by Sam Sykes
He heard them scream in surprise, heard their hasty words as they struggled to put up shields to ward off his flames. And though the fires roared, they were not so loud that he could not hear the desperation in their voices, the sound of their footsteps as they retreated before the onslaught, step by step.
The flames cavorted, they writhed, they sang and sprang and tumbled over each other in their rush to get to the three piles of meat and kindling before them. Dreadaeleon pushed them farther, brighter, louder. He poured all that he had into them—his thundering heart, his rushing blood, the throbbing pain in his head. He had to burn them, he had to end it.
And they grew louder at his command, brighter. So much so that he hadn’t even heard Annis’s spell until the sound of thunder followed.
A rippling wall of force. Wide and tall as a tidal wave, it seemed to fill the entire hall. It drove the mist away before it, snuffed out the flames in an instant, cast aside the debris and stones and rushed toward Dreadaeleon so fast he hadn’t even had time to scream by the time it hit him like an invisible hammer.
And when it did, he had no breath to scream.
He sailed through the air, the tails of his coat fluttering behind him. He struck the floor in a tumble, skidded like a dying fish on a dock’s edge until he collided with the doors.
The impact made him ring like a bell, sent it echoing through his blood. He didn’t even think to try to stand, to breathe; he had not even the strength to think how impossible that would be. Yet he still had enough in him to think.
Power.
Too much, too fast, too big. Annis had expended so much to make a spell like that. He could still feel the reverberation of magic in the air, taste its crackling power with each breath. It had to have taken a lot to create something like that.
And, somehow, he found the breath to chuckle.
Gods help you, old man, he told himself. If nothing else, you’re the only man on this dark earth who could make Lector Annis break a sweat.
He held on to that breath, that chuckle, however meager it was. He forced it into his lungs, his body, his legs. Bones ringing, muscles like jelly, he slowly clambered to his feet as he stared down the hall.
The woman was clutching the smoldering ruin of her face. The man was still terrified, trembling, his fear costing him as much power as anything. And Annis—tall, proud Annis—was breathing hard, draped in sweat, eyes ablaze.
And yet they all stood.
And yet they all advanced upon him.
However slowly, however warily, it didn’t matter. They would be on him soon. And he felt he had barely the energy to stand, let alone face them. His head thundered with pain. His legs were numb beneath him. His heart felt like it was trying to punch out of his rib cage.
This was it, then. After so many times he had cheated law, death, and fate, this was how it ended. Incinerated, electrocuted, frozen, and smashed to icy shards; it didn’t matter. No Harvesting this time; Annis wouldn’t leave a trace of him left. There was that small comfort, at least.
He tried to come to peace with that, in the small time he had left.
No.
But some part of him refused.
No!
Some small part, drowning in the pain and numbness creeping through his body, spoke out. And though its voice was small, too, it was a pain all its own, a pain deeper than his aching bones and pounding blood.
Not this way.
It wormed its way into his chest, his limbs. It drove his hand into his pocket. It wrapped his fingers around the tiny little seed.
They can’t kill you, old man. They can’t use you. They can’t stop you.
The barest flicker of power. The barest burst of fire in his palm. The seed was ignited in his hand.
Show them, old man.
His hand rose to his mouth.
Show them who they’re fucking with.
And he slid the broodvine into his mouth.
First, nothing.
And then, a breath.
The smoke blossomed inside his mouth, great purple plumes that rushed down his throat and filled him, his bones, his blood, his skin. The pain melted away with every breath. The energy felt alive inside him, bursting so bright that the dim light of the hallway seemed clear as daytime and banished the shadows. The hallway stretched wide as a plain ahead of him. And at the end of it …
His foes looked so small.
He smiled. He drew in a deep breath. And, gaping wide, he blew it out.
The broodvine’s smoke sang from him, a soundless symphony whose notes were the coils of its plumes and the writhing of its hazy cloud. The three extended their hands, put up the shields. But it was no use. The smoke slithered around their barriers, coiled up their ankles, reached out to fill their noses and their mouths and show them such beauties as he had seen.
“Cover your noses, fools!” Annis shouted out. “Don’t breathe it in!”
His voice sounded faint and muffled to Dreadaeleon’s ears. And because of that, he knew the Librarians hadn’t even heard him at all.
To a common barkneck, the broodvine was just another hallucinogen, however potent. But to a wizard, it was a tool more powerful than any spellbook or relic. Magic could merely shape reality, but the broodvine erased it entirely and replaced it with something else, something driven by will.
His will.
He narrowed his eyes. He focused.
He disappeared.
Or so it seemed. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. The Librarians immediately thrust their hands out, fire and lightning dancing at their hands as they searched for him.
“Stop that!” Annis shouted. “Conserve your energies, you idiots. He’s trying to trick you!”
He could hear Annis. They could not. He could see them. They could not. He knew how Broodvine worked. They could have only read about it.
“Where is he?” the man muttered. “Where did he go?” He glanced at his companion. “Do you see any—”
His voice turned to a shriek. When he turned to face the woman, she was no longer there. What stood in her place was a towering ghoul, as tall and black as any shadow. Skin hung from its body in charred strips. The flesh around its mouth was melted into thick globules that dripped over its teeth. Eyes wide and white and unblinking were turned upon him.
He fell to his rear. Through the screams, he somehow found the clarity to find a word of power upon his lips. He thrust his hands out toward the creature, his palms erupting with light.
Great torrents of flame swept from his palms and washed over the ghoul. It held up its own hands in a futile defense, or perhaps a futile plea, as it tried to beat the flames from its charred flesh. But the fires kept coming, bore it low to the ground where it lay, shrieking in a distinctly feminine voice.
“ENOUGH!”
Annis swept a hand out. A rippling force followed his gesture, struck the man, and sent him flying. He collided with the wall and fell to the floor, unmoving. Annis made a gesture toward himself. The pulverized stones and debris of the shattered pillars flocked toward him like graceless birds. They gathered together in a massive fist of rock.
Another gesture sent it flying, hurtling at a huge speed toward the wall of the tower. It punched a hole through the wall, opening it to the night air. Annis drew in a deep breath and the coils of broodvine smoke came to him. He made another sweeping gesture toward the hole and the smoke went flying out of it.
What was left behind was the mass of ashes and boiled blood that had been the woman Librarian, the unconscious body of the man, Annis’s burning eyes, and …
“No!”
Dreadaeleon’s voice, raw and scratchy. He could feel his power slipping away as the smoke left. The pains returned, raw and throbbing. His energy left him. The shadows seemed deeper, reached out toward him.
And when the air blew in, mercifully cold and clean, Dreadaeleon felt it as though he were naked.
“I should have killed you the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“Shinka was right,” Annis snarled. “I let devotion to protocol blind me. I let myself be convinced that you were just another heretic, like any other.”
Annis came forward slowly, staggering with each step. So many spells, cast so quickly and so desperately, had taken much from him. Yet his weariness seemed only to make him more determined, his pain something entirely different from Dreadaeleon’s.
After all, Dreadaeleon realized, he could still walk.
“Shinka was right about more than you know, old man.” Dreadaeleon took a step forward to meet the man, felt his leg almost go out from under him. Without the smoke, everything felt so fragile, so agonized. “She told me—”
“No.”
His word was punctuated with the sound of thunder. Dreadaeleon barely had time to throw his hands out and put up a wall of force as the lightning bolt shrieked out and cracked against it, driving him back a step.
“I am through with you, heretic.” Annis’s fingers crackled with electricity as he advanced upon Dreadaeleon. “I am through with humoring your pettiness, your childishness, your insults.”
Another word. Another bolt of lightning. Dreadaeleon’s shield shimmered, straining to hold it back. He fell to his knees, could feel the muscle of his legs burst with agony, burning themselves up to feed his power.
“No more, heretic.” Annis fired again. “No more words.” And again. “No more of this shit.”
And again.
And each time, Dreadaeleon recoiled. Each time, his shield shimmered. Each time, he felt a fresh pain rise up as something else burned to keep the power going—the muscle of his left shoulder, his right shinbone, the hearing of his right ear.
“Wizards built this tower, heretic.” Annis drew close, so close that Dreadaeleon could smell the storm on his skin. “It is not a place for weak-minded cowards.” He thrust his fingers toward Dreadaeleon. His eyes burned bright enough to fill the hall. “And not for petulant, whining little boys.”
A single word.
A bright blue flash.
The smell of electricity cleaving the air and skin sizzling and hair curling into thin gray coils of ash.
And Dreadaeleon fell.
The bolt shattered his shield, pierced through his power, and struck him square in the chest. That power had been all that kept the bolt from killing him outright. The smell of his own flesh burning and the agony of his wound was all that kept him awake as he lay on the floor. His body begged to sleep, to simply stop and slide into darkness.
And, truth be told, Dreadaeleon couldn’t think of a good reason why it shouldn’t.
It was always delusion to think he could defeat Annis. Really, it was a miracle that he had delayed him as much as he could. Three wizards to one malnourished and weakened heretic was impressive odds to have even started a fighting chance.
Really, he thought, it was a miracle he was still breathing.
He once observed this phenomenon in his former companions: in the way Lenk would pull himself back up to fight, in the face of clearly overwhelming odds. He had once asked after such an occurrence and Lenk had explained it as a state at which the mind ceded to the body and the body simply refused to die.
Dreadaeleon had always suspected he meant that some people were simply too stupid to die when they ought to.
And, up until now, he never thought that was actually the case.
And yet …
“I’m not weak.”
His voice, ragged in a throat scraped raw, the taste of his own blood on his tongue. But somehow, still speaking.
“I’m not a coward.”
His legs, burned and boneless and bloodless beneath him, withered to twigs. But somehow, still standing.
“And I’m not … I’m not …”
His power, blazing brightly, burning inside him, hot with fury and cackling in anticipation. Erupting out of his eyes, out of his hands, out of his mouth as he turned all of them on Annis.
“I’M NOT A BOY.”
Fire. Everywhere. Everything. Fire. From his hands, from his fingers, from his mouth. In great rivers and in great storms and in great plumes. Cackling, laughing, roaring, snarling, alive and eager and hungry.
So very hungry.
He sensed Annis’s power, though only barely. The Lector reacted quickly, reaching down and pulling the very stone from the floor. It rose up in a coarse, crumbling shield in front of him, barely holding back the flame.
The fire poured out of him, flowed out of him, as though it were the true being and he was merely an inconvenient cloak of flesh and blood that it was currently disentangling itself from.
It burned with such furious intensity, yet he could barely feel it. His body temperature dropped; everything poured into his flames. He could feel his body going dark as the light left him in great, ruinous bursts. The power to fuel it demanded everything from him and, one by one, it took it: his liver, his sinew, his blood, his toes.
But he couldn’t stop.
He refused to.
Never again, he told himself. Never going to be used … never going to be defeated … never going to be humiliated …
The shield of stone crumbled and flew away in smoldering chunks. Annis held his hands out, his words lost in the roar of the fire, the air rippling around him as he put up a flimsy shield. But the fire ate everything, ate the very air. Annis’s shield shrank, forcing him back.
More. MORE.
And Dreadaeleon could not stop it. He gave the fire his heat, felt himself go cold. He gave the fire his breath, felt his lungs wither. He gave the fire his voice, his rage, his very being.
Almost … you can do it … you … you …
Until he could give no more.
The fires did not die easily. They shrank as they had nothing left to feed on, retreating, dissipating, leaving behind nothing but smoke. And when the last of the sparks hissed away, they did so almost resentfully, cursing Dreadaeleon for not giving more.
He would have apologized, had the fire not taken his voice, too.
As it was, breath was all he had left. The rest of him lay on the floor, a limp and flaccid husk, unable to move, to speak, to see. But slowly, as the fires faded, the brightness blinding his eyes did, as well. The shadows returned and so did his sight.
And he could see that, despite it all, Annis was still standing.
Only barely, only just, but he was still there. His clothes had been seared away, and much of his hair had gone with them. His skin bore red and black marks from where the fire had started to gnaw on him. But he still drew breath, however ragged, and he still stood, however shakily.
Dreadaeleon had failed.
He had given everything, and he had still failed.
Annis, at the very least, looked as though he had nothing left in him, either. There was nothing left for hatred or anger as he looked down at him. Only a long, weary appraisal, wondering how the hell it had come this far. He had nothing left for spells. The task of killing the young man lying on the ground, even weak and limp as he was, seemed beyond him.
That was fine, Dreadaeleon thought. He was quite capable of dying here all on his own.
He heard a distant sound from beyond the eastern doors. A few dramatic words shouted, a few thunderous crackling sounds, a few forced shrieks.
He didn’t even need to look up when the doors came swinging open to know it was Shinka.
“Annis!”
She came rushing through the doors, followed by a trio of Librarians. She charged up to him, arms extended as if to invite him to collapse into her embrace. But he remained standing, swaying precariously. She swept a wild gaze about the ruin of the hall, a convincingly dramatic expression of shock and horror across her face.
“What happened?” She looked to Dreadaeleon, mouth agape. “Is that the heretic? How the hell did he get loose?”
“Traitors …” Annis’s voice was a weary croak. “In the Venarium …”
“Spare me.”
Though he could barely stand, Annis still found the strength to cast a long, ugly sneer toward Shinka.
“I know …” He snarled through clenched teeth. “I … know.”
The manufactured shock drained away from Shinka’s features like perfume from a porcelain basin. Left behind was the cold, appraising stare of a wizard, emotionless and distant.
“I see,” she said, folding her hands behind her back. “Shall I ask how?”
“Who … else?” Annis grunted. His body shook, as though he were trying to find the strength for a spell to hurl at her. Or, failing that, simply to strangle her. He could find the power for neither, though, and so he simply gasped. “Why? For … power?”
“Power has always been the pursuit of men like you, Annis,” she replied. “The names change, of course. Sometimes it’s magic, sometimes it’s gold, sometimes it’s women. But people like you, they simply hoard it, keep it out of the hands of those who could use it for good.”
“Liar …” He managed a weak step toward her. “Heresy!”
That was just a bit too much. He collapsed to his knees, trembling, still refusing to fall down completely. She sighed, kneeling down to meet his eyes.
“I won’t waste what little time you have left with speeches trying to convince you of the righteousness of what I’m doing, Annis,” she said. “Had I thought there was another way, I would have done it. But too many people have died while we’ve been held prisoner by antiquated laws.”
She rose, turned away from Annis, and looked to the western doors. She called out a word and they came open. Another trio of Librarians entered, sparing a glance for Dreadaeleon before joining Shinka and their companions. The Lector let a firm look linger over them a moment before speaking.
“I was stirred from my studies on the lower level shortly after midnight by the sounds of carnage,” she said. “I departed to investigate.”
“You called the three of us,” one of the Librarians said, “to come accompany you once you sensed magic was being expended at great rates.”