Chapter Eighteen: Sypher…

Sypher staggered under the weight of the half-Orc, grunting at the arms thrown around his neck. Edward squeezed hard enough to make his bones creak in protest.

“Thank the Creators!” he gasped into Sypher’s shoulder. “If you’re here, Sorrel and the others made it to Eden.”

“Yes they did.” The Angel pulled back and frowned at Edward. “But you all should have been with them.” He turned to look out over the barricade erected around the inn. A thousand dead-eyed stares gazed back. On the ground, it suddenly felt like there were a lot more of them.

“If we left with them, there’d be nothing to distract the dead.” Edwards eyes were filled with tears. “You understand how it has to be when the people you love are at risk.”

Sypher nodded, sighing at the ground. Edward had long since harboured affection for Sorrel, even before her husband died. “Sorrel and her daughter will be safe behind Eden’s walls. You’ll see them again,” he promised.

Before Edward could say anything else, the Soul Forge turned to the meagre army Kilmarthen had assembled. They were strong, obviously used to working the surrounding farms, but only a few had seen battle.

“Everyone stop,” he barked over the noise of a thousand feet churning in the mud beyond the shuddering wall. The men and women froze. “How many of you know how to use a weapon.” Every hand went up. “How many of you have killed a demon?” Three hands remained in the air, including Edward’s. Sypher turned his gaze on a red haired woman with thick arms and a fierce stare. “You. How many of you are there?”

“Thirty,” she replied.

“Divide yourselves into units of ten. The three who have killed before will lead each unit. If you want to live, you listen to me. Is that understood?” A chorus of agreements sounded. “Gather every bit of flammable liquid you can find. Every spirit, every barrel of oil, any explosives if you have them.”

“We stored the defensive materials in the inn cellar,” Edward piped up. “In case we had a demon attack and you couldn’t get here in time.”

“Get every last one of them out. Take your unit to help.” Sypher turned and located the red head again. “What’s your name?”

“Merridwen.”

“Merridwen, take your unit and check the barricade for weak spots.” He looked to the last unit leader. “Name?”

“Cedric," the meaty blonde man replied.

“Take your people and follow her. The barrier has to hold.”

“And what will you do?” Merridwen asked, balancing her war hammer across her shoulders.

“Something stupid, most likely,” Sypher replied. “Go.” They nodded and ran to their stations. He took a deep breath and climbed to the top of the only shed still standing within the barricade, surveying the crowd of corpses. “Hephaestus, if you can hear me, I need something. Anything,” he pleaded softly. “These people deserve to survive, and without my magic I can’t keep them alive.” The silence that echoed back at him was a punch to the gut. He nodded slowly. “Guess I’m on my own then.”

Ember swept down and snatched him off the shed at his signal, banking left as he walked up her spine and found his seat.

We are together.

“We are.” He patted her neck.

If you will not leave these people to their fate, then we shall stay together.

“Just make sure you eat me before I turn. Malakai getting hold of me as a mindless slave is worse than branding me with a rune.”

I will grind you to paste for getting us killed, she promised, a hint of rueful humour in her tone. What is your plan?

“Clear a border around the barricade and reinforce it. If I still had earth magic I could create a wall, but we’ll have to make do with a pile of bodies.”

This will take a long time.

“I know.”

And we will be among the walking dead.

“I know.”

I hope the Spirits heard your plea.

“They didn’t.”

Ember flew in a wide circle around the inn, swooping dangerously low and using her barbed tail as a club, pulverising scores of the undead in a single pass. Sypher held tight as she repeated the manoeuvre again and again, littering the muddied field with bodies.

Inside the barricade, Edward and his unit had gathered a pile of barrels from the cellar and set about making improvised bombs from the airtight stores of phosphorous. Sypher’s brows raised - there was enough to blow the whole village sky high.

If only the horde was half the size, Ember remarked, making another pass over the crowds and setting them alight with searing blue fire. Some of the bodies lit up like kindling, but others didn’t seem to catch.

“The newer bodies don’t burn as well,” he murmured, dread turning his stomach. “Somebody has altered the necromancy spell since Bratus.”

That should be impossible. Cynthia has no Soul Blade.

“But she’s Rune Bound now. Malakai has found a way to keep her strong even without Lazarus.”

Fate must really hate you, Ember mused.

“Fate can fuck itself,” Sypher muttered, surveying the bodies layering the ground all around the barricade. “Let’s get back to the survivors.”

Ember landed carefully on the inn roof, roof tiles clattering around her when she shifted to let him climb down her back and drop from the end of her tail to the ground a few feet below. He strode straight for the barrels.

“We have ten phosphorous barrels and thirty barrels of absinthe,” Merridwen said immediately. “It’ll take a lot to pierce the seal on them though.”

“Dragonfire should do it.” He hefted one of the barrels onto his shoulder and walked it back to Ember. “Throw it right into the centre of the crowd and set it alight.” She did as he asked, taking the barrel in her talons and tossing it. It hit the mud with a thump seventy feet away, taking down several corpses. The dragon lifted away from the inn to glide smoothly overhead, letting out a quick burst of fire and swerving away. She was barely clear when the flames pierced the airtight seal and an inferno burst from the barrel.

The blast was concussive, flattening every corpse within a fifty foot radius. Fire followed the shockwave, incinerating everything it touched. The heat was so intense that Sypher had to squint against it, but when the haze cleared the carnage was incredible.

He climbed nimbly over the barrier, beckoning Edward and his unit. They followed more slowly, all of them petrified but alert. The half-orc kept his axe in one hand and a long dagger in the other, eyes darting over the dismembered arms and legs like they might reach out and grab him.

“What now?” he asked.

“Start piling,” Sypher replied. “Check the bodies first to make sure they’re not still animated.”

“And if they are?” asked a short, balding man with a blacksmith hammer in his hand.

Sypher bent and slipped his knife into the temple of a woman who was nothing but a head and a torso, her jaws still gnashing. He wiped the blade clean on the remnants of her tunic and looked up at the blacksmith.

“Then end their suffering,” he said simply.

“They can’t be helped? Some of those people are our families,” another voice protested.

“They’re dead,” Sypher answered bluntly, lifting the torso and dragging it to the barricade. “This isn’t a disease - it’s magic. Necromancy like this only works if the subject is already dead.”

“So my mother?” the same woman asked.

“Dead. Children. Friends. Brothers and sisters. Fathers, priests, lords and beggars.” Sypher grabbed another body and started to move it. “This plague doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t pity and it doesn’t stop. If you hesitate, you will die.”

“Our families are gone!” the blacksmith snapped. “Do you have to be so cold?”

“Yes.” Sypher moved to stand over him, hyper-aware of the wall of corpses struggling to their feet too close for comfort. “Do what I tell you, or you will die. Understand?”

“You can’t kill us for not listening! We’re not soldiers!” the woman screeched. “Demon or not, you have no right!”

Sypher turned and shot her a blank stare. “Summer, five years ago. Your roof caught fire. Who dragged you from your house?”

She blinked, some of the anger leaving her. “You did.”

He turned and pointed at the blacksmith. “Your son was dragged off by the Arachna and almost lost his leg two years ago. Who killed the horde and stopped him bleeding out?”

The blacksmith’s brow furrowed. “You did.”

“That’s right. I did. A demon. If I wanted you dead, I’d leave you all here to meet your fate.” He stalked to the nearest body and started moving it. “Help me, or leave.”

One by one, the unit started piling bodies up at the barricade. Ember landed and used her powerful tail to sweep the corpses towards the wall, sending bursts of scalding blue flame outwards to give the group space.

They are too close, nirehni. She took flight just before the first rotting hand could graze her scales.

“Back over the wall!” Sypher yelled, drawing his sword to slash at the undead that got too close. They began to press inwards, rot and death so thick in the air that it turned his stomach.

His mortal heart pounded, lungs aching as he darted back and forth, cutting down corpse after corpse while the unit clambered slowly - so slowly - over the bodies and back inside the precarious safety of the barricade. He was running out of time, out of breath, and the dead were relentless.

One of them lunged, getting a grip on the cuff of his glove and yanking. Sypher let his hand slip free before it could pitch him forwards into a dozen waiting arms, but the rake of nails across his knuckles was unmistakeable.

He heard nothing. Not the roar of his dragon, or the tramping of numb feet through churned earth. He didn’t hear the clicking of jaws grinding in hunger. His entire world narrowed to the thin scratches and the pin pricks of blood welling on the back of his hand.

And then he shut it down, shoving the shock aside and sliding into the comfortable suit of a soldier. Now was what mattered. The lives behind the barricade.

He climbed over the stacked bodies and overturned carts to instruct the units again, tossing barrel after barrel, working until every inch of the barricade was reinforced by the fallen undead. Only one phosphorus bomb remained when they were finished.

The hordes of shambling bodies had thinned enough that the edges of the crowd were visible in front of the tree line, but there were still hundreds left to deal with.

Day had turned to night, thick darkness only broken by the blue flicker of Ember’s fire. The people were sweating, smeared with dirt and aching from hours of attacking the afflicted in waves. Dragonfire cleared an opening, the units topped the barricade using the piled bodies as a hill to keep them out of the grasping fingers and biting jaws, and the makeshift corpse wall withstood the press of those still able to walk.

The odds had been insurmountable, yet the inn stood. The barricade held. The people tapped into reserves of energy that seemed to come from nowhere.

But Sypher was dead. A walking corpse. His hand, though only lightly wounded, refused to stop bleeding. He tore a sleeve off his tunic and used it to bind the wound, ignoring the looks the survivors gave him.

He ignored them until the last shambling corpse was cut down, fighting like a man possessed, and when it collapsed in front of him, he dropped to his knees in the dirt. Heaving breaths passed through his lungs, every limb trembling with exhaustion.

The first drops of rain pattered against the ground around him, like the world was trying to wash away the stain left behind by the Necromancy. He didn’t move even when it began to pour, running down the silken feathers of his wings in rivulets.

Ember stayed twenty feet away, her nose low to the ground. A mournful wail issued from her, the sound cutting right down to his soul. Heavy footsteps squelched through mud and blood.

“Sypher.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Edward sighed and crouched beside him in the dirt, water dripping from his dark curls. “You were scratched.” Sypher nodded. “I notice you used no magic to fight them. Why?”

“I’m mortal.”

Silence, then... “You’re not immune to this magic-induced plague.” It wasn't a question.

“No.”

“And you still risked yourself to save us.” Tears welled in the half-orc’s bright green eyes. “The Spirits ask too much of you, friend. And we never, never deserved you.” Edward folded him into a tight embrace. “I will follow you until the disease takes hold, and I will do what must be done when it comes to it.”

Sypher thought of refusing. He thought of running himself through with his own sword, but that would kill Ember too. He had to find a way to break their bond before the necromancy killed him.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “You must not hesitate.”

“I won’t.” Edward clapped him on the back, then stood and offered him a hand up. Sypher accepted, allowing himself to be dragged to his feet. “Go console your dragon.

Edward left him then, heading back to the barricade to inform the rest of the survivors of what had happened to their Soul Forge. Sypher trudged through the mud, stopping a foot away from his bonded.

There is no cure. No prevention. You are mortal and you will die.

“I know.”

You risked yourself for people who would sooner forget the good you have done! she snapped, snarling and baring her teeth at him.

He didn't flinch. “I know.”

Why, nirehni? Why would you leave me? Sypher had never known a dragon could cry, but fat, glittering tears rolled down Ember’s cheeks, guttural sobs barking from her chest.

“I will find a way to save you before I die,” he promised. “But protecting people is my purpose. I know nothing else.”

You have damned yourself and Valerus along with you!

“Not if Hephaestus removes my power for good.” Sypher laid his uninjured hand on her scaled nose. “We return to Eden as soon as we’re able. The monolith must be destroyed before I turn.” His smile was empty. “Perhaps then I can set you free.”

Ember threw back her head and screamed at the night.