Life

by Rosie Scott

My eyes were intense on Terran's as I finished the trek to his army. The eyes of the soldiers gave away their distant fear. The fear came from knowing who I was, what kinds of things I'd done. The distance came from their wrong assumptions that I wasn't a huge threat by myself. I started to build two enervat spells by my sides.

  “I am not here to compromise!” Terran shouted over his army to me, his voice full of hostility and rage. His tone had been saddened just a decade ago. I wondered what had changed it.

  I raised both arms, black orbs facing two separate sections of Terran's army. His men began to panic as I screamed, “Neither am I!”

  Death magic exploded in the masses of Seran cavalry, and two handfuls of horses and men fell, leaving clouds of black in the air that raced back to me. Even before the power imploded into my chest, I sent out two more.

  “—until she is dead!” The last words of Terran's orders reached my ears until I could hear nothing from over the sound of my scream of an agonizing high, the voice distorted by the blood of the gods. I charged two powerful shield spells in my palms, giving myself one to absorb magic and one to reject physical hits. Then I sent two more enervat spells into the masses, and more of Terran's men fell.

  The ground trembled as Terran moved the Orders of the Mages forward. I was shooting death bombs into his frontlines so quickly that none of his men could charge me, so he was sending his mages. I was surrounded by hundreds of bodies of man and mount, but my skull felt as if it would break open from the power of their energies. I could not absorb anything more until I expended it. I quickly raised the corpses surrounding me, before I hurried backward to prepare a spell.

  “Archers! Gods damn it! Shoot her!”

  Generat le tremor. The earth energy was brownish-black in my palms, mimicking the color of an abyss. As I funneled more and more power into the spells, the transparent energy grew almost opaque. The magical barriers trembled so hard against my palms that they began to numb with the constant pressure.

  Only when hundreds of lives were forced into the spell did I release it at my feet. The grasses between Terran's army and me fell in shadow as hundreds of arrows were fired. I continued to back up, avoiding most of the projectiles and my own developing spell. A few dozen arrows hit my shield nonetheless, and it started to flicker with weakness.

  The earth hummed with a tremble. I'd never summoned an earthquake before, but I was fairly certain the spell wasn't supposed to take this long to work. And even though I'd never cast the spell myself, I'd been near Terran's back in the Battle of the Dead, so I knew this trembling was different. It felt reminiscent of Mantus's approach in Nahara, only much stronger like the core of Arrayis itself was shaking in intimidation. Terran screamed orders at his army, and they began to back out of the area and spread into two arms.

  Crrk! The grasslands where I'd first cast the spell split so abruptly that the earth shifted on both sides as if Arrayis was rearranging its tectonic plates. The massive crevasse continued to grow, multiple cracks extending off the first. I fell back on the grass after losing my balance. Ahead, thousands of Terran's soldiers fell as well, rattling over the earth as if the world itself was toying with them.

  I heard something collapse, and I glanced back at Hallmar. Parts of its western wall were breaking and crumbling from the residual echoes my spell had thrust through the earth. My friends were still safe near its gate, but much of the closest infrastructure was weakening.

  The breaks in the earth continued to grow, spreading the land open until the sides of the new canyons disintegrated with weakness, falling into the abyss. The fissures stretched across the grasslands like spiderwebs, reaching out so far west, south, and north I could no longer see the end of it.

  Many of Terran's fallen soldiers now found themselves on towering islands of shaking earth. Horses and men alike were falling into the chasms, the only evidence of their screams being their open mouths. The earthquake was so loud with its protests I swore I would forever hear it in my dreams.

  I pulled myself off the ground and regenerated my life shield. I wasn't being targeted for the moment because everyone was scrambling to avoid the hungry earth. I simply watched the destruction. The gaps in the landscape were now so vast there was no fixing them. These were not simple cracks in the earth that would heal over time and the natural elements.

  Pssh!

  The roar of water rumbled from the northeast. My spell was so strong, the fissures reached the northern coast. Ocean water burst through the new clefts like a stampede, engulfing everything in its path. As it raced through the land to create a web of rivers, hundreds of fish were expelled and left flopping over newly formed riverbanks.

  When the water's scream was gone, everything was silent. My spell had finally expended its energy, but the effects were devastating. With one spell, I had drastically changed the landscape of northeastern Chairel. Where there had only been one river along the base of the Firn Caps, there were now many. Terran's army had retreated to the west. Many of them had avoided the spell, but many had not. Now that the fissures were filled with water, the rivers were full of floating bodies.

  Terran and his men seemed to be in shock. At this point, my brother knew of my part in the destruction of Narangar's harbor and Glacia. He knew how powerful I was. Even so, this was the first time he'd seen it for himself. Chairel was permanently scarred.

  That was fine with me. It would eventually be mine anyway.

  Black tendrils raced from my fingers to the web of rivers ahead, pulling Terran's dead soldiers out of the water. Man and horse alike hefted themselves up onto the riverbanks and immediately rushed to battle. My quick recovery from the devastation spurred the Chairel Army into action to catch up. While some of Terran's men were distracted with fighting off the dead, he ordered his armies to reform. Many of his men on the frontlines looked over the rivers, trying to find a place to cross. I'd broken the battlefield apart far to the north and south, and the rivers were so wide even the horses could not jump over.

  I stalked up to the nearest riverbank, immediately shooting orbs of death magic across the water to the other side. Soldiers still fighting the undead fell, and the corpses ventured forth. I trembled with a mighty high, but I kept harvesting from the lives of Terran's nearest men. My brother screamed orders at them to retreat from the riverbank, and they did so, the corpses shambling after them until they were cut down.

  The rivers between us had etched through to the northern coast, but there was nothing but grasslands in the south. Knowing this, I pointed to the rivers in the south and screamed, “Send your armies south, Terran! Go around! Come and get me!”

  My brother was too far for me to see, but I heard his men's murmurs as they passed along the message. Next, I heard his hoarse directions to his men. Perhaps he was sending his armies south as I'd suggested. I decided he needed a little incentive.

  Generat la bolta a multipla. Even through my rage, I could feel heartbreak as I summoned the same spell that had once killed Jakan. Perhaps that feeling that would never go away. Nonetheless, I forced the energy of hundreds of Terran's soldiers into the heavens above the grasslands, and the beautiful cerulean skies darkened.

  Terran's next round of screams got his men to finally start marching south along the riverbanks. Black clouds formed over his men until they were all in shadow. A profound rumbling reverberated from the skies.

  BOOM!

  Just like at the Battle of Highland Pass, the lightning bolt was as thick as a tree trunk, cracking into the army and the land beneath their feet. Bits of grass and chunks of dirt flew outward from the hit, leaving multiple soldiers smoldering in a crater.

  Sss...

  Chain lightning sizzled out past the impacted land, and a handful of soldiers rattled in electrocution before falling to the ground, smoking from their eyelids.

  BOOM!

  Terran's army was a collective mass as it moved south, but with each lightning hit, gaps were opening up in his ranks. Soldiers flew out from each hit l
ike an explosion from every bolt, and more dropped dead from the chain lightning that followed in its wake. It was like the army was standing water beneath selective rainfall, and the men affected were the resulting splashes.

  I had no leeching high left, so as my brother's army headed south along the river, so did I. Closer to Hallmar in the east, I noticed Azazel moving our men toward my battle. I figured he knew just how close he could risk bringing our men without allowing them to be collateral damage. Past Azazel and our army, parts of Hallmar were on fire. The men along the western wall were clad in yellow, proving that Cyrus's plan to take the siege weapons to defend the city from reinforcements had worked. Some of the wall was destroyed by my earthquake, but it only crumbled with weakness. If any of Cyrus's men had been there at the time, I was sure they were safe.

  The Hammerton Navy had moved their ships inland after realizing that none of Eteri's warships were coming from the north. A few of the dwarven vessels were damaged from the harbor defenses, evidence that Altan had decided to have fun with the strategy I'd given him. Most of the ships were back at shore, however, so I assumed a battle was still raging in the city.

  By the time I paid attention to the traveling Chairel Army once again, hundreds more of them were left behind in massive craters. The morale of the once confident army was dwindling so quickly I could feel it escaping in the air.

  My earthquake had been so immense that just walking to the tip of its farthest crevasse took the better part of half an hour. Some arrows bounced off of my shield as Terran's archers decided to try their luck, but otherwise, the river was too wide to throw magic or other weapons at one another. Once the end of the river was in view, I stopped moving forward, letting my brother's army come to me. I kept the stream just to my right, leaving it as an obstruction to keep me from being surrounded.

  Then I waited, two enervat spells swirling hungrily in my hands. Terran handed out orders to his armies, and I watched as they started to move into position. Archers and mages were moving in units in an arc to the southeast, while Terran and the two gods with him were walking a straight course to me after leaving their horses behind. All three of them were surrounded by the unfamiliar round life shields.

  I found Terran's confidence in approaching me surprising. Given the armies of ranged units he had moving around to the sides, I knew he meant to flank me. I'd been causing such massive damage to his military when it was together that he was spreading it thin. He looked to distract me with the gods as his soldiers bombarded me from a distance.

  I noted all of this with a distant curiosity before I shot both enervat spells directly at my brother as he neared. Two black orbs exploded against his shield, misting out over the air before dissipating. None of the life shields even flinched with weakness.

  “Ah,” I blurted, the tone of my voice making it a taunt. “So that is what is giving you this confidence, brother. Your alliance with the gods. You know you cannot defeat me alone, so you resort to the powers of a race of hypocrites.”

  “I will resort to whatever I need to to ensure that you are dead!” Terran shouted, his voice trembling with rage. He and Raphael stopped just yards away from me, but Orzora continued forward, her heavy mace in both hands. If I couldn't get through their shields with magic, I needed physical force. I summoned multiple rock projectiles before thrusting them all at the goddess as she neared me.

  Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink!

  The stones barely chipped off the shield before they fell to the ground, useless. For the first time, a spark of panic alighted in my chest. Raphael's shields were not only powerful, but they also protected against both physical and energy damage. I'd never heard of such a thing, and I couldn't charm the god to gain access to the spell because he was protected by his own magic. I started to step backward when Orzora's mace swung toward me in an uppercut. The life shield protected me, but I flew back from the force alone, and the white magic flickered out once I hit the ground in a heap of pain and adrenaline.

  Shik! Shik!

  I hissed through my teeth and regenerated a shield. Two archers had managed to land hits, one in my left upper arm, and the other sticking out of the side of my left breast. I couldn't risk trying to heal the wounds now, for not only was my energy low, but Orzora was running after me with her mace as my new shield was peppered with more arrows.

  BOOM! Lightning struck from the sky, feeding me energy through my alteration shield. I inwardly thanked the Seran mage for regenerating my reserves, but now that they knew I was refreshed they weren't likely to do it again. I rushed to stand, quickly untying the war horn at my belt.

  HUUURRRNNNNN!

  Azazel's army started to move in from the east, preceded by hordes of the dead. I backed up from Orzora as she neared, tying the war horn back to my belt just as she threw another swing into my shield.

  I was once again thrown back, and my shield flickered out. I used the energy of the last lightning bolt to regenerate it, but at this rate, all I would be focusing on was defense. It was like the Battle of the Gods all those years ago when I'd fought my uncle in a battle of wits and patience. Only now, I was also outnumbered.

  “You are having second thoughts, sister?” Terran taunted, as he stalked across the plains after me. Two large boulders hovered over his palms. I still remembered him using them against me in the Seran dungeon as I freed Cerin, but they hadn't been nearly as large then. I wasn't sure if I should have been concerned about that detail or not.

  “I'm not,” I called back, pulling myself to stand once more. “But you are. What a filthy liar you are, Terran! I will do my best not to get involved in this war, you said!” My words were dramatically mocking.

  “That was before you involved my fucking children!” Terran screamed, shooting both boulders straight at me. One of them bashed into Orzora's shield from the back as the goddess pursued me, and the other broke through my shield and sent me sprawling over the grasses. My brother's words repeated over and over in my head as I tried to understand.

  And then, it clicked. People and clues and events all merged as if I were fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. His escape from Mistral's dungeon. Calder's intel about him heading through the underground to Sera. Cerin's intuition.

  Cicero.

  “What did he tell you, Terran?” I shouted, pulling myself up off the ground.

  “He told me nothing! He showed me everything! I heard it on your voice! Saw it through your eyes!” Terran stopped screaming to take a breath. “Will you kill the children? Yes!”

  I thought back to that conversation on the seas before the destruction of Narangar's harbor. Altan had been the one to ask me that question, but I hadn't given him a direct affirmative. I'd told him it depended on how old and politically involved they were, but at some point, I must have said the word yes. To create the most chaos, Cicero had selectively chosen which parts of my memories to pass on, whether or not they painted an accurate picture.

  “That was not my answer, Terran! Cicero is the god of chaos! He wants this! It is feeding him! He has manipulated you!”

  “You are the manipulator!” Terran built two more powerful spells in his palms. As he came to a stop, Raphael funneled life energy into my brother's side, regenerating his reserves.

  Dear gods. No wonder his spells were so powerful. Terran made sure to come to this battle extremely prepared.

  I gave myself another shield, but I had to drain my life energy to do it. I ran to the southeast, looking to harvest more energy from Terran's ranged soldiers. They started to retreat, but both of my enervat spells hit the backs of their ranks and refueled me.

  “Don't you retreat!” Terran roared behind me, coming after me with shards of metal swirling over his palms. “Don't you dare retreat! You're a fucking liar, Kai! Do you know how many memories he gave me of you saying you'd kill me? And with no hesitation?”

  “Oh, brother...” I trailed off, shooting more death bombs into his retreating soldiers as arrows and magic flew my way. “No
w that? That I said, and with no hesitation at all.” I turned toward him, building more spells with the lives of his men. “You've threatened the life of the man I love one too many times.”

  “That necromancer dies today!” Terran screamed, releasing his magic.

  As blades of metal whirled through the air between us, I shouted back, “Over my dead body!”

  Forty-three

  Shing-shing!

  Both metal shards ricocheted off my life shield while I charged another, refreshing its strength. I hurried to the riverbank, directing a spell toward the water.

  The shrill crackling of ice echoed into the air as a section the river hardened. Next, a combination spell of water and death swirled over my palm before I sent it into the ice. An ice golem began to crackle out of the cube, and the rest of the river's water leveled a bit as it pulled itself onto the riverbank to fight.

  I was then swirling through the air so abruptly that I was left disoriented. I could only assume that Orzora had caught up with me once again. Suddenly, I was sinking into the water of the river from my fall, listening to the sounds of bubbles rising beside my ears. I opened my eyes and enhanced my vision. Bodies of Terran's soldiers were floating in the depths of the crevasse. Even though we were far from the casting site of the earthquake, the force of the forming river must have pushed the bodies here. We were far from where I'd last risen the dead.

  While still underwater, I sent death magic into the depths. The floating bodies started to jerk, and then they were swimming up to the surface to join me.

  Then, all around me, the water began to solidify, rapidly hardening as one of Terran's water mages used my earlier spell against me to entrap me in ice.

  Circa a wava de therma. Hot air burst out from my hands like an explosion, melting the new ice before the resulting air bubbles rose to the surface. I swam toward the light, and as soon as I was above water, the sounds of battle were stronger than ever.

  Terran's army was in segments as it circled around the end of the new river. Infantry was closest to the riverbanks, and the archers and mages he'd ordered to flank me were now being attacked from the opposite side by Azazel and Calder's armies. Chairel soldiers shouted with panic as they were surrounded, and that caught my brother's attention. Terran had been in such a rage fighting against me that he'd failed to redirect his men. He turned to aid them, and Raphael stayed by his side.