Myn nodded.
"All right. I guess you stay here. I'll try to find them," Ivy said, venturing inside.
The castle shook from a blast somewhere deep inside.
"I don't think it will be hard," Ivy called, as she disappeared down the hallway.
Myn watched Ivy go until she could no longer see her, then padded uneasily about the courtyard. She pawed at the smoldering pile of armor briefly, then plopped down to the ground, huffing in irritation.
The air in the throne room was alive with magic. The king sat on the throne, looking upon the battle with the distant, helpless interest of a man watching the icy water lap up the sides of his sinking ship.
Myranda held the D'karon staff in one hand and Desmeres’s staff in the other. Powerful spells arced across the room. It was quickly becoming clear that Myranda was still no match for Bagu, but between the robe Desmeres provided and quick work with the D'karon staff, the young wizard found that she could shrug off most anything the general could summon mystically. The same, alas, could be said for Bagu. Fire hot enough to melt stone faded to nothing as it neared him. Black magics had no effect at all. The only progress at all was made by Ether.
The shapeshifter was on her third form, abandoning the form of a tiger for that of a wolf, and the wolf for that of a bear. Myranda's uninterrupted assault had created a handful of openings, and Ether had filled every one with tooth and claw. Thick black blood leaked from slashes across Bagu's back, but the wounds were quickly closing. Worse, the animal forms, though immune to whatever persisting spells had been tearing at her elemental forms, were defenseless against the perversions of magic that Bagu unleashed upon her directly. A sizzling patch of fur served as a reminder.
In a single move, the tide turned against the Chosen. Bagu's fist closed about the D'karon staff and wrenched it from Myranda's grasp. No sooner did the staff leave her grip than the full force of a dozen lingering spells dropped upon Myranda at once. Black energy wracked her body with pain enough to snuff out the spell she'd been readying. With a thrusting kick, he knocked Myranda to the ground and hissed a mouthful of arcane words that nearly incinerated Ether's hulking form. She shifted to stone and gathered herself, searching for a form that might do some good.
"Stupid creatures," Bagu spat. "The battle is lost! There is nothing you can do! You have failed at your purpose!"
The dark wizard punctuated each sentence with a new and worse twist of magic. It was all Myranda could do to hold them off. Bagu's hand finally reached for the hilt of his sword, left untouched at his belt. He'd not had the opportunity to brandish it, but with the momentum on his side he revealed its obsidian blade. Myranda's faltering spell of protection buckled and quavered. Without words, Bagu raised the weapon.
A blur of white flashed through the room and clashed with the sword. Ivy stood unsteadily, blades crossed against Bagu's weapon.
"You won't kill my friend," Ivy hissed, red flaring in her eyes.
"It is long past time this failed experiment was brought to an end," Bagu replied, coils as dark as shadow working their way up Ivy's legs as he bore down on his blade.
The general's mystic strength seemed bottomless. Ivy clenched her teeth in agony as Bagu's spell burned at her soul. He seemed determined to overpower her, to show her that he was stronger. Slowly, Ivy began to lose ground. The blade sagged nearer to her face. Then, without warning, the pressure was gone. A hole had opened on Bagu’s breast plate, seemingly on its own. There was silence. Not a gasp of pain, not a grunt of effort. Gradually, a polished silver blade, now smeared with black blood, wavered into view within the wound. The general staggered aside. Behind him, no longer hidden by his sword's spell, was Lain.
What followed next was chaos. Scalding, black as death energy began to erupt out of the wound. Like water from a ruptured dam, the power came. In the center of the storm was Lain, sword firmly held in hand, and Bagu. The general lurched, clutching desperately at the blade and bellowing words that twisted reality. He cast out his hand and a trio of curls of darkness drew together, swirling and opening. From the hole in the air came a shaft of piercing blue light--the very same hue as that which painted the skies to the north. He heaved himself free of Lain's blade and stumbled though the portal. It snapped shut, the unspent energy lashing outward and tearing at the heroes, crumbling the stone and warping the ceremonial shields on the walls.
Then there was quiet. A distant rumble, the ping of cooling stone, and the clatter of debris settling were the only sounds. Here and there, the masonry of the walls was striped with a swath of glowing red heat like veins in marble. It was the only light. Slowly, it was joined by Myranda's magic. The light that had so recently fallen upon splendor and history now fell upon ruin. Ancient portraits lay dashed upon the floor. Tapestries smoldered. The heroes slowly gathered themselves.
"Is everyone all right?" Ivy asked, as she helped Myranda to her feet.
Ether was slowly returning to her human form. As massive as the battle had been, she was not much worse for wear. The animal forms that were so often forsaken in favor of her elemental ones had been virtually effortless to assume, and as most of the attacks had merely damaged her physically, the injuries were whisked away with the form. Lain had once scolded her for squandering her abilities. Now it seemed that he may have been correct--she could have been more efficient.
The special equipment provided by Desmeres had taken the brunt of the damage directed at the others with barely a mark to show for it. Lain slid the ring of his sword to the position Deacon had indicated would heal him. Within a few moments, at the cost of the remainder of the sword's stolen power, Lain's injuries were nearly gone. Myranda put her mind to repairing the damage she'd taken, then turned her attentions to Ivy. Of all of the heroes, she'd fared the best, barely requiring more than a moment of the healer's ministrations. The king was another matter.
"Your Majesty!" Myranda cried, rushing to the throne.
The burst created by the closing of the portal had struck him unimpeded; the elderly monarch was slumped across the arm of the throne. Myranda ran to him. It was the work of a few moments to revive him, but to restore him was another matter entirely. The D'karon magic had a cruel, almost poisonous quality to it. It wrapped about one's soul and remained long after the injuries were closed.
"Enough. Leave me," the king said.
"You are my king and I will not allow you to die," Myranda said.
"See to the city. They deserve what little time you can give them," the king said, pushing Myranda away.
"The city is fine. I don't think we knocked down a single building," Ivy said, a hint of disappointment in her voice. "The streets are pretty much clear. I think the Undermine are mopping up the rest. And Deacon, I suppose. I don't know, I missed most of it."
"Still, it doesn't matter. It is over now. Perhaps my ancestors truly thought they were saving the kingdom. I was still a boy when I learned the truth, that they had all of the power. This kingdom ceased to be ours the very moment one of those things wore the colors of the north. I knew I couldn't take it back, I could only delay the awful realization from hitting my people. I never would have thought that it was the world I was failing," the king rambled.
"Be still, Your Majesty. You are out of danger, but you will need to rest," Myranda said.
"Your Majesty . . . Your Majesty! I am no king. I am barely a man. My name, my kingdom, my bloodline is tainted forever," he raged, throwing his crown to the ground.
"We are wasting time. We need to find and end the generals while Bagu is still wounded," Ether insisted.
"The generals don't matter. The sand has run out. The gateway is open now. They have succeeded, you have failed," the king muttered.
"Gateway?" Myranda asked.
"Their world to ours . . . indeed, their world to theirs," the king said vaguely.
"A gateway is open? Where?" Myranda gasped.
"I think I know! There was light on the clouds to the north. That has to be it, right?" I
vy said, her voice radiating the simple joy of being helpful.
"Let us go! That gateway must be closed," Myranda said. "But the king!"
"Go! There are some yet within these walls who would defend me," the king replied.
Lain was already padding swiftly down the hallway. The others quickly followed. With a final look to her king, Myranda joined them.
"Myranda! You have to hear what happened! These things that Desmeres made, I think they woke me up! And . . ." Ivy began.
"Ivy, we've still got a job to do. You can tell me later. If there is a later . . ." Myranda said solemnly.
"There'd better be. I have a lot to say," Ivy stated.
Myn leapt alertly to her feet when the heroes arrived. Myranda, Ivy, and Lain climbed to her back. After a few words, Myn began to charge along the courtyard, building speed and spreading her wings. The load was half again heavier than she was used to, and she was lifting off with a day of flight and a night of battle between her and her last real rest. The wings caught the air and pumped experimentally as she made a few successively longer hops. Then, with a final leap, she launched herself into the air.
After a few powerful flaps of her wings, it was as though she carried no weight at all. She wheeled and set off toward the piercing point of light on the horizon to the north.
#
Deacon's rampage was coming to an end. He'd adopted a spectrum of different manipulations with the swords as his power had waned. Rotating blades that cut through armor gave way to sweeping swarms of swords that he directed as a conductor might direct his musicians. As his strength dropped further, so too did a number of the swords. Those that remained orbited him in a complex pattern, separating and obeying his whim when the time came to attack. Blades assembled to mimic his fingers clutching and tearing at massive dragoyles. Others swept into place to block blows and keep soldiers at bay. When his mind weakened further, he thinned the cluster of swords to ten carefully arranged about him, floating and striking as though in the hands of invisible warriors defending him.
Now what swords remained sagged and drifted sluggishly. He carefully made another mental note on the effects of the overdose of nectar. It would seem that the flood of energy escaping him had the same effect as a siphon on a barrel of water. It continued to draw energy much at the same rate even after it had reached quantities he should have been able to maintain. In short, he was far worse off now than before taking the tonic.
Surrounding him was a single, badly injured dragoyle and perhaps fifty nearmen, the very last vestiges of D'karon influence in the city. Though it meant he had sawed, slashed, and bludgeoned his way through the vast majority of soldiers, this remaining fraction may as well have been an entire army. He simply didn't have the strength to face them.
As the final sword slipped back to the ground and Deacon staggered over the heaps of shredded armor, he quietly thanked his good judgment for not offering aid to the others. No doubt Myranda would not have let him die without a fight, and what energy she wasted on saving him might well have cost them the battle, and thus the world. Here, at least, he could be killed without consequence. He smiled weakly as the fate he'd been expecting all along stalked inevitably closer.
They were nearly upon him when a chorus of war cries from the opposite end of the courtyard startled him out of his reverie--and, more importantly, distracted the nearmen.
Deacon faintly remembered, an eternity ago when he'd taken the dose of moon nectar, that he'd warned the Undermine to seek shelter. At the time, they had been a dozen or so men and women. Unless one of the lesser effects of the potion was to confuse one's hearing, that number had grown greatly. He turned to the church to find, alongside the well-armed and poorly armored soldiers, were poorly-armed and unarmored aristocrats, screaming for blood. His addled mind tried to work out how the terrified gathering of social elite had been stirred into a maddened mob of berserkers. Caya claimed not to be a wizard, so it was not magic that had set their spirits aflame. Regardless, Caya seemed to have a power of persuasion that any wizard would kill for, and she wielded it through words alone.
On the strength of numbers and frenzied enthusiasm, the D'karon quickly fell to Caya's force. The most skilled of the soldiers spread out, each leading a small band of civilians. Names were shouted, doors were opened, streets were filled. Quickly, the city came to life again, this time populated by those to whom it belonged. The air filled with voices passing the tale from ear to ear. Curses of anger, cries of disbelief, and gasps of fear mixed with a universal feeling of relief. Whatever had happened, whoever was to blame, at least now it was all over.
Caya and Tus approached the weary sorcerer, the latter delivering a slap on the back that nearly threw him to the ground.
"Why didn't you do that in the first place? For heaven's sake, my boy, you practically could have taken the city on your own!" Caya cried.
Deacon did not answer. He was too busy keeping his eyes focused on the retreating form of Myn, carrying the other Chosen north. It wasn't over. Not yet.
Chapter 28
There were few who had ever seen this part of the world. Well outside the curious pocket of livable temperatures that made the capital possible, this mountain range that stretched to the very top of the world was nothing short of suicide to traverse on foot. The mountains had no individual names. No adventurer or explorer had yet to challenge a single summit. A half-circle of mountains that stood noticeably above the rest were known collectively as the Ancients. The rest were known simply as the Dagger Gale Mountains, and with good reason.
The wind seemed to cut like a knife, as though the air itself was freezing into jagged, pointed sheets. Myn heaved a heavy, streaming breath of flame every few minutes and basked in the all-too-brief warmth it brought. Despite the near fatal cold, though, each hero had a far more pressing concern, and it lay just ahead.
Nestled in the shallow bowl of a valley half ringed by the Ancients was a trio of triangular columns. The obelisks were gray, wide as a small building at the base and towering taller than the tallest tree. They tapered gradually along their lengths, then suddenly near the top, such that the massive towers were topped with small pyramids. Each tower stood many hundreds of paces from the other, evenly spaced as the points of a sprawling triangle, so large it took up most of the northern half of the valley. A small city could have comfortably fit between the towers.
Myn circled closer. The towering columns were perfectly smooth, seeming almost polished. Neither a line of mortar nor a single brick marred the surface, as though each tower had been carved from a single massive stone. The only interruption to the glassy sheen was on the inward-facing side, where massive runes were embossed into the surface. They covered the entire inner face, and led to a point of intense blue light that floated in mid-air just in front of the final rune. Each tower had such a point, and from each point emerged a single shaft of tangible mystic energy, bright as a bolt of lightning. The shaft buzzed and crackled, lancing down through the icy air to a point midway between the two towers opposite it. It came to a stop at a point above the ground precisely half the height of the tower. The point where the shafts crossed was brighter than the brightest sun on the clearest day. Directly below it, paper-thin and defined by the points where the shafts ended, was a triangle of pure black.
The whole of the structure had a terrible, geometric precision. The thought that something so enormous could be so exact was chilling.
"What is it?" Ivy asked in awe.
"It can only be the portal . . ." Myranda answered.
Ether, without a word, hurled her windy form to the ground. Myn followed, wheeling gradually toward the only other thing in the whole of the valley. It was a lone figure, a man, casting a long, black, twisted shadow. Ether took on her stone form, but held firm a few paces away from him. When Myn touched down and the heroes spilled from her back, it was clear why she hesitated. He was standing just within the area traced by the towers, and the power that poured out of the border fel
t as though crossing the line that separated them would tear flesh from bone.
"Astounding, isn't it!?" shouted the man over the diabolical mix of sounds the portal produced.
His back was to the Chosen as he admired the monstrous configuration. He continued:
"The end result of centuries of constant work. Two hundred fifty-five years, eight months, eleven days, fifteen hours. In your time, at least. Every moment of it filled with conjuring, sapping, chanting, and focusing. First ourselves, then a few of your own wizards, and finally a veritable army of Demont's nearmen made especially for the purpose. Even so, we'd estimated over three hundred years to get the gateway in place. That is, of course, until we captured you," he said.
The figure turned. It was Myranda's father, but his face made it clear that such was the case only on the surface. Epidime looked out from within.
"Ivy and Ether were the most help, but you all made a contribution. Those crystals. You filled hundreds of them. Each one took months off of the process. In just a few days, we made great bounds toward completion. If only you'd been a few minutes sooner, you might have seen it all come together. It is a sight to behold. The towers aren't built, you know. They are summoned. They are utterly impenetrable, every aspect of them carefully shaped in the mind. One moment a shifting mass of focused magic, the next three perfect towers coaxed instantly into existence. They draw the power to hold the portal open from your very world. A marvel. Every detail a marvel.
"You made it interesting, I can tell you. I had actually begun to believe we wouldn't get the gateway open. Now we have, and only three worlds in all of our experience have ever closed one. None of those worlds exist any longer."
"Where are the others!?" demanded Ether. "The time has come. You shall meet your fate, and your creation will die with you!"
"Bagu went through. He took Demont with him. They are gathering the army," Epidime said.
"Your army is destroyed," Myranda called out.
The Book of Deacon Anthology Page 125