Path of Shadows

by Ben Wolf

  Now he would repay Lord Valdis’s power games with a different kind of power—brute force.

  Garrick wound up for another swing and delivered.

  With a flash of green light, the scorallite crystal shattered.

  At the sound of the crystal shattering, Lord Valdis faltered. Aeron saw it happen, but by the time he tried to take advantage of it, Lord Valdis had already recovered.

  Aeron stabbed at him with his naginata, but Lord Valdis managed a haphazard parry with his shadow spear then quickly reengaged Aeron in battle. Then he charged forward with a primal yell and slammed the shaft of his spear against Aeron’s, forcing him backward.

  Thus far, Lord Valdis’s attacks had been fluid and clean, with a degree of precision and finesse that Aeron had never seen from anyone before, not even Mehta. Between Lord Valdis’s ability to jump through the shadows and his prowess with a spear, Aeron had barely managed to survive.

  So when Lord Valdis charged, it caught Aeron off-guard, and he tripped over his own feet and fell. He raised his naginata to defend himself, but Lord Valdis was already gone.

  Aeron searched the surrounding darkness for any sign of Lord Valdis but saw none at first. However, he noticed both Kallie and the dragon wavering in the shafts of orange light that suspended them. They’d been perfectly still before.

  Was their plan working? Or would it ultimately harm Kallie, as Lord Valdis had said?

  Whatever the case, Garrick had already raised his hammer at the next one.

  Then a shadowy form materialized behind Garrick, and Aeron recognized the shape of a spear, outlined in dark blue light, in his hand.

  “Garrick, behind you!” Aeron shouted.

  Garrick whirled back just in time to block Lord Valdis’s attack, but he struggled to keep up with Lord Valdis’s speed.

  Aeron ran over and joined the fracas.

  Mehta should’ve been able to sift Kent by now, but he’d proven craftier and more resourceful than Mehta could’ve ever imagined. He’d always known Kent had a brilliant mind, but Mehta was faster, more skilled, and a more ruthless fighter.

  Yet now, with his thirst and the phantom steel weapons ruling his actions, Mehta couldn’t understand how Kent had managed to survive as long as he had. Mehta had crushed every one of Kent’s magic shields, deflected every pitiful attack he threw, and otherwise dominated every aspect of the fight.

  But Mehta could tell Kent was growing fatigued. He knew, objectively, that although Kent’s ice magic would never let up, thanks to Fjorst’s blessing, his body would give out at some point. And with the phantom steel weapons guiding his movements, Mehta wouldn’t ever get tired.

  Eventually, he’d break through Kent’s defenses. He would sate his thirst and feed the weapons’ hunger for more power—and taking Kent’s essence would make Mehta unstoppable.

  “You must resist their pull, Mehta,” Kent urged.

  Mehta heard the words, but they didn’t matter to him. He’d relinquished all of his control, and now only the next kill mattered.

  Kent hurled more ice, this time in the form of hundreds of jagged spikes jutting up toward Mehta on an angle from the ground. They spanned about twenty feet across in total, and they didn’t move. They just sat there, a frozen river of peril separating Kent from Mehta.

  He couldn’t jump over them, not even with a running start, but he’d get through them eventually. Mehta alternated swings with his flail and his battle-axe, crushing the spikes before him, gradually carving his way across.

  All the while, Kent continued to petition him to see reason.

  But there was no reason to be seen—only death, and essence, and power. Mehta would have them all, and in increasing amounts. These weapons ensured at least that much. And no reason Kent could give would deter him from his course.

  “You must listen to me!” Kent shouted. “This is not you. You must see the truth!”

  Mehta smashed another ice spike and pressed forward. Flecks of ice hit his face, but they barely registered against his rage, just like Kent’s words.

  He shattered the last several spikes and lurched toward Kent, but the rows of ice spikes lifted off the floor and folded around him, forming a wall ahead of Kent. Then those walls of spikes began to close in on Mehta.

  It was a trap, and Mehta had walked right into it.

  “I will kill you if you cannot remember why we are here,” Kent’s voice called from beyond the ice. “You must examine your motivations. You are a Xyonate no longer. Do not let Lord Valdis pervert you into becoming one again.”

  Mehta ignored him. He was too busy fighting off the spikes jabbing at him from both sides, cracking off their pointed ends with his weapons and backing up as quickly as he could.

  He couldn’t break through to Kent right now, but he could fight out of this trap, take a new approach, and attack again. All Kent had managed was to delay his inevitable end. Mehta would sift him, and then he’d move on to Aeron and Garrick next.

  Ice rained down on Mehta as he crushed spike after spike, all the while pulling back. As he did so, the rows of spikes continued to shift and move toward him, always pursuing him, never granting him any rest.

  When he finally cleared the last of the spikes, the remainder of the ice walls shattered as well, and Mehta’s entire field of vision returned. But Kent wasn’t where Mehta had left him. Even with Mehta’s enchanted vision, he couldn’t see Kent anywhere in the shadows ahead.

  Then Mehta realized why.

  He whirled around, swinging his battle-axe with untamed fury behind him. It stopped abruptly when its shaft clacked against a pillar of ice. Except it wasn’t a pillar—it was Kent. He’d turned himself to ice like he’d turned himself to stone back at Lord Glavan’s estate, and then again in Lord Valdis’s throne room.

  Kent’s left hand clamped around the shaft of Mehta’s battle-axe, and the last thing Mehta saw was Kent’s right hand—also made of ice—careening toward Mehta’s chin.

  Kent stripped the battle-axe and the flail from Mehta’s unconscious grasp, careful to maintain a barrier of ice between his hands and the weapons. Then he hurled them aside and buried them under a mound of ice near one of the walls.

  As he gradually thawed back to human flesh, Kent silently thanked Fjorst for the blessing. Transforming into stone had served him well several times before, but he’d never considered trying to turn into ice. With Fjorst’s blessing, Kent might’ve been capable of staying in ice form indefinitely.

  For the time being, though, he had achieved what he’d needed to achieve, and he didn’t want to risk facing Lord Valdis in an unfamiliar state, so he let the ice magic dissipate from within his body.

  “I am sorry, friend,” Kent said to Mehta’s unconscious form. Kent had hit him pretty hard, but hopefully it wouldn’t leave any lasting damage. “When you wake up, join us. We are not yet finished.”

  Then Kent drew his ice-forged sword from his belt and hurried toward Lord Valdis, Aeron, and Garrick.

  Garrick had taken more than a few blows from Lord Valdis, and Aeron had taken a few as well. None were fatal, but all of them hurt. Lord Valdis’s shadow spear proved quicker than Garrick’s hammer, and he’d inflicted a few cuts and lacerations on Garrick’s arms and legs.

  He’d taken several solid punches and kicks, too. Garrick’s jaw hurt, his ribs ached, and his body wasn’t healing any of it like it normally did. Lord Valdis’s shadow magic was negating his usual quick recovery.

  Worse yet, no matter what Garrick did, even with Aeron fighting Lord Valdis, he couldn’t get away for long enough to attack the two remaining scorallite crystals. Destroying the first one had clearly affected Lord Valdis, or else he wouldn’t have been attacking them with such ferocity and abandon.

  Garrick swung his hammer at Lord Valdis, but he vanished into the darkness yet again, only to reappear behind Garrick. The hammer kept spinning Garrick around, but it didn’t connect with anything because a blast of ice hit Lord Valdis from the side and knocked him away.
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  Kent had rejoined the battle.

  “Go for the scorallite, Garrick!” Kent yelled.

  Garrick gladly obliged. Maybe now they could end this.

  “You’ll kill her!” Lord Valdis shouted as he recovered his footing and shook off the ice that covered his left side. “You’re condemning her to the very death you swore to save her fr—”

  Aeron’s naginata cut off Lord Valdis’s warning with a hard slash that clanged against the shadow spear.

  Garrick ran toward the nearest scorallite crystal as Kent ran to help Aeron with Lord Valdis. Garrick stole a glance at Mehta, who lay on the stone floor in the distance, no longer holding those cursed weapons. He was starting to stir, which meant he wasn’t dead.

  Good. They needed him.

  When Garrick made it to the scorallite, he glanced up at Kallie. She continued to hover in the orange light with her eyes closed, but she was no longer still. She slowly bobbed up and down, side to side, back and forth.

  Time to wake up. Garrick hefted his hammer high and swung it at the scorallite crystal again.

  CRACK.

  Lightning streaked through the crystal, but like the first one, it didn’t break right away. Above him, Kallie’s unconscious form wobbled again. Garrick readied his hammer for another swing.

  “Look out!” Mehta’s voice sounded from his right.

  Garrick turned back, ready for an attack, but it never reached him.

  Lord Valdis vaulted toward him with his spear extended, but Mehta collided with him from the side and knocked his trajectory off. Instead, they both tumbled into the wall, hard.

  Lord Valdis recovered first and stabbed down, but Mehta kicked off the wall, rolled away from the strike, and got up to his feet all in one fluid motion. A blast of ice hit Lord Valdis again, temporarily pinning him to the wall, but he broke through it with ease.

  Garrick didn’t miss his chance. He swung the hammer again, and the scorallite crystal shattered.

  In the distance, Lord Valdis roared.

  Then something stabbed into Garrick’s back.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Aeron was powerless to stop it from happening. When the second scorallite crystal shattered, Lord Valdis hurled his shadow spear at Garrick.

  It plunged into Garrick’s back, on the left side, just above where his heart should’ve been—at least, Aeron hoped it had landed above his heart. He went down immediately.

  “No!” Aeron shouted.

  “Help him!” Kent ordered. “Mehta and I will handle this.”

  Mehta just continued to fight.

  Aeron rushed to Garrick’s side. As he arrived there, the shadow spear dissipated in a puff of dark blue magic, but the wound remained.

  Garrick lay there clutching his chest—the spear had plunged all the way through his leather armor, into his body, and pierced out his chest and leather breastplate. His hammer lay next to him. He wheezed and gasped, wide-eyed as he stared up at Aeron.

  “Come on, Garrick,” Aeron said in a voice far more calm than what he felt. “This won’t kill you. You’ll heal.”

  Garrick shook his head and managed to say. “Not from shadow magic.” He gasped. “Not the same.”

  A pool of dark blood formed under Garrick’s body.

  “I’ll help you.” Aeron frantically worked at the straps on Garrick’s breastplate, but Garrick’s free hand clamped onto Aeron’s wrist.

  “Hammer…” He wheezed and sucked in another labored breath. “Finish this…” Another gasp. “Don’t screw it up.”

  Garrick placed Aeron’s hand on the shaft of his ice-forged hammer.

  Aeron looked at him, stunned. Was… was Garrick going to die?

  “Don’t look at me… like that,” Garrick wheezed. “Just do… the job. Now.”

  Aeron nodded, and he picked up the hammer. It was heavy, but a bit lighter than he’d expected. He looked down at Garrick again.

  “Go,” was all Garrick said.

  Aeron would’ve stayed with him, but Garrick was right. Destroying the first two crystals had done noticeable harm to Lord Valdis’s wellbeing—even if it was only his mental stability. And they’d made a difference in what was happening to Kallie and the dragon, too.

  So Aeron ran toward the final scorallite crystal.

  Moments earlier, Mehta had wanted nothing more than to carve Kent into a dozen pieces and harvest his essence. Now he again fought at Kent’s side against their true enemy, Lord Valdis. Mehta had never been more grateful for getting punched in the face.

  Kent’s ice magic thwarted Lord Valdis’s attacks at every turn, just as it had when Mehta had tried to attack him with the phantom steel weapons. Combined with Mehta’s speed and his rededication to ending Lord Valdis’s reign once and for all, they had actually managed to keep Lord Valdis focused on them instead of on Garrick and Aeron.

  Until Lord Valdis caught Kent with a wild strike to his chest.

  Kent had constructed another ice shield to fend off Lord Valdis’s attack, but this time, Lord Valdis’s fist drove through the barrier and slammed into Kent’s sternum with crushing force.

  Kent flew backward and skidded to a halt, gasping and holding his chest.

  Mehta had seen such blows kill grown men before. A sharp strike to the chest, particularly to the heart, could prove fatal. Had Kent’s ice shield not been there, he might’ve died as a result.

  Then Lord Valdis’s wrath shifted to Mehta.

  Mehta slipped his first two attacks—one with his shadow spear, now re-conjured into his hand, and the next with his fist. A pair of counterattacks from Mehta’s ice-forged knives yielded him nothing, but neither did Lord Valdis manage any effective counter-attacks of his own.

  When Mehta slashed at him a third time, Lord Valdis vanished. Mehta immediately swapped his knives for his shuriken and took aim at Aeron, who now hauled Garrick’s hammer toward the final scorallite crystal. The instant Lord Valdis appeared, Mehta loosed all four shuriken and yelled Aeron’s name.

  Aeron spun to face Lord Valdis and managed to wield the hammer well enough to defend a barrage of initial attacks. Then all four shuriken struck Lord Valdis from behind, carving ice-blue slits into Lord Valdis’s shadow armor.

  He grunted and went rigid for an instant. Had Aeron been holding his naginata instead, he might’ve been able to land a killing blow. But with Garrick’s hammer in his hands, he couldn’t do much but swing it as hard as he could.

  Lord Valdis disappeared before the hammer could hit him.

  As the shuriken returned to Mehta, Lord Valdis reappeared before him with a pair of shadow knives in his hands. Mehta stashed the shuriken in his belt and drew his ice-forged knives, ready to duel.

  Then Lord Valdis disappeared again, and Mehta ran toward Aeron.

  This time, Aeron was ready for Lord Valdis to reappear. When he popped into view, Aeron was already swinging the hammer. It struck Lord Valdis’s left shoulder, and his shadow armor crunched underneath the blow.

  The hammer knocked Lord Valdis off-balance, but he recovered fast and lunged. Aeron managed to bring the hammer’s shaft up in time, but the attack still knocked him onto his back.

  Lord Valdis went down with him, and only the hammer separated Lord Valdis from Aeron. Aeron abandoned his grip on it and instead caught Lord Valdis’s shadowy wrists in his hands.

  It wasn’t enough.

  One of Lord Valdis’s shadow knives plunged into Aeron’s left shoulder, and he screamed.

  Just as Lord Valdis moved to stab him with the other knife, Mehta collided with him and knocked him off of Aeron.

  Aeron’s shoulder burned from the inside out. The knife had gone in near where his shoulder met his torso, and though it wasn’t a deep wound, it hurt. The shadow knife was still in it, but as Aeron reached for the knife, it dissipated just as the spear in Garrick’s back had done.

  Mehta and Lord Valdis rolled around on the floor, jockeying for position and slashing at each other with their knives. Aeron wanted nothing mor
e than to lie there and be wounded, but he couldn’t. He was at the final scorallite crystal, and Garrick’s hammer lay next to him, ready to do its work.

  So Aeron gritted his teeth, forced himself to his feet, and picked up the hammer once again. His shoulder ached, and the hammer sagged in his grip. At first, he didn’t know if he’d be able to heft it at all.

  Then he looked up and saw Kallie suspended there. If doing this would save her, he’d endure any pain to make it happen.

  So he pushed through it, raised the hammer, and struck the scorallite.

  Nothing happened.

  Aeron grunted. He didn’t have even a fraction of Garrick’s strength, and his shoulder was wounded… but seriously? It didn’t look like he’d even struck it. There wasn’t a mark on it, from what Aeron could see.

  “Gods, give me strength,” he muttered. Then he raised the hammer again, reared back, and swung it as if he were back working in Pa’s forge.

  The hammer clanged against the scorallite, and a pang of agony lit up Aeron’s shoulder, but a small crack appeared where he’d struck the crystal. A weakness. A beginning.

  Mehta and Lord Valdis continued scuffling, but Mehta would only last so long. So Aeron raised the hammer and poured all of his disdain for Lord Valdis into his next swing.

  The crack in the scorallite deepened, and his shoulder ignited with pain. He ignored it.

  Misery is temporary. You’ll get through it, or you’ll die. Either way, it comes to an end.

  Aeron thought of Commander Brove and all the wrongs he’d committed, and he swung again.

  The crack turned into a fissure that spread across most of the scorallite, and it had started creeping upward, too.

  He thought of Faylen and what might’ve been, and he swung.

  The fissure grew larger.

  He thought of Falna, who’d taken Kallie and destroyed his parents’ home, and he swung again.