Meek

Eli watched the witch extend a blood-rope from her slit wrist into the scaffolding. The blood splatted onto a beam not ten feet from Lara.

The 'rope' of liquid braided together, and then--

A sword flashed.

Riadn pivoted from behind the woodshop, already finishing her swing.

The Bloodwitch's head fell from her neck and thudded to the ground. Eli almost wept in relief: the hounds had delivered their prey to the knife.

A moment later, the risen on the scaffolding started to decay. They collapsed in a rain of blood and organs. The ones nearest the Reach dissolved into rotten meat, and two heartbeats later so did the ones around Eli and Payde and Fishhook and Dorgo.

He heard a ragged cheer behind him, from the mercs at the shield wall, and closed his eyes, saying a silent prayer to the Angel.

The pain finally came, now that the urgency was over. His broken ribs gave a pang with every breath. His right arm had been slashed to the bone by a blade he hadn't seen, and something was wrong inside him, with his kidney or stomach.

He waited while the numbness spread, bringing his sparks close for comfort while the Reach continued to thunder against his core. So much for harnessing that power. He didn't know why that hadn't worked. Maybe because he hadn't been able to throw all caution to the wind and simply embrace the power.

Despite his desperation, he'd still felt an edge of caution. Of fear, paranoia, wariness.

Well, everything had worked out. Except ... not for everyone.

Swan and the mercs who'd held the shield wall started to gather their dead. The Cygnets had lost a quarter of their number.

While he healed, Lara climbed down from the scaffolding and trotted closer.

"They okay?" she asked Riadn, who was tending Payde and Fishhook.

"They will be."

"I've never been better," Payde gasped. "And the old man over there is tougher than boot leather, and twice as fragrant."

"You need a hand?" Lara asked Riadn, ignoring Payde.

"Help Twoeyes," Riadn told her.

Eli's spark watched Lara trot across the gore-splattered quarry toward the stone niche at the top of the ramp, where Twoeyes had been guarding the children. They looked ... well, alive. But still shocked and shaken, filthy and terrified.

Lara dropped her axe and greeted the kids in a bright, friendly voice. Some trick of her gait and expression made her look harmless and young, and she flittered among them, touching a shoulder here, murmuring gently there.

While she soothed them, Twoeyes called to the mercs who'd stayed atop the wall, protecting the lady and the mage. Something about evacuating the kids on ropes. Swan strode closer and spoke to Dorgo, then said they'd use the boulevard to leave the Weep now that the risen were dead. She wanted sentries posted against any angelbrood, though.

Which reassured Eli. Nice that someone else was expecting the worst. There was probably no reason to expect the brood without three moons in the sky, but they were in the Weep and nobody knew if--

His spark caught a glint of movement closer to the Reach.

At the Bloodwitch's body.

Blood poured from her severed neck.

Too much blood.

Into a puddle, then a pool--and it kept coming.

More blood than her body could've possibly contained.

"Riadn," he said.

She heard something in his voice, then followed his gaze. "What the halo?"

The pool of blood thickened into ropy strands instead of spreading in a thin film of liquid on the stone ground.

"Lara!" Eli yelled, rising to his feet. "Get those kids out of here! To the boulevard, now!"

Swan glanced at him as he stalked closer to the Bloodwitch's body. Then she and Lara started urging the children to climb down the slope to the quarry floor, to run for the boulevard instead of hefting them upward on ropes, which would only evacuate a few at a time.

The traumatized kids balked, though. Well, most of them. They didn't want to get closer to where the risen had gathered, to where the battle had raged and where the Bloodwitch had ranted.

Riadn faded to the left of the growing mound of congealed blood while Payde and Fishhook, half-bandaged, stood unsteadily and drew their weapons.

Before Eli took ten steps forward, the bloody mound expanded to the height of a bull. Three times as wide, though--and it kept growing, pouring from the Bloodwitch's corpse.

Payde and Fishhook stayed directly in front of the, the enormous blood-slug, remaining between it and the children while Twoeyes ran forward to take up position with Dorgo.

Eli veered around the right side, to reach the corpse, to stop this at the source. His spark lost sight of Riadn on the left, but he heard her gasp. Then he saw her stumbling backward, her sword raised in a parry.

A moment later, a cable of liquid emerged from the slug in front of him. He blocked with a spark. To his surprise, the blood rippled and the slug recoiled at the touch of the spark--but only for an eyeblink.

Then the cable slammed him back toward the others.

"Now that is a melody I didn't expect," Payde said, cracking his neck and approaching the slug from the front.

"You got any shields left?" Fishhook said.

"One, one and a half."

"Most of the kids are still in the cave," Twoeyes said, beside Dorgo. "We need to slow this thing down. Buy them time to--"

A whip of blood lashed at Dorgo, and he darted forward. The blood curled around to take him from behind but Twoeyes blocked it with her shield and Fishhook slashed with his sword.

His blow parted the whip clearly enough that the two sections didn't simply rejoin. Instead, the end of the whip fell to the ground and writhed there like a snake while the enormous slug oozed forward.

Faster than a slug, even one that size. Moving at the equivalent of a quick walk, rolling over the severed 'snake' of blood and reabsorbing it while Dorgo stabbed with his spear.

His stabes didn't stop the slug. It was moving fast enough that it could block the boulevard exit before the children reached it. So they worked together to slow it down, taking turns darting forward to slice chunks off it. Which made it pause ... but not for long. Not for long enough. It kept oozing unstoppably forward, and Eli and the others kept retreating.

"If this is risen, I'd hate to see what fallen looks like," Payde boomed, chopping at another bloody rope. "You look like the contents of the Celestials' chamber pot."

The slug--the Bloodwitch, if that's what it still was--lashed out with a frenzy of ropes.

Twoeyes took three hits on her shield, protecting herself and Dorgo, before a fourth tossed her aside, to land in a moaning heap. Dorgo impaled the slug with his spear to no effect, and then was slammed beside her.

Fishhook retreated sideways, trying to guide the slug away from the two fallen mercenaries. He was the finest swordsman Eli had ever seen, parrying and riposting with breathtaking skill, but he still couldn't slow the inexorable advance of the blood-slug.

Eli shouted to draw the slug's attention--to give the others a chance--and heard Lara and Swan behind him, urging the kids to flee, trying not to yell them, afraid of paralyzing them in terror when they needed to move.

After a flurry of blows, a blood-rope knocked Eli aside and one of his sparks showed him Swan ushering the bulk of the kids fast toward the boulevard. The ones who could be ushered.

But Lara stayed behind with five more, who couldn't, or wouldn't, leave the false sanctuary of the niche at the top of the slope. Two of them were weeping but the others were just standing there in terrified silence.

Pushing back into the fray, Eli slashed with his falcona. One spark gave him a eyeblink of warning before he needed to dodge while the other jabbed at the great mass of blood. The slug reacted to the impact of his spark more than from blade, but that wasn't saying much. It reminded him of a horse twitching her coat at a fly.

Still, he struck again and again while Payde waded in with his axe, attracting attacks by long ropes of blood that Fishhook then severed--until a pustule popped on the slug's skin and slammed Fishhook away. He staggered backward, tripped over a bandit's body, and fell hard.

Payde cursed and Riadn darted in from the side, piercing the slug's skin and throwing powder--poison?--at the wounds, to no effect.

"The Bloodwitch," she called, as she danced around another rope of blood. "Look behind her."

A spark showed Eli what she meant. "There's a clear path on the ground. She's ... consuming everything she oozes over."

"Dissolving it," Riadn said. "Like acid. Stay away from the main body."

"Keep her back!" Lara shouted, from behind them.

From far too close behind them.

"Find a blood blister," Payde told Eli.

"I can't!"

"You sure about that?"

"The whole blessdamned thing is a blood blister."

"Well, in that case ..." Payde leaped forward. "I'll take the solo."

His mage-shield hit the slug an instant before he did. The shimmer made the blood-skin of the creature bow inward and Payde hacked deeply with his axe.

Riadn made her ululating cry and spun into a blur of blades, whirling at the slug's side.

So Eli charged forward as well, following Payde--but a tide of blood closed around him before Eli reached him.

The slug swallowed Payde whole.