A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5)

by Everet Martins

  “The gates!” Claw’s hand clawed her arm, but she tried to shove him off. She saw it as he said it. “Look, they open, Mistress.” The Milvorian gates were half-lowered and lowering even farther. Recognizable figures stood behind it like mythical statues. “Walter,” she breathed.

  Asebor made a sound that sounded like a muffled grunt. He raised his arm and his palm snapped open. A warbling oval of violet cracked the air and Asebor stepped through.

  “No!” Nyset released a twin pair of beams of fire from her hands. The portal closed with a sizzle, missed her target and tore through five Cerumal crouching behind him, throwing out a mess of burning flesh, spinning bits of plate armor, and smoking entrails. That got a surge of cheers from hoarse throats.

  “Can you lead them?” She turned to Claw, gripping his shoulders. His pale eyes scanned her face as if she’d gone mad.

  “What? Can I lead them?” he repeated, his jaw hanging slack.

  “I need you to lead them, Claw. You’re my second. I must help Walter. Do you understand?” Her voice took on a frantic tone.

  “But…” the madness, the iron strength seemed to slip out of him then.

  “Just like you used to. Lead them like you lead your village in the North. Do what must be done.”

  “Like the North,” he nodded, eyes shining with that mad twinkle she’d come to love. Everyone she loved had a touch of it.

  Something caught her eye over Claw’s shoulder, their backs to the front lines. An apprentice of the Dragon clutched a fireball in two hands, hunched over towards them, arrow standing out from her sinewy neck. Her sunken eyes rolled back into her skull.

  “Claw! Shield!” Claw complied, glowing shield warping the air. Nyset wrapped her arm around his neck, using all her weight and the Dragon’s strength to shift him over to the shield he put beside her.

  The apprentice collapsed. Fire filled her vision. A tremendous force sent her rolling over. Claw screamed. Pain battered her shoulders, back, and face. She sucked in a breath. On the ground. Claw’s back thudded against her chest, blasting the air out from her lungs. Her cheeks burned, hair stinking and smoking at one shoulder. She coughed, blinking away the tears of pain. Had to see.

  “Mistress.” Claw’s voice was a sigh. “Are you well?” he asked as he rolled off of her. “Your hair!” He drew a dagger and wrapped his fingers into a length of it.

  “What about it?”

  He jerked her head to the side, gasped at seeing it still burning. Muscles strained in her neck.

  “Claw? What are you…”

  He stretched a chunk of her hair out, started sawing it off. He flung her cut golden hair to the ground, still smoking and burning.

  “Oh. I — don’t know,” she coughed, words coming out wrong. Pain lanced through her mouth. She put her hand to her cheek, felt charred flesh flake off onto her fingers. “Oh, oh no. Oh, no.” She still had both eyes, though filling with hot tears. “Something is wrong. Something is happening.” She didn’t know how to describe it. Something deep within her chest felt different. Something new, something strange, like a long yearning finally quenched.

  “What are you? Is someone?” Claw stammered, sitting on his knees and watching her. He picked up Ghostwalker and laid it across his thighs. It was a miracle neither of them had been run through in their tumbling.

  “What is it?”

  She felt her cheek again, flesh smooth, charred skin seemingly gone. The pain was still there, though, like a knife cutting under her face, trying to peel the flesh from her bones. It was an incapacitating, mind ruining pain. By the Dragon, it was fading, but not fast enough.

  Nyset saw they were up against the bridge’s rails, legs strewn out, elbow propping her up. “Have to get to Walter, Claw.” She stood on sore legs. “Lead them. Make me a portal.”

  “A portal? But I’ve never done it,” She saw the muscles in his neck working.

  “But you must know how!” She screamed, didn’t mean too. Cool mist swirled up and over the bridge, kissed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry, can you please try?” She thought she saw Asebor near the gates now, but it could’ve just been the glint of light. But where else would he have gone?

  Claw growled a curse, sheathed Ghostwalker and leaped up. The air hummed, hands glowing with the whitish-blue of the Phoenix. A line of light split the air, twisted around to reveal the opened gates. “It worked,” he said with a tone of surprise.

  “It did.” She swept her eyes over the chaos, watched a Cerumal take a spear through the eye, crumbling like its bones had become dirt. “Finish it, Claw!”

  The courtyard behind the Tower’s walls flashed as if a storm of the ages had just opened up, flashing with spears of lightning. And with that, she leapt through.

  There were two sets of Milvorian gates dividing the courtyard from the once magnificent Tower bridge. The second gate finished lowering with a dull click, showing the world beyond the Tower’s wall. Walter clenched his fist, tendons in his stump flexing as they attempted to do the same.

  The bridge was a ragged shell. Hunks of stone were missing in spots and showing the lethal waters below. The falls spilled out with curtains of mist that draped over the bridge and bubbled into white foam at the edges of its craggy cliff face. There were a few stony outcroppings on the cliff side bearing vibrant bushes in oranges, reds and blues. Overfed Sand Buckeyes swayed with the torrent, mouths hanging open for an unsuspecting meal. A few wisps of black smoke twisted up from the burned out village, insatiable fires consuming every last combustible morsel. Beyond the village, the Far Sea shone like priceless gems, waters below the surface dark as night. Above the Far Sea, the sun was a golden coin hanging onto the cloudless day, bright with its last few hours.

  Walter and his companions stood before the broad gateway, gates now deep within their hidden slots. Walter looked at the twisting lines of steel making up the bridge’s support beams, six in all. Thousands upon thousands of spiraling tendrils of shining metal reached around and around and down through the water’s white rapids, latching onto stone at some unknown depth. How they had stood the test of time unmarred, steel bright as the day it was created, was a mystery to all. Who had created the bridge and with what magic had been lost to the Tower, along with countless other documented histories during the Tigerian invasion.

  Walter’s gaze finally settled upon the bridge’s surface where the battle waged on, for once seeming to go in their favor from this distance, seemingly less Death Spawn than men. Pillars of fire, fireballs, and shimmering projectiles filled the air beyond like a strange dream. A nightmare. But it was Zoria and not the Shadow Realm, and that was good.

  “Let’s finally end this, shall we?” Walter said, looked at Grim by his side. Grimbald was nodding like he couldn’t stop, hand massaging the skull pommel of Corpsemaker on his back, eyes fixed in an unblinking blood trance.

  “There are only four of us. There are hundreds of them,” Isa said. “I understand flanking, but we won’t last long, even at their backs.” His jaw clenched and unclenched, muscles working. “Don’t misunderstand me. I do not fear death. But would we throw ourselves under the enemy’s heel?”

  Walter looked over his shoulder and into Isa’s colorless eyes. “Do you have a better idea?” A salty gust whooshed over the courtyard, sent debris tumbling against the wall adjacent to the parted gates.

  “No, no,” Isa said with a sigh of frustration, looked down at his soft-toed boots. “The way I’ve always survived, on my own, was through caution. But I see now is not the time for caution.”

  “Now’s the time for killing,” Grimbald said, blunt as the flat of his axe.

  Senka looked at Isa, perhaps with adoration. “A little caution is never bad. Maybe we—”

  Footfalls pattered onto the wall above. Walter took a few cautious steps back and peered up, heart thumping hard. Not more Death Spawn, he hoped. Thalia and her warriors were fanning out over the wall, long daggers bordering on swords brandished in wet hands. Men and women al
ike wore tight fitting loincloths only, war paint smudged down cheeks, necks, over breasts and muscular chests. They were ready for a battle and Walter was almost sad to disappoint them.

  “Didn’t leave any for us?” Thalia called, grinning down at him. She was bent over and her full breasts swayed over the parapet.

  “Not here, no shortage out there, though.” He nodded through the gates, then took a good eyeful of her body. “How was the swim?”

  “Invigorating to say the least. Glad to say everyone made it.”

  “Can you teach me to swim like that?” Isa called, hand shielding his eyes.

  “Maybe. But you would have to go outside to learn, get some sun on your pale flesh,” Thalia’s smile became a frown as she squinted beyond the courtyard, behind them.

  Walter turned. Something happened behind Isa near the middle of the courtyard. Senka said something, her words blurred in his mind. The air shimmered there. A violet orb took shape, ever widening.

  Walter’s eye burst alight with Dragon fire, chest filling up with cold rage. The sort of rage that could only be tamed by the Phoenix’s tempering. He stepped past Isa, shouldered him out of the way, twisted past Senka, eyes fixed. “Asebor,” he hissed, and felt his friends bristle with tension at the name, heard weapons rasp free from leathery confines.

  “Where?” Grimbald turned, grunted at seeing it.

  How many moons had passed? How many nights had he spent watching the stars burn, waiting, begging for this moment? Was he ready? Could he do what needed to be done? Walter stalked towards the portal, felt the world moving as if through molasses, stopped ten paces away, waiting.

  A black leg slipped through the oval of violet light, edges lined with whitish-purple flames. The portal widened even more, making room for his towering form. His chains darted through like snakes, ruby with the blood of his allies. A violet pair of eyes set in a shadow went narrow as blades. Tattered ribbons of his scarlet cape floated on the air, light as feathers. “Have you come to die again? To return to the Shadow mother?” Asebor laughed, a vicious, cruel sound.

  Walter squared his hips to Asebor, but still stood about five hands shorter. Asebor’s portal closed with a sizzling of violet sparks. Walter settled into a fighting stance, legs parted a little wider than his hips, one back and the other a step forward. He ground the ball of his back foot into the cold earth. A cloud of blackbirds rattled into the sky from the band of forest surrounding the Tower. They twisted up in a line, swirled against the golden sky and making for the Far Sea.

  Had to distract him, to protect his companions. Walter did not hesitate, did not speak, for his words were fire. A cone of white Dragon’s fire roared from his stump, dousing Asebor in the conflagration.

  Asebor let out a mocking laugh, chains whipping down, cracking in the air. The skin of the Death Spawn bodies touched by his fire crackled, the stink of rotting flesh filling the air. A pair of chains came at Walter, two snakes with shimmering blades for heads. He stabbed with his stump and pulled on the Phoenix, stopped them mid-flight and freezing them in the air. His stump glowed with the cool blue of the Phoenix.

  Another chain lashed at Grimbald. Walter could not stop it. The chain clinked as it doubled around Corpsemaker’s haft gripped in his mighty hands. A whipping length of cape snared him around the ankle, jerked him over onto his side with a heavy grunt.

  Isa leaped and rolled. Asebor’s chain aimed for him, cutting deep into the earth and throwing up dust. A piece of his cape darted at him, Isa cut, slashing it in half the long way. The halves twisted mid-flight, slipped around Isa’s neck, letting out a croak. His fingers wriggled against the crushing cloth, alabaster face flashing blood red.

  Senka danced, weaved, dodged and tumbled in a wondrous flow, narrowly avoiding the crippling strikes of his bladed links. She hissed out a dart from her blowgun. It bounced off his armor, all hard edges and severe angles. A pair of cape tendrils wound around her wrists, dragging her into the air with a shrill screaming.

  “You will return!” Asebor bellowed, hands pulsing with violet fire, dark shadows quivering. Asebor’s gaze shifted to the Tree Folk warriors piling down the stairs for the courtyard. He grinned.

  Then there were screams, shrieks of the most horrible sort. Walter twisted back, saw a river of violet fire roaring up the stairs. “No!” he screamed. Warriors fell with flailing limbs burned to black chars, turning to dust on the air. Thalia leaped and a few of her guardsman courageously followed before the fire reached them, plummeting down. The stone where the fire burned turned into red magma, bodies vaporized.

  Walter screamed and felt like his mind was splitting in half. He held Asebor’s chains and drew more of the Phoenix, made a portal cut the air where Thalia fell. It had to be wide, wider than any portal he’d made before. He saw it flash, Thalia and her guards vanished, dumped out on the path leading up to the other side of the bridge. It had worked, but it wasn’t enough.

  More Tree Folk warriors followed their lead, but he didn’t have the strength or the time to save them. He winced as they fell screaming, bones crunching against the cruel stone below. “No! Bastard!” More followed before the river of fire engulfed them, bodies coming one after another, bones cracking and bodies squelching against hunks of jagged stones. Walter saw a woman’s head dashed apart into halves, a man falling onto an upturned spear, another woman’s bones poking out of her thighs. At least forty men and women, slain in an instant. Men who he had broken bread with and shared in celebrations just shy of a week ago.

  He wasn’t strong enough. He wasn’t enough to save them. Deep within his chest, an anger unlike any anger he’d felt before blossomed to life. He made a sound unlike any sound he’d made before, a sharp high pitched whistle working out between gritted teeth. Walter felt a strange calm slip over him, like he’d just spent the better part of the day in quiet meditation. It surrounded his mindless rage, allowing him to think. The acrid stink of burned flesh reached his nose, made him want to wretch.

  Asebor grinned wide, showed his cascading rows of shark’s teeth descending down his infinite mouth. “Your strength has grown, but it will not be enough. Your place on this tapestry comes to an end, boy.”

  Walter saw the slightest twitch in his eye. A chink in his armor? He worked to regain control of the pair of chains Walter held firm. It felt like he was clinging to a piece of driftwood, trapped on the cusp of the greatest of waves. One wrong move and he’d be swallowed forever, drowned in the Phoenix’s strength.

  Walter wore his bravest face, but his wriggling stomach and trembling legs showed the truth, showed his wrenching terror. But he would not let it touch his face. It was a herculean effort to hold his chains in place, quivering, clinking against an unseen wall. “You’ve gone weak as a new babe, a lamb ripe for slaughter,” Walter growled, hoping it came out a threat and not a whimper.

  Asebor’s eyes became slits. Violet plumes of fire flashed, Phoenix shield instinctively sprang to life. Not again, Walter thought, panic lancing him like a knife. He drew hard on the Dragon, saw an image of it swirling together with the Phoenix. It was a ring of tails and claws, in the middle an avian beak and a roaring Dragon’s mouth. His eyes went wide, shield shifting from blue to blood red in under a second, a swirling hybrid of colors.

  Asebor’s fire struck, reflected from his shield and throwing violet streaks across the sky. It worked. He held them both in his mind’s eye. Asebor’s mouth drew open in a slight parting, then bore down in a grimace.

  “It’s time for you to die,” Walter said, plain as if it were but a chore that needed doing. He let The Chains of the North, Bonesnapper, unfurl from his arm. The links softly clanked in a pile beside him. Stormcaller burst alight, tendrils winding in and out around the links.

  Asebor’s chains retreated from waging war on his companions, drew in defensively tight like a cage. He dropped his elbows and the shadows around him shuddered. The tendrils of tattered cape twisted free from his friends, drew in close and wove together like a pair
of bucklers. “You have it!” Asebor’s arm drew across his neck, elbow down tight against his ribs.

  “I have it,” Walter said, body flaring with Dragon fire, wisps of light springing out his skin like tiny volcanoes. He whirled Bonesnapper overhead with a deep, chest vibrating whoosh.

  Asebor stepped back. “It will not be enough. You are not enough!” he said with a desperate note. His chains sprung into the air in all directions, blades stabbing at him.

  Walter let the Chains of the North snap free, darting in a blur, cutting between Asebor’s chains and aiming at his body. The triplicate of chains cut in different directions. One shimmering end stabbing, another slashing, another parrying his metallic attacks. The Chains of the North became white fire, brighter than the sun, cutting three lines through his shadowed form.

  Asebor screamed a scream of four voices at once, his chains retreating mid-strike and wrapping around his torso. Violet blood streaked down from his gut, his crotch, and rolled over his thighs, pattering onto the dirt below. The walls surrounding the Tower seemed to grow taller, looming, reaching to trap Asebor in. His chains wrapped his wound up tight, bleeding between links. His cape tendrils darted at Walter, at least ten of them.

  Stormcaller snapped the chains back to him, sent them into a whirling disc of fire. Asebor’s cape was cut to shreds upon the disc, bits of red spraying into the air like celebratory confetti. The last half, his cape went soaring back, snapped away with the sound of a whipping flag. “You are not enough!” Asebor screamed, his body shimmering into gray mist.

  “You are not a god!” Walter roared back. He struck again, chains hissing harmlessly through the mist. Asebor’s misty form fell towards him, violet eyes the only semblance of his previous form. Walter ran for his friends. He didn’t know what this mist form was, but knew enough to not let it touch him.

  Walter slid to a stop between Senka and Grimbald. They were recovering, rubbing at sore limbs where Asebor’s cape had snared them. Around Isa’s throat was a necklace of deep bruising, Senka’s wrists bled and Grimbald winced, putting his weight on his back leg.