Soul Forge (Book One of the Soul Forge series)

“Shit,” Julian cursed when he saw the creatures slinking over the rubble, undisturbed by the corpses of their brethren littering the sand beneath their feet. “Harbingers! Up, now!”

Cynthia laughed and twirled her sword, tossing her bright red hair over her shoulder and watching the Vampires step backwards into the shadows. Lillian slipped into a portal. The remaining Wraith banked low, picking up the two Corrupted to take the fight to the skies.

“Beating them will be much harder now,” Gira stated gravely from behind her, raising his voice over the wind. “Their hounds are numbering close to one hundred and one bite is fatal to anyone that isn’t Vel. The Vampires and Lillian will need to move consistently from one place to another.” As he spoke, Vel shot back into the air and set his sights on the Wraith that had cut him, letting out a vicious roar.

“What can we do?” Elda called to Gira, struggling to be heard over the wind whipping her words from her lips.

“Take us up. Get above the Wraith without being seen if you can.” Elda nodded and nudged Syd’s sides with her heels gently. The tulpar demon responded immediately, tilting into a sharp climb with a determined snort. They managed to get high enough that she hovered over the tops of Abraxos and Cynthia silently, wings barely whispering against the air with each beat. They sat side by side on the back of their mount, smiling at the carnage beginning to unfold below.

“What now?” Elda asked over her shoulder.

“Help Vel.” And then Gira’s muscles bunched and his teeth sharpened, his nails becoming claws as he morphed into his shifted form. His skin sprouted a silken layer of black fur and he gained a foot in height, his face lengthening into the muzzle of a wolf. He drew his sword and leapt off of the tulpar demon, dropping towards the Corrupted feet first and landing hard on Abraxos’ back.

Elda didn’t wait to see what happened next. Syd was already turning towards the Soul Forge as he lay waste to the multitudes of rotting black demons coating the desert floor below him, only breaking off to attack the other Wraith demon when it pecked at him. Every movement he made was determined, lightning fast, and in danger of tipping him past the point he could regain control.

Another arrow zipped through the air, Elda’s aim perfect as she turned the Wraith to ash, her shot bolstered by the strength of her Spirit. The Soul Forge whipped round to see her approaching and her heart skipped a beat at his expression. Rage. Vel was completely in control as he let out a violent hiss and pelted the ground with shadows that turned sharp, piercing ten creatures at once.

Syd circled in a complicated pattern around him, and he and Elda fired off attack after attack, but the Harbingers kept coming. Elda turned at the sound of a pained cry and saw a body plummet to the ground. Her heart lurched as one of the Vampires caught them, and the pair disappeared into the shadows again, reappearing above her to drop the injured party onto Syd’s back and then disappearing once more, only to drop out of the shadows and latch onto Vel’s ankle.

The demon looked down to see Clover hanging onto his foot, and Elda realised Yani was the person sitting behind her, bleeding from a head wound. The Wraith carrying the Corrupted lurched and Gira was tossed into the air, but Lillian appeared beside him and both of them dropped into one of her portals.

“They can’t keep that up!” Clover yelled. Both he and Yani were exhausted and sweating, their chests heaving with exertion.

“Vel, we have to leave the Harbingers for now!” Elda called. He nodded his agreement and bent to grip Clover’s free hand, helping him onto his back and angling towards the Corrupted. Syd followed immediately, eating up the distance in no time at all.

Vel tucked his wings in as much as he could and said something to Clover that Elda couldn’t hear, but she realised their plan a second later when he and the Vampire dropped out of the air and flattened Cynthia against the back of her Wraith. She grunted with the impact, and the Wraith shrieked when Gira ripped at it with his claws, climbing onto its back to make his way towards the head.

Julian was facing off against Abraxos with a stony expression, his axe spinning so fast that it blurred between each swing. Cain blocked each strike of the blade, but Abraxos was on the defensive. Cynthia was struggling to hold her own against her three attackers and the Wraith began to falter as it was peppered with arrows, hacked at with claws, smashed by Yani’s war hammer and stabbed by Clover’s sabre. Elda hardly dared to hope that they were starting to gain ground.

Everything changed when Arden rose over the horizon on a Wraith so big it cast a shadow the size of a storm cloud. It only took a second for Elda to recognise it as another Behemoth, and he was riding it.

“He’s Corrupted!” Lillian yelled to the others, spotting him in the distance.

“Damn it all to the Void!” Gira bellowed, hacking at the Wraith with renewed vigour. Elda’s heart began to pound in her throat when Abraxos and Cynthia attacked with glee, a wicked smile on both their faces as she realised they’d been biding their time. Their weakening was a trick, a clever ploy to keep everyone fighting.

Cynthia lunged and sank a long, thin dagger into Vel’s left wing, close enough to his shoulder that he wouldn’t be able to fly. He grunted in pain, punching her across the jaw so hard that she landed flat on her back. He ripped the dagger out and hurled it at her, but she rolled out of the way and the weapon buried itself to the hilt in the flesh of the Wraith, causing it to scream.

“Look out!” Clover cried, and Elda turned to see Arden’s Behemoth careening towards them at a terrifying speed. Cynthia and Abraxos leapt as it hit the smaller demon and drove it into the ground, both of them smoothly transferring to the bigger beast with amused chuckles that lingered on the air.

Lillian grabbed Gira and yanked him into a portal while Yani and Clover both reached for Julian, the three of them disappearing into darkness. Vel was the last to leave the back of the fallen Wraith, leaping for Syd when Elda called for him. He settled himself behind her quickly, one winging hanging awkwardly as he panted for breath. His injuries had stopped healing.

The tulpar demon wheeled away from the dust cloud the corpse created as it crashed into a sand dune, taking them up out of harms way. Cynthia’s whole form begin to radiate an inky darkness from the back of Arden’s Behemoth as she drew on the death in the air.

On the ground, the corpses of the fallen Harbingers began to get up, even those that were mutilated. They raised their heads and howled, the sound so high pitched and piercing that Elda began to get dizzy. She reached forwards and clapped her hands over Syd’s ears before the horse could be affected, and Vel’s hands covered her own ears as the sound reached a fever pitch. He convulsed behind her, but he gritted his teeth and clamped his legs around their mount, determined to keep his hands over Elda’s ears. She looked around frantically to see her friends on the ground some distance away, all of them with their hands over their ears to ward off the deadly noise.

The Corrupted protected their heads from the sound too, but they still had a huge advantage over their opponents. When the sound stopped, Vel shook his head, and Elda looked back to see his ears were bleeding. Those on the ground went back to leaping from place to place, once again in danger of a poisonous bite bringing about their end. Elda saw their leaps had lost vigour, and more often they dropped from the shadows instead of jumping.

“We’re going to die out here!” she yelled at Vel, who said nothing. She realised he was deafened by the sound, which meant he couldn’t hear what was approaching them.

The wing of Arden’s Behemoth slammed into Syd, sending her spinning. She dropped from the sky with a startled whinny, throwing both of her riders off as she struggled to right herself. Vel instinctively grabbed Elda and tucked himself around her, once again absorbing the impact so she didn’t have to.

She bounced off of him as he hit the sand with a grunt, the wind knocked out of her again. The second fall wasn’t as bad as the first, but her Soul Blade slipped from her grip, sliding down a sand dune. Elda couldn’t scramble after it until she was able to breathe, her arms and legs refusing to respond at first. Vel took longer to get off the ground, his injuries finally taking a toll on him as he staggered to his feet and spat blood. He stumbled, barely able to stay upright.

Elda was half way down the dune, almost to Irileth, when Cynthia dropped from the sky, planting her foot on the bow shining in the sand.

“Poor little Princess,” she crooned. “Let’s see how good you are without your precious Spirit.” She leapt, swinging Lazarus like a woman possessed. Elda barely kept herself out of reach of the poisoned blade, and she couldn’t avoid the Necromancy attacks at the same time. Her heart thundered in her chest when Cynthia almost took her head three times in quick succession.

Vel tried to help, but Abraxos joined the fight and buried the spikes of his mace into Vel’s already injured wing, sending a jolt of electricity sizzling through him. Elda was distracted by his moan of pain and Cynthia kicked her so hard in the chest that she was lifted off the ground. She coughed when she hit the sand again and rolled, narrowly avoiding her head being cut off by Lazarus a fourth time. She got to her feet and circled warily, trying to remember what she’d been taught, but the sight of Abraxos and his Behemoth overpowering her friends while the Harbingers circled like hungry animals was too much.

Cynthia attacked her in a flurry of elbows and knees and fists and boots, and all Elda could do was cover up and retreat, her arms and sides taking the brunt of each blow until her whole body throbbed and it hurt to breathe.

Vel snarled and roundhouse kicked Abraxos onto his back, ripping Cain out of his hand and levelling a second kick at his head so hard that it knocked the Corrupted out cold. Shadows erupted from Vel’s hands as he hissed, spreading out along the ground in a wave that wrapped around every single Harbinger on the sand. His rage fuelled his magic, and even though Elda could see it was agony, he still used the shadows to crush every single demon hound into a rotten black paste so Cynthia couldn’t resurrect them.

Elda had tears in her eyes when he swayed on his feet, bleeding from several injuries, and turned to see their companions still on the ground beneath Arden’s circling beast. Then he saw Elda, beaten and bleeding, hands behind her back and Lazarus at her throat. He sank to his knees, chest heaving, expression stricken.

“Play nice, demon,” Cynthia lilted, smiling serenely. “One wrong move and she loses her pretty little head.” His sword was lost somewhere in the sand, his body battered, and his wings were lopsided and trembling. He raised his shaking hands in surrender.

“Don’t kill her,” he pleaded softly, utterly exhausted.

“Kill her? Oh, I have a much better idea,” Cynthia grinned. Arden landed his behemoth nearby, his expression oddly blank. Abraxos got slowly to his feet and joined Cynthia, standing on Elda’s other side with a scowl.

“We don’t want either of you dead,” he explained, though his tone said otherwise. “Things would be much easier for us if both of you cooperated.”

“But we can get what we want without your Princess, if we have to,” the Witch purred, inspecting her nails with her free hand. Lazarus wavered at Elda’s throat, the poisoned metal coming dangerously close to touching her skin.

“He can’t h-hear you,” she stammered. “The Harbingers left him deaf.” She shot him a terrified look and saw his jaw tighten. “What do you want?”

“I want you both to behave,” Abraxos drawled, unhooking two pairs of shackles from his belt and holding them out. Vel scowled, but held his wrists out obediently. Elda had seen those shackles in a book once, etched with symbols designed to bind all types of magic. “Now stay.” Vel gritted his teeth when Abraxos snapped them around his wrist and, all at once, his magic was cut off. A similar pair were placed on Elda’s wrists, and the connection to Irileth dulled to nothing in a second. The metal bit into her skin, colder than ice despite the scorching sun.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julian quietly guiding Syd into one of Lillian’s portals with Clover’s unconscious form draped over the saddle. Lillian helped Gira limp through next and Yani followed with his arm wrapped around his ribs. Julian reappeared, reluctant to leave them behind. Vel saw and shook his head once, almost imperceptibly, but Julian understood. He crossed a fist over his chest in a salute to them both and disappeared, leaving Elda and Vel undefended against the Corrupted.

Something heavy hit the back of her skull and the world went dark.