by SJB Gilmour
Angelina barely noticed him. All she saw was her ex-husband, now a fanged wraith, crouching over the exsanguinated bodies of her sister, nephew and brother in-law.
‘No!’ she screamed.
Marzdane looked up at her, horror dawning on his face as he realised how the scene must appear to her. Instinct took over and he flashed back into his bat form and darted out into the night sky.
‘No!’ Angelina screamed again. She immediately began firing arrow after arrow into the air, each bolt finding its target with deadly accuracy. The bats turned back to their humanoid shapes as they fell. Most were beautiful female succubi. Some were vampires, but none were either Cromwell or Marzdane. Angelina paid no attention to those innocents she slew. She simply kept firing, screaming all the while, until she ran out of arrows. A single barked command later and her quiver was full again. She continued her bloody rampage.
The One did not have time to stop her. Wings out, she deflected Hnug and Hnag, knocking them back to near the edge of the platform. Herpethia lunged at her, snapping at her with dripping fangs.
The One dodged to one side. ‘Leave now or die!’ she thundered.
Herpethia only laughed. She lunged at The One again. The One did not back away from the blow. She simply stepped to the side again and brought her sword down upon Herpethia’s neck, severing her head from her body in one bloody stroke.
Hnug and Hnag howled and rushed at her. The One spun around and thrust out at them with her wings, also rending them in two.
The now activated Conundrum Gate had become a whirling maelstrom. The One looked past the dead body of Herpethia into the howling vortex. Her countless hordes of waiting demons were already surging forward, all jostling to get to Earth as soon as possible. Just ahead of them were the three souls of David, Susan and Alexander and only moments behind them was the departed soul of Herpethia herself. If she could reach those souls and consume them, she would be alive once more, just as she had been only seconds before.
‘No!’ The One thundered again. She reached into the massive writhing portal and swatted Herpethia’s soul aside as though it was no more than an annoying moth. ‘Sequollo Moi!’ she called and David, Susan and Alexander stopped falling through into Herpethia’s hell and came back to rest in The One’s embrace. ‘Stay with us!’ The One commanded the souls, absorbing them into her body.
What do we do now? The One asked herself.
We get rid of this thing for good! She answered.
Far above the ground, The One saw that The Armies of Nine were still in the process of retreat from the island. Oliver Cromwell’s island however, was almost uninhabited. Perfect, she thought to herself. She then fixed Conundrum Gate onto the beach on Cromwell’s island, just near the pier where Captain Thunder’s ship, The Norse Wind, had docked what seemed so long ago now.
Then, as though she was merely gathering corn stalks in her wide, outstretched arms, The One reached out across the water and pulled every last demon from the island of The Nonagon. Without any real effort or emotion, she hurled them all through, and with one final clap of her hands, commanded the most powerful portal in the universe to ‘Annullarikus!’
The explosion was beyond huge. High in the air, the dragons were hurled far out — many nearly into space. Luckily dragons are hardy creatures and had ample time to recover and fly away to a safer distance. The remaining bats, perhaps because they were smaller, were only buffeted away a shorter distance, but it was enough that they were mostly out of range of Angela’s arrows. Marzdane took the chance to escape and forged a portal mid-air and vanished. Cromwell wasn’t so smart. He continued to fly about, watching the devastation below with cold detachment.
In a heartbeat, The One returned to the Nonagon island and from it, watched a huge chunk of rock, streets, and a few buildings that had made up Neroland, crash onto Cromwell’s island with incredible speed. The ground shook and a great surge of water rose up from around the island. Most of the shockwave washed harmlessly out to sea, but some crashed up onto the shore of The Nonagon island, filling the maze and the labyrinth beneath it with seawater.
Now The One turned her attention to Angelina herself. A quick ‘Ictumblat!’, the Magaeic command to “take that over there!” was all it took to put Angelina down on the ground. The One scanned through the sky for a moment until she found Cromwell. She repeated the spell and Cromwell found himself flat out on the ground in his human form.
‘You!’ Angelina screamed.
Cromwell scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. ‘Yep, me. You’ll find I’m harder to kill than a simple wraith, but even if you do, what good will it do you? I’ll go to Valhalla where all heroes go — where all the winners go. You haven’t won a thing. You’ve lost your family. You’ve lost Marzdane. Herpethia might be dead but she’ll rise again—’
Whatever else he was about to say never made it past his lips as Angelina’s sword sliced through his neck, sending his head flying. She dropped her blade and fell to the ground, weeping uncontrollably.
Inside The One, the enormous power Sarah and Melanie had combined was beginning to overwhelm them. We can’t stay like this for much longer, The One observed.
We’re nearly done, The One thought to herself. Earth will be a target forever while there are so many portals here. She shut her eyes and found she could concentrate on the entire planet within her enormous mind. Dozens of fixed portals scattered all over the globe were easily visible. She focused on all of them except the only one that would never pose a risk to the planet — the portal to Wolfenvald, even now still guarded by vigilant Black Coats.
‘Quassico!’ she commanded the Magaeic word for “break”, and every portal about the planet except the one to Wolfenvald instantly imploded into themselves, never to be re-opened. That done, she focused on the only fixed portal remaining. It had existed high in the Carpathian mountains for thousands of years, but The One had an idea for a better place for it.
It was so easy. The power The Star of Planes within her provided made it so simple to shift the fixed portal to the middle of the gold in-laid nonagram on the floor in Benjamin’s hall in Gembrook. The guardians at the old site got quite a surprise as they found themselves suddenly relocated to the hall.
From outside the hall, the newly-arrived guardians could hear fighting. Two remained by the portal while the rest bounded out to find Queen Penethelia and her troops hard-pressed by hordes of Guild sorcerers and mercenaries, all charmed to attack McConnell and his allies. McConnell was fighting alongside Penethelia. He battled in his striking silver and black werewolf form, while Penethelia hewed about her with her sword. Despite their skill and deadliness, McConnell, Penethelia and her troops were being forced back towards the building by the far greater numbers of their enemies. The surrounding bush had been set alight and thick grey smoke filled the air. No mortals were anywhere near the property, which was very lucky as they would have been torn apart by the rampaging killers Mautallius had sent.
Just as the guardians joined in the fray, something odd happened to the enemy fighters. They all stopped. Many were immediately cut down, but Penethelia noticed the baffled look on many of their faces and called for her troops to stay their weapons. The charm Mautallius had used on them to get them to fight was gone. The Amazons quickly herded up the confused mercenaries and terrified sorcerers.
‘Where are we going to put them all, McConnell?’ Penethelia demanded.
‘Not the hall, Silver Shroud,’ one of the Black Coat guardians barked. ‘The portal to Wolfenvald is in there!’
Benjamin sniffed at him in agreement then turned to Penethelia. ‘Take them into the shed. There’s a barracks down there that will serve as a holding cell till we get this sorted out.’ Then he sat back on his haunches and howled in triumph.
Penethelia blinked at him in confusion for a few moments then she too realised what this meant. Sarah had won. The fight was over. She held her head back and gave the long shrill Amazon war cry that was echoed by every
one of her remaining soldiers.
The only one not immediately triumphant was Jeff. The ancient Smith of Ages crumpled to his knees. He raised his new eyes and gazed upwards imploringly for one long moment, then his body solidified into stone and crumpled to dust.
Chapter Twenty-four
Before Sarah and Mel had become The One, the battle down on the island was nearing its end. The bulk of the zombies and mummies on the plain had been destroyed. Beyond that in the maze, only a few pockets of more resilient demons and sorcerers were slowly being hacked away, while the rest of Mautallius’ forces were all but annihilated. Mel’s Nightcorps, along with the Silver Shrouds, had routed the labyrinth of every nearly demon and Guild sorcerer they could find. Then they left those caverns and tunnels for Tor and his minotaurs, and Ronny and his gnomes.
The Ottispuschenshuffen brothers’ elevators had devastated the crab population and the troops they ferried in had laid waste to almost everything that stood in their way. All the Men of Jilde, The Renegades of Wolfenvald and Isaacs’ Irregulars had suffered the most casualties, but they had also inflicted massive damage to both the crabs and the demon forces.
Castor and Pollux’s mother Grace had led a charge of ogres against a massive demon and been struck by one huge clawed fist. Though not killed, she had been knocked senseless, which was probably the worst thing that the demon could ever have done. Castor and Pollux both became so enraged that they went quite berserk. Forgetting all about their own safety, or anyone else’s for that matter, the twin ogres attacked the demon with such speed and ferocity that the rest of the ogres and other fighters had to scramble out of the way.
The demon, roughly the size of a two-storey house and covered in scales, barely got the chance to howl as the two battle-mad ogres chopped into it with their axes. Such was their rage that even after the demon was quite dead and in multiple pieces, the two kept chopping at it until it wasn’t much more than a large pile of green, gory goop. It was only when the first of the explosions from the tower rocked the island that they came to their senses and began carrying their comatose mother back to the sandy shore and the waiting medical teams.
James, Jerrit and Jasper met at the base of the tower, along with Maddy, Tor and Jax.
‘Anyone seen Mason?’ James demanded, panting.
‘He’s down!’ Jerrit replied, also battle-weary.
‘Dead?’
‘Nah, just out like a light. An elevator fell through the maze and landed on him. They dug him out. He’s on the beach now.’
At that moment in the tower, Sarah and Melanie had just joined hands and the blast of energy shook the island like an earthquake.
‘That’s it!’ James yelled. ‘That tower’s gonna come down on all of us if we don’t get out of here now! Sound the retreat!’
‘You sure?’ Jerrit called out.
James waved up at the tower with his machete. Bricks and rubble were falling from the tower like dust from an old rope. Another huge explosion rocked the island and several gaping holes were blasted out of the tower. There was a moment of stillness, then the tower began to collapse in on itself.
‘If that’s not Sarah and Mel, we’re stuffed!’ “Stuffed” wasn’t exactly the word he used.
‘And if it is them, we still don’t want to be anywhere near this thing!’ Jasper added with a panicked yelp. He sat back on his haunches and howled as loud as he could. Mannix and Fergus lent their voices to the howl and soon every werewolf echoed the call to retreat.
Parts of the retreat were very fast. The wounded were ferried away very quickly. The Renegades of Wolfenvald vanished through their own portals to Wolfenvald. The remaining wraiths either flew away or also used their own portals to get themselves to Gembrook.
Cassandra and Tor herded the surviving gnomes and minotaurs out onto the beach where those able to walk could be marshalled into formation. Those unable to move about without aid were carried to Amelia and her tireless healers for triage. The last remaining elevators continued to ferry the wounded to the hospital and the others to Jilde, Gnumphlatia and Gembrook.
Mel’s Nightcorps and Sarah’s Gilded Warrioresses were the last to retreat. With their powerful noses and keen ears, the Golden Shroud werewolves sought out a great many wounded, who The Nightcorps dutifully carried to the waiting medics.
Back at Gembrook, as the survivors arrived, Benjamin, Nathan and Penethelia decided it was time to be insubordinate. They arrived on the beach, shocked at the utter devastation they found. Benjamin scanned the place quickly then wrenched open his Gnumphlatian enchanted satchel to let Nathan the bookwyrm wriggle out.
‘Take this satchel,’ Benjamin told Nathan, pointing at the rubble that was all that was left of The Nonagon and its tower. ‘Find as many tomes as you can!’ He turned to create another portal.
‘Where are you going?’ Penethelia demanded.
Benjamin nodded at the smoking crater on Cromwell’s island across the water. ‘There’s someone I have to find,’ he replied. He changed form and was about to leap through his portal when Maddy flashed up to him from further down the beach.
She paused long enough to give him the briefest of hugs. ‘Who’s there? Who are you looking for?’
Benjamin shook his head. ‘Bruce. He’s an oracle. Questions are going to be asked about all this. He might be able to give us some answers. If he wasn’t aligned to either Herpethia or Loki, I’m a monkey’s uncle.’
Maddy and Penethelia nodded, understanding. Penethelia looked doubtful. ‘You’re not going to get very far with just the two of you.’ She called back to Gembrook through a crystal ball and two squads of Amazons arrived. ‘Go over to Cromwell’s island and help McConnell,’ Penethelia ordered them. She grinned at McConnell. ‘Just don’t get stuck there. That place is gonna sink any minute.’
When the combined beings of Sarah and Melanie destroyed Conundrum Gate and rid the island of the demons, the withdrawal became easier. A few ragged mummies shambling about the place and the odd pocket of more resilient Guild guardslins were all that was left of Mautallius’ army. The island was shaking now with constant earthquakes. Sections of the maze above continued to collapse into the labyrinth below it.
Among the very last to flee the battleground were the two great werewolves Fergus and Mannix. Bloody and scorched, the two werewolves raced across the rubble, dodging falling bricks and leaping over chasms with their respective packs close behind them. As they neared the shore, Mannix glanced over at his old comrade and grinned.
‘They did it!’ he barked with uncharacteristic joy. ‘The Gate’s gone!’
It was then, before Fergus or anyone else could even bark out a quick warning, that Mannix slammed into one of the last remaining pockets of Guild guardslins. Several were dead within the space of a few heartbeats as Fergus and several other werewolves began tearing them apart. One last goblin, fatally wounded himself having had one leg ripped off at the thigh, managed to fire one last crossbow bolt at Mannix.
Sheila Freeman howled with rage and grief as she watched her mate crumple and die before her eyes. The rest of Pack Mannix and Pack Fergus tilted their heads back and howled a quick dirge to the great Black Coat.
Mannix was not the only werewolf to die on that island. Herschel and Abby were both slain as were dozens of other Red and White Coats. Hundreds of Black and Brown Coats also returned home only in spirit form, never again to join the thrill of the hunt.
General Sally Troy and Field Marshal Jax began the sad task of counting up the dead, while their officers continued to transport the wounded to their hospitals. King Roger, tired and bloody from the battle himself, sat slumped on a rock on the beach while several medics fussed about him. He too was receiving reports from his soldiers about the horrible losses his army of pike-gnomes had suffered. Next to him towered the mighty Herdmaster Tor. Both his horns had been sheared off and his arms and shoulders were a mess of deep gashes and burns. He was weeping openly as he watched Cassandra and the rest of his medics lay o
ut hundreds of fallen minotaurs.
While the heart-breaking cleanup after the battle continued, James and Jerrit stood up on a sand dune and watched the last of The Nonagon collapse in on itself. It was there that Sarah and Melanie, combined as The One, appeared carrying the weeping form of Angelina Troy. The One dumped Angelina in the sand and stepped well back from her friends. The combined powers of The Star of Planes and the silver and gold within her was beginning to break free. It couldn’t be long now before she would be torn apart.
‘We have to hurry,’ she told them. ‘Angelina! Call your god!’
Angelina nodded and climbed to her feet. She shut her eyes for a moment, concentrating. When she opened them again, she clapped her hands. There on the sand next to her, appeared the glowing form of Apollo.
There were several gasps among the growing crowd of onlookers and a great many of them fell to their knees in respect.
The One strode forward to face Apollo. ‘It is done, Archer God. Take your bride now!’
Apollo smiled at The One and inside that gleaming body both Sarah and Melanie knew that He was smiling at each of them individually.
‘Praise and bless you, Golden Protector and Nightsmith,’ He told them, His beautiful blue eyes shining brightly.
‘We have one more favour to ask of you, Archer God,’ The One told Him. ‘Our time is running short and we must hurry.’
Apollo nodded, understanding. ‘Ask away.’
‘Within us are the souls of our parents and brother. We have more power than we can contain. We want to use this power to give these souls new life as deities over Jilde. We must know how to do this. Teach us!’
Apollo’s smile vanished and He paled. ‘You know not what you ask!’ He accused. ‘To give you the secret of the life of gods is to give the secret of their deaths also!’