42
Lord Arvendahl had torn free of Sherazedan, then been hurled like a spear through the growing link between realms. Like three lenses in a surging and crackling machine, those separate worlds were coming into alignment now, creating a sort of space-time telescope. If he’d read Sherazedan’s thoughts rightly, this cosmic alignment would focus power enough to alter fate or transform one into a god. Heady stuff, but not what mattered to Arvendahl’s ghost. Here and now, he was hunting.
Not having a body at present, he was meant to seize the “Fallen One’s”. Only, once Falco blazed through the expanding intersection of those three worlds, he was too revolted… repulsed… to proceed.
He manifested in the filthy, verminous, reeking heart of a shrinking land. Found himself hovering in front of a withered corpse. A ghoul. A pitiful remnant nailed to a throne of scrap by somebody’s last, frantic death-curse; kept half-alive through implacable hate. More than that, Arvendahl knew the miserable wretch.
“You,” snapped the elf-lord, stopping short. He absolutely refused to enter that shriveled, half-elven carcass, and not even Sherazedan’s will could compel him. “I would ask what in the seven vile pits you’re doing here, Orrin, but the answer is clearly “failing miserably,” yet again.”
The grisly Fallen One blinked sunken and cloudy eyes, igniting a greenish corpse light within them. The ghoul-prince leapt to his feet, raising a cloud of droning, fat flies.
“Who speaks?!” he demanded, peering around with the rattling pop of dried flesh and loose joints. “Show yourself!”
A horde of rats boiled out of their home in his tattered midsection, squeaking frantically as they ran down his legs and away.
Arvendahl was meant to enter that shriveled cadaver and take possession, but he would not stoop so low. He formed a simulacrum instead, creating a magical double in which to house himself. The body was very tall, with drifting black hair and intense blue eyes; ethereally beautiful, as only an elf-lord could be. Clothed in fine garments of Arvendahl green and black. The newly made form was temporary, but better by far than entering that. Falco trickled into the simulacrum with a sigh of relief, but the return of his physical senses only worsened his scathing distaste.
He refused to touch that filthy, bone-littered floor, which glistened and rustled beneath him; covered in scuttling, brownish-dark beetles. Had to breathe very shallowly, for the air stank of death and decay. Reeked of thick and rusty-wet blood, too. A large pool of the stuff had puddled onto the floor. It dripped and splashed from a mostly dismembered human female. She was pierced on an iron hook that twisted and swung from a rusted chain near the throne.
Arvendahl shuddered.
“You managed to squirm off through time after your last disaster, and this was the best you could do?” he sneered.
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The Fallen One hissed in response, creating and hurling a death-bolt that Arvendahl easily blocked. With a flick of slender long fingers, the elf sent that green manna-pulse straight down into the swarm of carnivorous beetles. The noise and stench of frying insects arose like a fog, preventing further conversation.
Falco used the respite to pull in a cleansing breeze. Not through the chamber’s lone window, which looked out on a landscape as desiccated as its hideous ghoul-prince. From the past; a time when this hellish place had still been a functional shrine.
The Fallen One straightened, drawing a pitted and battered old energy blade.
“I abjure you and all of your kindred, elf!” he raged. “I spurned you in life, and doubly so, now!”
Arvendahl snorted, conjuring manna, his weapons and magical shielding.
“You were kicked aside like an unwanted puppy, rather,” he mocked. “Mongrel offspring of a drunken mistake.”
The elf-lord shuddered once more, remembering.
“That human ambassador’s scheming wench used a love potion, or it would never have happened. Then she took by me… and the brew’s effect lingered enough that I let her stay pregnant.”
Arvendahl gazed curiously at his half-blood son’s current form. Over the impaled woman’s groans, he said,
“You’ve decided to pass as a human, it appears… not that the change seems to have done you much good.”
“More than you ever did… father,” snapped Orrin, stepping aggressively forward. The corpse-lord ignited his energy blade, creating a spear of greenish-pale light that shadowed his worm-eaten face.
Arvendahl flowed into an easy, mocking defensive stance (still not touching the floor).
“I gave you Snowmont," he accused, "An entire province, which you used as a base for sedition and treachery. Had that accursed Tarandahl’s allies not prevented it, you would have tried to attack me… and failed at that, too.”
A faint, divine spark flared at Orrin’s moldering feet. Some small, captive shrine-goddess, it was. She held out both translucent hands, mutely appealing to Arvendahl. Sadly for her, he could not have cared less. Through Sherazedan, he’d fed on much better than her.
The elf-lord returned his gaze to War Marshall Orrin Trask, who’d started to speak, edging forward again.
“I have a plan,” raged Orrin, striking at that beautiful, scornful, unreachable elf. Lashed out with manna and weapons, both. Leapt forward in a whirlwind of dust and flies. “Once that boy and his god are in my hands, I will use their sacrifice to escape from this place! I can…”
“Muck things up worse than you already have,” snorted his tall, raven-haired father, spinning away from attack, striking back with Grassfire. The family sword burned with the flame that cannot be quenched, and it simply absorbed the force of Orrin’s assault, growing stronger with each futile blow. Metal screeched against burning light. Arvendahl backed, feeling his conjured body beginning to fade. “I ended your mother when her potion faded at last, and her clamor grew tiresome. Ought to have killed you, as well, but foolish sentiment stayed my hand.”
“Ended?” Orrin’s attack faltered, as he stared at the elf-lord, dumbfounded. “You told me she left. You said mother found someone else and ran off!”
Arvendahl shrugged.
“Ran off, died… what difference does it make? She was mortal. She would have been gone in less time than one savors a creamy dessert. Lessa earned what she got, and she ended more mercifully than you have dealt with either of these, or the Quetzali princess you managed to snare.”
Arvendahl glanced at the hook-skewered, twitching mortal, then down to that drained and shivering goddess.
“Unlike you, Orrin, I do not toy with those who are no longer useful. I exterminate them.”
The pair clashed one final time. Elf-lord and ghoul fell on each other in bitter combat. A great flare of red light was seen for hundreds of miles around, painting the northern sky a deep, bloody scarlet. A thunderous roar shook the ground, as Far Keep’s rusted steel and crumbling rock were seared hollow. Purged in flame, clear to the edge of its mountainous borders. And then…?
Ah, then! The survivor rose up and took action, bringing the fight to his unwary prey.