by N. M. Howell
“So, you want to trade lighting?” Andie asked. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Ashur cast another white bolt and Andie met it in the air with a black one. And back and forth they traded lightning, black and white, hot and cold, like a miniature copy of the Hot Salts of Mithraldia. Ashur was well trained, methodical, precise. Andie was organic, intuitive, powerful. The bolts flashed through the air with a terrible sound as loud as any real lightning in the sky. As the bolts sailed by, they hit the train, the platform, various parts of the station, and anything else in their path. Andie and Ashur were destroying everything around them. Andie looked for the chancellor, but he was already gone. She needed to move, fast.
Ashur reached back to conjure his next bolt and Andie did that thing she only did in times of great distress: she reached into the deepest reaches of her magic and released it. A black bolt of lightning erupted from her chest and shot out with such force that she slid back on the train. The bolt was so wide it seemed more like a stream of energy that was wrapped in violent purple flames. Ashur was blown away so hard and fast that Andie couldn’t see where he landed or if he was even still alive. She leapt off the train and ran to find the chancellor.
She cleared the station and was running down the nearest boulevard when she stopped. She had no idea where he’d gone. The city was huge, sprawling, and he’d gotten a considerable head start and could have been anywhere by then.
Andie wracked her brain trying to think where he could go to get the quickest access to a large, dense population, but there was no end to the possibilities. The arena, the pier, any of the six boulevards in the publishing district, the financial district, the baseball stadium—Andie could hear them cheering from the train station—and on and on. She was at a total loss. For all she knew he had already started his mass sacrifice. She looked up toward the mountain and saw a tiny dot of light that was almost invisible from so far away. The tear. It had grown.
Just as Andie was about to lose her mind, the screaming began. She turned and began running toward the sounds. She could hear cars crashing and explosions as complete and utter chaos spread in the distance. She ran as fast as she can, wishing the entire time that she had a dragon who cut the air and have her in the area to save people. The closer she got, the more she heard, the more she feared, the more she pushed herself to run faster and harder. When she finally reached the intersection where everything was happening she was met by two things: fear and death.
There were bodies everywhere. There were far too many to count and even the people running were tripping over the corpses that littered the road in every direction. Even as she looked up at the buildings, Andie could see bodies collapsed in the windows. As the people ran, fled, they were killed in midstride. Andie turned and turned, trying to find any sign of hope or salvation, but there was nothing there except carnage and sheer terror.
The chancellor was moving down the street ahead of her. He was standing on a section of the pavement that he had ripped up and it was floating him along at an increasing speed. Andie began chasing him, but he was moving too fast. She could hear him laughing as the bodies continued to fall all around him. As he turned to watch the destruction, he saw her.
“You simply won’t die, will you?” he asked. “No matter, the spell is already begun. It’s self-sustaining now. All I have to do is wait.”
“You’re killing the entire city! This is madness! Please, stop!”
“It’s too late for your pleas, little girl. Although, if it makes you feel any better I was never going to stop. The plan was always to get rid of the dragonborn by sacrificing the city and then blame the mass destruction on your people. Then the world would be in a constant state of fear, hiding from a threat that didn’t even exist.”
“That’s sick,” Andie managed to spit out.
The chancellor laughed suddenly. “No, brilliant I think is the correct word.”
“You’re only—”
“Stop trying to reason with me, girl.”
The chancellor turned and began floating even faster. Andie stopped running. There was no way she could keep up with him on foot. Again, she wished for a dragon. Then she remembered a conversation she’d had with Saeryn. She’d told Saeryn about that night in the archives when, for a few moments, she’d levitated while fighting against the University. Saeryn had told her that it was possible for a dragonborn to levitate and even fly if they had the power, the concentration, and the will. She said it was a rare and powerful trait.
Andie had practiced some on the mountain without much luck, but now she was out of options and the dragons were too far away. She closed her eyes and went to that deep recess of herself, where her most incredible power resided. She focused all her energy, all her power. She tried to picture in her mind what she wanted to do, but although she felt the power she didn’t feel the change.
Yet when she finally gave up and opened her eyes, much to her surprise she found she was hovering. When she blinked and refocused her eyes, she noticed she was actually at least five feet above the ground. It had worked. She couldn’t believe it. For a split second, she allowed herself to laugh. A nervous sound that erupted from her lips, so foreign after the darkness she’s endured these past months. But her momentary thrill caught her off-guard and she slipped suddenly from the air. Fortunately, her will and determination froze her in mid fall and she propelled herself back up, an air of defiance on her face.
She steadied her hands beside her and began to will herself forward. It took a tremendous amount of concentration, but she found herself flying toward the chancellor, moving faster and faster. He was so busy enjoying the sight of the bodies falling that he almost missed her, but when he did see her flying toward him, a change came over him. For the first time that night, Andie could see that he was afraid. The sight of a powerful dragonborn flying toward him with only one goal in mind terrified him. He cast more magic at his pavement and the chase began.
They weaved through the streets of the city, moving faster and faster. Andie had some issues controlling her flight and she more than once knocked against buildings and lamp posts. The chancellor was so busy trying to escape that he stopped looking back, refused to see the girl coming for him. For her part, Andie was as exhilarated as she was afraid.
Time was running out and as they weaved in and out and between and around she was aware that the spell was spreading at an incredible rate. The magic followed the chancellor, but it also spread out from wherever it landed. The more Andie chased him, the more she helped him spread his poison. And, of course, she never forgot that her people were back up on Brie, fighting for their lives and the culture of their entire people. The dragons, too, were locked in battle to the death. And the innocent civilians of Arvall were the collateral damage of a senseless and profitless war.
There was no time. Everywhere around her was death and screams and fear. The chancellor had created something so terrible Andie’s heart was breaking more and more each second. She thought of the millions of people dying across the city. She thought of her people dying, perhaps already dead, on Brie. She thought her friends, the fighters, wounded and broken in spirit thousands of leagues away. Marvo. Carmen. Her father. Her entire world. Enough was enough.
She pushed herself like she had never done before and soared forward so rapidly she closed the distance between herself and the chancellor in less than a second. She collided with him, taking him off his floating ground and through the window of a skyscraper they were passing. The crashed through the glass and tumbled across the tiled floor, hitting the ground so hard they lost their breath. By the time Andie looked up, the magic had killed everyone on the floor and she was sure the magic was spreading up through the building as she stood there. In fact, the magic had grown so strong and so vast that even Andie was beginning to feel the effects; she simply hadn’t noticed before. The chancellor looked as though he were still having trouble catching his breath as he rolled over on his side and pulled a large piece of glass fr
om the side of his face. As the blood ran down over his mouth he looked up at Andie, smiling.
“Well, even I couldn’t plan for this,” he said, undaunted. “I didn’t know you could fly.”
“I can do a lot of things. Including showing you what real pain feels like if you don’t stop this spell.”
“Oh, I think it’s too late for that. Look around you, the spell can’t be stopped. Most of the city is already dead and soon the rest will be, too. Lucky for you, you’re nowhere near the gateway to the past. I would have loved to watch you be sucked away.”
“It is not too late. You can still save whoever’s left. You can put a stop to this!”
“You mistake me for someone who cares about these people, girl.”
“How can one person be so evil? What is wrong with you?”
“Me? I just wanted power. Respect. I wanted to walk out in the sun and not be thought a coward. And now I’ve failed. I think I’ve performed the spell incorrectly. Look…”
The chancellor held up his hand and Andie saw that the veins were beginning to turn dark blue. The skin was dying, beginning to wither even as she watched.
“You’re dying,” she said, in disbelief. “No! Who’s going to stop the spell?”
He began laughing manically then. “Oh, stupid girl. It’s not the spell you should be worried about, but our one greatest weapon that I leave behind.”
“Weapon, what weapon?” Andie pleaded, falling to her knees. “What can possibly be worse than killing an entire city?”
Mharú tried to push himself up from the ground, but he immediately fell back, his body too weak to even lift his head. “This spell is tied to me. I’m dying, but there the true power still lives.” His laugh transformed into an eerie cackle that made Andie take another step back from him. “He lives. And so long as he lives, so long as the weapon is alive—and I promise you, girl, that suit of his will keep him alive—the world has no hope. You think me killing a city is bad, just you wait until you see the destruction my Ashur can do.”
Andie shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a fool if you think Tarven will carry on your evil plan for you. Besides, I don’t think he’s even still al—”
“Stupid girl,” the chancellor snapped, bloody spittle spraying before him as he spoke. “You’re missing the point. It’s not about the spell. It will stop when I die, which seems to be any moment now.” More red spilled across the floor as he rolled to his side and coughed up more blood.
Andie stood frozen, staring down at the man before her. She had never wanted to kill anyone so badly in her life, but there he lay, dying before her. Part of her was grateful she wouldn’t be forced to let Saeryn down by becoming a murderer. Another part of her was angry that he took that task away from her.
“You know I never hated your people. Not really. Not until tonight. When I woke up this morning the whole world was soon to be mine. And now I’m dying by my own hand and the only person here to say goodbye is a girl I tried to kill.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t let it end like this. Do the right thing, please.”
His voice was barely a whisper, his breaths coming in slow, gurgling wheezes. With one final effort, he looked up at her and spoke. “You’ll never understand the allure of power, little girl. But no matter. You lost, anyway.”
With that, the chancellor laid his head back on the floor and clenched his fists. The suit began to charge and glow. Andie took several uncertain steps back before she realized what he was doing. He was going to give the spell one last wave of magic to sustain it. Enough to kill anyone left in the city. She dove for his body, her hands outstretched before her, but she was too late.
Chancellor Myamar exploded right before her and she was met in midair by a wave of magic unlike anything she’d ever experienced. The armor had amplified his final spell immensely. Andie was thrown back out toward the street and across it, until she crashed through the window of the next building and collided with the floor. The last thing she saw was the wave of blue magic traveling out across the city and the building where she’d been thrown from collapsing in an unbelievable cloud of smoke, debris, and noise.
He was jarred awake from the unbelievable pain. It felt as if his entire body were burning and as he looked down at himself, or what was left of him, he nearly fainted from the shock.
One of his hands was gone, as was most of his arm below the elbow. His legs were so badly burned they were undistinguishable as legs and one of them was totally numb and wouldn’t move. Every time he twisted his body, the discs in his back grinded against each other. Both his arms were in excruciating pain. He lifted his remaining hand to feel his head and felt that not only was his hair completely burned off, but the skin of his face was totally melted. And he could only see out of one eye. He was so shocked and was in so much agony that he could hardly move.
The only thing that remained largely undamaged was his torso. As the leader of the battalion his uniform had a thicker, more advanced chest plate so that his suit could harness more energy and deliver a more powerful performance. The torso of his armor remained largely undamaged and was the only thing that had saved his life.
The enormous bolt of black lightning that Andie had used against him had thrown him over two hundred feet away. It took him quite some time to comprehend his world through the pain and figure out where he was. He looked into the sky and saw the blue wave of magic. Chancellor Myamar Mharú’s final desperate act. The man he’d sworn his allegiance and life to was gone, had failed.
He rolled over onto the chest plate with a grunt of pain and began to crawl. He didn’t make it very far before he stopped, in so much terrible agony that he wanted to cry, to give up and die right then and there. He had never known such pain, such desperation. His skin was peeling off on the ground as he crawled and his back, more than likely broken, felt like it was tearing apart.
He gathered his strength and continued. The pain grew worse the farther he went, but with his goal in mind he knew he could make it to a safe place, somewhere he could meet up with other members of the battalion and regroup. This was only the beginning. And though he was broken, burned, and defeated, he was not without his rage.
Chapter Twenty-One
“How long will they stay like that?” Oren asked.
“As long as we need them to,” Saeryn responded, looking at her work. “We gave them every chance we possibly could, Oren. There was nothing left but this.”
When the final blast of magic had gone out from the chancellor, Saeryn had looked down on the city as its entire population was wiped out in one, maleficent move. Her heart had broken to see such unadulterated evil and she grew tired of it. She grew weary of battle and destruction. She ended her spell of light and went to face the battalion. As they converged on her, she rose into the air and began to revolve, sweeping her arms all around her, casting a spell that even the University’s armor couldn’t withstand. By the time she came back to the ground, the entire battalion was frozen still—those near her, those in the University, even the ones spread out around the mountain. Her spell was that powerful.
“What about the tear?” Oren asked. “It has closed for now, but how do we know it won’t be back? We have to find the chancellor and stop him.”
“Andie went after him,” Saeryn said. “And I’m afraid she caught up with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“That wave of magic. It had to be the chancellor. And even with his new armor there is no way a sorcerer could survive an expense of magic like that. He is surely dead. Even the Sentinels have ceased to attack and they would only stop if their commander were defeated. I fear what Andie may have done when she caught him. She may have... perhaps...”
“No,” Oren said, his voice filling with fear and doubt and other things. “I know I don’t know her as well as you do, but I’ve spent some time with her and I don’t think... I know she’s not capable of something like this. Not Andie. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.”
&n
bsp; “I don’t wish to consider it either, Oren, but what else is there? What other explanation? The chancellor would not have gone through all this effort and scheming simply to take his own life. What would you have me believe?”
“I say we should give her the benefit of the doubt. Wait for her return and ask her. Whatever happened, she would not lie to us. But she couldn’t kill. Not Andie.”
“Regardless, we have more pressing things to attend to. Look at all this carnage.”
As she spoke, she indicated all the bodies lying around the entrance of the University and throughout the lot and the precipice. All the bodies were darkly veined and the skin hung loose on the corpses. There were hundreds of them on the mountain alone and Saeryn knew that with that blast of radical, unmonitored magic from the chancellor every soul in the city would be dead. Millions of people sacrificed to feed an all-consuming spell that had ultimately failed. Not a single dragonborn warrior or dragon had been taken up into the tear. The chancellor’s grand design had failed. And all the wounds and breaks the dragonborn had sustained were already beginning to heal. The dragons, too, were improving with each second—only three of them had sustained serious injuries, but they would be healed within the hour.
Saeryn and Oren walked toward the precipice and looked down toward the city, thinking of all the bodies that must have littered the streets, buildings, stations, boulevards, parks, and every other space. Bodies killed in midstride or in the middle of eating. Bodies sucked dry of all vitality while they slept or woke. Bodies silenced and broken forever without ever having done anything to deserve their end. Saeryn hid her face in her hands, momentarily overcome by the unbelievable sadness. Like Andie before her, she couldn’t believe or understand how anyone could be so evil, so careless with the lives of millions of people they had claimed to protect. Oren rested a hand on her shoulder. And for a moment they just stood there.
