by Sam Cheever
Seeing her death in my face, Rayanne cringed back. She threw a hand in front of her face as if to block my attack. At that point, even if I’d wanted to I was incapable of stopping the power. I was a renegade laser train speeding down a mountainside with no brakes.
Three inhuman steps brought me face to face with her. She dropped her covering hand and flew at my throat, her long, gleaming white teeth bared to rip out my throat. She hit me hard enough to knock me on my ass, but I stood against it. The sound of ripping flesh told me she’d found her mark. Hot, wet blood ran down my throat, soaking warmly into the neck of the rough, brown robe. I felt no pain or fear as she tore into my throat with her knife-like teeth.
I was a mindless machine, with no thought for anything but killing the evil Rayanne. I reached up and pulled her from my throat, holding her off the floor before my face with a strength I’d never had before. Her lips and chin were shiny and wet with my blood, but already I could feel the hole she’d chewed in my throat closing and I knew that somehow I would heal myself. I smiled at her and finally saw the fear spark in her black eyes. That fear told me I had won. She was mine.
“Get thee to Hades fool, for God hath tired of you!” My voice boomed through the room, rising to vibrate against the quickly disintegrating rock walls. It rose above even the thunderous cacophony that the disintegration of millions of years of geological architecture wrought in the underground cavern. It was an inhuman voice, filled with the power of a thousand, long-tortured souls and the combined hatred that had too long lived within them.
I threw the full force of my power into her, flinging her like a rag doll thirty feet away to crash against the far wall. Then something twisted in my heart and, before I even realized I’d had the thought, I’d sent hundreds of knife-like shards of glass from the shattered mural flying toward her. She had almost regained her feet when they slammed into her. The magic driven sheet of shattered glass pummeled her, ripping her flesh away from her bones and driving what was left of her back into the wall. The shards of glass hit with such force that, despite their fragility, they were driven cleanly into the rock at her back, pinning her mangled body to the wall.
I stood there for a moment that was collapsed in time, my heart pounding terrifyingly in my chest and my breath coming out in gulping gasps. My body started to tremble uncontrollably as, from somewhere amid the jumbled mess that was my thoughts, I extracted the notion that I’d taken a turn toward my monster side which I would never be able to retrace. This thought caused me to fall to my knees in sudden, bone melting weariness. The subterranean room continued to rumble and collapse around me. As my head drooped onto my chest I realized that I would soon be buried alive in debris. In that moment, it was hard to make myself care.
Like a bolt of lightning through my benumbed brain, Emo’s face flashed across my mental screens, drawing me out of myself with a jolt. Adrenaline surged through my veins again. My gaze flew to him. With horror I realized that the wall he’d been hanging from was crumbling away and he’d been thrown to the floor, quickly being covered by flying stone, dust and glass. I jumped to my feet and rushed toward him.
Scooping him up with my newfound strength, I fairly flew from that room, praying that I’d be able to find my way out of the horrid cavern.
As I reached the passageway that led toward the ceremony cave, I realized the implosion I’d started in Nerul’s office hadn’t stopped there. Chaos reigned in that subterranean hell as rock walls and ceilings crackled and thundered and fell about the inhabitants in varying sizes of chunks.
Emo and I were quickly caught up in a slowly moving retreat and I soon began to fear that we’d be crushed and trampled by the onrush. Hooded figures swarmed around us, flinging each other down and charging toward what I assumed was an exit out of the court. I followed as best I could, praying I’d make it out in time to save Emo.
After a few moments of the crushing retreat, we emerged into sunlight and I suddenly found myself with room to move again. I carried Emo into the dense underbrush near the face of the cave and laid him on the ground. He groaned as I laid him down and all of the breath left me when I saw how pale he was. His usual ruddy red skin tones had been replaced by a kind of pinkish gray color. I could tell by his shallow and infrequent breathing that he was a hair away from eternal life. Panic welled in my chest.
“Hang in there, partner. I haven’t given you permission to leave yet. You’re still on the clock here. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
Although I knew I was avoiding the inevitable, I pulled several small slivers of glass from his chest, arms and legs before turning to the knife in his cheek. Remembering the gargoyle claw, I panicked. I would have to call the power to heal him or he would die. I also knew that what I had just done in that cave had scared the soul out of me. I was deathly afraid that I’d gone beyond the point of return and my soul was lost to me. My devil had taken over in that horrible room and I was terrified to unleash it again. But I knew I had to. I had no choice.
Before I could chicken out, I laid one hand on the hilt of the knife and wrapped the other one around the blade, resting it palm down on Emo’s flesh. Closing my eyes I reached tentative mental fingers toward the core of my power and reluctantly drew it forward.
The energy slid smoothly from its hiding place, easily flooding my hands. I poured it into the knife buried deep inside my friend and concentrated on pulling it free and closing the wound behind it. The knife vibrated under my fingers and then slid smoothly and wetly out. I allowed it to drop to the ground beside Emo’s head and smoothed my hand over the wound. Under the influence of my power, the blood began reversing its flow, moving away from the wound, back into Emo’s body. I felt the edges of the wound knitting together from the inside and I drove the power until it had completely closed the wound under my hands. Then I moved my hands to his chest and repeated the process there.
Once his body was whole again, I touched his forehead and shuddered at what I sensed there. I gently nudged my magic into Emo’s mind, encouraging his brain to heal and pull him back to life, because I perceived a weakness there that scared me more than the knife had. It was a giving up. A letting go of life. He was reaching for death.
After a moment I realized I’d done all I could do. I gently withdrew the power and sat back. My cheeks were wet. It was the first moment I realized I was crying. As it had in that horror chamber inside the cave, my heart was pelting the inside of my chest in a panicked state. I was going to lose my best friend and there was nothing I could do about it.
He lay there barely breathing, although his color had returned. He looked lifeless and way too still. I wanted to grab him and shake him into consciousness but I was afraid to move him. Feeling helpless is not one of my better things.
I stood and started to pace. I suddenly realized that it had grown quiet in the cave. Dark worlders no longer spewed from its face and the ground beneath my feet no longer rumbled and shook. Other than a thick dust that hung in the air just inside the opening, the cataclysmic event might not have ever happened.
Suddenly I remembered Nille and Dialle and Nerul and I wondered what had happened to them. I thought of the static I’d pushed away as I’d fought to drive off Rayanne and felt a new level of panic rising in me. Dialle had been calling to me. Looking back, I was sure of it. And Nille. I’d pushed them away in there and I didn’t know what had become of them. I suddenly knew what I had to do. I’d done all I could for Emo. I had to go back into that cave.
With a final glance at my friend, I said a quick prayer, briefly wondering if my prayers would even be heard anymore after what I’d done to Rayanne, and forced myself to turn my back on my dying friend. I moved toward that cave with a feeling of such dread I wondered at my ability to keep my feet moving forward. I knew suddenly, with perfect clarity, that I was about to face my greatest foe. And that one of us would need to die.
I had a cold knot in my gut that told me I was afraid it was gonna be me.
CHAPTER TWENT
Y-SEVEN
A Battle Due
Into that cave our lady did go, to face the evil core,
And though she knew she’d meet her end, she’d waiver nevermore.
The dust hanging in the air as I reentered the cave clogged my throat and nostrils, stifling my ability to take in the great gulping breaths I needed to set my fear aside. I pulled the rough material of the demon robe I was still wearing over my nose and mouth and tried breathing through it. After a minute I was able to take enough deep, calming breaths so that I could move forward into the thick air without coughing my guts up through my mouth.
The light, which had been dim before, had become almost completely obscured by the dust in the air. As I moved more deeply into the cave and lost the light that was filtering in through the entrance, I found that I had to rely more and more on touch. I walked close to the wall on my left side so that my right hand, which clutched the knife I’d pulled from Emo, would be free if I needed it. A few yards into the passageway, I became aware of a strange whirring noise. I followed the sound and soon found myself entering the cavern again. What I saw there brought me to a horrified stop.
The air at the top of the cavern was alive with something that darted back and forth in silvery flashes. I tucked myself back into the shadows and squinted upward. Although the shapes that danced above my head had a familiar feel, they were indistinct and moved much too quickly for me to recognize them. Like fireflies around a bright white light, they flitted here and there and shot away from the occasional fire bolt which flew at them from somewhere among the mass of bodies which littered the cavern floor.
The whirring sound I’d heard appeared to be coming from the fireflies in the sky. I also began to notice another sound. It was pitched low in both tone and volume, so that it almost blended into the background of my mind and ran unnoticed through my thoughts. But once identified, the sound brought my stomach into my throat. It was one of those entrancing chants that had left me helpless and as immobile as concrete in my own home.
The chanting didn’t originate from the things above my head. It was coming from the center of the cavern.
As if touched by a fresh current of swiftly moving air, the murk at the center of the cavern cleared away and I saw a tall figure standing upon the altar. He was naked, with his arms raised high above his head. Although his back was to me, I suspected that the chants were emanating from him. As I squinted to see who it was, the figure turned around and I gasped.
A pale blue gaze cut the dusty air and locked onto me in my hidden niche. The piercing gaze glowed through the murk, pulling me forward like a siren song of old. It sent a chill of cold apprehension down my spine.
Prince Nille’s voice carried through the dead atmosphere of that underground horror land and stabbed at my ears like needles made of ice. I wrapped my hands around my arms, momentarily forgetting the knife I clutched in one of them.
“So you return, lovely Astra. A pity your young Prince is dead. And even sadder that he called to you as he died. But alas, it appears that you were too preoccupied to answer him.”
Since it did me no good to hide in the shadows I stepped out and faced him across hundreds of slaughtered corpses. I stiffened my spine and dropped my knife hand to my side, but I didn’t drop the knife. I lifted my chin in defiance.
I’d apparently been chosen for that moment...to deal with the greatest evil I’d ever encountered. And though I hadn’t the foggiest what I was supposed to do against a creature as powerful as the very scary young devil prince, I knew it would be unveiled to me in due course. So, for the moment, I stood, if not tall then at least resolute before him. “I guess it’s just you and me then, Nille. Pity you don’t have more help.”
He laughed. The chanting dropped off and the cavern was silent, but for the whispery sound of the fireflies above. The room had grown extremely cold too, I noticed. And it smelled like a butcher shop. “You are very small to be so cocky, Astra. And I am very big.”
“Yeah, yeah. And you have such big teeth, gramma. I’m sure you’re gonna kill me, Nille, but I plan to take a chunk out of you before I go down.”
His smile stayed in place as he hopped lightly down from the altar. Watching him move toward me, I suddenly realized that the shimmery figures had all fluttered over to perch on the ledge above our heads, where Emo and I had first observed the goings on in that disgusting cavern. My eyes were immediately drawn to the figure at the center and narrowed on the golden haired angel whose scowling countenance was all the body language I had to go on as a clue to her feelings. Take care, Astra.
Help me.
I felt rather than saw Myra shake her head. We are not allowed to affect the course of things that will be. Know only that, once that course has been determined, we will stand for you.
Gee...thanks a bunch.
Trust me when I tell you my heart is splitting in two.
Let’s just hope that’s all that gets split in two here.
Amen.
My eyes had never left Nille as Myra and I shuffled mental drawers. He was moving across the cavern on long, elegant legs. As his feet slid forward, bodies flew away from them to clear his path. He still carried the golden aura I’d noticed earlier, only I was no longer pleased by it. Prince Nille was one powerful and evil sonofabitch and he was coming for me. Shit.
I cast my eyes around the cavern for some ideas. Nothing came to me but I did notice a few dead royals I recognized. Dialle’s people. My heart did a quick jump that left behind a wave of nausea and I forced myself not to examine my reaction too closely right at that moment. Dialle. He’d called out to me and I’d blown him off. If he was dead, could I live with that?
Where was he? Was he lying somewhere on the cavern floor? Just another mangled body among a multitude of torn and twisted corpses? My eyes scoured the cavern of cadavers, looking for survivors. The dead royals and many of the dead around them, appeared to have been sucked dry. Their bodies, hunched and pale, had collapsed inward under gray, ashy looking skin.
A fire bolt hit the doorway just inches from my face and I realized I’d have to deal with my reaction later.
Much later.
Run! The thought wasn’t mine and I didn’t have time to figure out whose it was. The singed feeling on my cheek and the explosion in my ear jolted me out of my daze. I ran in the direction that would carry me away from Nille, but since the cavern was circular I really couldn’t get out of view.
He simply changed direction, still walking at a normal pace, though I knew he could probably cover the distance between us in a fraction of a second. He was secure, confidant, not at all worried about me. I hate that in an enemy. It always encourages me to excel.
As I ran around the edge of the cavern, jumping over the dead husks of bad guys from the various courts as I went, I probed the core of my power and tested it. Gone was my earlier reluctance to pull it out again. I was fighting for my life and even more than that. For all I knew I was fighting for the whole of humankind. It sure seemed like a lot of shit to dump on one, pissed off little halfling. Hades, life just wasn’t fair.
I stopped when I’d put the length of the cavern between us and stood panting as my eyes sought Nille’s. He’d stopped too, and was smiling at me. Apparently he’d tired of the cat and rodent game and was ready to nibble on my poor, rodent-sized body. I wasn’t going to let him have that nibble if I could stop it.
Although I wanted to run like hell from that place, retrieve Emo and return to my relatively quiet and marginally uneventful prior existence, I knew that option wasn’t open to me. But if I was going to fight I needed to pick the right place. Something was drawing me back to that altar. While emotionally it was the last place I wanted to go, I figured there must be some reason I was being drawn to it so I gave in to the pull.
I narrowed my eyes at Nille and, surprisingly, I saw the beginnings of his movement toward me. I knew that within a breathlessly short period of time he’d be standing next to me and I reacted. I gathered my
magic quickly and, with a whir of light and sound, I was suddenly teetering on the edge of the altar. I’m sure if I could have seen my face as I fought for my balance I would have laughed at the look of shock and surprise there. Apparently I’d gained the ability to shimmer and spaceshift from Dialle. Again came the clench in my heart that I had to push away.
When I looked up, Nille was standing where I’d been. His face was no longer smug. In fact, the pale blue eyes had narrowed to showcase his anger. Oh hell. Now I’d pissed of the bogeyman. I realized I still had my power gathered around me and I decided to expand it, use it as a protection as I’d done with Rayanne.
Across the room Nille tensed in the first movement of what I recognized as a spaceshift and I poured everything into my protective bubble to hold him off. He hit my protective wall and I instinctively closed my eyes. His brittle laughter pried them open.
“Your tiny powers are nothing to me, Astra.”
“Oh yeah. Have you seen the lovely Rayanne since she got on my bad side?”
A flash of anger darkened the pale eyes before he could stop it. Then he shrugged and the cold smile he wore on his face widened. “Surely you don’t think she was as powerful as me?”
“As I. Always use good grammar when boasting about your ability to eat an enemy. They’ll take you more seriously.” I gave him a smile of my own and then shimmered to a spot just behind him.
As soon as my feet hit the ground I dropped the protective bubble and redirected the power to stab it into him like a psychic sword. It entered his back between the golden shoulder blades and cut a path through his flesh with a sizzle and a snap of bone. The tip of the energy blade emerged from the front of his chest like a bolt of lightning. He cried out once and then his shoulders rounded, his arms arcing as he seemed to draw into himself for the space of a heartbeat. He straightened and the shimmering blade shot away from him, ejected from his body. It flew back toward me and I dove for the floor as it whizzed over my head.
