With a series of dry cracks, the ceiling broke. Dante was already scampering away from it, toadstools squishing under his feet, and none of the stones threatened to crush him. Yet something else came down behind the rock: two of the gem-toothed worms. They lowered themselves from the tubes revealed in the ceiling and spread across the stone-strewn ground.
Dante slapped his palm to his brow. "Not the worms again!"
Blays twirled his sword. "Have either of you thought about summoning a really, really big robin?"
The creatures groped their way toward Dante and Gladdic. Without a hole to anchor themselves in, the worms moved awkwardly, humping themselves along, but they weighed so much that they'd need no precision to crush a man to death. Gladdic fanned out his fingers, shooting lines of light into the closer worm's eyeless face. Bits of translucent flesh shredded away, but the hard, crystalline bones within it stopped the worst of the damage.
Dante ran headlong from the other worm, pelting its mouth and throat with nether. Across the room, Adaine seemed to be taking advantage of the distraction to recover: nether flowed to him, sealing his cuts and gouges without a trace.
Dante neared the cave wall and veered right, heading toward one of the bright churning doorways. The worm pursuing him swung along the wall, knocking into it twice before finding its course. Blays stood in its path like a man who understands there's no outrunning the bear he's stumbled into.
It thumped and blundered its way toward him, spreading its four-part jaws like a toothy sail. Blays whirled about it, jabbing one sword into its body just behind the head. Using this as leverage, he pulled himself up its bulk. Once he stood atop it, he freed his sword and began stabbing downward as deeply as he could.
The worm bleated its airy shriek and arched its back with a snap, launching Blays into the air with his heels high. Behind Dante, Gladdic gave a bark of pain. By instinct, Dante moved into the rock beneath the worm, meaning to drive a fat spike up through its body and pin it in place, but he stopped himself, teeth clenched.
Ether swam toward him from behind. He whirled, parrying it with a dull blade of shadow. Adaine was standing again, conjuring down strands of light and weaving them together for the next strike. Across the room, Gladdic was limping away from a worm, blood smearing his forehead; near Dante, the other worm reared back, opened its mouth wide, and gnashed down at Blays, who had to throw himself to the ground to avoid getting bitten in half.
Another wave of ether was coming for Dante. He batted it down and countered with a lash of shadows, which Adaine dashed to bits, though he had to take a step and a half back. Dante knew he could bring the priest down, but the question was how long it would take—and if the worms would overwhelm the others before he finished with Adaine.
"I'll offer you a last choice," Adaine said. "Not to join us. I don't trust you, and besides, the White Lich would never take back one who's thrown away his most cherished gift. But here's what I can offer you: the chance to walk away."
He sent a torrent of both ether and nether at Dante. Dante knocked it away, standing firm against the wild sparks, but before he could counter, the worm Blays had been contending with flicked its thick tail at him. Dante moved in time to dodge the worst of it, but was still slapped to the ground.
"Do you see?" Adaine continued. "Walk away. Leave these caverns and all your troubles and find a new home in this world. This is the only place that's safe now. You can start a new life! Learn the secrets of the divine! Ascend! Choose this path and Taim will forgive you. For if you stay on the road you're walking now, it will only lead to torment and death."
"That's a very nice offer," Blays said. "But I think I'd rather do this."
He ran straight toward the face of the worm chasing him, one sword held before him, the other raised high above his head. The worm hungrily writhed its way toward him. Blays landed in a crouch, then sprung at the beast, which reared back and threw its mouth flaps wide. Blays sailed straight toward its gaping mouth and jagged crystal teeth.
And disappeared.
Dante began to laugh. "Now I'll offer you a choice, Adaine. Repent of your misdeeds, and you can die with honor. Or be slaughtered here as the greatest traitor in the history of your people."
Adaine looked on, abruptly troubled. The worm began to thrash from side to side. It clapped its four-part jaws like a seal's flippers; white blood shot from its mouth. Then its whole side split open, a crackling purple sword thrusting forth and gutting the beast from within.
A mess of viscera spilled across the cavern floor. Blays rode out with them. "That was among the most disgusting things I've ever done!"
Dante frowned. "What about when we crawled up the toilet?"
"If you don't believe me, try it and see."
The worm shuddered, but this only hastened the evacuation of its blood and guts. A great many hard, pink ribs showed within its carcass. Rather than the typical dullness of bone, they sparkled in the room's various lights. They were made of crystal, too.
Adaine began to chant. Dante didn't recognize the words, but there was no mistaking the rhythm of prayer. Ether shot from his hands. Dante turned to strike it down. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Blays drawing the other worm away from Gladdic, who had been knocked to his knees. Blays tried his jump-at-the-worm's-mouth trick a second time, but the creature seemed to possess some degree of intelligence, or at least cunning, because it snapped its mouth shut and bulled forward as if to simply crush him. Blays popped into the shadows and bounced harmlessly off the creature's hide.
"Gladdic!" Dante yelled. "Hold him off!"
Gladdic grimaced. His white hair was flattened to his scalp and half his face was awash in blood. He planted his hand on his knee and pushed himself upright. Ether blurred his fingers. As he stood to face Adaine, Dante ran toward the worm. Having lost its prey, the beast turned on him instead, crawling toward him like a titanic inchworm. It threw its mouth-parts wide, revealing its rows of clear crystal teeth.
Dante sent the shadows to them and reduced them to a liquid, flowing state—they were more or less rock, after all. As the worm reared up to bite down on him, he rolled the crystal into a thick spike and shot it up through the creature's head.
It swayed, a bit of white blood dribbling from its mouth. Then it toppled to the side and slammed to the ground. Dante stood ready to dash the crystalline spear to shards if it turned on him, but it didn't so much as quiver.
Blays materialized from the nether. "Did you just use its own bones to kill it?"
"Pretty clever of me, wasn't it?"
"Extremely." Blays nodded toward Adaine. "Can you do that to people, too?"
"Let's find out."
Adaine and Gladdic were locked in combat, galaxies of sparks erupting between them, casting madly unsteady shadows throughout the cavern, like the light shed by a lantern on a chain hanging from the cabin of a badly pitching ship. With all the subtlety he could muster, Dante reached into Adaine's bones, looking to punch them through his meat and guts. They wouldn't answer his call.
Muttering, Dante joined the more conventional attack, circling a tendril of shadows wide around Adaine and letting it rest within the ground. Adaine was sweating now and the hawk-like intelligence of his face had been replaced by something more grim. He dropped back a step, then two more, shifting his sorcery to a tight defensive web. He was talented, and it would take some time to crack. All the while, the portals swirled on, and the Blighted marched forth.
Dante hit Adaine with another wave of shadows. The priest dashed it apart, as he'd done to all the others, but Gladdic's followup pushed him back further yet. Dante raced forward, taking hold of the nether he'd held in waiting in a fat blue gemstone twinkling in the dark. The mineral stabbed forth, piercing Adaine's back and punching through his chest.
Adaine yelled out, the sound high and piercing. He gaped down at the blue spike, his arms raised from his sides. Gladdic walked forward. A sphere of light grew from his hand.
"Wait," Adaine gasped. "Don't kill me
, Ordon."
Gladdic pressed his lips together until they disappeared. "That is what we are here to do, Adaine. You chose this moment the same moment you chose to serve the lich."
"There is another option than death. Send me back to the Mists. The rift to them is in the same chamber you came here from."
"I should send you back to the Mists so that you might return here and continue your treachery?"
"You can imprison me. It would only take a handful of the dead to make sure I can't get out. After the siege of Bressel, you won't want for volunteers."
"You have already died once. Do you fear what comes next so deeply?"
Adaine shook his head hard, eyes flying wide at the pain caused by his movement. "It isn't death I fear. I fear not witnessing my god and his servant reshaping the worlds to match their vision of glory."
"You gave Bressel to the lich," Dante said. "You should be happy we're only going to kill you. We should send you back to the Mists to be kicked off a cliff every morning and fed to the dogs every night."
"Then do that very thing, if that's what you require to let me witness what's to come. I won't complain."
"I don't think you're getting me, you dumb bastard. Your treason might have destroyed everything."
"I was but the tool of my lord, his sword and his hammer. Let me live on in the worst prison your mind can conceive. Just let me watch his will unfold! You must understand, Gladdic. Everything I have ever done was done in the name of Taim!"
"I know that." Gladdic's voice was suddenly gentle. "And that is why you must die."
Adaine's face had gone pale with shock and pain. He lifted it to Gladdic, a childlike confusion in his eyes. "For my faith and service to our god?"
Gladdic nodded. "For you see, no matter what promises you make us now, if the chance ever arises for you to further Taim's will, you will seize it. What does your word to us matter versus the command of your god? It is your very devotion that makes it assured you will betray us. There is only one road left to us now."
Gladdic lifted his hand to Adaine's brow. A spark of ether arced between them. Adaine's head swung back, his eyes rolling upward, as if searching for some last sight of Taim. He smiled.
He slumped against the gemstone spear holding him up. He held there for a moment, then slid further—although this was an illusion; it was his skin that was sliding down, as if melting free of his flesh, although this was following as well, muscle and viscera, sagging toward the earth, already fraying, dissolving into steam and crumbling into ash.
Soot piled on the ground. Although there didn't seem to be any wind in the chamber, the ashes blew lightly across the floor, forming small dust devils that spun apart into nothing. Next to follow were the tendons and sinews, disintegrating as the softer flesh had done.
All that remained were his bones. These held together another moment, then fell to the ground with a clatter. The three watchers each took a step back. The bones, pristine white, grayed like things left too long in a basement. Instead of collapsing into ashes, they sank into the stone as if it were no more solid than quicksand. The intact right hand and the skull were the last to vanish below the surface.
When it was done, nothing was left but a few ripples in the stone.
Blays had raised his hand to cover his eyes, but had been peeking through his fingers all the while. "When I die, I really hope it's the normal way."
Gladdic's voice was scratched and hoarse. "He has passed into the Worldsea."
"Have feelings later," Dante said. "We have a portal to tear down."
He ran toward the spinning disc of light on the right end of the cavern. Just as it had been in the Gods' Plaza, cords of ether stretched back from it into the deeper strata of the world. Dante beckoned the nether to him and hacked deep into the ties suspending the doorway between worlds.
They snapped like bowstrings, disappearing as thoroughly as Adaine had. Gladdic shuffled up beside him. The older man had been battered and wounded fending off the giant worm, blood trickling down his face to stain the collar of his robe, but he paid this no mind, chopping into the cords alongside Dante. The portal gave a wobble.
Dante activated his loon at the same instant it began to throb in his ear. "Nak? We just killed Adaine. We'll bring the portal down—"
"Dante!" Nak yelled. "He's coming through!"
Dante didn't have to ask who Nak meant. Before him, a leg as stout as a tree trunk stepped through the churning doorway. And with it came the White Lich.
28
The lich strode through the ethereal doorway like a warrior walking out of a lake. He looked even taller than before and his presence radiated from him like the sun's warmth from brick. He carried his long white glaive, his cape flapping behind him. His icy face rarely betrayed much emotion, but he seemed to bear a calm but angry resolve.
The ground around the portal was thick with glowing blue stones. Dante reached into them all, breaking them down and launching them at the lich in the shape of a dozen different spears.
They struck his skin and exploded into fragments. The lich lifted one finger. With a deafening shriek, every gem and crystal in the chamber shattered like glass. All of the lights went with them—except for the blue-white glow spilling from the body of the lich himself, and the ever-cycling shades of his eyes.
The Eiden Rane gazed on them, no expression to be seen on his beardless face. A new bead of ether brightened on his finger.
"Stop," Gladdic said.
"I do not think so," the lich said.
"Stop and answer my question! For what have you to lose? The longer we speak, the longer your doorways churn, and the closer we edge to ruin."
The lich looked between Dante and Blays, then fixed his eyes on Gladdic. "What is it that you wish to know?"
"Tell me if Adaine was telling the truth. Tell me whether you are the servant of Taim."
"This is the last question you would ask me before you die?"
"It is the only one I need to know."
"It's of no interest." The ether expanded from the lich's finger once more.
"You will tell me!" Gladdic strode forward, his arm lifted above his head, fingers splayed. "I have fought you from the deepest swamps of Tanar Atain to the walls of Bressel to a new and frightening world. Cast me into ashes, if you will. But before you do, I will know if my life was all in vain."
"You do not make demands." The lich's coppery voice rang from the bare stone walls. "But you have fought me as few have ever done. I will answer your question and I will do so truly. I am not the servant of Taim."
"I knew it. You were deceiving him all along. Adaine was wrong. About everything."
"About everything? No, that is not so. And it was not I that deceived him."
Gladdic had lowered his head in pain. Now, he snapped it upward. "But it was you that—"
"Quiet, beggar-priest. Adaine spoke with Taim, just as he claimed. And it was Taim who led him astray."
"I do not understand. Taim told Adaine that you had come to Bressel as his avatar? Why would he do such a thing?"
"Adaine already gave us the answer to that," Dante said. "Taim wants to destroy the Mists."
"Just so." The lich smiled at Gladdic. "Will you now walk away, knowing that to oppose me is to oppose your own lord?"
Gladdic lowered his hand to his side. "I have chosen my course. If there comes a day when I am summoned before the father, I will answer to him."
"I wonder if you would speak so bravely if you knew the futility of your fight. Even the token you came here to seek would not have helped you."
Dante's face grew hot. "What token?"
The Eiden Rane chuckled. "You cannot lie to me, little sorcerer. I know your mind like a shepherd knows his land. Still you hold hope, but there is none to be had."
"No hope? We held our own at Aris Osis. We took what we learned there and we employed it at Bressel. You couldn't break through. We would have beaten you."
"Even at the very end, you deceiv
e yourself."
"You couldn't punch through our lines! We would have worn you down. It might have taken months, but we would have won."
"Would you? You had no means to strike at me. No strategy to destroy my army or myself. If I had not conceived of a way to harness the doorways, I would simply have left, gathering my strength in other countries while you continued to wait and do nothing, helpless and more hopeless by the day."
"Not so. With more time, we would have found our way here. And returned with the spear."
The lich waved dismissively. "It would have done you no good. Nor would the lords of this realm have granted it to you. It means nothing to me."
"Is that right? Then if it's no threat to you, why are you destroying the Mists?"
"You have had enough questions. If you had served me, you would have known everything. Not just these mundane matters, but all of existence. But you forsook such things."
Dante narrowed his eyes. "It's because you can't conquer them, isn't it? Your vision is to erase all the peoples of the world, with all their fractures, and replace them with a single new united whole. But as long as the dead remain in the Mists, there's a chance your new people could speak to them. Teach them that things weren't always like the way you'd made them. This knowledge would corrupt them—and ruin your perfect plan."
"How very wise of you. Yet such small wisdoms only make you look more foolish for throwing away your chance to serve as a lieutenant of the new order." The White Lich tapped the butt of his glaive against the stone floor. "I have more work left to do. It is time to bring this to an end. Kneel to me, and I will make your deaths swift and without pain."
Dante bit the inside of his mouth, tasting salt and metal. He wanted to speak out in defiance, to reveal some secret plan he'd built as they'd been speaking that would catch the lich off-guard and destroy him. But that desire, as so much else had been, was no more than a delusion.
"We cannot kill him," Gladdic murmured. "But we may still sever the portal, and save the others, if only for now."
Dante swallowed. "Right."
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