The first sign I saw of Ari was the faint specks of glowing red eyes in the darkness.
Drencher eyes.
Unblinking, uncaring, hungry, and hypnotic.
I swam toward them as fast as I could, the glowing ax held out in front of me. As I neared, I saw that they were all gathered around a lifeless shape lying on the seafloor, among several fluttering entrails of seaweed.
It was Ari’s motionless body.
Except it wasn’t really her. She had turned to stone. Which meant she was still alive, since the spell required a lot of concentration and effort to hold it for longer than a few seconds. The Drenchers swarmed around her, waiting patiently for their meal to turn back into consumable flesh. Which would happen eventually. During our magic training sessions, the longest anybody had been able to hold this spell was three minutes and eight seconds: a record held by Doral Deepfall, an eighteen-year-old from a family known for their magical prowess. Doral was usually the best at every spell we learned.
Ari had maybe a few minutes, or perhaps even seconds, before she’d finally, unwillingly return to her normal body and be torn to shreds by the pack of Drenchers.
What’s worse, Greggdroule, the Bloodletter said, is that there’s another pack coming in. Look to your right. Now come on, let’s just get out of here while we can.
I looked to my right, and my stomach dropped at the sight of another forty-eight glowing eyes approaching steadily from the darkness.
Oh kunk, I thought.
Exactly, the Bloodletter said. Let’s go, Greggdroule! There is no time to save your friend. If we try, you will perish right along with her! I may be powerful, but I can’t stop forty-eight Drenchers all at once, and you know it.
I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.
As I stared desperately down at Ari’s motionless form, I knew she would say the same thing as my ax. The larger mission was more important than one Dwarf. Without the Bloodletter and the Rune, we had little hope of defeating the Verumque Genus. Which was more important than her single life.
Just then, Ari finally lost her grip on the spell and turned back into herself. Her eyes opened wide with panic and fear, clearly visible even as she lay helplessly on the murky ocean floor.
The Drenchers immediately swarmed over their meal with a zestful frenzy that would have made a pack of hungry sharks look lazy.
CHAPTER 42
It’s That Time in the Story Where I Ask You to Play Some Music (Yes, Really)
One single thought passed through my brain as I watched the Drenchers swarm Ari, even as she desperately slashed with her dagger, even as I knew the other pack of Drenchers was closing in on me, just a few feet away now, their hungry mouths already open.
That single thought consisted of just two words.
The Rune!
It was time to see if this thing was as powerful as Kreych had said it would be when combined with the Bloodletter.
I quickly pulled the stone from my pocket and placed it inside the small indentation at the ax’s shoulder, the place where the blade met the handle. The Corurak didn’t snap into place like a piece of plastic, but rather seemed to instantly become a part of the ax itself, merging with the intricately carved metal as the water rippled with energy all around me.
The Bloodletter’s blue glow went from intensely bright to a strobe light of pure power, a surge of energy that would have blinded anyone looking directly at it. The blast of light erupted from my hands like a shock wave, spreading so far throughout the bay that I was certain anyone camping out on top of the Golden Gate Bridge probably figured the earth had split open and the world was about to end.
The water filled with the horrified shrieks of the Drenchers as they cowered away from me, momentarily blinded or stunned.
I couldn’t even look down at the ax in my own hands, it shone so brightly.
But I didn’t need to see it to know how powerful it had just become.
I could feel it.
It coursed through me like a dam had burst in my heart. But more than that, I suddenly felt like I possessed an extra sense I’d never had before, like clairvoyance. I suddenly knew things about the world, and magic, and life and death that I could have only guessed at lying awake in bed before. It’s hard to describe, but it almost felt like the Bloodletter and I had merged, becoming a single entity. Like I had just become a different person.
Someone my enemies should fear immensely.
This is the sort of moment where, in movies, the cool song starts playing and you know the hero has finally reached his or her full potential. Maybe it’s a cheesy bombastic song from the 1980s, like “The Touch” by Stan Bush, or “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. Or maybe it’s a bone-shaking modern rock song. Or perhaps it’s a softer, beautiful, understated song to contrast with the powerful violence ripping across the screen. I guess it all depends on the sort of movie you’re envisioning.
Either way, in your head, that song should be playing right now.*
AAAAAAAIIIYYYYYYYYEEEEEEE!!!! the Bloodletter howled in my mind. Let’s go save your friend!
I didn’t need him to suggest it twice.
It’s hard to adequately describe how easy what I did next actually was. Magic now felt less like an unknown power we were all struggling to harness and get used to and more like something as natural as breathing. Danger no longer felt like something to fear, but something to laugh at. And destroying Drenchers no longer felt scary, improbable, and somber.
Now it was fun.
I swung the ax in a quick half circle, and a thin razor of blue light arced out from the blade, quickly slicing a baker’s dozen Drenchers cleanly in half where they swam. It looked almost like Elven magic, but I now knew that the two types of magic were actually more similar than different. With the Rune Bloodletter, I suddenly knew I could perform any spell I wanted.
The ax propelled me forward, tearing through the water toward Ari.
Along the way, I spun and twirled, dispatching several more Drenchers as if they weren’t even there. I cleaved another in half from the top of its head down the middle to its legs. Then two bursts of blue energy fired from the blades of the ax, vaporizing a couple more that had been pulling at Ari’s arms.
She swam toward me, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and wonder.
We clasped hands as the remaining Drenchers hesitated around us, suspended in the water, debating whether to keep going after their prey or to simply flee in terror.
I didn’t even give them the chance to make a choice.
The Bloodletter was suddenly pinwheeling out of my hand, twirling through the seawater like some kind of self-guided torpedo-boomerang-ninja-star. It did a quick arc in the water, easily taking care of the remaining Drenchers, then returned to my hand as if on a string.
WWHHOOOOOOEEEEE! the ax belted as it killed the Drenchers. And once back in my grasp, he said: Come on, Greggdroule, let’s go win a war!
CHAPTER 43
Never Tell Me the Odds
It almost scared me how easy magic had become.
Before, when I’d tried to perform a spell, it felt like I was merely hoping for the best. And my efforts were mostly successful. But then there were the times I had accidentally set my own pants on fire and whatnot. But now, with the Bloodletter and Rune united, I knew I could do any spell I wanted. Even a spell as nuanced as turning a single, specific hair on someone’s head gray and then back again, took as little effort as merely thinking it into existence.
Transporting Ari and myself back to Chicago had been almost laughably simpler than our trip getting from Russia to the San Francisco Bay, and not just because it was a much shorter distance. We still used the virtual wind tunnel spell, but this time it was more controlled, less violent, more precise, and much faster.
There were still some limitations of Dwarven magic, of course: I couldn’t create a new k
ind of energy or materialize something that wasn’t a natural part of the earth or bring a dead person back to life or anything like that. But I did now have a full understanding of how wide open those supposed “limitations” actually were.
Even now, as I stood on the roof of the Hotel Arista, just outside of Naperville, Illinois, looking out across a horizon filled with armies, monsters, weapons—certain destruction—I was confident I would survive, knowing all the new power the Rune Bloodletter would bring me. But I still felt devastated that the battle needed to occur at all, and far less certain our side would win.
The Hotel Arista had been a natural choice for a forward base of operations. It was twelve stories high and sat in a relatively undeveloped area, aside from a few clusters of housing developments and office complexes. It provided sprawling views of the region just north of Naperville. Plus, the hotel was large enough to house most of the Dwarven and Elven leadership. The armies themselves were staying in tents and RVs spread out across the fields and parking lots below. Perhaps most fitting of all, the Hotel Arista was just half a mile away from where the Verumque Genus Elves and their massive army had set up camp. They were resting, after decimating most of Aurora, parts of Naperville, and several other western suburbs on their warpath toward Chicago: Capital City for the entire Dwarven nation.
The view from the roof was quite a sight.
While the size of our allied armies was impressive, it paled when compared to that of the Verumque Genus Elves and their monsters.
To the south and east of the hotel was the entirety of the Midwestern Alliance Dwarven Army, a camp holding some 20,000 trained soldiers, including 2,000 Sentry Elite Guard special forces warriors. Joining us were several smaller Dwarven armies from across the globe, including 1,500 soldiers from Kimmy Bitterspine’s NOLA faction, 8,000 from the West Coast, another 10,000+ from East Coast factions, several thousand more from Canada, and just fewer than 5,000 from the rest of the world. We’d hoped for a lot more, as our Council was the ruling governmental body for the entire Dwarven world, but the reality was that many of the smaller factions just couldn’t get their armies here in time. Or else were simply too busy dealing with more immediate threats in their own regions. So as it stood, the fate of the civil foundations of the entire Dwarven race (millions globally), came down to an army of roughly 45,000 soldiers, along with close to 2,000 monsters and fantastical creatures that we had pacified and allied with during Monster Pacification Missions over the past several months.
To the south of the hotel sprawled a much smaller camp containing the allied Elven armies Edwin had brought with him. Though numbering a solid 17,000, plus another several hundred monsters and creatures, their army was admittedly a lot smaller than any of us had expected. Edwin had explained to our Council that the Elven kingdom was still quite fractured, with a vast majority of Elves either in hiding, on their own, or simply not willing to choose a side until they saw who prevailed between Edwin’s forces and the Verumque Genus. But, he had promised, those present would fight valiantly until the end. And I knew he was right. His people were good fighters, well trained and well equipped, even more so than our own Dwarven armies.
The collective army of 65,000 Elven and Dwarven* soldiers and monsters surrounded the Hotel Arista to the east, north, and south.
But to the west, the army of Verumque Genus Elves and their monsters dwarfed us, if you’ll forgive my pun. Literally, their army spanned the entire western horizon. An ocean of black dots, tents, wings, horns, and all manner of shapes, cries, and growls, lit up by moonlight and the residual fires of the burning wasteland that was once Aurora and parts of Naperville. The sight of it was breathtaking. And horrifying. Their forces were confirmed to contain whole legions of Orcs, masses of Goblins, hordes of Manticores, flocks of Harpies and Wyverns, several dozen full-blown Dragons of a wide variety of species, packs of Werewolves, and many, many other creatures. Plus, they had at least 15,000 Verumque Genus Elven soldiers. All in all, their forces topped 300,000. And when our military commander, Debelle Blackarmor, factored in the weighted fighting forces of monsters (for instance: one Manticore equaled 6 trained Dwarves), she said their forces were actually equivalent to a Dwarven army of over 1,000,000.
Those were our odds: 1,000,000 to 65,000.
We weren’t simply outnumbered; we were facing near certain defeat, at least on paper. But we had no choice. Standing aside and fleeing, allowing them to devastate and destroy a city containing close to 8,000,000 hapless Humans, Dwarves, and Elves was not an option. Besides, none of the Dwarven commanders or Council seemed to fully understand the incalculable power of the Bloodletter now that it had been reunited with the Corurak, even after I’d tried to explain it to them. Nor did they understand the powers the Sword of Anduril would bring Edwin. None of us did, for that matter.
But the point is: with those two weapons on our side, anything was possible.
The prophet Kreych had said as much.
The Verumque Genus were expected to attack in just a few hours, at the peak of the full moon, when their three divisions of Werewolves would fully transform, and their Moonwraiths and other Specters would be at full power.
So I decided to use that time to go back downstairs into the hotel and say my goodbyes, should we succumb to the odds in the end.
CHAPTER 44
Non-Goodbye Goodbyes
Glam was in her room with her parents.
All of us who’d gone on the mission to find the amulet had been appointed a guest room inside the Hotel Arista with our families. The rest of the rooms housed nearly half of our Council members, high-ranking Sentry officers, and Regional Dwarven Committee officials representing the visiting armies. The other half of our Council—along with Dwarves not trained in combat—were back in Chicago, in the Underground, hoping for the best.
But the vast majority of Dwarves in Chicagoland had received at least some combat training, and so were here, ready to defend the city, camped outside along with the other regular soldiers, and the full force of the Sentry. It was all hands on deck. No holding back. In fact, just a single squad of twelve Sentry had been left behind to guard the Underground.
Glam smiled when she saw me at her hotel door.
“Ari told me you and the Bloodletter are like . . . well, pretty fierce now,” she said. “I’m a little jealous.”
“Well, the good news is you don’t need an ancient enchanted weapon and powerful Rune to be fierce.”
Her smile widened and she shrugged. “So what brings you to our room at the dawn of battle?”
“Nothing specific, just—uh—you know . . .” I stammered, struggling to find a nonmorbid way to explain that I was potentially saying goodbye forever. “Doing the rounds . . .”
“In case we all die tonight, you mean?”
“Well, umm . . .”
Glam laughed.
“We all gotta die someday, Greg,” she said. “I’d rather it be defending our city, defending the moral high ground, fighting for innocents, than sick in bed someday. Or in some pointless car accident, not that that’s really possible anymore, but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said, surprised by how much her point of view comforted me. “I suppose you’re probably just excited to finally smash some Elves?”
Her smile slowly faded.
“I wish that were true,” she said. “You know I like smashing stuff. And I don’t particularly like Elves. But we have been through a lot with your friend Edwin and his people. And I guess, well, I can see that they’re not so bad. I mean, I’ll still never love them, but I also don’t really want to kill them or anything like that. Plus, smashing things is more fun when your whole world isn’t on the line.”
I nodded solemnly, not wanting to leave already, but also knowing I had limited time to speak to a lot of people.
“Well, thank you for welcoming me as your friend all those months ago,”
I said, my throat tightening. “And if this is . . .”
“It’s not,” Glam said so firmly it made me believe her. “I will talk to you on the other side, after the battle is over and we’ve won.”
I nodded again.
“See you then, buttercup,” she said with a smile.
* * *
Eagan greeted me with a huge bear hug.
It was the first time I’d seen him since Ari and I had returned to Chicago. Which meant it was also the first time we’d seen each other since I departed for Russia on the SVRB Powerham.
“You did wonderfully, Greg,” Eagan said, inviting me into his room. “I know we didn’t get the amulet, but the Council is at least relieved that nobody did. Or ever can.”
“Thanks,” I said, in spite of still feeling as if our mission had ultimately been a failure.
He sat down in a chair next to the desk as I sat on the end of the bed. I noticed his combat armor and weapons lying on the floor near the closet.
“Is that just a precaution?” I asked, pointing at the gear. “Or are you joining the battle?”
“I can’t just stand back and watch everyone else fight the battle for me,” he said.
“But I thought the Council was barred from taking part in the fighting. To preserve the civil structure and everything.”
Eagan nodded slowly and then tilted his head in a half shrug.
“Plans have changed,” he said. “Once we finally saw the full fighting force we’re facing tonight with our own eyes, anyone with combat experience or training was ordered into action. Council members, Elders, everyone. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.”
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