The land here sang, its voice deep and full, multilayered and vibrant. I could not imagine how rich its voice would be when we reached the forested slopes ahead, for, despite this richness, the greenery was still sparse and the living things few.
I was lost in its tunes, appreciative of a world I had never before seen or felt.
I barely noticed when Lucius stopped moving forward, tilting sideways as though examining something in the distance or lost in thought.
After going several paces past, I finally realized Lucius was no longer with me and I paused with him, pushing my attention ahead.
It took me some time, but I felt what he noticed. I heard the change in the land’s timbre and tone.
Though it was masked by the surrounding chorus, there was something off, out of place, in the distance. It was not yet close, but I could sense the disturbance well enough now that I was paying attention.
I explored the sensation like something caught between my teeth—patiently and with my full attention.
Unlike the lands impacted fully by the demonic blight, slowly weakening as the life energy was drained away, this perturbation struck me as not a weakening of the land’s life force but an absence of it.
There was a space ahead occupied by something alien.
“Is it a demon?” I whispered.
This presence struck me as some form of demonic camouflage, a way to remain hidden in a foreign place without drawing inordinate attention to its nature.
Lucius’ firm movement was all the confirmation I needed.
I drew my staff.
“What should we do?”
If we were aware of the demon, then there was every chance it was aware of us, for we had not been employing sufficient protections to avert its attention.
After wakening and meeting Lucius, thinking us safe, I had let many of my protections lapse.
This was, in retrospect, not exactly the best of moves.
Lucius described a perfect circle in the air.
I nodded, invoking the rune staff to shield me from potential demon assault.
“Would you like in, Lucius?”
My shield might not stop a full demonic attack, but it might give us time to act, time to live.
In reply, Lucius merely floated ahead.
Which answered my second question.
We would not try to avoid the demon.
I suppose it was the knightly thing to do.
Except that I was far from a knight.
I was far from anything I knew.
My heart was racing.
I did not want to follow Lucius forward, but I did not want him to go alone.
This was not the wisest of decisions.
Especially for me.
I rubbed the sweat off each of my hands in turn on my tunic, as if a better grip on my staff would help my feelings of security and well-being in the conflict to come.
I had no plans to get anywhere near a demon, but, as I well knew, life had little to do with plans.
Welcome
The valley’s broad sweep narrowed ahead, a natural chokepoint that was the source of the infernal abnormality.
My feet seemed to slow and grow heavy of their own accord as we approached, reluctant to meet whatever lay in wait in the boulder-strewn reaches between mountainsides.
“What’s the plan, Lucius?”
Lucius’ focus had been growing the closer we came to the infernal’s trap. He was now so absorbed in whatever lay ahead that I might as well not have been present.
In this case, I might not have minded being a ghost, invisible and untouchable.
At least then I would not have to risk facing the demon.
Upon further thought, I decided that even being a ghost might not be enough to protect me from the entity ahead. Perhaps its favorite snack, after mortal flesh, was ghostly apparitions.
Better to not be here at all.
In reply to my query, Lucius darted forward quickly, his motion a blur I could not track, before returning to his position ahead of me.
“You want to charge in and catch the demon unawares?
“I don’t think that is a good idea. I think it is fully aware of our presence.
“This valley channels us forward, directly into its trap, like an extradimensional funnel-web spider’s web.
“Charging in could mean that the demon will have a new morsel just a bit faster than we would like or can counter.”
Lucius shifted noncommittally.
So much for arguing with a rock.
“Why don’t I try to climb up the slopes to get a clear line of sight on you as you move forward? That way, I can try to bolster your abilities and counter what I can of the demon’s attack with the staff.”
Anticipating any reticence, I added, “It’s good to have backup.”
Lucius skipped slightly to the side, indicating which slope I should climb. Giving a brief nod, I trotted off to begin my climb.
Lucius moved forward slowly, giving me time to get into position.
While he did, I began a chant to augment our abilities, sheathing us in a halo of ephemeral Light that would also help ward us from demonic attack.
I wanted to offer more, but the invocations were far too complex for me to try much more and still bumble ahead.
I offered what I could.
The mountainside was only partially covered in low-lying vegetation. Rocks and loose soil slid from beneath my boots as I labored up the hill, doing my best to climb, hold my staff, chant, and keep an eye on Lucius at the same time.
I needed to be ready to offer whatever assistance I could in case of an ambush.
I also needed an extra pair of hands.
Trying to look back over my shoulder and down a mountain as I climbed did not make the going any easier.
It did, however, give me a much deeper appreciation of how much I took normal movement for granted.
When I finally reached an outcropping perhaps a hundred or so paces above and slightly before the pinch point, I waved my arms to Lucius, indicating that I was ready.
Beneath me, eerily still in the afternoon air, the zone of absence was all too apparent. All around, insects buzzed and sang. There was even the occasional smattering of birdsong.
But below, there was nothing. The demonic region felt like a hole had been punched through the world’s song, leaving only emptiness in the music’s absence.
Lucius would fill that hole soon enough.
I hoped Lucius’ attempt would not cost him his life.
At my signal, Lucius burst forward, the report of his acceleration echoing off the valley’s walls like a ringing drum.
As fast as Lucius was, the demon was faster.
The demon exploded upward from the ground in a shower of dirt and rocks, the debris only briefly masking the true horror that was its presence.
If centipedes had night terrors, if centipedes had a nightmare god, then this monster was its incarnation.
The demon rose up into the air, a writhing, multi-limbed pillar, its armored plates covered in foul ichor oozing from pulsating pores. Vast, clacking mandibles able to chew through rock opened and closed before a maw large enough to engulf horses. Serrated spines arced outward in ridges along its armored segments. A sickly green aura hovered about its swaying form, a dissonance I felt rather than heard.
Lucius launched himself toward the demon, a bullet locked on its target.
Before Lucius struck, the demon surged backward and away from Lucius’ path, sinuously avoiding the attack while it spat out an undulating stream of sickening ooze that enveloped Lucius in a revolting gout, arresting his motion.
Wherever the ooze struck, the land steamed and flamed.
Still wreathed in vile green flames, the ooze quickly solidified, forming crystalline waves and globules and spattering the landscape in extradimensional mucus.
Lucius was stuck as surely as an ant in amber.
I had never imagined that my death would come from a s
not demon.
All this happened between heartbeats, my mind filling in details after they had occurred.
I had, as I saw it, two options: attack the demon, hoping I could penetrate its fell eldritch shield and chitinous armor, or try to free Lucius so that he could finish the attack that the infernal’s congealing excretions had halted.
Fearing my ability—even with the help of my staff—would do little to something capable of stopping an elemental cold, I chose the latter.
Before the demon could consume Lucius, I changed the tenor and tone of my song, expressing what I hoped would be a cleansing flame that dispelled the fell demonic magics, and quickly invoked the sidhe runes. In response, a gout of liquid energy burst forth from the shimmering crystal at the tip of my staff, splashing across Lucius’ frozen form while spraying the demon in the arcane energy’s fanning swath.
The demon reared back and screamed when the swirling incandescence streaked over it, buying us a moment’s reprieve. Before the demon could recover, I unleashed a second gout, this one targeted directly at the demon. Although the blast did little apparent damage, the demon screamed out once more, the sound a curse I will never forget, as the staff’s magic tore away the boiling energies surrounding the fell beast.
Before I could summon forth another magical discharge from the staff, Lucius erupted forward, shattering the confines of his demonic prison as he rocketed into the seething demon.
I registered the impact of Lucius’ collision only as a suppurating cloud of unholy fetid fluid, chartreuse viscera and gore spattered the hillsides in a demonic rain.
Thankfully, the staff’s shield protected me from the offal, for wherever the ooze or demonic parts struck, the land burst into unhallowed flames before solidifying.
I wanted to rush to Lucius’ aid but feared what the residual infernal magics might do to a much more fragile vessel than Lucius. Instead, I picked my way carefully down the slope, passing beyond the demon’s warren and abominable blast zone as Lucius floated forward to meet me.
Raising my staff in salute, I summoned forth more cleansing flames to rid Lucius of the last remnants of the noxious demonic taint.
Lucius appeared scarred and pitted, scorch marks covering most of his facets.
His song was also muted, perhaps humbled or restrained.
I saw no hints of the majesty that sometimes presented itself.
As Lucius drifted toward me, he appeared to be a simple, if abused, rock.
I wondered if elementals healed, and, if so, how long it took.
Guraem to Wera’Dun
The guraem had saved him.
There was no denying this truth or his attendant debt.
Without her intervention, the foul devourer of life essence would have destroyed him as surely as a rock that crumbles to dust is made anew beneath the weight of its brethren.
In her fragility, she had found strength.
He had lent his strength to others for so long that he had forgotten true strength—humility and an open mind, the need to question and doubt, and the desire to move forward based on understanding.
He had not looked.
He had not assessed.
He had not decided properly.
He had just moved.
He had grown lax and overconfident, careless after too many long years.
This could not happen again, for others relied on him.
Now Ilya depended on him, for she had become his wera’dun, and her life was his just as his was hers.
His life-debt would be repaid, for she was his partner in living ideation.
He would see Ilya, henceforth Noema’dar, through to whatever destiny she manifested and was able to realize.
Noema’dar, earth singer, was his charge, and he would sing her the songs of the world all the while.
If she could listen, so could he.
After
“What, exactly, was that?” My voice quavered with the question. I was unable to keep a flood of fear and adrenaline from rushing through me along with the remembrance of the terrible demon and our encounter.
We had walked in silence for some time before I felt secure and recovered enough to venture the question, before the growing shock of what had happened—facing a demon—and what had almost happened—both of us dying—had settled sufficiently for me to even ask a question.
Too distracted to read the subtle music of his aura, I wove an incantation that would let me understand Lucius directly.
Lucius was some time in answering.
Although it can be hard to gauge introspection and emotion in a hovering rock, I felt Lucius’ focus was inward, that he was perhaps recalling events and replaying what should have been done differently.
When Lucius finally spoke, his words came slowly as though he, too, were recovering from an ordeal. “The juel’dara are legion, as numerous as the stars and as varied.
“The el’amin know the devourers of essence of old, for, in many ways, they are our opposites.
“Just as there are demon hunters among the el’amin, so, too, are there elemental hunters among the juel’dara.
“These devourers of living essence seek my people out, preying upon us not as wolves prey upon herds, keeping the group healthy and strong, but to weaken us, to steal our strength, and overthrow us.
“These are the juel’soth.
“And we just killed one.”
I did not know what to say.
Juel’soth…that meant something close to ‘eater of hope’.
So these demon hunters stole optimism from elementals as well as their lives.
With so much history between elementals and demons, I was certain there were many layers of nuance within the name, so much so that my simple interpretation was only scratching the surface.
We picked our way up toward the ridge looming above us slowly, in silence, trees gradually filling in the place of shrubs, the scent of fallen leaves growing into an almost tangible musk. Birdsong, the buzzing of insects, and the songs of other fey creatures built into a vibrating sea that enveloped us in its warm waters.
“Was this the first juel’soth you have encountered?”
Lucius’ negative was filled with a grim sadness. “I have met far too many juel’soth for my liking. This one just caught me unawares, perhaps overconfident and irresponsible after recent accomplishments.”
I sensed rather than saw his shrug. “It will not happen again.”
I hoped that was the case. After meeting the juel’soth, I doubted very much my ability to reach Kerraboer alone.
Wishing to change the subject to something lighter, I asked, “And what accomplishments are those?”
Again, Lucius took some time in answering, perhaps because he wanted to do the subjects justice and was not fully in the mood to talk. For my part, while curious, I was also trying to brighten his mood, to give him something positive to focus on.
Nonchalantly, as though he were detailing the rate of surface wear on an inconsequential rock, Lucius said, “Saedeus, one of my recent wera’dun, helped cast down the Chaos Gate that has bridged our world and the Abyss for many benighted years.
“Maeraeth, my most recent partner in living transmutation, helped shield Uërth from further demonic invasion by channeling his longruen, his fiery heart-essence of true self, across the planet through the fallen Angel Swords.
“This shielding protects Noema’jin even now from further incursion by juel’dara.”
Whoa!
I was left speechless.
Lucius had spoken as if these things merited little speech.
This small floating rock bobbing next to me so innocently, so simply, had been party to destroying the Chaos Gate, the principal symbol of Heaven’s Fall and the demons’ ascent and then subsequently shielding the world from further demonic incursions?
What else had he done?
Had he helped sing the world into being?
I found his words unbelievable.
And unmistak
ably alluring.
A thousand questions flooded my mind.
Who were these people with whom he had adventured?
How had Lucius helped them?
How had they managed such great deeds when so many others had failed?
What, if anything, was the secret to their success?
Where were they now?
Why were they no longer with Lucius?
Would I be able to meet them?
Were they at Kerraboer or some similar fastness?
Would my deeds ever be but a pale shadow of such accomplishments?
What did their gestures mean for Uërth?
How would the world change as a result of their actions?
Would Heaven be reborn?
What about the Uërth?
Before the avalanche of my mind could voice any of these or any number of other questions, Lucius added simply, quietly, “I do not yet know what you will do.”
My mind skidded to a halt.
What I would do?
Was he equating me with the likes of those he had mentioned?
Was he implying I was one of these wera’dun?
Now it was my turn to remain silent, rendered speechless for other reasons.
Though I longed to talk, I did not know what to say.
Finally, the sounds of leaves crackling beneath my feet and the wind pushing gently through the swaying trees above brought me out of myself enough to venture, “Are you saying that we are wera’dun?”
Lucius stopped beside me, his attention once again a weight I could feel, one strong enough to hold me in place. “There is nothing else we would be.
“Whatever we are, we will be it together.”
And so we were.
Acceptance
If it had been in his nature—and ability— to nod, and perhaps smile, Luecaeus would have.
These were emotions he felt rather than expressed.
For he was pleased, content.
This wera’dun had taken the transition to partnership easily, naturally.
She would make a fitting companion.
He could respect that fortitude in one so fragile, in a being likely to pop, rupture, or char under even the slightest disturbance.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 40