The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  The sphere showed him a shimmering picture of his world. It wasn’t of his office where he now stood, but grounds far above it. A series of gently waving hills were covered in a bed of ashes, some forming eddies of black dust. The trees studding the lands were long dead, hollowed out stumps that would crumble at a touch. Red fires burned in the distance, glowing like eyes along the hills and showing the ritual dances of the Lost Tribes. Great roots curled out of the ground, lined with spines as long as swords, traveling in and out of the ground like earthen leviathans.

  Nothing lived here but the outlines of squirming shadows. An ancient race once thrived here until he was birthed of its chaos and its magic. He made this world his, much like the Shadow attempted to do in the Realm of Man. Where she failed, he succeeded. The lifeforms here weren’t prepared to withstand a force such as himself.

  A great fixture sat atop the largest hill, a collapsing castle of ornamented stones. A vast courtyard yawned open at the front where the wall’s mortar had failed, thousands of stones resting in great heaps. Blackened clusters of tall grass emerged between areas of tiles heaved up from the ground and stacked against each other. Red mist emerged from a crevice running along the length of the courtyard, its depth limitless. The mist stopped at ankle height, forming wisps around hunks of shattered stones. In the courtyard’s center was a tiered fountain of gurgling blood. The blood was bright among the gray gloom of dust and decay. Behind it was a mirror standing within a frame of stone. The mirror’s top curved and converged at an apex holding a cycloptic eye. At either side of the fountain were twin staircases that led up to a circling balcony below an enormous half shattered dome. Pillars of stone were carved with a texture of trees snared by twisting vines. The balcony balusters were twin pairs of thin crisscrossing lines winding around the dome.

  Prodal inclined his head, intrigued with what more it would show him. A leg appeared, thrusting down through the red mist, and grinding the ball of its barefoot into the stones. “A mortal? Here?” he breathed, hand clamping over his mouth. More of the figure came into view as it stepped forward, showing a ghastly hand clutching a bird glowing with a blue-white light. “A bird. No… but how?” The image faded, and the Future Sphere slowly reverted to a curve of shimmering glass. “Show me more!” He let out a shriek of rage that crescendoed from the walls. “More!”

  The Future Sphere glowed, and images came. It showed him the fountain with the mirror standing behind it. Some of the tiers had broken edges where blood came out in fat streams. The basin of blood gurgled like a choking man. The mirror’s stony edge glowed with amber light. A nude woman with bright golden hair leaped into the fountain, sloshing blood over its edges. She moved like a panther, every step cautious, head in constant motion for danger. She held no other weapon but the strange glowing bird. “The Arch Wizard? What is this?” Prodal murmured.

  He saw his human form standing within the mirror’s world, trapped behind that length of glass. He saw his face painted with worry, trapped with his hands pressing against the glass. She moved without hesitation, bashing her fist into the mirror’s face. The glass erupted into the air, thousands of shards silently floating down as slow as feathers. The image faded like a bit of melting ice.

  Prodal felt, in that moment, for the briefest iota of time that his presence had been erased from the histories. The tomes both past and present lining his shelves had changed. His name and his influence had been removed from all of them. All the events he’d shifted in favor of his enduring survival were reverted. And just as easily as the sense had taken him, it too fell away with the melting of the image.

  “But no. It didn’t happen,” he said. “That was only a potential future. It didn’t happen, did it?” A seed of doubt buried itself deep within his heart. He searched his memories for the incident, finding nothing but what he had just witnessed. It wasn’t possible for any mortal to enter his realm without his consent. He made sure of it. He would not make the Shadow’s mistake. He could freely pass between the realms, but his was a world warded by all except those he granted admittance.

  Another series of images sputtered to life within his spheres. This time, it showed he and the Arch Wizard facing off in some room of the Tower, he guessed. She summoned a sword of white light and ran him through, turning him into an explosion of fractured light. At this set, he could only laugh. There was no power a mortal could harness to stop him.

  “You taunt me,” he growled at the spheres. “Do you wish for destruction?” Perhaps he’d made them too well and far more intelligent than he’d anticipated.

  Zekes whirled around the chamber, bobbing its head from side to side, humming a jovial tune, breasts flopping. “Destruction, destruction,” Zekes said loudly.

  He saw his true form waving at himself from within both of the spheres. His clone grew smaller and smaller as if he were dropping into a canyon. There was smoldering anger in his clone’s eyes, a broad grin growing up its face as he shrank. The shrinking image became a fist, then a dot, a speck of dust, then nothing.

  “It’s all a game, isn’t it, Zekes? Something to pass the time. Something to keep us occupied until we all turn to dust. Sometimes, I wish for a mortal’s death. How much easier things would be.”

  “Mortal,” Zekes crooned.

  “Do you know what the worst part of eternity is, Zekes?”

  Zekes continued in his mindless marching, jar clutched tightly against his chest. The scuffing of his feet bounced from the walls.

  “The boredom. The predictability. Men are always the same with the same needs, wants, and desires. The technology changes but the rest…” he snapped his fingers. “The rest stays the same. Even if I were to die, it might be nice to bear witness to it, to feel that change and to see what comes.”

  He started to pace, following behind Zekes. “We need to avoid war for as long as possible, Zekes. The Purists must be hardened before they’re allowed to storm the Tower’s gates. That Arch Wizard is a clever one. I fear she may discover a way to destroy us, but how and in which way? Could the spheres have been right?”

  “Destroy,” Zekes said in a musing tone, fuzzy eyebrows raised.

  “There may be a fault in our armor. What could I have possibly missed? I’ve witnessed the fall of countless kings, queens, and emperors undone by their own hubris, Zekes. What is it that I’m missing? The spheres have foretold of my demise, but have given no clues to the how of it.”

  Zekes took a staggering step, and his jar slipped from his arms, shattering across the floor. He froze, twisted mouth falling open with a horrified inhalation. Prodal crinkled his nose at the odor of the withered Ice Spirit lashing at his senses, stinking like rotting eggs and mold. She was a tiny skeleton cloaked in hardened leather skin.

  Zekes collapsed to the floor with a sob, frantically gathering bits of glass and brushing them into a pile on top of the dead Ice Spirit. His sob became a moan, cheeks wet with tears, arms trembling as he worked. “Zekes, Zekes, Zekes,” the creature murmured, voice shuddering.

  “Why are you so concerned with that old thing?” Prodal asked, planting his hands on his hips. Zekes ignored him, his sobs shaking his whole form with tremors. Prodal pursed his lips. Zekes’s arms were now streaking his floors with blood as he worked to gather up shards of glass, apparently unaware of his injuries.

  “Step aside,” Prodal commanded. Zekes slowly rose, angled nose dripping with long strings of mucus and tears. He shuffled into a pillar and started lightly bashing his forehead against the emerald tiles. “Zekes, Zekes,” he moaned.

  “Look, I’ll fix it,” Prodal said, twiddling his fingers. The shards swirled into the air, snapping together, and the glass congealed back into the shape of his jar. The Ice Spirit rose to her feet, shaking her head and pressing a palm to her temple. Her little eyes glared at him, tiny fists balling and tiny wings buzzing. He extended his index finger with a flick, and she was thrown into the jar, glowing and casting the glass in a cool bluish light.

  Zekes continue
d bashing his head against the pillar, dotting it in blood. “Zekes,” Prodal barked, calling his attention, and beckoning to the jar while placing a cork over the opening. “Here you are, for you. Don’t forget to let her breathe once in a while or she’ll die again the same.”

  “Breathe!” Zekes gasped, grossly asymmetrically placed eyes blinking away tears. He ran to the jar and wrapped it in his muscular arms, pressing it tight between his breasts. “Zekes,” he moaned, pressing his face to the side.

  The Ice Spirit shrieked from her prison, beating against the glass with newborn fury. The harder she raged, the brighter she glowed. He frowned. They were usually peaceful creatures. They were incredibly rare and only found in the deep recesses of the Mountains of Misery where it was permanently frosted and too cold for men to thrive. This particular spirit was a gift to Asebor from one of his followers, from whom Prodal had forgotten.

  The Ice Spirit threw her head back in a mighty scream, finally settling down to sit on the bottom of her jar. She brought her knees up to her chest, clutched them in her arms and gently rocked with frozen tears in her eyes. Zekes resumed his marching, but with a new vigor to his step. One creature’s joy in exchange for another’s misery.

  Prodal grinned, finding pleasure in Zekes’s happiness. It was the little things that mattered most. Regarding little things, he had to contrive for the best use or his debtors in the world of men. He remembered that there was a slit in his armor then. Isa, Senka, Juzo, and Greyson had found him once in the only gateway to his realm he’d been unable to close in the Dread Temple. It was a weakness he hadn’t been able to rectify, as if intentionally placed there in the chaotic whirl of his creation.

  Scab was on course for the Tower, playing out his part as Prodal had thought. He was another pawn in his attempt at laying waste to all who threatened his existence. Prodal didn’t put a lot of faith in the scoundrel getting the job done, but a pawn couldn’t be ignored.

  Prodal remembered the day he found Scab. He wore a despicable assortment of threadbare and moldering rags. The Arch Wizard left him to die but never stamped out the embers of his body and spirit. The young woman hadn’t learned the lessons of the past and would pay dearly for it. Your enemy must be crushed to nothing. Embers become flames.

  Scab dragged himself through the white sands making a path for the shoreline, blood streaming from the remains of his arm. Lapping waves swept away streams of blood from his body, pinking the clear water. The salted air stung in Prodal’s sinuses, arms crossed as he glared down at this sad creature. Prodal’s shadow hung over him for minutes now, unaware of his presence.

  “Hi there.” Prodal waved both of his arms, hoping that would be enough to get his blood-starved attention.

  Scab slowly rolled onto his side with a groan, eyes drooping and seemingly unable to focus. Waves pulled at his knotted hair and fanned it out over the sand. He set his head down with a thump, eyes slowly drifting up to find Prodal. “Wha-who. Who are you?” Scab squinted, raising his bleeding stump in a failed attempt to shield his eyes from the glaring sun.

  Prodal gave a slight bow and gestured with a gloved hand. “I’ve come to save you. Do you wish to live?”

  “Save me?” Scab muttered in disbelief. “You’re not from the Tower then?”

  Prodal let out a hearty laugh. “No. Not from the Tower. From… another world, you could say.” Prodal scanned the vast stretch of beach. He spotted a few crabs with violet shells and squawking gulls riding the thermals. Behind them was a border of waving beachgrass where the sand ended and the Woodland Plunge resumed. “Usually, I would take you into my world for such a deal, but I thought I would try coming here since this beach is so wonderfully desolate. You have selected a beautiful place to die, I must say.”

  “Another world. What do you mean?” Scab licked his lips, voice going hoarse. “Have water, my good man? Or even better, drink?”

  “Of course.” Prodal lowered himself into a squat, handing Scab a full glass of water conjured from this realm. “Here you are. Go on, water for now,” Prodal said, tipping it into his mouth.

  Scab greedily drank it down then mumbled his thanks. “Is this… the Shadow Realm?” He blinked.

  Prodal roared with laughter now. “I see why men like you. No. I have an offer for you.”

  “An offer,” Scab repeated. He was a lot like Zekes, Prodal thought.

  “Yes. I will save your life, give you a measure of new strength. What do you say?”

  “A free lunch.” Scab snickered. “From a man with a necklace of bones? Now I’ve heard it all.” Scab closed his eyes with a wince. “And what is the price of this glorious renewal?” He asked with a flamboyant gesture of his bleeding stump, pattering blood over his cheeks. “Perhaps my soul?” he asked jovially.

  A thin grin stretched across Prodal’s face. “I should’ve expected no less from you. The price is indebtedness. You’ll be free to live as you choose, fuck and murder your days away, whatever your proclivity. However,” Prodal nodded, raising a finger. “One day I will need you to do something for me, and when that day, that moment, or time comes, you will have no choice but to obey my compulsion. What do you say? And yes, your soul.”

  “Sounds like a shit agreement to me.” Scab slitted his eyes to regard him with a surprising shrewdness for a man on the verge of death. Yes, he would be a valuable pawn indeed.

  “Look around you,” Prodal suggested. “You’re dying. You’ll be lucky if you live five more minutes. You don’t have much choice, and you like living far too much to die now. A slave to your senses, to your cock, if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Scab blew out his mustaches. “From a scoundrel to another scoundrel then. On one condition. You restore my arm and don’t call in your debt while I’m enjoying the carnal pleasures of this life. Can you agree to that? Let me finish myself off first if I’m with a good whore. Few things worse than blue balls, sure you understand.”

  “That’s two conditions.” Prodal frowned, crossing his arms.

  Scab groaned. “Must you gods, demons, whatever you are, always be so damned picky? Wants my damned soul but will take me mid-fuck. Can you believe it?” he asked the empty sky.

  “You have about two minutes before you’ll die and be sent off to the Shadow Realm. Your vision is starting to fail. Hearing perhaps muted…”

  “Give me my carnal pleasures then. I’ll forgo the arm.”

  “Very well.” And it was done, the man branded and added to his harem of souls. Prodal had the distinct feeling that this man would be immensely useful against the Tower.

  Prodal willed himself from his office, smiling at the memory of that day. He traveled via thought beyond the blasted lands, his ruined castle and into his realm’s center. The center was an immeasurable distance from his office, the land itself having no contiguous paths. They were a series of disjointed fragments with no connection but his mind between them.

  He emerged upon a hump of craggy gray stones spanning no more than twenty feet across in either direction. The stones were cool under his bare feet, his skin covered in a smattering of lizard’s scales. Around him was a sea of fire having no start and no end. The fire waved like water and had all the characteristics of water except that it burned the hundreds of thousands of souls who resided in its clutches.

  The sky was clear and lit with an expansive swath of stars. Only one world was visible tonight, the Shadow Realm, denied the company of the other worlds. The Shadow Realm made slight progress across the shimmering sky, a globe verdant with greens and reds. He sometimes sat on the stones for hours at a time, watching the realms float by. The Shadow Realm’s surface looked so clear tonight. It had a pleasing jumble of crimson valleys and vermilion mountains interspersed among swirling cobalt rivers. It was enthralling, capturing his attention while the men below his gaze howled in agony.

  They scraped, clawed, and stepped over each other, vying for a breath of fresh air above the fire’s furious touch, always just out of reach. The pestilent odor of
cooking flesh was difficult for even Prodal to bear. His fires penetrated their souls but never destroyed them, lit by the void of his heart. They all damned themselves to this place when they were complicit in his bargain. There were occasional plumes of dark gray smoke where some souls deserved a little extra punishment, those who tried to escape the binding of their agreement. The souls of men and women shrieked, groaned, and wept under the omnipresent flames. Despair and agony were the king and queen of the fire sea. He wondered if any of them understood the magnitude of the bargain.

  He gazed at his favorite possession, the soul of Lillian Thorne. “Ah, there you are,” he smiled.

  She was always the beautiful fighter, every day trying to find a way out of her imprisonment. She never gave up. Maybe she would today. He raised his eyebrows as she again managed to crawl her way out from under the crowding bodies trying to hold her down. Her naked flesh was scorched and blistered, then healed and scorched again. She rose up from the masses, eyes wide in horror. He waved at her and regarded her with a slight smile. “Will you make it again, dearest?” Prodal whispered, lowering himself to sit with his legs crossed and back rigid. “You are so very beautiful.”

  Where all the others wallowed in defeat and suffered the throes of agony, Lillian fought with her face fixed in a howl of rage. She managed to drag herself atop a man’s back, crawling along the throng of shifting figures to reach the island of stone. Her hair had been burned away to a few blackened wisps, a once luxurious obsidian. Her scalp wept blood from a blackened skin. Her lips were blistered swathes of char and blood, peeled back to show bloody gums. She reached for a fat fellow writhing every which way, tearing a chunk of burning flesh from his shoulder as she made further progress for the island. She ripped and tore at her compatriots in suffering, dragging herself ever closer to the refuge of stone. She finally reached the edge, hand clamping on a jagged tip of stone.

  “You sure do have a lot of fight in you. Well done!” Prodal clapped like a young boy, rising up to stand and working tightness from his legs.