City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [200]
‘Do you have any idea,’ Beami asked, ‘what it will do once it’s up and active?’
‘One can never be quite sure,’ Bellis replied, not really answering her question. They scrambled up to a flat roof that offered a perspective across towards the Shanties. The Onyx Wing rose behind them, and behind that the Citadel, allowing them a perfect view of what was about to happen.
‘Do the Jamur military know what you’re doing?’ Beami asked.
‘Not one iota.’
‘But what if there are citizens out there, getting in the way?’
Bellis’s gaze softened, and she sighed audibly. ‘Perhaps there’s no one there by now. We can only hope that, can’t we?’
Before Beami had a chance to say anything more, Bellis produced a smaller orb, the size of an apple, and began to tamper with it, muttering something to herself. ‘A-ha! And here we are. Three . . . two . . .’
Villiren groaned.
‘. . . one.’
Some of its thoroughfares glowed a pale violet, began vibrating and shuddering back and forth, and further out, towards the Shanties, there was a sudden haze of bright light.
Bellis grabbed Beami’s arm and said excitedly, ‘Let’s just hope it heads the right way!’
The noises of troop movements became more distinct for a moment, then buildings in the distance began to veer and teeter sideways. Dawn birds scattered manically. People surged out on to the streets in hysteria.
Cobbles spat up in a fluid line in three locations. Then something possessing an electrical outline breached the rooftops, and rose till it gained immense height, thirty, forty, seventy, a hundred feet and then doubled again and again in size until it took clearer form. Tentacles swirled around, crashing through the war-battered architecture.
A giant squid, made entirely from light.
Beami was shocked, truly shocked. Despite having been told, despite having known what was coming from Bellis’s explanations, this was far beyond anything she could have contemplated.
As the city delivered itself of this light-formed ghost, the streets themselves giving birth to the monstrosity, Bellis clapped her hands with glee, jumping up and down on the rooftop.
‘That thing, that cephalopod,’ Bellis explained loudly, ‘has been trapped beneath Villiren for millennia. The Archipelago is littered with such electrical ghosts, waiting for re-activation so, after some detailed research into electrical teuthology, all I had to do was put the right relics in the right place.’
These charged corpses were just waiting there to be unlocked.
Vast and garish, the squid’s tentacles flailed through the air, swirling in the dawn light. It pushed outwards, dragging buildings apart, trampling everything in its hundred-foot-wide path. Screams rose in the distance and, as a cloud dust accrued in its wake, it ploughed right through the enemy-occupied sectors of the city.
And through countless enemy soldiers.
As it slunk into the sea, probably trashing what was left of Port Nostalgia, it would, Bellis hoped, also eradicate the invasion fleet, those grey vessels in which the Okun and the redskin rumel had arrived. Water sloshed to huge heights as the harbour waters banked and surged far inland, and even the larger boats were cast around like toys.
And all the time Beami kept praying that as few of the Imperial forces as possible would be harmed.
*
Brynd glimpsed Lupus releasing an arrow which imploded a skulomewhere in the darkness. He fired again through a gap between the shields as the Night Guard maintained their protective structure despite the onslaught of redskins and Okun. Brynd was breathless and his legs seemed about to buckle because of maintaining this cramped position. Caked in sweat and blood and severed flesh, he rested his hands on his knees and tried desperately to draw in air.
With limited visibility he could not see clearly where the next attacks might come from, so had to remain ultra-alert. Attacked from the front and sides, simultaneously they broke position only briefly to launch savage assaults on their assailants.
Their recent enhancements had so far kept them alive.
Suddenly the