How did they get this far?
There weren’t any wild monsters near the city. That meant these creatures were probably from the spire, which was close by. Spire monsters almost never left home, though. I hadn’t heard of it happening in my lifetime, but there were stories. My father had a few of them. In general, the Soaring Wings took care of any small groups of monsters that somehow managed to follow someone out the tower gates — usually a fleeing climber who had gotten in over their head.
The other cases were cautionary tales.
Stories about vast waves of monsters, or a handful of titanic ones, exiting the tower to dispense the will of the visages.
If the Soaring Wings hadn’t stopped these monsters? That meant there were either too many for the guard to handle... or they’d let the monsters through deliberately, at the behest of a visage.
As I watched the first of the creatures descend from the sky, I pondered if my death would come at the hands of a creature serving the whim of the goddess my family had always revered.
And, as I followed in the line of students toward the nearest shelter, I wondered if I had caused the deaths of others by defying her.
More and more of the creatures began to descend on the school, but fortunately, none of them were near us.
“Mister Ross, lower your cane. Do not attack them. If one gets close, I will handle it,” Conway instructed. The student in question lowered his weapon, looking upset. I kept my hand near the hilt of my sword.
We were in one of the older parts of the university, which meant a lot of gray and brown buildings densely packed together. Presumably, this was before “décor” was invented. From a more practical standpoint, it meant we could easily be boxed in if those flying creatures decided to land on either side of us.
I probably wasn’t the only one who had come to that conclusion — the teacher was striding at a hurried pace. We found another class coming out of a different lecture hall after about a minute of walking, and I noted a familiar face among the crowd.
Patrick didn’t even take the time to make excuses to his class — he just wandered out and took a position next to me.
“Corin, Corin! Look!” He pointed to the sky, as if I could have somehow missed the cluster of monsters that were making the sun work hard to do its job. The students around us looked bemused by his exuberance, but I humored him and gazed skyward.
A hint of a coiled form, slipping quickly back into the clouds. It was hard to tell at a distance, but I was pretty confident that the small fraction of the creature I’d seen was larger than the lecture hall we’d just excited.
“That’s... bad,” I managed.
Patrick nodded sagely. “Yeah, but like, really exciting, right?”
I blinked at him as we continued to walk, passing another class. “I suppose that, in a way, you could call being potentially devoured by the God Serpent exciting.”
“Oh, no way, that’s not the God Serpent. It’s way too small.”
Small? That thing is about the length of a city block!
He was nonplussed by my skeptical thoughts, continuing, “Oh, oh, I think that’s Mizuchi. Yeah, look at the purple tint on the scales on her belly!”
I glanced upward again, and yeah, some of the scales — each of which was about the size of a castle door — did have a lilac hue. Most of the other scales were silvery-white, like the ones I’d seen on the actual God Serpent in the tower. “Okay, I’m looking. What, precisely, is Mizuchi?”
“One of the God Serpent’s daughters,” he explained. “And man, she’s supposed to be vicious. They call her the ‘Hero’s End’, since she, you know...”
The other students around had stopped glaring and they actually seemed to be paying attention now. We were continuing toward the shelter at a steady pace, but I had no idea where that was located.
“I get the picture. Has she ever been outside of the tower before?”
Patrick shook his head. “Don’t think so. She’s a spire guardian, they rarely are found outside.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What floor of the tower does she guard?”
“She’s not one of the ones that guards a floor. She goes where the visage wills, protecting things that we’re not supposed to see. In addition to ‘Hero’s End’, they call her the Guardian of Secrets.”
That sounded... really bad. A monster designed to serve a visage directly was going to be nearly invincible. The size of her was intimidating enough, but that knowledge made me all the more concerned that we lacked the firepower to repel her in a confrontation.
Looking up, though, I had to frown. There was no confrontation. The monsters weren’t raining fire from the sky, nor were the mages below firing bolts of lightning at the monsters above.
What was going on?
“Patrick, do you recognize the other types of monsters up there?”
He blinked at me, and then looked up. “Oh, yeah, why?”
“What are those things? Gargoyles?”
He made a ‘hmm’ sound, considering. “Yeah, a few of them, but not a lot. Gargoyles are solid stone... like that one.”
Patrick pointed at a particularly monstrous looking creature, with a gator’s jaw and four massive arms. “Those are tough, but slow and not very smart. They’re just animated by magic. Those scalier ones, with the leathery wings? Those are urgoyles — they’re flesh and blood. Much easier to hurt, but smarter. And the ones that look like fashion models with wings? Karvensi. They’re tougher than gargoyles, as smart as humans, and a few of them even use magic.”
Looking closer, it looked like groups of the urgoyles and gargoyles were clustering around individual karvensi… which made things scarier when I realized the implication. They’re organized.
I saw one of the karvensi point a finger and a trio of urgoyles descended on a distant part of the school.
I really hope Sera is already in a shelter.
I can’t rely on hope in a situation like this, though.
“Patrick, do you know where Sera is?”