Meek

Eli waited ten heartbeats for his flesh to knit together, then loped toward the mandible brood. When he got close enough, he sent his sparks to strike again. But that time, he knew how this thing moved.

Four sparks slammed into the brood's ankle while another braced it on the other side. Bone shattered and the brood spun toward Eli again.

He stayed back, at the outside of his range. The brood still closed on him too damn fast for something its size, but with one broken leg it didn't move nearly as smoothly. Eli threw himself sideways with sparks to avoid a swinging scythe. He tossed himself around like a rag doll, blocking with his shield and two sparks--and managed to punch a spark into the thing's eye socket.

He pressed down with that spark, throwing the weight of a mountain into the effort. He still wasn't strong enough to bring the creature's head to the ground, though. So he shifted the spark's direction abruptly, pushing upward to tilt the brood's head backward.

To expose its throat.

He took a cut across his thigh and a downward slash that chopped off his ear and shattered his collarbone ... but he managed to crush the brood's neck.

As its vertebrae shattered, the brood kicked him in the side with a foot like a monstrous bird of prey. The blow threw Eli across the road, and he was so disoriented from the pain in his collarbone that he barely managed to cushion the impact with sparks.

He hit a stone wall too hard, then dropped gasping to the ground.

The mandible-brood died, humming one final note ... and farther up the road, the other three paused.

Then they abandoned their chase and turned toward Eli.

Which was good. Which was perfect. That was exactly what he'd wanted. To attract their attention, to give those people a chance to escape into the relative safety of the Keep.

What a rousing success.

Except now three of the biggest angelbrood he'd ever heard of were stalking toward him, and he was badly injured. Oh, and he'd barely killed one.

The brood really were getting worse. First, the sheer size and ferocity of them was like nothing anyone had ever reported. Second, they'd appeared inside a city. And third, they were driving people forward like sheep to the slaughter.

Sure, they'd often chased their prey toward churches and shrines, because that's where people sought sanctuary. But this felt more ... intentional. More malicious. Like maybe once the brood packed everyone together, they'd simply ignore the power of the Dreamers and the Angel and slaughter them.

Though that wasn't Eli's most immediate problem. No, his most immediate problem was the skeletal brood with backward-facing legs leaping toward him.

Already in the air.

Two heartbeats from landing on him.

He coughed blood and dug his sparks into cracks between cobblestones, into a rain-gutter and behind the trunk of a shade tree. Then he yanked.

An instant before the brood landed, Eli slid away. The stone of the road shattered beneath the brood's feet and he tugged himself harder, faster, as the thing jumped at him again.

He veered to the side, leaving a trail of his own blood behind, and one of the other brood threw a blessdamn carriage

The carriage burst apart behind him. A wheel rolled past his shoulder and a door panel whipped at his face. The skeletal brood was already stomping down so Eli couldn't dodge the panel. He took the impact on the dome of his head and tears sprung to his eyes as his sparks shoved him off the ground.

He flung himself over a stone wall into the yard of a city building with a wide entrance and--

Holy Angel.

The archives. He'd thrown himself onto the doorstep of the archives.

He would've laughed if he could've. Instead, he crawled and tugged himself up the three steps and across the stone entryway into the dark interior.

The four-armed brood broke the doors behind Eli when it pushed inside. One of his sparks heard the other two outside, humming their tuneless tune. He got the impression that they were going to leave him to Four Arms and return to massacring the crowd so he shattered the shutters of a side window with one of his sparks to keep their attention.

Chunks of wood clattered into the alley floor outside. The beast-like brood immediately prowled that way, to check for Eli's escape, while the skeletal one on the front step leaped straight upward. It vanished from view, because he was too far in the archives to send his sparks outside.

It had definitely jumped toward the roof, though. Maybe onto the roof.

Like they wanted to capture him in a pincer movement, clearing the floors from bottom to top and top to bottom. Yeah. Bigger, stronger, and far smarter than other angelbrood.

But he knew this building.

Still weak from his wounds, he crawled across the ground floor to the staff stairs, using the sparks to muffle the sounds of his hands and knees. Only visitors and the higher-ups used the grand stairwell, which was the only obvious way farther into the building.

Eli slunk into the concealed, recessed entrance of the staff stairs. He crawled halfway up the first narrow flight, then collapsed for a minute, breathless from ... he didn't know what.

Felt like a rib was puncturing his lung.

The humming of Four Arms faded behind him as it scuffed toward the main stairway. Eli slumped in relief. Okay. He just needed to keep them here for another few minutes, then sneak his arse away. Once he could walk again. That didn't seem like too much to ask, considering--

The humming sounded closer.

Then he heard the scrape of inhuman feet on a marble floor.

Blight. Four Arms must've smelled him or--well, or followed the smears of his blood. Eli gritted his teeth and pushed himself to his feet in the stairwell. Okay, he could stand. Improvement.

Then the tuneless humming turned as loud as a shout.

Was it communicating with the others?

He didn't want to find out the hard way. With most of the sparks supporting his weight, and a few spiraling upward ahead of him, he climbed a flight and a half of narrow stairs toward the library where--

A door smashed inward on the landing behind him and a skeletal hand groped through. Missed him by inches.

Eli fled upstairs and pushed through the next door into the library. He threw himself into the dark stacks an instant before Four Arms stalked into the room from the main entrance on the other side of the room.

The humming set his teeth on edge.

Behind him, the skeletal brood scraped through the too-small stairwell. Getting closer every second. Eli's sparks helped him move silently, still cushioning his hands and knees as he crawled. Three more sparks watched the room; the rows of shelves, the four-armed angelbrood standing at the main entrance, slowing scanning the room.

Then stomping forward for a view along the next row.

Eli smeared two other sparks with blood from his side and sent them to silently dapple the ground and shelves, leaving false trails. He didn't know why foreign substances didn't always adhere to the sparks, but only clung to them if he chose. At least that's what he thought happened. He never really tested the--

The skeletal brood emerged from the stairwell, stopping the shaky jumble of Eli's thoughts.

Okay, breathe. Think. He didn't know where the third brood was, the beast-looking one. Probably still prowling the street outside, in case he fled.

The skeletal one leaped to the top of the shelves. It started striding across them, knocking scrolls and tomes and inkwells to the ground, never venturing too far from the stairwell, to block that as an escape route.

Eli squirmed into the cramped space at the base of a shelf of scrolls.

Four Arms cleared another row, then another. Getting closer.

Eli's ear itched. He felt the skin and cartilage regrowing as the skeletal brood lunged into a storage niche. No idea why, but--

Someone screamed.

A high, wavering scream.

No, a bunch of high, wavering screams. There were scribes hiding in here. Eli had led the brood straight to them.

He immediately slammed three sparks into the stacks, cracking the wood and sending paper flying. The skeletal brood spun back toward him--and the screaming continued, thank the Dreamers.

But if he didn't draw these monsters away, they'd cut through those scribes without a moment's hesitation. So he rolled from his hiding spot as his sparks raised a storm of books and quills, maps and candles and cloth screens.

He stood into a sprint, pelting himself with detritus as he ran for street-facing stone wall. He remembered reading ledgers in the sunlight that streamed through the window high in that wall. He remembered his previous life, living in a cocoon of calm and safety, as he raced across the room.

The skeletal brood leaped at him, slashing with its dagger-like fingers. His sparks slammed the creature's shoulder and he used the contact to push off, diving through a book-packed low shelf an instant after another spark cleared the obstructions.

Four Arms hurled a standing desk at him as it clumped closer and Eli didn't have anywhere to go except up. He lodged three sparks in the sill of the high window above him, and shoved two into the floor below. The final two slammed into the airborne desk, trying to keep it from smashing him as he hurled himself upward.

The edge of the desk crushed his left ankle and the skeletal brood slammed into the wall just below him. His sparks pushed off its head and he shattered the window, which was about as wide around as his waist. Maybe. He prayed it was no narrower, or he'd get stuck.

He sent sparks through the now-broken window to lodge against the outside of the wall, then started to pull himself through.

His head emerged, then his right arm, which sticking out in front of him.

Then his chest and his left arm, which was crammed against his side.

The sparks in the library behind him slammed into the skeletal brood's arm, trying to block an attack. They weren't strong enough to stop the blow completely. Still, they turned a deep, eviscerating slash of his belly into four deep cuts across his thigh.

Then Four Arms sprung into the air behind him, all four arms cocked to crush his legs to pulp and--

The sparks yanked him through the window.

One of Four Arms's fists pounded his already-shattered ankle and the others hit the wall hard enough to chip the stone.

Eli fell from the window toward the front yard of the archives.

Toward the fourth angelbrood, the bestial one, which was snarling up at him from below.