“Thought you could use some help,” Skye said.
“The more we have, the better,” the All Father said.
“What’s the plan?” Celeste asked.
“Guard me,” the All Father said. “I need to be the one to cleanse Elivigar.”
He knelt on the ground, took what looked like a comfortable sitting position, and closed his eye. It seemed like they were going to be there a while, and with the nightmares surging toward the shore in greater numbers, Abagail worried they might not get Elivigar cleansed in time.
The nightmares were now becoming the greatest focus for the armies on either side of the river. Warriors engaged them in battle, but their blades were no use against the wyrded bodies of the monsters. The sun scepters, however, blasted holes through the abominations wherever they struck.
Soon, the combatants realized this, however, and the dark elves with their moon scepters, and the warriors with their mundane weapons took to fighting the other creatures that threatened to pin them to the banks of Elivigar. The light elves took up a position at the army’s back, their weapons more effective against the threat from Elivigar.
The nightmares didn’t just die, however. Once they’d been blasted apart by a burst of light, their bodies oozed back to Elivigar to be reformed into another, newer and more terrible, nightmare.
The monsters were claiming bodies too. Whenever they struck, they took parts of elves and warriors with them, merging them with their terrible forms and creating new limbs, heads, and appendages they could use in more functional ways, like carrying weapons.
The All Father sighed, like a great exhalation of power. He opened his eye, and sunlight burst forth, radiant and powerful. The beam of light blasted into Elivigar, throwing water high into the air, and causing the river to hiss in a near deafening volume; the river steamed. The armies to either side turned to see what had caused the power, and the nightmares roared their defiance.
“So much for easy,” Celeste said.
Soon Elivigar was boiling, each bubble bursting from the surface in a dazzling display of sunlight. Bubbles trickled up from the white riverbed, the light bisecting darkling wyrd as it rose. Whenever light connected with darkling wyrd, the wyrd shriveled like hair put to flame. The snaking wyrd then burst into a little spark, and was no more.
“Get ready,” Skye said, unsheathing his sword, and taking his scepter in hand. Mari and Celeste were already standing at attention.
Abagail drew her sword, and held her afflicted hand down, willing her wyrd into her hand.
“All Father!” A voice called from the left side of Elivigar, and the armies of darklings quieted. The forces of light, however, didn’t stop their attack. Figures parted where the darklings held one section of the bank, and a woman stepped forward. Her right half was that of a beautiful maiden with flaxen hair and a glimmering eye. Her lip turned up in a smile that seemed more sneer than joy. Her left side, however, was twisted and maimed with death and eons of rot. The hair on that side was shriveled and white, the eye milky and cataract. She leaned heavily on an iron spear that ended in a cruel, hooked blade.
“Hilda,” Abagail whispered to the others, as if they needed assurance.
The All Father didn’t stop his attack on Elivigar.
“I see you mean to weaken me,” Hilda said. “It will not work. You know what the norn have said about this day. There’s only one way it will end!”
“There is another,” Abagail said.
Hilda shook her head. “There is no other way.”
“You can stop this now, Hilda,” Abagail told her. “You can turn away from this destruction and take your place in the Ever After once more.”
“And why would the gods offer me such haven?” Hilda wondered. “Could it be that their afraid their deaths have come once and for all?”
Abagail shook her head. “There’s been enough destruction already. This needn’t continue.”
“But I’m winning,” Hilda said, and then she laughed a croaking, parched noise that sounded like a chorus of bullfrogs. “I will hold the Ever After, and I will be subject to no one.”
“Don’t you mean Anthros will?” Abagail asked.
Hilda shrugged with a sneer. “Semantics.”
“So be it,” Abagail said. “We shall see if you change your mind once your power is gone from Elivigar.”
That seemed to shake Hilda, but only for a moment before the sneer returned to the healthy half of her face. “Good luck.” She twitched her dead hand, a black substance flipping from her fingers. If it was rot, molded fluids, or wyrd, Abagail wasn’t sure. What she was sure of, however, was that soon the darkling wyrd fled from its siege of the banks, and surged toward their island.
“Be ready,” Abagail said. “They come.”
She lifted her afflicted hand as the elves took position around her, and willed her wyrd through the pinpoint of shadow plague on her palm. She felt the familiar power of the Waking Eye split open her palm, and she worked the golden light into an orb around them as the first, fleshy nightmare took shape on their shore.
“What now, friend of the All Father?” Surt asked, his gaze fixed on the dark portal.
The truth was, Rorick had no idea what to do now. The toxins from the portal to the realm of the elle folk spewed forth in a constant stream. Around them, flashes of light streamed down from the Ever After, striking people mere moments before the toxins reached them and laid waste to their bodies. The dead shriveled to ash, and a thin wisp of wyrd streamed up to the white glowing mass of the Ever After high above.
“We need to get through that portal,” Rorick said. “Somehow . . .”
“Difficult with that poison,” Surt said.
“There are breaks,” Gil spoke up. “Now and then, the poison will stop for a span of seconds before starting once more.”
“The king exhales the toxin, and needs to draw breath to do so,” Rorick agreed. Gil was right, just then the poison wafted to a thin miasma that swirled out to nothingness before starting again seconds later.
Camilla struck out at a diminutive figure as it came near them. The impish elle folk fell effortlessly before the might of her blade. The little warriors were just a distraction, however, for the arrows that zinged through the air. She already had several sticking out of her left arm, and while they doubtlessly hurt, they weren’t causing great harm . . . yet. Rorick only hoped they weren’t tipped with some dormant poison that would spring up at any moment and wreak havoc with her body.
“So we barge in there when the poison stops flowing?” Surt wondered.
“You can conjure fire, correct?” Rorick wondered.
“What kind of fire-etin would I be if I didn’t have control of fire?”
“Not all fire-etin can control fire,” Gil pointed out.
“I don’t need schooling in my people,” Surt said. There was a lilt to his voice that told Rorick what Surt thought of those fire-etin that weren’t able to conjure fire.
So he thinks of them as lesser, Rorick wondered, though he failed to see how it mattered now, with so many dwarf fire-etin who could control fire laying as ash at their feet, churned into a macabre paste as they mingled with the blood of war.
“Yes, you and I, at least, should get in there,” Rorick said.
“You’re not going anywhere without me,” Camilla informed him, hacking through another elle folk that had broken past their ring of guards. She sidestepped a falling arrow, the little needle of wood ricocheting off her boot.
Rorick nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“All right,” Surt nodded. “Forward!” he gave the order, and soon their ring of guards led them through the field of battle, toward the edge of the portal and away from the toxin. The one good thing Rorick could see—and there weren’t many upsides to this battle—was the toxin only came through one side of the portal, and it allowed for a rather narrow range of attack.
Great smoldering prints charred the grass in Surt’s wake. Streamers of mult
i-hued light cascaded around them as the ballicrie claimed their dead, and ash churned beneath their feet. The going was slow, even though the fire-etin that surrounded them were able to carve a path before them with fire. Giants were doing a number on the elle folk whenever their rocky feet could swipe through the gathered forces. Still, the elle folk often had an upper hand when it came to the giants. The larger forms were sluggish, and compared to their lumbering attacks, the elle folk seemed like strikes of lightning. More than one giant was overwhelmed by the elle folk, crashing to the ground causing to heave, and Rorick stumbled more than once.
Around them, Eget Row burned.
“Wait for it,” Gil said, taking a step back to allow the others to get closer. “It’s going to be a little hard for Surt to get through.”
“I will manage,” Surt said.
The guard parted around them, allowing them easier access to the portal when the poison stopped flowing. Rorick counted the seconds, watching the surge of elle folk crash through the portal and into the fray of battle. They seemed immune to the toxins of the elle folk king. Camilla had tried, at one point, to slash into a wave of combatants as it came through, but Rorick had stopped her. It would have been great if they could have attacked and killed some of the elle folk as they charged through, but he didn’t want to bring attention to their position.
The toxins stopped, and Rorick stepped forward, but just before he was about to slip around the edge and into the nightmare realm of the elle folk, the toxins started once more. Another wave of elle folk rushed through with the toxins, and it was then Rorick saw why they were so powerful against the armies of light—they were using the cloud of poison as shielding to get into Eget Row. While the fire-etin defended themselves from the poisons, the elle folk attacked, using the confusion to strike down their foe.
Rorick was anxious the next time the poison fog abated, not sure how rapidly it would start again. He wasted no time, and Camilla and he slipped around the corner of the portal, and into the darkling realm.
Rorick was barely aware of the portal opening large enough for Surt to enter. His focus was on the twisted, wasted land that resided within the portal.
It was upside down. Or rather, it was like he stood between two mirrors. Beneath him was a hard, glassy surface that he feared he might fall through at any moment. It reflected twisted grass and thorny brambles, but there was no grass beneath his feet, no vegetation of any sort.
High above him, skeletons of trees hung upside down from the sky. Between their roots, he could see shadows and clouds twisting in some maelstrom that had yet to hit the land. Lightning flashed purple and green, reflecting off the mirrored grown like heat rising from a fire. He wasn’t sure what the trees were rooted to, and he worried at any moment that they may come crashing down, breaking the floor he stood on, and dropping him into some bottomless pit where he would fall for eternity until he died of old age.
“Ah, we have visitors,” the little king said, rubbing his dry hands together. The only source of health within the portal was the lime tree that rose powerfully at the king’s back. But even that was twisted like the deformed body of a knobby old woman. The leaves were sharp, as if tipped with blades, and the fence that kept those away from the tree was cracked, dilapidated, and gray.
“You have enemies,” Surt said. “We aren’t here to visit. We are here to kill you.”
“To the elle folk, that’s what visitors are—enemies.” The little king gave a hearty laugh. “But we aren’t the ones who die when visitors come knocking.”
“You are this time,” Surt declared, and in his palm formed a great ball of fire.
The little king motioned with his shillelagh, and Rorick’s fear came to fruition. The skeletal trees overhead began to shake, cracked and parched bark raining down on them. Camilla grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way moments before a tree cascaded to the mirrored ground.
Rorick tumbled out of the way, rolling to his feet, sword at the ready. The tree shattered through the ground with a hallow tinkling sound, as if the thinnest of mirrors had been broken. Through the jagged hole, shadows roiled and bubbled to the surface.
More trees were falling in the distance in such a random patter that Rorick couldn’t figure any reasoning to their pattern. Camilla dove out of the way as another tree came crashing down between them. They were separated by a large gash in the ground, and shadows surged forward. The shadows lashed out like huge tentacles. Camilla met their reach, and sliced through the shadows. When the tip of the reaching darkness fell to the ground, darkness oozed like blood from the tip, melting the ground where it fell, like acid on skin. A noxious fume plumed into the air, and Camilla stumbled back away from it.
That was the last he saw her, because just then, a shadow gripped him from behind and slung him through the air. Rorick slammed into the ground, but before he could get up, more shadows were converging on him as countless trees smashed through the glass ground. He was on an island of glass, that’s all he could make out. There was darkness all around him, and only one tree left above him.
The tree shivered, bark raining down on him. He tried to roll, but the darkness from the Void beneath the ground held him tight. The darkness pressed in on him, and it was hard for him to breath. He felt the bone of his leg snap as the darkness tightened more, bruising his flesh and making his leg go numb with lack of blood.
Moments before the darkness swelled to painful proportions around his head, Rorick saw the tree break loose of whatever had been holding it aloft. As it crashed down upon him, there was a great impact, and a rush of heat. The little king screamed in terror and in pain, but it was all lost to darkness as the tree collided with Rorick.
High above the field of battle, in an arched stone window, a ballicrie whispered a name before she lashed out with her purple sword of light. Beside her, another ballicrie whispered another name, her blue light flashing down into the field. Their lights slithered through the portal moments before it collapsed.
The names were Rorick Kueper and Camilla Chase.
A rain of light hammered down from the Ever After, the colors numerous and in such a large volume that the lands to the south were lit in rainbow hues.
As the portal collapsed in on itself, shrinking until it was little more than a heart of shimmering, glowing darkness, the elle folk that remained outside their nightmare realm vanished in pops of smoke. And then the glowing pustule of darkling light exploded in a horizontal ripple, cutting down fire-etin who remained too close to the portal, their cheers of victory dying in their throats.
Abagail wasn’t sure how much longer the circle of protection would hold. The one thing she could be proud of, was at least the All Father hadn’t yet been disturbed. As far as she could see, the darkling wyrd in Elivigar had been eradicated, but she knew there was more further on that she couldn’t see. Elivigar ran from the Well of Wyrding at their back that sheltered the great tree. The river meandered through Eget Row in a straight line until it spilled off the edge and into the fathomless depths of the Void. There was a lot to cleanse.
The nightmares that came for them wore the bodies of fallen comrades that hadn’t been claimed quick enough by the ballicrie above. Now they were malformed and twisted both in body and spirit. She knew that the ballicrie wouldn’t take them now, they would fall dead and be reclaimed by Elivigar to be churned into some new horrific shape.
On the left and right banks, heroes of all races warred with darklings. There were harbingers of darkness casting darkling wyrd about in a haphazard fashion, scorching the air with lightning and fire. Cascades of multi-hued light rained down from the Ever After, claiming as many of the fallen that they could.
Abagail found herself wondering what happened to the souls that hadn’t been claimed?
The melee was deafening. Still, over all the noise, she could hear the metallic thrum as the three elves with her struck fingers to scepters, shooting out their energy into the nightmares that converged on the orb of golden
light that surrounded them.
The nightmare abominations thundered against the orb, and when their fists met Abagail’s wyrd they shook, and then crumpled as if dead, their darkling wyrd fizzled out, waiting to be renewed by Elivigar.
Each strike tired her, weakened her power, and drained her of will to continue. She was tiring much faster than she wished, and worse than that, the darkling wyrd that was previously out of sight in the depths of Elivigar streamed closer to their island. Sensing the threat of the All Father, and at the insistence of Hilda’s waving dead arm, Elivigar was quickly polluting with darkling wyrd. Their little island was in the center of ebony water.
The All Father showed no signs of weakening. But as more of the nightmares stirred from the depths of the water and pummeled on the outside of her protective orb, Abagail knew her wyrd was reaching its end.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” Abagail said. If the All Father heard her, he gave no sign. His eye continued shooting golden light into the toxic water. Now there was no sign of the darklings letting up. His cleansing barely made a dent in their forces.
“Save yourself enough strength to fight,” Skye told her, another bolt of sunlight blasting from his scepter. She glanced at his weapon to see that it was running low. It glowed with the faintest of golden light now. A few more strikes and his weapon would be finished. She knew that Celeste could go on for a longer time, her scepter had been opened, but Mari’s and Skye’s hadn’t been.
“Abbie, let go if you have to,” Skye told her.
She worried that if she did, it would be over. They would quickly be overrun and the ballicrie would certainly send bolts of light down for them, wouldn’t they?
But while she was distracted, another figure rose from the toxic waters—Hilda.
She hadn’t seen the darkling goddess slip into the water, but there she was, rising up out of Elivigar, the God Slayer held firmly in her hand. The nightmares parted before her, allowing her entry to the island. She stood on the outside of the orb and peered in with a smile.
Twilight of the Gods (The Harbingers of Light Book 7) Page 7
