With a shriek of grating metal in a parody of a falcon's hunting cry, the hieracosphinx pounced forward. The rock golems blocked Camilla's view of Alyce, so she couldn't see what happened, but the shower of dirt and rock that burst up from the impact point and the way that the fiend whipped its head to its left an instant later suggested that the young agent had dodged away.
"You need to get there and help!" Camilla said. She fired at one of the golems, the explosive shell she'd loaded blowing one of its legs out from under it. The fiend continued to crawl towards them, though, dragging a furrow in the ground with its body.
"You can't hold off all these by yourself."
Which was probably true, especially as she had limited supplies of her more advanced ammunition and chemicals.
"Better than Alyce can deal with that thing."
Arnice swept her gaze across the ring of golems. Camilla fired again, a triple-shot of normal anti-fiend ammunition having more effect than metal-on-rock ought to have but nowhere near enough to be critical. In response, the Nightlord snarled, and—Jorth having vanished back into herself again—held her cupped hands upright at either side. Light swelled in each palm, and then with a sound like shattering glass, a fiend appeared above each hand.
No, not fiends, Camilla realized an instant later, Servans. Those fiends who retained a sense of self. These two weren't from the group Aluche had gathered during the affair of the Moon Queen, but were altogether different in appearance. Arnice had apparently regained enough of her power to summon some of her own minions.
"Rise," she ordered the alraune, a green butterfly-fairy kind of Servan that floated to her left, "keep watch on Dr. Camilla and heal her if she gets hurt. Ace," she told the reddish, winged-lizard dinosword on her right, "distract that fiend!" She pointed at the hieracosphinx, and both Servans chirruped back at her, no doubt speaking in the fiendish tongue Camilla couldn't understand.
Ace shot towards the hieracosphinx, slashing at its head like a mosquito taunting an elephant. Arnice, meanwhile, called forth her Blood Sword once again, but this time it appeared in the form of a massive warhammer with a head nearly as big as Arnice's own body.
"All right, Doctor. I'm leaving these for you."
She charged the line of golems, covering the ten feet between herself and the nearest one and pivoting her whole body into swinging the gigantic hammer almost in one motion. It slammed home with a brutal cracking sound, chips of stone flying free, and she used the momentum of the rebound to start her spin around the other way, ending in another thunderous impact that sent a network of cracks snaking through the rock golem's body. Arnice wheeled back around again, but the third strike ended with her bringing the hammer up, over, and down again in an overhead slam that shattered the fiend into pebbles. The instant it was down, Arnice raced through the gap formed in the animated wall, the hammer already vanishing to be replaced by Jorth as she charged the hieracosphinx.
Meanwhile, the golems did indeed continue to march towards Camilla, closing in on her in a tightening arc. She continued to fire while giving ground, but as she'd originally observed, her ordinary ammunition would take time to wear even one of the golems down. The Servan, Rise, tried to help by shooting a tiny arrow of light at the last golem Camilla had hit, but to even less effect.
You told her to leave this to you, Camilla snapped mentally. After that big argument you raised over not wanting her to go off on her own, now you're going to be the problem, the hypocrite just doing what she tried? What happened to the woman who told Aluche how she knew what she was and wasn't capable of doing?
She yanked another of the stunning flasks from her belt and tossed it towards the left side of the circle, detonating it with a single shot. The rock golems were considerably tougher than the harpies, but even they were caught off-guard by the attack. Camilla concentrated fire on the one that seemed the most staggered, putting three straight three-round bursts into its approximation of a face, and then charging straight towards it. As she'd hoped, its reaction was slow; by the time its big arm swung around, more like a crude club than throwing a punch, Camilla was already starting her dive, flying underneath, spinning as she hit the ground and cranking her gun from rifle to shortbarrel mode and firing into the backs of its stubby legs. The golem toppled, and she even got lucky as it crashed into the one next to it.
Camilla scrambled to her feet. She'd managed to get outside the ring and now had considerably more freedom of movement without the animated rock wall hedging her in. The rock golems were limited in that way; without ranged weapons they really couldn't force an engagement, though their incredible toughness meant that one on the prowl, smashing buildings or otherwise destroying valuables was hard to bring down. But she doubted that Fornix had meant them as anything but a wall, a delaying tactic. And even so, if they managed to herd her back to where her movement was cut off—or if, for example, they were to march to the watchtower and trap the Survey Corps team inside—then things would look a lot more serious.
She continued to move and fire, move and fire, circling the golems and chipping away at them. The problem was, while she could move faster than they could, the fiends were tireless, and Camilla had to be aware of her footing on the unsecure terrain, since to trip and fall would be a disaster.
Which isn't helped by the fact that I can't see in the dark and they can, she knew. Thankfully the moon was bright; if the clouds and fog from before had stayed in place Camilla would have been functionally blind. But it was still a problem, one made worse by the fact that the ground was made even more choppy since parts of it had come to life and uprooted itself.
That was when one of the golems raised its arms and slammed them down into the ground, sending out a pulsing shockwave that rocked the earth under Camilla's feet, making her stumble, trying to keep her balance, which she barely did—
—until a second golem followed suit. Then a third. The clashing shockwaves were too much; she couldn't balance her body in two separate ways near-simultaneously, and she went down, taking the fourth shockwave as a series of blows to her limbs and body as it passed through the ground below her. The actual injury was slight, but the impacts added several additional seconds where she was dazed and unable to right herself, seconds during which the lead golem, the one that had triggered the initial shock, had been advancing on her.
Camilla was just coming to her knees as the fiend raised its arm for a savage blow. Another spark from Rise hit the golem in the face, but it ignored the attack, not even pausing.
Then Ace swooped in, the dinosword slashing out with its cleaver-like blade in a flurry of strikes to the golem's arm and shoulder. Chunks of stone flew with every chopping blow, so that the golem was forced to pivot and bat Ace away with its other arm. But not only had the Servan done enough to distract it from Camilla for the doctor to regain her feet, he'd inflicted enough damage that the force of the pivot was enough to tear the fiend's injured arm clean off.
Rise dove for where Ace lay sprawled, casting a shower of light across her fellow Servan that washed away its cuts and bruises and straightened his crumpled wing. Ace leapt back into the air, pumped its sword upward once while giving a little crowing battle cry, and swooped at the golems once again.
But if the Servan is here helping me, then that means…
Camilla's assumption was proven correct in the next moment when steel rang off stone, Alyce hacking away at one of the downed fiends. The sword bit in, carving wounds into the rock by dint of the rituals and anti-fiend construction of the weapon and Alyce's training in focusing her own spiritual force into and through her strikes. With the four of them together, two humans and two Servans, Camilla felt a lot more confident about the outcome of this fight than she had a bare minute ago.
It also meant, though, that Arnice was facing off against the sphinx alone.
~X X X~
Arnice's blood was thundering in her veins.
The simple truth was, she enjoyed fighting. To pit her strength against an enemy's, to push her mind, magic, and body to their utmost, to know that there were no limits because the enemy was seriously trying to defeat, even kill her, it was fun. The only thing that spoiled it for her was when there was someone else at risk. Like on Ruswal Island; the pleasure had been there, but it had been muted by the fact that she'd been fighting towards the goal of saving Lilysse.
Even now, things were confused, with Fornix's presence and the mystery surrounding Alyce and the demon who'd apparently been the senior she had talked about at supper. Arnice wasn't quite sure how it all fit together, and straightening out that scenario would make things much more free and easy for her.
But for the moment, things were simple and straightforward. The giant fiend was in front of her, and she just needed to keep it from killing Alyce or anyone else.
That it apparently belonged to Fornix, and thus destroying it would deny that devil-flower a key resource, was just a bonus, as far as Arnice was concerned.
Ace had succeeded in distracting the giant fiend from its prey—and didn't it feel good to fight alongside her Servans again? When she'd run mad, she hadn't had the focus to summon them, and after Aluche had helped her come back to her senses, she'd been too weak to do it. She was glad that they were still well; the little fiends had been her friends and supporters even in her half-demon days. It felt almost nostalgic: the giant fiend before her, her Servans at her side.
Now, if I can just get that girl out of the way!
The hieracosphinx snapped at bit at Ace with its enormous beak, the steel striking sparks as it clashed shut, and Alyce took advantage of the distraction, not to get away but to attack, slashing at the beast's forepaw with two quick two-handed swipes. The sphinx reacted quickly, though, thrashing its injured paw at her and knocking her sprawling five feet away.
Arnice cursed under her breath and plunged Jorth into the ground. The Demon Sword exploded up under the sphinx's paw not as a single point but as a forest of blades, making the fiend rock backwards as it jerked its claws back from the stinging attack.
"Hey, you oversized canary, quit playing with the small fry and keep your eyes on the real fight!"
The sphinx took her words to heart, opening its beak and sending its chain-anchor tongue flying out across the fifty feet between them, whipping across the ground in a long arc that kicked up dirt and pebbles whenever the hooks tore into the earth. Arnice was forced to jump, vaulting over the wildly swinging chain, which snapped back into the fiend's maw as if there was a windlass in its throat cranking it back up.
Then it clashed its beak together again, spraying sparks into the torrent of combustible fluid it vomited up and breathed a massive plume of fire at the Nightlord. Arnice dove and rolled aside just in the nick of time; she felt the heat of the flames across her back as it just missed and suspected her clothes might have picked up a little charring along the way.
Any closer and I'd really be regretting leaving Camilla behind. If she can put out lightning, I'm guessing she's got another little bottle in that coat for fiendfire.
Arnice charged the sphinx, lashing at its head with Jorth's whiplike extension. It swept at her with its uninjured forepaw, a blow she barely ducked, and Ace dove in to slash a long furrow in its leg while it was pulling the paw back from the missed swipe.
"I've got this!" she ordered the Servan. "Go help the Doctor and Rise!"
"Ah, you're no fun," Ace protested—he was clearly looking forward to taking down the giant fiend—but he zipped off at once towards the fight going on behind Arnice. She swung her head towards Alyce.
"You, too! I'll handle this thing, so go help out where you can do some good."
"You can't fight that huge fiend by yourself!"
Arnice grinned at her, showing off her fangs, well aware that her eyes were ablaze with the Blue Blood she was channeling.
"Now that sounds like a challenge!" she laughed.
Alyce visibly flinched, but she gathered enough of herself to nod once and, whether it was because she believed Arnice or just didn't want to get into the middle of a fight between demon and fiend, spun on her heel to charge at the golems.
And now it was just Arnice and the giant fiend.
"Well, then?" she said to it. She didn't know if it understood, but it did lash out with its tongue again. Arnice jumped once more, but this time timed it so her foot came down on the anchor-shaft, driving one of the flukes firmly into the earth. The sphinx reacted just as she'd expected, trying to reel in the chain, to free its tongue from the ground—which pulled the chain taut.
Making a perfect bridge.
Arnice sprinted up the chain, boots finding purchase on the heavy links. If she'd hesitated, tried to stand still, she'd have fallen almost at once, but she didn't hesitate, springing up off the chain onto the top of its beak nearly twenty feet off the ground, whipping Jorth around for a great two-handed overhead stab.
The fiend seemed to realize its peril and pulled back, pushing with its massive forelimbs against the ground. Its tongue snapped free from the ground in an explosion of dirt, and freed from its restraint the sphinx's head went snapping back as well. Arnice was thrown off in mid-stab as her footing suddenly went wildly awry, and her blade slashed a shallow cut down the side of the sphinx's face rather than spearing through its eye into its brain as she'd intended. The blade still cut deep, and she felt it strike off a harder surface than expected, metal ringing against metal. Apparently it wasn't just the hieracosphinx's beak that was made of iron, but its whole skull, maybe its entire skeleton.
Arnice slammed into the ground, the jolt running through her, but she wasn't human and the impact was relatively minor, particularly as she'd landed on earth, not rock. The sphinx pounced, and she barely rolled aside, even slashing a shallow cut in the back of its leg, but the creature was too big, too powerful to inflict serious damage on in this way. She might eventually wear it down with a "death by a thousand cuts," but if she made even one mistake it might leave her open to a crippling blow. She needed something harder, more decisive, and if she couldn't go after its head…
The sphinx swung its head around, but Arnice was already in motion, sprinting down the length of its body, dismissing Jorth and replacing it with paired Blood Sword daggers. A plume of fire roared behind her as the fiend turned the ground at its front feet into a sea of flame, but Arnice was already past it, leaping up towards its side, driving a dagger in to the hilt to make a handhold, then reaching up with a second, then wrenching the first blade out to pull herself up and drive it in yet again, making herself a ladder up the fiend's massive, bull-like body.
The sphinx swept up its rear leg to kick her off like it was a dog trying to scratch away a particularly irritating flea, but Arnice had already pulled herself up and over onto the sphinx's back, along the long ridge of its spine and was moving forward between its great wings, using its own body as cover. Bringing Jorth back out, she plunged the blade down into the fiend's body alongside its spine, thrusting between two massive ribs, and once the malleable weapon was within its flesh she extended it, worming the blade through its body like a surgeon opening up a path to the organ she wanted to reach.
Until it reached the fiend's heart.
And instead of flesh found cog-wheels and pistons, braided steel cable and rigid wire.
Jorth's blade scraped, tore, even damaged, but could inflict no mortal harm. A part of her couldn't help but wonder what had gone into making this chimeric monstrosity, what mix of creatures and machines and dark emotions, but it was a stray thought as the fiend, roaring in pain, reared back on its hind legs, forepaws flailing at the air. For an instant Arnice dangled in midair, hanging from her sword-hilt, and then the wild bucking finished what gravity could not do alone and she was flung off, crashing onto the ground for the second time in as many minutes but this time slamming full-on onto her back, jolting the wind out of her. The sphinx roared once more, rage and pain and triumph all mingling together.
It was a cry that spoke to something deep in Arnice's soul, to the fusion of demon and human nature, to her pain and frustration, but also to her savage enjoyment of the challenge the monster was presenting. Her fingers dug into the earth as she pulled herself upright, and she shook her head, clearing it of the momentary fog.
"All right, then. It looks like I'm going to have to get serious about this."
Brave words, words of a woman who had been showing a casual attitude until this point—except that wasn't the case. The loss of Blue Blood and the loss of will alike had left Arnice a shell of her former self, and while she still bore the brand of the Nightlord, that mantle of power that allowed her to gather and rule the Blue Blood, the amount she actually controlled was far, far less than it had once been.
Time to find out how much I've really gotten back.
She reached deep within herself, focusing her will on pulling out every bit of strength she had available, until she touched the core of the Nightlord itself. It was stolen power, torn away from its true owner by Ludegert, then claimed from her by Arnice in turn, a raging darkness shackled to her soul. The peaks of joy and the depths of despair, transcendent love and hate that could shatter the world, laughter and tears, hope and terror, the very essence of Night itself.
It flooded her, filling her emotions to top-full, threatening to run wild, to seize upon every feeling she had and drive them to the furthest extreme. The first, the true Nightlord had been "one who accepted everything," a being of calm, his nature serene and accepting, so that it swallowed the Night and rode its currents without being consumed by them. The First Saint had tried to contain and control it with her own holy power, but had burned out her body over and over again with the strain, aging a lifetime in but a decade and requiring sacrifices to keep herself going.
Arnice, for her part, shackled the Nightlord's power with pure will, the same will that had kept her sane as a half-demon right to the end. Her emotions let it loose—threatened to fly out of control—but they were also her key to that power.
Her determination to stand fast.
Her hope for a reunion with Lilysse.
Her concern for her friend.
For the third time, the hieracosphinx unleashed its flame, a torrent of fire covering Arnice.
A cloud of Black Butterflies exploded around her, scattering the flame as they rose into the air. A bright blue haze surrounded her, clinging to her body.
"Enough!" she roared, and charged the monster.
With Jorth still embedded in the fiend's body, she called out her Blood Sword again, having it once more take the shape of the giant warhammer. The sphinx swiped at her with one paw, but Arnice dove and rolled beneath, then came up behind the strike and put all her strength into one massive swing. There was a thunderous snap, and she felt the shinbone, basically an iron girder, snap within the fiend's leg. The beast gave a screech of pain, but Arnice was already sprinting towards its rear flank and its back legs.
The fiend saw her intention and tried to turn, but its massive body wasn't capable of pivoting fast enough, particularly with its injured leg, and its iron beak snapped shut on empty air far behind Arnice. The Blue Blood surged in the Nightlord's veins, and she leapt into the air, bringing the hammer down in a thunderous blow to the sphinx's knee.
Metal cracked, then shattered entirely under the fiend's own weight.
Arnice barely was able to fling herself out of the way as the sphinx toppled, slamming into the ground with enough force that its fall nearly crushed the one who'd felled it.
But only nearly.
Arnice called back the warhammer and grabbed Jorth's hilt where it protruded from the fiend's back. She tore the sword loose, then raised it overhead and stabbed it down into the earth, and once again a circle of points came out of the ground, but this time instead of covering a small area they made a huge ring, caging the fiend.
The sphinx twisted and thrashed, trying to regain its footing, but with its broken legs it couldn't properly get up, not until they eventually would regenerate. Until then, though, it had no real chance of escape, or of generating enough force to crash its way through the ring of blades. Beneath it, the ground began to bubble and shift, torn-up soil and tufts of green fading until it looked like Arnice and the fiend stood atop a huge black mirror.
A mirror into which they sank, the darkness rising up around them, swallowing them until they were completely engulfed by the Night.
For, drained and weakened as she might have been, she was still the Nightlord.
The essence of Eternal Night was hers.
It was only seconds, but it engulfed the great fiend. Called to its Blue Blood. Held it still and silent in the darkness.
And in that darkness shone a pale radiance, a coruscating halo surrounding Arnice, a light that somehow shone brilliantly and yet cast no illumination on anything surrounding itself, a dark radiance that consumed light instead of giving it.
A dozen spears of that darklight sang out, impaling the sphinx and burning away all that was not of the Night, the mortal flesh and cold machinery that made up the chimeric nightmare, purging it all until nothing was left but the torrent of Blue Blood that rushed to Arnice, the last particles seeking their source, flooding the Nightmare Queen with this fragment of her scattered essence…
And then the Night was gone, and Arnice dropped, exhausted, to one knee, clenching Jorth's hilt to keep herself from collapsing. Black Butterflies swirled around her, ebon and azure wings etched bright in the moonlight as she panted for breath in great, rasping heaves.
I went too deep, she admitted to herself. When she'd pulled that stunt fighting alongside Aluche, she'd been piggybacking off the younger demon's power to bear the effort, but this time she'd pushed too hard all on her own, in holding the sphinx so it could be consumed, in calling the Night, and in striking the fiend down.
Even so, she couldn't suppress a small, satisfied smile, because she was there, alive to feel her exhaustion, and the fiend was not. Dr. Camilla, she was sure, would have rightfully identified the expression as a smirk, and probably had some dry quip to offer about knights or half-demons or whatever else, and their love of battle.
Camilla!
Arnice turned her head while pushing herself back to her feet. She didn't know what she had left to offer at that point, but if Camilla and the others needed her help—
Which clearly wasn't the case, as Camilla jogged up to her, rifle at the ready, while Ace and Rise flitted around behind her and Alyce just stood, staring, from around twenty-five feet away.
"I was coming to see if you needed any help, but I can see you have it under control."
"Mostly, I guess?"
Camilla looked her up and down, obviously taking in how she was wobbling on her feet.
"Are you going to be all right?"
Arnice nodded.
"I just need rest. I pushed myself a little too hard, that's all. I'm not so fragile as I was as a half-demon, but I'm not back to full strength yet, either."
"I see. Are you in any shape to get back to the survey team? That back of fiends we fought on the edge of the forest would be worse for them than that sphinx and the rock golems were for us."
She shook her head.
"Not with any speed. But the Servans can," she added as Camilla's face started to tighten in frustration and worry. "Ace, Rise, southwest of here is a ruined village, with four humans holed up in a watchtower near the edge of town. Go there as fast as you can, and if any fiends are prowling around trying to get to the humans, destroy them. Don't let the humans see you if you can help it, but keeping them safe is your top priority."
"You got it, boss!" Ace said. "I hope we get to see some action after you didn't let me keep helping you with the big one." He slashed the air a couple of times like an enthusiastic kid, then flew off, Rise following along.
"Well, if their showing against the golems—especially the dinosword's—is anything to go by, then we shouldn't have to worry," Camilla said with obvious relief.
"But what's going on here?" Alyce exclaimed. "Who are you? What are those things? They looked like fiends, but they helped us and are obeying you? And what was that power? There was nothing human about it!" She was still holding her sword in a guard position, though her stance was poor, doubtless affected by her confusion on top of the post-battle reaction. Even so, it was plain that she didn't know who or what to trust. Arnice wondered what she ought to say, what explanations she could possibly give at this point, and found herself momentarily paralyzed by the quandary.
Camilla's reaction could not be precisely described in those terms.
"Excuse me?"
She rounded on Alyce.
"You think that you're in any position to ask questions? No one is going to be answering anything until you explain just why I shouldn't drag you back to Eurulm and have you up on charges of apostasy against the Curia!"