The Vitalis Chronicles: Steps of Krakador

by Swanson, Jay

  As Ardin got up, another blast of black flame struck him head-on, knocking him onto his back in time to see a portion of the ceiling of the cavern above him collapse. He thrust his hand to the side, sending a burst of energy that slid him out and away from the boulders as they demolished the section of floor he had been lying on.

  He stood, but only in time to catch a shockwave that would have cut him in half had his defenses not been working to soften the blow. It still knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding once again. A crack opened beneath him. He grabbed the edge of the marble floor as the crack widened to swallow him whole, swinging down into it as he did so. The floor rushed back together, working to crush him and seal him inside it forever, but he kicked up and shot himself out of the gap just as it snapped closed.

  “You truly have missed it, haven't you?” Ardin taunted as he put his hands up to ready his defense. He was tiring, and working hard to breathe. How do I stop you?

  “I have missed nothing!” The Relequim laughed as he brought down an even larger section of the ceiling in massive chunks. Ardin dodged to the left, breaking the boulders apart as he sought safety. “I am God, Ardin, and all events have unfolded perfectly to this point. Veria falls in this moment and of Grandia there is no one left to oppose me. Everyone has played their part. Everyone has fallen into the trap laid for them. With your death comes the end of the only power that remains to stand in my way, and when you die, I will take this world by storm!”

  Ardin dodged another series of rifts that opened around him. He blocked an incoming set of invisible blows that sought to force him into one. He leaped into the air and brought forth the light, blazing so bright that the cavern lost its red hue as he focused it and sent it burning into the Relequim below.

  The Relequim raised his palm, a black vortex opening in front of him. “You cannot win this fight, boy. No matter what tricks you think you have learned.”

  The swirling black shattered his light as if it were glass, sending shards of sparkling energy bounding across the cavern. “Now burn.”

  The vortex compressed in the gray clutches of the Relequim. A rune flashed from within, deep and red, as the Relequim laughed. He thrust his arms out, and instantly a black fire was enveloping Ardin. He put up his defenses as quickly as he could, the shock of his broken power leaving him unprepared. He poured himself into those defenses, but he could feel the black fire caving them in.

  “I will not be undone,” the Relequim roared over the torrent of flame. “Now I rend you from your love!”

  A red flame grew at the center of the tumultuous black, reaching out slowly but impacting his shields like a ram. He felt them shudder, and as his armor began to smoke, all he could think of was Alisia. I can't be separated from you... He grit his teeth. No...

  But the fire was crushing his defenses, and soon he could feel it scorching his flesh.

  “Alisia!” He screamed as the fire shattered his defenses and enveloped him in demonic heat.

  The Relequim squeezed his fingers together, condensing the stream of energy, laughing deeply as Ardin was burned and slowly incinerated. “I will not be stopped.”

  The Relequim let the fire die as he felt Ardin disappear, and lowered his arms. He drew his breath slowly, calming his heart rate as he felt a wicked smile grow on his lips. I will not be stopped.

  He looked at the cavern around him, feeding on the darkness, finding comfort in the stillness of his solitude. Soon that solitude would be pervasive. Soon the world would be devoid of any life save his own. And then Ardin jumped back in.

  Instantly there was a blinding flash as Ardin shot a brilliant stream of light into his enemy. The Relequim was caught completely off guard, having mistaken Ardin's last-second jump for annihilation. His black fire struggled to keep the light at bay.

  Ardin had not made the jump consciously. It had been a reflex of the Shadow, survival driving his body to do what his mind could not. And in the Atmosphere, as he had floated without form and his body had repaired itself with its anchors in the metaphysical, the clarity of moments before returned. Everything clicked. He realized that he was now anchored to the spiritual realm in much the same way as the metaphysical. The world and all its underpinnings were laid bare before him, and all of them were his to command.

  “You have missed the greatest aspect of your own weapon: its capacity as a conduit for power, and a bridge to it,” Ardin shouted in a voice greater than his own as he slowly descended upon the Relequim. “It will cost you dearly.”

  Ardin's eyes shone brilliant white as light spilled from his mouth with every word. It all made sense to him, and as he saw the ordering of the world, it came readily under his control with the slightest command.

  “My eyes are opened, Relequim.” He pressed even harder into the Relequim's fire until the battle was almost between the Demon's hands. “The hierarchy of this world is laid bare, and from your stone comes a raw source of its greatest power. A power you worked to claim, but in doing so, corrupted your ability to see, and to master.”

  The Relequim screamed, pouring a desperate effort into Ardin's light and breaking its hold long enough to leap backwards. Ardin landed softly on the ground and continued to walk forward, glowing a brilliant white as if he had inhaled a star.

  “You have unlocked the mysteries of the universe, and in your avarice you never even realized it.”

  “I will not be mocked, boy!” The Relequim's voice vibrated the very stone on which they stood as he made quick motions with his fingers and then froze them in the form of a cage. “I am the greatest power in the universe, and I cannot be outdone! No mystery withholds itself from me!”

  A rune glowed red within his hands so intensely it looked as though they might burst into flames. The Relequim laughed as his arms began to shake, his eyes blazing red as intensely as Ardin's blazed white. “Two can play at this game!”

  He thrust his arms out as the rune erupted into a column of blazing red energy, like smoke and fire and lightning all in one. Ardin raised his hands as the strike made contact, calling on the warmth to bolster the invisible shield around him and deflected as much of the blow as he could around him. He grit his teeth and forced himself into it, but his shield was wavering.

  “Now you see the folly of your choice and the weakness of your 'revelation.'” The Relequim laughed as his power grew, the red lights of Krakador wavering as he pulled everything he had into this single deathblow. “And now you die.”

  Ardin's shield was failing him. It fluttered briefly, giving him the sensation of rapid pressure changes in the air, and then it was gone. His arms shot straight to the sides as the raw pulsing energy poured into him, wrapping him in its heat and intensity and working to tear at his very soul. He pulled on the stone in that moment. He let the fire come.

  Ardin Vitalis laughed as he stood straight and let the rest of his shields down. The energy coursed through him, but didn't touch him any more than a swirling wind. He was truly in command.

  “No.” Ardin lowered his stare to meet the Relequim's dead on. “Now you die.”

  He pulled his arms in, the world moving as if drawn closer to him in the process, and then he released the Relequim's own strike back at him. The Demon was thrown back by the blow, unable to defend against his own attack so suddenly after forming it. Ardin raced forward then, following it up with a brilliant white slash of his own and sending the Demon crashing into Krakador.

  “And once you're gone, your stone shall follow, and your legacy will be undone.”

  “NO!” The Relequim howled from the rubble of the broken walls.

  He rose to his feet and slammed his hands into the ground, sending cracks out in every direction. The cavern rumbled as he concentrated, a broad hole opening in the ceiling and one caving in the floor below it. As Ardin leaped into the room, the Relequim threw his arms to the side. A loud crash was heard as the stone shattered and was hurled from the foundations of Krakador into the sky.

  “You may feel the
whole, but you will be unable to locate nine pieces. They shall rejoin themselves, and when they do, the first like me shall come.” The Relequim laughed maniacally as he stood to face Ardin, the entire structure of the fortress beginning to crumble around them. “I am tied to the stone, Swift god; so long as it exists, I persist. But you are tied to nothing, so die with me here and now and save me the trouble of killing you when I return!”

  The Relequim shot one hand to the floor and one to the ceiling. Suddenly Ardin found his feet cemented in place by liquid marble that was already hardening. The high ramparts of Krakador were crumbling and falling by the time he looked up.

  He called the light forward again, blasting the incoming debris before it could reach him, then broke the stone's hold on him with a thought. The Relequim was already striking out as the stone fell around them, and Ardin deflected the black flames as he concentrated everything he could on a final strike.

  He sent the light out instantaneously, feeling its heat surround him and scorch the very stones of the fortress as it poured through the Demon's defenses and began to tear into his body. The Relequim screamed as the light flooded every corner of him and burst out through the seams. Ardin pushed his attack to greater strength than he had ever known. The floated up among the falling stones, wailing and burning and smoldering away until there was nothing left save ashes and light.

  Ardin let up on his attack as soon as he felt the Relequim pass, then came to his senses as a massive arch crashed down before him. This whole place is coming down.

  The sheer darkness of the cavern shocked him as he rushed outside, the lights of the Relequim flickering and dying as the enchantments feeding them rapidly deteriorated. Unlike the Magi, the Relequim's magic was not made to last. Ardin was about to launch himself through the tunnel that the Relequim had created to the surface when he stopped and turned in horror.

  “Rain!” He realized his folly all too late as the ceiling of the cavern began to cave in, and the soaring ramparts of Krakador finally collapsed.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE ROWLANDS FLEET SENT ONE OF THEIR SMALLER GUNSHIPS UP THROUGH THE WRECKAGE THAT HAD BEEN THE RELEQUIM'S NAVY ONLY HOURS BEFORE. Most of the smoking wreckage had sunk, but it still posed a submerged threat as the inbound ship carefully picked its way into the harbor. The last of the monsters on the slope below Quinn Phelts were being hunted down and killed by the exulting remnants of the Elandrian army. They had survived, just barely, and staved off the greatest invasion of their lifetime.

  Now Phelts was waiting for them to find a chair and carry him down to the shore. A medic was finishing up with his cuts, dragging his needle and thread through them like a sewing project gone bad as he made disapproving noises with every stitch.

  “Would you stop making a fuss, already?” Phelts was short in his tone, but relieved that they had won. Not only had they won, but he had survived to see it.

  “You've broken four bones, been lacerated on almost every part of your back and arms, and re-opened a deep wound I already stitched up once today!”

  “Oh.” Phelts squinted an apologetic look. “That was you?”

  “You could have bled out!”

  “Sorry.” He settled himself back to let the medic finish his work. “At least I'm still alive.”

  “Barely,” the medic grumbled as he tied off his suture. “Will you please come with me back to the city now?”

  “Not yet,” he said as the colonel in command walked up behind them. He rubbed at the Mayor's brooch on his chest absentmindedly, blood still caked into the etched details. “The colonel and I have one last item to attend to.”

  They brought one of the trucks down and placed him tenderly in the front as Phelts winced involuntarily at nearly every touch. He would be paying for today for a long time, but if everything went well in the next hour it would be well worth it.

  They set up a chair with a few wooden blocks under the front legs so he could sit on the slope by the beach, and then he waited with what few officers remained from the battle. The Rowlands ship wasn't built to come ashore itself, but soon a small skiff was buzzing towards them through the thousands of black corpses that floated in the water around them.

  The boat slowed as it approached, then two seamen jumped into the shallows with ropes to pull it the rest of the way and secure it to stones just out of the water. A tall man in the brown uniform of the Rowlands military stepped over the side and walked up out of the water. He carried himself in a disconnected manner like a true officer in his approach as he surveyed the carnage on the slope. He was joined by what appeared to be a colonel from Silverdale's army, and the massive square figure of an old man in a blue rain coat.

  “I'd stand,” Phelts said as the men came near, gesturing at his broken and lacerated legs, “but I won't be doing that at all for some time.”

  “Where's Merodach?” The Rowlands officer didn't smile, but came to a halt a few yards away and crossed his arms. “Where is this famed Mayor of Elandir? You're clearly not him; you're not fat enough, even if the stories about him are exaggerated.”

  “He died.” Phelts said carefully as he studied the soldier. “I'm the Mayor now.”

  “And how exactly did he go about dyin'?” the man in the rain coat asked as he rubbed his short and salted beard.

  “He was killed at the beginning of the battle.” Phelts sighed. “Look, can I surrender to you or not? Because if I have to do so to someone else, I'd just as soon meet him.”

  That took the soldiers back a step, but the man in the raincoat just laughed. “Smart bugger, this one. Too bad I couldn'a get word to ya about this invasion as well. I just barely got these lads here in time.”

  “You want to surrender?” The colonel from Silverdale looked genuinely shocked. “Just like that?”

  “Or sue for peace in whatever way you see fit.” Phelts waved the officers behind him forward. Each offered their sidearms to the men before them. “The point is, Merodach's war is over. It was only ever his war, and now that we've survived the Relequim's, we want peace.”

  The officer from Rowlands looked at the pistol in his hands in disbelief. It took him a moment before he looked back up at Phelts. “On any conditions we put forth?”

  “Well,” Phelts smiled at that. “Within reason.”

  RENDIN RENAULT WAS SO GLAD TO SEE THE DRAGON'S TEETH RISE IN THE DISTANCE THAT HE ALMOST KICKED HIS HORSE INTO A GALLOP THE MOMENT THEY CAME INTO VIEW. His thankfulness for the ability to even ride was made stronger by the large number of wounded they had worked hard to bring with them. So many had died in the mountains fighting, and so many more had never made it out of the burning wastes below them.

  His gladdened heart was quickly saddened by the realization that he had done nothing to secure his people's fate. While his faith had been rewarded with the appearance of the Brethren, they had never returned from their battle with the Relequim. In fact he was almost certain they had been defeated, which only left the possibility that his greatest fear had been realized. The Relequim was left undefeated, his weapon near completion, and there was no one left to stand in his way.

  Exploring the mountains brought few answers. They found what they believed to be where Krakador had stood, but nothing remained save a giant sinkhole that had claimed the nearest slopes of the surrounding mountains. With no enemy left to fight and no reason to keep his army afield, Rendin had reluctantly returned.

  And now Rain was gone as well. She had never returned to them; none of the scouts had ever made it back alive. Rendin had wept over her nearly every night since they had left the Desert Mountains, hiding his tears in his cloak as he slept on the ground. He was grateful that they had survived, even more so that they had routed the Relequim's army before beginning their own retreat. But his sister was gone, and soon his Kingdom could come under attack from forces he knew nothing about.

  As they neared the crossroads at the foot of the mountains, he divided his tribunes up to carry their wounded as necessary. The remaind
er of Sir Bramblethorn and Sir Hembrody's men had already parted from them as they traveled south, and soon Sir Beldin would continue on with his own men. It made Rendin sad to see the young tribune go, but he would see him again all too soon when his commanders next convened.

  The long days riding home had given him a lot of time to think about what he should do next and how he should approach the impending doom he was certain faced Islenda. There was hope, albeit of the slimmest variety. They had done away with the Relequim's last known army in Grandia. It was his weapon, and the Relequim himself, that plagued Rendin's thoughts. Perhaps the Brethren destroyed him after all... He hardly dared nurse those hopes, but they came nonetheless. It would be like them to simply disappear afterward.

  To see the towers guarding Albentine renewed that sad sense of hope, and as he passed through the valley where his father had won his second to last victory, he wondered what the old King would have done now. How would his father handle such a final defeat following on the heels of such a desperate victory?

  Rendin had resolved to bolster his people's hopes, and laud this victory as a definitive blow against the Demon, but he knew it was only a way of biding their time. The people of Islenda would breathe a collective sigh of relief, mourn their dead, and begin preparations for a war on their own doorstep. He didn't know how long it would be, if even they would be given another generation to prepare, but they would have no other choice. Whether or not it was right for him to allow such hope was no longer his decision to make. He knew that it was what he was bound to do as their king, and he would fight to the death to convert it into an honest fighting chance.

  He smiled as Islenda came into view at the far end of the Spring Vale, her tall white spires glistening in the sunlight like they had for centuries. He would fight to defend this city, this nation, and he would see her relieved of her enemies or die in the process.