by Ben Wolf
Aeron swung his naginata at her from the side, but she deflected the blow and nearly cut him in half at his waist with a sizzling counter-slash. She missed by mere inches.
But it was Kent’s swordplay with Falna that impressed Garrick the most. They traded blows like sword-fighting instructors, somehow both vigorous and casual at the same time.
When Garrick had fought Kent back in Mehta’s village, he’d gotten close to winning, but it was only because he’d been wielding the phantom steel weapons that now hung at his hips. Garrick literally couldn’t feel fatigue when he was using them, so he’d maintained a breakneck pace that had all but worn Kent out.
But now, with the four of them battling Falna at one time, Kent had no trouble keeping up with her. It would only be a matter of time before they overpowered her.
Or at least, that’s what Garrick thought.
He managed to sneak in a jab with the top of his hammer that knocked Falna back a few steps. Instead of rushing forward to reengage them, she crossed her arms in front of her face and slashed downward on a diagonal. Two pillars of fire, shaped like an X, scoured the floor and ceiling as they burned toward Garrick and the other Blood Mercs.
He tried to dive clear, but he was too late. The blast hit him in his flank and knocked him to the side. He felt the heat scorch up his arm to his shoulder, trying to sear his skin and his face, and he landed hard on the stone floor.
Garrick looked up in a hurry. Kent had erected an ice shield that stopped most of the flaming X’s progress, but doing so had isolated Garrick and Falna. She rushed toward him, wearing a wicked smile on her face.
But he was no coward. He rose to his feet, ready for her. She’d doubtless scorched some of Fjorst’s blessing away, but one good blow from Garrick’s hammer would end the fight.
Falna threw an onslaught of fiery blows, and Garrick met them all with his hammer in the cleanest display of defense and parrying he’d ever mustered. He’d hoped to find an opening to strike back, but nothing presented.
Just hold her off, Garrick reminded himself. You’re not alone.
Behind Falna, Mehta’s shuriken streaked through the air toward her once again. Somehow she knew they were coming, and she slid under them and away from Garrick in the same smooth motion.
Now the shuriken sliced at Garrick instead. Fjorst’s warnings filled his mind, and he raised his hammer to deal with them.
He parried two of the four away with his hammer, and the third went wide. The fourth hit him clean in his shoulder, and he winced. As all four shuriken swooped back toward Mehta, Garrick glanced down at his shoulder.
A rivulet of blood trickled down from a tiny nick where the shuriken had struck him. The wound wasn’t anything of concern itself, but the meaning behind it alarmed him: Falna’s most recent fire attack had severely diminished Fjorst’s blessing.
Had he lost the entire blessing, not even his durable skin would’ve fended off a god-forged weapon. It hadn’t been a glancing blow, either—the shuriken had hit him square, but it had barely penetrated.
It was enough to put Garrick even more on guard, and it reinvigorated his desire to end the fight as soon as possible.
Falna had retreated away from Garrick and now sparred with Kent, Aeron, and Mehta. Somehow she managed to keep up with all of them—even with Mehta, who could move faster than anyone Garrick had ever seen. But neither side seemed to be winning.
It was probably a bad idea, but something had to give. And if that meant Garrick had to risk a bit more to make sure it happened, he would just have to go for it.
So Garrick abandoned his concerns about his dwindling blessing and rushed forward, ready to unsettle the balance in their favor.
The sight of Garrick thundering into the battle with Falna truly excited Mehta. He ducked under a savage hack from Falna’s arcane steel sword, then he loosed a shuriken at her again.
As before, Falna batted it away with ease, but it had cost her the slightest instant to respond to Garrick amid everything else they were throwing at her. She managed to turn back in time, and she brought her swords around in a fiery arc as she did, but Garrick’s mass and momentum proved too much.
Falna’s swords clanged against Garrick’s hammer, and the force from the collision sent Falna tumbling backward, end-over-end, into the nearest wall with a loud smack.
The sight of it gave Mehta an idea.
He turned to Kent. “Launch me.”
Kent squinted at him, and so did Aeron.
“Launch me,” Mehta repeated. “I still have Fjorst’s blessing. Your ice magic has prevented her flames from reaching us. Launch me at her with your ice magic.”
Kent’s eyes brightened. “And my magic will shield you as you move forward.”
“Exactly,” Mehta replied. “Be ready to move in once I strike.”
Garrick continued to advance toward Falna, who’d recovered again and started to build another shell of fire around her.
Kent pointed his sword at Mehta.
“You sure this is gonna work?” Aeron glanced between them.
“We’re running out of options. Do it now.” Mehta turned to face Falna and Garrick and shouted, “Move, Garrick!”
Before the last syllable could escape Mehta’s lips, an icy jolt hit him from behind, bitterly cold, but tolerable. His feet left the floor, and he soared along a ribbon of blue and white light toward Falna with his ice-forged knives ready.
Over the years, Mehta had experienced a myriad of weird thoughts whenever he’d faced death in the past. This time, the memory of riding a spinal column toward Lord Glavan resurfaced in his mind, and Mehta wondered if this was becoming some sort of odd recurring strategy he’d continue to employ in future battles.
He wrote it off as coincidence. If it succeeded, maybe he’d give it more consideration then.
Garrick turned back, ducked, and rolled out of the way, and Mehta streaked past him. The beam of ice hit Falna’s fiery barrier and turned to steam upon contact, and the instant before Mehta hit it as well, he realized he was about to die.
As he broke through her shield, a wave of heat unlike anything he’d ever experienced washed over him. Pain seared every inch of his skin, and against all of his Xyonate training, he screamed. He couldn’t have stopped himself—it was an inescapable response to the sensation of being burned alive.
But his body kept moving forward, and somehow he could still see his target.
And he’d managed to hold onto his knives.
He stabbed his two ice-forged blades at Falna, but one of them missed.
One of them didn’t.
It plunged into the top of her shoulder, and she shrieked.
Ice crystals sprouted from the wound around the knife and promptly evaporated into nothing, then Mehta’s knife tore out of her. Blood spurted from her shoulder and hissed in the superheated air as it bubbled away to nothing in the next breath.
Mehta hit the floor and rolled onto his side. He continued the roll and bounded up to his feet, ready for more.
He was alive. Steaming like a chunk of meat over a campfire, but alive nonetheless.
Mehta glanced down at his bare arms and hands. They were burned, but not badly. He touched his face next and found similar minor burns there. The pain had been excruciating, and he’d fully expected to find his flesh charred beyond repair, but Fjorst’s blessing must’ve been just enough to sustain him.
Falna, on the other hand, faltered. Her fiery shell must’ve gone down when Mehta hit her because he’d rolled through the back half of it—or where it should’ve been—without enduring further burns.
And when her shell went down, Aeron was there, driving his naginata forward.
Falna managed to parry the attack, but not entirely. The naginata speared through her armor and into her thigh, and she screamed again.
Kent’s sword struck next. Falna only managed a feeble block, but Kent’s sword still pierced her armor and dug into her lower gut.
She gasped as ice cryst
als bloomed from both wounds. As before, they melted, but slower this time.
With rage and pain and a hint of fear in her eyes, Falna slumped to her knees and then onto her side. Her arcane steel swords clattered to the floor next to her and extinguished, now emitting smoke instead.
Aeron and Kent yanked their weapons out, and Falna gasped again as a relative silence filled the room. She clutched at her abdomen with her hand, now drenched in crimson blood, and glared at them with her twin fireball eyes, now less vivid and bright.
But she refused to quit. Falna braced herself up on her free arm, released her grip on her wounded gut, and conjured fire out of nothing—something she shouldn’t have been able to do, as far as Mehta understood magic.
The flames danced on her hand, and as Mehta joined Aeron and Kent, he could see the blood bubbling and evaporating along her fingers.
“You…” she inhaled a sharp breath and winced. “You will never defeat… Lord Valdis.”
Her charred eyes flared with wild, untamed fire, and she pointed her fiery palm at the three of them.
CRUNCH.
Garrick’s hammer caved in the three-horned ram sigil on Falna’s breastplate—along with her chest—and she dropped back, wide-eyed.
Her mouth hung open as if she were gasping for air, but she made no sound. The fire on her hand snuffed out, and her eyes slowly reverted back to their normal blue color, but still outlined in charred skin, as she stared at Garrick in shock.
“Consider that a goodnight kiss,” Garrick quipped.
Falna blinked once, then she lay back, totally still. Her eyes glazed over, and she was gone.
Aeron’s sense of relief that Falna was finally dead was short-lived. Neither Kallie, Lord Valdis, nor the dragon were anywhere to be seen. The nineteenth and final floor was empty aside from the Blood Mercs and Falna’s corpse.
Frantic, he looked at Kent for answers.
Kent stared back at him, answers absent from his gaze. He didn’t know what to do, either. Neither did Garrick or Mehta. They all just stood there in the quiet, unmoving, uncertain.
Aeron started to speak when a blue light began to radiate from both the ceiling above them and the lift in the floor. Then the light cut down the center of the ceiling, and the stone parted in the center, revealing a hidden twentieth floor.
Aeron locked eyes with Kent, who snatched up the ice cannon and rushed to the center of the platform. The others followed, leaving Falna and her arcane steel weapons behind. Then Kent activated the lift, and it ascended to the twentieth floor.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The platform settled in the center of a wide, well-lit space with a lofted ceiling. Aeron remained where he stood, but he searched the chamber for Kallie with his naginata raised high. What he saw horrified him.
Kallie hung in the air, suspended in a shaft of eerie orange light. Her eyes were closed, and she wore a white robe embroidered with golden flames.
She looked as if she were floating there with her body perfectly still. Aeron saw no movement whatsoever—not even breaths drawing in and out of her.
Was she already dead? He couldn’t identify any signs of trauma or wounds from his vantage point twenty-something feet away.
He wanted nothing more than to rush over to her and check her wellbeing, but the sight of another form hovering next to her in a much wider shaft of orange light kept him rooted to the platform.
A mammoth beast hung next to Kallie, also motionless. Two massive wings protruded from its back, both folded in like Wafer did with his wings. But this reptile had forelegs where Wafer did not, as well as rear legs and a long tail.
Obsidian scales armored every inch of its body, and black, demon-like horns jutted out from the sides of its head and curled backward. Black spikes and bones lined its hide and accentuated the exterior of its elbow joints, and they ran down its tail as well.
Talons curled out of its toes, and a long, thick snout extended from its wretched face. Though its mouth wasn’t open, white teeth poked out from its scaly maw, and its red eyes stared into the void, stuck halfway open.
It looked exactly as Aeron had always imagined a full-blown dragon would look, just a lot more black. It dwarfed Wafer in size by at least double—maybe triple—and Aeron doubted it was full-grown. After all, it had hatched only a month ago.
Wyverns grew fast, but they didn’t grow that fast. Aeron didn’t know of any beast, real or legendary, that did. Either Lord Valdis had done something to accelerate the dragon’s growth or dragons just developed that fast.
Between the dragon and Kallie stood a glowing green crystal the size of two men. Aeron immediately recognized it as scorallite, the stuff they’d seen lining the walls in the dungeon under the Crimson Flame temple in Muroth.
Two more chunks of scorallite framed them in, one to the left of Kallie and one to the right of the dragon, both comparable in size to the one in the center. The shafts of orange light emanated from somewhere between the scorallite crystals, but Aeron couldn’t identify a true source for either of them.
Between the Blood Mercs and Kallie stood Lord Valdis. He wore robes like Kallie’s, adorned with golden flames along the sleeves and elsewhere, but his robe was black instead of white.
His eyes smoldered with the same dark energy as before, only his usual impassive expression had crumpled into stern anger—or perhaps it was frustration? Or annoyance?
Aeron leaned toward it being one of the latter two emotions. Thus far, Lord Valdis had only viewed them as tools to accomplish his bidding or as interruptions to his plans.
But he also didn’t know that they’d come prepared with weapons capable of killing him.
Aeron shifted the naginata in his hands. Well, he’s about to get a rude awakening.
“Ice-forged weapons,” Lord Valdis said to them. “How interesting.”
Aeron’s breath caught in his throat. Maybe Lord Valdis did know what their weapons were, but that was beside the point.
“Do you seriously believe that the lot of you can contend with me?” Lord Valdis shook his head, still frowning at them. “Just because you have some weapons forged by a god? And one of the lesser gods, at that?”
So Fjorst is a lesser god after all?
“Even a lesser god is more powerful than you,” Aeron countered.
“Even if that were true, is Fjorst here? Will he be fighting alongside you?”
“We don’t need him to defeat you,” Aeron stated.
“You are mistaken, of course.” Lord Valdis pressed his palms together and bridged his fingers apart. “Furthermore, you are too late. The ritual has already begun.”
“She’s not dead yet,” Aeron said. “Get her out of… whatever that is.”
“I’m afraid that is quite impossible. Her soul is tethering to the dragon’s as we speak,” Lord Valdis said. “It is feeding on her essence, gaining strength as it bonds with her. Before long, they will become one being—and then I will take that being’s essence for myself. To stop that process now would only ensure madness and chaos.”
“Why would we believe you?” Garrick grunted. “You’re a liar and a fiend.”
“When have I ever lied to you, Garrick?” Lord Valdis asked, his demeanor calm.
“You sent Falna along when Kent and I had to go back and find the girl for you. She tried to kill me on your orders.”
“Yet here you are, alive, as evidence to the contrary,” Lord Valdis said.
“I said she tried to kill me.”
“Nevertheless, I gave no such orders, nor did I ever lie to you about it or anything else,” Lord Valdis continued. “If anyone here is a liar, it is you, who now stand with my enemies despite swearing to rectify your past failures.”
Garrick’s face hardened. “Call it a change of heart. I couldn’t justify bringing an innocent girl back to be slaughtered.”
“No one is innocent, Garrick,” Lord Valdis said. “Least of all you. That girl is not innocent, nor is she being slaughtered. The proces
s of draining her essence is painless. She can’t even feel it happening due to the ritual’s effects. And through her sacrifice, I will wield power unlike anything mortal man has ever possessed.”
“It still ends her life.” Kent set the ice cannon down on the floor and held his ice-forged sword. “We cannot and will not stand for it. Nor can we abide someone like you wielding such terrible power.”
Aeron glanced out one of the three narrow, rectangular windows cut into the stone walls that curved up to form the ceiling. He hadn’t seen them when he and Wafer were flying reconnaissance around the tower to search for ways inside, but they were there, sure enough.
He could see clear out into the sky, now black and full of stars but absent the moon’s usual silver glow. Night had fallen, and the new moon loomed somewhere overhead.
Was Lord Valdis right? Were they already too late?
“And what reason can you possibly give for denying me access to it?” Lord Valdis stared at Kent with those eyes plagued with darkness. “Is it not mine by right, simply because I am capable of taking it for myself? Power is only truly gained through the exertion and application of preexisting power. Why should I not claim mine?”
“I know how dark magic works,” Kent countered. “The power and wealth you have acquired over the years are rooted in death and destruction. How many souls have you condemned in your quest for greater power? How many men, women, children, beasts, and other living beings have perished for your personal gain?”
“Many,” Lord Valdis admitted. “Too many to count. But they all perished in the service of something far greater than themselves, whether they knew it or not.”
“Your enrichment and your quest for ‘godlike power’ do not justify your actions,” Kent stated.
“On the contrary, they’re the only proper justification for my actions,” Lord Valdis replied. “To do what I have done just for the sake of doing it, or because I enjoyed it, would have made me the hellion you believe me to be.
