Nefarius

by Chris Fox

  “I have been so blind,” Inura cursed. He raised a clawed hand, and flung a multi-aspected spell at the undulating pool of void magic before it could reach the skeleton.

  The skeleton didn’t truly live, not yet, and her brother had sensed something in that magic. The last piece, perhaps. An iridescent sphere appeared around the blood, confining it and forcing it together as the sphere constricted.

  Inura yanked his arm closer to his body, and the pool of void shot away from the skeletal dragon. For a moment elation surged as Virkonna realized what he was doing. If he could deprive the ritual of blood, then Nefarius would never truly rise. The skeleton was a powerful eldimagus, but hardly a god.

  Virkonna flew closer to her brother, and scanned the space around them for threats. Their enemies would have no choice but to act now. And she was right.

  The sun itself sputtered and died, plunging the entire system into darkness. She could feel the strength of the spell that had snuffed the star. This was no illusion. No trick. An elder god, or something just as strong, had eradicated it.

  Fissures cracked into existence above Inura, then below, behind, and in front. Dozens formed, some opening, while others closed. Virkonna knew it was designed to distract, and tracked every portal as she swam around the Fissures looking for the sorcerer who’d cast them.

  “Come forth, Talifax! Face me.” She roared her displeasure, but there was no answer of course.

  No answer except a storm of disintegrates, hundreds upon hundreds. They rained through every Fissure at once, an endless stream of negative energy. Hundreds of spells quickly overwhelmed Inura’s wards, which discolored and then broke.

  Inura raised a claw to sketch a teleport, but a tiny hand emerged from one of the Fissures, and flung an incredibly complex counterspell. It slammed into Inura’s growing spell and shattered it.

  The disintegrates continued to rain on Virkonna’s doomed brother, a brother she’d sworn to protect, from every direction, each spell ripping a new wound in his body. Inura clutched Drakkon close to him, and sheltered the younger Wyrm with his own body. It wasn’t enough.

  The spells continued to fall, and her brother’s struggles grew weaker. Weak enough that the shell containing the void magic cracked, and the contents oozed a path back toward the ritual.

  Virkonna raised a claw, and attempted to mimic Inura’s spell. She wasn’t nearly as powerful a caster, but she was an ancient goddess, and quite familiar with true magic.

  A counterspell slammed into her spell, just as it had Inura’s. Virkonna could only watch as the final flurry of bolts slammed into her brother, and her nephew. They may or may not be dead, but without greater life magic than she possessed, there was no way to heal them or return them to consciousness.

  Blast it. Her own pride had made her send the Shayan goddess away. She’d spited herself, and perhaps denied her brother the very thing he needed to survive.

  As she watched, the blood of Nefarius began to flow over the skeleton. It formed sinew and tendons, and muscles. They flowed over the skeleton with incredible speed, the body growing back far faster than either science or magic should have allowed.

  The flow of unholy flesh had nearly reached the head when a vessel jetted away from the rear of the skull. Virkonna sensed her guardian within, the strength of him truly magnificent. She also sensed his turbulent emotions, and that things had not gone well inside.

  “Talifax,” she growled to herself, wishing for the trillionth time that she’d killed him when they’d first met, all those millennia ago.

  The guardian had somehow outplayed her, and all she could do was react.

  The rebirth continued, and a layer of midnight scales began to cover Nefarius’s newly created body. They flowed ever upward, beginning with the tail, and working their way up the midsection.

  Eventually they covered the skull, and when the process completed, Virkonna’s greatest nightmare opened her eyes.

  Nefarius lived again.

  66

  Aftermath

  Aran zipped away from the Dragon Skull, and hadn’t taken the Talon very far when he realized what was going on. A god was being reborn.

  “My gods,” he muttered, “what is that thing?”

  “That is Nefarius,” Rhea said sadly, “the Wyrm that devoured my entire reality.” The Outrider limped to her matrix, and dropped down into it. Crewes settled into the other one.

  Everyone else was below decks, too tired and too emotionally drained to react. “How’s Bord holding up?”

  Aran knew it might not be the most important thing right now, but it was impossible not to care. Kez had been such a huge part of their lives, but nothing like she’d meant to Bord.

  “Kid’s strong,” Crewes said, with a note of pride. “He’ll get through this. I’ll help him. I owe him that. Depths, I owe her that.” Crewes closed his eyes, but it didn’t stop the flow of tears down his dark cheeks.

  Aran focused on flying, and took them up and away from Nefarius as the god continued to rise. The midnight Wyrm was very nearly the size of Virkonna, and there seemed to be no gaps in her body despite the number of ships that they’d destroyed.

  Somehow Skare had made enough to spare.

  He poured void into the Talon, and zipped toward Virkonna. As they twisted around the wreckage of ships and dragons both, he spotted Inura and his heart sank. The life Wyrm floated, apparently lifeless, in the void. Cradled in his arms was a smaller Wyrm. Drakkon. The water Wyrm appeared just as lifeless. The amount of magical power the pair represented would make an incredibly tempting target for any god.

  “Sissssstteeeerrrrrrrrrrr,” the newly risen dragon goddess rumbled. Deep purple light, bordered by scarlet, flared in her eyes. Nefarius gave an experimental flap of her wings, which carried her closer to Virkonna. Her neck craned around, and she fixed Virkonna with that awful gaze. “I warned you this day would come. Your schemes have failed. I live. And today, I will finally rid myself of you, as my children have already done with our mewling brother. Then, only Neith will remain.”

  Aran could feel Virkonna through the magic she’d infused him with. Her emotions were normally muted, distant things. But right now an ocean of brittle rage surged through her. She glided closer to Nefarius and flexed her claws.

  “You’ve killed our mother and most of our siblings,” she roared. “You are a treacherous, evil creature that should have been crushed as an egg. Perhaps I will die today, but if so, it will be clawing out your throat, you traitorous witch. I will make your rebirth the shortest in history.”

  Virkonna hurled herself into Nefarius, and the dragons began snapping and clawing at each other, exactly as their much smaller children might have done. It was ferocious, brutal combat that consumed both gods.

  It left Virkonna totally unprepared for the tiny Fissure that opened beneath her. A small pulsing ball of void energy shot through, and arced upward into her back. The energy crackled across her scales, and seeped in everywhere it touched.

  The effect was instant, if short lived. Virkonna’s spine arched, and her entire body went rigid…for a few seconds.

  Nefarius used that few seconds to clamp down on Virkonna’s throat with her wicked jaws. She tore out a tremendous hunk of flesh, and sent divine blood spraying across the cosmos. Virkonna tumbled away, flailing desperately as she sought to escape her more violent sister.

  “Sir, you got a plan?” Crewes asked, his voice half an octave higher than normal.

  His eyes narrowed as he focused on Nefarius. “We’re going to kill a goddess, but first I’m calling for backup. Sit tight for a sec.”

  Aran did the smartest thing he could think of. He sent a missive to Voria, a one-way message, “Virkonna is about to die. Nefarius has risen. We need you now, or the war is over.”

  By the time the spell completed, Crewes had already dumped a huge amount of fire into the Talon. Aran dug deep and added the last of his reserves to the spell. Those reserves had seemed so endless, but after everything he
was finally running dry.

  Nara had slipped into the third matrix, and Aran felt a surge of grateful relief when void rolled out of her, further strengthening the spell.

  He focused on Nefarius, on the head which contained the ship where Kezia had died. “Let’s make this count.”

  A bolt of negative energy, twin to the one that had destroyed such a large swathe of the Inuran fleet, zipped into Nefarius’s face. The targeting could not have been more perfect, and the bolt caught the dragon in the eye.

  Wave after wave of void and fire tore into the dragon’s face, and scales boiled away on that side, leaving a patch of oily, black metal. When the spell ceased, that was the only visible damage. Both eyes still glowed just as brightly, and the dragon’s titanic head swung around to face Aran, enraged.

  A precise four seconds later, Voria’s unmistakably brilliant golden light flooded the system. It exposed hundreds of Fissures, each disgorging countless monstrosities from the Umbral Depths. The only type Aran recognized were the arachnidrakes, and many of the others were both larger and more disturbing.

  Voria’s brilliance spilled over the portals, and they began to dissolve. Her light served as a beacon, and the few surviving Wyrms and their Outriders swam in her direction.

  Aran tapped all three void sigils, then all three fire. “Dig deep, Crewes. We need to keep this up a little longer.”

  “Can do, sir,” Crewes managed through gritted teeth.

  They raced through the system casting low-level spells as quickly as Aran could manage, each designed to clear a path for the survivors. There weren’t many, and it didn’t take nearly as long as he’d have liked, simply because there was almost no one left.

  Voria extended the Spellship and blazing blades erupted from either end. She charged, but she was tiny compared to the warring elder gods. Voria streaked forward and landed on Virkonna’s shoulder.

  Wonderful golden light, the hallmark of life magic, poured through Virkonna, healing the dragon goddess’s wounds, the scales on her throat regrowing until the wound was gone, though Aran sensed that the loss of magic remained. Virkonna flapped away from Nefarius, who banked away toward another target.

  Inura’s floating body.

  Options tumbled through his mind. He could try draining Inura so he could save some of the magic. He had a feeling they were going to need that. Unfortunately, his encounter with the ships in the depths had taught him that draining took time. It had taken many seconds to destroy even a single large ship. How long would something as large as Inura take? Hours, maybe. Minutes, certainly.

  That the left the unthinkable. If they couldn’t save Inura, then they had to deny his magic to their enemies.

  Aran broke off from attacking the remaining monstrosities, and winged toward Inura. “Rhea, relieve Crewes. Nara, I’ll take whatever void you’ve got left. Rhea, give me whatever fire you can scrape from the bottom of the barrel. We make this shot count, or Nefarius is about to get a whole lot stronger.”

  Crewes stumbled from his matrix and sat heavily against the wall. Neeko crawled into his lap and began to purr.

  Neither Nara nor Rhea spoke, but both wearily poured what magic they still possessed into the Talon. Aran poured in his own dwindling resources as well, everything he could still muster. That wasn’t much, and he silently prayed to the ship to give him everything it could.

  Magic gathered for several seconds, an immense amount, more than Aran could possibly have hoped for.

  Aran loosed the bolt, and Nefarius dodged, up and away. A tiny shred of relief rippled through him when he realized she’d had no idea what his true target was. That meant she wasn’t all powerful.

  A single bolt of disintegration, perhaps the largest and most powerful ever fired in the sector, streaked into Inura’s corpse. Wave after wave of negative energy disappeared into the dead god’s chest, until a critical mass was achieved.

  Then Inura exploded into nothingness—the entire god, just like any other target would have. Billions of particles drifted away, leaving nothing in their wake.

  “Nooooooo!!!” Nefarius roared, her hateful gaze settling on the Talon. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? That life magic was irreplaceable. I will devour you and your entire race for denying me what is mine.” Nefarius casually grabbed Drakkon’s corpse and ripped a leg off. She wolfed it down, then flung his body aside for later consumption.

  “Sir, uh, I do not like the way that thing is looking our way.” Crewes was suddenly very small against the far wall. “She seems a mite pissed about the face thing.”

  High above them Voria extended her arms. Aran’s stomach flopped as the translocate overtook him, and a moment later they reappeared in high orbit over Virkon.

  He quickly assessed the survivors. There were less than two hundred dragons, and only a handful of Outriders. Drakkon was dead. Inura was gone. Virkonna had arrived as well, but her wounded form was already descending through the atmosphere, shrinking as she approached her spire. If that wasn’t a capitulation he didn’t know what was.

  An elder goddess had run away so hard she couldn’t even talk to her surviving allies after a battle, and she’d been their strongest asset.

  Where did that leave them?

  67

  Unexpected Allies

  Frit appeared in the sky near Nebiat’s spectral form. She curtsied at the waist, and waited for her mistress to acknowledge her. Frit no longer wore subservience very well, but when one came asking a favor it was wise to be as polite as possible.

  “What is it, child?” Nebiat’s very human form appeared in the void a few meters away. She was roughly Frit-sized. “You seem quite distressed.”

  “You know why, don’t you?” Frit bit her lip. She was almost positive that Nebiat had felt the battle playing out at the fist, but didn’t want to assume.

  “I know that our enemies are weaker now than they were this morning.” Nebiat held up spectral fingernails for her own inspection. “And I know that Voria is in an absolute panic. I also know that our own position is slightly stronger than it was this morning, as it is every day.

  “I know you hate Voria, but if you’re being honest with yourself, you have to admit that Nefarius is the greater threat.” Frit folded her arms, and tried to muster as logical an argument as she could. “Virkonna is wounded. Inura is dead. Drakkon is dead. Marid has been consumed. Nefarius even possesses some spirit magic from the ships that assaulted you at Shaya.”

  “All true,” Nebiat allowed. She stopped inspecting her hand and gave Frit her full attention. “How would you suggest we capitalize on the situation?”

  “We ally with the weaker side,” Frit gave back instantly. Nebiat would like that reasoning. “Voria and her allies aren’t strong enough to fight back, and Nefarius knows that. She’ll be on them soon. They’re desperate.”

  “And you want to capitalize on that desperation? Go on.” Nebiat drifted closer, her gaze firmly locked on Frit.

  “We should ally with them, temporarily. Offer them help,” Frit explained, hoping that Nebiat would at least hear her out. “They’ll need assistance. We give it to them. We help them recover, and help them defend themselves against Nefarius. We have Worldender, and you are the strongest remaining elder god now that Virkonna is weakened.”

  “I agree that they need us.” Nebiat gave a musical laugh, and her eyes narrowed. “What I don’t agree with is us profiting from aiding them. If we do nothing Nefarius will spend strength overcoming them.”

  “Will she?” Frit countered. “If she devours her enemies she gains their magic. She becomes stronger, and eventually she comes for us with that strength.”

  Nebiat’s frown deepened. “That is an excellent point. In the short term this will weaken her, but if we do not strike during the aftermath of Nefarius’s attack then we will lose. It makes far more sense to hang back and await that confrontation, then attack the victor, most likely Nefarius.”

  Frit shook her head. “That’s too risky. There i
s too much chance that Nefarius will pick off gods one by one, and slowly get stronger while you stay roughly the same. If we ally with Voria, then we can ensure her and most of her allies die during the final confrontation. And we can force the offensive in a time and place of our choosing.”

  Frit didn’t want Voria to die, and certainly didn’t want Nara to, but she realized that if she didn’t speak Nebiat’s language there was precisely zero chance of the goddess going along with this.

  “Very well,” Nebiat allowed. “You may approach Voria as my emissary. Tell her I am willing to come to her world to discuss our common enemy. Tell her this must be done quickly, before Nefarius recovers from devouring Drakkon.”

  68

  The Scorpion and the Frog

  Voria knelt next to Virkonna’s human-sized form and pressed her hands against the hideous wound in the goddess’s back, which had apparently been inflicted before her arrival at the fist. Life magic pulsed out of her in quantity, and the wound gradually grew smaller, then finally scabbed over. Virkonna gave a groan through gritted teeth.

  “You have my gratitude,” Virkonna growled. “If not for your intervention, I would have died alongside my brother. As it stands, the only reason for our survival is that Nefarius will need time to recover after devouring my nephew and whatever remains of my children.”

  High above, the Talon screamed into view, and the ship dropped into a perfect landing on the far side of the pillar. The ramp began to descend, and Nara rushed out, running over to stand near Voria.

  “How is she?” she whispered, staring at Virkonna in horror.

  “I will live,” Virkonna rasped. She pulled herself into an elaborate throne that had been installed in their absence. “Until my sister comes to relieve me of that life. When that day comes I do not see how we can resist her.”