Toman stared at this man whom he hated and feared. Part of his mind gibbered senselessly, but like Esset, he shoved it away so it could deal with Moloch once and for all. He focused instead on his hatred for the man; he fanned that intense black flame in his heart and let it sharpen his senses and push the memories of his two years of imprisonment and torture out of the forefront of his mind. Moloch had so much to answer for—for the deaths of his birth parents and Animator Eldan, for his own imprisonment and torture, and for innumerable atrocities committed against innumerable people in his pursuit of power, influence, and even pleasure. Moloch was no man—he was a monster, a creature, a thing. And he needed to be destroyed.
Esset moved first. He flipped his hands out in front of him and sent a blast of fire towards Moloch; the attack was split ineffectively by Moloch’s shields, but it bought the summoner a second to start his incantations. In quick succession, four panthers materialized outside Moloch’s shields; a moment later, a tortoise exploded next to the magical barrier between them and their enemy.
Moloch didn’t stay on the defensive. Toman could hear him chanting as well, and black skeletons wielding swords and scythes materialized atop the panthers to fight back. Even as the beasts of slaughter appeared, Moloch sent other spells towards them—bolts of pure magical energy pounded against Tseka and Erizen’s shields and black lightning crackled all around them, seeking a weakness in the shields to exploit. Erizen kept a full dome shield up while Tseka blocked particular attacks outside it to minimize Erizen’s burden.
Erizen wasn’t the type to stay on the defensive either. Tendrils of silver light bloomed from the sides of his shield and reached out towards Moloch. They wrapped around his smaller shield and squeezed. They pulsed, and for a moment it looked like the shield would collapse beneath them, but then the shield pulsed too, blasting the silver tendrils into nothingness.
Through the haze of magic, smoke, fire, and mage-shields, Toman thought he saw Moloch smiling as his lips moved. The animator narrowed his eyes and looked around, casting a glance behind them just in case—nothing. Then Tseka screamed. Skeletal hands thrust up from the ground beneath them, and one had driven a sword blade into her coils. The rest of the skeleton was emerging when Toman reached it—taking a chance, he grabbed the other sword it held and animated it. He wasn’t certain it would work, since it was, in a sense, part of the summon, but it did. The sword came to life and wrapped around the skeleton’s neck, neatly beheading it. The skeleton vanished, but other hands were coming up through the earth. Then, all at once, the extended limbs were severed as Erizen sliced through them with a new layer of shield to protect the ground beneath their feet. The battle still waged on outside the shields, but Toman kept his attention close to home.
Toman didn’t even need to reach into his pocket for the roll of bandages he kept there; he simply animated it to go to Tseka and wrap around the wound. The sword that had wounded her had vanished with the black skeleton, so the injury was open and bleeding. Toman concentrated on stopping the bleeding as quickly as possible. Tseka hissed but held still. Toman looked up at her, but her eyes weren’t even on him—she still kept her gaze up, fighting her pain in favor of succumbing and giving Moloch an opening. She still blocked incoming attacks to help Erizen.
Toman turned his attention back to the battle. He still waited for his opening, if an opening was to come. Moloch’s stunt had given him an idea. He sent a few of his poisoned needles burrowing into the ground, risking the poison being rubbed off to see if they could come up from underneath. He waited, but they couldn’t get through—still, he left them there, to wait. He didn’t think Moloch had noticed the attempt, and surprise would give him his best chance.
They continued to exchange blows—summons fought summons, and when they could, they attacked the shields of either side. They were evenly matched; shields held strong and attacks kept flying, but neither side could get the upper hand. Moloch was holding his own against them. Toman had hoped that he’d been more weakened by the injury the phoenix had given him, by the reversal of his Greymaker, and by his failure to slaughter large numbers of people in Symria and Namara. But apparently he’d garnered enough blood and death magic anyways—enough to bolster his power for this. Toman began to fear that he’d underestimated the evil mage again.
Meanwhile, Esset knew he’d reached the extent of his power. There were summons he had never called on before, but they weren’t the summons he needed. Summoning the land of fire itself had been his most potent weapon, but Moloch had stood against it. It had served to uncover him, but they still had to defeat him. The summoner was throwing everything he had against Moloch, but the mage’s skin was still unburnt; Esset’s fire couldn’t reach him. Esset had traded his ability to summon the phoenix herself for the other powers she’d granted him. It was a cruel irony; without her aid, he wouldn’t have made it this far, but without being able to summon her now, he couldn’t defeat Moloch. He found himself praying to Hyrishal inside his own mind even as his lips uttered endless incantations to summon his creatures of fire.
Molten panthers tore through every black skeleton, plague beast, and swarm creature that appeared before it and tore at Moloch’s mage-shield, forcing him to keep expending magical energy. Explosive tortoises would appear and then detonate next to his shields, until a good portion of the hillside was blown away or left blackened and twisted. Fire burned the very air around Moloch’s shields. Massive birds of prey with wings of flame dropped on the shield from above, adding to the endless pressure. Atop Erizen’s attacks, Esset wanted to believe that they were slowly wearing the mage down, but Moloch stood there, perfectly poised, with a sneer upon his lips, untouched. His hands moved sometimes, with small flicks and gestures, but his expression lent the impression that he fought them only to amuse himself, or perhaps to humor them.
Toman kept himself mostly detached from the battle, trying to watch everything at once, waiting for his opening to strike. That was when he noticed Tseka suddenly sag. She’d been holding strong against the relentless onslaught, but then she’d swayed slightly, catching his attention before she began to collapse. Toman made it to her side in time to keep her from falling. He glanced at the bandages—they were soaked through. She needed a healer, but Erizen certainly couldn’t be spared from the battle long enough to help her. She just had to hold on, and he whispered that in her ear as he draped her arm over his shoulders to support her.
The battle waged longer yet, until Moloch lifted his hands. A pure white light flashed outwards, making them all blink, and when they looked again, every one of Esset’s summons and spells from Erizen’s attacks had vanished. Only their shields stood.
“Do you see now?” Moloch asked them in the brief silence. His summons stood motionless for the moment.
“Do you see?” Moloch asked again. “Do you see how futile this is? How puny you are? How weak.” He spat the last word.
“He’s bluffing. He has to be near the end of his rope,” Erizen murmured to them. Esset glanced at the mage, but he was not terribly reassured. Erizen was sweating and breathing heavily; his normally neat ponytail had succumbed to a few fly-aways. The cocky mage looked far from being as all-powerful as he liked to claim. Moloch didn’t even look tired.
“Your games are pitiful, and they grow boring. I will admit that you have inconvenienced me, but you have done no more than that. I even played your game. Look at these quaint creatures I have called to fight you.” Moloch gestured at the incarnations of famine, plague, and slaughter where they stood and hovered, waiting for his order.
“You were ever the one for games,” Toman replied. He wasn’t sure what Moloch was playing at; perhaps he was buying time for something, but Toman knew his own group needed the breather this delay was giving them.
“What can I say? I get bored,” Moloch said cavalierly.
“Too bad you only wish this were a game,” Toman said then—he knew the mage, so perhaps he could play him. Anger made one do foolish things,
and if Erizen was right, maybe they could end this.
“Once before, you deluded yourself into thinking you could beat me. Don’t you remember?” Moloch prodded back. “Perhaps you missed me. Don’t worry, there is always space in my dungeon for you. I enjoyed our time together too. For the trouble you caused me—and that Animator before you—I will never tire of torturing you.”
“I will kill you,” Toman promised, his tone dark and his gaze bleak.
Moloch laughed, but then the sky over him darkened and a mass of stone dropped from the sky. A great stone dragon had broken free of Moloch’s distant army of summons and come to join the battle. Toman didn’t hesitate or pull any blows; the dragon pounded on the shield with great echoing booms as Esset’s summons rematerialized and rejoined the battle.
“Stop!” Moloch screamed in rage. “You miserable nothings can’t hope to win against me! I am all-powerful! I am immortal!” They could barely hear him over the din of the battle. Toman had never heard the mage scream like that before, and for a moment, a fierce hope blossomed in his chest. That hope was paralyzed a moment later when a tense pressure permeated the air.
Moloch stood with his arms stretched out from his sides, palms to the air. Everyone’s shields vanished, and the summons were rent apart in an instant. Toman felt Tseka shudder against him even as his own knees threatened to buckle. He didn’t feel it when he did collapse; nor did he see Erizen beside him slump to his knees and then over onto his side. He was away: apart: detached. His soul was separated from his body; he somehow felt nothing and everything at once. He floated above the battlefield, deprived of his senses yet in full knowledge of where and how everything laid.
Only Moloch stood, arms outstretched, head cast back, eyes closed. Esset shuddered and fell to one knee, but then a searing fire lit through his body. He felt a colossal power grab hold of his soul and begin to tear it from him; then he felt talons of fire grasp it back and burn away the offending power. When he was able to look up again, he saw the phoenix manifested next to him. He didn’t remember summoning her, but he must have, for her to be here. Tseka, Toman, and Erizen were unconscious—dead?—on the ground. Even Toman’s animations had gone still.
A cry rose up but was strangled in his throat. Moloch didn’t see him, didn’t see that Esset wasn’t prone on the ground as the others were, and the mage had no shields up. Moloch was vulnerable; all Esset had to do was call a single summon down on him, and the mage was dead.
No.
The voice spoke in his mind, and it took Esset a second to realize it was the phoenix’s voice. Esset opened his mouth to disobey, but his throat had dried to a point where no sound could come out.
No, the phoenix repeated. Do not interfere. His end comes by his own hand.
Esset opened his mouth to ask her how—how Moloch’s end was coming, and how his companions might be saved, but she spoke with the question unasked. She didn’t need to hear the question aloud.
He has raised the Ghostmaker. The souls of the entire kingdom are his; their power, his.
Esset tried to speak again and failed again. As he watched, pale clouds whipped towards him from over the hills. Some he caught more than a glimpse of, and he saw faces and rough forms—they were like people: ghosts. They were the souls reaped by the Ghostmaker. He wanted to scream; he wanted to summon. But he didn’t need to speak to summon; clarity of thought was all that mattered in the end. Esset focused his will, but the phoenix cut into his thoughts again.
No, she said for the third time.
No! Esset thought back. I have to save them!
Then wait, the phoenix counseled.
The pale souls swirled around Moloch, and Esset saw the Dark Mage grin and his eyes open. Still the mage didn’t see Esset watching, but the summoner knew it was only a matter of time. Esset didn’t understand why the phoenix kept stopping him—surely his chance to strike was passing, the window closing.
Kill him now and their souls are lost, she whispered in his mind. Esset was forced to trust that there was another alternative. He felt rather than saw the phoenix flutter behind him. Her dainty talons gripped the collar of his coat and the soft, warm feathers on her belly pressed against his hair. Then her wings wrapped around his head and he found himself looking at the world through her transparent wing-feathers. That was when he saw the truth.
Esset looked at Moloch and saw the web of power stretching out from him across the kingdom. The lines of power burned black and their power was undeniable. Every soul, in comparison, was a beautiful white light, a candescent orb that flowed into the mage to become a tiny pinprick within him. But inside the mage himself there was a wound, a great, jagged black fissure in his soul. Instinctively, Esset knew it was the wound the phoenix had inflicted when Esset had first summoned her, the one that had left him howling in agony every time he tried to use magic, and every time magic touched him.
Moloch has brought about his own undoing, the phoenix whispered. Esset’s vision refocused, and for a moment, he saw a pale orb in the center of the crack. It seemed to press against the crack, to drive it open further.
Your brother’s soul is as impervious as stone. Moloch himself helped forge him thus.
If that was true—and Esset prayed that it was—then Esset owed his brother an apology. He was ashamed that he had doubted Toman. But even his faith in the phoenix and his god couldn’t shake the fear that, even still, he would lose his brother.
Esset watched as the pale light worked at the wound of the soul, like a dull but persistent blade working to reopen the stitches of a partially-healed wound of flesh. Esset was watching his brother’s soul so closely that he almost didn’t notice when Moloch physically shuddered. Esset refocused his vision to watch the mage; Moloch’s eyes widened and stared straight ahead, but he still didn’t see Esset. His hands came in to grasp at his chest, as if his heart gave him pain. He paled, then began clawing at his own chest. His mouth opened in a wordless scream, and he fell to his knees; Esset could only watch, entranced. Pale lights still came, swirling around him and absorbing into him, faster now than before.
“No.” Moloch’s whimper was barely audible. He jerked back, then rocked forward again. The pale clouds swarmed around him in a continuous stream. Moloch flailed his arms, as if trying to swat them away. Then he screamed.
Part of Esset had thought that he’d like to see Moloch in pain, but he didn’t. Maybe that was a good thing, that he didn’t even like seeing pure evil suffer to this degree, but he found himself wishing that he could end it. He steeled himself against it; he wouldn’t risk the souls of these people, of his friends and of his brother, to save a monster like Moloch. So the screaming continued.
Moloch collapsed backwards onto the scorched earth and writhed in agony. Esset tried to turn his head away, but the phoenix held him fast. Even so, she wasn’t heartless either; she shifted his vision so he could see inside the mage once more.
The black, twisted crack within the mage was twice as wide as it had been, and Toman’s wasn’t the only soul pushing it wider now. Other pale lights crowded at the edges of the crevices, pushing or pulling it open, splitting him further open a hairsbreadth at a time. Their progress was painstaking but undeniable. Then, all at once, their hard work paid off.
Esset found his vision banished in a white light. The phoenix unfolded her wings from before his eyes as white light spilled from Moloch in the visual spectrum as well. The light grew in intensity until it was blinding, forcing Esset to shield his eyes with his arm. All at once, the light vanished, and just as Esset lowered his arm, every one of the souls Moloch had absorbed exploded away from him at once.
It was glorious; their brilliant lights rushed high into the sky and then fanned out to rush back to each body that lay soulless where it had been left. Esset had never seen anything so beautiful. White lights entered Toman, Tseka, and Erizen’s bodies on the ground next to him and they stirred. Esset rushed to his brother’s side and rested a hand on his shoulder, but movement o
n the hill made him look towards Moloch again.
The Dark Mage Lord—the all-powerful, wholly evil, immortal man—staggered to his feet. He stared at Esset in disbelief even as Esset stared back.
“No,” Moloch gasped once, and Esset saw glowing white veins begin to trace across Moloch’s skin. As the summoner looked on, the veins glowed even brighter and split into cracks, then spread across every surface of the mage’s body. The light devoured the mage; when it vanished, the mage’s robes collapsed to the ground, leaving no trace of the monster himself behind.
Esset stared at the empty mound of clothes until he felt his brother’s hand clasp his arm.
“Moloch,” Toman gasped, looking around, unable to see their enemy. Esset felt his face split into an unstable grin, and by his brother’s answering expression, knew his sanity was feared for.
“Dead,” Esset said. Toman’s expression went vacant, and Esset took both his shoulders in his hands.
“Dead,” Esset repeated. “Moloch is dead.” Toman stared at him a moment longer before his expression changed and he bowed his head. The animator’s shoulders shook; Esset didn’t know if his brother was laughing, or crying, or both—it didn’t matter. On either side of them, Erizen and Tseka roused as well.
“We did it,” Esset said. “Moloch is dead.” Tseka grinned her fierce grin, despite her weakness and her pain. Esset looked over his shoulder at Erizen, who simply looked smug as he stood and brushed himself off.
“Let’s go home,” Toman murmured. He seemed to have gotten himself back under control. He looked up at Esset, squeezed his arm, then turned to try to stand and help Tseka up at the same time. Esset stood and helped, then paused to glance around; that was when he realized that the phoenix had vanished again. Not that it mattered; they were safe. They could go home. They could go home for good.
Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) Page 36
