“They aren’t enough,” the god said, his words grinding into Velixar’s skull.
“I know,” Velixar retorted through clenched teeth.
The strength he held, while great, was inadequate. He had to dive deeper into the well, find a new source of power. Placing one hand on the ground, he closed his eyes and concentrated, felt the burning heart of Dezrel buried deep beneath the soil, the fragment of Celestia herself. Who needs the Black Spire when you have the power of a god? A cackle escaped his lips as he focused on that energy, on that massive blazing mass, drawing its power up through the bedrock and into him. His eyes bulged from his head, and his skin felt on fire, so quickly did the transfer come. Outstretching both arms toward the approaching lions, he poured it into them.
The lions fell back on their haunches, bellowing. Warriors from both sides scurried away from their writhing forms. Ashhur ceased attempting to break through the shield and spun around.
Velixar looked on in wonder, feeling the inferno of Dezrel’s everlasting heart as he consumed it. That same inferno now raged in the Judges, burning them, altering them, improving them. The lions’ fur began to smoke, smoldering away in a flash of white light. The seams in their flesh split, leaking magma that melted the cobbles beneath them. The flesh itself became like stone, black and scorched like the onyx statues guarding the portcullis behind him. Men screamed. The lions’ teeth and claws became like black diamonds as they writhed.
When it was over, the smoking forms of the Judges rolled over and stood, shaking their heads like dogs shedding water. Kayne took a thunderous step forward, the blood on the cobbles boiling where his paw landed. His mane was a ring of fire. Lilah opened her maw and roared. Both lions then swiveled their heads toward Ashhur, flames raging in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths.
“The impure god,” Kayne said, his voice like a boulder tumbling down a mountainside.
“The bringer of chaos,” added Lilah.
The fiery Judges leapt at Ashhur. The god slashed with his sword, batting the male aside, sending chunks of volcanic rock from the lion’s body where his blade struck. Lilah bounded at the deity from the other side, her jaws closing around Ashhur’s forearm. The lioness’s teeth pierced the god’s vambrace, cracking the unearthly metal. Ashhur screamed and battered the lioness with his opposite fist, sending more chunks of blackened rock flying but doing little damage to her.
Kayne pounced as Ashhur tried to free himself. The lion’s flaming maw wrapped around the god’s neck, its teeth digging in deeply. Ashhur threw his head back and screamed. Magma poured from the god’s wounds, further stoking the Judges’ fire. The deity’s glowing eyes dimmed ever so slightly. The blazing female jerked backward, shattering Ashhur’s vambrace and flinging it aside, smoking. She then bore down and lunged, her maw opened wide.
Ashhur’s fist shot out, plunging deep into the lioness’s flame-filled throat. Lilah’s burning eyes bulged, even as her jaws snapped shut, further crunching and melting the god’s armor. Ashhur’s face scrunched, and he let out a roar as he whipped his upper body around, sending the female Judge careening across the battlefield, crushing and burning those unfortunate enough to be standing in the way. The deity then raised his hand, coated in red-hot rock, and snatched Kayne by his fiery mane. He forced the lion’s head back, the teeth withdrawing from his neck. With a mighty heave, he lifted the gigantic lion up above his head and slammed it back down. The ground cracked on impact.
Velixar’s eyes widened. The energy from the heart of the world continued to flow into him uncontrollably, and he poured all he could into the Judges. The lions were on their feet a moment later, assaulting Ashhur with all they had, but the god was more than their equal. He batted away jaws, slammed his fist into their faces when they snapped at him, driving them backward. He was like a raging comet, his force not to be withstood. Velixar couldn’t understand where he found the strength. He looked about him, where the battle had once raged. It raged no more. Combatants from both sides simply stood there, gawking at the clash of god and ungodly beasts. The Wardens who still lived, as well as half of the human soldiers, were kneeling, looking up at Ashhur with pleading reverence in their eyes. Everyone was coated with blood, making it impossible to tell whose side they’d fought on.
“No!” shouted Velixar, turning just in time to see Kayne leap at Ashhur. The deity ducked out of the way and slashed upward with his sword. Kayne’s momentum carried him directly into the blade, slicing him from nose to rear. The two halves of the flaming lion soared through the air, and when they landed, both halves exploded into chunks of smoking, molten rock.
The lion’s mate let out a rumbling howl of despair and charged as well. Ashhur plunged his fist into the lioness’s snout, driving her maw into the ground. Then he sidestepped and brought his glowing blade down on her neck, splitting through the solid stone and roiling molten rock. The gaps in Lilah’s stony flesh ceased to glow, smoke rising instead. Ashhur grabbed the beast’s severed head by the ear and lifted it. He turned to Velixar, showing the head to him before tossing it aside.
From all around the god came a chorus of gasps, cheers, and prayers.
With the Judges gone, the power that forged them had nowhere to go but back to its originator. It slammed into Velixar, the combined energies churning, boiling over. He fell to his knees as Ashhur stormed toward him. His shadowy, protective sphere dissolved. Smoke billowed from Velixar’s throat when he tried to speak. He tried to form runes with his fingers, but his flesh bulged and rippled. He screamed in pain as the pendant on his chest burned through his ribcage.
“It . . . cannot . . . be,” he gasped.
“Indeed it can.”
Ashhur snatched him up by the front of his cloak, lifting him into the air. Velixar felt no fear of the god; he was too fearful of what was happing inside him to worry about much else. He felt his flesh expand, his blood boil, his bones begin to shatter under the massive weight of all that he’d swallowed.
The deity lugged him off the slate walk while awestruck onlookers gaped. Velixar couldn’t blink, couldn’t move, couldn’t defend himself; it was like he was filled with a raging star that pressed against his limits, ready to explode. He felt impossibly stiff. Almost gently, Ashhur set Velixar’s two feet on the ground and stood before him, glowing sword in hand, shaking his head. Velixar glanced above the deity. He was now facing the Castle of the Lion, its three towers rising above the wall and into the afternoon sky like stone fingers.
“This . . . should never . . . have happened,” he murmured, looking up at Ashhur. “The soul . . . is limitless . . . so said . . . the demon . . . ”
Ashhur shook his head. “The mortal body is not.” He almost sounded compassionate. “Never listen to a demon. They lie.”
The god stepped backward and swung his radiant sword. The blade cut through the man’s shoulder, sliced down through his ribcage, and stopped upon hitting his spine. A rush of white-hot pain surged through him. All of the energy Velixar had absorbed came rushing out of him in a giant shaft of translucent fire. People screamed and fled. Ribbons of heat curled around the entirety of Velixar’s being. The beam of energy slammed into the wall around the castle, instantly disintegrating the bodies that hung there. The wall then detonated, crumbing, the heavy stones toppling one after another. The beam continued on its way, growing ever larger as it punched through the bottom of the three towers. The sound of crunching rock filled the air as the towers wavered, falling against one another, losing form as they collapsed, stone by stone, brick by brick, with a sound like an avalanche. The beam continued on, pulverizing the opposite side of the wall.
And then it was over. Velixar fell, his innards spilling over the cobbles, adding to the gore. The castle and its wall kept crumbling while Ashhur stood over him, a look of triumph on his godly face.
I am sorry, my Lord, Velixar thought, reeling with the pain of a mortal wound. I have failed you once more . . .
CHAPTER
49
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nbsp; Nothing had ever filled Aully with as much dread. Not being thrown in the dungeon, not watching the butchering of Noni and Aaromar, not those long days she sat fearing for her mother’s life, not even being forced to sit there helpless as Kindren had his fingers sliced off, one by one. No, the thing that lunged out of the forest before them, toppling trees as it roared, was terror incarnate.
Aully grasped hold of her mother and Kindren and wailed. Her entire body was quivering. She thought of her old friends, now gone after the massive creature tore through the city in the trees, devouring all it came across. Aully had escaped that fate, but now she and those who fled were trapped between the rampaging demon in front of them and the sheer cliff that plummeted into an ocean inlet behind. The choice between becoming a monster’s snack and plunging to her death was not a choice at all. Not even having with them Ceredon, the Quellan prince who had sacrificed so much to save them back in Dezerea, gave her a glimmer of hope.
“Keep steady!” Ceredon shouted, running along the line of survivors. The horde was huge, over two thousand as far as Aully could guess. Most of them were her fellow Stonewood Dezren, but interspersed among them were a number of the eastern deity’s human soldiers, their armor polished black. Although the humans seemed anxious, as if looking for a fight, the elves stared ahead with wide eyes, gawking at the beast rumbling toward them as their feet shuffled backward, edging closer and closer to the rim of the cliff. Few of them were warriors, and those that were had long before pledged their allegiance to Carskel. Aully spotted her bastard brother among their numbers, standing alongside Ethir Ayers, both of their expressions blank with shock, and for a waning moment hatred bubbled up within her, overtaking her fear. She scowled and shoved away from her mother and Kindren’s embrace, heat growing on her fingertips as she mouthed the words to a spell.
A hand grabbed hers. It was Ceredon. “Save it,” the handsome prince told her. “We will need it.”
The spell dispersed.
Ceredon kissed her on the cheek and dashed away, heading back toward the small cluster of human soldiers. When they spoke this time, it was hurried, hands waving, voices raised and frantic. Finally a woman, the most beautiful human Aully had ever seen, grabbed a man with a forked yellow beard by the collar, growled at him, and shoved him away. She handed Ceredon one of the shortswords that hung from her belt. A funny-looking man with a thick red beard and wearing a bright green, bloodstained robe, laughed. The odd man smacked Ceredon on the shoulder and hurriedly called out to the throng of humans in the common tongue.
The demon lurched into action, barreling across the stony ground like a charging bull. The thing was huge and bulbous, at least forty feet long, with a lashing spiked tail. Its rear legs ended in hooves that tore up the ground with each lumbering stride, sending bits of gravel and dirt into the air. The front legs each ended in five long, wickedly sharp claws. Its head was like that of a reptilian horse, with a triangular, slotted nose above a wide mouth filled with huge teeth that dripped with the blood of her people. A pair of giant tusks curled around from the hinge in its jaw, each coming to a point on either side of that slotted nose, and as it ran, it dipped its head, those tusks gouging into the earth. Its eyes were like a raging red inferno. Its forked serpent’s tongue licked the air. It was a nightmare made flesh.
Every remaining human soldier who had a horse mounted up. The beautiful woman swung up onto her charger, drew her sword, and sounded the charge. Hooves pounded the gravel-strewn ground as the humans fanned out. Those who had no horses ran behind, clustered together. There had to be four hundred of them.
“Do not just sit there!” screamed Ceredon. The prince stormed toward Davishon Hinsbrew, who stood gawking just outside of Carskel and his party, and slapped him across the cheek. Davishon staggered back, eyeing the Quellan with fright. “You have a bow—use it,” Ceredon growled at him before dashing away.
Davishon glanced back at Carskel for a moment before he seemed to gather his wits. The elf ran along the line of terrified elves, picking out those few who held bows, and pleading with them to follow him. He snatched his bow as he ran, nocking it just before he reached the front of the line. Only twenty other elves joined him. Their arrows sailed high into the air before descending toward the charging beast.
“Aully, Kindren—with me!” Ceredon yelled. Aully looked away from the archers and saw her protector dashing through the crowd. She was too numb to argue, so she simply followed his command, grabbing Kindren’s hand and putting one foot in front of the other as if in a dream. Lady Audrianna shouted at them to stay put, but her voice was carried away by the ruckus.
Ceredon reached them, grabbed them both by the hand, and then yanked them through the crowd, where another contingent of humans awaited. Unlike the other humans, these wore simple furs and knitted breeches instead of armor. The oddly dressed man in the pointed hat was among them.
Aully felt herself flying forward as Ceredon shoved her and Kindren in the odd man’s direction. “That’s all you have?” the man asked.
“For now, yes. All that I know of. Now go!”
With that, Ceredon sped off, chasing after the stampeding humans on foot. Aully could do nothing but gape as she watched him run headlong for the towering beast.
“You two, get in line!” the odd redhead shouted. “If you have magic, use it!”
“Turock, they might be elves, but they’re children,” one of the other spellcasters added.
“I know.”
Aully’s head slowly turned, and she saw Turock, the redhead, frowning at her. He shook his head and faced forward, along with the other sixteen men who made up his troupe. “All you have!” he exclaimed. “Do it now!” Their arms raised, words of magic poured form their mouths.
Hands wrapped around Aully’s waist, pulling her away just before she was struck by the jagged stream of lightning that leapt from the hands of the man closest to her. Kindren wheeled her around, staring at her intensely. His cheeks were flushed, and he blinked rapidly as if he’d just awoken from a horrible dream.
“Aully,” he said. “Aully, we can help. I know it’s frightening, but together we can be strong.”
“Together we can be strong,” she repeated. She glanced down at her hands. There was a tingling in her chest, a sensation she hadn’t felt in far too long. “Together, we can be strong.”
“We can.”
They turned about and faced the rampaging beast. Arrows bounced off its thick scales, the spellcasters’ fireballs, bolts of energy, and electric strikes dissipated against its hide, seemingly to no effect. And yet the monster’s progress was slowed as the soldiers on horseback raced past it, lashing at its legs with their swords and axes, gouging it with pikes. The beast reared up, its lashing tail thumping a trio of riders, impaling one and knocking the others off their steeds. With its underbelly exposed, the soldiers on foot hurled spears, if they had them. A couple found gaps between the large scales and dangled there like ornaments. Most of them simply bounced off.
“Damn it all, if you’re going to help, help!” shouted the man in the funny hat.
Aully and Kindren nodded to each other before raising their arms. Aully quickly turned her eyes away from Kindren’s mangled hand, not wanting to see his thumb and small finger sticking out on either side of his fist like lost lovers separated by an ocean of scars. She focused on his voice instead, on the confidence with which he spoke. Suddenly, despite the hopelessness of what they faced, Aully felt at ease. She remembered what she’d lost, what she still had. She remembered traipsing with Kindren through the desert, eating foreign foods and laughing with the locals. She thought of the times they’d met in the crypts beneath Dezerea, of Kindren’s broad smile as he spoke to her of legends and days long passed.
But most of all, she remembered what it was like to love and be loved, to live each day knowing that no matter what might happen, she would remain strong, that the strength she held inside her was not hers alone, but a gift to be shared with everyone she loved
.
Aully chanted, and a raging stream of fire leapt from her hands. It was thicker than those created by the other spellcasters, even the man in green. The stream arced through the air, blazing through the monster’s horns and lashing against its face like a crashing wave. The beast dropped down on all fours and turned its head to the side, seemingly wounded. Aully heard Turock utter, “That was unexpected.”
To her left, Kindren’s winding electrical charge zapped across empty space and struck the creature in the shoulder. The massive thing shrugged it off and took a hurtling step toward the soldiers clustered in the middle of the open ground. The men shrieked and tried to retreat, tripping over one another. The monster threw back its head and opened its hinged mouth. The horns that extended in front of its maw swung out wide like an insect’s mandibles.
“It’s going to eat them!” Aully cried.
Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed Kindren’s hand, in that hurried moment not caring it was his mangled one. She slid her fingers around the stumps of his. She squeezed her eyes shut, quickly mouthing the words of a spell she had never used. She felt Kindren’s inner strength, his connection to the weave, and then her eyes snapped open. Still chanting, she watched the ground in front of the soldiers rise and fold over, the solid bedrock beneath the cliff ’s surface forming a stone shield that curled atop the fumbling men. The beast’s head came down, maw cracking against the earthen shield with a solid crunch. The mandible-like horns snapped shut, wrapping around the shield and skewering two men, but the deed had been done. With the monster dazed, if only for a second, the soldiers were given their opportunity to flee. They scattered across the rocky field in all directions.
“More!” Turock shouted. “No relenting!”
The spellcasters, along with Aully and Kindren, continued their assault. Other Dezren stepped forward, joining with the others, their magics weak. But at least they were trying. The creature dislodged itself from the earthen barricade, shook its head, and was thrown into a rage. It lashed out at the soldiers on horseback that circled it even as its hide was pummeled with magical attacks. Two men died, then four, then another six, their armor shredding as easily as their flesh beneath the monster’s claws. The blood of men filled the air.
Blood Of Gods (Book 3) Page 58
