaness made another attempt to stand, which ended the same way as the first.

“Counter, make me a barrier,” she said. “A big one. Horizontal. Right here.” With some effort, she lifted up one hand and pointed at the ground beneath her.

Counter looked confused, but his doubts seemed to be dispersed when he looked back and saw the spawnlings nearly broken through the barricade. He spread his arms and created a wide field of blue energy where Titaness had specified.

Titaness gritted her teeth, wound back her fist, and slammed it against the barrier.

The recoil from Counter’s ability caused her arm to fly back. The barrier cracked and broke in a shower of blue shards, but much of the energy had been transferred back into Titaness and pushed her off her knees. She landed on her feet, stumbled, and caught herself.

Haden grinned at the sight, but Kiren knew this was no time for rejoicing.

He looked to the courtyard.

The other defenders had cleared out, and those who hadn’t were being devoured. The grounds were smothered with spawnlings, as well as two more of those crackling, static humanoids.

With no one else to kill, they all turned their eyes to the gate crew.

Kiren raised his sword in a two-handed grip.

They were too late.

There won’t be any Purifiers to save us this time.

*****

“Magge, take care of the left!” Legario called.

The big man followed his order. Standing on a nearby rooftop, he swiped his hands in a forceful motion. A wave of his holy redirected and crashed against a group of spawnlings emerging from an alley on their left. The creatures shriveled and curled up like dying spiders, shrieking their final contempt at the world.

Legario stood on the back of an abandoned wagon, surveying the street. Cora was shredding through the Beasts with her scythe wire, and Rusty was busy pummeling a pair of the creatures into the ground using his sledgehammer.

They were encountering increased resistance. They were getting close.

Legario nocked a wedge on his greatbow and pulled the string back. The draw weight was heavy, more so than most trained archers could handle. His put his entire body into the draw, fingers quivering when it was at its peak. He released, and the wide arrow shot into the crowd of encroaching spawnlings on the other side of the street. It impaled one of them and pinned it to the ground.

Legario’s skill set was more useful against the bigger ones, so for the moment, his role was mostly calling out targets.

He spotted a trio of spawnlings sneaking up on Rusty’s right.

“Rusty, watch your right!” he shouted as he nocked another wedge.

The black-haired man spun just in time. Legario shot the first one dead. Rusty smashed the second one into the ground. The third jumped on top of him, and he was barely able to fend it away from his face with an arm.

Legario nocked another arrow, but the creature was too close to Rusty for a clean shot.

Rusty heaved the spawnling off of him with a great cry, leaving bloody tracks on his arm where its claws had dug in. He took his sledgehammer in a two-handed grip and smacked the Beast, sending it flying through the wooden shutters of a nearby house.

Legario nodded with satisfaction. No sooner had he done so than he heard a woman’s cry from within the house.

An older lady sprang out of the doorway, clutching a boy of maybe five years to her breast. The spawnling crawled over the threshold after her, one of its front legs having been smashed by Rusty’s blow.

Legario raised his greatbow to put an end to the creature, but another wave struck at that moment, and a handful of them slipped past Cora’s offensive. They split into two groups, three of the Beasts headed for the woman, and the other four going for Rusty.

Legario impaled the closest of the spawnlings pursuing the woman, but the other three were gaining ground fast. Rusty was busy taking care of his own problem—he wouldn’t be able to help.

Legario only had two arrows left.

He shouldered his bow and leapt down off the wagon. He ran for the woman, drawing a dagger off his belt as he pumped his legs.

The woman saw him endeavoring to save her and turned her steps towards him, but she was slow and feeble. She would be felled before he made it to her.

A sudden gust of wind tugged at Legario’s clothes. A rapidly spinning object with projecting blades shot past him from behind, riding on the quick current. Its course went wide of the spawnlings, but it bent as it flew to curve around the woman and child. The bladed weapon sliced through Beast limbs, causing two of the creatures to fall immobile before the thing zipped back up into the air in a looping arc.

A young woman fell from the sky, brown hair arrayed about her. A bright cape shuddered between her outstretched arms like a burning sun.

She caught the weapon out of the air and folded in her arms, falling rapidly. With one final push of flowing wind as she neared the ground, she floated over the awestruck woman and landed with both feet planted on the contorted neck of the final spawnling.

Its putrid bones cracked under her weight and the thing fell. The woman used her four-bladed device to cut the Beast open and lay still its heart.

She stood and made an effort to soothe the mother. The child was crying uncontrollably, dribbling snot on his upper lip as the mother held him tight and shushed him.

Legario let his pace slow as he came towards them. Surveying the street, it seemed that his companions had the situation under control.

“Thank you, Hero,” he said to the woman in white and yellow. “Your assistance was unexpected, but much appreciated.”

“I was around,” the woman said. She cleaned her four-bladed weapon on the slick hide of a spawnling. “Thought I’d return the favor.” Pressing a button, the blades retracted into the circular device with a sharp click.

“Return the favor?” Legario asked with a slight frown.

“Yes. You saved us all, before. Me especially. In truth, I am no Hero. Only an apprentice.” She made a shallow bow.

Legario’s frown deepened.

“Salutations, Little Amar!” Magge called. He came over, riding on the back of a rushing wave that broke just as he reached them, feet hitting the ground with a wet clap. “I see you pulled yourself together quite decently.”

“I found a good tailor on the way,” the woman, Amar, said with a secretive smirk.

Now that he looked at her more closely, Legario did recognize her. She was one of the apprentices they had rescued in the courtyard of the Lodge. There was none of the scared girl in her eyes now, however. Before him stood a woman confident in her power and herself.

“I want to accompany you,” Amar said, regarding Legario earnestly. “Evangel is my curse. I’ll be his undoing.”

“You seem capable enough,” Legario admitted. “But this is no place for apprentices, no matter how… spunky. You would only get in the way. We Purifiers have a specific way of doing things.”

Amar nodded slowly and pursed her lips. “Okay. If you want me to leave, I’ll go. But consider this. I know Evangel’s true-names.”

Legario stiffened. “You… what?”

“All of them. Or at least, enough to slow him down while you take him out.”

“I see. I won’t ask how you came by this information, as I sense it’s likely a long story. Give us the true-names you’ve uncovered, and we will take it from there.”

Amar shook her head. “I will do no such thing. Bring me with you. Let me fight. You’re in no position to refuse my help.”

Legario glanced at the thick smoke columns rising into the sky from all over the city. He considered her proposal in silence.

She was right. Whether she was bluffing or not, the mere possibility of being able to employ Evangel’s true-names against him was enough to justify the risk.

And yet…

“I vouch for Little Amar,” Magge said, clapping a hand down on her shoulder. “True-names or no, we could use her help. She’s a Primal.”

That settled it.

“Very well,” Legario said. “You will accompany us. But be warned, Evangel is—”

“Dangerous, I know,” Lace said. “And yet, here I stand.”

Legario smiled. “You’d make a decent battle-priest, someday.”

He looked towards his other allies and found that they had finished off the last of the Beasts. Cora was escorting the civilians to a safer location while Rusty watched out for further threats.

Legario clapped his hands twice. “Okay, look alive, people!” He turned back to Amar. “You possess the ability of flight, no?”

Amar shrugged. “I’m still a bit shaky on that, but I think I’ve got the basics down.”

“Good enough. You’ll act as reconnaissance. Now, let’s move out. We don’t have much time.”