Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 22Arc 6: : The Ghoul King

Before we set out, I tried to convince Hendry to go with Vander’s group.

“I can still fight,” he insisted angrily.

“Your chest is cooked,” I told him. “And Vander needs you more.”

“Then you think I’m useless?” He almost spat. His expression was livid with an anger I recognized. Too often I’d drowned myself in the same for much the same reason.

Anger is easier than grief.

By the manic glint in the lad’s eyes, I suspected he was barely feeling the pain of his wound. He needed a clericon, which I’d already told him. He opened his mouth to argue further, but when he caught my stony expression he snapped it shut and turned away.

“Hen…” Emma stepped toward him before he left and reached out a hand. When he turned wide eyes on her, she flinched. They exchanged no more words, and Hendry walked towards the departing throng without so much as a backward glance. Emma watched him leave with a pained expression on her face.

“He’ll be alright,” I assured her.

She didn’t look at me when she replied. “No he won’t. I just killed his father right in front of him.”

Besides the Storm Knights Lochwine and Ariel, Ser Moonbrand also joined me. The gaunt-faced Karledaler gave me a nod as he took his place.

“It’s good to follow you into battle again, Hewer.”

I snorted. “Please. Half our battles back in Karles were disasters.”

“We were usually outnumbered,” he reminded me. “And we won in the end.”

I didn’t have a ready reply to that. Studying the group, I noted another familiar face. A young woman with olive skin and black hair cut into a sharp bob, who watched me with eyes such a dark green they were nearly black. Myrice Gorgon still had a broken left arm, cradled close to her ornate breastplate by a leather sling. She held a more conventional weapon in place of her lost whip sword.

When Moonbrand noticed the Gorgon, his eyes hardened. “What do you think you’re doing, snake?”

Myrice shrugged. “I can fight.”

“That’s not what I meant.” The Karledaler knight turned to me. “Her family are Recusants. I’m not interested in having a dagger in my back.”

By the dark expressions the rest of the group wore, more than a few agreed. Myrice’s face reddened. “My House is part of the Accord!”

“You expect us to believe your family isn’t party to all this?” Moonbrand waved at the bodies around us.

“Did you see me standing with that Ark woman?” Myrice shot back. Her voice had a distinct rasp, almost a lisp, one I felt was natural rather than the result of exhaustion or injury. She caught my eye and stood straighter. “Let me go with you, Ser Headsman. I can help.”

“You’re injured,” I reminded her.

Her green eyes glittered angrily. “I don’t need both arms to use my eyes,” she insisted. “Do you know how my family’s magic works?”

“I do.” Studying the pensive expressions the rest of the band wore, I sighed. “Neither the Huntings or the Arks were Recusant during the last war,” I reminded them. “And Lady Myrice could have betrayed us already if she intended to. The battle lines we remember aren’t the same ones we’re dealing with now. Let’s not do the Vykes’ work for them, eh?”

That didn’t mean her family wasn’t involved in the rebellion, or wouldn’t throw in with it if they thought it would benefit them. Myrice might not make the same choice Hendry had if it came to that.

For the sake of morale, I decided not to express my doubts aloud. Focusing my attention on Moonbrand I said, “This isn’t the time to settle grudges.”

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He looked less than convinced, but nodded. “Very well. If you’ll vouch for her, Hewer, then I retract my complaint.”

His eyes told me another story — I’ll be watching her for treachery.

We set out into the winding halls of the Fulgurkeep without further conversation. The mood of the group settled into a grim, determined focus and a silence only broken by the rattle of steel and the echo of boots and metal sabatons off the walls. Instead of leaving it to Emma, I kept a firm hand on Hyperia’s shoulder. The blinded princess walked without much prodding, though her layered skirts and shuffling gait made our pace frustratingly slow.

The fog thickened as we advanced. I ordered the group to keep close and burned my aura, working to prevent the enchanted mist from misleading us. Hyperia shivered and murmured under her bag, but like with Evangeline I noted how she didn’t recoil from the flame.

I put it from my mind.

The galleries ended at a set of stairs descending to a lower floor. We noticed the bodies the first time one of the group almost tripped over one. They increased in number as we went, and all of them were Lost Legion.

“They’re all burned,” Lochwine muttered after rising from checking a corpse. “And none of them are still animated.”

Moonbrand confirmed this with his own check of several more. The corpses had been blasted as much as cut with steel, their flesh blackened and their armor warped by heat.

“Ser Konrad?” Emma suggested. “His Art might have done this.”

Lochwine didn’t seem convinced. He frowned at the bodies as though something about their wounds struck him familiar. I felt the same, but my mind was elsewhere.

We moved on. Once we reached the bottom I sent out a wave of aureflame to clear the fog, giving us a better view of our surroundings. We found ourselves in an ostentatious antechamber with a high ceiling. A tall set of doors carved from stone and engraved with images of House Forger’s history dominated the space. To either side of that door stood alcoves fashioned to look like windows. I recalled gargoyles occupying those, but they were conspicuously absent.

There were also more bodies. Standing among them was a tall figure in the brass-tinted armor of the Storm Knights, almost a match to the two in my company save for the extra crest rising from his helmet.

Pale yellow electricity flickered around the Twinbolt’s two swords as he turned to face us. His face, as always, remained shadowed behind a helm of ancient design, with long cheek guards and a Y shaped opening. His gray-blue cape was bloodstained, as were his weapons.

“Captain!” Ariel and Lochwine both sketched hasty salutes to the leader of their order. There were relieved murmurs from the others.

I studied the array of bodies. The Twinbolt Knight was alone, though some of the corpses looked like palace guard. For a moment I wondered if I’d found another traitor.

But I recognized the wounds on all the ghoul corpses now for lightning burns, and forced myself to relax. “First Sword,” I greeted the man. “How long have you been lost in the fog?”

The royal bodyguard’s masked face tilted to one side in a thoughtful gesture. Then, in a surprisingly kindly voice dried with age he said, “Since this began. These creatures kept attacking me, but seemed to realize their folly after a time.”

He turned to the doors. “Ah. I didn’t realize I’d made it back.”

Ser Moonbrand nodded to the doors. “That’s the throne room. The First Sword must have cleared out the guard without realizing it.”

“I think that’s what the mist was for,” I said. Anyone who got close would have ended up lost in the thick brume I’d just chased away, as evidenced by our new friend. Already it was curling back into the chamber, regrouping like a persistent animal who’d learned not to fear a farmer’s waving pitchfork.

Dark, gangly shapes formed in that mist. I bared my teeth and lifted my axe. “On guard!”

The fighters who’d joined me made a circle, raising their weapons in preparation to defend themselves from the congregating ghouls. We formed up around the Twinbolt as he crackled with power. The Mistwalkers stared at us with eyes that glinted like those of nocturnal animals, their forms made into wispy mirages by the gray vapor.

There must have been scores of them, but it was difficult to tell through the veil of mist. Enough to drown us in bodies. I heard shuffling wings and croaking voices above, telling me there were more chimera as well.

Emma put her back to mine. She’d used a lot of blood already, and I sensed her growing fatigue. I knew she’d use her Art anyway, until she had nothing left.

My eyes went to the throne room doors. With a firm grip on Hyperia’s shoulder, I called out.

“CALERUS!” The mist seemed to swallow my words, turning them hollow despite the force I put into my voice. “I know you can hear me!”

The advancing ghouls paused. Emma shifted at my back. The Twinbolt’s helm turned in my direction.

I hesitated a moment, then pushed my prisoner forward. My eyes remained fixed on the doors, as though I could glare through them in the same way I could with darkness. “I request an audience, your majesty. If you want to see your sister again, then open the way.”

For long minutes, nothing happened. The Mistwalkers didn’t charge, my own company didn’t move, and the doors didn’t budge. I barely breathed.

Then, with the low rumble of shifting stone and a blast of cold air and displaced fog, the doors began to open. A deep, consuming mist filled the gap and obscured what lay within.

“Ser Hewer,” the Twinbolt said in his soft voice. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to end this. Follow my lead. Do nothing unless they attack first or I give the signal.”

The Twinbolt took orders from no one except the Emperor. For a moment I thought he might refuse to listen, but he nodded with little hesitation. “Very well. I shall accompany you.”

“You’re just going in there?” Moonbrand asked me in disbelief. “It’s obviously a trap.”

He wasn’t the only one staring at me as though I were mad. “You’re free to stay behind,” I said. “You can go back and join the Emperor’s forces.”

“He’s alive?” The Twinbolt let out a breath of relief that emerged from his helm as glowing vapor from the aura he was burning.

Lochwine and Ariel were both rubbing the last of their fulgurstones on their weapons. Myrice was muttering something that sounded like a prayer, though it wasn’t in a language I knew. Moonbrand stared at the ghastly faces watching us from the mist and cursed.

“You’re just as mad as back then,” he accused me.

I just shrugged and moved froward, keeping Hyperia in front of me like a shield. Emma fell into step without hesitation. With varying levels of reluctance, the rest followed.

We stepped into the fog, and it swallowed us.

The audience chamber remained set for the lavish feast that’d been meant to celebrate the tournament’s second day. Like before, flowers and brightly colored weeds crawled over the floor, with living vines wrapping the proud columns upholding the room’s cavernous ceiling.

The mist turned the white stone and artful greenery into something more sinister. It gathered thickly at the room’s edges, and hung over the floor like a gaseous, ever-shifting carpet. There was light, but it seemed to have no source. I saw no sign of the Wil-O’ Wisps.

The tables remained, four long rows stretching across the floor to nearly touch the dais at the far end. Those tables had some occupants, nearly all of them nobles and other dignitaries who’d been guests for the feast. Each had a plate of food set in front of them, and all were quiet and wearing shaken expressions.

An armored man sat at the very far end of the table to my right. He had long hair and an unkempt beard. I recognized him. Captain Issachar lifted his head from a meal of fly-covered meat and splintered bones to regard me with white eyes.

Other Mistwalkers lurked in the space, most of them waiting in the shadows of the columns on either side of the tables. Nearly a dozen arrayed themselves around the thrones, both of which lay empty. Many held long infantry spears or crossbows, most of them aimed at the occupants of the tables.

All was silent as I walked forward with my prisoner, the rest of my company hanging some paces back. I focused on the figure at the center of that eerie tableau.

The King of Talsyn sat on the stairs beneath the emperor’s throne, the point of his old sword resting against the floor. His were the only eyes that didn’t look up when I stepped forward. Sitting next to him was Malcolm. When he saw me, the prince’s eyes went wide.

The sight of Rosanna’s son sitting within sword range of my enemy made my heart skip a beat. A few steps behind me, the Twinbolt also froze at the sight of his young charge before mastering himself.

I recognized other faces. Faisa Dance sat next to her nephew, the Grand Duke of Mirrebel. It took me a moment to recall his name — Natan, an elegant man in his thirties who shared his aunt’s dark skin and fine features. Faisa glanced at me, providing a view of her tense expression. Laessa Greengood sat across from those two with her friend, Esmerelda Grimheart, at her side. The two noblewomen had their hands clasped between their plates.

Ser Kaia stood near the thrones with no less than four Mistwalkers guarding her, one of whom was another ogre. This one carried an enormous hammer with a head of gray stone, its weight supported by a chain wrapped around the brute’s right arm. Kaia was disarmed and dishelmed, and an ugly bruise crawled over her tattooed face. She otherwise seemed unhurt, and when she caught my gaze she grimaced.

I understood her expression a moment later. Issachar wiped at his mouth with an already filthy cape as he stood, reached down, and pulled up a smaller figure roughly by the arm. He strode out to stand between the tables and showed me Prince Darsus. Malcolm’s younger brother looked traumatized, his face streaked with tears. There was blood on his chin like he’d been struck.

Kaia closed her eyes, an expression of shame fixing itself on her strong features. I guessed then that she’d been guarding one or both of the princes when the three of them were captured.

What about their mother?

Focus, I ordered myself. I walked forward with my own hostage until perhaps twenty paces separated me from the ghoul captain, placing me exactly where I’d stood during past audiences in this room. Calerus spun his sword idly, his eyes remaining downcast.

I saw that the plates set in front of every guest had the same fare as the ghoul commander’s — rotting meat and pieces of human bone. Buzzing flies provided the scene a grim ambience.

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“No further,” Issachar growled. When he showed me the flat of a gladius blade, holding it in front of his captive, I paused.

Only then did the man seated below the throne look up. His eyes narrowed as they fell on my prisoner.

“Show me,” he said. His voice was quiet, but it echoed through the room as though the curling lines of mist beyond the tables whispered in tune with him.

Aware of all the eyes on me, I lifted a hand and pulled the bag from Hyperia’s head to show Calerus her torn throat and empty expression. His reaction was subtle, little more than a blink and a long stillness.

“You didn’t do this to her,” Calerus said in his dry voice.

“No,” I agreed. “This was Yith.”

Close enough to the truth.

“And what happened to the fly?” Calerus asked, his tone almost curious.

“I sent him to Hell.”

The Vyke nodded. “Good. I told her that one was too strong for her, but she didn’t listen. She never does.”

His eyes fell on his sister. “Can you hear me, Hy?”

Hyperia’s eyes were dull and unfocused, but her head tilted as though she’d heard her name from a great distance. Her bloodless lips moved, a small whisper of air emerging.

“Did you bring her back?” Calerus asked me.

“No. Not intentionally, anyway.”

Issachar growled like an angry dog. “Enough of this.”

He lifted his sword to Darsus’s neck. The Storm Knights in my company all reacted angrily, but I held up a hand to stop them. The Mistwalker captain’s tangled beard shifted as he revealed his ivory teeth.

“We’ve got the royal brats here, as you can see.” The ghoul grabbed Darsus by his black hair, pulling a whimper from the boy. “You’ll have your master surrender the fortress, or we’ll give his sons back to him in pieces.”

I ignored the corpse-eater and focused on Calerus. “I’m here to talk, Your Majesty.”

He noted my use of the title. “You know?”

“That you murdered your father? I figured it out on my own, mostly. Hyperia told me your story.”

He took that in a moment while Issachar all but ground his teeth in impatience. But Calerus seemed unhurried, chewing on his next words before speaking again.

“What do you want?”

I met his eyes and considered my own words carefully before speaking. “I want you to surrender to the Emperor’s mercy, banish the Mistwalkers to whatever hinterland they came from, and help me stop this war before it really starts. It’s not too late.”

He frowned at the room full of armed ghouls and noble prisoners. “After all this, you think it’s not too late?”

“I imagine there will still be plenty of blood,” I admitted. My mind went to Evangeline’s murder of Randal Brightling. “But we can minimize the damage and keep the realms from falling apart into all out war, if you cooperate.”

Issachar barked with laughter. “You offer his sister’s brutalized carcass and expect him to trade his life for it? The fucking arrogance.”

I caught movement in the corner of my eye. There were windows along the upper right wall of the throne room, exposing the huge chamber to the outside air. They were large enough for the castle’s gargoyle guards to fit through, which meant they were easily large enough to filter in a swarm of those leech-headed chimera.

Keeping my attention on the young king, I continued. “This entire thing was your father’s plan, isn’t that right? You’ve been pushed to it by his allies and advisors, but it was never your crusade.”

I gave the glowering Issachar a pointed look. “Hasur Vyke was a madman. He abused you and your sister and tried to make you weapons for his own lunatic ambitions. You killed him, Calerus, so I don’t believe you disagree with me.”

Calerus remained quiet a time before speaking. “I killed him because he was old, and weak.”

He stood then and rested his blade on Malcolm’s shoulder. The boy hid his fear better than his younger brother, but his face still went pale. There were murmurs of discontent across the room, but no one made a louder protest. I imagined the weapons trained on them had more than a little to do with that. There were a few already face down on their own plates, their eyes glassy and crossbow bolts sticking out of their backs. The flies ate them as readily as the putrid dinner.

“Your Accord is weak too,” Calerus told me. “I can destroy it in a single night, with one stroke of my sword. You have no power here, Headsman.”

I kept my fear controlled with effort and took Faen Orgis in both hands before tilting my head towards Hyperia, who was also in my reach. “Don’t I?”

Issachar sneered. “She’s dead.”

Calerus frowned. “So are we.”

“We’re immortal,” Issachar corrected. “Have I taught you nothing, boy? We are wolves among sheep. We feast on their dead and become strong. Your sister is just a shell. There might be echoes left, but most of her will be gone.”

He bared his yellow teeth at me. “Don’t let this phantom trick you.”

Calerus was difficult to read. His dead eyes seemed devoid of care or even interest. I recalled a dark sort of glee he’d taken in the tournament, but none of that was evident now. He just looked tired.

“You can’t win,” I told him. “This is just self destruction, a suicide that’ll take thousands more with it.”

He shrugged. “So? This world’s shit anyway. Better to live in legend than die as chattel.”

Issachar nodded in approval.

After a moment’s thought I said, “There was a time I longed to live in legend too. But stories have a way of getting twisted, Calerus. Trust me, I’d rather live in peace and be forgotten.”

“That’s because you’re weak,” Issachar spat in contempt. “A coward.”

“You think I’m a coward?” I asked him. After considering it I nodded. “Perhaps I am. There’s plenty I’m afraid of.”

The ghoul king studied me, his brow furrowing. Knights don’t admit to fear, something I suspected wasn’t lost on him. “Then why do you live as a warrior, if you’d rather have peace?”

I shrugged. “Because the world isn’t peaceful, and this is what I’m good at. It’s the only way I can protect what I care about.”

“But you’re hardly even a knight.” Calerus’s lips twisted into a macabre facsimile of a smile. “You’re an executioner. A butcher. Just as much a monster as us.”

Maybe he was right. How often had I thought the same thing? But the way I saw it, there were monsters like Issachar, Hasur, and Reynard. Those who chose this life for ambition and pride. Then there were those like me and Calerus, who made monsters of ourselves to protect what we cared about.

Was there any difference, in the end? Would history care what kind of villains we were?

I’d told myself once that I didn’t, so long as at least a few knew the truth of me. Even if I hadn’t yet decided what that truth was.

“Do you care how you’ll be remembered, Calerus?”

The young man thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “Most of this was Hyperia’s idea. She was obsessed with outdoing our old man at his own game.”

He looked at the risen remains of his sister and sighed. “If I surrender to you, I’ll die. The Round won’t let me go free after this.”

“You might earn mercy,” I told him. “Give us your father’s advisors, all his allies. I know you conspired with the Arks and Brenner Hunting. They attacked us not half an hour ago. Surrender the rest and there could be clemency. The realms might accept that you were a pawn in all this.”

“He’s right,” Faisa Dance said from where she sat at one of the tables. She flinched when one of the ghouls shifted behind her.

“There’s no guarantee you can make me,” Calerus said in a hard voice.

“You’re right.”

Chances were the Ardent Round would call for his death and have Hyperia’s reanimated body burned. An ancient realm would be torn apart, left leaderless and at the mercy of its neighbors. I could do nothing about that.

I met his eyes and gave him the last thing I could offer.

“I am the Headsman of Seydis, executioner of the Onsolain, wielder of the Doomsman’s Arm. I am also a Knight of the Alder Table. If you help me stop this, then I will purge your family’s home. I’ll banish every demon there.”

Calerus stared at me in open, undisguised shock.

Taking another risk, I lowered my axe and stopped threatening the man’s sister. “End this cycle. Stamp out your father’s legacy and reclaim your home for yourself, for your own family. Hyperia told me what you did to survive. Look inward, Your Majesty. What do your ancestors want from you?”

Calerus lifted his sword from Malcolm’s shoulder and took a single step down the dais steps, so we were closer to eye level. His expression became piercingly intense.

“Will you make a vow of it, paladin?” He bared his ivory teeth. “An oath?”

Issachar spun on the younger ghoul. “What are you doing!?”

He ignored the captain, keeping his focus on me.

“Alken…” Emma’s voice was quiet. “Are you sure?”

I saw some of the nobles in the room staring at me with varying levels of disbelief. Some even looked angry, as though I were betraying them by offering this much.

Better to have witnesses to this. If it worked, there would be no backing out.

“I swear it. Stop this coup and give me the princes, and I will cleanse your House stone by stone of the creatures that haunt it. I can make no assurances for your safety, but I can promise that much.”

Calerus had eaten the bones of his ancestors, ingesting their strength into himself. I suspected that much like the spirits of the Alder Table whispered to me, those dispossessed souls must speak to him as well. Besides his sister, this was the only thing I could think to offer that he’d care about.

Calerus Vyke squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and seemed to relax. His gaze went to his sister.

“You hear that, Hy? He says this nightmare might actually end. That you can have your dreams back.”

Hyperia stirred. Her lips moved again, and this time a reedy, almost ethereal whisper emerged.

“C-cal… rus…”

Calerus watched his sister searchingly, but she said no more. He sighed and closed his eyes, even while his ally practically burned with frustration. The Mistwalker captain’s desire to kill me beat off him like waves of heat.

The ghoul king pointed his sword at Issachar. “The captain will take the younger prince to the Twinbolt while you bring my sister to me. When the exchange is made, I’ll give you the other one.”

He nodded to Malcolm.

“What!?” Issachar snarled.

A thrill of victory moved through me, but I fought it down. This wasn’t over. There might still be treachery.

Calerus glared at the Mistwalker captain. “You swore your sword to me, Issachar. You will obey.”

“You’re just going to throw it all away!?” Issachar seethed. “I did not swear to this!”

Something heavy and dark formed in the air around the king. Malcolm shivered and squeezed his eyes shut, a frosted breath escaping suddenly pale lips. Ice formed on the steps of the dais.

“You will obey,” Calerus said in a very different voice, one that was many voices. The mist writhed around him like a living thing, and upon his brow a light formed. Almost a crown.

Issachar growled low in his throat, but jerked his head towards me and pushed Darsus forward. Taking a deep breath, I started guiding Hyperia down the aisle.

Nearly a hundred eyes watched me, more if I counted all the Mistwalkers who might be lurking in the shadows. The prisoners forced to sit with the stench of rot in their nostrils and flies crawling on them followed me with fearful eyes. Kaia’s stare was intense as she observed along with the guards restraining her.

Again, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. To the right, and above. Something lurked in the rafters high above. I forced myself not to look.

When ten steps separated me from Issachar, his corpse eyes shifted to meet mine. He bared his teeth. An expression of humor, challenge, hate? Some mix of the three?

“Would that we’d slain you at Caelfall,” he told me.

His grin widened as he drew shoulder to shoulder with me.

“It would have spared you this disgrace!”

His gladius flicked out.

Toward Hyperia.

I’d been caught off guard many times of late. I’d been betrayed, ambushed, manipulated. I’d been weak when I’d needed to be cruel and unfeeling, let doubt and sentiment cloud my judgement, stretched myself thin. I’d courted dark powers and compromised myself in countless ways.

I was not such a fool as to expect the likes of Issachar to go along with this, and I’d been ready. My axe came up and deflected his sword.

He danced back away from my blade, his colorless cape fluttering around him like ragged wings. “KILL THEM ALL!” He roared, foam bubbling from his lips. “TAKE THE CASTLE! LEAVE ONLY CORPSES!”

And he swung his blade at Darsus. Kaia lurched forward with a shout, only for the ogre behind her to strike with his hammer and send her tumbling down the dais stairs.

The air filled with the stench of ozone and a crackling energy that made every pore on my body itch. A piercing CRACK! echoed off the walls.

Issachar stumbled, tried to lift his sword again, then collapsed in three pieces as his head, right arm, and the hand still clutching Darsus’s shoulder came apart. The Twinbolt Knight rose to his full height perhaps ten paces further down the aisle, his body still flickering with pale lightning.

All of the Mistwalkers started to move, and kill. It looked something like two banks of fog suddenly rolling together to join into one cloud, only it was full of steel and gnashing teeth and bone white eyes.

Crossbows fired. Javelins flew. Swords swung. The company I’d brought with me started to advance, but the room was too big and the prisoners too spread out. For most, there was nothing we could do.

I grabbed Darsus and pulled the sobbing child close to me, protecting him with my own body. My eyes went to Calerus, who still stood by Prince Malcolm. The young king was watching me, his sword at Malcolm’s neck. His nostrils flared in anticipatory fury.

Hyperia was in my reach, still almost entirely unaware of her own surroundings. I met Calerus’s eyes and shook my head.

His sword lowered from Malcom’s neck as a look of confusion formed on his face.

But he had no control over the Mistwalkers anymore. They went into a fury at the death of their captain. The Twinbolt cut through three of them with his twin swords, every blow a mortal one, every twitch bringing him ten paces or more with fulgurous speed. He was moving towards the Vyke and Malcolm, not seeing what I did or not caring.

I shoved Hyperia and Darsus back towards Emma. “Protect them!” I ordered, then took my axe in both hands.

I considered killing the Vykes anyway. After all of this, why stay my hand? For honor? For some hope that this travesty could be rectified somehow? They’d both earned death, regardless of their circumstances.

But if I could keep the king alive, if he cooperated after…

I swung, cleaving the skull of a Mistwalker who came screaming out of the fog. The Twinbolt was carving a bloody path down the aisle between the tables, but even he wasn’t immune to sheer numbers. The fog obscured the dais, making it more difficult to see the figures on it. The First Sword of House Forger was forced to stop as a forest of pikes bristled out of the thickening cloud of gray vapor.

The cloud engulfed him. I moved to help, but Emma’s scream made me flinch. Her warning saved my life. A sword licked at me, whipping across my pauldron and putting a groove in it.

Issachar’s decapitated form stood, fog so thick it was nearly liquid connecting his severed limbs back to his body so they became like writhing tendrils. One formed a tether between his fallen head and neck, lifting it up into the air so he stared down at me like some eldritch parody of a man.

“You can’t kill me!” He laughed. “I am one with the mist! I am immortal!”

He struck again, the strange vaporous tendril his arm had become giving him more range and a strange, difficult to track swing. I smacked his sword aside, then flinched at a sharp twang. The bolt missed my ear by inches and vanished into the mist.

His other hand held a small crossbow.

Issachar’s limbs and head reconnected with his body as he strode forward, huge teeth bared in a feral rictus. “I came to this backwater for war!” He spat at me, tossing away his spent sidearm. “To feast. I will not go hungry.”

He lifted his sword again, the mist seeming to writhe around it into an almost solid shape. It took on an eerie glow.

He was one with the mist, as he’d said. And what was that substance? Not just cold air and water. I sensed something familiar in it.

How long had these cursed soldiers feasted? How long had they wandered the hinterlands between life and death?

The mist was the Lost Legion itself. When Issachar lifted his blade, the disembodied souls of all his soldiers gathered at his call. He did not strike with the strength of one man, but of a thousand.

It was a simple Art. Little different from one of my own smiting blows, only carrying the strength of a siege engine. I had no time for a counter, knew I couldn’t block it.

My life didn’t quite flash before my eyes. I’d looked down the maw of death and glimpsed what lay beyond it often enough. I just bared my teeth and wreathed myself in burning aura.

From the mist behind the captain, something emerged. It moved fast, carrying a tremendous momentum that displaced white vapor and air like a sudden gust of strong wind. It punched into the ghoul’s chest, tearing through his banded armor to emerge in a spray of brackish blood.

The curved point of a brass-plated cleaver.

Karog glared down at his one-time ally with pitiless yellow eyes and drove the blade forward, forcing the ghoul to his knees. Issachar snarled like a beast, put a fist on the ground, and started to stand. Even the ogre’s behemoth strength failed, his arm trembling. He had to put a hand to the skull pommel of his blade and brace a knee to keep Issachar pinned.

“End it!” Karog bellowed.

I struck, swinging Faen Orgis down into Issachar’s snarling face. I split his skull clean in half down to the neck.

But I knew even that wouldn’t be enough. This body was just a shell, dead flesh and hunger. Issachar was the Mistwalker, the original, the center of their curse.

A curse…

I put a boot to his chest, ripped my axe out, then squeezed the rough branch that formed its grip. Small burs on the handle cut my skin, mixing with the blood I’d already spilled that night. I doubted the Malison Oak much cared for ghoul blood, but it drank my own eagerly.

There was no soil to plant it in here. Instead, I punched the end of the branch down into the gap I’d cloven in the captain’s skull, burying it in his neck. I forced it down as far as I could, pushing down on the axe’s head. The deathless creature fought me all the while, struggling and clawing at the object.

Not enough blood. I made sure it was secure, then poured my will into it. The branch began to heat as I filled it with golden fire. I poured everything I could into it, and when I felt the change take I let it go and stumbled back.

Issachar dropped his sword and reached up to grab the weapon I’d sheathed into his body. His fingers curled around it as the wood crackled, bark splitting and small twigs emerging. His fingers blistered and peeled as he touched the burning wood.

The branch erupted, growing to three times its length in an instant and increasing in size rapidly. Roots began to wrap around the ghoul, encasing him in a cocoon of tendrils even as the trunk of a dark, twisted tree rose into the air.

It devouring him as greedily as he’d consumed countless victims across the centuries. His flesh shrunk and shriveled, his skeleton cracked, his organs and blood drained. The fog itself was pulled into the tree, vanishing into cracks in the bark like a sucking vacuum lurked inside. There were howls of despair and confusion, eerie faces in the mist.

And then a sudden and consuming silence.

When it was finished, all that remained of Issachar was a desiccated skeleton trapped inside a black tree that stretched half a hundred feet high. Only some thin bands of mist remained in the room, revealing the remnants of the brief and bloody battle. Kaia had found her feet and a sword. She stood above the corpse of the undead ogre. It was butchered, lying in near half a dozen pieces while her shoulders heaved over its remains. The Twinbolt had a broken spear in the shoulder, but still stood.

Natan Dance was injured, lying by one of the tables with his aunt holding her hands to the wound. Many others were dead, but we’d managed to save more than a few. Not enough.

Calerus remained on the dais. The Twinbolt and Kaia surrounded him, but neither seemed willing to approach with Malcolm endangered. The surviving ghouls looked frozen, shocked at the death of their deathless leader.

Karog stared at the tree with a grim sort of satisfaction, then pulled a second cleaver from his back and turned to Calerus. Baring his teeth, he started forward.

“No,” I croaked. A sudden weight of exhaustion crashed down on me, making the armor I wore feel like a shell of weighted iron.

Karog glared at me. “You won’t deny me my revenge, elf friend.”

There was nothing I could do to stop him with my axe still locked inside the Malison Oak. I’d poured an immense amount of energy into the tree, and felt drained.

“Is that all you care about after all of this?” I asked him. “Revenge?”

He considered it, his small eyes narrowing.

“Help me stop this.” I started forward at a half-shambling pace. My injuries from the day weren’t as healed as I’d thought, and suddenly I felt each one.

Karog said nothing. Neither did he charge at his enemy.

Calerus watched me as I approached the dais. He still held his sword, but hadn’t moved during the fight with Issachar. No doubt he’d wanted to see how it would pan out. Who would win.

“My offer remains,” I said hoarsely. “End this, O’ King.”

He looked at the tree. “You could really do it, couldn’t you? Free my House.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Then this will be my first and perhaps my last edict as King.”

He met my eyes and once again that crown of shining mist appeared. “I command you, Headsman. You will cleanse my family’s home.”

And then Calerus threw down his sword.