I worked my own red portals, and this time it went without the slightest bit of difficulty – they sprung up off the gold-brass floor, my ikistadreng, my epheldegrim, my hordes of imps flickering into being…
Redgate was following my lead. Dozens of intimidating demons answered his call. His pair of thinfinaran charged a pair of draumgerel, bursting them into gloopy messes with a single strike of their gauntlets.
By the time I looked around again, the desperation of my companions had increased – as had the intensity of the white light gathered in the eolastyr’s palm.
I blasted her defences with everything I had, hitting them with dozens of spikes. My force-blades evaporated on contact, not even making a ripple in her shielding.
It didn’t stop me trying, though.
“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she crooned, as though she were oblivious to the battle commencing in her throne-room, the dazzling missiles and rays exploding on her red wards. “In a moment we’ll be done, and say farewell for now. But it’s not goodbye – not for three of you at least.”
It couldn’t – it can’t be over…
The white light in her hand illuminating Dustbringer’s body began to change. It seemed at first that it was faltering, flickering off-and-on, but upon closer inspection it was just that the white light was turning red, matching the infernal illumination of the hall perfectly.
The wizards were being forced to join in the demon-battle with ever-increasing frequency as the foes began to break through, distracted by the eolastyr’s reinforcements instead of doubling-down on breaking her barriers. Our front-lines were being overwhelmed and we only had a moment until Dustbringer was… dust?
I went and thrust my circle and all its stars into her blood-red wards.
“Focus on stopping her!” Timesnatcher bellowed, hacking at the far curve of the shield, Killstop at his side.
I’d given my demons no direction, and on my last glance over my shoulder I’d seen Aunty Antlers engaged in a violent headbutting contest with an enemy ikistadreng, its antlers just as daunting as hers. Could I bring her across to help?
Before I could make a decision, Em, Shadowcloud and Winterprince all fused their powers, channelling energies into a fizzing, house-sized nimbus of light –
Unleashing a bolt of lightning that would’ve burned my whole apartment block to a crisp.
The shield absorbed it, spreading the electricity in tidal waves across the arc of the gleaming red surface; but the barrier wavered –
The white light burning in her palm was off permanently, emitting only the scarlet pulse now –
I hammered the shield…
But it was too late.
The black twists of material that were the last remnants of Dustbringer showered down about her feet.
The eolastyr offered us a mocking smile, the triangular face distorting… then an infernal blaze flared up out of nowhere and she was gone, the throne left empty.
All of the lights in the hall were instantaneously extinguished.
One or more of the wizards or enchanters responded within a split-second, suffusing the room with bright white light, and, looking down, we all stared at the golden throne – Timesnatcher swooped down, coming to hover before the scattered black ashes –
“Master!” I heard Aunty Antlers cry piteously.
My demons had never called for aid before, and certainly never in such a human-sounding voice.
Before I knew what I was doing I was turning away from the dais.
My ikistadreng had lost the red blurs that were her two forelegs; her face was on the ground, great antlers lowered; and the enemy ikistadreng was stamping on her spine with its hind-hoofs, cracking her in half. Other fiends were crawling on her, stabbing her with long talons so that she writhed.
I’d thought the druids had energised me earlier.
No. Watching Dustbringer just… vanish… and now this…
Anger energised me. I felt myself flooding with power.
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I didn’t care if this demon I owned was the most evil thing in existence, more evil even than the eolastyr. I didn’t care that she wasn’t a person. Aunty Antlers meant nothing to me.
But the enemy ikistadreng meant less.
And it was going to snap her in two, right in front of me?
Circle blazing, I flew right up alongside the face of her enemy. My hands moved, spikes hewing through the lesser demons, while I caught the ikistadreng’s eye.
Trapped its gaze.
Glared into that blurry floating pupil with all my pent-up fury.
“Tear yourself in half,” I spat in Infernal.
I let the newly-bound ikistadreng get started on its task for a few seconds before dismissing both it and Aunty Antlers. I couldn’t risk her dying here; from what I understood, that would only prolong her recoalescence. She could recuperate on her home plane, and quite possibly continue to watch the punishment of the very opponent who’d broken her.
“Feychilde…”
I looked around, confirming as I did that the dark hearths were now empty; they’d stopped producing demons when the fires went out.
There were still hundreds left, though, a few summoners amongst them.
“Not now, Neverwish.”
Then I instinctively threw out shields to support my other minions, pushing their foes back.
Pushing them all back. Shield Twelve encompassed everyone.
But I didn’t stop there.
I placed one hand around my rotating circle, and I moved, flying at them, invisible spikes in my hands.
I felt like I was in two places at once, but it was working.
I was moving with my circle, leaving Shields Two to Twelve in place.
“Zey vill kill you! K- Feychilde!”
She was wrong. The demons couldn’t kill me. I flew clear out of Shield Twelve, and my stars rotated as fiercely as ever.
“Then let’s kill them first.”
“I’m already on my vay.”
Zel’s hearing helped me pick up Winterprince grinding out, “I don’t need telling twice.”
Several demons lashed at me with their limbs, their tridents, their bolts of dark energy. But the surface of my circle was a hedgehog, a pincushion, covered in needles of unstoppable force. I used them as quickly as I created them, and I created them quickly.
Whole droves of them fell, pierced through, not all of them fatally. Yet.
On my right side, a field of gleaming snow overtook the room – and then without warning a whole host of icy stalagmites speared up from the frosty surface, barbed tips penetrating the bodies of at least thirty demons in a single terrifying motion.
A thunderstorm sprang into existence on my left. Sheets of lightning rippled down, electrocuting ranks of enemies. Redgate’s infantry mopped them up, the sorcerer himself staying well-clear of the indiscriminate conflict.
Dozens upon dozens of robed figures soared into battle with spellbound blades burning brightly in their hands – and some of the figures were even real, the arch-diviners bringing slaughter to the slaughterers.
I saw a lesser fiend bite its beak down on Nighteye’s cowled head, razor-like teeth slicing through the hood. It was a scaly creature, its beak far longer and more hideous than that of the druid’s mask. Such was the force with which it closed its jaw, it snapped the end of its beak clean off on Nighteye’s magically-reinforced skull. His blood flowed, but I had little doubt he was doing fine, the way he was ripping through his enemies.
Arch-druids could do things I hadn’t imagined, weren’t in the stories.
There’d been nothing about arch-sorcerers wielding their shapes as weapons, either.
Demonic mounds of rotten leaves with bramble arms were lifted up on spirals of hot wind, waving in despair before they were drained of moisture and combusted. I trapped a bintaborax in my diamond and took it apart, one spiked chunk of armour at a time. A thinfinaran, one of Redgate’s, stood astride one of the big, eye-covered apes, smashing its skull against the floor repeatedly.
It was over. Too soon, it was over.
And when there was nothing left to kill, I remembered. Who I was. Who had died. Who I’d become.
I wouldn’t cry for Dustbringer. We hadn’t been close, barely knew each other. But this night had started with him telling me to be careful, and it’d ended with him stretched out in the embrace of an arch-demon. I’d watched it happen, and it had changed me. Right there, on the heels of what had happened to Morsus, after I’d told him to be careful.
Endren…
I hadn’t fully formulated any plans, but since his performance in front of Henthae I’d nonetheless come to think of him as a future ally. A possible friend. Maybe even the knowledgeable, trustworthy mentor that every budding young hero from the stories needed in order to improve their skills, reach their potential.
Now he was gone, and we were left in an empty structure, built by the demons who’d come here for the express purpose of taking him from us.
There was some discussion before we left, about what to do with it.
“Gold is gold, after all,” Redgate whispered. “Between them, the wizards should be able to find a way to strip it off the walls and bring it out before we break this place.”
“Should we now?” Winterprince grated.
“It’s going to take hours to smash the obsidian tower above us,” Shadowcloud said, matching Winterprince in talking aloud as if that could help mediate the discussion, “maybe days. We could consider it.” He looked back at the shining throne, where Dustbringer had been disintegrated. “Claim our weregild.”
“Yet we have no assurances it’s actually gold,” Lovebright reminded them.
“Gold makes men mad enough as it is,” I said.
Neverwish seemed to agree: “Whatever that obsidian stone really is, this stuff might be worse for all we know.” He started to soar up towards the opening in the ceiling Dustbringer had made for us. “I’m going to get Starsight, and I’m getting out of here. Who’s with me?”
“You need a vizard,” Em said, following him and looking across at me. “I’m vith you.”
“Me too,” I said, feeling like I needed my bed more than I ever had in my life, while knowing that such a thing had to still be hours off yet.
One by one we peeled away, floating up into the black tower above us, keeping well clear of the hazardous substance as we manoeuvred through the crack.
The last thing I saw before I went through was Redgate, the final one of us to leave – he was floating there amidst the destruction, arms at his side, his emotions impossible to read or even imagine.
He’d lost Dustbringer, too, and for him it had to be a thousand times worse.
* * *