An inhuman, merciless scream rang in the hills. Everyone covered their ears, but for my part, that did nothing to dampen the shriek. I realized it was because some of it was coming from inside my head. The screaming stopped when a bright flash overwhelmed even that ungodly noise. Light and sound scattered the winged creatures.
When my eyes were able to readjust to the dimming flash, I saw the twitching being walking toward us. Something like cold, jagged nails started pinching my brain. An instinctive flood of prana was able to dull the agonizing impression.
“Why resist me?” asked a vaguely familiar voice inside my head, every syllable conveying a grating chill throughout my skull and nerves.
Taking the chance that he could hear me, my mind’s voice asked, “Omen?”
“I’m… so much more than an omen. You can be as well… if you hand me… your soul.”
Out loud, I said, “Odet, Mytariss, I don’t know if you can hear him, but please shut him up for me.”
Looking up at her partner, the princess replied, “We will.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Odet
Omen’s tone carried a tone of derangement, as though he were not in control of his mind’s tongue. An influx of holy prana stifled his voice for the most part, but I really needed to focus it on the link with Mytariss.
The eidolon rose her right hand, casting an earth spell as she did so. A ring of dirt twenty feet high rose around Omen, which proceeded to push on to him from all sides. The compacting dirt formed into a growing orb. More and more dirt was added to the sphere until a hundred men could have fit inside. This technique didn’t strike me as a permanent solution. Was she giving time for the scouts to retreat?
Then, rather than take an offensive measure, Mytariss turned to me, kneeling in the process. Apart from a small bump where her nose should have been, there were no features on her face. I merely saw a slightly contorted reflection of myself. Her glass-like hand reached out and touched the prana crystal hanging from my neck.
Be calm, child, she said without tangible words. We must be one. I cannot defeat this Omen alone.
She radiated such a calm demeanor, I had no choice but to surrender everything to her—my fears, joys, dreams… everything. I hazily looked down at her hand, except there was no hand there any longer. There was a forearm, but what used to be her hand was now spread across my chest as a layer of smooth, cooling crystal, which continued to spread over my body. It wasn’t long before I noticed Mytariss shrinking as she transferred more of herself onto me. I couldn’t recall a passage or verse where she performed this technique on my ancestors.
At the same time I lost myself to her, I found and shared in a new kind of devoted bond. It was as though Mytariss had become my new sister, one I loved as much as those that I knew all my life. Still, my newfound sibling was taking over my emotions as well as my movements. I wanted to cry or laugh or do anything that professed a tiny sliver of what I was experiencing, but Mytariss kept me quite unfeeling.
As my head became sheathed in the crystal, I heard an uncertain Gerard ask, “Odet?”
Mytariss permitted me a glance at the knight. I needed to look a couple of feet down at him for my legs were now propped up on crystal appendages. The same went for my arms. In the coldest voice I ever used, I told him, “Get everyone back.”
A second later and our attention turned to the ball of hardened soil splitting down the middle. The two halves then blew outward in frayed fragments. Omen’s malleable frame still bubbled and deformed itself, but he appeared to be much more stable than mere moments ago. The crystal over my eyes enhanced my vision to the point I could see a greenish mist spouting from every popped bubble. A sign of instability? How soon would he gain full control over the powers grinding inside him?
Omen’s transformed, withered frame stood twelve feet tall, so two feet taller than Mytariss and I. His forearms roughly resembled scythes, though compared to the rest of his body, his arms generally behaved the most irregular and fluid. Disturbingly, the effervescing skin wasn’t only skin. Some of what looked like bubbles were, by and large, eyeballs, most popping in and out of permanence within a few seconds. All around his oval head was a permanent row of non-blinking eyes, some set deep in his skull and others bulging outward. No mouth graced a convulsing face that seemed to want to split in two.
“Mytariss!” said Omen, his voice still rattling in our head. It seemed Mytariss wasn’t going to bother hushing him. “Thank you f-for coming to Orda. Killing Ylsuna’s prized s-servant shall do well to prove how close I am to ousting your gods.”
A two hundred foot wide wave of flame spilled out in front of Omen. It charged as fast as sound itself. However, we matched his speed, reacting by raising a wide wall of curved earth to protect ourselves and our allies. Most sections of the wall burst apart on impact. That didn’t concern us. We sprinted forward, though it felt a lot like gliding on ice. With the very weight of the sky bent toward Omen, we could use the disturbed dust and smoke to guide us to his location. The crystal in our right arm thinned as we fashioned a spear from it.
The next element to thwart us was a blast of icicle filled air. It was strong enough to chip at our crystal armor, but otherwise failed to slow us down. Our spear stabbed right through Omen’s lower chest. He felt like hard butter at best. We leapt dozens of feet up, taking Omen with us. Unconcerned with the weapon, the aspiring god wound up his scythes to slash at our body. However, before his molten limbs reached us, we flung him off our spear. His body landed a hundred yards northeast of the burning castle. Propelling ourselves with torrents of air, we dashed over the castle and landed gently on the other side.
“What are you stabbing at, Mytariss? My body no longer conforms to the laws of mortals. You cannot stagger the sea or fell a mountain with such artless techniques.”
Sparks convulsed around his right arm. We evaded the initial lightning bolt, but he kept up the booming attack. Our left hand formed a shield, which we used to block the electrical stream. It was hot and our body tingled uncomfortably, but we didn’t experience true pain. With our inhuman speed we lunged forward, deflecting most of the lightning. Meanwhile, our spear molded itself into a glaive.
Noting the obvious failure of his attack, Omen ceased nourishing his lightning. Rather, he took a cue from us and offered more of his pliable body to his arms, fashioning longer, hardier scythes at the end of pole-shaped limbs. Our glaive slashed upward. His blades blocked it, but not without cost. We sliced off one scythe, which unleashed a high-pressured cloud of that vaporous substance. Almost instantly that substance transfigured back into a solid state.
We continued hacking and slashing, but every moment that passed he became harder to hit. At least the strikes he landed were not doing much damage to us, and most were repelled by glaive or shield. Regardless, it was clear all we were doing was helping him hone his array of abilities, a concept reinforced when Omen bloomed two new arms and struck our midsection. We backed off before he could grab us or take another swipe, but that gave him an opening to cast an earth spell.
The ground below us shifted into a mass earthen tendrils. They, in turn, sprouted a multitude of long fingers. We cast a counter spell, but that’s when vines of water and ice swirled around us. They snagged our limbs and pulled us down, allowing for the tendrils and roots to encompass our lower body. Ice and earth compressed into a single element that would take a few moments to struggle out of. Despite that disadvantage, Mytariss still forbid any kind of apprehension to set in. We merely stared vacantly as Omen jumped on a hill north of us.
Looking upward, he said, “My form may not yet be able to pierce your exquisite shield, but I’ll create something that will!”
His four arms rose to the sky. At the tips of his upper limbs he began to call in a tremendous amount of air towards that tiny area. Many tons of water from the nearby river was sucked in as well. A couple of seconds later and huge slabs of the ground lifted off Orda to join the air and water at this sing
le point, collapsing or disintegrating as they did so. Pieces of the castle and its fire rushed in as his sphere of influence expanded. However, all that was inconsequential to his true goal.
The morning light around and above us was absorbed, creating a patch of impossible night across the battlefield. A wall of untouched sunlight could be seen a mile away, yet we could discern a few stars directly above Omen. The highly concentrated daylight wobbled as a tiny sun over the demigod’s irregular hands. It would have been far too blinding to gaze at were it not for our crystal barrier. Feeling nothing, Mytariss used a noteworthy portion of prana to say something to someone in the distance, someone our mind’s eye saw as wreathed in black flame.
We escaped our prison at the same instant Omen hurled his star at us. Glaive transformed into a shield. Our first shield melded with the second. Dead fucking silence right before the eruption. A seismic shockwave in the air and ground seemed to shred reality itself. Our shield broke off into large pieces we could never get back. We shrank and thinned as more crystal had to be spent in our defense. It was suddenly far too hot.
And still Mytariss refused to feel.
The heat, light, and quakes faded to nothing. We were at a human height now, but still mostly encased in crystal, if a thin layer of it. With morning returned, we saw that we stood in a v-shaped crater that began thirty feet in front of us. His attack hadn’t even been a direct hit. For all intents and purposes, the castle no longer existed behind us.
We leapt forward. Omen let us hear him laugh before he said, “A brave little eidolon you are, but at this point you are more human than crystal.”
Back on level land, Omen sped down to meet us. His last attack left his aura feeling unstable. Is that what we hoped for? We fashioned a spear, one smaller than those beforehand. Omen broke the tip of the spear with a single slash. His three other arms dug and split the armor at our sides and back. At one or all of those points we began to bleed. I felt something digging into my pockets. Something was taken from it. Several somethings. When they were, we extended our spear in the blink of an eye, penetrating Omen’s chest. Unlike before, we forced in more and more of our crystal as fast as we could.
A second since the initial stabbing, we had dozens of crystal spikes jutting out of Omen from every direction, including one out of his head. A few entrenched themselves, and therefore our foe, to the ground. Almost nothing was left of Mytariss. The little that remained snapped off the crystal that connected us to Omen. Mytariss pushed us backward, away from the reach of the temporarily stuck demigod.
She detached herself from me, floating to the ground at a size no bigger than a doll. A jarring deluge of liberated emotion forced me on my hands and knees, inhaling to the point that it hurt. I felt teardrop after teardrop slip down my face uncontrollably. The cracking of crystal had me looking up. Omen’s shadowy bubbles were breaking off some of the spikes. Part of his stretching head looked ready to split off and form a new one.
Mytariss vanished right then, but not before leaving me a parting message that evaporated my worries. Not to mention leaving me with a scrap of prana.
“Were you hoping to strike at my organs, girl? I told you, I no longer work in such a way. My eyes, my head, my voice, all mere formalities! I could lose each one and still tower above your kind! A little more control, a little more souls, and what I imagine will come to be! Rejoice! For Orda is saved!”
Putting pressure on the puncture wound on my left ribs, I sat up on my knees to glare into Omen’s many eyes. “All your power, all those eyes, and you still don’t see it, do you? It isn’t just crystal inside of you.”
All the eyes that had been skimming in every direction abruptly stopped to gape at me. A quick shadow passing over us revived their furious squirming and twitching. I outstretched my left arm and focused on what endured of Mytariss. There was no chance of purifying the odd mixture of corruption he used for his regeneration, but I thought the mere act of trying should still delay his healing ability and disrupt any spell he wished to cast.
“W-what are you doing?! What did you put inside me?!”
Through clenched teeth, I replied, “Just a few… stones… Mercer… gives… his friends.”
Hysterical, the undeveloped god’s unsolid flesh gurgled, but with his corruption now unbalanced, the bursting bubbles now caused more harm than good. He physically struggled as well, tearing his body in places to break a large spike, freeing a leg. But then a light appeared at the center of his chest. He yowled in a pitch that ascended and descended a hundred times every second. His skin truly boiled now. Red flames burst out of his torso. The dragon fire spread faster than Omen’s foaming body could convalesce.
The tormented being screamed something into my head, but except for a handful of broken words, it was in a language or cadence I did not understand. Relaxing my contribution for less than a thought gave Omen back his control, so I forwent applying pressure to my wound and focused all mental, spiritual, and physical energy on getting Mercer’s flames the opportunity they needed to purge Omen from Orda.
And so the flames purged. The greatest power of dragons advanced to every limb and eyeball, slowly silencing a would-be god forever.
Behind his dying flames stood Mercer, the eknuil and rider that brought him here not far behind him. Each of us wanted to go and embrace the other, but unless Mytariss and Aranath returned to give us a push, that wasn’t going to happen for another few minutes.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Mercer
I was too drained to stay upright. I fell to one knee and watched Odet gather the energy to brandish an exhausted grin through the embers and smoke rising between us. Guomin came over and tried to get me on my feet, but I insisted she check on Odet, who appeared to be bleeding from both of her sides. As she went over to the princess, more scouts flew over to us, one of them bearing Gerard. The ones with some healing ability examined Odet’s wounds. Thankfully, they found nothing too concerning.
I eventually made my way over to the princess, unassisted. As for the royal, she needed Gerard to lean on to.
Bowing slightly, I said, “You did well, princess. Your mother would be proud.”
“Thank you. Yours would be as well. But really, it was Mytariss who sacrificed so much of herself to achieve this victory. She never hesitated, never made me feel afraid as her body continued to break. I think it was her way of redeeming herself for failing to save my mother, though I fear it will be a long time before she recovers what she lost today.”
“Well, let’s hope another would-be god takes another few centuries to show up.”
We regrouped with Ghevont and Clarissa a few minutes later. The scholar no longer felt the nismerdon’s presence, losing it when it went under the hill west of the destroyed castle. As for the bulbs that were not devastated by Omen’s sunlight-snatching attack, none contained anyone we recognized. Did that mean Thanatis and Mio were in the unsalvageable bulbs? Or had they been spared from sacrificing themselves to Omen? The area under the castle certainly had a multitude of underground passages to search, but first there was the ground battle to manage.
As hoped, the dead or fleeing giants stopped organizing their thralls, though their naturally insane disposition still made it necessary to deal with them. In contrast, the Advent soldiers wholly lost their will to fight once the aura of their masters dispelled. They still needed to fight the thralls that suddenly saw them as no different as any other living meat, but once felled, they surrendered their weapons to the prince.
For now, I had little idea what would happen to soldiers fouled by a nismerdon’s power. Ghevont desired to study them, of course, and he would need to do so if we were going to figure out the fate of so many people. For one, we needed to find out whether their power could be removed without killing them. Or would their power dissipate on its own without the giants around? Outside of that, a reorganized Jegeru may very well judge them to be traitors and have them executed, rendering what happened to their power moot, t
hough proper reorganization promised to take weeks.
Once the skirmishes with the thralls ended, we sent allied soldiers under the castle and the hills flanking it. They brought forward anyone they found, but they appeared to be no more than average guards. While several teleportation runes were uncovered, none could be activated, implying that they led nowhere or that their destination runes had been demolished.
When night fell, we put many of the prisoners in the hills for easy guarding. One of those prisoners was my brother, still unconscious from his ordeal. While still unsteady, his corruption was his best hope of making a recovery. Depending on his health and his state of mind when he awoke, Odet stated that she would try to purify him after she recovered.
Per my inclination, my group, which included the perfectly fine Ujin and some of the less fine guildsmen, recuperated in tents a little away from everyone else. Regrettably, Fang lost his blazeeba and broke his leg in the battle. Otherwise, the three other lead guildsmen did well to fulfill their mainly defensive roles. They were able to share in the best drinkable and edible spoils discovered in the storage vaults under one of the hills. Fang got quite drunk on several kinds of drinks. My plunder mostly included getting a long nap.
I awoke shortly before the crack of dawn. Sensing that my reserve had replenished much of its prana, particularly the corruption part, I headed outside and took a walk down the hill we rested on. I ignited a stone and channeled the buildup of corruption into the flame, something I was going to have to do after every deep sleep I took, for that’s when the corruption gained the most ground.
On reaching the flatter valley, I remembered I actually wanted to waste some corruption checking up on Aranath. So I doused the black flame and summoned the dragon. The beast groaned, for he had been asleep.
“Ah, sorry about that.”
“It’s of no matter,” he replied, stretching his neck and folding in his wings closer to his body.
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 46
