Faerie Knight 169

169 - Camiel

I will open the way with a sacrifice.  Like all things most precious, the price must be paid in blood.

• The Journal of Decimus Avitus

☀

17th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

It was Bors that struck first, as the monster moved forward, and Trist caught the shimmer of crackling strands just beneath the surface of his body, empowering his muscles with a strength beyond anything natural.  The Tithes Bors had taken from Adrammelech served him well, and though Camiel flung up a wing of bronze to deflect the blow, the shattering impact of the Exarch’s flail drove the dead Angelus back.

Camiel’s toes, topped with ragged nails that curved almost into claws, dug into the rubble left by his fall from the sky, but just as the Angelus got his balance, Margaret lunged at his back, her glaive whistling through the air to stab into his calf.

All three black eyes opened wide in pain, and Camiel howled.  Then, he spread his bronze wings to full extension and spun, slicing the edges of the metal feathers out at the surrounding Exarchs like dozens of blades.  Bors and Margaret leapt back in time to avoid the vicious swipe, but they were the only ones.  Guiron crossed his two arming swords in front of him, able to keep the feathers from cutting him at the cost of being thrown backward, and rolling across the broken street.

Loregnel attempted a parry with his blade, but it was caught on the feathers and torn from his hand, to clatter across the street before coming to a stop against the stone basement of a house.  Cynric took the worst of it: too slow to evade the attack, and without a second hand to brace his parry, his arming sword was easily beaten back, and the edge of Camiel’s wing scored his cuirass, sparking off the steel with a piercing screech, and puncturing the metal through entirely.  The Exarch of Theliel cried out in pain, and fresh wet blood gleamed on the bronze feathers as Camiel’s assault came to an end, the monster crouching here before them.

For Trist’s part, fighting the monster was even worse than when he’d faced it beneath the cathedral.  Camiel might not have had the chance to fatten itself on Tithes - though he would not have put it past Avitus to drag captives down there and feed them to the thing, it appeared the seal of Veischax, until broken, must have prevented that.  Perhaps the man had feared to free it until the last; surely, there seemed to be no real intelligence left, and Trist couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to control it.

No, it was just as fast, strong and vicious as it had been before, only that now Trist lacked the full power of the Boons he’d possessed then.  While traces of those strands remained in his core, thudding a deep, dark red, he was no longer fast enough to leap the wing strokes, or duck beneath them and strike.  Instead, Trist simply allowed his attention to fade.

He opened his eyes in Vellatesia, no longer focused on either Lutetia or Maʿīn.  The sky was a bright, brilliant summer blue now, with white clouds scattered above, and the granite slab upon which he rested had grown warm from the heat of the sunlight.  There were few trees growing amidst the ruins, with the effect that it was if Trist lay in a great, wide clearing instead of a forest.

To Trist’s surprise, here he was panting and sweat-slicked from the effort of fighting first in Maʿīn, and then against Camiel as well.  Even though in Vellatesia his body had only been reclining on the stretch of rock, his muscles felt just as exhausted.  A pebble skittered across the ancient city streets, and Trist sat up, hand on the hilt of his longsword, searching the surrounding ruins.  He had killed two daemons, before going to the Gate of Horn to confront the Sun Eater.  Acrasia hadn’t been certain how many were originally bound here, but it must have been more than that.  He waited, motionless, for another sound, or a hint of motion that might warn of an impending attack, but nothing came.  Finally, a squirrel skittered across the street, tail held high, and paused to regard him with its large, dark eyes before dashing on about its business.

Trist exhaled in relief, and refocused his attention on the fight against Camiel in the streets of Lutetia.  He had been gone longer than he would have wished, and the fight had tumbled through the wall of an inn, and then out the other side, leaving a collapsed room, broken wooden tables, and shattered window panes to show the progress of the conflict.

The fight had gone badly while he was away.  Sir Guiron lay half buried by the collapsed roof of the inn, pinned under a fallen beam of thick, heavy wood.  His swords were near to hand, but the Exarch of Penarys did not move.  Trist hoped that after all was said and done, the man would still be able to use his legs.

Cynric, on the other hand, was shaking off broken glass from the shattered window, which had left him with a multitude of small cuts on his face.  Trist wasn’t certain when the man had lost his helm, but it was a dangerous thing to leave any part of the body unarmored.  

Only Lorengel, Bors and Margaret were still actively engaged with the monstrous thing that had once been the Angelus of War.  It sprung to the side, back arched like a cat, to avoid a crushing, overhand swing of Bors’ flail, which cratered the cobblestones upon which they fought.  At the same time, a raised left wing set aside a sweep from Margaret’s polearm.  Having defended itself for the moment, Camiel’s arm shot forward, crumpling Lorengel’s cuirass.  The Exarch of Vesichax hunched over on himself for a moment, in the posture of a man who has been surprised by a fist to the gut, and then the monster pulled its hand back out, with a fistful of innards.

“No!” Margaret screamed, setting the butt of her glaive against the ground and bracing it with her shoulder to parry another sweep of Camiel’s bronze wings.  Trist’s attention flickered to Lorengel; he scooped the knight up in his arms and tried to focus on his wife.

The world stretched until Trist felt as if he was going to tear in half.  It was clear to him that people were not meant to be moved this way.  There was no portal, like those used by the Serpent of Gates.  Instead, it was like trying to drag a man through a stone wall: two solid objects, pulled against each other until one or the other gave out.

With a cry, Trist tumbled onto earth packed hard by many feet.  Gasps and cries rose around him, but Clarisant was there, just straightening from a soldier on a cot.  His wife’s hands were bloody, and her needle was threaded.

“Trist?” she exclaimed.

“Lorengel,” Trist gasped, exhausted from the effort of pushing against that wall.  “I do not know if he can be saved, but try, please.”

“Here,” Claire said, reaching over to a bowl of cloths soaking in wine.  “I’ll make him drink this.”

Trist reached out a hand, rested it on the bowl, and unspooled the thin, weak red thread that was little more than a shadow of the Graal Boon.  “I have to go back,” he said.  “They’re still fighting.”

“Wait!” Claire said.  “I sent-”

He appeared next to Camiel before he could hear the rest of what she said.  There was no time; he would find her and speak to her after Camiel had been defeated.  The monster had gotten Dame Margaret’s helm off, somehow, and had its clawed fingers wrapped in her brown hair, closed tight in a fist.  She had both gauntlets closed around its wrist, but the shaft of her glaive had been snapped in two.  Before it could rip her face open with the claws of its other hand, Trist brought his sword down in a vicious cut to the wrists.

Without the strength of his lost Boons, Trist couldn’t shear the bone, but the stroke was enough to force the monster to drop Margaret, who rolled to the side and grabbed the upper length of her glaive, with the blade attached.

Bors, in the meanwhile, was shaking his head as if to clear his mind, and Trist could see great rents in the knight’s steel helm, where Camiel’s claws had caught him.  The creature clutched its wrists to its chest, where they bubbled with black ichor, and lashed out at Trist with its wings.

Margaret was behind him, with no helm and half a weapon; if Trist simply returned to Vellatesia, he would leave her wide open.  Instead, he brought his blade up to parry the wing.  Without the strength of the other Exarchs, he was pushed back.  Worse, the blade that had so long been strengthened by the presence of Acrasia was now drained of whatever magic had kept it in one piece for so long.  The sword snapped under the strike of the wing, half a length of shattered steel flying off past Trist’s shoulder.  Bronze feathers raked along his chest, laying him open with deep, bleeding lacerations.  He was only saved by the cry of Cynric, coming up behind their foe.

“Camiel,” the knight cried, spreading his arms wide.  “There is some part of you that remains, I am certain of it.  Listen to my words.  Look upon Theliel, and feel her love!”  Above him, the Angelus herself appeared, hair as luminous as clouds lit by sun, eyes like stars, wings as white as those of a swan.  Glowing cords unspooled from her core, and wrapped around Camiel’s wounded arms.

For a moment, the rage in the monster’s eyes dimmed, and was replaced by pain.  “End me,” Camiel croaked, a horrible sound, wet as the cough of a dying man.

With a great shout, Bors used the distraction to bring his flail down upon the monster’s right wing.  Trist could see the brilliant white of a Boon wrapped around the chain of the flail, all the way down to the spiked ball at the end.  The power of the Exarch of Destruction hit the bronze wing like a falling tree.  The metal feathers and pinions crumpled, then cracked, as the wing itself shattered.  A rain of broken bronze feathers clanged off the cobblestones at the Angelus’ feet like rain. 

Whatever reason had returned to Camiel’s eyes was washed away by rage, and it thrust forward with its remaining wing, spearing Cynric straight through the chest.  The Exarch’s metal cuirass was no protection, and the bronze pinions of the wings ripped out of his back, sending shards of metal and a spray of blood onto the street behind.  Cynric, choking on blood, was lifted up off his feet, impaled on the wing.

Trist, left hand clutched to the bleeding wounds on his chest, focused his attention on a cobblestone next to one of Guiron’s two dropped arming swords.  It was just as likely to break as his ruined sword, but at least it was something.

“Trist!” a girl’s voice rose over the wailing of the monster, and he spun to see Yaél careening around the street corner.  With a great heave, his squire threw a sword to him, and acting on instinct, he reached up to catch the leather-wrapped grip in his right hand.  It was the blade of ice that Dame Etoile had used in Basilea, Trist saw, and he recognized the thrum of faerie power beneath its edge.  He turned back toward Camiel, determined to finish this fight, when something far away drew his attention.

On the granite slab in the ruins of Vellatesia, Trist swung the blade of ice to ward off a massive daemon, in the form of a serpent with three heads.  “Balan,” he said, recalling Acrasia’s words.  Bleeding here as well as in Lutetia, Trist scrambled to his feet.

Around the slab of granite, a dozen or more daemons, all withered and hungry things, had crept forward, with claws outstretched and mouths gaping.