The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 391

Chapter 391

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Living with this constant fear of being unable to protect my loved ones...I had nearly forgotten what that felt like. In Alacrya, my battles had been entirely distant, separate, from my friends and family. It was only ever my own life on the line, or at worst, the lives of strangers and people who I had, for most of my unintentional stay there, seen as enemies.

Now, as I God Stepped from Varay’s side, I couldn’t stop considering the potential death toll of a full-scale assault on Vildorial. The people here were tired and afraid, the Lances only recently recuperated from very nearly dying, and our most powerful warriors, mages like Curtis and Kathyln and the Twin Horns, could not stand against even retainers, much less Scythes.

Another God Step took me from the edge of the city down two levels to where a series of arched gates opened into a long, straight tunnel wide enough for thirty dwarves to march abreast.

A miasma of brutal, animalistic killing intent was radiating from the portal room ahead, purposefully projected to loudly announce their presence. I ignited Realmheart, and five distinct mana signatures became clear, each burning with the sickly intensity I’d come to understand as the corrupted deviant mana used by the Vritra.

Hesitating, I looked over my shoulder up to the highest level, where my sister and mother were sheltered with a thousand dwarven nobles. The Royal Palace was much too close.

’This definitely seems kind of sus to me,’ Regis thought, sharing in the same nervousness that quickened my heartbeat.

I stepped beneath one of the arches leading toward the portal room, resting my hand on the cold stone pillar. Of course. It’s a trap, after all. Even if I defeated whatever enemy was giving off such an awful killing intent in front of me, there were still the enemies behind me to consider. I didn’t know if the Lances could hold the line. If it took me too long...

The pillar crunched in my fist, which came away full of pinkish dust and stone shards. But what other choice do we have?

Hurling the mess to the ground, I took a step forward. And then another. And with each cautious step, I pushed down another question and source of anxiety. The truest way to protect those I cared about was to make any fight as swift and decisive as possible and to do that, I couldn’t be shackled by my own uncertainty.

At the end of the tunnel, there was a matched set of arched openings carved of some light red stone. They opened into a huge, empty cave that surrounded the thirty-foot-high, fifty-foot-wide portal frame, which provided enough space to stage a small army if necessary. Columns of gray and red rock held up a series of balconies that encircled the cave thirty feet up.

The room was lit by the natural glow of the still active portal.

My eyes moved quickly from the portal’s opaque screen of undulating energy the four dwarven corpses bleeding out in front of it, their bodies impaled by black metal spikes, and then to the five figures spread out throughout the chamber.

Within me, Regis trembled with a mixture of anticipation and nervous energy. I felt Uto’s memories bubbling up unbidden in Regis’s mind and bleeding over into my own. I saw the sons and daughters of the basilisks who followed Agrona from Epheotus, the interplay of asuran and human magic fine-tuned over a hundred generations. I knew what these beings were. Windsom had told me about them, long ago.

’The Wraiths,’ Regis thought, giving a name to Agrona’s hidden half-blood soldiers.

"You must be my welcoming committee," I said curtly, taking in each figure.

The foremost was a tall, broad-shouldered man. Flowing locks of earth-brown hair tumbled around thick, corkscrew horns that stuck up several inches from the top of his head. He wore red chainmail under black half-plate armor that glowed with protective runes.

His dismissive eyes met mine. "We are here to eliminate a threat, not engage in witless banter."

"Oh come on, Richmal, we hardly ever get to have any fun," one of the others said, whipping thick blond braids around his head and staring at me with hungry eyes. "If it is true that this one killed Cadell, we should have some fun with him before releasing him to the oblivion of death." Like Richmal, this second man also had blood-red eyes and onyx horns. His curled out and down from the sides of his head, nearly touching again under his chin.

While they spoke, Regis’s Uto-memories continued to ripple across the mental connection we shared. I saw a distorted, half-remembered thought of the man called Richmal standing over the gaunt, ashen corpse of a woman with brilliant white-blonde hair, through which two lightly-curved black horns protruded—a dragon, I was certain of it.

Her golden eyes stared lifeless up at Richmal as the Wraith bent down and wrenched one of her horns free of her head. The noise of it breaking sent a psychic tremor through me that made my stomach turn violently.

With an acute sense of urgency, I reached for the thread of aether that always connected the djinn’s relic armor to me. The black scales feathered into existence across my body. There was a comforting weight and coolness to it as the armor wrapped itself around me, and I felt the swelling of aether as the limited amount in the atmosphere pulled closer.

"Ah, I think he wants to be one of us!" a rich, feminine voice drawled. "Look at his little horns!" The speaker was a marble-skinned woman in heavy black plate armor. Only her face and head were exposed, showing off her short, bright blue hair, which was styled into spikes around her ridged horns. Runic lightning bolts were tattooed across her scarlet eyes. Ulrike, I knew, her name manifesting from Regis’s uncontained stream-of-consciousness.

"Cadell must have been sauced on elder nectar to let this skinny lesser best him."

The rasping voice crawled like bugs out of the shadows and into my ears, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I traced it back to a Wraith whose robes were dark with burn marks, the hood of which was pulled half up over his bald head. Two daggerlike horns thrust forward from his forehead. Blaise. The bright red of his eyes was interrupted by dark splotches that seemed to float over their surface, matching darker, ash-gray patches that marred his cold, marble skin.

Next to him, the fifth Alacryan was half-hidden in living shadows. I caught flashes of jet-black hair curled up into horns atop her head and dark, ox-blood eyes surrounded by gray-black skin. Valeska.

"Enough," Richmal ordered, the deep well of his baritone burying the other voices. "You demean yourselves." A coiled lash of dark green, stinking liquid shivered into existence in his fist, and he met my eye. "We will waste no more breath on you, lesser."

In the same moment, I activated God Step. The room shifted in an amethyst flash, and I appeared just beside and behind Richmal. "Suit yourself," I said, conjuring an aetheric sword and sweeping it backwards.

The room exploded into chaos.

Black iron spikes shot from the ground to deflect my blade, and a gust of black wind seemed to enfold Richmal. I felt the aether blade strike home, then the wind carried my target away. A breath later, he reappeared across the room from me, his armor torn and blood seeping from a wound in his side.

This enemy was fast, and they worked together with flawless efficiency. I couldn’t afford to hold anything back against them.

Regis, the blade.

Mana condensed within the dust and shadows hovering in the air, and a ring of black iron spikes thrust out of nothing to stab at my face and core. Using Realmheart to sense the formation of the attack, I sidestepped, pivoted, and ducked around the spikes, slashing through those I couldn’t dodge.

A specter shaped from black flame reached for me, soulfire claws scraping over my armor. My sword spun around, flicking out toward the specter’s throat. Just before it made contact, Regis reached the sword, and the thin amethyst blade bursted in dark violet fire.

Destruction devoured the specter, leaving behind nothing, not even a residue of mana.

All five opponents were moving, casting. Shields of black wind and soulfire moved with them, turning the room into an inferno.

Twin torrents of black fire and sluggish, bubbling ooze sprayed at me from different directions. I leapt upward, grabbing the railing of the balcony and flipping myself up onto it. The metal twisted when I Burst Stepped away again, ripping apart under the force of my movement, and then hissing and melting as a cloud of soulfire chased behind me.

The room became a dark blur as I moved near-instantly toward my next target, the blue-haired Wraith, Ulrike. I had only an instant to be surprised as her crimson eyes followed me, her shield shifting up to block my strike just as her spear lowered into a position to catch my momentum and use it against me.

The Destruction blade crashed against her towering shield, which was wrapped in a thick shell of blue-black lightning. Her conjured spear hit my armor like a battering ram, just above my core.

A concussive burst of pure energy shook the chamber as we were both thrown away by the force of our simultaneous blows. I tumbled, landed on my feet, and had only an instant to take in the sight of violet flames engulfing her shield before acidic tentacles wrapped around my legs. I slashed down through them, and Destruction ripped the spell apart.

The soulfire cloud caught up to me, inundating me within an opaque black mist of seething fire that tried to force itself into my nose and mouth. I burst outward with an untargeted nova of aether, nullifying the flames.

The ground heaved beneath me as a partially-formed golem made of hundreds of interlocked spikes ripped through the granite tiles and reached for me. I slid one foot back across the broken tiles as spiked claws closed on nothing but dust, then flicked out with the Destruction blade once, twice, three times.

Violet flames raced across the golem, which crumbled and burned.

Greenish mana condensed beneath me, and I dodged back just as the floor began to ooze thick, poisonous sludge. A cyclone of black wind forced me to dodge again while deflecting a three-pronged bolt of lightning with the Destruction blade and releasing an aetheric blast to ward off the clouds of soulfire.

There were too many of them, and they left me few openings between their combined spell attacks to go on the offensive. As I pivoted to stay out of the gusting cyclone, I considered my own capabilities. I needed to maximize my mobility and rebalance the scales.

Sensing Regis following along with my thoughts, I prepared my maneuver, condensing aether into my fist until the bones began to ache.

God Step flared, and I was standing across the room, just inside the arched entryways.

The aether blade vanished, as did my connection to Regis and the Destruction godrune.

Extending my arm, I released the blast.

Ulrike and the braided Wraith, Ifiok, vanished in a cone of roiling purple aether. It engulfed the long-range teleportation portal beyond them as well, and the portal frame shattered with a sound like a thunderclap. The hard stone came down in a fluttering wave of glowing confetti as it dissolved. The opaque liquid energy of the portal itself swirled with the turbulence of its failure, then hissed and faded away.

At least they wouldn’t be bringing in any reinforcements that way.

Ulrike lowered her shield, which was pockmarked and burn-scarred from Destruction. Scarlet runes burned brightly across its dim metallic surface. Ifiok stepped out from behind her, his braids smoking and one horn cracked. The flesh on the side of his face was torn and bleeding.

Now, I sent.

In the breath that followed, Regis exploded into being between the two, fully manifesting his Destruction form in a rush of aether. Caught by surprise, the two Wraiths were battered aside by his bulk, and his huge, square jaws full of razor-blade teeth crunched down on the wounded Ifiok’s shoulder and arm. Destruction flicked between his fangs, its jagged edges cutting and snapping as they leapt across Ifiok’s pale flesh.

Simultaneously conjuring a blade and sending aether into every muscle, tendon, and joint, I Burst Stepped, blade thrust forward at the side of Ulrike’s head.

And sank into an ocean of pain and filth.