The Shadow princess blinked at him, her face expressionless and hard as granite. She had his mother’s angular cheeks, broad jaw, and golden-brown eyes. It couldn’t be her. He remembered the last time he was here, this particular memory branded into his mind forever. The Shadow princess had worn the face of Nyset then. This was a trick, like a shape-shifting Metamorphose.
“You are not her.” He shook his head and a grin sprouted on his lips. “You are just another who will taste my fire.” A strange, unexpected joy rose within Walter then, and he started to laugh. It was a deep laugh that came from his belly, booming and made him weep hot tears. He laughed at the Shadow princess, at the Shadow god. He laughed at the demons, the endless nightmare. The Shadow princess took a step back behind the Shadow god like a scared child.
The sky cracked with a bolt of lighting so bright it almost felt like an assault on his eyes. He stumbled back a few paces behind his friends with a mad cackle. Something rose up from the pool of blood. It was a strange cloud. Thousands upon thousands of bits of bones, some small as sand, others fully formed limbs.
He was struck with a bolt of panic. “Look out!” He sent a burst of the Phoenix out, pushing his companions stumbling farther away, his eyes still locked on the Shadow god. They started spinning up and around him, cutting into his flesh like knife blades. They whirled with incredible force, stripping him of his armor in an instant, the dark plates tumbling high into the air. Next came his clothing, torn away in ragged streaks, made his flesh bare for them all. He did not care, but only found himself laughing harder, his throat flexing and guts throbbing.
His friends stood affixed to the ground, bodies rigid, lost in the nightmares swimming in the Shadow god’s mouth.
The whirling bones tore through his skin, shredding through muscle, cutting him down to the bone. A strip of flesh hung from the side of his cheek, whipping like a sail. Screams roared in his ears. His screams. He no longer felt the pain because pain was part of him now. It belonged to him and he belonged to it. They had become allies, friends, in this struggle to survive.
He laughed harder then. Laughed as blood washed out from his naked skin, laughed so hard he thought his skull might shatter from the force of it. He had never felt so much elation in all his years. He was alive. He was dying. And if he did die now, he thought it might have all been worth it for this lunatic moment.
He felt like he lived forever in that storm of bones, blood, and pain. The world filled with red. The faces of his parents flitted across his vision, painted in bones and blood. The sky rumbled and thundered so loudly it overrode the sound in his screaming throat.
He felt like he was burning. Then he felt like he was freezing. He thought he heard the beating of drums in the sky or was that just the thumping of his heart? Pain swirled in his mind with bright colors. He saw the red of the Dragon, the bright green of the Sand Buckeye, the brown of a Shroomling’s mushroom capped head. His skin felt like it was on fire. Maybe it was. Pins, needles, blades wracked his body.
He saw his life in the whirling mix of blood and bones. Various times were laid out on this surreal tapestry. He saw himself pulling elixir cherries on his parent’s farm, laughing with Juzo in Breden square, training with Noah, meeting Baylan and Lillian, Baylan losing the lower part of his arm, his first time kissing Nyset in Midgaard. He saw the Lord of Death, Juzo stabbing him with Blackout, saw Nyset donning the robes of the Arch Wizard, saw himself losing to arm wrestling with Grimbald, meeting Senka in Helm’s Reach. He saw demons taking his eye, ravaging his mother, taking his arm. He saw something shatter in his chest, exploding with blinding light, the blood moon high above. It was the time when he’d re-connected to the god’s powers in the Shadow Realm.
He met Nyset’s eyes, shining and twinkling with excitement. It was the day of their wedding day. She was perfect. The day that would not happen.
He laughed with bleeding, tattered lips. His upper lip had been split into two halves, showing his front teeth below his nose. The world was bright, a glowing sphere encased in cascading blues, clouds merrily passing overhead. Red flowers fell from the sky, one catching on her sheer, white veil.
“Why are you laughing, darling?” Nyset asked him, her hands holding both of his. It was nice to see it had finally regrown. When had he learned that spell? He couldn’t remember.
“Our wedding day. After everything that happened, we finally made it,” he said, a tear streaking his cheek, gleaming like a diamond.
“Do you remember when I let you beat me at knife throwing at the Festival of the Phoenix?” she asked him.
“Of course, I remember. I would have beaten you if I hadn’t trained that day.” He laughed.
“I loved you so much, even then. I couldn’t stand to lose, but my mother taught me how fragile men’s egos can be.”
“Well, that was nice of you. Your mother was always a wise woman,” Walter snickered. He kissed her then, but her lips felt hot, sticky, and tasted metallic. This was a hallucination, he realized.
It became difficult to breathe. The bones cutting his body to ribbons became an incomprehensible concept, like magic when he’d first heard about it. The stinging taste of blood coated his throat. He felt like he was becoming the whipping wind, he and it rattling the world. The blood moon reeled, winding around overhead. Stars burned, flashed, glittered, then vanished in a sheet of darkness.
A moment of clarity came. He felt himself coming back into his body, his mind righting itself like a once capsized boat. He tried to close his eye, wished he could shade it from the burning light of the moon above. It would not close for some reason. Why wouldn’t it close? he thought with waves of despair, then he knew. His eyelid had been torn free. He snorted and sobbed. He just wanted to close his eye.
“Why won’t you die?” he heard the Shadow god ask.
Destroy. The Dragon whispered in his ears, dragged out the word with its ancient voice. Destroy our enemies. This is the place.
This is the time. Bring us back. Make us whole. Make us one, the Phoenix hissed. A sacrifice.
You owe us. A sacrifice, the Dragon rasped, its voice like crackling flames.
“A sacrifice,” Walter tried to say, but his jaw and his tongue would not work and came out as a slobbering grunt. He went inward. I can’t choose any of them. Don’t make me choose. His vision became sheets of blacks and reds. Sounds went away.
Your body, the Phoenix twittered.
The end of time, the Dragon said.
I understand. Spare my companions?
It will be done, they said.
I choose myself. I will be the sacrifice. His elation waned and a great void replaced it.
It is done, they said in unison. We are you. You are us. We are one.
Walter’s vision returned, his body hovering a few feet above the blood, back arched and head lolled back. He saw the Shadow god’s gaping mouth, his friend’s faces stupefied in its hypnotic fires. How much time had passed, he could not say. Time would no longer be a concern, he knew. The swirling bones stopped in mid-air then, frozen in place. Droplets, globs, and streaks of blood were crystallized in time.
Then he was fire. He went brighter than a thousand suns. The Dragon spread its broad wings of fire, stabbing into the darkness. Each of its burning wings was big enough to reach the apex of the Silver Tower’s tallest spire. Walter was an ant between its body, a black speck in its writhing form. Spines of fire traveled up and down its sinuous body. Its eye was made of a fire of pure red. The Dragon’s tail was fire of the finest white. Its mouth was made of fiery teeth, broad enough to swallow the moon.
The Phoenix pulsed from his chest, screeching into flight, tail feathers as long as spears. The Phoenix soared into the air, a shimmering form of translucent blue light, bordering on white. It circled around the air like a gull at sea searching for prey. It completed a loop, let out an ear-piercing shriek, and dove down into the Dragon, cutting through it with its angled beak.
They became one form. The Phoenix�
�s endless tails spiraled around the Dragon’s glowing, hollow innards. Around and around went the blue of the Phoenix, a coil of light within the Dragon. Walter stood at the center of all of this, watching with wonder.
We are yours. You are ours. Lay waste to our enemies, the Phoenix and the Dragon said in his head.
“No. You can’t be here!” The Shadow god screamed, her fiery mouth closed up tight. The bones hanging on the air dropped into the blood with a series of soft splashes.
He was a fair distance away from his friends, at least twenty paces. The gods had kept their word at least. He took them in, wondered if they had any idea where he was, what he was doing. Could they even see him? Would they know what happened?
Walter saw them collecting themselves, regaining control of their bodies. They were unharmed, it seemed. That was good, he thought soberly.
“The dual-wielder has made the last sacrifice,” the gods roared above him. Their voices echoed in the emptiness, making the demons cringe and gibber. They crowded behind the Shadow god, tumbling over one another to get close to her.
Walter couldn’t say how he did what he did next. He thrust out his stump, saw it had been reduced to bone and sinews, and the intermingled Dragon and Phoenix sprung into the air. They were a mammoth beast in flight, streaking trails of blinding light. The Dragon flitted over the vast mob of demons, grinning with a giant’s mouth of fire. A torrent of fire raged from its mouth, split into thousands of tendrils half-way towards the demons. The Dragon’s tendrils merely touched their bodies, igniting them like barrels of oil.
The world became geysers of fire behind the Shadow god as she watched her minions burn. They shrieked and roared, their tendrils and mouths chomping with mindless anger, finding nothing but each other to let their fury out upon. The bodies burned in a tower of fire so great the darkness all around was briefly dispelled. The skulls making up the landscape took on greater dimension, showing the dents, scars, and scratches making up their texture. The Shadow god’s shoulders heaved as she turned to face Walter, the muscles under her petite breasts working to contain her fury. Even with all that light, she was encased in a globe of darkness.
Walter sauntered over to her, blood warm against his bare legs, his cock bouncing between them, surprised to find it still there. He’d hoped to feel the satisfaction of having won the war, watching them burn and paying for their crimes. But he felt nothing. No hate, no anger, no sadness. Only an expansive emptiness. Dying wasn’t so bad after all, he thought and smiled.
The Dragon poured fire on the demons in glowing meteors, waves, and cones. They burned bright and fast, their shrieking cut off before it was given the chance to cry out a proper death. He thought he would have liked to hear them scream longer. But you could only ask for so much from the gods.
He met the Shadow god’s eyes when he was close enough to see them. They shone with a terrible, violet beauty. Her knees hammered as her legs shook with an uncontrollable rage. “Th-this cannot be,” she said, smoke curling around her lips like a pair of chimneys.
The blood around his legs became shallow, left him with gory stockings from thigh to ankle. His wounds were gone, he saw, his flesh made anew. As he stalked past his friends, he wanted to look at them one last time, but they wouldn’t let him. He tried again, but his head would not turn. His eye would not deviate from the Shadow god’s as much as he tried.
There is always a price. Our time is not infinite in this form. The price will be paid, they said in his head, a language he could understand. He somehow knew then it was not their tongue’s preferred medium.
Time seemed to go slow as honey. Walter saw the Shadow god’s body starting to diffuse into smoke, the edges of her flesh becoming immaterial. The Chains of the North and Stormcaller were still around his forearm, he saw, and he wondered how they had remained attached. Perhaps the god’s doing. Perhaps luck.
“No, you don’t,” Walter said the words playfully, the way he would have said it to Wiggles had he still existed. A spear of white fire sprang to life, slipped into the Shadow god’s stomach and out her back.
She cried out, hunched over and grasped it with her hands. Black blood sprayed out from either side of the wound. The skin around her fingers and arms melted like wax, dripping onto upturned skulls and swallowed in their parted mouths. Beneath her flesh was a scaled carapace, obsidian and glowing in the light of the flaming spear. “It cannot be,” she said, mouth twisting with disbelief.
“Even gods die,” Walter said flatly. “Your journey ends here.”
The Dragon and Phoenix darted into him like an eel, retreating into him like he was its protector. He was filled with the strength of a thousand giants, filled with enough anger and hate to break the world in half. His hand darted for her narrow throat and caught it in his unbreakable grasp. Her hands were claws, three fingers each with talons the length of swords. They rammed into his gut, but he felt nothing.
He lifted his stump and a hand of fire sprang from the end. Wrapping it around her throat, it joined the other. He dragged her down to the ground. She was screaming, vomiting blood. He bashed her pretty face into a skull, cracking it and throwing out one of her ancient teeth. He bashed her head again, again and again until it was flat and dented on one side, tongue lolling free. The snakes lining her head gave a parting quiver, then fell limp as noodles against his hand. The amethyst glow of her eyes faded to black shallows.
Bonesnapper fell from his arm, rattling beside her motionless body. He watched one chain wrapping around her throat of its own volition. The other two lengths of chain plunged into her eye sockets, burrowing like moles, spiraling and excavating out a mix of blood, flesh, and fire.
Then his mouth was forced open and words came that he did not say. “Your reign ends now, Utrix. He was the perfect conduit. The perfect time. Your arrogance would always get the best of you,” The Dragon and the Phoenix roared through his throat. His jaw was forced open, the lower portion dislocating, but he felt no pain. He was a background voice in the forces controlling his body. The body was no longer his. He knew the end was close. He knew that finality was a razor’s distance away. Let me see her one last time, he begged. Please.
Very well, the Phoenix said with a note of resignation.
He willed his head to turn and it did.
He saw Nyset looking at him, eyes swimming with tears and fire. “Walter?” she mouthed. Maybe she spoke it, but his ears no longer functioned, it seemed.
He wanted to reply, wanted to tell her how much he loved her. He couldn’t even blink. His actions would have to speak for themselves. The time ends. You were a suitable conduit, a worthy sacrifice. His head snapped back to facing the Shadow god, black blood puddling around her form. He felt like an observer in the back of a house, peering through a window that was at the front and far too narrow.
The world filled with blinding white fire, stretching out into a sheet of pure white. It became glimmering stars and amorphous shapes and then… nothing.
Nyset watched with rasping breath and bulging tear-filled eyes as a blast of white fire poured from Walter’s mouth. It bathed the Shadow god in it, cleansed the skulls of her form. The fire faded a second later, left a white streak across her vision. Where the Shadow god once lay were only ashes. A great wind came then, sending the ashes whirling into the air.
Walter’s body slumped to the ground onto his back, his jaw hanging unnaturally opened and loose. Blood streamed from his ear canals, his nostrils, his lips, and his tear ducts.
“Walter? Walter?” she shrieked his name. He did not respond. She went for him, but Grimbald held up a hand to stop her, putting himself in front of her. She slipped around him.
“Ny, let me,” Juzo said.
Her chest heaved, heart throbbing with agony at every beat. “No, no, no!” she shrieked.
Juzo knelt down slow, lips quivering, and put a pair of fingers to his throat. He swallowed and looked up at her, but she already knew. He shook his head and scooped him up in his arms.<
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A hand touched her shoulder. Senka’s. The fires of the demons had burned down to embers all around them, filling the sky with black smoke and blotting out the blood moon. “We should have done something. We should have helped!” she screamed, directing her dagger gaze at everyone. She threw Senka’s arm off her and shoved her away, stumbling. Nyset took a step up the mountain of skulls behind her and fell onto her side, sobbing. A half-skull was dislodged against her palm and went tumbling, plopping into the blood lake.
The blood filling the lake started to gurgle at the middle and seemed to be draining, to where was a mystery. It was as if someone had pulled the cork on an enormous tub. She watched through blurry eyes as it filtered down below the bed of skulls. Silence filled the air. Juzo stood at its edge, Walter’s body slumped dead in his arms. But he couldn’t be dead, couldn’t be, she thought.
The gleam of Bonesnapper on Walter’s limp arm caught Nyset’s eye. She rose up on legs that didn’t feel like hers. They couldn’t be because this had to be a dream, a nightmare in which she would soon wake. She met Juzo’s twitching eye, and unwrapped the bottom length of chain wrapped around Stormcaller and grasped the handle. Spiraling along the grip were fine etchings of both the Dragon and Phoenix, shining behind a sheen of blood.
Her breath caught and it felt like ice cracked in her chest, releasing a comforting presence. Bonesnapper burst alight with amber fire at her side.
“How?” Juzo asked, his red eye wide.
“I—” Her eyebrows drew down at the calming sensation swimming between the Dragon. Then she knew what it was, wondered how long it had been there. It was the Phoenix. Her heart raced and her knees felt like they’d give any second. “The Phoenix!” she cried. As much as she loved Walter, she thrilled at the prospect of bringing everyone else out, returning to the land of the living. She wanted to live. She wasn’t ready for the great emptiness. She opened her palm, reaching for the Phoenix. It felt as if she was learning how to flex a new muscle. Her hand burst alight with a cool glow. She turned it back and forth, grinning at its light.
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 51
