Gifts of Vorallon: 03 - Lord of Vengeance

by Thomas Cardin

  “I hope that as a god your tasks keep you too busy to write epic verse,” Oen returned with a chuckle.

  Lorace smiled and with chain in hand, he turned and walked toward the immense doors at the end of the grand hall. His companions, the whole force of men, dwarves, and elves followed behind him. He reinforced his links with their spirits and those who remained across the Vestral Sea in Erenar. Their concerted will focused upon him, making him more solid than a man could be, as though he was made of stuff phenomenally tougher than ogre bone or even godstone.

  More of the sickening sweet odor came in a cloying wave from the throne room, the death of thousands. He drove the stench away again, wishing once more that he could just melt the whole pile down.

  He halted before the massive doors that sealed the Kamunki’s lair. They stood higher than ten men and were more than half that wide, spanning wall to wall. Large steel rings were set at shoulder height. Lorace wrapped them in air and yanked the doors open to slam against the walls in a clap of thunder.

  The Devourer stood nearly naked in the center of the vast chamber and laughed. He dwarfed even the enormous trolls they had fought at the ambush. About his waist hung the clothing from countless victims crudely tied together like a street beggar’s rags. He laughed from a massive chest, muscled to immaculate perfection, a chest that bore none of Lorace’s scars though they both wore the same face. His towering body appeared to gleam with health and life, but it was death. Dead flesh made into a colossal mockery of life.

  The loathsomeness of undeath emanated from him, while the smell of decay filled the chamber. The Devourer was exactly as Vorallon’s memory had shown, but there was a physical impact to his vile presence that the memory had failed to reveal. As Lorace strode forward into the chamber, a resisting pressure pushed against him, the very strength of life filling him was repulsed by the presence within the room.

  The blue-white light of the glyphs, flooding into the throne room from behind, tipped the pressure in his favor. The light of life shone strong. It also made the giant fiend appear sick and wholly unreal for his perfection. The blight remained about the Devourer, wrapping him protectively, while his foulness warded it from the light. From around his titanic feet and the pit far below, it continued to flow toward the core of Vorallon.

  “Come, child,” the Devourer beckoned. “Enter my embrace so that I may feast, yours is the final essence I must have to become a god.”

  Lorace strode forward eagerly, stretching out all senses to detect the presence of the Dreadful Other, but there was nothing. “You will be no god. You will be dust in my embrace. I have looked forward to destroying you even more than you have me. Where is your friend, demon? Where are your servants?”

  “I am no demon,” the Devourer said, ignoring Lorace’s other question. “I wore the skin of one for an age, as I wear the skin of death in this age, but neither is the body I miss above all else. Let me touch you so that I may rise a dragon once more, as has been promised.”

  Lorace continued to step forward giving the melted pits in the floor a wide birth. He armored himself in will, as he had when he withstood Sir Rindal’s blade—armor hundreds of times stronger with the concert behind him, yet he was wary of what he must do.

  “Where did you come from Kamunki?” Lorace halted just outside of the giant’s reach. The blight held him immobile, only his enormous hands were free to reach toward Lorace. You cannot step clear of your task. You are locked into your destiny more securely than I ever was to mine.

  “That is not my name, my slaves gave me that name,” the Devourer snarled, his lips and eyes twisting into a grotesque mask. “By my own hand, my world transformed the way this one shall, but his spirit remains with me. His essence blessed the stones of my lair before you trod here.”

  “Tell me your name then,” Lorace asked, taking a half step closer. “Let all who hear it cringe and wallow before you, if you remember it.”

  “You would dare taunt me?” The fiend leered down at him, stretching a clutching hand forward, but Lorace remained out of reach.

  “You do not remember your name, perhaps it is a piece of you that I have with me?” Lorace asked in a level voice.

  The Devourer growled in inarticulate rage.

  “You are incomplete,” Lorace continued. “This is why you need me so badly. I am here, take a step to me and I will gladly enter your embrace,” Lorace lifted his arms, Sakke Vrang stretched between both hands. “Perhaps I should decline that offer though, I should simply keep your name, and then I shall be the dragon in your stead.”

  Iris stood between Falraan and Tornin, clinging to them both. “What does he mean? Why does he not strike the giant down?”

  Lehan stepped before her. “He probes. The fight is not against the Devourer alone and he knows it. Further, he seeks to draw the fiend away from its task of attacking Vorallon’s core.”

  “What does his true name have to do with anything?”

  Hethal slid up beside Lehan, both of them facing her and not the drama playing out in the throne room. “You must have guessed who the Devourer truly is by now, Lorace has. Utter it not or all is lost.”

  “I-,” she stopped herself and nodded. Only one being could be so closely tied to this God of Undeath. There could be no mistake, Lorace had guessed true. This spirit was the one brother who had fallen into darkness with his world. This spirit of foulness, from dragon to demon to giant, had always been the very first Lord of Vengeance.

  She ceased all worry, all thought, as Lorace swung loose his chain. Her only focus was on his infinite strength.

  Behind him, Lorace could hear a quiet discussion happening among the throng of his friends at the entryway. They know he tried to lure the Devourer off his footing to halt the blight, but they do not understand the nature of his taunting. I know your secret. The secret you have forgotten in your deaths. Memory is not tied to the spirit.

  Regardless of his taunting, he was running out of time. The blight had almost reached Vorallon’s core. It is time.

  Lorace lashed out with his chain, striking the enormous hand that groped toward him. There were no black flames or golden sparks, only pain. He gasped as stinging fire ripped through him. The pain of a fraction of his spirit, and of all those linked to him, flowing out of him through his chain and into the Devourer. Sakke Vrang betrays me!

  In his shock, Lorace took a step back. He whipped the chain away an instant before the Devourer’s hand could close around it. Lorace shook his head, clearing his mind of the pain. Bile had risen in his throat, gagging him. The circles on his hands ached like fresh burns. This is the cost of choosing tranquility.

  “That is it!” the Devourer crowed. “That is what I must have! Such lovely strength. It is how I must grow into a god!”

  The fiend stood even larger now, more enormous by several hands from the feeding of that brief moment of contact.

  The instant of doubt vanished from Lorace’s face, I understand now. Everything fell into place. The reason the Ritual of the Forge had made a chain of his godstone. The reason for his choices and Hethal’s shock at the pivotal choice he had made. He looked briefly back toward the ones he loved and flashed them his most reassuring smile. He rose into the air before the Devourer, pulling a great mass of air into the throne room, like taking a deep breath, all of it infused with his spirit and strength, eager to obey his will.

  “I accept your embrace, nameless creature,” Lorace launched himself into the Devourer’s chest, pressing himself up tight against him, into the blight, onto cold, dead flesh. What he could take of the pain he let flow to his tranquility and clamped his jaws tight against the remainder. He flung out Sakke Vrang with his left hand and the air wrapped its dull silvery links around the massive torso to lay the far end in right hand. “Now accept my embrace!”

  With the fingers of both outstretched hands, he pulled the chain tighter and tighter, even as he bore the agony of his draining spirit—the agony of the betraying chain. The dreadful
gift of the Devourer took his spirit and life slowly, he was far too vast to be absorbed as he had seen Queen Ivrane crumble to dust and bones. The blight struck at him as well, but his life remained too strong for it to invade his flesh. It was repelled from his life force as it was from the light of the glyphs, but his life force was draining away.

  The Devourer laughed and took hold of Lorace’s body in both hands, crushing him close in a sickening embrace. A doubling of agony wrapped around him, even as his chain wrapped the fiend. The monster stretched and bulged. One link at a time, Lorace’s fingers cinched the chain tighter, and never once did his grip slacken. Despite its betrayal, he remained the strongest link of the chain.

  When an enormous rib cracked to the unyielding, unbreakable chain, the monster stopped laughing. Lorace drove the air, imbued with more of his spirit into the growing figure. The chain now cut deep into the body of the Devourer who grew ever larger.

  It is not enough. Lorace’s life force ebbed lower, tantalizing the groping blight. Regretfully, he allowed more life energy to flow through him, feeding a fraction of the concert’s life into the Devourer. How many must I sacrifice? They give of themselves without holding back. Sir Rindal’s spirit was at the forefront, accepting the sacrifice before all others.

  Lorace fought against the paladin’s penetrating will, holding him back from giving so much of himself that he would surely die. More ribs cracked and collapsed beneath him. Where the chain had cut through the flesh no blood flowed for the body of the Devourer was not a living thing. Lorace stifled the need to pant and sob. Come back to me Sakke Vrang. I am not the one who breaks! I remain the strongest link.

  If the chain did not switch allegiance back soon, there would be nothing left. People in Halversome were swooning. Something was missing, another piece which had been put into play by the gods, something he had missed. Nothing had only a single purpose. He spared the focus to look back over all the sources linked to his shrinking spirit.

  There is another source, an endless source! Lorace groped out weakly toward his link with Tornin and the glow of vitality that flowed in an endless stream from the sword in his hand. He pulled that vitality into everyone, restoring Sir Rindal and many other spirits from the brink of extinguishing. He traced that strength, trying to pull even more from its source, and he found a silver thread extending outwards, away from Vorallon and into the hot fire of the sun itself.

  His brothers had done this when they had blessed the blade, Defender of the Youngest. They had built this conduit of vitality and strength that made all others seem inconsequential. Lorace drew on the warmth of the sun, Vorallon’s eternal partner, and let that flow into him and into the cracking, breaking thing he embraced. The thing beneath him was shrieking, a high, keening wail. Though it overflowed with strength and continued to grow, it could not bear the unbreakable chain.

  The Devourer’s spine snapped like a great tree shattering to the blow of a lightning strike. The pain stopped as Sakke Vrang came back to its rightful master, relinquishing itself to Lorace’s tranquility. The wounds of broken ribs and snapped spine would not kill the Devourer, but it showed a weakness which the Chain of Vengeance could not abide. Black flame erupted in a storm flung to the far ceiling. The golden sparks flew into Lorace, restoring much that the nameless spirit had taken from him. He let it flow into his tranquility, but it was a fraction of what he had taken of the essence of Lord Aizel. There was no hint of freeing souls, though he did not recall any such sensation when slaying the demon horde. It is not enough. It is not everything!

  Lorace tried to shake the doubt from his head. The dead thing was gone—its undead flesh and shattered bones devoured entirely by the reclaimed Sakke Vrang.

  He lowered himself to the floor and turned to face everyone he held precious.

  chapter 16

  THE LORD OF VENGEANCE

  Last Day of the Moon of the Thief

  -inside Blackdrake Castle

  Iris launched herself toward his open arms. “You did it, my love!”

  Quick as a snake, Lehan caught her arm, holding her back again. “No! It is not over! My son Micah—call to him now, Lorace!”

  Iris struggled like a writhing demon in the Truthseeker’s grip. “What is this? No!”

  Lorace tried to take a step toward her, but his feet would not move. He wind-milled his arms to regain his balance and looked down. The black stone of the floor had flowed up over his feet locking him in place. The throne room shook. The whole floor rippled like black water, and dust descended from a ceiling that rose beyond the light of the glyphs.

  He could only stretch a hand toward Iris’s tear-filled eyes as the sound of crunching and grinding ascended from the depths of the greatest of the pits. Lorace clenched his fists and formed a whirlwind around the distant child who stood beside his bed. Micah had waited through the night for this moment. The young boy jumped as the sudden touch of wind fluttered through his clothes and hair.

  “You have to go,” Lorace cried above the thunderous rumble coming from the pit. “The spirit is not slain, it has returned to its original body. The dragon comes!”

  “Lorace!” Iris shouted as Micah appeared beside her. “We will fight it together!”

  With his heart a dead thing in his chest, he focused only on the young boy. “Micah take them to safety, wherever that may be. All of them that you can.”

  The ground lurched ominously. His sight revealed nothing of the true form of what was climbing up from the depths of the pit, the Devourer’s gift had kept it hidden and continued to do so, but he could see the blight rising with it, marking its progress. All the cattle, all the undead of Ousenar have gone into that pit.

  Lorace drove his will and the strength of the concert toward Micah. He gave everything he could to enhance the boy’s gift. With what strength he had left, he drove diamond hard chisels of air into the stone trapping his feet, but succeeded in creating only a few small cracks. He remained trapped in the black stone’s grip.

  The great entry where his friends stood came alive with flowing black stone extruding from the walls and floor. Thick and serpent-like, they slammed down among the scattering crowd. Several spirits vanished from his link: guardsmen, former Zuxrans, the priestess he had saved from the warped birds, and stout dwarf, Petor, all crushed to death by the flowing stone. In the next instant Micah, and everyone still alive vanished. Only the debris of twisted black stone and the dead remained. The concert is broken. The light of the glyphs was gone. Only his sight revealed the horror of death to him, and he could not bear to look.

  Lorace turned his full attention to breaking the stone that trapped his feet. He drove more spikes of air into the cracks he had previously made, trying to widen them.

  A blue-white glow brightening the chamber gave him pause.

  The sound of falling and crumbling stone drew his attention back to the entryway where the black extrusions had frozen in place. Sir Rindal was cutting himself free of a stone grip, his blade slicing away constricting loops thicker than his waist. In his other hand he held the glyph of the priestess who had been crushed beside him.

  “You were right about my gift, Lorace,” the paladin said as he trotted forward. “I can shift it as well, to reverse it. I used it to deny the child’s hold over me, as I use it now to stop the stone from rising up all around us. I am staying to fight.”

  Using Brakke Zahn, Sir Rindal severed the black stone imprisoning Lorace’s feet, allowing him to step free and turn to face the great pit. Tornin was there leaning over the edge and peering down.

  “Tornin? You too?” Lorace cried. “What comes from this pit has the power of the Devourer and the undead god’s will behind it.”

  “Yes I know, and I killed it once before, as Elena,” Tornin said. With a flicker of movement, the young knight traversed the distance that separated them and placed on Lorace’s shoulder. “I ran beyond the boy’s grasp. My wife and yours are safe. Now I am free to protect you. Destiny is an amazing thing, is it
not?”

  Lorace shook his head, but could not prevent the smile that lifted the corners of his mouth. As much as he wished it otherwise, destiny had found the means to keep both these men, his sworn protectors, at his side.

  The sound of cracking and scraping stone grew to a deafening volume. A long, black scaled hand reached out of the pit. Talons as long as Sir Rindal’s sword sunk into the stone of the rim with an ear-splitting screech to pull an enormous bulk upwards. “It is time,” a voice hissed.

  A long-jawed head with a raptor-beaked snout shot up on a serpentine neck. “More than time.” His head dipped down, displaying a pair of sweeping spiral horns at the back of his skull and broad, fan-like ears spread wide and quivering in an unmistakable display of hostility.

  A body like that of a great feline, long and lithe, sinuously followed, tattered, bat-like wings furled close to a thorn-spiked back. The aura of death that had repelled Lorace from the Devourer intensified with the dragon’s full presence, driving him and his defenders back toward the entry.

  “All is as was promised,” the dragon’s speech thudded into Lorace’s body, carried on fetid breath. It crashed like the thundering surf of the beach where he awoke. It rattled through his skull and knotted his stomach.

  The dragon stood over the pit of his death and reconstruction, wrapped in a film of blight. Jagged scales of obsidian black covered his body from the crown of his head to just before the wicked spade at the end of his long, twisting tail. Broad, band-like scales warded the underside of the beast’s neck, chest, and belly, but rather than being the gleaming armor of the living dragon, they were rippled and pocked. In life, thousands had worshipped Kamunki’s majestic presence. Vorallon’s memory showed him as a titanic embodiment of frightening perfection. Risen once more, with the blighted flesh of unknown multitudes reshaping his body, the dragon was a warped reflection of his former glory, an embodiment of horror and death