Brenna and Edmar froze as thunder struck again over the city.
"We need to get you to safety." He said softly.
"What?" Brenna held out a hand as the snow began pouring down from the sky in earnest. "Safety from snow?"
"From the gargoyles," He replied, pointing through the whirling, dense skies. "I didn't know this was in Tamas's plan."
Brenna's eyes tensed. She knew the Void was clever and unpredictable. This strategy was well within what it was capable of. The distant struggle of life and death was too much for her to take in.
She was a pawn of deception and intrigue, not of violence. Even without seeing the carnage up close, she held a distinct distaste for it.
Brenna suddenly turned away, and Edmar's eyes followed hers. A portal was opening behind them, an obsidian mark across an already dark landscape.
A white-haired man wearing a chilling smile stepped through.
"Brenna, Edmar. How do you like the battle so far?" He asked with a relaxed air.
"It is well fought, but is Brenna safe here? Should we not move her further or get her into shelter?" Edmar's anxiety was apparent in his voice.
"I doubt they will come so far from the city when there are so many women there to be eaten, but of course I will make sure our sweet Brenna is protected. I would hate for anything to happen to her." The Void said soothingly.
Though Edmar seemed relieved, Brenna already knew all that. The Void would not risk its anchors being harmed. If they should die, it would be banished from this world once more, unless it had others.
She frowned. Did the Void have other followers? It hadn't mentioned any, not that she was privy to all its knowledge and plans. Mysterious and deadly, the Void had no reason to tell Brenna everything, nor Edmar.
Tamas turned and walked into the tree line, and the humans followed. Brenna tripped slightly over a root hidden in the snow, and Edmar reached out to take her hand.
She pressed her lips together in frustration at his kind attention. It was fake. It was all fake. He didn't actually feel that way. She did this to him.
Pulling her hand away, she tried not to frown at him too harshly. He held a stoic expression, though the corners of his mouth tightened slightly. It hurt her to hurt him, even though the pain she caused them both was of her own making.
The Void obviously wanted her to give in and be with Edmar. Otherwise, why would it put its two anchors to this world in one place?
She frowned, wondering why. The Commodore's son already served the Void. There was no need to use Brenna's seduction potion to serve it even better. Did it want—
Brenna suddenly had a difficult thought break through. Children believed easily, and wholeheartedly. It was, really, the strongest kind of loyalty a person could have. As a queen, Titania had insisted to Brenna that an heir was needed as quickly as possible.
That was why she said Prince Derek had needed to be seduced: the royal line was at stake.
Now, Brenna wondered if something similar was at play here. If Brenna bore children and raised them to follow her, would that loyalty be firm and unshakeable?
She recalled the night that the news had come to the Rhone camps: Titania is dead, long live King Duncan! Give him the loyalty of your hearts for the good of Rhone!
Everyone had immediately imagined the noble Duncan fighting for them, strong and brave. A dead queen had no need of being followed, but her son deserved it all.
Things would be very different for a child raised knowing exactly what the Void was, but following it anyway. Brenna balked at raising an innocent child to be under the care of the otherworldly being.
She'd made so many mistakes along the way. So much had gone terribly wrong. She was going to be executed if she stayed among her own kind, so she became what they thought her to be. She was despised and rejected by her own world, so serving this creature surely was what she deserved.
But to bring a child into it? The thought turned her stomach.
Even more reason to reject Edmar and keep her distance from him… as if she needed another on top of the overwhelming guilt of enslaving his emotions.
Turning away from his gaze, she hardened her heart again.
_________
Lysander made it to the top of the city wall after a harrowing ride through the besieged city. The bellows of the giants as they fought with the gargoyles attacking Jarnsaxa were ear-splitting.
Roland had told him of the sight of the mighty giants fighting off gargoyles, how the two men had swatted at the swarm like bugs while Jarnsaxa had screamed and flailed. There was a similar sight at play now, only their attention was also focused on getting to the giantess that had fallen from the sky.
Lysander had to hold back the queasy feeling he had at the sight of the enormous Jarnsaxa riddled with wounds. He recalled the orders of the General as he prepared to address the giantess through the heat of battle.
The gargoyles attacked women, and would be attracted to the two largest women naturally; that was plain to see. The giants would naturally want to rush in and rescue their fallen friend, and were clearly trying to do so while also defending their queen from the onslaught of the horrible human-sized monsters.
Lysander ducked as one of the creatures crash landed near him, having been backhanded by one of the giants. It was stunned but alive, and the former Provider quickly used his sword to dispatch the gargoyle, lest it regain its bearings and attack.
"Mighty Jarnsaxa!" Lysander called at the top of his lungs. He hoped from his height that she would be able to hear him better than if he had gone outside the city gates. They were closed, though that did nothing to deal with the current attacks against the city.
The wind of the snowstorm and the cracks of thunder were working to drown out his voice. He called again, loudly enough to cause his throat to become sore.
"JARNSAXA!"
The giantess swatted away another gargoyle, as she took another step closer to the city.
"What is it?" She snapped in annoyance. "I am busy."
Though the attacks were slowing the giants' progress, they were clearly headed towards the city.
"PLEASE DO NOT ENTER THE CITY! WE HAVE DISPATCHED TROOPS TO SAVE THE GIANTESS!" He didn't dare try to command her. The prideful queen, though she had pledged to help, would not respond well to being told what to do.
"If you should fail to save her…" The warning hung in the air.
"We must kill all the gargoyles. They cannot get free into our world!" Lysander urged.
The stately queen nodded her bleeding head with regal severity. She had lost none of the airs of royalty for having learned she was a queen of less than a handful of her race.
The snow whirled around her as she stood to her full height, straightening her shoulders and tilting her chin up in defiance of the creatures that now plagued her. The swarm surged, and with a mighty arm she swept a dozen from the sky with one blow.
With a trickle of blood from her right temple, and a gaping wound on her left cheek, she was nonetheless beautiful, a terrifying warrior queen crushing her enemies beneath her feet as they lay stunned on the ground.
Her men were no less dangerous, but they lacked the bitter, determined fury of a giantess who had been under regular attack from the beasts for hundreds of years. She unleashed her fury now, using a fully grown pine tree as a club.
Lysander watched her in awe, remembering how he had almost become food for the giants only a few days prior, had it not been for the intervention of the Fae.
He looked down and realized the riverbed separating the city from the rest of the world held only a trickle. The water was gone.
Shouts of war sounded behind him, and he whirled around to face inside the city. The gargoyles had shown little interest in the soldiers so far, at least the male ones, except in defense of themselves.
Were they mounting a ground assault now? He saw a group of Klain soldiers, swords raised, racing towards the center of a garden where something was digging up from the ground. Like moles, or groundhogs, grey-skinned fully-armed enemies with sharpened teeth popped out of the earth, ready to wreak destruction.
Lysander gasped. It wasn't more gargoyles at all; the goblins were reaching the surface. How many, he couldn't tell, but from the various horns of alarm, they were appearing all across the city.
Raising his own blade, he rushed down from the wall to help.