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Chapter XXI - The Dying Time

Van pitched himself into a roll as one of the speedy clawed undead leapt at him, and came up on its other side with an arrow already nocked, pulled, and ready to release. He planted the shaft into its head to the fletching, then twisted and drew his hatchet as the second running fiend came at him, swiping high with a brutal stroke that would have taken his face clean off if he hadn't ducked low again and spun aside.

Hot ash blew across his face, stinging his eyes, but he didn't dare let them close. A third of the ones he'd started to think of as Sprinters came up over the edge of his burning perch, ignoring the flames that licked and blackened its rotten flesh. Van cursed under his breath, trying to find some way off the rapidly burning three-story that wouldn't involved being bitten to death, clawed to pieces, or burnt to a cinder.

The one that had tried to tear his face off rushed again, and Van danced to the side, trying not to thank his grandfather for teaching him footwork so stringently. Another lesson from grandfather: he couldn't afford the slight delay such a distraction might make in his movements. The blackened newcomer came at him from behind, leaping and hissing and trying to bear him down with outstretched clawed arms.

Van whirled, and hurled his hatchet into the thing's face, neatly planting it to the base of the blade, and drew his cleaver while spinning and trying to stay abreast of the face-seeking sprinter, barely ducking another of its wild, lashing strikes.

Somewhere off to his right, another fiery hell-blast exploded, and the old church who's bell he'd rung simply vanished in a roaring, rising ball of greasy fire, while what few furs still survived and fought the rotting tide below screamed in agony or terror or both, and as the walking dead simply kept walking, burning like pyres.

Van suppressed a snarl, forcing his rage to simmer rather than boil and take over his fighting. Despite all discipline, he couldn't help aiming his thoughts for an instant at Castle Amarthane. You fucking fool! They're bloated soggy corpses! They'll take hours to burn to nothing! In the meantime, they'll be BLOODY FLAMING MONSTERS!

The sprinter nearly took his head for that momentary distraction, and Van yelped as he barely managed to dance backward in time, razor-bladed black claws slicing straight through his leathers and gashing across his chest in a blazing triple arc. In response, he snarled, fangs bared, and shot the damnable beast in the mouth as it roared out what it believed was victory. Then he fell on his rear, holding his chest as a surge of tooth-grinding, lava-hot pain shot outward from the rent in his flesh.

"Shit," he grunted, through clenched teeth, as he forced himself to his feet once again, to look down on the blazing street. Casso's trebuchets had annihilated several buildings in the poor district outright, severely damaged others, and now had fast-growing fires rushing up the many poorly built row houses. Somehow, it reminded him of a brush fire he'd once seen as a kit, as it blazed away from the forest's edge at unbelievable speed and ferocity.

Then, he heard the singing again, and fought through the burning of his chest, throwing himself into a run and leaping off the blazing structure to land on another no less burning, so that he could continue trying to track that insipid, horrible voice he'd heard before, back at the Gallows Tower. Something inside, some instinct, told him that somehow the Singer was a critical target. Certainly, supporting the few furs left fighting down below was a lost cause, in any case, as much as it ate at him to abandon them. He only hoped finding the Singer would save more lives than he was sacrificing by leaving the civilians to their fate. He added to that hope one other; that the Guard would arrive soon, and find some way to contain this, so that mothers and children at least could escape.

Another running leap, and the burning in his chest was disappearing, replaced by the incessant ache in his legs from over an hour of sprinting, fighting, shooting, and leaping. One more jump launched him across a narrow lane, and the fox landed in a windmilling skid as cheap faulty roof tiles broke free of their cementing and clattered down to the street around him while he scrambled for purchase.

He winced, as his body slammed into another stone chimney, and wrapped himself around it as old ceramic tiles shattered in a cascade of dissonant notes on the street below. The undead, he had realized, mostly navigated by sound, and any moment now would be swarming the base of the building he was on.

Then, a melodious voice spoke, and he forgot about that other minor problem. Van turned his head, dread dawning heavy in his chest, and looked into the eyes of a rabbit child whose body said he was maybe eight years of age, and whose eyes, filled with swirling blackness and the glint of an evil grin, said he was something far more ageless than that.

Why hello there, little fox...

Summer's recently-acquired horse stumbled, staggered, and dropped, bleeding profusely as the running clawed monster tore into its flesh. Behind him, as he was twisting to stab the thing, an unarmored rider hurled his javelin into its head, dropping the dead thing to the ground in a tumble of limbs.

The grizzled old captain rolled off his falling horse, sword already in paw, and stabbed it straight through the skull of an oncoming shambler, as a rush of flame burst through the row house to his side, dragging a snarl from his lips while his fur singed. The dog who'd just saved his life leaned down in the saddle, and Summer grabbed his arm, pulling himself up and wrapping an arm around the male's middle.

"My thanks, dog! Now get us to the damn bridge!"

"Aye, sir!"

In a minute, they were clear of the brawl, and riding down the slope of the hill that rose from the river just before the north-west bridge to Castle Amarthane. What the dog saw there made him reign up the horse, and made Summer curse violently under his breath, as another trebuchet boulder rose high into the air from the castle's walls, to crash down in the southern sector of Amarthane.

On their side of the bridge, a full hundred Guard watched helplessly from behind the barricades they'd built to keep the castle's defenders in and prevent counterattacks. On the castle's side of the bridge, barricades had been erected as well but lay largely abandoned, but for a few furs with trumpets.

"Damnit!" Summer shouted, as loudly as he could, the dog in front of him flinching slightly from the sudden noise.

"Captain...What do we do now?"

Now we start dying, he thought, and killed the thought before it could ruin his command by leaving his lips.

"We withdraw to the Black Tower and get as many civilians inside it as we can. It's our last fall-back that can resist that kind of fire."

"Sir? What about the other commoners?"

Summer felt his stomach curling, as he looked around from the hillside and watched his beloved city burn and die in rot and rage and warfare.

"We do what we can for those we can save. That's all."

Thieren's battle lust was so high he nearly struck the messenger. Instead, he balled his fists, crumpling the message, as the furs behind him systematically butchered another swarm of the undead that tried to pour through their sundered gate. It had been hours, now, and he had rotated the lines to let the tired front rest a dozen times now, such that even his reserves were flagging and drooping with fatigue. Nonetheless, their morale was high, many laughing at exhausted jokes as they butchered undead monsters rendered mostly harmless by the shield wall and skill of these warriors Thieren was proud to call his own.

The big mountain lion leaned in to the messenger, fighting down the urge to shake the ragged, exhausted rabbit, and instead grabbed his collar to pull him close. In the male's eyes, he could see fear, and knew his mental restraint wasn't stopping his body from showing anger.

"We're at the South gate. Black Tower is near the northern nobles' district. You told me yourself an hour ago there was a breach in the northwest. You're telling me now that this exhausted bunch is going to have to be told we've lost the fight, then expected to march across half the damn city, through these fucking monsters, to defend a keep while we watch the city burn?!"

His incredulous anger bubbled through, growling over his words in a susurrus of barely contained violence. The hare flinched, but didn't avert his brave blue eyes.

"Y-yes, sir. C-captain Summer says that with the c-castle firing at us, we've...We've got little choice."

Thieren looked up, as another artillery piece fired, and tracked the flaming ball of destruction as it crashed down somewhere in the smokey, burning holocaust Amarthane was becoming. With an angry gob of spit to the gore and snow-slick cobbles, he conceded the point, to his own fury, and gently set the rabbit back down, brushing snow off the male's singed and filthy lapel.

"We're too far from there. Get back to the bridges and tell the Masons to destroy them. The channels are deep and steep-sided, these mongrel bastard living dead won't be able to climb 'em, and they sure as hell can't swim with arms that clumsy."

The hare stared at him, brows up and ears forward.

"You...What?"

Thieren turned and started to push his way through the back ranks of his furs, exhausted, some of them bloodied by wounds, others dead and covered in blankets with their heads missing, a lesson they'd learned to handle early in the fight.

"You heard me, messenger. Get outta here, if you want to live the night."

The hare stared a second longer, as the hulking mountain lion wove through his warriors until he could get up on a cart and turn to address most of them.

"My warriors!"

Those not directly engaged in the fight began looking up, as the cougar called out the same twice more. Many faces were bloodied, smoke-covered, grim, but smiling, pleased at the words of respect.

"We have fought well! Those of us that died have died well! We've saved many by our actions this day, and held our ground all the while! I'd walk to the very gates of hell with the lot of you, and back twice more for fun!"

That got laughs, and a few hooting cheers from the more energetic of the resting soldiers.

"Our Captain, good lord Summer, sends word that we've done our job. He wants us to take a break back at the Black Tower. Thing is, since he sent the message, more enemies decided to get through, and we've got no clear path to take."

The news was sobering, and the hare could see it in their filthy, uplifted faces. They clung to hope, he saw, trusting in their new-found commander to let the other boot drop about how they were going to get through what they knew could spell utter disaster.

"So what we're going to do is this. You furs at the back, get those barrels the Masons left for us, and set up to roll them down into the undead. The rest of you, get set up in columns. We'll be fast-marching straight into the Channels borough and heading for the Old Bailey Prison. With any luck, we can barge right in and set it up to protect ourselves. Once the press of undead is over, and the firebombing done, we can march out of there and take the fight to them, aye?"

This got nods, and no cheers. Nobody here wanted to retreat, the hare realized with shock. Having fought the dead all night long, these furs had lost fear for them, with the hard-won understanding that the enemy could be beaten with the right tactics and discipline.

The speech done, he turned and sprinted off into the city, to report this news back to Summer, as the main force of surviving Guard and civilians were headed in force for the Black Tower.

Van gagged, choking and kicking feebly as his numbed limbs resisted every attempt at motion. The wind blew, and he swayed over the alleyway three stories below, held up by this immortal child's ruthless paw on his throat. It continued to sing, a soft song that made his muscles feel too exhausted to move, his mind struggling to fight back the blackness that swirled at his vision.

Both of his paws felt fiery, and were draining blood to the cobbles below, from where he'd sliced them to ribbons early in the fight to combat the horrible demon child's soporific song. The pain had helped at first, but the rabbit kit was simply too fast, too strong, dancing away from him laughing, giggling and singing its horrid song endlessly, with no evident need to pause for breath. It hadn't even counterattacked, really, allowing him to come at it again and again, cut himself over and over to resist the song.

When he'd run out of skin on his paws, the game had finally changed. The rabbit came at him, laughing and clawing with its little fingernails, scoring vicious hits along his arms and legs that left his jerkin hanging open, ribbons of skin hanging from inside them like cheap curtains going threadbare.

Now, the fight was over, and Van knew it. With blackness swirling through his vision in snakes of blindness, he was staring into the child's swirling black holes of eyes, watching as its grin shifted and worked, speaking words he couldn't understand that nonetheless read clear in his mind.

Your wife slowed me. I will pay her back for it, later. Elven storm-witchery, I never thought to see it again!

Van's heart jerked in fury-hot terror, images of his wife and her tiny forest village streaming through his head, as he choked out words against the vice-grip on his throat, struggling for air enough to waste on them while he fought his own sluggish mind for some way to survive this.

"You...Leave...Her...Alone!"

The fox threw everything into his last effort. Two toes gripped the roof's edge through his soft-soled boot, and his other leg raised up, knee bent, and kicked straight up into the child's chin, snapping it back with the sheer force of the desperate blow. His other paw snapped forward at the same moment, hurling one of his wife's precious acorns into the thing's snarling face as it came back forward.

He saw a green flash of light, and heard a squealing call that echoed in his bones and burnt his ears. Then he was windmilling, and falling backward off the ledge, no time to think or twist, and his body too drained to use his long-trained hard-won acrobatics. Van struck the cobbles with a resounding dull thud that shoved all the air out of his lungs, as he barely managed any form of a roll to break the force, and as he rolled to a stop he coughed out a bloody cloud onto the paving cobbles beneath him.

Pain seared him, then, flying through his body like birds in a thunderstorm, every which way with no source or end, and he cried out in agony, a long call he'd too little mind left to restrain. He tried to send commands to his arms, desperate to escape, to run, to hide, but his limbs wouldn't respond, filled with tingling numbness shot through with horrid streamers of liquid fire.

One of his arms finally jerked into movement, weakly writhing out in front of him like a wagon-crushed snake, and he grabbed at a cobble stone, tugging his whole body's dead weight forward as he tried to get indoors, away from something he knew he couldn't outrun.

A pair of white footpaws, bare and filthy with road muck and drying gore, landed on the cobbles just in front of his face, splattering him with detritus and ash, and Van's eyes closed, expecting the killing strike to end his misery any moment. Instead, indignant words filled his head, shrill with a ringing dissonant clash of tones.

You...Bruised me...Burned me...Die!

A rush of wind swirled past his ears, and he heard a thud, followed by an angry snarling sound that vibrated his chest and wounded guts, as the thing staggered back and looked down. Van's eyes opened, and blinked, seeing a wicked long-knife buried just below the child's breastbone, its black swirling eyes focused somewhere past his head.

A mocking, smug, purr-filled voice spoke from somewhere that sounded distant, and growing farther, as the fox's vision began to fade into a tunnel of swirling dark around the image at its center.

"Well well, what have we here? A little boy for me to play with..."

Van knew not who his rescuer was, and had no further time to wonder, as his face met the cobbles and his vision blacked to nothing. Toryen Casso, smirking as if all were right in the world and all of it his, stepped over the downed fox, twirling a throwing knife over his knuckles in one paw as the other rested on the curved hilt of a wicked-sharp stabbing dagger he'd taken off the Guard's stockpile.

The Singing Child's face was burnt, he saw, its swirling black eyes surrounded in a rime of dead vegetation and vines that had punctured its skin, thorns pulling at its flesh and drawing black, gooey slime from beneath, like rotten blood mixed with amber sap.

Toryen's tight, banded muscles shifted under his tunic, and he slid into a low, predatory crouch, swaying slightly back and forth as he brought the throwing knife up and licked it, his long, dexterous tongue nearly fellating the mirror-finished thing. Behind it, he smirked, fangs poutily over his lip as he dared the thing to come at him.

Then the Singing Child hissed, its cherubic face splitting both lips with the terrible shape it tried to take on, eyes flaring with light-devouring black. Claws extended from its fingertips, and its shoulders hunched forward, causing it to drag the long black things across the cobbles, scraping up chips and flakes of stone.

Its worst weapon of all came from its mouth a moment later, as the terrible creature howled out a one-note command, indignant fury blowing back Toryen's face fur and making him grimace to keep his eyes open against the flow of gale-force wind.

Serve me or die!

Toryen blinked then, and leaned his weight forward against the wind, laughter bubbling in his throat as he recognized the Voice. The Voice! It was here! It had form! The invisible thing that had cajoled and loved and threatened him all his life was here, in the flesh, standing before him! At last, he could embrace the one thing that had been with him all his life, never abandoning him, always pushing him to disobey father. At last, he could see it.

At last, he could kill it, for all it had done to him!

His laughter broke, finally, and he straightened up, the wind going through him as if there were nothing to bluster about. Toryen spoke a single word, glorious freedom-laughter tumbling from his lips, and all the world seemed to fall silent.

"No!"

The Singing Child stared at him, head tilted, an expression of dumbfounded incomprehension spilling across its warped child-like face.

OBEY!

Tory giggled, and danced forward, impossibly ignoring the wind that buffeted around the street, rolling Van's unconscious body around with its pounding gusting strength.

"I've learned to say no to you, Voice! You have no power now!"

The Singing Child stared at him, and for a moment, Toryen saw it display the most mortal emotion he'd ever perceived from the alien thing that had nurtured him since he was a kitten. Its face flashed with fear. Then its black eyes flashed scarlet with rage, and it hurtled toward him in a blur, claws like black iron whistling forward and cutting the wind with their passing.

The tiger knew instinctively it was too strong an attack to be blocked, and threw himself over his opponent's head, his acrobatic form twisting in midair so he could land in a neat roll and throw himself to his feet faced away from it. As it shrieked in rage behind him, Toryen threw his long-limbed body into a desperate sprint, cackling out laughter as he spun, dancing over the cobbles, and hurled his throwing knife into the chasing creature's gut to seemingly no effect except to make it even angrier.

It rushed him again, with blurring speed, and Toryen made his guess, turning a blind corner into an alleyway he knew well. He trailed fingertips along a soot-stained old blood smear that'd eaten slightly into the stone, and remembered the terrified squeals of the doe girl he'd raped and butchered here on his fourteenth name-day. Oh how furious Father had been at the trouble it caused him! Behind him, the Singing Child crashed around the corner and bounced off the wall, unable to keep up with its own speed, confirming Toryen's suspicion.

They were too close now for the tiger to waste time throwing knives, so he simply ran, swift as the wind, legs coming up nearly to his chest as he leapt a pile of detritus, then planted his footpaws into the cobbles and threw himself to the right down another alley, as burning cinders began to fall around him like hot snow. He smirked, vicious cunning whirling in his head as he heard the Singing Child rebound off the wall again, snarling in fury though apparently not slowed by the cracking of bones that resounded from its body.

With an explosion of speed, Toryen approached yet another turn, laughing in exhilaration as he heard the Singing Child catching up behind him, just in time to crash past the alley mouth and straight into the street as Toryen zipped into an alley barely wide enough for his slender, athletic shoulders. He didn't stop for an instant to check his quarry and pursuer, turning again to his right and then right again to come back out onto the street the Singing Child had just left to chase his trail.

So furious was the creature that it had lost all sense of its surroundings, which was just what the panting, thrilling tiger was banking on, as he charged toward a structure engulfed in flame that stood alone, occupying an entire city block.

As the flames were becoming too hot for him to bear, Toryen slid to a stop and spun, just in time to draw a knife from the two belts full of blades over his shoulders, and send it spinning into the Singing Child's left eye, which one from the creature a horrible howl that shook the very cobbles beneath his footpaws, as it leapt at him, slicing the air with its claws with its feet up off the ground, hurtling toward the cat.

Toryen threw himself flat on the cobbles, wincing as his rock-hard prick jammed into the stones and sent a shot of pain up his spine.

When the darkling foe landed, it landed in the blazing corpse of a towering inferno. Toryen had seen the trebuchet shot that hit the place, and known it was perfect from nearly a mile away. While he hadn't been certain fire would work, he knew it was his best chance to slow the thing down long enough for his master Tomasj to arrive with backup.

The fact he'd likely saved another fur's life hadn't factored into his mind at all, until that moment, and as the cat scrambled to his feet to look for signs of his foe he frowned and beetled his brows trying to discern why that fact made him happy. Or, if not happy precisely, made him feel as if he might be rewarded.

Then, shrieking in agony, covered in boiling red and black flame, the Singing Child emerged from the inferno, slamming aside blazing timbers many times Toryen's weight with a contemptuous, enraged strength. Its flesh was boiled, blistering and then peeling away, muscles cooking, hissing, spitting, crackling, and yet on it came at Toryen, and the tiger turned and ran for his very life, whispering a prayer to his new-found master that the others would be where Tomasj told him to go.

Something hurtled through the air behind him, and Toryen reflexively dodged to the side with a quick skip of agile feet. A block of masonry, torn straight from the side of a building, crashed into the cobbles, shattering them and sending flinders of rock flying in all directions as he struggled to keep balance and not slide on the snow-slick ground. Then a second, smaller object struck him, and Toryen bounced hard off a cindered, burnt-out shell of a row house, flung from his feet and sent rolling on the ground, head spinning.

Even stunned, his paws went to his knives, as Jaux had taught him in their long, brutal sparring sessions over the years. "Never," the lion had told him, "let an enemy beat you without making him suffer for it."

As he shook his head, scrambling about uselessly on the ground in the attempts to make a difficult target, he ran face-first into hobnailed boots, and looked upward, into a blurry mess of filthy red and white that his stunned brain could only process as a walking pile of bandages.

A powerful paw grabbed him by the throat, and abruptly he was choked, unable to breath, kicking uselessly as he was dragged up to eye height, snout-to-bandages and staring into the deepest, most rage-filled blue eyes he'd ever seen.

Her voice, he recognized, and it brought a smile to his muzzle that seemed to enrage the bandage-pile woman. She shook him as a terrier shakes a rat, and struck him hard across the face with the back of her gauntleted paw, sending blood arcing from his lip as his head snapped back.

"You! You bastard! Die!"

"Cel, no!"

Muzzily, head full of swarming wasps as it wobbled back forward, Toryen smiled bloody-muzzled at a tiny little cat of a priest, but more importantly his master, who smirked back at him with a clever glint in his dark eyes and eldritch cursed weapon in his paw.

The leopard that shook him had stopped, shaking with fury to splutter in incredulous tones to the cleric, tripping over her words in the rush to get them out.

"He...This...He! Rapist! RAPIST!"

DIE!

Toryen's world spun, as he was slammed into the side of a building and released, and as he slid to the ground saw the Slaughtered Knight, the only girl he'd ever fucked and not slain afterwards, release him and charge the Singing Child as it came around the corner howling for blood.

Her sword arced up from where she'd been holding it, down along her side, while choking him one-pawed. The blade steamed, cold as the frozen north, as it struck the fire rapidly crawling over the child-demon's body, only to be deflected at the last moment by those iron-hard claws. It responded to her swing in kind, throwing itself forward and slashing at her once, twice, and again with its cruel talons, forcing Cel to dodge aside to avoid being filleted.

Toryen managed to weakly fling the knife still clutched in his paw, and he giggled as it bounced off the thing's deceptive hide. Then a shadow eclipsed half of his vision, and he realized he was staring at the back of Tomasj's cavalry boot, as a deafening roar of noise reported from Nastasia's muzzle, along with a gush of blood that splattered across the tiger's face, sweet and coppery to his parched tongue.

The Singing Child was hit by the hellish blast, and blown backward, folded in half around the fiery missile, but the moment it landed, it hurled itself back toward them, trailing guts and gore from where its terrible magic had blown its gut out its back. Cel moved to intercept, slicing her icy blade downward towards its neck, only to have it turned aside again by the claws, and it responded with a slash across her midsection that would have disemboweled her if not for the breastplate that was sheared into instead.

Tomasj had doubled over, clutching his chest as he struggled to breathe through bloody, wet coughs, and fell to a knee next to Toryen's downed form, thrusting the pistol at him.

"Coghk...Iht..." he slurred out, and the tiger took the pistol in paw, staring at the thing. It was worn smooth with many years of use and age, patina'd black with oil, and the blood stains running along it looked to be permanent marks now. He slipped a paw back behind the bore and cocked back the firing mechanism, staring at the empty powder pan as he handed it back.

"No powder!" he managed, before another rush of light and wind made him wince and duck back, covering his eyes.

"Siz'lerak! Althos! Na'Tauriooof!"

The little priest was suddenly sitting next to him, having been punched in the gut hard enough that his lunch was spilled from his lips. He looked stunned, but managed to clench a fist, and in that movement Toryen felt the sudden surge of tingling energy the cat had summoned with strange words that hurt Toryen's ears.

His eyes were drawn away from the cat, and to the Shining Child, just as Cel's sword impacted its chest. This time, it did not slide away, or leap back, or block in time. The sword sheared through, glowing with the power of Timid's invocation, and in so brief a moment, the fiend that had chased him across what felt like half of Amarthane simply fell in half and crumpled to the ground, a sad pile of what was once a horrid monster.

From the hole where its body had been separated, a simple wisp of black smokeyness rose, and then burned away when Cel brought her sword through it a second time, panting, glaring, staring at the dead body of a small child, ripped in half, blown apart, and burned.

Toryen smirked, dazed though he was.

"Well done, master!"

Cel heard him, one ear twitching back, the ragged skin at its based torn open again from exertion, and she turned toward him with a baleful death-filled stare that roused a writhing, frightened feeling in the tiger's gut. Suddenly he found himself curling up, becoming as small as he could, to hide behind his master and hope this new one was kind in allowing him to live.

Her heavy footfalls rang like thunder as she approached. Behind her, the dead body began to burn in earnest, the flames held at bay by the Singing Child's power finally beginning to truly eat at the formerly immortal flesh. Then she was in front of him, pushing aside the panting, blood-hacking Tomasj as if he were a child, and that glimmering frost-blue blade of hers was touching his throat with a chill far more intense than any he'd felt before, making his throat feel as if it were instantly frozen.

Indeed the ice in her glacial eyes seemed no less cold for her hatred. In that instant, Toryen saw his death in her face, her jaw clenched, her eyes hard and sharp as steel. A simple twitch of her potent muscles would skewer his neck, pop his head off like a wine cork. All he could think of is how delicious she had felt around his cock, and how deliciously wrong it had been to order her scalped, how furious father had been at the danger it posed to his plans.

The little priest spoke then, surprising both cats, who turned their eyes to him as a voice not his own spoke from the winded cat's muzzle.

One shall be unwelcome foe,

Cruel of heart and weak of soul,

You shall need his darkling heart,

Know him by Her hatred.

Cel stared at the little cleric, as he began coughing and seemed to deflate with a grimace, and Toryen saw the emotions play across her face in a stream she couldn't stop. Fury, frustration, disbelief, and then tears as the sword dropped from her paw. A moment later, she clattered to the cobbles, shaking, and fell on her side grabbing at the knee he remembered vaguely as having been broken by her own falling horse.

Tory turned his head to stare at the strange wizard in priest robes. He'd killed the Singing Child just as much as Cel had, when Tomasj's trap had sprung shut. Toryen himself had led the thing in, weakened and enraged it beyond use of its reason and powers of song. Tomasj had restrained it with his shot long enough for the cleric to give Cel the strength to kill it.

He wondered if this is what it felt like to be part of a team.

Tomasj sagged against him, burping up blood, and whispered hoarsely.

"Not done yet...Where's Van? We must get back to...Black Tower."

The priest was levering to his feet, though bent over and holding his gut, likely badly bruised. Toryen watched warily as the wizard cat knelt down by Sir Cel, the mighty avenger that had utterly destroyed Verenax's royal guard, and whispered in the sobbing woman's ear while petting her bandaged cheek.

Moments later, she was standing, tears still streaming from her eyes, limping as she helped Tomasj up. The wolf looked down at Toryen, and flicked his snout at the cat, dribbling blood from it.

"Get up. Lead us to Vanyal. Then we go back and plan, yes?"

The Singing Child watched its vanquishers depart and cackled in its immaterial state. That sword had nearly sliced him into oblivion, but he'd cleverly escaped by dissipating in its frosty wake. He made a note to himself, that once he found a new body, he should find the Frozen One and punish it dearly for its interference.

He then began to wander, immaterial yet still tied to the ground, and search for a new living body to inhabit. Surely the tiny child who's body he'd taken and soul he'd devoured would be no further use, hacked in half and burnt to a crisp. Neither were the undead of any use to him, their bodies too decayed to hold his level of power, and the defenders of Amarthane had cleverly destroyed most of his more potent and less putrefied minions.

As he walked past a burnt-out charcoal husk, a fire-blackened, bleeding, furless, cracked paw shot out and grabbed at his leg, and the Singing Child stared at it in shock, not knowing how anything could touch him in his immaterial shape.

Then, with a scream of unbridled terror and fury, he saw the creature's eyes. In a scorched, bleeding face barely identifiable as lupine, a pair of somehow-undamaged eyes stared straight at him, as he was dragged in paw by paw, climbing up his leg to grab him by the hips and yank him forward.

The Nameless One bit him in the throat. The Singing Child, a shadow born of deepest darkness, a master of night-time dreads and deadly songs and the shadows under beds, was torn asunder. The Singing Child died.