Marked for Death

Chapter 60

Burch pulled himself out from under the wreckage of the wall that he’d been standing on when the enraged titan knocked it down. The titan lay shattered around him. The creature had pushed though the wall and over the platform beyond to cascade over the city’s edge and onto the ground beyond.

As Burch tried to stand, the titan stirred. It raised its head to look around and spotted the shifter. It tried to reach out and grab him with its arm, but it only flailed a splintered stump at him instead.

Burch kicked the titan’s head, which hurt his foot more than the creature. As the shifter stood over the creature and pondered what he should do, a ballista bolt slammed into the titan’s chest, and the thing fell still.

Burch looked up and saw the ballista crew that had missed him cursing at each other as they hurried to reload the weapon again. This close to the arena, most of the stations along the edge of the city had been abandoned after the stampede away from the fire, but the warforged staffing this ballista seemed more determined than most.

Burch retrieved his crossbow from the wreckage and checked its action. Despite the wild ride and final crash, the weapon still worked. He slammed a bolt into it and glanced up to see the loaded ballista pointed straight at him. He dove left, and the bolt impaled the spot where he’d stood. He took a deep breath, aimed, and loosed a bolt of his own, and one of the warforged staffing the large weapon keeled over with Burch’s missile sticking out of its face.

Burch dashed toward the ballista mount as he reloaded his crossbow. The warforged at the ballista spun the winch and shoved another of the massive bolts into place. They tried to train the weapon on the shifter then, but the bolt went wild above his head.

Stopping long enough to get a good aim, Burch planted another bolt in the chest of the warforged working the weapon’s winch, and the two creatures still standing decided to flee. A quick reload, and the shifter shot one of them down as he fled. The fourth keep low as he sprinted away and disappeared around the nearest building before Burch even reached the city’s side.

The shifter noticed that the city had stopped moving and seemed to be much lower than before. He reslung his crossbow over his back and pulled himself up into the city, right beneath the empty ballista’s mount.

Burch looked up and down the city platforms. In the distance he saw lots of warforged scurrying about. As he watched, another ballista bolt from that area sailed over his head and struck the arena wall far behind him. The shifter ducked behind the nearby ballista mount and tried to think of a plan. As he sat there, he heard a horse whinny in fear. Burch looked over the platform’s edge. Not twenty feet away, four horses were tied to a hitching post. Probably mounts for the ballista crew.

The shifter smiled.

Kandler cheered as he saw Xalt tackle Te’oma out of the air and drag her like an anchor to the arena floor. The pair landed hard, but Te’oma managed to twist her way atop the artificer before they struck the ground. The force of the landing tore Xalt’s arms from the changeling, setting her free. She rolled off the warforged and staggered to her feet, still stunned from the fall.

Xalt reached out and grabbed one of Te’oma’s feet with his good hand. His fingers closed around her ankle like a vise. The changeling snarled and stomped at his hand with her free foot. Once did nothing, so she kept at it. He grunted with each blow but refused to let her go.

“Hey!” Kandler said as he stepped up to the changeling.

Te’oma looked up and Kandler backhanded her. She would have gone flying backward but for Xalt’s grasp still anchoring her to the floor. Still, she stumbled, and her hand shot to the sheathe tied around her calf. Too late, she remembered she had dropped her knife off the back of the airship.

Kandler dove down at the changeling and grabbed her wrists. An instant later, a sharp bolt of pain stabbed into his mind. The justicar’s head snapped back as he battled the alien thoughts. She laughed as he thrashed about, trying to force her out of his mind.

Kandler fought through the static the changeling forced into his brain. He looked down at her and saw her face grinning up at him, laughing with delight at the pain lancing through his skull. He thought of everything this creature had done to his daughter, how she kept coming back to threaten them again and again. As he did, his rage worked its way out of his heart and into his head. His fury at her focused his mind on a single, burning desire, and he put everything he had left into making that wish come true. Kandler hurled himself forward and smashed his forehead into the bridge of the changeling’s nose. Blood spurted from her face, and she fell limp in the justicar’s grasp.