by Jason Alan
Now Drinwor felt immortal.
The soul-fire surged through him for another few seconds, then subsided…for now.
It was done.
The One Sword was resurrected.
Drinwor dropped to the floor, his eyes darkening back to blue. The power that had passed through him settled, but was still there, a reservoir of strength seated in his soul, connecting him to the sword. And though one desire was gone, another, stronger one began to brew…
The song of the spirit elves ceased.
The fire subsided.
The Hall of Voices was gone.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the universe had returned to white. Drinwor once again stood upon the little cloud. The colored stars were all around, and below he could see countless thousands of the golden spheres arising. They shot up all around him, placing him in the center of a great geyser of streaming gold.
ZeerZeeOzz reappeared, his barely discernible figure hovering amongst the soaring spheres. His voice came as it had when Drinwor had first heard it—a mysterious echo from some indeterminable place. It said: “Go, Drinwor Fang, go and vanquish all the dark storms of fate, for you are a mightier storm than all. You are the One Life, the summation of all the dreams of all the souls that have ever been and ever will be. Conquer your uncertainty, and you will conquer all. Have faith that your goodness will prevail. Now go, Son and Savior of the Stars. For every father, for every soul, fight for blue skies, fight for us all!”
And then ZeerZeeOzz was gone.
Drinwor felt his stomach twist in his gut, and his breath left him with a puff.
He knew—something traumatic was about to happen… “May the Gods return!”
Still holding Surassis high over his head, he shot screaming into the sky, accompanying hundreds of thousands of other souls back onto Phate…
Inside the Sunsword’s crystal pommel, Sillithian Synnstrike was awakening.
His little dragon wings unfurled.
His little dragon eyes opened…
…and Drekklor the Shadow Demon could see.
All had gone as the Devil King had foreseen. Drekklor had successfully followed Drinwor into the portal door, possessed the spirit dragon lord, and claimed his place inside the sword.
Oh, so wide went the little solar dragon’s smile…
It is in dreams that mortals will find their higher selves, for only in dreams do their minds dare to dip into the waters of immortality.
Vu Verian
Mystic Sorcerer, Last Sky Elf on Phate
And here, at this point, after Drinwor had infused Surassis with a soul, after the Dark Forever had been gated into the world and the shards had fallen, the universe seemed to take one last breath before the great plunge.
I’m glad, for our story has accelerated faster than even I had foreseen, and it would seem we’re dashing headlong into destiny. Indeed, the ending of Book One is soon to come…
But at this moment, all on Phate was quiet and eerily calm.
And though it seemed as if there was no force of light capable of diminishing so terrible a night, a light did indeed come to relieve the world of darkness. A dispirited dawn was breaking. The dying sun peeked over the horizon, and had it been capable of shedding fiery tears, it might have blazed as it had in times of old, for once again its last surviving child had been scalded by extrasolar flames. The Shards of Zyrinthia had been merciless, the devastation complete. Everywhere great plumes of smoke rose like spirits escaping the cadaver of the world.
Those who had survived the night gazed silently at the sky, awaiting the end of it all.
And for one, dawn itself was as the coming of death.
Warloove opened his eyes.
He was in the strangest of places. All he could see were decrepit trees that slowly swayed through glowing shafts of mist. “I hallucinate,” he whispered. He shook his head, gathered his wits, and looked about. There was something vaguely familiar about this place, something—Wait… He wasn’t hallucinating, he knew this place! And all too well.
“It is the Forest of Corpsewood. I am home.”
But something was very different.
The forest was bathed in…
Warloove gasped with a horrific realization.
“Oh, no! It cannot be! Do I behold the light?”
Yes, he did. For the first time in a thousand years, he was witnessing the dawn. He groaned, made to move, but couldn’t. With widening eyes, he looked down upon himself.
“Wha…what is this?”
With his body fully solidified in its dark elf incarnation, he was chained to the front wall of the Castle Krypt with glowing white shackles. Now he seemed not so powerful a thing, for his vestments were torn away from his chest, exposing his emaciated skin, and his cloak of smoke didn’t surround him, and the Gauntlets of Loathing Light were gone from his claws. He whispered sorcery, tried to transform into spectral smoke, but it was futile. Some property of the shackles was sapping his supernatural powers and weakening his limbs.
He was helpless.
And then the sky brightened. The daylight’s searing heat submerged into the pale sponge of his dead skin. It was excruciating!
Hear Warloove now as he tells you what it felt like!
“It feels like I am being punctured by a million jagged needles, and the needles are slowly twisting, damn you all!”
He rolled back his head and peered through the wickedly curled branches of the dancing trees, his eyes tracking up the dusky walls of the long-dead volcano. Beyond, through its gaping mouth, he saw something he had not seen for so, so long.
The bluish-black sky was lightening to red.
He groaned, “Daylight!” rather pathetically, I must say, and struggled against his bonds. But there was no escape.
“Who is holding me?” he muttered as the pain intensified. He deceived himself. He well knew there was only one being on Phate who could hold him so.
“Master!” he screamed. “Please! What is this sorcery that enslaves me?”
The cold, monotone voice of Darkis sounded inside his head…
I commanded Geeter to bring you back here because you repeatedly defy me, Warloove. While the Dark Forever breaks into the world, you tease and toy with my eternity! Primitive, barbarous abomination, the Sunsword has escaped you! I said to feast your fangs on the fools of Phate, but the fools have feasted on you. Need I again remind you what will happen to us if we are here when the Dark Forever descends upon us? What will happen when the sun goes supernova? We will burn. Oh, we will burn! Our dreams will perish with this world and we will never swim in the soothing seas of eternal darkness. We must escape! I must ascend to the stars and reclaim my empire, my life! I must wreak revenge upon my enemies! My starship awaits the power of the Sunsword, my life beckons me like a specter from some forgotten space, and you, Warloove, you must not fail me again. Today you will feel something of failure. Today you will realize that you, too, can die. Today you will face the sun. Remember this day. Remember it is but a taste of what will happen to you should you fail me again. It is a punishment, and it is a test. And the test is simple—feel the fringes of a star’s light, and see if you can survive.
Warloove was aghast.
“Master,” he uttered through lacerated lips, “the sword was in my grasp! But then the bones…the bones fell atop me, and it was lost. All went dark. And then I was here.” He tried to lift his arms, but the shackles held them firmly to the wall. “Oh, master, you saved me! …Master?”
There was no response. It was silent but for the crackle of his flesh. Desperation seized him. “Stop this! Stop! I will acquire the sword, I swear it!” He began to sob, his burning face fizzling with acidic tears. Helpless, tormented, he turned back time in his mind, perusing the hours in which he could have spent his efforts in a more meaningful manner. The Sunsword had been his to take! If only he could go back, try again… But it was too late.
No, on this day, our wicked Warloove would face the sun.
<
br /> “Oh, grey one!” he cried, “hear me! I will never fail you again!” But still no answer came. His master had left him alone with the sun. And although his heart was dead, his chest throbbed with fear.
The dying sun crawled yet higher into the sky.
Thick shafts of daylight crept over the rim of the volcano and shot down through the trees. They struck him with all the power of an enemy God’s holy beams.
“Master! Noooooo!”
It was painful beyond anything he had ever imagined. His eyes smoldered in their sockets. His fingers felt like pokers thrust into a fire. Heat reached down this throat and burned his dried-out organs. The light found every crevice between every molecule of his body. His skin was cut, cracked, stung, scorched, and stretched. He tried to thrash, but the shackles further tightened and he was unable to even find any solace in shifting. He was acutely aware of every ounce of pain.
“Agony! Agony and torment to end all misery!”
And just when he felt as if his skin had melted from his bones, and perhaps his eyes had been burned from his head, and his insides must have been a smoking, hollow cavern not even suitable for the carrion crows to feast upon, it stopped.
By the grace of the Dark Forever, it finally stopped, and all the world darkened.
A shroud had covered him, a scintillating grey screen blocking out the awful sunlight. It was more of Darkis’ technological magic. The screen sang with a lifeless, droning hum, but Warloove didn’t notice this, for he was making his own sounds. A loud, guttural wheezing leaked from his crispy lips, and his skin crackled as it broke off in grimy little flakes. He opened his mouth to unleash an anguished moan, but a silvery flash startled him, causing him to loose a grunt of surprise instead. The grey screen disappeared, and he was teleported into another place. A better place…
Now he was lying in his open coffin, his skin soaking in the coolness of the pitch-black chambers deep within the Castle Krypt. The Gauntlets of Loathing Light lay next to him, and he grasped them and pulled them close to his chest like a child clinging to some comforting toy.
It was over.
He had faced the sun, and he had survived.
The agony subsided, but the humiliation remained.
He hissed, “Massssterrrr…” as the coffin’s cover slammed shut atop him.
Warloove would never be the same.
A new malice had been burned into him, an anger that aroused a level of hatred he had never experienced. That he should be punished thus was unconscionable! He couldn’t be certain how much damage had been inflicted upon him this day, but whatever was left of him would murder the world, he vowed.
He squeezed these words through gritted fangs: “I…hate…everything! I will kill you all… You will burn, bastards of Phate. Oh, all of you will burn! If not by my fire, then by the vengeance of the sun you will meet your doom and I will be far, far away. I will rule worlds draped in the shadows of everlasting night, and the memory of this place will fade with my wounded mind into the forgotten archives of time…”
Then he lost the energy to speak as his thoughts spiraled down into unconsciousness. His eyes closed and he slipped into a vampiric slumber, a slumber so vile the darkest nightmares of others would seem as pleasant dreams in the bowels of his poisoned sleep.
Across the continent, a more hopeful dawn was breaking, and Drinwor, precious Drinwor, was waking.
As the first strands of awareness seized him, he couldn’t discern what had been a dream, and what had been real. Visions of dragons lingered in his mind—dragons and demons and spirits and meteors, all swimming in oceans of echoing darkness. But the darkness didn’t endure. For as the rising sun broke the back of the night, a compassionate voice emptied the seas of Drinwor’s sleep and guided his consciousness toward the surface of light.
“Wake up, my Emperor, wake up.”
Drinwor grumbled and opened his eyes. His vision was blurry. All he could see was a spotted red stain. He blinked a few times, then came to realize that his eyes weren’t quite as blurry as he’d first suspected. The red stain was the roiled sky; the spots were the Shards of Zyrinthia that had remained in orbit.
He was back on Phate…maybe?
“Do I perceive some fantasy, or is this part of some conniving, clever new dream?”
It didn’t feel like a dream when a warm breeze touched his face and the sound of gentle rustling found his ears. He was lying in tall grass; the rustling was the sound of the blades brushing his demonskin armor. He got up into a crouch and, with all but the top of his head concealed in the grass, carefully peeked around.
The scene that greeted his eyes was somewhat familiar. To his left was a lush forest of evergreens. Backlit by the awakening sun, the dewdrops on the ends of the clustered needles glinted softly, with some reflecting a broad spectrum of colors. A modest wind raced through the boughs, causing an elaborate mosaic of shadows to flit across his face. It was a calming, pleasant sensation. He took a few moments to inhale the morning’s fresh scent, then shifted his view to the right. There, a long field of rolling hills gently sloped down to a shoreline of mist. Beyond the shore was a wall of luminous vapor that was so massive, it stretched from horizon to horizon, dominating all the western sky. The vapor plunged down, its great splashes glittering the spaces before it with golden flecks.
“Ah, yes, I am back on Phate, for there lies the Phantom Falls!”
But it wasn’t the same.
Enormous plumes of smoke twirled out of a great many giant clefts that sundered the massive ledges which held the cities. The once serene majesty of the place was all but spoiled. It was a disheartening sight.
“So,” Drinwor whispered, “even the falls were not impervious to the wrath of the shards…”
But before Drinwor could dwell on it for too long, he was quickly overcome with a strong feeling that he wasn’t alone. He whirled about, looked around, but was unable to spot anyone. He was certain someone was close by, though. He could feel it. And then he heard the voice, echoing as if from the beyond.
“My Emperor…”
Suddenly reminded of a certain mysterious voice that had sounded from afar, Drinwor stood up straight. “Who’s there? ZeerZeeOzz? Is that you? Not your voice from nowhere again!” He said that, but knew it was not the spectral seer. No, this voice was smooth, lyrical…and feminine. Realization flushed his face, and his heart grew warm.
“Can it be? Oh, can it?”
And then, soaring out of the splashes that glittered the face of the Phantom Falls, came the clear yet coruscating outline of a Greater Translucent Dragon.
Drinwor held his breath.
The dragon glided closer, swooped down, then gently landed in the field not far from him. It walked toward him like some crystal creature conjured from the waters of the Syroxian Sea, with veins sparkling and golden heart glowing in the center of the clear pool of its breast.
Now there was no doubt…
“Morning’s Hope!” Drinwor did not think himself capable of feeling such joy and relief. He leaped into the air, laughing, “Ha! You’re alive! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
“My Emperor,” Morning’s Hope said, “there are no words to sufficiently describe the joy I felt when you were safely returned to us.”
Drinwor was beaming like the Sunsword. “Blessed be the stars, I’m so thrilled to see you!” A euphoric tingle of joy coursed through him and he danced about. He soon relented, though. (Despite his fantastic dexterity, dancing wasn’t something he was particularly good at…or comfortable with.) He stared at Morning’s Hope, soaked her in. It felt as if he hadn’t seen her in weeks. But as he gazed at her, his initial euphoria waned. Oh, he was still overjoyed to see her, you can be sure, but something about her wasn’t right.
She wasn’t…perfect.
One of her beautiful blue-green eyes was gone.
Drinwor winced. Where her right eye had been, there was now a small pinkish gash. “Morning’s Hope, no!” He sprinted up to her.
> She dipped her graceful snout to his uplifted hands, and said, “It was a worthy exchange, my Lord: an eye for our lives, for certainly death could have taken us all last night.”
Drinwor was shaking. He saw now that the missing eye wasn’t the only wound she bore. Her translucent hide was raked all over with bloody scrapes and marked as if with sunspots—sickly black circles where the enemy’s fire had scorched her. The Emperor of the Sky was driven near to tears, but alas he forbade them to fall. With as calming and quiet a voice as he could muster, he asked, “What happened?”
“I was going to ask you the same! I must know! The sword?”
Drinwor put his hands to his head and grimaced, for with even the slightest contemplation of the Hall of Voices, his mind was overwhelmed with many conflicting thoughts. Frightful images and dreadful emptiness wound around feelings of fulfillment and satiated power. It was overwhelming. He instinctively shied away from recollecting anything. “I will tell you in a little while, I promise, I just need to put it all together.”
Morning’s Hope displayed an obvious look of concern. “Are you all right, my Lord?”
Drinwor took his hands from his head, nodded, and said, “I am, please…please go on.”
For a time, she said nothing. She simply regarded him as he regarded her, with an impassioned stare. Oh, how her lone eye gleamed as it looked upon him! As if compensating for the loss of its beloved companion, it shone as brightly as ever, a shining testimony to the unending depths of her sympathetic soul.
Eventually she breathed in deeply, then let slip her story.
“For all their devastation, the Shards of Zyrinthia actually saved me. Just as Geeter was overpowering me, a shard came roaring down and smashed into his side. I was jarred free from his lethal grip, but when I spun away from him, his claw caught my eye.” (Drinwor flinched at this.) “Oh, and before that even happened, I saw Morigos.” A small snicker escaped her maw. “That crafty old dark elf was levitating upward, blasting Geeter with his green flames and leading Murdraniuss right into the shard’s path. The banshee was struck before Geeter, his captured screams scattering all over the sky. I suspect the fiends were driven into the mountain of bones, but I cannot be sure.” She looked to the sky, then closed her eye and sighed. “If only you could imagine how I felt when the shard struck, Drinwor. By the stars, I had no idea if you had made it into the Hall of Voices before the mountain exploded. It was terrible! Splintered bones flew for miles into the air, and the ruins of Shirian Shirion sank into the sea.” She opened her eye, its brilliance now dimmed with distress, and looked back down to her Emperor. “I was afraid I had lost you.”