And just that quickly, I’m in your good regards? How long would our rule together last before you stab me in the back?
“I’ve a better idea—you can join your brother in defeat, and your armies can be sent back to the Abyss. After I get what I need.” Not wanting to tip him off, she used her second sight to find Endira, who had remained silent and hidden just outside the entrance to the great hall. “Do it now,” she said telepathically.
Endira stepped into the throne room, an orange nimbus of power surrounding her head. Nera sensed the flow of power as Endira sought to enter the Engineer’s mind.
Her father laughed coldly. “This is the best you could muster to challenge me? Your powers are nothing, elf. You are foolish to rely on one as weak as this, Neratiri. I see my praise was premature,” he snarled. The Engineer flared his metal wings behind his back. One of the inelegantly fashioned feathers, a sharp shard of metal, detached and flew at Endira as if to pierce her breast.
Nera cried out and tried to seize the shard with her mind. It wavered in its trajectory but didn’t stop, the Engineer’s control too great.
He snorted in amusement. “I mean to simply teach you a lesson, Daughter, not kill your weak friend.”
The shard warped and wrapped around Endira’s neck, reminding Nera of the hated collar she herself had once worn.
The Engineer gestured, and Endira was yanked off her feet, suspended in the air by the collar, which dug into her neck. Slowly, she levitated into the center of the chamber. Before Nera could act, blood leaked out of Endira’s nose and ears, but Nera sensed the elf still struggling to get inside the Engineer’s mind as the silent battle played out.
“Nera, I am sorry, but I have not the strength… He is much too powerful.” The words were strained, filled with desperation as they formed in Nera’s mind.
“Take my strength.” She walked over and gripped Endira’s hand with her own and lent the elf her strength.
Endira breathed more easily as she drew on Nera’s own psionic power, which although crude and untrained, was a powerful well. The Engineer suddenly lurched back, and Endira wavered in midair as his grasp faltered.
He reached toward his brother, and the staff rose up, leaving a bloody, gaping hole in the Architect’s chest. The staff flew across the room and into the Engineer’s hand. He lowered the staff, its head pointing at the two of them.
A blast of raw magical energy shot forth. Nera hurriedly raised a sphere of protection as she had seen Malek do, shielding herself and Endira. The ball of energy ricocheted off and slammed into the ceiling. Stone cracked, then the ceiling collapsed atop them.
All was darkness for a moment as the stones shifted, but her shield held. Nera sensed the Engineer sending out a telepathic call for aid.
She spread her arms, hurling the stone away from her in all directions. By virtue of the throne’s connection, she could feel the monks spring into action, engaging a number of demons racing into the castle’s bailey.
The Engineer extended his wings, and they broke apart into a cloud of wickedly sharp shards. The shards rapidly whipped through the air, forming a defensive sphere around the Engineer. The barrier buzzed and hummed like a swarm of angry hornets.
Endira still hung suspended in midair, shielded by Nera’s power. “I had hoped to avoid a costly battle, but I see now I must defeat him first. Get to safety—this likely will be unpleasant.” She teleported Endira outside to the bailey.
Something moved behind her. Too late, she remembered the metal constructs, which had been silent sentinels until then. Pain tore through her lower back and innards. A wedge-shaped metal blade as long as her arm protruded from her belly, loops of intestine sliding off it. Before it could withdraw the blade, Nera gripped it with her own Abyssal iron hand and wrenched it free from the construct. Ignoring the wound in her gut, which spread wider when she pulled the blade through, she hurled the blade at the Engineer, but he deflected it with a wave of his hand.
The construct’s other arm swept down to behead her. Nera focused on it, and the arm melted to slag, sizzling as it dripped to the floor. She chopped her hand against the torso of the construct, and it shattered into splinters. The second construct’s feet rang loudly on the flagstones as it moved to attack.
She gestured toward the Engineer, and a blast of lightning shot from the palm of her hand. The bolt slammed into the whirling barrier of shards, exploding into a crackling sphere before it arced into the Engineer’s staff and was absorbed. With a triumphant cry, he aimed the staff, and the lightning bolt blasted back at her, striking her in the chest and throwing her to the wall.
Before she could retaliate, the world exploded in a flash of sparks as a white-hot lance of psionic force thrust into her mind. Her limbs twitched, and she fell to the floor.
“You were never meant to rule Nexus, Daughter. I was. You delude yourself by believing your mother’s nonsense, divine though she may be.”
The searing pain in her head was nearly overwhelming. She was weakening, injured and unable to heal herself.
Belatedly, she realized the Engineer was more powerful and better prepared than she suspected, having had millennia to plan his war. She had been a fool to assume she’d seize victory without a protracted fight against such a crafty opponent.
***
A pair of shadowy figures blocked the path leading up to the fortress gatehouse. Behind them, the gates stood open and the portcullis raised.
Waresh halted and squinted at the pair before him. He was surprised to find he recognized them.
“Haskell!” His fists tightened on Heartsbane’s haft.
Even though free of the axe’s influence, he still saw blood at the sight of his old foe. This was the barbarian bastard—a rival retrieval officer—who had brought Waresh in so they could slap that cursed collar around his neck.
The woman beside him was the witch who had been by Haskell’s side during his capture years earlier. She also was a retrieval officer by the name of Vhijera, as ruthless as Haskell by all accounts. Her skin appeared to glimmer like burnished metal, reflecting the glow of fires burning in the city, and her hair fell back in a black velvet curtain from a face that was coldly beautiful. Her violet eyes widened.
“You were right—so he appears,” Vhijera muttered in surprise with a sideways glance at Haskell.
“Waresh Hammerhelm.” The barbarian’s voice rumbled as he nodded. “You’ve finally come, here upon Nexus’s demise.” He was a huge man, standing a muscle-bound seven feet tall. Scars covered his face and corded arms. He held an axe in either hand, unthreateningly, but Waresh knew better than to trust him.
The woman still had her saber sheathed, watching with interest.
“Aye, I’ve come to kick yer big barbarian arse all the way to the Abyss!” Waresh strode forward, axe raised.
Haskell made no move to attack. “We stand here at the end of all things, and you seek to fight me over an old score?” His voice was incredulous.
“I told you this is foolish,” Vhijera snapped.
“Why wouldn’t I seek to settle an old score?” Waresh looked at them suspiciously. “Why else would ye stand in me way?”
“We don’t stand in your way, fool. The barbarian wants to help you, though you are too thickheaded to realize it.” Vhijera’s violet eyes were hard as she stared at him.
Waresh shook his head immediately. “I need no help from killer scum.” He spat on the ground. “If ye don’t mean to fight, then stand aside.”
Haskell’s gaze rose to a spot over Waresh’s shoulder. “You need our help, like it or not, dwarf.” He raised his axes. “Without our aid, you die here.”
Vhijera’s saber flashed and was in her hand, her gaze behind him as well. “Say the word, and we’ll leave him to his own devices.”
“If ye think to trick me with some fool…” He trailed off as he heard iron-shod boots striking the cobblestones. He whirled to find a dozen armored uvkra moving to surround him.
Waresh bac
ked away, sizing up his opponents. Even without considering Heartsbane’s fading magic and his own wounds beginning to take their toll, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to take them all on without the assistance of the other two retrieval officers.
“Bah! Perhaps I spoke too soon to decline aid,” he muttered. He was somewhat surprised to find the pair still remaining, a couple paces behind him.
Haskell grinned. “Now some sense seeps into that thick head of yours.”
“Indeed. Not a complete fool, then.” Vhijera suddenly was enveloped in a flash of bright silver.
Waresh blinked and found she’d disappeared. “Where—”
“Diversion. Attack, fool!” Haskell charged the squad of uvkra, twin axes whirling before him.
The silver light flashed behind the demons, and Vhijera reappeared, saber stabbing into the base of the skull of one of the heavily armored fiends, slipping between its gorget and helm. Before it could fall, she flashed and disappeared again.
The uvkra beside the fallen one turned in surprise just as Vhijera reappeared behind it. She delivered a similar stroke.
A spear stabbed at her, but she flashed and was gone. Haskell blasted into the rear of the spear wielder, his axes hacking deep into its backplate then whirling and striking at another one.
Three uvkra charged at Waresh, and he lost sight of his two unlikely allies. He blocked a halberd strike. Another brought a greatsword down in a great sweeping attack, which he avoided, moving inside the demon’s reach. Its gauntlets slammed him on the helm, but Waresh shrugged that off, burying Heartsbane in the uvkra’s thigh. It growled as the axe nearly hacked its leg off, and it collapsed back into the third, disrupting its strike with a morning star.
The halberd slammed Waresh in the back, but he was expecting the hit and rolled with it, coming up behind two others fighting Haskell. He came out of his roll and cleaved into the base of the back of one of Haskell’s opponents, severing the spine. The creature instantly dropped. Haskell, in turn, stepped past it and buried one of his axes in the face of the uvkra who had struck Waresh with the halberd, crunching in its visor and felling the fiend.
Waresh turned and attacked the uvkra with the morning star. It swung high, and Waresh ducked low, bringing Heartsbane in a downward chop to hack off the front of its foot. The beast roared and staggered forward, falling to one knee, which brought it in line at the perfect height for Heartsbane’s next swing to remove its head.
A pain flared in Waresh’s upper back, driving him to the ground and splitting his chin open on the cobblestones. He was able to turn his head enough to see another uvkra standing over him. Its spear tip had pierced his backplate and lodged in the thick muscle of his upper back. The demon rocked the spear side to side, and Waresh grunted in pain. It withdrew the spear and prepared to run him all the way through, the next strike likely fatal.
Silver flashed behind his opponent, and the uvkra disappeared.
Waresh grunted in surprise. He pushed himself up to his knees, the wound an angry burning in his back. Haskell’s scarred hand appeared in front of him. Waresh allowed the big man to pull him to his feet. He looked around, surprised to see all the uvkra were down.
“Where did…” He looked around in confusion.
Haskell nodded toward the gatehouse.
Waresh looked up in time to see the uvkra with the spear plummeting to the ground from the fifty-foot height of the gatehouse.
Vhijera leaned through the crenellation and watched the demon smack onto the ground below with bone-breaking force. After a moment, she flashed again and reappeared before them.
“Useful skill.” Waresh grunted in grudging admiration. He tried not to think about the time she had used the same trick on him, with nearly the same result.
Vhijera’s smile was lovely but cold.
Haskell slapped him on the back, nearly knocking him over from surprise. “The way is clear. I believe this is where our paths part.”
Waresh didn’t know what to say. He looked around at the corpses and spat on the nearest one. “Well fought, I must admit. Don’t think this makes me forget about our score, though.” He glared at the barbarian.
Haskell grinned in response. “Shall we meet again, I suppose I’ll give you the chance to test your mettle, Hammerhelm. Until then.” He gave a bow, and the pair walked away, back toward the center of town.
Waresh watched them go for a moment, puzzled at their motivation for helping him. “Why did ye come here to aid me? And how did ye know I’d be here?” he hollered after them.
“I foresaw this day coming long ago,” Haskell called back. “Thus, the reason you were the only mark I ever retrieved that still drew breath. Now, go and fulfill the gods’ will, Hammerhelm!”
“Aye, gods’ will indeed,” he grumbled. Ignoring the pain of his latest wound, he strode through the gatehouse and into certain death.
Perhaps Reiktir has given me this chance to redeem meself.
***
Arron took to the air again although his right wing was damaged and the pain of a dozen or so wounds ailed him. He flew high above the horde, out of range of their spears. A flight of erinys kept their distance warily, occasionally loosing their flaming arrows into the defenders.
He had been momentarily puzzled when the general he had been battling had disappeared in a burst of ichor. The acid corroding his scales was gone, and he felt himself rejuvenated.
Once he sensed Nera’s presence nearby, he smiled to himself, understanding. Her presence shone like the great lamp of a lighthouse amongst tiny candles.
The battle was not going well—the defenders were being driven deeper into the Funnel. Seeing a dozen or so drolnac scaling the city walls, he swept by and bathed them in dragonfire. The blackened creatures curled up and fell to the ground, and scorch marks remained on the walls. The defenders waved and cheered him as he flew overhead, making a wide circuit of the city.
He could sense Nera making her way to the fortress. For a moment, he was tempted to join her but decided against it. The defenders needed him more. Nera would have to succeed on her own. The fact that she might fail didn’t even cross his mind.
Arron banked and circled back toward the battle when a tremendous blast of sound rang out, startling him. As he passed through the smoke, his keen eyesight picked out Yosrick standing before a cone-shaped field of fallen fiends, celebrating his victory.
He smiled to himself. Seeing an unaware demon flying below, he dove, catching and rending the hapless creature in twain with his talons. Gore spattered the rooftops below as he dropped its remains.
The gates of the city had fallen, he was surprised to see. A pitched battle against a greater demon was raging, led by his friend Wyat. He couldn’t safely join the battle in dragon form, so he flew back out over the Ashen Plains, torching another group of krabuk below.
A sudden frenzy at one of the portals drew his attention. The unit of fiends closest to the leftmost portal was in a panic. The gate crackled with energy, flickering, and then it distorted and stretched, like a too-small sack about to tear while being pulled over a watermelon.
A powerful sense of dread struck him just before a maw plunged through the portal, purplish mist puffing from its mouth. Then came a massive head, followed by a spiny back and, lastly, a great, lashing tail.
A wave of fear roiled over everyone, the legions of the Abyss fleeing from one of their own. The defenders quailed, looking around in confusion as dread washed over them.
Arron and his companions knew what that portended—the doom of Nexus.
For the turmahr had come through the portal.
Chapter 33
Nera felt the turmahr the moment it set foot through the portal—like a sudden blight upon the fabric of Nexus itself. Even had she been able to face the beast, she likely couldn’t defeat it. She had her hands full as it was.
The second construct’s blade swept down as she struggled to defend herself from the Engineer’s telepathic assault. She just managed
to raise her iron hand. Iron rang on iron like a death knell, the impact briefly numbing Nera’s left arm as she caught the construct’s blade in her hand.
The Engineer thrust out his iron staff, which had elongated until it was the length of a lance. Its infernal enchantment soured her gut, much as the touch of Bedlam Judge had at one time. The end of the staff had become a sharp point, which drove into her chest, piercing between her breasts, where the blade of Lassiter had once struck her down. The wound wasn’t fatal, for she was no longer mortal. Yet the blow was damaging and the effect of the enchantment even more so. She collapsed against the wall, the staff throbbing like some vile mosquito’s proboscis as it drained her mana, disrupting her use of her magic.
Her newly acquired divine strength and magical power began draining from her at an alarming rate as the fell staff siphoned it.
The construct suddenly split into thousands of pieces, which wrapped around Nera, cutting her flesh, and reformed into links of chain that rooted into the wall and cinched tight around her.
She was immobilized, the hideous staff still embedded in her chest.
“And so you shall fall, as did my brother before you. Your magics are useless against the staff’s power. Lord Shaol himself granted Tauuavgir Kottaek’ar to me, which in the fell speech means Sorrowful Cessation. Poetic and fitting, is it not?”
Nera couldn’t reply as agony twisted her body, her mind confused and pained by the unrelenting psionic assault.
***
Idrimel knew the Engineer’s forces had decisively gained the upper hand, simply by virtue of the turmahr’s presence.
The immense beast fought for no side, however. Any demons too slow to flee were indiscriminately crushed to pulp by its massive feet, although their numbers were so great it made little difference. The organized units broke and fled from the turmahr, many toward the Funnel, others parallel to the front, while yet others tried to pass back through the other three portals, causing congestion and skirmishes with the unknowing fiends still trying to enter Nexus.
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