The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  “Perhaps. But I’m happy to die knowing your touch will never infect these lands again.”

  “Don’t you understand, Arch Wizard? You will never die. All you hold dear will be lost to you forever. There will be no Shadow Realm for you.” She dropped the sword and slumped to her knees. Blood poured down her shoulders and arms before pattering from her talons. “My work is done. Humanity is lost. Killing me changes nothing. My pets are not like Death Spawn. They will live on and slay all that remains of your kind. The Shadow Age has come to pass.” She choked again, falling to her hands and knees, guts wrenching and puking blood.

  “No. You’re wrong!” Nyset shouted, hoping this was a lie. Maybe if she fought hard enough, she could change things. The seed of doubt had already been planted long ago. The Shadow Princess’s words confirmed her own suspicions.

  “Nothing… you do… matters.” The Shadow Princess’s eyes fluttered. She teetered forward, thumping against the ground face first and producing the dull pop of cracking bones. Nyset drew her sword into her hands, bathed it in Dragon fire, and hammered it home through the back of the Shadow Princess’s neck.

  A long rattle of air hissed through the Shadow Princess’s lips. Nyset released her hold on the sword and peered up at the sky. She admired its beauty as the stars started to slowly reveal themselves. Treetops swayed in a cold wind.

  A portal burst to life before her. Its edges waved like the ocean, and its surface was a shimmering wall of flames. She closed her eyes and prayed to the gods. If you can hear me, I beseech you for the strength to slay your enemies. I have a chance to ruin the one known as Prodal in my tongue, with your help.

  A roar and a screech resounded in her head. We hear your request Nyset Camfield of the Silver Tower, the Dragon and Phoenix responded in unison. We demand a sacrifice for such gifts.

  No. She projected her thoughts with a bold show of strength. I know of your war for souls with this one. I ask that you give me what I need to slay our mutual enemy. If I succeed, I wish for you to return my betrothed to the Shadow Realm. If I fail, I am yours. You have no risks in this gamble.

  Silence. The weight of it interminable.

  I do not accept, the Dragon bellowed. It faded from her thoughts with a parting roar, and she knew then that it had left her forever. It felt like part of her died and fell away, never to be reclaimed.

  The Phoenix let out a shrill squawk, then voiced, I accept your bargain, Nyset Camfield. I hope you succeed, and I grant you my strength.

  Nyset’s eyes snapped open with a gasp. She instinctively opened her mouth as the Phoenix’s light poured down her throat in a bluish column, replacing all of her, even the void left by the Dragon. For an instant, it felt like an ice pick was trying to pry her chest apart from the inside out. All her worries, rage, and anger died away and was replaced with an infinite tranquility.

  The feeling, though, was short lived. She was torn from the ground, tumbling into the world of flame. She closed her eyes, focusing her thoughts inward and holding the Phoenix close to her heart.

  When Nyset opened her eyes, she was in the air, floating like a dust mote. “What?” she breathed. “Where am I? Walt. Walter?” Thoughts were suddenly disjointed. Time was lost. The idea of time felt impossible to comprehend.

  Surrounding her was a vast dome of tiles that perpetually fell from the walls, all of them coated in fire. Where a tile fell, a new tile replaced it, eventually dislodging from its mortar and into an endless sea of flames.

  “I’m here,” she whispered, motion drawing her eyes.

  Giant spears of rock emerged from a land of waving flames. Perched upon them were horrors that made her stomach churn. Their skin color matched the flames. One bore the semblance of a nude woman with four wings set upon her back. The top of her head widened like the base of a triangle, fanning out into hundreds of thin coiling horns. Forming at the back of her head and curling around her body were waving tentacles. The demon’s mouth yawned open, and from it emerged something that might’ve been a tongue, a giant swathe of flesh that hung down to her loins, its edges lined in lapping antennae.

  Galloping up the sheer side of another length of stone was a beast whose lower half was equine, its torso a heavily muscled man, flesh covered in stony spikes. Running down the center of its chest was a line of flames, its head like a wolf’s and topped with a mantle of horns. It had a scorpion’s tail, but of massive proportions, its poisonous barb hanging over its head.

  “Yes.” Prodal smirked, gazing up at her from a nub of land about twenty feet below her. “Are you ready? I’ve been waiting for you to wake from the dream.”

  “What are they?” Nyset asked, not looking at him, but regarding the strange creatures crawling over the fangs of rock.

  Prodal shrugged and gave a listless gesture. “Things I’ve collected over the years. Would you like to join them? I’d have to change you, of course. You’re too… boring.”

  “I see.” Nyset licked her lips, mouth furnace dry. Her eyes were pained like she was trapped in a burning house, heat and smoke drawing thick tears. “This is the Fire Realm,” she stated. She frowned at some niggling vestige of a thought. There was something she was supposed to remember, something she needed to do. Her memories were shattered diamonds.

  She gazed down at the man. His arms were crossed over a fit but not quite muscular build. He was bald-headed with the strangest eyes she’d ever seen. They hypnotically shifted colors every few seconds from amber to black to bright blue. He wore simple brown clothing that looked handmade. His skin was sallow, and around his neck, a small satchel suspended from a chain. “I suppose,” Prodal answered. “Let’s get this over with now.”

  “Get what over?” She balked, worry stabbing in her throat and bringing up bile. She needed to remember. Remember! The man twiddled his fingers with a hearty chuckle, as if he were a magician from a children’s story. It was an absurd gesture.

  Pain tore into her arm, outstretched in the air and smoking like it was being burned. “Stop! What are you doing?” she shrieked. Black swirling lines formed in her flesh on the underside of her forearm, going around and around her arm like an endless cattle brand.

  Within that pain, memory unfolded like a flowering lotus. Her name was Nyset Camfield of the Silver Tower. She was here to kill a god. To once again wrap Walter in her arms. A familiar presence glowed in her heart and brought warmth to her limbs. All of her memories returned like an opened floodgate. The warmth grew into an ember, ember into a roaring hearth.

  “Curious. You’re glowing,” Prodal said quickly.

  Nyset glanced down at her chest, finding herself nude and uncaring. She smiled, finding a billowing bluish-white light swirling at her chest like a cosmic nebula. The demons crawling over the rocks shrieked in terror, some skittering around the towers of stone like fleeing squirrels. The glow waved and undulated, encompassing the entirety of her form and banishing all measure of pain. A victorious laugh bellowed from her heart.

  Prodal scowled, eyes flaring bright red. Nyset willed herself from the sky and easily broke from Prodal’s bonds. She fell freely of her volition to join him on the ground. As she descended, she realized then that the flames were not only flames but saw there were people burning within them. Her eyes widened in horror, taking in a few of the agonized faces. “This is what you meant when you said ‘your collection,’” she said as her feet touched the obsidian island of rock, cool beneath her bare feet. She raised her eyes to meet his.

  “What are… how did you get here?” Prodal asked, slightly inclining his head to the side.

  “Ny! Nyset! Help… us!” a voice screamed. She knew that voice, brow drawing down hard. She turned her head to see hands scrabbling at the edge of the obsidian stone. Every leaping grasp left burning flesh and blood behind, the owner’s hands reduced to charring bones.

  “Who…? Isa! Is that you? Why? How are you here?” She tried to move toward the hands, but her feet were suddenly rooted to the ground. The owner of the voice
leaped, revealing Isa’s burning visage. Half of his face had been stripped away to bone and sinews, the other half gored and burning. “By the gods,” she whispered, jaw falling open.

  Another figure managed to draw her upper half atop the stone. Her hair smoldered, maybe jet-black, full lips blistered, round face terribly familiar. It looked like her body had been beaten with a dull axe, covered in hundreds of gouges.

  “Lillian. Lillian!” she screamed. “What happened to you?” Her heart ached with their pain.

  “Nyset.” Lillian smiled as her face suddenly went up in flames, the smile becoming an agonized shriek.

  “It shouldn’t surprise me that you know her,” Prodal casually said. “She is a relentless fighter. Lots of spirit in that one.”

  Nyset started to speak, but the voice of the Phoenix rang from her throat, its spirit taking her body and forcing her to turn away. She became a shell for the Phoenix’s control, her will pressed into the back of an enormous cavern. “Your reign could not go on unchallenged. Your end comes, Dark One,” the Phoenix shrilled.

  “Filthy flying rodent!” Prodal growled, a portal of flames gaping open on the ground. He leaped in, and Nyset’s body was forced to follow.

  Not again! No! Don’t make me do this! Don’t make me leave them! she wailed at the Phoenix.

  This is transient, was the Phoenix’s only reply.

  TWENTY-THREE

  A New Place

  “It seems death is not always favorable to life.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  Nyset’s breath caught as she landed on a shadowed path. She couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead, everything else obscured in thick fog. The path was lined in shattered tiles of a deep blue, some upturned as if made for slicing at bare feet.

  I leave you. Return your body, Nyset Camfield, the Phoenix said in her head. Do not think your guile will work on us. Our bargains are final. Its voice became a ferocious growl. I sense your conniving. Your treachery. The measures you’re willing to take to return to him.

  It was true. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. How could she argue with a god who was helping her? Thank you, she mentally replied. With a whoosh of air, her mind was thrust back into the forefront of her body. Her mind and form were again one being. A shiver passed through her at the prospect of living in that strange limbo. The Phoenix once again filled her with a sense of power and sedation. It quieted her fears and gave her the courage to march on.

  She pawed at the enveloping fog, cool and wet against her hands. What choice did she have but to follow the path? She treaded carefully, avoiding upturned tiles and straying too close to the edge of the fog. She couldn’t say why she did it, but some part of her knew that it would mean oblivion.

  The path curved on for a time, winding this way and that, unsure of how long or how far she traveled. It eventually opened into a barren landscape that might’ve once been a forest. Everything was in ruins. The path broadened, and the cobalt tiles slowly faded, giving way to weed-choked cobblestones. A low crumbling wall followed the path. Beyond the wall were the remains of decaying tree stumps and leafless saplings. Among the trees were dull gray boulders. The dark sky was framed in by spiraling trees and banded in a shimmer of red light.

  She traveled onward, marching up long and gradual steps as the ground rose. “I’ll find you!” she shouted, the threat hollow in her ears. She peered at the skeletal treetops, waving in an unfelt wind. When she set her gaze back on the road, Prodal stood where it appeared to crest.

  “Arch Wizard. You don’t belong here.” His voice reverberated as if they were in a cavern.

  “What is this place?” she asked, starting in a run.

  He vanished, but his voice responded. “Do you like it? There are countless others like this.”

  Nyset passed a hollowed-out tree stump standing no more than four feet tall with octopus-like branches. Upon one of its branches was a rusted lantern emitting a soft red light. Circling the tree were long grasses blackened with rot. There was something about the color and the hum of that light that terrified her.

  She ran faster.

  To her left was a length of bowed over wrought iron cemetery gate, sharp-tipped spears standing up at every angle. Behind the gate was a pile of porcelain bones spanning over six feet, some long and twisted, none from any creature of the world of man.

  She became suddenly aware of her nakedness. She felt the bouncing of her breasts, the wiggle of her backside, the undulations of her every step passing through her thighs. She felt her cheeks flare with shame. It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. These feelings she knew, were intentional. He was trying to weaken her resolve.

  She continued, passing another tree whose red lantern gently swayed with a high-pitched creak. This place was filled with strange things that pulled on her curiosity. Flanking the road was a wall made of tattered red fabric set between posts hewed from the trees. There were places where the fabric had large gaps, revealing the shadows of shapes moving beyond it.

  “Time dwindles, Arch Wizard.” Prodal’s voice rang everywhere at once.

  Nyset grunted in response. He plays with me. The outline of a hut emerged in the distance as the road started to slope down. At the bottom of its stoop were a pair of guttering candles, its roof sagging and window frames holding glassy teeth. As she drew closer, she saw the entrance to the hut ascended on a rise of land, beyond it a plank bridge spanning a vast canyon. She ignored the lure of the hut, running for the bridge.

  Then there was a song that filled the air. It sounded like children, but their language was in a tongue she couldn’t understand. Twin pillars of smoke appeared at each side of the road before the bridge’s mouth. Isa and Senka materialized as the smoke fell away, weapons drawn, starting for her with murderous intent. “Senka. Isa? What is this? No, stop!” She backpedaled. Isa went for her in a determined stride.

  She saw Prodal in their eyes, the colors slowly shifting. “Die!” Senka launched into a sprint and Nyset responded by instinct, slicing the air with a portal set like a saw blade. Senka’s running form was bisected into tumbling halves. Her friend’s ruined body fell apart, spraying the air with an absurd fountain of blood. They’re not real. Illusions.

  Isa was almost upon her, his expression a grinning skull, hatchet and hammer twirling in his hands. “Save me, Arch Wizard. You abandoned me! Abandoned!”

  “No,” she whimpered, lashing out the Phoenix to lift him off his feet and ten feet into the air. He struggled in her bonds, shrieking “Abandoned! Abandoned!”

  “Stop!” she screamed and smashed his head against one of the bridge’s wooden posts with a loud pop. His head exploded in a hail of gore, body falling limp as she released him. Black maggots spilled from his ruined head, wriggling on the ground as if searching for flesh to feast upon. She spared a look at Senka’s dead form, maggots emerging from her halves.

  “They’re not real,” she reminded herself with a grimace. “If you think that will stop me…” She laughed. “Nothing will stop me! I’ll find you!” she screamed at the sky.

  She ran for the bridge. A pulsing red light beat like a heart from the canyon below. Its tenuous and moldering planks bounced under her feet. She could hear it crumbling behind her, peering back to see as it turned to dust with her every passing step. She heaved a breath of relief as she reached the other side.

  “Where am I?” she hissed. She paused to take in the landscape after the bridge. The trees were more numerous here and all long dead. The cobbled path eroded to jagged pebbles. The reddish light in the sky seemed to darken behind billowing clouds. She followed the path, curving and rising beyond the canyon she’d crossed.

  “Arch Wizard… why did you let Asebor kill your family? Did you not love them?” Prodal asked.

  She resolved to ignore him, following the road.

  Prodal laughed. “Was the high echelon of the Tower too good to leave? Ah, the life of comfort kills us all, doesn’t it? All nations rise stoic and fall in plent
y. Yours will be no different. Are you not ashamed that you failed humanity? You let them all die. Because of you, the Shadow Age dawns.”

  “Shut up. Quiet,” she growled, agitation rising in her throat like burning acid. The path sloped down, and high walls rose at either side. Pain tore at her feet. She gasped at the realization that the pebbles covering the ground had become thousands of glass shards spanning the next thirty feet or so. “No matter what you do to me, I’ll eventually find you!” she screamed.

  She gritted her teeth and marched onward, whispering her thanks to the Phoenix for its constant healing. Glass crunched in her ears and dotted her bare feet with a shimmering patina of blood. She thought to simply weave a portal over the length of glass but thought it prudent to conserve what the Phoenix gave her.

  Was the Phoenix testing her? Was it perhaps confirming her worthiness of its gift? She was again left to wonder why the Phoenix did nothing to assuage her pain. The gods were cruel and men their puppets. The glass finally came to an end. She brushed off her feet, steeled her breath, and strode forward.

  She started for a rise of stairs carved through the center of an enormous boulder, what remained of its ceiling forming an arching bridge over the stairway. Red light shone on one side of the short tunnel of stone, its source unseen, the other cloaked in shadows. “Strange place,” she muttered. She went through the rock, and the stairs ended. The path wound up and down in short rises of land for as far as she could discern. She passed under gnarled tree limbs that curled above the path like guardian serpents.

  The path reached a fork. She gazed to the left and saw pillars of smoke forming on the road. From those pillars emerged six or so humanoid creatures with animal parts replacing sections of their exposed faces. One man had a pig’s nose, his wide torso covered in jagged black armor. In his hands, he hefted a long spear. A woman had goat’s horns, an eagle’s mouth, and enormous breasts that made her upper body sag. In each of her crab claw hands were sawtooth swords. The six became a dozen, dozen became twenty in a matter of seconds. They gibbered and squawked in a torrent of their fury.