by James Somers
Brian Shade and his compliment of Leprechaun soldiers were soaked by the wave that dashed over them. It spilled its fury across the dining table, washing away all of the prepared delicacies, so that they ended up as a mush pile near the king’s golden throne. The remainder of the water seeped through metal grates in the floor, leaving the fire in the huge hearth snuffed out and the dining room a complete shambles.
The Wind Elemental attempted an attack, but the elf was done playing around. His gaze fell upon the Elemental causing his body to jerk suddenly. His wind attack dispersed harmlessly. His spine cracked backward horribly, as though an invisible giant had taken him up and broken him in half. His eyes rolled up into his head and he fell over quite dead.
Sparks of electrical discharge played over the outstretched fingers on the remaining Elemental. However, he quickly thought better of his next attack. Clenching his fists, he allowed the charge to disperse as he backed away, surrendering to the elf.
The elf waited as the Elemental found his legs and ran out through the scorched entryway and down the hall. Now, only Brian Shade and his few soldiers remained. The elf gave them a pitiful look. All of them, including the king, were quite soaked by the water that had been unleashed in the throne room, so that they had the appearance of drowned rats.
“Why I thought a fool like you had the good sense and backbone to carry out my will I shall never know,” Black said.
“Your will?” Brian asked from within the circle of soldiers who were again brandishing their weapons at the elf, though far less menacingly now.
“I tried to warn you of Descendants like Brody West,” Black complained, “and you even saw firsthand his intention to lay claim to your lands. Did you stop him? No! You cowed to him. An entire township has since been established at Highmore!”
The Shade King began to form a reply, but then thought better of it. He felt sure, by now, that this man was more than he appeared to be. He feared saying anything amiss, lest he share the fate of the steaming corpses lying strewn across his throne room floor.
“And to top it all off,” Black continued, “you have summoned Donatus and his brother to your palace in order to forge a peace treaty. Surely, you must mean to give these Descendants at Highmore complete access to your kingdom.”
Brian Shade hesitated and then spoke carefully. “Perhaps, if I knew who it is that I am speaking with,” he offered. “Surely, you don’t pretend to be a mere elf spell caster.”
Black fixed his gaze upon the Shade King, frustration and fury gathering in his tone as he spoke. “I wanted war, and I shall still have it,” he threatened. “I still have an empire at my disposal. Certainly, Gladstone will do my bidding. You Leprechauns will perish with Brody West and Donatus and all of the Descendants they’ve brought here.”
Brian Shade, unable to contain his own fear, cried out, “Who are you?”
“Black!” But the cry had not come from the fallen angel impersonating an elf spell caster. From the shadows of the room, Donatus stepped forward wearing an expression of complete bewilderment. “The same who betrayed our trust as Ishbe? The same who killed my son and his wife?”
Black fixed his gaze upon the elf king, grinning devilishly. “The same,” he confessed proudly.
“Black?” Brian Shade muttered under his breath, terror beginning to overwhelm him. No wonder his Elementals had failed so miserably. No mortal could hope to take on an angel and survive.
However, Donatus continued to stride toward the fallen angel, his expression stricken. Brian couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He should retreat immediately, before it was too late. It might already be too late. Even Black seemed a little surprised at the elf king’s boldness.
Black chuckled. “Are you going to kill me now?” he asked casually.
A gesture made with Donatus’s right hand set into motion armored plates that unfolded quickly across his body. Materializing from a dimensional pocket, the ancient spelled armor, constructed in the Forge at Xandrea, covered him almost completely in a suit that resembled fish scales. A helm formed and swept over his head and across his bearded face.
“I’m going to try?” Donatus replied.
He swept both gauntleted hands up across the scales on his chest, creating an electrical charge. Donatus cast the lightning toward Black. Clenching his hands, Donatus pulled upon the stone floor, the walls and the ceiling at once. The angel’s expression changed to genuine surprise as the attack came.
Amused, Black caught the lightning, redirecting it back at Donatus. However, he hadn’t paid as much attention to the stones moving around him. The lightning flew back at Donatus from Black’s fingertips, discharging harmlessly across the violet colored scales of his armor. At the same time, the stones answered Donatus’s command. Hurtling up from the floor beneath his feet, the ceiling and two walls, the stones converged upon Black’s host body, threatening to crush him to a bloody pulp.
He managed to deflect three stones and attempt a dodge of the fourth, but it hammered him across his left torso and hip before he could evade. Black tumbled across the floor in a daze. Donatus launched another two simultaneous attacks while he had the chance.
Black was an angel of terrible power, to be sure, but he was confined to a mortal host. Donatus knew that this made him vulnerable. His anger drove him now, wanting to avenge his son and Charlotte. Still, in the back of his mind, he knew that he might not survive this fight. Cole would be left without any family. However, discovering Black here had almost certainly sealed his doom anyway. He was fighting to stay alive now.
Donatus pummeled Black’s host with several rapid fire concussive bursts, tumbling him across the stone floor, through one of the overturned tables and into the air. A further cascade of lightning lit him up on his way, until his body hit the far wall near the smoldering hearth. Any of these attacks on their own would have killed a human. Even a moderately powerful Descendant would have perished by now. But Black was still too strong.
He vanished as soon as he hit the floor. Donatus reacted. He knew Black would be on the offensive, teleporting across the room in an instant to attack. Donatus disappeared from his spot, just as Black materialized, sending out a blast wave that cracked the stone floor where the elf king had been. Even the shockwave from the attack was strong enough to knock down Brian Shade and his soldiers as they attempted to take cover away from the battle.
Donatus passed in and out of the mortal plane, seeming to appear for an instant and disappear again. But Black wasn’t fooled. As an angel, he could see on both dimensional planes at once.
With speed Donatus could not escape, Black became less than shadow, intercepting him. He batted Donatus’s gauntleted hand away and then drove his right fist into the elf king’s chest. The blow hit with such force that the spelled armor shattered to pieces, scattering violet scales in every direction.
Donatus appeared on the mortal plane again, his body hitting the wall behind and then falling as a lump of battered flesh and bone to the floor. He was bleeding from every orifice, lying unconscious, motionless. Black reappeared on the mortal plane where he had delivered the final blow. Metal scales were strewn all over the floor between him and Donatus.
Black stalked hungrily toward the elf king. He was enjoying this immensely. Donatus remained still. Even awake, he couldn’t have escaped now. His injuries were too great.
The Shade King and his soldiers watched the scene unfold from behind the king’s golden throne across the room. Black pulled up short. On the mortal plane nothing had changed. However, on the spiritual plane a bright light shone throughout the room, emanating from an angel standing between Black and Donatus.
Black growled at his Heavenly adversary. He had no choice now but to withdraw. There would be no contest, and he couldn’t risk his mortal host further. Even with the cherubim serving to anchor him to the world, a Heavenly angel might still cast him back into Tartarus.
The angel did not speak.
Black looked past him to Donatus
lying in a heap upon the floor. He smiled. “No matter,” Black said, “he’s finished anyway.”
He turned back toward the Shade King still cowering with his guards. “As for you, Brian Shade, you’ll regret thwarting my plans. This will not be the end of the matter—not by far.”
A flash of light blinded Shade and his men for a moment. When their sight came back to them, Black had gone. Donatus remained on the floor, moaning a little and bleeding heavily.
“Bring the healers, quickly,” Brian said. “I only hope they can save him. He was our best hope for peace.”
Uncertainty
We had nearly finished our meal when the captain of the guard, set outside to keep us from the palace, came rushing into The Dragon’s Lair. “My lord Connic!” he shouted, looking for the Shade King’s advisor. He appeared to be in a panic about something.
Connic stood from our table. “What on earth is the matter?” he asked.
“My lord, the king requests your presence immediately.” He paused, looking uncertainly at Donatus. I followed his gaze. The apparition left by my grandfather was completely transparent and fading fast. It continued to look around at us, trying to speak.
Connic looked at Laish. “A doppelganger? Where is Lord Donatus?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, sir,” the guard captain continued. “Lord Donatus has been gravely injured at the palace. The king bids all of you to come to the royal infirmary immediately.”
Connic took all of us into his gaze. Immediately, our surroundings shifted, just as they had when the king’s advisor brought us into Rockunder. We were standing now inside the golden palace. Walls of Alabaster surrounded us, lined with intricate carvings accented with much gold filigree. Like my grandfather’s city of Xandrea, even the most mundane items were crafted to be beautiful and highly valuable.
The king’s advisor had left the guard captain behind at The Dragon’s Lair. Only we three had been taken with him to the Shade King’s palace. Within the palace infirmary, where injuries were sure to be rare, all of the activity focused upon one patient.
We hurried to the place where he had been taken. Already, a group of healers stood around him, hands and minds joined as one. The Shade King stood apart, watching anxiously. Seeing us, he turned and met us before we could reach my grandfather’s bed.
“What’s happened to Donatus?” I blurted out before we came together.
“There was a battle in the throne room,” the king said.
“You attacked him?” Laish asked, incredulous.
The Shade King was taken aback. “What? No! Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing? We were set to confer on peace.”
“My grandfather left us at The Dragon’s Lair to find out why our arrival at the palace was delayed by the soldiers you sent to us,” I explained.
The king held up his hand. “Wait a moment,” he said. “What soldiers are you referring to? I sent no one to delay you. Connic?”
“Captain Rane arrived over an hour ago, informing us that you were unavailable for the time being,” Connic explained. “We were supposed to remain in the city until you sent for us to come.”
“I sent no one,” the king said, bewildered.
“Then what happened to my brother?” Laish asked. We could see from here that Donatus was in terrible condition. His head was swollen and his face bruised. I hardly recognized him as the noble man I had known all my life. I was already thinking that there could be no way that any of the Shade King’s men could have done this thing, but the truth was worse still.
“The angel, Black, invaded my throne room disguised as an elf,” the king said. “He came once before just as you and your people arrived in Ireland. He gave me counsel, telling me to beware of you…that you intended to invade.”
“And you believed him?” Laish asked.
I had wanted to ask the question myself, but I had been taught to know my place, even as a prince among the vampires and elves. Still, I urged Laish on in my mind.
The king straightened, seeming somewhat indignant at the question. If he was offended, he didn’t state it, knowing better with Laish’s reputation. He was as powerful as my grandfather, Donatus.
“I had no reason not to believe him,” Shade said. “You arrived unannounced in my homeland—thousands of refugees without so much as a letter of notice to the sovereign in this land?”
Laish nodded. “You’re right. Our arrival was both ill-timed and inconvenient. I assure you it wasn’t meant to be so. Our predicament in England was such that we had to make a hasty exit, or risk open war with the humans. We should have followed protocol.”
The king was placated by this. He gripped Laish’s shoulder with one hand. “It’s forgotten,” he said. “I only hope we can do something now for Donatus.”
I looked back at my grandfather. Many thoughts came to mind. Black had already come back into our lives trying, as always, to destroy us through subtlety. His disguise as Ishbe had evidently been abandoned. Perhaps he had taken a new host. Maybe he was able to change his form. The power of angels remained quite mysterious. How he and Donatus had come to blows in the throne room still needed explaining, but not now.
My grandfather was fighting for his life. He had taken on one of the Fallen. The results of that encounter were no better than I would have guessed. My grandfather was a direct descendant of the fallen angel, Samiel—one of the Sons of Anarchy. He had great power as a Superomancer. But none of those things gave him any hope of defeating an angel.
We walked on toward the medical bay where healers stood around Donatus. They chanted in unison. I did not recognize the language they were speaking, but evidently this was meant to bring them into rhythm with one another.
The methods by which healers worked eluded me. I had extensive training in matters of warfare. Black, in disguise as Ishbe, my former master, had seen to that. Under the tutelage of my parents, I had learned diplomacy—the subtle machinations used by politicians to achieve their desires while persuading others that this was all in their best interest. I had even conducted my own private studies into languages and histories of both the Descendant cultures and human civilization. But the matter of healing through spell casting had remained an elusive art. Information was not shared with outsiders by those orders which practiced it.
Sadie had actually studied the art for several years. However, the calamity that had struck the spiritual plane had ended that. She still intended to finish when an appropriate replacement could be found, but her former instructor had perished when the monastery of his order had collapsed during one of the many earthquakes that struck when the cherubim were released.
I glanced at her. Sure enough, she was watching them. Her lips moved ever-so-lightly in the same cadence with their chant. She didn’t so much as whisper, but I could discern that she was speaking the same language. I had asked her once to teach me some of it, but was disappointed to find that doing so was forbidden. She would not even do such a favor for her own parents. I tried not to take it personally.
We all stood back, allowing these men to work. None of us spoke. Whatever means the healers employed had been proven to be valid and extremely helpful. It was no trick, by any means. Nevertheless, we watched—most of us ignorantly—to see if there came any improvement in my grandfather.
I could not help but consider recent events. The whole matter with Black was so troubling to me. This was very personal because of the intimate relationship—master to pupil—that I had enjoyed so many years with Ishbe. The betrayal I felt no doubt made it all the more enjoyable for Black. Still, I found myself torn between feelings of hatred and longing. Some of the best days I could remember had been spent learning from him.
Why had he committed himself to such a relationship? It truly baffled me. Why not simply take the opportunity to kill me? He could have done it a thousand times, but he had never harmed me physically in the least.
Was I then some experiment? Had he meant to turn me into some
evil person, a weapon in his hand? Perhaps, I had already become what he had meant all along—opening the Underworld and unleashing the cherubim imprisoned there. Through me, Black had killed my father and mother. He had brought the entire spiritual plane to utter ruin. Thousands of lives had been lost and countless treasures in architecture, art and history.
I had been the key to it all, causing me to believe that the dragon held in the Realm of Abominations had killed my parents, when it had been him all along. Just like the child I was, I had allowed anger to determine my course of action. I had been like putty in Black’s hands, molded for his wicked purpose then used and discarded.
Laboring through my memories, I felt my anger welling. I closed my eyes. Only the chanting of the healers remained—rhythmic, hypnotic. Fascinated, I embraced the darkness, searching for the cadence of their song, following line by repetitious line.
It’s difficult to say how long I had been listening. Colors began to swirl. An image coalesced in my mind. The room around us came into focus. An aura of light emanated from every living person present. The light around my grandfather had been joined by that of the healers. Out of everyone present, only they and he were joined in this way.
To me, it appeared that they were feeding his life force from their own. Each seemed to give up part of himself to my grandfather, attempting to help his body repair itself of the injuries sustained in his fight with Black. I could sense the pain he was going through without actually experiencing it. His injuries were grievous. I had the feeling that he was barely clinging to life now—all of this information conveyed by the rhythmic pulse between Donatus and the healers.