by Will Wight
Urg’naut raised Darius’ hands, flexing them, moving his fingers independently as though familiarizing himself with a body.
Shera struck.
Heedless of her own fear and the terror of her Vessels, she knew this was her only chance. Syphren had been invested to turn power against itself, so in theory, it should cut even a Great Elder. Jorin had theorized that she might be the only one alive besides the Regents who could threaten Urg’naut or Nakothi.
Urg’naut shifted his new body to face Shera.
She froze.
Syphren was lunging toward him, but her body froze up. She couldn’t move another inch. It was as though he had bypassed her mind and reached her muscles directly.
Behind him, Jorin fell to the ground.
He landed in a crouch. Without his shadeglasses, his silver eyes gleamed like coins reflecting light.
“You were close,” Urg’naut whispered, and Shera found that she couldn’t tell who he was talking to.
“Then how about a little closer?” Jorin asked.
He tossed his sword aside and reached into his pockets.
His left hand emerged with a silver mirror and his right with a bottle of liquid that gleamed like a star.
Urg’naut shifted to face him and gestured as though brushing aside cobwebs.
The paving-stones between him and Jorin were erased in a blink. The wave of nonexistence was about to devour Jorin…but instead, his mirror flashed. It blackened and crumbled to pieces, but Jorin was unharmed.
A second later, the liquid in his bottle erupted in an explosion of golden light.
Rather than just filling the courtyard, the light expanded to envelop the entire Imperial Palace. It should have blinded Shera, but she found that she could see more clearly while covered in the gold aura. It swelled in a dome that stretched from ground to sky, an overwhelming aura that reminded her of the Emperor.
Whatever the Great Elder had done to her body, the golden light cleansed it. She staggered back, catching her breath.
Meia moved up next to her as the gold lingered on the air.
“Run,” Meia whispered, grabbing Shera’s arm.
Shera resisted.
Thanks to the power Syphren fed her, she was able to pull free of Meia’s grip.
“Not yet,” Shera said.
As she often did, she set aside her fear and her hopes for the future. She focused entirely on the mission. On the other side, Jorin lifted his sword.
Together, they dashed toward Urg’naut.
Who had taken not a single step.
“You must be smarter than this,” the Creeping Shadow said.
He broke the corrosive aura surrounding Jorin’s blade.
Shera froze again, an inch from Darius’ chest. This time, her left hand trembled and seized, the muscles moving on their own.
Her Vessel fell from shaking fingers.
Syphren’s power still ran through her, but she couldn’t bend down to pick it up.
The Great Elder focused on Jorin, and though the air between them crackled with the clash of Intent, Jorin’s silver eyes lost their luster. Blood ran from his nose. Slowly, he sank to his knees.
“Without the Emperor or his daughter, how will you oppose me?” He turned to Shera. “How can you strike me when my attention is upon you?
“You must improve yourselves if you are to bring true death to my brothers.”
Shera thought she must have misunderstood.
Was the Creeping Shadow helping them?
“We bring annihilation to all things,” Urg’naut whispered. “Including our own kind.” For a moment, the Great Elder shuddered as though fighting Darius’ body.
“We…must leave…you intact. We are sorry that we cannot relieve your suffering. In return, you must annihilate my brethren.”
For a moment, the sensation of Urg’naut’s power weakened. It felt familiar.
Darius.
They were both there, simultaneously, layered on top of one another.
Somehow, that made it worse. She had expected this to be Urg’naut taking over Darius’ empty body like a hermit crab, but he was still there. He could be aware. Suffering.
“When we take on human form, we are subject to human laws. Including death.”
Urg’naut knelt to face Jorin, taking the Regent’s chin in one gauntleted hand. “Kelarac comes. Bring him the release of death. Bring…”
The Great Elder trailed off.
Life had returned to Jorin’s eyes. He looked to the side, staring into the distance.
A moment later, he stood and walked to the spot where Jorin had been staring. Urg’naut’s empty darkness faced something Shera couldn’t see.
“You were gone,” the Great Elder said, and Shera thought she heard surprise in the tone. “You became nothing. But they were not thorough. Pieces of you remain.”
He had stretched out Darius’ arm, pointing into the corner of the courtyard. Away from Shera.
For which she was grateful, because her Vessels were screaming alarm. This time, Shera was the one pulling Meia away.
“His back is turned,” Meia whispered when Shera seized her arm. “Can we—”
“No. It’s too late.”
This time, Shera was certain. If she had attacked while Urg’naut was unaware, she could have struck him down.
She had missed her chance.
And now the Great Elder was about to unleash his full power.
Syphren and Bastion screamed in Shera’s mind as everything in front of Urg’naut’s hand ceased to exist.
In an instant, Shera could see from that courtyard in the Imperial Palace to miles deep in the Aion Sea. The annihilation spread out in a wedge from Urg’naut’s body, growing wider as it spread. It spread deep, revealing layers of pipes and ground beneath what had once been Capital streets, and it erased water so thoroughly that for a moment walls of ocean spread out on either side of bare seafloor.
Shera staggered. Syphren sensed lives vanishing in a moment.
Thousands upon thousands of lives.
An entire section of the Capital was gone. How much had it been? Ten percent? Twenty? She couldn’t be sure, but the death toll was…staggering.
She had sent Gardeners to spread out among the city. How many Consultants had died?
And this was only the Great Elder’s first blow. The rest would surely be worse.
Darius’ hand lowered, and a moment later his body shuddered.
“We can save no more of you. The time has come to do battle with the Outsider.” The black orb that was Urg’naut’s head lifted up. “Perhaps he will bring salvation to us all.”
The Aion Sea thundered back into place, filling in the wedge that the Great Elder had weakened.
And a column of darkness connected Urg’naut to the sky.
It stretched out, not perfectly straight, twisting toward the crack in space. His body lifted, rising in the center, and a moment later it pulsed with power.
That power struck the sky and more cracks crawled out from the first.
It was like watching glass break one hammer-tap at a time. In seconds, the Great Elder had struck the sky several times.
Like it was only an inverted bowl of blue crystal, the sky cracked further and further.
Finally, it broke completely.
Some jagged pieces of blue remained hanging from the ceiling of the world, but they were only patches of normality over an endless black.
The void was their new sky.
It was the home of the Elders that Shera had glimpsed before, a stretch of endless darkness filled with shivering spots of color like stars. It covered the entire world as though an alien night had fallen.
Now, Shera could see the difference between those colored lights and real stars. One purple circle was nothing more than a circular window onto an amethyst city. A red spot flying in circles looked like a giant droplet of blood chasing its own tail, and a blue spot was a massive azure fist clutching something she couldn’t make
out.
It was as though someone had scattered handfuls of random, shining treasures throughout the night.
And one spot seized her attention, taking up the spotlight like the moon among stars.
It was a disc of blue light, much closer and brighter than any of the others. It seemed to be made up of every shade of blue all layered onto each other at once, and it looked so solid that she thought she could reach out her fingertips and touch it.
A man stood between the world and that disc of blue. He should have been hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away, but she could make him out clearly. It was as though distance had less meaning now, like physical rules had begun to break down.
He wore gleaming armor of head-to-toe black, and he clutched a matching scythe taller than his own body. Long, white hair streamed from his head, but he seemed young.
Or rather, ageless. Like a statue. His face was handsome but cold, distant. A king about to pass judgment.
Urg’naut ascended into the void to meet this stranger, the one he had referred to as the Outsider. A shadow stretched out from the Great Elder, slithering like a thousand dark snakes to cover up the colored lights in the background.
When the Creeping Shadow and the Outsider faced one another, their backdrop was only darkness.
Shera’s Vessels both cried to her at once: DON’T LOOK!
She grabbed Meia’s head and forced it down just as the celestial figures clashed in the void.
The entire world lit up bright white as the two exchanged blows, and Shera felt a strange pressure all over her entire body. The flash was like lightning, but instead of thunder, it filled the air with a crackling like a million snapping bones.
Shera brought her head up, still careful not to look into the sky, as Jorin limped over to them.
“Beat me like a kettle drum,” the Regent said hoarsely. “He was right after all.”
“Who?”
“The Emperor always said there were outsiders peeking in our windows, but I was never…well, I’m sure now, straight as a good road.”
He almost collapsed, but Shera caught him.
“Can he defeat Urg’naut?” Shera asked.
“The Great Elders truly slip their leash when they escape this world. They’re stronger than any of us can picture or imagine.” He leaned heavier on Shera. “But I don’t think it matters one bent bit who wins. If there’s one thing we know about the Outsiders, it’s that they are no friends of ours.”
Meia took Jorin’s other shoulder, and together they carried him away from the courtyard.
Shera thought back to the words of Urg’naut: “Kelarac comes.”
“What about Kelarac?” she asked.
Jorin chuckled humorlessly. He had left his sword behind him, and stone curled up as it dissolved beneath the blade. “I suppose we’d best greet him as best we can.”
Shera asked no more questions as she dragged the Regent from the battle they’d lost.
Toward the next hopeless fight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Before the Elders, all men are allies.
—The Emperor
present day
Loreli seized a man by the arm as he flew past her, hauling him back down to the Heart of the Aion’s deck.
Above her, Urg’naut fought against an opponent of impossible power. The Emperor had warned her that there were people outside of the world they knew and had emphasized that they couldn’t be trusted. She had never been sure.
Now she could see one of them for herself, could feel his power as he clashed against a Great Elder beyond the borders of existence. She finally believed, but it did not reassure her.
If these outsiders could fight against the Elders, why had they never helped? Why had no one saved them during the Elder War?
Why only now, at the end of the world?
Captain Marstrom gave a sharp whistle, stealing her attention. His hat was gone and he clutched the wheel like a drowning man. “Regent, please! We can’t go any further!”
Everything flashed and the air crackled with a sound like seeds tossed into a fire. She looked around at the enraged seas.
Their ship had a huge gash in its hull. She had managed to patch it herself with all the spare planks and rope in their storage, but hope and Intent could only hold a Navigator vessel together for so long.
On their journey back, Elders had thrown themselves into her over and over as though they had a death wish.
She was exhausted, the crew were soaked and doing everything they could to keep the ship upright, and every blow from the heavens sent waves soaring.
She was desperate to get back to the Capital. Jorin needed her help. If she’d only been there, she would have been able to restrain her old enemy. Urg’naut would not have escaped with her on watch, and she cursed herself for her decision to leave.
Loreli had thought keeping all three Regents in one place would have been a strategic mistake, and the situation in Axciss had sounded urgent. But she had known too little about her enemy’s intentions.
“No help is coming, Captain!” Loreli shouted back. “Together we hold your vessel, or together we swim!”
Marstrom said something under his breath that was probably a curse, but he went back to wrestling the wheel, and she could feel his Intent flowing throughout the ship.
Once again, she opened her Reading to the air around them. They should be within a day of the Capital, though now that Urg’naut had left, she couldn’t feel anything from such a distance.
But no matter how tired she became, she tried to extend her senses out at least once an hour. There might be someone to help them, or someone they could help. She had yet to find anyone, or at least anyone still intact enough to be helped.
She had almost withdrawn her Reading when she felt something.
Loreli.
It wasn’t her name, not quite. Another Reader was searching for her. Close by.
They had extended their senses much further than most could manage, but they were unsteady, as though they had heard of that technique but not quite mastered it. A Magister, perhaps.
It was the best news Loreli had heard in weeks.
She pointed, tapping into her Soulbound Vessel and making a light appear at the end of her finger so that Marstrom would notice. “Captain! That way!”
“Where do you think I’m—”
“Adjust your heading, Captain!” The Reader was coming from the direction of the Capital, so they were almost directly ahead of Loreli, but not exactly. Every adjustment Marstrom could make might be the difference in reaching help before a crewman died.
Or reaching someone in distress before they were killed themselves.
Based on the distance and the chaos in the sea, Loreli had expected it to take at least an hour to reach the source of that Intent, but she caught a glimpse of something in only a few minutes. Between rising swells, she saw a giant pulling something behind him.
A wave blocked out the image again, and when it fell, the giant was much closer. It was a humanoid Elder chained to a dark green ship.
She lost vision again, and the third time she saw the ship, it was already upon them. The strangers had eaten the distance, and she couldn’t believe the speed the Elder had made through the ocean.
The creature spun to the right, bringing the ship alongside them. She could see the name burned into its side: The Testament.
The red-haired man at the helm met her eyes, and she knew the armor he wore. She had sensed its familiar presence from hundreds of yards away, though she hadn’t recognized the source until she saw it with her own eyes.
Calder Marten, the pretender to the throne, wearing the Emperor’s armor.
“Regent Loreli,” Calder shouted across the water. “Will you come with us?”
“We are all allies in the face of this greater threat,” Loreli called back. Which wasn’t exactly an answer.
She turned to Marstrom and asked him in a lower voice, “What do you know of him?”
/> “Over long distances, his ship is the fastest in the Guild,” the Captain said. “But I had no idea it was that fast. If you need to get back to the Capital now, you should go with him.”
Loreli nodded sharply and turned back to the “Imperial Steward.” “Do you have room on your ship for myself and eight others?”
“Regent,” Marstrom protested, “we will make it. I can’t abandon my Vessel.”
“Without my protection, you will more likely die out here.” She looked into his eyes, seeking a mutual understanding. “I have lost my Soulbound Vessel before. It is like burning away a part of your heart…but it is not worth dying for. We can come back for your Heart of the Aion later. I personally promise you a team of Readers to dredge the ocean floor.”
The wind and rain whipped Captain Marstrom as he looked to the faces of his crew.
Minutes later, Loreli and the entire crew boarded The Testament. Some wept, but Captain Marstrom kept pained eyes on his ship as it drifted into the distance.
To expedite the process as much as possible, Calder Marten had not only extended ropes and boards from his ship onto the other, but he himself had leaped from one deck to the next and picked up a man under each arm, jumping back.
She had never met him, but she was certain he had not been so strong before. Either he was under the effect of some kind of alchemy or he had been enhanced.
If they were to fight the Great Elders, she would accept an advantage anywhere she could find one.
“You don’t know how to put the sky back together, do you?” Calder asked from the wheel. It was the first thing he had said to her since she’d boarded.
Loreli walked up to join him. “Unfortunately, that’s not our most urgent concern.”
He looked to her, outwardly calm, but in the depths of his eyes and his Intent she could see more. He was holding himself together with sheer will. Dangling over a pit and hanging on by a thread.
She could understand that.
“And what could be more urgent?”
“The prison doors have been broken,” Loreli said. “And there are six prisoners still inside.”
