by Chris Fox
Kazon started toward the airlock, but pulled up short when a man appeared next to him. He was tall and regal, and had long, white hair. Yet he seemed no older than Kazon, perhaps a few years younger even. Until you reached his eyes. Warm, golden light flowed from the holes where the pupils should be.
A pair of draconic wings extended behind him, flaring outwards as he gave Kazon a friendly smile.
Kazon extended a hand to grab his hammer from a void pocket, but the stranger crooked a single finger and Kazon froze. Or more precisely, the spellarmor did.
“Constructs such as your armor offer an immense degree of power, but they also open up weaknesses.” He moved to stand in front of Kazon, affording a good look at the man. If it was a man.
A tail flicked back and forth behind him, and the light glittered off green scales all along it.
“What are you?” Kazon asked. He figured it couldn’t hurt, and right now it seemed the only move left.
“The short version?” He brushed long, platinum hair from a face so handsome it bordered on feminine. “I am your god, Kazon. You may call me Inura, the Wyrm Father of Life.”
“Oh.” Kazon quietly emptied his bladder, which wasn’t as cowardly as it sounded. The suit was designed for that, after all. “So, uh, why are you here, Inura?” Kazon figured it would be rude to ask a god directly for help, especially when that had to be the reason he’d shown up at this precise instant.
“My enemies have finally revealed themselves. Even now, in this very moment, Krox rises. Worse, Talifax has openly seized control of the organization I founded so long ago. You represent the last of the faction still following the ideals I initially created.” Sharp, golden light emanated from Inura’s eyes, and his beautiful face curved into an ugly snarl. “The time has come to fight back. The godswar has come again, and our enemies will soon learn that I have not been idle. Together, we are going to elevate your sister to godhood. She will lead us to victory against Krox, and then against Nefarius.
“But first,” he continued, sketching a brilliant bouquet of golden sigils, “I will give Skare and your mother something to ponder.”
The spell disappeared and Kazon tracked it through his connection to the ship. A single, pulsing ball of golden energy streaked toward the thirty-six spellfighters. It had nearly reached them when it exploded into countless light missiles. The missiles swarmed toward the fighters, and one after another they peppered the hulls with superheated death.
Fighter after fighter exploded, until every vessel pursuing him ceased to exist. Any doubts Kazon might have had that he was dealing with a god vanished instantly.
Finally, they had a fighting chance.
55
Krox Rises
Nebiat inhaled deeply as she stepped onto the bridge of her little cruiser. The ancient vessel had served her well, and had already begun to serve as an interim home for the displaced Ifrit she’d convinced to flee from Shaya.
Each of the three spell matrices was occupied by a true mage, and one of those mages was already in the act of opening a Fissure. The sky split, and they began maneuvering back into normal space.
The void on the other side of the Fissure was tinged purple, as everything in the Erkadi Rift was. Scientists from previous millennia would have called the effect a warm dust nebula, but mages knew the truth. They were seeing the magical leakage from the corpse of a god. The essence of Krox, slowly drifting in all directions like blood in water. It wreathed the unnamed system where her world lay, and where her father ruled.
“Miss Nebiat?” An Ifrit called tentatively. Nebiat couldn’t remember the girl’s name for the life of her. “I think you should see this.”
The Ifrit tapped a fire sigil and the scry-screen shifted to show the system’s red star, or rather what most people believed to be a star. The Mind of Krox slumbered before them, pulsing slowly with immense power. But there was something new as well.
Twelve rods had been erected in geomantically charged positions around the star, and lines of blazing, white power connected them. Life magic, enough to make a god weep. The lines all flowed towards a fixed position at the nadir of the star.
A sea of glowing, interlocking wards, many layers deep, had been erected around a ritual summoning circle that dwarfed the one she’d created on Marid. In the center of that circle hovered a minuscule, bipedal figure, his slate-grey skin bathed an angry orange from the light of their god.
Her father, the mighty Teodros.
Nebiat turned smoothly to face her younger cousins, each Ifrit staring timidly at her, like cats ready to bolt for a deep closet until the stranger goes away. She gave them all a warm, encouraging smile. “I am going to speak to my father, and let him know we’ve arrived. When I return I will take you to my world, and we can show you your new homes. Each of you will have a villa, and servants to care for your every need.”
They smiled at that, and most seemed to accept the promise.
Nebiat sketched furiously, trying not to let the Ifrit see her nervousness as she completed the teleportation spell. She popped into existence a dozen meters from her father, the wonderful light of Krox bathing her, but not as it should.
She glanced up and realized the wards her father had created sat between her and Krox, and were completely shunting those energies. Even now, he added another layer, which drew the others together.
“Ah, daughter.” Teodros’s words appeared in her mind, a simple telepathy spell. “You arrived later than expected. Did you run into any trouble?” He added another life sigil, and a water, then flung another layer of wards atop those he’d already created.
“Father,” she thought back, “I don’t understand what your goal is. We lost at Colony 3. We lost at New Texas. Our offensive failed. Ternus stands. Everything you’ve asked of me, all of it was supposed to culminate in our victory here. Yet it hasn’t. And still you take no direct hand. Why, father? Your presence would have turned the tide at New Texas, or ensured no battle was even necessary at Colony 3.”
Nebiat hated the pleading in her tone, but she couldn’t disguise it. She’d spent centuries dutifully enacting the will of Krox, and now it seemed all of it had been a ruse. A ruse she still didn’t understand.
“Your failure at Colony 3 is an unexpected complication.” Teodros looked up then, and his slitted eyes fixed on her. “I intended Ternus and the sector to be crippled for a generation or more. Thankfully, it wasn’t the sum of my plan. Once my ascension is complete I can intervene directly.”
His ascension? Not Krox’s? She studied the wards he’d erected, and the roads gathered around the Mind of Krox. Her father didn’t possess the kind of magic necessary to do this, or hadn’t last she’d been aware. So where had he acquired it? Her eyes widened.
“You assaulted Shaya directly.” Nebiat drifted closer, peering at her father’s unreadable face through the wards. “How did you manage it without a fleet?”
Teodros beamed an arrogant smile in her direction. “Every time one of my progeny has fallen I’ve had the corpse brought here, where I animated it. I have been slowly building an army for over a century, dozens of potent Wyrms who feel no pain, and do not flinch from death.” A sinister smile crept onto his face. “That army is ashes now, but so is most of the Shayan fleet. And I came away with their precious Pool of Shaya. I finally have enough power to accomplish my plan.”
That made no sense. The life magic wasn’t being used to resurrect. It was being used to ward. And what need did Teodros have of wards against the Mind of Krox, the being that had given him birth? Nebiat simply couldn’t understand the logic. Unless her father was doing something Krox would want to stop. Then the wards made complete sense.
“Father, what are you planning?” She suspected, but she wanted to hear it from him.
He raised his arms expansively, bathed in the energies of his wards. “I will bind the Mind of Krox, and I will drink his power. In his place will rise a new god, dark and terrible. Teodros, the unassailable.”
His eyes shone, and Nebiat’s stomach roiled in fear, and anger, and sadness. Her father would break the sector, and she had no idea what image he would reforge it into. She had no idea what Krox’s motivations were, but she had trouble imagining them as being worse. Her father was mad, and she had no desire to live in the version of the universe he crafted.
But what could she do? She couldn’t harm him, or stop what was about to happen. She could only observe, and hope he treated his one surviving child with a shred of mercy. A vain hope, in all likelihood.
“What will become of me?” she asked forlornly.
“Daughter.” His mental voice contained…was that compassion? Teodros waved a hand and a hole appeared in his wards. He extended that hand and caressed her cheek. “I am so proud of you. Of all my progeny, you were the only one to have never disappointed me. You need not fear. I will not bind you or harm you. I will gift you with power, once I have ascended. You will aid me in creating a paradise, one I alone control.”
Teodros turned back to the star. “That won’t be long now. I am pouring all the power we acquired in the war, every Catalyst I have visited, all the artifacts I have drained. Everything is being fed into the Mind of Krox. Soon now, he will begin to re-awaken. In that moment, I will supplant his consciousness. I will become Krox.”
A puff of magical energy burst out from the back of Teodros’s head, and she raised a curious eyebrow. Nebiat was a master of binding. In fact, she doubted any other binder in the sector could rival her. She knew every available binding, and every tangential spell that might aid in the process.
She instantly recognized the compulsion spell someone had laid over her father. A sixth level, both powerful and insidious, if short lived.
Teodros blinked suddenly, then bent back to his wards. He added more sigils, but Nebiat realized that there was something off about them. They were fragile and malformed, poorly drawn, as if by a novice mage. The sigils were such a tiny imperfection in the vast sea of magic, but they were a weakness. A weakness her father was far too canny to have introduced.
The energies from the rods intensified, and each now fired a beam into the smoldering, red star. The star bubbled and shifted, the surface roiling like a cauldron brought to a boil.
A tendril of liquid magic lashed out from the Mind of Krox, and latched onto Teodros’s wards. Then another, and another. They probed the wards desperately seeking a way in. At first, the wards held. They had been erected by a demigod at the height of his power, after all.
Teodros had thought of everything. Except for the petty retribution of a very clever Shayan, one who knew that even a simple imperfection might be enough for a god to exploit.
The wards cracked, shattering into a brief puff of mana shards. Teodros’s shocked face gaped up at the star, and then the tendrils dove for him. The first encircled Teodros’s waist. Then another lashed his leg, and another his arm. Horror dawned on her father’s face as he realized his predicament.
The tendrils dragged him closer to the star, and several more roped out around him. Teodros shifted then, assuming the form of one of the most powerful Wyrms in the sector. But he had never had to face the full might of an elder god.
Krox’s tendrils pulsed with power, draining Teodros’s magic. Pulse after pulse flowed back into the star, and Teodros’s struggle weakened after each one.
She shivered as Krox pulled her father into his brilliant depths. The Wyrm disappeared as if he’d never been, while the final magical energies began pouring into the star. She was out of time.
Nebiat hastily examined the incomplete spell her father had been working on, the one that fueled all twelve rods.
“You were going to kill a god, but how?” The spell was a ninth level—she was certain of it. Thankfully, it had very nearly been completed. Only one section was unfinished, an area rich with spirit and earth wards. Binding. “What’s the last step?”
Below her the star began to rumble. The god was waking.
She frantically scanned the sigils and tried to understand exactly what her father had been attempting. There was no time. If she was going to complete the spell it had to be now, even if she didn’t understand what it would do.
Nebiat added spirit and earth sigils to each unfinished chain, quickly completing the last three and then sealing the spell. The ritual completed, and beams of energy from the closest neighboring rods shot into Nebiat.
She shrieked in agony, thrashing as an ocean of magical power crashed over her. She could only watch in horror as her body unraveled, every molecule separated as she disintegrated into nothingness.
No, not nothing. Her essence—her soul—remained. The energies gathered around it, then suddenly shot into the mind of Krox. She pierced the star like a spear hurled by the Creator, sinking all the way to Krox’s core.
Krox’s immense rage assaulted her from all sides as magics beyond her comprehension fought to dismantle her mind. Her father’s wards shunted them away, the layers of wards slowly peeling away as they made it deeper toward the center.
Finally, she reached the very core of the god, the center of his mind. The wards were nearly gone, but she no longer needed them. The energies her father had channeled had all been collected around her, and they swirled outwards—spirit, and earth, and water, and life. She didn’t understand everything they did, but they seemed to be scouring away parts of the god, rewriting it to fit some new plan.
Suddenly she was no longer alone. Something lurked near her, a vast unknowable presence, watching.
What have you done? It rumbled in her mind, the words terrifying, and alien. I live, but I cannot act. You have enslaved me.
All of Krox’s power lay before her, and she realized that power existed to serve her. She could will Krox to do whatever she wished. Effectively, she was Krox. If she’d still possessed a mouth, she’d have smiled.
Nebiat had become a god, and very soon her enemies would finally feel her wrath.
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