Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

He hooked them up. Once again, the lightning splayed out, jumping from Caleb to the fey, where it gleefully arced and leapt and sizzled.

It seemed to like them better than us, I thought.

But for a moment, nothing happened. I held my breath, watching the fallen colossi, because Caedmon’s people used elemental magic, but the air variety, not earth. I wasn’t sure they could channel Aeslinn’s type at all.

And then, all over the battlefield, formerly empty vessels started to stir. Massive hands twitched against the ground; huge heads rose out of the dirt; eyes that had formerly been dark and lifeless suddenly lit up like candles were behind them. Make that high beams, I thought, as they suddenly leapt up off the ground, picked up fallen weapons, and waded into the fray, now under new management.

I saw my human body give a massive sigh of relief, and abruptly sit down. There were still more of the enemy than of us—a lot more—but at least it was now a fight. And we fought hard. Part of the fey stayed to protect the mages; more went after the creatures stalking Mircea; and the rest of us started driving the battle toward the line.

I fought side by side for a moment with an exquisite manlikan with sapphire spikes for hair and emerald eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was Caedmon, as I didn’t have time to chat, but it jumped and leapt and slashed its way across the field as if it was made of flesh instead of thousands of tons of rock. It was almost balletic.

The rest of the fey were pretty impressive, too. One had occupied a manlikan with a green agate head and another with long, mossy dreadlocks and obsidian eyes. They had taken up guard over the mages, with double swords in their hands, slicing and dicing anything that got near them.

A bunch of the smaller, more generic looking creations had also stirred to life, but what they lacked in size they made up for in determination. Together they were pushing back the Ancient Horrors, surrounding and then falling on them, all at once. It was an elegant savagery, although one that caused almost as many casualties among the fey as among their prey.

But then, they simply jumped to new rides and continued the fight.

My own fighting style wasn’t so pretty, but it didn’t need to be. With the momentum that those massive arms could command, every blow was like a pile driver. I didn’t bother trying to push anything anywhere; I just picked things up and threw them. Only to have the gryphons that Caedmon’s men had been riding, which had taken off to avoid the carnage on the ground, catch them and rip them apart midair.

Yet it still wasn’t enough.

The Corps finally waded into the fray, having realized that they didn’t need to shield right now, and started lobbing spells. They did a lot better with those than they had with elemental magic, and saved me from being swamped by a squad of the sculpted type of manlikans, who were trying to break through our ranks. They were smaller than the mountainous variety, but there were more of them—a lot more. But the Corps’ volley drove them back into Caleb, who further savaged them by the simple expedient of kicking them over.

And then stomping on them as they tried to get back up.

His fighting style wasn’t pretty, either, but it was brutally effective. But while we were holding our own, that was all we were doing. And we weren’t going to be doing that for long, I realized, looking up.

Because the other side’s reinforcements had arrived.

Rank after rank of the carved manlikans descended on us, following their advanced scouting party, and required everyone to work together just to hold the line. And then we weren’t even doing that. Instead of us pushing them back, they were doing it to us, overwhelming us with sheer numbers.

I saw Caleb’s ride go down with at least ten soldiers savagely hacking at it. Saw Caedmon have to somersault over a line of several dozen more in order to avoid the same fate. Saw Pritkin’s Green Man get driven back, despite making them pay for every foot.

And then I was falling over onto my back, a dozen soldiers pushing me over and then following me down, trying to take me apart.

It didn’t work because I shifted them to the far side of the battlefield and rolled back to my feet—only to be hit by a wave of dizziness that almost sent me back down again. And, suddenly, I could feel it, as I hadn’t up until now: exhaustion. It weighed down my limbs and made me work for every movement. And I knew without asking what that meant.

I should; I’d felt it often enough with the Pythian power. We were reaching the end of the energy that the trine had created. It had been massive, but we’d been pulling on it like crazy, all three of us. This battle was coming to an end, one way or the other really soon.

No ex machina, after all, I thought, as a new line of soldiers grabbed for me.

And then Pritkin proved me wrong.

“Fight, you bastards!” he yelled—out loud. He was projecting his voice magically, and it echoed across the battlefield. “Get to the line! Reinforcements are almost here! We have to protect them until they land and get shields up!”

I stared at him, not understanding what he was talking about.

And then I did, when a little ingenuity did what brute force couldn’t. And almost the entire damned battlefield headed off to intercept an army that wasn’t coming. I just stood there, an Ancient Horror in each hand, squeezing what might have been a neck or possibly a foot for all I knew, and staring.

This was never going to work. This couldn’t possibly work. It couldn’t be that easy.

It was that easy.

A couple of seconds after they reached the area of the ley line, the sky tore open with what looked like the force of a thousand suns. A line of vivid, eye-searing yellow erupted like a volcano in midair, raining fire and death down on everything below. And just like that, and an entire army went up in smoke.

Epilogue

The beach looked a lot like the one I’d visited with Gertie. It was colder, though, with a breeze that cut right through you. I wrapped the thick old blanket I’d found in an upstairs closet tighter around me, but it didn’t help much.