“Get settled in, Ezzie,” Kristafrost said. “We’ll observe the instrumentation tonight, and then start first thing in the morning.”
The submerged base was exactly as Eszhira remembered it. The interior of the spherical pod walls was also metal, creating an additional skin with insulation between the inner and outer walls. They were painted sea-foam green, and maroon seams ran up the sides from ceiling to floor, making her feel as if she was in a giant, sectioned citrus fruit. Circular windows allowed her to see out into the thick green water outside, and every once in a while, curious fish looked in at her.
The base had been designed to accommodate more than one crew. There were six pods in all, three of them purposed as sleeping quarters. For gnomes. The built-in bunk was half the size she needed.
Yes, it was exactly as she remembered from her last time here—fitful nights trying to find a comfortable sleeping position when the bed was merely the length of her head to her waist. She had forgotten that. She should have brought a long bedroll to roll out and provide some cushion between her and the cold metal floor.
She laid out her gear. For their daily runs, they had brought smaller skinsuits of finely woven cloth. It would breathe more but dry quickly from the water. It completely covered her body and shoulders from neck to pelvis, but had neither sleeves nor legs. They would pack their cloaks and overgarments in watertight leather pouches and rise quickly to the surface with the ankle swim fins. Once reaching the surface, they would stow the swim fins and don their garb to move about the city.
Eszhira realized they had never thought to learn whether vampires could swim. If they were discovered, the sea might not prove as easy an escape as they were planning.
“Ezzie!” Kristafrost shouted from across the base, her voice echoing through the tubes. The gray seelie woman crawled through the glass tube to the central pod chamber.
“Look!” the gnome said in excitement, pointing at the control panel. The walls in this room were covered in dials, buttons, and lights. Most of them monitored the status of the base. Some dials weren’t clearly marked other than a red zone with the word “evacuate.” Past the “evacuate” state was a larger area labeled “panic.” Kristafrost had told her that if a needle ever went to “panic,” they were pretty much done for. Thankfully, these were not the dials at which the gnome pointed. Kristafrost focused on a different set of dials and knobs, all on a panel marked “Artalon’s Status.”
“What?” Eszhira asked. She saw the needles swaying hard to the right, past the hatch mark that read “unusual” to the mark that indicated “abnormally high.”
“The chronometers are off the chart!”
“The… what? The clocks?” There were a number of clocks ticking throughout the room, each embedded at different points in the panels, sometimes in their corners or in seams between functional controls. She knew that the clocks served no greater purpose than to tell time, but gnomes found them pretty. Encrusting functional clocks on nearly everything was a gnomish aesthetic. They derived comfort from large clusters of timepieces all tuned to precisely the exact time, second hands clicking in perfect synchronization. It soothed them the same way a crackling hearth fire soothed humans and dwarves.
“No!” Kristafrost looked at her strangely. “Oh. You would think that, wouldn’t you? No. Chronometers measure chronometric events—fluctuations in the element of Time. Like time magic. I brought them on my last deployment to Artalon. One of my tasks was to monitor the flow of Time—we needed to account for the long-term effects on Artalon from Aaron’s rule, and part of that was to monitor the effects of Valkrage. He was Eldrikura’s avatar, and she was the Archdragon of Time.”
“So what does it mean?” Eszhira asked.
“It means,” Kristafrost declared, raising her finger dramatically into the air. “We’re about to have a chronometric event!”
“What does that mean?”
Kristafrost lowered her hand, dejected at the lack of response. “I don’t know, exactly. I should have thought about this. Just because Valkrage died… you never know when a Time wizard’s work is truly done. He could have sent so much into the future that we could be feeling his effects for… well, who knows? One thing I do know, something is happening right now.”
Eszhira thought about the last time she had seen Valkrage’s magic. He had destroyed half a dozen Artalonian towers, killing both their inhabitants and those on the streets around them.
“We should be careful—”
“Grab your gear,” Kristafrost ignored her. “Valkrage could still be alive. We’re going to investigate!”
Eszhira moaned inside. She knew the gnome was going to say just that.
* * *
The sidhe Archmage gurgled blood and fell back under the seelie huntsman’s assault. The purple of the Violet Dragon faded from his eyes completely. All that remained in his gaze was the brown of Valkrage’s fading mortality as he lay in the burnt spherical crater in the throne’s seat.
“You should have cut my throat,” he gave one last gasping laugh and with his final strength, stretched out his hand and touched Tiberan’s face, uttering a single word of magic.
Time slowed down around the two of them…
Then Valkrage’s eyes shone with bright purple light again, illuminating one last moment of clarity. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “There’s no Time left for me… I pass my seal to you—”
…and then time returned to its normal flow and Valkrage’s madness returned.
A crackle of purple light enveloped the sidhe in a loud thunderclap…
…and then Tiberan fell back upon the hard floor. He leaped to his feet, but he stood alone in the throne room. Valkrage was gone. His companions were gone. The late afternoon light outside was dimming towards dusk, where just before it had been morning. The burnt spherical hole in the throne where the mad wizard’s body had lain was now covered with lodged bits of bone.
He returned his sidhe bow to the sheath on his back and walked out to the balcony. He had to confirm it wasn’t a wizard’s trick, that he hadn’t been translocated somewhere halfway across the world. He saw the skyline of Artalon extending a half-mile in every direction, the length of the tower’s height in which he stood.
No, he was definitely in Artalon, still in the throne room of God Spire. He examined the room again. Thick layers of dust scattered from his footsteps. Bird droppings lined the entryway from the balcony to the interior, and spiderwebs spanned corners in the ceilings.
Tiberan clenched his fists in anger as comprehension flashed through his mind.
The Archdragon of Time! he thought, his mind echoing in horror. How long has it been? How far forward did you throw me?
He went out to the balcony again and looked below. He saw nothing but birds around the towers. No movement in neighboring balconies or the streets. The city had been deserted.
Aradma, where are you? How long was I gone? Are you still alive?
He took a moment to focus inward and reached out with his senses as far as he could. Other than birds, rodents, and insects, there was no animal life around him. No mortals walked the nearby tower tops, but the streets below were out of his range.
Through his link to Ghost, he felt a faint presence and acknowledgement. Ghost was very far away.
He couldn’t cast his senses to cover the expanse of the entire town. He would have to descend and walk through the streets to be sure. If he felt his connection to Ghost, that was at least something. It meant he hadn’t been thrown centuries into the future.
He had no idea where Aradma might be, but she clearly wasn’t in the city.
He walked out of the throne room towards the tower’s central stairwell and stopped at the threshold. There were other footsteps in the hallway dust. Not many, but they were definitely there, and recent. There was someone in the city, in this tower, but where were they? Why couldn’t he sense them?
He suddenly felt uneasy about being in God Spire. His instincts told him to escap
e its halls, though he couldn’t rationally identify why. The walls themselves felt alive with a malevolent force that was not yet aware of his presence. It slept, twisting around the periphery of his senses like so many serpents. He heeded his impulses and hurried down the stairs.
The last light of the day still glimmered in the sky, as if desperately clinging to life. He found the front gate to God Spire hanging wide open. The streets outside were just as empty as they had looked from above.
Grass and bushes had overtaken the streets, roots, and soil splitting cobblestone and brick. The towers destroyed by Valkrage’s final madness remained shattered, open husks, mocking him with their broken glass. Destruction had endured but life had not.
What happened here?
Skeletal remains dotted the streets. He started to think that whatever final spell Valkrage had cast to banish Tiberan to the future must have also destroyed all life in the city. How else was it that all these years later, bodies still lay scattered from Valkrage’s cleansing of Artalon?
Aradma is dead.
That thought froze him for a moment.
No. Ghost is alive.
He breathed again. Ghost’s survival didn’t guarantee Aradma’s, but at least it meant that not all of his companions had perished.
Three yards from him, a skull lay partially covered by grass. Little flowers grew up through its eye sockets where its pupils had been. Nature would reclaim this city.
Civilization will fall and be swallowed up by Ahmbren once more. Life will endure. Primitive, unthinking life.
That same malevolent feeling returned. The skull seemed to reflect the evil intent of the land around him. It knew him, somehow. It waited… waited until nightfall. Something ancient and evil stirred in the towers of Artalon, something bent against mortalkind and all the powers of civilization, seeking the ruin of intelligent life in all its forms. Something that hated civilization more deeply and for much longer than the Vemnai’s conception of Rin. The unstructured desire to consume. The unwavering hatred of all things that build and create.
My mind is playing tricks. Tiberan hurried forward, wanting to get out of the city as quickly as possible. He checked his belt and confirmed his sidhe daggers still rested at the ready in their sheaths.
What did Valkrage mean? What ‘seal’? But he had no answers.
The sun made its final retreat, ceding the night to the stars.
As Tiberan hurried to the west gate, a strange, smoky mist grew from within the towers. It ebbed and rolled at windows and doorways, thick fingers of vapor escaping into the air.
At Artalon’s threshold, where the old gnomish city ended and the newer suburbs began, the open guard tower roiled with mist inside. The mist didn’t leave the tower, but it bulged and pulsed like some sort of gaseous membrane. Tiberan was loath to draw any closer, but to escape the city he had to move past it.
An old man stepped out of the mist, appearing disoriented. His clothing was thin and worn in patches, with sleeves whose stitches had loosened over time. At first, he didn’t see Tiberan as he walked out of the tower to stand underneath the open gate’s archway. He stared dumbly ahead at the door to the opposite guard tower.
Tiberan tensed. He was looking straight at this man, but he felt no life within him. The hairs on his neck stood. How many other such creatures moved inside the surrounding buildings, with him none the wiser, for they did not register in his awareness of life?
The old man slowly turned his head. His hair was thick and white, spreading wildly in all directions. He stared dumbly at the elf. Tiberan looked closer and saw he wasn’t just old. He was desiccated, as if his skin had dried and stretched over dead bones, but not been permitted to decompose. Folded wrinkles sunk into his cheeks, and his lips pressed together to form a border between grooved lines running from chin to nose.
His eyes shone with intelligence that seemed to awaken. The man sniffed the air, and then his lips stretched wide into an inhuman grin. Two serpentine fangs extended from his open mouth, and the man hissed, “ssseeeelllliiieeeee…”
The man stepped forward, and then was on Tiberan with such startling speed that the elf had no time to react. He fell back and rolled by instinct when he hit the ground, tucking his legs and kicking against the man’s chest as he tumbled. The man flew over the elf, his momentum carrying him forward. Tiberan sprang to his feet. He already felt the man’s strength and knew he couldn’t meet him head on.
The man whirled, and then dissolved into mist.
The mist! The mist is them!
The column of serpentine smoke rushed and surrounded Tiberan. It re-solidified. Tiberan whirled and sliced its throat with his daggers.
The desiccated man staggered back but did not fall. Thick blood seeped down his neck. Tiberan sheathed his blades, and then, in one swift movement, drew his bow, nocked an arrow, and sent a wooden shaft through the thing’s heart.
The man’s eyes widened. He clutched the arrow and fell back, lying motionless on the ground.
Tiberan nocked another arrow, but the man did not move. He came to examine the dead body. The man’s eyes stared up at him with a gaze that glinted with orange light.
Tiberan knelt down beside him.
“How do I kill you?” he asked aloud. “How do I kill that which is already dead?”
He drew his daggers again. Their sidhe blades were just as sharp as the day they had been made millennia ago, preserved by elven magic. He continued the cut he had made to the neck, and the blades slid easily through the flesh until they hit the neck bone. Tiberan grabbed the head’s wild thatch of white hair and sliced deep with the other hand, separating ligaments and cartilage between the vertebrae. The head rolled away, and finally the light in the dead thing’s eyes faded. The dead flesh dissolved into dissipating mist, leaving only the bones behind. The thatch of hair disintegrated, and the dry skull fell to the ground with a hollow thud.
Fog belched from open doors and windows onto the streets.
Tiberan froze in place and faded from light’s view. The faerie heritage of his people allowed him to step halfway out of phase with the world, keeping him invisible so long as he didn’t move.
The mists gathered, and then the streets were filled with scores of the desiccated people shambling about.
They passed near him and slowed. They hissed and their jaws opened wide. Fangs extended, and he could see the glimmerings of venom collect in eager drops on their tips. They stopped, unmoving, reacting to his presence but not knowing where to turn. They sniffed as they shambled aimlessly about him.
My scent. They know I’m here.
A woman stopped in front of him. He stood still at her left side. Her profile formed a shadow against the starlit reflections in the towers’ copper and glass walls. The towers at the city’s edge were short, only three levels tall, save for the higher pairs of guard towers around each gate on the city wall.
He felt something. The sudden presence of life at the edge of his awareness startled him so that he nearly moved and lost the protection of his invisibility. Two life forms moved slowly towards him. As they drew closer, their presence became clearer in his mind. Two living women. One seelie and one gnome. They approached from behind.
The starving dead clustered around him and stopped without touching him. He saw the lines of their faces, stupidly staring through him. Their eyes glowed, and their mouths contorted until they were wide open, lined by folds of wrinkled, dry flesh. Their fangs all fully extended, over two inches in length, and they softly hissed.
He was trapped. There were too many of them. He knew he couldn’t afford to move.
35 - The Reckoning
Eszhira followed swiftly behind Kristafrost. She held herself out of phase with the world just enough to maintain her invisibility. She had disciplined herself and achieved mastery beyond the other firstborn seelie, able to hold this state even while she moved. The gnomes had told her this was because of how she was made—her race was, quite literally, the torn fragment
s of another plane of existence. They were the Otherworld, held together and given life by the Green Dragon’s spirit, solidified and made flesh when their light fell to Ahmbren. Their minds were crystalized from pieces of the dead Fae and the Dragon, but their bodies were spun from the fabric that had made the Otherworld itself. Becoming unseen was a matter of her body remembering, if only for a moment, what it had been in the land of light and song.
The two of them had surfaced outside the docks just before nightfall, donning their cloaks and slipping through the city. Kristafrost had a wrist chronometer that she followed. “It came from the top of God Spire,” she whispered.
Kristafrost did not share Eszhira’s natural ability to move unseen, no matter how quiet and sneaky gnomes could be. Instead, she wore a magical ring of invisibility, enchanted by the gnomish wizards of Cloudmoore and provided to their operatives. Her ring granted her true invisibility, bending light around her so as to make her unseeable, as opposed to Eszhira’s ability to shift out of phase with the world. The effect was the same. When the light elf was out of phase, however, she could see Kristafrost’s faint outline. The gnome couldn’t see her, but at least Eszhira could follow her lead.
The city was dead. Eszhira noted the dried bones from years past. She wondered how many of them were simply left there from Valkrage’s massacre. As the sun went down, the mists rose. She knew Kristafrost would include that detail in her report. The gnomes had left Artalon unwatched as the plague spread, but they were keen to resume their study. Artalon had been their construction originally. There would be a time when they reclaimed it. As of yet, no one had seen the heart of the contagion, but they had often speculated as to what the fate would be if vampires took the world and killed off their mortal food supply. Artalon, where it had all started, now showed vampirism’s ultimate ends.
The mists flowed up the street ahead of them, and Kristafrost followed past God Spire. “The chronometric residue has moved,” she whispered. “Whatever it was has left the tower. The mists follow its trail.”
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 78