Walter dug his fingers into her neck, the veins writhing out of his forearms as he squeezed. Her legs flailed, struggling for purchase, her arms pathetically clawing at his fingers. Hilanda’s face turned red, bluish, and purple. He jerked her head back, slamming it into the stone with a crunch, again, again, and again. Her left arm reached out, clenching the carpets. What started as bone thudding, became wet, squelching slaps as red matter spilled from her shattered head. Her limbs stopped smacking at the ground, stopped clawing at his hands. Her portal hissed shut, the trembling shadows drifting away like smoke.
He rolled off Hilanda, sprawled out beside her and stared at her massacred face, tongue flopped out of her mouth. He heaved a ragged breath, his bloody fingers aching and uncurling. Tears slid down his cheeks, through the dirt, dust, and scarlet.
What had he become? He was a monster, no better than his enemies. That was fine though. He had to become what he hated. He had to be worse, even more vile if there was any hope for surviving this. Sleep and rest were crushing him like a vice. He thought if he laid here just long enough, he might just fall asleep beside her pale corpse.
“Not so wretched any more are you?” he snickered.
The ringing of weapons and screams returned, faint through the open windows. “No sleep, not yet,” he coughed, blowing out what little contents remained in his stomach.
Chapter Twenty-One
Last Breath
“The phantom of Asebor frightens me. I grow tired.” -The Diaries of Baylan Spear
Sweat dripped into Nyset’s eyes, blinking away the burning salt. She didn’t know how much longer she could carry on, each burst of fire becoming a monumental effort to pull forth. Three Cerumal charged at her in a dumb line, a massive shield at the front. They were stupid things, no lack for courage though. A spear of fire buzzed from her hands, tingling as it ejected, spitting the three on its burning haft. Their gnarled hands grasped at it, severing fingers and cutting through the wrist of another. The shield bearer’s wide jaw dropped open, as if his noble character had been affronted.
The defenders had shifted through the archway leading into the gardens, creating a choke point to give the defenders a chance. She was only fooling herself though. She knew deep down they wouldn’t live. With only about thirty of them left, they were only buying time.
The other defenders knew it too, could tell by their desperate attacks, leaving themselves open for a crippling strike. Maybe Walter could do something. Maybe he could harness both of the god’s powers again and destroy them all like he had done before. She wasn’t sure if he was even still alive. He had to be, must be. He had left what felt like an hour ago, but she couldn’t be sure. Time felt like it was stretching out, too long. Perception always stretched out in times of duress, she knew.
Juzo was down, maybe dying, dragged off at the back of the gardens. She didn’t know where Grimbald fell, couldn’t find his body in the fray.
Baylan wove shields, splitting the knees of a sprinting Black Wynch with a horizontally cast portal. The beast continued running on its bleeding stumps before collapsing. His hair glistened with sweat, posture sagging under the tremendous weight of exhaustion. They fought side by side, flanked by armsmen protecting them from Equalizer carrying Death Spawn. She had to give their foes credit, it was a clever tactic. An effective one by looking at the number of remaining wizards. Besides she and Baylan, there remained one other wizard, Vesla, a fellow apprentice.
A few had got around the wall of fire burning in the hallway that Vesla strained to keep burning. The massive blade at the end of a halberd chopped into the skull of a screeching Cerumal, burning and running towards Vesla. A few beasts surrounded her and her protectors. One of the guards fumbled his sword, dropped it and was stabbed in the neck by a leaping Cerumal with frizzy red hair.
She had learned a trick to conserve her energy today. By conjuring the same Dragon flame discs, bending them through space and never allowing them to dissipate was far less tiresome.
“Is this how it’s going to end?” Nyset said into Baylan’s ear, blood streaming out of it.
“Don’t talk like that. Never give up, fight until you are nothing,” Baylan said with a pained grunt. Something thudded into flesh. Hers? An arrow was lodged deep in his shoulder where it met his chest. She screamed, her voice cracking from so much screaming, furious discs slicing through a Skin Flayer’s swords, dislodging the guts of a Cerumal, hacking through another’s arm at the elbow.
Damn it, Walter. Where was he?
* * *
Where is she? Walter ran down the steps, cramped up leg muscles twitching as he forced them onward. The faint rings of battle grew nearer, metal clanging on metal, screams of the wounded, explosive booms of the Dragon. He trailed his wet fingers on the stone as he rounded the corner, four red lines painted on the walls in Hilanda’s blood.
“No,” he whispered. The defenders were a sliver of the number they were earlier, decimated and clinging onto life, the last bastion of the Silver Tower. Where was everyone? This couldn’t be all of them, couldn’t be.
A golden bird twittered on the top of the wall, as if the realm were not about to fall into the claws of a demon god. Walter made his legs work, jogging past the marbled fountains, the tamed bushes, vibrant flowers, and ornamental stone carvings. Stormcaller trailed at his side, a Phoenix shield in his other hand.
A few Cerumal broke through the squirming defenders, victoriously whooping, their dull armor glowing in the sun. His skin prickled with hot anger and air heaved from his lips. Their presence defiled the beauty of this place. Their deaths were already determined, written in their dark blood streaking across the manicured grass. Their deaths were spoken on the wings of the buzzing Rot Flies feasting on Hilanda’s shattered skull. Anything that stepped into the gardens would die.
“Who’s next?” he growled. The broken bodies of the three Cerumal formed red pools behind him.
“Walter, glad to have you back,” someone said over a shoulder. It sounded like it was spoken from a blurred memory. He knew the voice, maybe knew the face. A friend? All he needed to know now was who to obliterate.
A Black Wynch rolled forward, talons clacking and gleaming pain. Before it could even lunge, Stormcaller whirled in a circle under the bottom of its helmet, through its body, and its legs. Stormcaller ripped the bottom half of its mandible free and its ribs spun through the air, the lower legs crumbling to the soft earth. Blood spattered on the carved bust of a pudgy faced wizard. The wall of fire encompassing the hallway vanished and the rest barreled through, letting out a screeching war cry.
“More wish to die?” They charged through the center, barreling aside the thinning defenders. Walter roared. Stormcaller wheeled around and around, filling the air with shrieks, spurting blood, flying weapons, limbs, heads, pieces of armor, and chunks of stone. The predictable patterns in their attacks were beautiful. He painted the walls, the ground, his face in their dark blood.
Their weapons marred, nicked, and scratched at his flesh, but healed in an instant with the light of the Phoenix. They were nothing, ants to be crushed under his boots. Each pain inflicted upon his body was returned with death. If a defender stepped too close, he had his head hacked off by Walter. He was death incarnate and only a fool would step so close to death. He laughed at the fear in their beady eyes, at their burning limbs, at the ineffectual attempts to stop death.
His laugh roared over their shrieks, maniacal and without an ounce of pity. He thrust with his opened palm, releasing two fireballs through a pair of Cerumal’s guts, jerked his elbow back into the face of another, black teeth hammered back into its mouth. Walter tore its jagged blade from its stunned hand with the Phoenix, snapping into his and jamming it under its neck, slamming it up to the crosspiece. Stormcaller burned, splitting through a breastplate, and leaving the monster’s chest gaping open, ribs split. The ground he fought for was his and his alone, all who would enter meeting only doom.
The defenders circled in
on his flanks, war cries bellowing. Familiar voices rang out, but he couldn’t comprehend them. He only heard the angry squawks and screams of his enemies. They seemed to hesitate, a pile of broken bodies as high as Walter’s hips littering the ground. He smiled to see the terror in their eyes, to know they finally understood who he was. They gibbered at the edges of the pile, mustering the nerve to die.
“I give up.” He let Stormcaller fizzle away. “You’ve won, and we both know it.” He whispered softly. A Black Wynch took a cautious step towards him, claws tapping on its thigh plates. His arm was like a viper, hand like a vice, seizing the Black Wynch under its bony neck. It rammed its claws into his arms, but Walter felt no pain. He lifted it into the air with both hands, windpipe cracking under his furious grip. Its legs kicked and its claws raked at his arms, its soft neck quivering. He forced his fingers deeper, Dragon bright in his eyes, his hands and his soul. His fingers forced burning holes into its neck, blood welling out from under the skin and smoking on his fiery hands. He screamed into its face, “Leave this place or die!” He threw its dead body into its gibbering friends, soaring in slow motion through the air.
“Walter! Walter!” a voice screamed from behind. A voice he thought he liked hearing in a time when he was not death. He peered over his shoulder, a torrent of fire ready for the one who knew his name. There was a girl there, pointing towards the archway. It was Nyset, the girl he thought he loved, knew he loved.
He felt the rage slipping away, seeing the carnage all around for the first time. He felt himself gag on the noxious odor of their evacuated bodily fluids.
Baylan was beside her, eyes bulging out of his skull, eyebrows trying to escape his forehead. The defenders had fallen back behind him, taking out anything that survived him, the rage of the storm. Juzo was there, propped up against the wall, looking like he had been used for testing new arrow designs, leaning on a long sword. He raised his hand and pointed behind Walter, red eye spreading wide.
Walter turned, expecting more Death Spawn seeking his wrath. What he saw almost killed him by sight alone. His heart skipped beats, his blood pulsing through his veins, stomach twisting in Gordian knots. The horror from his nightmares, the one he fought on the red plateau while the Cerumal armor was being removed, glided through the archway.
The Death Spawn’s squawks quieted, groveling and scraping as they backed away from Asebor. Walter swallowed, palms sticky with sweat. Asebor’s chains unfurled from around his arms and legs, floating about his form. Walter’s eyes found his neck, a tiny scar there from where he had struck with the axe of white light. He can bleed, he told himself. He can bleed.
“The last dual-wielder. The destruction you have caused has made finding you easy,” Asebor hissed. He pressed his massive arms behind his back, rows of metallic spikes running up and down. “Bow before your master and your death will be quick.” Asebor’s shadowy legs paced before the once pristine gardens.
Walter took a deep breath, feeling the urge to bow, almost wanting to please him. Asebor’s presence was surreal, something that should not be. Something he felt compelled to worship. Walter started bending forward, gasps springing up from voices behind. He felt an odd wetness trickling from one of his eyes. But that just wouldn’t do. Some things can’t be forgiven or mended. He paused half-way into the bow, jaw bulging with tension.
“The Tower has fallen. The rest of you may die or serve me, the choice is yours. Follow the submission of your only hope,” Asebor gestured to Walter.
Walter sucked at his cheeks, pooling up a great wad of phlegm and spit. He tilted his head up to Asebor’s violet eyes, swimming with all the hatred of the world. He spat the glob into Asebor’s face. It landed with a slap and dripped down the spot where a nose should have been. It was a nice wad, one Juzo probably would have congratulated him for if not for his pincushion state.
Walter’s saliva spread down Asebor’s black cheek, slipping around the hollow, and along his jaw. “Humanity, defiant until the end. Your kind doesn’t understand defeat, even before the arms of death. For that, you will be tortured young gnat, until the end of days.”
“Run!” Walter screamed over his shoulder, piercing the quiet. The faces of his friends and defenders alike were frozen… muscles twitching, grips iron on weapons, lips trembling, tremoring knees vibrating armor. A man with a crooked nose coughed once then collapsed onto his side; breath gasping like he was out of air.
This was his chance to end this. To wake from the nightmare. To make the death of his parents matter. To show a god that even it can bleed. Asebor’s mouth spread as wide as a canyon, his teeth jagged like broken stones.
His chains rattled towards Walter, slicing and crisscrossing at his legs. Walter fell backwards into his own portal, rolling through the exit on Asebor’s flank. He thrust with both hands, streams of white Dragon fire sizzling from each fingertip. Asebor’s body transmuted into a cloud of mist, lines of fire cutting down Death Spawn and punching holes through stone.
A fist collided with his face, crushing nose, cheeks, even his teeth roaring pain. He staggered back, caught himself before falling, ducking as another stony fist passed over his head, blowing cool air down his back. Asebor was living obsidian, bright in the sun, dark fragments raining down where the joints shifted. Asebor’s arm flung up, stony fist now a ragged blade. Walter saw it coming, mind numb with the agony in his head. He threw up a Phoenix shield at the last second, the blade thudding off the side, throwing him into the ground.
He heard the hissing of the chains, rolled in what he could only hope was the right direction. He clenched his jaw, tendons in his neck popping, bracing for the inevitable cutting. The squeal of blades on stone rang in his ears, blades gleaming bright and sunken into chunks of broken wall. The Dragon sword sprang to life in his hand, slashing at the chain attached to the blade beside his head. The Dragon blade thudded off the chains as if into a Phoenix shield, unscathed.
“Shit,” Walter hissed. Asebor’s chains leapt from the ground, whirling in the air, smashing against the wall and freeing the blocks of stone.
“You have trained well, dual-wielder, but it will not be enough,” Asebor said cooly.
Walter rose, looking back at the others, the taste of metal and sweetness on his tongue. They hadn’t left, they stood there, staring. Asebor was right. He knew it in his guts. Here is where he would die. He could only hope it would be a good death.
Walter opened a portal, hoping to split the fucker apart. When the portal started opening a violet spray shot from Asebor’s eyes, vaporizing the blue spark. Asebor was gone. Walter felt Asebor’s portal open behind him a half-second too late. Asebor’s blades at the end of his chains tore into his back and out the front of his chest. The mirror bright blades were red with his blood, dripping from their waving tips onto his pants.
The Phoenix was warm around his back and chest, surging and pressing at the immovable blades. Walter’s feet were jerked from the ground, screaming, legs writhing in the air, hands pushing at the blades.
“The power of your false gods is not enough. You are not enough.” Asebor’s voice hissed into his ear, close as a lover, breath reeking like old urine.
Tears were hot in his eyes. He gagged on the pain, his body weight supported by the blades. What could he do? What was the defense against being impaled? Another chain wound around his neck, cold as a grave. Something wet tickled and scraped at his ear. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bastard’s tongue slithering out, afraid to turn his head and open his throat on the bladed chains.
“I can taste your fear,” Asebor laughed in his ear.
“Fuck yourself, bastard,” Walter said through sore teeth. The world was a blur of figures below, open mouths, shifting shapes. His fingers tried to work their way under the icy chains, cutting his fingers down to the bone, wriggling under.
The chain clinked, razors shearing through his skin, wet streaming down his neck. “You will never die. Pain will be your only ally, all you will ever know,” Ase
bor whispered.
Screaming and the clanging of blades rang up from below. Walter fell from the air, blood streaking from his back, the ground coming up fast, air expelled from his lungs at the impact. He coughed and heaved, sucking in grit. Asebor bellowed in what could only be pain. Walter opened an eye, watching as a blue portal winked out under his leg. His ankle bled a few violet drops, the shadows snapping shut, chains wildly hissing.
Walter rolled over onto his back, pushing onto his elbows. Baylan had replaced him in the air, Asebor’s chains encircling his shoulders and thighs. A human face full of blood streaked across his vision, his helmet lethally dented. Nyset ignited a group of iron-clad Cerumal, armor molten on their burning skin. She pressed herself into the archway, a spear meant for her slamming into a bush manipulated into the shape of a dog.
“Baylan!” Walter screamed, reaching to him with bloody fingers, one finger bent alarmingly sideways, skin pulsing with the light of the Phoenix underneath. Walter saw Juzo swing his sword into the shoulder of a Black Wynch, hacking it through its neck, blood spraying on his face.
Baylan screamed, arms and legs splaying out, head thrust back, veins standing out on his neck. Portals sprung open beside the chains around his arms, the edges not cutting but pushing the portals away. Asebor’s lips curled back into a mocking smirk.
“It will not work, you are weak. Your gods have left you to die,” Asebor laughed.
“You are not a god! You are nothing,” Baylan snarled.
“Let us see if your god deems your courage worthy of redemption.”
Baylan roared, blue light flashing as bright as the sun from his shoulders and hips. Asebor’s chains twinkled in the light as scarlet blooms formed under Baylan’s robes, blood rolling down his chest and thighs.
“No!” Walter screamed, fireballs flying from his palms, skittering off the chains and into the sky. Nyset tried to break them with red discs, cursing; her mouth opening with mounting horror.
The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) Page 27