Arc 7: Chapter 23: Fracture
Twelve years.
For twelve years I’d wandered, fought, bled, regretted. For twelve years I’d sought some kind of dubious repentance, a way to make up for my failures. And there in front of me, contorted like victims of Inquisition broken on the wheel, stretched and twisted, crawled the very faces of my failure. They reached for me with fingers like gnarled tree roots, mouths agape and eyes brimming with poisonous tears.
Twelve years. Had they been suffering all that time, waiting day by day for me to return and fight for them?
I could have. I could have spurned the Houses, those squabbling wolves, and forged back into Seydis to slay all the monsters who violated it and save the elves, or died trying. The realization came like a punch to the gut, like a lethal wound that bled painlessly and fast.
I was shocked out of my reverie when a pike darted forward and sunk into the Woed she-elf’s neck. She gurgled and shivered, then slumped down like a dead spider, finally succumbing to her wounds. Around me, the battle continued.
“Are you alright!?” The militiaman who’d killed the Abyss-tainted faerie shouted in my ear.
“Fine,” I rasped. I blinked out of my shock and inspected the street. Reinforcements had arrived, probably Cyril’s men from the garrison finally caught up to me. We were pushing the irks back, though the transformed elves were nightmares, fast as insects and moving with a skittering energy. They changed by the second, limbs elongating so they could twist around their victims and strangle them. Most had discarded their artful weaponry and fought like animals, shrieking in high, piercing voices.
This wasn’t Maerlys, but they were Seydii. The ones we’d failed, the ones we’d left behind when the Golden Country was consumed by fire and madness.
One of the Woed spasmed suddenly, then its chest burst open to reveal ribs that’d become like snapping teeth in a gory maw. One by one the rest were revealing their true forms, and they were killing the changelings — their own half-mortal children and descendants — as readily as the humans.
An orgy of violence. The storm above the town roiled, as though growling in satisfaction at this butchery.
Mounted knights from the castle tore down the street, bypassing my group with dextrous precision. Each rider was mounted on a chimera of local stock — big, scaled beasts with tube-shaped mouths like horse fish. They’d been grown with lungs that could emit flammable gas, and they sent a barrage of fiery plumes ahead of them as they crashed into the disorganized attackers. Those irks and Woed who weren’t burned were crushed or pinned on the lances of the knights.