The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  “No,” Gymal snapped. “I’m afraid of falling from heights.”

  Kairah crossed the floor, ascended the stairs to the platform, and stood within reaching distance of the amethyst wall. The others–even Gymal–followed, albeit with more measured steps.

  “The Divine Mother is imprisoned in an Apeira well?” Irvis asked.

  “No. Rasheera is encased in the center of the planet.” Kairah extended a glowing hand. Her first theory was to simply touch the Mother Shard and use her new power to burn it away. She pressed her glowing fingers to the crystal.

  Nothing happened.

  She held the touch and willed energy into the Mother Shard. The well’s soft purple aura flared, and electric lines of green appeared deep within the Apeira well, spider-webbing up and down the Mother Shard.

  It was the cage of Moriora the Zikkurat had shown her; Shivara’s spell designed to crush the goddess. The arcing lines of green slowly crept toward her, and intuitively Kairah knew she must not have even the slightest contact with the emerald energy, and so removed her hand. The glowing lines faded.

  Aeva, I need you!

  The Spirit lily didn’t respond.

  The heat inside Kairah flared, and she hunched over, gripping her stomach and clenching her jaw. Irvis moved toward her and she threw out a hand, motioning for him to stay back. “You saw what my touch can do.”

  Irvis slowly nodded and stepped back.

  Ignoring the questioning looks from Irvis, Graelle, and Gymal, Kairah cast a spell producing a harmless explosion of colored sparks above them, and the burning pain diminished.

  “Those green lines,” Gymal said. “They make the Apeira well look infected, or diseased.”

  “More like poisoned,” Kairah said. A thought struck her. Could it be so simple? Did all she need to do was cast a healing? She glanced down at the shining white band on her finger. The goddess ring contained a portion of Rasheera’s untainted essence. Could she somehow use it to purge the Mother Shard?

  The Apeira well–all Apeira wells–were a diffusion of Rasheera’s power, caused by mixing it with Moriora. That’s why the wells turned green and shattered when touched by someone wielding Moriora. The additional infusion of the other magic unbalanced the mixture in Moriora’s favor. Could she somehow purge the lines of green from the Mother Shard? No, not just the Mother Shard. Kairah would have to somehow pull the arcane venom out of all Shaelar’s wells simultaneously. Then the crystal prison holding their creator should return to a state of pure energy.

  Kairah’s mind was working faster than it ever had before, and it wasn’t just from crisis-induced adrenaline, or desperate innovation. She was making connections in arcane theory that were well beyond her natural abilities. The ring was not only suffusing her with a burning power, but it was granting her greater intelligence. Not that Kairah hadn’t been intelligent before–all her academic assessments declared her above average–but she hadn’t ever had instincts this sharp. Nor had she ever been able to wrap her mind around Jenoc’s more complex theories of spellcasting or understand how he reverse-engineered talises.

  “Poison,” Kairah whispered. She reached out both her hands and cast a far greater healing than she’d ever attempted, or even thought possible.

  The spell she blanketed the Mother Shard with was enough to heal thousands of people of any injury or ailment save death, and Kairah was starting to think she could even undo that. The power resonated throughout the Mother Shard, making the lines of Moriora deep within reappear.

  “What is she doing?” Gymal asked.

  “It’s a healing,” Irvis said in astonishment.

  Kairah closed her eyes and willed the spell’s influence to expand further and further. She beheld each mile it encompassed as it raced across the surface of the planet, and then pushed below ground. She could see the entirety of the amethyst sphere at the core of the planet. It was misshapen with many points pushed so far outward that they rose through the planet’s crust–Apeira wells.

  Lines of crackling green light exploded to life inside the crystal as they snaked through the planet’s core and its protruding nodes. Kairah pushed harder, attacking the Moriora and attempting to burn it away. But the Moriora fed on her power, and Kairah only succeeded in growing more purple crystal.

  Kairah’s arcane fever broke, and she collapsed to her knees. The goddess ring was silver again, only emanating the faintest white glow as was she. Though she had spent nearly all the power in the ring, it wasn’t entirely exhausted and already producing more energy. No, she hadn’t lost Rasheera’s gift, but she had failed to purge Moriora from existence.

  “Lady Kairah?” Irvis knelt next to her, his eyes wide.

  “I am fine.” She waved him away and stood.

  “What happened?’ Gymal asked.

  Kairah could still see glowing emerald lines within the amethyst crystal, albeit they were fading. “I failed.”

  The ground shook, making Maely’s already difficult balancing act even harder. She braced herself against a white statue until the rumbling subsided. She felt like a useless coward taking cover behind the fifty-foot visage of a nude Allosian man.

  She’d retreated here on orders of the prince, who now fought alongside Karak against the charred form of Jenoc. Fought was probably the wrong word. Karak sprang about, fast and agile as ever, but each time he conjured a ball of light to attack Jenoc, the fallen Allosian obliterated it with a bolt of his green lightning.

  Raelen moved much more slowly, his many apparent injuries–and likely some not so apparent–rendering him virtually stationary. Conveniently, Jenoc would usually come to him, and Raelen would employ his Ursaj martial arts against the monster with little effect.

  Maely had wanted to try casting more flare bombs, but Raelen had told her such only fed Jenoc’s power and made him stronger. That, and with them fighting in such close quarters, she was just as likely to incinerate Karak and Raelen as she was to hit Jenoc. So all Maely could do was hide and watch. It frustrated her to tears.

  If only I hadn’t smashed my mother’s ring!

  She had no idea if it would work on Jenoc now–it had barely worked before–but at least then she could do something.

  “No,” she whispered. The compulsion talis had made her into a creature every bit of a monster as Jenoc. With it, she’d done awful things.

  Smashing the compulsion ring had been the start of her redemption; getting into the river to bathe. But Maely still felt dirty. In Gryyth’s metaphor, the next step was scrubbing off her dirt. She’d thought she found a way to do that in saving Raelen and trying to kill Jenoc, but that part was turning out to be an impossible task.

  The ground tilted and Maely’s hand slipped from its place on the marble Allosian’s foot. She pitched forward, crying out as a jolt to her broken leg sent a shock of pain up her thigh. A long fissure opened in the ground, snaking its way across the pavement. It ran right by Maely, causing the giant statue to break loose from its base.

  Maely screamed, and moved away from the statue, but it turned out to be unnecessary as the giant likeness of the muscular man tipped away from her and fell into the yawning chasm only ten paces away. A geyser of lava shot out of the chasm as if it were licking its lips after swallowing the statue. The intense heat drew a whimper from Maely as she scooted away on her behind, broken leg stretched out before her.

  A hiss drew her attention back to the fight, and she turned just in time to see Karak speared through the stomach by a sharp piece of debris from the remnants of the demolished tower.

  “Karak!” Maely screamed.

  That drew Jenoc’s attention and he shambled toward her.

  Maely frantically scooted away on the ground, but her only other option was to move closer to the ten-foot wide chasm boiling with a rising river of lava. Jenoc’s face had healed to the point that Maely could recognize his features, but a good portion of the top of his skull was still missing. He had only one eye, and it was an otherworldly glowing point of gr
een.

  He grinned at her and manifested a spread of translucent green tentacles. Maely had but one recourse. She raised the flare kris and pointed the wavy red blade at Jenoc. One of his energy tendrils was already snapping toward her, on a path that would plunge it directly into her face. At the last moment, it suddenly changed course and sank into the well shard of her sword. It seemed a magnetic thing, as if the tendril was automatically drawn first to the purest source of Apeiron.

  Maely’s spell failed, and the well shard on her talis exploded into small, emerald shards. Jenoc sucked in a shuddering breath, and more of his blackened skin healed. He refocused on Maely and drew back his tendril of energy in preparation to lash out again.

  Arms grabbed Jenoc from behind, and the monster’s tentacles vanished. He roared, and struck at Raelen with his hands, but the prince’s grip was sure. Raelen began dragging Jenoc toward the fissure in the ground and its burning red river.

  Maely understood what the prince was doing. “No!”

  She clenched her jaw as she stood. The pain was so intense that her vision began to darken, but she willed herself to remain conscious. She took a step toward the struggle and reached out a hand. Raelen was dragging Jenoc backward, on a path that would put them both over the edge of the chasm.

  “Raelen!”

  Something crunched beneath Maely’s step. She glanced down and found green shards, the remnants of the jewel that powered her now useless talis. She snatched three and closed her fist around them. This would at least protect her should Jenoc lash out at her again.

  Jenoc, too, apparently realized what Raelen was trying to do, as was evidenced in his desperate struggling. Just as they neared the chasm’s edge, an aura of red light surrounded Jenoc tearing a scream from Raelen. The prince released Jenoc and collapsed to the ground, smoldering burns covering his chest and arms. The flash of fire had burned away the front of Raelen’s tunic along with the leather band that held his green well shard. It rolled off Raelen’s chest, and Jenoc kicked it away.

  The monster grinned and manifested a single green tentacle to feed on the prince. In a suspended moment of time, Maely eyed the chasm, then Raelen, then Jenoc, and she knew what she had to do. Scrubbing dirt off in the bath sometimes hurt, and this would definitely hurt.

  Maely clenched her fist tight around the sharp bits of emerald in her hand and lunged at Jenoc, giving vent to her leg pain in a ragged scream. He turned just as she crashed into him, her momentum carrying them both over the chasm’s jagged edge.

  The concentric tiers of the coliseum were empty now, save for the charred remains of those not quick enough to escape Shivara’s mad tantrum. That would deny the witch any additional conduits for drawing Apeiron, which meant Jekaran could kill her if he could cut her off from the five hostages she still held.

  Shivara’s tendrils evaporated each time she tried to sink one into Jekaran. He batted away a bolt of green lightning as he ran, trying to circle around the witch to get to the five paralyzed Allosians who were the source of her power. Shivara all but ignored Hort, Mulladin, and Keesa, deciding instead to focus her wroth on Jekaran. That was both good and bad. Good because it kept the others from getting killed, and bad because the reason she ignored them was that they poised no real threat to her. That put the onus of the battle entirely on Jekaran.

  A bolt of lightning arced into Shivara’s back, followed immediately by a blast from Keesa’s concussion rod. It made the witch turn and gave Jekaran his opening. He smiled, rushed in, and sliced through the tethers linking Shivara to the paralyzed Allosians. Shivara growled and blasted Jekaran with a funnel of air. It struck him on the side before he could bring Azrin up to block and absorb it. He spun backward and slammed into the front of the speaking dais.

  He’d managed to hold onto the sword this time–Not a sword, but a key. A key to what?

  His eyes watered, and pops of light exploded across his vision. Jekaran shook his head to clear it. When his eyesight wasn’t dark or blurry, he stood. Hort was attacking Shivara now. The big man impressively dodged balls of fire, and parried Shivara’s attempts to syphon his life away with that black scepter. It appeared to open tiny lines into a vast, sucking, emptiness. Hort even managed to get close enough to draw a black line in the path of one of Shivara’s swings and the void ate her hand. She, of course, immediately grew a new one at the same time she struck Hort with a spear of light. It grazed the big man’s abdomen, burning away flesh and sinew and leaving an open wound. Hort howled but managed to stay on his feet.

  Jekaran blurred toward Shivara forcing her to turn her spellcasting on him. He raised Azrin and this time successfully blocked and then absorbed a shaft of searing light. His vision cleared further, and the pain in his back and head vanished.

  Hort took the opportunity to flank Shivara, and Jekaran expected him to draw a line that would collide with her back when he instead swung at the Allosian hostages.

  “Hort, no!” Jekaran shouted, but it was too late.

  The big man had traced a line right through the necks of all five Allosians. The blackness sucked in their heads, leaving decapitated corpses that quickly withered, and shriveled to little more than skeletons.

  Shivara shrieked and released a blast of power so fierce it demolished the speaking dais in the middle of the coliseum floor and cracked the walls beneath the first tier of seating. It also struck Mulladin, Keesa, and Hort. Jekaran watched in horror as the three were flung into the air like debris. Mulladin crashed into the wall beneath the first tier of seating and slumped to the ground, a line of blood trailing out of his ear. Keesa met a similar fate but arced up and came down so hard she crashed through a bench on the first seating tier. Hort was lucky, he lost his footing, fell to the floor and slid and rolled until he was stopped by a chunk of debris.

  Jekaran absorbed the blast, but it was so strong that it still shoved him back. He stumbled, fell, and rolled. When he sprung back up, Shivara was passing through the archway leading out of the coliseum and toward Allose’s giant Apeira well.

  Jekaran glanced where his friends had fallen and ground his teeth when Mulladin and Keesa did not stir. Though burnt, bruised, and bleeding from an opening in his side, Hort rose, retrieved his scepter and began a stumbling run after Shivara.

  Jekaran forced his concern for his friends to the back of his mind and leapt into a run. He streaked past Hort to the far side of the coliseum floor, toward the arched exit. Kairah was directly in Shivara’s path to the Apeira well, and he had no illusions as to what the witch would do to Kairah when she caught her. What would happen if Shivara fed directly on the Apeira well itself? Nothing good, Jekaran knew that much.

  Raelen lurched to the edge of the chasm just in time to see Jenoc disappear beneath the flow of molten, red death. A few feet below him was an outcropping of rock to which hung a wild-eyed Maely. She held to the sharp edge of the outcropping with scraped, bloody fingers that left runnels in the soot as she slowly slid off the edge. Raelen shot a burned arm down and grabbed Maely by the wrist a heartbeat before she would’ve fallen. She shrieked, but quickly looked up and met Raelen’s eyes.

  “It’s okay, Maely. I have you.”

  Without Gryyth’s borrowed strength, and wounded and exhausted as he was, Raelen had to reach down with his other hand and strain to lift Maely up to where she could grab onto the chasm’s jagged edge. He didn’t let go of her until she pulled herself up and rolled onto the ledge, but the latter part of the extrication was mostly by the girl’s strength. She surprised Raelen by throwing her arms around his neck and clinging to him. She trembled so badly that Raelen found himself smoothing her hair and whispering comfort.

  It was an odd thing to do sitting on a quaking ground while an army of monsters attacked the city, but the fighting wasn’t close. The other life-sucking monsters deliberately avoided Jenoc, and the few that had stumbled upon their battle had quickly gone on to seek other prey. Still, they were in no way safe.

  Raelen stood, albeit slowly, and
then helped Maely to stand. “That was a courageous thing you did.”

  Maely looked away from him and mumbled something that sounded like, “I had to scrub off the dirt.”

  What did that mean? “Well, you saved my life. I owe you my thanks.” Although it hurt tremendously, Raelen bent down and kissed the girl on the forehead.

  She started and looked up at him. She held his eyes for several heartbeats. Then, appearing to remember something, Maely frantically glanced around the tower ruins. “Karak!”

  The two of them stumbled away from the chasm and toward a pool of glowing green blood. The Vorakk shaman was gone, but luminescent footprints tracked through the blood and led away.

  “He’s gone to find Kairah. We need to follow him!”

  The ground lurched and the two only kept from falling by Raelen steadying them against a smoldering chunk of white stone.

  “I fear this place is―”

  “Going to hell?” Maely supplied.

  Raelen wouldn’t have put it in such a crude manner, but the description was accurate. “Yes. We need to get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Maely snapped.

  The girl actually snapped at him! That wasn’t something Raelen was used to. So far Maely had been clumsily deferential in her conversation with him, but he wasn’t offended. Her blunt honesty was actually refreshing. Had their circumstances not been so dire, Raelen would’ve laughed.

  “We are too injured to render any assistance to your friends.”

  “Tell that to Karak! Last time I saw him, he had five feet of white stone spearing him through his gut.”

  Good point.

  Raelen wearily nodded, retrieved his emerald shard from the ground, and the two began to follow Karak’s luminescent blood trail.

  The tall, stained glass doors exploded. Kairah whirled, Graelle screamed, Irvis stepped in front of Graelle, and Gymal backed up to the platform’s rail. Shivara stumbled into the room. She looked haggard, long, black hair disheveled and hanging in front of her face, and wrinkles creased the corners of her eyes and mouth.