Aliandra

  The body that had once been Maeria Runeweaver squelched in a pool of blood as the heavy-set, creaking skeleton stepped off of her, advang toward the table. The longsword hung loose from bony fingers, the tip screeg as it was dragged along the bloody fgstones. Mismatched pieces of armor hung from the bones, g discordantly with each step.

  Ali jerked back, her stomach heaving as everyone fled, their screaming uo drown out the hammering of her heart. Her chair toppled backward, spilling her onto the floor with a bruising thump. Splinters of wood pelted her as the skeleton’s bde bit deep into the wooden table right where she had been sitting. Flickers of light rippled throughout the library as those who could evacuated using personal teleportation skills, talismans, or artifacts.

  … she’s… dead…

  Ali scrambled backward on her butt, uo tear her eyes away from the creaking bohe dripping sword, and the sheer malevolence as it transfixed her with its horrifying, glowing gaze. A loud muffled thump shook the library, and the skeleton stumbled drunkenly to the side. With a burst of adrenaline lending her arms and legs sudden strength, she scrambled to her feet and fled, heart rag as she gasped for breath.

  I couldn’t… I should have…

  Ali had seeh only a couple of times before, but never with such sudden brutality. And never a person dying at the hands of a monster.

  That… that was a skeleton…

  The undead were horrors for the bat csses. It was terrifying to even read about them in books. That one had appeared in the library… she simply couldn’t believe it. A she was fleeing for her life.

  She shot out of the library, desperately trying to outrun the g footsteps that chased her. It grew louder and louder as the urge to look became unbearable, but then she suddenly caught sight of a fsh of slithering bronze scales. A burst of wind buffeted her as it flew past, and suddenly a loud crash echoed off the walls behind her. She tripped, rolling head-over-heels, nding in a pile of something hard and pointy, but her eyes were glued upoerrible battle.

  Outlined in the gigantic doorway, a gleami Naga unleashed a dizzying flurry of attacks with four saber-wielding arms as thick as Ali’s torso. He hissed as the skeleton’s bde sliced a long gash across his ribs, but his double-overharike cleaved the monster’s bony arm off its body.

  “Armand,” she whispered, her body suddenly weak with relief. But still, she held up her library book like an improbable shield.

  But to Ali’s horror, the loss of its arm did not even slow the skeleton down. It returned with another devastating jab which Armand barely parried. Furious battle ensued, with a dizzying blur of attacks and terattacks, Armand hissing and the skeleton g its jaws while the ring of steel echoed through the pza.

  A moment ter, Armand shed out with his enormous tail, knog the skeleton down, crushing a femur, and the flurry of swords rained down, decapitating the monster. Still, it twitched upon the pavement g toward her with its one remaining arm.

  Armand hit it again and again, until he had separated every bone from the monster, beating the unholy unlife from its bones with sheer brute force. Ali stared at the remains for a long time, ready to scream, run, or something. But it failed to move.

  “Ali? Are you hurt?” Armand asked, slithering up to her.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, cheg herself. “But…Maeria… she…” She choked up as the gruesome memory proved too much for her.

  “The others fled already,” Armand said. “But you didn’t e out. And then there were the skeletons… What is going on?”

  “I don’t…” Skeletons? Ali gnced around, registering for the first time that the previously bustling pza was deserted, abandoned carts and possessions dotting the open space like so much discarded trash, uhe pulsing red of the emergency lights. Smoke billowed from a few burning carts, shrouding the pza in a haze. But when her eyes fell to her surroundings, she found herself sitting among a pile of dark gray shattered bones. She yelped, springing to her feet and unched herself toward Armand and safety.

  “We o go,” Ali said. It was the one clear thought in her mind. The arm had said to go home and wait for the guard, so that was what she was going to do. Safe. Ihe barriers. They were already up, giant domes of purple magic, being to her with the promise of safety through the apocalyptic red haze.

  “Yes,” Armand said. “I take you home.”

  Ali could have hugged him right then.

  “ you call us a transport?” Armand asked. “My unication panel broke in the fight.” He carefully sheathed two of his bdes, keeping two scimitars at the ready, slithering slowly beside her, slow enough to aodate her small stride, but still with a sense ency.

  Ali hurried along, reag into her pocket, but found her unicator was offline. “It’s not w,” she said, shaking the thing and cheg again. Another explosion shook the ground and she caught herself against Armand. But instead of hard, smooth scales, her fingers entered something warm and sticky. Pulling her hand back she gasped at the sight of blood. “Armand! You’re bleeding!”

  “I’ll be ok,” he said lightly, but his grim expression told a different story. “Why are the undead here?” he asked, ging the subject.

  “I don’t know,” Ali answered, shivering. It would be a long walk to get home, but the further from those horrible skeletons and that terrible tear in the fabric of reality, the better. They walked – or slithered – side by side for a while in sileil they reached the feet of the three kings.

  “Where’s the guard?” Ali asked, looking about. Where, for that matter, was ahe deserted pza had beehing, but staring out at the main boulevard, y of all traffic, sent a fresh chill down her spine.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Armand said. “I’m not sure I like this.”

  “We have to remain positive,” Ali said. At least that’s what she had always been told. “We just o reach the barriers and then we’ll be safe.” But her own words sounded hollow. There should have been a barrier around the library. And there should be guards swarming the area. High level bat csses.

  She pressed on, following Armand, leaving her worries to fester in the background of her mind. It was not like there was anything she could do about them. They walked for almost half an hour, past the administration buildings and unity ters ringing the pza, and Ali’s legs were getting tired. It was when they approached the first terrace that Armand suddenly stiffened up, stopping in the middle of the street.

  “What is it?”

  “I hear something,” he said. His head swiveled quickly from side to side sing the area, and then he gestured with one of his lower arms. “Stay behind me.”

  There was a soft sk as he drew his other two swords and he slithered forward, pausing to listen carefully before turning onto the street. Ali could hear nothing but when she followed him around the er she immediately froze at the sight of the gruesome se. It wasn’t so much what was there, but what was nht in the middle of the street, garishly red upon the dark stone pavement, were several rge pools of blood. And leading away from each was a trail painted across the street, where something – or someone – had been dragged away.

  “Armand…” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said, his voice just as low as hers.

  But he slithered forward, his muscur body rippling across the stained pavement without so much as a sound. Up ahead, Ali heard a g, the rattle of steel toug steel, and her head snapped up to see a skeleton emerging from a side street. Her heart began to race, ahroat spasmed involuntarily as she suddenly noticed that half of the skeleton’s body had been bathed in something crimson.

  Armand did not hesitate. His form blurred as he shot across the street, trash and dust bursting into the air in the vacuum of his wake. Swords ged against ptes of armor and cracked against bone.

  Ali hid, pressing herself up against a wall, trying to make herself as small as possible behind a set of stoairs. She was not a bat css like Armand – worse, she didn’t even have a Css yet. All she could do was stay hidden and be grateful for Armand – she would never have made it out of the pza without him.

  She poked her head up when the banging and crashing stopped and the street grew suddenly silent, finding Armand standing over a pile of bones, looking cautiously around. Ali stepped out and joined him. He’s injured again, she thought, spying several fresh cuts dripping blood down his arms. And I ’t even help him.

  “I leveled up again,” Armand said, grinning. “I had no idea it could be this fast.”

  Ali bli the ingruity of his happiness. But upon a moment’s refle, she realized what it meant – a stronger Armand would make both of them safer. “That’s awesome, Armand,” she said, quietly. And truly it was, but her thoughts, and eyes, returo the blood stains ireet, and the pile of crushed and chopped bo their feet.

  In the middle of the residential area. Without a barrier proteg it.

  And still, no sign of the city guards.

  Another muffled thump shook the city, and in the distance, one of the great purple barrier domes flickered owice. And then suddenly it shattered into a cloud of purple smoke and glittering sparks that drifted upward toward the floating sor orbs, still pulsing with the red of the arm.

  “Hey, Armand,” she said, suddenly making a decision. “I’m worried about my mom. Do you mind if we go there first? I know it’s a little further...” In truth, the worry was g at her heart with the cold fingers of dread. Something was very wrong. There shouldn’t be skeletons this far into the residential district. There shouldn’t be skeletons iy at all. But they hadn’t seen a single person since leaving the library, no guards, no fleeing people, nobody riding on a te transport. Nothing.

  And one of the barriers had just gone down.

  We o leave the city.

  She didn’t want to go hide at home behind a barrier that might break, hoping fuards that wouldn’t show up. She o leave the city entirely. And there was no way she was leaving her mom down here with the skeletons. At least, with Armand’s help, she could get her mom to safety.

  “Yup, that’s a good idea, Ali,” Armand said, ining his head. “That way, right? The Eastern Quarter?”

  “Yes, inner ring, so it’s not too far,” Ali added, previously unnoticed tension suddenly easing from her shoulders as Armand agreed to her pn. “Thank you.”

  “Your mom is well ected, she should be able to tell us what’s going on,” Armand said, his voice oozing calm and fidence. But he kept close by, setting an urgent pace, and Ali rushed to keep up.

  As they drew closer to the glowing purple wall of the barrier, muscles Ali didn’t even know she was g began to ease. “It’s just over here,” she called out to Armand. He was slowing down now, and his breathing was bored, but at least most of his bleeding seemed to have stopped. She led the way fidently. Even though her unicator panel wasn’t w, just the fact that she had it in her pocket should allow them both access through the protective magiising safety just up ahead.

  And her mom lived just a few streets up from here.

  “Ali, wait up,” Armand said.

  She turned, finding him breathing heavily, struggling now to keep pace with her urgent rush. Behind him, the bakery she had promised to stop by at on the way to dinner loomed shuttered aed. She stopped, giving him the ce to catch up, smiling encement. “Mom keeps emergency healing potions at her house,” she said. “We’ll get you fixed up in a minute.”

  But his eyes suddenly widened, staring past her, and his fists ched around his swords. “Ali!” he shouted, his body suddenly blurring with speed.

  Ali turned her head to look back at whatever was lurking behind her, but her body moved too slowly. Everything happened so quickly. Armand’s enormous body smmed into her. She flew across the street as something drew a line of burning pain down her arm, and she bounced off the purple barrier with enough force to knock the wind out of her. Her body hit the pavement, head crag painfully against the stone, but she scrambled to her feet, struggling to move her right arm as her amber blood spilled from her fingers onto the ground.

  She gasped, struggling for breath that wouldn’t e. But her heart froze at the sight of the gleaming sword protruding from Armand’s back.

  Armand… she reached with her dripping hand, stumbling toward him.

  The giant skeleton stood a head taller than even Armand’s enormous height. In the frozen moment of silence, her miered the heavy armor and the shining greatsword. Before she could utter a single sound, the skeleton wrehe sword sideways out of Armand’s body. It blurred in the air and came down in a vicious overhand chop that tore through Armand’s scaled torso from his shoulder, winding up lodged in his sternum.

  Crimson sprayed up into the air spshing against her fad neck, dreng her coat. Four sabers cttered loudly as they hit the ground.

  “Armand…” she said, her voice weak and tiny.

  “… Ali… run…” he whispered, blood gurgling out of his mouth. And the the ground with a heavy thump.

  Whether she screamed or not, she did not know, all she knew was she found herself scrambling toward the barrier in a frantic state of sheer panic. She hammered her hands against the unyielding magic before her mind caught up.

  Key…

  g footsteps echoed behind her.

  She reached into her pocket and fumbled the unicator panel with blood-slick hands. It fell to the ground and bounced, skittering away from her grasping fingers.

  Metal scraped against stone as she frantically chased the panel. Wind whipped past her ears as she ducked to pick it up. The g of steel rang out loudly as the heavy sword hit the impervious barrier. Grabbing with all her might, she smmed the panel against the barrier, and suddenly it gave, pitg her through the wall of magic to nd sprawled and bruised oone beyond.

  She leapt to her feet and flinched as the sword hit the barrier again, right in front of her face, but it bounced off as the skeleto her through the transparent magic. It took arike before Ali breathed, realizing she was finally safe.

  Her eyes found Armand’s crumpled, unmoving body, and her heart sank, weighed down by a sudden flood of guilt. I shouldn’t have rushed ahead…

  Tears spilling from her eyes, and blood dripping from her fingers, she turned and fled. Familiar streets flew by in a blur, but all she could see was the horrific spray of crimson blood ahe terrible whisper of his st words. Even as he died, his thoughts were for her safety.

  Her ha bloody amber prints upon the door as she hammered on it.

  The door suddenly opened, and she pitched forward into her mother’s surprised arms.

  “Ali! Oh my goodness, what happened? You’re bleeding!”

  Ali struggled to form the words, but her mother did not wait, pulling her inside and smming the door shut. She yahe first-aid kit from the hallway cupboard, reached in and grabbed a red vial and upehe tents into Ali’s mouth.

  Ali spluttered and choked, but she mao swallow it down. Warmth blossomed from her stomach, rapidly spreading as it infused her shaking limbs and trembling body with its magic. Pain receded, and her arm stopped bleeding as the gash from the skeleton’s sword knit itself closed.

  “Aliandra, what happened? I heard the arm and the evacuation warnings, but the unication panel isn’t w. I have been trying to get hold of you fes.”

  “I… they’re… he’s dead,” Ali gasped.

  “Easy, breathe first.”

  Ali took a deep breath. The potion pulsed again, filling her with healing magic. Her headache faded and her mind steadied.

  “Now, why don’t you start at the beginning? You were supposed to be meeting Professor Maeria Runeweaver in the library…”

  “She’s dead,” Ali said, the words simply blurted out. Her mom gasped, but she tinued. “It was a skeleton, it stepped out of something… a tear in the fabric of reality? A portal?” And as soon as she started, the eory tumbled out of her, words spilling over each other like a river breaking its banks.

  “But that’s impossible,” her mom said. “Where was the guard? And the barriers?”

  “There was nobody, mom,” she said. “Not just the guards, it was just me and Armand. And we had to walk from the library. There was no barrier around the pza, nor anything around the first terrace.”

  “I… that shouldn’t be possible,” her mom said. “But you’re safe now, the barrier will keep them out.”

  “Mom, I saw one of the barriers fail. I really think we o get out of the city.”

  “Look, Ali, I know you’ve had a horrible day. You said you ran all the way from the library with skeletons chasing you, you were injured, and Armand…” Her mom trailed off for a moment staring ily at her. “All I’m saying is, maybe you were mistaken? The barriers are iructible. If we stay here, we will be safe – if we go outside, we might run into monsters.”

  “It really broke,” Ali said. Somehow, she o vince her mother. If they stayed here, she khey would die, just like Maeria. Just like Armand. “The entire western residential district barrier shattered with one of the explosions. Please believe me, we o hurry.”

  Her mom held her gaze for a few moments in silence.

  “Please, mom…”

  “I believe you Ali. Let me get a few things, we leave by the southern gate a up with your father in the Grove. His domain and elementals should be able to protect us.”

  She believes me? Knots of tension dissolved from her ned bad she reached out a hand. Her mother took it and gave her a reassuring squeeze before she began colleg a few important items.

  Ali shrugged out of her blood-soaked coat, dumping it with a wet spt ihroom for now. She slipped her library card between the pages of her library book, closed it, and tucked it under her arm. By the time she was done, her mother was ready. They stepped out of her mom’s studio apartment and walked cautiously down the deserted street. Even though her mother’s wings worked just fine, she chose to walk beside Ali, and for that she was incredibly grateful.

  It took a few mio reach the purple barrier – a s dome wall of magic that arched high overhead, proteg the entire district. But Ali’s eyes were glued oreet beyond, and the bloodstains that were all that remained of Armand.

  “Where… where is he?”

  “Ali, that is an undead skeleton,” her mom said, and following her gaze past the stained pavement Ali caught sight of the huge skeleton that had sin Armand. “And where there are skeletons, you be sure there is a neancer. And I have a feeling I know who it is.” Her fists were ched tight at her sides, and her eyes were narrowed frowning at the monster as if she could u with the force of her gre.

  A neancer… Armand is… her eyes fell upoerrifying armored skeleton given ghastly unlife by the neancer’s magic.

  A loud thump shook the ground and suddenly all the lights went out, leaving just the glowing purple dome. Ali yelped as she hit the ground, but a seore powerful bst detonated right in her face as the entire dome shattered, filling the air with sparks and shards that slowly faded, leaving them in utter darkness.

  Ali sat up in a daze. Mana prickled along her skin and suddenly a golden wall appeared right before them, and the giant skeleton cttered loudly as it smmed into the barrier magid bounced off.

  Ali caught her mother’s eyes and saw both fear aermination in her. All her life she had been taught that the barriers were invulnerable. No matter what, she could shelter uheir magical prote and be safe. She knew her mom had believed it too.

  Not anymore.

  Ali scrambled to her feet, reag for her mother’s free arm. Mana surged again and a sed golden wall appeared, trapping the skeleton in a side alley, and they fled.

  On and on they ran through the pitch-dark deserted city, navigating by the light of her molden barrier magic. But the city was far from silent. The muffled ks and scraping of steel, or the g of bone footsteps announced eaew skeleton. Her mother was no bat css, but her barriers blocked each monster, leaving them time to escape.

  Distahereal screams floated through the air, punctuated by explosions. And still they ran, pausing for breath only when Ali ran out of stamina – and then only long enough for Ali to drink a stamina potion. At least her mom had had the fht to pack potions.

  The southerrao Dal’mohra was an enormous chamber hewn from the bedrock of the mountains themselves. The city’s rgest radial boulevard emerged from the entrance hall, normally teeming with traffic of all kinds. Carts pulled by tamed beasts, flying people or mounts, magically engiransports of infinite variety. Now, however, it y silent in the darkness.

  Ali hugged herself, rubbing her bare arms against the sudden icy breeze.

  “Nearly there,” her mom said, trying to be cheerful. Outside the gate they would simply follow the short passageward, and then they would find themselves above ground in the Grove.

  Safe.

  Ali followed her mom inside.

  What she found was a se of utter destru. The giant stone doors that protected the city from the outside world y shattered, strewn across the chamber as giant boulders and rubble. Among the jagged stohe bodies of the missing defenders, crushed and mutited.

  Ali’s gut tightened, g painfully as her eyes recoiled from the terrible age. Over by the far entrawo dozen defenders stood; their expressions frozen in abject terror by the enormous blocks of ice that entombed them.

  An unnatural, bone-chilling wave of cold rippled through the room. Frost coated her eyeshes, and her hair as visibly growing ice crackled and crept across the floor.

  Ali shivered as the aura hit her, dragging her mind into a frozen pit of terror and despair.

  What happened?

  She struggled, her body shaking from fear and icy cold as the blood drained from her face. Something moved. A ch of a heavy footstep on ice. Shuddering, and uo flee, or even to scream, she slowly turned.

  The dark figure emerged from the shadows; its huge bulk shrouded by a bck, hooded cloak. Leather creaked as it moved. Metalliking echoed from the chamber walls, the sound of heavy pte armor. Another heavy footstep as dark steel ched against the ice.

  A frigid blue glow emanated from uhe bck cloak, illuminating the splintering ice growing around its feet. And when that shrouded head turoward her, she was transfixed by two pierg pinpoints of blue and the sudden wave of intense cold crawling across her skin. Ali’s heavy breathing echoed loudly in her ears.

  “Don’t be afraid,” her mom whispered. A warm hand grabbed Ali’s frozen one and a rush of sparkling mana filled her, banishing the fear instantly.

  Ali reeled at the sudden whipsh of her emotions.

  Magical fear?

  What is that thing?

  “He has e for you, Elowynn Amariel.” When it spoke, it set the very chamber to trembling. Shards of ice cracked, ing away from the walls and falling to the ground in loud splintering crashes. It resonated from everywhere and nowhere, like an echo from the underworld lingering unnaturally long in the ice-den air.

  Ali gripped her mother’s hand with the force of desperation; grabbing onto a tiny lifeline in a world turned suddenly inprehensible and terrifying.

  “Tell your master he will get nothing from me,” her mother said. She spoke with defiance, her raised as she locked eyes with the horrifying apparition.

  In respohe blue eyes bzed with iy, and a vast t presenleashed from the monster, a wave of palpable cold that Ali knew without a doubt would annihite her. Ice crystallized in the air, rge nces h, humming with power.

  But an equally potent force blossomed from beside her. The familiar sparkling prickle of her mother’s magily thousands of times more potent than she had ever felt. And suddenly a rge sphere of golden barrier magiapped into pce around the shrouded iight.

  Ali suddenly grabbed at her hand as her mother stumbled, catg her before she hit the ground.

  “Thanks, Ali,” she gasped. “We o leave, that won’t hold him for long.” Her chest was heaving as she struggled with ragged breaths. Whatever she had just done had clearly taken a huge toll on her and Ali supported her mother as they scrambled across the rubble and treacherous id fled out through the shattered gates.