Chương 16: Storm at Zimnerudik

The term 'demon' is not, in strict taxonomy, the name of a natural race. Demons possess no single ancestry, no stable bloodline, no singular homeland, and no shared origin before corruption. Rather, the term 'demon' refers instead to any living being whose body has been irreversibly corrupted by meaningful quantities of astral lead, an outerworld substance first observed after the opening of the Lead Rift in Vyrmgaard.

All natural beings generate mana inwardly, however little, and expend it through growth, motion, thought, healing, and relic use. Demons cannot. Astral lead corruption devours their mana cores' generative function, preventing them from generating their own mana. In exchange, their corrupted bodies gain a more terrible capacity: they may draw mana passively from the surrounding world.

Soil, beasts, trees, men, rivers, and even the leylines themselves become nourishment, and the more a demon feeds on mana, the stronger the astral lead within their body—thus allowing them to produce greater violence, durability, and otherworldly phenomena. Fear the demons who only take and give nothing back, for even if they cannot wield relics without functioning mana cores, their astral lead abilities are more than formidable enough to conquer this world.

—Excerpt from 'Death from the Stars', Written by the Relikov Board of Astronomy Nikolai had never liked drinking on duty, but there were only thirteen soldiers stationed in Zimnerudik's Rift Sealing Corps building, and most nights, the worst enemy they faced was boredom. So he drank. Not too much, though. Just enough to keep the afternoon from growing teeth and chewing his patience down to the bone.

The Corps building was a squat stone structure built into the side of the town square, with old weapon racks on one wall, duty bunks on the other, and a table in the middle that'd seen more spilled vodka than strategy. Around him, several of his men were doing more or less the same thing: drinking, playing cards, dozing off, and trying to forget they were all stationed in a mining town nobody outside cared enough to remember. Zimnerudik wasn't a great posting.

It was a small town with one mine, one raised hill, one watchtower, one Church of Inanna, and a population of four hundred all working in said mine. The whole town curled around the hill where the mine entrance sat, and every morning the same men went in covered in soot and came out covered in worse.

Nikolai used to be stationed further north in Birsk, but in the year and a half since a little misconduct had him reassigned here with his thirteen half-decent men—a dumb tavern brawl that ended with him breaking someone's arm—all he'd 'sealed' as the local Captain of the Rift Sealing Corps were two rat-sized rifts in someone's attic.

"Captain," Lieutenant Petrov said from across the table, squinting at his cards.

"If I lose another hand to Vanya, I'm accusing him of using a Cognitum-Class relic." Vanya snorted.

"You don't need relics to beat an old goat who plays with his eyebrows."

"My eyebrows have served the empire longer than your whole family line. Shut it." Nikolai took another sip and let them bicker. Soldiers needed noise. Quiet made men remember all the things they'd signed up to die for. Besides, he knew his men well enough. Petrov complained because he was comfortable, Vanya cheated because he was bored, and Little Maksim near the stove was pretending to sharpen his knife, though in truth, he was nodding off with his chin dipping lower every few seconds.

Fine men, all of them, even if half of them were idiots and the other half worked hard to prove they belonged with the first half. Then the bell above the building rang, and Nikolai's cup stopped halfway to his lips. T … Just one ring? The Rift Sealing Corps didn't use normal bells. The bell over their building was a starbrass bell, a Celestial-Class relic extremely sensitive to spatial distortions. It rang only when space nearby began to tear. One ring was a warning. Then it rang again. Twice. Thrice.

Nikolai stood so sharply his chair fell behind him. By the fourth ring, every man in the room was already reaching for weapons. By the fifth, nobody was pretending this was a minor distortion anymore.

"Up!" Nikolai barked, grabbing the leather belt hanging beside his chair. The spatial restoration blade knocked against his hip as he fastened it.

"Helmets on! Petrov, bring the sealing kit! Vanya, wake Maksim before I throw him through the stove!" His men grabbed their blades, and together, they charged out the front door. Zimnerudik's evening air hit Nikolai's face cold, and the whole town had already begun to panic. Miners' wives dragged their children off the streets. A mule cart carrying slag overturned in the road as the beast screamed and kicked against its harness.

But the bell rang one more time bove the Corps building, making it six rings in total, so Nikolai's gaze snapped to the hill. The mine entrance sat in the center of town, cut into the small hill with wooden supports bracing the dark mouth. Around it, miners spilled out in messy clumps by the dozens. A few guards from the town watch were already waving civilians back, but they had no formation, no clue, and no authority worth a damn once rift panic started.

"Petrov, take four men and clear the square!" Nikolai ordered. The wind was starting to howl, picking up speed as well.

"No one stays near the mine! Vanya, Maksim, gather any miners still coming out and get names from the foreman! If there are men still inside, I want to know how many and how deep!"

"Got it!" both men shouted, racing off to intercept the evacuating miners.

"The rest, with me!" Nikolai reached for his sheathed blade.

"We'll go in, locate the rift, and cut it close before it tears even wider! Six rings means it's a Common-5 rift, so steel your nerves for—" His order stuck in his throat. Every hair on the back of his neck rose at once, and his skin tightened under his uniform. The mine entrance suddenly seemed darker than it had a second ago. A pressure rolled out of it, faint but growing, pushing against his ears from the inside. Huh? What… is this? Usually, there was time to prepare. Rifts took a while to open.

Space would buckle first, and the air would bend, allowing beast and men to flee while the sealing crews got into position to seal it. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. But this one was already on the verge of tearing.

"Now!" Nikolai roared, drawing his blade halfway from its sheath.

"Into the mine before it opens! Move, move, move—" Then a stronger, guttural roar echoed from the mine, and a storm of shimmering metal flakes exploded out of the entrance and blasted into the sky, spreading above Zimnerudik. The evening sun vanished behind the oil-colored haze as the flakes swirled around like sharpened snow. Nikolai shouted in pain as the first flakes cut across his cheek and hand. One sliced through the sleeve of his uniform. Another scraped his brow.

His men cried out around him, raising shields and arms over their faces as the flakes swirled and hissed against the town's stone, wood, skin, and cloth. Astral lead. And while Nikolai tried to gather his men, a dozen figures trudged out the mine entrance before them. At first, they looked like beastkin. Elkkin from the Akhemir Continent, maybe, with long legs and arms, thin fur across their skin, heavy shoulders, and elk heads with broad antlers. But no natural elkkin had their fur patched with shimmering lead.

No natural elkkin had ribs pushing out through their stomach in metallic ridges, or eyes glowing dull silver, or veins pulsing beneath the flesh like molten wire. They came out one by one, dragging giant clubs made from astral lead bones, and unlike the men of Zimnerudik, they were completely accustomed to the stormy atmosphere of their homeland. Nikolai's stomach sank. Demons. Orland had thought the lead rain was annoying when he first stepped out of the tree hollow, but now he hated it. He hated it so much.

The flakes weren't cutting that deep now that he knew what to expect, but they were still enough to sting and force him to keep his arms raised before his face as he pushed through the forest. His new evercoat helped cover his shoulders and neck, and his regenerating clothes fixed the tiny tears slowly, but none of that changed the fact that the sky was currently trying to shave him alive.

"This is bullshit!" he shouted over the hissing storm.

"How do people fight in this?"

"They usually don't stand around complaining first!" Kazimir barked back.

"You said the storm comes from the rift, right?"

"It surrounds the area where the rift opens! You want to find it, you follow where the flakes churn hardest until you reach the eye of the storm where the flakes are thinnest!"

"Sounds stupid!"

"You got a better detection method?" Orland grumbled. For a man with a bad leg, Kazimir moved faster than he'd expected. Not fast, obviously. Not even close. The metal brace over the man's right leg forced each step into a hard, uneven drag, but there was real discipline in the way he moved. He used trees for cover, angled his body against the wind, and kept his head low without ever letting his eyes leave the swirl of flakes ahead. The storm thickened as they pushed deeper and deeper into the woods.

The flakes no longer fell straight down—they twisted in currents, scraped against tree trunks, and spun around branches hard enough to strip leaves from them. The whole forest was hissing. Bark splintered, ferns shredded, and Orland tasted metal on his tongue even through clenched teeth. It's gotta be close. Just a little more, just a little more, just a little— The forest finally broke before him.

One moment, the lead storm was shrieking around them, flakes cutting at the air so thickly Orland could barely see beyond his own hands, but in the next, it was like he'd stumbled through an invisible boundary and the storm simply stopped. And he almost fell face-first down the slope. Kazimir's hand caught the back of his collar and yanked him still with a grunt.

"Careful, idiot." Orland swallowed his curse and looked down. A town sat below them in a shallow bowl of earth, small enough that he could see from one end to the other. The whole place surrounded a raised hill in the middle with a giant mine entrance cut into the side of it, while the houses clustered around the hill in uneven rings, mostly in slate roofs and squat stone walls. Kazimir was right in the end.

The sky over the town was still clear enough to show the dusking sun, even though the lead storm churned through the forest outside the town like a wall keeping outsiders out, which meant… The rift's here. And if the sky being relatively clear wasn't obvious enough, the battle raging below was. A dozen elk-headed monsters on two legs were fighting human soldiers near the mine entrance.

'Monsters' wasn't the right term for them, though. What was it again?

'Demons'? Patches of shimmering, oil-like metal crawled across their fur and skin, their limbs too thick, their movements too violent. They wielded huge bone clubs that cracked through shields and sent soldiers sprawling wherever they landed, and it wasn't like the soldiers seemed weak, either. Even Orland could tell that much. They were holding formation as best they could, spears braced, blades slashing between gaps.

One man with a silver blade at his belt shouted orders from near the center of the formation, voice carrying over the clash, but it was also clear that they were losing ground. A demon brought its club down on a shield. The shield buckled. The soldier behind it dropped to one knee, and another soldier yanked him away before the demon could crush his skull. Orland's jaw tightened.

Name: Mansi Elkkin demons Grades: Common-6 ~ Common-8 Might: 18 ~ 21 Dexterity: 9 ~ 10 Resilience: 22 ~ 24 Clarity: 16 ~ 17 Mana: 1/1 (+1/hr) General Description: Mansi elkkin corrupted by astral lead. Their skin, bones, and muscles are augmented by astral lead, making them far stronger and tougher than normal elkkin. However, their brains have also been corrupted by astral lead, weakening their cognitive and logical abilities.

"Elkkin demons," Kazimir muttered, scowling down at the town.

"They're beastkin corrupted by astral lead, typically ranging from Common-7 to Common-8 in strength. As far as demons go, they're the weakest of the lot."

"Do they have any special abilities?"

"Just read their tags, dumbass. I know you can see them from this distance." Orland was scowling at the distant tags of the demons, and he'd read the words under their attribute levels if he knew how to read.

"Just tell me. You were a former Bratstvo… something something, weren't you? What's your practical experience with them like?"

"You want my practical experience?" Kazimir sighed.

"They're not much. Elkkin can't tolerate too much astral lead corruption, so they're mostly just stronger, faster, and tougher, especially in areas where there's astral lead covering their fur. They're still more than strong enough to pulp the average corps soldier, though."

"But we can handle them?" Kazimir gave him a sideways look.

"You're the 'Hero', aren't you?" he said coldly.

"Spread out. I'll take the left flank and draw two, maybe three of them. You slide down and hit the other ones." Then the old soldier drew his chainblade. Frostfire immediately crackled along the curved edge as the chain loosened with a metallic rattle, and for all his limp and bitterness, the moment that blade entered his hand, Kazimir suddenly looked less like a disgruntled middle-aged man and more like the soldier Orland had seen in Rusalka's town square.

So as Kazimir started down the slope carefully, making sure not to hurt his bad leg, Orland bolted straight down, full speed ahead. Another soldier down there went flying. A demon roared near the mine. The townsfolk screamed as more and more shadows poured out of the mine, huffing rage and pure bloodlust. … Baba Marza had said when monsters were loose, the Hero was the one who dealt with them. What kind of Hero would he be if he didn't go straight into the fray?

What kind of Hero would he be if he let the demons kill another Baba Marza in town?

"Keep up, old man!" Orland shouted over his shoulder.

"What'd you say, brat?" He could sense Kazimir's bloodlust as well, but he didn't turn back.