Soul Stealer: Legacy of the Blade

by Joseph J. Bailey

  My grip on Loer’allon firm, I marched forward, blending with the Light held within me, a diffuse ray of Light to the demons’ Darkness.

  The sky that had been clear until now began to darken, a deep, rancid bruise discoloring the firmament as though the air itself had taken mighty blows.

  My heart sank.

  So much for clear skies. I really should remember to keep my mind and mouth shut.

  Think of the demon, or in my case demons, and they appeared.

  Fred’s brothers began to arrive in their uncounted multitudes…and his sisters…and his cousins…and his second cousins…and his aunts…and his uncles…and his distant relations…and his friends…and his acquaintances…and his former classmates…and his enemies…and any random demons he might have once chanced upon…along with far too many other demons looking for a good time.

  There was an entire language of demon types descending from above.

  Although I could not read or speak it, I knew what this language screamed, its wrenching voice echoing to the heavens.

  “DEATH!

  “DESTRUCTION!

  “DESECRATION!

  “HUNGER!”

  Although I heard, I was in no mood to listen.

  Their story was as old as Creation.

  They were the Knights of Entropy.

  I was to be their cure.

  All demons had one thing in common.

  They wanted to suck the Uërth’s life force and anything living on it dry.

  Fortunately for Uërth and all her denizens, I was in the hellspawns’ immediate path.

  Yay me.

  The Chaos Gate had taken my chance appearance as the perfect opportunity to belch forth a legion.

  My luck knew no bounds.

  Fred, if he were still with us, would certainly agree.

  Lucius, who was, agreed wholeheartedly.

  I, on the other hand, could not agree less.

  So much for a casual jaunt beneath the Chaos Gate.

  At least this time I would not be alone.

  I hoped.

  Darkness fell over me then.

  And this time it was not because I had fainted.

  Yet.

  A Shadow in Light

  “Be ready, Saedeus.

  “You will soon walk with such Darkness as you have never known.”

  I know Alric did his best to help, to urge me on and prepare me, but sometimes—like now—his words had the opposite effect.

  “You’re not helping, Al, but thanks.”

  For my part I could not help but be honest.

  What better way was there to prepare for certain death?

  “Fear not.

  “The Guard are with you.

  “The Guard are in you.

  “The Guard act through you.”

  Whenever Alric spoke, offering his guidance, I felt like I needed to wear a tunic with his slogans emblazoned on the front for all to see.

  “Slay the demons within that you may slay the demons without!”

  “Be true to yourself that you may see the truth!”

  “You are Heaven’s justice!”

  “Be the future you wish to live!”

  “The mind is the first mover!”

  If I survived—and that was about as big an “if” as I could imagine—perhaps I would be best served opening a shop to change the world through Alric’s words of wisdom.

  Saedeus’s Shirts and Sundries, store for all seasons…

  Funny where the mind will go even in the face of certain doom.

  Not so funny when that doom approaches.

  Loer’allon blazed in my hand, the thrum of her song charging through me with clarion vivacity, a building resonance that charged my essence ever higher, ever clearer.

  I was Light and she was my source.

  Darkness fell upon me, the fell arcana of the demonic assault crashing into the earth in thunderous concussive blasts, wave after wave of vitriolic power exploding in jarring detonations. From these fell energies, hidden within the foul magics, demons burst forth, materializing in the mounting gloom with savage ferocity.

  Slashing and cutting, I carved my way through a twelve-legged arachnoid that scrambled toward me, clambering down silvery streams of ropey power, the ground burning where its poisonous venom landed.

  Hairy severed limbs quavered in my wake.

  The sky darkened as I sprinted forward past the giant spider’s carcass. Above, a boiling avalanche of oozing Darkness roiled toward me as a piece of the Abyss itself detached from beyond the Chaos Gate to envelop me in demonic destruction.

  The thing was vile.

  Its presence revolted me on levels I had never known existed.

  The demon’s roiling, turbulent advance was like an oncoming tidal wave of offal.

  Here was the Turdal Wave of Darkness, summoned straight from the Abyss’s largest, least cleaned latrine.

  The demon’s breakneck approach brought with it the psychological equivalent of an overwhelming urge to vomit coupled with waves of heaving nausea and the stench of the Abyss’s own abattoir.

  The best way to overcome a problem is often to go through it.

  Directly.

  Launching myself upward—a minor comet taking flight—I pierced the unholy demonic gauze like a needle through sheer fabric, trailing the demon’s essence in a nasty tail behind me, the infernal’s power fueling my flight and my continued charge as I touched ground and dashed ahead, a comet no more.

  More demons came: giant carapaced insectile apes, the ground thundering and cracking beneath the blows of their mighty limbs; thrashing tentacled amoeboids lurching through the air grasping for purchase on my soul; multiheaded draconic horrors breathing foul fumes, fires, and vapors; and droves of others too numerous to catalog.

  Loer’allon burned ever brighter as the demons fell, her fires a beacon in the gloaming as I wove untraceable geometries behind her trajectory.

  Taking the demons’ power as my own, I became a maelstrom of fuming Darkness as necrotic as Loer’allon was beneficent.

  Breaking through the initial crush, I charged ahead, the roar in my mind louder than any scream.

  Behind me, the luminous wave of Empyrean Guard, the argent wall of the Empyrean Mantle itself, surged forward—a tsunami of Light unleashed and unrestrained.

  As I was disembodied, this front rushed through me, a tide that sought to consume me, to bring me within its vast, heavenly fold, but I resisted, letting it wash past me like shifting tides and flowing sands breaking along a storm-ravaged beach as I advanced forward into an ocean of cresting Light.

  Into the Maelstrom

  The ghostly luminescent silhouettes of stocky, armored Empyrean Guard, the celestial hints of sidhe, the shimmering movements of dryads, the flowing wakes of mighty dragons, the Lights of so many beings interwoven with the Empyrean Mantle crashed ahead and into the advancing demons.

  I watched a galaxy of vital stars colliding with countless animated, gluttonous black holes, the Uërthly Host vying to stop the advance of Darkness through a savage storm of Light.

  A bit of both, I waged my own war somewhere in between.

  The Empyrean Mantle was a relentless tide that had washed the plains clean countless times. Wherever the tide ebbed, receding back toward the Keep of Kerraboer, the ravaged earth was laid bare as the demonic dross was left behind.

  On this day, while the next wave of demons shrieked and howled on their descent from above, their inhuman cries as alien and unwelcome in this world as light, hope, and love were in theirs, I was among the detritus left by the Empyrean Mantle’s withdrawal.

  Unlike the tide, I would remain in place until the day was done.

  I suppose the Hosts’ was the superior strategy—regroup, regather, and prepare for the massed enemy on the field of battle that it might be swept clean once more.

  However, I was a firm believer in forward momentum.

  Now that I had it, I did not want to stop.

 
Left alone amongst the corpses of shattered demons, my body shimmering like the light of the sun dancing on sea foam, Lucius whirled into the air beside me, finally deciding to wake from his slumber now that I was, at least temporarily, alone.

  Lucius’s greeting was the building hum of acceleration as he gathered speed around me, his flight a blur growing ever faster until I could no longer follow his course.

  As demons neared, however, I could tell exactly where Lucius had been, for he left artful splashes of demonic gore painting the land and air in effusive mosaics of elemental destruction.

  Lucius was an artist who painted the plains in blood.

  Despite Blendar the Destroyer of Demons’ efforts, infernals still found ways through Lucius’s frothy halo of annihilation.

  Although nowhere near as masterly, Loer’allon helped me cobble together my own masterpiece of carnage.

  In retrospect, I think the demons would be proud.

  Seldom were the times they met with fellow masters of ruin to exchange pleasantries, techniques, and aesthetics.

  I did what I could for interspecies dialogue.

  Mostly, I let Loer’allon do the talking.

  Lucius helped with translation.

  A Receding Tide

  I waited an eternity in vain for the rising tide, for the return of the heaving wall of coruscating Light of the Empyrean Mantle to cleanse the plains of extradimensional scum.

  I fought as a man, as an island, assailed by a sea of Darkness, Lucius at my side, constrained by my conceptions of what should be.

  “You must let go, Saedeus.

  “Be not what you think you are.

  “Be what you must become.”

  There they were…more tunics to be.

  Alric’s words, a voice I had so often disregarded or belittled unfairly, were a jolting splash of cold water on my psyche.

  I awoke to his words.

  He was right.

  No matter how hard I tried, no matter how valiantly Lucius fought at my side, no matter how mighty Loer’allon might be, if I held on to what I was, I would die.

  I let go of who I was to become what I could be.

  No longer fighting with hand and eye, I fought with my mind.

  Darkness became me alongside the Light.

  Thirst

  Demons fell like rain.

  The torrential droplets of their essences soaked into the parched ground of my being to feed an unslakable thirst.

  I drank.

  Deeply.

  Power raged into me from all fronts unbridled and unfiltered.

  I let none of it touch me.

  I let it burn.

  The fires of the demonic essences raged ever higher under my guidance, the explosion of one demon bringing down more in a cascade of entropic destruction.

  I was the end.

  I was the beginning.

  The howling throngs of unholy monstrosities were merely the means to their own end.

  Destiny’s Arc

  Ready to meet my enemy face-to-face, fueled by the lifeblood of my foes, I soared heavenward, my destination the putrescent font of the demonic flow.

  The Chaos Gate grew nearer, Its depths hidden in pure, churning Darkness, Its surface broken by the legions of foul creatures erupting from Its depths in an unbridled flood.

  Looming like a floating continent, one whose shores had yet to be touched by man, the Chaos Gate defied all reason with Its size and scope. The Gate’s far edges were lost in the distance, disturbed by fell explosions and surges of luminous arcana meant to destroy Its denizens, halt Its expansion, and stay Its advance.

  I would land upon Its shores and lay claim to Its bounteous power as my own.

  A comet once more, a body of Light cloaked in a tapering cloud of tremulous Darkness, I blasted upward, shattering hellspawn in my path, and their essence became my own.

  I was a Djen’toth.

  Those souls I stole to fuel my rage had no right to the name, for I took the soulless and gave them purpose.

  Their aim was my own.

  Through me, their souls were uplifted.

  Through me, their abject depravity became a beacon of beauty and divine purpose.

  Their essences became a means to cleanse the Uërth and all it held dear.

  If I only had had this option, this focus, when I lived in my sad shack outside Balde…maybe my hovel would have been clean enough for me to consider hosting the occasional friend or an intimate dinner.

  Some things, however, truly were impossible.

  Chaos Gate

  The Chaos Gate yawned in the firmament before me, a swirling mass of absolute darkness hovering above the bodies of countless men and demons, a maw leading into the gullet of another fell dimension.

  Powerful magics of men and the fey rippled across its surface, struggling to limit Its expansion, battling to prevent Its continuous vomiting of unholy hordes onto a fragile, failing Uërth.

  Seeing that gaping wound in reality, a portal so large that entire cities could pass through without touching Its vast, seething edges, a series of observations and insights shuddered through me.

  I could feel Its cruel heart beating with an overwhelming, sickening strength.

  I could feel Its malicious spirit radiating outward in noxious plumes.

  I could see Its fell essence corrupting the very fabric of reality through which It rent, tore, and fought Its way through to reach our dimension.

  We had this all wrong.

  We were fighting a battle we could not win.

  The Chaos Gate was alive.

  It was a living thing.

  And It was feeding.

  The Chaos Gate was the largest demon ever to enter the Uërthly realm.

  Its indomitable presence paved the way for legions of Its brethren to break through to this world.

  Until this time, since the Chaos Gate had first torn through the fabric between the planes to begin its war on the denizens of Heaven and Uërth so long ago, our efforts had been flawed; our attempts to halt Its progress had been in vain.

  We, men and angels alike, were fighting the Chaos Gate with power, trying to stymie Its advance, to close the door with power, to permanently seal Its rictus with arcane arts like the fallen Empyrean Gate.

  But we were not fighting It.

  At least not directly.

  In fact, we were often giving It the very power It craved.

  It was a demon.

  There was only one way I knew to truly kill a demon.

  It must be consumed, burned to nothing.

  My purpose was clear.

  A path through the firmament and the battlefield ahead resolved before me and I flew forward, leaving the spawn of Chaos writhing in my wake.

  I had no other choice.

  Chaos’s End

  There was, I decided, only one thing better than killing a demon…

  Eating it.

  Consuming it utterly.

  From its very core—dismantling its essence and burning away everything that held its horrid substance together—to the outer periphery of its body, mind, and soul.

  All the demons I had burnt through on my trajectory upward had not been enough.

  I was hungry and it was time for dessert.

  I knew exactly which morsel I wanted to claim.

  The Chaos Gate loomed ahead, a yawning pit into oblivion.

  Demons streamed forth in a necrotic cloud, their advance met by the luminous counter of the Empyrean Mantle itself—resplendent Empyrean Knights, otherworldly fey, dancing plumes and flashes of eldritch power, flights of magical bolts and arrows, and raging holocausts of dragon fire all within the gathered front of holy Light hammering into the Chaos Gates’ front.

  Letting Light become me, I shifted ahead.

  The Chaos Gate was a living geyser of Darkness, a bottomless well spewing forth poison into our realm, drinking the life force from our world to sustain Its infiltration.

  Ignoring the droves of demons surging
from Its gullet, the full force of the Empyrean Mantle crashing into the roiling infernal mass, I lifted Loer’allon heavenward and sliced through the Chaos Gate’s undulating periphery in a blazing arc of heavenly fury attacking the Gate Itself.

  Again and again I slashed, blow after blow cutting into the Gate’s essence.

  With each stroke, more of the Gate’s power leaked out, a small trickle slowly becoming a flood.

  Not content to let this power ebb, I sucked the vile torrent through me, the essence of corruption. Fuel for my flame, I lit this power in Light, a gout of destruction that I redirected crashing inward into the Abyss.

  Although I did not hear the screams of dying demons on the portal’s far side, I felt the cataclysmic forces tearing them apart.

  As ever greater power rushed through me, I became a widening conduit, a break in the dam of Darkness forcing the Chaos Gate’s aphotic essence to spill outward into and through me, my strength, my reach, my scope growing greater with each passing moment.

  Though my hunger, my desire, for the Gate’s demise knew no bounds, truly I did not eat the Chaos Gate.

  It ate Itself.

  A New Ending

  If all good things come to an end, then all bad things must come to an end as well.

  I became that ending…

  I liked endings.

  With a proper ending came the opportunity to begin again.

  Epilogue

  Loer’allon descended to Uërth on lambent rays of sunshine, her clear blade nearly transparent in the tired light of the setting sun. She settled softly on the parched earth as gently as a memory of fond dreams past.