by Ben Wolf
As Shadow Wolves, they evaded the Gronyxes, Dactyls, and Wargs with ease. They were infinitely faster, and their claws tore through the Gronyxes’ and Dactyls’ flesh and the Wargs’ thick matted fur alike.
It had gone well, at least for the two of them, until someone lashed a sword at Riley.
The blow had come seemingly from nowhere, and he’d barely dodged it in time. When he turned to face his attacker, he saw a sword-wielding Sobek warrior stepping out of a black void just like the one Axel had conjured back in the King’s garden.
Riley easily ducked under the next swing and drove his claws deep into the Sobek’s armored chest, killing him, but one errant Sobek wasn’t Riley’s concern. The dozens of black portals opening all around him were.
Humans, Saurians, Wolves, and even a few Windgales emerged from them. Weapons drawn, they flooded the city with steel. Now Calum’s army had to contend with not only the monsters bursting out of the streets but also Lumen’s soldiers.
“We have to work together!” Windsor shouted at Riley through the raging battle.
“Thought you’d never ask,” Riley called back as he took down another soldier, this time one of the Wolves who’d once been a part of his tribe. A pang of regret stabbed at his heart, but he pushed it aside. These Wolves had chosen to side with Lumen.
“I’m not asking.” Windsor batted away a sword strike from a human attacker and returned the attack with a devastating slash of her own that dropped him.
“You never do,” Riley countered, but he moved closer to her—close enough that he could hear her growling at him amid the battle.
He smirked. It had always been easy to aggravate her. It had been part of their dynamic before he’d fled the tribe. Apparently, some things never changed.
In tandem with Windsor, Riley attacked dozens of enemies in a flurry of vicious slashes, tearing through ranks of soldiers and monsters alike. It felt like old times, when they’d coordinated their hunting efforts to corner jackrabbits and deer in the desert.
It felt right.
Then an unearthly howl droned from behind them.
They turned back in time to see Rhaza emerging from one of the black voids. He rose to his full height, now twice as tall as Riley and swollen with corrupted power.
The puncture wound in his side from where Riley had stabbed him with the shard still glowed with white light, and the same light also glowed from his white irises, his claws, and his teeth. He was a hulking, horrifying mass of Shadow Wolf, bolstered by Lumen’s corruptive power, and he’d fixed his attention on the two of them.
Rhaza said no words, but Riley could see the twinge of recognition in his eyes when he saw the two of them together. He knew who they were. Some part of him remembered their past, and it enraged him.
He hunched over as if to pounce and loosed another droning roar that rattled the buildings around them and reverberated through Riley’s chest.
“We need to run, Riley.” Windsor’s bloody hand found Riley’s, and it brought him some comfort—at least until she tried to tug him away from Rhaza.
“No.” Riley resisted her pull and stood his ground. “I’m done running from him.”
“He’ll kill us! We can’t possibly beat him!” Windsor protested. She tugged on him again, but he refused to move.
“No,” Riley repeated.
He found Windsor’s eyes, all black except for the blue irises, and he took hold of her other hand as well. Both of them were bloody messes from all the fighting, even though none of it was actually their blood, but Riley didn’t care. He stared deep into Windsor’s eyes and spoke the truth in his heart.
“I need you, Windsor. Together, we can do this, but I can’t kill him alone,” he said. “And if we don’t kill him now, he’ll always be out there. He’ll always be a threat.”
Windsor growled, but she didn’t deny it.
“He ruined our lives. Separated us,” Riley continued. “We need to do this. We need to put him behind us for good. Then, finally, we’ll be free, one way or another.”
Windsor growled again, but she nodded. “I’m with you.”
Together, they face Rhaza, the source of their greatest fears and regrets. He issued another droning howl, as if beckoning them forward, and they leaped at him with their claws extended and teeth bared.
The emergence of thousands of new soldiers had complicated the battle enough that Calum had to make a hard decision. Even with the King’s new power, he couldn’t do anything more to end this battle than he was already doing.
Unless they could reach Lumen. If they could get to him and defeat him, perhaps they could finally end this war.
Calum gathered the most powerful warriors he could find—Magnus, Lilly, Condor, Matthios, Gavridel, and General Anigo—and they carved a path toward Valkendell.
Gavridel led the way, barreling through literally every foe in his path and reducing them to paste. General Anigo followed close behind, and Magnus flew overhead, scorching enemies who tried to attack from the sides, while Matthios defended the rear. Calum, Lilly, and Condor filled in the center, mostly doing nothing thanks to the effectiveness of their team around them.
They reached the front of Valkendell in record time, only to find the fortress’s front gates shut and guarded by a dozen Gronyxes and several dozen more soldiers. The group made quick work of the monsters and the guards, thrashing and hacking and burning their way through.
But as they approached the gate, a black void opened up before them.
Calum recognized it immediately as Axel’s work. He also realized by its ever-increasing size what was about to come out of it.
Sure enough, the massive form of Kahn, the Dragon-King-turned-Jyrak, stepped through. His first footstep splattered the remains of one of the Gronyxes, shooting glowing green blood in every direction. Once he fully emerged, he towered nearly half as tall as Valkendell itself, even with his head partially caved in.
The group looked up at Kahn as he loosed a droning roar from his misshapen mouth.
“Stand aside, everyone,” Magnus started forward. “I will handle this abomination.”
“You really think you can take him alone?” Calum asked. “He’s double your size.”
“I killed Kahn once. I can and will gladly do it again.” Magnus looked at Calum and winked. “Go save Kanarah. Leave this to me.”
Then Magnus hurtled through the air at the Jyrak’s head with a roar of his own.
Chapter Forty-Seven
From high above, Axel had watched as Calum and his powerful friends crashed through the city, plowing over all manner of monsters and Lumen’s soldiers in the process. It was all thanks to Gavridel, the Gemstone Imperator, who apparently couldn’t be stopped—at least not by conventional means.
The moment Axel laid eyes on Gavridel, rage ignited in his chest. That muscle-bound over-armored idiot had won their first contest because of the obvious power disparity between them. But this time, things would be different.
As Kahn stepped out of the void and blocked their path into Valkendell, Axel used the distraction to his advantage. He opened a new void and flew inside.
Traveling through the void was easy: A shadow dimension of nearly pure darkness opened up, and with his mind, Axel controlled where the next opening would be. He decided to open one right next to Gavridel.
From within the shadows, sunlight streamed through a crack. It widened to a circular opening, revealing Gavridel’s huge form, his armor gleaming with the colors of every fine jewel known to Kanarah.
Axel launched forward and rammed into Gavridel at full speed. His shoulder struck solid armor, jarring him, but the mountain moved.
Axel wrapped his arms as far around Gavridel’s immense form as he could, pinning the Imperator’s left arm to his side, and they thundered forward until they hit the wall of a building and crashed through it.
They tumbled and skidded to a stop just inside the building, covered in dust and plaster and splintered wood.
“Gavridel!” Calum cal
led from somewhere behind Axel, who was already on his feet, drawing his blackened Blood Ore sword.
He glanced back to see Calum hesitating about whether to come into the building to help. As usual, Calum couldn’t make a decision when the time called for it. If it came to it, Axel would fight them both at once.
“Go! Defeat Lumen!” Gavridel shouted as he, too, rose to his feet, shook the dust from his armor, and brandished his axes. Then, with his voice lower and more menacing, he said, “This one is mine.”
Axel scoffed. “I’m yours, alright. And this time, I’ve got the advantage.”
“By what measurement?” Gavridel asked.
“You don’t know how to fight. You’re just big and strong and durable.” Axel sneered at Gavridel, though neither of them could see the other’s facial reactions because of their masks. “I’m faster, more skilled, and more powerful. You’re gonna lose this time.”
“If you truly believe that, then step forward and test your mettle,” Gavridel taunted.
In a burst of speed, Axel’s sword clashed with Gavridel’s axes in a dazzling display of purple and white lights. It should’ve been quick enough for Axel to land several blows, but Gavridel had reacted far quicker than Axel had anticipated, even in the close quarters of the building they were in.
Axel hurled another attack, and Gavridel’s axes clanged against his blade yet again. It happened a third time, then a fourth, and then Gavridel got in a counter-swing.
Axel barely managed to reposition his sword in time, and the power behind Gavridel’s diamond axe slammed him into the inside wall of the building. The wall cracked, and when Axel ducked under Gavridel’s amethyst axe, the wall shattered completely instead of his head.
Gavridel’s flank should’ve been exposed, and Axel swung at his side to capitalize, but Gavridel’s diamond axe intercepted the blow, rippling with light. Then the amethyst axe came at him again, this time from overhead.
Axel opened a void beneath his feet and dropped into it, and Gavridel’s attack missed. When he reappeared behind Gavridel, the Imperator was ready for him and defended Axel’s next three strikes, each one more vicious than the last.
But the under-curve of Gavridel’s diamond axe hooked the inside of Axel’s knee, and he slammed Axel to the floor with a loud crack.
Axel felt the floor cave in underneath him, and then the stone foundation beneath that fractured as well.
Gavridel stood over him, no longer attacking but instead watching Axel struggle to regain his footing. He uttered, “Care to rethink your assumptions about my fighting prowess?”
Axel snarled and launched forward for more.
High above the enormous tree in the Central Lake, a storm began to brew. Clouds of gray began to swirl, gathering moisture from the air.
Gill sat on his porch as the clouds expanded and darkened to a furious black tinged with green.
“Nev’ seen a storm like this’n,” he muttered. “All mah years, not a once.”
Jake, still seated next to him, asked, “Should we take shelter? Looks like it could be really bad.”
“Coul’ be.”
A bolt of lightning, tinged green, lashed across the blackening sky, accompanied by a peal of thunder that rattled every building in Sharkville.
“Coul’ also be dat we ain’t safe no mattah where we go,” Gill said.
“Do you… do you see that?” Jake pointed to the left and to the right of the lake.
“What I done tol’ you ’bout askin’ me dat question?”
“You can’t see it, so I should just give you the spyglass for a look?”
Gill held out his hand, and Jake placed the spyglass in it. Gill put it up to his eye and peered through it to the left of the lake. Far in the distance, he saw a column of water rising—not falling, but actually ascending toward the maelstrom in the sky. It could’ve only come from one of the other lakes.
Gill looked to the right and saw the exact same thing: a column of water flowing upward, feeding the storm overhead.
“By Bartholomew’s beard…” he muttered. “What is goin’ on?”
Lightning crackled through the sky again, and again the thunder rattled every building in Sharkville.
“He’ll be in the throne room,” Matthios said as they set foot inside Valkendell. “I can already sense him there.”
Though nothing had physically changed about the fortress, and though daylight still shone through all the windows, the place seemed far darker and more foreboding to Calum. A heaviness weighed down the air in the halls, and every footstep seemed like a day’s labor.
They ascended higher and higher through the empty fortress, making their way toward the very throne room where the King had decided to show Calum and Lilly—and Axel—mercy. When they arrived, they found Lumen seated on the King’s throne, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
His glowing body heaved up and down as if he were… weeping? It didn’t make sense to Calum. The war wasn’t over yet, and Lumen still seemed to have every advantage. Why would he be crying?
As they approached, Calum realized he’d been wrong. Lumen wasn’t weeping.
He was laughing.
“Surrender, traitor,” Matthios ordered, “or I will—”
“Be silent, Matthios,” Lumen’s voice clapped like thunder and echoed throughout the cavernous room, even though he still held his head in his hands. “You and I both know that you mean to destroy me whether I surrender or not.” Lumen looked up at them with his eyes ablaze with white light. “And I will never surrender.”
Matthios pointed his spear at Lumen. “Then you will die.”
Lumen began to laugh again. It started as a low rumble but gradually built into a robust belly laugh, almost to the point of being uncontrollable. He put his head in his hands again and kept laughing louder and louder.
The sound of it sent chills coursing through Calum’s body. What was happening?
“I thought I could control it,” Lumen said as his laughter came to an end. “I thought I could take the King’s place. I thought I could figure it out. I thought I could rule, that I could keep Kanarah alive. Instead, it has become a place of darkness and death.”
Calum tensed at Lumen’s words.
“But I like darkness and death.” Lumen looked at them again. “I am darkness. I am death.” Then he shouted, “I am your end!”
Lumen rose to his feet and stepped down from the platform slowly, methodically, scrutinizing them. Each of them recoiled slightly, except for Matthios.
“This is all of you?” Lumen said between chuckles. “The five of you mean to battle me? All of you combined do not even amount to a fraction of my power. Where is Gavridel?”
“Fighting your false imperator,” Matthios said, “and then rejoining us soon.”
“And you expect to hold me off in the meantime?” Lumen laughed again. “Matthios, you always were such a fool. Senseless, yet practical, and far too confident in your own abilities.”
Lumen raised his hand, and a spike of white light shot toward Matthios. It struck him in his chest and knocked him backward, and he skidded to a stop against the inner wall of the throne room with a grunt.
He was back on his feet the next instant, but the attack had done its damage. Matthios’s breastplate now had a dark hole in it, outlined with white-hot bronze.
His voice ragged and strained, Matthios said, “It will take… far more than that… to kill me, traitor.”
“If you insist.” Lumen raised his arm again, but this time Calum was ready.
He reached out with the King’s power and grabbed hold of Lumen with it. He yanked hard, and Lumen’s next spike fired wide. Matthios spun his spear and further deflected the spike, which struck the wall in an explosion of sparks and then dissipated into nothing.
Calum had marshaled all of his focus for that one pull, so small that he’d only managed to move Lumen’s arm a few inches. It had been enough to save Matthios from further harm, but
in the grand scheme of things, it had accomplished very little.
Calum exhaled a labored breath and quickly inhaled another. The effort had strained him a lot more than anything else he’d tried with the King’s power. Even healing the soldier’s leg had taken less energy from him than that one simple motion.
Was Lumen really that much stronger? Or was there some sort of dampening effect in here that made everything harder? That would explain the heaviness of the atmosphere in Valkendell.
Calum didn’t know, but they only had one chance at this. Whatever it took to kill Lumen, they had to do it, no matter the cost.
Lumen fixed his blazing eyes on Calum—eyes Calum had seen in his dreams countless times. Eyes that now haunted him and peered deep into his soul.
“You again,” Lumen said. “But this time with a measure of power that does not belong to you. It should belong to me instead.”
“It’ll never be yours,” Calum said, holding the Dragon’s Breath sword up as if to ward off Lumen.
Lumen tilted his head to the side. “Then why did you bring it to me?”
Calum’s eyebrows rose as Lumen reached out his hand and, from twenty feet away, he seized Calum’s heart just as he had on the balcony overlooking the city.
Calum screamed.
Riley and Windsor were getting thrashed. There was no other way to put it.
Claw marks raked up and down their bodies, across their faces, and along their arms and legs. Every wound hurt, and all of them dripped blood.
Rhaza, by comparison, still loomed in the distance, relatively unharmed, save for a few slashes across his midsection, legs, arms, and one lucky swipe along his neck. If Riley had only carved a little deeper, maybe that would’ve done the job.
Windsor looked up at Riley from a crouched position next to him, breathing hard. “This isn’t working.”
“I know,” he rasped. What he wouldn’t give for a mug of cool water right then. “But we can’t stop.”
“I’m not gonna stop,” Windsor said. “We have to find a way to kill him.”