by Dante King
“Then we’ll go back through the sewers,” I said. “Lead the way.”
We turned back and hurried through the maze, keeping our eyes and ears wide open for any signs of trouble. I’d done my best to memorize the way we’d come, and since I’d always had a talent for directions and finding my way, along with all the experience I’d accrued when it came to navigating my way through crypt mazes, I was able to correctly predict every one of Yollah’s twists and turns.
“What happens to these clowns when we get into the sewers?” I asked the Lord of Light, jerking my thumb in the direction of his magic-enslaved guards. “Does your magic wear off, or do they stay like that?”
“It will wear off after a few hours, unless I recast the spell,” he answered. “I intend to keep them by my side, though, to aid us in the fight against Elandriel and the Blood God. They are, after all, elite warriors, and could be of great assistance to us in battle.”
“Who the hell said anything about you fighting alongside me in the battle, huh?” I asked coldly.
“Oh I. . . I just assumed that…” the Lord of Light stammered, a crimson blush lighting up his bright yellow cheeks.
“I’m just messing with you, Sun Boy.” I grinned at him. “Anyone who hates Elandriel and the Blood God is welcome to join us in this fight. Are you sure these holier-than-thou buffoons can be trusted, though?”
“They are completely loyal to me, unlike those who serve Elandriel,” the Lord of Light said. “If their hearts were not pure, my spell would not have worked on them. This magic I am using on them, by the way, is willing accepted by each man. It is not only advantageous to me, the wielder of the spell; it also grants each man a considerable boost in strength and speed, making him faster than a panther and stronger than three men.”
“Pfft,” I scoffed. “I’m sure one of my zombies could kick one of your golden boys’ asses.”
“We can perhaps pit the powers of Death and Light against one another in a friendly contest after we have destroyed the Blood God,” the Lord of Light said. “But for now, we must focus on—”
“What’s going on there?” a voice suddenly yelled out from behind us. “Where are you men taking those treasures? And what are those—assassins!”
We spun around and saw a guard standing at the far end of the corridor. He had just stepped out of one of the doors we had passed. Yumo-Rezu was ready. Within a second of his shouts, she had spun around, nocked an arrow to her enchanted bow, and loosed it at the guard. The potent magic arrow smashed through his gleaming breastplate, skewering his torso, but it didn’t kill him outright.
“Alarm!” he managed to roar, staggering backward and grasping feebly at the arrow as he bled out. “Raise the alarm! Raise the—”
Yumo-Rezu’s next arrow transfixed his skull and silenced him immediately, but it was too late, for his cries had been heard, and shouts of alarm were echoing through the entire maze.
“There goes the stealth plan,” I muttered. “Sun Boy, I hope those soldiers of yours are as loyal and powerful as you say they are, because we’re going to have a battle on our hands, and there are way more of them than there are of us.”
“Every one of my men is willing to sacrifice his life for me without question,” the Lord of Light replied confidently. “And others who we come across may switch sides and join us when they see that the Lord of Light lives!”
“Referring to yourself in the third person is really asinine, Sun Boy,” I said, trying to recall whether I had done so in the past. I probably had, but that didn’t mean I’d let the Lord of Light off the hook for it. “You’ll to work on that if you want to have any hope of endearing anyone in my party to you. For now, though, you’d best start cracking some skulls. Here they come!”
The sound of many heavy boots resounded through the maze. Many dozens of guards were rushing our way, and they were coming from all directions and aiming to converge here so they could attack us from all sides. I grinned and spun the Dragon Sword in my right hand, while in my left I drew on the massed power of the numerous graveyards and catacombs all across Luminescent Spires.
The first company of guards rounded the corner ahead of us, greatswords drawn and at the ready.
“You would draw weapons against your Lord and Savior, my children?” the Lord of Light asked them calmly as they skidded to a halt and stared at him—and us—in utter confusion. He raised his right hand and aimed his palm at them. Out of it blasted a torrent of blazing golden light, which was blinding in its brightness. It was not a devastating blast of intense heat, though, like the light Elyse blasted out of her mace. Instead, it caused no harm; it simply put the guards under the Lord of Light’s spell, provided their spirits were receptive to his magic.
The glow clung to the guards, crackling in a shimmering aura around them. Every last one of them lowered their weapons and bowed to him. When they looked up, I could see that their eyes were shining with a yellow glow.
“We live to serve you, holy Lord,” they all said.
“Make the motherfuckers get up off their knees and fight!” I yelled, spinning around to face our rear, for another contingent of guards had just rounded the corner there.
The new arrivals, however, would not be falling under the Lord of Light’s spell. “He’s escaped!” the head guard roared. “Kill him, for the Master no longer needs his blood! Kill them all!”
“Protect your Lord and his allies!” the Lord of Light commanded. The new guards, as well as the ones who he had bewitched in the Inner Vault, all rushed to his defense, arranging themselves in a defensive square around us.
“Your puny Light magic is no match for the might of the Blood God,” the head guard growled, his voice growing deeper and more sonorous, and echoing as if there were hundreds of replicas of him filling the entirety of the maze. I peered closely at his helm and saw that his eyes were completely red, as were the eyes of all of the other guards with him.
“This is going to be a little tougher than the guards we just dealt with,” I said grimly. “Those aren’t men we’re looking at … they’re Blood Demons.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Yumo-Rezu asked, taking aim at the head guard. “Let’s show these Blood Demons what happens to those who try to prevent the resurrection of a dragon!”
She loosed three arrows in rapid succession, and the glowing blue projectiles streaked through the air and slammed into the breastplate of the head guard, sending jolts of Cold magic ripping through his body. He gasped and staggered back, coughing and shuddering as the Cold magic froze his body solid. Yumo-Rezu smiled as she nocked a regular broadhead arrow to her bowstring; one final shot would shatter him into broken chunks of ice.
Red light, however, blazed from his eyes, and his coughs and gasps became a series of slow, mocking chuckles. The ice melted off him, and red steam rose from his armor.
“You’ll have to do a little better than that,” he snarled, yanking the arrows out of his torso and snapping them contemptuously in his steel-gauntleted hands.
“Loyal children, destroy those creatures of evil!” the Lord of Light commanded.
“Hold up,” I said. “I’m taking this one myself. Your boys and my assassins can take the rest, but this asshole is mine.”
For one tension-laden moment, our forces stared down the Blood Demons. Then both sides broke into a furious, headlong charge, racing at each other with weapons drawn and battle cries resounding through the white-walled maze.
I’d faced Blood Demons before, so I knew how much punishment they could take. The question in my mind, however, was not how I could beat this Blood Demon, but rather how quickly I could pound him into nothing but mincemeat and splattered blood. I hadn’t been nearly as powerful the last time I’d faced one of these creatures, and now, filled to the brim with power drawn from the Gray Sentinel, I wanted to see what I could do.
As I closed the distance between the Blood Demon and myself, I concentrated all of my own power and the Death power I’d drawn from
all over Luminescent into my left fist, which I cocked for a killer punch. Before the Battle of Brakith, I’d pulverized a trebuchet boulder to dust with this fist, and now, with even more power at my disposal, I wanted to see how my fist would handle a Blood Demon.
I reached him, and he took a swing at me with his greatsword, which was glowing red with Blood magic, but I slid effortlessly under the attack and countered with a vicious Death Fist uppercut. When my fist struck him, the power was unleashed. A flash of pitch-black darkness engulfed the entire passageway, driving out all light, even the glow of the Lord of Light and his troops. A tremendous shockwave rocketed through the maze, bowling everyone over and flinging them against walls or the ground. In the pitch-black darkness, I felt wetness spray across my face. When the shadows faded a few seconds later and were displaced by light, the Blood Demon I’d been fighting was gone. All that was left of him were a few twisted, half-molten lumps of steel splattered all over the surrounding floor, ceiling, and walls. A spray of red dripped off the walls and my armor. My Death Fist had hit him with such force it had vaporized him.
Everyone on both sides had stopped what they were doing to stare at me with both awe and fear.
“What are you waiting for?” I yelled. “Get on with it, kill these fucking Blood Demons!”
The Lord of Light’s troops entered the fight with their greatswords blasting out torrents of superheated light. While under his spell, they were able to wield similar powers to Elyse’s. Friya transformed into her werewolf form and tackled a Blood Demon guard to the ground, roaring like the vicious beast she was as she ripped off the foul creature’s arm. Yumo-Rezu was shooting arrows at such a furious pace that I thought her fingertips might start smoking. Her Cold enchanted projectiles pierced Blood Demons’ skulls, froze their heads solid, then shattered them into shards of blue ice before their Blood magic could counteract her Cold magic.
I raged through the demonic masses with the Dragon Sword in my right hand and my Death Fist vaporizing them with my left. With each strike of my empowered left gauntlet, the entire maze was plunged into complete darkness and knocked people over mid-fight.
Soon enough, we’d defeated all the Blood Demons, but the fight was far from over. After I’d killed the last monstrous creature, the ground started to rumble beneath our feet, then the whole maze started to violently shake.
“What’s going on?” Yumo-Rezu asked, alarmed. “It feels like a monstrous earthquake, the biggest I’ve ever felt!”
This was no earthquake, though. I could feel it in my bones, my heart, and my spirit.
“The Blood God is awakening,” I muttered. “And he knows we’re here. This is it, everyone; brace yourselves, for the greatest battle of our age is about to begin!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chunks of marble started falling from the ceiling, and huge cracks tore across the floor and walls. The shaking grew increasingly violent with each passing second, and as sturdily built as this place was, I had no doubts in my mind that it would completely collapse in a few minutes, burying us all under thousands of tons of stone and rubble.
“How far is the main entrance from here?” I asked Yollah.
“Twenty minutes, if we can run straight there and not have to fight any more guards,” he answered.
“And the secret escape tunnel?”
“Twenty-five or thirty, also best-case scenario,” he said, looking worried.
“We’re not going to make it out in time,” Yumo-Rezu murmured, and a look I’d never before seen on her came across her beautiful face: fear.
“Yes, we are.” I clenched my fists with determination. “This doesn’t end here, like this, with us dying crushed under stone like a bunch of cockroaches in a collapsing ruin.”
Just as I said this, though, a huge chunk of marble, which looked like it weighed at least a ton, dropped from the ceiling above me. It was only through my catlike reflexes and a rapid dive and roll that I avoided being flattened like a pancake. We couldn’t run; this place would be reduced to rubble in minutes. I racked my brain for a solution, and when I glanced down at my wrist, on which my faithful little Tree magic crossbow was mounted, it came to me.
What did one always see growing out of the rubble of ruined castles and temples? Trees. Their persistent roots could crack even the strongest stone over time. And what did trees need to grow big and strong? Sunlight, water, and fertile soil—with the soil usually being made that way by the rotting of dead things. There was plenty of water flowing through the sewers around us, and the Lord of Light could provide sunlight. As for me, I could draw on the energy of Death to nourish the tree’s roots. Using the power from the Gray Sentinel, I could amplify the tree’s rate of growth by ten thousandfold. It was a crazy plan, but just crazy enough that it might work.
“Check the bodies of the Blood Demons!” I ordered. “See if any are still barely alive; they just need a few breaths left in them!”
“We’re about to get crushed to death and you want to check the enemy dead?” Yumo-Rezu gasped. “Have you gone mad?”
Unlike Yumo-Rezu, the Lord of Light obeyed me immediately, ordering his men to check the corpses.
“This one’s still breathing!” one of the soldiers yelled after a few seconds, pointing to a Blood Demon who, despite having been chopped in half, still had a few ragged breaths left in him.
There was no time to waste. I took aim with the tiny crossbow and fired an enchanted bolt into what remained of the Blood Demon’s body. Normally, the foul creature would have been able to resist the Tree magic, but in his weakened state, he could not do this. Leaves, roots, and branches exploded out of the writhing demon’s corpse, and the creature’s skin turned into bark. As the Blood Demon was forcibly transformed into a living tree, I hastily explained to the Lord of Light what I intended to do. He smiled and gave me a confident nod.
“Close your eyes, everyone, lest ye be blinded by the purest and most concentrated sunlight ever seen in Prand!” he yelled.
We closed our eyes, and while he started shooting intense sunlight at the little tree, I drew on the power of Death. I was already full to brimming from when I’d pulled the power into me for the fight against the Blood Demons, from all the graveyards all over Luminescent Spires. This was the first time I would be using this power for growing something rather than destroying something, but I figured it couldn’t be that different.
While the Lord of Light blasted his pure sunlight at the sapling, I crawled over to it on the madly shaking ground, keeping my eyes closed against the blinding light. I felt around on the ground and grabbed the nearest root. As soon as my skin touched the tree, my subconscious took over. In my mind was the intention of growing the tree and of converting the Death energy to compost-like fertility. With this transfer of magical energy from myself into the growing tree, I poured my pure will, ordering the tree to grow at an impossibly rapid rate and demanding that its roots seek out water.
As I poured my energy into the tree, the root in my hands pulsed and writhed like a live viper. The tree’s instincts knew where the shortest path to water was, and the root shot out of my hands and smashed through the ground below me, going for a direct path to the mass of water running through the sewers.
It was happening. I could feel it. The tree was growing.
A force like a heftily swung club smacked me upside the head, knocking me to the ground. It was a branch, shooting out of the tree in mere seconds, growing to a size that would usually take years, decades even.
“Everyone, grab a branch and hang on tight!” I yelled. “This tree’s going to get us out of here!”
Everyone scrambled to grab branches and boughs as the combined force of my magic and the Lord of Light’s sunlight gave the tree a supernatural boost in growing power. The entire vault building crumbled around us. Walls toppled over and ceilings collapsed while wagon-sized chunks of marble and rock came crashing down. But the mighty tree was not inactive. Instead, it exploded in size, smashing up through the
collapsing ceiling and plowing through the multiple floors of the vaults. As the tree grew, it continued shooting out new boughs above us, which thickened and strengthened from finger sized shoots to branches girthier than the thickest wine barrels in mere seconds.
It was all we could do to hold on to the tree as it surged upward, smashing effortlessly through layers of stone and marble as if they were nothing. Then, finally, it broke through the roof of the vault, and we saw open sky above us.
“We made it!” Friya cried, dangling precariously from a lower branch. “You saved us, Vance!”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I said, “not by a long shot. Look at the palace and the cathedral!”
The Grand Palace and the Great Cathedral were the only two places in Luminescent Spires that were higher in elevation than the vaults, being situated at the very top of the massive hill on which the city was constructed. The citywide earthquake was shaking these two buildings—each of which was hundreds of feet tall, and over a mile wide—like saplings in a hurricane. They were crumbling and collapsing, their towers and spires cracking in half and toppling over while their walls collapsed into rubble and billowing clouds of dust.
The streets below us were a mess of sheer pandemonium as the citizens of Luminescent Spires, whose homes and businesses were also collapsing in the apocalyptic earthquake, ran screaming in panicked crowds, trampling each other in their haste to escape the widespread destruction.
The horrendous citywide earthquake wasn’t the only things they were fleeing, though. The gates of the palace were wide open, and from these gates legions of Blood Demons were marching, slaughtering all in their path in an orgy of killing and bloodlust.
“The usurper Elandriel has finally revealed his true nature to the people of Luminescent Spires.” The Lord of Light stared in horror at the mass death and destruction happening below us, all over the city.