by Dante King
Cowering before me like some starving beggar on the street was a figure whose face was known by every citizen of Prand.
The pathetic, emaciated prisoner at my feet was none other than the Lord of Light.
“Help me,” he wheezed. “Please … help me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The emaciated being trembling before me looked nothing like the regal god depicted in so many paintings and statues, at least not in this state, but there was no mistaking the fact that this was him. In these artistic renditions, his skin was always yellow; not the fleshy yellow tone of Yengish people, but rather an unnaturally bright, vibrant yellow, like a sunflower or a ripe banana. Now, his flesh was bone-white. The paintings showed his eyes as pure white, without irises or pupils, and were usually illustrated as shining out beams of light, or at least glowing. Now, however, they didn’t even have a hint of a dim sparkle to them. He was always painted or sculpted as a powerful, muscular figure, the epitome of manliness and masculinity, but he was so skinny my undead rat probably could have lifted him up and carried him.
Even though I knew it was him, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “You are the Lord of Light, right?”
“I am,” he wheezed, barely able to utter the words.
It didn’t take long for my disbelief to turn to righteous wrath. “What the hell are you doing down here?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be the most powerful god who ever lived, but I find you locked away in one of Elandriel’s secret dungeons, looking like a crazed beggar dying in some tavern back alley?”
“Elandriel,” he coughed, struggling to raise his head to speak. “That … viper. He tricked … me. Fooled … everyone.”
I peered closer at the Lord of Light’s body and saw scars all over him. They were all the same size and had obviously been made by the same instrument each time. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what had been going on here.
“Fuck, Elandriel’s been slowly draining you of your blood, hasn’t he?”
“Y-yes,” he gasped. Then his eyes rolled back in his sockets, and he flopped into a heap on the urine-soaked stone, rattling out a weak breath.
The Lord of Light was dying in a puddle of his own filth in front of me. Part of me was happy to let it happen; so much evil had been done in this god’s name. So many people had been persecuted, driven from their homes, and died because of the Church of Light. He had also had a hand in the Purge, a holy crusade which had killed most of the other gods from this world.
As much as he deserved death, I needed his crystalized tear to destroy the Blood Pyramid, and if he died, that artefact would lose a lot of its power—maybe so much that it would no longer be able to destroy the Blood Pyramid completely. I looked down at him, and anger still fizzed and hissed inside me, but I knew what I had to do.
“You’re lucky I have a Blood God and his pyramid to destroy, asshole,” I muttered.
Then I closed my eyes and rocketed my spirit across time and space to the Black Plane. I’d added many thousands of souls to the Gray Sentinel during the Battle of Brakith, and the tree was bursting at the seams with raw power.
I walked up to the Gray Sentinel, slammed Grave Oath into the trunk, and sucked out power like a tick gorging itself on blood. When I’d drawn enough power from the souls stored in the tree, I yanked Grave Oath out and blasted my spirit back into my body. Then, with the enchanted dagger in my hand, I knelt down next to the dying god.
“I’ll save your life, Lord of Light,” I said. “On one condition.”
“N-name it,” he wheezed.
“When this is all over, you make amends to every person in Prand for allowing your church to run rampant, for allowing yourself to be duped by Elandriel, and for all the persecution worshipers of other gods have suffered in your name over the centuries. And if you don’t, I’m going to shove this dagger through your eyeball and add your soul to my growing collection. Got it?”
“I will … do this. I … swear it.”
“You’d better be true to your word, Lord of Light,” I said, “because if you’re not, you’ll have me to deal with. You’ll wish you were back here, getting your blood sucked out by Elandriel.”
“I swear … I will do … as you have asked.”
“I’m holding you to that. All right, take my dagger.” I flipped Grave Oath in my hand, holding the blade and offering him the handle.
He was so weak that he needed both hands just to hold the dagger, and even then, he could barely keep a grip on it. While he was doing his best to hold it steady, I pressed my palm onto the point of the dagger, using just enough pressure so that the tip punctured my skin.
As soon as the enchanted blade entered my flesh, I felt its magic sucking the energy out of me. So, this was what my enemies felt like in the last few moments of their lives… I had filled myself with power from the Gray Sentinel, but even so, I was wholly unprepared for how intensely draining this process would be. I felt as if someone had just lopped off all my limbs simultaneously, and that my lifeblood was gushing out of me in gallons.
The Lord of Light, meanwhile, was transforming before my eyes. In mere seconds, his pallid skin became vibrant in hue, and his dull eyes started to glow, and then shine, like twin portals to the sun. His skeletal figure began to swell, and his muscles, wasted away to almost nothing, exploded with new volume and strength. After a few seconds, he was completely transformed, but I could feel my own power ebbing to a dangerously low level, and a feeling of intense weakness, verging on paralysis, started to choke me in its suffocating grip.
“That’s enough, sun boy,” I rasped, snatching the dagger out of his hands before he could suck too much of my power out of me.
Before he could say anything or react, I closed my eyes and zipped my spirit over to the Black Plane. I staggered over to the Gray Sentinel, plunged Grave Oath into it, and refilled myself with fresh strength from the tree. After a while, I felt like a million gold coins again, so I left the Black Plane and returned to the physical present.
The assassins and my women had finished off the guards, and were all standing outside the cell, staring in amazement at what—or, rather, who—was in it. To his credit, the Lord of Light, who was now restored to his former strength, got down on his knees to bow before me.
“God of Death,” he said, “you have given me life, and for this gift I will forever be in your debt. You are my liege, and I bow humbly before you. What strength and powers are left in me are at your disposal.”
“Remember the promise you made to me,” I said. “When it’s all over, you owe this entire continent one huge apology.”
“I know this.” He shook his head sadly. “I have let all of humanity down. Along with the divine cohort. The sins I’ve committed to both mortals and immortals weigh heavily upon me. Elandriel only became so powerful because of my negligence.”
“He smells disgusting,” Yumo-Rezu whispered to me, looking at the Lord of Light with an expression of revulsion on her face.
“And he looks like even more of a pompous ass than I imagined he would,” Friya whispered into my other ear, regarding the Lord of Light with an expression of disgust equal in intensity to Yumo-Rezu’s.
The assassins simply stared at him with naked contempt in their eyes. The Church of Light hated the Assassins’ Guild. The former had fought many campaigns to try to exterminate the latter.
“We should kill this pathetic creature,” Rhuz snarled. “So many of our brethren have been tortured to death in his name.”
“I agree.” Yollah curled his fingers tightly around the handle of his dagger. “If anyone deserves death, it’s this snake.”
“Believe me, I’d love to slam Grave Oath into his neck and give him the justice he so sorely deserves,” I said to them, “but we need him to beat the Blood God. And just think how satisfying it’ll be to watch him get on his knees and grovel before all the people of Prand.”
“I will kiss the feet of beggars and gutter whores, if I must,” the L
ord of Light said. “I will do whatever it takes to make amends for my sins.”
“You’ll do all of that, and more, I promise you that,” I said before I turned to address everyone else. “But that can wait; right now, we have to access the Inner Vaults and get our hands on the Dragon Heart and this asshole’s magic tear. Let’s move.”
We left the dungeon chamber, moving with stealth and silence. Because there was ample evidence of a massacre there, I resurrected the guards who hadn’t been chopped to pieces and ordered them to barricade the door from the inside with their bodies, so nobody could get in. After that, Yollah led us deeper into the maze.
This place was maddening in its complexity, far larger than any crypt I’d robbed. I could now see why it took new guards months to simply memorize routes through this place. I asked the Lord of Light if he knew his way around, but this section of his domain was as unfamiliar to him as it was to me. It seemed that, in his haughtiness, he never entered the subterranean depths of his spires. Without Yollah’s crisp memory of the place and all of its twists and turns, it wouldn’t have taken us very long to get hopelessly lost. We’d have been able to fight our way out, but that could have taken hours, if not days.
Finally, after about an hour of endless twists and turns around identical looking corners, past walls and doors that were all exact replicas of each other, Yollah paused at a corner and held up a hand to stop us.
“The entrance to the inner vaults is around this corner,” he whispered. “But it’ll be heavily guarded. From this point on, stealth is out the window. It’s going to be a fight for our lives. No matter how swiftly and viciously we attack, at least one guard will raise the alarm before we kill them all. There’s a system of bells throughout this maze, and all it’ll take is one tug on the rope to get them all ringing. And every guard knows that when those bells ring, it’s a signal that the Inner Vault has been breached.”
“Bring ‘em on,” I said, drawing Grave Oath. “Consecrated Knights, elite guards, I’ll cut every last one of them down.”
The Lord of Light stepped forward. “Wait, God of Death,” he said. “I may be able to get in without raising the alarm.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” I asked.
“My powers are restored, thanks to you. Most of these guards have no idea I had been imprisoned in this place, and they are, I presume, still dedicated to serving and worshiping me. Remember, the treasures in the Inner Vault are all technically my property, not Elandriel’s. I should be able to simply walk in, take what I wish, and walk out, and all the while the guards will kneel before me.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then we will fight,” he said. “But please, allow me to attempt this way first.”
“Go ahead, but I’m gonna be pissed off if you get yourself killed before you get to make that apology to the people of Prand,” I said. “If that happens, I’ll resurrect your sorry ass and make you do it as a zombie, just so you know.”
“I understand. May I try my way?”
“You shouldn’t trust him.” Yumo-Rezu stared at the Lord of Light with a venomous mixture of contempt and hatred in her eyes. “After the role he played in the Purge, he long ago proved that he’s nothing but a two-faced liar who cares about nothing but his own power. If you let him go, Vance, he’ll just turn around and command those guards to attack us, and he’ll fight alongside them against us.”
“I only knew about the Purge after it happened, Dragon Goddess,” the Lord of Light said. “I admit that my negligence and self-absorbed detachment from reality was a major contributing factor to what happened, but I never ordered the deaths of any gods, I swear this to you.”
“Liar,” she spat. “Filthy, fork-tongued liar! Most of the old gods are dead because of you and your genocidal Church of Light!”
“It was never my intention that my followers would become so … fanatical,” he said, sighing sadly. “All I wanted was to bring light into a dark world. All of this,” he continued, sweeping his arms around him, “just … happened. And yes, I was too absorbed in studying the mysteries of the universe to know or care what was being done in my name, but I never desired this. Please, allow me to make amends for what has happened because of me.”
I hated this glowing chump as much as Yumo-Rezu did, but, regardless of my feelings about him, he had a major role to play in my quest. Still, I considered myself a good judge of character, and I had never been betrayed by someone without first predicting their betrayal. And, for all his faults, I could discern the honesty in the Lord of Light’s words. I knew, on a deep, instinctual level, that I could trust him.
“Go and do your thing,” I said, holding up my hand to pre-emptively silence Yumo-Rezu, who looked as if she was about to explode with unbridled fury. “But I promise you this, Lord of Light, if you betray or backstab us, your death at my hands will be more agonizing than anything Elandriel or the Blood God could subject you to.”
“I will not betray you, God of Death.”
He drew in a deep breath and stepped around the corner, while we waited with bated breath, with our weapons in our hands, ready to explode into action at a moment’s notice. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen; part of me felt quite certain that the guards did know that the Lord of Light was a prisoner and an enemy, and this side of me was sure that the sounds of a fight breaking out would erupt at any second. Another part of me, though, felt that he was right, and that they would bow down before him. The next few seconds would tell me which of these theories was correct.
A light suddenly blasted out from the corner around which the Lord of Light had just walked. It was a warm, soothing light, like bright sunlight on a clear day, and it was so dazzling that everyone but me had to turn their faces from it and shield their eyes. From around the corner, instead of shouts of anger and cries of alarm and the warning bell ringing, there came gasps of disbelief and murmurs of wonder.
“Whatever he’s doing over there is working,” I said to the others, who were still shielding their eyes against the dazzling glow. “Hold tight, and we might be able to walk out of here with the two most valuable objects in this building without Elandriel knowing a single thing about it.”
We heard the sound of a door being opened and excited voices chattering. The light continued to shine with brilliant intensity, and after a few minutes, it grew even brighter, so much so that even I had to turn away. Then, just as it started to grow impossibly bright, it abruptly shut off, and the Lord of Light walked around the corner … followed by the entire company of guards.
“You lying piece of shit,” I snarled, preparing to lunge at him with the Dragon Sword. It seemed this was the one occasion where my judge of character had been false.
“God of Death, stay your blade, please,” he said calmly. “They are under my spell; they do not know that you are there, and they cannot even see you. All they know now is my light, and with my light, I can command them to do whatever I say.”
I cautiously lowered the sword, then took a closer look at the guards. Through the eye-slits in their full-face helms, I could see that their eyes were shining with a soft yellow glow. They reminded me of my zombies, except, of course, that the guards were still breathing, and living blood still flowed through their veins.
Yumo-Rezu had been ready to unleash a volley of glowing blue arrows on the guards, but when she saw what they were dragging behind them, she lowered her bow, and her jaw dropped open. The guards were pulling an ornate golden carriage, and on it was an enormous glass jar the size of a cave troll. And inside the jar, suspended in embalming fluid, weas the biggest heart I’d ever seen.
“The Dragon Heart,” Yumo-Rezu murmured, tears of joy glistening in her eyes. She almost broke down and started weeping, but she managed to restrain herself.
Friya looked on in wonder, her eyes sparkling. I didn’t need to read minds to know what she was thinking. With this Dragon Heart, she was that much closer to fulfilling her dream of transforming into a drago
n.
In the Lord of Light’s hands was a more familiar object, for I’d seen and used one of them before: a crystalized tear, glowing gently.
“Can’t you just cry more of those things out?” Rhuz asked scornfully. “It’s just a tear turned to crystal.”
“I cannot,” the Lord of Light answered. “This tear is not something I wept out; it is the essence of a falling star from the heavens. I caught this one at the height of my powers. I called it my tear because of the shape the crystalized power took, but I cannot produce this kind of magic; only the stars can. And a star like this one only falls from the heavens once every thousand years … and, what is more, my powers will never reach the levels they were at again. I burned most of them out, and even with your generous assistance, God of Death, they can never be fully restored.”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” I said. “We’ve got what we came for, and now we need to get the hell out of here and put these treasures to use. Elandriel is preparing for the final battle, I’m sure of it, but he doesn’t know that it’s going to start a lot earlier than he’d hoped for. That fool thinks I’m still flying from Brakith with the harpies and the rest of my party. The longer we can retain this element of surprise, the more of an advantage we’ll have; we’ll be able to force him into battle before he’s fully prepared.”
“We will have to make our exit from the vaults with caution,” the Lord of Light said. “While I was able to bring these guards under my spell, it will not be the case with all the guards we encounter. Those who have abandoned their faith in me and chosen to worship the Blood God will be immune to my powers, and they will certainly raise the alarm if they see us.”
I stroked the blade of the Dragon Sword. “Not if I separate their heads from their shoulders before they utter a single word, they won’t.”
“We should go back through the secret tunnel into the sewers to avoid detection,” Yollah said. “If we move fast and deal with any guards we come across even faster, we should make it out without them raising the alarm or realizing that the Inner Vaults have been robbed until it’s far too late.”