The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [68]
Exhaling a long breath, control and reason slid away, freeing his mind and sharpening his instincts. Opening his eyes, he was no longer vremyonni, no longer truly himself. He was merely the mask, the axe, the magic, and the crystal clear rage of the Rashemi.
Thrusting his arm at the center of the descending swarm, a bead of light flew from his fingertip. It disappeared among them. He ran across the broken stone, leading them in a circle. Arcane words poured from him, a harsh poetry of magic that blurred his form as he charged into the living mass. Crashing around him, the varrangoin swirled as an explosion rocked the tower, a ball of flame erupting within the flock. The ground shook, debris fell from the walls, and Bastun found himself in the chaos.
Broken bodies and burning blood rained down as he dived into the nearest of the varrangoin. Caustic fumes burned his nose as stone melted. The survivors rallied quickly, and still more broke free of icy prisons above.
Claws raked his arms and scraped at his mask and leather armor, but they brought the varrangoin too close. His blade slipped through their forms, hissing with the blood of one even as it slew another. Stingers struck stone where he'd been standing, claws found only air as he sidestepped. The rage consumed him, filled his body with strength and his spirit with bloodlust. He reveled in the freedom-in the rhythm between steel and magic. He shouted in their fang-filled faces, laughed as they spit streams of acid from glowing maws. His laughter became a chant and the chant became thunder.
Lightning blasted outward, leaving the twitching fiends to fall and flounder.
As the blue-white glow faded, others escaped, clinging to walls, their green eyes full of hunger and violence. Turning slowly, whispering spells through a grim smile, he watched them regroup, shrieking at one another in a fiendish tongue. They leaped from the walls from all directions. Waves of tingling energy washed over him as his stomach lurched and gravity changed direction.
He plummeted upward, the fiends screeching as they fun-neled into a flapping spiral in his wake. From a pouch, he pulled a fistful of pebbles, shaking them like bone-dice as he chanted and scattered them like seeds. The tiny rocks grew into boulder-sized chunks of rock and plunged through the tornado of leathery wings.
Emerald light filled the darkness beneath him as the fiends scattered, smashed by the falling rocks and crushed against the ruin below. Their shrieks reached beyond the stone-cold demeanor of the mask to the calm that dominated the center of his being. He stopped his freefall, drifting toward the wall and rolling on the stone before finding balance again.
Standing, his senses swam with a momentary vertigo. The tower appeared as a long tunnel, pale light behind and crawling darkness ahead. Shaking his head, he waited as the survivors, those still able to fly, rose from the chaos to find him. He couldn't let them escape-a small flock of varrangoin could become hundreds within months, thousands in a year.
Less than a dozen remained, slow in their ascent and splitting into groups. Directing each other in their odd croaking language, it seemed they were regaining their wits after such a long hibernation in the ice. Letting go, gravity turning in his gut like a giant's fist, he fell to the far wall. Two varrangoin fell to his axe, a third scoring his mask as it spun out of the way. He led the others back down, leaping from wall to wall, before changing direction and ripping through two more as he ascended.
They floundered behind him, diving beyond reach of his axe, though the unnerving sound of beating wings grew uncomfortably close. A sudden impact nearly took his breath, and he tumbled with the fiend, freefalling toward the top of the tower. The varrangoin's stinking breath burned his nose as he fought to breathe. It raked his shoulders, teeth snapping just over the handle of his axe. He growled as he fought to keep the fangs at