Wraith Lord

by Phipps, C. T.

  Like so many more we’d destroyed.

  Drol-Bethir shouted, “What have you done?”

  I chuckled. “She has sealed you away from the World Below. Your magic is no longer accessible, which means you are a fish flopping on land.”

  “No such magic exists.”

  “Not until last month,” Serah said, smiling like a cat having just eaten a bird. “I created the spell in case we ever ran into one of your kind.

  Serah settled down her dragon in front of us, joining our war party in facing down the Ice Demon.

  “Thank you, Serah,” I said, grimacing as I knew Ketra was probably dead.

  “Anything for my husband and wife.”

  “Let us see where demons go when they die.” Regina stood up from Ketra’s side, holding Starlight in one hand and a shield of light in the other. Serah slid off the back of Smoke as Regina climbed into her place instead, being a far better dragon rider than all of us.

  Drol-Bethir seemed to contemplate surrender, at least that was what I guessed it was doing. Severing him from the World Below seemed to have freed him from Hellsword’s control and had it chosen to swear allegiance to me, I might have recruited it as a weapon against my enemies. Pride is a dangerous thing, though, and Drol-Bethir was a proud being. Roaring, the Ice Demon threw back its useless wings and charged. The remainder of the battle lasted six minutes but was never in doubt. For all the injuries we’d had to heal, barrier fields we’d had to erect, and killing strokes we’d had to avoid—Drol-Bethir was nothing without with his magic.

  While we were warriors.

  The final blow was struck by Regina who, leaping from the dragon’s back onto Drol-Bethir’s neck, cut through it and sent its head rolling away. The rest of its body dissolved into abyssal energy that imploded into a shimmering ball of crackling dark magic.

  And then it was gone.

  Dissolved like the mists before the sum.

  And we were left with broken bodies, widowed spouses, and dying children.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I needed a few moments to come down from my battle fury. The environment around us was chaotic, maddening even. Victory is always described by poets in terms of exaltation, triumph, and arête. For me, it has always been disingenuous to say victory ever actually exists save in hindsight. The Ice Demon, Drol-Bethir, was destroyed, but there was no magical cure to the horrors that surrounded me. Nothing that said, Yes, we have won and all is right with the world.

  I was in my full wraith form, the Ice Demon having torn out my guts and left them splattered on the ground during our battle. Because I was dead, not a living man, I could conjure a new body with no more effort than changing a suit of clothes. It was an eternal reminder, though, that I was not alive nor never could be again. Like the Gods Between, I was a ghost of a god who had as much to do with the living world as a memory or a fireside tale.

  Being in wraith form, I was spared the worst of the after-effects that came to battle. I did not have to smell the shit and half-digested food smell that came with the demise of the mortals all round me. I did not have to hear anything but the distant echo of weeping women and screaming fathers as they cradled their dead children.

  As a hooded specter, I did nothing but drain away the life force of those who couldn’t be healed, sparing my victims hours of painful death, and funneled the majority back into those who might survive. I kept enough that I might generate another body, even this far from Everfrost, but it would still take hours to craft. I would not be able to work light magic until then and the majority of those who needed such would be crippled or dead by then.

  And people still called me a god.

  Serah, at least, was a woman who knew how to take advantage of such things and continued using the Heart of Midnight to control the dragon she’d enspelled and sent it forward to the outer edges of the now-barrier-covered Fire District. My senses were keen enough in this form, I could feel the lives ending one by one. Unique, vibrant, living souls suddenly surrounded by nimbus of flames followed by screams and panic before their flesh melted off their bodies then that uniqueness passing away to charred meat.

  I wasn’t in a good position to know what was going on outside my immediate area but I wagered the Burning Blades had sent in many of their soldiers, perhaps as many as six or seven hundred, only to find themselves trapped without support. There was little such men could do against a dragon and witch of Serah’s skill and I suspected their lives had gone to reinforce the barrier surrounding us. They had come to commit a war crime, but I spared them some sympathy. Rare was the soldier who was completely evil, and those that were often had witnessed so many atrocities that their minds were broken rather than bent.

  Nearby, I saw Regina was holding the broken and battered form of Ketra. Half of Ketra’s body was covered in burns and her right eye was busted wide open. There were also places where parts of her were leaking out and were only held in by the cauterized nature of her wounds. It was a miracle she was still alive but, perhaps, not one that should have been lauded. Regina was not trained in the arts of healing and there was precious little she could do to alleviate the majority of these wounds. Yet she kept pouring divine energy into the body of her cousin, hoping for a miracle.

  Refusing to give an inch.

  I placed my hand on Regina’s shoulder and spoke with a voice that sounded like it came from the grave. “Let her go.”

  “No,” Regina whispered, her eyes soaked with tears. “I won’t lose her again.”

  I had no eyes to close. “You know you—”

  Regina’s response was to unleash some of the foulest profanity I had ever heard in my life, and I was no stranger to vulgarity.

  “I want her to live!” Regina hissed. “Help me!”

  “So be it.” Closing my eyes, I reached out and felt a dozen surrendering soldiers. I took the lives of men with husbands, wives, families, and those who had been conscripted into this war. I sucked the life force from their chests and caused them to fall over, choking on their own blood. I poured that energy into Ketra, the foulest of necromancy, and watched as her scar tissue sealed over in an instant. Her interior organs stitched over, her lungs emptied of fluid, and her right eye regenerated. None of the scar tissue vanished, though, and it led to the rather disgusting image of her vomiting up blood on the side of the street.

  “Thank you,” Regina said, looking up at me. “Thank you so very much.”

  “I told you I would burn the world for you.”

  “And I you,” Regina said, stroking the still-ruined side of Ketra’s face. ““What about the scars?”

  “They’re black magic of the highest order. Why it took so much energy to heal. The Ice Demons were designed to kill those who had access to the mightiest healers. Your magic is aligned to the light and can cleanse the wounds but it will take weeks. We should probably wait until we’re back at Everfrost—”

  “No.” Ketra spat, wiping away a disgusting pink white residue from her mouth. “I will keep the scars.”

  “Ketra…” Regina said.

  “I am more than a pretty ornament my family wanted to marry,” Ketra said, climbing to her feet. “I am a warrior of the Army of Free Peasants. Let people look upon me and know what I am willing to sacrifice.”

  “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything,” Regina whispered.

  Ketra gave a bitter laugh and looked around at the carnage around us. “We don’t live in that kind of world.”

  “Some men like scars.”

  “Some women too,” Regina said, rising herself. “As you wish, cousin.”

  Ketra gave her sister a hug then suddenly hugged me as well. “You are true warriors of the World to Come, both of you. I must go see if I can help organize the resistance here for the next round of the attacks.”

  “What a strange woman.” I took a deep breath, even though I had no lungs. “Regina, we should—”

  “Don’t,” Regina interrupted, picking up Starlight off the grou
nd. “There is nothing you can say to keep me from now marching on the Governor’s Palace and turning every single person who stands in my way into a greasy red smear. The Nine Usurpers have reminded me as to why they have to be annihilated along with all of their supporters.”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have simply said I’d be offended she’d think I would try to stop her. That there was nothing she could say to keep me from walking beside her to murder, torment, and slaughter the Imperials who guarded this town. There was something dark and unholy in my spirit, perhaps inborn, perhaps cultivated like a gardener’s flowers.

  Two hundred years of being the King Below’s mind-controlled Dark Lord of Despair did not go away with the return of my free will, nor did the prior decade of serving as the most ruthless Shadowguard in an age.

  I loved combat. It was a shameful thing because I’d grown up amongst pacifists who wanted nothing more than to live in peace with their fellow man. I was an aberration, though, a wolf amongst sheep. I tried my best to make myself a tame wolf, a sheepdog, but it wasn’t always easy.

  Right now, I wanted nothing more than to take the fight to Hellsword and Redhand, slaughter all their minions, and then piss on the ashes. I wanted to punish them for this atrocity, though. I knew that was not the way, though. Not yet, not now. I saw the bleakness in her eyes. It was the same pain and suffering I’d seen in a hundred other soldiers, my brothers and sisters in war. Even the greatest soldiers could be killed when they were running on the heat of grief than the coolness of logic. We needed a plan if we were to destroy Hellsword and Redhand, even in the face of all this.

  So, instead, I said, “There are children dying around you.” It was a cruel thing to say, doubly so because I couldn’t bring myself to care about their suffering now over my wife’s safety.

  Regina turned to look at me, looking betrayed. She opened her mouth to speak an angry retort, stifled it, looked down, and then sighed. Walking to the nearest injured Fir Bolg, she said, “You bastard.”

  “Indeed,” I said, starting to walk with her.

  “No,” Regina said, stopping in mid-step. “You need to organize…this.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible.” I doubted the people wanted to be organized by a bodiless embodiment of death and despair.

  “I need some time alone,” Regina said, closing her eyes. “Please.”

  I nodded. “As you wish.”

  Walking over to where Kana’s still form lay, I reached down to turn her over only to find her shifting and shaking. “I’m alive, Black Sun.”

  I loomed over her. I suspected, looking like nothing so much as the embodiment of Death. In my true form, I only had demonsteel armor, a cloak, shadows to make up my form. They were almost indestructible, embodiments of the old King Below’s power, but they were a poor substitute for the basic ability to give comfort.

  “Are you injured?” I asked, not offering my hand. I did not like the Golden Arrow and couldn’t help but wonder how badly they had injured the empire in the region to bring down this sort of massacre on their heads. The fact that the elders of that organization had been hoping to spark a purge and Kana knew made me want to plunge my sword into her chest before she got up. I doubted any of the locals would object.

  “Nothing I cannot heal. I was able to get my barrier up in time.” Kana looked over to the many dead Fir Bolg around us. “How is Ketra?”

  “Injured,” I said, my voice echoing. “Badly. Do you feel anything at all?”

  “For her?” Kana looked up to me, blinking. “Versus everyone else here?”

  “Yes.” I wondered if Ketra knew just how much contempt Kana and the Golden Arrow had for her.

  Probably not.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t.” Kana rose to her feet and crossed her arms around her stomach. “When Gewain and Ketra came to the forest, many Golden Arrow soldiers saw nothing but a pair of spoiled nobles, the kind who had been killing my kind for centuries. I assumed they wanted to use us to kill more of their kind and, honestly, I was fine with that. It became…harder…when I realized she genuinely believed not only were we friends but that one day we would liberate my people.”

  “Were you the one who taught her to be Rainfire? Two nobles don’t become seasoned guerillas and revolutionaries without training. I know the Golden Arrow has allied with peasant revolts in the past, even if they’re all anass to you.”

  “Yes,” Kana said, looking up at me. “I showed her the mass graves, the whipped bodies, the forced labor, and I made the wizardess studying to be a healer into a weapon. I also was the one who encouraged Gewain to seek your aid. I was hoping to either gain a powerful ally or spark an invasion of the Southern Kingdoms. The elders believe another war between the North and the South can only benefit us.”

  I stared at her. “Never mind how many burn.”

  “Yes,” Kana said. “I would burn every an—”

  “Don’t,” I said calmly. “Make your choice.”

  “My choice?” Kana asked.

  “Look around you at the face of your people. The ones who choose to live amongst humans, boggans, and other races. The ones you were ready to sacrifice to gain more recruits and know you are their enemy. I give you a choice: fight for them and fight for me. I will give you back your homeland and it will be a place we can all try to live together in peace in. You can also choose the Golden Arrow and continue to fight for the ancient world you know only of in distant memories.”

  “You would have me become a traitor.”

  “I consider you a traitor to your race already. How many Fir Bolg have you killed because they did not follow the Golden Arrow’s ways or spoke against them?”

  “Dozens,” Kana said. “If I choose the Golden Arrow, you will kill me. Do you think I am afraid to die?”

  I stared at her. “No. However, if you choose the Golden Arrow I will do something you would regret.”

  “Which is?”

  I sheathed the sword. “I will rule your people.”

  Kana blinked. “What?”

  “I have saved this region from destruction and healed the sick. Your people know me as a hero now; a legendary slayer of monsters and archdemons. Word will spread until all know me as a friend of your race. I will go forth to each Fire District in the land and offer them a new homeland in the North. I will shower them magitech wonders and riches. I will give them everything they could possibly want and make my price only that they worship my wives and me exclusively. I will obliterate the old ways and make mockery of the Gods Between so that they will be forgotten within six generation. It will work, too, because most Fir Bolg prefer children with full bellies to dusty old rituals. They also hate the Golden Arrow almost as much as they hate the Anessian Empire. Choose peace or I will assimilate your race. Do you understand?”

  Kana’s eyes widened and I knew in that moment she believed. “I…understand. I…will choose peace.”

  “You will work against your superiors for me. Report on them and I will sponsor you and others like you to higher positions. We will eliminate the others. If you do not, know I am entirely capable of fulfilling my promise.”

  Kana nodded. “I am yours, Black Sun.”

  “Good. I must go find Rose.”

  “He is a traitor, you know. The spirits whisper of meetings and messages. He is the only one who could have betrayed Gewain to the Imperials. Ketra’s meeting as well. This entire meeting was a trap for the Imperial’s enemies.”

  “I will ascertain the truth of your claims.” I turned to walk away. At this point, I wasn’t going to be surprised by anything.

  “Black Sun—”

  “Yes?”

  Kana then made me uncomfortable by adding something else. “Thank you for saving these people. I was born R’Tosh, a country Fir Bolg who lived in a village built on the most godsforsaken swamp land humans would allow us. I did not think these were my people. The Y’Tang are believed to have sold themselves to the anass for riches. I….changed my mind when I
got to know them.”

  I turned to walk away. “I am not doing this for your people.”

  “No, but you’re doing it for all. Gods’ blessings upon you.”

  I didn’t respond to that. Instead, I helped several people trapped under rubble, gave the gift of death to a man who could live for hours more but in great pain, and eventually succeeded in tracking down Rose. He was in the corner of a half-collapsed building’s cellar, having gotten himself half drunk on a collection of wine bottles down there. The poet had spilled as much as he’d drunk and looked like he’d taken a long look in a filthy mirror.

  The cellar was surprisingly pleasant-looking with numerous bottles of wine, fine furniture, and several boxes of clothing that would have fetched a high price on the market. The Fir Bolg hadn’t been impoverished in Kerifas, at least this one hadn’t, which was yet another sign of the toxic influence the Nine were exerting on the land.

  “You ran,” I said, walking up to him.

  “Yes,” Rose said, looking down. “But not because I was afraid.”

  I walked up to him and waved my hand. The spell I cast would not have worked had he been in his right mind, but I suspected it would now. He looked as if he was in need of a confessor. “Tell me the truth.”

  “About?”

  “Your allegiances.”

  “And if I lie?”

  “I will tear the truth from your mind. I don’t think you’re going to, though. You were sickened by the realization they were going to kill all the people here, not just the Golden Arrow and rebel Jarls.”

  “Yes. I was.” Rose said, simply. “As for my allegiances, you’re right, I’m a spy.”

  “How long?”