Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [65]
Why hadn’t the lens showed him the zombies, Levac thought? Unless—
“Levac, I could use you! I thought you said the wards were—”
“We’ve been breached!” Levac shouted.
Wards exploded in a series of rapid cracks along the edge of the door, arcing blue lightning into the zombies and wracking their bodies rigid. The creatures groaned as foul smoke poured out of their rotting skin. If those corpses had fooled the door lens somehow, at least they hadn’t managed to deactivate the other defenses.
Levac grabbed a sledgehammer from the case and flanked up next to Haim, who didn’t dare sink his steel sword into the electrified undead. Levac reared back for an overhand swing.
“Do it,” said Haim.
Levac brought the mallet down. He crushed the skull of one of the zombies, and it fell. He brought the hammer around again, and smashed through the collarbone of the other. The two of them fell in a heap.
Levac huffed. “How the heck did those things fool the lens?” he said.
“Levac…”
Haim was looking through the doorway, out to the yard surrounding the stronghold. Levac looked.
A sea of undead was amassed around the stronghold: two ranks of bloated fleshbags, a legion of zombie grunts led by a contingent of undead spellcasters, three enormous dreg reavers with their ribcages carrying squads of animated skeletons, and flyers in the form of a cloud of undead drakes and kathari.
“Malfegor …” Haim breathed.
Behind the undead army was a towering, misshapen demon lord with broad, batlike wings, four arms, and the lower body of a huge, black-scaled dragon. It spoke some booming, guttural blasphemy to its troops, and the sea of undead began to advance. Torchlight faced Malfegor, the demon-dragon abomination, the cruelest and most powerful demon lord in all of Grixis. If Malfegor was there in person, then Torchlight was going to fall, and not after a long siege. The hermitage, the last major refuge of humanity, would go that night.
“Get out of here,” said Haim.
Levac stared. His fingers dropped the sledgehammer, and his feet took a single, slow step backward. “Levac, you idiot, run!”
Windows shattered. Wards fired off ineffectually as the undead began pouring through every portal in the stronghold’s ground level. Some sort of undead beast pounced in the open doorway and knocked down Captain Haim. Levac rushed up the stairs as he heard Haim’s screams.
Levac took one final look back, and regretted it. Haim’s entrails flew every which way as the beast and three other zombies feasted on his abdomen, while he screamed and tried to beat on them with his fists.
Levac took the stairs three at a time.
“Salay!” he bellowed over the popping of the wards. “Salay!”
Other living humans streamed past him on the stairwell, carrying rusted swords and shields. Levac said silent goodbyes to them as they passed.
He reached the landing. His wife Salay regarded him from their vestibule. She would have looked waiflike with her concave cheeks, but for her pregnant belly.
“What’s happening?” she said.
“This is it. We’re hitting the tunnels. Grab the satchel.”
“Where’s Captain Haim?”
“He’s dead. They’ve come, Salay. It’s time to go. Where’s Vali?”
Salay’s face went pale. “I thought he was with you! He said he was going to help you with your watch, and headed out to find you …”
“Oh, no, no—”
His son was outside the stronghold, unprotected among the undead. He was sure of it. The world closed in on Levac’s mind.
BANT
Aarsil held her hand up to quiet the court assembly again.
Rafiq looked at Mubin. The rhox’s mouth hung open at the prophet’s words—the thought of other lands appearing all around Bant, and the onset of war with them, was hardly to be believed. But his expression seemed not to convey disbelief so much as wonder.
“What is it?” Rafiq whispered to him.
“It all fits,” said Mubin, but he didn’t elaborate.
Aarsil