Necropolis Endur - year 21 under reign of Precentor Riva
~~~
Azekiel shuddered in the icy breeze carrying the stink of rotting blood. The hallway in which she stood watch intersected with another path, forming a ‘T’-shape with her at the center, stretching far in every direction. The domed ceiling hovered more than nine feet above her, making her feel small and insignificant. Gothic stone arches wove along the ceiling like threads of a giant spider web, flickering and dancing in the unsteady light of sooty, smoking torches. The higher she gazed, the blacker the walls got, be it because of the smoke or because of some intended effect to show the heavens as nothing else but a dark hell in itself.
The young woman— more of an old girl, really, having lived only eighteen seasonal turns so far— had won the favors of her superiors in such a manner, she had gotten this highly valued watch post as a reward. Her post lay directly between the council chambers, the breeding halls and the garden entrance, making it one of the safest and most secure places in all of Endur, but also one of the most important ones.
The only peculiar thing about this new post was the fact, that never before the Order of Neq’roth had let any of the city watch into their necropolis… until now, which still was cause for uproar in the ranks of the lower clergy and even some of the city folk. It had been common hold for centuries to only have knights or squires of the Order itself guard the halls of the inner sanctum, the necropolis that lay in the center of the sprawling city of Endur. A lowly commoner like Azekiel would have only seen the inside of the necropolis for two reasons: to die as a sacrifice, or to be accepted into the ranks of the Order, an honor bestowed only on three guardsmen or guardswomen per year. But something had changed recently, and although no-one knew what exactly had prompted it, it kept everyone on edge.
The commander-at-arms of Endur had been ordered to send five subordinates he deemed fit into the necropolis for guard duty, and the simple fact that Azekiel, young, nervous Azekiel was one of them gave her high hopes to be chosen for the Order’s entry trials next spring. Her! A holy squire!
The delicate ornamental bardiche groaned beneath her tightening hand, and Azekiel froze instantly. Carefully checking the position of her weapon out of the corner of her eye she pulled the stave weapon back into the required angle, only daring to breathe again when it was held perfectly again. Nobody had seen her slip, except for the Lich King himself, and if it pleased Him to do so, he would strike her as he saw fit.
Still, she had been lucky this time. Negligence like this, falling out of the required posture, were punished with two dozen hits with the cane. Torturers were known to get bored with such easy punishments, and that meant they got creative in respect to where to hit their victims. They always found the most interesting, most painful places then.
Her commander-at-arms had told all five of them about the punishments, making it very clear to them that he would add to it if they brought shame to his name. They were to represent the faithful, loyal city and their townspeople, to show their respect for the necropolis and their god Neq’roth, and they were expected to prove their willingness to conform to the high standards usually shown by squires of the Order.
It had sounded quite reasonable at first. But after one week and the increasing pains produced by standing around frozen for more than twelve hours a day Azekiel was quite unsure if she’d ever be able to match the endurance and backbone shown by the members of the Order who endured this for years on end, every day. It only took a few days for her to remember not to salute if somebody walked by, and three dozen hits with a cane every time she slipped helped her along. Guards of the Necropolis had to stand frozen like proud, decorative columns, only allowed to move if a direct threat emerged. Everything else would have disturbed the clergy, their priests and necromancers performing their rites and magic behind the giant black iron doors in the center, too much.
For the same reason Azekiel had quickly learned how to put on her gleaming black guard uniform correctly. Pain was a great, effective motivator, and every time she did it wrong she would come back to her room covered in scrapes, scratches and bruises everywhere the armor had ground into her body.
This week had been an eye-opening learning experience for her. She knew now the difference between the lowly city guard of Endur, and the guards in the city’s heart, the Necropolis. And she knew how little hardships she had experienced so far in comparison to the holy clergy she had always aspired to join.
The great council doors opened with a soft grinding noise. It was impossible to move such giant gate wings soundlessly, their weight was just too great for it, but they were greased enough to dampen the grating to a soft, buttery grind.
Azekiel froze even more, tensing her whole body to stand as still as possible and resisted the urge to look to the side and find out what was going on. A band of thirteen necrolytes walked by without a single glance in her direction, as custom for middle-rank clerics. The only sound coming from them was the soft swish of their black robes. Maybe they were bare-footed, but Azekiel didn’t find the willpower to look.
Behind those clerics a group of four Death Knights, commanders of their own power, walked out of the council halls, filling the creeping silence with the soft thrum of chain-mail and heavy boots on hard obsidian stone. They also passed her without a second glance, but this time Azekiel didn’t feel the urge to have a look at them. They were dangerous, and they were closer to Neq’roth than any other rank of warriors could ever hope to be. If they caught her gaping like a kid they would probably not bother with a cane, but instead use more permanent measures of reprimand.
A short silence followed, and the longer it went on, the harder Azekiel’s heart beat. The council doors were still wide open, and they weren’t supposed to be. It was considered heresy not to close them after walking through. Just when Azekiel thought she would have to run over there and close them herself or die of a nervous stroke she heard another set of voices come closer. One of them she recognized instantly as Death Lord Malaner, highest of the Death Knights and a fearsome sight to anyone who dared to look at him. She had dared only once, and only when she had been certain he wouldn’t notice. His skin was pale like a funeral shroud, his face completely hairless and haggard, and he was tall enough to bridge two of her steps with one of his. The other voice though was unknown to her. Azekiel didn’t want to listen to their conversation, but her duty didn’t leave her much choice, especially not when they stopped just out of sight but close enough to understand every single word. Luckily none of them spared her so much as a glance either.
The unknown voice spoke first, making Azekiel reel from the shower of profanities. “Ulder’s troops have advanced to the north cliffs in the last two months, so don’t tell me our regiment has repelled them, Malaner! Empty words and lies may sound good enough for your women to lift their skirts, but not for me! If that blasphemer is able to advance even more he will stand before the gates of Endor soon - too soon! And then, my dear Malaner, it will be your head on a pike, right next to mine!”
“The Yespharites won’t be able to cross the north cliffs before the onset of winter,” Malaner replied with a strangely calm demeanor. Was that respect in his voice? “And even if they manage to cross two thirds of the pass, the ice will kill them. Our troops are ready, the acolythes have already congregated at the western fort, and we are far better prepared for the cold than those heretics. You see, precentor, there is no reason to fear failure.”
Precentor, he had said. Even if Azekiel had wanted to breathe, right now she wouldn’t have been able to even if Neq’roth himself had ordered her to. The god-sent himself was standing not a breath away from her!
“Failure, Malaner, means eternal agony. To disappoint the Lich King by disappointing me will bring greater anguish to you in your lifetime than you could ever dream of. Remember this!” Another swish of cloth sounded, then the two men passed her with the same disinterest everyone else had shown her. She could have been a picture or a curtain for all they cared. They turned right in front of her and walked down the hallway, giving her a chance to stare at their backs as she relearned to breathe, then they turned away from each other and disappeared in two different directions.
Azekiel could feel her mouth gaping open. The presence of the precentor, highest of all servants of Neq’roth still tingled over her skin like another kind of cold breeze. How had she earned such a blessing in her lifetime?
Finding her nerve took a long time, but when Azekiel finally did, she remembered what had been spoken. She hadn’t understood everything, the name Ulder didn’t mean anything to her for example, but some bits and pieces did make sense to her. The precentor had made an impression of worry about this Ulder, and a sense of acute danger nestled in her hearts for a few moments. She also didn’t know what a Yespharite was, but this word she had heard once before, read from a list of mortal enemies of Endur. This put those Yespharites on the same level of worth as renegades and the Order of Imaeath, and therefor was not worthy the ground she was standing on, and certainly not a second thought.
Still, the conversation had circled around war, a war that no inhabitant of Endur had heard of until now. Maybe this impending war was the reason why the Order of Neq’roth had asked for town guards for the necropolis? Maybe the usual guards had all gone to war?
Stopping her train of thought Azekiel sighed softly. All this war talk didn’t concern her, not as long as she wasn’t a member of the Order. Not until she was one of the chosen. Until then she would do her duty as she was supposed to, and put her trust in her god Neq’roth.
City of Endur - Beginning of winter, year 21 under reign of Precentor Riva
~~~
The first snow of the season was falling, weeks after the temperatures had plummeted enough to freeze the world. The flakes fell like flecks of ash, tumbling lightly and confusedly from the heavens with no gust of wind to distract their drunken dance. The firmament above was gray with thick clouds blocking out the weak rays of sun, tinting every street of Endur in twilight.Azekiel followed the tanner’s road towards the main road with single-minded, tempered steps, closing in on the western city gate. Her chain-mail harness clattered against the plate mail protection on her thighs with every step she took, dampened only by the thick gambeson embroidered with the city symbol, a star with thirteen barbs instead of the typical spikes. The rhythm of her armor led her steps along without having to think about it, and without it she probably would have fallen down a long time ago. Exhaustion was eating her body and mind alive, sapping her strength, eating her focus and her thoughts, her resistance, but not her will. It kept her going where others had already fallen and not stood up again.
It had been nearly two months since her eavesdropping on the Precentor and the Death Lord Malaner, and slowly but surely the decay she hadn’t wanted to notice then had become impossible to ignore. When at the beginning only five city guards had been ordered into the necropolis, it had become ten after two more weeks, and after another three weeks twenty. And finally the last group of Death Knights had left the city just a week ago, building a long, solemn file of worshipers riding to war for their faith and their god, Neq’roth, the Lich King.
It hadn’t stopped there though. Since that day when the doors had fallen shut behind the last armed forces of the Order, the city guard had taken over not only the doubled guard duties along the walls of Endur, but also all the guard shifts in the necropolis. Now each and every one of them, from recruit to officer, had eighteen hours of work every day, all day. They were barely able to shake off their armor when they fell onto their cots at the end of their shift, all of them. This had been going on for six days.
Only the fearsome, pale Malaner and three of his Death Knights, the Precentor and the Nekrarch - highest of the necromancers and consult of the Precentor - were left in the necropolis, keeping to the council chambers and the ritual grounds. Everything else was silent, dead, empty, except for the guards faithfully keeping watch over empty halls. Azekiel remembered vividly what had happened when her commander-in-arms had asked Malaner to seal off the unused parts of the necropolis to lower the work load for the guard. He had died for his blasphemy. The new commander-at-arms was very motivated to not make the same mistake and drove them like towing horses, although he lost good people to it left and right.
When Azekiel reached the great outer wall leading along her route, she could hear the steps of the guardsmen from above. She looked up without stopping, because stopping would probably have made her fall down and not get up again. The guards up at the wall felt most likely the same way she did, after all they-
A strange, reddish-golden patina lightened the night sky above the great wall, looking like little more than a small spark of light from her perspective. Lost in thought and captured by the sheer beauty of that splotch of color in all the gray above Azekiel didn’t hear the muted thunder instantly. She only noticed it when it got louder, closer, and it was a strange, alien sound she couldn’t quite place.
Suddenly a call from the top of the wall shook her out of her day-dreaming and had her wide awake. “Alarm! Alarm!”
Turning on her heels she staggered for a moment from sheer exhaustion and panic, then she started running. It took her a few seconds to figure out where to run first, as she was required to give word to the commander’s office first, but seeing as how everyone able to respond was already on their way, and the rest probably unconscious from exhaustion, it wouldn’t do any good. Instead she decided to run to the necropolis to inform the guards there.
How exhausted she was and how damn heavy her armor was only dawned on her when she tried to catch her breath against the deadly tip of Malaner’s sword, staring into his cold, dead eyes. He had pulled his sword and swung it around to point at her throat so quickly she would have impaled herself, had she not already tried to stop at the threshold and thus slowed down in time. Surprisingly the death lord showed the most restraint she had ever seen on him, waiting motionlessly for her to cough out the reason for her committing uncountable sacrileges by bursting into the council hall and disturbing the active discussion there.
It took her a few breathless moments to finally gasp, “the guard at the western gate has sounded the alarm, oh righteous one, the sky is on fire!” Once she had wrenched out those words though, Malaner instantly lost interest in her and simply sheathed his sword as he quickly walked by her. Azekiel felt a small drop of blood trickle down her throat where the sword had cut her skin, shaking with the realization how close she had just come to death.
His three death knights who had watched their exchange with expressionless faces silently stood up and followed him out, once again treating the female guard more or less like furniture. She didn’t mind, she had to recover her breath, and only then decided to follow them cautiously.
As the group of four left the outer doors of the necropolis they were joined by eight guards Malaner silently beckoned to his side. They walked as quick as they could towards the glowing, smoking hellfire on the horizon above the western gate, and finally into the chaos of soldiers, guards and warriors preparing for defense.
Malaner climbed up the stairs with baffling ease, the rest of his force dispersed quickly to join the panicked work around them. Azekiel stayed where she was, intently listening to the argument audible from upstairs. She instantly identified the voice of their new commander-at-arms.
“But your excellency, it didn’t seem reasonable to interrupt your devotions as long as the enemy is still a half day’s march away-” the commander whined, and was promptly interrupted.
“There are about five hundred knights of the Order running towards our gates, followed by three times that many Yespharites, the city has only about twelve hours to prepare for their arrival, and you thought it would be best to not inform me instantly, you stupid, worthless maggot?!”
“But-”
Azekiel blinked when she heard a soft, muffled crack. She knew that sound, it woke vivid visions of the activities leading to it. The commander-at-arms had just been punished for his failure, and been sent to Yaq’Charyb, the hellmouth, to live the remainder of eternity in never ending agony.
Above her Malaner barked orders from the gatehouse, and the three death knights dashed away to each collect twenty warriors and secure the gates and walls and put the garrison on the alert. Other people were sent by them to carry orders to the other gates, and soon the whole city was armed to the teeth, on their feet and filled with quiet fear.
Siege. It was another word Azekiel only knew in theory, but it still filled her with dread. A siege meant war, and war meant the possibility of failure.
City of Endur - Midwinter, year 21 under reign of precentor Riva
~~~
A loud cracking sound tore Azekiel from sleep and made her jump up, shaking all over from exhaustion and fear. Thin, cold smoke hung in the air, clung to every surface and had even burnt itself into the straw mattress she was lying on, telling the story of the fire the house had suffered just a day before. The guard had put out the flames, as they had done with many houses before, and moved in again. As long as there was a waterproof roof above them, no space near the gate was wasted. It would have been too much of a burden to have the warriors, guards and death knights walk the way from the safer inner city to the gates and back whenever they were needed, so they were sleeping right next to the city wall, no matter how cold, wet and desolate the houses might be.The calls, screams and orders resounding from the active troops barely penetrated the wet, dripping walls, but the air was saturated with the smell of corpses and the sounds of wounded men and women who weren’t taken care of. Nobody treated them, because there weren’t enough healers around, and even if they died the few remaining necromancers breathed unlife into their bodies and sent them out to act as blade and cannon fodder. Only when their bodies were fully destroyed they finally could ascend to Neq’roth’s divine domain, Yaq’Charyb.
The cracking sound repeated, a dull, thundering, staccato boom that shook the foundations of the house. It was different from the other sounds the siege had brought so far, and Azekiel hadn’t heard one like it ever before, although the siege by the hands of the Yespharites had been going on for two months.
It faintly reminded her of something being thrown against the wall with incredible force, but she was too far away from the wall to discern more and couldn’t be sure. As soon as the echo passed, the background noises came back to her. There were the hissing, monotonous prayers of the necromancers next door, who revived the undead as a first line of defense, and there was the hacking, gurgling breathing of wounded death knights lying only a few feet away from her, closer to death than to life at this point. Armed forces ran by the door to join the continuing fight for supremacy, and two or three guards from her quarters joined them with a look of muted acceptance on their faces.
The stink of blood, death and feces suddenly filled her nose and made clear why the others were in such a hurry to leave after only five hours of sleep; the room stank worse than any dungeon cell, not to mention the vermin and insects crawling about around the half dead. Azekiel stood up with a disgusted sniff and shook herself. The straw mattress she had used was damp, cold and a little bit moldy, but it was still better than all the other mattresses in this particular house. When she had slept on moldier mattresses in the past, she had always woken up with short breath and burning eyes, and her arms and legs had broken out in hives. After that she had learned to keep an eye out for better mattresses, and if there weren’t any she collected rags and built a nest out of them.
Once again the thundering crack sounded, and this time it was much, much closer to her position. With it the voices of troops wafted closer, following whatever the Yespharites were doing to their wall. Probably they had finally finished the build of their trebuchet and were throwing rocks the size of small carriages at the city.
Azekiel allowed herself a wintry smile. They would have to work hard if they wanted to penetrate walls nine feet deep. There were no hallways or rooms inside that wall, and its construction had been planned for just this situation. It was layered with different kinds of material, allowing for elasticity and sturdiness at the same time, making it almost invulnerable to most bombardment. The only choice the Yespharites had of breaking it was continued and focused bombardment of one specific spot over a long time, and as long as they didn’t find the weakest parts of the wall this could take months. None of the people aware of those specific spots would ever betray Endur, so the danger was very limited.
Her whole body protested when she put on her armor, a mixture of leather and chain mail. She had long since passed simple tension pains and sore muscles, what her body complained about now was sheer overuse, hunger and brutality, with which she punished her flesh day in, day out. There was no time for recuperation though, no time for leisure days with your life at risk every single day. Azekiel had seen what Yespharites did to those Endur warriors they got their hands on. It made her highly doubt that anyone, be it man, woman or child, would be allowed to survive if the siege was successful.
The Yespharites had killed the last of the death knights fleeing their troops when they hadn’t reached the gates in time. Their bodies strung between two posts, their heads being lopped off and then burned. They had done this to every single one, and their calls, “For Yespha!”, had rung out with each head rolling away from the body.
Not once had the precentor left his chambers through all of this, but Malaner and his three death knights were right there in the middle, leading the efforts to save the city. Their presence was a most calming sight, offering hope and resolve to the guards and armed inhabitants, keeping them from deserting Endur.
Azekiel left the blackened house armed and ready. The freezing, fresh winter air was a relief, because the cold held all those smells at bay. They would come back with the onset of spring, but until then there was no better place to breathe freely than the outside.
Fresh bodies lay on the ground near the city wall. Their extremities were broken, contorted and in shreds, and their blood was painting the snow a bright red. The trebuchet attacks and the constant ballista shots had taken their toll once more, and nobody was left to pull them away. It was common a sight for Azekiel to be shocked by it anymore, but the visions of blood and gore haunted her dreams every time she closed her eyes. It was disheartening, shell-shocking even, how little the Neq’rothim forces were able to do against the invading army.
Another thunderous bang sounded, but this time she was able to hear the high-pitched screech prior to the impact. The walls shook hard enough to let her feel the vibrations in her bones. A group of ten guardsmen stormed by and climbed the stairs to the gate tower, disappearing behind the serrated edge. Orders were bellowed, but there was too much tumult and noise for Azekiel to understand them.
She turned away and trotted towards the western city gate. In front of it more guardsmen and knights scurried around like ants and only scattering when Malaner and two of his men stormed through.
“The two ten-men-crews of the guard are with me! Second year knights of the order follow!”
Azekiel started jogging swiftly but unhurried. Hurry was a thing of the past, gone with the second week of war from everyone able to wield a weapon.
“The guard crews will follow Gregôr’s command from now on. Knights of the order are with Fyle. Those are your new commanders and I expect you to obey them. Dismissed!”
Even while the guardsmen followed their new commander Azekiel had to stop herself from worrying and thinking too much. Malaner, the most upstanding, strict and correct of all Neq’rothim nobles, hadn’t used titles when he gave the orders. Had he forgotten? Why would he forget? Was their situation so hopeless he didn’t see the need for respect, decorum and deference anymore?
And if so, how bad was it?
City of Endur - 2 days before the end of year 21 under reign of precentor Riva
~~~
Leery black button eyes stared unblinking at Azekiel. The rat was nearly the size of a cat and sat on top of a slowly cooling corpse, watching her and looking completely relaxed. Rats were one of the few creatures benefiting from war, just like the ravens circling the city for the last two weeks. There was enough to eat for both species, but at the same time both were hunted with increasing frequency.Azekiel slowly grabbed the handle of her short sword, never taking her eyes from the rat. The weapon creaked softly as she pulled it out of the sticky sheath, and the sound made the Rat get up on its hind legs and scent the surroundings curiously. The bushy vibrissae combed the air like butterfly wings.
Azekiel didn’t trust rats. They didn’t blink- and if they did, it was too quick to see- and their giant black eyes reminded her of a soul-eating, bottomless void. They upset her, but they were edible, and quite so.
She tried stabbing the rat with a quick forward motion, but it was faster. Squeaking once it jumped away and ran in giant leaps towards the ruins of houses further back. Azekiel only stabbed the dead guardsman the rat had gnawed on before, and now sunk to her knees in frustration.
If she couldn’t hunt, she would die. But was there any use trying to live on?
She looked around, scrutinizing the burnt-out, half-collapsed ruins of houses that had once lined both sides of the Jeweler street. Their roofs were sagging beneath the weight of snow, rocks from the walls and the absence of more than half of their weight-baring walls. Dirt, excrement and slush piled between the ruins, and in front of them burnt smoking, hissing fires surrounded by black-eyed, starving, dirty warriors. When the straw finally had run out and all the horses had been eaten, the men had started to undress corpses and use their clothes as an accelerant to make the wet woodwork more flammable. It didn’t help much though. It just gave them a choice between starvation and freezing to death.
Somewhere, somehow the smooth transition to catastrophe had been finished without anyone really realizing it. Suddenly half-dead guardsmen deserted and disappeared into the empty streets of the city, and sometimes Azekiel could see beggars and brood of similar kind carry off dead or nearly dead bodies. Some had jumped off the walls and hoped for their luck not to run out, but the Yespharites had quickly shown they knew no mercy.
The way those black-clad monsters handled those who tried to flee had become one of the most effective deterrents in the ranks. Everyone who slacked off, deserted or criticized too loudly was sent onto the walls to work the giant tar kettles there, and most of them didn’t come back. Vast parts of the city wall weren’t even accessible anymore due to the constant bombardment of rocks.
Azekiel suppressed a distraught sob and pulled her sword out of the corpse. She was too tired to try and try again to catch something, anything edible, and this had been her last try for today. Maybe tomorrow she wouldn’t be able to get up anymore, a fate she silently welcomed.
An animalistic shriek came from one of the ruinous streets. Even more frustrating than a failed hunt was the sound of someone else’s success at the same task. She could even see that lucky bastard, a tall, dark silhouette standing between the crumbling walls of the destroyed pawn shop, one hand holding up the dripping, steaming body of the rat.
It was too much to take.
“That’s my prey! You stole it!” she hissed as she reached the huntsman, ready to fight him- or her- for a few pounds of probably sickening meat. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone got into a fight over food in the last few weeks, but up until now Azekiel hadn’t been distressed enough to join in. Now her hand tightened around the grip of her sword, ready to kill over a rat.
A low, sonorous laugh sounded, and its tone felt like a prickling stroke down her back. It made her entrails twitch in a good way, and this made her stop in her tracks. The stranger stepped closer and glared at her with emerald green eyes she knew all too well.
Liel. Damn it.
“You want to go for a brawl over a rat, ducky?” he hummed, his voice a caressing, dark whisper that made Azekiel blush furiously and think wicked thoughts. His smile was lighthearted and still dirty, an expression a woman usually only got to see once she was naked, but his eyes… There was malice in them, a shiftiness and intellect that made her hair stand on edge. Even Malaner had avoided the priest of Thoronac as much as he could, which meant something.
Azekiel took an involuntary step back and pulled her sword out three inches. It wasn’t a conscious gesture, more like a reaction to the tension in her muscles, but it felt appropriate.
Liel smiled even broader, holding himself very poised. “Your sword won’t help you against me, ducky. But to be honest, you don’t look like you’d be able to swing it anyway.”
She blushed again and in an even darker shade. Every time she threatened to pull her sword and didn’t follow through he just seemed to laugh at her more, and it was getting embarrassing. She would have loved to snatch the rat out of his hand and make a run for it, but she honestly didn’t think she’d get far before fainting from sheer hunger. All she had left was her pride. “That was my prey, I just lost sight of it for one moment! And you stole it,” she bellowed, puffing herself up in a last attempt to bluff this priest of a minor god.
When his fingers touched her cheek she twitched but stood her ground, trying not to let her face show how helpless she felt in his confusing presence.
His warm body crept closer and closer until she could feel his heat against her face, a vision of how it might feel to lean into him, to get closer, to have more contact, but she didn’t move. It was all she could do. Her heart beat in her throat when Liel leaned closer, brought his sinful lips next to her ear and whispered: “Then let’s share, shall we?”
For a few seconds, Azekiel stood there frozen and motionless as her face switched from red embarrassment to a sickly pale color. Her and a Thoronac priest, share something? His face didn’t let on to any evil or backhanded thoughts, no matter how long she stared at him. There was just a jeering derision in his green eyes, that never seemed to go away.
The more she thought about his proposal, though, the more she found it to be quite appropriate. The small community of Thoronac believers was subject to the order of Neq’roth, and they had sworn an oath to support the warriors of the Soul Eater wherever and however they could. They had held their word so far— and probably deserved at least a little bit of respect— but they were still nothing but underlings to a greater power.
Azekiel smiled unpleasantly, and nodded. Her eyes never left Liel’s face, hoping for some sign of subterfuge, but none came.
“We need to stick together in times of great need, don’t we?” she breathed with a rough voice, slowly letting the tension go she had held up to now.
Liel laughed his soul-warming laugh, then smiled, nodding. “That’s how it shall be.”
He pointed over his shoulder, leaning forward just enough to touch her cheek with the warm cloth of his coat, then murmured next to her ear: “Back there is a warm, dry place, free from robbers and deserters. You will like it.”
A heartbeat later, the horizon behind the ruined roofs glowed brighter, and accompanied by a deafening detonation all hell broke loose.
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