by Sarah Hawke
Selvhara’s howls of pains mingled with bitter snarls as she tried to break free of the spear impaling her, but the glowing weapon didn’t budge—nor did her wounds heal. The fur around the wound sizzled as if it were about to catch fire.
“I promised the dragon mercy, but you do not deserve peace,” the One God spat. “I warned you time and again, Sarodihm—you are forever bound to my will in this life and the next!”
Dathiel stretched out his left wing, and the ethereal feathers shifted until they looked more like glimmering tendrils of raw energy. They stretched out and curled around Selvhara’s body, and her wolfish muzzle let out a pained cry when the tendrils began to constrict her like shimmering serpents.
“Perhaps I should make you destroy your precious Wyrm Lord,” Dathiel taunted. “It would be a fitting end to your pitiful existence, don’t you agree? The Faetharri concubine who unwittingly betrayed Tir Lanathel…yes, perhaps you should be the one to destroy the dragons once and for all!”
“Leave…her…alone!” Jorem snarled. It took every ounce of strength he could muster to pull his head off the ground again.
Dathiel snorted. “A Wyrm Lord who doesn’t revile the lowborn peasant? Well, Sarodihm, it only took you a thousand years to finally seduce a dragon. Congratulations.”
The glimmering tethers squeezed Selvhara so hard she audibly gasped for air. Her eyes fastened upon Jorem, and he expected them to be filled with a millennium of despair and torment and misery…but instead, he saw hope.
“Destroy him, and I will finally set you free,” Dathiel said. “No curse, no tethers, no Wasting Echo…the only burden you will carry is the knowledge that you alone destroyed the dragons you so desperately wished to serve. You will not find a more generous offer, Sarodihm.”
“You…you are not a god,” Selvhara snarled. “You are a monster!”
“I am the Watcher,” the One God declared. “I am the last light shining upon this broken world. I am the God of Vigilance!”
Selvhara’s wolfish muzzle twisted into a smile. “Then perhaps you should turn around.”
Dathiel’s glowing golden eyes narrowed. “What are you—”
It all happened so quickly that Jorem wasn’t convinced it was real. A tall human clad in dust-covered Silver Fist armor sprinted out of the fog farther down the street, a sword made entirely of blue energy blazing in his hand. Jorem had never seen anything quite like it; the air hissed and popped in the blade’s wake as if it were on the verge of being set aflame.
The instant the knight spotted Dathiel, he charged with the fearless zeal that only a true paladin could muster. The One God turned at the sound, the feathery tendrils of his other wing lashing out to swat his attacker away…
The knight didn’t even try to dodge. He simply raised his blade and hewed through the tendrils like underbrush in the forest. Dathiel screamed—a deep, horrid sound that literally shook the ground like a quake—then tried to move before he was cut down. The knight’s blade still clipped the One God’s glowing armor, and another horrific scream of godly pain shuddered across Highwind.
“Miserable wretch!” Dathiel growled so loudly Jorem had to cover his ears.
“You will pay for what you’ve done, demon,” the knight, Commander Julian Cassel, said through clenched teeth as he lifted the blazing sword in front of his eyes.
The One God snarled and pulled back the broken, sizzling remnants of his wing. “Fool,” he spat. “You cannot kill a god!”
“I don’t need to kill you,” Cassel said. “I just needed to spill some of your precious blood.”
Dathiel’s eyes shot wide as he glanced down to the gash in his glowing armor. Tiny streams of shining liquid hemorrhaged from the wound and splattered beneath him like droplets of molten gold. They congealed into a smoldering pool and seeped into the ground…
And then, suddenly, the Aether returned.
Jorem inhaled a deeper breath than he had ever taken. His arms, no longer weak, lifted his body off the ground, and the pain crippling his limbs and squeezing his heart vanished as if this had all been a fleeting nightmare. His bones swelled, his flesh hardened into red scales, and in the span of a few heartbeats, he was staring down at the glowing man in front of him as if he were an annoying insect rather than a Fallen God.
“No!” Dathiel hissed, clutching at his side. “I will not allow you to steal my—”
Jorem whirled around and slapped the One God with his mighty tail. Dathiel sailed through the air like he had been fired out of a ballista, and his golden figure crashed through the northeastern wall of the Redwater District and vanished into the rubble.
With a bellowing roar, Jorem unfurled his wings and launched into the air in pursuit. Wyverns screeched behind him as they continued ravaging the now-defenseless city, and he even spotted a few flaming boulders in the distance as the catapults on the Vorsalosian warships began their bombardment. He wanted to turn around and roast them—he wanted to strafe the length of the Reachwend and incinerate every bloody ship in the damn river while he had the chance. But if history was right and the Wyrm Lords had defeated the Fallen Gods once, then perhaps he could do so again.
Snarling, he plunged down toward the shattered wall at his prey. Dathiel was already rising above the rubble near Highwind’s northern wall, still unharmed aside from the gushing wound on his flank. He conjured and hurled another spear, but this time Jorem was ready—he rolled onto his side, narrowly dodging the attack, and his mighty maw spewed forth another cone of his searing draconic breath. The flames broke harmlessly over the One God’s impenetrable defenses, but the attack still held his attention long enough for Jorem to reach out and snatch him in his talons as he streaked past.
He squeezed as hard as he could, hoping he might crush the annoying godling into paste. But when Dathiel’s armor refused to crack, Jorem soared high into the air and simply threw him back at the ground instead. The One God streaked down from the heavens like a meteor, and when his luminescent body crashed into the hills outside the city, the explosion showered the plains in a storm of dirt and stone.
Jorem didn’t relent. He plummeted back to the ground and landed in the hills with a thunderous crash,
I may not be able to kill this bastard, but damn if it doesn’t feel fucking good to try.
A surge of light rolled over the hills as the One God leapt out of crater he had dug. His wounded wings had yet to heal, and trails of golden light still dripped from his side. But somehow being thrown into the mountains hadn’t even dented his breastplate.
“The arrogance…” he seethed as another spear materialized in his hand. “You are nothing without our power!”
He hurled the spear. Jorem lunged out of the way, a tremor shaking the hills as he shifted his enormous weight. He sucked in a deep breath and unleashed another blazing cone of flame, but Dathiel didn’t even flinch when the inferno broke over him.
“I can still reclaim what has been lost,” he said once the flames abated. Stretching out his hands, he pulled the droplets of golden blood beneath him back into his body. “I am the Aether, don’t you see?”
Jorem could feel his power starting to waver again. He reared back to take another breath—
Maskari!
He heard Kaseya’s call as clearly as if she were standing next to him. He could feel her presence back in Highwind, and he knew that she, too, had felt the Aether’s sudden return. He couldn’t speak with her, but he could feel her relief—and her resolve.
You cannot kill him, Jorem, but you do not have to. Focus on me…see what I see…and then you will understand.
A flood of thoughts and images poured into him. The amazon—his amazon—had always been able to perceive things that no one else could, from the gaps in the defenses of the Senosi to the strange tendrils that had bound Selvhara to her dark master. And just like she had done so many times before, Kaseya revealed the critical weakness of their new enemy.
You know what must be done, Maskari. This battle has ra
ged for millennia, and it will not be resolved today.
“You cannot destroy me, wyrmling!” Dathiel sneered as the wound in his side healed over. “Rip apart this body and I shall merely build a new one in its place!”
Jorem knew with absolute certainty that the Fallen God was right. If the full fury of the Avetharri Wyrm Lords hadn’t been able destroy him outright, then a single dragon didn’t stand a chance. But the ancient elves had still defeated Dathiel once, and after what Kaseya had shown him, there was no reason Jorem couldn’t do it, too.
“Is that fear I see in your eyes, dragon?” Dathiel said, another spear flashing into existence in his hand. “Do you finally understand your place?”
Jorem rushed forward. His wings unfurled as he snatched Dathiel up in his maw and leapt back into the sky. His jagged teeth couldn’t pierce the One God’s divine armor, but Dathiel’s spear had no such trouble. A fresh spike of anguish burned through Jorem’s body as the weapon stabbed into the side of his neck, and blood spewed from the wound as he dropped his left wing and banked around for another pass over the city. For a moment, he feared the agony would overtake him…but then he felt Kasey calling him home.
We are here, Maskari. We are ready!
Jorem soared back over the city walls and above the Redwater District. The fires and rubble were like beacons in the fog, but the strongest light of all was cast by Commander Cassel’s strange blade. He was standing outside the ruins of the Silver Temple with Kaseya and Valuri, and when the girls spotted Jorem approaching, the paladin turned and thrust his sword outward as if he were trying the slay the air itself.
Instead, he was stabbing the very wall between worlds.
Jorem never would have been able to see what was happening without Kaseya’s aid. But thanks to her bequeathed vision, he could perceive a shimmering tear in the very fabric of reality. It was a small gap—little more than a crack beneath a larger door—but the risks of such dark magic were the stuff of legend…and nightmares. The Pale was a realm of demons, shadows, and death…but it was also a prison from which even the gods could not escape.
“No!” Dathiel growled as he grabbed Jorem’s jaw and tried to pry himself free. “This world cannot survive without me!”
Jorem dove straight down at the rift. The air seemed to ignite around him as he gained speed, and when his talons finally crashed into the ground, the sheer force of the impact tore apart half the street in a shower of stone and dirt. He opened his mouth at precisely the moment he hit, allowing the raw inertia to carry Dathiel toward the rift. The One God soared through the air, his wings unfurling in a last desperate attempt to halt his momentum, but the rift seemed to have a pull of its own. He roared in defiance as he drew closer and closer to the yearning maw, unable to escape—
Until he conjured yet another spear and plunged it into the ground like an anchor. Dathiel clutched onto the shaft of the weapon with both hands, his wings fluttering straight backward behind him as the rift pulled with all its might.
Dathiel screamed, his golden eyes blazing like twin suns as a shockwave of force rippled out from his body and slammed into the others. Kaseya, Valuri, Cassel—they were all sent tumbling across the street, chased by the snow and fog. Jorem had to dig his claws deeper into the shattered ground just to hold himself steady.
“I. Am. Free!” The One God’s bellowing declaration shuddered across all of Highwind. “Only I can bring order to chaos! Only I can redeem the worthy and cull the weak! Only I can…can…”
Dathiel abruptly turned when one of the glimmering tendrils from his wounded wing went taut. An instant later, a familiar bestial figure stepped out of the clouds of dust, her claws clutching at the tendril and curling it around her arm like a rope.
“You told me that we were forever bound together in life and death,” Selvhara rumbled. “Maybe you were right.”
The werewolf yanked on the tendril with all her bestial might. Dathiel howled in protest as he clutched his anchor, but it seemed steady…right up until Selvhara violently twisted around as if she were throwing a giant hammer. The ground beneath his spear began to give…and then it cracked. Dathiel flew backward again, clawing helplessly at the air until he reached the rift—
“Sarodihm!”
The instant the One God touched the Pale, the flesh and bone of his mortal shell dissolved in midair as if he had suddenly been plunged into a pool of virulent acid. A haunting, tormented scream echoed across the entire city, the entire world…and then fell silent.
But the rift didn’t close. It still had one more victim to claim, and it pulled at Selvhara with ravenous hunger. She had wrapped Dathiel’s tendrils around her arms to give her the leverage she needed, but she had bound herself to the One God’s fate in the process. It all happened in the blink of an eye: Dathiel being pulled into the rift, Selvhara being tugged right behind him, her lupine head craning around to look at Jorem one last time as she lurched toward oblivion—
And then a red blur slammed into the werewolf’s flank, altering her trajectory a split second after Dathiel vaporized. Selvhara crashed to the ground just a few yards from the rift, still holding ethereal tendrils that were no longer connected to a body…and dissolved into nothing an instant later. Kaseya was lying on top of her, pinning her flat against the rubble-strewn ground, as the tear between worlds hissed and popped as if in protest…and then collapsed.
For a long moment, the only sound was that of heavy, desperate breathing. Jorem stretched out his draconic hand near Kaseya and Selvhara as the druid returned to her willowy elven form and smiled up at her savior.
“You pledged yourself to me, elf,” Kaseya said. “An amazon does not take such vows lightly.”
Selvhara smiled and then laughed, and Jorem swore he could see a thousand years of pain and self-loathing drain from her face in an instant. The two women kissed deeply, passionately, before they turned in unison to look upon the face of the dragon they shared.
“He is gone,” the druid breathed. “He is finally and truly gone…”
Cassel stepped up beside them, his eyes still heavy and focused upon the air where the rift had been. His humming blade slowly shifted back into solid metal. “For Tahira,” he whispered. “Escar guide your soul.”
Valuri strode up beside him, placing one hand on his shoulder while the other wiped a layer of soot from her cheeks. “Serrane is still out there, and the battle’s not over,” she said gravely. “The Sanctori and Senosi have no idea what just happened. Fuck, I don’t even know what just happened.”
“The end of one age,” Kaseya whispered as she leaned back and helped Selvhara up. “And the beginning of another.”
“Right…” Valuri muttered. “All I’m saying is that the battle isn’t over. We need to give Marcella’s forces a reason to surrender.”
“Jorem will think of something,” Kaseya said, placing her hand upon Jorem’s massive snout. “And we will be there to fight alongside him. Always.”
11
Turning of the Age
A fresh layer of snow had gathered overnight, concealing the full extent of the lingering devastation wrought upon the Silver Temple. The scorched rubble looked almost serene when covered in a blanket of pristine white, and Julian Cassel resisted the urge to dust off the shattered statues still strewn across the courtyard. The surviving aspirants had long since sifted through the wreckage and recovered the bodies of the fallen, and he had led the memorial ceremony himself two days ago. Every man and woman who died in Highwind’s defense—paladin, ranger, guardsman, and Darkwind soldier alike—was now buried in the Sanctum of the Guardian where they belonged.
“I still believe the temple can be repaired, sir,” Kerth said from behind him. “The western wall is in decent shape, and the building’s foundation is perfectly solid. We could—”
“The foundation is anything but solid,” Cassel said. “If there’s a lesson we needed to learn about ourselves these past few months, it’s that.”
The other man fell s
ilent. Cassel understood his frustration, given how badly everyone else in the city wanted to rebuild. Less than a week had passed since the battle with Dathiel and the Vorsalosian fleet, and laborers were already busy at work repairing the ravaged Iron District. The nobles here in the Redwater District had called in favors from Darenthi, Galvia, and even Talisham; they wanted their estates restored as quickly as possible so that they could wall themselves off from the rest of the Northern Reaches again.
Across the city, people were desperate for everything to return to normal. They wanted to pick up their lives and carry on; they wanted to believe that nothing had changed.
They were wrong.
“My mind is made up,” Cassel said, turning and sweeping his eyes across the length of the ruined temple. “The heroes of the Order will not be forgotten. The Sanctum will stay. We shall build a simple shrine above it—a place where anyone can come and honor the memory of those who died so that everyone else could live. The fallen deserve no less.”
Kerth shuffled across the snow, the morning sunlight glinting off his armor despite the many dents and scorch marks still marring its surface. “Then where are we going to live, sir?” he asked. “How can we rebuild without a temple?”
“We’re not going to rebuild,” Cassel said. “We’re going to start over.”
He crouched down low enough to slip through one of the many holes in the temple walls and stepped into the remnants of the sanctuary, Kerth close behind him. There wasn’t much left in here besides a few shattered pews and piles of rubble, though the memories it evoked were as sharp and brutal as ever…and he suspected they always would be.
Take the spark, Julian. Use its power to start anew.
Every time he set foot in here, he swore he could hear Tahira’s voice as clearly as if she were still in his arms. He had plunged his old sword into the ground as a temporary monument where she had drawn her final breath, but he planned to erect a proper memorial once he had the resources at his disposal.