by Mark Albany
“So why haven’t you killed me yet?”
“It has taken a liking to you.” The God-King sounded confused and amused. “That is rare, although not unheard of. But it has taken voice and spoken to you, and that almost never happens.”
I looked into the fire, seeing an image of me. Well, not me. It was what I had been when I killed Vasara. Almost twelve feet tall, powerfully muscled with black, armored skin. The eyes were obsidian abysses. Around the image of me were Jule, Leena, Kalna, and Eira, all serving me. The image twisted around as the creature that I was stood and then fell to one knee before a massive, powerful blackness.
“An enticing image, is it not?” the God-King asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Your struggle to contain Legent will alter your perceptions. You can already feel it happening, no? Its words become your words. Its feelings, yours. The melding is not yet complete, but when it is, I hope your voice will drive it to take its place before me. The rest of the world will bow to you if you just afford me the same honor.”
“Not going to happen.” I spoke through gritted teeth. Something painful drew at me. It felt much more real than anything in this dream.
“You’ll have time to think on what I’ve said, Braks.” The God-King wasn’t at all put off by me turning down his offer. “But for now, I feel that our conversation is at an end. Until we meet again.”
My eyes shut as the pain anchored me back in reality. I fell, feeling myself dropping a long way. I couldn’t see the bottom... Until it hit me.
Chapter 26
The feeling was hunger, gnawing at the pit of my stomach like an angry dog on a bone. I groaned. Everything hurt. After the time spent in the void and then the numb sensations of the dream, the sharpness of reality hurt.
I groaned again, turning over onto my stomach. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure if I’d opened my eyes as there was nothing to see. Blackness was the only thing around me, like it had been in the void.
But there was cold rock under me, and there hadn’t been any rock in the void.
I pushed myself to my feet. Reorienting myself with gravity was a troubling sensation, but I got used to it eventually as I put one foot in front of the other. It was slow going at first, but without anything to see in front of me, I was able to force myself into it.
One foot in front of the other.
Every muscle in my body felt like it had been overtaxed and overused. Just walking and staying upright made me feel like I was burning up, despite the chilling conditions around me. Something worked inside me to heal what had been broken and torn, but it was a slow, laborious process. Like there was something in there slowing it down.
The Darkness was there, but it was uncharacteristically calm. I had been struggling first to contain and then use the Darkness without letting it completely take me over until that last battle with Vasara, but it seemed placid now, like calm seas just after a storm
I knew it wasn’t going to last, but I felt relieved that I didn’t have to deal with it after everything I’d been through. It had been a long day, and I wasn’t sure if the day was over.
Distant voices in my head asked about the ladies, but everything was swimming, spinning… upside down. All I could do was keep moving. The rest I could figure out later.
A soft light came from just ahead of me, and I started to get a feel for my surroundings. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, giving me a good view of the path. While I didn’t have any kind of mental map of the place, much less know exactly where I was going, I had the vague impression—possibly from Vasara’s memories of her time here, although I wasn’t sure—warning me that these tunnels were winding and full of dead ends and drop-offs.
The light didn’t grow brighter. I shivered as a gust of icy air tore through the tunnel before I rounded a corner. I was standing in the tunnel’s open entrance, looking out over an incredible mountain range, which was visible in the light of the moon and millions of stars reflecting off the pure white snow.
I stepped out of the tunnel. The wind coming down from the mountain cut through my clothes like they weren’t even there. I looked down, realizing suddenly that there were no clothes to speak of. Not even rags of what I’d been wearing before. There was something else on my skin, however. Even in the dark, blue-tinged light around me, it was difficult to make out, but it came off when I rubbed it with some of the snow that covered the ground.
Vague memories of what had come before touched the very edge of my memories. Tearing into Vasara was the last concrete image that came to mind, but thoughts of the tunnels, the pools, the pain… Kalna, Leena, Eira, and Jule were all left behind when I decided to take care of the Vizier on my own.
I dug deep into myself, desperately trying to connect with them, to find them, but there was nothing there. Not even a hint that they might still be alive. What had happened? Were they dead? Where the fuck was I even supposed to be?
“Any time you feel like helping.” I spoke to the being that was hosted in my body. “Feel free. Anything?” I heard nothing other than a contented silence from the Darkness.
I shivered again. It had to be freezing outside, but aside from the icy chill of the wind cutting across my bare skin, there was no feeling to it. I wasn’t surprised anymore. There were a lot of benefits to having something leaching the life out of you, if only to counter the downsides.
I started moving along a path that had been cut into the side of the mountain, wrapping my arms around myself for warmth. It could have been hours or days that passed…I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t still in that dream.
I touched the rocks, trying to remember what it was about snow, rocks, and cold that made them feel real so that I could tell if this was a dream or not before I came around the other side of the mountain.
For the life of me, I could have sworn that I had been making my way down under the mountain—but somehow, I was hundreds of feet above the temple. I could remember the metallic look to it, as well as how its spires gave it an appearance similar to a dark, bronzed crown. There was no pathway, but the slope was gentle enough to make it a reasonably comfortable climb down. It still took a few hours before I reached the bottom again.
There was something different about it now. The last time we’d been here, the temple grew larger the closer we got to it, appearing more and more impressive and intimidating with each step. This time, there was no such illusion. It was an impressive structure, though there was a lot of damage done to the sides, but it wasn’t that big, only about a quarter the size of the castle back in Radon.
As I came around the temple, my eyes were drawn to something else entirely. The courtyard that had stood between the temple and the walls that protected it had been leveled when we arrived. Vasara had told us that she was the one responsible, and there had been no reason to disbelieve her.
The courtyard was full now. Hundreds of corpses were piled across it, some stacked as tall as a grown man. They weren’t all human. I remembered the statue-monsters that had come alive and attacked us. It was hard to forget that. They were there, mingled in almost equal number to the rest. They were all wearing the black Trelan armor.
Hundreds of corpses. Maybe thousands. They littered what was left of the walls, piled up, not through conscious action, but simply because there were so many of them. The freezing cold temperature prevented me from knowing just how long the bodies had been lying there. It could have been weeks, for all I knew. Days? It could have been hours, even.
A raging nausea rose in the pit of my stomach as I looked down at myself. The thick, dark stuff covering my body was blood, but was it their blood or mine? Images of what I had been when I tore into Vasara crossed my mind’s eye. No, not only my blood.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered, staggering across the few open sections left, making a beeline toward the gate. The drawbridge had been lowered, but the portcullis was shattered, along with the rest of the gatehouse. There were bodies outside too, but in lesser numbers and mo
stly human. It seemed that not many of the monsters had managed to escape the walls, and those few had been quickly killed.
Massive claw marks gouged the outer walls. I stepped off the drawbridge, moving over to the gashes in the stone. There were splatters of blood following them. The gouges were the size of a bear’s claws, but they had cut right through rock like it was butter.
I had been here before. I had seen these marks when the blood around them was still fresh.
Had I done this?
I shook my head, moving away. There was a light covering of snow on the ground. I picked it up and rubbed it over my body. I was feeling numb, so the cold didn’t touch me as I washed the blood away. I couldn’t have done this. I was in control. I wasn’t capable of this kind of slaughter.
A horse whinnied softly in the distance. It was the first sign of life, other than mine, that I’d seen since I emerged from the cave. Once I was clean of the blood, I kept moving toward the sound. It was over near where we had originally entered the castle through the hole in the wall created by Vasara.
“Toad?” I asked. The horse still hadn’t taken to the new name, but the four-pointed white star on its forehead was unmistakable.
The beast saw me and showed no sign of worry as he dipped his head and lightly nipped at the snow before raising it again. A few paces to his right was a pack, and a sword which had been planted into the ground.
My pack. My sword.
I couldn’t help giving a soft laugh of relief, giving Toad a quick hug around the neck. He seemed almost too annoyed to accept it. I hurried over to my pack. My elf-forged armor was gone, but some of my extra clothes remained. Even though I didn’t mind the cold, the nakedness was starting to get to me. I pulled on a shirt, a coat, and some trousers, as well as a spare pair of boots I’d brought.
The sheath for the sword was gone, however, and I didn’t feel comfortable with just tucking it into my belt. I pulled it out of the ground and kept it in my hand, ignoring the nagging fact that only one person had been left alive inside that chamber with the glowing pool where I had last seen the blade.
Me.
How unkind of you. I was in there as well.
“About time you showed up,” I muttered under my breath, seeing it fog the air in front of me as I quickly mounted Toad. “Where have you been?”
I am with you always, Braks. I thought this was clear by now.
I shook my head, tucking the sword into the makeshift sheath I’d made in the saddle, careful to keep the edge of the blade away from my leg, as well as from Toad. Despite having been left out in the cold and exposed to the elements for heavens knew how long, the edge was still sharp enough to shave with.
I need a shave, I realized as I scratched at the stubble growing on my jaw. I set Toad to a quick walk down the mountainside.
I was about halfway down when I saw a disturbance in the forest. Well, there was a disturbance in the empty fields as well, but they were drawing a lot less attention. Men in black armor were running out from the forest, rushing and screaming, looking back to see something that was visibly jostling the trees. It was miles out, but my new and improved vision could make out something massive moving inside the woods. The soldiers were Trelan, of course, but they were not what I was afraid of at the moment.
Had one of the monsters escaped the massacre? Was it tearing into anything it could get its talons into? Even though the Trelans were the enemy, I didn’t want to be the one who unleashed that kind of terror on them.
With the ice and the treacherously slippery path down the mountain, I had to pull Toad back to a slow walk to make sure he didn’t trip and fall.
Once we reached the bottom, I was able to pick up the pace. My mind was clearing, and it was time to sort all of this out. The Trelans that had run out from the forest had set up camps and defensive positions in the fields outside. Judging by number of villagers outside and the stream of black armor-clad soldiers going into the houses and barns empty-handed and coming out with their arms fully laden, the Trelans had forced the families living in the farmhouses to evacuate while they raided what was contained in them for food and other supplies. As infuriating at the practice was, it was fairly common during times of war—and from the looks of things, these men were at war.
They mostly ignored Toad and I. Their focus was on what might be coming out of the forest. The few who tried to stop me immediately fell under the spell that I was quickly getting used to. They relaxed around me, but one thing was clear: stay out of the forest.
We’re just going into the forest, then?
“Oh, absolutely,” I said with a small smile and a nod, tapping Toad’s flanks with my heels to get him trotting toward the massive trees. I still couldn’t wrap my head around just what could make trees grow that large. Or what kind of monster could shake trees that size.
Once inside the woods, I slowed Toad to a walk. The sun was now setting. Out in the open fields, it had been beautiful, but once I was inside the trees, the lack of sunlight made things more difficult to see. However, my enhanced senses meant that I could see without too much problem.
I saw something moving in the distance, and tensed. It was massive, at least twenty feet tall, though still dwarfed by the trees. It had moved to hide behind them, but something that size couldn’t move without being heard. I tapped at Toad’s flanks again, pushing him forward. He was snorting and shaking his head.
“Come on, then,” I leaned down to gently pat him on the neck. “I’ll protect you, you big baby.”
The words seemed to calm him down, and he slowly started walking toward where I’d seen the giant creature. As we got closer, I could see that whatever it was, it was absolutely useless at hiding. A massive foot stuck out from behind the tree. The thing was made of ice, judging from the way it shimmered with frost, the same way the icy barrier had done in the cave.
“You can come out now.”
It heard me and seemed to understand because it stepped out from behind the tree. It was larger than I remembered it being, but it was the same creature. The one that had carried Eira first to Radon and then to Kalames on its shoulders.
Toad seemed spooked by the appearance of the monster. I leaned in and murmured a few soothing sounds. His ears remained planted flat against his skull, but it seemed that my spell had some effect on animals too. He stood still, although I could feel his muscles quivering under my legs.
I turned back to the ice creature. “Hello, old friend. It’s been a while.”
Its head nodded gently in response.
“Is Eira with you?”
It nodded again.
“Take me to her.”
It needed no convincing. I had no idea why I’d called it “old friend”, but it appeared to have worked. It started moving away. Toad still seemed reluctant to get anywhere close to the creature, but after a little persuading, he started moving in the creature’s footsteps while still managing to keep a decent distance between him and it.
Less than an hour later, the sun had fully set, and I could see the lights of scattered campfires. They wouldn’t have been visible from where the Trelans had set up camp in the fields, but they were hard to miss all the way out here. From the look of things, whoever this army was, they outnumbered the Trelans by a fairly decent number.
I could hear voices speaking quickly and excitedly as they saw the massive beast coming in closer, all chattering in a language that was completely foreign to me. I gritted my teeth and shook my head. I needed to learn at least one of the common languages in this place. I couldn’t keep relying on someone to translate, or for Kalna to use her magic to help someone learn.
The ice monster was tied to Eira. If she was here, I had to hope she was with Leena, Kalna, and Jule as well, and that the breaking of our connection was somehow unrelated to any of this.
The talking grew more excited when as I drew close. The men were pointing their fingers at me, and as I got closer, their weapons. I brought Toad to a halt a few paces away f
rom one of their spears.
“I’m a friend,” I called loudly. “I think.”
They looked at me, almost annoyed, and shouted something I didn’t understand. The spear pointed at my sword, though, which was still attached to Toad’s saddle. I rolled my eyes. Not this shit again.
Suddenly, a man came forward. Well, not a man if the look of his armor and his pointed ears were any indication. An elf. I recognized him as the captain of the ship that had brought us here.
He smiled. “Captain Braks.” He gestured for the men around him to lower their weapons. They did so reluctantly.
I smiled and took his now-outstretched hand. “It’s a real blessing to see at least one friendly face out here.”
He chuckled in response. “You have no idea. Although we had it on good authority that you were dead.”
“How good was this authority?”
“The best,” the elf answered cryptically, motioning for me to follow him. The guards quickly circled around us, taking Toad’s reins and making sure to keep my sword out of my reach as I was led through the camp.
“This is the Neurian army, yes?” I asked. “The one that you and the other elves left us to join? They were fighting against the Trelans a long way away from here, last I heard. How did you end up fighting so deep inside Trelan territory?”
“Yes, the Neurians,” the captain said with a nod. “They were glad of the help. They were fighting for their lives when we arrived. However, something odd happened after we joined. The Trelan forces quickly started retreating. We’d heard rumors of a greater force being gathered, already pushing deeper south. As the Trelans retreated, we thought it prudent to press our advantage. I half expected us to be walking into a trap, but we’ve seen no signs of them, and in the past three days, our forces have been considerably bolstered.”
“Bolstered? By whom?”
“By us,” someone said. I looked away from the elf captain, my eyes falling on a very welcome sight.
