The Chaos Gate grew nearer, Its depths hidden in pure, churning Darkness, Its surface broken by the legions of foul creatures erupting from Its depths in an unbridled flood.
Looming like a floating continent, one whose shores had yet to be touched by man, the Chaos Gate defied all reason with Its size and scope. The Gate’s far edges were lost in the distance, disturbed by fell explosions and surges of luminous arcana meant to destroy Its denizens, halt Its expansion, and stay Its advance.
I would land upon Its shores and lay claim to Its bounteous power as my own.
A comet once more, a body of Light cloaked in a tapering cloud of tremulous Darkness, I blasted upward, shattering hellspawn in my path, and their essence became my own.
I was a Djen’toth.
Those souls I stole to fuel my rage had no right to the name, for I took the soulless and gave them purpose.
Their aim was my own.
Through me, their souls were uplifted.
Through me, their abject depravity became a beacon of beauty and divine purpose.
Their essences became a means to cleanse the Uërth and all it held dear.
If I only had had this option, this focus, when I lived in my sad shack outside Balde…maybe my hovel would have been clean enough for me to consider hosting the occasional friend or an intimate dinner.
Some things, however, truly were impossible.
Chaos Gate
The Chaos Gate yawned in the firmament before me, a swirling mass of absolute darkness hovering above the bodies of countless men and demons, a maw leading into the gullet of another fell dimension.
Powerful magics of men and the fey rippled across its surface, struggling to limit Its expansion, battling to prevent Its continuous vomiting of unholy hordes onto a fragile, failing Uërth.
Seeing that gaping wound in reality, a portal so large that entire cities could pass through without touching Its vast, seething edges, a series of observations and insights shuddered through me.
I could feel Its cruel heart beating with an overwhelming, sickening strength.
I could feel Its malicious spirit radiating outward in noxious plumes.
I could see Its fell essence corrupting the very fabric of reality through which It rent, tore, and fought Its way through to reach our dimension.
We had this all wrong.
We were fighting a battle we could not win.
The Chaos Gate was alive.
It was a living thing.
And It was feeding.
The Chaos Gate was the largest demon ever to enter the Uërthly realm.
Its indomitable presence paved the way for legions of Its brethren to break through to this world.
Until this time, since the Chaos Gate had first torn through the fabric between the planes to begin its war on the denizens of Heaven and Uërth so long ago, our efforts had been flawed; our attempts to halt Its progress had been in vain.
We, men and angels alike, were fighting the Chaos Gate with power, trying to stymie Its advance, to close the door with power, to permanently seal Its rictus with arcane arts like the fallen Empyrean Gate.
But we were not fighting It.
At least not directly.
In fact, we were often giving It the very power It craved.
It was a demon.
There was only one way I knew to truly kill a demon.
It must be consumed, burned to nothing.
My purpose was clear.
A path through the firmament and the battlefield ahead resolved before me and I flew forward, leaving the spawn of Chaos writhing in my wake.
I had no other choice.
Chaos’s End
There was, I decided, only one thing better than killing a demon…
Eating it.
Consuming it utterly.
From its very core—dismantling its essence and burning away everything that held its horrid substance together—to the outer periphery of its body, mind, and soul.
All the demons I had burnt through on my trajectory upward had not been enough.
I was hungry and it was time for dessert.
I knew exactly which morsel I wanted to claim.
The Chaos Gate loomed ahead, a yawning pit into oblivion.
Demons streamed forth in a necrotic cloud, their advance met by the luminous counter of the Empyrean Mantle itself—resplendent Empyrean Knights, otherworldly fey, dancing plumes and flashes of eldritch power, flights of magical bolts and arrows, and raging holocausts of dragon fire all within the gathered front of holy Light hammering into the Chaos Gates’ front.
Letting Light become me, I shifted ahead.
The Chaos Gate was a living geyser of Darkness, a bottomless well spewing forth poison into our realm, drinking the life force from our world to sustain Its infiltration.
Ignoring the droves of demons surging from Its gullet, the full force of the Empyrean Mantle crashing into the roiling infernal mass, I lifted Loer’allon heavenward and sliced through the Chaos Gate’s undulating periphery in a blazing arc of heavenly fury attacking the Gate Itself.
Again and again I slashed, blow after blow cutting into the Gate’s essence.
With each stroke, more of the Gate’s power leaked out, a small trickle slowly becoming a flood.
Not content to let this power ebb, I sucked the vile torrent through me, the essence of corruption. Fuel for my flame, I lit this power in Light, a gout of destruction that I redirected crashing inward into the Abyss.
Although I did not hear the screams of dying demons on the portal’s far side, I felt the cataclysmic forces tearing them apart.
As ever greater power rushed through me, I became a widening conduit, a break in the dam of Darkness forcing the Chaos Gate’s aphotic essence to spill outward into and through me, my strength, my reach, my scope growing greater with each passing moment.
Though my hunger, my desire, for the Gate’s demise knew no bounds, truly I did not eat the Chaos Gate.
It ate Itself.
A New Ending
If all good things come to an end, then all bad things must come to an end as well.
I became that ending…
I liked endings.
With a proper ending came the opportunity to begin again.
Epilogue
Loer’allon descended to Uërth on lambent rays of sunshine, her clear blade nearly transparent in the tired light of the setting sun. She settled softly on the parched earth as gently as a memory of fond dreams past.
Far less gracefully but just as certainly, Lucius landed next to Loer’allon in a small plume of dust.
Lucius was asleep as soon as he settled in place and showed no signs of rousing.
I wondered if I had survived.
The odds were slim, but I liked my chances.
I always did.
“That was something,” I said, gazing upward through Loer’allon’s facets toward the immense sweep once occupied by the Chaos Gate, my essence only a miniscule ripple within Loer’allon’s vast stillness.
The others in Loer’allon agreed.
Legacy of the Blade Book 2: Wild Mage
Wild Mage
Water and Stone
Legacy of the Blade Book 2
Joseph J. Bailey
Author’s Note:
Your time is short. Go long.
Be the Light you wish to see in the world.
- Master Nomba
Prologue
With the fall of the Empyrean Gate and the routing of the Uërthly Host, the legions of Chaos finally believed they had achieved permanent access to the mortal realm.
On the day of Heaven’s defeat, seraphic blades fell from the firmament, Paradise’s tears made solid, each Angel’s Sword marking the death of one of Uërth’s chosen defenders.
The blades were wieldable only by the purest of heart, and there were those on Uërth who still believed humanity’s deliverance would come from above.
But what good ever came from the edge of a swo
rd?
Their path to Uërth clear, the legions of Chaos began their assault upon the realms of Man. Overmatched and outnumbered, humanity was decimated at every turn while the world was despoiled and recast around it.
Despite the crushing defeats meted out and the annihilation of human forces at almost every engagement, the hordes of Chaos were shocked by the resilience and tenacity of Man, the mortals’ stubborn refusal to yield ground and allow demonic ascension.
Though these meager humans’ paltry lives were suspended tenuously between the Empyrean and the Abyssal, very much unlike their righteous heavenly allies, the Lords of Chaos were quite surprised to find that they refused to fight fair.
Or yield.
Stone in Need of Water
Luecaeus needed to find a new living fluid-filled receptacle.
The living fluid-filled receptacles passed far too quickly, their lives burning incandescently, like a volcanic eruption, but stilling just as fast, returning their water to the earth, to his kith and kin.
He had just lost his wera’dun, and the loneliness and desolation in his facets were vast indeed.
The living fluid-filled receptacles were too fragile for such a harsh place. Far too many were quenched.
Soon the land would drown in their blood.
He could not let that happen.
Earth and water lived together in harmony, each shaping and molding the other, each creating the other’s future.
Too many futures had been lost to the devourers of elements, the juel’dara from the planes of Darkness.
The juel’dara’s portal had been sealed by his wera’dun, but there were so many living shadows here now that more could come.
Another maw into Darkness could be made.
Uërth would be swallowed.
He must find more rocks to throw into the juel’dara’s gullets so that they would choke, knocking out their teeth so they could no longer bite, and filling their mouths with rubble until they could no longer feed.
He needed a wera’dun to make this possible.
He could not do it alone.
Not Hard-Headed Enough
“Maeraeth!
“Run!”
A roiling cloud of Darkness erupted from the bare earth, a living rift into the bottomless Abyss, darker than the void between stars. The night sky above disappeared before the demon’s ebon sweep, a living sea of evil intent on engulfing our souls.
I felt the chill emptiness of the demon’s presence from afar, a cold so deep it brought my soul to a shuddering halt.
Master Nomba stood firmly before the Darkness, one small, brave old man reaching his arms out in a futile attempt to halt a raging flood with his bare hands.
“Run!”
Years of training kicked in, breaking the spell of my stupor: countless lessons spent at my master’s side, obeying his every command.
At least this I could do.
I ran.
I sprinted away from my master at full speed, muttering the very spell of warding against extradimensional invaders we had spent so long mastering even as I pumped my knobby arms and my long, bony legs loped down the rocky slope away from my teacher, the man who had given my life purpose.
My spell complete, magical energies gathered, wreathing me in the energies of Creation.
Finished with the incantation, I looked back over my shoulder toward Master Nomba, who was now bathed in incandescent azure flames, while a shower of ivory flower petals looped and whorled around me, a fluttering halo of sweet-scented aromatic bouquet.
Daisies?
White light flashed, so bright I think that I actually saw the explosion through the back of my skull. Then there was no seeing as I was catapulted through the air on a tumultuous wall of roaring sound.
At least a remnant of vision was restored when my head cracked against the earth some indeterminate distance away from my point of launch, and a universe of stars briefly occupied my vision.
When I finally woke up, surprisingly still alive, my protective halo of flowers was still hovering around me.
The Fall and the Aftermath
Though the catastrophe had happened centuries before, Heaven’s Fall was not a distant memory. The loss of Uërth’s Heavenly defenders, her noble champions, was a constant presence, a sad reminder of what had been and a tragic counterpoint to the dangers of the day for any who yet remained on Uërth’s once lustrously shimmering surfaces.
I was, I am, one of the lucky survivors of this holocaust.
Or I am at least the distant descendant of them.
This fact affords me no honor or reassurance.
I am aware of my place in the world.
This place is constant and unwavering.
I am near death.
Always and forever.
At least I am not alone in this predicament.
The entire human race, and many others besides, hangs from the same fragile, weakening thread, our lives and ways of life winding downward, our connection to this world soon to be severed by the grasping, slashing claws of demonic invaders.
The wonders and glories of ages past, the heights of magical ascension and aspiration, once made manifest across the world in the fullness of glory, were largely no more, washed away by the unending tide of demonic advance.
I was among the dross of what was left, the worn, broken driftwood waiting to be shattered by the next set of crashing waves.
I was one of the fortunate ones, the ones who yet lived, the ones doomed to remember and dream about what had been lost, what was but could never be.
I am a survivor, one of the few who may live to see Uërth’s last days.
I should be honored.
But mostly I am miserable.
In this, too, I am not alone.
My Master
When I finally managed to lift my head up and look around, there was no sign of Master Nomba.
Neither was there a top to the mountain we had been standing on just moments before.
The demon must have gone the way of the peak, and my master.
Laying my head back down, for it hurt too much to hold it up any longer, probably because all the missing rocks from the hilltop were now lodged in my skull, I closed my eyes and cried.
So much for my master.
So much for his vision.
So much for me.
I blacked out.
Nightmares and Screamscapes
I stood alone atop a rocky prominence. The gray, clouded sky boiled and frothed above, its motions disturbed by some inner turmoil. Skating above the landscape, the clouds seemed near enough to reach out and touch.
But I dared not extend my arm too far for fear of falling.
No matter how close the clouds appeared.
A hot wind blew fiercely across my face, sucking the moisture from my mouth and nostrils, leaving my lips flaky and parched, my nose burning.
My clothes whipped about me, the cloth too short to become tangled but long enough to be caught by the vicious wind, the fabric cracking with every capricious turn and frenzied adjustment of the currents.
I adjusted my footing, the irregular rocks cutting into the soles of my feet through my boots as I settled atop the wind-hammered stones.
Sere, blasted plains stretched to the horizon, the land as cracked as my unfortunate lips, as dry as my nose.
Nothing living moved within the flat’s extent.
Though the clouds threatened rain, none came.
The foul smell of brimstone filled my nostrils, an unwelcome foreboding of what was to come, for demons threatened these lands as much as the few surviving people living on them.
My eyes burned in the acrid wind.
Blinking did little to help.
Somewhat surprisingly, I felt power surging through my veins, the raw substance of magic churning through my body, ready to be unleashed.
I knew then that this was a dream, for I never felt anything move through my veins, much less magic.
And
I generally did not surge.
I sputtered.
My eyes locked on the plains, I watched the end of an era unfold, the death of peace and security.
The very air above the hardpan warped and distorted, bulging and stretching in ways my mind could not fully grasp, some internal or external pressure threatening to break through.
With a final tear that made not a sound but that reverberated through my soul, turning my knees to jelly and making my mind grow numb as my heart wrenched in sadness and pain, space ripped apart, opening onto an endless well of Night.
The yawning Abyss that unsealed was so dark that I could see it devouring light, the air itself tortured and deformed into obscene shapes, the illumination twisted and bent as it descended into madness, giving off final gasps of rainbow hues before being swallowed utterly.
Inconceivably, the yawning portal, this ravenous maw, was alive.
It was hungry.
And it wanted to engulf our entire world.
I could feel the gate’s malevolence radiating outward in an overwhelming wall of animosity, one that threatened to push me off the mountaintop with the tangible force of a physical blow, sending me careening down the mountainside to my bloody, dismembered doom—a wet spot to be quickly soaked up by the plains.
The gate’s incomprehensible regard, an intelligence so vast that I could not recognize its awareness, fell upon me like a god’s own anvil cast down from the heavens, burning with fiery heat and force as it collided into me with its precipitous descent, smashing me in place as it dissected me where I stood.
With its attention fixed upon me, I could not move, much less fall.
No matter how much I wanted to.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 20