The being that wore Prince Galeveth’s form—a sickening reminder of what T’Alon himself had been forced to endure these last weeks as another guided his hands—stood on the burning, smoking field of frost. He faced the Night Lord, which no longer raged quite as it had before. Instead, it leaned forward, looking more like a cat than a ram. It lowered its snout to the ground, those burning emerald eyes boring into the being that it had once helped to overthrow.
There were no words spoken. Or none that T’Alon could hear, and whatever Dark Kind remained in the east had scattered to the winds—perhaps gone south, after Kole and the others. There was a communion taking place, and T’Alon didn’t like what it might portend.
On a sudden whim, the Night Lord reared up, standing on its hind legs like a man might. It was more wild than the images T’Alon had held of its kind, who were said to be cunning, and, in the case of at least a pair, wise. They were the equivalent of the Sages of the World Apart, though they had fallen into shadow and darkness. T’Alon wondered what they must have looked like, the wonders they might have wrought before the ruin.
He almost wondered what had happened to that other realm, to plunge it into a canvas of black and red, with horror the only paint. But then, the painter stood below, framed against the sky he had just broken. Standing before a goliath of black and green, spikes and massive strength, unmoving.
The beast roared and sent another pillar of fire into the sky. It would have been beautiful if T’Alon did not imagine what it would do once it found its way into the mountain behind him, or into the halls and stone keeps to the south, where the people who had suffered under the Sage of Balon Rael now walked in free air.
Not all he had done had been in vain. Not all of it had been wrong, even if the reasons had been.
The Last God whose name was still unknown to him watched the beast’s tantrum without so much as a twitch. And when it slammed back down, he simply raised his chin, like a king might to a lowly lord. The beast seemed to consider making for him, snapping him up and adding his bones as further fuel for his unceasing green rage.
Instead, it closed its eyes … and bowed.
“Great,” T’Alon said. “Looks like these two have put their differences behind them. I was actually beginning to think there might be a chance for me to win after all.”
He expected an answer from behind, but none came.
“You need to leave, Shadow.”
She pulled herself up from his own shadow on the fallen tower, her violet eyes shining.
“You don’t command me, Rane.” Her voice had lost some of the venom it usually carried, and all of its mischief, though she seemed to have recovered from the strange, almost paralyzing effects the scar had had on her.
“This is a fight we cannot win,” he said, his voice firm.
“Then why do you fight it? Why do you fight for them, when it will all come to ruin anyway?” She sounded genuinely curious. Almost painfully so. Almost as if she needed to know.
“Do we know that?” he asked, watching the Last God lay his silver hand atop the Night Lord’s armored brow. “It was our Sage who thought he could see the end of things—
“He is not my Sage,” Shadow said. There was the fire T’Alon had missed. “Not anymore. His hold has weakened. He is dying.”
T’Alon had thought it so. He had thought it as soon as the Sage had collapsed atop the broken tower. Shadow confirmed it. She was bound to the Eastern Dark in ways T’Alon never had been, even toward the end. T’Alon might have been taken by him, but he had also given a good part of himself. Shadow had been made. At least, as she was now.
“And he was right.”
T’Alon looked at her. She stared a challenge at him, daring him to refute the claim.
“He knew this day would come,” T’Alon said. “That’s true enough. He knew the World Apart would arrive, sooner or later. And he knew at least a part of why. He knew the part he’d played in it. He wasn’t wrong about the sins of the Sages.” He smiled. “But he didn’t know about that one.” He pointed at the Last God. “And he doesn’t know how it all ends. He only fears it.”
“None of us do,” Shadow said, softly.
“That’s the beauty of it, Shadow. Someday, you’ll see that. I hope you do, at least.”
They stood in silence for a time. T’Alon lit his palms once more. He thought of sending another blast toward the Last God, but knew it would avail him little. Not from this distance. Perhaps if he got closer …
“Our Sage,” T’Alon laughed. Shadow gave him a strange look. “He counted himself separate from the others, just as they counted themselves separate from us—the Landkist. As if they were above the very power they sought to emulate. Not all of them were evil. I know that now, as I’ve always known it. Some were good. Some meant well, and some kept to it, even up to the end. Envy was their great sin. Envy is becoming of men.”
Shadow said nothing. He looked down at her. “You see, Shadow, the Sages are no different from us, just as we are no different from those we protect, or hunt, or love or hate. And he,” he tossed his head toward the flats, “he is no different, ancient or otherwise. Envy grows. Greed festers. It is all-consuming, and whether it is this World or the next, his will consume him, body and soul. He will never know peace.”
“He isn’t the only one,” Shadow said. She sounded more hurt than bitter, and T’Alon felt a pang in his heart to hear it.
“What do you want from me, Shadow? Why do you not run while you can?”
“I—” she started and then stopped. “I don’t know. I only thought …”
She never continued the thought, but T’Alon thought he knew what she meant. He would have taken her hand if doing so wouldn’t have burned it away.
“I’ll leave you with something,” he said, speaking more quickly as the Last God turned back to regard them, the Night Lord scenting the air, rising onto its hind legs once more. “Something I got from the Sage’s mind. Something of you, Shadow. The true you. I’ll tell you, only if you promise to go, and to make a go of living.”
“You’re not asking me to help them?” she asked, sounding suspicious.
T’Alon only smiled.
“Promise?”
She pursed her black lips and narrowed her violet eyes. They were pretty, when she wasn’t in a killing mood.
“Fine.”
T’Alon bent and whispered into her ear. He expected her to refute it, or to shout him down, to rage against the World, or to promise vengeance upon the Eastern Dark. Perhaps she did all of those things on the inside. On the outside, she only fell to her knees and cried.
The Night Lord roared and T’Alon felt the wave of green fire cooking the air as it raced toward them. He smashed his palms together and sent his fiery response, the collision sending a crack down the length of the fallen tower, all the way to the western wall it had taken down as it fell.
Shadow didn’t move, though she had recovered some modicum of control. She wiped at tears T’Alon didn’t know she could make.
“Go, Shadow,” he said. “So that you may live.”
When the smoke cleared, T’Alon saw the Night Lord breathing in, filling its great black chest. He saw green light spilling out from beneath its arms and under the skin between its ribs.
“Shadow.”
“I was sorry when Resh died,” she said. “But I was glad you got to know her, even in your darkest days.”
The fire in T’Alon’s blood took whatever tears might have marred his cheeks.
“Thank you,” he said. “Goodbye, Shadow.”
“Goodbye—”
“Go!”
The Night Lord brought its mass down upon the frozen sea with gusto, and the next jet it sent toward the tower was not one T’Alon could rebuff. He redirected the fire in his palms into his legs and shot skyward, his eyes focused on the broken tip
of the tower below him, and the black speck atop it. Shadow watched him soar, their eyes meeting a final time before she melted into a pocket of dark.
The beam of emerald immolated the tower and continued beyond it, skimming the very tip of the mountain stronghold where Queen Elanil’s subjects had retreated. T’Alon spun in the air and fell through the stinging vapor the fire left behind, the slight burn letting him know in no uncertain terms that he was not immune to this fire. That a single blast would kill him.
He landed with a shock just a few strides from where the Last God stood watching.
The Night Lord took a moment to register that T’Alon had moved. When its bright eyes found him once more, it gouged furrows in the frost and sent up a shining spray from the pools that had collected beneath it, soaking the god who stood beside it and making him look more like a wet dog than the deity he claimed to be.
“Not the sharpest one of the bunch, I’m guessing,” T’Alon said, nodding toward the titan. The Night Lord ignored him and would have sent another blast his way, but its master held up a hand that stayed it for the moment.
“No,” he admitted. “Ferrun has always been difficult for the others to deal with, which makes him ideal for me to deal with. Hence,” he dipped a bow, “why I chose to open the scar I came through very near to his domain. I’ll deal with the others once I’ve adjusted. Once I’ve … grown.” He seemed to have difficulty choosing his words.
“He is one of the four remaining,” the intruder continued. “Once-great kings, these.” He looked at Ferrun with profound condescension. It was lost on the beast, which stared at T’Alon like a hound at a steak. “Ancients, of their World. Protectors, even. Once upon a time. Of course, that was before they turned on me—”
“Before you invaded, you mean,” T’Alon said. “Took their World just as you’ve come to take this one.”
“All lands and all worlds are ruled by the powerful,” he said, unperturbed. “I will admit that the Night Lords are the most deadly I have come across yet, but they are no match for the land itself.”
T’Alon frowned and regretted it, as the Last God smiled, overjoyed that he had caused the reaction.
“Myriel mentioned something called the Worldheart,” T’Alon said. He felt his fire rising, but tried to keep it from showing in his palms. He didn’t let them die out, but kept them lit just the same, if not dimmer. Let them think he was burning out.
There was a flicker of recognition in the prince’s face.
“So,” T’Alon said. “That’s what you are.”
“A crude term, and rather … small.”
T’Alon almost shook his head in disbelief.
“Small term,” T’Alon shrugged. “For one with small ambitions. What is power to you? What is conquest?”
“Why, in other words,” the Last God said, finishing T’Alon’s thought for him.
T’Alon shrugged as if it didn’t matter. He felt his veins begin to pulse, his heart thrumming, aching with the amount of fire he was circulating.
“Your World is ripe,” the god said, his eyes going wide, mouth opening in a hungry, predatory mask. “She is declining. Going into her rest, like the rest of them.”
T’Alon didn’t understand half of what the mad titan spoke, but his dalliance and this one’s vanity made his palms glow a bit brighter, his muscles bunching as he struggled to contain the power he hadn’t harnessed in such a pure form in ages.
“But not you.”
“Not me. Never again will I sleep. For men—no matter the World—will write their bloodiest songs when we do.”
“And what is this?” T’Alon swept his hand out, encompassing the broken lands, the melted trenches, the remnants of the fallen palace and the husks and smudges that were all that remained of the Dark Kind.
“Divine consequence,” he said. His look showed that he was no longer in the mood for questioning. “She is strong, to have made you. Very strong. But the other Landkist are weak in comparison to you. There are no great ones left, and there may never be again, until she decides upon it. A frivolous god, bestowing her gifts at random, one era full of masters of fire, warriors of wind, weavers and unweavers. Another barren. This is the benevolence of a cold, uncaring god. I am not She.”
“You might be surprised on that count,” T’Alon said, ignoring the fluff.
The Last God frowned in confusion.
“About the Landkist, that is.”
“Oh?”
“The ones you’ve only just seen. I would sooner back them than you and—” He cast a bored look on the Night Lord that, for all its bulk and power, reminded him more of a whipped dog than some ancient force.
The Last God laughed, but T’Alon heard the note he’d sought within it. He smiled, and when the other saw it, his laughter ceased.
“They are less than nothing,” he said. “Even in my current form.” He flinched as he let the detail slip, proof that T’Alon had him nervous, at the very least.
“Then you will not follow them, to see the place and manner of your doom,” he said. “Spend your time digging for what you’ve come to find. Spend it opening your rifts and reining in your beasts—assuming you can—and ignore the bright stars racing toward your demise.”
The Last God smiled, countering T’Alon’s bluff with one of his own.
It might have worked, except that T’Alon believed what he said. He didn’t know it until that moment, when those dark, ancient eyes met his and pried the truth from them using less magic than the corrupted wisdom that comes from seeing worlds burn and empires crumble. He saw the truth in T’Alon’s eyes, and T’Alon saw it reflected back.
“You are here because you fear the Landkist,” T’Alon said, emboldened. “Because you saw them when the Sages stumbled upon your World. You saw their power. More so, you saw their mettle. Do you truly believe they are blessed at random? That there is nothing of destiny in them? In us?”
He smiled, meaning that as well.
“And now, you have burdened them, blessed them … gifted them with purpose,” T’Alon said. “Singular. Focused. Divine.” T’Alon raised his chin so that he could look down upon the god, even if only slightly. “What is your purpose, Last? What lies at the end of your road? For surely it will end.”
“The purpose of men is to hate one another,” the Last God sneered. “It hath become me. It will become Her. It is as inevitable as the turning of the tide.” He raised his left hand—the one closest to Ferrun—and the Night Lord began to breathe in once more. “Men are guilty. Only the gods can judge them.”
“If only the gods can judge men,” T’Alon said, sliding his back foot over the slick ice, “then it stands to reason that only we can judge them back.” He angled his body toward the Night Lord, but kept his eyes on the other. “Besides, I killed you once already.”
“I remember,” the Last God said, “as he remembers. Little Resh.” T’Alon winced. “How far did she fall?” T’Alon didn’t answer. “I have enjoyed you, Ember king. But even I cannot hold Ferrun any longer. It seems an Ember slew his brother in the west. He’ll take his vengeance here.”
Born again. Only to die.
“Ah, well,” Rane said under his breath.
He charged, shattering the ice behind him as he streaked toward the Night Lord with abandon. The beast was faster than it looked. As the Last God leapt to the side, it came down with its mouth agape, letting the emerald fire do the roaring for it. T’Alon leapt, and the beast anticipated him, raising its chin to follow him, the green flames licking the bottoms of T’Alon’s boots.
T’Alon pulled his knees up to his chest and aimed his glowing, vibrating palms down just before the Night Lord’s head. The river of red flame that issued forth carved through the emerald fire and caused both currents to smash into the ice below the Night Lord’s feet.
The land cracked beneath it, and the beast f
ell through, spewing its fiery gouts, which only served to break the deeper shelves.
T’Alon hovered there, caught between rising and falling for a long moment, and just as he was set to fall back down, he jutted his palm toward the south and sent a blast that way. The force was enough to drive him backward, to drive him north. He raised his opposite palm toward the sky and let the last of his fire go, shooting him downward with the speed of a diving hawk.
T’Alon twisted around as he fell, angling himself toward the Last God, who was so taken with the light show playing itself out of the chasm the Night Lord had fallen through that he looked up too late.
They collided with a force that would have killed all men and most Landkist, the ground splitting around them, bowing in like a cracked bowl. T’Alon seized the white, black-veined neck of the prince he’d killed not so very long ago, and called to the warmth that had reanimated him.
He drank in Prince Galeveth’s heat, feeling it move through his veins, fill his heart, charge his pulsing limbs. But then he felt cold. Cold unlike anything he had felt before.
The Last God’s eyes changed from blue to black to red and back again. Where before he struggled and choked, now he seized hold of T’Alon’s wrists and began to push him back.
T’Alon felt poisoned, like there were knives in his blood. He should have known that attempting to steal the heat of life from one who walked in death would have done this. But he had to try.
The Last God didn’t smile a smile of victory. He pushed with all his might, and T’Alon pushed back. They screamed, so close one could have bitten the other. T’Alon saw the shattered bowl around them begin to emit a strange light. It was green, and growing brighter by the second.
Now the Last God smiled, and launched T’Alon skyward with a strike to the chest that broke the bones that encased his heart. T’Alon flew up, losing the horizon as he tumbled. As he came around, he saw the Last God crawling away from the breach. He was wounded, but he would live. And then he started down, and his eyes found the land below. The Night Lord’s fire broke through the roof of the frozen sea and raced toward him, and he had nothing left to stop it.
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