by Damien Lake
For the briefest instant, he felt surrounded by a crowd who silently lent him their strength.
And the energy slowly moved
Marik pulled the power upward. As much of it as he could. He crafted no channel to direct it. A perfectly usable channel was already in place.
Xenos’ drawing channel swelled. From a finger-wide trickle, to wrist-thick, to a flow that matched Marik’s torso. Marik rose alongside the channel, pulling the power in his wake.
It picked up speed. He kept pulling additional power from the reservoir, forcing it to join the flow. Drawing energy was no different than a water siphon. Once it flowed, it would never stop until it ran out or was cut off.
The flow increased through the channel. Marik moved faster than it to keep ahead. Together they rose toward the surface in a volcanic eruption.
Now! You overlooked a weakness, Xenos! A mage working so basic it is the first thing an apprentice masters! It is so routine that no experienced mage ever thinks about it!
Marik drew energy from his reserves. Racing upward, he crafted it into a needle, an attack he had never mastered fully. An attack he had learned from Caresse during their practices in the horses’ vale. With all his magical might, he hurled it straight into Xenos’ surge shield.
The minor shield, whose sole purpose lay in protecting its weaver from errant energies surging along an incoming channel, burst under the focused needlepoint. Its curving surface popped easily. Xenos had erected it simultaneously with his channel. Any longtime mage would have. In all likelihood, he did it without any conscious thought.
Xenos felt his shield shatter. His attention immediately fixed on his channel.
Too late, you goat-loving demon spawn!
Marik had timed it perfectly. The onrushing energy thundered past where the shield once stood in nearly the same instant he destroyed it. He hovered in the etheric while the upsurge swept by.
It moved fast. Once it started, nothing could stop it. Xenos had less than a second to realize what was happening. If he were the fastest thinker alive, he would sever his channel before the influx could hit him. Marik held his breath. Or would have if he possessed a body.
Xenos failed. Marik roared in triumph, then shot back into his body to watch without being roasted by the fierce energies.
The tremendous power hit Xenos like a mad Taur. He arched his back and screamed. Power flooded into him far too fast to deal with. His aura-shield blew away in an instant. In its place, flames burst out across his robe through a hundred tears. Small, candle-sized flames. Nothing compared to the fire bursting from his head, rendering his hair to ash in seconds. Shocked cries from the soldiers were lost under Xenos’ wail.
Marik’s skull pained him unbearably. Exposure headache. He could feel his scalp splitting. His brains oozing from his ears. That didn’t stop him from pounding the platform under Dietrik’s pooling blood, shouting, “You wanted it, you bastard! Now you’ve got it! You’ve got it all!”
Xenos’ arms folded. He clawed at his shoulders with razored fingers, howling in unimaginable pain. Smoke poured from his mouth as if he were a chimney. The power surrounded him in a shroud.
“That’s right, you whore-master! That’s right, you mother—”
Marik stopped in mid-word, his mouth hanging open. The energy around Xenos dimmed. Smoke had stopped rushing from mouth and nose. Xenos still stood arched, staring into the treetops…but he could not possibly be regaining control! He could not be!
“No!” Marik screamed. “Don’t you dare! You’re dead! You’re dead!”
Power still flowed in a river along the channel. Except where it surrounded Xenos, it faded completely. His fingers twitched. They slowly left his maimed shoulders in shaky trembles. The man blinked.
“That’s impossible! You can’t do that!” Marik pounded splintered wood without noticing, tearing gashes in his hand.
A tremendous energy burst exploded away from Xenos. It forced a ripple through the water until it struck the platform. The four immersed solders were slammed against the edge with pained cries.
Loud cracks presaged broken wood snapping from the boards closest to the pool. Jagged pieces flew back. Marik screamed. Blood streamed across his face. His right eyeball splattered over his cheek, forced from the socket by a spearing deck fragment.
He rolled to his back. Half his vision had vanished. The pain burned fiercely. Marik stared with a single eye at the inhuman monster over the water with the knowledge that it had all been for nothing. His pain had been in vain, and it was only the beginning of what lay in store.
The flash of movement above Xenos failed to register in Marik’s awareness until it was already over.
* * * * *
Colbey crashed into the demon. Hard. He felt his legs snap from the force. His sword drove deep into the demon’s chest from the Guardian’s body weight.
The fall from the upper Euvea was hardly broken by the demon’s carcass. Colbey had braced his sword so he stood on the T-guard during the plummet. Its full length drove down through the right lung. Missing the black heart beating within the human guise.
His impact overcame whatever foul magic the demon used to stand upon the pool’s surface. They smashed into the water. Colbey’s decent had hardly slowed. The water felt like solid stone.
His ribs shattered. His left arm also broke. In how many places? What did it matter? At least his right arm remained functional. It kept an iron grip on the sword hilt. Dragging the demon down.
The demon who refused to die. Still it screamed in defiance. Bubbles cascaded from its mouth. Light burned inside its eyes.
Colbey pulled the demon to him. He embraced the murderer, forcing his broken legs to wrap around the demon’s waist. His good hand reached down to his belt.
The demon fought back. It raked Colbey’s face with its talons. Blood clouded the water between them.
Colbey drove his knife into the demon’s throat. It spasmed wildly several times before slowing.
In its eyes, the light brightened. Across its body the glow that had surrounded it moments before Colbey’s impact returned. It intensified, making the water boil. Outshining the illuminated forest pool.
This was finally the end. Colbey pulled the demon’s body tightly to his, and slipped into the artesian well with it.
Around him, faces populated the depths.
Familiar faces.
Cool hands. Welcoming smiles.
Smiles for one no longer foresworn.
* * * * *
Marik stared in astonishment at the place Xenos and Colbey had vanished. His head was weighed down by the wood in his eye. He yanked it free with a brief stab of pain he hardly noticed. It hurt far less than his pounding skull.
“Colbey! Colbey!”
Gods, was the scout all right? Where had he come from? Had he waited the entire time until he found the one opening he could use to make an effective strike? For the moment when the aura-shield vanished and the enemy was laid bare?
“Colbey!”
The soldiers were shouting as well. Those by the platform were climbing over the edge. Marik spared no attention for them, nor for Mendell angrily issuing orders to the two armored soldiers sharing his root.
He peered into the etheric’s depths. What he saw…he was unsure what he saw down there. Two bodies were deep in the water. Neither moved. The power still flowed to one. That would be Xenos.
And yet, it increased by the moment. The flow from the reservoir was increasing rapidly. It looked as if the more that siphoned away, the faster the drain became.
Xenos’ body glowed brighter than a star within the pool. The surface started bubbling frantically. Steam rose from the water until an untamed hell spring boiled from the well. Flames briefly curled up through the bubbles following an intense flare from Xenos.
The spring burst high into the air. Water rose in a geyser a hundred feet across. And inside, Marik could see the reservoir’s energy streaming into the canopy. Scalding rain drenched t
he men, who yelped in pain.
Energy struck the treetops. It hesitated for an instant. Marik watched in trepidation. Without warning, it exploded in waves of raw, etheric power. Concentrated energy that expanded up, down, left, right, forward and back. Its expanding wall vibrated from its sheer might as it rushed toward the men on the platform’s sad remains.
“No!”
The shout would have startled Marik if so many worrisome things weren’t already in progress. He looked to the side and found the Red Man crouching on one knee. His scaly hand punched forward toward the approaching energy wall.
From his claw tips spread a shield that shone in every hue of red Marik could name. It formed a dome around him, Marik, Dietrik and the one-eyed Arronath.
The reservoir’s energy wall struck with deitific force. Tornadoes were mild. Landslides were warm-ups. Nothing compared to this.
Massive swaths of the remaining decking were torn away when the wall hammered into the platform. They were ripped up in an ear-splitting splintering of wood and carried into the forest. Water flowed over the platform in five-foot waves. Yet it parted around the Red Man’s protective dome. All they could feel within was the earth leaping, making their deck section shudder in jackrabbit jumps.
Sooner or later, too much of the platform will be torn away. Nothing will anchor our little piece, and then we’ll be smashed against the roots as surely as a ship on the rocks!
The energy wall passed them. It continued into the forest beyond. Marik breathed a sigh until he noticed the reservoir still regurgitated a Euvea-thick power stream into the tree canopy.
“The ending has yet to be incepted!” the Red Man warned.
There was no question that he might be wrong. A second energy wall burst from the trees, far outstripping the first. Followed by a third. Soon an endless assault ricocheted through the village.
So much energy raged in a tumultuous thunderstorm that beyond the dome the air was pure white. A thick fog that battered everything it could touch. The last sight Marik beheld before the whiteness clouded all else out were the airborne buildings raining down from their ancestral perches.
Marik yanked the wooden shrapnel from his arm during the long candlemark of the assault. After questioning the Red Man on the advisability, he kicked the Arronath awake. He helped Marik bind a tourniquet around Dietrik’s stump fashioned from a tunic sleeve and bits of wreckage. His friend had lost two inches off his wrist as well as a hand. With luck, that would be the extent of his loss.
The entire time, his head hurt bad enough to make him wish the Red Man had not bothered. His previous exposure headache had lasted days. This one might never fade completely. At the least it would plague him until winter. He hardly felt the raw wound from his missing eye over the splitting headache.
When the white fog of energy finally cleared, the Red Man let the dome down. Marik stood on legs that were leaden.
He looked for the reservoir. It was gone. The siphon must have drained it completely. Seven thin lines continued on their courses without dumping their energy anywhere.
“It is an ill reason to celebrate,” the Red Man informed him after his ragged cheer that no one could ever tap the reservoir again.
“What are you talking about? It’s gone! No one like Xenos can ever try and resurrect the Earth God!”
“I concur on the benefit such an outcome has granted. But you little realize the cost at which it has been purchased. Study, as you will.”
Marik followed his pointing claw. The two armored soldiers were laying on a different root entirely. One’s body had been mangled. His friend had survived the onslaught, though he lay coughing and weak. No doubt he would never move on his own without help.
“He must have a healthy constitution to withstand that amount of beating.”
The Red Man shook his head. “Never a physical force would such an outpouring be. Raw life force cannot destroy. Only when suitably crafted for such will it ever. It encourages growth, or change, only.”
“This deck looks pretty destroyed to me.”
“Only those parts already damaged. Those parts which were whole remain so. As well, only those men already injured in some fashion were further wounded. Their wounds grew, as life force encouraged them.”
“That makes no sense to me at all. Are you saying the men who weren’t hurt at all made it through without a scratch?” He searched for Mendell. There was no sign of the dirty bastard. Don’t tell me he escaped!
“No,” the Red Man sighed. “Change on such an order as this would affect each individual in equally individual fashions. Partake of this sight, and understand.”
This time Marik found his gaze directed at a…thing. He missed seeing it completely for several moments. When he finally did, he jumped back in revulsion.
It was man-sized, and fairly humanoid in appearance. Except its skin matched the slimy green of a toad. The body was emaciated, its limbs even thinner. Long fingers reached to curl around handholds on the root it clung to. A wide mouth split the entire lower half of its head. Twin nostrils in the flat face were all the nose it possessed. Around the bald crown, a narrow ring of stringy moss formed hair. Pale eyes stared back at him.
“A’ppa!” it croaked without warning. Marik felt nauseous. “Kapp! Kappa!” Sharp white teeth glinted lethally.
Most horrible of all, visible when it dove into the water and swam away with webbed feet…it wore the same pants the wading soldiers had worn. Ragged. Torn. Yet, the same.
Sickened, Marik tore his gaze away. He found the Red Man bent over what he had at first taken for a tree branch washed up against the platform. A second glance revealed it to be a badly charred corpse. It was nearly incinerated. Across the chest was a spiky metal mess that had once been a sword hilt until it melted and cooled simultaneously underwater.
The Red Man reared back his clawed hand and punched it forcefully into the blackened skull. Marik felt his gorge making a serious attempt to race for freedom. He watched the Red Man’s claws dig ruthlessly through the cooked brain matter until he withdrew a handful.
Flakey ashes drifted away between the scaled fingers. After a moment, Marik caught a glint from the reptilian palm. Light bouncing off a polished black surface.
An obsidian surface.
“Tremendous life force quantities are at work in this venue,” the Red Man said, straightening from his crouch. “Best would be if we departed with haste.”
“Yeah,” Marik husked. His throat was dry. “That sounds like a good idea.”
* * * * *
Jide, as Marik had learned the man’s name to be, carried Dietrik slung over one arm until they reached a resting place. The Red Man had done something to stop the bleeding while they huddled in their crimson dome. Before they left the pool, he added a bizarre suffusion of energy into Dietrik’s inner channel network that, the scaled monster promised, would encourage his body to replenish the blood supply faster. Dietrik had been flickering in and out of wakefulness ever since.
After six candlemarks, Marik dropped. He could not move a single inch further. The Red Man reluctantly agreed to halt long enough for the humans to get their wind back. Marik fell to the ground beside his father’s oversized sword, which they had found jammed in a distant Euvea root on their way out, not too far from Dietrik’s rapier. While Marik hung his head between his knees, Jide got into a furious row with the Red Man that lasted nearly a full mark.
In the end, the Arronath stalked away to sit with his back against a root. The Red Man stood several feet away, lost in thought until Marik called out.
“What’s he fussed about?”
The Red Man considered Marik a long moment before approaching him. “There is a task ahead he feels inadequate to meet.”
“Bigger than fighting Xenos?”
“As important, perhaps so. He must return to his homeland. Problems await that will be difficult to surmount alone.”
Jide could piss up a rope for all Marik cared. What did he know about di
fficult problems? Had he ever set out on a quest to discover a missing parent? A quest that ended with his father’s death at the hands of a madman?
“You got my father killed. He never should have been involved with this.”
“Grown men must make life decisions every day. He accepted risk in exchange for the chance to absolve a threat.”
“Screw that! Don’t try to sell me a pack of lies! I saw what it was doing to him. To his body. You were killing him!”
“I will not deny the strain. Rail Drakkson was a man who could do no less than his best. He pushed his limits without consideration for depreciative cost, that he might achieve our goals. He,” the Red Man lofted a hand to forestall Marik’s outburst, “knew the consequences well. In his heart he accepted them. Achieving the end mattered beyond the toll.”
Marik slumped back into his weary crouch. “Yeah,” he sighed. “That much sounds like him.” He kept his head low to hide his watery eye. “What are you going to do with that thing?”
The Red Man patted his coat pocket. Inside rested the obsidian shard. His human fingers pulled it free. It looked harmless. A sliver as long as Marik’s index finger.
“This I will take to a place of safekeeping.”
“Where?”
A smile lit the Red Man’s face. “A place of safekeeping. Leave it as it stands.”
“Is that really the cause behind everything that happened?”
“Indeed. This is tainted by the madness of Turliss, God of Earth. Not merely His power alone stains it. If one accepts it wholly, as did the creature who was once a man called Xenos, then so it will pass on memories of times it has existed through. Knowledge of bygone days. Secrets coveted by the God of Earth and His sects. Through this stone did Xenos channel pure energy to where the God of Earth lays in ruined state.”
“S-sounds like…a bloody…diary.”
Marik looked aside to Dietrik, who blinked in pain. “I’ve grown to dislike diaries quite a lot.”
“People are…t-trouble enough without them,” Dietrik agreed.