Erlaut watched with morbid satisfaction as his curse settled into Leviathos’ back. The dread lord, demi god, and guardian of Sauridius had all but smashed Eryn under foot. Now he was drinking from the golden wellspring. Robbing them of precious magic that he’d been tasked with safeguarding, hoping to resurrect Aeryn, that she might stand guard for her people once again. That dream was dying, but he’d done his part to purchase a future scenario in which they might have a chance.
Leviathos finished after taking his fill and strode back slowly to Erlaut who still lay prone. The dread lord looked down at him with a sneer. “My father will rise. Thanks to your dead goddesses’ contribution. I only regret that I won’t be able to see the look of absolute defeat in your face as we spread our rule across the sector, and soon, the galaxy once more. Sauridius’ power will soon envelope all.”
“The only thing you’re going to see is your own defeat. My only regret is that I don’t know how it will happen. Only that it will.”
Leviathos crouched and grabbed a handful of Erlaut’s hair. The dread lord torqued his head, so they were face to face. Erlaut hissed with pain as he struggled in the dragon’s grip.
“You’re awefully mouthy for an arch mage I’ve defeated. If I were a sportsman, I’d take a trophy. But such things are beneath me. Still, you’ve earned a place of respect in my mind. So I’ll make this quick.”
His other hand summoned another soul blade. This time, the blade was straight and slender. A stabbing weapon. Leviathos rammed the blade into Erlaut’s chest up to the hilt. White hot agony slammed into Erlaut and he gasped.
“You have been a worthy opponent, Erlaut of Eryn. I hope you come back, that we might battle again. With time and fate, you could prove a challenge.”
It was such a curious thing. To surrender to his end. Others he knew, like Morwen, would fight and fight. But here he was, practically offering himself up to Leviathos. All to conceal a future that was fast approaching that would undo the dread lord and bring him to ruin. An outcome that Erlaut hoped would come swiftly and definitively.
“Normally, the opportunity to drink the life force out of such a strong and challenging foe would be too strong. But out of deference to your skill and defiance in the face of defeat. I’ll allow you a warrior’s death.” Leviathos said as he laid back Erlaut.
Perhaps his paltry defense had appealed to some kind of buried kernel of honor deep in Leviathos. Few knew much of anything at all about the dread lord as he’d kept to his molten world beneath waves of magma for decades, scheming in secret. Erlaut’s vision blurred as blood loss and weakness pressed in on him. He tried to heal his injury but a cold icy spike remained where the blade had punctured him.
“It’s a soul injury. Your body won’t be able to heal it because I’ve wounded that piece of your soul. Your death is assured.”
The darkness pressed in on Erlaut’s vision, as the last of his life bled away. Though his tenure was short as Arch Priest, he would forever be remembered as the man who challenged evil itself. Though he’d died fighting it, Leviathos had made a martyr of him. This world would need time to grieve. Time that would allow Leviathos to complete the last piece of his plan.
Before departing, Leviathos would pause and reflect on his fight with Erlaut. He’d treated it like a game at first, and Erlaut was just another pathetic ant for him to step on. But Erlaut had forced him to learn a very humbling lesson. He was no true god, yet. A problem he would soon remedy.
High in orbit, the Thefaris arrived. The great fleet was in shambles. Many ships were on fire or adrift. Some were little more than flotsam and debris clouds. Among the carnage were dragon bodies. From the bridge of the Theferis, Morwen looked on with a heavy heart. Twice now her home had been attacked, and this attack was more savage than the last.
“I should have stayed, like he’d wanted.” Morwen said.
Rozien’s azure gem pulsed with light silently. Eventually, he broke into that silent reverie. “You did what you thought was right. And it was. We shouldn’t have left our allies unguarded. There’s no telling what kind of damage could have been wrought. It’s not like they were as defenseless here.”
She frowned. Seeing her world torn to the ground once was enough to crush her. She’d promised it would never happen again. Seeing it happen was enough to gut her. She gripped the golden spell staff tight.
“I promised myself I would stop this from ever happening again. I got the legendary spell ship. And it still happened.”
Rozien thought again before continuing a few beats later. “True. But you can stop it again. Now you have the weapons.”
Morwen nodded. She did. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For bringing me back from the brink of collapse.”
Had Rozien been anyone else in her squad? She wasn’t sure she could recompose herself as elegantly. She sucked in a deep breath, held it, then it let it out slowly.
“Arjun, notify the crew. Warn them to assume battle stations. I’m taking us in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave the crew a five-minute head start and then rammed reached into her connection with the ship. Her sense of self pulling away from her body and into the hull of the ship. Its senses became her own. It’s hull, her skin, its engines, her legs, and weapons, her hands. She had a lot of hands.
Turrets and missile emplacements all over the long barrel like vessel slewed to targets in the battle space. Once the ship confirmed she had a target lock on over forty-seven different hostiles, she opened fire. Gold beams burst from rod-shaped ship, lancing into dragons all over the battle space. Cheers erupted over the battle comms and it took her a moment to get it all under control.
“I need radio discipline on the comms please. All combat capable units report in.”
Stolen novel; please report.
A list of call signs rattled off as ships reported in and gave their conditions. As they did, icons appeared on a holographic battle map next to her. She frowned. The most advanced battleship in the sector and she was still fighting this war the old way. She waved the map aside and dove into the senses of the ship, becoming it.
Then she repeated marking vessels, this time marking their actual positions and using imagery to project course headings, speed, and weapons. The Theferis surged into the combat space, blasting dragons of all types. They tried to retaliate, but it availed them little good. Not only did the wards protecting the ship hold up, they straight repelled most attacks, venting them back at their casters sometimes.
She watched with detached amusement as one dragon hurled a massive acid ball at the shield grid, only to have the spell bounce off and return, melting away the hand that wove the runes. If she wasn’t so heavily integrated into the ship’s infrastructure when she watched it happen, she’d have laughed. No, that was a lie. She found it amusing, but laughing wasn’t a luxury she afforded herself often.
She unleashed a volley of missiles that collided with a Sauridius cruiser that was harassing the right flank of the Eryn fleet. The brutish vessel adjusted its bearing to bring its cannons to bear on her. It was a foolish move.
The Theferis was a massive spell cannon with a propulsion system. It was literally just a giant barrel with a spell drive bolted on, along with living quarters and a plethora of amenities strapped the to exterior of the barrel. And now she brought said kilometer long barrel in line with the enemy cruiser, who immediately realized one fact.
“I am not to be fucked with right now,” Morwen declared as the spell cannon fired a beam of void magic that disintegrated its way clean through the cruiser.
Morwen would have blinked if she was not mentally immersed in the great ship. “Rozien, has anyone ever noted how the Theferis is like a massive spell blade hilt?”
“Several actually. I believe that was intentional in its design. The ship has many uses.”
She watched as the cruiser listed, and crashed into the surface of the moon. A few stragglers tried to flee, and several weapons batteries on the hull lit up, picking them off. Then she focused on the battlefield once again. Something caught her eye. Something familiar.
“That’s the air wyrm that chased us into the void.” Morwen said of the massive draconic corpse that was currently clawing its way into the deck of an Eryn warship. Splinters created a cloud of debris as its talons continued to slash away. Its milky white eyes unfocused as its jaws gnashed mindlessly. It was like it was on autopilot.
“Most of these dragons are already dead.” Rozien observed.
“It would seem Leviathos was gathering this army for decades. Every dragon we felled. Every hatchling slain? Was just fodder for this one thrust. But what could be so important a target to merit a force on this scale? This is bigger than the strike force Akamori stopped on New Xinjia….”
And then she lowered her focus to the surface. It was the lack of shining divinity she expected to sense from the pool. As though it’d been moved, or worse, emptied. Immediately her mind was in her body again as he gripped Rozien and channeled a teleport through the ship to the surface. She’d never done it before, but now, she needed to do.
Smoke and blackness appeared as a cloud as she emerged from it mid stride. She saw the grand temple in an absolute mess. Bodies lay strewn everywhere. One entire side of the temple had been blasted away, and the damage was too extensive to determine just who’d done that. The air was thick with charged ozone. Lots of magic had been discharged here.
She raced down the stairs, her heart beating a thousand beats in that short time it took to get down to the well. And then it stopped. Her heart sank, and she fell to her knees with it.
On the ground lay Erlaut’s dead body. This was the second time she’d presided over the death of one of their head of state. Worse, it had come at the hands of the Sauridius again. They’d gutted their naval fleet and stolen most, if not all, the magic in the golden well. Where before they hopefully thought they could bring back Aeryn with their stock? Now there was but a mere pond.
“It’s gone…. all of it gone.”
Hope and light died in the darkness that Leviathos had brought here. She had nothing. No cunning strategy. No ass pull of a plan. None of it. She’d been soundly out maneuvered and her people had once again paid the price for it.
“I need to be better. They needed me to be better. And I failed them.” She said, looking down at her hands.
“ There’s still a chance, Morwen. I sacrificed myself to buy you the time you needed. Make the most of it. Save our people. Save our world,” a disembodied voice said softly. It was feminine and had an edge to it that reminded her alot of herself. Disciplined. Composed. The voice of someone who’d waded knee deep into a war and weathered it until it claimed her along with all others.
“ Tell her old friend. She need only drink.”
“ And drag her into your war?”
The voice chuckled, amused. “ Oh Rozien. She’s already been in this war for centuries. In fact, she was learning how to cast while you were sitting on Erlaut’s shelf catching dust. Hope is not lost. Light is not faded. You are the future, child. But to seize it, you must make the most of all the sacrifices that have come before you.”
The air shimmered before Morwen, and the golden outline of a woman emerged. It was very translucent and just barely visible. But Morwen couldn’t mistake the way it reminded her of some of the older renditions she’d seen of Aeryn.
“ The time has come for a new warrior to take up the mantle and safeguard the sector. I’ve chosen you. No politics. No drama. Just a dedicate to the cause. All you need to do is drink.”
Morwen shook her head, confused. “I had to have hit my head on the way. This must be a hallucination.”
“Nothing of the sort, I’m afraid. Come, watch.”
Aeryn held a hand over the shallow golden pool. It was so low she could see the marble bottom. Aeryn looked up at Morwen and grinned, then lifted her hand. As she did, the pool bubbled and surged, rising to meet her hand as she did. It stopped at a quarter when she finished.
“Ta daaa. It’s magic!” Unable to help herself, the golden shadow of the Goddess Aeryn burst into laughter, leaving a very confused and dumbfounded Morwen to simple ogle the once drained, now partially refilled golden wellspring.