Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6)

by Steve McHugh

  I removed the shadow that had been wrapped around Kay’s arm, and as he moved it, I severed it at the elbow with the sword, rewrapping it in shadow to stop him from bleeding out. I gagged him once more and crouched beside him. I couldn’t save all of those people, but I could tell Olivia and her people, and maybe they could help. It didn’t feel very heroic, but I didn’t have a lot of other options. Taking them all back would be impossible, primarily because if they were in the camps it would require us to fight our way through tens of thousands of blood elves to get there. And that was if they even wanted to leave.

  Kay stopped hyperventilating and stared at me with hatred. I removed the shadows from across his face. “Jane died because of you, Nate.”

  “No, Kay. She died because of you. And you’re going to die because of you too. There’s no one else to blame here. No one else.” I punched him in the face. “And don’t ever utter her name again.”

  “Arthur will kill you when he wakes up. If you kill me, he’ll hunt you down and deliver vengeance.”

  I shrugged. “If he wakes up, I’ll deal with that problem. If there’s a true afterlife, I hope you burn in it.”

  I tightened the shadows around Kay’s neck until he couldn’t breathe, wrapping them around his jaw and mouth. I didn’t want to hear him speak ever again. I wanted him to suffer, but Mordred would need me. The shadow forced Kay up to a kneeling position, and I brought the blade down across his neck, the shadow moving aside as it touched. Kay’s head rolled away. I thought about taking his soul, but there was no way to know exactly what effect the power he possessed would have on me. I wouldn’t have time to try and acclimate myself to that much power, memories, and evil. Instead, I took a moment for Jane before leaving the room.

  Outside in the hallway, I came face-to-face with the half-dozen blood elves who had led me to Kay. I stabbed the closest in the neck and threw the second sword at the blood elf the furthest from me. The sword’s blade slammed into his chest, taking him off his feet.

  I disarmed the third blood elf as he drew his sword and severed his arm at the elbow with it. I pushed him into the next blood elf, driving the blade into the chest of the fourth, then kicked him to the floor. The fifth came at me with his sword, but I impaled him with a spear of shadow. The sixth remained alone, a mixture of fear and hate on his face. He screamed and charged at me. I avoided the swipe of his sword, and used my air magic to pick a dagger from the floor and drive it up into his skull. He fell to the floor dead a second later. I removed the heads of the third and fourth elves so that none remained alive.

  I walked over to the huge window looking out at the bridge far below, and used the blood of the slain elves to draw the original dwarven rune for collapse onto it in several places around the base and side of the window. Or at least as much as I could reach.

  Then I ignited the runes.

  The effect was spectacular, as the entire wall just collapsed, taking the window, and a massive amount of rock above, with it. Several dozen tons of rock fell at high speed into the bridge below, making a terrifying noise. I stood as close as possible to the jagged edge of what had once been the floor, and could see only a huge plume of smoke and dust. Then I ran up the stairs toward the fight between Baldr and Mordred.

  As I reached Baldr’s room, the Norse god crashed through the far wall with a very determined-looking Mordred stalking him.

  “Need help?” I asked.

  “He’s mine,” Mordred told me and charged into Baldr, taking him off his feet, and driving a blade of air into his chest.

  Baldr broke Mordred’s arm and tossed him aside into the nearest wall. Mordred vanished from view in a cloud of dust.

  “Do you want to try?” he asked me.

  I used the shadows around him to take hold, and he walked through them as if I’d used string.

  He removed his jacket and threw it on the floor, revealing the purple glyphs adorning his arms. Matter magic.

  “Doesn’t work on me,” he said. “I’m too powerful to be stopped by shadows. You’ll need to do better.”

  I threw a fireball at him, which he allowed to burst against his chest.

  “Do better,” he repeated as he closed the gap between us, and I narrowly avoided being punched. He hit the wall instead, which disintegrated from the blow.

  I rolled to my feet and ignited a sphere of air in my hand, spinning it faster and faster as I dumped lightning into it.

  “Not going to kill me, little Nathan,” he said. “You’re welcome to try, though.”

  The glyphs turned yellow and I managed to close my eyes as bright, blinding light poured out of him. I slammed the sphere into the ground just in front of me, which tore the floor apart.

  The light dimmed and I opened my eyes.

  “You should have been burned,” he said. “I guess the shadow magic does have some uses after all.”

  A blast of air smashed into Baldr, flinging him back into the other room, as a wounded Mordred staggered out of the hole in the wall he’d created.

  “Be careful: he hits like a charging rhino,” Mordred said.

  We both entered the room and found Baldr by the window at the far end. “I wonder if I could kill you both? Let’s find out.”

  He moved quicker than anything I’d ever seen, charging toward me as I threw lightning at him, and dodging at the last minute to hit Mordred, who had been trying to slow him down with liberal use of air magic.

  As Mordred went flying into the wall behind him, Baldr used his own momentum to bounce toward me, and the only thing that saved me from being seriously hurt was a shield of lightning hastily raised in front of me.

  Baldr screamed in pain as his bare skin touched the shield, and he skipped back, the skin on his hand red and raw from where he’d touched the lightning.

  “Just like Thor,” he snapped. “Lightning didn’t stop me from killing him, though.”

  I dashed forward, creating a sphere of lightning and attempted to tag him with it, but he moved too fast, so I just detonated the magic inside the sphere. Baldr couldn’t avoid the wave of electricity as it crashed into him, forcing him off his feet. The wave smashed into the wall behind him, destroying the windows.

  “You don’t really think that’s it, do you?” he asked, coming toward me, the purple glyphs blaring brightly across his arms.

  I avoided a punch I was certain would have taken my head off, and hit him in the chest with another electrical shock, sending him back a few feet again. Mordred took that opportunity to wrap tendrils of blood magic around Baldr’s arm, which caused him to yell. He threw a ball of light that exploded in Mordred’s face. He screamed and dropped to his knees.

  Baldr ignored him, and turned his attention to me once more. “I hear you can’t use blood magic,” he said with a chuckle, as his own blood magic trickled over his fingers, forming a blade. “It’s a real shame; you’ll never know the joy of using it to take someone’s life.”

  I hadn’t had the time to take any souls before I’d come upstairs to face Baldr; I hadn’t wanted to leave Mordred alone for a second longer than necessary. But it meant that my necromancy wasn’t as strong as it might have been otherwise. Baldr was stronger, faster, and much more powerful than I was, even with my new upgrades. I wished that I’d taken Kay’s spirit. The extra power could have really come in handy.

  So I did the only thing I could, and, keeping an eye on Baldr, who didn’t seem that concerned about us, walked over to Mordred.

  “Are you okay?”

  Baldr looked at his nails and scratched his jaw a little, but was in no hurry to fight us.

  “My light magic lets me heal much quicker than most sorcerers. I’ll be back to normal in a few seconds. Didn’t realize light magic could hurt me though. That’s new.”

  “I need time,” I whispered.

  “How much?”

  “I need to take Kay’s spirit, but I have no idea what it’ll do to me. It’s the only way, though. I need the power. We can’t beat him like this.�
�

  Mordred got to his feet. “I’ll give you time, Nate. Just hurry.”

  I sank down into the shadows around me, landing in my shadow realm. I moved the gray world around until I found the shadows that left the room, and tried to go further, but it was too difficult, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to make those shadows come to me.

  “You can only emerge from shadows that are within a certain area of you,” Erebus told me as he stepped out of the gray. “Hello, Nate.”

  “Are we in the shadow realm or my head?” I asked.

  “Both. We’re still in your head, but you’re physically in the shadow realm. I can’t go into that realm; I’m not actually a real person.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To stop you from making a huge mistake.”

  CHAPTER 37

  I really don’t have time for this. Mordred is going to die if I don’t help.” I snapped.

  “We are in your mind,” Erebus said, his voice calm. He looked exactly like me except with longer hair. “Time doesn’t pass here in the same way. A few seconds there, a few minutes here. We have time.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Go.”

  “Do you really want to take Kay’s soul? You know what you’ll see?”

  “Jane’s death. I’m aware. But I need the power. We can’t beat Baldr; he’s too strong. I need something, and if that means putting myself through whatever awful shit sits inside Kay’s soul, then so be it. I’ll deal. Besides, maybe it’ll show me who these my liege are.”

  “You don’t believe that for one second. You know full well that whoever manipulated the minds of these people isn’t about to let you figure it out just by taking their souls. You know there will be traps and things planted inside his memories for an occasion such as this. Besides, can you even take Kay’s soul? He didn’t die fighting; he died kneeling on the floor, gagged so he couldn’t beg for his life.”

  “So what do I do?” A thought occurred to me. “The blood elves. I can take their souls, use them instead. Some of them fought back.”

  “You can, yes. And then what?”

  “Is there a point asking me?” I snapped. “And then I go kill Baldr.”

  “Even with added power, killing him won’t be easy. He’s much older than you or Mordred and considerably more powerful. He walked through your magic; only lightning had any effect. And we’re not outside, so using natural lightning is impossible.”

  “Okay, so what do I do?”

  “When those curse marks were added to you, when they stopped you from accessing your magic, they also planted the knowledge of how to use them inside you. I am that knowledge. I taught you how to use your lightning, didn’t I?”

  I nodded. “So you tap me on the head, and I know how to use my shadow magic?”

  He shook his head. “Shadow magic is powerful—more powerful than most realize. And while it’s true you can’t bring sorcerers into your shadow realm, and anyone you do bring in here will start to weaken quickly, there’s another reason you shouldn’t bring people down here.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  Erebus pointed behind me. “That’s the reason why.”

  I turned and almost jumped out of my skin. A few feet away was a floating mass of darkness. The shrouded figure wore long, dark robes that rippled along the floor, seemingly with a life of their own. It wore gray armor over its chest, visible under the robes, and its hands were little more than claws. Two orbs of blue light bobbed inside the shadow where the creature’s face should be.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “A wraith. Don’t worry; we’re still in your head. I’m just showing you what’s currently happening in your shadow realm.”

  “They live in my shadow realm?”

  “This one does. Every sorcerer who uses shadow magic has his own realm. The realms are a part of you; you are linked to it by more than just the ability to go there. Should it be damaged, that damage will happen to you. It’s your own little place to tend and take care of.”

  “And the wraith does what?”

  “Well, the wraith feeds on anyone you bring in here. It’s why you really shouldn’t bring anyone in here. They don’t distinguish between friend and foe. They distinguish between you, and not-you. And the not-yous are to be eliminated as quickly as possible.”

  “So this realm is dangerous to anyone I bring in here?”

  Erebus nodded. “There’s an upside, though. The wraith feeds on the bodies of those you bring here. It literally folds that person’s power into you. It increases your power without having to take a soul to do it. It isn’t as powerful as your necromancy, but it’s quicker, and it means you don’t have to learn everything of the person from the souls you take.”

  “Will it help strengthen my necromancy?”

  Erebus shrugged. “The number of sorcerer necromancers can be counted on both hands and feet. Those of you who use shadow magic, too—probably on one hand; I have no idea. When those blood-curse marks were put on you, so was some knowledge of how to use your magic: knowledge that’s still inside your subconscious mind, inside me. You need to know how to use it. You need to confront your wraith. It won’t hurt you. You’re its master, its reason for existing. A little bit like me.”

  “You want to take control of me, though.”

  “True. Although not for the reasons you think. I’m hoping once those other marks are gone, I’ll be able to explain why. You’ll be able to understand what I truly am, and why you need me. And then I’ll vanish forever.”

  I whipped around toward him. “You’ll vanish?”

  “Once you have no more marks, and I’ve done what needs to be done, yes. I have no interest in keeping control of you forever. That’s not what a sorcerer’s magic does. You have been lied to about us, about the power a sorcerer possesses. All of you, all sorcerers, have been lied to. We are not your enemy. I know you don’t believe that, not truly. And I understand why. But you will. Like I said before, we are your birthright, not your enemy.”

  “So every single sorcerer under two thousand years old has been lied to?”

  “That’s my guess, yes. At some point, you’ll have to find out why, and who arranged it, but they are problems for another time. Less immediate than your current situation.”

  The idea of not having Erebus there, to have him leave—it didn’t feel good. I didn’t know what he was, or why my magic felt the need to create someone for me to talk to, and I had no idea if it happened to every sorcerer, but the thought that we’d been lied to about what the magic was, about what nightmares were . . . That was something I would not allow to continue, and would need to be investigated further.

  “Good luck,” Erebus said. “Your power is greater than it ever was before. Calling me to help will be much harder, the amount of power you’d need to use to bring me to the surface, incredible. But we’ll see one another again, soon. Until then.”

  He vanished and the wraith began to move toward me, the robes trailing it. It stopped just in front of me and looked down. It was over seven feet tall, and the robes brushed against the bare skin on my arms. It wasn’t scary, or worrying. I felt no malice or anger from the being.

  “So you’re like my gardener in here?” I said.

  The wraith’s voice echoed all around me. I am here to protect you. I am here to feed you power. I am a wraith. I will sustain you.

  “‘Sustain?’ I don’t need food and water?”

  Sustain your power. You should probably continue to eat and drink.

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I noticed a hint of sarcasm in its voice. “Wait there.” I moved the shadow realm around me until I found the exit I needed and emerged on the staircase outside of the room where Mordred was fighting Baldr. I wished Mordred luck and sprinted down the stairs until I saw the bodies of the elves. I enveloped them in shadow and dropped them into the shadow realm, where I followed a second later.

  The six elves were lying in the middle of t
he realm as the wraith hovered nearby. You should not watch this.

  “I have questions,” I said as it hovered close to the bodies.

  Be quick; their presence causes me pain.

  That was information I hadn’t been expecting. “Can you leave this realm?”

  It turned back to me, and regarded me with its eyes. Yes. If you wish it. I am strong, fast, and magic cannot harm me. But light will harm me, and I cannot feed in your realm. My time there is fleeting. I would not be able to recognize friend from foe for long, either. I advise against bringing me out of this realm.

  I removed the tablet from my armor. “Can I leave this here?”

  Anything you leave in this realm will be here when you return. The exits might change for you, depending on the shadows around you, but this is your realm, your creation. Go help your friend.

  “Thank you.” I placed the tablet on the ground before leaving the shadow realm. I ran back up the staircase to Mordred and Baldr and reached the floor as Baldr stepped out of the room.

  “You ran off,” he said. “Mordred didn’t fare so well by himself.”

  I looked behind Baldr and saw Mordred lying on the floor, his face a mask of blood. His chest rose and fell steadily, though, so he wasn’t dead. He turned my way, opened one eye and smiled as the cuts on his face began to heal in front of my eyes.

  I nodded.

  “So what’s the plan here?” Baldr asked. “Going to use your shadow magic a bit more? Maybe you’re going to try to electrocute me. That worked well for you last time, but it’s not likely to kill me. You’re not even as powerful as Thor.”

  “You like talking about him,” I said as the feeling of power swept through me. I placed a hand against the nearby wall to steady myself.

  “Weakening already?” Baldr joked. “And I like talking about it because it’s the single greatest thing I’ve ever done. Murdering that unbearable asshole was my pleasure. But killing you and Mordred: that might just be even more fun.”