Storm Kings (Song of the Aura, Book Six)

by Downs, Gregory J.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Chaose Sate

  Chapter Two: Chaose Morten

  Chapter Three: Bellia Mindum

  Chapter Four: Achillais Victori

  Chapter Five: Halanyad Risene

  Chapter Six: Destune Lauda

  Chapter Seven: Shardum Vox

  Chapter Eight: Achillais Requiem

  Chapter Nine: Enclave Atrum

  Chapter Ten: Histrya Vox

  Chapter Eleven: Magise Ambala

  Chapter Twelve: Melodia Ultem

  Chapter Thirteen: Umbalo Ultem

  Chapter Fourteen: Hiberne Cruorz

  Chapter Fifteen: Medeo Nox

  Chapter Sixteen: Virtus Deo

  Chapter Seventeen: Fidesa Ascendr

  Chapter Eighteen: Vasta Cataclysma

  Epilogue, Part One: Fatalus Vanum

  Epilogue, Part Two: Initio Ultem

  Storm Kings

  Song of the Aura

  Book Six

  A Novel by Gregory J. Downs

  Copyright 2012

  This book is dedicated to the Lord, who inspires me.

  To my family, who believed in me,

  And to you, the reader,

  Who has dared to follow me on my quest.

  Chapter One: Chaose Sate

  Tannarch Avarine, Queen of the Blackwood, stood alone in her tower, surrounded by death.

  No less than five Pit Striders surrounded her, clad in black, with blades that extended from their gloves like claws. Red eyes stared at her from beneath heavy, drooping hoods. Their breathing rasped menacingly as they slowly closed her in, stalking forward with the assurance of victory. Two of them limped slightly… her guards had given a valiant account of themselves.

  A month of conquest, and I hold my father’s throne for only a day, she thought sourly. But this was no time for weakness. It was hold or die. The flickering green light cast eerie shadows of the Pit Striders across her face. They tightened their circle around her, and Avarine could’ve sworn she heard a hissing chuckle.

  Not today. You will not have me today.

  Avarine bowed her head, letting herself drift into that other place, where the world was a swirling pool of specters, and hard reality was no bond. The Power of Spirit.

  The Pit Striders, taking her reaction as surrendering, moved in. One seized her hands, roughly binding them, while another seized her about the waist, and a third wrenched her head back. She cringed, trying not to break her concentration… It was happening too quickly. She was too tired… too beaten… what if this didn’t work?

  Then, through the fog of the Otherworld, she discerned a presence… no, two presences, bearing down on her from afar, piercing the cage of darkness the Pit Striders’ minds formed around her tired spirit. They were like two brilliant balls of flame, shining in her mind, blinding her mental vision: one white, like heaven-fire, one red, like the Blaze-fury.

  She was forced to her knees. The Pit Striders were wrapping her in black chains they conjured from smoke and shadow. She would never escape…

  …the presence of white flame shuddered, sparked, and reached out to her. It touched her mind…

  “Tulen!” she screamed. “Novashar!”

  Yellow light arced out from her body in a hundred flashing tendrils. There was an explosion, and the Pit Striders were hurled away from her with tremendous force, flesh smoking as they thudded against the stone walls of her tower. When the noise had subsided, she knelt where she was, too stunned to move. She was certain she had recognized those strange presences, and that they had just worked through her. Her head was spinning, trying to realize what it all meant. How could she recognize Spirit Striders she had never met? That’s what they had to be…

  “The prophet,” she realized. Eyes moist, she stumbled to her feet amid the haze that still hung in the air from her attack. “The prophet is coming, at last…”

  ~

  Gribly gazed across the ravaged landscape and shuddered. Mortenhine hadn’t been the most hospitable place, from what Lauro had told him, but this was a new low. The towers that periodically broke the treetops had almost all been knocked down. Huge portions of the forest itself had been burned away, and the ground beneath blasted apart to reveal naked sections of the M’tant’s underground tunnels. Flames were everywhere, devouring earth and sky alike with ravenous hunger.

  But the most frightening sight of all was the great stone tree: the towering keep carved like a massive redwood that was the center of the Wood Nymph city. It was surrounded by golems, destroyers, and other minions of the Golden Nation, in undulating waves of destruction that struck its sides again and again, clambering upward, burrowing inward, doing all they could to eat it away. But even that did not frighten him.

  In the midst of the horde stood a towering figure seemingly formed from the bowels of the earth. Green fire blazed in eyes far larger than a human head, and the creature’s rippling, debris-strewn body was at least ten times the height of a man. Its flesh was of churning stone and soil, connected with hideously thick vines that surfaced here and there, straining as if they formed the very sinews of the unholy thing.

  Wood Demon, Gribly thought, grimacing. He held tighter to the far-eagle that had brought him here, ignoring the practiced calm of the soldier who steered it. Easy for him to stay composed… he was a Sky Strider! Gribly felt sick, and not just from the height.

  Clouds obscured them from the view of the enemy below… but not for long. In the week or so since Lauro had been crowned, numerous rumors had been disturbing the Remnant camp. Rumors of Golden Nation automatons that could actually fly, faster than the wind itself! He hoped they weren’t true… it could nullify Vastion’s one single advantage in the Last War.

  Think about the mission, idiot, he reminded himself. Mortenhine won’t save itself!

  “Mancaptain!” Gribly yelled over the roaring wind of the far-eagle’s passage. The soldier guiding the beast nodded in his direction, expertly keeping his gaze on the tumult ahead without wasting motion. “Steer over the Wood Demon!” Gribly told him, once he knew he had his attention. “Right over top! I’m going to hit it from above!”

  This time the Mancaptain’s eyes did turn to him, and in disbelief. Jump? He mouthed. Gribly nodded. The soldier stared for a moment longer, then nodded again and changed their course. The eagle now bore to the left and slightly downwards, cutting through wisps of the ghost-gray clouds that huddled across all of Vast in these final days.

  Gribly gripped the leather straps that bound him to the far-eagle. This was going to be touch-and-go of the deadliest kind… one small miscalculation could kill him, and he was dangerously far from his native element. Doesn’t matter what you Stride, he thought, a fall from this height will kill you…

  A few hundred yards to go, and he would have to do it. The Mancaptain was increasing their speed, hoping to get away before any Pit Striders could target him and send a complementary ball of fire streaking into the sky. I hope this works. Gribly knew he’d have to jump early; at this speed he’d be falling downwards and sideways, still buffeted by the speed he was moving now.

  Not so different from leaping across rooftops in Ymeer, he reckoned… but all the more deadly if he failed.

  A hundred yards. Seventy-five. Fifty. Gribly reached for the buckles, frantically ripping them open. His hands shook, but his mind was icy clear.

  Twenty-five. The far-eagle dipped dangerously low past the cloud cover, and plumes of flame streaked upward as they were sighted. The last buckle came free. Gribly pulled Traveller’s staff free from its place jammed between two knobs of the saddle.

  Fifteen. The Mancaptain glanced at him
again. Now! The look said.

  Gribly prayed to the Aura, and jumped.

  Wind rushed by him on all sides like a roaring cataract. He seized the staff in both hands, angling his body along it like a diver’s, trying as hard as he could to resist the battering the wind seemed determined to give him. He was an arrow in its fall, he was lightning to earth… he was Going to die… I’m going to die…

  The Wood Demon turned its head toward him in the midst of punching a hole in Mortenhine’s tower. Compared to his rapid fall, the monster seemed to be moving in slow motion. For half a second, he fancied he saw fear in its fiery eyes.

  All at once, his own fear faded. I can DO this. I can WIN.

  Gribly gripped the staff tighter as the wind currents whipped him straight at the demon’s turning head. The Power of Stone filled him as he prepared to Stride.

  PROPHET! Roared the demon’s mental shout. Gribly ignored it… he had come here to conquer, not to speak.

  Half a second before impact, Gribly forced his staff in a sweeping motion, spreading his grip apart and reaching into the Wood Demon’s own substance. It was bound to the demon’s will, but he would wrest it away and Stride it himself!

  The Wood Demon’s featureless, lumpy face exploded as he ripped it apart, forming a net of vines and earth to slow his fall. Whump. He struck and passed through, slowing but not stopped. Whump-whump. Two more followed, and he dropped with ease onto the wrecked mass of what had been the demon’s shoulder. Its head was caved in from crown to jaw, with only the semblance of structure around the glowing green eyes.

  “Leave this place, or I will slay you!” Gribly shouted, menacing his foe with the staff. The demon’s only response was a guttural roar that rumbled up from inside it, coursing through the holes in its leafy, earthy flesh.

  Then, in a storm of earth and emerald fire, its head re-formed. Twisting its thick, vine-twined neck towards Gribly, it fixed him in its malevolent gaze. “Blast,” he cursed, and raised his staff in defense.

  Without warning, vines snaked around him from the Wood Demon’s arm and shoulder, snagging his legs and waist like living things, trying to pull him free and fling him into the open air. Faster than thought, he let the Power of Stone slip away, drawing on Spirit instead. Traveller’s staff glowed brightly in his hands, forming a hypnotic display of light as he whirled it back and forth, severing vines in droves. They sizzled and snapped, one after another after another… but there were always more.

  “Enough!” Gribly finally shouted. Ignoring the vines for the moment, he lifted the staff high, then thrust it downward with every ounce of strength he possessed. It penetrated the demon’s flesh and sunk down nearly four-fifths of its length. Oily smoke poured out of the burning wound, and Gribly was splattered with hot, sticky stuff like pine resin… only thicker, darker, and much more foul-smelling.

  Aura’s light, bane of night, shine forth the pall of winter’s blight! He voiced the verse in his head, hoping it would be enough; his mouth would not move to speak the words aloud. There was a sickening drain on his strength as the complicated Spirit Stride he’d initiated rushed into existence. Traveller had been teaching him… and teaching him a lot.

  The air around his body shimmered as a nearly invisible force rippled down his arm, through the staff, and plunged shuddering into the Wood Demon’s flesh. Sound died. The demon went still. Gribly felt an incredible pressure press against his chest and limbs, and for a moment he thought the Spirit Stride would overwhelm him.

  Peace, brother. We fight together. Gramling’s voice whispered in the back of his head, and the pressure evaporated as invigorating warmth blossomed up though Gribly’s body. His twin was nearby, feeding him strength!

  Gribly pushed on the Stride, forcing it deeper into the Wood Demon’s body. Gramling’s energy surged through him, and the air around him warped into a myriad of twisting colors. His sense of hearing returned in time to hear the bellowing of the Wood Demon as it convulsed, white light piercing its vine-and-stone hide in a hundred places.

  Ear-splitting cries broke up from the attacking hordes as they realized their champion was losing. Gribly held onto the staff for dear life as the demon buckled, swaying and thrashing as its form was eaten away from the inside. The light around the prophet dissipated as the energy of his attack served its purpose. Arcs of yellow light flashed here and there across the demon’s body, and with one, final, shuddering BOOM the Wood Demon collapsed on itself.

  “Blast,” Gribly swore. He’d stabbed directly into the heart of the creature, destroying its demon core… but now he’d go down with it if he wasn’t lucky.

  He pulled the staff free, leap-flipping away as the earthen titan gave way around him. He shaped the world to his will, using mind and body both. He Strode, and formed a curling rampway of debris from the falling corpse of the Wood Demon. His falling motion carried him down it like a deadly slide, depositing him in the air twenty feet or so from the ground outside Mortenhine’s main tower.

  Whump. He landed in a cloud of dust, absorbing the shock with Stone Striding, the vanquished demon thudding into the ground behind him with earth-shattering force. The wreckage of the thing surged around him, melting into an ashy cloud in seconds, much like the Sea Demon he had defeated in Mythigrad.

  You have grown, Brother. Gramling’s voice again. Their connection was tentative, and they were not so much reunited as forced together by necessity… but there was no denying that together they were much stronger than apart.

  As the ash cloud parted, Gribly got painfully to his feet. That Stride had weakened him, and he could only hope that the Golden Nation had retreated when the Wood Demon fell.

  With a wave of his hand, he forced the remainder of the ash to settle. He was standing at the bottom of the wrecked flight of stairs that had once led up to Mortenhine’s keep gate. The stairs and a large portion of the stone keep were in ruins, broken gray matching the color and hue of the skies above. Cold wind tugged at Gribly as he turned slowly to take in the surrounding countryside.

  Horde after horde of Golden Nation troops surged across the blackened terrain, trampling the charred remnants of the trees they had torn down in swathes. Several Fists of golems loped forwards with the foot soldiers, metal screeching on metal, spewing fire at him as they came.

  They weren’t afraid of him. They were angry. Really, really angry.

  “Blast, blast, blast,” Gribly said, and tried to turn and run up the broken path to Mortenhine’s main tower.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Ssstone Ssstrider,” hissed the Wraiths, materializing from the wisps of smoke that pock-marked every yard of the battleground. Fellsparks danced in the hands of each Coalskin, ready to be unleashed on him at the first move he made. Gribly cursed again, inwardly… it had taken longer for the enemy Striders to feel the increase in power the rebels had experienced… but they felt it now, and he was all the worse for it.

  Gribly swung the staff in one hand, twirling it behind his back in readiness for the battle he knew would not favor him.

  The Pit Striders stepped forward, and for the first time he thought he caught concern in their eyes. Did they know his limits? Was he really such a war god to them that they would fear him, six or more to one?

  The howling, gnashing hordes closed in behind him, flanking him, closing in on him in a deadly circle. Now the Pit Striders didn’t look so unsure. Now, they knew they would win.

  Gribly shifted his footing. If he could crack the earth under their feet, perhaps…

  …It was almost as if the earth responded to his thoughts. Without warning, the ground shuddered, rippling outward like the waves of the sea. Thinking quickly, he struck the ground with his staff, Stone Striding to ensure he wouldn’t be knocked off his feet.

  The Pit Striders weren’t nearly so lucky. The earth caved in as it passed them, sucking them down into its bowels with a noise like hungry thunder. Dust swirled and fountains of shattered stone leaped from the ground in a hundred places. Gribly threw
his free hand across his eyes, and the earth formed a temporary shield around him.

  Then the earthquake was gone, as quickly as it had appeared.

  Gribly let the earth-shield disintegrate, turning about in awe. The reckless might of the quake had left him standing alone on a precarious platform of earth… while the Pit Striders, the golems, and most of the Golden Nation’s attacking horde had simply disappeared. He was standing amidst the largest crater Vast had probably ever seen: a hollowed-out graveyard of twisted metal limbs and broken machines, bloodied corpses and flickering fires.

  What in the Blaze… Gribly lifted his staff, and the platform of earth collapsed neatly beneath him, pouring away like melting ice until he stood on a broken bit of boulder, feeling dizzy and more than a little overwhelmed.

  Dirt and rock spurted from the ground directly in front of him. He stepped back warily, but some instinct told him he was not in danger. The funnel of earth whirled round and round, spraying bits of refuse outward, then collapsed, sinking back into the ground, pouring down a hole that had not been there before.