by Rosie Scott
I burst into sarcastic laughter. “Yes! Flee! Flee rather than face me, you cowards!”
As if encouraged by my enthusiasm, the skies pulled back their clouds and ignored the earth's pleas for mercy. My laughter died down as awe overcame me, for it was the first time I'd summoned meteors with such an abundance of energy. Much like the hyper-powered versions of the lightning storm and tornado, the spell evolved in ways I'd never seen.
Balls of molten lava the size of cottages hurtled toward Arrayis in streaks of blinding orange light. Armies scattered in panic as men tried to anticipate where they would fall. The first meteor hit amid thousands of cavalry with a crack as it carved a monumental crater out of the earth. The shadows of flying horses and men flew so far up into the sky as a result that even if they lived, the fall alone would kill them. Strings and clumps of lava splashed in a radius around the hit as big as a city block, melting hundreds of soldiers as it splattered over the fields.
And that was just one. Dozens more meteors fell, trailing globs of molten lava. The spell was not only more powerful than normal, but it had gained an element, for magma required both fire and earth to create. The vibrations of the harsh spell tore through the earth so powerfully that thousands fell after losing their balance. To the south, more of Comercio's broken wall crumbled.
I could hear nothing but the whistling of meteors and the deep resounding crashes that met with their fall. Everywhere on the unaffected battlefield, people stopped fighting to watch. What had been a simple spell for me to pull off was a once-in-a-lifetime event for tens of thousands.
The last meteor fell just as the skies cleared. Arrayis trembled with the impact, caving into the pressure and leaving a crater of hissing magma. Hundreds of soldiers flew through the air, some of them already boiling. Soldiers living and dead rapidly descended back to the earth, dotting the fields with red fountains as they exploded into messes of gore.
The lava-infused meteor shower was the strongest spell I'd ever summoned, leaving permanent marks on Terran's army and the northern fields of Comercio. Previously flat prairies were now full of craters that glowed with still-bubbling lava. The land was cracked and scarred after the power of my spell caused even the earth to raise its hands and admit defeat. What had been legions of men was now a wasteland of fire, scorched earth, and death.
Sizzling reached my ears as thousands of black tendrils slithered through the area to call the recent corpses to arms. I glanced back to see Hades finally catching up to me with his own undead army. The god of the dead gave me the warmest smile I'd ever seen him give and motioned to the wasteland ahead.
“Beautiful, half-breed,” Hades complimented. “Beautiful. It appears Ahebban does live on through you, but your rages are far more devastating and interesting to watch.” The ground trembled as the hordes of dead he'd risen shambled to him. “I assume you have found your brother. What of the gods?”
“Raphael and Varian are the bastards who protect him, and they're doing a damn good job,” I grumbled, stalking toward where I saw Terran last as Hades smirked at my passion and fell in beside me. “Do you know Varian?”
“The god of alteration and change,” Hades mumbled with distaste. “I have fought Varian time and time again, Kai, and I could never defeat him. My magic only empowers him, and I do not deal in melee. Varian is one of the few who nearly killed me.”
“How?”
“He kept me paralyzed using my own energy as another hacked into my neck.” Hades pulled back the flap of his hood and swiped a finger over a thick scar across his throat. “Made it to my spine before the vampires arrived.”
“With Varian and Raphael by his side, I will never be able to kill my brother. They all protect each other. I worked to get Terran unprotected just for Varian to barge in and separate us.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Are you truly asking a half-breed for advice?” I retorted, shooting death bombs at the soldiers who finally rushed up to fight us.
“I am not a strategist,” Hades replied. “I simply fight until everything is dead. If you have a plan, I will do my best to aid it.”
“Kai Sera!”
Hades and I turned. Coming toward us from the west was Rek. The orcish god was absolutely covered in blood and matter. Chunks of bone lodged in dried blood on his boots and torn locks of long blonde hair wrapped around his dirty fingers as they held an ax. Rek was alone, but his path from the western armies was evident from a trail of mutilated bodies.
“My kin are dead,” Rek announced, though his face showed no remorse. “I have no army to lead anymore. I follow you.”
Rek pushed through crowds of Hades's corpses to come up to us. The two gods sized each other up as I said, “Rek, this is Hades, the god of the dead. Hades, this is Rek, the god of carnage.”
“I am the last orc god,” Rek said as a greeting, lifting a sticky fist and pounding his chest.
“Are you?” Hades smirked. “I fought with your mother once long ago. I suppose she tried eating the wrong person.”
Rek nodded once in affirmation. “Yes, me. I kill her and eat her.” One bloodied finger trailed down the bone of his ax. “This is her femur.”
Hades chuckled in gusts of wheezy air and turned back to the east. “It looks like we'll all get along.”
“We were just planning, Rek,” I told him, beginning my trek once more. “My brother is the leader of this army, and he has two godly allies. We need to separate them to gain the upper hand. Take one out, and the other will follow.” I motioned to Hades. “If you kill Raphael, the other two should easily succumb to physical attacks without his shields. Raphael's shields are strong, but magic and melee deplete them.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Hades purred.
I turned to Rek. “I want you to focus on killing Varian. He absorbs magic—”
“I do not deal in magic,” Rek replied.
“I know, which is perfect. Once you destroy Varian's life shield, you can kill him easily even if he regenerates his alteration protections. Varian is the god whose hair changes color. Only when the gods are defeated can I kill my brother. Be careful, Rek. Varian has magic that can pull or push you, and my brother is an earth mage who can split the land. It is possible they will try to bury us alive.”
“I stronger than magic,” Rek replied, unconcerned. “He try to kill you with split earth, I will kill him by splitting his head. He will learn from his mistakes.”
I couldn't argue with that logic.
Thirty-nine
The skies darkened in the east with night's approach, and a golden glow glistened on the tips of blades of grass from the setting sun in the west. The haziness of the morning had cleared, for the air was stale after a full day of fighting between mages.
The northern plains of Comercio were separated into three sections by virtue of the various skirmishes and army movements throughout the battle. Chairel's largest force still fought with Fremont's units at the exterior northwest corner of the city wall. Just north of Comercio was a wasteland of ruined earth and puddles of blood from my rage. Farther east, Terran and the gods finished gathering the remnants of what had been multiple legions of men into only one.
The Defense of Comercio had been one hell of a battle, but I could feel its resolution in the air. If I were Terran, I would want to retreat with the remainder of Sera's army to focus on its defense because he was clearly defeated here. My brother had done a fantastic job of breaching and flooding the capital, but after we'd successfully pushed back his forces, they were fatigued and fighting undead comrades. Hours ago Terran could smell victory, but my arrival had reversed that with a brutal one-eighty.
As my brother traveled west to consolidate his western and eastern armies, we moved to face him with thousands of corpses surrounding us. Terran, Raphael, and Varian were well-protected with fresh shields of both types. I needed to find some way to split them up to whittle down their protections.
With my mind on the Battle of Highland Pas
s and how a tornado had depleted shields of the Icilic easily, I decided to try the same strategy here. The protections of the gods were far stronger, but I hoped the power of a storm's vortex could overwhelm them.
The heavens groaned with annoyance, trying to persuade me that they'd aided me enough in this battle. I shrugged off their concerns, draining the energy of Terran's men into the already darkening evening skies. Clouds pulled together into an ever-expanding funnel, and a deep roar rumbled through the earth as the tornado touched down just south of my brother and his army. Vibrations massaged my feet as the storm etched a jagged path through the grasslands to its target.
Terran's men broke out into a run to the north, screaming in panic and refusing to listen to their general's orders to stay. My brother's voice was hoarse as he yelled after them, but most interestingly, he made no move to flee the twister as it neared. Long grasses whipped harshly in protest as the storm conquered them, pulling corpses from the northeastern fields into its whirling grasp.
Terran and the gods kept walking toward me, unfazed as the twister moved so close it should have picked them up by the force of its vortex alone. Instead, exterior dark winds separated into thin wisps that siphoned into the alteration shields, draining the immense power of the storm into my brother and his allies. I watched with horror as the funnel thinned and weakened, releasing the cold corpses from its grasp as its momentum was no longer strong enough to hold them. Bodies fell from the skies as the twister retreated as if heeding my brother's request.
Newly boosted in morale, the fleeing soldiers slowed their pace and turned back to follow their general. The alteration shields surrounding the trio weakened after having absorbed so much power, but now Varian had all the energy he needed to refresh them. As Terran finished the trek to me, his long hair floated within his shield on sparks of rabid static.
Hades stopped walking, and his ruined eyes slowly rose to the darkening skies. Scarred arms lifted and his eyes closed in concentration. Only when he opened them again did an inhuman screech echo from the direction of the Seran Forest. He rolled his eyes over to me and said, “Fodder is getting scarce, half-breed. Use me for energy if you need it.”
I nodded once with understanding and appreciation. I drained my remaining energy into a reject magic shield for Rek and regenerated from Hades through two black funnels. Rek seemed confused by the magical protection and reached out to poke its force field, frowning when his finger passed right through.
“Focus on puny god on the right?” Rek questioned, pointing one heavy ax at Varian.
“That's the one,” I affirmed.
Rek grinned and taunted the other god by dragging a thumb across his throat. “Consider him dead.”
Terran stopped his army with a raised hand. Hades's horde of undead hissed and gurgled as they charged, eager to kill their targets.
Terran's hair slowly lost its static as he funneled the energy of my tornado into his own concoction. My brother's hands shook with effort as black and deep brown wisps of magic swirled rapidly between them, and he grunted as he threw the spell to the ground.
Violent vibrations rolled through the earth, rattling Hades's corpses until they fell and toying with them as they tried to stand. I urged the allied gods back, but the crackling of splitting earth interrupted my warnings. The northeastern field of Comercio opened like a starving mouth, the chasms etching north and south like an ever-widening grin. Ground exploded upward as the spell tore through to Comercio's northeastern guard tower. As the earth parted, spurts of gray dust billowed into the air from the structures which crumbled into the new abyss.
Terran's spell wasn't done; it was similar in power to my own due to the energy he'd stolen from me. New cracks split off of the first, breaking the earth into multiple segments separated by chasms. Groups of Hades's corpses disappeared into the canyons, but the gods and I were safe. I understood my brother's strategy, however, and it wasn't foiled. He'd seen me gather energy from Hades and give it to Rek; much like I had my mind set on splitting them up to keep them from empowering each other, he sought to do the same.
It worked. While a group of corpses clashed with Terran's army across a crevasse, they were separated from their master and his closest minions. Hades, many corpses, and I were kept far from the enemy army via a series of fissures that would require us to reroute to the southwest before we could travel back up and around. It left Rek alone on the other side of the crevasse with our foes. For now, my brother and his army could keep their distance from me.
That didn't have to keep me from fighting. The corpses near me snarled across the chasm at our foes, unable to reach them directly and not smart enough to know to go around. Many of them were smoldered messes after getting caught in my earlier meteor spell. The frontlines were soon overshadowed by flying body parts as charred corpses exploded, giving up their internal ashes for phoenixes.
Hades stood at the edge of the canyon and shot rapid-fire death bombs at Raphael. The dead surrounded the god of healing, so the black magic only affected him. Raphael fought as valiantly as he could with a sword, trying to back out of the area to avoid the barrage. Both his shields were flickering, but he regenerated his own.
“Varian!” Raphael called. More black magic exploded against his protections, and though he was refreshed, his alteration guard finally went out. Hades relentlessly threw enervat, and I directed all my phoenixes to swarm Raphael to overwhelm him.
From our distance, Terran watched me intently, goading me by standing near the chasm's edge. He wanted me to hit him; he needed energy. Varian could only benefit Terran by recycling my power through the shields. It was my energy that had torn up these fields, not his. I refused to give in while he was near those who could refresh his protections. The smartest way to get to Terran was by dispatching his allies first or getting him alone. Right now, Raphael was separated from Terran and Varian, and we were being reinforced.
Lengthy shadows blotted out slivers of the starry night sky as vampires heeded Hades's earlier call. Their hisses traveled over the chilly air and to the ears of Terran's men. Surrounded by the dead and outnumbered, our foes panicked. Groups of Terran's soldiers fled north to escape the battle around the inhibiting chasms, shooting fire at pursuing vampires.
“Varian! I need a shield!” Raphael yelled again, felling another corpse. The god had already refreshed his shield multiple times using his regenerative abilities and the excess energy from my tornado.
“I'm fucking busy!” Varian shouted back with irritation. He shot multiple paralyze spells at Terran, refreshing my brother's reserves through his protections. Such use of alteration magic intrigued me. It had never occurred to me to use the lesser magic in that way; while it was impossible to get a high through absorb magic shields, Varian figured out a way to recycle his own energy into someone else's environmental reserves. Varian was one hell of a mage and ally; I was jealous of Terran's ability to get the god on his side.
For as skilled as Varian was, he had plenty of weaknesses. Rek rampaged for the god, both axes held out at his sides as he ran. Newly refreshed with energy, Terran summoned two handfuls of sturdy metal shards and threw them all at Rek. I'd given Rek a reject magic shield, but my alteration protections weren't as strong as Varian's; two metal blades ricocheted off of it, but the rest broke through. Six metal blades impaled Rek, the most lethal one cutting through the muscle and tendon of one side of his throat until it rested against his spine. Rek trailed splashes of blood as he finished his trek, roaring with fury as Terran and Varian panicked.
“What the hell kind of—” Terran's shriek was quickly interrupted. Rek swept an ax forward and up, and the long weapon hit both Terran and Varian due to their proximity. My brother flew northwest, landing on the other side of the massive chasm. With my brother separated from his allies, I collected as much energy from Hades as I could before I spun to run south around the crevasses keeping us apart. Terran still had both his shields, but I could overpower him. As I rushed to figh
t my brother, I kept track of the happenings over the main chasm.
Varian scrambled to stand after Rek's strength threw him farther north, his chest rising and falling rapidly with panic as he sought solutions. As Rek pursued him, Varian summoned telekinesis to keep him away.
Rek skidded back over the grasses at the magic's mercy, swaying with imbalance and on a quick track to falling into the closest crevasse. The god of brutality roared with frustration and lifted both axes high, throwing them into the ground before him to stop his slipping. The blades dug into inches of earth, tearing through the land as magic fought to conquer raw strength. Rek's arm muscles bulged until his green skin threatened to pop with the pressure as mud and clay build-up accumulated on the undersides of his blades. Finally, he came to a stop. Rek waited to move, understanding enough about magic to know Varian could use the same spell again.
As Hades kept busy chipping down Raphael's seemingly unending supply of shields, his vampires swarmed Varian, out of others to fight due to the retreat of my brother's men. The god used alteration light to temporarily blind them and paralyze to whittle down their numbers. It didn't appear Varian was talented with many offensive skills, however, for as many foes as he disabled, he never defeated them.
Aided by the distraction, Rek jerked his axes out of the ground with explosions of mud and rushed forward again. Varian noticed this with alarm and called for Terran, but my brother was too far to help. The god decided to use mass paralyze instead, trying to disable all the vampires so he could hit Rek.
Rek closed in, dropping one ax on the field and raising the other over his head. Varian threw out paralyze, but the green mist instead absorbed into the surrounding vampires, some of which were already disabled. He summoned the spell again, but Rek's ax ripped over his life shield first. The protection didn't break, but the immense pressure behind the hit jolted Varian downward so hard he collapsed within it. Rek chopped down over the shield repeatedly, whittling down its strength. Varian crawled over the grasses and stood, disoriented, just to be thrown back again with another swipe of Rek's ax. The ground where the god had been was indented in the circular shape of his shield from being pummeled by Rek's fury.