Twelve months ago, Raven Grey and her brother had succeeded in destroying Asmodeus and replacing him with Tanith, if such a thing could be considered a success. Then they’d completely vanished from the realms. Three days later, Astriel felt the realms go cold, and upon the casting of a powerful scry, he’d learned that Lord Malphas of Caina had been executed.
Tantibus, the Nightmare Lord, was now the ruler of both Phlegathos and Caina. A more fitting ruler, those realms had secretly never known. Tantibus fit into Abaddon’s puzzle like a long-lost piece, and barely a ripple of discord escaped the Nine Circles.
With this murder, a change came over Abaddon’s denizens. The next night, they left their realm and began pouring out over the terran lands like swarms of insects washed from underground. Armies of darkness raged through city after city, destroying everything in their unfortunate paths.
It was widely held that the elven nation did not tend to bother themselves with the affairs of mortals. Battles were fought, won and lost, disease came and went, and the young grew old and died, yet through it all, the elves and their ilk remained separate and aloof, disconnected from the chaos of mortal nature’s temper tantrums and faulty design.
It was something that pained Astriel now to look back upon and admit, yet admit it he did. That was exactly how they were.
However, when Tanith began sending his minions out upon the terran realm, a loophole in this apathy emerged. These were not purely mortal affairs. And it was painfully clear from the get-go that at the core of these attacks was a mounted search for a single woman: Raven Grey.
Like the spoiled child, like the prince who was never denied, Astriel imagined that he’d already staked his claim. He’d seen her first, had he not? And in a move that would paint a bloody picture upon the walls of time, his pride took hold.
Astriel stopped in his tracks in the halls of his palace as a familiar ache moved through him, beginning at five long, thin marks across his chest…. They were the scars that remained where the princess of Caina had left her iron mark upon him one day, what felt like centuries ago. He touched his chest lightly and placed one hand against the wall to brace himself.
My pride, he thought. And then he laughed, feeling quite old indeed. He closed his eyes, lowered his hand, and righted himself.
That princess is a queen now, he thought. She hadn’t even been here for it, and the war had made her older as well.
A month after the disappearance of the Grey twins, Abaddon’s army had infiltrated the towns on Trimontium’s outskirts. Astriel had done what he’d wanted to do from the very beginning and captured Raven’s parents.
But she was unreachable, off the map. Using her parents against the object of his desire in order to win her obedience wasn’t an option, not until she was found. Therefore, he kept them with him at the palace under the pretense of protecting them.
That was a year and a lifetime ago.
Astriel took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and continued down the hall. It curved around, winding suddenly in a very non-geometric pattern. The stone floor became cracked, and those cracks grew larger, eventually making way for sprouting plants and grass.
The walls on either side of the hall gradually painted themselves, transitioning from royal marbles, platinum, and gold, to faint images of forests and clearings, ponds and waterfalls. As Astriel moved further along the hall, those faint images became darker and stronger, not as faded.
Before long, he was exiting the hallway, which had become little more than a tunnel through a winding labyrinth of stone overgrown with vines and blossoms, and entering a garden. On either side stretched areas of mushrooms taller than he was, in all shapes and sizes. He knew from experience which were edible and which weren’t – and which would show you a good time if you became bored. Which elves often did.
Or did, once upon a war-less time.
Flagstones bordered with moss and mushrooms of a much more miniscule size led from the tunnel’s opening to a wrought gate constructed of verdigris gold. Astriel approached the gate, and as all doors did for him in his kingdom, the gate swung open. On the other side of the gate was a circular clearing, at the center of which stood a small cottage constructed out of the hollow remains of a single plant that had died long, long ago.
Smoke rose from the chimney in its red and white roof. It comforted Astriel. It meant that Raven’s parents were utilizing their surroundings, making themselves “at home,” so to speak. It meant they were comfortable, and hopefully it meant they felt safe.
All they were missing was their children.
Lord Astriel was no longer interested in using Sarah and Alastair Grey against their daughter. He was no longer interested in using anything against her at all, in fact, and hadn’t been for some time.
He had a feeling he knew why Raven and her brother were back on the terran realm. He was wagering they had the Hunter’s Map. That particular map led to one thing only: the Phylactery of Souls. The Phylactery was capable of turning back time. If Raven possessed the map, then she likely intended to erase the events of the past year and keep this war from ever transpiring.
Astriel knew that if she was given the choice, she would run from him. She would think the worst of him, and he couldn’t blame her. But contrary to her beliefs, after what he had seen, he wasn’t prepared to thwart her. In fact, if he had anything to do with it, she would whole-heartedly succeed, despite all of Abaddon’s unholy efforts to stop her.
Chapter Six
“Raven!”
Her brother was calling her name, but her eyes were closed. She was afraid of what she would see when she opened them and got a good look at the portal around them.
“Raven!”
Raven swore under her breath and opened her eyes. Just as she’d thought there would be, swirling colors were everywhere. But rather than make her sick or disoriented, they formed a kind of vibrant tunnel filled with wind and magic. She felt more stable than she’d expected to.
“My sword! It’s here!” Loki had one fist curled tightly around the bunched-up edge of the map. The fingers of his other hand were pointing at something further down the portal.
Surrounded by a blue-white glow, Loki’s sword hovered in the middle of the swirling tunnel, as if waiting to be reclaimed.
Impossible, Raven thought. But then, this was magic. And their weapons had been born of magic. So, she quickly amended her thought, as nothing was impossible when it came to magic.
“Can you reach it?” she called out. It was loud in the portal. The world was literally turning around them.
“Let’s move together!” Loki yelled back. He reached out in the direction of the sword, angling his body as if he were going to sprout wings and fly across the spinning space.
Raven had a queasiness in her gut. Trying to move haphazardly through the already chaotic environment of a portal seemed foolhardy. And she could feel the portal reaching its destination. They had little time.
Without really thinking about what she wanted to do, Raven cast an internal spell. She said no magic words, but only willed it to happen, drawing the sword to them in an image in her mind.
Within seconds, the long blade was ripping through the portal in their direction.
“Heads up!” Raven warned.
Loki reacted with skill rather than the surprise evident in his features, and when the time was right, he snatched his weapon from the air, his hand sliding over the hilt to grasp it firmly.
“How in Abaddon did you do that?” he asked loudly.
Raven shrugged.
The portal crackled, Raven braced herself, and the wind buffeted them as they were again ejected into the terran realm. It felt to her like she was being violently vomited by the portal, as if it didn’t like them.
Raven hit the ground rolling, her elbows and knees reminding her all too bruisingly that her body possessed hard angles. She came to a painful stop and pushed herself up with the hand that still held the map. “Ow.”
Loki, who h
ad landed several feet away, rolled to his side, levered himself onto his elbow, and grimaced in agreement. “I’ll second that. But on the up side, it looks like you’ve regained control of your emotions. Wherever we are, it’s not snowing here yet.”
Raven ignored him and took in their surroundings. In the short distance, past a few copses of trees, looked to be a group of run-down buildings. Very run-down buildings. Ruins, to be exact. Raven recognized them from the map.
A throb in her wrist forced her to look down at her own body. Loki had wisely released both his weapon and the map in order to catch himself as he’d collided with the ground, but Raven had stubbornly maintained her grip on the map, perhaps out of good old fear.
Her knuckles were scraped up, and her wrist throbbed, but she had the map, she could feel the bow was in one piece at her back, and a quick glance over her shoulder assured her the arrows were still in her quiver. She situated herself, coming to her knees, and looked down at the scroll.
“The map survived,” she said, her voice sounding dull.
Loki joined her and gently grasped the edges of the map so Raven could once again unroll it. “Did you want to read it this time?” she offered.
“No, you’ve already started, you may as well navigate to the end.”
Raven peered at the map, and for the second time, the symbols and lines scrawled across it coalesced upon the page, darkening and defining until clear images could be made out.
As she read, Loki looked over at what Raven had assumed were ruins. “Do you think he’s still alive?” he asked. “Sartorun?”
Raven didn’t want to answer that. She knew devils. She knew Drake. And if this man, Tantibus, was anything like what Adonides had been for Raven’s own father, Malphas, chances were, no mercy would be shown. On the other hand, Abaddonians didn’t kill without reason, at least not from what she’d seen in her father’s court. The heat of war was one thing; “all was fair,” as they said. People were caught in the swell of it, and there was no premeditation. It was simply war.
Killing without a plan or agenda was another thing altogether. It wasn’t Abaddonian practice. Maybe Tantibus would spare Sartorun. And if it had been Astriel’s men who’d blown open that door, Sartorun was guaranteed not to be killed. Apparently Astriel wasn’t doing that.
“I don’t know,” she finally sighed. “I really don’t. But we need to concentrate on this right now. We need to find that Phylactery and set things right.”
Loki nodded. “What does it say now?”
“Nothing’s changed yet,” she replied, staring at the same picture she’d gazed at in Trimontium. She wagered it hadn’t changed because they hadn’t yet done what they’d been sent to the ruins to do.
But then, something did change. “Except….” Something was different. The left side of the map was darkening before her eyes. Raven frowned. “I don’t know. There’s a darkness on this side,” she told him, gesturing to the part of the map that displayed Trimontium, the place they had just been.
A chill went through her, which was rare for Raven. She gazed harder at the map, watching in terrible fascination while it darkened further, as if a mighty shadow were being cast over the places they’d just left, and it were inching toward the place they now were.
The shadow was coming closer. “It’s behind us, Loki,” she whispered. “There’s a darkness just behind us…. And it’s catching up.”
Chapter Seven
Sartorun had survived so much.
The initial battle between Lord Astriel and the underworld had come with some warning. Tensions between the fae and Lord Tanith had vibrated the terran realm, sounding alarm bells.
The elf king placed a shield over Trimontium, lending his magic to its well-being. But the day of the attack, Tantibus came with his army of soldiers, the Night Marchers. The sky went red and dark.
From within the library of Trimontium, Sartorun had felt the world shift. The balance of power was changing, and its epicenter was the city around him.
Possessing some magical ability himself, at first Sartorun had decided to aid the fae king and the townspeople however he could.
But the sky cracked with red lightning, and the shield over Trimontium shattered as if composed of brittle glass. The universe roared, terrifying and wrong, and the ground shook. Nightmare steeds of black and red pounded the soil, leaving smoke and ash in their wake. A darkness followed on the heels of Tantibus’s armies, threatening a kind of evil that turned Sartorun’s blood to ice.
At short length, he could do nothing but hide. Hide was what they all did. Real fear was all encompassing and terribly palpable, like the taste of metal on the tongue. There was no beating it, no way a mere mortal such as himself, such as the other townspeople, could stand straight in the face of it. They fled to their basements, to their attics, and to their closets, and there they remained.
Sartorun did not emerge from the cellar beneath the library until long hours after the shaking, explosions, and otherwise unholy sounds had faded. Even protected as it was by fae magic, Trimontium had fallen, and the elven king had magically relocated his entire castle and its portals to the fae world, leaving Trimontium barren and unprotected, no longer under the shadow of elven reign.
What protection the king had lent the city before his departure spared the majority of Trimontium’s buildings and land from complete annihilation. The townspeople, by and large, had escaped without injury or death, thanks to their fear. And by nightfall on the day after the battle between the elven realm and Abaddon, Trimontium’s inhabitants had begun repairs on the damage.
However, before the moon was high that night, a deeper darkness rode in once more on a foreboding wind. The denizens of Abaddon were not finished with Trimontium. An example had to be made. Lord Tanith meant business.
Somehow, the elven king received word of the second wave. He sent a legion of his soldiers and mages to counter the attack.
But the misfortune that had befallen the city earlier that day had been a sliver, a drop in the ocean of blood that Abaddon meant to unleash upon the terran realm. A tidal wave of death overtook them. The armies of the Iron City of Abaddon flooded the land. Bounty hunters, thieves, and assassins of Phlegathos followed on silent feet of death. And the attack’s killing blow came from the denizens of Caina and Nisse, the eighth and ninth circles of Hell themselves.
When the sun rose upon the remains of Trimontium the following morning, it cast a grisly light on all that was left. Smoke curled from crumpled abodes, piles of ash denoted where citizens, elves, and devils had perished quickly in hellish, consuming blazes, and unmoving bodies bearing frozen, pained expressions demarked slower deaths.
The few townspeople left alive, draped in the dried tears and sweat of their terror, took one slow look around and decided to relocate. There was nothing for them now in Trimontium but the waving “Wanted” signs the victorious Abaddonians had left behind, nailed here and there upon the skeletal remains of Trimontium’s buildings.
The survivors whispered as they packed. Side-long glances at the woman on the posters were winsome at best, filled with loathing and regret. The sum the bounty promised was the largest any of them had ever seen, and the callousness of it added a new depth to the cruelty of what they had endured. Money would not bring back their sons and daughters. The promised reward fell on empty hearts, devoid of hope, and burned like acid in their veins.
It would be years before the soil of the city could once more sustain crops, years before the trees would grow to fruit-bearing size. In mass exodus, they left. Those who would not be joining family elsewhere in the terran realm would journey together to a valley a week’s distance from Trimontium. Already, a small town existed in the valley, but land and trade routes were sufficient to support a much larger population.
Sartorun, alone, remained behind. Someone had to bury the bodies.
And that’s what he had done. He’d laid them all to rest; dozens of soldiers, families, and countless individuals. He’
d grown blisters that became larger than his knuckles digging these graves, even with the aid of magic. The sound of dirt covering bodies was eternally imprinted upon his mind. But as the last peek of tunic and leather disappeared beneath layers of shoveled soil, he’d exhaled. At last. Truly, in that moment, he’d thought the worst to have finally passed. What more evil could possibly befall a city so ruined?
Trimontium, however, possessed one final inhabitant, and the city’s capacity for suffering remained with him alone. The worst for Sartorun was yet to come.
As the dust settled from the explosion that had taken the library door, Sartorun waved his hand in front of his face to find a man standing before him.
Nightmares had the capacity to fill a dreamer with an inexplicable form of dread. They suffused the bloodstream with liquid fear that subjugated and reproduced, eventually replacing the blood altogether so that fear, alone, then caused the heart to beat.
As Sartorun gazed into this creature’s red burning eyes, he understood why Lord Tanith’s first in command had been named after a nightmare. He lost feeling below his waist. His hands began to tingle. He would fall at any given moment. And then Tantibus had his gloved hand around Sartorun’s neck, and this single choke-hold alone held him aloft.
“Where is she?” the devil asked.
Sartorun never would have answered, not on his own. But his words were pulled from the depths of him as if Tantibus had reached past his lips, down his windpipe, and into his core, where secrets normally dwelled.
“I don’t know. But she searches for the Phylactery of Souls.”
Tantibus’s eyes continued to burn, a reflection of the hellish blaze from which he’d been born. An indeterminate amount of time passed between them, filling the silence with innumerable, terrible possibilities. In that vast and tiny space of time, Sartorun would have given anything, even his soul, to be in the hands of the fae king rather than the devil who had him now.
Queen of Abaddon Page 4