by Dan Avera
“Monster!” Will cried, and he charged at Pestilence, who raised his hand as though to catch something. A roiling cloud of dark energy snaked out from his palm, catching Will in the chest and flipping him through the air. He landed hard on his face and felt his nose break once again, and then screamed as pain more intense than anything he had ever felt flared through his entire body, holding him immobile against the ground. He tried to push himself up onto his hands and knees, but found he hadn't the strength.
“It is usually Agony who resorts to such use of his power,” Pestilence said, “but my own preferences have proved to be inefficient.” He began to walk toward Will, raising his halberd into the air as he came. “Until next time, Dragon King,” he said almost conversationally, his voice now completely eclipsed by madness.
But out of the corner of his eye Will saw something leap out of the shadows and crash into the Belahan with a feral snarl. Pestilence stumbled to the side, dropping his halberd and hissing in pain as Grim latched onto his arm. The warhound shook his head from side to side, and Will heard a loud crack followed by a hoarse, choked scream that seemed entirely out of place. But Pestilence effortlessly flung Grim away, sending him crashing to the ground with a yelp. The warhound slid a short distance across the cobblestones and struggled to get back to his feet.
And then, to his dismay, Will saw Clare leap into the air from behind Pestilence, her sword raised high over her head. It was all a ruse, he thought. And for a moment it seemed to have worked. But in the next instant Pestilence turned and caught her by the throat with his good hand, jerking her body to a halt. She struggled, hacking at his arm with her sword, but a cloud of shadow energy blocked its path and the blade simply bounced off as though dull.
“What is this?” Pestilence hissed fearfully, and then snarled, “You! You have caused me no end of trouble!”
Clare gave a strangled cry as he tightened his grip. Her sword fell from her fingers and she brought her hands up to claw desperately at his sickly, pallid one. Her feet kicked in midair, and her breath started to come in wheezing gasps. Will struggled frantically against his otherworldly bonds, but to no avail. They held him as surely as chains.
Pestilence snarled wordlessly, and the sound was far more reminiscent of an animal than a human. There was fear in it, and anger, but most of all there was madness—chaotic, nightmarish madness. Pestilence, it seemed, had finally lost his mind.
Have to get up, Will thought frantically. The words raced around his mind, and he tried desperately to draw strength from them. He had to help Clare—had to stop the Belahan before he could hurt her anymore. It was all he cared about, the need to help her the only thing he felt.
He pushed with all his might, straining against the dark energy that held him, but the black cloud swirling around his body was a force no human could contend with. The pain burned through to his very soul, taking his breath away and rendering his trembling muscles useless. He gritted his teeth and tried again and again until, finally, his strength gave out completely and, though he willed himself to keep fighting, he could struggle no more.
And then, to his horror, he saw Clare's fallen sword rise from the ground of its own accord, its grip wreathed in twisting ropes of smoke. It angled itself so that it was pointing at her stomach with the tip resting lightly against her torso, and for a moment time itself seemed to halt.
“CLARE!” The scream, raw and agonizing, tore from his throat in the same instant that the sword stabbed forward. There was a wet, sickening squelch, and then Clare's eyes widened in shock. Her mouth fell open slightly, and Will could hear the faintest hint of a gasp leave her lips. Blood trailed down the grip of the sword and began to drip steadily to the ground below, forming a small puddle at Pestilence's feet.
“NO!” Will screamed, his cry long and brutal, and he struggled even harder against the Belahan's dark power, his strength renewed to bestial heights in a burst of desperation. He felt like an animal trapped in a cage, and like an animal he kicked and screamed and fought his bonds. The sword withdrew and clattered to the ground, and Pestilence let Clare fall from his grasp, her dark hair trailing over his fingers as she went. She landed with a soft thud and lay motionless, her eyes unfocused, the lids struggling to stay open.
In an instant, everything leading up to that moment flashed through Will's mind. His time with Clare slammed to the forefront, and anguish burned like poison in his gut—anguish for the woman that, he realized, he had rapidly been falling in love with. The realization triggered that feeling deep down inside of him, just as it had during his first battle with the yaru, and with a scream of rage the Other awoke, furious and powerful like never before—so powerful that for an instant, Will was completely terrified. He felt its awakening as a physical blow, an explosion of pain within his body that eclipsed every other sensation, even the pain from the Belahan's power, and he, too, screamed. Pestilence whirled around, and took a step back when he saw Will.
“No,” he rasped, the fear that had always been present in his voice now taking control completely, “no!”
Will's body was no longer his own. Still screaming, the Other took control of his muscles and pushed him up to his hands and knees. Heat flared along Will's body—delicious, wonderful heat that covered every fiber of his being like a blanket—and suddenly the pain was gone. He felt pure, complete ecstasy, ecstasy so incredible that for a moment he was aware of nothing else. It felt like floating through clouds. It felt like flying.
Then he came back to his senses, and his scream turned from one of pain to one of rage. The Other raised his gaze to the Belahan, and the most intense hatred he had ever felt coursed through him, even stronger than it had in the forest. He felt the heat along his body intensify a hundredfold, and then he looked down. The Other saw Clare, and a new emotion stronger than anything else bloomed within Will: love. As he gazed on her he felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but her—her shallow breaths, her heart beating more and more slowly with each passing moment. Somehow he knew that his eyes were no longer ice-blue, but flowing, churning, burning crimson, and he met her gaze with them. For a moment her own eyes came back into focus. There was fear in them, but something else as well...
The Other raised Will to his feet, and the heat, until then just a faint waver in the air, erupted violently. Bright, roaring flames burst from his entire body, feeding off of some unseen energy. “Your time has come,” the Other said with a distorted version of Will's voice, the words sizzling and bubbling like magma. When he spoke, sparks and thin tendrils of smoke drifted from his lips. The Will that had been there only moments ago was now gone completely, replaced by a column of flame that wore the shape of a man, the skin at its extremities beginning to blacken and crack, exposing the liquid heat beneath. But his eyes, those bright, crimson orbs, were still visible, and when he brought them down on Pestilence the Belahan's form flickered, revealing for an instant a sickly, thin man, his face a mask of complete and utter terror.
“No! Please!” Pestilence cried, falling to his knees and raising his hands in a feeble attempt to ward off the coming storm.
“Wretched fiend,” spat the Other, and a flurry of sparks burst forth from his lips. “You thought to challenge the gods. Your life ends. Embrace the Void.” The fires all along Will's body flared, burning away the last vestiges of the Belahan's tendrils of power and giving Will a renewed strength beyond anything he had ever possessed. Now engulfed almost completely in flame, he began to walk toward Pestilence's fallen form, leaving flickering footprints in his wake that smoldered and burned, melting the cobblestones beneath them. The Other raised Will's hand, and the flames around his fingers grew and intensified until the churning nest of heat was too bright to look at directly. A twisting river of fire exploded with a screeching hiss and a furious roar from the center of his palm.
Pestilence desperately threw out his own hands, but the dark cloud that leaped from his fingers to meet the flames was swept away like nothing more than conjurer's smoke. The
stream of fire barely even slowed, and then it slammed into the Belahan, who screamed and thrashed frantically upon the ground, flailing and scrabbling in a futile attempt to escape the Other's fury.
His robes caught instantly, burning away to reveal a frail, sickly body that rapidly crisped and blackened, the skin splitting and popping to reveal the raw, red muscle beneath as the inferno licked across it. The last to catch was his cowl, and when it crumbled away it revealed a sallow, sunken face, its features twisted with intense pain and its red eyes wide with fear.
Pestilence flailed across the glowing cobblestones, jerking and flopping like a fish out of water, and soon his throat and lungs melted from the inside, bursting and putting an end to the horrible screaming. Next to go were his eyes, which liquified and bubbled out of their sockets as the otherworldly fire boiled them away.
A moment later what remained of his ruined body fell still, and Will's hand went slowly back to his side, cutting off the flow of flames. The cobblestones around Pestilence's ruined body were black with soot and glowed as red as a forge; the smell of burnt flesh hung oppressively in the air, which wavered madly from the heat.
Will felt the Other's attention move then to Clare. She was still breathing, though shallowly, and she had managed to keep her eyes open. She was staring at Will with tears streaming down her cheeks—but most of all, she was still alive, and the Belahan could no longer hurt her.
The Other left, satisfied.
In control of his body once again, Will took one halting step toward Clare—and fell to his knees, the realization that he was still on fire hitting him like a falling anvil. There was no pain—far from it, in fact—but the intense pleasure continued to pulse and radiate throughout his entire body, making him gasp for air as he shuddered involuntarily from the sheer ecstasy. Without the Other present to help him control the power, he was unable to stymie the flow and began to draw from its source like a starving child at a mother's breast. He wanted more—all of it, everything he could find. He craved it like he had never craved anything before in his life. It was completely, terrifyingly intoxicating.
The fires flared brighter, and Will was dimly aware of the smell of something other than his fallen foe burning. He looked down and saw to his surprise that his clothes and armor were crumbling away from his body, disintegrating quickly into smoldering ash that drifted away on a sea of tiny sparks. The blackened skin that had started at his fingers began to creep up his arms, slowly turning his body into a piece of living coal. Something sizzled on the ground, and he saw a glowing stream of liquid metal drip fitfully over his shoulder. My sword, he thought, and realized that all of his weapons had begun to melt.
Panic seized him when he could not make the fires stop. He wanted to, wanted so badly to cut the flow that his mind was breaking with the fear and the need, but the pleasure was too much. The fires flared higher, and suddenly they were uncomfortably hot. I'm going to die, he realized. A choked gasp escaped his lips. He was completely naked now, wreathed only in flame and kneeling in a pile of ash and molten metal and forge stones. The ground beneath him was so hot that the cobblestones began to crack from the fury of the flames.
He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed, as much from fear now as from pain, and a cloud of smoke and sparks billowed out of his mouth and drifted off into the night sky with mocking serenity. Fire dripped from his lips, falling to the ground like burning rain. Make it stop make it stop make it stop! The heat was unbearable now, like being completely submerged in boiling water.
Then something seized his hand tightly, and his eyes flew open. Clare had dragged herself over to him, a smeared line of blood trailing out behind her from where she had fallen. Her free hand was pressed into the wound in her stomach; blood trickled over her fingers, staining skin that was now deathly pale. He saw pain on her face, horrifically intense pain, but her gaze was locked to his.
“Come back!” she screamed, her voice raw. “Will! You have to let go!”
“I can't!” he sobbed. He smelled burning flesh, and realized with horror that the skin of Clare's hand was beginning to smoke. “Let go!” he screamed, trying unsuccessfully to tug away.
“I won't let you die,” Clare gasped through clenched teeth, tears falling from her face and evaporating with a tiny sizzle in midair before they hit the ground. “Come back to me.” Her grip on his hand tightened, and her skin began to darken from the intense heat just as Pestilence's had.
He was hurting her. The knowledge that he was the reason for her pain made him want to vomit—made him want to die. He exerted every bit of willpower he had then and slammed it like a mental blacksmith's hammer into the source of the power, a ball of heat deep inside of him that seemed to pulse and writhe like a living thing. Stop! he screamed inwardly. Stop! He beat at the power again and again, but he could not dent its surface. Will felt confusion emanate from the power; why would he want to cut its flow?
Clare was sobbing from the pain, her body convulsing with barely controlled agony and fear, but still she held his gaze. Distantly, he wondered how she was still alive—how it was that the fires had not consumed her as they had Pestilence—and he realized that he must at least be controlling that small aspect of himself. The knowledge gave him strength, and he struck at the power's source again.
“Will,” Clare gasped, “please come back.”
For an instant that felt like an eternity he stared deep into her eyes, and he realized that soon she, too, would die, and it would not be Pestilence's fault—it would be his. The knowledge infuriated him, and as fresh pain coursed through his body he clenched his teeth and screamed, as much from rage now as from pain and terror. He struck one last time at the knot of power, all of his energy careening into the Other's core like a massive tidal wave...and the fires instantly went out. He remained on his hands and knees, unbelieving, his body steaming in the night air and the glowing stones beneath him sizzling but, incredibly, not hurting him.
He released Clare's hand and, stumbling like a drunk, picked her up and set her as gently as he could a short distance away from the remains of the inferno. She curled into a ball, crying softly in agony and clutching her ruined hand to her chest. He reached out to her, trying to formulate words, but his throat was raw and no sound would come to him. He felt suddenly weak and pitched forward, landing heavily on the ground. He dragged one hand up, trying desperately to touch Clare one last time, but he never made it.
Her sobs quieted then, and he saw her eyes flutter closed. Her breathing slowed. No! Nonononono!
“Help!” he half-screamed, half-sobbed, his voice ragged and bloodied and hoarse. “Serah! Castor! Somebody help!”
The last thing he remembered before peaceful blackness swallowed him was the sound of pounding feet, and then he drifted into oblivion.
Ten
Where the Titans had created life, the Dark One wished only to leave death in its wake. With Keth as its vessel it left the Void behind and traveled down to the world below, where it rejoiced in the chaos it had created and watched with sickening glee as the monstrosities it had unleashed upon Pallamar carved a path of destruction through the once-peaceful land.
The armies of humanity rallied against the Dark One's hordes, but they were no match for their own nightmares. Mankind fell into despair, and they cried out to the gods for deliverance.
And the small part of Keth that remained saw the destruction he had wrought, and wept.
~
Will awoke to the sounds of clopping hooves, low voices, and the heavy tramp of tired feet. He realized that he was being carried on a litter—he could feel the ground moving beneath him, and every once in awhile he felt a sharp bump in the road jar his otherwise peaceful journey. He opened his eyes and saw the stars and, low in the sky, the sliver of crescent moon. The dim outlines of birch trees framed either side of his vision. I think I've been here, he mused, a strange sense of calm settling over him. I wonder where we're going?
He looked around, careful to move only
his eyes—his head ached something fierce—and saw that they were, as he had suspected, in the foothills. More people were beyond, walking or riding horses. They looked rather downtrodden, which he found curious—it was a beautiful night, and he could think of nothing that they should be worried about. We're going toward that village, he realized. I wonder if the bones are still there. Perhaps we're going to a funeral for the villagers, which is why everyone is sad.
His current situation struck him as more than a little odd—for example, why in the name of the Void was he on a litter? He tried for a moment to remember how he had gotten there—he was sure he had done something abominably stupid to have such a headache—but thinking so hard was painful, so he stopped.
“Do you think he's alright?” a man's voice asked from behind him. Castor, he realized.
“He is fine,” said a woman. She had a strange accent, and after a moment the name 'Serah' popped into his head. “What small wounds he had when we found him should be all but healed by now. It is the girl I am concerned for.”
“I hope she's alright...” That was Katryna's voice.
“Me too,” Castor said quietly. “God above, if she doesn't make it...”
“Will is going to be devastated,” Katryna finished.
Who are they talking about? Will wondered.
“We are almost to the forest,” Serah said. “If Clare can hold out for just awhile longer, Feothon will be able to bring her back.”
Clare.
The name hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he jerked spasmodically out of the litter as everything came rushing back to him. He rolled to the ground and then rose shakily to his hands and knees, ignoring the now excruciating pain in his temples. He saw something swing back and forth in front of his face—Rik's flute, he realized, burnt around the edges and smeared with soot, but otherwise unharmed. How had it survived the fire when everything else had been destroyed? He heard several people shout in surprise, and their cries were accompanied by the pounding of booted feet on soft earth. “Where is she?” he asked, his voice coming out as a hoarse growl that sounded disturbingly akin to Pestilence's. “Where's Clare?”
