by Phil Tucker
Then nobody would be able to stop him from teleporting to the ur-destraas and binding it himself.
But why? Why did he want our forces weakened or the demon under his own control?
Because he meant to betray them.
Audsley’s head snapped up. What a fool he’d been, to believe he’d coaxed the truth from Erenthil, to think he’d deceived the man when he bent knee! The Artificer had said as much — he didn’t trust Audsley at all.
“Well,” Audsley said, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. “A wise man you’ve proved to be, Artificer. But you should have guarded your secrets more closely.”
Back. Take me back to the battle. Now.
CHAPTER 37
Tharok
Death was but moments away. Tharok rose to stand on the dragon’s back, one hand clutching the spine before him, the other holding World Breaker, which was dripping both white fire and black. Everywhere, there was sound and confusion, the raging swirls of crimson fire seeking to crush their protective sphere, untold numbers of claws and fangs scoring the curved golden surface, and the palpable thrum of tremendous power filling the air.
Yet Tharok felt removed from the chaos. The White Song was rising from his depths like a geyser, flooding up and out of his body to bolster the Ascendant’s defense. Where the Song sang, there was no room for doubt, or fear, or panic, or hesitation. Even as Draumronin writhed, nearly knocking them all to their deaths, Tharok felt a cool detachment.
No matter. He hefted World Breaker. How could he free them of the demon? How could they turn their attentions to their true prey? Every moment spent battling these others was a moment irretrievably lost. He didn’t need the circlet to know that their chances for victory were slipping away through their fingers.
The second ur-destraas was raging above them, hammering at the golden sphere, blasting it with endless fonts of hellfire. Tharok felt World Breaker’s strength coursing through him and wondered, could he leap that high? Could he assail the ur-destraas, seeking to cleave it in twain with one mighty blow?
He lowered himself into a crouch, thighs bunching in readiness to hurl himself aloft. He rode the thrashing dragon as one might a bucking mountain goat, ready to leap at precisely the right moment.
It would mean his death, and there was no guarantee that he would kill the demon. Distract it, perhaps knock it away, but kill it? Probably not.
Tharok bared his tusks at the demon. No matter; if it bought them a moment’s respite, a moment for the dragon to teleport to their target, a chance to defeat Zephyr…
The third ur-destraas again appeared below them, having shaken itself free of the shaman’s summoned spirit. It slammed its fists into the golden sphere and then unleashed a wall of flame upon them, incinerating countless smaller demons that were seeking to assail them as well.
The effort to resist the attack almost made Tharok swoon. His knees buckled, and only his grip on the spine kept him upright. He saw the Ascendant fall from his hovering crouch across the dragon’s spine, and only Kethe’s quick reflexes prevented him from tumbling away altogether.
More. He needed to channel more.
Tharok closed his eyes, dug deep into his reserves, and somehow forced himself to open wider to the purity of the Song. It coursed through him, a raging flash flood thundering down a narrow canyon, unstoppable in its power. He felt the demons’ might pressing the sphere in to the point of cracking, and then his efforts pushed them back, if only for a few more moments.
No. He couldn’t sacrifice himself to kill one of them. He needed to kill them both or do nothing at all. And that was impossible.
Despite the Song’s power, he felt panic beginning to creep in around the edges of his mind. How could they win? It was all they could do to prevent their own deaths, much less fight back.
Grunting, holding on to World Breaker, pouring forth the White Song, Tharok forced himself to his feet. He swayed violently back and forth with the dying dragon’s thrashing.
An answer. They needed a solution.
Tharok closed his eyes. There – the original ur-destraas. He sensed it flying below them, fending off a circle of eidolons, Sin Casters and Asho. It had been badly, almost mortally wounded, but it was healing rapidly. Its rivers of fire were extinguishing the Sin Casters one by one, no matter how recklessly they dodged.
Time seemed to slow, and Tharok’s heartbeat drowned out the madness of battle. There was no darkness behind his eyelids, but rather a wasteland of white dappled by blue shadows. A frozen tundra.
I want to bring Ascendancy to my people, he thought. I want to prevent future wars. I want to heal them. Protect them. Save them.
The White Song was building to a crescendo. He could feel it pressing at the confines of his skull.
Too much. He was channeling far, far too much.
I want to mate with Maur. Begin a new clan with her. I want to raise children on the slopes of the mountains, and teach them the bow and the hunt. Watch them grow. Watch them become strong and wise. I want to grow old with Maur by my side.
A whisper filled the white tundra, a distant wind wending its way toward him. The blue shadows shrank and disappeared as if an invisible sun were rising toward its meridian overhead.
I want to make amends. I want to feel peace. I want to put down World Breaker and take up the hunter’s bow.
The whisper grew louder. Now, it was a susurration akin to a river, unseen around the shoulder of a mountain, pouring over a bed of rocks.
A column of white fire was approaching him. It was the center of the world, he understood: everything flowed into it and was devoured. He felt it calling to him. In its presence, he felt insignificant. His victories were as nothing, his mistakes negligible. His hopes, his dreams, his weaknesses – like dry leaves, they were consumed by the fire.
Sorrow filled him. Not sadness, not regret, not disappointment or self-pity, but a true, bone-aching sorrow for what might have been.
His skin felt stretched and overtight across his frame. His bones were burning. He opened his eyes and saw only an infinite and righteous whiteness in every direction.
The ur-destraas below him killed another Sin Caster. There were only three left alongside Asho. Soon it would kill them all, then concentrate its ire on Draumronin. They would all die in the onslaught of three such fiends.
Goodbye, Maur. If the Sky Father allows it, I hope to see you in the Valley of the Dead.
He saw lights dancing in her eyes as she smiled at him. Saw her reach out and take his hand and pull him gently toward her.
Tharok let go of the dragon’s spine and stepped out into the void.
CHAPTER 38
Audsley
Audsley popped back into existence directly before a wounded demon. Half of its head had been burned away, but it was still flapping its wings, hunched over in pain and dripping ichor into the wind. Its one good eye flared open wide at the sight of him, and its lower jaw trembled spastically in eagerness as it corrected its flight path to attack him.
Audsley yelped, lashed his inner demon with a thousand whips of white fire, and appeared far away and below, huddled on a tilted balcony on the face of Aletheia. The vibrations coursing through the stone were so thunderously powerful that he immediately collapsed forward to embrace the carved balustrade. He stared up at the night sky and saw whiplashes of flame coruscate against the darkness, endless surges and wheelings of the demon horde, flashes of resistance where the battle was thickest, and high, high above, a burning sun of gold and vermillion.
“By the White Gate and the Black,” he whispered, his voice shaking from the violence of Aletheia’s movement. He’d thought his plan subtle and dangerous, but had only planned this far; success had been so improbable that he’d left what would come next to improvisation. But how was he to improvise amidst such a maelstrom of fury?
“Oh, Aedelbert, what I wouldn’t give for your counsel right now,” he murmured. His hands and feet were growing numb from the stonecloud’s vibrat
ions.
He had to use the ur-destraas’ name against it. He had to tell it to the others so they could, as one, command it to desist. But how could he insert himself into that combat without being immediately destroyed?
His demon was prostrate with agony. It afforded him only a shadow of the power he had wielded before, when was housing three of its kind. His attempts to cast fire would be pitiful. At best, he’d be ignored; at worst, killed as an afterthought.
Yet, despite its weakness, he could tell that Erenthil had spoken true: even now, with the demon utterly immobilized, Audsley could feel his grip on his own mind, his very sanity, beginning to fray.
His thoughts ran away from him. He felt weak, indecisive. He was being indecisive because of the demon’s effect on him, but even that knowledge wasn’t enough to galvanize him into action. Sweat beaded his brow, and he felt feverish; his joints ached, and his throat was tight.
“Oh, Aedelbert,” he moaned. “What should I do?”
The stonecloud’s vibrations as it plowed across the face of the world made it impossible to think. His thoughts were breaking up even as he struggled to form them. Gripping the balustrade, he closed his eyes and envisioned Aedelbert: thought of his firecat’s sagacious face, his wise eyes, how his wings had once been richly iridescent and magnificent.
A sliver of determination rose within him.
“Yes, all right,” he gasped. “All right. Now. I’m going up there right now. This very moment. Right — now.”
He whipped his demon again, scoring its hide with a knife of glowing white, and the world flashed black. Then he was in the sky, falling, catching himself with the demon’s flight, surrounded by beating wings and searing hot blasts of air. Draumronin was embedded within an amber bubble of protective light, contorting and turning to blaze at its aggressors with its fiery breath as it struggled to remain within the sphere.
Below, Asho was hurling blast after blast of black fire at the ur-destraas, yet managing to do little more than delay its complete healing.
“Asho!” Audsley screamed, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Call it by its name! Ghash’la – damnit!”
He ducked, tumbled, then simply fell as he evaded a swooping attack. His heart felt like it would burst free of his chest. Demons were converging on him, then, suddenly, they were there, appearing all around him, claws swinging toward his face…
And he appeared below, Draumronin now an incandescent planetoid above him. The ur-destraas’ serpents of fire were superheating the air so that his sweat immediately dried, his mouth became parched, and he could barely breathe, much less scream words at .
“Asho!” He coughed, tried again. “Its name! Use it —”
The demons again popped into existence all around him.
“Confound you all!” Audsley screamed, and forced his demon to take him right to where Asho was flying.
The Bythian was surrounded by a faint corona of burning black fire, and his eyes were twin pits of ebon flame. His hair was a mane of white light, and his armor hung from his body, ruined by the intense heat that had failed to wound him. The tips of three spikes protruded from his form, and the sight of them and what they had to be doing to Asho stunned Audsley momentarily into silence.
“Audsley?” Asho stared at him in surprise, then grabbed the magister by his arm and yanked him down so hard that Audsley felt his shoulder nearly dislocate. They dropped a dozen yards in a heartbeat, just as a river of fire slammed through where they’d been a moment before.
“Its name, Asho,” gasped Audsley. “Here. Use its —”
Something impinged upon Audsley’s mind, and a feeling of reverence and awe compelled him to look up. Asho did the same. They both stared at the struggling Draumronin as a blazing white meteor punched free of the golden sphere and fell through the assembled ranks of the demons. Everything it touched immediately charred and turned to ash.
“What —?” Asho asked, but he didn’t have time to say anything else.
The ur-destraas before them froze, its serpents of fire temporarily stilling all around it, and then it roared and directed the horde of demons toward the falling meteor. Dozens of them whipped up, but although they lashed at the falling light, they failed to arrest its passage; instead, where they smashed into it, they were truncated, and the severed lengths beyond faded away into cinders and curlicues of fire even as the remnants lashed around as if they were in pain.
The meteor picked up speed, and before the ur-destraas could teleport away, it fell, curved up and slammed straight into its chest.
White light expanded outward in all directions from the point of impact. Audsley glimpsed vague shadows within that expanding sphere, and then he was forced to look away, covering his face with an upflung arm.
The light washed over him, but it didn’t burn; rather, it drained him of his fear and panic, so that when he lowered his arm and blinked at the afterimages imprinted on his vision, he felt himself restored; the fabric of his mind, which had begun to fray, felt fortified, and his thoughts were lucid once more.
“It’s dead,” whispered Asho.
“No,” said Audsley. He extended his hand to where the ur-destraas had floated but a minute before. “Not gone. Teleported away.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Asho said, his voice filled with bitterness. “Zephyr wasn’t inside it. We’ve lost!”
“Not yet,” said Audsley. “Take my hand, Asho. Hurry. We must follow it!”
“Follow it?” Asho grabbed Audsley by the wrist. “How?”
“I shall soon have dominion over it,” said Audsley, grim purpose filling his voice. “Ghash’la’karn Izmul’drr’ack Offash’sammaz D’sil’varan!”
A sense of the demon’s passage filled his mind: an invisible hole closing in the air before them, a tunnel through which the demon had fled. “Take me through it!” screamed Audsley. His demon wailed and thrashed, but Audsley spitted it with a thousand skewers. “Do it now!”
His demon slumped over, acquiescing, and they were hurled through the closing tunnel before it could snap shut. The world swirled in blackness and ruin, and then they appeared in mid-air over the side of a mountain on whose slope the ur-destraas lay shattered and burned.
Snow and ice glittered all around, but where the demon was lying, its heat had melted the snow so that only bare rock showed, cracked and rivened by the demon’s impact. The stars shone overhead with such startling vivacity that there was barely any darkness between them, and Audsley felt for one manic moment that they had followed the demon to the very ceiling of the world.
It lay stretched out full-length before them, its great form bleached bone-white and cracked. The fire within its ribcage had been reduced to a smoldering glow, and it was turning its head listlessly from one side to the other as if it were dazed.
“What now?” asked Asho. “We finish the job?”
“No,” Audsley said, drawing closer to the demon. “That would end only this avenue of investigation. We must force it to tell us where Zephyr is.”
Asho gave a bitter bark of laughter. “It doesn’t have a mouth. And look: it’s already recovering. The fire in its chest is growing brighter. We’ve only moments before it’s able to defend itself.”
“Still,” said Audsley. “It must know where she is.”
He alighted on the warm stone beside the demon’s head. The fiend was truly massive; its head alone was like a great boulder that Audsley could barely see beyond. This close, he could see in fine detail the damage that the white meteor had wrought; the demon’s hide was desiccated and ashen.
“What are you doing, Audsley?” Asho flew a few yards closer. “Audsley?”
“I’m going to try something rather foolish, I’m afraid.” Audsley bit his lower lip and extended his trembling hand to touch the demon’s brow. “ I don’t see any other means of accomplishing our goals.”
“Audsley?” Asho’s voice was tight with concern. “Don’t touch it.”
“But, alas, I must.”
Audsley brushed his fingertips across the demon’s temple, and even that glancing touch scalded him. He hissed and drew his hand back, and then in a fit of anger planted his palm full upon its skull, fingers splayed.
“Ghash’la’karn Izmul’drr’ack Offash’sammaz D’sil’varan.” Audsley bit out its name as his palm burned. “I bind you to me. I use your name to force you to take residence within my soul. Ghash’la’karn Izmul’drr’ack Offash’sammaz D’sil’varan, I name you a second time. You are to be my servant, my slave, and do as you are bid!”
“What the hell…?” Asho shouted, darting toward him, but as the ur-destraas began to flail in protest, sensing the danger, Audsley cried out the rest.
“Ghash’la’karn Izmul’drr’ack Offash’sammaz D’sil’varan! I name you a third time! You are mine!”
The demon disappeared, and Audsley fell down. He lay unmoving, his face pressed against the heated rocks.
His sense of self was insufficient to encompass the fiery energy that flowed into him. He knew he was flopping like a fish plucked from the ocean, but it was a distant fact. He could taste blood, but he didn’t know why. Then he became aware of a sense he’d never consciously considered before: his awareness of where his body and limbs were and where they ended. That sense was being tormented.
He felt his awareness expand, seeking to contain the entity that had just entered his soul, felt it billow out like a great sail, straining to not tear altogether.
Asho was shouting something and pulling him up to sitting. Audsley’s head lolled. He felt nothing. He couldn’t peer into his mind’s eye at all. All he had was an awareness that he should be trying to formulate some thoughts but was unable to do so.
Asho dropped him with a cry of pain. Audsley fell onto his back and then began to roll down the mountain slope. Stars swung overhead, then he saw the ground, then the stars, then the ground. He was rolling faster.
He went over an edge of some kind and fell.
Peace embraced him, along with the wind. He fell, loose and limp, for what felt like a precious eternity. Then he careened off something, hit another surface, and fell some more.