Page 36 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

CARNAGE

HE ASHANAS WERE no longer Venennin, but creatures of another world. Corpses in motion, they moved with speed and severity, but their flesh was rotten and grotesque, their bodies gnarled into pieces. They were living rot that hungered.

Adrenaline and noise flooded Clea’s senses, combated only by repeated scenes of horror, disemboweled corpses and twisted lumps of flesh lying in wait in every entrance and corridor as Clea made her way toward the castle of Loda.

Bolts of darkness met blades of light in fierce flashes of illumination and shadow, battling in a deadly rhythm.

She moved swiftly, brandishing a sword blade from a fallen soldier.

Her steel was a white torch, cutting through the rotten Venennin with practiced precision.

Their shrieks echoed, cut short by searing light as she broke into one hub of disheveled fighting and then another as she moved from the tunnels up through the city interior and toward the castle.

The battle was winding down without a clear victor.

Clea’s hair was strung together with sweat, traces of ash coating her skin as she turned into one alley and then the next.

Covered in pieces of mismatched armor wrenched from fallen soldiers, she turned each corner with increasing haste, finding either friend or foe, a winner or loser of individual battles that had broken out like patches of infection throughout the city.

She found one family, humans, all dead meals for a Venennin who tore and hungered at the half-frozen corpses as frost climbed along the shattered windows and doors of the house.

It was an easy kill. Clea didn’t remain to absorb the fullness of the carnage, managing to kill another Venennin just as it had breached another house.

She gathered command of straggling soldiers, others recognizing her voice and congregating to her, and she directed them back out to secure the small villages of the inner city, taking another portion with her to the castle gates and then through them.

Minutes passed in seconds. Clea’s vision blurred at the edges as she saw but did not absorb the breadth of the devastation.

Again, her journey from Virday repeated itself, and arriving back at a city that had once been a stronghold, she saw only its decaying duplicate.

A bakery she’d once known was burning; a blacksmith’s cottage boiled with spreading decay; cobblestone streets were roiling with battle where civilians had comfortably walked for over a century.

Every scene passed her by as she gave orders, familiar with the battlefield but unfamiliar with this place she’d once called home.

The corridors narrowed as she ascended inside the castle, dispatching one soldier or the next to aid in skirmishes left and right as she gathered others to her.

With each turn, she found bodies, soldiers, servants, even scribes, strewn across marble and mosaic.

Once beautiful walls were cracked and stained with soot and splattered infection, the interior still lit by layers of blessings that weakened any of the Venennin who dared enter.

The blessings were a powerful shield, lining every inch of the castle’s upper interior, and she knew them well, her father’s own power demonstrated by his ability to serve as the castle’s very walls. She knew his power and knew what it could mean when all at once the walls faded to dark.

Clea looked at the small group of soldiers that had gathered to her, mixed rank, some she recognized, some she did not.

She issued an order with fervor, fighting back the tremor in her voice: “Go to the entrances. People are sheltering in the inner castle. Make this our fortress, filter who comes in,” she said. “Secure the interior. I’ll go up.”

Hesitation lingered.

“Now!” she shouted, surprised at the roar of her own voice, and they dispersed behind her.

She whipped back into the hallways, rising through the final levels.

She felled another Venennin on the way to the castle throne room, which served as its inner sanctum, her breathing ragged as she made her way through the final hallways.

She struck down another Venennin, finding them strong but uncontrolled, consumed by their illness and hunger in ways that made them fierce and sloppy.

Her opponents thickened as she cleared one hallway and then the next, Clea exhausted and still wild with adrenaline as she turned into the final walkway to the throne room doors.

Bodies of Venennin lay in discarded heaps, clean, even cuts laying them in piles outside a cracked throne room door. She suspected Dae’s work, the bodies huddled in close quarters as if felled by one enemy in close proximity.

Shrieking continued inside the throne room, the stench filling the hallway as the rotted bodies now reeked with true decay.

She sprinted through the door, shoving it open through the corpses.

She cut down a Venennin startled by her entrance.

A second lunged from the side. She spun, light coalescing into a shield on her hand.

The impact crackled. Her counterstrike was swift, decisive.

She saw Dae past the second Venennin just as he felled the last two remaining and collapsed onto a column, sliding down and bracing against wounds that rotted through him.

His eyes widened at the sight of her and then he looked to her right, and Clea spun hurriedly in case it was an enemy. In the ensuing silence, she saw only the depth of the city’s devastation.

The vaguest sounds of fighting still echoed in the distance, but even that calmed into the silence in her mind as she witnessed her father’s body, hunched with a bloodied neck. He was dead. He’d collapsed back, and Clea spotted the open door behind him. They’d been attacked on both sides.

She stifled the flow of any thought or feeling, pushing both from her as she rushed to Dae and hoisted him up. His breathing rasped, mouth bubbling with a mixture of dark red and black infection.

She pressed her hand to the mass on his chest, a cut that had evolved into something atrocious, and she healed him. The wound was not an easy mend; Dae lost consciousness before she could finish the act.

She was relieved to find him breathing at the end, cutting herself short as something slammed into the door outside. She whipped up, grabbed her sword, and drew it in the direction of the door before an armored Veilin stumbled through.

She met his eyes before several other Veilin funneled in after him. The silence was profound, not needing words. They stared for a moment, then she lowered her sword and stalked toward the door.

“We need to move,” she said, catching the eyes of the other Veilin, standing with the backdrop of blood-spattered doors behind them. She looked at the group that now scanned the rooms, absorbing the terror of the onslaught.

She gave orders if only to distract their eyes, delegating to each group individually.

“Break up into pairs, scour the castle, vacate the hallways, and start an infirmary,” she demanded, and then looked to the first Veilin soldier who had entered.

She pretended she was Dae, captured his essence like an actor.

“Take a team to the east to dispatch any remaining Venennin. I’ll cover the western side.

We meet back at the central courtyard with survivors. ”

The Veilin nodded, and they both moved swiftly back into the halls.

By the break of dawn, teams had formed, hunting down stragglers and combining forces.

It became clear in a matter of hours that the attack was done.

Her voice rose over the crackling of fire and the cries of the wounded.

“Scout the walls! Post sentries at each vulnerability! Stay in teams!”

Through the smoke and ruin, soldiers without leaders began to cluster. Orders were repeated in waves until the city was mobilized, groups coming to her for new waves of orders, the structure of the army rebuilding itself around the absence of key leaders.

The rest of the work was gruesome and toiling.

Bodies were quickly gathered into piles, rampant fires were doused, controlled fires were started, and the wounded were transported away.

The morning was fast and long. At last, Clea found Catagard unconscious in one of the makeshift infirmities.

Taking the briefest moment to sit next to him in the tent, Clea shared with him what she’d learned as if offering an official report.

She spoke to his silent form, the bustle in the distance moving like a river around the tent.

“Fillip was killed in the initial onslaught,” Clea whispered hoarsely, glancing at her dirtied hands, blood and ash leaving a ghastly crust over her skin.

“Ivy, along with her house of renowned warriors, fled with the queen into the woods to protect the legacy of Loda. Ignat went with them, and Dae stayed behind to fight with my father. We still haven’t found Yvan.

It’s taking time to untangle the chaos.”

For the first time, she had a moment to pause, looking out at the courtyard and multiple infirmaries where healers, most inexperienced, tried to tackle one wound and then the next. Clea had mended some herself before she was pulled away to direct soldiers who had no one else to go to.

“We’ve removed all Venennin from the city,” Clea said to Catagard emptily. “The infected bodies are being burned. I’ve elected several key soldiers to rotate in as leaders.”

Silence. Catagard breathed haggardly, his face looking pained, even in his unconsciousness. His chest had been bandaged, the wound cleared of infection, but he had yet to wake up.