Their bodies fell like a crumbling mountain, hailing from the sky by the thousands to engulf the sun. The Shadow Princess flickered through Nyset’s portal, snapping shut as Grimbald was assaulted by their irresistible weight. His limbs were pinned in seconds, bones crushed, and shattering in his skull. His skin was gored by hundreds of ravenous bites. He tried to scream, but his throat had been flattened. He managed to open his mouth, and the sinuous curve of reptilian flesh fell into it. In his last effort of resistance, he tried to bite, but their oppressive weight tore the corners of his lips apart, dislocating his jaw with a sickening click. He wailed as their weight grew and grew. He didn’t know how much more pain a man could take before his mind shattered.
It was over in seconds, but it felt like forever. He was conscious just long enough to realize what was happening, thankful for death’s quick and pitiless scythe. The Tower’s resistance was ended in an instant, all of their efforts for nothing while the weight of the Shadow squeezed his internal organs from his body. Grimbald’s death held no measure of the glory he always imagined it would be.
“No,” Claw whispered, eyes bulging so hard it felt as if they wanted to tear from his sockets. His scarred hands squeezed the frame of the arched window, leaning out and refusing to believe his eyes. “This can’t be happening. Can’t be.”
But it is, his mind refuted. Do what needs doing. What you promised.
Claw watched the horrific spectacle from the Arch Wizard’s spire about a mile away, the shrieks of the dying carrying terribly clear.
The room was circular, the walls mortared creamy Milvorian stone. It had a solitary couch of a deep brown leather, a disheveled bed and a writing desk holding Claw’s packed belongings. If he were to set his gaze to the North, everything appeared like any other day over the amber Plains of Dressna. To the South, hell reigned. The southern sea breeze carried the odor of rot and decay.
“Death Spawn,” he whispered.
Something broke inside of him, coming unhinged. “Fuck. Fucking Dragon! Fucking Phoenix!” he screamed, tilting his head to the sky. “Where are you? Why have you left us?” The dark clouds that had been ever creeping over the southern lands fell over the spire to block what remained of the sun, casting him in a grim light.
“Uncie? What’s wrong?” Why are you yelling?” Gaidal asked from behind him.
“I’m not… sorry.” Claw sighed, placed a smile on his face even as tears fell freely from his eyes. He watched as the Shadow horde fell over the Tower’s wall as if it were a child’s obstacle, shrouding all the stonework in their sordid bodies. Their endless forms spilled over the wall and into the Tower’s gardens, spreading like spilled ink.
He turned to face Gaidal and brushed away the wet. “It’s nothing, boy.” He wondered what he made of all of this. Did he have any notion of what was happening? Did he know how much his life was about to change? This was no world for a child.
Gaidal, hardly four name years, was frowning at him as he sat on the floor. He cocked his head, long dark hair falling over his square jaw. In one hand was a carved figurine of the Dragon, in the other a carved Cerumal. “Okay.” Gaidal shrugged, then resumed smashing the two wooden figures together. “I’ll get you yet, Dragon!” the boy said in his lowest voice, which wasn’t very low, providing the voice of the Cerumal. “You’re no match for the Dragon!” He snarled in the Dragon’s voice. He whacked the Dragon into the Cerumal figurine, sending it spinning across the floor. “The Dragon always wins, and the bad guys die.” Gaidal raised his head to give him a look that sought his approval. “Mommy always says the Dragon beats the bad guys. Right, Uncie?” Gaidal nodded as if Claw had already answered his agreement.
“That’s right, lad. Your mother is usually right.” Claw walked over to him and scooped him into his arms, unintentionally dislodging the Dragon carving from his grip and resting him on his hip. Gaidal peered down to watch as the Dragon figurine tumbled, catching it with the Phoenix and drawing it up into his expectant hand. Claw peered into his eyes, a bright emerald exactly like Walter’s. “Gaidal. Do you remember what we talked about? How there was a chance we might have to go if something bad happens?”
The boy enthusiastically nodded. “Mhm.”
Claw’s mouth opened and closed, hesitating. “I’m afraid that time has come, and we must go. We’re going to go to someplace different, someplace warm. It will take us some time to get there…” Claw stole a backward glance, the Shadow snakes spreading like a plague over the market square.
“Can we use portals?” Gaidal furrowed his brow.
“No. Where we’re going is much too far for that.”
“Oh. We’re gonna go on a boat?”
“A sailboat, yes. It will be fun.” Claw forced a smile, but a great sadness carved a hole in his chest.
“Where are we going again? Is Momma gonna be there?” Gaidal asked.
“We’re going on a trip to the Far Islands… and I don’t know.” Claw held him tight and started to round the stairs down the Tower’s spire.
“Why?” Gaidal stared at him wide-eyed.
“Because something bad is happening here, and we have to leave,” Claw’s lungs started working like bellows, knowing it born of anxiety and not exertion.
“What is it?” Gaidal squeaked.
“Bad things.”
“Like my Cerumal?”
“Yeah.” Claw sniffed. “Something like that.”
Nyset growled as she fell into a roll, organic debris kicking up her back and under her armor. She sprang to her feet, finding herself in an unfamiliar world.
Where are you?
She took in the ancient forest hemming her in. A woody scent filled the air, laced with musk and rot. Towering trees guarded the pinking sky. Tangled vines hung down in coiling loops between broad leaves. Roots twisted up from the ground like wriggling Shadow snakes, some so large you could easily walk beneath them. The foliage between the trees was lush and impassably thick. Gnarled boughs held what appeared to be an endless supply of berries. A gleaming spider’s web shone behind a shrine of piled rocks, hundreds of dead leaves and sticks trapped in its sticky snares. Another tree had a lightning-blasted side, charred in scars that splintered like shattered glass. Tiny insects were like stardust dancing on chinks of bleeding light.
“Tigeria,” she breathed. If only her first time there were under better circumstances, she might’ve found some enjoyment in the newness of the place. In Zoria, everything she loved was dying.
Is this how you reward the loyalty of your closest? The question was given to the gods, neither replying. Her eyes fell on the Shadow Princess, frantically digging at the earth before the strange shrine. Around it were the remains of unlit candle stubs and a waterlogged book. “Where is it? It has to be here! Where is it?” The Shadow Princess heaved clods of earth from the ground, and the dirt hissed against tree leaves.
The trees had parted above the shrine, and everything around it was blackened, corrupted by her pestilence. Nyset hesitated, watching with grim curiosity as this sad creature abandoned all to find the one thing that would end her reign. It reminded her of Senka and her tales of disavowing her obvious addiction to Angel’s Moss. This enemy, this demon that ended the lives of so many was but a cursed child. Nyset drew hard on the humid air as the first evidence of her gamble revealed itself.
Strange bluish spears of light shot from the cracking earth. They cut the shadows of the forest, slashing up to the heavens. The Shadow Princess punched her hand into the ground. “It’s still here! I knew it. She lied to us! Liars must die.” Her voice became shrill. “You fool, now she’s just going to kill us. Must I do everything to keep us from death?” Then her voice changed again and went hard as granite. “Of course she did, but you didn’t listen to me, and now she’s going to kill us because of your stupidity! When we die, make sure you tell him it’s not my fault.”
A wry smile spread on Nyset’s cheeks. The Shadow Princess turned, glowing phylactery victoriously clutched
in her fist, and Nyset’s spear of white Dragon fire soared. It struck true. Her phylactery exploded with red sparks and bits of shattered crystal. The remains of her phylactery tinkled against her shrine in a song that told of her inevitable termination.
“NOOOOO!” The Shadow Princess shrieked, dropping to all fours, and working to gather bits of the broken stone. The hand that had held the phylactery had vanished from her forearm to fingertips, spewing rivulets of glowing violet blood. “What have you done?” Her voice changed again, this time high pitched and whimpering. “We’re going to die now! She’s going to kill us! Everything is lost. Lost, lost, lost! Master Grozul’s sacrifice was for nothing, for nothing! You’ve ruined it all. Anger knew what would befall us. She always knew.”
She’s mad. Nyset narrowed her eyes at a dark mist that hovered up behind the Shadow Princess. It twirled into the semblance of an oval, further materializing into a creature with hundreds of eyes, spikes, talons, and mouths. The mist compressed into a spear and whooshed into the Shadow Princess’s back.
The Shadow Princess arched with a dry gasp. The violet light in her eyes became obsidian mirrors. The nub of her ravaged wing started to grow with new life, the bleeding suddenly staunched. Gelatinous scarlet carapace slid over her bleeding forearm like an organic bandage. Her voice shifted, head raising in defiance, lips peeling back into a feral snarl. “No. I’ll gut this bitch where she stands. I won’t stand for this. If you cowards want to waste your life gathering glass…”
Nyset’s heart jumped against her ribs, drawing deep on the Dragon and the Phoenix, their strength infusing her body with the power of a god. She drew far more of the god’s strength than needed, taking no chances, releasing a dozen spears of Dragon fire in a wall of death.
A throaty laugh cut the air, and the Shadow Princess vanished. Nyset’s spears tore burning chunks from the sides of trees, exploded against the shrine, and cut smoldering holes through looping roots. A sizzle and an odor of rot came from behind. Tens of knives tore into Nyset’s back, carving through her in bolts of pain. A scream was ripped from her throat, head thrown back and eyes screwed shut in an attempt to press down the agony. “No!”
Behind her, The Shadow Princess laughed, a crisp, dry, and murderous thing. “You try to fool me, but who is the greater fool? I wanted you to follow me, stupid cunt!”
Nyset peered down at her chest with a shudder. “No. Can’t be.” Eight of the Shadow Princess’s talons stood from her chest, coated in her blood. The light of the Phoenix poured from her wounds in wisps of blue smoke, healing but unable to close her chest with her talons impaled. “Get… out… of… me.”
“Your arrogance defeats you.” Her laughter grew into a madman’s cackle. “All this time you thought it would be so easy, that I was but a child to be crushed under your heels. The Tower’s arrogance, always the same. A weakness we never properly exploited.”
Nyset peered up at the sky, planted her boots on the Shadow Princess’s legs and threw herself off her blades with a shriek of pain. Her wounds self-knitted, though it did nothing to stop her nerves from wailing. She fell to a knee, breath heaving, sweat streaming from her temples. She started to rise with the Dragon’s thirst for vengeance coiling her anger.
“A challenge!” The Shadow Princess grinned and sent a claw to her enemy’s head.
Nyset ducked and fell into a backward roll. A portal snapped open, and she fell through, emerging at the Shadow Princess’s back. An axe of white flame, born of the Dragon and the Phoenix forged as one, flashed alight in her fist. She chopped down in a streaking arc, aiming to slice the Shadow Princess into halves. “Die!”
The Shadow Princess evaded with a backflip, assisted with a flap of her wings to bring her soaring ten paces away. “I know you feel as I do, Arch Cunt. That this life, this world, that this everything is meaningless!” she shrieked, midnight eyes seeming to deepen and swallow the surrounding light. “Maybe we aren’t very different, you and I. The futility of our actions… what is it that separates us? We both scream when we die!” A flash of violet, and Nyset drew a portal, leaping through as a cone of violet flame scorched the area she’d just stood in lapping flames.
“No. We’re different!” Nyset growled, filling the ground before the Shadow Princess in a wall of Dragon fire, holding her down with the Phoenix’s crushing grip.
The Shadow Princess wailed, stumbling backwards as her flesh was blistered, scored, some bits of red carapace fell away like molted skin. The Shadow Princess snickered as she burned, falling to her knees to gaze up at Nyset with a vicious snarl. “Oh, it feels good to kill, doesn’t it? Does it make you feel good? Do you like hurting me?” she cackled, drawing something out from behind her back.
“No,” Nyset breathed. In an instant, the Dragon and the Phoenix were cut off as if sliced by a falling guillotine. Nyset felt naked, deflated, and weak. The Shadow Princess held an Equalizer dangling from a Milvorian chain. “Arch Cunt, the time of the Shadow draws near. The Age of Dawn ends, and the Shadow Age begins.”
The Shadow Princess rose to her feet with a groan, flesh knitting itself together much like her own strength of the Phoenix. “You freed my soul and thus restored my strength. I feel it all within me and all at once. Do you understand? Do you see? I have become a god! The fearlessness of my father, the endless strength of my mothers, both Isabelle Glade and the True Mother. I am all. The heretical gods of the Dragon and Phoenix are nothing before the power of this…” she broke into a sinister chortle, “petty gem.”
Nyset swallowed, raising her chin despite the knowledge that the end of her life drew near. She wouldn’t die without trying, it’s what Walter would’ve done. She charged at the Shadow Princess in a reckless move, steel sword ripping from her hip sheath. Violet winked, and she dropped into a slide, flames licking at her floating hair. Her hair was caught in the Shadow Princess’s conflagration, assaulting her scalp with its own form of misery. She rose up and slashed with her sword, her movements slow and terribly mortal without the Dragon’s assistance.
Nyset blinked, and the Shadow Princess was gone. Hands wrapped around her throat, delicate at first, the skin like cured leather. “You have failed, Arch Wizard,” the Shadow Princess whispered into her ear. “And now you will die.” Her hands clamped like a vice, crushing her throat with an audible pop.
The Shadow Princess smashed Nyset’s head to the ground, and her mind was stuffed with a dull ringing. The Shadow Princess prattled on, but the words weren’t getting in. Her hands pressed hard on Nyset’s flattened neck, sword dropped a few feet away. She stared at it, fingers stretched. Her shoulder pushed out of the socket to get every inch she could. Out of reach. Out of time.
Her vision blackened at the edges. The Shadow Princess smiled into her eyes, roaring with great peals of laughter. She gave up on the sword, making a desperate attempt at working her fingers under the Shadow Princess’s death grip. She got a few fingers in up to the first knuckle when the Arch Wizard lost control of her limbs, fingers unresponsive, the light that once entered her eyes a patina of bloody stars.
Then there was a sound in the peaceful abyss between life and death.
Sticks cracked, and drapes whispered as if drawn apart. An offer, Arch Wizard, a voice like burning leaves said.
You, she replied, surprised he came and grateful for it at once. Are you him? I didn’t think you would come for me.
Prodal, I am, Prodal responded.
An idea occurred to her. You must really want her dead.
I do. But alas, the price. There is always a price, but I think you already know this. Nyset could imagine this creature wearing a sadistic smile, inclining its head.
Under a condition, I am prepared to agree to your bargain, Nyset answered.
A condition? You are bold for a mortal on the verge of death. Prodal’s voice rumbled like a volcano.
Nyset did not respond, uncaring of Death’s axe falling. Her silent bluff was a gambit that held a world of downside risk.
Tim
e dwindles. Name your condition, Prodal voiced quickly.
Brand me in your realm among the Lake of Fire after, and only after, I’ve slain her.
Preposterous. Prodal emitted what might’ve been a laugh. No mortal can survive in my world. And how?
I don’t need to tell you I am no ordinary mortal. I can survive long enough to fulfill the bargain. Let me slay my enemy.
And your enemy, she thought to herself.
Very well, Arch Wizard. You will be a lovely addition to my collection. I do hope you enjoy pain.
Nyset gasped, her vision restored to find the Shadow Princess’s grin faltering. There was something in Nyset’s hand, and she gazed down to find her short sword firmly in her grip. Its leather-wrapped hilt was fresh and soft, yielding to the pressure of her fingertips. Her muscles sung with new vigor, sword arm driving hard, roaring her triumph. Nyset slammed the sword through the Shadow Princess’s neck like it was made of paper, the guard thumping against the side of her throat.
The Shadow Princess released her grip on Nyset, rising up and stumbling back. “How?” Her mouth fell open, and blood wept from the corners of her lips. The sword protruded from her neck like a grisly ornament.
In the Arch Wizard’s other hand was the Equalizer crystal, dangling in her grip. She growled as she smashed it down against a stone, shattering with a dull crack. The Dragon and Phoenix surged through her body in a beautiful torrent of rage and harmony. The wounds in her chest closed, her flattened throat allowing her to breathe easy. “I paid the price you would not.” The half of her hair that had been burned away started to sprout anew from her healing scalp. Cuts and scrapes knitted shut, all of her once again whole.
“You… Prodal?” The Shadow Princess chuckled, blood spurting down her chin and between her breasts. “You’re an even greater fool than I imagined,” she croaked, momentarily choking on her own blood and heaving before she could speak. The Shadow Princess drew the sword from her throat with a squelch, blood spraying from the sides of her neck. She staggered on failing legs.
The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7) Page 38