Bloody tree, but the gashes in Tal’s chest ached. The wound muddied his thinking, making it difficult to focus. It should have healed, but it was possible the Ghast’s claws had poisoned him. Even if she had his body would deal with it, but that would take time he didn’t have.
He fought past the pain and forced himself to his feet. If he didn’t deal with the situation he was unlikely to survive the night.
“What do you see?” Tal asked, stepping to the doorway next to Elora. The rain was coming down in thick sheets, splashing across the threshold and soaking his boots. He hardly noticed. The awful dirge carried by the wind had his attention.
“There’s movement down by the docks. I stopped counting at a dozen. They’re coming up the road, and I’m guessing they’ll be on us in the next quarter bell. I can’t make out much, but they don’t walk like shamblers or ghasts. There’s more purpose to them,” she answered. Her demeanor was all unwavering discipline, the hallmark of the Hasran military. She began dragging tables and chairs away from the door. “At least we have a good defensive position. The doorway will make a perfect choke point, though we’ll have to watch those windows. They might try to flank us that way.”
“Elora, we cannot hope to prevail against these Maw Pirates,” Tal replied, slowly shaking his head. The ache throbbed in time with his heartbeat. “We have to hide. Or flee if we can. We might be able to sneak down to the docks and find a boat. They may miss us in the chaos.”
“We have no accurate count of their numbers and no way to gauge their abilities,” Elora countered. She turned from the doorway to focus her full attention on him. “If we leave the inn we run the risk of being surrounded, and we’d be fighting on their terms. I’d rather make a stand here. Grond said you acquitted yourself well at the Skull of Xalegos. Between us I think we can keep them at bay until morning. Hopefully they’ll leave then.”
“With respect I do not belive you understand what we are dealing with,” Tal replied. He took a step closer and rested a hand on her wrist. It seemed to get her attention. “I have encountered only one thing powerful enough to raise so many corpses at once. A Catalyst. The body of an elder god. Nothing mortal could accomplish a feat of this magnitude, not even Olivanticus.”
“Either these Maw Pirates are carrying around a dead god on their ship,” Tal continued, darting a worried glance at the shuttered windows. “Or whoever is controlling them can accomplish something not even the greatest dreadlord to ever live was capable of. That would make them the equal of a god, something the Stewards themselves would flee from. I say again, we cannot fight. We must flee.”
“I’m with the lad there,” Ivan interjected from his place behind the bar. A hand snaked into view, plucking another bottle of brandy from the bar then disappearing. “You don’t fight the Maw Pirates. You run and you pray. We should make for the docks. We can take my ship. She ain’t much to look at, but she’ll get us away from here. “
“Be quiet you fool,” Elora hissed. Tal didn’t have to ask why. The low sonorous chanting was growing closer.
It was accompanied by the steady tread of boots on cobble, broken briefly by a peal of thunder. It sounded like dozens of voices, all singing in some long dead language. Tal was relived he didn’t speak it, for he had a feeling he didn’t want to know what they were saying.
The chanting drew even with the inn. Between the shutter’s wooden slats Tal could make out several figures that detached from the main column and approached the building. One stopped just outside the door. Elora caught his gaze, slowly drawing her blade from it’s scabbard. She motioned for him to do the same.
Tal took a deep breath and steeled his nerve. He slid Kira from it’s scabbard, her warm hilt reassuring in his hand. Every instinct screamed at him to flee. He could disappear easily with his magic. Or so he hoped. Elora was right about the Maw Pirates. They were an unknown quantity. Who knew what abilities they might possess?
Besides, he couldn’t desert her. Not because of some misplaced sense of chivalry, but because of the bracelet he now wore. If he fled his life was forfeit, which left him no choice.
“Esss gibt kein sicheresss Reisehaus,” something droned from beyond the door. The words were drawn out in a deep tone that touched something primal within him. Something that warned of certain death if he did not immediately flee.
It was no natural fear. Tal had faced similar things before, and hardened himself. Panic would lead to a swift death, which was exactly what the magical terror was designed to do.
Elora moved with grace of a jungle cat, positioning herself behind the door so that when it swung open it would obscure her. Tal simply crouched behind a fallen table near the wall. There was no sign of Ivan, though Tal assumed he was still cowering behind the bar.
“Esss gibt kein sicheresss Reisehaus,” the voice repeated, much louder and with a great deal more hostility. Then the door exploded in a shower of splinters.
A figure entered the room. It had once been a man, at least if the clothing were any indication. It was difficult to tell, because most of the flesh had rotted away. All save the eyes, which were a dull translucent gray. Yet they held a malicious intelligence.
The creature still wore the remnants of a white tunic and black breeches, though both were torn and crusted with brine. It wore a wedge shaped hat, the kind common among sailors of the south sea. A rusty cutlass was clutched in it’s bony hand, though it appeared lethal despite its poor condition.
So this was a Maw Pirate. It was both more horrible and less terrible than Tal had expected. The creature’s head slowly swiveled as if searching for prey. Elora didn’t give it that chance. She flowed forward, violence given form. Her blade sheared through the monster’s wrist, sending both hand and cutlass clattering to the floor.
The Maw Pirate lunged for her neck with a skeletal hand, letting forth a shrill shriek of rage. Elora simply wasn’t there. The blow passed over her head as she dropped to a crouch, blade flicking out like the tongue of some steel serpent. The eldimagus sliced through the monster’s middle, separating torso from legs. It collapsed into a pile of gore, though parts still twitched.
Elora placed a boot under the torso, then heaved it through the doorway as she rose into a combat stance. The dismembered pirate caught one of its fellows, knocking both sprawling across the rain slicked cobblestones. Yet a heartbeat later another pirate filled the doorway, this one even more ghastly than the last. Several of it’s fellows crowded behind it, all eager to enter the inn.
“Tal, watch the window and destroy anything that comes through. Use whatever magics you command, just make sure they don’t get behind me,” Elora shouted over her shoulder, then pivoted to dodge a swipe from her current opponent. It’s cutlass hummed by her ear, so close it severed a few golden hairs.
“You’re a bloody witch? Wel ain’t that just lovely,” Ivan shrieked from behind the bar. “If we survive this I’ll see you burn, demonspawn!”
Tal didn’t bother replying. He reached into a deep pocket sewn inside the breast of his tunic and withdrew a seed vaguely resembling a peach pit. The dark grooves lining it’s surface pulsed with a faint crimson, in time with his heart. The ridges were razor sharp.
Tal clenched a fist around the seed, the ridges slicing his flesh. The seed pulsed once, then burrowed into his flesh like a tick. It wasn’t a pleasant process, but he endured it. The seed was a focus, a potent eldimagus that amplified his powers. Enduring a little discomfort was worth the added strength it would lend his spellwebs.
Using it was not without risk. If he did not remove it the seed would eventually burrow up his arm, in search of his heart. If the seed ever reached its destination it would attempt to seize control of both his body and mind. Only the strongest of wills could fight off the seed’s influence, and even then it was a constant battle. If one lost that battle they became one of the consumed, a mindless vampyr who existed only to feed. Not all that different from the ghast he had dispatched earlier.
He often wished for an eldimagus staff like Hasran mages wielded. They were certainly more impressive, and much less invasive. They could also be used as a weapon in a pinch. Unfortunately such foci were also far less portable. Anyone bearing such a staff in Olivantia would be swiftly arrested and killed.
Tal pushed such thoughts aside and focused on the moment. He popped his head over the table and took in the scene before him. Elora had dispatched another pirate, but was hard pressed to hold the doorway against the mass trying to push through.
The shutters to the right of the doorway burst inward in a spray of splinters. A ghastly pirate jumped through, landing heavily on a table which gave way under the weight. The monster rolled to its feet and charged Elora.
It ripped a rusted falchion from a scabbard strapped to it’s back, swinging the massive curved blade in a tight arc. Tal sucked in a breath as the weapon connected, wincing at what he expected was a mortal blow. Elora staggered forward, but her back wasn’t the mass of blood he expected. Instead her tunic had been sliced through, revealing shimmering silver links underneath.
Tal concentrated, willing tendrils of energy to coalesce around the seed embedded in his palm. They came easily, a marked contrast to when he’d used the charm spell on Marya earlier. The energy gathered around his palm forming a complex web of power. It was a spell he’d never had cause to use, though he’d seen it done often enough.
He thrust his hand towards the Pirate’s with the falchion and completed the spellweb. Thunder boomed, far louder than any of the peals outside. An arc of lightning and a wave of concussive force arced from his hand into the maw pirate. It picked up the hapless monster, flinging it through the window and across the cobbles like some ragdoll discarded by a petulant child.
Tal’s brief moment of victory was squelched as two more pirates barreled through the window, their companions ready to do the same. He summoned another thunderbolt, then another. Yet no matter he killed they just kept pouring through.
