Excerpt: Middle Ground

Sophia is not about to leave. With a thought, her awareness expands, multiplies upon itself. She feels the divine fire take her as she calls upon the power of the Angel, heat washing through her chest until she feels like fire should be leaping from her mouth. Her vision splinters. She sees inside and outside simultaneously, knows where every living thing in the enclave is standing. Colours wash across her sight, picking out lurking marsh folk, highlighting possible threats and projected courses of movement. The uluitu is not so easy to read. He blurs and stutters, colours cycling across him as Sophia’s enhanced senses try to guess his actions. He lunges, arms spread and mouth open wide to display jagged, blackened teeth, but Sophia has anticipated him with no more than human instinct. He slams to a halt as the air in front of him becomes solid, barring his path. His fingers scrabble for purchase on nothing and he rebounds a step.
The marsh folk have not moved yet, still wavering between support of their priest and fear of the archon. Sawyer has thrown himself behind a boulder, gun ready in his human hand. Outside the skull Sophia can see sudden movement through the eyes of her disciples. Some...thing has burst from another bone structure and is loping towards her/them, trailing some sort of glutinous liquid. More of them leap forth; her disciples react quick as thought to her instructions, weapons sliding from holsters and bullets leaping towards predicted destinations that she paints on their vision. One of the creatures is saved by random chance and its own agility. Sophia’s metal arm snaps out, unconsciously mimicking Warrington’s ‘gun’ gesture of days before; the air snaps away from her fingers fast enough to leave smoke in its wake, punching a neat hole in the side of the room she stands in and smashing the creature’s ribcage concave like an invisible fist. It folds in half mid-leap, crashing onto the bone walkways far wide of its intended target. It twitches, dead but not yet realising it. The marsh folk recoil almost as one in the face of the power of the Angel, made manifest through her archon.
The holy man speaks, his words nothing but white noise in Sophia’s ears. His hand bears a seal – some part of her sees it, learns it, files it away for future consideration – which blazes with an orange radiance. Countless pinpricks of light flare across her impenetrable barrier, link together with one another, and the wall crumbles in a gentle shower of orange motes. Sophia feels a flicker of shock that the Angel’s magic can be overcome, a flash of fear as the priest advances again, then all human emotion is sealed away and set aside by the holy power that drives her limbs. Her metal arm whips around and is caught by the priest’s. His other hand closes on her throat.

Forge knows what is about to happen. It can see the archon’s eyes unfocus, can feel the tug as she starts drawing power into herself. The living enclave reacts, birthing blisters convulsing and spewing forth his still-incomplete hybrids to savage and tear the disciples. Even with the archon’s assistance they are only human, armed with human weapons, expecting human resistance. Their deaths are inevitable. Forge spares a glance for the non-disciple – what an interesting hand he has – and dismisses him as he throws himself behind a boulder. There will be more than enough time for him later, when it is finished with the archon. Forge resists the temptation to discard its near-human guise and enjoy the experience in its natural flesh; the marsh folk are useful dupes, so long as they believe it to be their salvation. Instead, it opens its jaw and lunges for the girl with its serrated teeth. It is a genuine surprise when it slams instead into an invisible barrier.
There is a moment of consternation – what if the archon is too powerful after all? – swallowed up by mounting indignation. I am Forge, it thinks. I have been walking the earth for one hundred years. I have claimed souls for dozens of my brethren. I named myself for the artefact of transformation and refinement, where rocks from the ground become tools and weapons. This girl is nothing. Great power wrapped in human weakness.
It incants a demon spell, a call to its inner strength. The magic reaches out and finds the weak points in the archon’s wall, unravels it in the space of a heartbeat. Uncertainty flashes across the girl’s face, human frailty visible for a fleeting moment behind the raw power of the archon. Her reaction is all too predictable and Forge snatches her wrist, sinews of demonic metal holding the artificial limb away from them both without effort. It clamps its other hand around her throat, wondering what would happen if it claimed her soul. Could an archon’s soul even be claimed? Forge’s long fingers squeeze her blood vessels shut as it considers this new experiment.

Sawyer sees Sophia fade, realises what’s coming next. Experience tells him to defend himself first and worry about fighting back later. He dives behind a candle-studded boulder, landing hard on his right shoulder while his left hand frees his gun. Something makes a huge, wet noise outside and some other things howl like starving lion-horses. People are shouting and screaming out there, although he can’t tell if it’s the disciples, the marsh folk, or something that just sounds human. The priest is surprised, clawing at Sophia but somehow unable to reach her. As his mouth hangs open, Sawyer spots the uluitu’s black, metallic teeth. Not uluitu, he thinks. Demon.
The two disciples in the skull are acting strangely. One shoots over the heads of the marsh folk in the doorway, driving them back. The other has his gun raised and is tracking something that Sawyer can’t see. More howls from outside. Sawyer sees Sophia raise her arm and kill some sort of bestial thing outside without even looking at it. There’s no time to wonder how she does that – archon magic, of course – as Sawyer sees the marsh folk mob in the doorway start to surge back into the skull. He picks out a ringleader and catches his eye, points his gun at him. Sawyer’s used to staring down demons and monsters; the marshie, mouth open in shock at whatever he sees in Sawyer’s eyes, staggers to a halt before the crowd can build momentum and overwhelm them all.
A flash of light draws his attention back to Sophia and the demon. The thing has got through her wall somehow and is crushing her neck, her killing hand held at a safe distance. She tries to do something with her cane but the demon lifts her off the ground and shakes her like a child’s doll. The silver cane flies from her grasp and bounces across the floor.
Sawyer sets his jaw, stands from behind the boulder. He steadies his aim with his mechanical hand. His gun is levelled at the demon, although the thing isn’t paying any attention to him. Probably didn’t think it needed to; demons were mostly bulletproof.
Mostly.