by Quil Carter
Josiah looked behind him. “Kelakheva taught you runeflame, didn’t he? But why…?”
“Something is taking over him, possessing him,” Ben explained. “I don’t know how. He was normal during the day and took the form of a merchant, but at night he turned into this other person. The magic fire he used turned black like the orb Teal has. That’s all I know… I – I don’t know how to get rid of him.”
“Josiah!” a voice suddenly bellowed. Everyone looked up as they ran through the two fire trees marking the entrance to Anagin’s land, and saw Pontis, Suana, and several other guards. “What’s happening? Every fire has turned black… it’s ten in the fucking morning and it’s pitch black! Where’s Anagin? What’s going–”
Suddenly Suana let out a scream; all eyes shot to her as she was tackled to the ground. Before anyone had any time to react, an elf with brown hair and shining blue eyes raised his fists and slammed them down onto Suana’s head.
The force of the blow made the ladyelf’s head cave in on the side. An eye popped out of its socket and her jaw crumbled like it was made of week-old bread. She managed a single gasping groan before she fell silent, blood gushing from the wound and pooling all around her.
“Suana!” Pontis yelled. He drew his blade and swung it at the brown-haired elf, but he swung at nothing. The elf disappeared only to reappear behind Pontis. He grabbed Pontis’s neck and wrenched his head back, just as Ben flung another handful of flames at the creature’s turned back.
Malagant and Teal were already running towards Suana, but though Malagant was there to help, Teal only grabbed the dagger she had strapped to her side. By now elves were running into the streets, gasping and screaming as they saw the scene play out in front of them, but all at once those surprised cries turned into bloodcurdling shrieks.
Malagant looked around and found himself pausing, not believing what he was seeing.
Behind Ben, who was throwing fireballs at the brown-haired creature, were over a hundred plains animals, and near the front, a dozen elves.
They were all dead and in the process of rotting. Plains bears had their brown-stained skulls showing, and scraps of fur slipping away from greasy green flesh, jare cats waved skeletonized tails back and forth behind glowing yellow eyes, and the elves, most terrifying of all, walked with confidence, wielding shining silver swords clasped in partially skeletonized hands. Like the animals they were necroptic, their scalps bare with chunks of hair dangling down off of exposed skulls, and their oily green faces showing open mouths framed by leech-like black lips and…
Ben gagged.
… they had teeth embedded in their skin, eyes sewn into their fluid-dripping cheeks and in their necks. Some even had hollow chests void of organs and others wore those organs around their necks and armour.
And the smell… the fetid smell was horrendous.
“Oh… fuck…” Malagant said in a thin whisper.
Teal skidded to a stop, two daggers in his hands now. His mouth dropped open as he saw these revenants marching down the street, their clanging steps sending percussion after percussion of fear inside of everyone’s chest. The residents were screaming all around them now, a hysterical and desperate chorus that knew no beginning and no end and seemed to be stuck in an infinite loop of primal terror.
The undead kept marching in rows of ten, Malagant couldn’t see where the army ended; they stretched down the road before the darkness covered their grey, shining bodies.
“Malagant…” Anagin’s voice suddenly sounded. Malagant jerked his head over to see his father standing beside him, blood caked down his head and his neck.
“Dad?” Malagant cried. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine; Kelakheva still has enough of himself in him not to kill me,” Anagin said grimly; then his lips pursed. “Malagant, I’m going to ask you to do something horrible but I need you to obey me. You need to trust me, or else we’ll all die tonight.”
Malagant took a step back as these undead stomped towards them, their white figures broken up only by black shadows. The residents were fleeing like rats, elves running in every direction screaming at the tops of their lungs as they looked for places to hide. Pontis was several feet to his left gasping, holding a neck that was dripping red onto the black ground. Ben was further on with blue flames shooting to the sky. Everything was chaos and yet Anagin stood calm beside him, Teal’s backpack on his back now.
“What is it?” Malagant said. The anticipation of what his father was about to say burned like acid inside of his throat.
Anagin grabbed onto his shoulder and squeezed it hard. When Malagant looked over at him he saw a look on his father’s face he never wanted to see again.
“Kill as many towns-elves as you can,” Anagin replied. His hand slipped from Malagant’s shoulder and he took his ruby pendant off of his neck. “Quickly, Malagant. They’re dead anyway – kill as many as you can, as quickly as you can.”
When Malagant only looked at Anagin in horror, the sunmage’s yellow eyes flashed. “Now, Malagant. All of you! KILL THEM!”
Anagin pushed a dagger into his hand and grabbed Teal, who was bracing himself for the battle with the undead. He removed Teal’s emerald pendant and barked something to Ben who was holding a kerchief to Pontis’s neck, the brown-haired merchant nowhere to be found.
Ben looked at Anagin, took off his pendant and threw it to him. When Anagin had all three pendants into his hands Malagant finally realized just why his father had given him such odd instructions.
A scream sounded which was abruptly cut short, then a shadow was thrown across Malagant’s vision. He looked to his left for only a moment to see the bottom half of a towns-elf, still wearing trousers and buckled shoes, skid along the cobblestone leaving a streak of red like a paintbrush stroke.
Malagant turned back to his father, just in time to see him slashing Pontis’s throat with one of Teal’s daggers. The sunmage looked up at Malagant while holding Pontis’s head back and nodded grimly at him, the pendants, all three around his neck, starting to glow and flash, the only light breaking up the midnight sun.
We need an army to fight these revenants…
“Malagant!” Melesch screamed to his left. He heard exhausted panting and an echo of boots slamming onto the ground. “Malagant, what are they? We need to evacuate!”
And there is only one way for us to get an army.
Anea forgive me.
Malagant whirled around, Melesch only several feet away from him. The young guard, an elf that Malagant had known since he’d arrived in Birch, was looking behind Malagant with eyes that radiated terror. He was so taken with the undead animals and elves now killing and dismembering everything in their path, that he didn’t even see Malagant’s dagger until it was too late.
Malagant drove the dagger into Melesch’s neck and jerked it down, opening up his throat from below his ear to his windpipe. The guard screamed then coughed, and fell to the ground with his hand holding the wound.
“Ma-Malagant?” Melesch stammered, his confused eyes shooting in all directions.
“I’m… I’m sorry, buddy,” Malagant whispered. He stabbed the knife into Melesch’s gushing neck wound and stepped over his body. His eyes scanned the darkness in front of him, seeing shadows hiding and running to hide, all on a backdrop of shrouded houses and distorted phantoms that was the black fire burning inside of the torches.
In every direction he could hear screaming and clanging metal. Malagant stalked towards where a shadow could be seen huddled down and approached it.
It was Daesy; she was holding her chaylen partner in her arms, squeezing her tight to her chest as they both cried softly into each other’s hair. Her eyes were closed and she hadn’t seen Malagant – a small comfort that Malagant knew would do nothing in the throes of what he knew would be lifelong nightmares and many more screams to add to his collection.
Malagant stabbed Daesy’s partner in the neck and as Suana’s daughter opened her eyes and screamed, Malagant sta
bbed her as well.
Then, as Malagant stepped away, he saw black smoke starting to curl underneath his feet. Malagant turned around towards where he’d left his father and friends and saw a sight he knew he’d never forget.
Anagin was in the middle of the road, the pendants incandescent and blindingly beautiful in the thick and formerly impenetrable darkness. They lit up Anagin’s face in spectrums of blue, green, and red and painted the houses on either side of him like the rippling reflections of an ocean. The only thing breaking up these radiantly-glowing pendants was the black smoke coming off of Malagant’s father.
Lord Anagin Avahlis of Shol.
Though the chaos around him was a constant assault of bloodcurdling screams, clanging swords, and snarling and snapping revenants, Malagant could only stare at his father. The sheomancer was moving his arms, contorting the smoke around him into shapeless forms, a booming chant on his lips in a language that had always sounded demonic and evil.
There was terror and death everywhere but this image was one that scared Malagant the most. There was no good and evil matching swords right now; Anagin Avahlis was no god descending from Cilandil to save the prophecy walkers. Lord Avahlis was fighting evil… with evil.
Two figures ran towards Malagant. He wanted to look over at them but his eyes remained glued to his father. The smoke that was swirling around him like a tornado was now shooting in dozens of directions like tendrils, running along the road until it found an organic mass on the ground for it to seep into.
Malagant watched a tendril streak past him; flickers of red and orange could be seen flashing inside of the thick smoke. Malagant turned around with it and watched it completely envelope Daesy and her partner before sinking completely into their skin.
Then Daesy’s eyes opened, eyes that shone red like embers and smoked like them too.
“Malagant?” Teal called out of breath, he had been one of the ones approaching. Malagant could hear Ben beside him as well. “We need to get out of here. Those creatures are coming closer. We need to get out of–” Teal paused and gasped as Daesy rose to her feet. The ladyelf, with black hair like her mother and a small frame, looked around the dark town before her flaming eyes narrowed.
“Hail Avahlis,” she said to Malagant before the two burning eyes looked past him. A rumbling growl erupted in her throat and she glanced to her side where Daesy’s red-haired partner was also standing.
“What did Anagin get into now?” the demenos inside of Daesy asked. The voice coming from her was no longer her own; it was deep and broken, a gravelly rasp that seemed to draw friction from the air.
“Something is wrong with Kelakheva,” Malagant said. He turned and saw dozens and dozens of glowing eyes break through the thick smoke as the demenos’ rose inside their cadavers. Then, at once, every single one of them turned to the undead revenants who Malagant realized were being kept away by Josiah. His brother was holding their father’s blackthorn staff in his hand, with his sunmagic useless he was doing, and doing well, something that even Anagin had forbidden him from learning: black magic.
“Is there?” Daesy walked past Malagant and looked to Anagin.
Anagin had his arms raised in the air, the smoke contorting and twisting around him, more smoke than Malagant had ever seen in his life. He motioned for Teal and Ben to follow him and he ran towards his father.
Then there was a scream. Malagant looked to see Josiah get flung backwards, the staff falling from his grasp and the distorted barrier he had been using to keep the revenants from attacking them flickering before dying. The young sunmage slammed hard against the cobblestone and skidded backwards to his father’s feet.
The revenants charged forward. Anagin turned around just in time to grab Josiah as a revenant gruleon, a lion-bear hybrid, came charging towards him. He flung Josiah onto a porch of a nearby house but he didn’t have enough time to get himself out of the way. Malagant ran towards him with his dagger in his hand as the gruleon raised a paw and hit Anagin across the chest, sending him flying backwards into the air.
Blue flames sparked in Malagant’s vision, Ben shot a stream of sapphire fire from his hands towards the beast and coated it, but behind the animal several undead elves could be seen, their silver swords flashing in the light of the pendants. Immediately they charged towards Ben, swords swinging.
Teal met them, during the chaos he had gotten his twin swords out of his backpack, metal sung as he engaged all three in combat and he was soon joined by the glowing red eyes of the demenos-possessed elves. It was like an approaching black wave, the smell of the Smokes of Shol so thick around Malagant he felt his adrenaline spike as he inhaled the smoke’s oddly pleasant scent.
Then the scream.
Malagant whirled around in its direction and paled when he saw something standing on top of Birch’s auchtrhall. He looked closer and saw to his horror – that it was Kelakheva.
“So quiet inside here… so tormented soul!” Kelakheva screamed. He outstretched his hands and a burst of light-sucking black flames erupted from his palms. “Nails scraping, cold breath on the winter’s hold.”
The sky was black above him but still he glowed, the black flames reflecting their darkness against his face as he laughed like he had become one with insanity. “Circling ravens feast on your eyes! Open to find my secrets–”
“– then to your demise!” Ben suddenly yelled. He took a step forward, the blue glow of his flames all around him. “What things lurk in shadow that turns fire to night?”
“Does it matter what slinks so, when you’ve lost your sight?” Kelakheva yelled back.
Anagin suddenly grabbed Malagant’s shoulder. “He’s reciting prophecy. I don’t know how but he’s reciting prophecy,” he said in a broken, weak voice.
Malagant stared at Ben in perplexed horror; hot blood now mixing in with the smells of smoke as the undead and the living fell to their deaths around him.
“Surrounded by smoke, in black shadowy lands…”
Then the ground underneath their feet started to rumble and vibrate. Kelakheva let out a bone-chilling laugh, and at this, the sky split open. A single beam of light broke through the midnight sun only to fall directly onto the mad demigod’s face.
And in that sun they could see two midnight blue eyes staring down at them.
“Kill them, my beautiful revenants,” Kelakheva said, though it was no longer his voice. It was dry and raspy with an odd accent to it that Malagant had never heard before. He looked down as the ground continued to shake underneath their feet, splits in the road now appearing. “Kill them and make beautiful jewellery from their insides.”
Then, with a flash, Kelakheva disappeared from on top of the auchtrhall’s roof, only to appear in front of Anagin.
“Kheva?” Anagin whispered as he faced the mad demigod. He leaned heavily on his blackthorn staff, his yellow eyes wide. “Kheva? What’s wrong? Who did this to you?”
Kelakheva’s lips split into a horrendous smile. He leaned a hand out and gently touched Anagin’s face. “My little sunray… how would you like to become a god next to me?”
Anagin’s face paled, but before he could answer Kelakheva’s hand slipped from Anagin’s cheek to the pendants he was still wearing. He took all three of them into his hand and viciously ripped them from Anagin’s neck.
Kelakheva got one step away from Anagin, before the ground opened up in front of them.
Everyone froze as a chunk of road, as wide as a house, dropped down into the hole never to be seen again. Inside of the hole a red glow could be seen and smoke that spilled from the center like steam from boiling tea.
“Kelakheva!” a booming and terrible voice rang out. Malagant tried to move, tried to run to the demigod to keep him from taking the Jewel of Elron but he found he was absolutely paralysed.
And not only him, no one was moving; the only thing living or dead that still had movement was Kelakheva.
Then… he appeared.
Rising up from the hole in
the ground, his horrific bat-like wings flapping away the thick black smoke, was King Kaul Avahlis.
The King of the Demenos looked down at Kelakheva, the only shining light in what had been made impossibly black coming from the red pit.
The demigod stared up at him, the three pendants clutched in his hand. He looked at Kaul Avahlis and laughed, a shrill laugh that was as nerve-shattering as the agonizing scream.
“You’ve fallen into madness…” Kaul growled. His slender, clawed fingers, clenched in fury. “You are not yourself…”
Kelakheva raised the pendants, and with another laugh, the pendants started to glow. Kaul stared at them for a moment, as if not knowing what to make of this odd reaction, before he suddenly bellowed like he was in pain. Malagant gasped, a sense of horrific dread wiping away the hope that he hadn’t realized he had been feeling since Kaul Avahlis’s appearance.
“KAUL!” Anagin screamed. To Malagant’s surprise his father was able to fight the paralysis that had claimed all of them.
Anagin ran to Kelakheva, and before the demigod even realized he was there, he ripped the pendants from his hands…
… and he threw them into the glowing crimson pit.
Kelakheva shrieked and whirled around. He smacked Anagin across the face so hard the sunmage flew backwards off of his feet. Malagant caught him right before he hit the ground.
“Malagant,” Anagin gasped. “Jump into the pit. Do it now. All of you.”
Malagant had no time to react. He looked to Josiah who already had Ben and Teal’s arms securely in his hold. Malagant picked up his father and looked ahead of him, seeing Kaul Avahlis’s wings flapping and writhing as the King of Shol clutched his head with his clawed hands. There was no time to question what they were doing; no time to second-guess just what jumping into the pit would do to them, or the Jewel of Elron.