Wraith Lord

by Phipps, C. T.

  “I will forgive you, eventually, if only because life is too short to hold grudges. Which cuts to the heart, really.” Regina’s expression turned serious. “I won’t lie to you, Jacob, I suffer for the Nine’s existence. For the betrayal of the Lawgiver, empress, and my people. I dream nightly of the screams of my family, friends, and homeland as well as the piles of burnt corpses they made of them.”

  I grimaced at her description. Regina had lived an adventurous life before I’d met her, being both a Shadowguard and a member of a now-extinct Great House. The Whitetremors were royalty, rather than nobility, with descent from the emperor I’d once served. Empress Morwen had slaughtered them with the same feeling one might give swatting an insect. Similar purges happened every year the Nine remained in power, a reminder that my inaction had a price.

  Regina continued. “You were not born to the purple so you cannot know what it is like to have been instilled from an early age that you were destined for greatness, only to have those illusions cruelly stripped away by all-too-banal cruelty. I want revenge, I want to see them die screaming, and I want to lay waste to their works as if I was a god—a status you have given me.”

  “Regina—”

  “Do not interrupt for this next part is important. Despite this, I will not lower myself to their level,” Regina said, taking a deep breath. “I numb myself to the pain with drink, your and Serah’s love, plus whatever other pleasures I can enjoy. I cope with my loss of faith with the dream that there is something worth worshiping above the Lawgiver. Yet, regardless of my pain, I would set aside my desire for retribution.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Peace is a finer thing than the satisfaction I get from wetting my blade with the blood of monsters,” Regina said, clutching her hands tightly. “But do you really think sheathing my sword is an option?”

  I stared at her and realized she’d given this matter as much thought as I had. Which made my next words all the more painful. “No, it is not. To set down our weapons is to invite attack.” It was the hardest thing I’d ever said.

  “Then what choice is there?”

  I was silent. I could tell her I had come to that conclusion myself, that I knew there was no other war than to find a third option but that wasn’t possible now. We had but a few seconds left and not even the gods knew what would happen during the next battle. I just prayed, to the universe itself, that there were other options to pursue. I didn’t want to lose Regina or Serah to war the way I lost Jassamine. “Victory, I suppose.”

  “You suppose.”

  “Not a very kingly response, is it?”

  “No, not really.”

  Smoke snorted and rumbled beneath me. “You humans. You speak of ethics, morals, and philosophy as if they were things that exist outside your head. The Lawgiver and King Below never gave half a thought to such things.”

  “Which is why they’re assholes we want to kill,” Regina said.

  “That’s true,” Smoke admitted. “I’m just saying life is nothing but mating, eating, and sleep.”

  “There is wisdom in that I suppose,” Regina said, smiling. “Another reason I always liked dragons. They are less complicated than people.”

  “Smarter too,” Smoke said.

  I was about to respond when a brilliant white light exploded from the Night Bridge, engulfing us all. We emerged seconds later in a light snow near the coast, storm clouds above our heads, and the winds howling around us. The enemy’s dragons were all about us and didn’t have time to react before we made our attack.

  Poets and balladeers had spoken of war since the first songs were set down on lutes, but they rarely managed to capture the frenzied madness conflict actually entailed. We vanished from their current position and re-appeared seventy feet in the air, right above the enemy forces. Dragons did not fly like birds, instead propelling themselves forth with a kind of telekinesis, but it was still shocking to see them immediately zoom into one another with claws, teeth, and flame.

  The teleportation had not been without flaws, either, as one of the Great Reds had physically merged with one of the Blacks, killing both instantly, I watched out of the corner in my eye both dragon riders fall to the ground below, perishing without any sort of glorious end. That was another truth of war that storytelling often ignored: death in war was frequently absurd.

  It’s hard to put into words what battle was like for those who had never experienced it, harder still to describe the exhilarating but terrifying experience of combat on dragonback. Magical spells flew through from the air from both sides, the Shadowguard elite recovering quickly even as Regina’s plan left many dragons impaled or wounded in the opening battle.

  Dragons were not soft creatures, though, Great Blacks especially, and the opening salvo did not kill many. Smoke, herself, breathed out a salvo of fiery red flames that washed over an entire Great Black yet the creature passed through it like it was only a minor inconvenience. Our opponents were well protected by magic and it soon became a series of individual duels that looked like a flock of giant-tailed crows flapping against one another.

  “Curse, strike the one to your North Upward degrees! Payne, aim for the rider! Serah, we need the barrier spells around them weakened!” I could hear Regina’s commands, projected through a spell around her helmet to everyone else’s, but she did not try to control every detail either. Instead, she left me with but a single command, and that was to do what I did best. “Jacob, kill.”

  “With pleasure,” I spoke, summoning forth a storm of black lightning from my fingertips that wrapped around one of the closest dragons like a trout in a fishing net. It wasn’t enough to kill it but it stunned the creature long enough for me to leap onto its thrashing neck, bury a gauntlet underneath one of its scales and hold on long enough to draw my sword.

  Chill’s Fury glowed as it was drawn, a weapon forged by the old King Below for the late Kurag Shadowweaver. It was a curved sword with teeth and terrible runes of power that sucked the life out of every being it killed. I jammed the weapon hard into the side of the dragon and drank deeply of its life force, using that to empower another spell of black lightning that caused the creature to thrash wildly.

  Somehow, I managed to hold on.

  “Profane creature, I strike at thee in the name of the King Above!” I heard the Shadowguardsman speak at the base of the creature’s neck.

  It was a white-cloaked man with long red hair and angular features, clearly elf-blooded, with golden eyes I could see through the acute vision of the dead. His armor was gilded and covered with blood runes, magic that required the sacrifice of the living to perform. It was possible he was Fel Hellsword. I’d never actually seen the man so I had to guess. The figure aimed his blade right at me and the terrible flame shot forth at my face.

  I summoned a ward just in time to prevent the flame from striking me in the face. While my barriers were powerful, I was nearly knocked away by the force of its power. It wasn’t the magic of humans but Nephyr, those possessed by the Lawgiver’s messengers. In my living days, like blood runes, such magic had been forbidden.

  “The Lawgiver is no god worth worshiping!” I shouted, leaping forth from my position at the Nephyr, burying my blade into the human-spirit hybrid’s chest. The momentum of my attack carried us both off the creature’s back and to the side into a free fall.

  I looked into the face of my opponent as we fell, the nineteen-year-old man’s features contorting and twisting into a hideous scaled green creature with reptilian eyes. The Nephyr’s face then faded away as Chill’s Fury disintegrated the spirit inside him, leaving only the man breathing his last.

  Looking into my eyes, the Shadowguard’s eyes lost their anger. “Thank you.”

  We were about to strike the ground as a set of clawed talons grabbed my shoulders and pulled me upward, the corpse impaled on my blade falling to the rocky coast below. Seconds later, the headless corpse of the Great Black he’d been riding fell past me, the two landing in the black water
s of the sea.

  I looked up to see who had caught me, only to see Regina riding on Blaze rather than Smoke. Above her head, I saw the battle was not going well. The person I’d mistaken for Fel Hellsword was dead, but another similar in appearance destroyed a Great Black with a spell that caused its body to explode outward like a poorly made barrel.

  Other Great Blacks and Reds were destroyed but the numbers weren’t favoring us. The elite Shadowguard soldiers were firing powerful spells of light magic, far more than a normal human being or elf could conjure. That was when I realized a fact that made our situation infinitely direr: they were all possessed by messengers.

  “Dammit,” I said, climbing up the side of Blaze as Regina pivoted her dragon up toward the new figure.

  “I’m not sure that qualifies when you’re the King Below,” Regina said. “You know, I never expected to be killing messengers as my religious vocation.”

  “Now’s not the time for jokes!”

  “It’s always the time for jokes!” Regina shouted. “Get rid of the next one’s barrier and put one up around us.”

  “What?”

  “Now!”

  Regina thrust Blaze forward at a Great Black standing in the way of the man I believed, now, to be Fel Hellsword. Casting rapidly, I found myself facing a powerful and intricate barrier spell that protected against everything from magic to explosives. I could have spent hours unweaving it, but, instead, just threw everything I had against it to annul trying to raise one around us both.

  I wasn’t fast enough.

  “Y’aghul al’mathan!” the figure on the dragon, a crimson-haired woman with deformed avian hands and features shouted.

  It was, roughly translated from the old Terralan Tongue, an invocation to the Lawgiver that called for his retribution against the unrighteous. The actual words mattered little compared to the spell behind it, a mental command that invoked the Ultimate Holy Retribution spell. It was capable of killing the strongest demons that only archmages and great wizards were said to know. I struggled to finish the barrier but the Ultimate Holy Retribution passed through it like light through glass only to strike Regina in the chest.

  And wash over her like raindrops.

  “Retribution!” Regina shouted, lowering her lance and spearing the Great Black and its rider with a single lance thrust.

  Both fell to the ground, the lance inside them exploding halfway down.

  “That’s three for me! How many for you, Jacob?” Regina called.

  “One.”

  “Shameful! I’ll give you half!” Regina then pivoted Blaze to the right, barely avoiding a spell of concentrated light as hot as the sun.

  Fel Hellsword had noticed us.

  “I need that barrier spell now!” Regina shouted orders to the remainder of our group. There only a few dragonriders left, tearing apart messenger-possessed Shadowguard and devouring them to absorb their power.

  I finished my spell and gave every little bit of energy I had into it. What followed were a torrent of a dozen spells shot forth in rapid succession, faster than any human being could cast them, each slamming into the barrier with the force of an elemental-powered locomotive. Somehow, they managed to hold their own against it as we came closer to our quarry, soon only a hundred feet away.

  “You cannot win this day, Black Sun and Starlight Maid!” Fel Hellsword’s High Imperial-accented voice echoed through the battlefield, using titles far more respectful than I expected. “I fight so this world may have a future beyond the next age!”

  A group of four Great Black Dragons came up behind us, rider-less but glowing with a control spell visible to the eyes of a wraith. That was when the sky cracked open and a thousand black crow-shaped imps poured out from a gate to the World Below, swarming our foes. Serah had brought us allies from the World Below.

  “I guess your demons were sick of being bored, Jacob!” Regina said, closing the ranks to a few dozen feet. “Time to die, Hellsword!”

  Regina drew her blade, Starlight, from its sheath and the glowing blade of living light caused the very air to crackle.

  I saw Hellsword then, my vision capturing his full likeness better than any human’s could at that distance. He was a chalky-skinned human with hair like dull straw. He was delicate looking with a red splotchy birthmark over his right eye. The Usurper was wearing form-fitting ancient Terralan armor of indescribable beauty. It was absolutely covered in blood runes, more than a hundred, and enhanced his aura to such a degree I could feel it even at this distance. In Hellsword’s left hand was Plaguebringer, the sister blade to Chill’s Fury, a weapon that wailed with the spirits of a thousand imprisoned souls. I could defeat him alone, perhaps, but with Regina at my side? He didn’t stand a chance.

  “Give my regards to Serah!” Hellsword then said, smiling. “She’s much improved.”

  He lifted Plaguebringer into the air and then aimed it to side, conjuring another rift in the sky before flying through it.

  “No!” Regina shouted, trying to move Blaze fast enough to follow.

  But it was gone before we reached its side.

  Hellsword had escaped.

  Chapter Six

  “Shit-eating whoresons!” Regina shouted, turning around Blaze and doing a circle about the area where Hellsword’s portal had appeared. “What was that!?”

  “The stories about him binding souls to empower his spells are true,” I said, disturbed at the implications of that.

  Necromancy was nothing new to me, let alone the world, but I’d never heard of someone who had been able to successfully bind more than a few souls to themselves. Even a few imprisoned ones were great sources of power to those who knew how to feed upon them as magical reservoirs. Hellsword had bound an entire city to him. Enough to open the kind of portals I’d needed an entire city’s worth of machinery to create. The pain he was causing those spirits had to be immense.

  I was still more powerful than him, such as one might want to measure a god versus a mortal, but the ability to deploy power on the world was not a one-to-one affair. I could draw on great power, power which would change the laws of reality, but the consequences to the people of this world—as well as myself—were things I’d need omniscience to predict. That hadn’t come with my ascension to the King Below’s throne. Hence, I relied on the same (im)mortal sorcery I’d used in both life as well as undeath. It usually didn’t fail me. Usually.

  “Can you open it behind him? Follow him!?” Regina shouted, shaking with rage. “We can’t just let him get away.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “We don’t have the Night Bridge here and it’ll be a days-long journey back to the Eyes of the World on dragonback. That portal he summoned could have gone anywhere, too. Hells, the ancient sidhe moongates led to other worlds and times.”

  “Then it was for nothing,” Regina said, shaking her head. “Alayx, Vain, Bloodsplatter, Dwain, and Kull.”

  I took those to be the names of the dragon riders who’d fallen in battle. It was, in military terms, a pyrrhic victory. Even if we’d managed to kill thirteen of the empire’s finest warriors and their dragons, they could afford to soak up the losses of such far better than we could. With Hellsword’s death, Regina might have been able to justify the loss as in a good cause. Without it? It was just the death of five good soldiers.

  Such was war.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, removing a glove and placing my hand on her shoulder.

  “They trusted me to lead them to victory,” Regina muttered. “I should have made their deaths count.”

  “War is not so easily measured,” I said softly. “It is made of a thousand failures, mistakes, and misjudgments wrapped up in pretty banners to disguise how so much of it is pointless.”

  Regina stared forward, silent for a moment. She then said, “We should rejoin the others.”

  “You are a good commander, Regina, and I—”

  “Please, Jacob, just leave it alone for a bit.”

  I didn’t say
anything else.

  Blaze settled down with the remaining riders of our group: Serah, Curse, Payne, Archus, Regina, and myself. Smoke was standing amongst them, unconcerned with my survival one way or the other, but two of the Great Blacks were gravely wounded by their struggle. With alchemy, magic, and time they would heal, but that would be a long time coming.

  Months.

  Serah was, thankfully, already lending what little aid she could to the dragons by clouding their minds before starting the healing process. Magical healing had many benefits, but pain was its price.

  The area around us was rocky and not too far from the shores that the Devil’s Sea crashed into. Bits and pieces of grass grew all around and there was a forest to the north. The Northern Wasteland was somewhat misnamed and had much habitable land inside it. We weren’t that far from Caer Callig, a former fortress of the Shadowguard. Several dragon corpses were nearby and I spotted the remains of the fallen Lesser Yellow nearby. It wasn’t dead, but soon would be, and I had little hope the rider had survived her treacherous journey.

  Regina slid off the side of her saddle. “I’m sorry, my friends, Hellsword escaped.”

  “No war is measured in victories alone,” Serah said, lifting her staff above the arm of a handsome sidhe man. “Sometimes even the greatest generals must acknowledge the bitter sting of defeat.”

  The sidhe, the self-titled Curse, had brown skin and long silvery black hair that hung down to his waist. Curse had traded his ornate elvish armor for the more modest attire of a dragon rider, but he was still someone who looked more like an artist’s romantic conception of a warrior than one. Either way, he was still one of the deadliest killers in the North.

  “We bloodied him and made him retreat,” Curse said, clenching his teeth as I heard a broken arm set before beginning to heal under Serah’s care. “To do that to the people who killed the old King Below will win you many accolades.”

  “I’m not interested in accolades,” Regina said, gritting her teeth. “Only the destruction of my enemies.”