Lysander gave Fletcher a nudge with his beak, as if to draw Fletcher’s attention to the next demon that bounded down the stairs. It was a gesture that felt unusually human and, as Fletcher glanced down, he saw Lysander wink at him. Lovett was in there all right, and Fletcher grinned back at her.
Arcturus’s wolf-like Canid, Sacharissa, scampered past, pausing only to give Lysander a playful nudge. The Griffin lashed out with a claw, but only succeeded in catching the end of the four-eyed Canid’s bushy black tail.
‘Looks like Arcturus was thinking along the same lines,’ Fletcher said as Seraph welcomed Sacharissa with a strip of jerky, miraculously produced from a pocket in his jacket. Though Griffins were more powerful and versatile than Canids, Fletcher wished that he could have both on his team. With Arcturus and Lovett’s demons at his side, he would feel much safer in the gloom of the orc jungles.
‘What the hell is that thing?’ Cress asked, pointing, as an enormous, skeletal creature, roughly humanoid in shape, slunk down the stairs.
It had thick, branching antlers that swept out from either side of its head like tangled thorns. The head was like a hairless mix of deer and wolf, with hungry, black eyes that swept the room. Long, dangling arms knuckled the sand ahead of it, the hands tipped with razor-sharp talons. Its flesh was the mottled grey of a corpse, with a stench to match. Despite its rangy frame, the musculature shifted beneath the tight skin as it moved, like corded wire being stretched and tautened.
‘A Wendigo,’ Othello replied, his voice tinged with a mix of awe and horror. ‘Level thirteen and rare to boot. That’s Zacharias Forsyth’s primary demon. Almost everything we know about the Wendigo was learned from studying that very creature – they’re almost never seen in the ether.’
‘No mystery where that thing’s ending up,’ Fletcher said, as the creature came to a stop beside Isadora’s team. He grinned as Tarquin, the closest to it, wrinkled his nose at the smell.
‘My Caliban shall be joining Malik’s team,’ Rook announced, beckoning the final demon over, his own.
It was Rook’s Minotaur, a burly beast clad in a shaggy black pelt. It was powerfully built, all brawn and meat, where the larger Wendigo was sinew and hard bone. The bullish head snorted through its thick, piggish nostrils as it clopped down the stairs on cloven hooves, each breath like the pumping of the bellows in Berdon’s old forge.
‘Thank you for sponsoring us, Inquisitor,’ Malik said, bowing low.
‘We can’t let the Saladins’ and Favershams’ only heirs go unprotected,’ Rook said, pointedly ignoring Penelope and Rufus, whose families, though noble, were not as wealthy as the rest. Rufus, however, seemed not to notice, grasping Rook’s hand and shaking it emphatically.
‘You won’t regret this, Inquisitor,’ Rufus said. ‘My elder brother will reward you tenfold when we rescue my mother, I swear to that!’
‘You shall be meeting your guides, who have been chosen for you by your sponsors, tonight,’ Rook said, extricating his hand with a grimace. ‘Malik’s team, stay here with me. The rest of you, follow the demons.’
20
Lysander led them out of the arena and back into the atrium, with Sacharissa padding along beside him. Fletcher expected them to go out through the main entrance, as Caliban did, but the two demons continued up the western staircase instead.
It was a long climb, but he entertained himself by watching as the usually airborne Lysander slipped and slid on his way up, unused to having to mount steps, especially narrow winding ones such as these. Sacharissa waited patiently at the top of each staircase, her bright blue eyes keeping a protective watch over the struggling Griffin.
‘Maybe you should have flown up and met us at the top,’ Fletcher laughed, earning himself a stern glare from Lysander which could only have come from Lovett.
Fletcher had rarely entered this side of the building during his first year at Vocans, for the rooms were mostly the teachers’ private quarters, servants’ lodgings, a large launderette and storage rooms. It was no surprise then when they went right to the top floor’s main corridor and headed for the north-west tower.
As they followed the two demons, Fletcher couldn’t help but admire the paintings and tapestries that lined the topmost corridor, depicting ancient battles fought without gunpowder weapons. It was only when he passed an older painting, the colours faded and peeling from the canvas, that he paused.
It showed not orcs being vanquished, but dwarves. In the background, dwarven women had their veils torn away, while in the foreground, dwarven warriors kneeled in rows, their beards being clipped by heroically dressed men in shining armour. Around them, the corpses of the fallen dwarves were scattered about the scene, and above, flying summoners looked on, their lances bloodied from base to tip.