“Do you feel that?” Aiko asked.
Kyren did not answer immediately.
He felt it before he understood what she meant: a faint pressure in the air, as though the forest around them had drawn breath and forgotten how to release it.
Then came the smell.
Smoke.
Not the thin, familiar smoke rising from cooking fires or the bitter resin burned by Delasai’s guards, but something oily and dense enough to coat the back of his throat.
Aiko slowly raised her head.
Above the canopy, great masses of smoke black as tar were twisting into the night.
They rose in separate columns at first, then merged until whole sections of the sky disappeared.
Somewhere deeper in Delasai an elf screamed.
The sound broke suddenly.
Another scream replaced it.
Then another.
Within seconds the forest seemed full of them.
Some came from far away, distorted by trees and distance.
Others were close enough for Kyren to hear voices shredding themselves raw.
An orange glow pulsed behind the trunks.
The forest was burning.
“Kyren…” Aiko whispered.
He put one hand against the nearest tree.
Usually Delasai answered him in ways he could not explain: a pressure beneath his palm, the sense of sap moving through wood, roots shifting somewhere far below.
This time the presence was faint.
Sick.
Something was pressing the forest’s magic down.
“Its power is weakening.” “The fire?” “No.” Kyren pulled his hand away.
“Something else.” A laugh drifted through the trees.
Not human.
Not even a voice.
Music.
A trumpet stumbled deliberately through a cheerful sequence of notes and then slid half a tone too low.
A drum answered with three deep beats.
Strings joined next, scraping out a melody that should have belonged to a circus, except every instrument was fractionally out of tune and the tempo had been slowed until the music became grotesque.
A celebration performed while someone was being buried alive.
Kyren froze.
After Lurline, the sound of music where music should not exist had become enough to tighten every muscle in his body.
Aiko caught his expression.
“Not again.” “Different.” The bass deepened.
With every repetition of the melody, the pressure surrounding Delasai seemed to weaken further.
They ran toward the sound.
Sparks drifted through the trees.
Dead leaves crumbled beneath Kyren’s boots.
Roots that normally shifted to clear his path remained rigid.
Higher up, branches cracked under weights too large to belong to elves.
Kyren climbed.
Aiko followed, breathing hard.
They reached one of the upper limbs and found Arkin already crouched there with his bow across his knees.
Relief struck Kyren so strongly he nearly laughed.
“You’re alive.” Arkin glanced over.
“Disappointed?” “Constantly.” “Good.” Aiko pulled herself onto the branch.
“What is happening?” Arkin’s usual grin disappeared.
“Look.” Kyren looked.
Delasai had ceased to resemble a forest.
It was a slaughterhouse that happened to contain trees.
Dozens of vampires occupied the surrounding branches and open air.
Some fought.
Others played instruments.
Those musicians remained behind the front lines, surrounded by dull red circles of magic that pulsed with the rhythm.
Their hands moved with impossible speed across strings, drums and keys.
Each note sent black-red waves through nearby vampires.
Torn flesh sealed.
Wings stiffened.
Movements accelerated.
One vampire received an arrow through the chest and continued fighting as if it were an inconvenience.
Below them stretched webs.
Hundreds of them.
Some were thin enough to become visible only when flame reflected from them.
Others were as thick as ropes and connected whole trees.
Vampires hung inside them.
Elves hung beside them.
Jorogumo moved along the webbing with obscene ease.
Some still wore the upper halves of beautiful women or men while spider bodies supported them from beneath.
Others had abandoned imitation entirely.
Chitin covered them from mouth to abdomen.
Legs unfolded from torsos.
Jaws split wider than skulls.
One had grown almost as large as a dwelling.
A vampire hacked at one of its legs with three swords at once.
The Jorogumo caught him in webbing, pulled him against her abdomen and bit into his face.
Two elves attacked the spider from behind.
Another vampire appeared behind those elves and opened both their throats.
A second Jorogumo descended from above and pulled the vampire into the canopy.
There were no lines anymore.
No front.
Elves killed vampires.
Vampires butchered Jorogumo.
Jorogumo fed on both.
Some elves suddenly turned on one another with expressions of terror, their limbs jerking as almost invisible threads tightened around their bodies.
Kyren remembered Aven.
Tsugimocho.
The soul bound to a thread.
Decisions altered.
Emotions controlled.
He watched one elf stab his companion through the spine while screaming apologies.
Hundreds of bodies already covered the ground.
The dead were so numerous in places that surviving fighters stepped across them without touching soil.
“We have to help,” Arkin said.
Kyren looked at him.
“Who?” Arkin raised his bow.
“The elves.” “Half of them are being controlled.” “Then the ones who aren’t.” “And when a vampire kills a Jorogumo who’s about to eat one of us?” Arkin hesitated.
Kyren pointed below.
“Who are you helping then?” “Whoever isn’t trying to kill me at that exact moment.” “That’s going to change quickly.” “Then I’ll shoot quickly.” Arkin crawled farther along the branch.
One of the vampire musicians had positioned himself on a broad limb beyond the main battle.
He was concentrating entirely on a stringed instrument covered in veins of red light.
Arkin planted his feet.
Drew the bowstring.
“Vornis.” Green magic curled around the arrowhead.
Kyren noticed the smoke change behind him.
A perfectly straight absence appeared inside it.
“Arkin—” A voice spoke from nowhere Kyren could locate.
Cold.
Almost courteous.
“Iskander.
A pleasure.” A horizontal black line cut through the air at the height of Arkin’s neck.
It did not explode.
It did not roar.
It simply moved.
The line passed through flesh without resistance, like an edge made from the absence of matter.
For one impossible heartbeat Arkin remained standing.
His fingers still held the string.
His eyes moved toward Kyren.
A red line slowly appeared around his throat.
The bow fell first.
Then Arkin’s head shifted sideways.
Aiko screamed.
His body dropped from the branch.
The head separated as he fell.
Kyren heard flesh strike wood below.
Once.
Twice.
Then nothing.
He could not breathe.
His chest clenched so violently that he thought something inside him had ruptured.
His heart struck his ribs once, then again, then accelerated until individual beats disappeared into a continuous pounding.
Cold spread through his fingers.
They began to tingle.
The battlefield moved farther away even though he had not moved at all.
Sound narrowed.
Aiko was screaming his name, but her voice seemed to be coming through water.
Kyren opened his mouth.
Air entered.
It did not feel like air.
“Arkin.” His knees shook.
The branch beneath him seemed to tilt.
Blackness crept inward from the edges of his vision.
My heart.
Another violent beat.
Something is wrong.
He tried to inhale again.
Could not fill his lungs.
I’m dying.
That certainty became absolute.
His palms were wet.
His stomach twisted.
His skin alternated between burning and freezing.
“Kyren!” Aiko grabbed him.
He barely saw her.
“Arkin.” “Look at me.” “We have to get him.” “Kyren, look at me!” She seized both sides of his face.
Her own eyes were wet and enormous.
“Breathe.” “I can’t.” “You are.” “I’m not.” “You are.
In.” His breath broke halfway.
“Again.” “Something’s wrong.” “I know.” “I’m dying.” “No.” “My heart—” “You’re scared.” “No—” “You’re scared, Kyren.
Breathe.” She took his hand and pressed it against her chest.
Her heart was racing almost as quickly.
“In.” He dragged air into his lungs.
Pain stretched through his ribs.
“Out.” He exhaled.
“Again.” A branch below cracked under an enormous weight.
Kyren looked down.
He could not see Arkin’s body.
“We have to get him.” Aiko’s mouth trembled.
“He’s dead.” Kyren stared at her.
“Don’t.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t say that.” “Kyren—” “DON’T SAY THAT.” Something enormous climbed around the trunk.
Black legs emerged below them.
Aiko grabbed his wrist.
“If we stay, we die too.” Kyren looked once toward the place where Arkin had fallen.
Then he ran.