Tyrion ducked and dodged, keeping his defense tight and strong, so that it shed the few blows that landed. He cut and he slew, but the number of times an unseen strike sent him reeling told him that part of his success was down to luck. If any of the attacks that found him had been strong enough, it would have been over.
Brigid was another matter entirely. She moved across the field as though it was what she had been born to do, dancing through her foes with a grace that was beautiful despite its grisly results. Though she was nearly as strong as her father she wasted none of her power on defense, as if she believed that aythar spent to preserve her life rather than ending another’s, was a waste.
The distance between them grew gradually greater as they fought. Neither of them was particularly adept at fighting as a team. But for Brigid it hardly mattered, she was a goddess of destruction and she had no need of allies.
Her chain was everywhere, soaring and flying away at one moment and then dipping back down to deflect attacks that she couldn’t manage to dodge, but it wasn’t her only weapon. Brigid’s arms were sheathed in power and she used them flawlessly, as though it cost her nothing in attention to control the chain that wove around her.
Inevitably, however, there were too many even for her to avoid or deflect all the attacks. A spellwoven tentacle slipped past her chain and ripped through the meaty part of her right thigh, opening the flesh to the bone before she destroyed it. She would not be running any farther.
Fifty yards away, Tyrion saw her stall and then stop, hobbling on her one good leg as she killed everything near her. Not being able to move was a fatal flaw, though. Her opponents no longer needed to avoid her advance, they only needed to stay out of the lethal zone around her. A circle began to form and Tyrion knew they would pick her apart with long range attacks.
Altering course, he ran toward her, nearly getting himself killed with foolish haste. Brigid was laughing as the blood coursed down her leg.
He was still twenty feet away when he sensed the change. The krytek had paused, coordinating themselves for a joint assault that she would be unable to block. Without thinking he relaxed his mind, and in an instant, he reached out to the earth. A wall of stone and earth ten feet thick shot up around the two of them, reaching thirty feet into the air. It also encompassed five or six krytek unfortunate enough to have been caught within it.
Brigid killed those in a heartbeat before giving her father a disappointed look, “What are you doing? Don’t ruin this for me.”
“You were about to get killed,” he said rebuking her. “You can’t go any farther with your leg like that.”
She started laughing again, tipping her head back and letting the coarse laughter rise toward the heavens.
She’s utterly mad, he thought.
But then she spoke a word and an ugly red light began to flow from where the bone in her right leg was exposed. It wasn’t just that bone, however, it was all of them. That one was simply the only one that was visible to normal sight. With his magesight Tyrion could see the runes covering the rest of her frame flaring to life, burning with the aythar that she had carefully stored within them for so long.
Brigid straightened, putting her weight once more on her damaged leg. “You don’t understand, Father. They can’t kill me.”
Every bone in her body was enchanted in a fashion very similar to that of her magical chain, allowing her to control them with her will alone.
She had gotten the idea years before, when she alone of all his children noticed that Tyrion had enchanted the bones in one of his legs to enable him to store an emergency reserve of power, but she had taken it several steps farther. Her entire body was a tool, one that she had used to store her power, and one that she would now use as a weapon to enact her bloody will on her enemies.
And using it will kill her, Tyrion realized. “Brigid stop. We still have alternatives. You don’t need to do this.”
“Open your barrier, Father, so I don’t have to waste this power tearing my way free,” she replied, walking forward once more.
He knew there was no stopping her. Lowering his head sadly, Tyrion opened the wall of earth ahead of them.
Brigid began to run, her mouth open again as she laughed madly, “Watch me, Father. Watch me bleed, watch me burn!”
The enemy were waiting when she emerged, and multiple lines of focused power converged on her as she ran out. She didn’t bother trying to block any of them, they tore through her torso, arms, and legs, shredding and tearing through her flesh.
If she felt pain, she gave no sign. The chain flashed through the air and destroyed everything that moved within its reach, and Brigid kept running.
The krytek focused on her, almost ignoring the man that followed in her wake. Tyrion ran behind, killing those that approached from her rear. As she advanced the She’Har continued their attacks, attacks Brigid no longer wasted time avoiding. She ran and she slew, and with every minute that passed there was less undamaged flesh left on her.
Her skeleton was showing in dozens of places and fire seemed to flow from her wounds, limning her body in crimson flames, but Brigid would not die.
They had passed the boundary of the Illeniel Grove now, and they angled their path to take the shortest path through it to the Prathion Grove. There were fewer krytek here, other than the few survivors that chased them. The Illeniel children they crossed paths with offered no resistance, but Brigid killed them anyway.
When they reached the Prathion Grove the She’Har there tried to fight, but they were far worse at it than the battle-bred krytek. She slaughtered any she found in her path and when one of the elders roused itself enough to attack her with a massive bolt of viridian power she simply laughed.
The Prathion Elder’s blast scoured most of the remaining flesh from her burning bones, but she still did not die. Making note of which tree had attacked, Brigid altered her course to return the favor. A powerful spellwoven shield appeared around the trunk, but she tore through it, using the burning bones in her hands as though they were claws, and then she placed one bony palm against it and sent out a pulse that shattered the massive trunk.
Brigid was running again before the tree had even begun to fall. Tyrion followed, and all he could do was watch as she spent her life in front of him. In truth, he knew she was already dead. Her heart and most of her vital organs had been destroyed almost as soon as she had left his protection. What ran in front of him now was what was left, a blazing symbol of hatred and vengeance, infused with Brigid’s mind and will.
Two more of the Prathion Elders tried to stop her, with similar results. After that, if any of them were awake, they did nothing to provoke her. The children of the elders, the Prathion She’Har began to appear in greater numbers. They fought with illusions and ambushes, appearing suddenly and vanishing if they survived her violent reprisals, but they couldn’t stop her.
Eventually they gave up. Though they didn’t value their lives nearly as much as a human might, there was no point in letting her kill them. The Prathions vanished and remained hidden.
Brigid continued her run, heading for Ellentrea, and now that she had been deprived of prey she began to kill every Prathion Elder that had the misfortune to find itself in her path. But with each trunk shattered, with every use of that devastating power, Brigid’s flames dimmed.
Eventually her steps faltered, and soon after that she fell.
Tyrion stopped, kneeling beside her, his heart aching. He had no tears left, he had used them all up after losing Kate and his little ones, but he still felt a black despair as he watched her fading in front of him.
Brigid looked up at him, her burning skull almost completely bare, with only a small bit of scalp and hair still attached. There were flames where her eyes had been, but they were flickering, like candles in a strong wind. Without a throat or lungs, she couldn’t speak, but her thoughts reached him, Do you think they’ll forgive me?
“Who?”
Inara and Eldin, for failing t
hem…
The lump in his throat almost made it impossible to answer, “I’m sure they are waiting for you. I bet Haley has been playing with them to keep them occupied until you get there.” He had grown up thinking the She’Har Elders, the God-trees, were divine. Now that he knew they were merely sentient trees, he had no idea what to believe, or whether there was any sort of afterlife at all.
But as he watched his daughter’s fire going out, he could only believe there must be something for her after death.
Haley, she whispered with her thoughts. I did this for her, in the beginning. She told me to take care of you, Father. But I couldn’t even do that.
“She would have been proud of you,” he muttered.
I love… Brigid’s thought was never finished. The flames guttered out and her bones collapsed into ash. All that was left of her now, was dust.
Tyrion sat there, staring at what remained, watching as the breeze picked up her ashes and began to scatter them. “It didn’t have to be like this,” he muttered. “I could have saved you. If only you had let me.”
But that hadn’t been what she wanted.
Looking around he gauged his distance from Ellentrea. It was still at least a half a mile away, and he had no guarantee that Thillmarius would be there, waiting to be found, if he got there. He could feel the eyes of the hidden Prathions on him, watching. Soon they would decide it was safe to attack.
Tyrion stood, straightening his back and feeling the soreness in his muscles. He was tired, so very tired. He still had the strength to fight, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. It had been a fools run, trying to reach Ellentrea.
It had served no purpose, other than to give Brigid her last wish. “Watch me, Father. Watch me bleed, watch me burn!”
He had, and now he was out of time. His final task had waited long enough. Emma had surely finished and found safety in her own stasis box by now. Reaching into the pouch at his waist Tyrion pulled out the small iron talisman that served as the key to particular stasis boxes, the ones that held his final gift to the She’Har. With a word he activated it, and several hundred stasis enchantments stopped working, releasing the slave mages that Abby had prepared.
The second item he removed from the pouch was one of the glass spheres that Ryan had created. They had all been identically made, with no master. If any of them was broken or released, all of them would be.
Tyrion waited, counting silently. Give the Mordan time to find their destinations first…
The first attack nearly caught him unprepared. Ducking, Tyrion felt the spellwoven tendril pass over him. His return stroke was raw and unfocused, but it sent the Prathion that had appeared flying backward, stunned if unhurt.
Clenching his hands into fists Tyrion gripped the air around him with his aythar, whipping it into a wind so tight and swift that it screamed as it circled him. Within seconds the tempest had become a deadly whirlwind that caught up leaves and dirt, sticks and small stones. It expanded around him, sweeping outward with deadly power, destroying everything it touched.
Tyrion poured his power into it, but he ignored its results. It was merely a distraction, in the back of his mind he continued counting.
His strength was coming to its end when he finished his count. “Five hundred,” he intoned, letting the wind die down. Touching the glass sphere with one finger he erased one rune and watched the magic that powered its tiny stasis field collapse. The glass cracked and the small wasp-like krytek emerged, crawling up his arm.
It sat there for a moment, sniffing his skin, excited by the aythar in him. But it recognized its parent. Losing interest, it flew away, in a seemingly random direction.
It went almost a hundred feet before diving down to a section of empty earth, a place that had been scoured clean of leaves, plants, and debris. It vanished for a moment and then reappeared, having eaten its way through the veil of invisibility that hid a Prathion that had been sheltering there.
The She’Har stared at it, puzzled, and then it dove, piercing the spellwoven shield around the Prathion and burrowing into its skin.
Must not have been a lore-warden, thought Tyrion idly. Otherwise he’d have known to kill it instead of staring at it.
Not that it would have mattered. Hundreds of others just like it were finding their first meals in scattered locations around the world. If even half of them were killed by quick thinking She’Har it wouldn’t matter, only a few had to succeed to start a cascade that would eventually kill every human, She’Har child, and Elder that lived under the sun.
Tyrion watched the Prathion die, screaming, and then he smiled.
Chapter 47
The calm left behind after Tyrion’s windstorm died down was short-lived. Only moments after the Prathion finished dying his enemies renewed their attacks.
The Prathion krytek had arrived, probably called back by the elders, desperate to stop Brigid’s one woman rampage through their grove. She was dead already, but that merely simplified their job, which now was reduced to getting rid of him.
The first appeared directly behind him, a monstrous beast that stood on four legs and was ten feet tall at the shoulder. Invisibility aside, it was hard to imagine how such a thing had moved quietly enough to get that close, but it had.
And its first spellweave was already prepared. A wide circle appeared in front of it, trapping Tyrion within its boundaries as it began to contract.
Tyrion was tired. He had fought long and hard, even while following in Brigid’s wake, and the windstorm he had just used had drained him of what energy had been left. Adrenaline didn’t help him either. A man can only fight for so long, facing death at every turn, before he finds himself numb. Tyrion’s heart didn’t even quicken as this latest threat materialized.
In the quiet void that was his heart and mind Tyrion wondered, This must be it. I’ll finally be able to rest.
But his actions didn’t reflect that silent sentiment. Too many years of struggling to survive had been ingrained in his soul to accept death so easily. Activating the enchantment on the bones of his leg, he drew deeply on the power stored there and used it to leap high into the air.
His enchantment was nothing so serious as Brigid’s, it merely kept a reserve of power for him to draw upon, it didn’t make his bones unbreakable or anything as nuanced as turning him into an un-killable machine. As he sailed upward he used that power to recreate his rune shield and then he turned his attention on the ground below.
Four more krytek had appeared and predictably, they were preparing to destroy him in mid-air. That was always the danger of leaping high, you couldn’t alter your course again until your feet found solid ground again.
Taking the best aim he could manage while soaring skyward, he sent a rune channeled blast down his arm and slew one of them. The rest of his power he devoted to his defenses.
It almost wasn’t enough.
Their return fire knocked him sideways and sent him rocketing into the trunk of one of the presumably dormant Prathion Elders. Stunned, he fell and after a brief drop of ten feet, the ground knocked the rest of the wind out of him. Dazed he sat up. Hardly able to think straight he was still struggling to live. Old habits die hard.
Somehow his shield was still up, but if the krytek had followed up on their advantage then, he would have been finished. Oddly, though, they didn’t fire, preferring to charge toward him. If he had been thinking clearly, he might have realized they didn’t dare to damage the Elder he was sitting in front of.
The massive four-legged one reached him first, stomping down on him with a foot that he could now see was studded with large claws. Still sitting, he manage to lop it off with a drunken swing, and then the damned creature fell on him, crushing him beneath its multi-ton body.
Tyrion’s shield encased body sank into the soft ground, until it pressed against one of the Elder’s roots, trapping him there between the bulk of the thrashing krytek and the unyielding wood. He couldn’t have been more helpless. His arms couldn’t move,
his torso was trapped, and he could only imagine his legs sticking awkwardly out of the ground on one side of his gargantuan oppressor.
What a stupid fucking way to die.
His immobility and the awkwardness of the krytek, still foundering as it worked to stand on its three good legs, on top of him, did give him a brief pause to think.
He remembered what he had once told Emma, “We don’t need power, we become the power we seek to wield.” It had been a good line, though he wasn’t sure he was remembering it exactly as he had said it at the time. Either way, he knew what he needed to do.
Fighting his instincts, he let his mind slip free, expanding slightly and growing to encompass more of the world around him. The earth surged up beneath his human body, pushing him upward. Simultaneously he tried to make the Elder’s roots rise, to use as a weapon, but they ignored him. Their voice was different, as was that of the krytek. He hadn’t noticed it before, but his ability was much more difficult to use with regard to the physical forms of other living creatures.
So, he focused on the earth, using it to create a swell of earth that separated him from his massive opponent before he raised it like a thick shield around himself.
The other krytek were close, but they never reached him, and before they could attack his flimsy defense they found themselves sinking into the ground, mired by soil that had somehow come to life.
The fight that followed was surreal. Manuevering his weakened human body and the ground around it simultaneously, he staggered to and fro, slashing as his opponents when they were close enough and using the ground to unbalance them whenever their attacks became too coordinated for him to handle.
It was like fighting in a boat, except that it only shifted and rolled beneath his enemies. Tyrion’s body only staggered because of its exceptional exhaustion and fatigue.
He finished those four off and then noticed the horde that had grown around him. Hundreds more had found his position, but they were no longer paying any heed to him. A cloud of insects was in the air and they danced and jerked as they tried to avoid being bitten. Some were already down, thrashing on the ground as they died.
Betrayer's Bane Page 36
