The Silenced Tale, стр. 97
“The monsters are all headed this way. We have to get you away from the innocents,” Bevel hisses over his shoulder at Elgar.
“What do you mean, awa—ay!” Elgar yelps as Bevel grabs his wrist and yanks him out into the open floor and along the wall. His bare hand, where it’s wrapped around Elgar’s skin, tingles and sparks the way Forsyth’s does when they touch one another. Elgar wrenches his head around to watch the three gouts of flame resolve into three more creatures he has no name for. The movement sends hot pain shooting up the back of his neck, still not totally healed from the whiplash, but running for his life and keeping the things that are trying to kill him in sight is worth it.
Kintyre is just a few steps behind them, and this time, the monsters don’t stalk slowly across the floor. One is some sort of legless crawly thing, until it launches itself from a pile of tables and spreads horrific, spiny wings. Elgar thinks he’ll be forgiven the girlish shriek he lets loose as it bears down on them, its wide-open maw ringed with rows and rows of fangs.
Kintyre stops, spins around on the balls of his feet, and flings himself back in the direction of the creature. Foesmiter does . . . does something too quick, and too bright to see, and then the monster is nothing more than quivering chunks of carcass on the cement floor. The laughing overhead redoubles.
“Run!” the Viceroy howls, still unseen, still menacing from above, in glee. “Go on, you fat, stupid, worthless old man! You think they can protect you?”
“Don’t listen,” Bevel hisses as he yanks Elgar behind one of the food court carts. “And keep your head down.”
Bevel takes the moment’s respite to sling his bow back over his chest and raise the ray-gun. He peeps over the top of the cart to watch what Elgar assumes is Kintyre hack and slash at the two remaining monsters. The air fills with the stench of loosed bowels and fresh meat, the sounds of boots scraping on concrete and claws shrieking against rebar. Kintyre’s grunting huffs mingle with the shrill cries and howls of the monsters. Elgar isn’t sure what’s worse. Not knowing what’s happening, or only hearing it and imagining the worst.
The surreality of the situation is punctuated by the fact that Bevel Dom, bard, fantasy knight and seventh son of a seventh son, is clutching a futuristic laser-weapon in his hand that he’s—after just a few shots—completely comfortable with. Sure, Elgar had written him to be extremely proficient with any targeted range weapon, but the picture of Bevel, in his battle leathers and Dom-amethyst short-robe, with his fingers wrapped around a high-sheen, chrome cosplay prop that literally magically works is enough for him to want to screw his eyes shut, and pinch himself hard until he wakes from this wacky, awful nightmare.
Elgar’s neck hurts, and his pulse is so fast and thready that he can feel it jumping in the hollow of his throat, clutching with taloned fingers at his lungs, prickling in beads of sweat at his hairline. He swallows hard, trying to beat back the fear, trying to trust the fact that it’s Bevel Dom protecting him. He should trust his own creation. He should have more faith. But a year of knowing Forsyth Turn, and several months of friendship with him, has also taught Elgar that his creations, while heroic and clever and strong, are also human. And that means fallible.
“It’s the papers,” Bevel snarls as he takes aim over and over again, firing off bolt after impossible bolt from the ray-gun. The roars and howls of dying beasts are punctuated by crackling flames and the slick, poisonous laughter of the Viceroy. “There’s no end to these monsters. He’ll just keep summoning them, again and again.”
“Words of Burning!” Elgar gasps at him. “Forsyth made them work before.”
Bevel shouts out to Kintyre that he should try to burn what paper he can with the Words, but his trothed is too caught up with keeping the monsters at bay to waste his breath on Word magic.
Bevel burns what paper his Words can reach nearby, the syllables of it gorgeous and syllabant and hissing in Elgar’s ears. They sound like fire. Elgar scrambles on his hands and knees to shuffle every paper within arm’s length onto the pile. Bevel has to keep popping his head up to shoot at the monsters, though, his attention divided.
“Get back inside, you fools!” Kintyre calls over the din, and Elgar wrenches himself to his knees, clinging to the side of the upset hot dog cart to see what he’s talking about.
At the far side of the room, the large doors to the ballroom have been thrown back.
“What are they doing?” Elgar hisses. “They’re going to get killed!”
From this distance, it’s difficult to distinguish individual faces, though Lucy and Forsyth are distinctive enough in the forefront of the rush. Like football linebackers, the group of be-weaponed cosplayers surges out onto the floor, ray-gun blasts sizzling and filling the room with the tang of ozone and even more burnt flesh. Magic swirls and pulses through the air, some of it the watercolor swirls of his own creations, some very clearly the recreation of effects he’s seen on television, in film, in anime and comics.
“No!” the Viceroy sneers from above and all around them. “No!”
“Clever Forssy,” Bevel says with a panting grin as he pops back down behind the cart, taking a moment to rest.
“What? Why? What’s he doing?”
Bevel’s grin gets wide and ever-so-slightly goofy, his dark blue eyes shining with mirth and adrenaline. Elgar chokes back a startled sound. He knows that Bevel loves action, but he never realized that this is what his creation would look like in the midst of a heated battle. Elgar