by Ben Wolf
He noticed her, and then he noticed the storm. His eyes fixed upon its green center, no doubt pondering its meaning just as Valerie had pondered it upon first seeing it.
Then he looked at her again.
She knew he could see her smiling at him, even from behind her helmet.
“The King told me I wouldn’t understand,” she called to him, her voice modulated to sound like Gavridel’s thanks to her helmet. “And I didn’t. Not until I saw this storm.”
Lumen continued to stare at her.
“He said to me, ‘Three days afterward, amid the coming storm, I promise you will understand everything,’” Valerie continued. Inside her helmet, tears streamed down her face, but she maintained her smile all the same. “I thought he meant you were the coming storm.”
Lumen’s grip tightened on his sword.
“I was wrong,” Valerie said, her smile the widest and truest it had ever been.
Then Lumen flashed toward her and cut her out of the sky.
Chapter Fifty-One
Magnus had seen Condor fall to the streets below with Axel’s sword—Magnus’s old Blood Ore sword—protruding from his body.
After his duel with the Jyrak, he’d been too far away to intervene, and far too late to stop Axel. It all happened under the darkest storm Magnus had ever seen, casting the scene in bleak tones of black and gray.
The sight of Condor’s death filled Magnus with rage. Every memory he had of Axel chastising him, or making snide comments, or complaining about any insignificant thing replayed rapid-fire through Magnus’s mind. Then he recalled Axel’s outright betrayal of his friends, his role in the King’s murder, and his continued combat support of Lumen’s reign.
It all burned at the back of Magnus’s skull, and it propelled him into the air, straight toward him.
Axel had killed Condor, and now Magnus was going to make him pay for it.
Axel had been so preoccupied with watching Condor fall that at first, he hadn’t noticed Gavridel—Valerie—and Lumen hovering in the air halfway across the city. When Lumen flashed toward Valerie and struck her from the sky, Axel turned in time to see her armored form dropping toward the barren city streets.
Horror seized his chest. He hadn’t wanted Valerie to die—that’s why he’d saved her in the first place. But he’d also known that Lumen would ultimately determine her fate.
And Lumen had clearly made his choice.
The storm overhead swirled and raged with a fury unlike any storm Axel had ever seen before. The thunder of the lighting ratcheting through the clouds was so constant that it sounded like hammers striking the air, or like the wing beats of a huge Dragon tearing through the sky.
Axel’s eyes widened with realization, and he whirled around.
He tried to open a void to escape, but an enormous scaly hand snatched Axel’s entire body into its grasp. A deafening roar ripped through Axel’s ears, and he found himself staring at the enraged face of the Dragon King of Reptilius himself.
Magnus.
Axel squirmed to try to get free, but Magnus didn’t loosen his grip in the slightest.
“Hello, Scales,” Axel sneered at him.
A low growl issued from Magnus’s throat, and then his nostrils began to smoke. But instead of unleashing dragonfire, Magnus began to squeeze.
Axel heard his bones popping and cracking before he felt the pain, and though he struggled to free himself, he couldn’t. He gaped at Magnus with desperate eyes, and then he saw nothing anymore.
Calum reached the sky in a state of heartache, but upon seeing the storm overhead, it shifted to confusion. Had he really been inside Valkendell so long that a maelstrom had time to gather without him realizing it?
Somehow, though, his reservoir of the King’s power seemed to have fully replenished. He could feel it pooling inside his body yet again, ready to be used. He considered going back to use it to heal Lilly, but he stopped himself. He had to try to finish off Lumen, or it wouldn’t matter what he did for her.
When he noticed a strange green glow from the eye of the storm, positioned perfectly over the center of the city, Calum felt something stir within him, but he couldn’t make sense of it.
The impression immediately truncated as a terrible pain took its place. A familiar pain screaming through Calum’s chest. Hot white light glowed from his heart, shining even through his armor.
He whirled around and saw Lumen soaring toward him with his hand extended. With his teeth clenched, Calum summoned the King’s power and pried Lumen’s grip from his heart.
It was surprisingly easy, especially compared to how he’d struggled against Lumen’s pull inside the throne room.
Lumen tilted his head at Calum, and then his blazing eyes narrowed. “Even now, at the end, you still defy me?”
“Get used to it,” Calum fired back.
Overhead, rain began to fall from the storm, but not just a smattering of drops. It swelled to a torrential downpour almost immediately, so thick that it even managed to dim Lumen’s light.
Lumen reached out and grabbed Calum’s heart again, and this time his grip multiplied in intensity. The pain almost made Calum pass out, but a burst of the King’s power kept him coherent, and another burst began weaving its way between Lumen’s grip and Calum’s heart.
Lumen noticed, and his eyebrows scrunched down in fury.
Calum had expected Lumen would redouble his efforts to seize control of the light, but instead, he raised his sword and darted closer to him.
Weaponless, Calum raised his left arm and called the King’s power yet again. A shield made of green energy deadened the blow, but the force of Lumen’s attack still sent tremors shuddering up Calum’s arm.
“You cannot resist me forever,” Lumen said as he pulled even harder on Calum’s heart. “I am too powerful for the likes of you.”
Calum ground his teeth and pulled back. He pulled for his very life.
And as he pulled, he sensed something familiar in the air—no, in the rain. Familiar, yet different. New—renewed.
Power.
The rain itself had taken on the same radiant quality as the eye of the storm, and it now glowed green as well.
It was as if Calum’s skin was drinking in the rain, and every drop of it filled him with a little more power.
With the King’s power constantly renewing within him, Calum pried Lumen’s grip from his heart once again. When Lumen swung his sword, Calum’s energy shield blocked it with ease, and this time the blow hardly rippled through his arm at all.
Lumen spouted ancient curses at him and summoned half a dozen spikes of pure light. They materialized in the air, visible even through the downpour, but as he sent them flying toward Calum, they disintegrated in the rain, becoming nothing but steam.
Lumen roared and launched forward, swinging his sword in vicious world-destroying arcs. Calum kept his shield up and deflected every blow, even as they grew more and more powerful with each successive strike. He found himself gritting his teeth as the King’s power struggled to keep up with Lumen’s onslaught.
“You are nothing!” Lumen growled between strikes. “You always have been.”
Though Lumen’s sword hadn’t breached Calum’s defenses, his words had found their way into Calum’s mind and heart all the same.
“That’s not true,” Calum fired back. He was saying it to himself as much as to Lumen.
“Oh, but it is.” Lumen’s blade crashed against Calum’s shield. “Do you think you are important because I appeared to you in your dreams? Do you really think I chose you to set me free?”
Calum held his tongue. Lumen had chosen him. He had appeared in Calum’s dreams.
“You are a fool if you believe that,” Lumen jabbed, as if he could read Calum’s thoughts. “I did not choose you. I sent dreams to thousands of halfwits just like you. You were the only one deluded enough to answer the call.”
Calum’s heart shuddered at Lumen’s admission. Was that really true? Or was Lumen just w
aging mental warfare against him?
“You are nothing,” Lumen repeated, his voice even more menacing than the first time. “You will always be nothing.”
It couldn’t be true. It would mean that everything Calum had done in his life, especially since he’d fled the quarry, had meant nothing. It meant that he was the only person in the whole world who’d been dumb enough to answer Lumen’s call, to set him free, and to destroy Kanarah in the process.
“You know it is true.” Lumen’s sword pressed against Calum’s shield, which began to crack under the pressure. “You are weak. You always have been. But with me, you can finally be strong. Join me, Calum, and together, we can save Kanarah—forever.”
In that moment, Lumen pushed Calum too far. He’d overstepped, overplayed his advantage, and Calum knew it.
He felt it.
But more importantly, he felt that familiar impression again. Familiar, yet different. New, and renewed. Powerful beyond measure.
Calum began to reinforce his shield with more of the King’s power.
Lumen shook his head. “Do not resist. You must know you will never be king. You are too weak to reign.”
Those words were absolutely true. Hearing them from the Father of Lies made them all the more poignant.
They helped Calum realize the truth about what was really happening.
He looked up at the maelstrom overhead. Though the rain continued to pour down, the eye of the storm no longer glowed green.
That was because the storm wasn’t just a storm. It wasn’t a means to empower Calum to defeat Lumen. Even with all the power he could hold, he never could’ve done that.
No—the storm was the power.
“You’re right, Lumen,” Calum said through gritted teeth as he pushed back against Lumen’s sword. “I’ll never be king.”
Lumen tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at Calum.
Behind him, a form began to materialize out of the rain. It was the size of Lumen, and it, too, wore all white armor and a crown of white atop its head.
Calum already knew who it was, but upon seeing the figure’s vibrant green eyes ignite in the darkness, every last bit of his reservations vanished.
“And you’re right— I’m too weak. I could never defeat you.” Calum nodded over Lumen’s shoulder. “But he can.”
The form drifted forward, revealing itself in the entirety of its glory.
The King had returned.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Lumen whirled around and swung his sword in a vicious strike that would’ve obliterated an entire army, but a bronze spear stopped his attack mid-swing.
Matthios’s spear. But it wasn’t Matthios holding it.
When Lumen saw who now wielded the weapon, his eyes widened. “Impossible.”
The King hovered in the air before him, clothed in white armor, wearing a crown of white, and radiating more power than Lumen had ever known. His green eyes burned with righteous fury, and they were fixed upon Lumen.
“I killed you. I buried you!” Lumen shouted as he drew his sword back for another strike.
This time, his arm didn’t even make it all the way back. A bolt of green lightning screamed down from the storm and struck his arm, shearing it off in one brutal strike.
Lumen recoiled and shouted as he watched his arm and his sword fall into the watery abyss below. He looked up at the King again. “I killed you! I buried you! You were dead!”
“Not anymore,” the King replied.
Desperation filled Lumen’s chest. It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for a thousand years—not since the King had defeated him at the end of his last rebellion and cast him into his prison beneath the Central Lake.
“How?” he asked.
“The Law of Debt,” the King replied.
Lumen just shook his head.
“Kanarah was suffering. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to intervene, your rebellion lingered among my people. They violated Kanarah’s laws. They oppressed each other. Even my own soldiers participated in harming their fellow man. There was only one way to fix it. The Law of Debt was the answer.
“I allowed you to kill me,” the King continued. “By sacrificing myself and dying at your hand, I took on the burden of your rebellion, and thus, the rebellion of all Kanarah. I gave my life in order to reclaim this land forever.”
“Impossible,” Lumen repeated. “You mean to indebt everyone in all Kanarah to you?”
“I already have,” the King replied. “And not just its people, but also its plants, its animals, its waters, its atmosphere, its mountains, and its valleys. The land itself. All of it. Before, I was merely connected to Kanarah, feeding it with every beat of my heart. Now I truly am Kanarah.”
A shudder pulsed through Lumen’s body. This couldn’t be happening. He’d done everything right. He’d succeeded in killing the King and taking the throne. He’d ruled the whole world—only to have it ripped away from him in just three days’ time.
“Now only one task remains,” the King concluded. He said nothing else. He just looked at Lumen intently, intensely, boring into him with those furious green eyes.
“No,” Lumen held up his remaining hand. “You cannot. I will not let you!”
He began to summon the same ball of white-hot energy he’d used to obliterate Matthios’s army right after he’d been released. If he could loose it on the King, it might be enough to—
A bronze streak clanged against Lumen’s head, destroying the ball of energy, ripping the mask from his face, and exposing the true horror that lay beneath—a black void of darkness lined with the rotten brown teeth of a skeleton. The rest of Lumen’s face followed suit, reverting back to its true form—that of death and darkness, decay and destruction.
With one final roar, Lumen flung himself at the King, starving for vengeance.
The King’s spear skewered him through his chest, stopping his advance far short.
Lumen strained and wailed against the searing pain of the spear in his body, but to no avail. Then he looked up, toward the storm as another bolt of green lightning crashed down toward him, reducing him to ash.
Then the rain washed him away forever.
Axel’s broken body lay on the city streets near Magnus and Riley, all of them staring up at the battle raging under the storm. The rain had somehow erased some of the profound damage that Magnus had done to Axel’s body, slowly but painfully, and he’d reawakened not long after he’d gone out.
At first, he’d been eager to fight Magnus again, but the instant the green lightning bolt vaporized Lumen, Axel’s powers vanished with him, leaving him weak, frail, and thoroughly human. As he lay there, he realized that the power had never truly been his at all. In the end, Lumen hadn’t kept his promise.
Alone once again, Axel closed his eyes and let the rain continue to do its healing work. There was nothing else he could do, and nowhere he could go.
As soon as the King destroyed Lumen, Calum abandoned the storm and dashed back into Valkendell. He darted up the long hallways until he finally reached the throne room again—until he finally reached Lilly again.
She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even breathing.
Thanks to the storm, Calum was filled with the King’s power, but was he already too late? Healing that soldier’s leg had been one thing, but if Lilly was already dead…
He had to try. Calum placed his hands on her body, one on her stomach and one on her head, and he poured new life into her with the King’s power. He saturated her body with so much energy that her entire body began to glow green.
Calum could feel the power fusing her bones back together, mending broken blood vessels, shrinking hemorrhages, eliminating bruises, knitting torn tendons and flesh. Her physical body was being repaired, but he couldn’t tell if her soul was still in there or not—if she was still in there or not.
When he’d emptied the last of the King’s power into her limp form, he waited.
Nothing changed.
&nbs
p; “No.” Panic set in. “No, no, no!”
He reached down for her, took her by the shoulders, and shook her.
“Lilly, come on.” He said it quietly at first, as if he could just rouse her from sleep. With each attempt, his volume increased. “Lilly, wake up. Lilly. Lilly! Lilly, wake up! Please!”
Tears streamed down his cheeks and he tasted salt on his lips.
“Lilly!” He was shouting now. “Oh, please… Lilly, please wake up!”
She didn’t move.
“Lilly!” he screamed into her face and shook her again. Then he couldn’t restrain himself any longer. He pulled her into his arms and wailed, clutching her tightly against his body.
She was gone. Lumen had killed her after all, and Calum had been too late.
He’d helped to save Kanarah, but it had come at the cost of Lilly’s life.
Amid his tears, Calum managed the strength to whisper, “I love you” one last time.
To his surprise, she whispered it back to him.
He jerked backward, staring at her with his mouth hanging open in shock—beautiful, horrible shock. She opened her blue eyes and gazed into his, smiling like she had that night when she’d kissed him.
His shock transformed into a smile, but the words he wanted to say never made it out of his mouth. He couldn’t have said them even if he’d wanted to.
Instead, he leaned forward, and he kissed Lilly again.
And this time, he was never going to let her go.
Epilogue
By the time the massive storm overhead had disappeared, it had saturated Solace nearly to the point of flooding. Were it not for the city’s sewers, it probably would have.
The rain also served to cleanse the streets of the surviving abominations; wherever the rain touched them, it melted a little bit more of them away. And since the storm was a nonstop downpour, the monsters disintegrated almost immediately, whether alive or dead.