December 1069
I realized too late I should've used the method Lash had taught me to block out pain, because the act of forcing out a bar of fire through a wounded arm and a focus not meant for it made my hand and staff wobble. And so, rather than blowing Ursiel's head clean off, I instead burned a hole through its shoulder, the one that led to its left front arm, the one that was still whole. For the moment.
I also, just maybe, shouldn't have included soulfire in the mix. But hey, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
My spell severed Ursiel's arm at the shoulder, and the massive demon-bear turned and landed on its middle pair of paws, its maw sprouting a second set of serrated teeth behind the first.
And then Ursiel roared. Not like a bear, but like a man enraged. "Deceiver! Thief! You dare to taint the fires of creation with your mortal soul?!"
"Heard that before," I muttered. Then I took off running like Wile E. Coyote. And I say him rather than Road Runner because ultimately, I didn't get away.
Ursiel charged at me, roaring and screaming, and ran right into a hail of sharpened spikes fashioned from the ruined walls of the castle. Some dug six or so inches into Ursiel's flank and back, some hit the ground in front of him. None of them bothered or impeded him.
The ground in front of him changed into a liquid, muddy slurry that swallowed its paws and then reverted back into frozen dirt and earth. It bought fractions of a second as Ursiel was forced to repeatedly tear its feet out of the ground.
Someone stabbed Ursiel in the back with a bloody sword. It didn't even look back. Was Cerdic even in there anymore? Or had the pain and maiming been enough to let Ursiel seize complete control?
Academic questions in that moment, really.
I tipped my staff over my shoulder and fired off a half-hearted, soulfire boosted "Forzare!" and wasn't remotely surprised when it splashed against Ursiel's head and barely even nudged it. Then I judged the distance between us, my surroundings, and made the snap decision to throw my staff off to the side.
Didn't need it breaking against me, and-or hurting me, when Ursiel mauled me.
I stopped, stepped to the side so that Ursiel's strike wouldn't throw me into a wall, and threw up my strongest shield. And braced.
I'd been intending Ursiel to have to turn and bat me with its left side, throwing me further into the courtyard. Instead, its middle right arm bent in ways that shouldn't have been possible and blindsided me, slamming against the edge of my shield with enough force to shake my teeth and send me hurtling to the ground. Its middle left paw then broke through my shield, flipped me around roughly, and then slammed down on my chest, hard.
My duster was the only thing that saved me from being crushed. As it was, I think it still cracked a few ribs, and definitely drove the air right out of me.
"How did you steal it?" Ursiel hissed in my face, drool dripping over my face. "Who did you slaughter and defile to seize it?"
I couldn't even croak helplessly, almost drowning in drool and water as snow and ice started to flash-melt around me from my raging aura.
I felt something slam against Ursiel's side from the way its paw ground into me, and through drool drenched eyes I dimly saw a length of wood punch right through Ursiel's maw and knock out a few teeth. It reared back, narrowly avoiding a number of wooden spears that might have taken it in the brain, and snapped the one that had taken it in the mouth in two.
Then it sunk slightly and something hooked around my shoulders, pulling me back. I was dragged for all of eight feet before a hand roughly grasped my back collar and hauled me up and over a shoulder.
"Second time, wizard," Lucille hissed.
"T… turn," I wheezed as Lucille started running away, fumbling around with my coat pockets.
"I need some distance first."
"T-turn!" I forced out, grabbing my baseball and roughly hauling it out.
Lucille snarled and pivoted like a ballet dancer, turning me around so that I faced Ursiel who was, surprise surprise, charging my way, maw open and snarling.
Which was convenient for me, good even.
Not trusting my ability to speak or even breathe right then, I opened my hand and pointed my palm in Ursiel's direction, and before the baseball could really start rolling off I forced out a silent kinetic burst. Silent evocation was dangerous, I wasn't accomplished enough to pull it off consistently or without risk, but now was not the time to hesitate, even if it set off a whole Fourth of July's worth of fireworks off in my head.
The baseball shot off like a cannonball. It flew at a slight angle and not in the best direction, and so rather than braining Ursiel or tearing through it's gullet, I hit the bear in the back of its maw, tore through its jaw, out the back, and punched into its flank.
That stopped Ursiel and drew out a bellow of pain that only got louder as a transfigured length of iron slammed into its side and sent it stumbling, followed by a lightning quick cut at a joint from a figure I still couldn't make out.
Now Ursiel, like Magog, was a brute, a thug. They liked to smash and destroy and revel in violence. But I figured there was a reason Magog followed Tessa, and Ursiel followed Nicodemus:
Namely, Ursiel was the worst kind of thug. The smart kind.
Ursiel's orange eyes whipped around to take us all in, and then rather than take its chances against us, decided we weren't worth fighting any longer. Instead it picked itself up, slammed its bulk against the outer wall, and broke it apart. Then it turned and loped off, in the direction of the river and York Castle.
"Fuck," I managed.
There was a brief, tense pause as everyone took a moment to process and breathe, and then Lucille shucked me off and got me to my feet. Helga and Rowena came down off the walls, walking in my direction, while the indistinct figure also started walking towards me, bloody sword in hand. I ignored him right up until he walked up to me, looked me over, and slugged me in the side.
"Ow!" he said, pulling his hand back and shaking it.
Helga and Rowena snapped their wands up, but I shakily raised my hand and shook my head. Tim, who I could now properly recognize and acknowledge, looked back at me. I'd given him my blending potion for that little extra edge against Ursiel, and had, as a contingency, allowed him one punch to break the effect on me in case it was necessary. Though, he didn't really stop to check before slugging me. "What is your coat made of?"
I wheezed and tried to speak, and realized that I wasn't getting more than a single syllable out at a time, and even then with some pain. I winced, closed my eyes, and blocked out the pain as quickly as I could. It wasn't safe, but I needed to operate at as close to full capacity right now as I could.
The pain vanished, and I almost let out a sigh of relief. The only reason I didn't was because it would have exacerbated my condition.
Tim looked like he wanted to punch me again, and I slowly held up a single finger. He looked at it, sighed, and nodded.
"What now?" he asked.
If it had been painful to breathe and grunt, then speaking was right out. Which was really bad, because I needed to figure out a response. I spent a few seconds wracking my brain for an answer, then remembered the first time I had used soulfire. It had been unconscious, and unintentional, but I might be able to repurpose it for a different purpose.
I ran magic and soulfire through my body, specifically my throat, and then drew it out. "I'm not sure," I said without moving my lips.
My tone of voice was flat and monotone, but for a first try the vocal construct was serving its purpose: letting me speak.
"Helga, you can fly. Ursiel needs to cross the river, it won't be fast about it. Get to the castle, warn Malfoy, and start organizing some kind of response," I said.
Helga looked at me with a mixture of fear and worry, and it hurt. But I couldn't worry about it right then.
"Go!"
Helga turned and shrank into a barn owl before flying off after Ursiel.
"As for us, I don't know," I said. "Timothy, can you beat Ursiel across the river?"
"And have anything left to fight with, and not devour a few maidens along the way?" He shook his head.
"Shit," I said. "Rowena, my staff."
She nodded, waved her hand and muttered something that sounded vaguely Polish under her breath, and my staff flew towards me. I barely managed to grasp it, and it barely helped me stay up.
"Can you not curse the demon, or the man?" Tim asked.
I looked at him, and he gestured towards Cerdic's severed arms with his sword. His bloody sword.
"Maybe," I said. "Assuming Ursiel isn't blocking magic at the moment. And that we weren't murdering a man with magic."
"What does that matter?" he asked.
"Killing a person with magic taints and twists the mind and soul of the murderer," Rowena said. "It's inherently vile."
"He's a demon right now," Tim pointed out. "Surely if there is any time when murder is appropriate it is now."
"No," Lucille said, drawing looks from everyone including me. "The wizard's mad enough as it is. Making him evil on top of it is a bad idea."
If I could have laughed, I would have.
Tim gave Lucille a strange look, then shrugged. "Then what else is there?"
"Could we try and assault Cerdic's mind?" Rowena asked. "Or curse him more moderately?"
"Ursiel is running mental defense for Cerdic, you wouldn't be able to do anything. But…" A thought came to me. "Do you know lightning magic?"
"Some. Rarely practiced," Rowena said.
"It'll have to do. Timothy, grab the arms, bring them over here. Lucille, put me down, carefully. Rowena, start making a circle around us, we're going to need it."
Lucille carefully set me down on the frozen ground, while Rowena pulled a wooden spear towards her before taking it in her free hand, walking in a circle and dragging the sharpened point along the ground. Tim came back a few moments later with two bloody arms in hand, tossing them down on the ground in front of me.
"The brain controls the body through electrical impulses carried along the nerves," I said. "Basically, tiny amounts of lightning carried back and forth."
"Really?" Tim asked, and even Rowena looked at me curiously.
"Yes. Now, we'd need to put a lot of power into a curse to make it hurt, and then Ursiel could block and diminish the effects. But the demon isn't naturally immune to magic, it has to actively defend against it. That implies there's some kind of cost to it. So we need to hit Cerdic for maximum effect with minimum effort. Continuously bombarding him with small amounts of electricity to force his body to thrash and misbehave is the best way to go about it. Ursiel will have to maintain its block constantly, which will hopefully exhaust it. Hopefully. Tim, stab your sword through the right hand and leave it there."
Tim stepped forward in front of Rowena, who was most of the way done with the circle, and drove his sword through the hand of Cerdic's severed right arm hard enough to pin the sword and hand to the ground. Then he stepped back. I awkwardly dug out the copy of Ursiel's coin from my pocket, then leaned forward and shoved it into Cerdic's left hand, curling his cold, dead fingers around it.
"I'll establish and maintain the link as long as I can," I said. "Rowena, you do the lightning."
Rowena nodded, finished the circle, and threw the spear aside. Then she stepped inside, brought up the circle, and touched her wand to the hilt of Tim's sword. I grabbed Cerdic's right arm with my left and his left with my right, and took as deep a breath as felt safe. I pictured Cerdic, inside the ursine form of Ursiel, and assembled a mental jigsaw, putting his arms back on his body, reconnecting the nerves, imagining the impulses flowing up to his brain and back down his body.
"Now," I said.
Rowena channeled a small amount of lightning through Tim's sword and into Cerdic's arm, and I pulled that lightning into myself and pushed it into Cerdic's left arm, adding a tiny bit of soulfire along the way to give it that extra kick. I figured that once all was said and done I'd be low on capacity, but I had enough sense of my own limits to avoid actually burning myself out.
The lightning flowed through Cerdic's severed arm and vanished rather than grounding itself, and I felt a connection spark and sputter and flicker. I let a little of the pain return, enough so I could properly gauge if I was going too far. I regretted it immediately.
Rowena and I settled into a steady if uncomfortable rhythm, shocking Cerdic again and again and again, once every second or two. We kept this up for what felt like an hour to me, but was probably closer to four or five minutes. Right at the end, just as I felt I couldn't maintain the link any longer, Cerdic's left arm started to blacken and wither and weep. I snatched my hand back immediately and Rowena cut off the lightning, and we watched in morbid fascination as Cerdic's arm twitched and spasmed and rotted. A few seconds later, it fell still and silent.
"What was that?" Lucille asked.
Rowena cocked her head. "It looked like Cerdic was violently and magically poisoned, and died as a result."
Poisoned. Or envenomed.
"That's good, yes?" Tim asked.
"Hopefully," I said, cutting back on my vocal construct. I'd overdone it at this point, and it had left me temporarily mute just like my arm had gone numb the first time I used soulfire. But I judged it worthwhile.
I broke the circle, tried to speak, and failed utterly. I didn't even make a sound. I sighed, motioned for someone to pick me up, and then pointed in the direction of the river and the castle. It took a bit for me to get my point across, but after a little bit of charades we started off towards York Castle, Tim supporting me along the way. It took us almost half an hour to reach York Castle, and that was with Tim doing the bulk of the walking for me.
When we reached the base of the motte, it was eerily silent. Tim and Lucille looked at each other, and Tim shrugged. "There's no good way to explain your presence here," he said.
She nodded. "I'll wait. Your eyes are silver though."
"Are they? Bother." He looked at Rowena. "Can you walk him?"
Rowena slung one of my arms over her shoulder and winced at the weight, but didn't drop me. Tim nodded and let go of my other side.
"I'll be just outside, by the doors," Tim said. "In case there's still a problem."
I nodded.
We trekked up the motte, past the unguarded, broken front doors of the castle, through the entryway and pseudo-foyer, and into the main hall of the castle.
It was dead silent, except for the snoring. Dozens of men and a few women were slumped over on tables or laid out on the ground, conked out and sleeping. The only three people that were up were a jumpy Malfoy, a wary Helga, and an almost snake-like Salazar.
Rowena asked the question we both had: "What happened here?"
Helga looked around at Malfoy and Salazar, swallowed, and sighed. "I got back here a minute or two ahead of Ursiel. Malfoy and I put up defenses, and they held for a few seconds. It was spasming as it came in, and we were getting ready to fight it." She waved at all the sleeping men. "Then Salazar came in. He plunged the entire room into darkness until the only thing we could see were the demon's glowing eyes, and then…" She sucked in a deep breath. "The screaming started."
I arched an eyebrow.
"That went on for… a bit, and then everything went silent. Then Salazar dropped the darkness. I found that everyone was asleep, and the demon was gone." She turned and looked at Salazar, almost accusing him with her eyes. "He still hasn't told me what he did."
Well, I could guess. And on the whole, I guess it's pretty metal.
Basilisk one, Ursiel zero.