Chapter 44

Balefor, Marrowsven, and Pyre summoned their Sigils as they moved through the gloom toward the Shepherd, who stood alone in front of Veylan and Sura, broad shoulders squared, crook resting lightly in his hand as he glared up at the Synod of Yore, daring them to try something.

“Stop here,” Irix told the three, her voice appearing all around them.

“But the Synod—” Pyre took another step forward anyway, and the resistance hit him immediately.

It wasn’t a wall in the physical sense. There was no surface, no impact. Instead, white noise flooded his ears, a shrill, smothering pressure that seized his balance and locked his muscles in place if he tried to push forward. Pyre staggered, teeth grinding as the sound pinned him where he stood, his Sigil flaring uselessly against it.

He forced himself still just as something descended out of the dark toward the Shepherd.

One of the Synod lowered toward the ground, wings spread wide. They were massive and ragged, gray feathers bent and mended at strange angles. The mask fused to his face was long and beaked, the curve of it predatory, with tears etched down its porcelain surface where eyes should have been. Thick armor hung from him in overlapping plates and straps over black mirthbeast fur, the entire visual disturbing, violent, and sinister.

The Synod leader’s Sigil was staggeringly large, the long staff capped with the sharpened head of a dragon. He leaned forward, his focus on the Shepherd as he finally spoke. “Where?”

The word carried easily through the chaos, calm and cold.

“Your thrall is there.” The Shepherd tilted his crook toward the horizon. “Dead. Move along.”

“You killed him?”

Behind the winged man, the other Synod agitated, wings flexing.

“We do not subscribe to a doctrine of suffering,” the Shepherd growled. “Being put out of one’s misery is an act of kindness reserved for all souls.”

“Which one of you did it?” their leader asked.

“I did,” the Shepherd lied. A grin lifted his scarred cheeks, humorless and sharp. “You may search the rubble for the headless body yourself, if you’d like. Otherwise, be on your way.”

The Synod remained in place, wings beating slowly as a second figure descended beside him—a woman, thin and slight, her mask just as wrong, its beak narrower. They spoke quietly to one another, voices lost beneath the distant buzz of the Deep Nether. She pushed back and summoned her Sigil, the bow with an elegant gleam to it at odds with her disheveled look.

The Synod leader finally returned his focus to the Shepherd. “Our doctrine is clear. The punishment for killing a member of the Synod of Yore is a donation.”

“Donation?” the Shepherd asked.

“You have many here with you; surely you want your strongest for the imminent realm collapse and the plundering that will follow. That is, after all, your plan, considering you’re not a sanctioned faction. The Synod of Yore remains generous. To satisfy your debt, we will ask for your weakest.” He lifted his staff and pointed it toward Pyre and the others. “One of your Unclaimed will suffice.”

The Shepherd shrugged, casual as if discussing weather. “Not going to happen. Last chance to leave.” He tipped his crook in the opposite direction. “This negotiation is over.”

The woman pushed forward and spoke to the leader again, her bow at her side.

Behind them, the remaining Synod bristled, Sigils manifesting in flashes of Anima. Pyre tracked them instinctively: twin swords, one slick with flowing water, the other jagged like a saw blade; a heavy hatchet; a needle threaded with something that shimmered and twitched.

Balefor glanced at Pyre, and beside him, Marrowsven shifted her stance, coiled and ready.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Pyre said quietly to them.

“Let the Shepherd handle this,” Irix told the three. Yet there was hesitation in her voice now as the Synod leader spoke again, his tone now with an edge to it.

“Directly defying our doctrine is grounds for subjugation. You have one more opportunity to correct your path. Are you sure of your answer?”

Rather than reply, the Shepherd launched himself into the air.

His strike came so fast the Synod leader barely reacted. The blow slammed into him mid-hover, sending the winged man spiraling down in a violent tumble as his dragon staff vanished.

The Shepherd followed, landing beside him in the same breath, crook blazing as its tip came to rest at the man’s throat. He looked up at the other Synod. “Well? Is this warning enough?” he asked.

The woman with the bow moved first. She loosed an arrow humming with Anima straight at him, one destined to never land as time fractured.

Sura’s clock-shield snapped up, the world stuttering around it as the arrow froze midair. Sound collapsed into itself, a sharp fizzle knocking the shot aside.

When time surged forward again, the arrow detonated somewhere behind the Shepherd in a burst of light and debris.

The Synod with the jagged blade dove for Sura. She shifted aside effortlessly, and he struck the ground hard enough to crater it, the man starting to rise before an unseen force drove him flat again. Irix’s influence slammed into him, a piercing pressure of sound that locked him in place.

The other Synod came down in a rush of wings as their archer fired again, this time splitting her shot into a fan of glowing trails.

A domed shield flared to life around the Shepherd, Sura, and Veylan, the barrier spreading outward from Veylan’s monocular. The arrows shattered against it in bursts of light. Inside the dome, the three of them stood with the Synod leader—still pinned, still breathing.

Outside it, four Synod hammered at the shield, Sigils flashing, wings beating as theyz screamed for their leader.

Pyre’s fire surged hotter in his grip. “Irix,” he said, voice tight. “You’re going to need our help!”

The barrier hummed louder in response. “Stay here. They are too powerful!”

The Synod woman with the needle and thread, who remained behind her companion, shifted her attention to the Unclaimed.

There was no warning, no wind-up. One moment she hovered over Veylan’s protective barrier, and the next she was a blur of gray wings, black fur, and white porcelain heading in Pyre’s direction.

Her arm snapped forward, and the needle punched straight through Irix’s sound barrier that had been preventing the three Unclaimed from joining the fight.

The sound split, and the magical thread followed, spinning impossibly fast as it wrapped around Balefor’s neck. The line tightened in a single vicious pull.

Balefor didn’t even have time to shout as he was yanked skyward, boots leaving the ground. The thread held, impossibly thin, impossibly strong, hauling the lion-man higher as the Synod woman veered away, wings beating hard.

“Balefor!” Pyre roared.

The other Synod reacted instantly.

The man with the water-edged blade banked toward the fleeing captor, accelerating to intercept anything that followed. The one with the hatchet struck it against the ground, the impact rippled outward in a rolling quake, the lava-stone landmass buckling. Cracks tore open beneath their feet, jagged fissures racing outward as the ground pitched and split.

Pyre was thrown hard, flames flaring instinctively as he hit and rolled.

The shockwave tore through Veylan’s barrier, causing the domed shield to warp and collapse entirely.

The Shepherd leapt back just as a fissure split the stone where he’d just been standing, his crook ripping free of the Synod leader’s throat, allowing the man to surge back, wings snapping wide.

The Shepherd snarled and pushed to his feet as the Synod archer fired again.

This time, her arrow split midflight, blooming into dozens of smaller shots that rained down in a screaming arc. They struck the ground and ignited, golden fire racing across the stone, burning hot enough to force distance.

The final Synod trapped beneath Irix’s soundwave broke free.

By then, Pyre was already running.

Heat surged through him, rage sharpening his focus as he sprinted toward the woman who had captured Balefor. He launched himself upward, flames flaring from his Sigil, but she was too high, already gaining altitude.

Not here, he thought, eyes snapping to the jagged slope of a nearby lava-stone hill. There!

Marrowsven passed him like a shadow.

The former assassin hit the incline first, claws biting into the stone as she climbed with impossible speed. Pyre followed, boots slipping, then catching, his will driving him onward as the hill steepened beneath him.

Balefor dangled above them, struggling, the thread cutting into his throat as the Synod woman climbed even higher.

Pyre and Marrowsven crested the ridge together; Pyre was just about to leap when the Synod with the watery blade collided with him.

The impact was explosive. Water met fire, and the collision erupted into a roaring plume of steam that swallowed both of them as they tumbled down the slope, bodies crashing, the Synod’s wings tearing furrows through the stone.

Pyre hit hard and rolled, coming up first only because he didn’t have wings to tangle him.

Fire flared around him, his Sigil responding to his fury. The sphere of flames, the same one he’d unleashed against Urosh, threatened to form. Pyre could sense it.

Not now. He forced the sensation down, teeth clenched, Pyre able to get control over his Anima.

The hesitation cost him. The Synod swordsman launched forward, wings driving him ahead. They hit the ground hard, the impact ripping the air from Pyre’s lungs as both Sigils vanished.

The Synod straddled him, a mask descending like a blade, the man trying to drive the sharpened beak toward Pyre’s face.

Pyre kneed him hard and twisted.

The man grunted, momentum breaking as Pyre flipped him onto his back. The Synod’s wings tangled once again, giving Pyre just enough space to scramble free before the man heaved and threw him aside.

Pyre’s Sigil flared back into existence just as the water blade came down.

The Synod’s sword lodged against the cracked edge of Pyre’s broken blade, steam hissing violently as fire met water again, the two pressing into one another. Pyre stomped on the man’s foot and shoved him, wrenching his blade free.

The Synod lunged again and stopped short as a banshee-like cry tore through the air.

The force caught him mid-stride, wrenched him off his feet, and drove him into the stone. Sound coiled around him in tightening spirals, pinning him in place. Pyre felt it at once, the air thickening, reality compressing under the strain.

Irix was doing her worst.

The pressure intensified. The Synod screamed as his armor buckled, skin peeling back and reforming, his body flickering between solidity and distortion. Cracks spidered across his mask until it broke, revealing a smooth, featureless face.

“Finish him!” Irix shouted, voice strained.

Pyre didn’t hesitate.

He leapt, both hands locked on his Sigil, and drove his flaming blade straight into the man’s chest. The Synod tried to raise his weapon and failed as his Sigil shattered in a burst of light.

The man’s body went slack, already graying.

“What did you do to him?” Pyre asked Irix as he staggered to his feet, heart hammering.

Her form flickered into view, hunched, vibrating violently. “I used my power to force burnout. Not total soul annihilation, but the destruction of his Sigil, which will send him to the Hollow. I try not to do it if I can avoid it. It can injure me as well.”

A blast of Anima thundered overhead.

“Good,” she said, straightening slightly. “Ronark and Tallow have entered the fight. You should go.”

“What about you?” Pyre asked.

“I’ll be fine. But I’ll need to recover.” She looked up at him. “Go, Pyre. And good job holding him back until I got here. I was wrong to doubt you.”

Above them, the sky burned with motion, and for all Pyre knew, Balefor was still in the air.