Victor of Tucson-Chapter 38Book 12: : Cataclysm

38 – Cataclysm

Victor recoiled at the realization—the idea that a single person could so callously snatch away the lives of so many people. For a moment, he was dumbfounded, and his speed faltered. Almost against his will, he imagined people he knew in the place of all those thralls—Valla, Edeya, Thayla, Tellen—all the Shadeni and their children. He saw a parade of tormented faces—their hopes and dreams, their loves and fears, their accomplishments and history—all wiped out in an instant by a madman with too much power.

He couldn’t give Xelhuan’s thralls back their lives, but he could keep some of them from feeding into the mad Death Caster’s plans, couldn’t he? Most of the spirits were still drifting toward the pyramid. Victor had no idea what exactly Xelhuan was doing with all that Energy, but he didn’t think it would be good for anyone’s spirit to be a part of his designs. There was still time; he could influence them, could he not? Wasn’t he a Spirit Master?

He’d already flown out of his Core Domain, but nothing was stopping him from creating another. As Xelhuan, a shadow flitting through the wind, found his way to the peak of his pyramid, Victor dove for the nearest slope, aiming for the midpoint of the mountain-sized structure. He glanced at his Core—nearly fully recharged thanks to his veil-walker status. He had to do a massive working. He had to extend his domain as far as possible—further than he ever had. He knew it would leave him vulnerable, his Energy dangerously low, but something in his gut told him he had to do it. He had to offer those spirits an alternative.

So, like a falling angel, wings set aflame, he streaked toward the granite slope. As he approached, the shelves became apparent, each deeper than a football field. Millions of rectangular stones, some massive, some the size of simple bricks, stretched away as far as his eyes could see—and it was just one shelf. He didn’t have time to marvel, though. He hit the ground and then flooded his pathways with the greatest outpouring of Energy he’d ever attempted. He dumped nearly everything he had—a great wave of hope-attuned Energy that he channeled through the spell pattern for Core Domain.

Just as before, the clarity of inspiration, the fearlessness of certitude, and the peace of acceptance washed over him. As his crystalline domain transformed the pyramid, spreading outward with him at the epicenter, Victor looked up and understood what Xelhuan was doing.

The flow of death-attuned Energy had become a veritable eruption from the peak of the pyramid. It was more than Victor had ever seen displayed at once, save for perhaps around the Ivid Queen’s hive world. The geyser of dark, swirling, blue-black Energy shot into the sky and, from its crest, it split into a million streams that stretched across the firmament for as far as Victor could see. He’d known Xelhuan had a web around the world; he’d seen it before, but this was something else.

Those rivulets of death Energy oscillated through two stages—one in this world, and the other on the far side of a veil. Xelhuan was trying to rip Dark Ember out of its natural universe. He was trying to take the world and everyone on it elsewhere. Panic gripped Victor’s heart, and he acted out of instinct. Using his knowledge of the spirit plane and his attunement to spirit Energy, he tore open a passage in the veil between the material plane and the spirit plane.

Suddenly, the hundreds of thousands of spirits drifting toward the pyramid’s apex stopped and then, like someone had pulled the stopper in a great metaphysical bathtub, they began to flow toward the gateway Victor had torn open. Meanwhile, his Core Domain kept Xelhuan’s Energies at bay, drove his miasma out, and granted those tormented spirits free passage.

As the first wave of spirits drifted through, escaping Xelhuan’s trap, a horrifying roar echoed from the peak of the pyramid, and thunder rolled over the countryside. Red and black lightning split the purple sky, striking the ground around the pyramid in a thousand forked plasma tongues. Again and again, the thunder crashed, and again and again the strikes came, each one closer to Victor. At first, his domain rebuffed them, but it was clear what Xelhuan was doing: he sought to weaken Victor’s foothold.

Victor held fast, watching as wave after wave of the spirits drifted through the rip in the veil he’d created. Tens of thousands had already passed through, and their numbers were rapidly multiplying as the current his rip had created intensified, reaching the furthest extent of his Core Domain. More unnatural screams erupted from the top of the pyramid, and then an endless roar of thunder mounted, so loud that it shook the ground like an earthquake.

When Victor realized it wasn’t thunder, the only response he could think of was to flee, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t abandon that rip in the veil; he wouldn’t let Xelhuan close it. So he stood his ground and watched as a fiery meteor fell toward him, wondering how mad Xelhuan must be to call down a cataclysm on his own seat of power.

###

Tes stood atop the highest tower in Victor’s citadel with Arona, Ronkerz, and several of his Big Ones. They were watching the southeastern skyline, marveling at the mountainous black clouds that stood out despite the gloomy evening sky. Otherworldly spiderwebs of red lightning helped to illuminate the ominous storm. More than anything, though, Tes worried about the rapid expansion of some sort of death-attuned Energy latticework spreading outward into the firmament. “I’ve seen much,” she whispered, “but I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Nor I,” Arona replied, “and I’ve seen more than one world conquered by Death Magic.”

Tes looked at her. It was very easy to forget that the Solar Caster had once been a necromantic servant of a world-conquering despot. She wasn’t outgoing, and her tone was usually quite dry, but there was a light—literal and metaphorical—about her these days. Especially since Victor had vanquished Vesavo. When Arona smiled at her and shrugged, Tes nodded and looked past her to their prisoner—of a sort.

Citlalmina had made herself smaller—something more like a Ruhn-sized giant—and sat inside the command tower, leaning one elbow on the map table, an almost morose-looking frown on her soft, berry-stained lips.

“I begin to wonder if our guest wasn’t as popular as she thought,” Tes said under her breath.

Before Arona could respond, Ronkerz’s strange Sorcerer, Arcus, looked toward her, his dark eyes like gleaming opals within the cowl of his ragged robes. As usual, he kept his corrupted tentacle of an arm coiled within his sleeve, but she knew it was there, and it gave a strange gravity to his words. “They come. You’ll feel it soon enough, but the void has been pierced on this world.” Without warning, his black, writhing appendage sprang forth, and he gestured with it toward the terrible storm in the distance. “We should be more worried about that, however. This entire world is in danger.”

“Calm down, boy,” Ronkerz growled, shifting on one of his massive fists to look at the man. “That’s Victor’s problem out there. We’ll deal with—”

His words were cut short as, not a mile from the parapet on which they stood, a rip in the fabric of the universe appeared. It was a portal into the void, more than a hundred strides across and just as high. “That,” Ronkerz finished with a grunt.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“More come,” Arcus announced.

Tes followed his gaze toward the sky, and there she saw another portal, perhaps a mile distant, over the churning waters of the ocean. She glanced at Arona, but the woman was already moving toward the map table; she would message Lesh and Bryn, instructing them to ready their armies.

###

“That’s seven,” Lam said, pointing.

Edeya nodded, watching as the sky ripped open yet again, and ghostly specters, glowing with the blue-tinged aura of death, drifted forth into the black, storm-whipped air. The portals had been forming one after another for several minutes and, though the citadel was distant, they’d already seen grand displays of magic—beams of solar Energy that swept the field, turning night into day if only for a moment, balls of fire that exploded in white-hot showers of sparks, and bolts of blue lightning that were quite literally blinding.

Not far from where they stood at the head of their cohort, Lesh exhorted a pair of his captains, ordering them to get their troops under control. The scene made Edeya stand up a little taller, gazing proudly over the soldiers that she and Lam had molded over the last few years—the Mad Jesters. She didn’t love the name, but she loved their troops.

One of the lieutenants had come up with the sobriquet during the siege of Bitter Rock Keep, when Lam and Edeya had been flying together, battling specters not unlike the ones pouring out of the distant portal, laughing and joking with each other the whole while. Now, each of their soldiers sported stylized yellow-and-blue jesters on their uniforms—complete with floppy hats and Ghelli wings.

Something tingled against her chest, and then it suddenly grew quite hot. “Ouch! What’s…” Her words faded as she reached under her silvery chain-mail armor to wrap her fingers around the dangling necklace she’d been wearing ever since coming to Dark Ember. It was a gift from Olivia, something she and Ranish Dar, of all people, had crafted for her. Her armor’s neckline was too tight to pull it through, so Edeya yanked, snapping the thin chain and drew it out the bottom.

“Look,” she breathed, holding the large, glowing pearl aloft.

Lam squinted at it. “Pretty. What—” She caught her breath as realization dawned.

“She’s here!” Edeya hissed.

“Deya!” Lam cried, grabbing her wrist as though she was about to lose her.

“Stop it! What?”

“Don’t you dare charge after her!”

If she were being honest, Edeya would admit to Lam right then and there that she hadn’t had any such intention. Almost like she’d cast a spell, though, Lam’s words had triggered something in Edeya: a smoldering volcano of anger, hurt, and frustration that had, over the years, cooled but never quite gone out. Now, though, the glowing pearl and Lam’s assumption that Edeya was about to charge off and do something foolish stoked those coals, breathing fresh life into the fire of her anger.

Edeya gripped her spear, and the bonded weapon hummed with encouragement, though the dear spirit within couldn’t know exactly what Edeya was thinking. “I have to face her, Lam. I must. What she did to me...”

Suddenly Lam was holding her massive, glossy black shield. “Then I’ll follow you.”

Edeya shook her head. “The Jesters need you. Besides, Catalina took something from me, and I won’t get it back if I don’t face her on my own.” Edeya tried to look brave. She tried to project strength. She thought maybe she’d succeeded.

Lam looked into her eyes searchingly, but she didn’t ask what Edeya was talking about; she knew all too well that Catalina had taken a piece of her spirit, a touch of her spark. Even after a full recovery—and then some—Edeya felt that nagging void where that bit of confidence and verve used to reside. So, she tried again, and this time when she spoke, there was an edge to her voice and some fire in her eyes. “I’m going for her, and Roselance will pierce her dark heart!”

###

Tes glided on the stormy winds, her enormous wings like sails, her tail a rudder. She could fly through any storm. Even the lightning was welcome; her scales caught it and pulled it into her Breath Core, only for her to use it on the undead fiends, coughing out great blasts that shattered them by the hundreds. Even so, the hordes that had come to wage war against Victor were countless as they marched endlessly through the rifts. Thousands poured through every second, gathering in the sky, on the ground, and even in the sea—specters, ghouls, zombies, vampires, dread beasts of every kind, skeletons, and terrors too strange to name.

Tes feared them not at all, but then, she’d yet to see their masters. None of the undead kings had yet come through the portals, and though the hordes of enemies grew, they hadn’t attacked the citadel with any vigor. It was clear they were waiting for something—likely a critical mass or, perhaps, simply for their masters to join them.

Tes coasted in a great arc, her keen dragon’s eyes scanning the fields around the citadel and the unfinished streets and buildings beyond. Tens of thousands of figures scurried to and fro down there, and the specters, haunts, and ghosts were settling down, slinking into the buildings and alleys. They wouldn’t be able to fly near the citadel during their assault; Arona had seen to it that the anti-flight wards were carved deep into the bedrock, fueled by the accumulated Energy of hundreds of thousands of troops over the course of months. Even Tes would have had trouble flying above those walls if not for the ward-key she carried.

As she turned back, ready to return to the battlements and hear Arona’s latest reports, a massive figure leaped from the walls and charged a battalion of skeletal reavers. It was Ronkerz, and his roars split the night, vying for attention with the thunder. His fists smashed into the earth, sending a dozen reavers flying with each blow. He fought like an enraged beast, but it was clear he wasn’t really trying—he was just having fun.

Tes was contemplating a strafing run on one of the portals, wondering if her lightning could pass through in the opposite direction, when the sky lightened and she wondered if it could possibly be dawn already. She banked again, blasting a pair of spectral wraiths that had been tailing her with a brilliant bolt of blue lightning. As the bolt’s afterglow faded, Tes froze, gliding on the wind as she stared toward the source of the false dawn.

A fiery streak had appeared in the sky above her, so high that it might have been outside the world’s atmosphere. The rumbling noise of its passage came a full thirty seconds after she first noticed it, and it carried on for minutes, distracting her from the battle at hand as she watched it progress into the dark, miasmic clouds on the horizon. It seemed Xelhuan or some servant of his had called a rock—a piece of the moon, perhaps?—out of the sky, likely to hurl it at Victor.

“Be strong,” she whispered, earnestly wishing she were with him. “Be strong and keep your eyes up, love.”

###

It wasn’t easy to see how big the fiery missile falling toward him was, but Victor thought it had to be enormous. Just to last that long, burning through the atmosphere, it had to be significant. It burned through the night sky, bright as the sun in his eyes as it approached. Regardless, he stood his ground; in fact, he moved several hundred yards along the shelf and then up onto the next one, in order to put himself more squarely in the meteor’s path.

His rip in the veil was still open, his domain was still protecting the spirits rushing through it, but if he fled, their avenue of escape would close. That being the case, he fully intended to take that meteor head-on. It was probably some kind of stone, but it was most definitely burning. Victor was already resistant to fire, but he wanted to improve his chances as much as possible, so he cast Volcanic Fury, embracing his rage and empowering his already mighty titanic form with strength and enhanced regeneration.

He gripped Lifedrinker’s haft in his hands and felt her thrum with eager anticipation. “We’re gonna fuckin’ rip this one out of the park, beautiful!” As she screamed her enthusiasm, Victor prepared to cast Roots of the Angry Mountain, laughing almost maniacally as he thought of the spell’s description:

***Roots of the Angry Mountain – Advanced: You have harnessed primal Energy to anchor yourself to the very fabric of the world. When activated, the spell will render you immovable, making you as unyielding as the mountain itself for several seconds. Any force—physical, elemental, or magical—will struggle to shift your position during this time. The spell will call forth the mountain’s roiling blood, causing it to erupt violently from the ground in an explosion centered on you.***

He wasn’t sure what was about to happen to the mountain-sized pyramid beneath his feet, but it was going to be explosive. One thing he was sure of was that he didn’t plan to move from his domain—not so long as there were still spirits trying to escape. He lifted Lifedrinker high over his shoulder, elbow up, and watched the fiery orb grow larger and brighter in his field of view. Its movement through the air was deceptively fast. The fact that it was coming straight for him made it hard to measure distance, but one second it seemed a mile away, and the next it was right there, roaring and burning.

Victor cast his Roots of the Angry Mountain, swung Lifedrinker, and screamed, “Ancestors!”