Chapter 25: The Ember That Remains
Torgo had lagged behind, as he always did, a lantern swinging from his stick like an afterthought. Now he stood alone on the muddy embankment, silhouetted by the sickle of moon, his hat askew and the amber at the tip of his staff bleeding thin green fire into the dark.
The wind guttered, and with it came that resonant chime, a vibration that crawled up Apollo’s legs and into his gut, sickly familiar and yet nothing he’d ever known in life or death.
From the other side of the river, the congregation of the temple pressed forward, their numbers swelling as more and more white robed bodies spilled from the woods.
The river took some, the ice giving way with a sound like bones breaking underfoot, but the rest clambered over the writhing mass, undeterred by water or cold or the prospect of drowning.
Above them all, the shapes of light continued to multiply, each one a riot of angles and hunger. They pulsed, starved, impossible.
Torgo’s voice split the cold. "Don’t stop running, you fools!" He jammed his stick into the mud, scattering sparks. "Go! GO!"
He didn’t look back as Apollo and the others scrambled up the far bank, Lyra half-dragging Thorin, Nik with a hand on Lyra’s shoulder and the other clutching the dog’s scruff.
Apollo hesitated, just long enough to see Torgo plant both feet like he was bracing for the world to end.
The cultists reached the river’s edge, and the foremost of them—hair streaming, mouth wide, hands clapped to the temples, threw itself across the gap with a grace that defied every law Apollo could remember.
The figure landed in a crouch, then vaulted again, closing half the distance to the survivors in three horrific lunges. The light-beings trailed after, ribbons of radiance wrapping the cultist’s body, burrowing into its flesh and then ballooning outward in a grotesque facsimile of wings.