by Lee Dunning
“Madam?” he said.
The incongruity of his deep, cultured voice and his barbaric appearance left her speechless for a moment. Lady Swiftbrook realized she was recoiling from him. Embarrassed, she straightened and tried to take a dignified step back. Breathing through her mouth, she tried to lessen the effects of his odor. She had the sudden suspicion his kilt had been made from something thoroughly unwholesome and improperly cured.
Lady Swiftbrook’s attempts to regain her composure faltered as the tableau of demonic corpses around her caught her attention. With a start, her circumstances came back to her and she cried out, reaching for a sword she’d lost at some point in the battle.
“Madam,” he said again, and moved up, ignoring her disgust. He took her by the elbow. “We are the only survivors in this part of the city. We must move on.”
Her shoulders slumped at the news. Her keen gaze traveled down the roadway, into the distance, taking in the destroyed skeletal dragon and just beyond it the razed library. She moaned when she recognized the black and red plate of the commander who had died fighting at the side of her soldiers. I should have been with them. Why am I still alive?
She turned back to the strange Shadow Elf. Despite his calm manner, an inferno of rage burned in his eyes. In his hand he held a sprung psychic containment collar. He noticed her gaze and lifted it for her to see. “You lost two council members, and hundreds of others, because the male could not access to his powers.”
She turned her head in shame. “I hate those things,” she said.
“It pleases me to hear that, Lady …”
“Swiftbrook. But you know that already.” He inclined his head in acknowledgement, and an involuntary shudder rippled through her. She could still feel his intrusion into her head. She appreciated that he’d saved her, but understood now why others feared psions. He knew things about her. Things she shared with no one other than her lover. Some things, even he didn’t know. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir,” she said, pleased her voice didn’t quaver.
“Of course—how very rude of me. You may call me … Wrath,” he said, the faintest of smirks settling onto his features.
“W’rath?” she mused, putting an Elven accent to the word. “It suits you.”
“And now, madam, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course,” she said, and started to trudge to the east on shaky legs. She stopped when she realized her new companion had fallen behind. She peered over her shoulder to see him cocking his head, surprise plain on his face.
“What?”
“Quickly!” he hissed, rushing to her, his great mass of hair slithering along behind him. “I sense another Shadow Elf. A female. Her powers are immense!”
“That’s impossible,” Lady Swiftbrook protested. “Everyone knows females have minimal psychic ability.”
Umbral, now W’rath, took her arm and grinned a feral grin. “Then prepare to meet the impossible, madam,” he said and teleported them away.
One moment they crept through the murk and fog, their footfalls echoing as if they moved through a vast, subterranean cavern, the next, dozens of grinning, leering creatures materialized out of the surrounding black.
Raven and Linden lurched back in shock, the knowledge that they had nearly reached their goal making this all the more bitter. “Where is everyone?” Linden whispered. “Surely, the others will come to our aid.”
Unless everyone else had already fled or perished. Raven hated to think that way, but they had not seen another soul for the last several minutes. And something about this new mob of fiends struck Raven as different. Her eyes grew wide. Unlike everything else they’d faced thus far, these weren’t demons from the Abyss, but devils from the Nine Hells. “Gods,” she moaned, despair returning in a flood. “These are beyond us. Your sword, my wand … they’ll do nothing to these.”
Linden didn’t respond. Raven suspected he didn’t know a demon from a devil, but surely he could sense these creatures were vastly more powerful than anything they’d encountered previously. “Why don’t they attack?” she whispered.
“If I had to guess, I’d say they’re enjoying our fear.”
One of the devils gave off a hyena laugh. He stroked himself obscenely, giving them a preview of the fate awaiting them. “It can’t end this way,” she whispered. “The councilor said we have a future.”
“No, she didn’t,” Linden corrected, his voice tinged with sadness. “She said you have a future. For me she had only tears.”
“Don’t say that!” Raven shook her head, refusing to accept his words.
Linden squeezed her close to his side. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to know each other longer,” he said.
“Please … don’t.”
Linden ignored her plea. “When you get to First Home, tell my mother I didn’t shame her.”
Raven tried to cling to him, but she couldn’t match even a fraction of Linden’s strength. He gently pushed her aside and swung around to face his foes. He bellowed a challenge at the wall of fiends and charged them. Raven cried out in horror and emptied the last of her wand’s charges into the foremost devils. As she’d feared, the blasts had almost no affect. And then Linden rushed in among them, his sword, his strength, and the power of the molten earth of his ancestry, taking his foes by surprise.
Raven gasped as one went down, its head severed. The others, shocked, fell back as two more fell to Linden’s savage assault. They continued to retreat and Raven felt her heart surge with hope. He could defeat them. They could both escape this nightmare!
Then the opening the devils made, as they fled Linden’s sword, suddenly filled with a massive being. Toying with its prey, it reveled in the knowledge the elves’ despair was that much greater, having allowed them to believe they could prevail. That some of its minions had been sacrificed for the sake of the ruse mattered not.
Watching, keeping itself invisible, the monstrosity dropped its spells at just the right time so it might crush every last vestige of hope. It flicked a finger as long as Linden was tall, sending him sprawling. Instantly, a dozen giggling, slavering, oozing horrors swarmed him. His soul’s scream reverberated through Raven’s psyche as the devils tore the life from him, and her heart burst with anguish. Her mind erupted with fire. She howled in fury at the slayers of her friend.
Then the world exploded into shards of light and death.
W’rath and Lady Swiftbrook teleported to the top of a cornice overlooking a terrible scene. He spied the psion he’d sensed, a tiny, stick-limbed Shadow Elf girl. With no armor or weapons, she stood helpless as creatures, more vile than even W’rath was accustomed to, prepared to savage and destroy her.
Next to him, the Sky Elf gasped as the broken body of a First Born male tumbled to a stop at the girl’s feet. Even at such a distance they could hear the heart wrenching howl of anguish and fury that erupted from the girl’s throat. “Oh, ancestors,” Lady Swiftbrook whispered, “she’s just a baby. Can you teleport her out of there?”
W’rath barely heard, so consumed by the brilliant psychic power washing over him. The girl was a prodigy. Completely untrained and currently consumed by her emotions, but still more powerful than any other Shadow Elf he had ever seen.
The devils felt it too. Having dispatched her protector, they should have leapt upon her in savage glee, but instead they shifted uncomfortably. Not even their terrible leader dared close on the child.
The girl crouched down and tugged at the sword still clutched in the First Born’s lifeless grasp. Her tiny hands fumbled with the hilt, inept and unfamiliar with such a massive weapon. She slowly straightened, staggering in her struggle to lift the blade. The tip rasped against the stone of the roadway.
Lady Swiftbrook grabbed W’rath’s and arm shook him. “She can’t fight them. Help her!”
“Not just yet,” was his only reply.
Lady Swiftbrook spun away, sickened, and tried to call upon her own powers. She’d burn the monsters down with a barrage of lightni
ng. Her fingers danced, making the passes she needed to call upon the elements. Sparks of electricity danced around her, but they were weak, a shadow of her normal power. She cast an anguished gaze toward the false canopy of leaves enclosing the city. How foolish, how arrogant of them. Their beautiful marble city, it’s walls thick with magic, blocked them from the natural world. She might as well spit on the demons for all the good she could do with her elemental magic.
The child, weighed down by a sword she could not use, raised her head, and a howl, not of fear nor even of sorrow, filled the air. Pure rage erupted from her throat. Where her eyes should have been twin suns blazed. The spell forgotten, the crackle of power dissipated from Lady Swiftbrook’s hands, leaving only the smell of ozone. “By the First.”
A concussive force rolled outward from the girl, and the front ranks of devils disintegrated into mist, coating those behind in a film of blood. Some panicked and started to fight their way through their fellows. Others took to the sky and fled, not paying the least bit attention to the two elves perched on the cornice.
For his part, W’rath was entirely swept up in the glorious super nova of the girl’s power. His soul vibrated with the terrible force of her vengeance. Her purity burned him and yet drew him closer.
Lady Swiftbrook gaped. The girl’s psychic blast swept through rank upon rank of devils, destroying them utterly. She heard W’rath moan and cast a concerned glance his way only to quickly avert her eyes. Eyes closed, a look of pure ecstasy suffused his face, an expression far too intimate for her to gaze upon.
Below, only the monstrous devil survived. Presumably the leader, the fear twisting its face was almost comical. Seemingly unable to flee, it quaked as the tiny Shadow Elf slowly strode toward it. The only sign she remained aware of the world around her was the careful way she stepped around the fallen First Born. Still dragged along, the sword’s razor edge etched the ground.
W’rath pulled himself out of the girl’s mind, gasping. She was losing herself, burning up from the inside out. “She’s losing control, and I can’t bring her out of it,” he said. “She keeps calling upon more and more of her mind.”
Lady Swiftbrook shot him a glance. “Can you do anything? Maybe take that thing out?”
“That thing is a duke of the Third Hell. And yes, I can kill it, but that won’t keep her from self destructing. She has a better chance of surviving if she channels the power building in her out and into him. She’s had absolutely no training, though. Indeed, until now, I doubt anyone knew she had so much potential. It’s lain dormant in her until an emotional break stirred her brain.”
“What do you mean? You can’t help her? You won’t help her?”
“What I’m saying, madam, is she needs to work it out for herself. At this moment she’s more powerful than any elf I’ve ever met, and much too out of control for me to guide her.”
Raven stalked the bloated fiend. Her mind burned with ice and fire. For a brief time, another had shared her mind, but he’d left when she’d ignored his attempts to reign in her power. She was killing herself, she realized that, but right now the power burning her from within seemed the only way to purge the guilt she felt.
Too small. Too weak. Not even capable of defending herself. A young elf, who barely knew her, had given his life to save her and she couldn’t even help—until it was too late. Where had this power been before he’d landed dead at her feet? To the Hells with visions and dreams. She would go up in a ball of psychic power and take this squirming, loathsome creature with her.
She drew closer, keeping the thing bound to the spot. She didn’t allow it to speak. It could cast no spells. It quivered, helpless for probably the first time in thousands of years. It’s terror tasted like hopelessness.
She stopped short. A hand had appeared, pressing the flesh out from the devil’s abdomen. Then a tortured face joined it, the devil’s skin distending. More joined in and soon Raven saw a mass of frightened, pained people silently screaming at the horror of finding themselves trapped within the flesh of a nightmare.
A trick. It had to be. Raven tentatively reached out with her mind and recoiled as the anguish of fifty or more beings nearly dropped her to her knees. Swallowed whole, they now found themselves slowly merging with the devil’s body. It could take decades before the monster completely absorbed them, and they’d stay fully aware the entire time.
Gods! If she detonated herself she’d destroy them along with the monster. The devil leered, sensing her faltering conviction. Raven screamed in frustration. She was too far gone. She didn’t know how to stop herself now. She needed a new direction for her power. She regretted rebuffing the entity who had tried to help her.
The devil’s mass rippled, shaking with silent laughter. It understood her quandary. She glared at it. This never would have happened if she were a hero instead of a victim. She suddenly hated the skinny arms, and the slim hands clutching Linden’s sword. She snarled at the fiend’s grinning face and locked her eyes with his. His smile faltered as he saw the sneer of triumph slide onto Raven’s face.
She restarted her deliberate pace toward the devil. All the power that had been radiating out from her began to swirl and coalesce around her, drawing in at an increasing rate. The hiss of tearing silk whispered through the hall. Three slim books fell to the ground. The scrape of blade across stone stopped.
“What is she doing?” Lady Swiftbrook said.
W’rath blinked, stunned. The girl had seemed determined to work herself into an explosive end. All that remained was to see how large of a crater she’d leave in the city. But now she’d started to draw her power back in, forcing it into her body, into her limbs. His eyes grew wide. Remarkable! What an extraordinary child!
Lady Swiftbrook’s mouth fell open. “That’s not possible,” she breathed.
“Indeed. And yet, here we stand witnessing it. Still, we have one problem,” W’rath said.
“What?”
“She’s drawing all of her power inward. Any second now her playmate will realize she can no longer restrain him.”
As if he’d overheard W’rath’s words, the devil’s face lit up in evil glee. It knew. Its tail whipped around in a deadly sweep toward the girl and the swirling power enveloping her. The tail never made contact.
The devil screamed in fury, twisting about in search of its new tormenter. Lady Swiftbrook shuddered as its fell gaze found them on their perch. It bellowed something and the force of its voice staggered the Sky Elf. Beside her, W’rath waved at the devil. “Sorry about that, old boy,” he called.
With a roar of frustration, the devil swung back to face his doom. The sphere of light had completely enveloped the girl, and began to streak upwards toward the devil, becoming little more than a blur. It raced past him, shooting skyward, coming to a halt where it hung in space just above the devil’s head.
The sphere of power collapsed utterly and the world wrenched, pulled toward the black void left in its place. Light and matter alike distorted, only to violently release, snapping back into place as a silent detonation of light erupted back from the void, blinding all. The forlorn wail of a vanquished fiend pierced the air and was gone.
Raven had transformed into a being of pain and light, blind to all but the power she drew into herself. Every vessel in her body altered, metamorphosing to her will. Her control over the devil vanished and her power continued to turn inward. She paid no heed, as she knew with certainty the being who had briefly shared her consciousness would take over that task with ease.
Raven propelled herself forward, the final, furious remnants of her power sending her skyward. She flew, shooting above the devil’s twisted face. Reaching her apex, she screamed as everything she had been, and everything she would become, were pulled into a singularity where they compressed into one being. Motes of crimson light announced her rebirth.
Below her, she saw the upturned face of her victim. Yes, her victim. She’d no longer suffer at the hands of the evil and the cruel. The new be
ing smiled. Gripping the sword, she felt the responsiveness of her new muscles, and plummeted like an avenging angel.
Something delicate fluttered against Lady Swiftbrook’s arm. She cracked open her eyes, hoping to find she’d awoken from a terrible dream, and in reality lay safely in her bed. A storm of scarlet wings swirled about her, and throughout the vastness of the city. One of the creatures landed on her hand. A butterfly. She stared at it, confused, disoriented.
With a start it all came back to her, the searing light, the Shadow Elf girl, naked and greatly transformed, falling from the sky, sword raised above her head. The devil had wailed as the blade struck its forehead. The blade had continued on down the length of its body. So much blood. Hundreds of feet of entrails. And people. Ancestors! So many people.
“Are you back with us, madam?”
Lady Swiftbrook blinked up at W’rath and realized she’d collapsed. Had she fainted? “There’s butterflies,” she said, only vaguely aware of how addled she must sound.
“Heralds.”
“Heralds?”
W’rath offered her a hand and helped her rise. He made a sweeping gesture, taking in the field of carnage sprawled out below them. In the midst of it stood a lonely figure, white hair falling to her bare calves. Around her, dozens of gore-covered elves staggered, some fallen in supplication before her. The crimson butterflies spun in a frenzy, alighting in her hair and dancing along her skin. “They’re heralding a new heroine.”
“Her power?”
“Gone. She burned herself out remaking herself.”
Lady Swiftbrook clapped a hand over her mouth, but the tears came anyway. “Don’t mourn her, lady,” W’rath said. “She only did what she needed to do. She saved not just the devil’s victims, but herself as well. Her power was like a dragon’s breath upon a candle. She would have destroyed herself if she had not done what she did. In the end, she chose to live, and for that you should be grateful.”
