(THOB) Chapter 147: Consumed To Nothingness (Patreon)

The sun’s decline from its apex found them arraigned a distance away from the ruined walls, infantry and cavalry alike.

Somewhere before the front lines of their group’s arrangement Baltar addressed them. His words were majestic and designed to strike hope and the glory of battle into the hearts of the men, at least Ezril thought so. The Reverend’s words were lost to him, however. Their glorious order fading away somewhere after the eight row, demanded that only the soldiers of the realm and the first line of priests on horseback heard them. It didn’t matter; priests weren’t known to be motivated by speeches of grandeur. That was for simple soldiers.

As the evening made its presence known, the first wave roared into action. What Ezril had expected to be an organized attack against the Merdendi sounded more like a stampede of raging men, not that he could see them all too clearly.

They had grown close enough to the city when he saw it.

Light fell from the skies in a concentration of yellow haze, landing at random points of the battle field as the sound of shouts and metals clashing traveled across them.

They came down like flashes with incalculable speed. Each descent preceding an explosive boom the sound of thunder conquering the skies.

This is war, Ezril thought as he listened to the chaos unable to truly see past the mounted priests before him.

To his left Olufemi sat atop his stead. Wild was nothing like its name in the moment. It stood without sound just as its owner. Ezril’s attention flicked to his brother’s gaze and found the priest seemed uncaring of the wave before them. He seemed to be in thought. Perhaps of the one armed man.

On his other side Takan was chewing on a leaf, a habit it seemed the young man had picked up while Ezril was traveling the realm. Salem wore a simple frown as he caressed his horse’s mane. Ezril’s brows furrowed as he noticed an oddity. The exorcist was without his poleaxe. And upon further coercion of his memory, he realized the priest had been without it since his return.

“Salem.”

His brother leaned forward at his call, gaining a better view of him, but said nothing.

“Where’s your axe?” he asked.

Salem seemed to shrug. “It won’t be of use to me in this war.”

Ezril’s gaze puzzled and, seeming to understand the question that plagued him, Salem added. “Apparently, the Broken care nothing for steel that is not of Asmidian origin.”

It made Ezril wonder. “Then what of the soldiers?” he asked.

“Their duty is to run when they see one,” Takan said. “I reckon they’ll be more than happy to oblige.”

“Two priests are required to handle an Broken,” Darvi told him from beside Olufemi who remained uncaring of the conversation. “The Broken seem to be stronger and faster than a Hallowed. Handling them is beyond tasking.”

Takan nodded. “It makes you understand why the seminary was designed to push priests so hard. I reckon it’s no task concentrating when you don’t think, feel or speak when you fight. Damned Broken.”

This piece of information disturbed Ezril. The Broken he’d fought had had a few words for him and at the time it had seemed puzzled at his presence, almost confused.

He opened his mouth to speak when he heard the war cry of the soldiers at the head of the parade. The cry drowned out whatever he had to say and he unstrapped his bow glad he hadn’t been sent to stay with the archers. The Broken may not respond to normal steel but the Merdendi still responded to everything. The reminder had him retrieve four arrows from his quiver as he kicked Apparit into a full charge beside his brothers as they thundered into war.

Ezril sidestepped an attack and severed a head from the body of a Merdendi in one swing as the third wave roared onto the battlefield. If his knowledge served him accurately there were six waves of attacks on their part. He turned his attention to his surrounding, hair wavering in his peripheral view as he took stock.

He’d long since dismounted Apparit, as most priests had done their steads a few moments after the they had arrived. The beast of a horse was no doubt trampling a foe at some portion of the battlefield. The gates, however, still remained closed and the enemies seemed to pour out of nowhere as if for every one man they fell two would emerge. If Ghimasu didn’t come through soon enough, the war would be all but lost.

The evening had aged since they began and the light that fell from the sky struck Vayla in lesser shimmers of heat, and its intervals between each attack growing larger by the evening. Ezril parried a blow and plunged forward, ignoring its origin. The lack of weight of his Sunders, or absence thereof, made each strike far more accurate than it had ever been. His swings flowed with greater alacrity and his actions displayed a skill it hadn’t had a few months ago. Still, it was nothing new to him. His battle through Heldrag had all but shown him what he was capable of now that his Sunders didn’t weigh down on him.

He stepped through the battlefield bringing down enemy after enemy, the closest he’d been to the sun strike being when it had turned a priest to dust a few paces away from him as the man had fought of three foes at once. He had been on his way to help the man at the time before all four combatants turned to nothing in one strike. Leaving nothing but two cracked Sunders in its wake.

It was only a while longer when he came to his first Broken. The soldiers of the realm were fleeing from one point when he raced in its direction. His arrival saw him witness to the death of a man in King’s guard colors. His head ripped from his body in one brutal slap.

Alphex stabbed the creature from behind, raising his sword just in time to parry its attack as it whirled on him. The force of the blow pushing him to the side as Ezril tightened his grip on his Sunders and launched himself into a sprint straight for it. Alphex saw him as he slid to a stop and struck at the Broken in a bid to hold its attention. The thing’s hand moved in a blur and the weapon in its hand clanged against Alphex’s held up blade. Ezril forced more speed into his sprint before hurling himself into the air. He came down hard on the creature as one of his Sunders took purchase in its skull and they both fell to the ground.

The creature let out a snarl, forcing itself off the grass before Ezril took its head with his other Sunder, silencing it clean off its shoulders. He spared Alphex a glance. Certain the man was still capable, he stalked off after his next victim before the man could say whatever he’d opened his mouth for.

Ezril was still holding off his third Broken with the help of a priest he didn’t know when a screeching sound pierced through the battle field. He ducked out of the Broken’s reach, expanding the distance between them by a few steps in time to see his partner do the same. He’d brought down his second Broken on his own but this one had a smaller body. There was no doubt that the thing had been one of those small men who always seemed a child while it had been alive. Unlike the others, this one was significantly feral, it didn’t bear as much strength behind its blows but its speed was on a different scale making it difficult to get within reach long enough to decapitate it.

Their quarry’s gaze darted between them, indecisive of whom to attack. The creature stepped back and Ezril took the time to turn his head in the direction of the still screeching sound. Relief washed through him at the sight of the gates coming open. Finally.

A snarl seared from beside him and jumping back. He raised his Sunders in defense and the Broken’s knife struck steel, shoving him farther away than his retreating step intended. His feet off the floor, his eyes closed in blinding pain as his scars flared in something he had only felt once before. This time, however, the pain wasn’t one of deep-rooted recognition, but one of total intimidation.

Pain crawled from the scars in his back trailing the path down his arms and screaming to an end at his wrists as he fell to the dirt. He would’ve stayed writhing in pain but instinct propelled him, and forcing himself into a roll, he escaped the Broken as it pounced.

Then it happened.

Heat seared his skin like wild fire and with one final thrust he pushed farther away, knocking into something behind him as it came down. Everything seemed to happen in frames, each moment passing in stages. A thin line of white sheen descended and threaded a path through the Broken from sky to dirt, then its territory expanded in a barrier of yellow like those of fully lit flames, and yet, there was no mistaking it for anything else but light. Then its surrounding wavered, the air shimmering and distorting from heat as everything buzzed to life. The Broken barely registered anything. Its eyes remained glued on him as its hands and feet left the floor.

There was an explosive burst. A thunderous boom that shook Ezril’s ear. Then it was gone: light and Broken. Consumed to nothingness in the blink of an eye. This was the sun strike. For something that fell so randomly, its impact felt too precise. It made Ezril wonder how terrible it could be if the one armed man himself took stock of its control and graced the battlefield.

Rolling off the body he’d collided into, Ezril rose to his feet. Two heartbeats had yet to pass and he barely recognized the blistering body a distance from where the Broken had been when pain flared again. Amidst the chaos of war, he fell to his knee succumbed by his pain. It was the likes of which he had never felt before. Something akin to being burned by shadow fire. He knew nothing burned him as he gritted his teeth keeping himself from howling in pain as spittle spilled from the cage of his teeth and his scars burned anew.

He had to fight the pain. This was war and even in this chaos any pointless sound would do nothing but draw the attention of any random assailant looking for their next victim.

The light from the evening sky exploded twice more in successive intervals in close proximity to each other and fear gripped Ezril within the pain. It’s never fallen so close together, he told himself as he struggled to his feet only to fall back down. The pain was almost unbearable, but a part of him knew he had to move. So he employed a trick he had learned weeks ago; something that often dulled the pain. He pushed from without, willing the pain within. It traveled up from the scar tipped at his wrist and back to his shoulder blades before tilting as if seeking his spine. Then like a burst of a million pinpricks it slithered through the scar outlining every fiber of scarred tissue, piercing its way down his shoulder and around his biceps as the scars paved a way for it on his skin. For every path it took, it left a wake of explosive pain that ebbed into phantom tendrils mere moments after it came until it reached his wrist and dissipated.

Everything was gone as slowly as it had come. The pain left him, expelled from every pore of skin darkened by the scar of shadow fire.

The nearest men to Ezril wobbled, then dropped to their knees as Ezril rose and stepped his way through the distance. Men buckled under their weight as he passed.

He drew to a halt, darted to the side and executed a distancing roll. A moment later, light struck where he’d drawn up short, turning everything in its circle to dust and blistering those around it. Ezril shrugged off the pain in his shoulder, now reduced to an annoying ache, and caught hold of a Merdendi’s wrist between the hilts of his Sunders crossed before him, intercepting the woman’s strike. He flipped her easily, and bending her arm at its elbow, shoved her knife into her left breast before rising to meet his next attacker, then he brought his Sunder down on the… child.