The blackness of the Storm crashes into the fifth like a wave. As they fall, the clouds solidify into monsters: a giant spider, a swarm of little winged beasts, a pack of hybrid creatures with the bodies of lions, scorpion tails, and human faces.
The ikonshield rematerializes behind them, cutting off the deluge of beasts and holding back the rest of the Storm. I’d be reassured if three of the lion-beasts weren’t bounding toward me. Their jaws snap, spittle flying in streaks behind them, rows of blade-sharp teeth glinting.
They’re forty feet away. I have no weapon, no shelter. They bound forth faster than I can run. I grab the charcoal pencil in my pocket. I drop to my knees and pick up the first piece of rubble that I find, scrawling an ikon I copied from Casvian’s book, to attach two things together. The stone flies true, but it misses the stormbeast’s eyes and instead sticks to its forehead like a demented hat. The beast doesn’t even slow.
Thirty feet away.
I scribble the ikon onto the ground, over and over. I manage to scrawl it three times before looking back up.
Twenty feet.
I dive into the temple. There are two doorways, each only big enough for one beast to enter at a time. Through one, I watch them come. One of the stormbeasts shrieks as its hind foot lands on one of my ikons and is held fast. But the other two bound right over my ikons.
I grab a shattered piece of wood as long as my forearm. Splinters dig into the skin of my palms. I wish I knew more ikonomancy, just a little bit more.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears. I know only this: if I must die, I won’t do so cowering.
A beast bounds through the door, and I smack it with my makeshift club. It howls and retreats. It felt real as anything when I hit it, but its coat is the same shifting darkness of the Storm, cloudlike, as if I could put my hand to it and it’d pass right through.
A rustle of stone is my only warning as another claws through the far opening. I swing at it, catching a paw that snaps my club in two.
My shoulder throbs with the impact, but I hunt for another weapon as they prowl outside the temple, their claws clicking on stone with every movement.
One bolts inside and pounces, its lightning eyes on me.
I brace for the bite of teeth, the pain of my flesh tearing.
The beast screams. The pain doesn’t come.
I peek through my arms, up through the shattered roof. A Wardana descends, cloak stretched wide, arm outstretched from having just thrown a spear. My stomach flips when I see his blue eyes.
The spear pins the stormbeast’s shoulder, and Dalca swoops down, yanking it out and touching down into a fighting stance before me.
Another lion-beast enters the temple.
I don’t break eye contact with the second beast, but my hand searches the ground for something to defend myself with. My fingers brush against wood. I lift it with shaking arms. A shattered beam, heavy enough. It’ll have to do.
I raise the club as Dalca jabs his spear at the wounded beast. It jumps back, and the other beast lunges forward. Dalca bats its swipe aside with the pole of his spear, but I can tell that he’s handicapped, fighting at this close range. He’s only doing it to keep himself between me and them. To save me.
Dalca stabs the first stormbeast, sticking it in the leg, in the chest. It thrashes at him, and he ducks as the scorpion tail comes around. Dalca fights like he was made for it, his movements smooth as water, meeting each and every one of the beast’s strikes. But even I can tell that he won’t last long, not when he has to fight this close.
The second beast had hung back, watching, but with Dalca distracted, it lunges. I swing my club, connecting with the beast’s muzzle with an arm-rattling thud. Its claw catches the side of my leg as it rears back. A sharp pain blossoms, but I ignore it.
Dalca stabs the beast, shoving it away from me, and its claws rake against his chest. He rolls with its momentum, sliding under it and sticking it deep through the eye.
It falls. But that was what the first beast was waiting for; it jumps on him, sinking its teeth into his shoulder. Dalca doesn’t scream. But I’m close enough to hear him draw in a sharp breath.
His eyes meet mine, and his lips part. “Run.”
I’ve done enough running. With all my power, I swing my club at the beast’s head. The wood connects with the stormbeast’s nose with a satisfying crunch, and it releases Dalca. He drops to his knees, ducking under its teeth, and in one fluid movement, he hefts his spear and rises to his feet, stabbing the beast through the heart.
I watch the light leave its too-human eyes. Dalca gives it a good shove, and it falls to the side, slowly, heavily, but a hairsbreadth before impact, the body dissolves into a whorl of dark cloud. The black cloud rises into the air and is sucked back into the Storm, becoming one with the darkness encircling the city. It’s a dark promise: the beast will be born again, someday.
Dalca turns to me. He gasps, face shiny with sweat, chest heaving. Blood pours from his sleeve, coating his hand, dripping to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he says, before I know what to make of him, before I know what to feel. He gives me an uncertain smile and falls to his knees.
I catch him before he hits the ground, but my own hurt leg buckles under our combined weight. His head drops into the crook of my shoulder, and his breaths come fast and hot against my neck. I search his body for any lingering wisp of darkness. I’ve never heard of anyone getting cursed from just being touched by a stormbeast, but that might be because stormbeasts don’t usually let go, not until they’ve dragged their prey back to the Storm. I turn to inspect my leg, and my head spins at the blood soaking my pants. At least I don’t see evidence of a curse.