by Steve Vera
At the top of the stairs, they followed the blood trail down a carpeted hallway. It stopped three quarters of the way on the left. Whatever door had been there now laid in a ba-jillion pieces. Backs against the wall, they crept forward until Gavin raised his fist. Their three-person line stopped right outside the shattered door. Gavin then brought his open hand to his hip and with cupped fingers signaled them to get ready in textbook SWAT. Just where exactly these magi-knights learned SWAT hand signals was beyond Skip, but he had it perfect.
Gavin brought his hand up to his cheek and extended it forward twice. Assault. The three of them stormed inside, sword blazing, guns bristling, sweeping through the room.
It was empty. There was a sleek, desk-sized computer monitor with charts of the orbital trajectories of the moon and planets upended and smashed into the floor. Hundreds of books and texts littered the area rug, spilled from shelves brimming with books and tomes so tall they reached the ceiling. Many of them were singed. On the west wall, where once there was a window and wall, a cool fall breeze blew through a hole that had detonated from the inside out. Stone, concrete and twisted metal studs jutted out into the night.
Cautiously, Gavin stuck his head out of the former window and looked up, to the sides and down, the tip of his blade leading the way. Nothing.
They checked the room across the hall and then cleared the rest of the upstairs methodically, but they found nothing. Asmodeous was gone. And so was Amanda.
Gavin stopped. The silence that followed was thick and terrible. Gavin’s eyes were wide and distant, his mouth slightly open, his face paper-white. Skip caught Noah’s eye and for a moment they shared mutual realities. This is very bad.
“He’ll want to bargain her, Stavengre,” Noah said gently. “There’s still hope.”
“No,” Gavin said numbly. “She’s dead. He’s going to kill her. He’ll make her suffer.”
Skip could hear the man’s breathing quicken, could see the tremors in his jaw as if he were shivering. It was the blossoming of a nightmare come to life. He watched the progression of shock to anguish to rage on Gavin’s face. With a swirl of his cloak, Gavin stalked out the door.
“Stavengre,” Noah called. “Stop.”
Gavin ignored her and flew down the stairs, knees like pistons. Noah sprinted after him and grabbed his arm at the bottom of the stairs. Skip followed, wondering if he was going to have to deck him. If Gavin went out there and got barbecued, they were all hamster food.
“It’s exactly what he wants,” she said, her eyes urgent.
“And I’m going to oblige him,” Gavin answered, pushing past her. “He’s not doing this to me again, no fucking way!” he roared.
Tarsidion came bounding in, AK-47 at the ready, but Gavin ignored him, kept marching toward his destination—the outside door. Skip wasn’t particularly relishing the thought of tackling somebody wearing full plate armor, but he would. There was no way Skip was letting Gavin out of here.
“A little help, Tarsy?” Noah asked, keeping stride with Gavin.
Tarsidion stepped in front of Gavin.
“Get out of my way. I did it once, I’ll do it again—only this time he dies.”
Skip watched in guarded silence.
“We face him together, Stavengre. He wants you to succumb to your despair. This is a game to him—you know this. He takes us for puppets. Don’t give him that.” Tarsidion pointed at the liquid crystal amulet housing the blue jewel. “We all die if he gets that.”
Gavin was silent for at least eight seconds, long enough to at least appear as if he were considering the words. “I won’t let him,” he finally said and went to step beyond Tarsidion.
Tarsidion blocked his way. “No.”
The two eyed each other, fabled knights in a face-off, while the Lord of the Underworld flew free and plotted their demise.
Noah slid in from the right. She took his face into her hand and made him look at her, speaking in that cryptic, flowing tongue of theirs.
Whatever she said, the words penetrated that shell-shocked haze in his eyes, brought him back, at least partway.
Tarsidion jumped in, and together they broke through.
Gavin closed his eyes and gave a single, strangled moan.
Something from his left called for Skip’s attention, a luminance that seemed out of place, bright enough to pierce the beveled windows bracketing the thick oak back door. He looked and stifled a gasp. “Uh, guys,” he said. “I think you’d better take a look at this.”
The three ceased their discussion. Gavin jerked his chin up, his eyes as turbid as sediment in a flood. “What?”
Skip took another glance, trying to pick his words. “There’s a ring of fire in your backyard.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
A steady wind whispered ominously through the trees then died abruptly, as if the world had just inhaled.
Gavin stared at the circle. Part of him wanted to scream, to detonate into a fireball and leave this all behind—the war, his fear, his friends, duty—but like always, his rage came hurtling back like some spiritual bungee cord.
“That wasn’t here when we went inside, right?” Skip asked, Barrett in hands.
The circle was precise in its dimensions, as if created by a giant compass and large enough to encircle an eighteen-wheeler. Although it was surrounded by grass, inside the circle was plain soil, and in the middle of that soil, a perfectly round hole the size of a basketball. The perimeter of the circle glowed, like fiber optic moonlight.
“No,” Gavin said in a low voice. “That wasn’t here before.” Heat pulsed through him in bursts like solar flares, all the while the roaring of waves crashed through his hearing. My world is crumbling around me.
“What is it? Why is it glowing?” Skip asked.
“Step one of three,” Noah said. “The borders of the doorway have been carved.”
Skip turned to her. “To Theia?”
Noah nodded.
“What’s two and three?”
“This is two,” Gavin said, fishing out the Regolith Talisman from a leather pouch hanging off his belt, wincing as his hand came in contact with the dark metal. It was freezing. Waves of needles prickled the muscles and bones of his hand, as though he’d grabbed the nubs of a battery with wet fingers. “And this is three,” he continued, holding up his angry Quaranai to the night, which burned and crackled silver-blue light in an uneven fashion, vaporous and gossamer.
A sudden wind whipped up around them, and on it was a deep, guttural voice. It bounced and echoed against the stones of the Bastion, raising the skin on the back of Gavin’s neck. He only knew a couple of phrases of the foul language, but he didn’t need a translator to know what was said.
I am coming.
Gavin stuffed the talisman back into the leather pouch. Come and get it.
“That was more than creepy,” Skip said, eyes comically wide.
“Skip, take a position on the east wall and watch those trees around the pond,” Gavin said tonelessly, pointing out over the grounds beyond the circle. “It’s probably where he’ll come in.”
“How do you know?” Skip asked.
“I don’t. Just a hunch. Now that he’s done skulking, he’ll probably come through the front door.”
“Well, you’d know,” Skip muttered, walking to where Gavin had pointed and unfolded the legs to the bipod beneath M107.
As if to make his point, the air went still and a long, otherworldly call slithered through the night, deep and cavernous. Then the ground began to shake, like a giant footstep that never stopped. Tarsidi
on and Noah were well acquainted with Deos’s methods, but Skip was not. The police chief’s eyes were glued to the three of them; he was taking his cue from their reaction. They ignored it the same way a seasoned pilot ignored turbulence. Tarsidion let loose an impressive stream of spit through his teeth, as good as any baseball player.
Skip gave a tight nod and put his eye back to the scope. Above them, the moon sat like an unearthed skull rising slowly from the horizon—cold, bright and full of secrets. It would be hitting its zenith within the hour and when it did, the fate of two worlds would be decided.
True to form, the ground ceased trembling and the ensuing silence pressed down like a shadow. Deos loved to string his victims along, stretch their nerves and exhaust them mentally, physically and spiritually; even Gavin’s simmering rage couldn’t quite overcome the bombardment of greasy moth wings in his stomach. After several millennia, a single, lonely gust of wind swirled through the sentinel trees around the grounds, transforming the still air into a steady roar of shivering leaves and scraping branches.
He’s out there.
Instead of letting dread take root, Gavin distracted himself by studying Asmodeous’s hastily conjured Circle of Elements. It was impressive, especially considering how little time the Overlord had had. It would have taken Gavin at least a couple of hours—the glass channels burned into the earth comprising its perimeter was in and of itself a work of labor. It took hot flames to make glass, and the Overlord had done it without his talisman.
Gavin studied the four slender, cylindrical columns rising from the ground, each pillar created precisely at true north, east, west and south. They were about five feet high and flat on top…like an altar. On the north pillar was a dancing tongue of flame, on the south, a frozen drop of water the size of an orange, gleaming in the moonlight. A continually crackling ball of red lighting marked the west, and on the east column was a fist-sized lump of what looked like obsidian.
The four elements.
Not only was Asmodeous a flesh-eating monster, he was the Great Warlock. The Pale Terror. The Ruler of the Underworld, the ArchDrynn and a hundred other titles given to him by myths and fables. But what punched Gavin in the mouth was that no matter how sophisticated Gavin might think himself, how well-trained and powerful he’d become as a Shardyn, he was only thirty-three years old; Deos was millions.
How did I get here?
Lucian, that was how. This was his fault. Haaaaad to be the best, couldn’t just be content being a Magi. And who was Gavin fooling? He would have followed Alyssandra to the gates of Eternity, so why not the Shardyn Academy? It wasn’t as if he regretted it. For every moment of despair and terror of training and war there had been an obverse moment of triumph and wonder. He just hated being the shining beacon of irony, standing here now when the two people he’d loved more than his own life, who’d actually wanted this gig, were dead. Perished. He didn’t even bother to wipe at the droplet of moisture that spilled down his cheek and rolled to his chin.
Here, everything would be decided.
“So this koala bear walks into a bar,” Skip said from the right of them.
In unison, the three Shardyn Knights shifted their attention to the police chief, unsure if they’d heard right.
Skip’s eye remained at the scope. “He walks in, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he scarfs it down, he pulls out a Glock, plugs the bartender a couple of times and then walks out the door—I’ve got movement.” His voice turned crisp as he reverted to a soldier’s professionalism. “Silhouette, eighty meters west.”
Three pairs of eyes snapped forward.
Behind the pond a figure emerged, stumbling toward them in a listless shuffle. Amanda. She was alive. She took a couple of steps forward, whimpered and then began to levitate. Exorcist style.
It took everything Gavin had inside of him to not fly to her immediately, but he knew what was happening. Diversionary tactics. Trap. Instead, he searched the night for the source, for the Lord of the Underworld.
“I got something in the trees,” Skip said. “Second birch on the left of the pond, fifteen meters up.”
Gavin looked up deeper in the gloom, and lo and behold…a shadow sat. Two disembodied orbs glinted amber in the night. I’m watching you.
“I can’t believe something like him even exists,” Skip muttered, adjusting the sights on the scope, tilting the gun up to get a better fix.
“He is one of the Original Races,” Noah murmured. “The Drynn go back further in history than even the Dragons.”
“Dragons?”
“Well, dinosaurs here.”
“Millions of years to perfect the art of killing,” Skip said. “Somehow, I’m not encouraged. Why can’t I just plug him right now?”
Gavin perked up. “You have a shot?”
“I did. Dammit, where’d he go?”
Gavin shook his head and sighed. That would have been too easy.
“Efil,” Tarsidion said in that deep melodic voice of his, and the short, rippled blade of his sleeping Quaranai shot up three feet in a shing. Now he was double-fisted.
“If he shows himself again—” Gavin pulled his hood over his head and stepped onto the grass. “Take his head off. Don’t wait for a signal.”
Skip took his eye from the scope and stared at Gavin. “What about Amanda?”
“Just take the shot. We’ll handle the rest.”
Skip gave his holstered .357 Python a pat and nodded. “Roger that,” he said and put his eye back to the scope.
Noah and Tarsidion fell in behind Gavin wordlessly, pulling their hoods over their heads and walking into the night like three avenging angels.
Even before they reached the water’s edge, black contrails rose from their steps like smoke, obscuring the line of sight offered from the courtyard. Warfare 101—smokescreen. As old as war itself. So much for the head shot.
“Walk no further,” Asmodeous commanded from above in the old tongue of High Common. The Overlord was crouched within the upper branches of an old birch tree, leaning forward in the Drynnian hunting stance. The birch struggled with his weight. He glared at them with wolf-amber eyes, flecked with crimson, and then swooped down from his perch in a huge spread of leathery wings, landing silently behind Amanda.
She cringed and stared at Gavin helplessly, her bottom lip trembling as she hovered in the air, spinning slightly like a leaf caught on a spider strand.
“Give me what I desire and I won’t indulge myself,” Deos said, sniffing the side of her neck. His black tongue rasped the side of her cheek, and Amanda whimpered.
Gavin tried to guess at how much of Deos’s gloating was an act. His body was riddled with purplish boils filled with pus, and his wings and shoulders were scraped bloody from being dragged. He was cut up, shot up and battered. Yet still he smiled. He extended a hooked talon and pushed it into the soft spot beneath Amanda’s jaw.
“Why are you so eager to sacrifice those you hold dearest, Annototh? Have you not suffered enough?” He shook his head in mock pity, those monstrous eyes brimming with malignant humor. “Give me my amulet and your accursed Quaranai, and I shall return her to you.”
Gavin looked right into the eyes of the Underworld. Fathomless depths glinting cruel amusement stared back at him. He was enjoying this—savoring it, eager to see it through.
Gavin reached beneath his cloak, steeled himself for the pain and grabbed the Regolith Talisman
. On contact, his hand was assaulted by waves of prickling needles that he ignored, taking satisfaction in the way Deos’s eyes glinted with longing.
“Release her, and I’ll give you your talisman.” He raised his head defiantly. “My Quaranai you will have to take.”
“Stavengre,” Noah warned from his right, while Tarsidion turned in alarm.
He ignored them. “I’m not going to let him kill her.”
“Stavengre, we have him,” Tarsidion whispered. “We must take him now. Without the talisman his magic is diminished. We’ll never have another chance like this.”
“He’ll kill her.”
“He will kill her, anyway.”
“No,” Asmodeous said, breaking into their debate. Evidently, he understood English just fine. “I give you my word, Annototh, and you know how often I do that. Give me my talisman and I will not kill her.” There was a look of amused interest on his face.
“No. That you will not harm her.”
Asmodeous’s laugh came out—long, guttural and breathy. “Clever cattle. Very well, she will not be harmed. I will leave her to rot on this wretched world.”
Tarsidion grabbed his arm. “We will never have a chance like this again, both the talisman and your Quaranai in our grasp. We have no choice but to strike now!”
Asmodeous dug the tip of his claw deeper into the bottom of Amanda’s jaw. She whimpered. “Decide quickly, cattle,” he said, running his black tongue down her face. “I am hungry.”