Path of Shadows

by Ben Wolf

“But I have never once lost sight of my focus, never once forsaken my goal for any reason. This power is mine alone to claim because I have done what must be done to claim it. I have earned it, and nothing will keep me from obtaining it.

  “Yet now here I am, on the precipice of success, being challenged by four insects with icepicks.” Lord Valdis’s voice took on a menacing tone. “You can’t imagine how thoroughly infuriating it is to get so far, to have everything go so right, only to be delayed and thwarted by lesser beings right at the very end. Twice.”

  “Real sorry to have to piss on your campfire,” Garrick said. “But we’re here to stop you. We tore through your little tower to get here, and now we’re gonna bring you down and save Kallie, even if it’s the last thing we do.”

  Hearing Garrick say it aloud filled Aeron with confidence anew. He’d said it how Aeron wanted to say it himself, but he never could’ve come up with the words.

  As determined as he was to rescue Kallie, Aeron had to admit that Lord Valdis still scared the skin off of him. Were he alone, he never would’ve made it this far, and he certainly wouldn’t have any real belief that he could save Kallie.

  But together with his fellow Blood Mercs—his brothers—there was a hope of success. A chance. One final shot.

  “As I said, you are already too late,” Lord Valdis repeated. “And in your fruitless pursuit, you have accomplished nothing. You’ve slain my men, betrayed my trust, and forfeited your very lives, all for naught.”

  “If we kill you, it will still have been worth it,” Mehta said from the back of the group.

  They each turned to look at him, and he met each of their eyes with a resolute gaze.

  “At last, the Xyonate speaks,” Lord Valdis said. “Yes, I know who you are. I know who all of you are. After our last encounter, I delved deeply into your pasts and learned everything there is to know about each of you. With time and coin, you can learn anything you wish.

  “I know your strengths and weaknesses, and I know precisely how to harm you. And when I am finished harvesting your essences in preparation for taking the power that is rightfully mine, I will see to it that your families and loved ones perish.” Lord Valdis added, “That is, unless you leave now, and leave me to my destiny.”

  “He’s worried,” Garrick said. “He doesn’t make deals like this. He knows we’re going to kill him, so he’s trying to threaten his way out of it.”

  “Believe whatever you wish, Garrick,” Lord Valdis said. “This is no bluff. Much about this world will change once I achieve godhood, but it doesn’t have to include unnecessary carnage.”

  “You’re about to experience some necessary carnage.” Garrick raised his hammer. “Enough talk. Let’s stomp this sack of serpents once and for all.”

  “Agreed.” Kent stepped to Garrick’s side and pointed his ice-forged sword at Lord Valdis.

  Aeron exhaled a deep breath, stepped to Garrick’s other side, and gripped his naginata tightly. He still believed he could save Kallie, but whether or not that was true, he would see to it that Lord Valdis paid for what he’d done.

  Then Mehta vaulted over Garrick’s head and threw all four of his shuriken at once.

  As Mehta’s shuriken zipped forward, Kent pumped magic into his sword. He was the only one of the Blood Mercs who still harbored Fjorst’s full blessing, and he intended to use it to its fullest advantage against Lord Valdis.

  A shaft of blue-white ice beamed forth, chasing Mehta’s shuriken. Garrick, Aeron, and Mehta charged forward, all with their weapons drawn and ready.

  Lord Valdis repelled it all with an eruption of pale green fire that burst forth from his body. The shuriken careened away, the beam of ice deflected up and struck the lofted ceiling, and each of the Blood Mercs flew back and skidded along the stone floor.

  Kent could tell it was the equivalent of a warning shot. He’d seen another dark mage named Eusephus conjure a similar barrier of pale green fire back in Goldmoor, the capital of Inoth. Lord Valdis was doubtless capable of much worse.

  The Blood Mercs made it to their feet in record time, and Mehta’s shuriken returned to him from four random directions. Apparently, Mehta had enough of Fjorst’s blessing left to catch them without being harmed.

  But to Kent’s dismay, Lord Valdis hadn’t even moved. The green fire had burst outward, but he hadn’t so much as flinched in the process.

  Worse yet, as they tried to advance, Kent sensed an overwhelming, unseen pressure pushing against him. The ice-forged sword in his hands, once so light and natural in his grasp, multiplied in weight, and Kent’s legs and arms weakened as if strong foes were holding him back. His advance slowed as he struggled just to remain upright.

  The others didn’t fare any better. Even Garrick, the strongest of them all, had to lean on his hammer to stay on his feet.

  “It’s him,” Garrick managed to say as the pressure forced him to one knee. “We have to pull back.”

  Kent’s head felt like it was going to explode. His sinuses rebelled against him, and he squinted to keep his eyes from bulging out of their sockets. His lungs strained for air like they had when the avalanche had buried them in that cave back in Etrijan.

  He reversed his trajectory and backed away from Lord Valdis one labored step at a time. It took awhile, but he eventually got back to the far wall where the pressure wasn't so severe, and the others joined him.

  Lord Valdis still hadn’t moved, but his hands began to glow with vivid red light. Blood magic. Kent had seen that effect before, but elsewhere.

  “What do we do?” Aeron asked.

  “I don’t know,” Garrick replied. “He did it to me before, and no matter what I did, it was still too much.”

  “I have an idea, but we must prepare for the aftermath if it works.” Kent pulled a white crystal out of one of his pouches.

  Back in Inoth, when Kent had helped bring down Eusephus, the dark mage, Ronin Shroud had used a crystal to resist Eusephus’s blood magic attacks. Then, months later, Kent had used a crystal to fight against Kymil in the final battle before he fled Inoth with Aeron and Wafer.

  He doubted it would aid them in overcoming Lord Valdis’s pressure, but they might need it to repel whatever blood magic Lord Valdis had prepared for them.

  Kent touched the blade of his ice-forged sword and drew ice onto his hand from it. His magic erected a barrier made of ice, clear and hard as stone, and he formed it around them.

  “God-forged weapons and an ice-based blessing are not worth much if we cannot leverage them to our advantage,” he said. “Now we will learn precisely how much they are worth.”

  Together, with the ice barrier ahead of them, they advanced into the range of Lord Valdis’s pressure once again.

  As they walked, the barrier cracked, sending long fissures across their field of vision. Kent continually fed the barrier as he had when they’d faced Falna to reinforce it.

  Lord Valdis’s pressure broke off the outer edges of the barrier with each new step, but overall, the barrier was working. Thanks to Fjorst’s blessing, Kent wouldn’t soon run out of ice magic, and the barrier—damaged as it was, absorbed the majority of Lord Valdis’s pressure.

  “The ice is going to break.” Kent’s voice shook more than he would’ve wanted it to. “Prepare to attack him again.”

  A deafening crack sounded, and the barrier shattered.

  The Blood Mercs rushed forward again, ready to engage in battle.

  This time, Lord Valdis moved.

  He extended his hands toward the Blood Mercs and hurled bolts of blood magic at them.

  Kent shifted his magic into the crystal instead, and Lord Valdis’s red bolts collided with a previously invisible crystalline wall that spread just wide enough to protect each of the Blood Mercs. The bolts dissipated along the wall in a prism of red hues.

  Mehta cut hard to the right, and Garrick went left, both trying to flank Lord Valdis. He didn’t stop them.

  But as they closed in on him, a wave of pale green fir
e burst forth from Lord Valdis’s body once again, flinging the four of them back once more.

  Mehta recovered first and hurled his shuriken again, all the while advancing.

  With a wave of his left hand, now coated in the same green fire, Lord Valdis deflected them. The shuriken careened away and then returned to Mehta a moment later.

  Kent and the others recovered their footing next and started toward Lord Valdis again.

  Both of Mehta’s ice-forged knives leaped into his hands, and he lurched toward Lord Valdis. They met in a clash of blue ice and green fire, with Lord Valdis barely moving except for his fiery arm and occasionally to reposition his feet.

  Meanwhile, Mehta slashed and stabbed and drove his knife into a smaller barrier that moved along with Lord Valdis’s arm. With every one of Mehta’s strikes, the barrier rippled with pale green fire, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t break through.

  As Mehta relentlessly attacked, Lord Valdis etched a quick rune in the air with his right hand. A glowing violet blade extended from the rune, made of dark magic and swirling with angry energy. It hung in the air until Lord Valdis clasped it in his right hand.

  “Mehta, watch out!” Kent yelled as he continued to press forward. He would’ve shot another beam of ice at Lord Valdis if he could’ve, but with Mehta in the way, he didn’t want to risk it.

  Whether or not Mehta had already seen the blade, he reacted well. Lord Valdis slashed with his violet blade, but Mehta ducked under the attack and returned with a trio of vicious attacks that thudded against Lord Valdis’s barrier once again.

  Garrick and Aeron came at him from two different angles, separate from Mehta. Lord Valdis sidestepped Garrick’s mighty hammer swing, his violet blade clashed against Aeron’s naginata, and his left hand still defended against every single one of Mehta’s attacks without missing a beat.

  As his companions fought, Kent studied the scorallite crystals and the orange light that suspended the dragon and Kallie. If Lord Valdis was telling the truth, then attacking the dragon could wound or even kill Kallie in the process. It wasn’t something Kent was willing to risk.

  More troubling still was the idea that Lord Valdis was using scorallite at all. Scorallite drew magic out of mages in uncontrollable ways, so Kent hadn’t dared touch any of it in the dungeon in Muroth for fear of what it might do to him, but clearly Lord Valdis wasn’t concerned about—

  Kent’s eyes widened, and he inhaled a sharp breath. Had Lord Valdis somehow found a way to make the scorallite work to his advantage? Was it amplifying Lord Valdis’s ritual? Or was it holding the dragon and Kallie in stasis, keeping them locked in their unnatural slumber?

  Whatever the scorallite’s purpose, it had to be essential to Lord Valdis’s plans. Therefore, if they could destroy it, perhaps they could disrupt the ritual without harming Kallie in the process.

  “Kent!” Garrick shouted. “Down!”

  Red flashed in Kent’s periphery, and he saturated the crystal in his hand with magic anew. Spears of red light—blood magic—struck his crystalline shield once more and broke apart, harmless.

  Lord Valdis loosed another burst of green fire, and the other three Blood Mercs tumbled across the stone floor, repelled yet again. The blast knocked Kent back as well, but the green flames merely gnawed at the fringes of Kent’s clothes and threatened to sear his skin.

  As far as he could tell, it hadn’t caused any serious damage to the other Blood Mercs either, but it had done well to keep them from harming Lord Valdis.

  With all the Blood Mercs on their backs again, each a bit slower to rise this time, Lord Valdis once again had the advantage. And this time, he pressed his advantage.

  With a roar that shook the entire tower, Lord Valdis tore his garments away from his chest, dug his fingers into the meat of his flesh, and started ripping his skin open just under his sternum.

  Kent watched in horror as Lord Valdis gouged his fingers deeper and deeper into his own body. Blood stained his robe and spattered onto the stone floor at Lord Valdis’s feet, but he continued to tear at his own flesh, shrieking, until a gaping hole yawned open at the Blood Mercs.

  Finally, when Lord Valdis stopped screaming, something emerged from inside his chest. It poured out and hit the floor with a wet smack—dark-purple, writhing, and covered in blood.

  Another one fell out, then another. The formless things squirmed on the floor in a pool of blood, seizing and shifting and reshaping themselves as the Blood Mercs watched, unsure what to do.

  Violet light glowed from Lord Valdis’s hands, and his torso slowly knitted itself together. The sight was even more repulsive than seeing him peel it open in the first place, and before long, only the blood on Lord Valdis’s hands, chest, and robe indicated anything had ever been wrong.

  The three forms sucked up all the blood on the floor, leaving it bone-dry, and shifted into humanlike shapes. Now they slowly rose to their full height—each of them just as tall as Lord Valdis.

  They mimicked the image of his body, his facial structure, and even sprouted hair like his on top of their heads. The dark-purple color faded to a pink-gray pallor, and they stared at the Blood Mercs with sunken eyes made of black coal.

  They were naked until shadow itself wreathed their bodies in black robes like Lord Valdis’s, but without the gold flames embroidered on them—instead, the flames were silver. Aside from their sickly appearance and their robes, they looked like perfect copies of Lord Valdis.

  What kind of magic was this? Some sort of blood magic? Were they blood clones of Lord Valdis?

  Each of them drew intricate runes with the fingers of both of their hands, and three pairs of glowing violet blades materialized, each identical to the one already in Lord Valdis’s hand. Now armed, the blood clones advanced forward, as did Lord Valdis himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Two of the blood clones split off to fight Garrick and Mehta while Kent dueled the third. As such, the task of facing the real Lord Valdis had fallen to Aeron. The thought of facing him alone terrified Aeron, but if winning meant freeing Kallie, he would do it.

  He would die for her if he had to.

  So Aeron fought the hardest he’d ever fought to save her.

  Lord Valdis moved like a seasoned warrior—easily the best Aeron had ever encountered. Most of the time, Aeron barely managed to defend himself, let alone throw in an attack or two of his own.

  It took all of his concentration just to keep Lord Valdis from hitting him with that violet blade or skewering him with those red spears from his fingertips.

  Lord Valdis abruptly broke away from the fight and stepped back. “You cannot succeed. I will harvest your essence and consume your soul.”

  “Then do it already,” Aeron fired back. He jabbed his naginata at Lord Valdis’s head.

  Lord Valdis parried it with a burst of green fire from his left hand, then he whirled around and lashed the violet blade at Aeron’s head in return.

  Aeron brought the naginata up just in time to block the strike, but Lord Valdis proved too strong. No matter how hard Aeron resisted, even with both of his hands, the blade pushed closer and closer to his face.

  All the while, Lord Valdis’s dark eyes flared with that haunting, otherworldly energy, and he sneered at Aeron. “You are weak. Useless. A fraud. You will fail, just as you always have.”

  In that moment, Aeron saw Commander Brove’s face instead of Lord Valdis’s, and rage billowed to life in his chest.

  Instead of pushing back, Aeron back-stepped and redirected Lord Valdis’s blade down and across his body. Its tip slashed across Aeron’s breastplate, carving a deep gouge into the metal, but Aeron felt no pain. It either hadn’t hit his flesh, or he just hadn’t felt it yet.

  Now, with Lord Valdis off-balance, Aeron lunged for a killing blow. His naginata blade shot forward, perfectly aimed and perfectly timed.

  This was it. This was the moment.

  Then Lord Valdis knocked it aside with a simple wave of his other hand.
Pale green fire rippled along the invisible shield coating his arm, and Aeron’s naginata hit nothing.

  This was not the moment.

  A storm of red tendrils sprung from Lord Valdis’s left hand and screamed toward Aeron, now off-balance himself. To avoid them, Aeron leaned into his lack of balance and dove to the floor.

  His armor skidded along the stone surface for a couple yards, and he quickly jumped up to his feet. He stole a glance at Kallie. She hadn’t moved, and he still saw no indication that anything was happening between her and the dragon.

  But he couldn’t focus on her now. Lord Valdis was still coming after him.

  Aeron raised his naginata and continued to fight.

  No matter how many wounds Mehta managed to inflict on the blood clone, it was never enough to bring it down. He’d carved dozens of brutal lacerations into the blood clone’s body and limbs, but it kept coming for him, kept attacking.

  By now, several of Mehta’s attacks should’ve severed some of the tendons in the blood clone’s body. Without properly functioning tendons, the blood clone shouldn’t have been able to continue to fight, even if Mehta couldn’t figure out how to kill it.

  Yet it persisted nonetheless, pursuing Mehta relentlessly wherever he went, slashing those violet blades at him, trying to end him once and for all. And even if Mehta could’ve found a way to kill the blood clone, what would prevent Lord Valdis from simply creating another one?

  So Mehta abandoned the blood clone and joined Aeron in dueling with Lord Valdis.

  Mehta threw strike after vicious strike at him, and green fire rippled along Lord Valdis’s left arm with every blow. Aeron dealt with his other side, but only briefly as the blood clone Mehta had been fighting returned and soon attacked him instead of Mehta.

  But now Mehta had his chance. With the blood clone busy, perhaps he could do what Aeron could not. Perhaps he could find a way to sift Lord Valdis and finally end this conflict.

  Fighting Lord Valdis differed wildly from fighting Lord Glavan. Whereas Lord Glavan had relied heavily on ranged magic and necromancy to do battle, Lord Valdis engaged Mehta face-to-face and fought him up close.