Lastlight's Revenant #34

The Duskhound lunged, its spindly limbs a blur of chitin and malice.

Garran moved.

Faster than thought. Faster than human.

His hand snapped out, catching the demon mid-leap by its eyeless face. The moment his fingers made contact, something surged through him—a power not his own, wild and ancient and hungry.

A searing pain raced across his skin as spectral scales erupted along the right side of his body—his face, his torso, his arm—each one shimmering with an eerie blue light. His vision sharpened, colors bleeding into hues beyond mortal sight, and his eyes—

They burned.

Blue fire wreathed his hand, consuming the Duskhound’s skull in an instant. The creature’s shriek cut off abruptly as its flesh blackened, crumbling to ash in his grip. All that remained was its spine-spear, charred but intact, clattering to the ground.

Garran exhaled, flexing his fingers. The flames flickered out, leaving no mark on his skin.

"Not how I expected your power to manifest," he muttered.

Tyrrax’s voice rumbled through his mind, thick with disdain.

"What then? Did you expect to breathe fire?" The dragon’s scorn was palpable. "You are no dragon, human. Be grateful your flesh can channel even this much."

Garran didn’t have time to retort.

Three more Duskhounds surged from the rubble, their jagged limbs skittering across the broken stone. Without hesitation, he snatched the fallen spine-spear from the ground and hurled it.

Mid-flight, the weapon ignited—blue flames roaring to life around it—before detonating on impact. The explosion tore through the demons, sending shards of chitin and gore spraying through the air.

A fourth Duskhound seized the moment, charging from behind.

Garran felt it—not with his ears, not with his eyes, but with something deeper. Instinct. Tyrrax’s instinct.

His body twisted aside, moving with a speed and precision that left his own mind lagging. A spectral afterimage flickered in his wake, and the Duskhound’s claws raked through empty air, striking nothing.

The Duskhound staggered, its eyeless face twitching in confusion.

Garran did not give it time to recover.

He moved—blurred—crossing the distance in an instant. Another spectral afterimage flickered in his wake as he appeared before the creature, his fist slamming into its chest with a wet crunch. His arm punched clean through the demon’s torso, bursting out the other side in a spray of black ichor.

With a grunt, he drove his other hand into the wound and wrenched.

The Duskhound split apart like rotten fruit, its two halves collapsing to the ground in a steaming heap.

Garran stared at his hands, the blue scales along his arm flickering like dying embers.

"This doesn’t feel like a dragon’s power," he muttered.

Tyrrax’s growl reverberated through his skull, thick with ancient fury.

"A dragon you are not. And neither am I—not for three centuries." The words dripped with venom. "Your forefathers’ magics saw to that. They hollowed me out. Made me into something... else."

As he spoke, pale blue flames erupted around Garran—not the roaring fire from before, but something colder. Eerie. Lifeless.

The flames slithered over the bisected Duskhound, caressing its corpse like a lover’s hands.

Then—

The demon twitched.

Garran’s breath caught as the two halves of its body knitted back together, sinew and chitin reforming with grotesque precision. The creature lurched upright, its movements jerky, unnatural.

It let out a hollow groan.

And charged—not at Garran, but at its kin.

"Is this... necromancy?" Garran whispered, his voice tight with revulsion.

Tyrrax’s laughter was a knife dragged along bone.

"How else do you think I slipped my soul into your corpse? How else do you stand here now, breathing with lungs that should be still?" A pause, then a whisper laced with malice: "Listen to your vessel, little knight. Hear what it tells you."

Garran’s hand pressed against his chest.

No heartbeat.

Only silence.

The truth settled into Garran’s bones—lighter than breath, heavier than a tombstone.

He was dead.

Not dying. Not clinging. Dead.

And yet he stood. Moved. Fought.

The realization didn’t horrify him. Damnation had already stripped him of any illusions about his fate. But the implications—

His jaw tightened.

Tyrrax’s power wasn’t just a weapon. It was the only thing stitching his corpse together.

And the dragon was no ally.

He could feel it now—the ancient wyrm’s presence coiled around his thoughts like smoke, thick with centuries of bitterness. Every pulse of blue fire, every spectral scale, carried the weight of that hatred.

If he decides to withhold his power mid-battle…

The thought slithered through him, cold as grave dirt.

'I need to find Sylrithiel.'

The words left his lips in a growl. The elf sorceress had secrets older than kingdoms. If anyone knew how to leash a dragon’s spite—or at least forge a temporary reprieve—it would be her.

But first—

A guttural roar shattered the air.

Garran’s head snapped up.

A Fleshforged abomination loomed over the battlefield, its stitched-town limbs bulging with grotesque muscle. In one meaty fist, it clutched the reanimated Duskhound—and with a wet rip, tore it apart once more.

Black ichor rained onto the rubble.

Tyrrax’s flames surged in response, licking up Garran’s arms like eager serpents.

"Pathetic," the dragon hissed. "My power wasted on vermin."

Garran ignored him.

The Fleshforged turned, its beady eyes locking onto him.

Blue fire erupted around Garran’s fists.

He charged.

...

The last of the blue flames licked over the Fleshforged’s corpse, reducing it to smoldering sinew and blackened bone. Garran straightened, rolling his shoulders—the motion still unfamiliar in this half-dead body.

Then he saw it.

A Faceless stood twenty paces away, motionless as a statue. Unlike its kin, this one wore tattered human robes—a scholar’s garb, frayed at the edges but unmistakable. Its blank face tilted, studying him with eerie patience.

Learning.

Tyrrax’s voice slithered through his mind, sharp with warning:

"That one is old. Two centuries at least. It has devoured more humans than you’ve drawn breaths."

Garran flexed his fingers, blue embers dancing along his knuckles. "Then it’ll die slower than the rest."

The Faceless moved.

Its robes rippled—then split as fleshy wings erupted from its back, veined and glistening. With a single beat, it launched into the air, hovering just out of reach.

Garran barely had time to curse before the demon’s hand lashed out.

A bolt of sickly green magic streaked toward him.

He dodged—barely. The spell struck the ground where he’d stood, boiling the stone into bubbling slag.

Another bolt. Then another.

Garran rolled, the heat searing his back as he scrambled behind a crumbling wall. The Faceless circled like a vulture, its magic reducing the ruins around him to molten ruin.

"You call this a fight?" Tyrrax sneered. "You’re a rat in a maze."

Garran ignored him, peering through a crack in the stone. The demon’s robes flapped with each beat of its wings—and there, tucked against its chest... a small object, half-hidden. Familiar, but—

A blast shattered the wall beside him. Shards of rock sliced his cheek.

No time to ponder.

Garran lunged from cover, snatching up a fallen Duskhound’s spine-spear. He hurled it skyward—but the Facless banked effortlessly, letting the projectile sail past.

It retaliated with another spell.

Garran twisted, but the magic grazed his shoulder. Agony erupted as the flesh there blackened, necrotic veins spiderwebbing toward his chest.

Tyrrax’s power flared in response, blue fire racing to contain the corruption.

"Pathetic," the dragon growled. "You can’t even—"

Garran stopped listening.

His eyes locked onto the Faceless’s chest again as it banked for another strike. That object—

A straw doll.

One he'd seen before in the hand of a child back in the church.

Rage, sudden and white-hot, flooded Garran’s veins.

"You filth!"

He didn’t wait for Tyrrax’s reply.

Darting forward, Garran slammed his hands onto the ground. Blue fire surged through the earth, racing toward the spot where the Faceless’s shadow touched the rubble.

The demon didn’t notice—until the flames erupted beneath it in a geyser of spectral energy.

Its wings caught.

For a heartbeat, it hung there, wreathed in blue fire—then plummeted.

Garran was already moving.

As the Faceless struck the ground, he drove his knee into its chest, fingers closing around the doll.

"This," he snarled, "isn’t yours."

The demon’s blank face stared up at him.

Then Garran’s other hand, wreathed in Tyrrax’s coldest fire, plunged into its chest—and squeezed.

The Faceless thrashed beneath Garran’s grip, its body convulsing as Tyrrax’s necrotic flames consumed it from within. The dragon’s voice slithered through his mind, edged with warning:

"Even in death, its will lingers. A demon this old cannot be bound for long."

Garran ignored him.

Blue fire roared through his fingers as he forced the creature back into unholy animation. Its limbs jerked like a marionette’s as it rose, its blank face twitching in silent defiance.

Garran held up the straw doll—crude, misshapen, its stitching frayed.

"Where," he growled, "did you get this?"

The Faceless shrieked, a sound like grinding bone.

Garran’s hand clamped around its skull, flames erupting anew. "ANSWER ME!"

The demon’s shriek turned to a howl of agony. Its flesh blackened, peeling away in curling strips—yet still, it resisted.

Then, with a shuddering jerk, it raised one clawed finger.

South.

Tyrrax’s laughter was a dry rasp. "That’s all you’ll wrest from it."

Garran’s grip tightened. The Faceless’s skull creaked under the pressure.

"Then it’s served its purpose."

With a final surge of blue fire, the demon’s head ruptured, exploding into a shower of charred bone and ash.

Garran rose, wiping gore from his hands. His gaze fixed on the southern horizon, where the ruins gave way to jagged hills.

Somewhere out there was a boy whose name he couldn’t recall. A boy who’d clutched this doll like a treasure.

And if the demons had harmed him—

Garran’s jaw clenched. He started walking.