by J. F. Lewis
The fingers of her lone remaining hand trailed along the ephemeral outline of his jaw. Her brows knit in concentration as she touched his spirit with her magic. Torn down, battered, and reduced to his core, Dolvek’s energy hummed liked an air spirit.
Maybe . . .
Conjuring thoughts of him, the arrogant prince who had been overstimulated by her scent, discombobulated by the sight of her unveiled face, the wiser prince who had seen through his own blinders and accepted that he had been wrong, then moved to change himself, the resolute and heroic prince who had decided not to allow Uled’s Port Gates to remain standing even in death. A sweet and foolish spirit who valued Yavi’s life more than his own life, his own sanity, or the whole of The Last World.
*
Silent by choice, by injury, and by name, Caz stalked amid the flow of animated corpses. Bone-steel gauntlets traced with skeletal filigree struck out, serpent-like, bringing quiet to the restless dead courtesy of the thin, golden-hued spikes tightly clutched within. A mob of opponents this thick could overwhelm a lone Aern, even in a warsuit, if they were possessed of comparable strength or they were exceptionally hard to kill, but they fell before the Bone Finder as easily as the angry nobles or petulant farmers who had foolishly stood between him and his quarry over the centuries.
He came for the bones and, save for a single time in living memory, no opponent had ever thwarted him for long. A burst of the memory struck at his mind, sinking its images deep, fang-like, into his concentration. The new warsuit. Wylant. Vax, thinning into a wire strangling cord, cutting through Caz’s warsuit, then his neck, his spine . . .
Caz banished the memory, haunting the present. Now his purpose was rekindled.
We come for the bones, Silence thought.
Caz sent a mental nod, but even his thoughts were sparse, clear of everything but the mission and the bones.
What a wonderful difference a few assassins could make.
He had been standing at his post in the room where Wylant had slain him, the same room where the Life Forge had once been housed, as ordered by Zhan, the one member of the Armored Ossuary not allowed to pursue the lump of bone metal withheld by the dead dragon, Coal, when the influx of the dead had begun. Invasion had been meaningless to him. Only the bones, the bones and his oaths, truly mattered. Then he had felt the tug of uniqueness.
Twice a shard of the Life Forge had pinged his senses, not bone-steel, but close enough when a proper Bone Finder was alert for it. Not a concern, as such, but he had been obligated to leave his post. After that, it had been easy to snatch the warsuit-slaying implements from the claws of would-be assassins. They would not have been his equal even when alive . . .
Surprise and numbers were the only edges the undead reptiles (he was noticing a few humans now, too) had when facing an Aern; Silence, Caz’s warsuit, negated the one and his own sense for metal obviated the other. He had fought his way down the corridor, tracking the source of them. Clearly the Port Gate, but he felt a deeper tug, too. From beyond the gate, perhaps?
Farther down the hallway, Caz saw the Sixth of One Hundred, Glayne, testing the hypothesis Caz the Silent had already confirmed to his own satisfaction: the shard of the Life Forge slew warsuits and Aern, but also ended the unquiet dead.
We could tell them, Silence thought.
Caz sent a mental head shake in reply. Glayne would know soon enough and would disseminate the information more efficiently. Long Knives and Warpick (his first soul-bonded weapon, forged before he’d discovered and taken a liking to dual blades) hung from his back. With a shard of the Life Forge in either hand, Caz waded through the dead, stilling more dead with each step.
The Third and Sixth of One Hundred were going through the Port Gate to find the source of the dead and end it. A mission of complete unimportance to Caz, except . . . who knew where their bones would lay if they died? What easier way to ensure their bone metal would not be lost to the Ossuary than to follow them himself?
Besides, the tug he felt, unusual and distant, but clear enough to track prey by, grew stronger with each step toward the grand circle of stone through which the dead still poured. Another step or two and he knew would be able to identify the Aern from whom . . .
First Bones.
Kholster had metal beyond that Port Gate.
We come for the bones, Silence intoned.
Kholster . . .
Caz flushed with embarrassment at the situation Kholster (and to no small extent Caz himself) had allowed to develop between Wylant and himself. She had fought well. Word among the warsuits now held that Vax had been properly born, freeing Caz from his oath to Kholster himself to ensure the child’s eventual full awakening. But . . . to have been to so blinded . . . so unwilling to hear what Wylant was saying . . . so intent on finally having his oath fulfilled . . . Caz could not help but feel he had deserved the thrashing she and Vax had given him.
Memory rushed him again, the feel of Vax decapitating him, the embarrassing necessity of a strip and dip to restore his body . . . now finally his honor would be restored. Habit preventing him from growling in his throat, but he did the equivalent in his mind.
I come for the bones.
He waited, spying with Silence’s assistance on the Third and Sixth until they were through the gate. Then, with a hiss and a heroic burst of strength, Caz performed a twisting flip, landing toes and knuckles on the ceiling before darting through the Port Gate after them.
*
Coal reeled back, lightning from the talisman at the female dragon’s neck burning his eyes, making them smoke, hiss, and sizzle. Savage blows raked his neck scales, heavy metal footsteps skidding down its length.
Warsuits? A wet splash signaled the end of his eyes, but Coal could still see . . . vision cloudy and dim, like a mist, images defined by an inner light. Souls? Muzzy and wearied by the attack rather than feeling its true impact, Coal sensed the mad elf thing that Uled had become gaining a foothold at the edge of his mind.
That is the head of a god at her throat, Uled’s screeching voice wailed. Seize it!
“So . . . One-Headed Kilke sided with the Zaur after all,” Coal muttered. Chromatic sprays of light popped at the edges of his vision, remnants of the meat body’s optics—nerves misfired by the raw magic of an angry, disembodied god. “I would be irate, too, if I were only a head.”
Clawing absently at the Aern on his back, Coal could not believe it when they dodged his massive claws. I was that nimble once, Coal mused as he noted a marked change in his emotional state. From rage to introspection. Ah. Brain damage.
Dissociative concern coated his mind. Uled’s hooks sinking deeper. Coal’s tail twitched, controlled by a mind that was not his own.
“You will need to lay me to rest more quickly than this,” Coal drawled, his words slurred, his jaws slow to respond. “He gains purchase in my . . .” He searched for the word, could not find it, and approximated. “ . . . head.”
“Stop fighting, then,” the young dragon replied. “Logic would seem to—”
Coal struck the foolish thing a mighty blow across the face, claws drawing blood, marking the scales and the flesh below deeply enough that it might scar. Dazed, the female fell back, eyes unfocused, a loud crack sounding from one of the bones in her forelegs as she landed.
“Dragons never stop fighting!” Coal bellowed. “We end fights or we die.”
He loomed over her, reaching for heat but unable to grab it. Cold flowed through him instead, a sure sign Gromma’s order had been turned on its snout.
*
“You have to concentrate!” Coal’s voice boomed, reverberating in Bloodmane’s warsuit. “You will never win this unless you can manage a Second Breath.”
Rae’en mapped out a second run on the great wyrm’s head, Bone Harvest relaying Alysaundra’s agreement. They had lost ground dodging Coal’s claws, moving all the way back to his shoulders.
Amber and Glayne just went through the Port Gate. Kazan flashed their new location on a
n updated map.
Where is that? Rae’en caught the tip of her heavy boots and might have gone tumbling if she and Alysaundra had not been working together, the bone-steel bond between bracing them against each other to increase traction.
The Sisters, Amber thought. Northern Ports where the borders of—
I know where the Sisters are, Rae’en interrupted. Bloodmane was there when the Dwarves . . .
Sorry, kholster Rae’en, Bloodmane thought. Memory seep can happen when we both share the bone metal this intimately. Our minds are pressed close.
Rae’en Bloodmane, they thought together.
She missed what Coal said to Warleader Tsan at first, but Kazan had not missed a thing.
He’s giving Tsan’Zaur instructions on how to use Jun’s fire to kill him, Kazan thought. But he’s attacking her at the same time.
Rae’en lost her balance, stumbling over the side of Coal’s neck. A certainty that she would fall sent trills of fear plucking at her spine, her stomach light and trembly, but she felt Alysaundra’s pull and kept moving.
Together they kept going, orbiting Coal’s scaly neck in a counterbalancing rotation until they reached a steady balance again.
Kazan, time the strike for us.
*
Many jun away, Kazan sat on the edge of Scarsguard’s extended boundary walls, an Armored Overwatch within his warsuit’s reassuring embrace. He shunted all of his other responsibilities to the minds of his fellow Overwatches, sending most to Joose, Arbokk, and M’jynn, but not stopping there. A mind that could see the whole of the Aern narrowed its attention to two single Aern: kholster of the Aernese Army and the Acting Ossuarian. They were already in close sync, both warriors of like spirit and strategic leaning.
Since both were in need of a strip and dip to coat their bone metal in new flesh, he provided the touchstone for their physicality. His heart set the internal rhythm they lacked. His lungs simulated the steady pump of their breath. He painted the world for them in traces and arcs, each step outlined and glowing. Hands outstretched, his left to form Rae’en’s strike and his right Alysaundra’s, he lost all sensation of body, leaving that to Eyes of Vengeance, becoming an extension, a bridge between the weapons.
Every conversation any Aern had ever had concerning dragons, Coal or others, flooded his mind as he pinpointed the most likely spot to crack the wyrm’s colossal skull.
On a level below conscious thought, where instinct and autonomic function live, he felt connected, his motions appearing to guide theirs, but in the core of him, he knew the truth: They were the initiators, the attackers, the true talent, and he was little more than a clever metronome.
They brought his arms together, hands clapping in the middle, echoing the twin strikes to the dragon’s temples. Leaping and spinning, they flew through the air like soaring sea hawks, bone metal striking once, twice, three times, and over and over, though the lightning of a decapitated god lit them up, flaring the crystalline eyes of their warsuits until, with a solid clink of metal on metal, their warpicks met in the center of the dragon’s brainpan.
Then the cold hit them, freezing the ground, but not as solidly as before. Frost rimmed their joints and as they saw what Kazan saw, Rae’en and Alysaundra, Bloodmane and Bone Harvest released their unseen tethers and fell away from Coal just before the Last World’s final dragon breathed her Second Breath for the first time.
*
Even as Coal blew apart, becoming ash and molten scale before her, Tsan could hear the thumping of his mighty tail. She would never be sure, as no one seemed to know whether Coal spoke Zaurtol or not, but his tail seemed to tap, <
CHAPTER 34
THE MAD ELF
Wretched beasts of his own design, long since beyond his control, burst through Uled’s Port Gate, stilling his dead and claiming space on his docks. Uled recognized the warsuits and sneered. The Third and Sixth. He narrowed his eyes, the dual-pupiled mass in his left socket bulging beyond its ocular orbit, filling with a brown mixture of pus and dried blood. He lanced it with an impatient jab of the foreclaw on his left paw, the mixture running over the scales of the Zaur-elf hybridized appendage.
Grinding his bone metal teeth hard enough to make sparks, he flexed his right hand, its smooth skin close to that of a normal elf’s, excepting the rips revealing bone and desiccated muscle that marked its back. His clothing shifted and flowed, becoming a long robe of red chased with silver thread. It would not do to allow his beasts to behold him in tattered rags.
A cold rain sprang up, soaking his robes through, unnoticed. Having addressed appearances, he had moved beyond them. Who cared what beasts thought?
The Sixth spun to face the Port Gate, his gauntleted fist obliterating the first rune without even pausing to take in his surroundings. The Third—was it inhabited by some . . . female?!—held off the dead as best she could, stabbing them with shards of the Life Forge. A third warsuit, a Bone Finder, and therefore of little concern other than to collect the bones of these two when Uled had finished with them, sprung out of the rear of the Port Gate, dropping off of the dock and into the water below.
I did not realize any of the beasts knew it was possible to control which section of the Port Gate they came through. Interesting enough to give him pause to ponder what else the beasts might have deduced about the workings of the Port Gates. The Sixth, however, did not pause, destroying the second, third, and fourth runes in swift succession.
Uled was unamused.
*
Lightning crackled over the mountainous boundary marking the passage toward the center of the Never Dark’s diminished light. Demons gathered, their numbers growing. Craggy voices of true Ghaiattri rang out with increasing volume, a low rumble at the edge of the scarred elf’s ears. The shifting of their leathery wings formed an audible susurrus illustrating that time had grown short.
He did not look at them, ignoring the clashing weather that mirrored their violent will. His troops faced outward, ready to defend the Aern and the wagons at the center of the massive formation. Even so, they were forced to tighten their formations as the Ghaiattri increased in numbers and their influence grew.
Clad in his dragon armor, Rivvek poured fire into the Port Gate, the purple conflagration of his Ghaiattric flame shining like a bonfire. He felt his skin burning despite the draconic armor he wore, but he did not stop. All around him, those elves who had followed him on his suicide mission stood ready to charge, and with them, the Aern they had come to claim.
Jolsit, Cambrish, Hevrt, Vodayr, and Kyland . . . he ran out of names then. He knew more but did not have the concentration to spare in summoning them. General Kyland stood at his back, Jolsit to his left. Each shifted nervously, stepping farther away from him as his nimbus of heat grew.
Kyland and the Lost Command, he thought. Found, recovered, and ready to return, but for this truculent Port Gate that refuses to break open.
Violently flickering between the seasons, the surrounding environs fought Kyland’s will. Rivvek, who longer thought of himself as prince or king—titles had no meaning now—had considered himself dead. The idea that he might live, might be triumphant, could take only tenuous hold on his thoughts. Self had gone, replaced by that part of Rivvek that plotted and planned, setting out trignom tiles on the board of his mind.
He had learned to use them as a mental exercise when he had been sent to the gnomes of Rurnia to study and convalesce after his first ill-fated sojourn into the Never Dark. A mistake, he’d thought then, but time had proven otherwise. Without the scars his foolishness had won him then, Kholster would not have put his scars upon Rivvek’s back, and without Kholster’s scars, the Aern might never have listened to him, might never have spared the quarter million of his subjects who had been spared.
It was such a small population, but better than zero. Sufficient, according to the species formula the gnomish arithmeticians had drilled into his head. It was enough for the elve
s to survive and thrive and grow in number again—threatened, endangered, but not extinct. He had thought his quest over, his calculations completed, his projections and plans, what the gnomes called the Great Destiny Machine, all resolved, quiet, but Kyland’s presence had brought his mind back to life. This Port Gate, forcing it, was required for any of his current projections to succeed. The crucial first step.
I have to get them back to the Last World.
As he poured all of his magic into the task at hand, his mind, without regard for his own feelings on the matter, could not help but continue his design. Portions of the equation, vital ones, lay still and dark, completed: Destroy the dragon. Retrieve the Aern.
Others shimmered in uncertain shades, needing completion: Get them home. See Sargus. Destroy Uled. Cement Bhaeshal’s power. See Sargus. Ensure the continued safety of his people. See Sargus.
Stop looping, he thought, removing “See Sargus” from the equations, an optional subset that his subconscious mind kept shifting to the “required” permutation set.
Fine. He had two living friends, and the thought that he might see either of them again felt unreal to him.
“Whatever is being done on the homeward side of the Gate,” Kyland said through gritted teeth, “may be fixing the ebb and flow of magic, but it is making the elements on this side as hard to control as the wind in a hurricane. If they get a few more Ghaiattri up there fighting me . . .”
Rivvek made no comment.
Flame rolled up his arms, the skin bubbling and popping, pain sinking into his shoulders, his back, his chest. If he had not had to use the Ghaiattric flame so much or so often, he felt he could have done this less painfully. If there had been more time . . . If there had been another with the skill to aid him. Instead, he pushed to his limits and beyond until the whole of him was a flaming knot of agony.
Break!
In the end, it was not the thought of Sargus or Bhaeshal or even of those elves already accepted as Aiannai by the Aern. Nor was it the desire to show kholster Rae’en what the elf whose father she had killed could accomplish. It was not the need to see the suns of his own sky that made him push on. It was the nineteen thousand and four Oathbreakers who would be counted forgiven by the Aern if he could only get them across the threshold of the gate. If he could only get them home, it would be nineteen thousand fewer deaths on his conscience.
