Wraith Lord

by Phipps, C. T.

  “It’s to provide purpose for our lives,” I said, half wondering why I was even bothering to do this.

  “If you say so,” Redhand said. “I find the people on the ground often make up reasons for why the guy above them wipes his shit on them.”

  I could feel Regina’s hatred radiating off of her. My wife stood there, looking like she could pounce at any minute against those who were part of the group that had stalked her for her entire adult life. Yet, muscles taut and the body of her cousin and first love on the ground, she did not attack.

  I was proud of her for that.

  Sad but proud.

  “I know what your plan is,” I said, still stunned by the sheer monstrousness of it. “I know you want to animate the Guardians of Kerifas and unleash them unto Everfrost. I know every single horrible deed you were willing to commit in order to prevent us from becoming a threat. I even know your offer of peace was a lie, but we can end this. We do not have to follow the paths set out before us.”

  Redhand snorted.

  Hellsword, however, looked thoughtful. “You would make that offer, even now?”

  “I could have unleashed the guardians upon your forces. They’re not powerful enough to operate for long but they could wipe out every Imperial in this city before they’re done. I know how. I’m willing to kill you and the rest of the Nine. I’m willing to bring war to your shores and march my forces all the way to the Imperial city and shove your vile empress’s head on a spike. I won’t let you threaten my people and I am prepared to do what it takes to eradicate you. I’m not going to if I don’t have to, though.”

  “That’s your mistake,” Redhand said. “War is written by the winners, no matter how vile.”

  “But peace is lived by the survivors,” I replied. “Let us make a lasting one.”

  “And you?” Hellsword asked Regina.

  “You’re the refuse of humanity,” Regina said. “I won’t sacrifice my people for my revenge, though.”

  Hellsword looked down and Redhand looked over to him, questioning. “Tell me you’re not listening to this shit.”

  “I am.” Hellsword gazed up. “But she should have abandoned her revenge earlier!”

  Hellsword swung at Regina’s head only for me to block his blade thrust. Plaguebringer and Chill’s Fury sent forth sparks of witchfire from where the two swords met. The two of us throwing each other’s strength against one another’s while testing our magic in a contest of wills.

  Redhand, meanwhile, lifted his left hand and unleashed a hellish torrent of flame that Regina blocked with her shield before the energy construct dissipated and she was forced to flee to the side. Redhand swung around his axe, burying it in the ground even as Regina just barely managed to duck out of the way in time. Redhand had millennia of experience killing, not dueling but killing, and I doubted there was anyone in the Three Worlds who could match him blow for blow.

  My gold was on my wife, though.

  Hellsword brought his blade against mine and struck again and again, each of his blows sending me a step back only for me to rally and strike anew. Plaguebringer and Chill’s Fury were identical in make, both constructed by the King Below as weapons for his Wraith Knights, but Hellsword had empowered his weapon with countless imprisoned souls. Against any other opponent, they would have allowed him an insurmountable edge but my godhood allowed me to hold my own.

  Albeit, just barely.

  It was a contest of skill now, as well as sorcery. Hellsword’s movements were enhanced with spells and he moved three times faster than a normal man as well as four times as strong. I focused my own spells on divination, ironically enough, giving me knowledge of where he would strike and enhancing my aura. Each of his attacks was thwarted by my blade, his amazing dance of movements and stunning array of assaults all knocked backward before they could ever get at my armored frame.

  “I am the greatest swordsman of this age,” Hellsword said, hoping to demoralize me. “I am a great wizard. You think your godhood gives you an advantage? I have slain dozens of lesser gods, messengers, and demons. Beings more powerful than you. You were nothing when you were alive, just Jassamine’s catspaw in the Shadowguard. A deluded mutt she decided to take pity on and left to die when you were no longer of any value.”

  He moved like a swarm of bees buzzing around me, but nothing seemed capable of penetrating my defenses. In a way, he reminded me of the waves crashing against shoreline. The fact he managed to make several glancing blows meant nothing as my enhanced demonsteel held against his strikes. “It must be terribly frustrating knowing the limits of your greatness. I was never the kind of great wizards you and Serah are or even the kind of warrior Regina is. However, I do possess one thing you don’t, Hellsword, and that is time. I have had two hundred years to practice and train. You fight like a mad genius, an artist throwing paint at a canvas and declaring it inspiration from the gods.”

  I left an opening in my defenses, which he brought Plaguebringer down to strike at. I grabbed his wrist in midair and he found himself unable to bring it down further.

  “Impossible,” Hellsword proclaimed.

  It was ironic he thought this contest was evenly matched as I was holding back most of my power. If I’d wanted, I could have reached out to Everfrost and drew on the necromantic energy of a million ghosts. The entire World Below was at my command and I was a god, not a mortal. He assumed he was fighting a Wraith Knight and he was but only because I willed it. Not even Regina and Serah suspected just how much I chose not to wield against our enemies. Because every time I unleashed my full power, I felt myself becoming more like the King Below and less like Jacob. Besides, I didn’t need that kind of power to defeat Hellsword. Even as Jacob Riverson, not the God of Evil, I was still a bloody killer.

  “I fight like a blacksmith,” I said, knowing it was time to end this charade. “I know how things are made.”

  I then contacted every soul in Plaguebringer and offered them their freedom. With a push of necromancy, the thousands of imprisoned spirits rebelled at once and caused the sword to shatter in Hellsword’s hands. The entire room was bathed in light for a brief moment, blinding the Namtariss wizard. Which let me slug him across the face with the back of my hand, sending him to the ground.

  Hellsword was dazed on the ground and confused, which gave me the opportunity to strike. Lifting my sword for the killing blow, I was struck by two bolts of glowing light from his hand. They were painful beyond belief, bolts designed to kill Wraith Knights, and sent me down to my knees. Hellsword’s next spell threw a bolt of green eldritch energy into my wrist, knocking Chill’s Fury from my hand as well as destroying the fingers that held it.

  “Blacksmith? As if that was something to be proud of!” Hellsword said, spitting on the ground a part of a tooth. From his hands a series of translucent white chains shot forth and began wrapping themselves around my arms, legs, and throat. “This world has lived under the tyranny of petty short-sighted nobles, mad wizards, and gods for too long. You act as if you are the solution? Fool, you are part of the problem, and if I have been played as a game piece then know I am taking control of the board!”

  The last of the chains merged together and began squeezing me. It was not damage to the body but the soul. The Chains of Aibon were a spell designed for the purposes of imprisoning the greatest of spirits and required unimaginable power from the wizards involved. The fact Hellsword was able to conjure it alone, with no preparation, was a sign I was out of my league. I had gotten lucky, it seemed, when I faced Ethinu.

  Regina and Redhand were playing a game of cat and mouse throughout the machines beside us. Regina had struck numerous blows against the demigod but each of them had healed almost instantly. Regina’s armor had managed to absorb a similar number of blows from Redhand’s axe but it looked like she was favoring one arm over the other. There was also a burn on the right side of her face where she’d only managed to barely deflect one of the monster’s flame strikes. She conjured yet another sh
ield for yet another attack, but was in no position to come to my aid.

  “Farewell, Jacob!” Hellsword said, rushing to one of the machine’s controls. “Your rebellion will be stopped now along with all of your ambitions. The number of dead in the city will animate the guardians and give us an empire that will last ten thousand years!”

  I struggled against the chains, summoning as much strength as I could (at least without drawing on the power of my godhood). I knew the intimate workings of the spells and that its form as a chain was more than just a visual metaphor but an actual symbol of its existence. Concentrating on a single link, I focused all my remaining energy to cause it to shatter and dissipate.

  I failed to scratch it.

  Hellsword finished throwing several switches and turning dials. This caused the machines around us to rumble. The resevoir of blood magic energy drained away and there was a terrible sense of power that grew from miles off. A look of jubilation and triumph passed across Hellsword’s face. It faded when the sense of power began to diminish within moments, and then disappeared entirely within a minute.

  Hellsword’s face fell. “What?”

  “I altered the symbols in the controls,” I said, sighing. “Like I said, I fight as a blacksmith. The guardians are presently smashing each other to pieces. No one should wield that kind of power, even for the greater good.”

  Truth be told, I had sabotaged the guardians as much for myself as any real higher purpose. If I used them here, I would almost certainly use them everywhere and justify my actions through arithmatic. The guardians could only be used as weapons of subjugation. I wasn’t so confident of my ability to lead morally that I would let them be unleashed. It was the same reason I didn’t simply animate every corpse in the Southern Kingdoms and begin the end of the world. I wasn’t sure I could do that but I wasn’t sure I couldn’t either. The power I wielded was all-consuming. It changed me every time I usedit. Better to win by cunning. As long as I won.

  Hellsword spun around and stared at me before actually giving a short laugh. “I really should have seen that coming.”

  “Yes, you should have.”

  Hellsword seemed almost relieved and I suspected, no matter how many atrocities he’d committed over the past decade, he’d developed enough of a conscience not to want to destroy Everfrost. We were not so different in that respect. That wasn’t going to keep him from killing me, though, and all my efforts had done little more than give me access to my minor spells like telekinesis and witchfire. Not exactly the sort of stuff that could defeat an archwizard and master swordsman like Hellsword. I could draw on deeper magics, the kind only gods had access too, but the consequences of such could wipe this city off the map. No, I would fight on a lesser front even if it disadvantaged me.

  “Say hello to the King Below for me when you reach wherever gods go when they die,” Hellsword said, conjuring a spirit blade of glowing light magic. It trembled with power and I knew it was infused with all the wizard’s power in the same way I had tried to strike at my chains with mine.

  “You assume he’s dead.”

  Hellsword charged, aiming the blade’s tip at my skull.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on a piece of glass, sending it skidding against the side of Hellsword’s femoral artery. Without a barrier, he was left unprotected and blood began to pour out of the wound profusely. Falling to the ground, his sword dissipating to nothingness, the wizard covered the wound and struggled to heal it.

  That gave me time to grip Chill’s Fury with my mind and send it spinning at Hellsword’s throat. His eyes widened in the split-second before his head went flying off. I collapsed to one side, that action having left me exhausted and bereft of strength.

  Some god I was.

  Turning over despite my efforts and the excruciating pain the Chains of Aibon inflicted, I struggled to see the battle between Regina and Redhand. I dreaded the possibility that millennia of fighting, immortality, and his absolute utter disregard for life would give the monster an advantage over my spouse. That she was like Hellsword, gifted, but lacking the experience to defeat the horror.

  I should have gone with my gut instinct.

  “Have you ever fought someone who could fight back?” Regina said, holding the decapitated head of Redhand before her by its hair. She was addressing the immortal with a look of utter contempt on her face.

  The head’s mouth moved up and down but no sound escaped its lips. The immortal’s body was chopped into five pieces on the ground, each appendage having been kicked away as well as set on fire. Already I could see the head starting to form a new spine and sinew, though.

  “Jacob, I need you to freeze the head of our good friend here,” Regina said. “We will then bury it in concrete at the base of Everfrost or toss it in the deepest hell we can find. Redhand is immortal, but I doubt that will mean much if he’s locked in demonsteel chains in a place where even the air in one’s lungs freezes.”

  I was impressed and appalled by Regina’s ruthlessness. “I would gladly do so, but I’m a trifle…bound.”

  Regina lifted her sword at my chains. “Dispel.”

  The chains shattered like they were nothing.

  I then froze Redhand’s regenerating head, dumped it in the closest container I could find, and filled the container with the same noxious substance as the few remaining unshattered tubes around us. I promptly froze it as well, leaving the immortal trapped in a state of outrage, shock, and horror. I suspected that would keep him until we were back at Everfrost and could find suitable accommodations in the dungeon.

  We did not have to be savages after all.

  However tempting that might be.

  Regina looked around the corpse-strewn and bloody ruins of the lab. “So this is what victory over your mortal foes feels like.”

  “Regina—”

  I didn’t get a chance to say more before half of the ceiling collapsed due to a runestone smashing the floor above us.

  The revolution was bringing the Governor’s Palace down around our heads.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Governor’s Palace was in chaos.

  The spells that kept all the servants subdued had faded with the deaths of Hellsword and Redhand. As a result, the hundreds of nonhumans were in a state of panic as well as outrage. The guards were trying to maintain order as the Imperial staff were trying to escape with as many of their possessions as possible.

  Runestones launched from cannon had caused the collapse of floors above even as the assault was intermittent, perhaps because the enemy had pierced the very walls of the building itself. Several times, we came across groups of dead bodies of either citizens wielding magic weapons or members of the staff.

  Regina and I moved through the palace, both of us still at a fraction of our former strength. I had wrapped my destroyed hand in gauze even if it would have been better to simply let it dissipate. The pain was a reminder of what it was to be alive and helped me solidfy my connection to this world. Redhand’s head was carried in a burlap sack over my shoulder, a morbid trophy that was sadly not the strangest thing I had ever acquired from an assassination mission.

  Regina held Starlight in front of her even with her right hand even as she held her ribs with her left. It was an irony we were able to heal almost any other wounds but the ones we needed most.

  Moving into a ruined office as the sounds of shouting and detonations moved closer, Regina took a moment to catch her breath. “Can you do another of those obscurement spells?”

  I shook my head. “I drained an elixer’s worth of life force from Redhand’s thrashing limbs, but even that isn’t enough to do much more than divert attention for a few seconds. I am well and truly spent.”

  Regina nodded, her voice hoarse and cold. “Is magic supposed to be this exhausting?”

  “War is this exhausting. Have you never reached your limit before?”

  “The battles fought against the Formor were usually over as soon as they began.” Regina
stared forward. “I always felt it best to make sure any time my troops engaged in battle, the odds were so heavily stacked in their favor that it was a foregone conclusion they should win.”

  “We called that being a good general in my time,” I said, chuckling. I decided to risk what little bit of power I had left to mentally contact Serah. Are you there, my wife?

  You live, Jacob. Does Regina?

  Yes.

  Thank…well, us. I am leading the assault, as much as such can be said, on the Palace District. It is more like a riot with looting, rape, and murder.

  Can you control the masses? We should try and prevent any atrocities we can.

  You or Reginas would be better at that, though I’ve kept it from degenerating into the wholesale mass murder of every Imperial in the city.

  How did you manage this? I asked, speaking more about the fact the uprising Gewain planned had transformed from an Imperial trap into a successful revolution.

  You can blame your friend Rose, whom we will discuss later. When he returned to help evacuate the Fir Bolg’s children, he let it be known the Burning Fists’ dragon riders were subceptible to bribery and not as loyal to their commander as they seemed. He also let it be known the garrison’s marshall had no great love of the Usurpers. Most of the Imperial forces withdrew once it became clear the entire city was against them. How is Gewain?

  I closed my eyes. Gewain is dead.

  Serah was silent. I’m sorry to hear that. I knew him. He was every bit the good and wonderful leader Regina aspires to be.

  There wasn’t much to say to that. Good and wonderful people died in war all the time. We need to get control over the situation until the actual forces from Everfrost arrive. Can you conjure illusions of dragons and our forces? We also need soldiers capable of maintaining order.

  I can do the former but you’ll have to ask Kana about the latter. She has since arrested all the leaders of the Golden Arrow outside the city and seized power in your name.