by C. L. Wilson
Gaelen and Rain reacted with identical speed, spinning five-fold weaves in almost perfect unison and flinging them out with equal force to meet the deadly onslaught of Mage Fire. A third weave from Ellysetta’s quintet followed a scant heartbeat later.
Mage Fire and five-fold weaves met with a concussive blast. The room shook from the deafening boom, and in the dome overhead, mirrored tiles shattered into dust.
As the blinding flash of exploding magics faded, Rain saw Ellysetta struggling against two scarlet-robed men, screaming for her mother, whose fallen, motionless form lay crumpled against the base of one of the room’s six columns.
His eyes flamed with fury at the sight of Ellysetta’s bruised face and the sel’dor manacles clapped around her slender wrists. Worse yet were the filthy, torturous needles plunged deep into her flesh. Without interference of the five-fold weave protecting the Solarus, he could feel every burning pain as if it were his own, and a mix of shame and rage consumed him.
The cowls of her captors’ robes were flung back, revealing their faces. The pale-haired one Rain didn’t recognize, but the other…
The Tairen Soul smiled with predatory fierceness. The butcher’s son would pay for every wound he and his soul-cursed companions had visited upon the Tairen Soul’s mate.
«Keep the Mage occupied.» Rain ordered. «I’ll see to the rultsharts holding my shei’tani.»
«Aiyah, Rain,» Bel answered. Beside him, Gaelen and the other four warriors of Ellysetta’s quintet wove powerful ropes of magic to batter the Mage’s shields. Blades were useless until they succeeded in breaking those shields, but then…then the Mage would regret laying his accursed hands on the Feyreisa.
Rain shimmered into invisibility and raced around the perimeter of the room towards the gaping Well of Souls, reappearing beside the two men holding Ellysetta.
The pale-haired exorcist grabbed a fistful of her flame-red curls and thrust the sharp edge of a Mage blade against her throat. “Come another step closer, Tairen Soul, and I’ll slit her throat,” he warned.
“Nei, I don’t think you will.” Rain’s eyes flamed. Air and Earth shot from his fingertips.
The pale-haired man’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened on a desperate, soundless gasp as Rain wove every breath of air from his lungs. The fingers of the man’s knife hand straightened one by one until the blade at Ellysetta’s throat clattered to the floor. Fire flamed in Rain’s eyes, and the man’s skin turned bright red and hot to the touch.
Convulsing, the man released Ellysetta and staggered back, beating fruitlessly at the unseen flames consuming his body from the inside out. Rain sent a red Fey’cha flying. His aim was straight and true, and the razor-sharp blade sank to the hilt in the man’s right eye socket. Deadly tairen venom worked fast. The man barely twitched before he fell dead to the floor and his body burst into flame.
No death so swift and neat for the butcher’s son, though. Rain smiled and pulled black. Nei, he vowed with grim pleasure, not swift, not neat, and definitely not painless.
The butcher’s son took one look at the menace in Rain’s eyes and leapt into the Well.
Free, Ellysetta raced to her mother’s side.
Rain spun to face the Sulimage battling the quintet behind him.
“Rain, watch out!” Bel shouted. A hail of arrows came flying out of the Well.
Rain grunted as arrows sank into his shoulder, thigh, and back. Sel’dor set his flesh aflame. Snarling, he spun to the left and sent an incinerating blast of Fire into the Well. The pain nearly drove him to his knees. He roared a furious challenge over the echoes of the screams from within. “Fey, ti’Feyreisa!” he cried. “We’ve got company!”
Black-armored Eld soldiers poured out of the Well like bees from a disturbed hive. With them came two men wearing the deep blue robes and heavily jeweled sashes of experienced and very dangerous Primages.
“Mama.” Desperate with fear, Ellysetta fell to her knees beside her mother. “Mama, hold on. I’m here.” She started to pull the knife blade out of her mother’s chest, but stopped before she touched it. Unless she could prevent the wound from bleeding, pulling that knife free would guarantee her mother’s death.
Ellysetta attempted to summon healing magic, only to bite back a cry as the Eld’s poisonous metal burned her flesh. Sobbing, she yanked out the remaining exorcists’ needles and fumbled with the manacles. The metal scorched her fingertips. She found the button that retracted the spikes digging into her wrists, but she couldn’t find the release catch. Where was the release catch?
She could feel her mother slipping away as the cold dark of death crept ever closer.
Rain spun a rapid series of five-fold weaves, trying to block the Eld from escaping the Well into the room, but there were too many. The Primages peppered his weaves with Mage Fire, ripping holes in his defenses. Eld soldiers raced through, black swords raised.
A shadow flew at Rain from his right. He spun on his heel and brought the Fey’cha in his hand slashing up to greet it. His eyes widened with surprise.
Gaelen grunted and plowed into him, knocking Rain off his feet just as Mage Fire struck the exact spot where he’d been standing.
“Thank me later,” the former dahl’reisen quipped, patting Rain’s cheek before jumping to his feet.
“Fool. I could have killed you.”
“With black?” Gaelen snorted. “Not likely.” He pressed one hand to his side and wove green Earth to stem the flow of blood from the wound made by Rain’s Fey’cha. With the other hand, he fired red Fey’cha in rapid succession at the enemy, bringing down the ones who’d gotten past Rain’s defenses, then firing more lethal blades into the Well. Demons howled and swirled in a frenzy of hunger as blood poured from Eld wounds. Chilling screams filled the Solarus as demons consumed the dying. “Not that it was a bad strike,” Gaelen added. “If you hadn’t pulled back, you’d have pierced both liver and kidney. But black? In a fight? Your chatok should be ashamed.”
“It was red until I saw it was you.” Rain thrust him aside and spun a wide five-fold weave to block a sizzling globe of Mage Fire. He grunted as the painful concussion vibrated up his arms. “Put your Fey’cha where your mouth is, vel Serranis. There are several hundred soldiers in there, and much as I’d enjoy a good forty-to-one fight, it’s too risky with Ellysetta here. Time to end this dance.” He intercepted a fresh volley of Eld arrows with a billowing cloud of Fire and shot three red Fey’cha at a small knot of Eld who’d broken through the left barrier. “Can you close that portal?”
Gaelen ducked a ball of Mage Fire and dug the curved end of a meicha into a soldier’s belly, gutting him with one swift, brutal slice. “The Mages aren’t powering anything, so there’s got to be a selkahr crystal around here. A big one. Somewhere near the portal.”
“Try looking behind those two Primages and the sixty or so armed Eld beside them.”
Gaelen grinned. “I knew there had to be a sense of humor in you somewhere, Tairen Soul.” He arched a brow. “Keep the Mages off me?”
Rain met his gaze, humor replaced by somber promise. “I will.”
The former dahl’reisen’s grin faded. He gave a short nod. “Beylah vo, kem’Feyreisen.” Meicha in one hand, red Fey’cha in the other, he dove to the right and came up fighting.
The Mages had punched another hole in Rain’s barriers. Soldiers were pouring through, scrambling over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Rain spun a whirling vortex of Air in their path. They screamed as it lifted them off their feet and flung them with shattering force to all corners of the room.
Behind him, a loud explosion shook the Solarus, and he heard Bel and the others cry out in surprise. He glanced over his shoulder. The Sulimage had knocked the quintet off their feet. A globe of Mage Fire grew bright in his hand. He flung it at Cyr, and the Fey died without a sound.
Rain threw red at the Eld’s back, distracting him just long enough for the rest of the quintet to scramble to their feet. Bel lashed out with a four-fold weave
. Kieran, Teris, and Kiel combined their weaves into thick ropes of magic and pummeled the Mage’s shields.
Another arrow caught Rain in the back, just below his shoulder, piercing his lung. Excruciating pain dropped him to one knee and set his chest on fire as he wove Air to keep the lung from collapsing. A dozen Eld slipped past his shattered weaves and advanced on him, arrows and blades flying.
“Hold on, Mama,” Ellysetta pleaded. With every second, she could feel her mother growing feebler, her life seeping away. She couldn’t wait for the Fey to help her. She would have to find a way to weave healing herself, in spite of the sel’dor shackles.
Gathering her strength, she stretched out her hands over her mother’s wound. “Bright Lord, aid me,” she whispered, and drew the magic up from the shining well within her. Sel’dor burned like fire at her wrists, but she set her jaw and persevered. She would summon magic. She would weave it. She would save her mother. The burn became agony shooting up her arms. A low, guttural, moaning cry of defiance rattled in her throat. I will do this! I will! Please, Bright One, help me!
A weak trickle of Earth flowed into Lauriana’s body. Not enough, not nearly enough to save her, but enough so Ellysetta dared pull the Mage blade free. She flung the evil thing as far across the room as she could while keeping one hand pressed to her mother’s chest.
Her mother stirred, eyes fluttering. Ellysetta choked back a sob. “Hold on, Mama.”
Lauriana heard her daughter’s voice calling to her, muffled as if it were very far away, but growing louder. When the Mage had stabbed his blade into her heart, her world had plunged into darkness, and her consciousness had been cast on a cold, black sea where relentless, currents tried to drag her towards a terrible abyss. She’d fought against the currents, afraid of what lay waiting in the abyss. The fight had sapped her strength. She was tired now. So tired.
But the currents had stopped, and her daughter was calling.
With effort, Lauriana opened her eyes, and her laboring heart skipped a beat.
For a moment, she thought she was dead and a winged Lightmaiden of Adelis had come to fly her to the Haven of Light, but then she realized the Lightmaiden’s face was familiar. Different—so bright and beautiful—but familiar. A face Lauriana had loved since the moment she’d first laid eyes on it twenty-four years ago.
“Ellie?” she whispered.
A halo of light surrounded Ellysetta. A glorious beacon, fierce and untainted, blazing like the Great Sun. The light swirled and spun, reaching out to Lauriana as if Ellysetta were trying to weave the brightness to chase away the dark of Lauriana’s approaching death.
“Oh, Ellie,” Lauriana breathed. Awe, love, and regret bloomed in concert. Whether by the Bright Lord’s will or the proximity of her own approaching death, Lauriana knew she was seeing, for the first time, the shining glory of her daughter’s true soul. A tear trickled from her eye. All these years she’d been so blind. All these years she’d worried that the power trapped in Ellie was evil, yet now she could see how very wrong she’d been. “You’re so beautiful…” She tried to lift a hand to her daughter’s face, but her limbs felt heavy as stones.
Ellysetta caught her mother’s faltering hand as it started to fall and clasped it to her cheek. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks. She could feel the cold invading her mother’s flesh as death crept inexorably closer. “Stay with me, Mama. Don’t leave me.”
“I promised the Bright Lord, my life for yours.” Her mother’s lips curved in a faint smile. “It was a good bargain.” Her voice grew thin and her words slurred as breath and strength faded from her. “I love you…kitling…”
A sudden flash of darkness crowded the edge of Ellysetta’s vision, and rough hands grabbed her shoulders, hauling her to her feet. Two Eld soldiers had broken past Gaelen and Rain’s defenses.
“Let me go!” Ellysetta fought their hold. “Mama!”
“Mama!” one of the men echoed in a mocking, falsetto voice. “Mama! Mama!” His face went hard. His black sword slashed down. Ellysetta screamed, and Lauriana’s eyes opened wide on a silent gasp as the blade sliced through her neck.
Ellysetta screamed again as her mother’s head rolled grotesquely free of her body. “No!” she cried out in horror and disbelief. “No!”
“Mama’s dead, girl,” the man sneered. “Gone to meet her maker, and now you’re coming with us to meet yours.”
A red Fey’cha thunked home in his throat. He gave a choked sound and dropped stone dead to the floor. Beside him, his partner met a similar end.
Ellysetta barely registered their deaths. Numb and frozen with shock, she stared at her mother’s body. A memory played in her mind, of Rain speaking of Sariel’s death. They cut off her head so she could not be healed. Not even Marissya could heal Mama now. She was gone. Irrevocably dead.
A strange, frighteningly empty place opened in Ellie’s soul, a cold, barren, aching place where always until this moment there had been a glow of warmth that corresponded with the presence of her adoptive mother. Anguish burned like concentrated acid, searing into the deepest, most guarded part of her soul. Rage and something else rose up to greet it. Strong and wild and violent, that dreadful something swelled within her, straining against the confines of the barrier within her mind.
Her head, her body, her entire being felt as if it were on fire. Pain gripped her with stabbing, thorny hands. White agony crowded her vision, and violent tremors shook the ground beneath her feet. Tremendous pressure strained her senses, relentless and intensifying beyond her capacity to bear. She screamed again, a ripping shriek of anguish, denial, and fury that reverberated with wild force through consciousness and soul.
The lifelong, unseen barrier within her snapped. Power, hot and violent and immense, poured through the breach. Sel’dor shrieked at her wrists, then shattered, its acid evil no match for the blazing strength of her magic. She threw back her head as the magic rushed to fill her. It didn’t feel as she had expected it to. It wasn’t black and evil and twisted as her mother had always raised her to believe magic would be. It wasn’t sickly sweet and corruptive like what the Mages wove. It was electric and exquisite, glorious and frightening all at once. She reached out for more, drawing it to her effortlessly until she felt as if her body was gone and she was living flame.
She was an infant goddess who had just discovered that she could do more than merely rail against those who had wounded her. She was a young tairen who had just discovered the purpose for the venom in its fangs. She was magic, pure and hot, endless and deadly.
Her mother was gone. And the Eld were to blame.
She would destroy them.
With a roar of fury, Rain swung the heavy, deadly swords in his hand, gutting his two opponents, then whirled to fling searing Fire at a knot of ten more trying to get to Ellysetta. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Primages turn towards Gaelen, blue-white Mage Fire gathering in his palms. The snarled and plowed a rumble of Earth beneath the Solarus floor. Floor tiles buckled and shifted. The Primage staggered. The globe of Mage Fire veered sharply left, scything through half a dozen Eld. Blackened, half-consumed corpses dropped to the ground.
Without warning, a blast of power slammed through Rain, so fierce and so raw it made him stagger. From half a continent away, he heard the savage, triumphant roar of the tairen in his mind, and an instinctive echoing cry tore from his own throat.
Ellysetta. He spun to face her and froze in his tracks.
Power crackled around her like a nimbus. Her long, fire-kissed hair blew back away from her face on an unnatural wind and her eyes blazed like twin suns as she faced the Elden warriors.
“Shei’tani,” he whispered. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes as her incandescent form rose up into the air.
“YOU WILL DIE FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”
Her voice was a crack of thunder. The Solarus’s crystal chandeliers shivered a delicate cry of warning a bare instant before the ground shifted violently. Glowing with angry green Earth,
soil erupted into the room and a giant fissure opened up in the marbled Solarus floor. Shrieking, several Elden warriors tumbled to their deaths. Massive chunks of plaster, glass, and stone rained down from the dome and ceiling, crushing indiscriminately.
Lightning seared the air. Through the shattered roof, Rain glimpsed roiling black clouds, marbled with blue, white, and red lines of power. In mere seconds, Ellysetta had summoned a raging tempest in the sky. Violent fists of wind tossed grown men like matchsticks, flinging bodies through the air. Torrential rain poured down, vaporizing into mist as it touched the fiery aura surrounding Ellysetta.
A barrage of barbed sel’dor arrows darkened the sky. The Eld soldiers had recovered from the shock that momentarily gripped them all.
“Don’t harm her, you fools! The master wants her alive!” The shout came from the Mage battling Bel and the remaining members of Ellysetta’s quintet. He sent a blast of blue-white Mage Fire to intercept the arrows. The Mage Fire consumed over half the arrows, but the rest continued on their deadly course.
Rain flung a shield around Ellysetta, but the protective bubble collapsed inward as soon as it formed, absorbed into Ellysetta’s glowing aura.
She swept one arm forward, and a fiery five-fold weave of magic shot from her fingertips. The arrows disintegrated instantly. Another five-fold weave seared the air, this one aimed directly at the Mage standing beside the Well of Souls.
“Ellysetta! Nei!” Rain flung out his own weave to weaken and misdirect hers, but his magic fell away from hers like tinder curling back from the heat of a blaze. He could only watch in horror as Ellysetta’s weave sliced through the air with lethal accuracy.
The blazing shaft incinerated the Primage’s shields as if they were paper. In slow motion, Rain saw the large, charred black hole appear in the Mage’s chest as the five-fold weave burned through him, saw the look of disbelief on the Mage’s face as he realized his prey had slain him, then saw the man’s flesh bulge outward as Ellysetta’s magic ignited the concentration of power held within the Mage’s body. Rain barely managed to shield his eyes before the Mage exploded in a violent blast of light, heat, and vaporized flesh.