Within moments, a dozen half-ghosts surrounded the team. They were vaguely humanoid shapes with elongated limbs and pugnacious canine jaws hobbled together with bits of detritus and wreckage used as makeshift weaponry, glass and stone and steel fused into hammers, wedges and knives.
Blades met blades and magic tore through wraith-flesh. Sharp stones slashed open skin and gun blasts ripped apart carapaces of street armor.
Ronan and Kane fearlessly stepped forward and hacked their way through undead enemies. Ash cast her spirit around their blades to form thin layers of heat energy, a hellish vorpal sheen that gave the weapons unequalled sharpness. The two warriors slashed at undead golems with swords of pulsing flame.
Black hacked through battling corpses. Her weapons reflexively deflected stone blades and asphalt fists. Strong and fast though they were, Korva’s constructs lacked any true fighting skill. The war wights and Vath of the Ebon Cities were animated with recollection of the martial skill they bore in life, but these shadow constructs were made from the raw soul-matter of lost lives, and they bore no memory of anything they’d once known.
Black rolled between the shadow golem’s predictable attacks with ease, and she jettisoned sorcerous energies behind her that tripped the bulky physical aspects of the constructs and forced them to discorporate. They broke into unstable shades long enough for her to swing backwards and rend them into shards of spectral matter.
Danica charged Korva. The avatar waited, possessed by the magnitude of arcane power stored within the sword, the same power held by The Sleeper, dank and dirty, a corruptive mass of shadow filth and life-draining vapor. The light in Korva’s eyes was unholy, like burning pits of phosphorous.
Their blades clashed, and Black was thrown backwards and through the air. The world spun. She landed in a heap against the side of the hill, and felt something snap in her leg. Pain shot up her thigh and into her stomach. She screamed as a pulse of necrotic power hit her like a controlled tornado.
Danica’s vision blurred. The sky grew dark. Shadows bled through the clouds like poison.
Cross leapt up and stabbed Korva in the back with Avenger. Her scream ripped open the air. It was no human cry, but something that sounded like a thousand bats, or the call of a dread lizard.
The air grew heavy. Danica felt time slow. The atmosphere throbbed, and the sky rippled and pulsed. Everything shook, as if from the force of a vast footfall.
The world hollowed, turned inside out, vibrated.
The pulse came again, closer this time, sooner than the last.
The countdown.
But that’s impossible, she thought. The explosion already happened.
No, she realized. It hasn’t happened yet, not in this timeline. But it will. That explosion…it must tear through to the past. But where does it originate from? The sword? Korva?
Danica rose, and she nearly blacked out from the pain in her leg. Darkness swam around her vision.
Korva and Cross locked blades while the rest of the team battled the ghosts. Maur screamed when a stone sword caught him in the shoulder. Kane ripped through the spectral attacker with a howl. Ronan stood over Ash, who bled from both of her arms. The swordsman held a pair of undead warriors at bay.
Cross raised his blade. Korva’s defenses had dropped, just for a moment, but another pulse came. He fell back and clutched his chest. Waves of black and white heat rippled up and down his unstable body. He shimmered and faded before he regained control, and by then he was forced to deflect Korva’s renewed assault.
From Black’s perspective, Avenger seemed to be the equal of Korva’s black blade. They sparked against each other with deafening rings of power that exploded in bursts of ice and fire.
Cross was winded, and it seemed it was a struggle for him to even remain standing. Coal shadows clung and leaked from his body. He fought to keep something held within.
Cross, Danica realized. Cross is the bomb.
She saw something. Black pulled her spirit tight, and prepared him.
Korva turned to shove her blade into Cross’ exposed midsection, but he raised Avenger and countered with his own blow.
Danica’s spirit flew past Cross and slammed into Jennar, who’d come out of nowhere and aimed his nightlance squarely at Cross’ back. Black’s spirit was a jumble of crooked cold razors and jets of black steam that sliced Jennar open. Shadows exploded out of his body, a rapid mass of darkness that seethed with pain and fury.
Kane leapt forward and crushed Jennar’s skull into a pulp with a clean swing of his blade.
Cross and Korva battled on. Every strike of their weapons made the air bleed with metal noise. Arcane ghosts circled them like a pack of spectral wolves. The air was thick with shadow grit and explosive waves of light. The ground beneath them smoldered and turned pale.
Maur was down, Kane and Ronan were injured and overwhelmed, but they all fought on. Danica couldn’t tell if Ash was dead or unconscious, so she used her spirit to lift the other witch’s body to safety.
But a claw tore into Danica’s shoulder, and it pulled her back and into a mass of murderous shadows.
He feels the blast coming. The black matter of distant worlds races forward like an unstoppable engine. It burns inside and pounds against the shell of his flesh like a team of hammers.
He is a tunnel: a vortex. He senses the void buried in a hidden tunnel in his soul, a roiling black mass of destructive power. It burns like the flames of a thousand suns. In moments, it will find him, and everything will be lost.
He doesn't have much time.
He reels from another blow. Black metal scorches his skin and cleaves his spirit. He feels her pain and rage. The Soulweavers have tamed the disease inside her, but they could not eradicate it. As her sickness intensifies and the moment of his destruction draws near he feels his control slip. He is powerless to stop her, helpless, just a witness to the story of his own demise.
His team has come to save him. He'd hoped to resolve this without them, so they wouldn't be put at risk. He knew there was no way they’d let him march to his death on his own, even though he’d wanted them to.
I failed. Why should all of you have to die?
Ash is dead, or nearly so. Danica is dying at the hands of more of those bastard wraiths, half-shadow constructs formed from Soulrazor. Her spirit roars with hurricane force. It shreds dark bodies and lashes out with lightning tendrils that boil the ground.
He ducks beneath Soulrazor, and readies himself. His spirit grabs hold of him, cakes to his torso like a shell of shadow iron.
His body lifts from the ground.
Korva ascends with him. Swirling ebon blades follow in her wake: she rises on a stairway of knives. A shape takes form in the air behind her. It is a vast and dripping darkness, a ghost tapestry like a water-corpse continent. It is the firmament of pure night.
He sees through the cracked stars and glimpses the edge of the void. There is darkness, deep and cold and without end.
We come for you, the voices say.
He sees them. They are riders at the head of a vast black storm, undead gods with midnight hearts and cloaks of burning skies. Their scaly limbs are like the skin of dragons, and they yield blades made from behemoth black bones. Their size defies comprehension, stretches the limits of his consciousness.
We come for you. Your death marks the passage. You are us: you are the door.
He knows it’s not true. The Soulweaver has tamed the dark energies inside him
but that will not stop them from erupting only delays the effect so you have not died before now but he stares into their meteor hearts and feels the darkness roar inside him towards him at once worlds distance and yet there with him scratching the skin of his soul and he witnesses the truth of what they mean
I am the cause, he realizes. I am the detonation that tears through the worlds. I am what triggered The Black, a blast now that rips into the past the future the now God no!!!
He roars. His spirit howls with him, an
d their cries resonate across the face of the Earth in a fierce and violent wave.
Half-ghosts try to avoid him, but the earthen components of their bodies shatter into dust. Korva is thrown back. Soulrazor slips from her grasp. The midnight blade falls to the ground and lands hard in the stone, point down. The sky shakes when the dark edge slices into the rock.
He falls. His spirit abandons him, leaves him alone so he plummets and crashes.
His left arm takes the brunt of the impact, and he hears a sickening snap. He howls in pain. Dust cakes his face and blood clogs his raw throat.
Jennar comes at him. The Black has taken over that body that should have long since fallen. The ebon skyshapes bristle with glee as the nihilist mercenary raises the nightlance and brings it down into Cross’ thigh. Midnight steel sears through his muscles. He screams, but at that same moment he brings Avenger up and pushes it what is left of Jennar's shattered skull.
Still the madman won't die. Inky liquid leaks from his wounds. Jennar's eyes flash white. He rips the nightlance free from Cross’ leg, and Cross almost passes out from pain.
Kane grabs Jennar from behind and puts a knife in his back. The Black-infused warrior swings round and knocks Kane back and into the air. He soars for a moment, then lands with a crash.
Jennar’s face pulls apart like a slipping mask. Something black is underneath, so dark it pains the eyes to look at it.
A spirit circles Cross and pulls him off the ground. His leg and arm go numb beneath the vaporous touch of a male ghost. At first he thinks the spirit belongs to Ash, but after a moment he recognizes its signature.
Danica stands just a short distance away. She is covered in cuts and shadow blood. Her face is stained with darkness, and her eyes shine like arctic suns.
Ronan stands over Maur and pushes their foes back. Ash stirs behind them. She pummels Korva with her spirit’s power as the men rush to her aid.
Korva’s wings unfold. She has kept them concealed until now, folded like retractable claws beneath her leather armor. Each razor wing has been grafted straight through the skin and onto her bones. Her arms are laced with blade spurs and fused to strips of metal, like gauntlets bonded to her skin. Her wings shine sharp in the failing light.
Ash’s spirit strikes at Korva with a battery of ice blades.
Black’s spirit holds Cross aloft and keeps him safe from Jennar’s strikes. The crumbling assassin gives up, and turns for Soulrazor.
The blade stands at the center of the battle. The seven combatants almost form a ring around the sliver of meteor steel embedded in the blood rock. The dusk mist hangs low and still, and the ruins of the city seem to freeze in perimeter around them. They are all poised, all within reach of the sword.
Korva leaps forward to claim the dark blade, and Ash’s spirit explodes against her. Shards of ice fill the air with bladed snow. They are fragments of grey glass, knife stars embedded in the skin of moments.
Those bladed ice tears hang in stasis. The air is frozen plasma. Firmaments of debris lie embedded in the atmosphere like dead flies in honey.
Ash screams, and falls. She is sliced to ribbons by her own exploding spirit.
Korva flies through the explosion. Her face is a ruin of cuts, but her wings relentlessly propel her forward. She extends her armored hands so she can grasp the dark blade.
Ronan leaps at her, and Maur reaches for Ash.
Cross wills Black’s spirit to release him, to pitch him forward. His own spirit is still there somewhere, but hidden from him, taken by a sudden need that defies his own.
He flies forward. Air whips against his face. He feels like he has been frozen here for ages, waiting, poised to strike, ready to finally earn his freedom from this perpetual prison of moments.
Avenger slices Korva’s head clean from her shoulders moments before her fingers close around Soulrazor. Her eyes glaze as her head topples to the ground.
Black blood splashes onto his face, and he is back in that room, in the chamber of dead girls. He feels slathering wet jaws and iron tongues probe his submerged body. He feels grave-rot fingers and the kiss of dead fish as they suckle on his flesh. He falls into the waters, again and again.
Korva’s body crashes and slides across the ground. Her blade wings explode.
He lands hard on his face. Ash lies there with him, facing him, her eyes glazed and her skin so badly sliced and scarred he can barely recognize her.
You lost Grissom, he thinks sadly. I’m sorry, Ash. I’m so sorry.
Flaming black rock falls from the sky like lost stars. They leave wide trails of dark smoke in their wake. It looks as if some vast claw has torn open the night.
He lays there in pain, only half-conscious. He can’t move. His lungs are filled with ice crystal. Every breath makes him wince.
He stumbles to his feet. His legs can barely support his weight. He still holds Avenger in his hand. It is bloody and heavy, and the handle is slick against his skin.
Jennar fights on. His ruined face mirrors the animate shadow substance of his missing hand, a hazy cluster of darkness. Kane and Ronan battle him, but even injured he is more than a match for them both.
He is fueled by The Black. How can we defeat that?
Everything has slowed. Blasts detonate nearby, but they are muffled, as if they come from underwater. Broken rubble and glass shards glance off of him. He feels blood on his cheek.
He looks up. What he thought were meteors have landed. They surround the clearing and circle the dark blade as it thickens time and turns the air around it to sludge.
They are not meteors, but women, razor-winged women with blades.
Avatars.
A dozen avatars, come to claim the sword even though their master, their creator, is gone.
He feels the darkness rise. A black heartbeat tears at him from within. Dark matter like sick oil leaks out of his skin.
The avatar’s curved gray blades drip electric water onto the ground. Their hollow eyes cast the air in a ghastly green light, and their wings interlock and fill the air with a violent hum.
Jennar flees. His form ripples and vanishes into the folds of time.
The shadow wights are gone. The team faces a new set of enemies now.
Kane and Ronan, released from their battle with Jennar, turn and fire their rifles at the avatars. Most of the bullets bounce off of folded wings of reflective organic metal that wrap around the women’s bodies like shields. The few bullets that do find purchase rip away chunks of undead flesh, but the slugs don’t seem to do any real harm to the avatars at all.
The women move in unison. Their bodies exude silver dust. They use their blades to cut each another in the thighs or arms to prove the sharpness of their weapons. Dark blood flows from the wounds and sprays on the ground like hot oil.
The women hover, and draw close.
The pulse of that massive heart drowns out all other sound. He hears nothing but the pulse, and he sees nothing but the undead angels.
There are only moments left now. Seconds.
He feels destructive power burn inside him. It will break free at any moment. He feels forces of light and dark
light and dark
push against one another like rabid animals locked at the horn. The combination of those energies is vitriolic, venomous and toxic, a living bomb that will literally tear a hole in time when it goes off.
That’s it. That’s the answer.
He takes a step forward, and puts a hand on Soulrazor’s hilt.
The darkness in him swells, and the black whispers tear at his mind. His veins pulse and throb. His fingernails turn black, and his broken arm animates. The pain is intense, but the limb moves forcefully, possessed by a strength he has never known. Ooze darkness wraps around his skin. His flesh takes on a ghastly hue as he pulls the sword from the ground.
Avenger repulses Soulrazor’s energies. While Avenger has nowhere near the same level of power as Soulrazor, he senses something shift deep in his blade, some cleft of p
ale and primordial power.
The darkness inside him hesitates. It could overtake his body like oil spilled over a cloth, but it doesn’t. It recedes.
The avatars move in silence. Their glassy eyes and mottled blonde hair and blood-soaked limbs are rigid as their knife-sharp wings propel them through the air.
They ignore the rest of the team. Kane and Ronan wrestle one of the women to the ground and decapitate her, but not before the razor wings lash out in defense and cut them both. Danica impales two more on spears of dark ice and drives their bodies into the ground, where they continue to hover for a moment before whatever force it is that animates them finally expires.
The rest of the avatars come right at Cross.
He pushes the two blades flat together. Opposing magnetic energies tense and wrack his body with pain.
His eyes narrow. He thinks of the dead girls in the Spire, of what they must have suffered. He doesn’t want them to suffer any more.
His vision goes white. He sees everything through a ghostly lens. The world glows like fiery milk.
The energies within him coil and seethe like a reactor. He hears his own heartbeat, and he feels it slow. The lens of reality pulsates with every beat. The sky cracks and shatters.
The first avatar comes at him with her razor wings extended, and he destroys her with the unified blade. Avenger and Soulrazor are joined now, a harlequin sword. They breathe streams of black and white fire that sear the air. A cloud of flame encircles him.
The avatar falls, consumed by the blaze. She is a pile of smoking debris before she hits the ground.
Another avatar attacks. The beat is slower now. He counts long pauses between each pulse. He feels his life-force leak like water and steam. Avatars draw near and explode beneath the power of the joined blades.
This is a power that has created worlds, he realizes. Created them, and destroyed them.
Angels collapse into ash. He walks through drifts of divine dust and the scattered remains of undead goddesses.
Soulrazor (Blood Skies, Book 3) Page 22
