Chapter 18
Deh Leccend moved swiftly, pulling Shannon along towards the oval office. The Black Leaf somehow knew exactly where Athaem was, but even Shannon would know where he was going. He pulled her left, then right in a rush, but he would not run. He never broke his seemingly casual strides beyond a quick gait -not even after Shannon heard the screams as they drew nearer. It sounded as though a war had broken out in the halls of the White House.
* * *
There were others who could hear it. There were many, in fact, including Director Farsing, and Secretary Hargrove.
President Thurston Manning himself could as well, having long known now that the infiltrators of this Dunesil were indeed real and present and lethal due to the radio transmissions and the agents within the oval office who stood with guns aplenty, at the ready, aimed for the doors.
“Break the glass!” One of them was shouting, urging the president to flee.
“You must get on the chopper, Mr. President.” He said as another secret service agent threw something heavy out the window behind him, and began clearing away the remaining shards with the butt of his military issued rifle.
“It’s a bit of a fall, but it’s better than standing to your death here. Go, Mr. President. I will be right behind you.” He said, urging Manning to do as he insisted, but the president just stood there dumbfounded, as the gunfire ceased and silence returned to the White House once more.
“Go!” The agent urged him once more, breaking his trance. The agent then reached up and touched his earpiece, holding the cuff of his shirt close to his mouth. “Fire up the bird, quickly, the president is on his way out! Evac is underway! Repeat, evac is immediate!”
Thurston moved for the window, hesitating as he kicked one leg out onto the windowsill and looking down the drop. It wasn’t as far as it looked, he told himself.
“Snipers, cover-fire. Anyone making an approach on the president is to be taken down. Stand by.” The agent was talking into his microphone again.
* * *
Several halls away, Director Farsing had been exhaustedly speaking in council with Secretary Hargrove, and the two of them heard the war break out even before Shannon had. They paused uncertainly, then scrambled, pulling secret service agents after themselves in a rush, guns drawn.
In route to the oval office, they came across Alpha four and the carnage that Athaem had wrought. Against their will, their strides slowed and stopped altogether as awe took over their features. The hall was devastated, torn asunder and scarred by more than just bullet holes. It certainly looked, to all appearances, as if a war had been fought within a matter of a few square yards.
Blood and ruin was everywhere, but Director Farsing was on the move immediately. He moved through the dead, and took up one of the visors he’d helped to design, prompting the secret service to do the same. With the visors on they then moved on in a rush. They could only pray they weren’t too late, but if the assassin was not here and dead already, then it was only a matter of time before he reached Alpha One and slaughtered them in the same fashion.
* * *
Shannon found herself urging Deh Leccend ahead. She still disagreed with the slaughter, even as she’d given up hope against its inevitable coming, but she vehemently disagreed with what Athaem was doing even more. He was breaking the Elves’ own rules of engagement, or at least he was manipulating the rules to sate his hatred. He was no better than any human racist.
Sure, she disagreed with, and likely downright hated the government for its control and all the corruption that it represented. But she still didn’t want anyone to die. Her dissociation with mankind, in wake of realizing its corruption, was beginning to disappear altogether. She was swiftly becoming re-acquainted with her own kin in light of their soon-to-be annihilation. She would weep for them and miss them all, and be utterly alone for the rest of her life.
“You must stop him, Deh!” She cried to his ears along their way. “What he’s doing is wrong! It’s just wrong!”
Of course, the Black Leaf didn’t need to be told, and he didn’t need to answer her. He just skipped ahead more swiftly, pulling her straight through walls as if they weren’t even there.
Gunfire and screams, followed by a terrible thundering shudder within the great house’s entire structure, signaled a new little war breaking out beneath Athaem’s foul acts, and Deh Leccend picked up the pace, bounding ahead as others could only stand and listen. * * *
The president, half out the window, abruptly froze, and he turned back to the doors as his agents could only listen helplessly. The hall beyond the office plunged into the sounds of a desperate struggle of terrible power against gunfire. Stray bullets whizzed through the doors, in tune with the pings of steel as Athaem merely deflected them by his sword. The fright of it all nearly forced the president to duck for cover, but he couldn’t even drag himself from the windowsill. He just froze, waiting and watching helplessly as the struggle ended as swiftly as it had begun.
For a second all was utterly silent, but it would be shattered like the doors that barred Athaem’s coming, for he heaved his last victim through them with ease, sending a bloodied body barreling across the floor in a tangled mess. The haze of debris and dust from his assault spilled into the room, and the secret service was left no choice. They opened fire blindly, unloading everything they had upon the portal. But to no avail.
Athaem, cloaked all in black like the image of Dunesil himself, strode boldly into the hall, sword flicking about his body in breathtaking rapidity and accuracy, deflecting away the bullets without fail.
Abruptly the room fell silent as the agents rushed to reload, and Athaem laid his bright green eyes upon the president seeking to escape the carnage of what would be his assassination, the bloodiest assassination attempt any president had ever seen.
The Elvine prince saw exactly what the president was going for. He was intending to flee, and gain the helicopters outside. He was covered by two agents, hopeless men of futile skills. This prompted Athaem to smile, and he abruptly ascended to the fringe of the Veil. He just disappeared right before their eyes, and drew out his mighty long bow from nothingness, and an arrow to match. He turned his aim upon the helicopters beyond the walls, and loosed a bolt.
In wake of his absence the sudden silence was only broken by an explosion upon the White House lawn, and the shock of it nearly let the president topple from the window in a surprised turnabout. He caught himself, but sat gaping as his chopper went up in a cloud of smoke. Then, another shaft went hailing unseen, blasting into an armored Blackhawk and sending it into ruin with a fiery boom.
Athaem didn’t need to strike another time, for it was quite evident already -the president would never make it to the chopper. Even if he did make it, he would never make it off the ground. There was no escape.
President Manning helplessly turned his gaze back upon the oval office and his few, inadequate agents -watching as the dark figure of Athaem reappeared as easily as it had gone. The monster beneath that black hood was glorious and easy on the eyes, but he wore a demon’s grin. He’d forsaken the need to use the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, and these few men were witness to his greatness.
In a deliberate, smug movement the Elvine prince drew forth his lithe blade with a glittering flash. There would be no escape, and they all knew it. They were going to die here and now, and their lives would never flash before their eyes.
However, out of left field came Deh Leccend, the Black Leaf, dragging Shannon right through the wall. The prince started in surprise.
“Athaem, stop!” She howled, laying eyes upon him, pleading for him to cease and desist, but the Addl’laen prince held no intention of stopping. He ignored her and his subservient Black Leaf, and moved to strike, casting his bow into the nothingness it had come from. He promptly lifted his sword for the kill and went lunging forth. It was good that the Firea’csweise was here to see his glory. She was meant to bear this witness. It was only too bad the Black Leaf
fool had brought her to the ordeal so late in the game.
Neither the secret service nor the president were witness to the coming of Athaem’s opposition, and the agents opened fire against the Elvine assassin. They should have died then and there, but Deh Leccend was before the prince in a heartbeat, leaving Shannon behind.
His little knife erupted from beneath his black cloak, and in a flashing slash, that lengthy blade was borne against the prince’s own. The lunging Elvine prince frightfully collided with nothingness as the unseen Black Leaf’s mighty sword bore him down. Deh Leccend, small as he was, was indeed powerful. He reared up before Athaem’s bewildered and instantly infuriated features like a giant by compare.
The agents never ceased firing, not even in their confusion as to how the assassin was halted, but with a flick of his free hand, Deh Leccend’s power sent them sprawling. Bullets whined and pinged, deflected and sent ripping off in various safe directions as the agents were hammered back, kicked up off their feet and helplessly flung against the walls and out the windows.
Single-handedly, the Black Leaf also leveled Athaem’s blade in a certainty filled deadlock. The prince struggled to rise up behind his weapon, fighting against Deh Leccend’s betrayal, but the Black Leaf was far beyond him. It took the both of his hands, and all of his great strength to merely hold back against his once-ally’s one handed press.
“How dare you!?” The prince howled against him. “Black Leaf traitor!?” Athaem’s frame shuddered and quailed, but he refused to relinquish his own press in a peaceful manner.
“You will stand down immediately!” He tried to command, just as he’d always done, ordering the dumb Black Leaves around like mindless children.
“You were sent here as an emissary in efforts to force compliance through diplomacy, Athaem.” Deh Leccend defied him evenly, hitting him with logic, and yet there was a hint of insistence, almost an emotion, like no one had ever seen within a Black Leaf.
None of the bystanders, short of the unseen girl actually understood what they were looking at. Neither President Manning, nor his few surviving defenders could see beyond the Veil, and they were left looking upon the struggle of the lone assassin. They could hear his words and knew he had to be speaking to someone, but they couldn’t hear or see the other half of the argument. The once gloriously lethal figure of Athaem was bent before the weight of something or someone. Who or whatever it was that held him locked desperately in a power struggle was clearly very powerful as Athaem’s limbs quaked with the effort.
“It’s too late, Black Leaf! They assaulted me unjustly! They can see into the fringe of the Veil with their tools of sighting the Qual! By both such laws of Addl’laen, they must now perish!” The prince defied in return, tongue spiteful and hissing as he gritted his teeth.
“You are too late!” Athaem tried, desperation for his case rising as his muscles began to tire beneath Deh Leccend’s unfathomed power.
“You fool, Athaem! If you continue this course, the White Leaves will fall. They will loose the Powers, and all shall come to cataclysmic ends.” Deh Leccend denied the Elvine prince his unwise outlook, and again Shannon could hear an insistence in his voice she’d not seen or heard within him before. It had never been heard, not once, not in all the talk she’d made him engage. Though, it was indeed still just a wisp of insistence.
“Exactly!” The prince howled, heaving against the undeniable strengths of the Black Leaf, digging down into his core for the birth-righteous powers bequeathed unto the sons of Dunesil.
Deh Leccend looked over the shoulder of Athaem, ears picking up the approach of more humans. President Manning also spotted the new goggles of his defenders upon the faces of men that could only be agents in the company of Director Farsing and his aging Secretary of Defense. Athaem didn’t need to turn or look to know they were coming, for he could hear them. In light of this arrival, however, Deh Leccend glanced to Shannon, his charge, Firea’csweise, for she stood exposed. Beneath the gaze of the newcomers and their Qual-goggles she might become a target but was for the moment safe.
Sure enough, Director Farsing spotted not a single assailant, but a trio. Two were locked in what looked to be a heated debate, blades borne against one another. Beyond the trio, he spotted President Manning framed in the broken-out window. After a quick survey of the scene, Deputy Director Farsing slowed everyone and hesitantly emerged from the debris of Athaem’s forceful entry -gun raised from within the cloud and echoed by the agents at his sides.
Farsing let one slip, and suddenly as that, it was on.
The shot rang out, and both sides opened fire against the assassin Athaem, though the newcomers to the struggle took various aims, one of which was Shannon, a hopeless shot at something that could not be hit. She flinched and screamed out, fearful regardless of what she knew about the Veil –for it wasn’t long ago she’d been shot by Ben Connelly, and that memory of agony was still too fresh to ignore. Deh Leccend knew her safety as well, but in the distraction her fears presented, Athaem’s magic erupted. White searing light sprang up from within him like razor-edged rays, and he heaved against the Black Leaf, opening up all of his birthright as a son of Dunesil.
He threw Deh Leccend back, shoving so hard the Black Leaf was forced to recoil. It wasn’t much, but enough for Athaem to gain clearance. Deh recoiled like a rattlesnake, and returned instantly, sword scything. But Athaem was swift. Lunging high, the prince vaulted free. Up and over Deh’s head the prince only narrowly avoided the low, lethal sweep of the Black Leaf’s undeniable blade. His high-arching leap took him nearly to the ceiling, then it elaborately twisted, as if a swallow in flight. He bent his aim to allow him a descent upon the president and end this confrontation immediately. In his travels, Athaem drew the fire of the many agents. However, he was once again, beyond them, too swift by half despite being beneath the Veil.
But the Elvine prince was not beyond everyone in the room. Something miraculous occurred, and for Shannon Hunter, time seemed to stand still as she felt a familiar rush return to her system.
“No!” Shannon cried out denial, just as she had against the Black Leaf when he’d come to claim her in the hospital. Unwittingly unleashing an unseen, unknown, restraining power against him, Shannon felt her breath escape as something akin to a bizarre blend of an adrenaline rush and hot iodine injection flooded through her body. Its control was beyond her knowledge, and wouldn’t be nearly as effective as before. But it grappled with the prince, twisting and slowing his fall upon the helpless President Manning.
Athaem twisted free of her resistance as if spinning out of a grapple, avoiding bullets and all as he flicked his free wrist at her. Righting his fall even in his avoidance of all restraint and assault, he plummeted upon the president as Shannon went down in a tumble. She cried out, unable to defend against a vicious slap of forces she couldn’t even describe, but which struck her down regardless, mangling her senses, tangling her limbs and knocking the wind from her like a sucker-punch.
Deh Leccend’s instantaneous decision was then made.
He wheeled about in his own retaliation, using his strike to bring him around and track Athaem’s swiftness. His long blade, quickly grown ridiculous, came around with him, scything the wall and men, far windows and everything and anything else in its path. Deh Leccend lashed out keenly for the high prince without cares as to what he clove, for an assault on his charge was unforgivable. As Black Leaf, charge of the Herald of Change was all he had. That duty overtook all others by order of the Addl’laen, even be the assault by a royal member.
As though god had emptied his bowls of wrath, the White House trembled, then shuddered with the rising tremor of Deh Leccend’s building strike. It went from chaos, to cataclysmic in a single instant, and not even Athaem could have begun to prepare to defend himself. He could deflect bullets, dance upon the air, and reject Shannon’s small magics altogether while falling with a deathblow –but against the undeniable accuracy of a Black Leaf, Athaem was instantly in trouble.
Shocked, he saw the assault coming, but there was nothing more he could do than gasp and seek to recoil from his strike. He wished to defend, but even Athaem knew there was no defending the Black Leaf’s blade. It simply came, a perfectly timed sweep of glittering brilliance, and it was all Athaem could manage to close his eyes.
The sword of the Black Leaf clove him right before the president’s helpless eyes, and Athaem’s cry was painful and wild. However, the great sweep of Deh Leccend’s terrible power was not restricted to a mere sword-stroke against flesh. Severed in twain, Athaem’s body disintegrated like silver dust in a breeze before he could end struck down dead upon the floor, as the Black Leaf’s power destroyed his very soul and more. Deh’s gifts also took that scar upon the White House and amplified it like a bomb had gone off. In the whole scope of the breadth of his stroke, both above and below, the White House was rocked away.
The entirety of the outer wall of the oval office, and all that was above was taken up and hammered outward, tearing free of its seeming permanence since its construction. Under an eruption of volatile winds and forces the likes of which even a hurricane would envy, the entire face of America’s proudest landmark was rocked, torn off, and dumped into its lawn and far beyond.
E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 25