Phate

by Jason Alan

  Drinwor exhaled with an airy whistle. “So that’s why Warloove didn’t follow me into the hall.” Then, with a hopeful tone, he posed, “Is it possible that either he or Geeter was destroyed? If not by the shard, perhaps by the destruction of the mountain of bones?”

  Morning’s Hope shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re immeasurably strong, extraordinarily resilient.”

  “And we couldn’t possibly be so fortunate,” Drinwor added.

  She let out a sad little laugh. “True.” Then she knelt before him, keeping her massive head level with his. “We are fortunate in one thing, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “We are still alive!”

  A shadow passed over Drinwor’s face, and he looked away from her. “For now…”

  Morning’s Hope narrowed her eye. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing, nothing, I’ll tell you later.” Drinwor waved off his comment, looked back to her, and patted her snout. “Oh, those evil beings, wounding you like this!”

  “Scars are but a reminder that we’ve faced adversity, and conquered it. Do not worry, I will heal. Now, if you had been hurt…well, that’s a wound I do not think I could have suffered.”

  Drinwor allowed himself a little smile.

  Morning’s Hope smiled back. Then she shook out her wings and licked a bruise on her side. She made to speak, but Drinwor blurted, “Wait a minute, where’s Morigos and Vu Verian?”

  Morning’s Hope motioned behind her. “Morigos is back there, immersing himself in the Phantom Falls. He says the vapor soothes him. I warn you, though, he’s not the same. He’s worse. As for Vu Verian, I don’t know. I expected him at first light, but so far there’s been no sign of him.”

  Drinwor lifted his hands to the sky. “May the stars be with us.” When he brought his hands back down, he noticed Morning’s Hope looking at him with a pleading stare. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Drinwor, I’ve told you my story from last night, but by the Seven Glories, what of yours? What of the quest? You must tell me what happened in the hall!”

  The dusk elf looked confused. “The quest?”

  Morning’s Hope let out an exasperated huff. “The Sunsword! Did you imbue Surassis with a soul?!”

  Drinwor inexplicably turned from her, and walked some steps away. He tried to calm the frenzy of thoughts that distorted the memory of his time in the hall. It seemed like a dream, and an elusive one at that. He whispered to himself, “What did happen? I feel so empty…and yet…fulfilled?” And then he concentrated harder, drew his focus inward. Slowly, the events of last night fell together like pieces of a puzzle. He remembered the cloud, the universe of white. He remembered the starry structure of the hall. Then it all fell into place. He recalled that moment when the Lord of the Spirit Dragons had emptied his soul into the sword. He remembered the power he had felt, and the fulfillment and satisfaction thereof. He felt that power now, lying dormant within him like some sleeping beast, waiting for him to awaken it…

  “Drinwor?”

  Drinwor shook himself from thought and turned back around. Morning’s Hope was still looking on him with that pleading stare, her huge translucent expanse twinkling in the daylight. “Drinwor? The sword?”

  He smiled weakly. “I’m sorry. Yes, Surassis has its soul.”

  “Sillithian Synnstrike lives!”

  Drinwor nodded. “He lives.”

  Morning’s Hope shook her head. “It must be magnificent.”

  A curious expression twisted Drinwor’s features; his eyes slit with purpose and he nodded. “I think it’s time for us to find out.”

  “Drinwor—”

  “Yes, let us finally see it as it was meant to be.” He reached for his leg pouch.

  Consternation crossed his dragon’s face.

  Drinwor looked puzzled. He stayed his hand. “You don’t want to see it?”

  “I do, I do. I’m just concerned that revealing the sword might bring us unwanted attention.”

  Drinwor’s face tightened with anger. “I don’t care. This is our world. My sword. If Surassis is ready, then let our enemies cower before its light! I want to see it!”

  Morning’s Hope bowed. She said, “Then so be it, my Emperor,” but thought, He has changed; he has lost some of his emotions, and acquired others…

  Drinwor pulled forth the Sunsword Surassis.

  And just as he had in the Hall of Voices, he gripped it with both hands and hefted it high into the air. The surrounding winds suddenly rose to a wailing whirl, shivering the evergreens, and a lick of red lightning split the sky above them. Grey and black clouds streamed in from the far horizon, and the world darkened as if it meant to brighten the sword all the more.

  “By the angel’s light, the evil presence of the Dark Forever is about,” Morning’s Hope stated, “and irritated by the emergence of the One Sword it would seem.”

  Drinwor heard her, but didn’t answer. He was transfixed by Sillithian Synnstrike flying around in the pommel’s crystal. While he watched the little solar dragon, an intense desire to unleash the blade struck him, and his heart began to pound, for he knew he needn’t suppress this compulsion any longer.

  He whispered, “For you, father…”

  Then, with but a thought, the Emperor of the Sky set the blade free!

  Wild energy erupted like a sparking geyser from the slit on top of the hand guard, in a split second extending to ten feet in length. Finally freed after a thousand-year dormancy, it was a wild burst of energy indeed! It soon condensed, though, tightening into a double-edged blade of compacted white fire. Singing with a vociferous sizzle, it illuminated all the area for a hundred feet around. Sillithian Synnstrike brightened to a silhouette of yellowish light, and Drinwor felt such power course through him, he thought he might leap into the sky and fly over the clouds.

  Oh, it was quite a sight, the Son and Savior of the Stars wielding his sword!

  “Look at the blade!” he cried. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”

  “The Halo of the Gods,” said Morning’s Hope.

  Drinwor’s expression was quizzical, but he was too entranced with Surassis to pause and ponder the translucent’s strange statement. He fell into a crouched stance, then leaped forward, thrusting. Surassis sizzled. Drinwor grinned. He began combating imaginary foes, twisting about and swinging the sword from side to side. Gods the blade was huge! But it was so light, so perfect. He whipped it around so fast, it left a fiery circular trail.

  “The Halo of the Gods!” Drinwor yelled through a series of grunts. “I see it! I see it!”

  Morning’s Hope was enthralled, but she also couldn’t completely stifle the sinking feeling that they were now exposed to all who stood against them.

  When the dusk elf saw her face, he relented his sparring and commanded the blade to diffuse. The white fire instantly rushed back down into the hilt and disappeared. Then he was struck with a most uncomfortable feeling. Not because of the dragon’s expression, but because it suddenly felt as if a billion sets of eyes were upon him…

  A billion demons laughed.

  Surassis, the most feared weapon in all the universe, the sword of the fated sun that had a thousand years ago vanquished them, was cursed and in the hands of a child who would have no idea of this until it was too late.

  The cracks over the Raging Sea opened wider, a million more demons scampered free of the Dark Forever, and the dying sun’s light crept through the largest tear and glinted on Nenockra Rool’s skin…

  Eternity itself wept as if with tears of cold suns, for now it seemed there was no doubt…the Devil King would come.

  You are master of your present, guardian of your future, and survivor of your past. Dwell not on yesterday, for it is but a beast slain by time…

  Treeziax

  Fighter for the Second Darkness, Champion of the Whirlwind Wastes

  The flesh on Syndreck’s face had all but rotted from his skull. Now he resembled the dusty cadavers he had recen
tly pulled from the ground. “Perhaps someday someone will pull me from the ground, and send me trudging toward some foul purpose!” He chortled, then peeled a slice of skin from his forearm and tossed it into his mouth to nibble on. “Useless trappings but for the snacking, this dying skin! Oh, next millennium, I want demons of meat. Yes... Yes!”

  His skin might have been dying, but his eyes were still vibrant, still imbuing him with powerfully enhanced sorcerous vision. So powerful, in fact, that when Drinwor ignited the Sunsword Surassis on the other side of the continent, Syndreck saw it, saw it as a little streak of disturbingly intense flame illuminating some distant unknown field.

  “What’s this? The Sunsword resurrected? It was supposed to be cursed! Perhaps it is…?” Frustrated by uncertainty, he recoiled from his cauldron and erupted into a tantrum. “No! You promised, master, promised we wouldn’t have to contend with the sword! Has the weakling Warloove failed us again? I will—”

  The horrific death rattle of a hundred demons distracted him. He turned aside, and glimpsed a hail of charred bodies whip around his tower and disappear below.

  Another kind of cosmic sword had claimed them.

  Syndreck looked down.

  Trudging through a mess of dark elf limbs, vanquishing hundreds of demons into the depths of his black hole blade as he came, was Soular Centurion 7. The warrior from the stars seemed unconcerned with anything but his target. Even as a thousand descending demons dispelled the Glyph of Multiversal Guarding, he never took his cybernetic eyes from the necromancer. Even as those demons came wailing in to obliterate him from existence, he strode on with but one thing in mind.

  Thus, he came right up to the entrance of Syndreck’s tower and stopped, his silver-helmeted head tilted upward, his ancient grey eyes gleaming through the sorcerous storms.

  Syndreck looked down, and saw his own glowing red silhouette in those eyes.

  – TARGET ACQUIRED AND LOCKED IN –

  Syndreck actually saw that readout, and fingers of fear tickled his psyche.

  Unable to contain himself, he erupted with vulgarities, then screamed, “Enough of you! Begone! What sort of being are you to endure such mighty resistance? Go back to your doomed stars, I say! May the currents of the Dark Forever drown you beneath their unholy waves! BEGONE!”

  Then Syndreck squeezed sorcery like sweat from the rag of his soul.

  He screamed arcane words, and wild forks of explosive lightning shot over the top of Ulith Urn and blasted hundreds of demons out of the air. The energy then curled down and swirled around his tower, surrounding it with a tornado-like funnel of purple lightning.

  The funnel spun so fast, its accompanying winds ripped chunks of stone from the tower’s walls and, before long, the entire structure was pulled into the lightning and disintegrated. The only solid things left were the Cauldron of Carcass Control, Syndreck himself, and the sorcerously suspended floor of cracking stone that supported them.

  Syndreck continued screaming and the sparking funnel continued to intensify. It wound up tighter, and assumed the shape of a tower itself, its winds shredding Syndreck’s tattered robes apart and tearing what remained of his skin from his bones.

  Now the necromancer was the skeletal master of a vortex tower of purple lightning, his burning, howling eyes leaking a vapor like that of the Dark Forever’s!

  He lifted his skull back, raised his bony arms, and bellowed with a crazed voice, “I will feast on the light of your soul! I will tear the fabric of this world apart! I will send a billion demons against you!”

  And then he laughed.

  His laughter sounded above the shrieking demons, above the crackling whoosh of the whirling lightning tower. He lifted an ivory finger and it ignited with translucent red flames. Pointing the finger down, he yelled, “I, too, can make atoms disappear!”

  Below, Soular Centurion 7 lifted high the Sword of Molecular Destruction.

  Syndreck cackled like a crazed banshee as he unleashed his flames. The fire shot down through the lightning toward the warrior from the stars.

  – INITIATE DEFENSIVE MANEUVER CENTURIOUS 8.7 X –

  Soular Centurion 7 spun away from the flames and leaped into the sky just as a host of demons landed beside him. He flew up hundreds of feet in a second, blasting through the electrified tower’s walls and thudding to Syndreck’s suspended floor, his sword whipping down before him, eager to vaporize his necromantic target.

  But Syndreck was not there.

  The centurion’s sword swept through empty space, and hacked a hole into the floor.

  “Metal against magic?” Syndreck’s echoing voice teased from some indeterminable place. “Tell me, galactic warrior, can you roam beneath the dimensions?” Then he reappeared on the other side of the Cauldron of Carcass Control. With his hands raised, he sang out, and bolts of energy flew from the tower’s wall to engulf the cosmic warrior in a mesh of lightning. Syndreck disappeared again, slipping back into the space beneath the dimensions, his echoing cackles trailing into inaudibility.

  The centurion’s mechanical systems sparked. What little flesh he possessed burned. But before any permanent damage was inflicted, a wave of blue energy pulsed through him and doused the lightning with cosmic cold.

  – SPIRIT FREEZE COMMENCING –

  The ghostly parts of the centurion were taking over, cooling his primary systems. His eyes dimmed to a darker grey, and all he viewed grew hazy. His vision widened to see on many dimensional planes.

  – TRACKING TARGET THROUGH DIMENSIONAL PHASING…ACQUIRED –

  Soular Centurion 7 faded from the primary universe, his enemy located and locked in his cybernetic eyes…

  Learning is the one journey whose end should never be reached, and whose road should never be abandoned.

  Yorn Illadruss

  Sorcerer Seer of the Youthful Scribes

  Ever so carefully did Drinwor Fang slip Surassis back into his leg pouch, fearful that any sudden or exaggerated movements would attract the attention of “the billion sets of eyes.” He scanned the horizon with an uneasy stare, then looked to Morning’s Hope and said, “With the sword revealed, it did feel like I was being watched. I should have listened to you.” He tilted his head back and exhaled an exasperated huff. “I couldn’t help it, though. I’ve spent my whole life waiting in the clouds, wondering what this urge inside me could be. And now I know. I’ve been waiting to set the blade free, and thus, take one step closer to my destiny.”

  Morning’s Hope nodded. “You are destiny, Drinwor. And worry not about the emergence of the sword, for the wounds of the world have opened, and the eyes of the Dark Forever would have spotted us anyway. And now we know you have it within you to unleash its fiery blade. You needed to know. I needed to know. Nevertheless,” she added, her unblinking eye fixed on the wild clouds, “I do believe we should be cautious and keep the sword concealed, at least until such time as we need its light to shine. And then you must be ready.”

  Drinwor cast his gaze to the ground and murmured incoherently, his foot gently brushing the grass. He could sense Morning’s Hope turn her stare down to him, and after a minute or so he brought his head back up to face her. “Oh, I’ll be ready…”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked. “Since you returned from the Hall of Voices, you seem…”

  “Different?” he suggested.

  “Well, yes, but that’s to be expected. You seem troubled.”

  “I’ve been ‘troubled’ since we first met, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, yes, but it seems like there’s something else going on, something you’re not telling me. Hmm… Perhaps I’m mistaken. But I know the infusion of the soul had to have been a most intense experience.”

  Drinwor laughed. “Intense? Yes, one could say that. Honestly, I believe the resurrection of the sword has profoundly affected me.” Then his face seemed to darken with the shadow that had recently found a home amongst his features, and he looked deep into his dragon’s sole survi
ving eye and said, “I’ve learned things. The Fallen Angel was right. I was right. I am much more than the Emperor of the Sky. And I’m beginning to understand what it means to be the Son and Savior of the Stars. But what I didn’t know until recently is just how much I’ll have to sacrifice. Like father, like son, with nowhere to run…but headlong into whatever fate has in store.” He paused for a moment, then whispered: “I’m not as afraid as I thought I’d be, though, not afraid to give myself, my life, to the sword. I wonder why that is? I’m not afraid of my destiny. All this, here, it doesn’t feel like the end.”

  “That’s good. You are the Son and Savior of the Stars, and you should fear no evil.” Morning’s Hope said this with conviction, but I must tell you, she was a trifle bit unnerved when she saw what could only be described as a rather villainous grin stretch over Drinwor’s chin.

  Drinwor half muttered, half growled, “You won’t have to worry. When the time comes, I swear I shall burn evil from the sky!” And then his grin vanished.

  Morning’s Hope found his tone as distressing as his expression. “Are you certain there isn’t something specific you want to talk about?”