by V. Lakshman
“Sorry I missed the wedding,” Duncan said, and a small chuckle escaped his weary frame.
Arek took a deep breath, taking stock of his surroundings. The blood gholem still stood, the only motion its nostrils flaring in two vertical slits as if catching the scent of something. Dark shapes flitted in and out of view as Avalyon was overrun by nephilim, perhaps worse. Then tendrils of smoke, whispers of something still alive, snaked up his body.
Duncan scrambled back to his knees, his voice quavering as he said, “Oh no.”
“What?” Arek asked his father.
The ethereal vapors had infiltrated the body, entering through pores and skin. It took hold and the creature’s eyes changed from blue fire to a color Arek knew all too well: the eyes of a wolf, a predator, a Galadine lord thought dead for centuries.
The gholem inspected itself, then rasped, “Not the body I would have chosen, but it will suffice.”
Yetteje had grabbed Arek by one arm, pulling him back a bit. “What is that thing?”
Arek’s eyes widened. Valarius! The man could possess, just like the Aeris. He took a faltering step back, then stumbled to fall near Duncan.
“What do we do?” he whispered.
The gholem who was now Valarius flexed his gargantuan fists, rubbing bone shards against each other, then said, “You die.”
Arek looked at his father and mindspoke, What do we do?
Duncan nodded and to Arek’s surprise said, Silbane showed me; do the same.
A sudden surge of the Way encompassed him, unlocking something that yearned for freedom. It took hold, a transformation of light and strength, as if he had become the Way incarnate. In surprise he looked down, suddenly towering over Yetteje. The princess quickly moved behind the two, pulling the recovering Brianna with her.
Arek saw the armored living plates that were Azrael’s, protecting him from head to foot from the gholem’s bone shards. Was this what Azrael had meant by sharing his light? He was dimly aware of the dark angel that his father’s form took, helm and armor of burnt cinder and smoke for wings, but combat was upon them so his eyes stayed on the hulking creature that was Valarius.
The gholem who’d become Valarius charged, a behemoth made for destruction. Each step made the wooden floor vibrate, promising pain when they met.
A blaze of arrows flew from behind Arek’s leg, fired by Yetteje.
The creature waded in but Duncan and Arek scattered and Yetteje vaulted up, somersaulting over the gholem’s head. As she fell she fired three more arrows in quick succession into the creature’s back.
Valarius let loose a howl of rage and spun but streaks of silver tattooed a small pattern of explosions around his face. The creature was forced to raise its arms defensively.
Arek followed the line back to Brianna, still kneeling, firing her strange weapon at the creature. It made a zip sound at each pull of the trigger, sending some kind of explosive projectile at the gholem. They seemed to be doing little good but the distraction gave Arek the time to charge and strike.
Hitting the creature felt like hitting a wall, the impact jarring him through armor and right to bone. An elbow bone shard smashed his back and he shifted, letting the blow glance off a wing. Then he struck a double punch that sent a gauntleted fist into the creature’s face and midsection simultaneously.
Had the gholem not been armored it was likely Arek’s tactic would have stunned it. Had the creature only had the mindless rage of a gholem, its counter likely would have been something more mundane. But it gestured and lightning coursed from its hands, striking Arek and blasting him backward, his jaw locked in a teeth-clenching rictus.
Duncan dived in, breaking the highlord’s attention and disrupting the lightning storm enveloping Arek. He too met a brutal counter, matching his prowess against a man who had led the Galadine forces on the field of battle and the elven forces in Arcadia.
Armed now with the strength of the gholem, Valarius struck a vicious blow downward, catching Duncan hard on his helm. The helm let out a small cloud of ash and sparks, as if cracking under the might of Valarius’s fists, and Duncan fell in a heap at the gholem’s feet.
Arek shook his head, slowly leveraging himself up, only to see Valarius smashing his bone shard fists into Duncan’s armor again and again. The archmage had collapsed, barely defending himself, and Arek knew it was only a matter of time before one of those fists broke through.
Tej fired her bow but Valarius ignored the arrows as they mostly bounced off his bone plates. Brianna had collapsed again, and Arek wasn’t sure if she was unconscious or had been killed. He could feel himself panicking, and an itching, like ants under his skin, crawled up his legs and torso. He fought to regain his feet, the itch now a burning pushing itself into his arms and scalp, setting his hair dancing on end.
Arek couldn’t stop it, the plight of his father igniting an anger within him into a flashpoint, a burning star, before erupting forward in a bolt of whitefire so pure it seemed to tear the very firmament into halves. It threw Valarius back, blasting him into a smoking furrow made by its own massive body. Arek watched in dazed wonder as Duncan managed to scramble away.
How did I do that?
Slowly, the creature rose. Its body was charred, tendrils of smoke curling up as blackened pieces of flesh fell from equally blackened bone. The sickening smell of rotten meat being roasted wafted through the hall, an acrid stench that made Arek gag in a reflexive effort to hide from its putrid taste.
And yet, Valarius was not done. He took a step, then two. Droplets of blood splattering the ground, the blood of his own fallen elves, traced crimson lines as they raced toward the gholem like lost children to their father. When they met the behemonth’s foot, they raced up its leg, disappearing at the first wound they met. Slowly, like the sand in an hourglass running backward, Valarius was being remade.
“Your hubris, Duncan, means I cannot die,” the Galadine archmage said, “and I thank you.”
Then Tej was there, facing the creature by herself! “It makes me sick to know we share the same blood,” she said, then let loose with Valor like a goddess of the bow. Her arrows flew like spears of flaming light and Valarius fell back, crossing his arms in front of his body. They pierced the flesh, lodging in bone before detonating with yellow fire.
At first, Arek was convinced the beast would face immolation. Then Valarius did something and a barrier formed before the gholem deflected Yetteje’s arrows into small expanding clouds of fire that curved around the gholem’s body. Valarius bent forward, then took step after step toward them.
“You betray your own family!” the highlord screamed, advancing with murderous intent upon the princess. “The price for treason is death!”
Arek couldn’t use his whitefire because Tej blocked his way, so he moved forward to intercept the creature.
“Stand steady,” a voice said, and an enormous archangel armored in silver and blue struck Valarius from behind. The silver blades stabbed through the gholem, and as it turned, the new Aeris lord sliced off a clawed hand at the wrist and kicked the creature back.
“Orion!” cried Yetteje.
“Not exactly, princess,” the visor popped open and behind it was the firstmark’s clear gaze, his eyes crinkled into a smile. Then Valarius screamed and the visor snapped back down. A storm of lightning was unleashed at the two.
Ash encircled the princess with his wings and tucked her within. The blast hit him with the force of a cannon, throwing him and Yetteje to one side as arcs of lightning danced around the firstmark.
Arek watched them fall. The giant figure was not moving but Yetteje had recovered Valor. She crawled to her feet, but Brianna came to her rescue, pulling the dazed princess down behind some rubble just as the princess had done for her earlier. Arek looked back at the highlord, whose wrist had already stopped bleeding. New shards of bone poked out, a glistening claw slick with blood colored black and red emerging.
He needs blood to heal, his father’s voice mindspoke. D
on’t give him any.
I’ll try, Arek responded with a mental smile. He looked over and saw Duncan slowly getting up, his armor cracked and his helm gone. A sudden bolt of lightning caught him in the chest and flung him back and away, the strike so quick his father hadn’t even made a sound.
Arek alone now faced the creature that was Valarius. Until this moment, he’d felt a disconnection with the events that brought him here. The whitefire had been an act of desperation, an instinctive reaction to his father’s danger. He didn’t have that primal need goading him any longer. A sudden cold clarity told him more than anything else could that his mind had finally caught up to his body, that he was in the here and now, and no plea to desperation would help. He was no longer a spectator acting out of instinct, and his next actions would either mean victory or death for them all.
“I had planned much for you,” rasped Valarius. Arek saw the grotesqueness of the creature as a reflection of the highlord’s true inner self. “I gave you life, protected your mother. I made you into a weapon to survive these Aeris demons, and you repay me with this!”
“You aren’t taking your madness to Edyn,” Arek said calmly.
“Spoken like a true avatar of my making. Let us—”
“Hold!” Piter’s voice rang with command, a strident battlefield voice unlike anything Arek had heard his fellow apprentice utter before. Around them dark nephilim rose from the floor, surrounding the area. They crowded in, forcing the two combatants away from each other. They moved to surround them, forming two circles, their cold blue gazes eager with hunger.
Piter’s black eyes watched the blood gholem, then he looked over to Arek. “Well done,” he said. “You have completed the cycle started with Valarius and guaranteed the destruction of Arcadia.” He tapped his head and added, “All things must come to an end.”
Another explosion, this one closer from below, shook the ground. Fire leapt up from the opening they’d come through and the sounds of battle within the city could be heard approaching.
“Destroyed Arcadia?” Arek said.
Piter gestured to the black nephilim surrounding them, “Pestilence, disease—the rot you spread upon the Way was the only endgame that truly mattered.”
Arek’s brows drew together in consternation because something in the shade’s voice had changed. “The nephilim are not new. They appeared here before I came. The elves, the Watchers, even Cainan knew of them.”
“Yes, but the Aeris, whether Watcher or Fury, never faced a disease that spread so quickly,” the thing that looked like Piter said. “You succeeded where many before failed, only because Lilyth stayed her hand.”
Arek shook his head. “That makes no sense. Why would Lilyth bring me here if she knew I could destroy her kind?”
“Arek,” the shade said, “you didn’t succeed because of any action of yours. You succeeded in something far more potent.”
“What?” Arek asked, his mouth dry.
“You brought me.” The shade that had been Piter smiled. “We are at the end, all cards must be played, all debts called.”
Arek’s eyes widened. “But I . . . who are you?”
“You know, and yet the answer does not matter. I am the end of this world, and the creator of a far better future for the people of Edyn.”
“W-why do this?” Arek stammered, trying feverishly to comprehend. His mind felt slowed, his perception dulled, and he could feel himself being overwhelmed by all that had happened.
“Because he wants the Aeris destroyed,” the voice of Valarius growled. The gholem turned to look at Piter and said, “I gave Arek the dark gift. Who are you to interfere, slave? You should be groveling at my feet, your master’s feet.” The gholem’s eyes glowed amber with power. “I banish you from Avalyon!”
Although Valarius’s voice rang with command over the Way, nothing happened. A slow smile spread across the shade’s face and it said, “I am so much more than you comprehend.”
Something in his voice caused Valarius to shift, his bone armor gleaming dully as he turned from Arek to face the dark shade, a subtle warning to Arek that the archmage now saw this as the greatest threat. But it seemed the shade of Piter didn’t care.
He looked at the horde surrounding the creature that was now Valarius and said, “Take him.”
The nephilim horde moved forward like an ocean wave, acting as a foe with a single mind hungering for flesh. At the first touch of a dark one Valarius spun in place and smashed the nephilim, then let loose a lightning blast that expanded outward, forcing those around him away. Another white bolt seared a hole through the horde, vaporizing the nephilim it hit, but the darkness flowed in like an unstoppable tide as the horde reconverged. A third blast echoed out, then a fourth, this last one barely visible beneath the dark mass that covered the blood gholem.
Still even more came rising from the floor, biting and ripping as the horde covered the monstrous beast, turning it from blood red to inky black, a new kind of nephilim, something with unknown limits. The abomination regained its feet, its eyes burning a cold blue as the darkness took over. What was once Valarius Galadine was consumed.
Piter clenched his hand, looking at Arek. “He could have prevailed had you not brought me here. Now he is turned to a better purpose.”
Arek was stunned at the suddenness of the highlord’s fall. He blinked, only to be brought back to the here and now by Piter, who had moved closer to him. “Do you See the power of the blackfire? It cannot be combated by the Way, for it feasts upon it.”
Piter tilted his head back, taking in Avalyon at a glance. “When I overheard Lilyth planning to send you to Avalyon, I could not believe our good fortune. Delivering Valarius was an unanticipated bonus, a crowning achievement. It is fitting he died by the hand of his own creation, no?”
Little things came together all at once: Piter didn’t remember specific details prior to his death; the clumsy way in which the supposedly combat-trained apprentice had handled Brutus and his men. Arek’s eyes narrowed and he knew whatever was standing here in Piter’s shape was not Piter.
The shade must have seen the change, the sudden dawning realization. It shrugged and smiled. “The deed you were created for has been done, the cycle is complete, the game has come to its end. Your nephilim now multiply, destroying the Way wherever they go. Soon they will overrun Arcadia, and only Edyn will remain. Cainan will carry your blight to the known world.”
Then Piter gestured, and his remaining nephilim, along with the silent, massive hulk of Vengeance, descended into the floor.
Arek was quiet, thinking about how Piter had demanded he release him. Finally he said, “You certainly timed things right.”
Piter shrugged. “My freedom had to be granted willingly. Lilyth thought she played the razor’s edge, but even she did not ken the true danger I faced beholding myself to you. You had but to touch me and I would have died a true death.”
It was obvious the shade had used any means at its disposal: fear, carefully placed words, lies, threats, anything to achieve its goal, to enter Arcadia and survive until Arek freed it. A moment passed, then two.
Finally Arek asked, “They why not just ask me for your freedom at the very start?”
The once-shade of Piter tilted its head, “You are fearful, conceited, and self-absorbed, but not stupid. Had I asked such a thing without first making you hate my every appearance, you would have questioned my intent.”
And suddenly Arek knew the shade was right. He’d have wondered what Piter wanted, and never released him until he knew. Piter had been just barely helpful, and his own circumstance just dire enough to take the chance on releasing his once-name brother.
Arek sighed, his mind tiring at the thought of how he’d been maneuvered yet again. “And now what?”
A slow smile spread on Piter’s face, behind which such malevolence shone it caused even Arek to take a step back. The shade grew, becoming taller, larger. It did not grow to the height of the Ascended but somehow still seemed m
ore imposing in its stature.
The dark figure who was once Piter looked at them all and in a much deeper, older voice, said, “Unraveling the blackfire within you has made you of little use to me. However”—the black eyes blinked once slowly, like a reptile’s—“I am not without mercy. You did me a great service, so I leave Arcadia to you for however long it lasts.”
He looked at them all and smiled. “The blood gate has closed. I judge you have two days at most before you too are consumed and return your essence to the Way.”
“Where will you escape to?” asked Arek.
“What need have I for escape?” countered the dark shade.
With that, the figure disappeared and the hall grew still, somehow feeling darker and less alive. Scattered about lay the survivors of the party, sitting atop a floating wooden city set ablaze in the clear blue skies of Arcadia.
Hands of Justice
Do not let those who capture also judge.
The chase makes their blood hot and their rage swift.
- Argus Rillaran, The Power of Deceit
S
ounds could still be heard below, the screams of dying men grasping for life with their last breath. It was the ever-present requiem to fighting and mayhem, a tune every soldier heard, but whose words only the fallen knew.
The sounds of battle grew louder. A force of what sounded like armored men was driving its way up, causing Arek to cast a desperate glance around for Duncan. The archmage had transformed back into his normal body, making him harder to find amongst the carnage. He gently shook his father, happy to hear a groan, then turned his attention back to the gate. The thing that had masqueraded as Piter said it was closed. Before he could take a closer look his father gasped, struggling to rise, so Arek helped him up, scattering a bunch of magehunter torcs that lay about from the first attack by the elves. They made a flat metallic sound, like cheap jewelry, and Arek cursed the sight of them.
The men of Bara’cor held the other side, with the king pressed against the shimmering field, clearly distraught at the prospect of losing Ash and Yetteje. A groan from his right revealed Brianna tending to Ash, who had also changed back to normal.
