“Heee-yah!” Darby bellows, leaping atop the barrier of detritus and side-stepping two monks entangled with a heavily bleeding City Guardsman. He jumps down at another guard, knocking aside his short sword and running the screaming man through. His penguin guards squawk after him, rolling and stabbing into the melee, monks cheering them as cricket fans would a mascot. Our man pauses on the very edge of the skirmish, watching a monk being bludgeoned over the crown with the butt of a crossbow, his limp body falling against the furniture barrier, where his head hits a chair leg with a sickening crack and twists sideways. A frosty air whips around his head as his manservant moves past him, spreading its dark clutches out at a crossbowman taking aim at our hero’s fedora brim. The guard’s mouth falls open as his weapon shatters in his hands and the seamless shadow descends upon him, pressing him to the ground, where he disappears among the dark folds. Our man watches as his hand, which is outside the edge of his servant’s shadowy body, quickly recedes into the ghoul’s body. The creature straightens, like taffy being pulled from a loose blob into a narrow strand, and its body ripples slightly, a few fragments of green feather gusting out as if from a burst pillow. Our man feels his throat contract.
Apparently he is not the only one for whom this is a fearful sight, for the guards, already being beaten back to their tower, turn tail and, some screaming and tossing aside their weapons, rush into the siege tower, glancing back in horror at the dark ghost that has entirely swallowed one of their own. A few monks scream out a cheer and grab onto the extended platform, pushing it up, its latches easily coming free of the loose debris at the edge of the roof, and slam it shut. The rest, some deathly pale, are either standing in shock or slowly retreating from the voiceless demon in their midst. Darby, straightening his ruined hat and nodding in satisfaction at the penguins regrouping around him, seems the only one unaffected.
“Heat of battle!” he cries, gesturing wildly. “Ones does what one will do. The American General Sherman told us as much! Come, men!” he points with his sword cane to the next clutch of attackers, these seemingly getting the upper hand over the monks, thrusting and punching at the corner of the roof. “Tally-ho!” None move; it seems the fight has been plucked from them, suddenly and frighteningly. “Eh, fake Leopold?” Darby points to our man expectantly. “Keeping down your first taste of war?” Our man raises an unsteady finger to object, but has no time to force out any reply. Something snaps above him, a loud whip crack, and a forceful burst of magic can be felt rushing around him, whooshing and heaving as a river burst from its banks. The siege tower before him creaks slightly and then disappears from sight, toppling over and back. A rumbling explosion from below heralds its destruction on the square below.
“They’ve cracked that hex, it seems,” he says, a bit shocked. The first time he’s seen magic used to maim, and it kills a score of men in a wooden box. It is at the same time thrilling and disappointing.
“Well thank God, now we can see some real whizz-bangers!” Darby declares. As he spits out the last word, the boom of an artillery shell explosion rocks the roof, and the whole platoon ducks, clapping arms over heads, wincing at their rattling skulls. Our man looks up at the small battle Darby had pointed at earlier, and gapes at the column of smoke and flame rising from the remains of the tip of the wooden tower. Planks and hunks of iron are raining down from around the explosion, and guardsmen all along the roof have been floored, blood pouring from their ears, some vomiting across their fronts. The monks among them stand as if no more than a summer breeze has touched them, glancing around in shock at the effects of the unexpected magic attack. A series of chest-shaking detonations at the far end of the courtyard makes our man turn his gaze out across the field of battle, where catapults are being torn apart by geysers of earth and stone. The very ground under the tiny guardsmen’s feet is boiling up, hands of gravel reaching out and dragging them down to their waists, their half-buried bodies flailing angrily at their earthen prisons.
“Good Lord,” our man says, watching the courtyard turn into a fountain of earth as towering figures of stone push themselves into the open air and begin stomping into tents and siege machines, pounding them with huge fists, arrows bouncing harmlessly off their eyeless heads. A platoon of men rushes out from one of the tents, brandishing what look like sledge hammers and huge long swords, making for the closest stone golem, but scatter and spin across the ground as the wind whips into howling maelstroms around them, dirt devils of titanic size sweeping back and forth, flinging men like a child’s tin soldiers, bouncing them off each other, tossing their weapons high in the air. “No wonder they banned it…” he mutters, watching the last of the guardsmen drop their weapons and flee, disappearing down alleyways and main roads, some of their cries drifting up over the sounds of smashing wood and roaring wind below.
“Eh?” Darby asks, moving to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. Our man glances at it, mouth pulled to one side, and the viscount removes it, chuckling awkwardly.
“Europeans haven’t used magic in battle since Napoleon,” he replies, blankly, shocked at himself for spouting history in the midst of such a vital moment. “Offensive magic was outlawed in the Congress of Vienna.”
“Ah,” Darby replies, obviously uninterested. The explosions below and around them, already intermittent, disappear entirely, and the stone golems in the courtyard below collapse in on themselves, piles of rock that burrow down back below the ground. The cyclones puff out into slight gusts that toss about the tattered remains of the war tents. As monks turn to each other, hugging or merely nodding in recognition of the battle they’ve just won, and the remaining guards on their feet raise their hands in surrender, flinging their weapons aside, some even tearing off the green plumes from their helmets, the ghostly lights hovering above the field begin to wink out, one by one erasing the battle entirely, smoothing out this unhealthy wrinkle on the face of the city. Figures, some with tall hats on their heads, others draped in arabesque robes, appear in the darkness, their shadows moving among the wounded, muttering and moving their hands, forcing life and health back into the causalities of war.
The arbarians, still swaying along the roof in the darkness, begin humming another song. It lacks the alien hollowness of their earlier melody, but is just as powerful, ringing in deep resonance somewhere in our man’s stomach, soothing his dark horror, an unexpected husk of battle left rotting within his body. It is easy to forget, caught up in this sonorous buzz, that he has killed men today and watched them pierce each other in battle, spreading their blood across a holy Citadel’s stone walls.
Submit Thread for Judgment
