Stret turned back to Tal’raen, raising his staff to cut off the spell the man was casting, knowing all the while that it was too late, that the chaos in the mountains was far too strong now. He could not stop it, and it would not be stopped.
A massive crashing sound heralded the end of the world, as the mountains exploded outwards. He saw the first massive stones and bursting balls of lava land among the Swarm, felt the lava begin to flow out from the slopes.
Stret’sar, Drake Lord and Master of the Swarm, bowed his head at least in defeat and despair. For all his power, for all his will, he had failed, and all that he had dreamed would fail with him.
He heard an immense whistling sound as something approached him. There was a sudden flash of immense heat… then nothing.
Tal felt the lava splash out from the two immense volcanoes his magic had just forged. It surged down the slopes, consuming the Swarm. They would meet about where he knelt. He looked down at Brea’s still body, and accepted that he was going to die.
The heat grew around them as the lava surged down the valley. He could feel that the Battlemagi were shielding the host, as they would. As they must. They would live. They had reason to. He didn’t.
He reached out his hand and caressed Brea’s face. “You shouldn’t have come, my love,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t have had to die.”
His acceptance faded. “You can’t die,” he shouted. “You can’t!” He reached down into the deeps of his power, where the link to Brea had been. He reached into the well of his being, and touched something that had never been there before.
Touched it, drew it up, and unleashed it. His magic surged into Brea, merging with what remained of hers. His will found the scattering remnants of her spirit and gathered them together once more. His power found her lungs, her heart, and started them again. The magic surged across the wounds on her skin, clearing them away. It surged through the damage done to her organs and fixed it. The blood vanished as he unleashed his power, not to destroy, but to heal. As he strove with all his power and all his will to do that which was impossible for him, a Death Mage, to do.
His heart surged as she suddenly began to breathe. A choking coughing fit followed her breathing, and he grabbed her as her eyes opened, “Tal,” she said croaked.
“Brea,” he replied.
Then the heat brought him back to where they were, and he drew on what little power remained to him to raise a shield over them. Moments later, the waves of liquid rock crashed over the two lovers, trapping them beneath ten thousand tons of molten stone.
Aftermath
Brea woke to an all-encasing blackness. Not the inky darkness of night, but the utter blackness of no light at all. She reached out, trying to find where she was. Her hands touched unnaturally smooth and cool stone. She ran her fingers along it, finding that it curved down to the dirt on which she lay.
“Where am I?” she asked softly.
In answer, a small light appeared, and glowed to light the entire chamber. The sides of the cave were a glossy black, reflecting the light a hundred times over. It was a perfect hemisphere, extending from the earth. She turned towards the light to see Tal watching her.
“We’re still in Drago Pass,” he replied.
“What?” Brea demanded, looking around the stone chamber surrounding them. “How?”
Tal looked guilty. “I flooded the pass with lava,” he told her. Brea stared at him in horror. “Turned both Morit and Drago into volcanoes. Burned the Swarm to a crisp and killed Stret’sar.”
“Why?” she asked.
“You were dead,” he replied, his voice heavy with remembered sorrow. “I stopped thinking. I simply lashed out.”
“Dead?” Brea said incredulously, then looked down at herself. Scorch marks marked holes torn through her clothing. “How…?”
“I brought you back,” Tal explained, obviously understanding what she was asking without her truly explaining it. “I don’t know how. I simply couldn’t stand to let you go.”
Brea crossed the tiny chamber to him. “And now?” she asked.
“Now we wait for them to dig us out,” Tal replied calmly. “It’s taking most of what strength I have left to keep the air in here clean. I can’t get us out.” He seemed resigned.
“What if they don’t try?” Brea asked. “What if they think we’re dead?”
Tal met her eyes. “You are speaking of Shej’mahi and the Eldest,” he reminded her. “Do you truly believe they would leave us down here?”
Brea considered for a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she admitted.
“Exactly,” he told her. She felt his arm go around her and tighten. “So we wait.”
Brea never knew how long she waited in silence, unwilling to speak in case she broke Tal’s concentration on the spell that kept them alive. In the end, her waiting was broken by the sounds of explosions above their head.
“Tal?” she said quietly.
“I heard,” he replied. “That’s the Battlemagi being extreme. If they’re close enough that we can hear them, they should stop blasting their way down soon.”
Almost as Tal spoke, the explosions stopped. Another form of magic began, subtler. Brea could feel the stone above them being gently shaped and moved aside. She looked over at Tal, to see that he’d slipped back into his trance, maintaining the air.
She sat for perhaps an hour, feeling the magic above them working to break them free, watching Tal. Then she felt the magic slow, and looked up in time to see the stone shift aside, revealing a starlit night sky, and a white-robed Life Mage.
The Mage stood up and shouted: “We’re in! They’re alive.” He then looked down at Brea. “We’ll get you a rope in a few minutes,” he paused, then continued, “your Majesty.”
A chill ran down Brea’s spine at the first use of that title by someone other than the men who’d been there when the crown was placed upon her head. The sudden surge of remembrance brought a question to mind. “Captain Mar’tell and his men – are they okay?” she asked.
The Mage nodded. “Yes, your Majesty,” he confirmed. “They escaped behind our lines while you and the Black Lord fought the Lord of the Swarm.”
A few minutes later, she saw Mar’tell herself, as the Queensman turned up with the rope himself. By that point, Tal had released his trance and was standing next to her. “Majesty?” he asked softly.
Brea looked at him and nodded. “My father died on the field, in battle,” she told him in a small voice.
“I had feared as much,” Tal replied, an unimaginable weariness tingeing his voice.
The rope dropping down interrupted any further conversation, as they slowly climbed their way out of the cave carved by Tal’s shields. Once they were out, they found themselves at the bottom of a deep pit, marked by the limits of each set of explosions that had carved it out. The Life Magi had added steps around the edge of the pit, but it was clear that the access was quite crude.
“If you’ll follow me, it’s still quite a way to the camp,” Mar’tell told them. “We have to go up, to the edge of the lava, and then down again.”
“Lead the way,” Brea said.
At the top of the pit, she paused, surveying the vastly changed landscape by the brightly glowing starlight. The cliffs that had marked the pass were gone, marked by a gentle slope of black rock. Off to the west, the slope of the lava went up sharply, and a dull red glow marked where some of the molten rock continued to flow down the sides of the mountains.
“An impressive disaster you’ve created, my love,” she told Tal.
Tal said nothing for a moment, surveying it. “It’s… there are no words for what it is,” he said quietly. “Not knowing what’s buried under it – not knowing that I created it.”
A moment passed before Mar’tell interrupted. “We should get going,” the Queensman said. “I would like to get down the brand new cliff our black-clad friend has provided us while there’s still light of some sort to see by.”
Br
ea nodded. “Tal?” she said softly, seeing that he had not turned away from the devastation.
He paused for a moment and turned back to her. She smiled gently at him. “Let’s go,” he said. A moment later, hesitantly, as if having to remember how, he returned her smile.
Soon enough they came to the edge of the lava flow, where the Battlemagi’s massed shields had managed to hold back the molten rock. A sheer cliff, almost a hundred meters high, marked where the Battlemagi had stood. From the top of the cliff, the winking lights of a camp glowed in the starlit night.
Mar’tell led them to where a stairway had been molded into the side of the cliff by the Life Magi. “Watch your step,” he told Brea and Tal. “It’s quite steep.”
Brea nodded her thanks to the captain, and followed him down. Handholds had been molded into the side of the cliff, to help those making their way up and down the stairs. “A lot of effort to retrieve two people,” she said softly.
Mar’tell looked back at her. “When those two people are our Queen and the Black Lord,” he replied, “there is little that can be considered too much.” He shrugged. “Also, the Battle Lord suggested that we keep a watch on the top of the escarpment.”
“The Swarm is gone,” Tal said softly from behind Brea. “They were all here. Anything else would have been sent against the other passes, and nothing was.”
The Queensman nodded. “So Shej’mahi said,” he admitted. “However, it does not hurt to be careful.”
“No,” Brea agreed. “Not at all.”
They reached the bottom of the cliff as quickly as could be expected. Waiting at the bottom were Shej’mahi, the Eldest, and Earl Kes’tar, Earl of Telnar. Brea stiffened slightly at the last man. The Earl had not been at the battle, but had been riding to reinforce with his Earldom guard. He’d been at least a day away.
The Earl sank to one knee as Brea stepped off the last step. “High Queen,” he said softly. “I place my sword and my realm at your command and in your power, until the end of my days.”
Brea stepped forward, taking his hands in hers, as she knew she must. “Earl Kes’tar,” she replied formally, “I take your sword and realm and return them to you, entrusting them to your care and custody.”
She released his hands, the ceremony complete. She turned to the Eldest and Shej. “My lady, my lord,” she greeted them. “It is good to see you again.”
The Eldest stepped forward and swept Brea into an embrace, holding her tightly. “Thank the Gods you are alright, child,” she said firmly. “I felt a silence and feared the worst.”
Shej looked at her. “It’s true, isn’t it?” the Battle Lord asked. “You died?”
Brea nodded. The Eldest pulled away, looking up and down her for a moment. “Then how?” she asked.
“Tal,” Brea said, stepping back to take Tal’s hand. “He brought me back. I don’t know how.”
She felt Tal shrug. “I am still not certain,” he said quietly. “All I know is that, somehow, the Gods’ grace allowed me to bring her back. Beyond that, I do not know. Nor do I care, beyond that she is with us again.” Brea tightened her hand on Tal’s as he spoke.
The Eldest faced Tal for a moment, saying nothing. Then the old woman pulled him into a fierce embrace. “You young fools,” she told them both. “Thank the Gods you are alive.”
“It’s over now, isn’t it?” Kes’tar suddenly asked. “The Swarm can’t come through that,” he gestured at the new escarpment, “can they?”
“No,” Tal said from Brea’s side. “Most, if not all, of the Swarm was destroyed as well. Telnar will no longer bear the brunt of the Long War, Earl Kes’tar.”
“My Queen?” the Earl asked, looking to Brea for confirmation, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“It is true,” Brea told him. “The Long War is finally over.”
The Earl nodded. “Then it is done, and we may withdraw our armies,” he said softly. “Come to Telnar, my Queen, my lord. The fall roses are out and the city is beautiful. A perfect time and place for a wedding.”
Brea looked at Tal. Their year and day had not passed, but somehow that no longer mattered, to them, or anyone. His eyes met hers, and he nodded, smiling. She returned his smile, then turned back to Kes’tar. “It sounds perfect. Let’s leave this battlefield behind.”
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