“Agheeral!”
The cry echoed across the Field of Praja, carried on a hundred thousand throats. Blood flowed across barren soil so thickly that even the parched earth couldn’t hold it all. Screams of pain, terror, and rage swirled about so intensely she could almost see them rippling through the smoke-filled air. The screeches of the spirits shattered the rocks themselves with their power. The wind roared about her as her powers, unmatched on this world or any other, carried her above the battlefield, but still, above it all, one sound filled her ears as she sped across the battlefield, her powers carrying her above her armies on invisible wings of air.
“Agheeral!”
A roar to her left caught her attention, and she veered sharply as a charge of a thousand enkatiks, massive spirit beasts tens of times larger than a human, slammed into a wavering shield wall and ripped through it. She crossed a distance that would have been an hour’s walk for another mortal in mere seconds. She didn’t bother to unsheathe her crystalline blade; instead, she reached deep into herself, to the place where her core of power burned like another sun, and channeled the tiniest trickle of power into one hand. With a thought, she could call forth fire or lightning, bring tornadoes down from the sky, or open the earth beneath the attackers’ feet to swallow them whole. Any of those would have been a mercy for the enkatiks, though – and after decades of warfare against the spirit armies, Agheeral no longer had a shred of mercy left in her soul.
The dark power of the void ripped from her hand, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. Webs of darkness blacker than any night lashed down on the hapless enkatiks and plunged into their gray, glowing flesh. The spirits’ hides were impervious to mortal weapons, immune to the human concerns of age, disease, or poison, but they yielded like water to her powers. She felt it in her core when the lines of power connected to the pulsing nodes at the spirits’ cores, and she pulled, drawing that energy into herself to replace a little of what she’d used in this battle already.
The enkatiks didn’t die. Their bodies didn’t drop to the unyielding earth. Not a drop of their eldritch blood spilled to the soil. Instead, they simply ceased in that single instant. A thousand spirits vanished, their power and vital essences both stolen to fuel Agheeral’s power. The ravening, insectoid burlats that rushed behind the mammoth spirits stumbled as they found themselves facing not a ragged, broken line of defenders but a solid wall of sahr-enhanced shields. Someone barked out an order, and those shields opened to let a line of burning spears through, stabbing into the uncertain bodies of the burlats. The spears, boosted by the power of mages, tore into the burlats and killed them quickly. The entire front line of the enemy simply collapsed as the enchanted weaponry robbed them of the vital power they needed to maintain their solid forms.
Agheeral didn’t stop to watch any of that. She had no place in that battle, a fight her soldiers would win without her assistance. She fought the battles others couldn’t, faced the foes that would have devastated them. With her superhuman senses, she could see the entire battlefield at once, hear individual heartbeats an hour’s run away, and smell the unique scents of each race of mortals banded together to face their great enemy. No spirit escaped her gaze, but she withheld her power to deal with those worthy of her notice.
She felt the rumbling in the earth seconds before the huge peylonitog exploded from the ground in the middle of her army. Bodies flew in all directions as the serpentine monster soared upward, rising twenty times a man’s height toward the ash-choked sky. Men and women screamed as tendrils shot out from the monster’s side, ripping and tearing them to shreds. It opened its long, snakelike jaws wide, preparing to breathe a cloud of death that would kill a thousand of her soldiers at once, but Agheeral never gave it the chance.
Her finally unsheathed blade, long as a man stood tall, blazed with power as she struck at the peylonitog. The creature’s scales were harder than the best metal, impervious to even magical weapons, but her power flowed in her blade. No force in the world could withstand it. With her sword, she could cleave mountains, carve diamonds, and destroy cities. The snake’s armor gave it no more protection than if it had been draped in sheer silk. Her blade cut into its body, unleashing a spray of glowing blue essence, then flashed back as the spirit snapped at her. The monster screamed in pain and fury as its jaws flew free of its body, then dropped to the earth as her next strike cleaved it in twain.
Her soldiers cheered as she drained the power of the dead spirit, but she ignored them as she raced from battle to battle. She struck with bolts of lightning as thick as trees and waves of fire larger than the greatest houses. Mountains of ice entombed fiery spirits, and spears of glittering granite pierced towering monsters, holding them above the battle like a forest of writhing death. She rarely unsheathed her blade; her powers were sufficient to deal with all but the greatest spirits, but she felt a fierce joy when she faced those that gave her a reason to unsheathe her weapon.
She was born to battle, quite literally, and it was the only place she felt truly alive.
“Agheeral!” The cry followed her wherever she went, bolstering her forces, encouraging them to fight harder and longer, knowing that their general and savior fought among them. She darted back and forth across the battlefield, but as she did, she knew that the time had come for her to withdraw, at least for a time. She’d broken the spirits’ offensive; her armies could do the rest. Almost regretfully, she raced back across the battle toward a distant hilltop, one that glowed with the power of the sahr-shield encasing it. Her banner, golden with an azure sword decorated with the heraldry of every mortal race, fluttered and gleamed atop that hill beside a tent that housed her commanding officers.
She slipped effortlessly through the shield – no working of sahr, no matter how powerful, could hold her out – and landed on the firm soil of the hill with a twinge of regret. She yearned to rejoin the battle, to slaughter the spirits as only she could, but she pushed those desires aside as she lifted the side of the leather tent and stepped within its confines. She was more than just a warrior; she was a general and the supreme commander of this allied army, and she had responsibilities beyond battle.
“My Lady,” a voice greeted her as she entered. She focused on the speaker immediately; her eyes needed no time to adjust to the dim sahr-light in the tent. The man was taller than she by at least two hands, with pointed ears and narrow eyes that marked him as one of the race called shayeni. He wore their typical light chain armor, glowing blue with the power of the sahr enchanting it, and he had a slim blade only a finger’s width across belted at his hip. Despite its delicate appearance, Agheeral knew that blade had taken the lives of a hundred thousand spirits in this war.
“Lord Aelritar,” she inclined her head to him, removing her golden helmet to reveal hair the color of the sun, eyes as green as emeralds, and an olive face that could only be described as perfect. Of course, it was designed to be, so that was no surprise.
“We monitored your progress, my Lady,” the man spoke, pointing to the glowing orb in the center of the tent that revealed the battlefield outside. “It seems that your efforts have broken the spirits’ advance.”
“As we all knew they would,” a woman half Agheeral’s height spoke gruffly. Like all thelnis, Hegglenath was short, sturdy, and far stronger than she looked. Her heavy armor gleamed silver in the dim light, forged with the techniques that only the half-heighted knew, and the spear on her back glittered dangerously.
“This battle is done,” the thelni added. “The spirits just don’t know it yet.”
“They know,” the slim fernar Willinel spoke softly, as he always spoke. His delicate fingers traced the fine, almost invisible fur on his hands, fur that Agheeral knew covered his entire body. His long, copper tail swished agitatedly behind him, and his feline ears twitched atop his head. “They almost have to. Even the rank-and-file soldiers can tell which way the wind is shifting.”
“The question is, what will they do about it?” Agheeral asked, her voice smooth and melodious, deep and rich without being throaty. She walked past the orb and pointed to the large map pinned to the tent’s wall.
“We’ve driven the spirits from every battlefield,” she said touching the map that showed the entirety of the continent of Umpratan, stretching halfway around the globe. The Fields of Praja lay at the far west of that continent, a peninsula bounded by the ocean on three sides, along which Agheeral’s ships patrolled ceaselessly. There would be no escape that way; there was no way off this battlefield for the spirits, and everyone knew it.
“It’s taken three decades, but we’ve done it. Praja is their last refuge. When we take it, we drive them out of our world.”
“They’ll be desperate,” Aelritar suggested.
“Desperate people do foolish things,” Willinel added.
“Or desperate ones,” Hegglenath said quietly.
“Or both,” Agheeral agreed. She turned back to the others. “When we first beat them at Fahrinad, they slaughtered their captives to unleash the peynolitogs. When we turned their counteroffensive at Braymor, they opened a volcano beneath the front lines and killed a quarter of their own army. Now that they’re about to lose the war entirely…” She fell silent, letting the others pick up her thoughts, which they swiftly did.
“How far will they go?” Aelritar said in a near whisper.
“We need to get to their leaders,” the thelni spoke up after a few moments of silence. “We need to stop them before they can do whatever they’ll have planned.”
“Easy to say. Hard to do.” Willinel shook his head slowly, turning back to the battlefield and pointing toward a dome of utter blackness at the rear of the enemy lines. “The ashurae still hide behind their barrier, and even Lady Agheeral hasn’t been able to penetrate it.”
“Yet,” Agheeral corrected with a smile. She reached down and touched her blade. “I think the time has come to truly show the spirits what I can do.”
“You mean, you’ve been holding back all this time?” Hegglenath asked in disbelief.
“Yes. I have.” Agheeral let a trace of her power flow out of her, and the others drew back from her slightly as her body began to glow. “I’ve held power in reserve in each battle, never letting myself drop too low.” She saw Aelritar’s face crease in a frown and added, “Yes, that means that people have died, but how many more would have died if the spirits counter-attacked and I was out of power?” The shayen grimaced but nodded in acquiescence.
“Now, though, the time for holding back is at an end,” she declared. “We have a chance to end this war, to free our people from the threat of the spirits forevermore.” She looked them each in the eye, letting her power flow through her gaze into them, linking them to her and filling them with hope and excitement. She could manipulate their wills with ease, dominate them with a thought and a moment’s concentration, but stealing the will was the spirits’ way, not hers. She led through example and inspiration, and those who followed her did so because she was the world’s best chance for survival, and because she had led them through ten thousand battles together.
“Together, we can destroy the ashurae and save our world. Are you with me?”
“To the ends of this world and back,” Hegglenath said stoutly, banging her fist against her chest.
“We’ve always been with you, my Lady,” Willinel practically purred.
“What must we do?” Aelritar asked simply.
“Fight at my side, Lord Aelritar, and you’ll have done everything I could ask.” She extended her power, and the three gasped slightly as they rose into the air, carried on the wings of her ability. “Now, let’s go show the ashurae the meaning of fear – and teach them to shun our world!”
Reaching the ashurae’s shield was child’s play. No force on the battlefield could stop Agheeral alone, much when less accompanied by her three companions. Aelritar’s bow hummed as he fired arrows of pure sahr into the battlefield, each shaft killing a dozen spirits or more. Hegglenath’s spear flashed and danced whenever a spirit got near, the silvery metal rending their immortal flesh with ease. Willinel’s fingers twisted and writhed, hurling ropes and lashes of sahr down on enemies, flaying them with fire and lightning in equal measure. They left a swath of destruction through the center of the spirit army a hundred paces wide, further shattering the invaders’ will to fight.
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Agheeral simply absorbed the power of those dying spirits, pushing the energy into her core until it pulsed and rumbled dangerously, barely within her control. As they raced toward the half-sphere of glossy, gray-black energy, she drew her blade and began to pour power into it. The crystal sword thrummed and hummed as it amplified the energy she pushed into it, and the air around the blade grew hazy and wavy as the dense power twisted even the light nearby. Still, she poured more power into it, until she felt the blade starting to unravel from the sheer energy it held. She leaped forward, quickly outdistancing the others, lifted her blade overhead, and slammed it down on the perfect, flawless globe enclosing the leaders of the spirit army.
The explosion of power roared with the fury of a million enkatiks. Wind blasted past her, hurling every creature nearby but her back. Every spirit within a hundred paces of the globe simply died, their mortal vessels extinguished by the force of the blast. The earth shattered and groaned; rocks shivered into dust and gravel that soared outward to pelt the spirit army harmlessly. The dome split, unraveling as the power of the void shattered its perfection and unbound its energies, and that freed power arced and crawled across every living thing it found.
Agheeral ignored the blast and the maelstrom of released energy; neither could harm her, and while the power of the shield wasn’t suitable for replenishing her stores, the liberated energy of the ten thousand dead spirits nearby was certainly welcome. She hung in the air, waiting for the tempestuous fury to ease, until at last, the air cleared enough for her advanced vision to penetrate the haze of dust and ash beneath her.
The seven ashurae masters of the spirit army cowered below her, staring up at her revealed form. She felt the mingled awe, fear, and hatred wafting up from them, a stench that overpowered the ever-present miasma of blood, death, and worse coating the battlefield like a thick syrup. The creatures were tall, perhaps twice her height, slender, with long arms that had one too many joints and hands that sported six fingers. Their alabaster skin shone with its own light, illuminating the metallic sheen of their hair. They looked noble, regal, beings worthy of respect and admiration, but Agheeral knew this to be a lie. These were the masters of the spirits, the slave lords of all mortal races, and only their deaths would free her world.
“Foul creatures!” she declared in a ringing voice, still holding her blade despite the flaws and cracks that now ran through its crystal structure. “You who have held this world in bondage these centuries, flee our world now or die!”
“Ignore the mortal!” one of the creatures hissed, its voice nearly as pure and melodious as hers. “Focus on the construct…”
Agheeral was certain the creature had more to say, but none would ever know what words it intended. A blazing shaft of pure green light streaked past her and pierced the monster’s open mouth, plunging through its throat and jutting out the back of its head. Its eyes widened in pain and shock, and it grasped at the arrow to pull it free – only to have the shaft erupt in green flames that coated its face and hand, burning and searing.
A roar far too loud to come from such a small throat ripped the air as Hegglenath leaped over the shattered earth. Her spear, glowing with sahr and the force of her own rage, stabbed into an ashurae, tearing into its flesh and spilling its essence into the air. The thelni ripped the weapon free and spun it, slamming the haft into a second spirit before burying the spearhead in that one, as well.
Agheeral charged her blade and struck, flashing down into the group of spirits. Two turned to face her, one holding a long lance that pulsed with darkness while the other swung a chain flail as long as she was tall. She struck at the first with a blast of lightning that knocked it backward, then caught the crackling metal ball of the flail as it soared toward her in one hand, crushing it with a flex of her fist. Her blade darted out, tearing a hole in the stunned ashurae, then slid upward to slice it in two.
The ashurae’s moment of shock seemed to pass, and they struck back at her with their own prodigious powers. Waves of flame and shards of ice the size of a person soared toward her. Chains of blazing darkness streaked at her, and crimson lightning arced from the sky to hammer at her skin. Agheeral laughed as the attacks struck; finally, she’d found an enemy worth fighting! The ashurae were potent and powerful. Their attacks burned her skin, drove her back, and forced her to use her power to shield herself from them. She exulted even as she tore apart their strikes and struck back with her powers. This was the reason she’d been born; this was the purpose of her creation!
At the same time, though, part of her seethed in fear and frustration. This was it. This was the reason she’d been born, and when it ended, so would the reason for her existence. Her armies would disband. The gathered nations would disperse to their homelands. The cries of “Agheeral!” would fall silent as the mortal races slowly turned away from her. She was bred for battle, crafted to be an instrument of war. When that war ended, what would be left for her? What would be left of her?
“Agheeral!” Willinel’s cry pulled her from her contemplations. The fernar’s sahr rippled about, tearing into the ashurae, but when she glanced his way, his face looked alarmed, even frightened. “Look down!”
She blocked a slash from a blade as large as her own, the force of the blow shivering up her arms and sending a few crystal shards flying from her sword. Her power lashed out as a line of lightning crackled into the ashurae’s face, sending it hurtling away from her and giving her the chance to look at the ground below the battle. She froze for an instant, a near-fatal one as a mass of ice crashed into her, knocking her backwards and threatening to engulf her in its depths. She shattered the ice with a blow, then looked once more at the pulsating glyphs written across the stones.
“It’s a crafting!” Willinel shouted. “A powerful one!” His words told her very little. Agheeral was no master of the sahr – she had no need to be – but even she could tell that the glowing runes spread across thirty paces of floor, etched with the essence of a million slaughtered spirits, was a potent working. She could feel the power held within it, energies that rivaled the intensity and density of her own but dwarfed hers in sheer scope and breadth.
She flitted back to the fernar mage’s side, leaving behind a shield to keep the ashurae off her for a few seconds. “What is it?” she asked in a flat voice.
“I – I don’t know,” the fernar admitted. Agheeral stared at him in shock; Willinel was a true master of the sahr, probably the single most powerful worker of it among all the mortal races. She’d never seen a working that he didn’t recognize, no matter how powerful or complex.
“The glyphs – they’re ones of destruction,” he continued in a bleak voice. “Of unmaking and unbinding. They way they’re put together, though – it’s a form I’ve never seen, and I don’t recognize any of the linkages. It’s like they’re mingling sahr and something else, maybe something from their world, I don’t know.”
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good. We have to finish this before they can activate it.” She lifted her blade and charged into the fray once more. All doubt and hesitation vanished. She couldn’t let the ashurae finish what they started, even if that meant the end for her. She was born to be mortality’s savior; she would do her duty, no matter the cost.
Power exploded from her as she released her final restraints. Lashes of energy tore into the ashurae, shredding their immortal bodies. Webs of void darkness drained their power, and she pushed that power back into them as blades of fire and ice, turning their strength into hers. Her blade burned with sapphire light so bright that even she had trouble looking at it, and crystal shards fell away from it with every strike as her power consumed the single greatest artifact ever crafted in the world.
She felt Aelritar fall as one of the ashurae plunged a black, poisonous blade into his back. Hegglenath dropped to a knee beneath a mighty hammer blow, then collapsed as a golden spear tore through her silver armor. Agheeral didn’t care; she couldn’t care. She’d lost far more than those few in this war; death and loss were her constant companions. All she could do was make all those deaths meaningful, and she gladly did so.
The ashurae died swiftly in the face of her fully unleashed power. Her blade cut one in half; a spear of the void sapped the power and existence from another. Molten lava exploded beneath a third, encasing them in liquid rock while a web of lightning burned a fourth from existence. Her power was unstoppable, overwhelming, the single greatest force in this world, and even the masters of the spirits had no choice but to fall before it. At last, only one remained, and that one faced her bearing a sword larger than her own. Its blade shook and trembled in its fist as it stared at her, and although its lean face held no expression, she felt the rage and terror emanating from it.
“Curse you, child of the hated sahr!” the thing snarled at her. “Curse you and all your descendants, through all of time!”
“Curse me as you will, foul spirit. I’ll bear it willingly if it drives you and your kind from my world.”
The spirit’s face grew sly at her words. “No, foolish child. My kind will never leave your world. You’ve gained nothing here today.”
“With your death, the threat of your kind ends.” She hefted her blade. “The last of the spirits will be banished to the void today, ashurae, and Umpratan will finally belong to the mortal races as Ak-lahat intended.”
“None may know the mind of the Creator of All, mortal! And though you may kill me today, I will still claim victory!” The spirit suddenly dropped its blade and sped earthward, flashing toward the pulsing crafting of sahr and other energies that lay below. The ashurae was swift, moving faster than an arrow’s flight – but Agheeral was quicker than thought, and even as the creature reached toward the working, her blade plunged through its chest. The ashurae screeched as her power ripped into its deepest essence, tearing it apart and drawing that energy into herself. It felt death and something worse than death approaching; the end of existence swept toward it, an immortal lifetime cut short as the power of void obliterated all that it was and would ever be. Even as her power consumed it, though, the spirit reached out with one trembling finger – and gently touched the crafting beneath it.
Power swept outward, energies so vast that even Agheeral quailed at seeing them. This was more power than she’d ever seen, forces that dwarfed the armies behind her and made the ever-present sahr a vaporous shade. Energy plunged into the earth and clawed at the heavens. It lashed out farther than even she could see, embracing the distant horizons and shrouding them in its clutches.
The battle beyond fell silent as every spirit on the Field of Praja vanished, their essences sucked into the spreading mass of power. The groaning wounded gasped their last as that same energy sucked the life from them, drawing it into its working and feeding that power into it. The air hummed and seethed, warping visibly from the sheer density of energy crackling through it.
The earth beneath her trembled and shook. Waves of earth and stone higher than her head rippled across the battlefield, flinging everyone off their feet and killing thousands. The sky darkened, and fingers of lightning crawled across the ground. The wind rose to a gale and continued to strengthen, keening and battering her now terrified and demoralized army with its force. Reality itself seemed to lurch as power flooded the atmosphere.
Agheeral lifted her blade once more. She didn’t’ know what was happening, but she knew that she had to stop it. She was no master of the sahr, no mage to subtly unbind the ritual. Willinel, the only mage she knew who might have a chance, lay prone and unmoving behind her, although the sound of his heart beating assured her that he at least lived. She was a warrior, and she knew how to do one thing.
Her blade chimed as it slammed into the working below. Any other weapon would have passed through the ritual without touching it, but nothing could ignore the power of the void filling her weapon. The blade cut into the earth and lodged there as it sucked the crafting’s power into itself, drawing energy out of the ritual and hurling it into the endless void. The chiming rose in pitch and volume, swelling into a clear ringing sound that echoed over the clamors of despair and fear coating the battlefield. The single note climbed through the registers to the edge of hearing and expanded to blot out all other sound, even all thought.
Agheeral staggered as the sound assaulted her ears, and she grabbed her blade, intending to pull it free, but the sword remained locked in place, held not by the feeble grip of rock but the bloating connection between the void and the terrible power of the working. She strained, pouring her power into her muscles, but the blade refused to yield. Strength that could lift house-sized boulders, crush glaciers, and flatten hills found itself stymied by this single sword. She refused to submit, though, reaching deeper into herself to push more of her swiftly dwindling power into the blade. The earth groaned as her strength met the power of the void, battling that primal energy for supremacy. For a moment, the entire world seemed to pause as those two forces balanced on a razor’s edge – until with a sharp snap, a crack shot down the length of her blade, introducing a single impurity into the delicate balance of terrifying energies.
Agheeral screamed as the ritual beneath her exploded. Its energies battered her, burning her flesh and giving her true pain for perhaps the first time in her life. Her golden hair shriveled and vanished; her perfect skin seared and scorched; her crystal armor shattered and plunged into her otherwise flawless flesh. Agony ripped through her as power surged into the world, tearing not just at her but at all reality.
How long she existed that way, held in the grip of torment, she couldn’t say. When at last the power faded, she found herself kneeling on the earth, panting and sobbing, her nude body covered with burns. She reached inside herself for power to heal her injuries, but the core of her essence hung dark and empty, bereft of power. She reached outward, seeking the energies of death she knew had to surround her but felt nothing. No swirling energies of spirit and life filled the air. No ephemeral mists of sahr enshrouded her, waiting to be tapped. The world felt – empty.
She stretched farther, reaching beyond the horizons, extending her senses in a way she’d never known she could – and there, to the west, hanging beyond the ocean bounding the Fields of Praja, she felt a source of power at last. Her thoughts recoiled from that energy, though. It felt like an ending, as if reality itself stopped at a wall of nothingness. She touched it, drawing the tiniest bit of power from it, and as she did, she recognized its flavor.
The spirits. The Field of Praja ended at a wall of spirit energy, a wall that seemed boundless in depth. The world of spirits existed beyond that boundary, a place no mortal could enter. Somehow, the ritual had brought the spirit world into Umpratan – or hurled Umpratan into the world of spirits, she didn’t know which.
Even as she healed herself with that stolen energy, Agheeral smiled. A hundred thousand had died, her companions were lost, and the world had changed, possibly unalterably. She had no idea what it all meant, but she knew one thing.
Her people would still have need of her. Her time wasn’t done yet.