“No, don’t!” Harruq screamed. Azariah’s blood bled upon the pages. A specific page, used for a specific purpose.
Azariah reached to Karak, and the Lion answered.
The words ignited in violet fire upon the page. Aurelia flicked her hand, blasting lightning into the fallen angel, but a cocoon of magic already surrounded him. Fire burned across his body. What was flesh was consumed. What was living, died. Shadows crawled about his body. An unholy blessing, once given to Karak’s most cherished and devoted prophet, flowed into a former Warden of Ashhur. The demanded power blasted outward in a shockwave. Harruq crossed his arms before him to protect against its power, choking down a cry of pain as it lifted him into the air and dropped him on his back.
Another roar of the Lion. Books were lifted off their shelves and sent careening through the air when a funnel of magic formed around Azariah’s body, raising it off the ground as with invisible strings. His robes darkened. His body changed. When his feet touched down, it seemed the very stone were scorched black from an unseen fire.
“What have you done?” Harruq whispered.
Despite his exhaustion, despite the ache in his limbs and the collected bruises from hours of battle, he stood and readied his swords before the recreation of an entity long dead. Azariah’s hands were exposed bone held together with an inky, tar-like substance. His eyes glowed red. His face...his face was not his, nor that of any other single living being. Its features shifted and changed. Not quickly, only a gradual, subtle change so that nothing ever seemed quite right. A thousand faces, but yet Harruq saw but a single one.
The face of Velixar.
“I thought you had fallen,” the half-orc said. “I thought you at your worst. I was wrong.”
No longer did Azariah wield the divine magics drawn from Celestia’s Weave. His heart was fully committed to Karak, and he drew power from the Abyss. He garbed himself in shadow. He wreathed himself in dark flame. Judarius’s bones animated, and they circled around Azariah’s body, collecting together to form a clacking cloak that hung about his neck as a most morbid ornamentation.
Aurelia had slammed her staff upon the stone. Her slender hands gripped its wood in a white-knuckle grip.
“I don’t know how much longer I can withstand,” she told Harruq as bolts of shadow collected within Azariah’s tightly clenched fists. “Make haste, and cut him down. He cannot live. Whatever the evils of Paradise, the new kingdom he would create is a thousand times more wretched.”
“A kingdom?” Azariah said. He pressed his wrists together, and from their contact burst a tremendous deluge of black fire. Aurelia braced her entire body, and a shimmering, partly-translucent shield bathed her and Harruq to protect them from its heat. If the undead monstrosity cared, he did not let it show.
“I will create no kingdom. I am done with the humans of Dezrel. I care not for your wretched race. Let the doors be opened. A million other worlds await me, and I would go to them instead.”
Harruq lifted Salvation and Condemnation. He thought of Azariah arriving at some unsuspecting world. What destruction might he unleash with his foul magic? When he summoned his armies of the dead, would there be heroes ready to rise up and face him? He didn’t know, but it wouldn’t matter. He would not let it happen. This monster was his responsibility. His blades would end it.
A shadowy door opened halfway up the wall, but it was no spell from Azariah. Deathmask emerged from within like some nightmare specter, Veliana right behind him. Violet flame burst from his palms, taking the shape of razor-sharp daggers. Nine of them slashed across Azariah’s face and neck, tearing into his robes, opening his throat, and clacking off his bones. Deathmask landed, but Veliana’s momentum continued, her heels colliding with the fallen angel’s stomach. Her knees curled with the impact, and her daggers lashed out, scoring several more cuts across Azariah’s already mutilated throat. She kicked, and up and away she soared to land beside Deathmask. The pair stood together, smug grins on their faces that rapidly vanished when Azariah not only remained alive, but responded with heightened fury.
“Maybe I am a fool, but I feel like that should have killed him,” Deathmask said.
Azariah’s wings became liquid shadow, their edges elongating while also sharpening along one edge. The two surviving members of the Ash Guild dodged as the wings tried to slice them in twain. Harruq burst into motion, his twin swords striking the wings to beat them back. He did not cut through them as if they were bone and feather. Instead, the pieces he hacked free twisted and squirmed like serpents before dissolving into nothing. The sight sent shivers up his spine and made his stomach tighten from a nameless, unwelcome fear.
Aurelia assaulted Azariah with multiple lances of ice and fire, forcing Karak’s newfound champion to defend himself. The reprieve allowed Harruq to retreat and for Deathmask and Veliana to regain their bearings. Once back with Aurelia, Harruq stared at the rotting entity with the ever-changing face. Just like Velixar…
There had once been a pendant that belonged to Velixar, a pendant Azariah himself had requested permission to study rather than having Judarius destroy it with his mace. The Prophet had bound his soul to the object, denying any true death from taking him. There could be only one potential choice for Azariah during his own transformation, given its hasty and desperate nature.
“The book!” Harruq screamed. “Destroy the spellbook!”
“Why does the fucker need a spellbook?” Veliana asked, dodging another half-dozen spikes of shadow that embedded into the wall upon missing.
“It has his soul in it!”
Aurelia launched a fireball the fallen angel’s way. A dismissive wave of Azariah’s hand detonated it early. Harruq charged through the dissipating heat and smoke. The fallen angel’s hands danced, forming a great shield of darkness. Despite the powerful magic within Harruq’s weapons, he could not break through. Sparks flew as he battered the shield, which rippled on impact like some strange, floating liquid. At last, he was forced into a retreat from shadows that sprung from the floor like vipers, seven of them with three fangs that tried to bite at his wrists and ankles. He not once reached the spellbook, never scored a hit with his swords, but that had never been his intention.
As was often the case, Harruq was a loud, furious, muscle-bound distraction from the true threat.
Veliana sprinted to the nearby wall, leaped off it, and soared upside-down as if gravity held no sway over her body. Her twin daggers lashed out, the violet flame wrapped about their blades flaring with power and rage. They sliced off three of Azariah’s fingers. Her body rotated further, and just before landing she kicked the spellbook with her heel and sent it flying. The assassin landed on her back, gasping as the wind was knocked from her lungs.
“You wretch!” Azariah bellowed. He slammed his foot into her side, lifting her off the ground and bashing her body against the tower wall. She lay still when she landed, a soft moan escaping her lips. Azariah’s attention turned to the book, which had landed right in Deathmask’s waiting arms.
A single whispered word, and the spellbook burst into flames so hot that every page was consumed within moments. The remains floated upward to join that cloud that hovered about Deathmask’s head.
“You have a bad habit of not holding onto things that are yours,” he said, and no cloud of ash was thick enough to hide his amused grin. “First Rakkar, now your soul. Tsk tsk, angel.”
Deathmask’s magic was advanced, but even he could not withstand the barrage sent his way. A dozen bolts of shadow slammed into a shield he frantically summoned to protect himself. Aurelia struck the floor with her staff, a second shield growing upon impact to wrap about the beleaguered man. It was enough, but only barely. Both shields broke, the energy of their explosion flinging all within the tower backward.
“Enough with your prattle!” Azariah howled. “Never ending, never quieting. Enough, all of you, I say enough!”
Dark magic exploded out of him, taking the form
of rolling shadow. Aurelia protected Harruq against the brunt of it, but the same could not be said for Deathmask. The magic slammed into him like a solid wave, and flattening him against the wall. He slid down until his rear hit the floor, looking dazed and confused. His head whipped toward Veliana, whose unconscious body had suffered a similar fate as his own.
Harruq sprinted toward the fallen angel, determined to steal his attention before he might finish the two of them off. Azariah flapped his wings once, unleashing a gust of wind so powerful it lifted Harruq off his feet. He flailed, helpless to control himself in such a state. Another flap, and he somersaulted head over feet back toward Aurelia. He was upside-down when he saw her smack her staff against an overturned bookshelf, transmuting it into an overstuffed pillow full of goose feathers. He landed atop it and rolled off with a groan. His wife clutched his arm to steady him.
“This is bad,” he muttered. Aurelia said nothing, but the worry in her eyes was clear as day.
“Stubbornness was always your finest trait, half-orc,” Azariah said, more magic gathering about his body as Karak’s power filled him. “It shall make breaking you all the more satisfying.”
The shadowy hands of ethereal giants emerged from the walls, passing through the stone as if it were but a mirage. Six fingers closed around Harruq, and from the corner of his eye he saw six more clutch his wife. Though the hands lacked any physical substance, they were cold like ice to his exposed skin. Harruq tensed his every muscle, his face flushing with heat and his body quivering from the strain.
He couldn’t break free. He could barely even breathe.
“Always so clever,” Azariah said, the fallen angel suddenly whirling in place. He caught a newly-awakened Veliana in mid-lunge, twisted so he guided her momentum instead of slowing her, and then flung her into one of the toppled bookshelves.
“Vel!” Deathmask cried pitifully with his hoarse voice. He pushed to his feet, but his reward was a lash of black lightning that sent him dropping back to his knees. Blood poured down both his nostrils and ears. Harruq dug his feet into the ground and pushed, pushed, but he could not break the grip. The lightning continued. It would be fatal. There was too much shock. Too much blood.
An arrow of pure light sliced through the room, connecting with the arc of lightning, which then exploded in brilliant blue-white mist. The lightning ceased, and Azariah howled as he rocked back several feet on his heels. Pieces of his illusory flesh peeled away from his face and neck, only to be immediately replaced. Deathmask collapsed at the reprieve, coughing and hacking to clear away the blood that had gathered in his lungs. Both Harruq and Azariah turned to the entrance, to witness their interloper.
Jessilynn stood at the tower door, a broken bow held in hand. That single arrow appeared to be the only one she had to offer. She stood there, a look of shock and horror upon her young face. Velixar was before her time, Harruq knew. She’d not seen the true face of Karak, and the horrid future he’d inflict upon Dezrel. Azariah snarled at her like an angered beast, hands lifting to assault her with Karak’s magic, but she was not alone.
Jerico entered the tower, sword drawn, shield at ready.
“Must I slay all of Ashhur’s pets this day?” Azariah asked. Dark magic swirled around his fingers, the beginnings of a great beam of shadow. The red-haired paladin dug in his heels, lifted his shield, and pulled back his sword as if for a thrust.
“I made a promise,” he said. “And I shall keep it.”
The roar of a lion marked the beam’s tide. It slammed into a glowing shield half its size. Harruq cried out in worry, what little noise he could make given the force constricting his chest and lungs. Normally he would believe the paladin able to withstand any blow, no matter the source, but Karak had poured every shred of his lingering power upon Dezrel into this wretched recreation of the Prophet.
Jerico dropped to one knee, but his resolve never shook. He screamed, the act strengthening him, but his resolve was not the steel of his shield bowing inward. Already the light around it flickered. The metal cracked. Splintered.
Shattered into shards.
“Elholad!”
No metal touched his arm but for broken remnants of the metal grip. There was no need of it A shield of pure light swirled beside him, despite no physical substance to hold it firm. The blast of Karak’s magic broke against it, making not a dent. It could not even dim its light.
“A promise made,” Jerico repeated. A flick of his arm, and the beam of magic ricocheted aside. Two bounding steps, and the distance between them vanished. Lathaar’s sword buried deep into Azariah’s heart. The fallen angel might have survived the touch of plain steel, but Jerico was not alone. An after-image of an armored man shimmered into view like a wraith to stand with him side-by-side. His hands closed about the sword hilt.
“A promise kept,” said the soul of Lathaar. Holy light swirled about his former blade. It blasted apart undead flesh. It turned bone to chalk. The red of Azariah’s eyes burst like glass smashed beneath a soldier’s boot. Shadows crawled in thousands of directions as the unholy power dissolved into nothingness. The image of Lathaar vanished with the explosion, but the holy light wreathing the blade remained until the last of Azariah’s screams faded into nothingness. The mutilated corpse collapsed, and with it the dark hands that held Harruq and Aurelia imprisoned. Harruq dropped to his knees and coughed, beyond thrilled to have clean air flow into his lungs.
“Cutting it close there, bud,” he spat out.
The light of both shield and sword faded, and a very tired Jerico turned his way. A loose smile pulled at his lips despite the tears running down his face.
“Sorry about that,” he said. Jessilynn came running into the room and flung her arms around his waist. “I guess I still needed some help.”
Harruq pushed to his feet and went over to help Aurelia to hers. His worry diminished a hundredfold when he saw she was likewise unharmed. She sank against him, and he wrapped her in his arms and kissed the top of her head.
“We did it,” she whispered. Her forehead pressed to his chest. “Did I decide right?”
He held back a shiver.
“We’ll see her again, Aurry. Never question that, or yourself.”
Whether she believed him or not, he couldn’t tell, but it seemed his words soothed her nonetheless. Her eyes closed, the tenseness of her muscles faded, and he held her tightly as his own exhausted fears drained from his body.
“Good, you left some for me,” Deathmask said. Without even asking, he grabbed Lathaar’s sword from Jerico’s hand, limped over to Azariah’s corpse, and knelt. Two quick cuts, and he tossed the sword to clatter on the floor. Deathmask stood, Azariah’s head dangling from his grip, held by its pale, colorless hair. It no longer shifted and changed with magic, instead having reverted back to the angel’s original features.
“Something the matter?” Harruq asked the enigmatic assassin, who stopped before the tower entrance.
“I also made a promise.” Deathmask flung the fallen angel’s head out the door. It bounced down the tower’s winding outside steps and out of view. The man laughed despite his obvious pain and injury. “And damn it all, did that feel good.”
32
Jessilynn climbed the steps of the tower through sheer force of will. The hour was late and her body begged for sleep. Her legs felt like wood. She cradled her bow to her chest, unable to feel her fingers. Every step up was accompanied by a wobble in her knees and the fear that she’d topple backwards. She never did, though, so slowly she ascended until arriving at the tower’s very top.
“It’s not enough, is it?” she asked the wind as she crossed the small flat balcony jutting from the tower’s side. This tower was the highest of Mordeina’s castle, and its view was spectacular, if not a bit intimidating. She leaned her hips against the crenelated wall and stared at the muted gold image of Devlimar, reflecting the moonlight in the distance. “Will it ever be enough?”
For all h
er bluster, her turning away Ahaesarus so elves and orcs might decide the fate of Dezrel, she had failed. Jerico had arrived. A paladin of Ashhur, come to slaughter a newborn prophet of Karak. Her attempt to break the constant cycle of Dezrel had been thwarted.
She tried to tell herself it was necessary. How could it not be, given the horrific power unleashed by that rotting, ever-changing body Azariah occupied? But knowing that and believing it were two different things. The brother gods had their battle, and as it had been since the dawn of humanity’s creation, Ashhur had prevailed through the friendship and the aid of others. There was solace to find in that knowledge, she knew. Had it not been lectured so to her by her teachers? Karak was lonely and hateful. Ashhur welcomed all. His love of others was his strength.
Yet today, that gave her no comfort. She tried to convince herself that justice had been met and order restored. Proper order, not the nightmare Karak would build. Yet she could not shake the image of Ahaesarus with a crown…or would it be Jerico who accepted that new role?
There was no guarantee this would happen in her lifetime, of course. What of Jerico’s children? What of her own? Might those of her blood one day attempt to claim the throne from Gregory? Absurd thoughts, she told herself, but could she deny them given Dezrel’s long history? The Stronghold yet remained within Ker’s lands. Who was to say they wouldn’t one day convert the heart of a king?
Footsteps echoed behind her. She turned, and it seemed her own thoughts of him had summoned the red-haired paladin to join her upon the high balcony.
“Forgive me if I intrude,” Jerico said. “I thought it best you weren’t alone.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
He joined her in looking out across the city to the distant Devlimar.
“I lied. I don’t want to be alone, is all. There are few who might understand why, and I suspect you are one of them.”
The King of the Fallen Page 32