The Sylph Hunter (32 page)

For all its thousand eyes, it almost didn’t see the human and the air sylph. It didn’t see them at all at first, hidden as they were by the battlers, but it did spot them once they finally got clear of the cloud and continued climbing, rising to get above it. It paid attention to them then, never having seen such a thing, and listened. It couldn’t understand what the human said, but it could understand the sylph and listened to what she was saying with growing horror.

A moment later, it turned its attention away from the hive completely, abandoning its meal.

The battle sylphs hurled themselves without thought at the Hunter’s tentacles. They were hatched to protect, to keep the hive safe, and the hive was in danger. Abandoning it wasn’t even an option and the shrieks of their brothers as they died in agony didn’t get through their maddened determination. Caught in a fugue of insanity, they threw themselves at it more and more, knowing only that Hunters ate until sated, and if it had to be sated, it would be on them, not their hive or their queen.

It was a shock to many of them when the last of the battlers to hurl themselves down just raced through the entrance to the hive instead of dying. Inside, there was rubble everywhere from the devastation and blood, but no bodies. The Hunter had swept away any living thing it touched.

Alive along with the rest of the few survivors, One-Eleven gaped around himself and then started to roar in triumph, echoed by the others. The Hunter was gone, they’d driven it out!

It’s not over yet!
Tooie shouted to all of them.

They turned, looking back up through the gaping wound in the side of the hive. One-Eleven stared with the others, not sure what he was supposed to be looking at yet, until he saw the last thing he would have expected. The human that Haru hadn’t let him kill earlier was being carried by that foreign air sylph through the sky, both of them darting around in all directions as though they were trying to avoid something.

Hadn’t the human claimed something about being able to see the Hunter? One-Eleven wondered with a sudden uncertainty.

When Eapha saw the palace crash into the hive, making a jagged hole fifty feet wide in the thick stone, she was horrified. When she saw the battle sylphs start to make their suicide run, her horror only increased. If she stopped them, everyone inside the hive would die. If she didn’t, the battlers would die instead.

Everything happened so fast she couldn’t even think, let alone tell Tooie what order to relay. Then she saw the human floating through the air and thought at first that he was coming up to where Tooie held her above the ground, only he wasn’t taking a direct route. He was darting back and forth, dodging awkwardly around swirling lines of dust and smoke that were almost like tentacles.

They were
exactly
like tentacles. “I can see it!” she shouted, startling Tooie. “I can see it!” Hundreds of tentacles, barely visible, all of them trying to lift up toward the man but most too heavy as he continued to rise. All of them were pulling away from the hive, straining toward him.

Send the battlers in, she thought, but couldn’t. There were so few left where there had been hundreds before and they couldn’t see the Hunter. Devon could. If they went in, if they got in his way, if they
hurt
him…

“Tell the battlers to hold their explosions,” she told Tooie, peering down from his embrace at the battle. “Tell them to let that man through. They have to keep him alive!”

Let him through what?
Tooie wondered, but he obeyed and far below her, the battle sylphs obeyed as well.

“Left!” Devon shouted, seeing a tentacle swinging toward him. He was nearly at the level of the underside of the Hunter and it was so close it filled his vision, clearer and easier to see up close. It was still translucent, but obvious enough this close that he easily saw its tentacles lashing toward him. The tips dangled far below, apparently too heavy to lift, but the midsections were high enough to reach him.

Sobbing, Airi lifted him over the tentacle coming his way, Devon raising his feet high to avoid it. Immediately, another swung toward him from the other direction. “Down!” he screamed and Airi dropped, almost landing him in a mass of thinner tendrils below before his next scream stopped her. He didn’t like to go down, there were more tentacles there, but he had to get close. It knew he was there, he had no doubt about that.

The battlers knew something was up as well and they swarmed around him, staring at him with their terrifying ball lightning eyes. Devon saw one blunder into a tentacle and vanish immediately, his energy sucked into the length of it. The other battlers roared, having seen him disappear, and attacked that spot, two of them falling into the same trap and being devoured as well.

The tentacles stopped when they drew in energy. Devon didn’t know if it was intentional or involuntary, but he screamed for Airi to go up and she lifted him, gaining another fifty feet and carrying him over a feeding tentacle that had been impassible a moment before. He was able to see the edge of the Hunter’s rounded body now, only a few dozen feet away. The sides of it were smooth, faintly patterned and completely clear of tentacles. They all came out of it from its underside.

I can’t do this,
Airi wailed.
I’m too tired!

Be tired later, he wanted to tell her. He was terrified himself and really wanted to go home. Someone far braver than he was should be the one doing this.

A battle sylph swept up to them, eyes swirling, and Airi shrieked, nearly dropping him. Devon shrieked as well, at the proximity of the thing and at how he’d never reach the ground if Airi dropped him now. The entire air beneath him was a mass of crisscrossing tentacles and the battlers had already lost a half dozen of their survivors to it. More tentacles waved all around them, the Hunter lifting its smaller, lighter ones as fast as it could. They had to get out of their reach while they still could, but Devon could only stare at the battle sylph hovering before him. It was huge, even bigger than Mace back home, which meant it was old and powerful, though even the youngest of them could turn both him and Airi into an ash too fine for the Hunter to taste.

Some older battlers were skilled enough at shape-shifting to form a human voice in their cloud form. This was one of them. “So you
can
see it,” the creature hissed.

Zalia’s lover. Devon nearly wet himself and Airi pressed close, whimpering at the appearance of her master’s rival. The battler glared and Devon tried to speak, but he couldn’t get anything out.

One-Eleven moved closer, lightning teeth frighteningly large in its massive head. “Why you, you pathetic coward? You’re nothing.”

Devon swallowed, trying to talk. If One-Eleven would listen, he could point him at the Hunter’s head. He could destroy it in a heartbeat. It had to be vulnerable. The Hunter wouldn’t be trying to kill him so much if it weren’t. One-Eleven could kill it and Devon could just go and find a place to collapse.

“Are you trying to impress Zalia?” One-Eleven went on. “She’s picked me. Not you…me! You think you can change that by pretending to be brave? No one here thinks you have any courage.”

Devon tended to agree with that. He licked his lips, forcing himself to speak. He could feel how tired Airi was getting and she couldn’t keep this up for much longer. “I just want to keep everyone safe.”

“I don’t care what the queen ordered, that’s a battle sylph’s job!”

Behind the battler, who was between Devon and Airi and the Hunter, a tentacle only as thick as a human arm managed to lift itself up high enough, the curve of its middle rising up beside its bulbous body bag while the rest of its length hung below. Trembling from the strain, it lashed out, heading straight for them.

“AIRI! LOOK OUT!”

Airi screamed, not knowing which way to go.

Up, he tried to say, pointing at it, knowing she couldn’t move fast enough. One-Eleven gave him a look of pure disgust. “The queen gave her order,” he said, spitting the words.

Then he placed himself between Devon’s pointing arm and the Hunter.

Devon saw the tentacle hit him. One-Eleven grunted, shifting to human form, perhaps involuntarily, and Devon saw the pain on his face as the tentacle sank into him, or perhaps he sank into it, growing transparent until he was as hard to see as his killer, his eyes still locked on his rival’s before they closed and he faded entirely, becoming just a flicker of energy running up the length of the tentacle.

The tentacle stopped, hesitating as it fed, and Devon managed to get out his order. “Up! Airi, take us up!”

She did, howling, and the tentacle moved again, lashing below Devon’s hanging feet as they rose to where even the finest of the monster’s tentacles couldn’t reach. The whole body started to move, the Hunter giving up on catching him. Instead its tentacles lashed out below, ignoring any battlers still around as it grabbed for buildings, wrapping the ends around them and digging in as it used them to pull itself away, trying to flee. Battle sylphs howled at the sight of the tops of buildings exploding, trenches suddenly appearing in the stone, and whether by luck or desperation, they started to attack the buildings. Stone exploded, leaving the Hunter nothing to grab on to as it hung there.

It started to roll over instead, trying to turn its vulnerable back away from him and get its tentacles in the way. Carried by his air sylph, Devon rose above it, seeing those tentacles swirling under it, his mouth dry and his hands covered in sweat so that he had to let go of his sword with first one and then the other to dry them off on his shirt. He had no idea what would happen next, but he knew what he had to say.

“Let me go,” he told Airi.

What?
she gasped.
You’ll fall!

Yes, he thought, but only he would. Airi would be safe. He didn’t know how long she’d last without his energy, but surely they’d get her back to the Valley in time. Surely Eapha would be willing to give her that much.

“Drop me!” he shouted.

She wailed and did, unable to disobey. Devon fell straight toward the Hunter, unable to breathe as he braced himself, afraid he’d be absorbed the same as One-Eleven the second he touched it, but hoping that the steel of his sword, pointing downward, wouldn’t.

He hit it hard, his breath whooshing out of him and his feet slipping on a surface that was smooth and somehow slimy. His sword, however, plunged hilt deep into the Hunter, and he was lucky that he couldn’t inhale as foul gasses suddenly poured out of it.

The Hunter shrieked, its scream echoing in Devon’s head and into the minds of everyone there, human or sylph. Stunned by it, Devon could only hold on to the hilt of his sword with both hands, feeling the monster pulse underneath him.