Coming to Power

by T J Marquis

  As Malok shouted, waves of purple light rippled outward from him. His soldiers obeyed his orders without question, and the weary defenders scrambled to meet them.

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment, wizard,” Malok said. “Somehow, I knew you would come.”

  “Stand down, ogre!” Jon cried, the promise of death in his voice. He was covered with cuts and bruises, and blood both red and black. His dark armor was punctured in various places by serpent fangs, but he pushed his weakness and weariness deep down.

  “No more of your people need to die,” Jon continued. “I will slay only the undead, if you retreat now.”

  Malok bellowed laughter. “Even if I thought retreat our only hope, we would not succumb. Honor, and loyalty to Oorgubamalglat our lord compels us.”

  Now it was Jon’s turn to laugh.

  “Honor?” he scoffed, beginning to approach the ogre giant. “Honor in butchering innocents who would just assume leave you at peace?”

  “You know not the reality of our lives, pest. Humans hate us. They think us monsters. And this City binds the presence of our master to the earth. If it falls, his power shall know no bounds. He will reward his most faithful servants, and all will be free. Those like me will rule alongside him on this world and all others!” Malok drew his sword, a different one from before. Jon could hardly see it in the night, so dark was the slender, one-sided blade. It was easily half as long as the ogre, with a generous two-handed grip, and a small square guard.

  “It’s all lies!” Jon’s voice nearly cracked with passion and compassion. “Do you know of the guardian Jeremiah? He told me all about your god. The dark man will consume you once you’ve served him, just as he’s consumed any number of other civilizations before he came here.” Jon stopped several yards away from Malok and sighed. “Enough… if you won’t hear reason…”

  “Have at you!” Done with talk, Malok surged forward to attack.

  His purple aura expanded with his rage, entangling with Jon’s own. The power of Command strove with Jon’s bubble of healing for supremacy. Malok beat at him with the sword of condensed darkness, but Jon met it easily with the pain and passion of his mageblade. His amplified speed and awareness allowed him to block or parry Malok’s flurry of blows, despite the ogre’s greater swordsmanship.

  For a moment, their eyes met, and Jon feared that Malok saw through the fire in his eyes to the weakness and weariness within. Growling, the ogre raged, and Jon defended.

  Not far away, in the dark of an alleyway, the Assassin awaited his moment. When the ogre fell, and the little man reveled in a second of relief and victory, he would strike. One thrust would do it. Enkann’s hope would be slain, the only threat this world could pose to the master. So the shadow creature watched, calm and attentive, as man and ogre struggled.

  Jon desperately wanted to break from this fight, and help his friends and the Enkannites who were spread throughout the City blocks, but he knew the ogre giant would not let him alone until this battle was decided. Now Malok had power, he posed a bigger threat.

  An aura of authority lay on the ogre like a purple mist. His desires and will crashed into Jon’s mind and heart like ocean waves, full of unrelenting force. One moment, Jon felt the urge to surrender, the next he felt goaded to keep on fighting, and intermittently he thought he could actually hear the imperative, “Flee!”. There was even a sense of the faintest plea for mercy.

  It had been difficult to speak civilly to the ogre, for Jon had been driven by bloodlust and instinct for days now, harried across land and sky, pushing his body past all acceptable limits and fueled exclusively by the white light. All the while he’d been forced into battle after battle, constantly straddling the line between fight and flight. His mind screamed that all foes must perish, his body cried out for rest and nourishment. His conscience and sense of goodwill begged him to show mercy. And his power ached to vanquish evil. Under the crush of thoughts and emotions, Jon did what he’d been doing all along- he kept on moving.

  A dodge and parry brought the mageblade in position for a menacing slash, but Malok recovered, maneuvering his dark blade with unnatural quickness. The long, curved sword seemed to drink in the night, making it hard to follow. What strange enchantment was allowing it to survive contact with Jon’s blade of pure magic?

  The ogre feinted left with his nightblade, closed some distance, then landed a crushing blow to Jon’s ribs with his opposite fist. Jon felt a few break, and his rage swam through fiery pain to the surface of his mind.

  Before he thought to control it, the bloodlight’s red nodes and twisting streams sprang into open space behind him. Thousands of orbs bloomed and extended their tendrils to form a vast web with Jon at its center. The only clear space was a shape like a shield around Jon’s form.

  Malok’s eyes went wide as the bloodlight lashed out at him.

  “Back, serpents!” he cried.

  Tendrils of his own regal light reached out to entangle the red orbs of violent power, pushing back the edges of its web.

  Jon engaged Malok swiftly during the moment of his distraction, swiping madly with his blade, but the ogre’s skills were still beyond him.

  As the onslaught of Malok’s will and the purple light’s resistance to the bloodlight persisted, Jon suffered enough sanity to realize what the purple haze was. The concept took shape in Jon’s mind and his subconscious gave the power a name. Command. He’d seen the ogre apply it to his troops - whatever their general willed, they were urged to obey.

  Jon took a risk by sparing enough focus to sniff out the scent of the power’s origin, and there it was in his mind - one of the fallen crystals. Jon had the privilege of knowing that the crystals were connected to Mount Iskeh, the origin of his own gift. So what had the White Light to do with this, the dark man’s general? These thoughts and Jon’s confusion over mercy gave him momentary pause. Malok’s pressure of will increased, threatening to crush Jon in body and mind. He reeled from the impact of so much Command, conflicting orders and emotions holding him paralyzed.

  The myriad nodes and tendrils of bloodlight flickered out, and Malok’s purple aura surged into the vacuum of power. The sudden shift in circumstances brought the full weight of Malok’s Command to bear on Jon, and he buckled under the pressure, falling to his knees.

  No, he thought, I wasn’t called to fail.

  He thought of Cal’s death, Gram’s forgiveness. The impossible beauty of the space beyond the planes and the incongruous familiarity of Mr. Bear. Bahabe, and his friends, the people of Centrifuge, all counting on him to turn the tide. This Light inside him, a gift beyond measure.

  I can’t afford to fail.

  And all he had to do was keep on.

  Jon struggled to rise. He knocked the ogre giant back several feet with a blast of psychic force that blew dust and soot up off the ground. Raw Command lashed at Jon but he deflected it with the mageblade and one light-shrouded hand.

  He closed on Malok and their swords clashed in a flurry. A surge of quickness and need earned Jon a strong parry and the briefest moment of advantage. He struck the nightblade from Malok’s grasp and the ogre fell back, palms out as if he could ward Jon off with his hands alone.

  “Call the retreat,” Jon demanded, blade crackling with red fire under the ogre’s chin.

  The Assassin saw the opening, bared its teeth, and in a blinding fast motion hurled a poisoned kunai, then sprung forward to attack.

  The gleam of a blade penetrated the night, there was a thunk and a sickening squishing sound, and Malok fell to his knees with a deep grunt, clutching his breast.

  A sickle sliced the air and Jon dodged just in time. The chain attached to it tightened and the curved blade raked Jon’s aura as it retreated. A shadow to his left. The chain shot out from it like a tentacle of steel, weighted end wrapping around Jon’s legs to ensnare him as the shadow closed in. Jon flung himself upward, maxing his velocity, but the kusarigama’s chain pulled taut and he was unable to escape. He spun in the
air and swiped at the black steel chain.

  His blood-red mageblade flashed and severed the chain, freeing him. Intuition brought him back to the ground. The shadow moved like the wind - Jon feared this opponent might prove superior in the air.

  The hiss of its voice confirmed its identity. The creature from the night Jon had first met Jeremiah. It was tall, slim, hard and yet frayed at the edges, slightly unreal. Its loose black clothes fluttered in the breeze of the burning city.

  “Your prior foolishness is repaid today,” the Assassin said. It cast its broken kusarigama aside and drew two slender tanto. Its aura of ill will was less wild than that of the necrosaurs and all the more frightening for it. “No one is here to save you.”

  It was before him in an instant, impossibly fast and barely substantial as it moved. Adrenaline and magic empowered Jon, but for every flashing blade he parried the other struck his armor of light, bruising him. His armor held, but he fell back step by step, struggling to keep his mageblade between himself and death.

  Midnight steel collided with crudely shaped earth’s blood in tiny white explosions of annihilation. Jon thought of all he’d come through, only to be bested by this wicked being, and his anger surged.

  He grasped the Assassin’s mass with his mind and it strained against his hold. Jon hammered at it with the mageblade, an utter lack of finesse. It gritted its teeth, blocking Jon’s strikes. Its darkness flexed outward and it broke free, knocking Jon’s mageblade aside. Jon stumbled.

  The Assassin rushed around him like wind, clamped a hand on his shoulder, and rammed its blade through his aura and into his side. Before the tanto blade could run him through, it stopped.

  “You may not,” came the familiar booming voice of the guardian.

  The shadow creature spat. Jon winced and shuddered as the dark blade withdrew from his body. He fell to the ground and turned to see Jeremiah restraining the Assassin’s arm in an impossibly firm grasp.

  “Guardian,” the Assassin hissed. “You allow me to kill one of them, and not the next. The hypocrisy of your kind is appalling.”

  Jeremiah mocked him with a derisive laugh.

  “You know nothing of the Law, and you do yourself dishonor by pretending at morality,” he scoffed.

  The massive guardian had appeared out of thin air, his natural aura dimmed so as not to betray his presence. Still, he radiated might, cloak billowing in the evening’s breeze, eyes bright silver. His brawny form seemed casual despite his obvious strength.

  The Assassin snarled, but Jon saw that it trembled.

  “Vanquish me then, and have done with these pointless visitations,” it challenged.

  But Jeremiah’s countenance held firm. “You cannot tempt me, beast. My offer from before has been rescinded. Now be silent.”

  The Assassin struggled but could not escape, and could not speak.

  Jeremiah gestured at Jon and something insubstantial passed from his open palm into Jon’s body. The pain in his side eased but did not cease. Jon rose, hand on the wound, blood slick between his fingers.

  “Cutting it close,” Jon said, voice raspy.

  “They never do listen,” Jeremiah said, “until I give them no choice. I leave the big one to you.”

  And he dissolved into the wind with the Assassin in his grasp.

  Jon walked stiffly to Malok’s side. The wicked-looking hilt of a kunai sprouted from the ogre giant’s chestplate. He wheezed and coughed blood.

  Malok’s power had all but fled from Jon, and when he looked he saw that the ogre’s aura was twitching and struggling at his breast. Was he trying to Command the little dagger out of his chest? Jon went to his side, contemplating whether he should kill the enemy General, or leave him to die.

  Malok coughed and spat out blood, raised a huge, plaintive hand to touch Jon’s arm.

  “Please,” he sputtered. “Cn…you...” He coughed again. “Heal…”

  Jon sighed and nodded. In theory, he too knew he could help the pitiful giant, but his mind, body, and will had been so thoroughly tested these many days… And he wasn’t entirely sure he could trust the ogre. Why help Malok, when he too was a slayer of thousands? How many others on this battlefield would get no such mercy?

  As if reading his mind, Malok said, “I’m asking…beg…” he choked on blood and coughed it up again. “He’s mad… I shouldn’t have…”

  Hoping he wouldn’t regret it, Jon channeled the light into his body and grasped Malok’s chestplate by a strap. He hoped she was back in Centrifuge, and willing.

  He launched toward the ruined and smoking redoubt at terminal velocity, with Malok in his grip, hoping the stress alone wouldn’t kill the ogre. It took all his focus not to stumble from the pain of his wounds.

  They soared over the blurred lines of attackers and defenders, many eyes swiveling up to track them. Dozes of blocks down, and there one was - a medical tent. If Bahabe was here, she’d be in one of those, unwilling to fight, but ready to heal.

  Jon landed, set Malok down on the ground. The shocked eyes of soldiers and medics regarded both of them.

  “Is Bahabe back?” Jon said frantically. “My friend? She needs to heal this ogre.” He was relying on his own fame, that anyone who knew of him would know of Bahabe as well.

  The crowd was a sea of incredulity.

  “Please! Find her,” Jon shouted, and startled them into action. He knelt down by Malok’s side. “She’ll do a better job than me. I’m sorry if she doesn’t come. If she does, you order the retreat, do you understand? Use that purple magic and end it!”

  Malok just nodded wearily. He wasn’t all there anymore, but Jon hoped he’d heard. He shot away to rejoin the battle. It had to end soon.

  One of the medics had heard of a young sarathi girl that was helping in the infirmaries - he’d been retrieving supplies for his own post. Swiftly he’d run to get the girl, and brought her back to Malok.

  It was surreal to Bahabe, looking down on one of the enemy, defeated, in need. She could let him die, and maybe the Nulians would retreat without him. No, she thought, looking up to the battle in the distance. Screams and clangs and weapons fire echoed through the ancient streets. Things were too chaotic, even the death of a general would not make a difference now. And Jon had asked for this, wherever he was. She wished he’d stayed to see her, but she knew he had to fight.

  And… it was the right thing to do. Occasionally Malok’s eyes opened, filmy, red, and pleading for mercy. His massive, fat-fingered hand touched her tiny arm gently.

  Bahabe grasped the short hilt of the kunai and removed it swiftly. She fumbled at his chestplate to remove it. Blood flowed out of the wound, too much all at once. She put a hand to the puncture and poured herself into it. The blood began to clot. She reached in and found a sense of Malok’s condition, in shards of images and feelings. A lung had been pierced - she stitched it shut, drained it of fluid, filled it with air. Her own lungs burned painfully. The kunai had been poisoned - she flushed out the sickly presence, felt the nausea settle in her stomach. Malok sucked in a deep breath of relief, opening his eyes once more to regard her with gratefulness. Bahabe knit his veins and flesh back together, rushing and leaving a scar, and sent a pulse of adrenaline through the ogre’s body - just enough strength to get him up.

  Malok struggled onto his feet and regarded her with awe. He seemed to be lost for words.

  “Jon saved you,” Bahabe said to him cooly. “You remember that.” It was all the scolding he should need.

  “That was a blade of the Assassin,” Malok rasped, weary from being near death. “He betrayed me.” He had to breathe between most of his words. “Your wizard friend told me to call the retreat.”

  Bahabe nodded.

  “I can do that, but the Assassin will still be around, and the undead cannot be wrangled at this point. They have no will that can be bent.”

  “Do it,” Bahabe intoned.

  Malok regarded her for a moment, nodded, and turned, reaching to his belt for a signal
horn. He began to sound the retreat.

  The battle at large had lapsed into chaos and sheer bloodlust. Dahm had seen Jon rush by, actually hauling the huge ogre general with one hand. He’d sprinted to catch up, dodging pockets of fighting and erecting hasty walls of stone to cut off any pursuit. By the time he reached the rear ranks of the defenders, Jon had shot off into battle again. Dahm saw that droves of Nulians were retreating as ordered by Malok’s signal horn, but many either disbelieved its authenticity or ignored it, and continued to press the attack.

  There were more undead than Dahm could believe, rivers of them flowing through the streets, doggedly hunting the scent of their prey. Enkannites, Anekans, and sarathi fought them bravely, but the stress of battle wore on everyone as they fought on multiple fronts. There were hardly any formations to speak of.

  Dahm caught sight of Malok striding past, several yards away, and their eyes met, but they did not engage. Dahm had seen the ogre receive his fatal wound. He still wore that strange purple aura, but it had dimmed almost to nothing. What had possessed Jon to save him? He must have brought Malok back here to Bahabe. Dahm hoped the mercy was wisely placed.

  Dahm rushed to find the girl helping at one of the mobile infirmaries. They needed to get to Rae.

  “Bahabe!” he hollered over the noise of battle and the screams of combatants. She looked up, relieved to see him. “Rae crashed! Come on!”

  She nodded and finished up with the man she was healing. As she came near, Dahm could see that her magic was taking its toll. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin pale and loose. Dahm hugged her close, then pulled her along toward the Throne’s crash site.

  They dashed through streets choked with bodies, flame and smoke. Seeing the City in daylight, Dahm never would have thought there was so much in it that could burn. But the skyscrapers themselves were lit like titanic torches, so many of them and so far up that it looked more like dusk than full night. The stars above were washed out by firelight.