A Season of Rendings

by Adam J Nicolai

  The dark ignored it all and flattened itself to the ground, one long front leg darting into the tower. Seth screamed as the dragon dragged him into the open, speared through the gut.

  Ves isn't working. Ah, a'jhul, it's not working! He needed something bigger, something that would force the thing's attention. He fought down his panic and Ascended again. His emotions receded instantly, an ocean at low tide, as all became brilliance.

  Fire. I need the fire. But he didn't know the words, didn't understand the concept—he couldn't command the Pulse if he didn't know what to say.

  Seth's cries were only knowledge here. They registered in his ears as anguish. Pain. The dragon shook his body (corporeality, warmth, vitality) loose, sent it sprawling and limp to the middle of the courtyard.

  Warmth. Angbar thought of a torch, of the fire in it—then threw that concept away and remembered the spell as Syntal had cast it. That, he demanded. I want that. Components of the effect glittered in the distance, just beyond his reach—so he leapt for them, straining upward, pushing further into the realm of possibilities. The concepts themselves abstracted further. Distance. Space. Up and down.

  Was it enough? Was it what he needed? There was more here, so much more, just beyond his reach. Forget the fire geyser. He could create fire in the air—he could transform the dragon to flame. Everything he needed was here, if he could just go further.

  So he shot upwards, assailed by revelations. He saw the dragon's dark as a snarled knot in the Pulse, one he could smooth out with the proper tools. He could annihilate it just by wishing it; there was no need to even play Lar'atul's game. Nothing was impossible here. Knowledge and power flooded him, turning his blood to lightning.

  Below, there was panic. Motion. Translation: Iggy was screaming, shaking him. His friend didn't understand. The universe was larger than he could possibly comprehend, its answers far more sophisticated than anything he could dream. Angbar ignored his warnings and seized the cosmos' ultimate mysteries. He willed the dragon's dark to vanish, all the wardbooks to manifest before him, and all the seals to shatter.

  Nothing happened.

  It felt like slipping on ice: that first instant of vertigo as he realized he had no control. He plunged back into reality, rejected and wretched—not just jerked back to the physical world but held in utter contempt by it, forced to his hands and knees as his body shrieked with pain, forced to vomit blood and bile as lightning traced delicate, wicked threads through his veins. His own flesh was water and bone and air.

  The stone dug into the meat of his hands, the bones of his knees. Physical pain wracked him, but it was nothing compared to what he had lost. Omniscience. Godhood. He sobbed, utterly destroyed.

  Somewhere, Iggy screamed his name. He looked up and saw, through the wispy form of the dragon's dark, that the monster had caught Helix in its teeth, skewing and gnashing—chewing him.

  But he was just a particular combination of certain ideas; there was nothing special about him, as such. He could be formed or deformed, modified at will. He was—

  Helix. He's Helix.

  Iggy roared as he fired arrows, one after another after another.

  My friend. He's my friend. That . . . ant, that crawling, irrelevant thing?

  Yes.

  He gritted his teeth and forced his way back into heaven.

  It will entice you, Syntal had warned him. You'll want to surrender everything. Finally, he knew what she meant. Even now, seconds after it had nearly obliterated him, he still heard its siren's call. This time he ignored it.

  Syntal's spell: no more, no less. Heat and energy and up. He was a child just learning to speak, blathering demands to the cosmos. The cosmos bucked him. It bit and snarled. Without the words, reordering it was a fight—but it was a fight he won.

  The dragon flickered to the air, suddenly hovering, and the fire spell leapt after it, licking at its tail. Helix plunged to the ground in a spray and splat of blood.

  Finally, the dragon's dark turned on them.

  "Back to the tower," Iggy panted. Angbar groaned, telling his muscles to stand, but they ignored him. He could still glimpse traces of lightning beneath his skin.

  Iggy jerked him to his feet and hauled him back. They stumbled into the guard tower just as the dark hit the ground behind them.

  iii. Lyseira

  Don't be dead.

  This exhortation repeated itself endlessly as she dashed from the cover of the guard tower, a mere dozen feet behind the dark's lashing umbral tail. Her thoughts held no accusations for Angbar's failure to get the dragon away from them, no ideas for how they might ultimately bring the thing down. The hope that she wasn't too late crowded everything else out.

  She hated watching her brother get murdered, over and over, only to bring him back from the brink so he might do it again. She hated seeing her friends' flesh mashed to nearly unrecognizable forms, never achieving the freedom of death. But in these instants—all too common, now—when their lives hung in the balance, the only thing that mattered was reaching them before they drew their final breaths. After last night, she believed Akir could heal nearly anything, provided the wound was on this side of death. All the scriptures agreed, though: beyond that veil, even He couldn't or wouldn't reach.

  She skidded to her knees by the heap of bloody flesh that used to be Helix. Too late! her mind shrieked, wild with panic. A pool of blood cradled his ruined body, pockmarked with gobbets of muscle and bone. His shredded limbs splayed out in contorted, impossible angles. She couldn't tell if he was breathing.

  She didn't wait to find out.

  Akir answered her call at once, flooding her with His power, and only then did she seek that answering heat from her patient, that warmth that meant he still lived. She found the barest, dying ember, but it was enough to stoke, then coax to a healthy burn.

  Helix coughed, his body still riddled with holes and broken bones. "What . . . ?" he mumbled, his tongue or mind too thick to say more.

  "Your legs should hold you," she said. "Get back to the tower and down the stairs."

  She blinked away the spots in her vision and ran on to Seth.

  iv. Helix

  Blood in his eyes. Blood in his throat. Blood seeping from the holes in his chest and arms, blood slicking his palms and the stone beneath him—all of it screaming with pain.

  She was right, though. His legs worked.

  He pushed himself to his feet, roaring against the agony in his shattered arms. Every breath came fast and shallow, tearing against the splinters of his ribcage. If it weren't for Lyseira, for the unspoken promise of a complete healing later, he wouldn't have found the strength. As he staggered back to the tower, he realized this was perhaps the tiniest glimpse of what Seth's Preserver training had been like.

  Syntal stood just inside the doorway, alone. "You're well," she whispered, relieved, as he stumbled inside.

  That's a bit of an exaggeration, he tried to say, but the answering crunch of agony in his chest ground the words to dust. He lurched past her, toward the stairs—and a howl of pain from the far tower forced him to turn back.

  "Who . . . ?" he managed, before the whistling pain again silenced him.

  "I don't know. I can't see. The dark's in the way." She absently wiped a line of blood from her upper lip. "It's going after them!"

  Just like it went after us. Helix gritted his teeth, preparing himself to speak through the pain—and Syntal started chanting.

  "Kor-val bael―"

  He shoved her shoulder, pushing her into the wall before she could finish.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded.

  He fought to push out one word: "Lys." She was still out there, tending to Seth now. If the dragon turned back before she finished, caught the two of them in the open . . .

  But Syntal couldn't follow his reasoning, or refused to; she was livid that he had interrupted her. He had never seen such rage in her eyes. "Don't interrupt me when I'm chanting! Ever!"

  An answering anger er
upted inside him—You need to think about what you're doing! You're going to get Lyseira killed, and then we all die!—but he hurt too much to give it voice. "Just . . ." he managed, wincing, "wait."

  Then he made for the stairs, bracing himself against the cold walls as he followed them down. He waited in the dark for Lyseira to return and make him whole, his only companion the grating hum of Lar'atul's sword—now louder than ever.

  v. Angbar

  "This is impossible," Iggy panted. "We're not even hurting it."

  At least it's not hurting us this time, Angbar thought. Seconds ago, still above ground, they'd been caught in its phantom fire breath. Angbar had screamed, fearing the worst, but Lyseira's blessing had held. The attack had felt like the sudden glare of the sun, peeking out from behind a cloud—intense, but painless and brief.

  Now they cowered in the tunnel beneath the towers as the monster's claws scraped at the stairs above them. Angbar watched the world slowly reassert itself, the vertigo and despair from his over-Ascension slowly fading.

  "Syn's right," he said. "It's the fire spell, it has to be, but it always misses. The dark always vanishes into the air."

  "Syn brought it down with lightning. Maybe hit it with that, and then, after it lands―"

  "She tried that. Lightning, then fire. It just flickered away again."

  The stairs shuddered under the dragon's fury, coughing up sprays of dust and stone fragments. The dragon's constant grunts and occasional roars were muted, like everything else they'd heard here, but the stone wasn't: the grating squeals as it tore apart were all too real.

  "You don't think . . . it can get down here?" Angbar blanched. "Or bring down the tower?"

  Iggy backed away from the stairs. "Maybe we better move farther."

  They retreated down the underground hall. If it does bring down the stairs, if it caves in the entrance, we'll be trapped down here. We'll have to go all the way to the far tower. A sobering thought seized him. If it brings that one down, too—

  It didn't come to that. A crack of thunder echoed down the stairs—another lightning spell from Syntal. The dark howled, gave one final swipe at the stairs, and fell quiet.

  "It's gone," Iggy said, and ran back for the stairs. When they emerged back into the ruined guard tower, they saw the dragon, once again, at the far tower. Angbar didn't see Seth or Helix—Lyseira must've saved them. He heaved a shuddering sigh of relief. One of these times, we won't be so lucky. "The plan's working, at least," Iggy muttered. "We're keeping it on the run, back and forth."

  "Yeah, but we can't keep it up forever." The words felt sluggish, dragging through the mud of his brain. "We need to―"

  Iggy shushed him, looking him in the eye while pointing at the tower. Over the remembered chaos of the battle outside and the dragon's tail scraping over the dirt, Angbar heard the last echoes of a shout from Syntal.

  "—when it lands!"

  "What?" he called back, as loud as he could.

  Arrows hissing through the air. The whispered screams of dying soldiers.

  "Be ready . . . Fire―" The shout cut off.

  "When it lands." Angbar recognized the words, but couldn't comprehend them. His exertions had stretched his mind too thin, like a limp piece of taffy.

  "She brings it down, you hit it right away," Iggy said. "She doesn't have to take the time for a second chant. It could work. It can't be in two places at once." Then, belatedly: "I don't think."

  Angbar's two Ascensions without a proper chant had split his mind with a savage headache; now his hands trembled as he prepared to do it again. He spun up the mantras, the gears of his brain squealing with rust.

  A cyclone tore up from the ground, heaving the dragon into the air. The beast thrashed in the wind's grip, wings flailing. Angbar Ascended, preparing.

  When the cyclone vanished, Angbar seized the cosmos. A stealth attack, catching the Pulse by surprise, wringing out what he needed before it could fight back.

  A blast of lightning slammed the dark to the ground, and Angbar was ready. Heat and energy and up, the very instant it landed.

  The dark shrieked. Lightning and fire ignited it from within as it twisted, deformed, toward the sky. Got it, Angbar thought. We finally—

  Then it flickered and was whole once more.

  No. No, we had it. His body rebelled, ravaged by his repeated castings without a chant. It fell to its hand and knees, wracked him with seizures.

  "Angbar," Iggy snapped, hauling him back to his feet. "It's coming back, come on! It's coming back!"

  But he couldn't control his muscles. Every one of them quivered and jerked, fighting his friend's effort to save his life, in time with the denial that wouldn't quit repeating in his thoughts: We had it. We had it. No.

  A slash of light on the far side of the courtyard, a Rising that signaled surrender. They had lost.

  No. We had it.

  The dark crashed to the ground, again filling the ruined tower with the memory of flame, and again Lyseira's blessing saved them. Iggy fairly rolled him down the stairs. They shoved and smacked him as he fell, pushing him around like bullies in a Tal'aden alley.

  At the bottom, battered and bloody, his seizures finally eased. Iggy helped him through the tunnel to the far tower, eventually shoving him toward the stairs. "Up. Get in the Rising," Iggy said. "I'll find you lot after dawn."

  Staggering, head spinning, he managed to crawl up the stairs. The Rising gleamed like a beacon, a lighthouse on the shore. Seth beckoned him forward from its steps. On the far side of the courtyard, the tower he and Iggy had used for the battle collapsed under the dragon's onslaught.

  We had it.

  Seth took his hand, and pulled him into the light.

  vi. Helix

  Angbar slid down the gleaming white wall of the Rising. "We had it," he mumbled, the words like rocks in his mouth. Blood leaked from his eyes, his lips, his ears. "We had it."

  Though she could still stand, Syntal's face was a mess of blood too. Eventually her efforts to wipe it away had merely smeared it everywhere. "I don't understand. It should have worked." She shook her head, snorting like a bull, enraged. "That was the only thing that could have worked. We killed it! You saw!" She looked at Helix, and he glanced away.

  "We'll have to try again tomorrow night." Seth's former reticence had given way to a lust for the challenge, his hatred of failure proving greater than his fear of the unknown. Lyseira, numb once more from her exertions, made no argument.

  "I don't know if I can." Angbar's speech was too thick, too slurred; he sounded like a simpleton. "I never learned it, Syn. I did it, but . . . but I never learned it."

  Syn's eyes widened. "You cast it without a chant? Twice?"

  "It really hurts," he whined, holding his head. "It's all . . . I think it's all pulling apart, it's just . . . just pulling apart."

  "Sleep today," she said. "We'll skip tomorrow night, make sure you learn it right. We're on to something, we have the right idea, but―"

  "I don't know if that'll help." He was crying now, the words hitching with gentle sobs. "It's not like normal. It feels like . . . like I tore something."

  "Ah, God." Helix sat next to his friend, put an arm around him, and recoiled. Angbar was hot, so hot Helix could feel it emanating from his shoulders before he touched him—and when he did, that weird heat stole into him, thrumming through his own blood and vibrating inside his wrists as if a beetle were playing a drum inside his veins. "Blesséd sehk," he blurted as he pulled away. "Syn, he―" He blinked. Had he just seen a glimpse of Angbar's skull, shining through the flesh?

  "He'll be all right." Outside, far into the Waste, the sky began to swirl.

  "Look at him!" Helix pressed. "He's not well!"

  But she didn't look at him. Her eyes were glued to the window. "Angbar," she breathed.

  Angbar looked at her, squinting as though the light of the Rising were too much for his eyes.

  "The cataclysm. The fire." Urgency stole into her voice. "Blesséd se
hk, the fire. We had it right, we just did it at the wrong time!"

  Helix stood. "Syn, what are you talking about?" Next to him, Angbar pushed to his feet, swaying.

  Syntal gestured at the window, summoning a slash of light that coalesced into stairs leading back to the ground. "Come on!"

  "Syn, you're gonna kill him!" Helix gripped Angbar's shoulder, but again, the sudden thrill of lightning through his arm made him jerk it back. "Angbar, you can wait. Wait for tomorrow!"

  They ignored him and pushed outside, Syntal sweeping down the steps and Angbar stumbling behind her. Helix followed them out, still protesting, but fell silent when he saw the western horizon, transformed to a towering wall of rushing flame. It had been awe-inspiring when viewed from the Rising. From the ground, it struck him speechless.

  Again, he watched the attackers flee and the defenders retreat. Again, he saw the dragon claw for the sky.

  But this time Syntal caught it midleap and speared it to the ground with lightning, denying its final instant of hope. And Angbar was ready. The ground erupted with fire as the cataclysm shrieked in, incinerating the dragon and the soldiers and the moat and the sky, blinding him, washing the world in light until there was nothing but eternal brilliance, whiter than a Rising.

  It faded eventually, the memory of radiance giving way to the slow, grey light of dawn. Where the dragon's dark had died, there lay a book.

  Angbar crumpled wordlessly to the ground and Syn walked past him, hands outstretched toward it. Syn, Helix thought to say—an admonishment or a reminder—but the word died on his tongue. On the Rising's steps even Seth had come out, Lyseira leaning heavily against him, to bear witness.

  The hum from Lar'atul's sword intensified, making his whole leg thrum. "Syn," he said, aloud this time, "the sword . . ."

  She waved the warning away as she knelt by the wardbook. Unlike the others, this one had no bands to seal it, no clasp to unlock. When she tried to open it, though, the cover wouldn't move.