I looked out upon a sea of purpose, one whose realization was ever eluded as the hordes of Darkness slowly impeded upon their shores.
Stepping out onto Kerraboer’s parapets, I felt the Empyrean Mantle settle over me, a web of force too expansive to encompass in a glance or feel its limits. I was a single link in a vast chain coat, joined with, connected to, and bolstered by my brethren in arms. Armed and armored, I was part of this purpose, awash in this power, as the Light danced within and around me, cradling and buoying my essence as It did so many others.
I knew then that I could willingly take this power into myself, that I could draw deeply upon this strength, letting its heavenly might become my own, allowing me to become the Light’s champion, Heaven’s chosen actor on the field of strife.
This desire was a thirst without end, a gaping well without bottom, and I would not risk my allies to increase my strength at their expense. Their survival depended upon this protection and I could not take it for myself.
The Light’s chosen had survived so long beneath this mantle exactly because its aegis sheltered them all.
If I took this bulwark upon myself for my own ends, however vaunted, I would be as cruel and heartless as the minions I sought to overthrow.
Letting this divine power flow through me untouched, I left the unbroken ward of the Angel Swords joined together in unified purpose.
Others needed their safeguard more than I.
I hoped.
Deeply.
Such presumption in a coward was rather brave.
If I do say so myself.
Being presumptuous, I did.
And agreed wholeheartedly with my sentiment.
However warped and contrary to my screaming survival instincts this resolve might be.
“In looking out for others first, you look out for yourself.”
Even Alric’s psychobabble could not faze me.
I was already such a tangled bundle of frayed nerves that he could not add any more confusion to the emotions fluttering from my mind to my gut and outward in nauseous waves.
“Mostly I was looking at, as opposed to looking after.”
My retort was weak and Alric knew it.
Thankfully, he did not argue.
I was grateful for that at least.
Lord Chalmeire had said I was free to do as I wished on the field of battle, that I could make no mistake in acting from my heart with a clear intent and positive vision.
Seeing the massed troops and the roiling Shadows of Chaos striking against the army’s periphery, I felt anything but clear of mind or purpose.
I felt more like a sodden pile of mashed potatoes left to cool and eventually dry out, abandoned on the tabletop, my determination leaking away along with my heat as I grew turgid and cold.
“Stop wallowing in self-pity and be about your business!
“We have faces to smash and ichor to spill!”
Lucius was right.
And, really, who in their right mind could argue with a pet rock?
Into the Night
Leaping boldly from the parapets, flying forward with dizzying abandon toward the Front, I let the Empyrean Mantle fall from me, a silken kerchief drifting away in the breeze, its passage left to the troops passing below me.
Not a being of the Light like the Empyrean Knights or the Heavenly Host, in whose stead the Knights and their allies now fought the massed horrors from the Abyss, or a creature of the Darkness like the fell demons and their allies, I fell somewhere in between.
Just as I would not sully the Light and tarnish Its essence, so, too, would I not succumb to Darkness.
I would, as always, find my own way.
Existing somewhere between Darkness and Light, I persisted in a liminal state, defining myself and my future.
I would choose my own way.
The Empyrean Mantle dissipated, a bittersweet memory of what could have been, as I stepped forward, sword drawn, into Darkness.
Gouts of necrotic power spurted in bruised gashes through the air, leaving afterimages of sickly indigo, foul ochre, and heinous olive green on my eyes.
My mind flicked longingly over the luminous Empyrean Mantle sheltering the troops behind me. So much for security...and safety in numbers.
Wistful reminisces disappeared in a blur of savage claws and fangs, a growl that rumbled through my bowels presaging the sweeping talons lashing towards home.
As I ducked instinctively, Loer’allon surged to life and the slaughter began. Black ichor splashed over me in a noxious plume. Stifling the urge to retch, I waded forward, the Chaos Gate a fever dream too distant to consider.
The demon lunging viciously for me looked like the unfortunate union of a massive, misshapen bat, a giant crusty crab vomited up from the depths of a polluted sea, and a massive diseased cockroach.
I called him Fred the Wretched.
Fred had the annoying habit of regenerating all the hoary limbs I kept lopping off.
Instantly.
Fred was like a contaminated hydra that had been spit out from a nightmarish zoological meat grinder.
One that refused to die.
Fred and I both had something in common, however.
We both refused to play fair.
If Fred would not stop replacing loathsome appendages after Loer’allon sliced them off, then I would cut Master Wretched off at the source.
No more regeneration for you!
Loer’allon's radiance a luminous torch searing through Fred’s blurred, multilimbed attack, I wrenched the demon's essence into that flame, where it burned and charred to nothing.
Above and ahead, the Chaos Gate writhed unwholesomely, a rotten dark star insatiably slurping in Uërth’s Light. The Chaos Gate existed from one side only, that facing the Keep of Kerraboer.
On the other side, only the sullen, maligned sky was visible.
A vision of the Chaos Gate popped into my mind’s eye from Alric’s memory. Black clouds of demons spewed forth from its gullet as the infernals descended upon the mass of troops in torrent after torrent of horrors.
Today, however, the Chaos Gate was still, its churning surface unmarred by emerging hellspawn.
The Empyrean Mantle was a luminous wave front that refused to break, arcing behind me in both directions and ultimately encircling the Gate above from below. Within this crest, moving constellations flowed freely, each an Empyrean Guard or one of their allies.
Ahead, ringed by the shimmering Front curving into the far distance, the blasted and pitted landscape hunched beneath the looming Chaos Gate, living Shadows quavering and darting of their own volition. Other Shadows shifted between forms, becoming demons prowling the war-ravaged earth in search of prey. Fell magics left a cloying haze across the entirety of the region, a vile film that risked any who might venture within.
My grip on Loer’allon firm, I marched forward, blending with the Light held within me, a diffuse ray of Light to the demons’ Darkness.
The sky that had been clear until now began to darken, a deep, rancid bruise discoloring the firmament as though the air itself had taken mighty blows.
My heart sank.
So much for clear skies. I really should remember to keep my mind and mouth shut.
Think of the demon, or in my case demons, and they appeared.
Fred’s brothers began to arrive in their uncounted multitudes…and his sisters…and his cousins…and his second cousins…and his aunts…and his uncles…and his distant relations…and his friends…and his acquaintances…and his former classmates…and his enemies…and any random demons he might have once chanced upon…along with far too many other demons looking for a good time.
There was an entire language of demon types descending from above.
Although I could not read or speak it, I knew what this language screamed, its wrenching voice echoing to the heavens.
“DEATH!
“DESTRUCTION!
“DESECRATION!
“HUNGER!”
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Although I heard, I was in no mood to listen.
Their story was as old as Creation.
They were the Knights of Entropy.
I was to be their cure.
All demons had one thing in common.
They wanted to suck the Uërth’s life force and anything living on it dry.
Fortunately for Uërth and all her denizens, I was in the hellspawns’ immediate path.
Yay me.
The Chaos Gate had taken my chance appearance as the perfect opportunity to belch forth a legion.
My luck knew no bounds.
Fred, if he were still with us, would certainly agree.
Lucius, who was, agreed wholeheartedly.
I, on the other hand, could not agree less.
So much for a casual jaunt beneath the Chaos Gate.
At least this time I would not be alone.
I hoped.
Darkness fell over me then.
And this time it was not because I had fainted.
Yet.
A Shadow in Light
“Be ready, Saedeus.
“You will soon walk with such Darkness as you have never known.”
I know Alric did his best to help, to urge me on and prepare me, but sometimes—like now—his words had the opposite effect.
“You’re not helping, Al, but thanks.”
For my part I could not help but be honest.
What better way was there to prepare for certain death?
“Fear not.
“The Guard are with you.
“The Guard are in you.
“The Guard act through you.”
Whenever Alric spoke, offering his guidance, I felt like I needed to wear a tunic with his slogans emblazoned on the front for all to see.
“Slay the demons within that you may slay the demons without!”
“Be true to yourself that you may see the truth!”
“You are Heaven’s justice!”
“Be the future you wish to live!”
“The mind is the first mover!”
If I survived—and that was about as big an “if” as I could imagine—perhaps I would be best served opening a shop to change the world through Alric’s words of wisdom.
Saedeus’s Shirts and Sundries, store for all seasons…
Funny where the mind will go even in the face of certain doom.
Not so funny when that doom approaches.
Loer’allon blazed in my hand, the thrum of her song charging through me with clarion vivacity, a building resonance that charged my essence ever higher, ever clearer.
I was Light and she was my source.
Darkness fell upon me, the fell arcana of the demonic assault crashing into the earth in thunderous concussive blasts, wave after wave of vitriolic power exploding in jarring detonations. From these fell energies, hidden within the foul magics, demons burst forth, materializing in the mounting gloom with savage ferocity.
Slashing and cutting, I carved my way through a twelve-legged arachnoid that scrambled toward me, clambering down silvery streams of ropey power, the ground burning where its poisonous venom landed.
Hairy severed limbs quavered in my wake.
The sky darkened as I sprinted forward past the giant spider’s carcass. Above, a boiling avalanche of oozing Darkness roiled toward me as a piece of the Abyss itself detached from beyond the Chaos Gate to envelop me in demonic destruction.
The thing was vile.
Its presence revolted me on levels I had never known existed.
The demon’s roiling, turbulent advance was like an oncoming tidal wave of offal.
Here was the Turdal Wave of Darkness, summoned straight from the Abyss’s largest, least cleaned latrine.
The demon’s breakneck approach brought with it the psychological equivalent of an overwhelming urge to vomit coupled with waves of heaving nausea and the stench of the Abyss’s own abattoir.
The best way to overcome a problem is often to go through it.
Directly.
Launching myself upward—a minor comet taking flight—I pierced the unholy demonic gauze like a needle through sheer fabric, trailing the demon’s essence in a nasty tail behind me, the infernal’s power fueling my flight and my continued charge as I touched ground and dashed ahead, a comet no more.
More demons came: giant carapaced insectile apes, the ground thundering and cracking beneath the blows of their mighty limbs; thrashing tentacled amoeboids lurching through the air grasping for purchase on my soul; multiheaded draconic horrors breathing foul fumes, fires, and vapors; and droves of others too numerous to catalog.
Loer’allon burned ever brighter as the demons fell, her fires a beacon in the gloaming as I wove untraceable geometries behind her trajectory.
Taking the demons’ power as my own, I became a maelstrom of fuming Darkness as necrotic as Loer’allon was beneficent.
Breaking through the initial crush, I charged ahead, the roar in my mind louder than any scream.
Behind me, the luminous wave of Empyrean Guard, the argent wall of the Empyrean Mantle itself, surged forward—a tsunami of Light unleashed and unrestrained.
As I was disembodied, this front rushed through me, a tide that sought to consume me, to bring me within its vast, heavenly fold, but I resisted, letting it wash past me like shifting tides and flowing sands breaking along a storm-ravaged beach as I advanced forward into an ocean of cresting Light.
Into the Maelstrom
The ghostly luminescent silhouettes of stocky, armored Empyrean Guard, the celestial hints of sidhe, the shimmering movements of dryads, the flowing wakes of mighty dragons, the Lights of so many beings interwoven with the Empyrean Mantle crashed ahead and into the advancing demons.
I watched a galaxy of vital stars colliding with countless animated, gluttonous black holes, the Uërthly Host vying to stop the advance of Darkness through a savage storm of Light.
A bit of both, I waged my own war somewhere in between.
The Empyrean Mantle was a relentless tide that had washed the plains clean countless times. Wherever the tide ebbed, receding back toward the Keep of Kerraboer, the ravaged earth was laid bare as the demonic dross was left behind.
On this day, while the next wave of demons shrieked and howled on their descent from above, their inhuman cries as alien and unwelcome in this world as light, hope, and love were in theirs, I was among the detritus left by the Empyrean Mantle’s withdrawal.
Unlike the tide, I would remain in place until the day was done.
I suppose the Hosts’ was the superior strategy—regroup, regather, and prepare for the massed enemy on the field of battle that it might be swept clean once more.
However, I was a firm believer in forward momentum.
Now that I had it, I did not want to stop.
Left alone amongst the corpses of shattered demons, my body shimmering like the light of the sun dancing on sea foam, Lucius whirled into the air beside me, finally deciding to wake from his slumber now that I was, at least temporarily, alone.
Lucius’s greeting was the building hum of acceleration as he gathered speed around me, his flight a blur growing ever faster until I could no longer follow his course.
As demons neared, however, I could tell exactly where Lucius had been, for he left artful splashes of demonic gore painting the land and air in effusive mosaics of elemental destruction.
Lucius was an artist who painted the plains in blood.
Despite Blendar the Destroyer of Demons’ efforts, infernals still found ways through Lucius’s frothy halo of annihilation.
Although nowhere near as masterly, Loer’allon helped me cobble together my own masterpiece of carnage.
In retrospect, I think the demons would be proud.
Seldom were the times they met with fellow masters of ruin to exchange pleasantries, techniques, and aesthetics.
I did what I could for interspecies dialogue.
Mostly, I let Loer’allon do the talking.
A Receding Tide
I waited an eternity in vain for the rising tide, for the return of the heaving wall of coruscating Light of the Empyrean Mantle to cleanse the plains of extradimensional scum.
I fought as a man, as an island, assailed by a sea of Darkness, Lucius at my side, constrained by my conceptions of what should be.
“You must let go, Saedeus.
“Be not what you think you are.
“Be what you must become.”
There they were…more tunics to be.
Alric’s words, a voice I had so often disregarded or belittled unfairly, were a jolting splash of cold water on my psyche.
I awoke to his words.
He was right.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how valiantly Lucius fought at my side, no matter how mighty Loer’allon might be, if I held on to what I was, I would die.
I let go of who I was to become what I could be.
No longer fighting with hand and eye, I fought with my mind.
Darkness became me alongside the Light.
Thirst
Demons fell like rain.
The torrential droplets of their essences soaked into the parched ground of my being to feed an unslakable thirst.
I drank.
Deeply.
Power raged into me from all fronts unbridled and unfiltered.
I let none of it touch me.
I let it burn.
The fires of the demonic essences raged ever higher under my guidance, the explosion of one demon bringing down more in a cascade of entropic destruction.
I was the end.
I was the beginning.
The howling throngs of unholy monstrosities were merely the means to their own end.
Destiny’s Arc
Ready to meet my enemy face-to-face, fueled by the lifeblood of my foes, I soared heavenward, my destination the putrescent font of the demonic flow.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 19