“He was too confident. Even Iolus isn’t clever enough to understand the mind of a god. Especially the god of chaos. You can see it on his face—he’s beginning to realize this.”
Emma was about to dig a little more when a rumbling noise interrupted them. It made the landscape tremble, seeming to rise from the very core of this planet, or whatever kind of world this was.
The earthquake sent lava spewing from the cracks. Kovax cast an impromptu spell, drawn from the blood ether, which shielded him and Emma from the splatters. Basher danced, crying out in pain and rubbing at the burnt spots on his body. Iolus only stood staring into the distance. He was unfazed by the burning goo, even as it burned holes in his clothes and singed his hair.
“I thought it couldn’t hurt us,” Emma said, uncomfortable with how close the low mage had gotten.
“It can’t,” Kovax said, “but it would be very uncomfortable nevertheless.”
As the rumbling became more rhythmic, Emma realized what it was. A very large presence was laughing at them. The sound was like that of a mountain enjoying a long, satisfying chuckle.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Emma said.
Kovax must not have heard her. He was staring into the distance along with Iolus, who answered Emma’s question instead.
“Xelios,” he said. “Master. I have arrived.”
The laughter died away. A deep voice replied, sounding as vast as if the sky itself had spoken. “So have I, Sorcerer.”
Emma waited, listening in silence, bracing herself. Kovax pointed suddenly and said, “There.”
Cowering next to him, Emma followed the low mage’s pointed finger. She startled at the sight of a massive black shape in the distance. It approached like a tidal wave seen at night, steadily growing, intent on swallowing everything in its path.
The godlike voice came again. “I’ve been waiting.”
The being was too high and dark for Emma to make out its features until a sudden, fiery burst exploded from vast networks of fine cracks all over the being’s body. They were filled with liquid blood ether, though this substance was more alive than the variety in the ground. The cracks pulsed and coughed out flames instead of steam. Emma could now clearly study the gigantic, horrible thing looming above her.
The ancient god known as Xelios—if this was truly what he’d been reduced to—was little more than a giant stone man embedded in the side of a floating mountain. His muscular limbs and expressionless skull poked out of the stone as if they’d been carved there, the project only half finished. Yet the distinctly shaped glow emanating from the cracked surface indicated a trapped body made of light.
He hadn’t been carved into the mountain; he’d been trapped inside it.
Hellish red light came to life inside eye sockets. More intensely lit was the crystal stuck to his forehead. Long and slender, it was unlike any blood crystal Emma had ever seen.
“What is that on his face?” she asked Kovax.
“A God’s Head bloodstone.” An awestruck tone had entered the low mage’s voice. “It used to be mine, but Iolus stole it from me. That was the key, the final piece he needed to complete his mission. Look how big it’s gotten.”
Emma cared little about the stone’s history. Still, she stored the information for when she finally woke up. If she woke up.
“The time has come,” Xelios said, and the crystal in his forehead brightened until it was like a star. “My prison will become yours, Sorcerer, so that I may scour the realms for my brothers and sisters, and taste the vengeance I crave. You will take my place until my return. Then will I grant you the power you seek.”
“You lied to me,” Iolus said in a voice that seethed with hatred. “This wasn’t part of the deal!”
Xelios made a sound like a yawn. His arms spread outward as the crystal on his forehead reached a brilliant intensity. His massive stone outline began to expand. Emma could tell by the way the cracks of light bent outward.
“Duck,” Kovax shouted.
Emma fell into a crouch as Kovax threw himself protectively over her body, another shield spell springing to life around them. Even so, the explosion blinded her. Chunks of rock flew everywhere as the entire mountain shattered. When Emma looked again at the imprisoned god, all she saw was smoke and mineral dust, and Basher rising from his protective crouch over Iolus. Both looked unharmed.
When the smoke cleared somewhat, all that was left of the mountain was Xelios, standing at least forty feet tall. His muscular body was naked, but Emma saw none of the parts she would have expected on a human man, just sheets of rippling, purplish flesh covered in bright, pulsing red veins. This time, the veins were not cracks in a stone surface. They were a disturbingly organic webwork that made it seem as if he’d been turned inside out.
His head tipped slightly forward, as if weighed down by the bloodstone. He caged his fingers around it. Then, like a bull being prodded by a spear, the god began a strangely convulsive dance. He jumped and spun around as his legs bucked. His hands clawed at his forehead. Wind caused by his movements slapped Emma’s body and made her wings bend.
Xelios fell to a crouch, his back to them. Emma saw mounds of flexing muscle like a hilly landscape. The writhing and shaking had stopped. When he turned slowly on bare feet as big as boats to face them again, there was only a groove in his forehead where the bloodstone had been.
It lay in his cupped hands, tiny as a thorn but bright enough to illuminate his face. The expression he wore turned Emma’s stomach. His meaty lips had curved devilishly, exposing sharp, diamond-like teeth locked together in a madman’s grin. He was enjoying this.
“I don’t want it,” Iolus said, backing away. “Get rid of it. Leave me be. You have no need for me anymore.”
Xelios breathed a raspy chuckle through his teeth. “Do you know why I chose this form for my imprisonment, Sorcerer?”
Iolus kept silent. He stood slightly bent in a defensive posture, his sword creeping out of its sheath. Basher noticed the moving blade and backed away.
“I chose it,” Xelios said, rising to full height and throwing back his shoulders, “because it is the form of men. Long ago, when my brother- and sister-gods cast me in stone, it was a man’s face that smiled back at them. A face like that of the creatures they so loved.
“Now, I will cast all men in stone. I will banish them to a state of eternal suffering, as I was banished. My brother- and sister-gods will taste the truth of what I have done to their children. They will taste it in the moments before I slaughter them, one by one.”
Iolus’s sword shot toward the god, quick as an arrow. Xelios waved it away as if it were no more bothersome than a mosquito. The blade went tumbling through the air and landed in one of the lava-filled cracks.
“That really scared him,” Basher said.
“Shut up,” Iolus hissed at him.
Xelios chuckled down at them. Emma tried to make sense of what the god had just warned them of.
“He can’t leave, right?” she asked. “He’s trapped here.”
“Not so,” Kovax said. “He can use the crystal.”
“But… But he’ll kill everyone back home. He just said…”
A blast of wind silenced her. It had come from Xelios, who had spun around to point the bloodstone at a spot in the distance. A red beam shot from its tip, opening a rift much larger than the one Iolus had used to get here.
“He’s getting away,” Iolus shouted.
Xelios turned back, this time scowling down at Iolus and Basher as if they were no more than trespassing cockroaches. He aimed the crystal at Iolus and caught him in a twisting, wormlike beam of energy.
Basher lunged away from the spell. Kovax and Emma huddled close together, watching as Xelios lifted a struggling Iolus dozens of feet above the ground. With his free hand, the god commanded a mountain of stone to rise in the distance, shaking the land.
“Enjoy your stay in my home,” Xelios said with a sneer.
Iolus managed to shout a curse a
t the god, and Xelios responded with a chuckle. He whipped the hand holding the bloodstone, sending Iolus flying toward the mountain.
Seconds later, his impact released a fiery burst on the surface. Was he dead? Emma could see little of what was happening so far way. Kovax must have been just as curious; he cast a spell that magnified the image.
They both watched as Iolus sank into a smear of lava against the mountain’s rocky surface. They watched as his struggling body took on the same molten quality and expanded, spreading and stretching into a ghoulish shape, its elongated mouth yawning open in a howl of agony.
Xelios released the crystal. It shot forward, quick as an arrow, along the same trajectory that Iolus had flown. Finally, it smacked into his forehead and embedded itself there for good. The pain caused the writhing sorcerer to arch his back, and he froze that way—chest pushed outward, head tipped back in pain, half-buried. He looked more like a statue than a human being—a statue made of blood ether and pain.
The finishing touch was almost too gruesome to bear. Red light came into Iolus’s eyes. He blinked up at the void, unable to move his head. A wretched howl escaped his throat before Kovax turned off the telescoping spell, erasing the miserable sorcerer from sight.
The god looked satisfied. He lifted a hand and summoned another bloodstone from somewhere in the distance, followed by another, and then another.
Kovax was stunned. “This is why Iolus was tasked with bringing more than one.”
“More than one bloodstone?” Emma said.
Kovax spoke in a breathless voice, watching the god as he collected his prizes. “The first one to open the rift. Another to gain the strength he needed, and then to trap Iolus. Now he needs one to leave this place.”
“And go where?”
“Back to Astros. He’ll destroy the entire realm, just to make a point.”
“Thank you for the gift, Sorcerer,” Xelios said to himself. “Now, the taste of freedom.”
He turned toward the rift, but what he saw there made him roar in anger.
“No!”
White light slowly filled the belly of the rift, turning it pinkish in color. It almost looked like a wound being slowly dominated by healthy scar tissue.
“What’s happening?” she said.
Kovax wrung his hands together in excitement. “Someone is sealing the rift—but from here, inside the Nether.”
Emma spotted the bolt of energy being cast up at the rift, so fine as to resemble a spider’s thread, but one that crackled with electricity.
Overcome with rage, Xelios leaped with enough force to send himself arching through the air toward the rift. But another bolt, this one thicker and brighter—a tree trunk compared to the spider silk from before—hit him squarely in the chest, sending him in the opposite direction. The bloodstone fell from his hands and was lost somewhere in the distance.
Upon impact, his body tore open the ground. Lava sprayed everywhere. Thankfully, he was far enough away that Emma and Kovax could watch unharmed.
“Who do you think it is?” Emma asked him.
“I have a hunch,” Kovax said, watching intently, “but you’ll have to see for yourself. I believe this is why you brought us here.”
Xelios had picked himself up. The rift was now a sealed, pinkish scar that faded with each passing second, but it wasn’t the remains of the rift that held the god’s attention.
A cloud of sparkling white energy had formed and was drifting quickly toward Xelios. He watched with his arms dangling by his sides, his enormous head cocked. As he uttered a single word, Emma realized the god’s anger was gone, replaced by an entirely different emotion—an entirely human one.
“Emmanuel,” he said.
Xelios, God of Chaos, was impressed.
“It’s him,” Emma said. “It’s Uncle Manny. I thought he was dead.”
“I thought so too,” Kovax said, just as impressed. “But I was wrong. He became something else. He knew what Iolus had planned, and that he, Emmanuel, could use the rift to… But that’s impossible. Unless…” He glanced at Emma as if he suddenly didn’t recognize her. “Your Sight. He brought you here, Emma. That’s the reason you’re seeing this. Because he called, and you answered.”
“Uncle Manny.” She shook her head somberly. “But what’s he doing now?”
“We can only watch. We cannot change anything.”
Xelios lifted both arms. Lava spurted up from various cracks in the ground and formed sizzling globes against his palms.
He was going to fight Uncle Manny.
A god versus a demigod… Her uncle was outmatched.
CHAPTER 55
Emmanuel dropped from the cloud and stood as tall as Xelios, tall as a building, wearing a suit of sparkling pale armor that seemed to have been forged from glass, steel, and light. His sunglasses were gone, and he wore a cape that hung thickly behind one shoulder. The cape, like the rest of him, was dripping wet, his hair slicked back as though he had swum a great distance to get here. He looked like a god instead of a man.
Emma watched in stunned fascination as he lifted his hands, outfitted in a pair of silvery gauntlets.
“Emma,” he said, without looking at her. Could he even see her at all? “When this is over, you have more work to do. Don’t be afraid.”
Xelios let out an abrupt “Ha!” He lowered his hands and drew blood ether from the cracks in the ground. The substance swirled, wrapping his arms up to the elbows. “It all ends now, Magician.”
Xelios cast the sizzling, smoking substance at him.
Emmanuel deflected it using a spell Emma had never seen before. It sent the energy up toward the dead sky, neutralized it, and let it rain back down in harmless streamers of smoke.
“That’s the best you’ve got?” Emmanuel said.
Xelios launched another similar attack. This time the burning ball of energy exploded into a mess of wriggling, red-hot tendrils. Emmanuel tried to deflect again and caught most of it, but the tendrils arched around his spell and latched onto his ankles. They worked their way upward, wrapping themselves around his body.
Emmanuel filled himself with light. Looking more like a star than a man, he let the light burst out of him, disintegrating the tendrils in a magnificent display.
But that wasn’t the main spell. Xelios chuckled, arms raised, as the rest of it unfolded.
Two jagged walls of stone erupted on either side of Emmanuel, shaking the land. Emma screamed. Kovax wrapped them both in a shield spell as boulders and lava flew everywhere.
The walls slammed together, Emmanuel in the middle, sandwiching him before he could react.
As the smoke cleared, Emma searched for her uncle, but the walls were tightly pressed together. There was barely a crack between them. Then, the crack filled with light that shattered the stone.
Emmanuel stood unharmed. Lines of electricity swept across his armor. Glaring at Xelios, he took a deep breath and held his ground.
“How can it be?” Xelios said, stunned.
“You are not a god here,” Emmanuel said. “The Nether has rules, and you are its prisoner still.”
“But I have been the master of this realm. The stone, the lifeblood, my creatures…”
“All meant to keep you entertained. Your brothers and sisters were too lenient. They should have destroyed you. Instead, they gave you this sad little home, full of playthings.”
Xelios spoke in a rush of anger. “You call them playthings?”
He pointed off into the distance. Lightning flared across the void. Following the god’s gaze, Emma saw another swarm of winged creatures. They curled and whipped against the flashing darkness, eventually forming a mass so thick that Emma couldn’t tell the swarm apart from the rest of the sky.
Cebrons. She had seen enough of them in pictures to know what they look like. There were so many of them.
The swarm shifted course and flew toward her—a hurtling, flexing, swelling mass of deadly, spiky creatures. Black appendages dangled from the
ir abdomens, long and tubular, and Emma knew from the pictures that each of these appendages had a stinger at its tip.
“Do something,” Emma shouted.
Her uncle looked at her. Actually saw her standing there.
“Your parents are proud of you, Emma. They love you, as do I.”
She could only stare back at him in shock.
This moment between them lasted a few blinks of an eye, and then Emmanuel was running toward Xelios, his armor sizzling once more with energy that wasn’t quite electric, something wilder and more alive.
Xelios raised his arms to shield himself, summoning streams of blood ether from all directions. Emmanuel lunged and straightened his body until it appeared he was diving toward Xelios—but to what end?
Cebrons flooded the sky. They shrieked and roared and circled, breaking off in streams to swoop down toward her uncle. Suddenly, they were swept away by a titanic burst of light and heat, an explosion that had come from Emmanuel’s body meeting his target.
The world seemed to tilt. Emma blinked at the chaos in front of her, suddenly aware that she had fallen. Kovax also lay on his side. He couldn’t protect her anymore. They were going to die down here.
Before that happened, Emma caught sight of one last thing.
Uncle Manny’s head, shoulders, and arms had risen one last time, the rest of his body merged with that of Xelios, as if the two fighters had become a hideous pair of conjoined twins wrestling to the death. Emmanuel dominated the fight. His expression contorted to one of primal hatred as he brought his arms down and smashed them into Xelios.
More light flashed in thick particles, like stars dropping and exploding, as Emmanuel and Xelios were fused together, and eventually imploded into a ball of light. The ground shook beneath them. Stone flew everywhere. Lava shot toward the sky, and smoke spread across the ground in a thick carpet.
Before the smoke could erase everything, Emma caught one last glance of the world around her. The last thing she saw were stars—an impressive array of stars where before there had been none. It had to mean something.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 109