by Chris Fox
He knew this was merely the preamble to their battle. Teodros would send minions, which Eros’s ‘minion’ would dispatch. Eros would erect defenses, which Teodros would study. Only when he was satisfied that he understood what he faced would the ancient Wyrm approach, and therein lay Eros’s only really hope of altering the future of their world.
He couldn’t overpower a Wyrm, and he couldn’t overcome him with magic. Not directly, anyway. The Wyrm was simply too old and too prepared. A demigod in his own right, one with millennia of experience. Yet that did not make him infallible, and that gave Eros a chance to make his death matter. To be remembered not as an ignoble coward, but rather as the man who sacrificed everything for his goddess.
Eros scooped up a handful of golden life magic, then drank deeply. He took a second, then a third scoop. It was more power than anyone had ever been allowed to take, and it crashed over him in a wave. His godsight, an ability he ignored as often as possible, leapt into clarity. Possibilities snaked in all directions, and nearly every one of them was equally horrifying.
Yet one tiny thread remained that would allow him to influence the far-reaching consequences of Teodros’s victory here.
He turned to face Erika, suffused with an immensity of magic he’d not dared dream of, not even when he’d first been elevated to Tender and understood the truly massive power the position imparted. Today, he was as close to a god as he would ever come. In that instant there were no more than a dozen beings in the sector who could have met him in equal combat.
Unfortunately, as Erika cut down the last abhorrent beetle, one of those beings stepped from the tunnel the beetles had bored. Eros spent a millisecond examining his foe. So far as he knew this was the first time anyone had seen the human form that Teodros chose to wear.
His hairless body was slate-grey, not so different from the shade of his scales. A suit of ebony spellarmor covered his body, but that armor bore little resemblance to the suits the Inurans produced. It was a series of interlocking plates, and resembled that worn by knights in their earliest myths. Teodros cradled a spellspear in his right hand, and like the armor it too bore a style from a previous epoch.
“You could have run,” Teodros rumbled. He stepped into the room and gave Erika a contemptuous look, then turned back to Eros. “It would have bought you a handful of years, perhaps as much as a decade. That possibility was nearly as great as this one.”
Eros raised a hand and sketched a life sigil. Teodros made no move to counter it, so Eros added another, and then a third. A golden ward sprang up around him, shielding the pool. Eros cleared his throat. “If you believe there was any possibility where I would have run from this confrontation, then your godsight is deeply flawed, monster.”
“Oho, a little fire.” Teodros smiled, and thumped his spear heartily against the wooden floor as if clapping. “So tell me, little Tender. Do you wish to converse before I kill you and drain your little pool? Have you questions you wish answered, because I would be happy to gloat?”
Would delaying Teodros have any value? Who could come to save them? No one. Voria was half a sector away, locked in a pointless battle with Teodros’s underlings. And, so far as he knew, no living god existed to come to their aid. He was well and truly alone, and would be dead soon no matter what he did.
“I’ll indulge you.” Eros glanced at Erika, and she nodded. “So, what is your grand plan for the sector, Teodros? Resurrect your dark father, and then grovel before him in the hopes that he doesn’t consume your mind? There is a reason you were one of his few progeny to survive Krox’s wrath. He’ll be hungry when he wakes, and I’ve no doubt you’ll make a tasty morsel.”
Teodros gave a hearty laugh as he began to slowly twirl his spear. The casual skill was meant to intimidate, and Eros noticed Erika tense when she saw the motion. “Do you think me a fool, little Tender? Krox will never rise, not as he was. I have labored for centuries to engineer the rise of a god, but not the one you believe.” He smiled then, revealing dark fangs. “I will rise in Krox’s place.”
Eros began sketching again, this time a protection spell. He gathered sigils of life, and water, and spirit, until he’d completed a sixth level spell. It was the most complicated he knew, and constructing it was laborious. It would have been a perfect time for Teodros to strike, but he merely stood, twirling his staff. Waiting.
The spell completed and a rain of golden energy cascaded down over Erika. Each drop that struck her armor disappeared within, and as that energy was consumed, Erika began to glow. She grew larger, half again as tall as she had been, and much, much faster. The spell imparted a certain amount of magical protection against void or spirit, the two most likely to be used in attack spells against her.
“A potent defense,” Teodros mused. He raised his spear in a salute to Erika, and then he blurred toward her.
Eros was not idle. He sketched as quickly as he ever had, aided largely by the Shaya’s grace effect he’d gained when drinking the blood from the pool. He completed another of the most complex spells he was able to cast, this one also designed to enhance the user. A dozen images sprang from Erika, each a perfect mirror. However, unlike the lesser version of the spell these images were not harmless. They had a magical form, and could harm those vulnerable to such things.
Erika swept her blade up, and a dozen blades answered in near perfect unison. Her own blade clanged off Teodros’s spear, and sent her sliding back a step. Several of the illusions connected, and wherever their blows hit, little wisps of magic floated from Teodros, over to Erika. Stolen essence.
“Ingenious. I’ve never seen the like.” Teodros spun his spear, and the tip lanced out for thirty meters or more around him, far further than it should have been able to extend. Something he was doing bent space, and allowed the weapon to strike any target he could see, apparently.
The spear cut down image after image, and all Erika could do was desperately parry and fall before the storm of blows unleashed by Teodros. The flow ceased, but only then did Eros realize why. Teodros had paused to fling a disintegrate at Erika. In the same instant, he loosed his spear, aimed at a spot above and behind her.
Erika somehow twisted out of the path of the disintegrate, which avoided instant death. It placed her in the path of the spear, which caught her in the chest and carried her across the room. She slammed into the wall with bone-cracking force, and if not for the protection spell Eros had cast, he was certain she would not have survived.
As it was, she hung limply from the spear, clawing ineffectually at the haft of the weapon with the hand that still worked. The other arm hung limply at her side, a stream of blood flowing down the index finger of her gauntlet from the wound in her chest.
Teodros blurred across the room and wrapped both hands around the spear. Eros sketched a disintegrate with his right hand, but began a second, more subtle spell with his left. The casual ease with which Teodros had dealt with one of the finest war mages Shaya had ever seen confirmed his worst fears. It was time to think about what came after, and he could still do something about that.
The Wyrm lunged out of the way of Eros’s hastily cast disintegrate, but his hands never left the spear. Pulses of bright, white light began flowing out of Erika, up the spear, and into Teodros. Each pulse seemed to sap a bit more of Erika’s will, and to his horror Eros realized she was beginning to age. Lines creased a once beautiful face. Rich, scarlet hair faded to pale orange, and then white.
Eros hurried his casting, but rather than fling another disintegrate he focused on the myriad possibilities connected to this one. He followed Teodros back to his home, a system in the Erkadi Rift. He watched him perform a terrible ritual to awaken the mind of Krox, and he saw Teodros enslave that mind to do his own bidding.
He thought furiously. How could he disrupt that spell? He smiled, and began tailoring the binding. How fitting that he use the magic of his enemies to bring them down in the hour of their triumph. Teodros would think he had won, but he would learn very quick
ly just how mistaken he was.
“You are already a god,” Eros murmured, infusing the words with awe. As a man who lived by his ego, he understood the effect that could have on the arrogant. And Teodros did not disappoint.
The demigod released the spear, and left Erika’s limp form impaled against the wall. He walked to the edge of Eros’s ward. “Not yet. Soon, I will be. Soon I will control the mind of Krox. I will be Krox.”
Erika groaned, and began pulling the spear from her wound. Teodros’s expression shifted to irritation, and he turned to face her. In that instant Eros struck. He flung the spell, and the binding sank into the back of Teodros’s skull and settled there, its touch so light that even a Wyrm of Teodros’s age and skill could not feel it.
Such a binding was, by nature, weak. The compulsion would only last a few seconds. But when the time came those few seconds would be enough to alter history for the entire sector. He could die knowing he’d saved what he could.
Teodros sketched a disintegrate, faster than Eros could track. In the same instant, he extended a hand, and a tendril of air ripped the spear from the wall and into his grasp. Erika landed awkwardly, and as she began to rise, Teodros flung his disintegrate. This time, Erika couldn’t dodge.
She had a single instant of awareness. She knew her fate. Eros read it in her eyes. Erika closed her eyes, just before the bolt took her in the chest. There was an explosion of particles, and then she simply ceased to exist.
Eros fell to his knees.
“Lower the ward and I will make your death painless,” Teodros offered. He paced outside the ward like a hunting cat. “Or stay inside, and watch me drink your pool dry.”
He crossed to the golden pool and knelt beside it. “Are you certain you would not like to face me, and die with dignity? Or are you so eager to witness this place’s desecration?”
“Do what you will.” Eros nodded at the pool. “I cannot stop you.”
Teodros bent to the pool, and began lifting handfuls of golden power to his lips. He drank deeply, and in that moment Eros struck again. This time he created a simple teleportation spell, centered on the bottom of the pool. He removed hundreds of liters, and deposited them in a secure location. Teodros wouldn’t have it, not all of it at least.
The Wyrm continued to drink, and seemed unaware of the missing portion. When he had finished, Teodros finally rose to face Eros. His eyes were lit with golden light, and he blazed with power, far more so than he already had. “I see all, little Tender. I see your deceptions and your hopes and your fears. I see every moment. Every possibility. My victory is at hand.”
Teodros flung a counterspell at Eros’s ward and the ward shattered into mana shards. Eros reached into his robes and flung a dagger at the Wyrm. Teodros knocked it contemptuously aside, and then appeared next to him. He wrapped a hand around Eros’s throat, then the other seized both of his hands. Teodros crushed them, shattering every bone in each delicate hand.
Eros screamed into the hand over his mouth, the agony drawing tears he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Teodros bent close, and whispered into his ear. “Now I drain your magic, as I did hers. And then, I resurrect a god.”
Eros gritted his teeth and thought fondly of death. His greatest regret was that he wouldn’t be alive to see Teodros’s face when the Wyrm learned what Eros had done.
51
Embers of Life
Voria braced herself as she guided the Spellship back into normal space over the moon where she’d been born. At first glance, that world appeared just as peaceful as it always had, but only at first glance. Plumes of dense, oily smoke rose from many points on the plains outside the roots of the tree.
Scattered among them were the grisly remains of dragons. They came in all shapes and sizes, though most were catastrophically large. Where had the Krox come by so many? How had they mustered an army of such size, and if they’d had it, why not use it in previous battles?
And then she felt the lingering energies around the bodies. They had a definite spirit residue. “Those creatures were bound. Corpses, most likely.”
“Undead dragons?” Pickus adjusted his glasses as he stared at the field on the scry-screen. “No disrespect or nothing, but I’m kind of glad I wasn’t here to deal with them. I don’t even want to meet the regular variety.”
Voria was too distracted to chastise him. “My goddess, Teodros must have collected bodies from the battlefields where we faced the Krox. Vakera. Starn. Marid. Every battle gave him more corpses to work with, ones that our navy couldn’t ignore.”
She could already see the pitiful remains of that navy. The wounded Arcanaca was their center piece, smoke billowing from numerous holes on the stern. She was surrounded by a half dozen battered ships of the line. All that remained of the once proud Shayan fleet. The fleet that had terrified an entire sector into signing the Confederate Accords.
Yet at the same time, the fact that the fleet still existed meant that the Shayans must have won. Didn’t it? There was only one way to be certain. She faced Pickus. “If anyone contacts the ship via missive, tell them I’ve gone to the Pool of Shaya to meet with the Tender.”
Pickus snapped an absent salute, so she tightened her grip around Ikadra and then sketched a teleport spell. Time and space warped around them, and when the vertigo faded she was standing in the room where Kheross and Rhea had been cleansed.
“Wow, this place has been trashed.” Ikadra gave a low whistle. His voice became more somber. “Oh, crap.”
Voria scanned the room until she found the cause of his distress. The room was much more dimly lit than it had been the last time. The fierce glow from the pool was all but gone, embers in place of a bonfire. A body lay next to the pool, and another was slumped against the wall not far away.
The body against the wall had long, stringy hair bound into a ponytail. The face was gaunt, just a thin layer of skin over bone. It was desiccated, as if every bit of moisture had been removed. Voria didn’t know what spell had done this, but she recognized magic when she saw it.
She focused on the body next to the pool, which was still moving. Voria hurried over, and it took a moment to recognize Eros. His jet-black hair had faded to a brittle white, and his once handsome face was lined and spotted with age.
“V-voria.” He raised a trembling hand, and she took it in hers. “Teodros. Came.” He paused, fighting to catch his breath. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his brow. “Drained the pool. Drained me. Killed Erika.”
“We’ve lost, then?” She sat back on her haunches, but didn’t release his hand.
“No!” The word was fierce and his eyes flashed as he delivered it. Then his trembling lips slid into a smile. “Teodros believes it so. He returns to the Erkadi Rift, where he will awaken the Mind of Krox.” Eros was interrupted by a fit of coughing, and it took long moments for his breathing to stabilize. “I implanted…a compulsion. At the very moment of his triumph he will learn that I am—,” more coughing, “—not to be trifled with.”
“We need to get you to the Caretakers.” She released Ikadra and slid her hands under Eros. It terrified her how easily she was able to lift him.
“Won’t matter.” He wheezed a bitter laugh. “Teodros drank my magic. Did the same t-to Erika.” He inhaled a long, slow breath through his nostrils before he seemed to find his strength. “You have much work to do. You must rally the Caretakers. I left…a reservoir of life magic. In the room with the Mirror of Shaya. It’s enough to…stabilize the tree. For a time, at least.”
Voria’s eyes widened as she looked up at the tree around her. She hadn’t realized it, but the tree was connected to the magic of this place. Without the magic, the tree would wither and die. And so would the people who lived here.
“We can still get you help.” She was about to ask Ikadra to teleport them, when Eros seized her sleeve with a weak grip.
“No.” His eyes blazed, the only part of him she still recognized in that aging face. “
I forbid it. I have no wish to live without my magic.”
She gave him an irritated glance. “If you think you get to abdicate your responsibilities as Tender that easily, then you are a fool. Our people still need you, magic or no.”
“Stubborn—,” more coughing, “—wench.”
“There’s the man we know and love.” She nodded to Ikadra. “Take us up to the third branch. Directly to the palace.”
“Sure.” Ikadra’s tone was muted, but dark energies rolled from the staff, and a moment later they appeared in the center of the Caretaker’s massive hall.
Ducius and several others she didn’t recognize sat wearily around a table showing a map of Shaya and the immediate orbit. At the sight of her, Ducius shot to his feet. “Of course you return after the attack. I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Ducius!” Eros croaked. “I—tire of your rancor.”
Voria brought Eros to the table where they’d gathered, and gently laid him across the surface. Ducius’s face shifted to horror when he took in Eros’s visage. The other Caretakers had similar reactions. Unsurprisingly, from a race that could—theoretically at least—live forever. Age was the worst possible end for them.
“Yes, see your possible fate if you do not listen.” Eros paused for breath, his angry gaze roaming the Caretakers. “I tell you now the secret passed from Tender to Tender.” Strength seemed to return then, enough for him to speak at the very least. “Shaya is no tree. The tree was planted over her grave, to mark it. Shaya looked much as you or I, and began life as a mortal before she was elevated.”
Gasps echoed through the room, but no one interrupted. Other than the swish of robes as nervous Caretakers shifted, there was only silence.
“Shaya can be resurrected. We very nearly had all the pieces. The pool was one of those pieces, but only one.” He closed his eyes, but did not stop speaking. “You must find a way to restore her. Krox rises, and will be upon us soon. Only the might of another god can oppose him.”
