Meek

Eli launched himself into the air.

Like an arrow flying at the Bloodwitch.

Except he wasn't an arrow. He wasn't going to reach her; he was going to land in the thick of the risen ranks. Exactly as planned, but halodamn he was not looking forward to this.

For a moment, time seemed to slow. The dead creatures beneath him, silent and smiling, pushed forward up the slope. The Reach rose above him, a monument to a previous age. The Bloodwitch stood in front of him, no longer on her 'throne' of bodies.

She raised her arms, and he saw that both of her wrists were slashed. A stream of blood flowed from each cut, but they didn't splash down and drain away. Instead, the ropes of blood braided together, like whips of liquid.

And the thrum of the Reach surrounded Eli. Power squeezed him like a giant's invisible fist. He felt his core glow in response.

This was his moment: he'd harness the Reach, he'd defeat the witch with her own power.

He tried to fully open himself to the energy shedding from the great spire ... and couldn't.

Time restarted and he crashed into the risen.

He chopped one in the face and brought two more to the ground with him. A spark showed him a cudgel swinging at the back of his head. He blocked behind himself with his falcona then rolled forward, shoved by the other spark, and put the point of his blade in another risen's throat and a dead bandit's spear pierced him through the kidney.

The pain was excruciating.

A scarlet glow of agony blinded him--his eyes and his sparks. His mind couldn't parse what he was seeing but apparently his body could because he spun and took the risen's head and he ducked another spear thrust and grabbed that spear and pulled, then chopped through the wielder's neck.

Well, most of the way. The risen's still-smiling head flopped to the side but it kept coming and he blocked a bloated fist to his face. He missed two more to his back then took the half-decapitated head in his free hand and tugged until the ligaments and muscles tore.

He used the rotting head like a shield, battling his way toward the Bloodwitch. He blocked an axe and a saw and a fist before the head disintegrated in his hand. He forced his way onward as the risen cut and bit him. One grabbed his legs. He took her arm off at the elbow, then a bandit shoved a dagger between his ribs, and he howled and broke free and kept staggering forward.

Then she was in front of him. Small woman. White-gray eyes, white-gray skin. Wearing a tattered bloody robe, with those streams of blood winding around her like trained snakes.

"Do you rise?" she asked him.

"Oh, I rise," he said, stepping forward.

"No. You are not one of us."

"The Celestials reached into my--"

One of her ropes of blood whipped at Eli. He blocked with his falcona but the blood simply parted around his blade then rejoined and lashed him across the chest.

Felt like being swatted by that bear.

He flung backwards into the thick of risen. One leaped on him, hugging his face to its rotting stomach while another dragging him to the ground. Teeth sunk into his wrist and hands wrestled his falcona away. Knees and feet pummeled him and he pushed with one spark while the other spun in tight circles looking for openings, and a cold wash of gore slopped across his arm.

Above him, Padye swung his axe again.

Another risen fell and Eli shoved the body off him and grabbed his sword and climbed to his feet. He found himself standing with Payde and Fishhook, both of whom looked pretty rough.

Yet despite that, both of them still fought with shocking skill. Fishhook's sword darted and sliced, Payde's axe hewed and cleaved--and they fought together. Almost like a single warrior, covering for each other, parrying for each other, feinting for each other.

Blades flashed, bandits and risen fell--but kept coming. Too many even for two master bladesmen to stop, especially as the creatures shrugged off any blow that didn't kill them outright.

Then they stopped.

At least twenty of them stopped short, forming a circle around Eli and the others. Gathering for one final rush, or keeping them contained for the Bloodwitch. Too many to beat. Far too many--and Eli's high spark showed him the shield line of mercs still fighting in the mouth of the boulevard that opened into the quarry. Keeping half the risen busy, but that didn't help him any.

At least Twoeyes and Dorgo were still guarding the children. For now. Eli needed a distraction. He needed a distraction immediately, but nothing happened except for the witch stepping into the circle of risen.

"You aren't one of them," she told Eli, her bloody ropes twining around herself.

He didn't know which 'them' she meant, but he said, "Well, I'm sure as halo not one of you."

"We will rise like they rise," she told him. "And unleash the heavens."

"Like them?" He cut his gaze briefly to the risen. "Like rotting, obedient animals?"

"Like peaceful animals, finally at rest."

"How about you come a little closer," Payde snarled at her, "and we'll help you rest?"

Her bloody rope whipped at him, faster than a diving bird of prey. He raised a shield at the last second, and the blood smashed it ... then returned to gather at the Bloodwitch's wrist instead of lashing farther at Payde, who staggered backward.

"You had another name once," Eli told the witch. "Shimyn of Ehrat."

"All of you together cannot defeat me. Cannot defeat this."

The ropes her wrists shot out again.

One crushed through Payde's shield and grabbed his ankle and pulled, slamming him to the ground, while the other shot directly at Fishhook.

Fishhook blocked with his sword, but it was like blocking a bull with a buckler. The impact flung him backward into the risen, who grabbed him in dead arms.

The blood-rope around Payde's ankle lifted him overhead then slammed him to the ground again and Eli took two steps forward and the Bloodwitch opened her mouth and puked a third blood-rope at him. It hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer.

He felt bones break.

His breath came in gasps.

He could barely speak but he needed to delay so he whimpered, "Who ... are the others ... like you?"

The rope retracted into her mouth and she said, "They're not like me. They're far stronger than I am."

"Well, that's ..." He coughed blood of his own. "Not ... great news."

"When I raise them," she told him. "I leave a trace of myself behind. They are not my children but I am with them. Always. As They are with me. With us. You consider my risen animals because you are blind to beauty so open your eyes and see what the heavens offer."

The rope around Payde's ankle lifted him into the air again. The other one looped around his neck and started to squeeze.

Payde batted at the rope with his axe, only semi-conscious. A shield flickered into sight, then fizzled out. The rope squeezed and his attempts to free himself weakened.

Eli could almost see Payde's life ebbing away. And death wasn't the worst part. If she turned him, if she raised him, that was a betrayed of everything he'd been and--and Eli couldn't stand for that. He barely knew Payde but watching someone that full of life reduced to a shambling dead monstrosity ... no.

No.

So he opened himself again to the power of the Reach. He stripped away the protection of mountain cave in his mind. He revealed his core to the Reach, naked and unconcealed. He welcomed that screaming thrum of power into himself, into his core, and through his core into his sparks.

He teetered on the brink of something immense and then--

Nothing happened.

He couldn't take the next step.

Instead, he merely smacked his sparks at the Bloodwitch. One at her face and one to her chest, then he tried to send the second one into her slit wrist. Pushing, probing, trying to squeeze through the wound and inside her body.

She frowned in surprise, then turned her wrist upward. A bulge of blood shoved his spark away and he felt her power. Her magic was stronger than his sparks. He couldn't force his way inside her so he struck her face again and pushed himself to his feet.

"That's you," she said. "That's--"

Then she stopped, at the same moment that he caught a glimpse of motion at the Reach.

A moment later, Lara appeared, jogging easily across the narrow beams of the scaffolding, slowing at a junction. He saw but couldn't hear the thunks of her axe chopping through the cords tying the scaffolding together.

The Bloodwitch must've heard, though.

She spun and shrieked. "No. No!"

Half of her risen broke away and start racing jerkily for the Reach. The witch tossed Payde aside and shouted to her risen as she lashed again at Eli.

He dodged the blood-rope but one of her risen slammed a cudgel into his side, and he lost a few seconds beating back a wave of the creatures.

The first dead bandits to arrive at the Reach climbed faster than Eli expected, but not nearly fast enough. Lara was a dryn, and those beams were straighter than branches. She ran across them with complete ease, she leaped the gaps between them without looking, her axe chunked into cords then she climbed a diagonal brace no wider than her foot like it was a grand stairway.

Tearing down the only thing the Bloodwitch cared about.

Not that she could that much damage, not quickly. And not without bringing the whole thing down on her own head.

Still, the Bloodwitch didn't want to take that chance. One of her ropes of blood stretched toward the Reach.

For a terrible moment Eli thought it would fire like an arrow and strike Lara where she stood.

But it couldn't reach that far. Instead, the end splashed against an un-sawn log and attached, somehow. Then it pulled the Bloodwitch closer, like a fish being reeled in on the end of a line.

She fired her other wrist-rope and dragged herself past the woodshop. Then she aimed upward, to pull herself into the scaffolding.

A dozen risen climbed toward Lara.

Payde lay gasping on the ground, his axe a foot from his hand.

Fishhook fought to free himself from a dozen grasping, putrefying hands, while Dorgo's spearhead slashed and pierced from behind.

And Eli was too far from Lara to help.