Soul Forge (Book One of the Soul Forge series)

“Fuck!” Sypher hissed. “She must be insane!”

“Why? Does she not have the control to keep going?” Elda asked. Sypher’s eyes were wide, his throat bobbing when he swallowed. Her heart dropped into her boots when she realised he was afraid.

“It’s worse than that,” he answered.

“Then what?”

“Ose. I’ve never been close enough to the mountains to recognise her, but it’s unmistakeable.”

“Who’s Ose?” Elda asked reluctantly.

“The only Behemoth to ever escape me. She almost killed me the first time we crossed paths.” He was still flying towards Lillian at breakneck speed, intent on catching the Fae. “She concealed herself in the mountain where she’s been resting for over six hundred years, and now Lillian is using ancient magic right beside her.”

“She’s going to wake her up,” Elda gasped.

“She’s going to get us all killed.” His voice became a growl as he allowed Vel to take the reins, hands clamping around her thighs. His skin paled, dark veins spreading out around his left eye. The pupil expanded to swallow the red, blacker than sin as he shot forwards like a cannon ball. Elda flattened herself against his back, stomach lurching when his speed threatened to unseat her.

“What are you going to do?” she called out, eyes watering in the gale.

“Rip her off that fucking mountain and drag her back to Valdren myself,” Vel snarled. "Lillian!" At the sound of his voice, ice laced with a razor sharp edge of steel, the Fae dropped onto a rocky ledge and turned, her head whipping round to gawk at them. She yelped when Vel switched courses and gripped her around the waist, the very tip of his left wing skimming the mountain side as he yanked her from the rock.

“Let go of me!” Lillian screamed, slamming the hilt of her katana against his hands, but Vel was enraged. He kept a firm grip on her, wings beating fiercely to put distance between them and the mountain before the beast inside could wake.

“Lillian, stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!” Elda called.

“Oh fuck off, Princess!” the Fae screamed, swinging her legs to try and throw him off course. When that didn’t work she slashed the air with her sword.

“Lillian, no!” But Elda’s scream was futile. Vel threw out his wings, grunting when they caught the wind and strained in an attempt to arrest their flight. It was too late. They hurtled through the portal and straight into the mountain side. All Vel could do was turn his body to stop the two women taking the brunt of the impact.

There was a crunch as the fine bones of his left wing shattered and Elda gasped when the air was pushed from her lungs, her brain rattling in her skull. Vel’s grip faltered and she fell. Lillian dropped too, landing heavily on a ledge of rock and rolling until her back touched the flat side of the mountain.

Elda was in a free fall, hurtling towards the ground with enough speed to smash her bones to dust. She knew Lillian wouldn’t try to use her portals to help, if she was even conscious. The elf couldn’t even close her eyes as the ground rushed up to meet her.

Something constricted around her waist and then Vel’s feathered wings were in her view and she was looking up at the sky. Somehow, even with his shattered wing, he’d caught up to her.

The impact was hard enough to rattle her bones, sending stars bursting across her vision when she bounced along the hard-packed sand and rock, coming to rest a few feet away from where she landed. She laid in a daze for what felt like hours, too winded to move.

When she finally remembered where she was, she sat up slowly and looked over at Vel. He was on his hands and knees, his wings battered and twitching in pain. Blood dripped onto the sand, pouring from his nose and mouth. From the way his chest heaved, it was obvious he’d sustained serious injury. It was a miracle he was even conscious.

Elda crawled over to him on her hands and knees, legs still too wobbly to stand. She laid a hand on his shoulder while he coughed, spitting more blood into the sand. The sight of him wheezing and agonised made her heart pound in her throat. He sat back heavily and turned his head to study her.

“Hurt?” he grunted. She shook her head. “Good. I think...I collapsed...a lung.” He pressed a hand to his chest and grimaced, the runes at his neck glowing as he healed some of the damage. “Always hurts when I have to do it to myself,” he muttered, but his breathing was even again.

“We’re too late,” Elda realised, looking over at the last place she’d seen Lillian. “She’s gone.”

“Our best hope now is that Ose’s magic kills her before the Corrupted can find her.”

“We have to go after her,” Elda insisted.

“Like fuck we do,” Vel snorted. “She made her choice. I’m not fighting a Behemoth for a woman I’d much rather behead. Especially not that Behemoth. Ose is-” He froze, mid-rant, and turned slowly to face the mountain. Elda felt a faint, ominous vibration beneath her hands. “Awake,” Vel finished, visibly sagging. “Ose is awake.”

“What do we do?”

Vel shrugged. “Die, probably.”

“I’m serious! We need a plan!” she yelped, scrambling to her feet. The tremors grew, rising until they rivalled an earthquake. Chunks of stone began to detach themselves from the mountain, sending plumes of sand flying into the air wherever they landed.

“I have to kill her,” Vel groaned. “If Ose reaches the cities, there’ll be nothing left of them.” He sighed and rolled his neck, turning to face the mountain and looking back over his shoulder. “I spend my time shackled, varro. I’m amiable around you because the Angel always has some sort of influence on me, even if he doesn’t realise it. To beat this thing, I need to shut the Angel out as much as I can.”

“What are you saying?”

“He’ll still be there to try and help me regain my rationality, but if I can’t come back from this with his help, kill me.” Before she could ask what he meant, his head jerked to the side, neck rolling as he unleashed more of his demonic nature. A wave of undiluted energy rolled off of him, the metallic taste she remembered from the first time she’d met the demon settling on Elda’s tongue. The veins around his eye spread down his throat, his injuries healing effortlessly as his sharpened teeth lengthened into fangs. Shadows rose from his skin like smoke as his umbramancy was allowed to flourish.

Elda backed away, her brain screaming at her to run, to get away from the thing that wasn’t Sypher, or even the Vel she knew. She made sure to get out of his peripheral vision, fearing that he’d see her and forget the Behemoth altogether. She felt shame at being afraid, but it was overridden by her alarm.

A huge hand tipped with long, skeletal fingers burst from the summit of the mountain like a volcanic eruption, sending dust and rock soaring upwards. The whole structure began to crumble, raising enough sand to darken the sky and cast the desert into temporary shadow. Elda threw an arm up to shield her eyes from the grit, turning away to avoid breathing it in.

When the sand finally settled and the rumbling stopped, a creature taller than the mountain stood before them. Its frame was slender and elongated, skeletal ribs showing through stretched skin. Its arms were so long they hung down past its knees, giving it an incredible reach. From its head sprouted two massive horns, curving upwards, almost forming a circle. It took a moment for Elda to realise the red pinpoints of light decorating those horns were eyes, placed there so the disproportionately small head could be entirely dominated by a wide, fang-lined mouth.

Ose opened her maw and shrieked, the sound striking a bass so low it made Elda’s teeth hurt. She clapped her hands over her ears but she could still feel the thundering boom of Ose’s voice in her bones. It was so loud that it put pressure on her lungs, vibrating through her ribs until her pulse thundered.

Vel opened his mouth and screamed right back, the inhuman sound echoing its own concussive force towards the towering Behemoth, carrying across the desert with just as much ease despite his smaller size. Ose rose to the challenge, stepping out of her rocky bed to meet him. He took off with such force that the wind from his wings buffeted Elda back a step, streaking towards the Behemoth like lightning now there was no passenger on his back. Silhouetted against the sun, it was easy to mistake him for an Angel.

Elda unhooked her bow from her shoulder and sighted Ose, pulling the string back as far as it would go. She let the arrow that appeared gather energy, feeling it build inside her as Irileth fuelled it until her whole body buzzed with power. She released it before Vel could reach the Behemoth, watching it streak through the air and shatter against her massive chest. Ose howled at the ice encasing her ribs, the howl becoming a scream when Vel immediately blinded two of her sixteen eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” a voice hissed, and then Elda’s Soul Blade was yanked from her grasp. She whirled to find Lillian staring at her in horror, the weapon clutched in her fist.

“Helping him! What does it look like I’m doing?” Elda snapped, reaching for the bow that Lillian held too high for her to grab.

“You’re helping a beast as bad as the Behemoth,” the Fae retorted “When he’s done with her, he’ll come for us!”

“Give me back my bow!” Elda yelled, kicking out Lillian’s knee with enough force to knock her into the sand.

“You’re making a mistake, moron!” She scrambled backwards and swept her leg round, knocking the elf onto her back and laying her katana against Elda’s jugular. “You saw him. It’s too late to help him now.” The elf tried to struggle but every move was countered with a knee or an elbow pressing painfully into the joint. “He taught me all the tricks he’s taught you, Princess.”

Elda scrabbled for a handful of sand and threw it, making Lillian flinch and withdraw the sword. She smashed her forehead into the Fae’s nose and rolled out of the way.

“I guess you forgot that one!” Elda quipped, snatching up her bow and aiming at Lillian. In the background Ose roared and swiped for Vel when he flew between her horns, picking off her eyes one by one. “Get up.”

“You can’t seriously want to go back over there?” Lillian asked, sheathing her katana and raising her hands in surrender. “You’ll die.”

“I will if I go alone.”

“No way. I’m not going with you. This is a fool’s errand.”

“You brought us here!” Elda yelled.

“That was before I knew there was a fucking Behemoth in the mountain!” the Fae roared back. Elda relaxed the bow and the arrow disappeared. She was wasting too much time on Lillian.

“Fine. Stay here then.” She turned away, intending to jog towards the fighting beasts, but a grip on her bow made her turn as the Fae once again tried to take her weapon. Elda gritted her teeth, spun, and roundhouse kicked her across the face. Her head snapped back, eyelids fluttering before she crumpled in the sand. “Coward,” she growled.

She drew closer to the fighting, close enough that she was almost in danger of being stepped on, and definitely in danger of being crushed by the chunks of rock Ose kept hurling at her attacker. Vel swooped and wheeled between her swiping hands, aiming for the remaining two eyes still gleaming from her horns.

Elda loosed three arrows in quick succession, targeting knees, elbows, even Ose’s face. The Behemoth threw back her head and let out another howl, stomping her foot down right where Elda was standing. She dove out of the way, coming up in a roll and firing another arrow that exploded against the giant ankle, weighing it down with a heavy shackle of ice.

Her concentration on one foot meant she missed the other one aiming to crush her, only just managing to get clear as it slammed down into the sand. Elda was flung backwards and showered with dust, rolling along the ground a few times before coming to a stop.

Vel blinded another eye while the Behemoth was busy, only to be swatted out of the sky by her massive hand. He hit the ground hard, wings buckling, one arm snapping at the elbow, his sword lodging in the sand. He snarled, got to his feet and grabbed the sword in his uninjured hand, the bones of his wings already healing. He was back in the sky and angrier than ever, aiming right for the centre point of Ose’s chest.

Elda loosed another flurry of arrows, distracting the Behemoth as best she could. The creature screamed and swung for her when its massive fist was encased in ice, barely able to see her through its one remaining eye. She was almost crushed, but the creature stopped mid-swing, rearing back to scream when Vel dug his sword into its chest and sheared downwards, dropping his body weight onto the blade to vertically open the massive sternum. Elda gasped when he tore the ribcage outwards with his gloved hands, ignoring Ose’s thrashing and keening, and smashed her heart to paste before setting it on fire.

The creature crumpled. Elda ran, realising she was about to be flattened under the mammoth corpse, lungs screaming as her legs struggled to carry her across the shifting sand. Her boots kept sinking and Vel was too far gone to help her.

Use the bow, Irileth insisted in her mind. She heeded the suggestion and aimed at the ground behind her, still sprinting when she fired blindly into the sand. The concussive impact blasted her off her feet, pitching her forwards just far enough to avoid the enormous elbow falling towards her head.

Scrambling to her feet, chest heaving, Elda watched the dust settle, waiting for any sign that Vel had survived the fall. She got her sign when the arm moved, pushed aside by a pair of gloved hands. Vel stumbled out from beneath the Behemoth corpse and straightened up, the speed of his healing a dead giveaway that he still wasn’t himself.

She looked to where Lillian sat in the sand less than fifty feet away, still drowsy from being kicked in the head. When Elda looked back at Vel, he was already staring at the Fae. His head turned slowly and their eyes locked, neither of them moving, and then he zeroed in on Lillian and let out a vengeful hiss.

Elda fired an arrow at him and ran.