Year Zero

  Abigal Knife Spine clutched her two boys to her chest as she joined the other

  refugees on the bridge of ice leading away from her home. Her daemon waited to be

  summoned, but there wasn’t an immediate threat to use it against for the moment.

  And it wouldn’t be a help with what the rest of the survivors were doing.

  She looked back at her former home.

  Riordiana had been a mighty seaport, moving cargo from the ocean to the interior

  through the various methods that her citizens used. Mostly daemons had done the

  work like they were doing now to save the remaining people as they fled into the

  ocean.

  A tower of black smoke whipped tentacles in the air as flying daemons released their

  attacks into it. Some of the daemons were big enough to carry their owners into

  combat. Things emerged from the ebony mass, overwhelming the defenders. The

  fliers retreated, throwing out their attacks as they tried to buy time for the rest to get

  away.

  One by one, the daemons and riders were plucked from the air and ripped into pieces.

  Those who lost their daemons but not their lives would be scarred forever.

  Abigail saw the end of the bridge break off from the shore. She saw her countrymen

  fighting with things rushing from the darkness. She frowned as she tried to decide

  what to do.

  Boats formed a flotilla around the ice bridge. Daemons pushed the sails out with gusts

  of winds. Others secured grips on the ice to pull it with them toward safety.

  She looked down at her boys. Victor and Brandon were too young to call on daemons

  despite being marked. Moshe had almost refused to do the ceremony, but he had

  when he saw the center of the port collapse inward from the rising of the darkness.

  His shaking hand had etched the blood signs and his daemon had helped heal the boys

  when he was done. Abigail had been so grateful.

  Moshe had been crushed by a building trying to rescue someone else. His daemon had

  wailed until it exploded.

  Daemons didn’t last long without their partners.

  The fragments that had chased after the fliers descended on the boats and the ice.

  Their eyes glowed in the starlight. No one could be allowed to escape.

  Abigail summoned her daemon, calling it from inside of her through the blood marks

  on her torso and arms. It flowed from her, dropping on the bridge, tipping the other

  end in the air with its weight.

  “I need you to do what you can to protect us, Razor Back,” she said.

  The giant boar snorted on the children before she advanced in front of the group. She

  glared up in the sky. The fragments descended through lines of fire, water, lightning,

  and other things to get at the fleeing people. The pig swelled like a bladder filling

  with water. Then she compressed, releasing the new mass.

  Spines erupted from the pig as it shrank. They cut through any of the strange birds

  that flew in front of the storm.

  Abigail smiled. Razor Back wasn’t much of a projector, but what she could do was

  something many daemons couldn’t do.

  They could blast at things, and most were more powerful in their output, but few

  could strike the same target with hundreds of needles capable of punching through

  rock.

  Razor Back huffed as she looked at the ragged things. She had cleared a portion of

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  the sky. That would attract them down on where she stood. She couldn’t let anything

  happen to Abi and her pups.

  The pups started crying. Abi would have to take care of them. Silencing them

  wouldn’t mean anything if the wings came again to tear them apart.

  Two daemons appeared on either side of Razor Back. They weren’t a threat to the

  giant beast. They growled at the sky as the ice bridge carried the people away from

  their ruined home.

  Razor Back pushed the two small daemons back with her snout. She paused. She

  didn’t know a red and yellow nine tailed fox, or a blue and silver walking lizard with

  small wings on its back.

  Who summoned these daemons?

  She put the thought out of her head as the wings came on, trying to get through the

  lines of fire from the other projectors. She started to swell up to fire her needles into

  the sky again. She paused. Out of the corner of her eye, the foxes were multiplying

  and spitting small sparks into the air. The blasts went off but were more startling then

  dangerous.

  On her other side, the lizard fired a globe of spit at a wing swooping down on them.

  The bubble hit and ate its target until the sphere was gone.

  Razor Back swelled up and fired her own attack. The needles hammered its targets

  as they swooped down. Bloody bits fell to the bridge and marked it with oozing

  decay.

  “Good job,” said Abigail. She hugged the boar with one arm, while holding her

  crying infants with the other. “Who are your friends?”

  The small daemons faded back to their homes.

  Daemons worked on fixing the floating platform, burning the remains of the wings

  off the ice before repairing the hole.

  “It’s Festus!,” said someone in the crowd. He pointed at the sky above the dark tower.

  “It’s Festus!”

  “What happens to us if Primrose drops a big egg?,” asked an older woman. Her

  daemon, a white bear who had lost an eye at some point, crouched over her. “The

  impact will reach us out here.”

  “We have to move faster than this,” said Abigail. “We need big sails and a way to

  mount them. We have to get out of here. The wave will sink us.”

  Citizens urged their daemons into hurried work. Primrose was a giant dragon whose

  main attack consisted of a large rock flying at a target. Festus didn’t use it that much.

  A daemon who could claw a lesser daemon to shreds like Primrose could generally

  didn’t have to use its special attacks.

  When Primrose did use its special attack, foreign ships in the harbor were sunk to the

  bottom of the bay.

  A large stone dropped from high in the sky. It’s shape resembled an egg with the wide

  end plummeting toward the tower. It struck in an aura of burning air.

  The remains of the port collapsed as the shock from the strike ripped at the front of

  the buildings.

  More rocks fell on the city. A crater formed from the impacts. The wind of the blows

  pushed the sail boats in front of it. The citizens fought to keep their boats righted

  under the sudden storm.

  Water rushed into the bowl created by Primrose. It buried anything that might have

  survived the high speed collisions in an oceanic cover.

  Abigail rubbed Razor Back’s head. She fought back the tears in her eyes. The city

  was gone. Festus had destroyed it with the power of his daemon.

  If they turned around, they would have to deal with the complete flattening of their

  land with the new harbor in the middle of it. And would the land be safe to live on

  after what they had just witnessed?

  That dark mass of flesh reaching for the clouds had not looked like any daemon she

  had ever seen.

  What if the meteors and the ocean had not killed the thing for good? That would be

  a problem for them if they tried to reclaim their land.

  And their neighbors would try to take advantage of their rebuilding. Some had tried

  to take their children into service. That had lasted until Festus had dropped a rock on

  the grounds of the offending ruler’s castle.

  Primrose turned and flew over the fleet. The dragon headed out to sea, winging away

  from the boats and ice bridge.

  Abigail looked around. Some of the people around her wouldn’t last long without a

  place to get warm. She looked at her boys. They cried as she tried to rock them back

  to sleep.

  “It will be fine,” she said. “Things will be better.”

  Razor Back nuzzled her arm with a wide snout. The pig settled beside them, and

  snorted. The boys started playing with her jowls instead of crying.

  In the distance, an island took shape. The refugees pointed at the collection of rocks

  growing out of the ocean. The next few years would be tough, but they would live.

  Abigail rocked her babies and smiled. Her daemon snorted at her side. Her boys had

  a chance to grow.

  Shelter and food would have to come next.

  She looked around. The other new mothers and older women and their children were

  gathering. As soon as they reached the island they would have to carve something out

  of the rock, or figure a way to transport wood from the mainland to their new home

  to build houses.

  Abigail held her boys so they could see the new Riordiana. They would have a chance

  after all.