Drynn

by Steve Vera

  Time moved into a slower, thicker version of itself. The love of his life versus the lives of countless.

  A lone, defiant toad croaked from somewhere in the pond.

  He glanced down at the corrupt talisman, felt its cold stabbing in his palm and fingers, then looked at the Overlord. At the terror in Amanda’s eyes.

  I am weak.

  “Swear it,” Gavin said. From his peripheral vision he saw both Noah and Tarsidion stiffen.

  “I swear that she will not be harmed.”

  “Release her.”

  Asmodeous waved his hand as if shooing a moth, and Amanda went flying into the pond. She landed with a scream and a splash.

  “Your turn, honorable Shardyn,” Deos said, raising his right eyebrow bone and stretching out his massive, muscle-corded arm to receive. It dripped blood from a half-dozen different lacerations.

  Gavin closed his eyes. He tapped into the currents of the night, feeling its tempo and cadence as he entered what the Shardyn called the Void—a place within the mindscape where action flowed as effortlessly as water downstream. “Catch.”

  Like a pitcher, Gavin threw the talisman at Asmodeous’s head. It sailed impossibly long in the air, aided by his craft and homed in on his oblong skull. The Overlord snatched it easily from the air and the moment it made contact with his giant clawed hand, the moment Gavin’s word was honored, Gavin unleashed two bolts of lightning wreathed in cobalt flames.

  The Overlord hadn’t been expecting that.

  Both bolts speared into his chest and knocked him back, his face ablaze with shock and pain. Even before the lighting completed its arc, Noah and Tarsidion rushed in, their silver blades weaving a bloody spark-fest against his flailing arms.

  He tried to fly away, jumped up and backward with a flap of his wings, but that was exactly what Gavin was waiting for, why he’d hung behind. He sent a flight of blue-white darts sizzling through the night like a machine gun burst of tracers from the wings of a P51 Mustang. Just in time, Asmodeous crossed his bloody forearms in front of his face, protecting it, while his body and wings were impaled by a dozen blades of light. He fell the meager twelve feet he’d managed to climb, right back within striking distance of Tarsidion and Noah, who immediately resumed their rain of slashing silver metal.

  Even inert, Noah’s and Tarsidion’s Quaranais wreaked havoc on his arms, biting deep into his ridgebones, spilling rivulets of blood to the ground with every blow. He fell back, staggering, his once arrogant leer now contorted into dismay. Gavin tracked them from behind, arm outstretched, waiting for a clear shot. They pressed…

  And were lured.

  With the suddenness of a blackout, Deos punched out with open palms and released his own magma-colored lightning point-blank. The concussion of the bolt leveled Tarsidion as if he’d just been hit by a charging rhino.

  But it cost him. In the moment the Overlord struck Tarsidion, Noah arced her blade in a vicious slice of her blade, opening the flesh below Deos’s right armpit, even while a flight of pale blue lances sizzled out of Gavin’s fingertips. They burst against Deos’s neck, torso, wings and legs, clinging to his flesh like silver-blue napalm.

  There was nothing contrived about his scream that time. Asmodeous’s good cheer disintegrated. Even as streams of blue flames roiled from his body, his other palm snapped out, and this time it was a sphere of scarlet lightning that hurled out and detonated against Noah’s breastplate. Back she flew, head over heels in the limp way only the completely unconscious could tumble, encased in a field of residual electricity. She landed in a messy heap and didn’t move again.

  For just a breath, the world stood still, and Gavin’s fear spontaneously combusted, consumed by the fall of his brethren. Noah wasn’t moving. Cirena was motionless. Tarsy was down. Gavin lowered his chin, held up his blade and pointed at the Overlord. You die.

  And then Gavin was streaking through the grass, his body catapulted by the force of magic. Deos was particularly dangerous when he got your stare, because through it, he could enter and control a weak mind, but that’s all Gavin wanted. He wanted the Original Race to know that today its reign of millions of years had come to an end.

  Whether he saw what was coming for him or simply acted in a tactical decision, Asmodeous was not there when Gavin’s Quaranai swung for his head. Instead the Overlord burst into spirit and soared back to the trees. Gavin tracked him relentlessly, smelling blood, crashing through the underbrush of the Bastion’s estate.

  Deos was hurt. He could tell by the milky film that covered his eyes, the unbalance in his perch. A tree was not going to save him. Gavin cleaved right through the trunk of the birch Deos had retreated to with a crackling hiss of his Quaranai. It was like cutting through straw. The tree swayed a moment and then crashed down with a dull whussh of splintering wood and smashing leaves. Ribbons of flames clung to the stump and newly sheared end. Gavin yelled in bloodlust as his insides rippled from the ecstasy of spent magic. Asmodeous leaped to another tree, and Gavin followed.

  I am your reckoning, I am your end, I am your slayer…It had become a chant within Gavin’s mind.

  The temptation to defy gravity crossed Gavin’s mind but he discarded it; too much energy required, and the air was the dominion of the Drynn. Instead he chopped the next tree down with a single swipe and hurled three balls of fire wrapped in blue lightning. They homed in on the Drynnlord like guided missiles, trailing silver-blue contrails. At fifteen feet, each sphere exploded and released a storm of blue-light shrapnel like a double shot of canister fired from a civil war cannon.

  This time, the shrapnel never touched him. Like water balloons against glass, they bounced off a shimmering crimson field that surrounded him like a dome.

  Gavin’s intestines squirmed.

  Slowly the Overlord descended from the air to land beside the felled maple, surrounded in a gossamer curtain of fire-red light. Deos gave the fallen tree a good look and then looked at Gavin. “Very aggressive, Annototh. That’s something your brother would have done. How is the young calf? Oh.” He dipped his head in mocking sadness. “Forgive me, I forgot I cut his head off. It seems that seventeen years in a black hole has stolen my chivalry.”

  A new rush of anger smothered the panic that had begun to well in Gavin’s bladder. Although Deos had just taken their best shot and was still grinning, he held his right arm to his side as if it were broken, and his thick, purple-red blood leaked freely from a half-dozen lacerations onto the grass, pungent and unmistakable.

  “How is it that it always comes to us?” Deos asked, stepping forward, his dome of red light moving with him. “Why are your friends so weak and eager to abandon you?”

  Gavin didn’t dare take his eyes off the Overlord, but with his periphery, Gavin took note that both Tarsidion and Noah still laid where they fell. Amanda shivered from the side of the pond, wide-eyed and blue-lipped.

  It was just him and Asmodeous the Pale. Again.

  The Overlord looked up at the moon and grinned. “Soon I shall return home to end everything you’ve ever known.” Deos smacked his lips. “But first, I shall cook you, Annototh, sear your flesh until it splits open and your juices leak into my mouth. But fret not, brave cattle, you
won’t be dead. I’ll have you—”

  A supernova of lava-red light exploded around Deos like a transformer hit by lightning. A microsecond later the unmistakable kar-rump of the Barrett M107 rumbled down the grass way. The fifty caliber round shattered the red curtain of protection and punched a cluster of walnut-sized holes into the monster’s stomach as the round fragmented against the barrier.

  Gavin’s night vision disintegrated by the flash but he charged blindly anyway, using his memory to cleave. His blade found nothing.

  The Barrett barked again. And again. Swiping at the air as if it would make his vision return quicker, Gavin heard Asmodeous’s enraged screams, the methodical booming of the great sniper system. Gavin fell back on his training and walked toward the screams, eyes closed, his mind replaying the terrain he’d just traversed. He held his Quaranai in front of his face. The distinct thickf of a flying Drynnian daggerspur hissed from beyond, followed by the buzzing crackle of lightning on stone. Skip gave a loud grunt, and then there was silence.

  Gavin opened his eyes. A giant blob of imprinted light blocked his vision, but he could see from the fringes. With his peripheral vision he searched for Asmodeous, heard the flap of wings and did the calculation of last scream to present flap. Magic rushed through him as he peppered that quadrant of the sky with a scatter of fiery darts.

  Asmodeous’s cry sounded almost like a squawk. Surprise, you son of a bitch. Gavin didn’t need sight to know what to do next.

  He Cocooned. Just in time.

  The air around him exploded into crimson flames, hissing violently beyond the cocoon of blue light emitted from his cloak, withering and blackening the grass and earth around him. Beyond the curtain of flames he could see Asmodeous’s silhouette, could see both taloned hands raised, blood dripping down his arms, wings outstretched, two streams of red-orange fire roaring into Gavin like double WWII flame throwers.

  Maintaining a Cocoon was like holding a thirty-pound weight over the head. Not too bad at first, but once fatigue started to set in…Gavin’s sweat began to pop.

  Asmodeous approached slowly, fire streaming, until he was standing just a body length away. Torrents of flame engulfed Gavin’s form, squeezing his cocoon of pale blue light like twin pythons around a stag. Buuuuuuuuurn, the flames seem to say.

  “Long have I waited for this day, Annototh,” Deos said through the flames and onto the crust of Gavin’s mind. There was no trace of the leer or black humor Gavin had become accustomed to. What was left was hatred so feral and consuming that it was a force unto itself. “For seventeen winters I lay in wait, trapped within the cold darkness of my thoughts and this wretched earth, and in all my whisperings, in all my violence, I poured my will upon one thought.” Asmodeous ran his black tongue over his thick, worm-like lips and glared at Amanda, shivering by the pond. “I’m going to make her watch.”

  Gavin was panting now; sweat dribbled down into his eyes, burning his concentration. It was like the ultimate game of mercy, whoever’s fingers were strongest…and Gavin was wilting. His intestines were cooking. The heat below his navel was egg-frying hot. He staggered to his knees, gasping as his cocoon shuddered like the first tremor a car makes before it runs out of gas.

  “Burrrrn,” Asmodeous chanted. “Buuuuuuurn.”

  And then Jack rose from behind like a phantasm.

  *

  It wasn’t the first time he’d ever been hit by lightning, but it was the first time he’d ever been hit while in trance. It was not the preferred method of waking up. Once his body stopped spasming, Jack sat up and let loose a stream of obscenities.

  Why in all the hells didn’t anybody wake me up? And then the pain came, like his tongue had been seared with a cattle brand. Oh, that’s why. The memory of Asmodeous’s ugly puss and fetid breath biting Jack’s tongue out of his mouth hammered at a door within his mind. Jack just deadbolted it. No time for such thoughts.

  In a single pan of his head he saw Cirena on his right, arms crossed over chest, fist-sized marks blackening her armor. Left side—Skip, motionless, daggerspur protruding from his chest, M107 lying smoking a foot away from his hand. Above him, the night sky flickered colors that didn’t exist in the natural world—fire and ruby and sulfur, Underworld colors—and somewhere ahead of him, the unmistakable grate of Deos’s voice contaminated the night.

  He took a deep breath, which hurt as the air ran over the nub of what used to be his tongue, and steeled himself for what he was about to unleash on this world. Time to go to work.

  Jack rose.

  The last man standing was Gavin. As usual. His old friend was entombed in a waning cocoon of blue light, while Deos went to work with his with unholy flames. Twin columns of red-yellow flames writhed around Gavin so thickly that Jack could only see his silhouette. Tarsy and Noah were down, one on his left and one on his right.

  I check out for a couple of minutes and the whole world turns to shit. Jack unsheathed his Quaranai from his waist and held it in front of him. He would have to extend it just before the strike; otherwise Asmodeous would recognize the sound. There was only one sound in the world like an awakening Quaranai.

  Jack charged.

  *

  Gavin feigned weakness. Not that it was much of a stretch. He wanted Asmodeous focused solely on him and not on Jack, who was flying across the grass like a helicopter skimming waves. Asmodeous moved in for the kill, eyes wide in bloodlust, and Gavin just about crumpled. Get here, get here, get here.

  And as usual, Jack Nyx did.

  Maybe it was because he’d had millions of years to evolve, or that he had supernatural hearing, but when Jack got five feet from him, Asmodeous knew, and twirled around, blocking the springing blade in a sword strike that would have separated most of Deos’s head from his shoulders like a big fat chicken. As it was, the metal of Jack’s Quaranai buried itself in his arm, cleaving bone and muscle in a spray of purple-red blood. Asmodeous roared. The flames stopped, and immediately the crushing weight of the thirty pound dumbbell disappeared, but not before the grand finale. Like an explosion underneath water, a blast wave of interrupted magic blew Gavin nine feet back.

  He struggled for breath, fought for control over his muscles but felt only electric fingers twitching his nerve endings. A fresh wave of panic washed over him; every time he moved even an inch, a bolt of agony seared. The threads of red lightning did not subside, but instead roved over his armor, seeking his skin.

  And then the pain started.

  *

  Even with an inferno inside his mouth and two broken arms not all the way healed, Jack stood calmly, like a sculpture of a knight in a storm. In one hand he had his lightless but fully extended Quaranai and in the other, his Nai, the Quaranai’s accompanying sidearm, like the wakisashi was to the katana. Longer than a dagger but shorter than a sword, the Nai was an exquisite double-edged stabbing blade of Valisian steel—as deadly as it was beautiful. Of all of them stranded here, not even Noah was better than Jack, and tonight he was going to make it sing.

  He held both blades in the classic Shardyn middle-guard—the hilt of the Quaranai by his face, blade up, the shorter Nai thrust front, angled at Deos’s eyes.

  “How quickly we meet again, cattle-prince,” Deos said with a malicious smile. “Shall
I take your eyes this time?” Despite looking as if he’d just been ambushed by a pack of flamethrower Velociraptors, Deos’s leer remained.

  Tarsidion was face down in the grass, Noah’s body was half-twisted on its side and Stav writhed like a singed dragonfly on the ground not fifteen feet away.

  “Have you no retort?” Deos asked, raising his clawed hand to the hole in his head that served as an ear. “Ahhh yesss, I seem to have forgotten. I bit the tongue out of your mouth and swallowed it.”

  Yeah, you swallow, all right, Jack thought, regripping his blades. All I gotta do is take your head and we go home. As legends.

  “Brave Juekovelin, you stand before me daring to fathom triumph when I have laid entire armies to ruin. The ambition of Men never ceases to delight me.” Deos licked his lips. “How sweet your flesh shall taste.”

  Jack attacked simply to shut him up. In a sequence he’d done ten thousand times before, Jack feinted with the Nai and then slashed his Quaranai across Deos’s chest with a flick of his wrist so fast he could have cut a bullet out of the air. His blade carved a line of separated flesh over Deos’s ribs. Then Jack retracted, as if he’d never moved at all. He gave Deos a little wink.

  The laughter in the Overlord’s eyes had vanished. Deos looked down at the wound, back up at Jack and then bared the points of his teeth. A moment later Jack’s world became a whirlwind of flashing blades, snarls and raking talons. Blood sprayed, and it wasn’t Jack’s. Without Asmodeous’s dreaded weapon—the Abyssian Scepter, the one Lucian had given his life to destroy—the Overlord had to rely on the ridgebones of his arms, already notched and bleeding freely, and his daggerspurs, one of which was missing. Sticking out of Skip’s chest.