Chapter 102: Destruction at the Inn - The Assassins Attacks Begins

Glass and splintered pine sprayed across the floorboards as the first demon came through the third-floor window. Kōya caught its thick wrist two inches from Lyra’s cheek.

The impact drove his back heel across the grit on the planks, grinding broken pane glass beneath his boot soles. Rancid tallow and iron poured off the creature’s hide as it wrenched its arm sideways to break his thumb lock. Behind its hunched shoulder, a second shadow vaulted the broken sill with a curved skinning blade already mid-swing.

"Kōya!" Lyra ducked, pulling her chin down into her collar.

He yanked the first attacker forward by the wrist and drove his knee straight into its solar plexus. Stale air burst from the demon’s lungs against Kōya’s torn coat sleeve. Pivoting on his ball of foot, Kōya hauled the gasping body around as a meat shield to meet the second assassin’s downward slash.

Steel bit deep into demonic collarbone with a dull crunch. Dark blood splattered the wainscot as the second attacker cursed in his throat and planted a boot against his comrade’s chest to wrench the wedged blade free.

Kōya dropped the wounded demon’s wrist and clamped his right hand around its windpipe. "Who sent you?"

Yellow teeth flashed behind split lips. "Her." The demon’s slit eyes rolled past Kōya’s shoulder, fixing on Lyra.

Kōya’s fingers dug into the corded muscle of its neck until cartilage creaked. "Wrong answer."

He pivoted and drove the creature spine-first into the interior partition. Dry lath cracked inside the plaster wall, shaking loose a framed charcoal sketch that bounced off its brass hook and smashed beside the bedpost.

Lyra was already moving across the cramped room. She whipped her wooden wand in a horizontal arc, unleashing a compressed gale that caught the second demon square in the floating ribs and hurled him backward through the open doorway. His spine slammed into the hall banister, tangling the legs of a third operative rushing up from the stairs.

"Three!" Lyra called out, her shoulder blades pressed against the washstand.

Beyond the tangled limbs in the threshold, Kōya tracked a fourth operative planted in the narrow corridor outside, swinging a thick length of blackened iron chain between gloved palms. Violet runes pulsed along every link, scraping shallow grooves into the pine floorboards as he advanced.

"Alive," the chain-wielder ordered, his eyes fixed straight through Kōya toward the bed. "Both women. The boy is expendable."

Lyra’s fingers whitened around her wand handle. Both women. Zarth’s hounds had zero interest in recovering auction gold or claiming the Hero Sword. They had come to restock a cage.

Kōya planted his boots squarely between the splintered doorway and the corner where Kaela sat motionless against the wall. "Lyra, stay behind me."

"That would be easier if they stopped coming through the walls!"

Plaster and dry mortar exploded inward from the adjoining room to their left. Down on the ground floor, a thick oak table overturned with a crash, followed by the shrill scream of a late tenant bolting into the street and the thud of iron-shod boots taking the stairs three at a time. Zarth’s strike team had cordoned the alley and sealed the lower exits before breaking the glass.

Kōya hated organized ambushes. Arithmetic favored the side that brought extra doors.

"Lyra," he said, tracking the swinging black chain in the hall while his bruised ribs pulled from yesterday’s arena brawl. "Can you handle the ones who get past me?"

She set her feet shoulder-width apart on the glass-strewn floor, the small crystal at her wand tip flaring white. "Try keeping them in front of you."

The handler in the corridor whipped the runed chain straight at Kōya’s eyes.

Kōya tilted his head aside, took the biting impact of the iron links across his leather forearm guard, and twisted his wrist to trap the slack before the demon could reel it back. Stepping straight down the taut line of the chain, he drove his left knuckles into the hinge of the demon’s jaw. Bone cracked. Kōya followed with a vicious hook below the ribcage that folded the operative over, then booted the dropped rune-chain deep beneath the low bedframe where nobody could reach it in a hurry.

A curved saber screamed down the Hero Sword’s crossguard, showering orange sparks across his knuckles.

The kinetic force sang up his bruised radius into his elbow. Kōya slid his grip half an inch down the leather wrap, stepped inside the wide recovery arc of the follow-up swing, and buried his elbow into the swordsman’s sternum.

Leather brigandine buckled inward. As the swordsman doubled over, a leaner shadow vaulted the man’s bent back, ignoring Kōya entirely to dive across the mattress for Lyra.

She planted her back heel and leveled her wand at chest height. "Down!"

Kōya dropped to one knee. A cylinder of compressed wind roared over his parted hair, catching the airborne demon mid-leap and rocketing him backward through the corridor doorway in a shower of splintered molding.

Kōya turned his face over his shoulder. Lyra’s chest heaved beneath her frayed collar, damp strands of dark hair sticking to her forehead.

"You’re welcome," she panted.

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

His mouth twitched, the expression dying as a thick boot caved in the cracked plaster wall behind them.

***

Chalk dust and powdered lime filled Lyra’s mouth before the timber studs finished splintering.

Thick boots pounded the corridor planks outside while steel rasped against the ruined jamb, accompanied by a guttural bark in the High Demonic tongue as Kōya surged into the hall to meet the main wave.

She pivoted toward the far corner of the bedroom. Kaela sat slumped against the wainscot where the first shock of the breach had left her, knees drawn up, the long scabbard of Stormfront pinned across her thighs beneath both scarred hands. Shattering glass, collapsing walls, and the copper stench of spilled blood had failed to pull a single blink from those dull silver eyes.

Asking her to run was pointless. Three fresh operatives were already crowding the breached wall from the adjoining room.

Lyra stepped directly in front of the beastwoman’s knees and whipped her wand downward.

"Stay behind me, Kaela."