I dropped her staff and embraced her. She stood stiffly in my arms until I lowered my face and kissed her on the forehead. Then, she began to shake.
“I’ve got your back,” I said. “If you’ll trust me.”
Mahrai looked up, tears in her eyes. “I’m just so tired. Tired of death and destruction. Tired of fooling myself that I was doing the right thing. Saruqin is pure evil, and I’ve been helping him.”
“That’s over now. You can leave all of this behind, or if you want, you can help me set it right.”
“I’d like that.” Her expression had softened, revealing the scared young woman behind the act of defiance and psychopathy.
A loud clang sounded across the city. Mahrai looked around in alarm.
“That’s the gates of the clan palace,” she said. “They’re doing their nightly patrols.”
We both picked up our weapons and readied ourselves, standing side by side in the square, with the puddles of magma still glowing all around us. But though I was ready to fight if I must, my reserves of Vigor were badly depleted from the intensity of that Magma Burst and my Hidden Burrow. Mahrai was also drained, both physically and emotionally, her staff shaking in her hands.
Howling cries emerged from the streets on the far side of the square. I caught glimpses of shining weapons, blazing torches, and malevolent faces topped with horns.
“What the fuck are they?” I’d seen non-human creatures before, but these were something else. Their forms were bloated and grotesque, covered in blood-red scales. They hunched over while they marched, but they were still at least seven feet tall.
“Lesser demons,” Mahrai said. “Saruqin has been trying to open a gateway to the demonic realm for months. It seems he’s finally succeeded.”
Well, that was an interesting—and terrifying—development. But then I should probably have known that cultists were trying to do something nasty like opening up a portal and letting an army of demons into this world.
“That explains the curfew,” I said as the movement came closer to the square. I could see that there were dozens of the demons, if not hundreds, all howling and hammering their black-bladed weapons together.
“We can’t take them on,” I said. “Not alone. Not now.”
I hated running from a fight, but this was a whole new kind of enemy that I knew nothing about.
“What else can we do?” Mahrai asked. “I have nowhere to go.”
“Yeah, you do. You’re my friend now. But friends don’t betray each other. You show even one sign of betrayal, and I’ll finish what I started today.”
“Understood,” Mahrai said, her eyes sparkling with sincerity.
My reply was a single nod before I turned and started running back toward the city gates, Mahrai trailing behind me.
Chapter Twenty
“This way!” Mahrai grabbed my hand and dragged me down a side street. Behind us, demonic howling echoed around the torch lit city like a storm of pure animal aggression.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The mountain gate,” she replied. “Better chance of getting out that way.”
We dashed through the streets, our footsteps hammering against the cobblestones. My heart was racing, the breath raw in my throat. Brief as it had been, the battle with the stone golem had used up a lot of my physical and magical energy. I needed to rest, and instead, I was running full tilt on aching legs toward an uncertain hope of safety.
“Ha, they’ll never catch us!” Mahrai grinned she ran and flashed occasional pleased glances at me. Though her movements still betrayed her weariness, there was a lightness to her spirit that hadn’t been there before.
“How can you be sure?” I asked, the words broken by deep breaths.
“I can’t. But what’s life without a little risk?”
The howling was growing louder. Either more demons were being unleashed or they were getting closer to us. The timing of events seemed far too coincidental, so I could only assume that Saruqin had discovered I was inside the city and was sending these demons to hunt me down.
The only thing that might stop the demons was the city walls, and even then, Saruqin might choose to let the beasts out after us.
“Can you summon your stone golem again?” I asked. “That would be one hell of a distraction to cover our getaway.”
“I can only do it once a day,” Mahrai said. “That means nothing until tomorrow.”
“Shame,” I said.
It was the first time I’d seen an Augmentation with that sort of limit, but I wasn’t surprised. If a golem burned up all of Mahrai’s Vigor, then a good night’s sleep would see it returned by morning. She didn’t seem like the meditative type, so she wouldn’t have the ability to regain her Vigor like I did.
We were getting closer to the walls now. The baying of the demons continued. When I glanced down the streets we ran past, I caught glimpses of torches, horns, and gleaming weapons. Their giant forms cast long shadows over the walls and streets. They might not have worked out where we were going, but as they spread out through Hyng’ohr, they were bound to stumble across us sooner or later.
A pair of towers rose from the walls ahead and to the left—the upper peaks of the gatehouse. The torches were packed in more tightly here, creating an area of bright light that would make it impossible for anyone to sneak out unseen. In that light stood a score of guards, all armored and carrying hefty weapons.
“Looks like we’ll have to fight our way out,” I said.
Mahrai grinned. “It’s the only way to leave.”
“You have betrayed our cause, priestess,” the lead guard said. “Saruqin saw your fate in the sands. You will die tonight.”
“Really? Because I think Saruqin is full of shit. You’ll be the one to die tonight. Not me.”
I drew the Sundered Heart Sword
