by Phil Tucker
“Stop it!” cried the Ascendant.
It disappeared, covering the distance between itself and the Gate in the blink of an eye. It appeared again floating before the vast Gate in the distance, high above the steps, its crimson wings nearly bleached of all color by the Gate’s divine glow.
“What’s it going to do?” Iskra asked, not expecting an answer.
A line of green flame appeared beside the demon, curving around to form a circle. A kragh shaman was carving the Portal’s other side directly in front of Kyrra, frantically whispering and dragging a ceremonial blade through the air until at last he completed the circle.
As the Portal opened, Kyrra leaned forward, and her eyes blazed.
The demon roared down the length of the hall as it fell back. Kyrra’s gaze bleached its front, but then it lashed out with its whip at the green Portal before it, collapsing it in a shower of viridian sparks. The shaman cried out and fell.
The demon appeared in front of Kyrra, scimitar raised, its front blistered with gray pustules, its movements awkward and stiff. Before it could swing, the shamans and the Vothaks as one unleashed a hellish barrage of flames both black and green, enveloping the demon altogether, and it screamed anew and once more vanished.
More demons were coming through the hole that it had opened, though, including several huge ones with hog heads.
Everyone was trying to crowd into the golden sphere, but there wasn’t enough room.
“Get out there and fight!” Tiron roared, shoving at palace guards and Agerastians.
Kethe stepped up beside Mixis and Synesis, and all three held their burning blades at the ready, but the demons were too many. Tiron gave a final shove to the man in front of him, then strode out of the golden light into the clear air. Iskra almost reached out for him, begging him to stay at her side, to not risk himself, but at the last he turned to look at her, and in the depths of his eyes she saw an apology for not being able to fulfill his promise to her.
Blade raised, he ran, limping on his left leg, and then Captain Patash was at his side and the last of the Hundred Snakes were running behind them.
Demons were pounding at the Ascendant’s golden sphere, countless numbers of them, some of them vast and able to withstand the burning repercussions of their attacks.
The Ascendant was grimacing and slowly falling to his knees, shoulders hunched, head ducked, eyes narrowed near to closing.
Iskra stared at him in horror. Where had his sublime strength gone?
The sphere was contracting once more. Men and women were moaning in terror all around her, pressing ever closer so as to remain inside the sphere, but there were too many of them; a demon snatched at the arm of an elderly woman as she was forced out, and with a scream she was borne aloft to be thrown from demon to demon as they clawed and ripped at her until she had been pulled apart.
Tharok was fighting with unstoppable strength, hewing demons apart and throwing up a shield of white fire every time he was assaulted by the black flames. But for every demon he slew, another five appeared to take its place.
Kyrra and her shamans and Vothaks were an island of resistance off to one side, unleashing blasts of power in every direction, but they too were being swamped. Everywhere Iskra looked, demons were falling from the sky to explode into fragments on the ground, but they were flying in low now, using Kyrra’s acolytes as cover.
Iskra closed her eyes. She wanted to pray, wanted to beg for help, but in that moment, surrounded by chaos and death and evil on all sides, she realized that she had nothing and no one to pray to. Nothing in which she believed, no one she could beg to succor them.
CHAPTER 28
Audsley
They appeared in mid-air, much to Audsley’s surprise – and evidently to Erenthil’s as well, as the Artificer let out a reflexive cry of annoyance as they began to fall. Aedelbert dug his claws into Audsley’s shoulder and flapped his wings valiantly as Audsley gripped Erenthil’s hand, flailing as his robes billowed around him. The walls of a vast pit rose up on all sides, everything blurred, and then the shaft into which they were falling disappeared and they were high over Aletheia, gazing down onto a scene of devastation.
The great courtyard in front of the Ascendant’s palace was a shattered ruin, most of it having collapsed into the massive shaft below. Erenthil must have tried to appear on it, only to fall within. The palace itself was aflame; entire sections had been incinerated or collapsed, and over it all swirled a great cyclone of demons, revolving slowly about a nexus point in the palace roof through which they were descending.
Audsley’s heart lurched in his chest as if it had been batted at with a hammer. He tried to take in the scope of the destruction, to encompass it, and failed. Nowhere did he see resistance. Nowhere did he see his friends or their forces fighting back the demons. Was he too late? Was the battle already over?
The bronze men had appeared around them in the gleaming constellation, and they were beginning to attract the attention of the closest demons.
Erenthil gazed at the demons with something akin to disinterested annoyance. “You may have taken too long to fetch me,” he called over the wind. “If so, mankind’s fall will be blamed on your tardiness.”
“They’re moving down into the palace,” Audsley cried, pointing to where the spout of the great cyclone of demons was positioned over a huge rent in the palace roof. “They may still be inside!”
“To the White Gate, then,” said Erenthil. “I suppose it cannot be avoided.”
Demons were streaking toward them, wings flapping powerfully, and then they disappeared, popping into existence all around them. Erenthil clutched Audsley’s hand tightly, and the ruined scope of Aletheia vanished, replaced by bedlam and battle as they appeared in the Hall of the White Gate.
The Ascendant’s golden sphere was under punishing assault before the shattered front doors, while Kyrra and various magic users were hemmed in on all sides by assailants. Tharok and the Virtues were battling desperately against impossible odds, and it was clear that there were only moments left in this battle, if any time at all. Horrific shrieks filled the air, and above it all the White Gate was raging.
They teleported down to the very edge of the golden sphere, and then Erenthil raised his hands, releasing Audsley, and called out, “Let me enter! Your Holiness! Grant me safe passage!”
The Ascendant was down on one knee, hands thrust before him as if he were seeking to stave off the future, his fingers forming the sacred triangle. Iskra was standing over him, and a gaggle of nobles was pressed in tightly on all sides.
“Audsley!” cried Iskra.
The Ascendant managed a nod, and Audsley and Erenthil pushed through the golden exterior into the gilded glow. Erenthil shoved people aside with casual brutality, his gauntlets giving him impossible strength, and Audsley could only trail helplessly in his wake.
“Your Holiness,” Erenthil said, lowering himself to one knee before the sweating young man. “You’re all going to die here. Let me escort you to safety.”
“No,” gasped the Ascendant. “I won’t abandon the Gate.”
Erenthil looked over his shoulder as if to consider the Portal in question. He didn’t look impressed. “You must survive,” he said. “If you die, the Empire will be defeated in truth. Come, let me get you out of here.”
“Who are you?” demanded Iskra.
The ground beneath their feet lurched, then fell away and kept falling. Audsley floated up off the ground and saw everyone else around him rise up as well. Aedelbert took to his wings. Screams of panic joined cries of pain and death. The demons, already airborne, only cackled with glee as their opponents lost their footing.
“Already?” Erenthil asked, then he gave a curt shake of his head. “Ascendant, the White Gate is lost. Come!”
“Never!” the Ascendant cried, his eyes so wide they almost bulged. “I shall not surrender the White Gate!”
Audsley bit down on the bile that had flooded up the back of his throa
t. Outside the golden sphere, he saw Erenthil’s bronze statues flitting back and forth, perfectly vertical, limbs unmoving, and wherever they faced a demon, they shot forth sizzling bolts of black lightning that caused their opponents to spasm and fall from the sky.
“I’m not going to offer again,” Erenthil yelled, his long hair fanning out around him. He seemed strangely at ease in free-fall, no doubt assured by his ability to escape. “We can yet save the Empire. You can reclaim the White Gate! Come!”
Iskra took the Ascendant by the arm. “Please, Your Holiness! If you die, there will be no one to appreciate your martyrdom! Escape! Listen to him!”
The Ascendant let out a wrenching cry, as if something within him were being torn in two, and with a sob he pulled his hands apart and nodded.
Erenthil touched the Ascendant’s shoulder, and they both disappeared.
“Wait!” cried Audsley. “What about us? Wait!”
A bronze man swooped down and touched Iskra on the shoulder. They both vanished.
Twisting around awkwardly, smothered by his own clothing, Audsley saw Erenthil’s servants moving to teleport others away. Virtues vanished. The medusa disappeared, along with the Consecrated and Ser Tiron. Bronze men returned, alone, to fling black lighting, clearing a path to new targets whom they tapped with their fingers and teleported away: Tharok with Maur in his arms. Shamans and Vothaks.
With the bulk of the fighters gone, the demons fell upon the remaining humans and began to massacre them. The Aletheians begged for mercy to no avail. Audsley himself was about to shriek in despair as a demon flew at him, only for a bronze man to appear at his side.
Audsley lunged, desperate, and managed to take hold of Aedelbert’s tail a second before he felt a tap on his shoulder, and the madness of the Hall of the White Gate disappeared.
It was replaced by the serene beauty of the small meadow outside Erenthil’s cottage. Dusk had fallen, and the moon was visible as it rose above the horizon, overlarge and silvering the trees and people staggering about the grassy sward in confusion.
The sudden absence of screams was disorienting, the return of gravity overwhelming, and Audsley fell to his knees, releasing Aedelbert and plunging his hands into the grassy loam. Heart pounding, he stared at his fingers where they disappeared into the earth, unable to blink, unable to stop thinking of Aletheia falling at that very second, the armies trapped in defending it across its balconies and walkways, the White Gate burning, the demons tearing and eviscerating…
“Welcome!” shouted Erenthil as he flew into sight above them all. “I am pleased to have been able to save you all from certain death. I will not seek to parlay this timely rescue in exchange for favors. I want what you all want: to drive the demons from our world.”
Kyrra rose to her full height, her vivid coloration subdued in the light of the moon. Her beauty was alien, made cold by the silver light, and she gazed imperiously at the Artificer, her chest rising and falling from her recent exertions. “Who are you? Where are we?”
“This is my home, known as the Isle of Nethys. We currently are flying over the surface of Ennoia. I am Erenthil, known as the Artificer.”
The Ascendant staggered to the fore of the group and stared up at their savior. “You came too late. Aletheia is fallen. The White Gate is no more!”
“But the Empire persists,” said Erenthil. “Do you not live, Your Holiness? As long as you draw breath, there is hope for your Empire.”
“What hope?” That came from Iskra. Tiron was standing at her side, half of his face gleaming black with blood. “We threw everything we had at them, and we lost!”
Audsley climbed to his feet. A cool wind was blowing over the stonecloud, causing the branches of the trees to whisper as if in commentary to what was taking place below their boughs. Aedelbert fluttered down into his arms, and he held his firecat tight.
“Who is here?” Tiron called out. “Who escaped?”
Slowly, the survivors identified themselves. Kethe, kneeling beside an unconscious Asho. Mixis and Synesis, standing with a dozen Consecrated. Kyrra and a handful of Vothaks and kragh shamans. Tharok with Maur in his arms. A dozen ragged men who identified themselves as Sin Casters. Ser Tiron. Iskra. The Ascendant.
The entirety of the group was subdued. Paralyzed by horror, more like. Audsley wanted to move from one to the next, to squeeze hands, pat shoulders, offer sympathy and condolences. In a way, he felt removed from the horror that had befallen them; he was a soul already lost, damned by his previous actions, and thus with no stake in the future. As such, he felt strangely free, and his sympathy was almost charitable.
Tharok spoke first. “There are too many demons for us to defeat them.”
Kethe’s voice was just as sober. “And we can’t fight the ur-destraas. It killed two dragons, drove away Draumronin, and then ignored the Virtues and myself as if we were of no account.”
“Worse,” said Tiron. “Zephyr is inside the ur-destraas, somehow. Don’t we need to take the circlet from her if we are to win?”
Iskra stared up at Erenthil. “You said you knew a way to save the Empire. Speak, damn you!”
Erenthil hovered above them all, arms crossed, his shoulder-length black hair blowing in the wind. Audsley couldn’t spot his bronze men, but they had to be close by.
“Barring perhaps the medusa, I am the eldest here by centuries,” said the Artificer. “I recall an age when nothing limited our inventiveness but the reach of our imaginations. When Flame Walkers and Adepts of the White Gate probed the very fabric of possibility in search of power, in search of the essence of reality.”
“Skip the lecturing,” snarled Tiron. “Our men are dying even as we speak.”
“My point,” Erenthil said, drifting down a few feet, “is that you are limited. By your beliefs. Your religion. Your world view. You have not sought to combine all the resources at hand to mount your greatest offense.”
Iskra pushed back her shoulders. “What are you talking about? Medusa has fought alongside kragh, Virtue alongside Agerastian Vothak. We have thrown everything we had at the demons.”
“Yes,” said Kethe. “Even Sin Casters. Sin Casters you had imprisoned and tortured so as to extract your black formulas.”
“Is this him?” One of the Sin Casters stepped forward, an emaciated wretch of a man covered in scars. “Is this the one responsible for our torment?”
Erenthil waved his hand as if batting away a fly. “You assembled the pieces but did not construct your eidolon. You, knight, are correct in that we need the circlet. With it, I can compel the demons to return through the Black Gate and cleanse the world of their presence.”
“You?” scoffed Mixis. “Why would we trust you with the circlet? You’re the heart of Fujiwara corruption. The greatest enemy of the Empire.”
“I was there when the ur-destraas was bound in the depths of Starkadr,” Erenthil said softly. “I have spent my life studying how to control demons, how to twist their powers to my own designs. Am I your friend? No. But in this, I am your ally. My world is as threatened as yours. Only I can promise to use the circlet as it was designed to be used, to capture every demonic essence in my mind and force them to leave this realm. Who here can boast an equal amount of experience or knowledge?”
Nobody spoke.
To Audsley, it all made sense. But that didn’t mean he trusted the Artificer.
Iskra stepped forward, fearless. “So, you would open the Black Gate.”
“Of course,” Erenthil said with mock surprise. “How else are we to get rid of the demons?”
“No,” the Ascendant said faintly. “I will not go down in history as the Ascendant who saw the loss of the White Gate and the opening of the Black.”
“Demons cannot enter our world through the Black Gate unless they are summoned,” said Erenthil.
Lie, thought Audsley.
“And who here will summon them?” continued the Artificer. “But more importantly, what matter if the Gate is open or closed if the
demons destroy us all? One way or another, the Black Gate will be opened. I can assure you that the circlet will bend Zephyr’s will toward that end. Further, she is a Fujiwara. She was raised to desire the opening of the Gate. I swear you this: either we open it and cleanse this world, or we die and they open it regardless.”
Again, nobody spoke.
Audsley bit his lower lip as he frantically examined the Artificer’s argument. Where was the duplicity? The weakness?
“This is all theoretical,” Tiron said with a chop of his hand. “The circlet is on Zephyr’s head, inside the damn ur-destraas. How do we get our hands on it?”
“You are each a pure metal,” said the Artificer. “You must become alloys.”
“Riddles,” sneered Mixis.
“No,” said Kyrra. She slithered forward, gazing up at the floating Fujiwara. “His counsel mirrors my own.”
“Allow you to bestow your Kiss upon my Virtues?” asked the Ascendant. “We would win, but in doing so, lose everything.”
“Not merely that,” said the Artificer. “I recognize your Virtues and those with them — your Consecrated? All are attuned to the White Gate, are they not? And over there, my naughty children, my beloved Sin Casters, playing truant from where they belong. As before, so shall it be now: they must unite so as to boost each other’s power, Flame Walker with Adept of the White Gate.”
The uproar was immediate. Virtues, Sin Casters, even the Ascendant cried out in anger. Audsley sank down into a crouch and pushed his fists against his temples. He had to think. Events were moving too quickly. There was no time for clear-sighted deliberations. Survival at all costs: that was what the Artificer was demanding. And yes, it made sense, but where was his angle? What were they all missing?
“There is no time,” said Kethe, her voice breaking through the clamor. “And I know of what I speak. I have bonded with Asho in just this manner. We share a conduit through which I cleanse his casting. But that bond took months to build, and even so, we nearly died several times while we sought to master it. We can’t duplicate that in mere hours.”
