“But Armagon—”
Khain cut Morkleb off with a shove toward the boat. “Has the NecroKwar.”
“We have to be ready to escape when he gets away,” Sahra insisted, dragging Camry toward the boat.
Charon’s teeth chattered. “My boat, my river, is beyond even the king’s touch.” He patted the sack of teeth tied on his robe. “Your passage is paid.”
Golas and Seal were the first to board and helped pull Morkleb and Camry from the shore. Madger took a step back toward the bridge but Kharick snagged her hand. “No, lass.” She gave a final, desperate look before relenting to his tugging. Dying here would be worse than a simple death on the Mortal plane. She didn’t want to be trapped in the Hells.
The touch of the NecroKwar would have killed any other being, but the power of Asmodeus, the greatest archdevil, prevented the wound from being mortal. Still, scorching pain radiated from the slash, like being struck by a hot iron. His bones creaked, the skin on his face suppurated, as the power of the weapon wrenched at Asmodeus’s essence.
Armagon desperately tried to fly past Asmodeus before the archdevil could recover from the wound. He thought he was high enough, beyond the archdevil’s grasp, but a spell caught and jerked Armagon down. He wasn’t practiced enough to summon his clerical powers to break free, before Asmodeus’s claws swiped across his chest, leaving bloody rents in his armor, and slapping him to the ground like a fly.
Armagon gagged for air despite his wounds. He grasped for the NecroKwar at his side and focused on healing his injuries before he lost consciousness.
“You defy me?” Asmodeus roared. The façade of the elegant devil began to melt away. “You dare strike at me?” His frame bulged, muscles tearing through the fine fabric of his robes. “You will obey!” Wings flared from his back, as the true demonic figure of the king of the Hells roared. Elongated fangs dripped poison from his mouth, and horns curved high over his head. His skin blistered and broke open, the flames of his essence no longer fully contained within his body. A sword of fire and stone appeared in Asmodeus’s hand and he struck at the prone sarpand.
Armagon managed to roll out of the way as his injuries healed. He scrambled to his feet, gasping, as his ribs snapped back into place. Armagon jumped back and the blazing sword crashed into the ground again in front of him. The heat from the weapon seared through his armor and his scales. He whipped the NecroKwar up, slicing at Asmodeus’s wrist, and the devil dropped his weapon, howling as he cradled the injured arm.
“Do something!” Camry demanded.
Khain frowned but nodded. “I’ll try and get his attention.” He turned to Sahra. “Don’t leave them.”
Sahra’s features creased with her desperation to help, but she was no match against the archdevil. Looking back toward the boat, she urged her fellow assassin. “Hurry.”
Khain dashed forward, becoming little more than a darting stream of black fluid. Pushing and lunging, grasping and pulling across the ground, trying to reach the bridge.
Armagon tried to fly past Asmodeus again, hoping the injury to the devil’s arm was serious enough to let him pass. Armagon caught sight of DraKar struggling to pull himself up onto the ledge of the chasm. His brother wouldn’t be able to flee before Asmodeus recovered. With a growl of determination, he spun in mid-air and dove at the archdevil’s back.
“No!” DraKar roared as he clambered up from the chasm.
The NecroKwar bit deep into Asmodeus’s back, cutting through muscle and bone between his wing joint and shoulder. Dark crimson fire erupted from the wound, alongside boiling ichor. The archdevil screamed and spun, his wing smashing Armagon to the ground.
He tried to catch his breath, and looked up from where he landed, horrified he’d left the sword in the devil’s back. He tried to avoid Asmodeus’s hand as it slammed down, but his arm and wing were caught under the seething grasp. Bones snapped, and Armagon roared as the devil jerked him up, dislocating his wing.
“I will consume you,” Asmodeus promised. Saliva and blood pooled with the poison from his fangs, and he spit it at the sarpand.
DraKar lashed out with his magic as Khain speared past him. The spell smashed into Asmodeus near the NecroKwar, the flesh around it already sloughing off and blackening with decay. When the magic struck the wound, the rot was burned away, and fresh gouts of dark gore poured free.
Khain caught Armagon as he fell from Asmodeus’s grasp, and shifted into his humanoid form to ease the sarpand to the ground. Armagon grunted as Khain reset the bones. The soothing heat of his clerical power eased the pain as it knit torn ligaments together, and healed skin and scales.
“Get DraKar out of here,” Armagon commanded.
Khain hesitated, not sure if he wanted to follow the directive to abandon Armagon, but seeing the determination in the black sarpand’s eyes, he left to aid DraKar.
Asmodeus turned to face DraKar and unleashed a torrent of flashing magic at him. The blue sarpand barely had time to raise a shield spell, and was forced to one knee from the strain of maintaining it.
Armagon’s wing wasn’t fully healed, but he jumped into the air after the retreating archdevil, desperate to keep his weakened brother from Asmodeus’s full attention. He caught enough lift to reach the NecroKwar and jerked it free. A gaping wound was left in the devil’s back where the flesh had rotted and torn away from the combined assaults.
Asmodeus gasped as he turned again, confused by how quickly Armagon was recovering. He swiped wildly, but swung wide of the dark sarpand. His mind was awash in fear unknown to him, the thought of making Armagon pass the sword to him vanishing. He’d never been so injured before. Never doubted he was immortal. Death was a void in his mind. A frightening yawning chasm and he teetered at the edge. Oblivion. It could not be!
Armagon fell from the air, unable to recover from dodging the clawed hand with his injured wing. He rolled across the ground, absorbing the concussion of the fall, but his ribs and wing protested the move. With his movement slowed, Asmodeus caught him and picked him up. The devil’s grip was crushing, claws from both hands punched through his armor, spearing into his flesh. Armagon had no breath to scream, as he faced Asmodeus. Instead, he sliced at the archdevil’s chest, laying open the molten flesh.
Asmodeus howled as the NecroKwar split his body again. The archdevil wrenched his arms in opposing directions, and dropped the sarpand’s rent form, spilling viscera onto the blood-slicked ground. The two halves of Armagon’s body lay separated from each other on a field of intestines. His lifeless eyes stared across the space to his other half and the NecroKwar still clutched in his hand.
DraKar’s eyes flared red as his brother’s sundered body fell. In a blind rage, he lashed out with his magic at something dark that reached for him, not realizing he was striking out at Khain and sending him tumbling away. DraKar ripped vials from a padded pouch on his belt and smashed them in his hands. Howling screams of souls being consumed shattered the air. The horrid power from burning the immortal essences poured into DraKar, threatening to overwhelm him. He roared and the sound tore across the terrain and pummeled the collapsing archdevil.
Morkleb screamed and tumbled to the bottom of the boat, clutching his ears. Golas and Madger fell back as the magic erupted from DraKar and hit them like a physical force. Camry spun to her mentor, feeling the waft of magic rush past her, though she didn’t understand what it was. Her natural draw of magic had shunned it.
“He burned them!” Morkleb keened and wept.
Madger struggled to breath and pulled herself upright. She’d made a similar sound as DraKar when she’d discovered her massacred clan. Her slaughtered brother. Tears leaked from her wide eyes. Kharick grabbed at her shoulders to keep her in the boat but she was too weak, too stunned, to get to her feet.
“Infinite,” Seal seethed. “Devil-son.” She turned away from the scene and tried to settle Morkleb.
Asmodeus was on his knees, trying to recover from the dead sarpand’s final assault, when he hea
rd and felt DraKar’s grief riddled cry. The burning of the souls, the scream from the two immortal essences, echoed across the Third plane. He staggered to his feet and turned to meet the new attack, and stumbled back as DraKar slammed into him.
Magic and sword and claws and teeth tore at the blackened chest of the archdevil. The crazed sarpand was ripping through the fiery essence of the devil. The blazing heat and boiling ichor didn’t slow DraKar’s assault. He drove his blue sword deep into Asmodeus’s neck with another defiant, feral roar.
Asmodeus tried to claw at DraKar, to rip the maddened mage away, but he couldn’t get past the magical shield. His weakened power failed against the strength the annihilated souls had given DraKar. Blood and venom frothed at the archdevil’s lips as he grasped at the weapon, unable to halt the ceaseless attack.
DraKar wrenched his sword back and forth, sawing at the devil’s neck until the body lay on the ground next to its head severed.
A great shockwave boomed out from the archdevil’s corpse, like a gong. All the planes of the Hells shuddered as the final release of the king’s power diminished in everything he had dominated.
DraKar was thrown back, his body rolling and sliding across the hard ground, before finally settling to a stop in the dust. He staggered to his feet; looking for Armagon’s body. Anxious to find the remains of his brother, he lurched back to where the battle had taken place, where the corpse of Asmodeus was turning to ash. Would Armagon’s soul be captured in the Hells after being killed there, even with being Death’s Champion?
DraKar gasped and spun in a confused circle, not finding Armagon’s body. No hint of his brother remained, no blood, armor, or the NecroKwar lay on the battle-scarred dirt.
Khain finally reached DraKar again, and wrapped his arms around the big sarpand’s chest, pulling him back toward the bridge. “We have to go! Every devil will know Asmodeus is dead. If we don’t beat them to the Seventh plane, we’ll never reach Limbo!”
DraKar didn’t hear Khain, he couldn’t see past his tears. He fell forward and clawed at the ground, trying to find his brother, desperation feeding his suddenly weak muscles. The strength and power he’d used against Asmodeus was exhausted. He wailed as Khain pulled him away, scrambling to go back to where he had last seen Armagon.
“He’s gone,” Khain insisted. “Armagon is gone!”
Seeing DraKar was beyond reason, Khain dipped a tendril of fluid beneath the scales at the base of his skull. His chemical essence tapped the big sarpand’s brain, and he collapsed, unconscious. Khain heaved the nine-foot tall sarpand across his shoulders, his fluid form shifting to balance the weight, as he rushed back across the bridge to the boat.
Madger helped ease DraKar into the boat and cradled him with Camry. Camry wiped at her tears as she silently wept. Seal held Morkleb as he rocked. Golas shook his head, no one but the archdevils should be able to burn a soul, let alone survive the aftermath of such power.
Sahra urged Khain toward the boat. “Go. I can’t go with them to Limbo. If Armagon’s soul is here, I’ll find him.”
“Get away from here. The archdevils will be looking for Asmodeus’s killer.”
Sahra nodded. “And tell DraKar, I don’t want to see him here again.”
Khain gave a sad smile. “I’ll tell him.”
After Khain joined them in the boat, Charon pushed away from the shore. The loudest noise on the river was his skeletal fingers clicking and sliding along the pole.
Kharick ground his teeth, his beard twitching, as he watched Camry stroke DraKar’s scarred face. As though she were trying to smooth away the strained look that made his eyelids wrinkle shut and pulled his mouth down. He cast a worried look over Madger, her face was taunt, haunted; how she often looked after waking from a nightmare.
“Lass,” he whispered. She wouldn’t look at him.
Charon reached down to Camry, a skeletal hand extended beyond the sleeve of his black robe. He eased her arms aside and placed his hand on DraKar’s head. “Rest.” His voice was deep, hollow, like the abyssal depths he rowed over. “When we land, he will awake, fully restored. That is the last I offer you.”
“Has an archdevil ever been killed before? Can that happen?” Seal asked in a hushed voice as the boat gently carried them away.
Khain shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Charon’s teeth clicked and ground together in his skull. “Asmodeus is destroyed.” Disappointment etched the words. “The Dreamer will find another.”
Camry’s lower lip quivered as she watched the shore slip away. “Where is he? What happened to Armagon’s body?”
Khain offered no better answer than, “Dead.”
“What do we do now?” Golas asked.
“Continue with the plan,” Khain answered. “We have no other option.”
Chapter 29
317 Br. summer
“The southernmost Icren Isle was once sparsely populated but when the demon gate was erected the Council of Elders ordered the evacuation of the dormant volcano. It took twelve long years and thousands of lives to rid the island of the demon host that had arrived with the construction of the gate. Since that time a guard has been set to warn the Council if more demons arrive via the gate. Each time the icren have risen in defense of their lands, and though it costs them many sons and daughters, they slaughter the demons. Although some few demons have escaped, the icren make it their boast that they do not lose more land to the hell-spawn.”
-Tales of the Hell Mouths
M adger stared at ghostly images, not asleep, but caught in a nightmare. Her frantic screams for her mamma and dadda deafened her. Merion was dead, his spear still clean, at the entrance to the boys’ room. He’d never been much of a fighter or hunter. His body was slashed open, as though a bear or something bigger had attacked him. One leg nearly torn off.
Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked.
Merion walked her to his room, to put her in seclusion before her wedding. The bruise from her father’s strike was fresh on her face.
Her question was a vague whisper in her mind. “Why did you give up the Titan’s Tome?”
His answer was as clear as the day he said it. “You know why.” He’d had to give it up to keep her from being executed. She shouldn’t have fought off Kern, she’d already been betrothed to him. If she’d only followed the Traditions. If she’d only let him have his way. His knee in her gut and his finger between her thighs… her father would’ve had a better negotiating position.
The last time she’d hugged him, his last words to her, “Be brave.”
***
Charon’s boat scraped to a stop on shards of bone of the Seventh plane’s shore. There was a constant deep rumble of heaving ground. The grinding noise stirred DraKar and he blinked to clear the haze of sleep. He sat up, pulling away from Camry, ignoring her whimpered words. He looked behind him, hoping to see his brother. No one was there except Charon. The boatman’s empty sockets stared back at him, and bare teeth clicked together as though he might say something. It hadn’t been a nightmare, Armagon was dead.
“Take me back. I need to find him,” DraKar said.
“No.” Khain didn’t shy away from the dark look the big sarpand turned on him.
Charon’s teeth chattered. “There was no payment for a return trip.”
“Sahra stayed behind to look for his soul. Armagon told us to get to Limbo,” Khain said.
DraKar stood, wings flared, towering over Khain and everyone else on the trembling shore. Camry edged away from him, slipping out of the boat and went to Golas. They watched him with an air of distrust, frightened of where they were, and uncertain of the quivering land beneath them.
Volcanoes burst from the charred ground, dark clouds rained blood, and lightning struck the ground and broke open flaming pits. In the distance, just within sight, Asmodeus’s palace was crumbling, shifting, new spires speared up from the ground, and its walls were torn apart like paper.
DraKar had seen that desp
erate, despondent look before. He flexed his hand, touching the long scar across his palm. He needed to get them out of the Hells. Khain was right. He needed to finish what Armagon told him to do. As he stepped on land the chattering of bones eased. Charon silently departed the quieted shore and disappeared into the fog of the river.
Morkleb huddled against Seal and stared up at DraKar. His aura was shifting, the black taint of the Hells was churning within a dark smoke. It remained unsettled, boiling black tar that drowned in billowing smoke, as though the fate of his soul was unknown. He’d never seen such a sharp shift, although minor, in someone’s aura. He’d never heard of someone able to tear apart and consume a soul for power. He’d never thought an archdevil could be killed.
“What be happening?” Kharick muttered.
“With the ruler of this realm dead, there is no one to control its form,” Khain answered. He looked back to DraKar for confirmation and received no answer, but there was no argument either.
“Who will rule it?” Camry asked as she tried to mute the smells by covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve.
“This is rather unprecedented,” Khain replied. “But I don’t think we have much time before the palace completely disintegrates, and possibly takes the portal with it.”
Golas shook his head. “There’s no way we can survive crossing that. The air is barely breathable here and if one of those lightning strikes hit us or a volcano comes to life under us…” he trailed off, not needing to finish.
“You can shield us,” Camry insisted. “Staying here isn’t an option.”
Seal studied the landscape and the horizon. “At least there aren’t any demons. Likely died when Asmodeus did or succumbed to…” she hesitated and gestured vaguely in front of them, “this.”
Khain looked back to DraKar again, wishing he would add some useful information, but the sarpand’s eyes were still distant.
Golas followed Khain’s look back at DraKar and shuddered. Burning a soul for magic had not been something he’d thought possible, much less by the sarpand. It was unacceptable that the brute he’d known as DraKar had the capability to wield that kind of magic. He tried to rationalize how a mortal could tear apart and consume an immortal essence, and contain the resulting power. DraKar’s aura still shifted and roiled. It didn’t make sense that it had lightened. Did consuming that much power and using it to kill the archdevil have something to do with it? Perhaps it would take time for the inky aura to settle?
The Titan's Tome Page 33
