Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  Titania’s voice rang into the night like a silver bell. “Clever of you, Ethniu, to attack my sister at midsummer, when she is at her weakest.” A growl of thunder added punctuation to the end of her sentence. “But it was shortsighted to assume she would stand alone.”

  There was a thrumming in the air, a quivering sensation of nauseated terror that went through me like a bullet, and suddenly the silver-grey eight-legged steed whom the legends named Sleipnir thundered out of the night sky, its hooves digging up mounds of earth to arrest its momentum. The great horse reared, kicking the scorched air with all four forehooves, and the terrible shadow upon its back lifted a hand that suddenly clasped a bolt of lightning.

  When the Erlking landed, he did so in total silence, despite the heavy faemetal plate he wore over his usual hunting leathers. He landed in a crouch, flanking the Titan opposite the terrible rider, and drew his antler-handled hunting sword as he faced Ethniu.

  I wanted nothing at all to do with this fight, and I started trying to worm out of the immediate blast radius without being noticed.

  “I give you this single opportunity,” Titania continued. “Withdraw from the mortal world. Return to your sanctuary. It will end here.”

  “As if you could offer or deny me anything I chose to take,” Ethniu snarled. “Petty little demigod.”

  And with that she unleashed the power of the Eye.

  Titania was waiting for it.

  The torrent of destructive fire struck out at Titania—but rather than trying to oppose or endure it, she did the opposite. She spread her arms wide, rolled at her hips and lower back in a peculiarly dancelike motion, and rather than striking her, the torrent of energy bent and twisted, sending all that heat and hate spiraling up into the night sky.

  Up into the sky that had, only a moment before, been full of freezing air and sleet, courtesy of the Winter Lady.

  To call what happened next “rain” is something of an understatement.

  Great, grinding thunder raised its voice in a throaty roar, and the air turned to falling water.

  Water and magic are awfully finicky around each other. Enough running water tends to disperse and ground out magical energy, so much so that entities whose existence most depended on magic dared not cross even a running stream.

  Titania didn’t so much summon a thunderstorm as she created an improvised waterfall.

  Down smashed the rain so thickly that I had to cover my mouth with a hand in order to be able to breathe.

  And I felt the shift in power happening.

  The terror of the city and its hovering magical potential in the air began to melt away like a sandcastle before the tide. The water sluiced down over the city, washing the air clean once more. Magic began to bleed out of the air and sink back into the earth, drawn along by the heavy rain.

  It couldn’t come down that hard for very long. It was maybe thirty seconds. Definitely no more than sixty. And then the rain abruptly stopped, as if a switch had been thrown, and only a few light, sporadic raindrops continued to fall. The city went from a roar to almost complete silence. The quivering reservoir of concentrated dread, ready to be collected and used, had withered and melted away.

  And with its energy supply abruptly missing, the sullen fire of the Eye guttered and nearly went out.

  Ethniu let out a short, sharp exhalation and lifted her left hand to the Eye.

  Titania lowered her face, gleaming from the flood, and focused bright green feline eyes upon the Titan, her expression as set and immovable as the earth.

  Sleipnir screamed and reared again, the great beast straining against the reins, eager to fight, while the blue-white fire of the living lightning in the hand of its great rider cast flickering nightmare shadows upon the ground all around them.

  The Erlking gave her a wolfish smile.

  And then the immortals went to war.

  It happened fast. Everything was a blur of motion and energy. Sounds tumbled one upon another so rapidly that it was impossible to pick out or identify any given portion of it. Lights flashed so brightly that I had to cry out against the intensity.

  None of them bothered with physical weapons. They all threw Power at one another. They all had been using it for century upon century. They were all better than me, with minds capable of shaping and forming multiple workings of Power simultaneously. I couldn’t have tracked that duel, not even if I’d been at one hundred percent and had signed guarantees of safety. Participating in it? Laughable.

  There was so much power there that my Sight started picking up images, like a light so bright that it hurt even through closed eyelids. Each of the combatants blurred, as if multiple layers of the same image had suddenly started performing multiple separate actions. I was struck by the sudden overwhelming perception that I was looking at potential realities, possible realities, all overlapping while immortal minds fought to see into the future and adjusted and counteradjusted their actions based upon what they could perceive there. So not only were they all doing multiple things at once; they were all thinking through every available possibility. That was like . . . simultaneously playing an entirely mental game of 3-D chess while juggling a running chain saw, a lit torch, and a bowling ball, all while balancing on a slack rope.

  And then they took all of that vision and Power and potential and condensed it into a single instant. When they cut loose, the immortals fought one another all at once: They brought the totality of their being to the table, expending their energy all in the smallest area and time frame possible, concentrating their enormous Power with inhuman precision.

  So there was light that tore at my eyes and sound that clawed at my ears, a nauseating ripple in the air caused by so much energy being unleashed in so small an area, and a clap of thunder.

  And then there was a smoldering crater in the ground where the four of them had been standing faced off against one another.

  Where the Erlking had been there was only a burned shape. Half of it was a skeleton, charred black. The other half looked like a lot of melted metal and cooked meat.

  Sleipnir lay on his side, stunned, several yards away. Beside him lay his rider, his dark cloak and hood smoldering.

  And Ethniu stood in the center of the smoking crater, her feet planted wide and confident, holding a limp, apparently unconscious Titania by the throat, the Summer Queen’s feet dangling six inches off the ground. Ethniu’s Titanic bronze skin-slash-armor had been scorched but not dented. She was breathing hard and looked unsteady, her eyes wide.

  “Pathetic,” Ethniu purred to Titania. “I don’t need the Eye of Balor to deal with a goblin with delusions of grandeur, a starved, emaciated old god, and a little girl playing at being a queen.”

  And with a casual motion, she slammed the Summer Queen’s head into the earth at her feet, leaving the rest of her limp body awkwardly sticking out.

  I stared. Just stared.

  One-Eye wasn’t moving.

  The Erlking’s skeleton had begun twitching. Nerve fibers and ligaments were beginning to regrow on the blackened bones. It was like watching stop-motion capture of creeping ivy. But it would take him hours to recover.

  Titania was down.

  Titania.

  Even Mab had been TKO’d.

  Ethniu looked around at the three fallen opponents and let out a little-girl giggle, a sound that was frightening in how hysterical it sounded.

  And her balance wobbled.

  Not a lot. But she wavered.

  She showed weakness.

  The Winter mantle in me suddenly focused on the Titan and licked its chops.

  The fight had cost her something. Though she might be powerful and well equipped and tough as hell, the Titan still had limits. And if she had limits, then she could be pushed beyond them.

  She could be beaten.

  It could be done.

  Ethni
u hadn’t even glanced at me. She paced over toward One-Eye’s fallen form, making a softly reproving clicking noise with her mouth. “I warned you, fool. Look at what the mortals have made of you. We needed their terror. Never their love.” She shook her head and leaned down, reaching out.

  One-Eye gripped an ash-hafted spear in his right hand. Flickers of blue-white electricity played over its head.

  “You are barely sustained by the faith of children,” Ethniu murmured. “While I am made stronger every time they cry out in fear in their sleep. Every time they feel a moment of dread after they turn out the light. We were never meant to be their protectors. We were meant to be what lurks in the dark.” She lifted the spear and studied it with narrowed eyes for a moment. “The mortals have become arrogant, in their well-lit world. Proud. Boastful. It is time to remind them of their insignificance.”

  She lifted the spear into the air, narrowed her eyes, and suddenly it became a blazing thunderbolt in her hands, ready to be hurled at any who might dare oppose her.

  So, naturally, of course, she turned to me. Lightning crackled overhead, seemingly eager to get started. Armies fought in the background, and the riders of the Wild Hunt screamed and blew horns, dark and horrible shadows against the lightning flickering between clouds overhead.

  And Murph was gone.

  It looked and sounded and felt like the end of the world.

  “Starting,” the Titan said, her beautiful face framed in brilliant blue-white glare and heavy shadow, “with you, little wizard. Empty night, but your breed is annoying enough to be worth killing.”

  I’d just been proximate to a divine beatdown and smiting.

  I’d just been struck by lightning.

  My snark projectors were out of alignment. But that was no reason not to try.

  Heck, every insult was essentially a different way of saying the exact same thing.

  “Yeah?” I wheezed. “Well. You suck.”

  Ethniu stared at me for a few seconds.

  Then she tilted her head back and laughed. It was . . .

  Giddy. Pure. It came right up out of her belly in a kind of brittle-sounding joy.

  It didn’t sound right. At all.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Ethniu sighed. “Me.” She shook her head. “Having a conversation with a talking cockroach. I suppose congratulations are in order, insect. I’ve actually noticed that I’m killing you. I’ll even enjoy it a little.”

  And she stepped forward and lifted the bolt of living lightning over her head.

  Chapter

  Thirty-one

  My body was still shorted out enough that I couldn’t move much. And I’d seen the kind of power that spear put out. Without the supercharged atmosphere, I couldn’t put up a defense sufficient to the task of defeating it. Maybe if I’d been able to keep her talking for a minute, I could have recovered enough to at least attempt to run away.

  But I could see it in her face and in every line of her bronzed form: She wasn’t going to be swayed or denied or distracted. She’d had her own brief moment of weakness after battling several immortals, and now she was back on task—a task she’d been planning for thousands of years.

  There wasn’t much I could do.

  That was when it was too much. Everything. The injuries. Not so much the physical ones. I had seen too much for one night.

  Lost too much.

  That was when I broke.

  When you’re in that kind of condition, your brain does weird things. I didn’t feel scared or angry or upset anymore. I felt like a bystander, a member of the audience. Once you realize your ticket has been punched, you see things differently. I could see everything that was happening around us. It didn’t really involve me any longer.

  The Winter Lady’s charge had been met by a wall of sorcery from Corb and his inner circle, and they’d stopped her and her trolls’ charge, ba-dump-bump, cold. Molly’s army’s furious strike had stalled short of cutting the Fomor’s legion in twain, simply lacking the mass it needed to finish the deadly stroke. Even as I watched, I saw Winter troops being pushed back, cut down. One of the trolls fell, its head a smoking ruin, as King Corb lowered his staff and howled triumph. A bolt of green lightning shattered upon the Winter Lady’s flank. I saw it scorch flesh to bone, saw her ribs burned black, saw her stagger a step and then turn like Juggernaut, relentless and unstoppable, and keep fighting as another troll fell, nearly crushing her.

  Winter’s momentum had stalled in the sultry summer night. And the Fomor legion, terrified and furious, smelled blood and began smashing their way into the forces of Winter, killing with wild abandon.

  The last defenders of Chicago were falling.

  And from the south, where our allies had been holding the enemy, came the long, low blare of a Jotun’s horn, sounding the attack.

  I couldn’t see, through the armies and the park and the smoke, what was happening to the south. But the Jotun horn sounded again, nearer.

  Our allies there had fallen. The second arm of the enemy force was sweeping toward us.

  And when it arrived, they would crush whatever resistance was left.

  My city was falling.

  There wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t even lift a hand to make a dramatic gesture, and I only would have needed to move one finger.

  The world was just too heavy.

  The Titan turned toward me, triumph in her gaze, and lifted the spear she’d taken from One-Eye’s fallen form.

  I’d been through a lot in my time. But I knew an ending when I saw it.

  The Titan had won. The old world, the old darkness, had come back at last. Chicago would be laid into waste and ruin.

  And I would die with it.

  I met Ethniu’s gaze, and in that moment I knew that I probably wasn’t even going to be aware of it when I died: There was no chance at all that I could soulgaze that being and keep my mind intact. I would die mad.

  Only it didn’t happen.

  And I saw a truth even more hideous.

  It didn’t take a wizard to see the Titan’s soul. It was already all around us. The sheer desire for ruin and destruction that filled her soul and had allowed her to master the Eye had been made manifest in the world. This was the world that Ethniu longed for. The terror, the death, the blood, the destruction, the senseless chaos—this was who and what she was. This madness was the fire that had fueled the Titans, that had made their destruction a necessity in the first place.

  Blood was their art. Screams were their music. Horror was their faith.

  Mortals could not stand before this.

  I watched my death coming for me and wept in sheer despair.

  I knew that it wasn’t just the actual pain. I knew it was also the dark will of the enemy, now unopposed by Mab’s battered will, and that that awful psychic pressure was running rampant with my emotions. I knew it was a lie.

  But it was becoming the truth, right in front of my eyes.

  And . . .

  And then . . .

  And then Waldo Butters stepped up.

  The little guy appeared from behind me and put himself directly between the Titan and me.

  He wasn’t an impressive figure under the best of circumstances. Standing in front of the towering Ethniu, he looked even less impressive. Even if they’d both been humans and the same height, she’d have had more muscle. Combined with everything else about her, her aura, her power, her grace, her armor, her height, her beauty, the war and ruin and mad-lit, dying city behind her . . . Butters didn’t even look like a human being. He looked more like a badly animated marionette standing next to a human being.

  He looked small.

  Dirty.

  Tired.

  Bruised.

  Frightened.

  The little guy glanced back at me, his face s
ick and pale. Then he turned to face the Titan.

  And he squared his shoulders.

  And he raised the Sword, a sudden white, pure light in that place, an unseen choir providing hushed music around it.

  In that light, Ethniu’s armor looked . . . sharper somehow, harder, more uncomfortable, more inhibitive to her movements. Her beauty seemed flawed, harsh, as if it had been a trick of the light, and in her living eye I could see nothing but a desperate, empty hunger, a void within her soul that could never be filled.

  Before that light, even the ancient terror of the Titan hesitated.

  “Begone, Titan,” Butters said. His voice was quiet, mellow, resonant. It wasn’t a human voice at all. Though the volume never lifted, it could be heard over the battle, over the thunder, over the crackle and roar of fires. “These souls are not for you. Begone to the depths of your hatred and rage. There is no world for you here any longer.”

  Ethniu’s face became a thundercloud, her lips twisting into a snarl of pure hate. “Do you dare give me orders, you lapdog, you traitor, you coward.”

  “Ethniu,” murmured that voice, and the depth of compassion in it was like a deep, quiet sea. “I only offer vision, that you may avoid suffering.”

  “You’re no more powerful than your instrument now.” Ethniu spat toward Butters, and the spittle actually began eating a hole in the ground, it was so virulent. “You chose the side of the insects. Be crushed with them.”

  She straightened, whirled the spear as if it had been a reed, and smashed at Butters with a bolt of lightning that sounded like some enormous, angrily buzzing waterfall.

  Butters screamed, in his dirty, tired, terrified, normal human voice, barely audible.

  He lifted the Sword, and again I understood, on an instinctual level, that the blade of the Sword of Faith, though made of immaterial light, was for this purpose far more solid, more unbreakable, more real than it had ever been when made of steel. Had the Sword been lifted in this purpose before, mere molecular structure would have been shattered by the forces brought to bear upon it—but now, unpolluted by the material world, the true power of the blade could be brought to bear, and in that bar of silver-white light was a galaxy of subtle color, of immovable power, of something so pure and steady and fixed that the universe itself had been built upon its foundation, and in the background my addled brain could hear the faint echoes of a Voice saying, Let there be light.