Knights of the Grey City 59

Chapter 59 – CHECKMATE

The dream was in disarray.

The ruins were overturned and leaning against each other, uprooted from the white sand. Deep slashes cut through them, bisecting carved faces and leaving deep scores in the wave-eroded pillars. A bronze statue of a man astride a horse had been cut into three sections, head and torso and horse scattered.

I felt fuzzy and slow-witted, like I hadn’t for a long time in these dreams. I drifted forward, unable to muster fear or worry, only feeling vaguely concerned. Something here wasn’t right.

I came to a familiar clearing: a deep crater in the sand. The sword was gone. Something else was gone, too—someone else? There had been someone here?

I found the name and spoke it into the deep. “Leviathan?”

“Hush,” came the softest noise. “It is not safe here.”

I tried to make my brain catch up with what I was seeing, what was missing. “What happened?” I whispered, my voice muffled and underwater-sounding.

“Our opponent moves,” the voice breathed. I still could not see Leviathan, but I caught the faintest hint of movement out in the waters ahead, like his shadow-black body had momentarily blinked against a light source. “I have come to fear that it is spying on us.”

“Spying… how? I’m dreaming,” I said dully.

“Second… focus, please,” Leviathan prompted me. “Where is your mind? Has our connection eroded?” he fell silent—he had spoken too loudly.

Far in the distance, there was a sound. It had the resonant quality of a whale’s call, but was torn and high-pitched, like a stuttering shriek. I found myself drifting backwards.

“Second… I will break contact in just a moment,” he said. “I’ll take care of this if I can. But we may not be able to speak for some time. Please be careful. Something is happening… is changing… our opponent means to stop us before we get any further.”

“How?” I asked.

Another shriek, jagged and staccato, closer.

“I do not know. Be careful.”

And just like that, the dream faded. I sat bolt upright in my bed, breathing in the darkness, straining to hear the faint whale-call shriek in the distance. There was only the faint rush of cars outside.

I reported what I’d experienced to the other three Knights while we travelled No Man’s Land, headed for our third, and hopefully final, attempt on the walled district.

“I wish I knew more about how your connection with Leviathan works,” Huang said.

I had a sudden, dreadful thought. “There are cracks in the Sentry tower,” I said.

“They’ve been there from the very beginning,” Huang said in surprise. “Since I first found the place.”

“They’ve been growing steadily deeper since I’ve been here,” I said. “I wasn’t sure at first because it happened so gradually. But the last time we were there… I noticed that they were definitely much deeper, and they also had some kind of color change going on. I forgot to mention it. We got caught up in Rayne’s navigation stuff… but it has me worried now. The Tower… that’s the brain. That’s where the data is. That’s where Leviathan is.”

“He’s alive,” Rayne said.

I looked up toward her, where she flew alongside Huang at the front of the group. “How do you know?”

“All that energy is still flowing into you,” she explained. “You’re still contending with his instincts, aren’t you? That means he’s alive.”

“You’re right,” I said. The instincts still surged around me, even in this moment of calm. It wasn’t much comfort. “He may be alive, but not being able to speak with him will become a problem. I should probably try and make a trip to the bottom of the tower, soon.”

“No. That’s a bad idea,” Huang objected. “You said he seemed to be in danger. You’d just be putting yourself into that danger.”

“We don’t know that for sure…” I hedged. I was surprised at myself, but I felt defensive of the freaking Leviathan. He was a pretty heartless guy, all told, and way too wordy and grumpy. But damn it, we were on the same side, and he’d helped us a lot. Now, he fought alone.

“He’s a fifty-foot ghost crocodile, Camilo,” Katie said. The Firedrake spun in her flight spiral nearby. “He’ll be fine.”

“We should be more concerned with ourselves right now,” Huang added.

We arrived in the walled district.

It was already in chaos. The street leading up to the hole in the wall was the same as always, calm and unremarkable, but beyond, the whole district was twisting with a million thorny vines. They wriggled on the walls and ground and waved in the sky, like underwater tendrils seeking unsuspecting prey.

“I can’t believe we have to go in there,” Katie said.

The Gargoyle alighted on the pavement and turned back to regard the four of us. “I know it looks bad, but we are ready for this. All of our tasks up to this point have taught us how to use our senses and our powers to work as a team. We have a plan, and remember, with Rayne rearranging the streets, we should reach the center quickly. We only need to make one big push, and we’ll have this place. Understood?”

I nodded my big reptilian head. The others responded in the affirmative.

“Good. Don’t be reckless. As much as I’d like for this to be our final attempt on this place, if things get bad, it’s better to retreat and try again later.” And with that, he led the way into the chaotic mess of shadows.

The moment I stepped inside the wall, the vines whipped toward me. Huang spun, slicing through several of them with his talons, and I dodged the rest, relying on my spatial sense to show me the way. I perceived that, though the ground appeared to be completely covered in grasping vines, there were many places where they actually laid across the pavement and didn’t sprout directly from it. If I placed my feet in those places, I pinned the vines to the ground and they couldn’t grab me right away.

The Queen followed behind me, her armored wings flared for protection. Her strategy was to step so lightly and swiftly that only one or two vines were able to get ahold of her at a time. Her armor plates deflected the thorns and she was able to break the grip of those few vines quickly. We pushed forward towards an alleyway.

The Firedrake burst through the wall last, a deadly missile of flame and claws that punched through the vines as they reached for her. My instincts flared with alarm at the proximity of her flames as she burned her path through.

The Queen looked at me. “She is on our side. Let’s continue.”

The instincts calmed. I forged ahead, breaking free of the vines which had curled around my front leg during my distraction.

The alley provided a greater challenge because the vines were now also reaching out of the buildings. Huang made strafing runs up and down the walls, slicing off vines and leaving their severed ends to writhe on the ground, where they swiftly dissolved into ink. The ink then floated listlessly into the sky, where I feared it would reform as more vines elsewhere.

No time to focus on that now. My sense was providing smaller and smaller windows for me to step without being caught as the number of vines simply made it less and less possible.

The Queen let out a startled call. I turned. Several vines had managed to get a strong hold on one of her wings, and coming down from the wall was a fire breather, the first demon we had seen thus far.

Ignoring the thorny vines that grasped me, I powered toward the fire breather and reared up on my back legs, smacking it off the wall before it could let loose with any flames. It tumbled down toward Katie, who snapped it in half with her jaws.

“Rayne, take the lead,” Huang ordered. He darted from wall to wall, slashing vines down. “We’ll follow you to the center. Katie, we’re going to keep the vines down as much as we can, but focus on taking out any demons that get too close. Camilo, protect Rayne.”

We went to our tasks.

After the fire breather, more demons started to appear seemingly out of nowhere, having been hidden in the waving depths of the vines. My spatial sense could not differentiate between the demons and vines; everything was moving and radiating demonic energy. I couldn’t concentrate on my sense enough to find where the demons were hiding.

Katie and Huang could, though. Katie’s danger sense could detect what was most harmful moment by moment, and she was able to direct her flames accordingly, burning back both the thickest patches of vines and the encroaching demons. Huang flashed around in seemingly random patterns, but wherever his claws fell, demons tumbled from the walls and alleyways.

“The center! I have it,” Rayne exclaimed. She hopped forward purposefully. “Just at the end of this road. Let’s go!”

I couldn’t see to the end of the road through the vines, but my spatial sense showed me a long stretch of narrow street, then, a couple hundred feet off, an opening. The demonic energy there was the strongest so far, the gradation extremely swift: it seemed that Rayne had managed to shorten our journey considerably. Just two hundred feet and we’d be there.

“Damn it!” she hissed, twisting away as vines suddenly reached down from overhead. We were passing under an overhang, now assailed from all sides. There was no safe space to tread.

I sensed the area where the vines were the thinnest. “After me!” I barked, pushing ahead and tearing through the mass claws-first. They wrapped around my legs and neck, trying to halt my progress, but I tore my flesh out of their grip and forged ahead, roaring.

The Queen followed in the path I opened up and, in a few moments, we were past the overhang. A few demons appeared in front of us, but Huang shot past me a moment later and took care of them. Katie joined us, fire streaming in all directions.

We fought. The Queen led the way. The Gargoyle spotted and killed the demons. The Firedrake unleashed hell. I made paths.

Finally, up ahead, in the distance: a glimmer, the lightest flash of light reflecting off of steel. I pulled ahead, readying an attack that would bring us through to it.

The vines vanished.

They simply pulled back into the walls and streets, which returned to their dormant, solid state. No more demons appeared from the skies or streets. The four of us stood, gasping for breath and splattered with ink, in a long, narrow street boxed in by tall stacks of buildings.

“Did they… retreat?” Huang asked quietly. “I don’t sense any demons at all. No life in the walls.”

My sense, too, reported that the substance of the district had returned to concrete and stone. It still stank of demonic energy, but other than that…

“There’s something up ahead,” Rayne reported softly.

I peered past her. The open space was now clearly visible: a roughly octagonal opening in the buildings, something like a city square. In the very center, gleaming sword had been planted, surrounded by deep fissures in the earth.

“We’re here,” I said, taking a few cautious steps forward. Nothing leapt out at me. The sword just sat there, gleaming.

“Huh. It really is a sword,” Huang commented, reaching it in a few flaps. He settled next to it and poked at the hilt with a talon. “So, all we have to do is dislodge it?”

“It’s a little more than that,” I said, following him. I was unable to let myself relax. “Why would the demons retreat? This doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know, but if we get rid of this sword quickly enough, we’ll still win,” Huang said. He closed his talons around the hilt and pulled, but was unable to budge it. “Damn.”

There was a moment of stillness as we looked at the sword.

The Firedrake let loose with an ear-shattering roar.

“Get out! Everyone, get out! Retreat!” she bellowed, whirling around. She’d only taken a few steps into the open.

I moved to do as she said, but a disturbance of demonic energy rippled through the ground before I could. The vines instantly reappeared in the buildings and alleyways. The ground under our feet remained clear.

Katie roared and started breathing fire on the vines writhing in the alleyway she’d been trying to use to escape. Instead of reaching for her, the vines seemed to be weaving themselves together, forming a thorny lattice.

I spun around, realizing what was happening. They were forming a wall. On all sides, the vines wove together and blocked access to the streets. The wall rose up to the full height of the buildings, and overhead, they writhed and wriggled into a dome-like patchwork.

“Camilo, get that sword out,” Huang snapped. “Everyone else, get over here. They’re going to try something.”

Why couldn’t I move the sword as Leviathan? Each time before, I’d had to switch to my human form. I pressed my nose to the sword, feeling my senses ping off of it. Now, all I had to do was…

What the hell was that?

There was something in here with us.

My spatial sense went wild. The demonic energy radiating from it was so strong it hurt, sending jagged waves of pain through my spine until I was forced to pull back the breadth of my sense. I couldn’t get a read on it: not the shape of it, not the size of it, not its texture.

“This is really bad,” Katie panted. She had ended up beside me and the sword. “I’ve never sensed anything like this. Not even the Colossus was close to this.”

A terrible, sinking feeling settled in my stomach. Could it be…? No. It was too early for something like that to happen.

I focused on the sword, not even turning to look for whatever terrible creature was forming in here with us. I took the hilt in my jaws and wiggled it, focusing my sense on the blade.

It didn’t work. It was like something was blocking me.

“Camilo, how’s it going?” Huang said stiffly. “Do it now, before this thing forms. I’m sensing…” he trailed off.

“Watch my back! I need to go human,” I barked. Trying not to think about it, I shrank into vulnerable, squishy human form and placed my hands on the sword hilt, again pressing against it with my spatial sense. The sword was a funnel, biting into the substance of the Grey City and allowing the demonic infection to flow inside. I needed the sword to budge. As I thought that, something gave, becoming looser. I braced myself to pull it free.

“KNIGHTS.”

The voice was like grinding stones. It was spoken out loud and also formed directly in our heads, like our own soundless communication. Beyond the gleaming white of the Gargoyle’s wing in front of me, I saw a figure take shape.

“Oh, no,” said Rayne. “G-guys, I don’t know how to say this… that thing… it’s… it’s the big bruise.”

She had confirmed the dreadful suspicion that had taken shape in the back of my head. Our opponent was supposed to be districts and districts away, safely hidden in its own territory. We had been working our way towards it. We should have had a year or more of prep time before we faced the opponent directly, according to Leviathan.

I pulled the sword with all my might. It shifted, about to fall, and then something snaked around my neck and jerked me to the ground. My concentration shattered and the blade remained solidly upright.

A vine had taken shape right under my feet, inside the circle of the others who had been protecting me. I slammed into the earth, the breath leaving me, and with the flash of pain I transformed almost involuntarily. The vine broke at my sudden change of scale. I rolled backward, bumping into the Firedrake, then righted myself and got to all fours.

The opponent looked at me through blazing white eyes.

Its form was kind of humanoid, if a human was scaled up to be some twenty feet tall—though its size constantly shifted, shrinking and expanding, its body almost liquid. Its face was indistinct, also shifting in size, though it had a skull-like appearance with a visible jawbone and eye sockets that seemed too large for its beady eyeballs. Its arms, proportionally too long for its body, drooped at its sides. Behind it, a pair of black wings stretched out, similar in appearance to the Gargoyle’s sharp, interlocking feathers.

It was wreathed in black smoke that almost seemed to form robes. The smoke curled around its head almost like a cowl, and from the top of the cowl sprouted sharp antlers not unlike those of the Queen. At the end of one of its too-long arms, in a bony, inky hand tipped with scaled claws, the figure clutched a long, silvery sword.

It looked like the Grim Reaper. No, an angel. Maybe both. An artist’s vision of death.

I didn’t have too much time to absorb its appearance, because it suddenly surged toward us, swinging that familiar sword down at the nearest person: Huang.

He darted away. The blade sheared through his left wingtip, cutting through the armor, which had once deflected attacks from the Colossus, like it was paper. The severed feathers seemed to hang suspended in the air.

“Get out of its range!” Huang barked, following his own advice with a quick pivot. In a moment, the four of us had the angel boxed in the center of the writhing area of vines. It stood in front of the sword embedded in the earth while wielding the blade’s double in one clawed hand. The feathers it had sheared off of Huang drifted to rest beneath its mist-cloaked feet.

“What is it doing here?” I demanded. The Leviathan’s instincts were in overdrive. That thing was the most powerful creature I had ever sensed, and my instincts urged me to either fight back with everything I had or to flee immediately. I tried to ride the balance in between those extremes.

“W-we’ve got to get out of here,” Katie said. Her mind-voice was shaking. I could only imagine what her senses were telling her.

The angel moved. In a quarter of a second, it had crossed the distance to Huang again, seemingly intent on finishing its fight with him. Its previous strike had only sheared off feathers; the Gargoyle was not yet bloodied.

The blade sliced the air in a wide arc. Huang avoided it, then flew around the angel and slashed its wings. It didn’t do much damage, but the creature seemed to flinch, its next strike going wide.

I leapt forward to give him a hand. My pounce tried to bring my teeth in contact with the angel’s neck, but it turned and flared its wing in my face. My teeth skidded off solid feathers with a consistency like stone, and then a blade was flashing for me.

Huang appeared and attacked the angel’s shoulder, breaking its trajectory. I hopped back, then went for it again. The creature was smaller than me, but that blade… my sense reported how dangerous it was. The blade was unnaturally sharp and moved with both unnatural strength and speed, seemingly breaking the laws of physics that generally applied to physical objects. It was less like a real sword and more like the concept of cutting, of slicing, and thus it could effortlessly break apart the substance of everything it touched—from solid stone to our bodies.

The angel made a wide, sweeping slice, and both Huang and I backed off to a safe distance. It brought its weapon to rest at its side and drew itself up again.

“Let’s get out of here,” Katie repeated. “Watch my back, I’m going to try and burn through the wall.”

The flames had barely left her mouth before the angel flashed across the intervening space to attack her. I pounced again, digging my claws into the armoured wings to slow it down. I gave Katie the barest of seconds to dart away, avoiding the stab, and I then backed off as the sword turned on me.

“Do not let that sword touch you. It can cut through any armour you might have,” I warned them.

“Joshua, what do we do!?” Katie demanded, looping near the ceiling of our enclosure. The vines writhed and occasionally shot down towards her, troubling her flight.

“I…” Huang stammered. “We… That thing could kill us pretty fast if it wanted. Why did it put us in a box instead of holding us to the ground with vines?”

“What are you?” Rayne demanded of the angel.

It raised its weapon, white eyes blank, and darted for me.

I presented too large of a target to completely avoid the strike. The angel drew a line across my shoulder, then managed a stab which cut a few inches into my chest. Now that its arm was extended, I twisted and tried to slice it with my claws.

Its wing got in the way again, then flared out, pushing me off-balance as it pulled its blade free and aimed an attack at my skull.

I flattened myself and the sweep soared overhead, just as a corkscrew of flame descended on the angel from above. The Firedrake’s talons were deflected by those stupid wings and she was forced to retreat out of the way of another sword strike.

My heart was pounding wildly. FIGHT, my instincts screamed, and my course was locked in. One misstep meant death. But if we could win this…

This could be our way out. Kill our opponent, and reclaiming the whole Grey City would be easy, our grueling timeline expedited. Things could go back to normal. I could be out.

The blade darted towards me. I twisted, letting it trace the tiniest scratch down my side, then lashed out with my teeth at its sword arm. It moved to avoid my bite, the blade retreating and a wing flashing out to stagger me once more.

“We need to find a way to take out its wings,” I reported. Huang appeared by my side, drawing the angel’s attention while I struck again and again, always deflected by the armoured feathers.

“No, we need to get out of here now!” Rayne snapped. “Katie, you’re going to need to try and break through the wall while we keep this Archangel distracted.”

“Last time I tried, it went right for me!” Katie protested, still looping up above.

“Focus on fighting it!” I insisted. “If we can kill this thing here and now, don’t you realize what that means?” My instincts roared like a storm-tossed ocean and it felt good to be in full agreement with them for once.

“We can’t beat this thing!” Rayne said. She had been circling the fight and staying out of range to the best of her ability, and thus far the Archangel had been ignoring her. “Can’t you sense that?”

The flash of a sword darting for my eye. I ducked and twisted; it got a chunk of my forehead and the hot blood pushed me further into the raging force of my instincts. KILL IT, my insides screamed. The Archangel followed with another strike that I avoided.

“We’ve got to GO!” Rayne repeated. “Snap out of it, Camilo!” Her words struck a note like a tuning fork, forcing me to give them my full attention.

“I’m in control!” I shouted. The blade shot out for Huang and I slammed all of my weight into the Archangel’s wing, trying to find a weak point. It seemed to be protecting its torso, so that must mean it had vitals similar to those of a human. “I’m fully aware, and I’m telling you, this is our best option! We’ve got to kill it! It’s just given us the opportunity to win!”

“Joshua, what do we do!?” Katie demanded again.

“I…”

“Now is not the time for hesitation, Huang!” I barked. “Do you want to get out of here and get back to Joanna for good? Then let’s do this now! Someone find a way to get through the wings!”

In the absence of Huang’s decision, Katie swooped down from above, aiming for the Archangel’s back. The creature flared one wing behind it to block her, fended me off with the other, and continued to carve the air around Huang with its sword. My heartbeat roared in my ears; a deadly focus settled over me.

We could be about to win.