Page 53 of Angel in Absentia
It reeked of rot and decay that crawled through the ice.
Clea knew that cien sucked heat out of the environment, but she had never seen such dramatic, smoky sculptures develop as a result. She waded through them, following small signs of color and rank through the ice until she reached an area where Yvan might have been fighting. Fragments of what looked like Venennin were frozen throughout, a vast pillar positioned in the center of it all. Clea extended a hand and washed the pillar with a wave of heat and light.
It shattered, and Clea stumbled back, other Veilin coming up behind her as they watched the body collapse from it, pale and riddled with rot.
No.
Two bodies.
One was a soldier, stretched out in a picture of suffering, a Venennin, deformed and blackened, with its teeth sunk into the Virdain woman’s neck.
Yvan. It was Yvan.
Both bodies steamed from the ice as Clea watched them in horror and then looked out at the rest of the wasteland. She nowsaw the murky shapes for what they were, those same rotting, cannibalistic sculptures she’d witnessed in a horrid nightmare.
The bodies in front of them jerked, causing Clea and her companions to look forward and ease back, hands at the ready. Yvan’s corpse jerked as if coming back to life, eyes rolling back into her head as she jostled loosely beneath the bite of the Venennin, who now continued to sink its teeth in and eat. A scream, so horrid and gurgling and vile, erupted from Yvan and then from another corpse, far beyond the ice sculptures, as if answering in suffering.
Yvan’s corpse flipped, losing its teeth as the rotten Venennin still continued to chew into her skin. Yvan’s corpse thrashed and lashed at Clea and the others. Clea drew her sword, lighting it and swinging clean through what had once been her ally and the Venennin entangled with her.
She panted with adrenaline, watching wide-eyed as the light faded. The Venennin’s corpse lay in pieces, the rot gone and only vague lumps of flesh remaining. Yvan hissed, body twitching.
Clea’s stomach churned in disgust, but her grief felt locked behind the wall of shock that allowed her still to move, to think, to exist in this new reality.
A chunk of ice broke from a nearby column and clattered into the earth before shattering. Clea began to climb through the wasteland, other soldiers joining them to scout. They managed to find an icy dome that somewhat resembled an ansra shield in the middle of the battlefield. They blasted it open, crawling through the thick walls to find several Veilin soldiers huddled inside, barely conscious.
“Here! Survivors!” The fear came through the harshness in Clea’s voice, and soldiers piled in, taking away the survivors. “Look for other frozen shields! Scour the war zone!”
The hunt was frantic and urgent. Clea melted one dome after another, salvaging small pockets of soldiers, some already dead. They hauled back survivors as the ice melted and the smell of the rot intensified.
They left a small team to scour the battlefield, and as the late afternoon sun began to set, they returned to the inner city. Clea knew she looked ill from the day. She imagined they all did. She felt a mixture of adrenaline and numbness, almost grateful the carnage had been so terrible only because she hadn’t recognized most of the faces among it all. It made it feel a bit less real.
“Their bite is like its own curse, but even the Venennin seem infected by it. The rot and the hunger,” said another Veilin scout as they made their way through castle halls, all silent apart from the occasional call or groan. “Curses so powerful that they draw heat out of the world and ultimately freeze their hosts.”
In her visitation to Javelin de Gal, she had not sensed reason, just cold, rot, and hunger, a Venennin, but beyond it. Cursed. A cursed creature in a wretched, cursed land.
The horrors she’d imagined were finally coming to light, stifling all of the progress of the last couple of years.
Clea lifted a hand to pause the scout as she poked her head into one of the doors of the castle infirmary, spotting Dae where he lay sleeping. She faltered slightly when she saw Iris curled up beside him, sleeping with a troubled expression on her face. Her hands were scraped, clothes bloodstained. She’d come backfrom Ruedom, followed Clea perhaps, and found the city in the aftermath.
Clea nodded over to the scout before they both returned to the throne room, shutting the doors so they could talk privately.
The bodies had been dragged from the room, but the remaining carnage and broken stone and glass still remained. Clea looked out a broken window at small pillars of smoke as Venennin bodies were burned in heaps.
Watching the devastation, she saw at last what she and Catagard had both already recognized.
“The Breathless Eater,” she said. “This army they sent, it had no leader.”
“It was likely only a fraction of their forces,” the scout replied, and she looked back out the window.
“A fraction,” she whispered. “How long do you think we have until they strike again?”
“A few days at most.”
She nodded in agreement. “We’ve lost at least a third of our fighting forces. Civilians, royalty,” she added, not wanting to say father as she eyed the blood left behind by him. “Dae has been healed, but he isn’t waking up. Neither is Catagard.”
She walked back over to the throne and eased down slowly on the steps. The first traces of true exhaustion seeped through her.
“We could reach out to Ruedom,” the scout offered.
