There was no landslide-it was just another weapon of the demons, playing on his fears.
But it might have been their most effective weapon yet. In his fear, he had shouted an order to his soldiers that had instilled the same fear in them. Fear could turn an army of soldiers into a panicked mob in an instant, and a glance behind him confirmed that his warning had done exactly that.
“Halt!” he shouted, but he had no confidence that his voice would be heard over the tumult of the panicking soldiers. And before he could do anything more, the other two demons redoubled their assault.
“I’ve heard a lot of lies and excuses in my career,” one demon said, taking on the appearance of the commander on the bridge and glaring at Roghar, “but never so bold a lie from a paladin of Bahamut.”
The other stood back and seemed to grow. Its face was a mirror of Roghar’s own, and great leathery wings spread from its shoulders.
“Kuyutha,” he murmured, awe and fear seizing control of his thoughts. Kuyutha was an exarch of Bahamut, a dragonborn who had been a paladin like him in life, but ascended to his god’s right hand. Dragonborn revered Kuyutha as Bahamut’s particular emissary to them, who had shepherded the scattered clans after the fall of the empire of Arkhosia centuries ago. He was said to train the bravest and purest dragonborn paladins personally, in his halls in the celestial mountains.
“You have failed Bahamut,” the exarch said. “I share our god’s disappointment.”
Roghar glanced between the two figures expressing their condemnation, and he knew the exarch’s words were true. He was a failure as a paladin, a disappointment to Bahamut and a mockery of all his god’s ideals. He fell to his knees and bowed his head, feeling unworthy even to look at Kuyutha. The commander stepped closer and drew a sword, as if to carry out a sentence of execution.
“For Fallcrest!” came a shout from somewhere behind him.
“For Bahamut, and for glory!” more voices cried.
Roghar looked up just as the commander swung his sword at Roghar’s neck. A reflex brought his shield up to block the blow, and he sprang to his feet.
A wave of soldiers was about to break around him. As he stared, trying to remember what was happening, the first soldiers reached the commander, hacking him with swords and prodding him with spears. He made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar and changed, his human face transforming into a blank, alien visage of leathery black skin and red crystal.
Roghar spun to face Kuyutha-or rather, the demon that had adopted Kuyutha’s visage and presumed to speak with his voice. “Blasphemy!” he spat. “You dare to speak with the voice of my god!”
“You are the one putting words in your god’s mouth,” the demon whispered.
Roghar’s sword flared with divine light as he drove its point through the demon’s gut. Kuyutha’s face faded as the demon crumbled into dust and ash. “For Bahamut,” he muttered, looking down at the scarlet residue left in its wake.
A cheer erupted from the soldiers as the other demon fell under their blows. Roghar turned to survey the scene. Tempest and Uldane had led an assault on the demons on the other side of the road, and they stood in the midst of another clump of cheering soldiers.
“Our first victory is won!” Roghar shouted, and another round of cheers erupted from the soldiers. Four demons, he thought. How many more do we have to face?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Albanon stared at the Vast Gate as Kri pulled at him, peering through the billowing blackness at the dry landscape that had appeared in the archway. He thought he saw a tiny speck in the crystal blue sky beyond the gate, but it was too far to be of help.
I have to face Kri on my own, he thought.
An effortless gesture sent a bolt of arcane force hurtling at Kri-a weak attack, but it was all he could manage as his spine creaked and popped, sending waves of agony through his body. The bolt glanced off Kri’s shoulder, but it was enough to make the grip of the slimy black tentacles weaken just slightly. Albanon used that moment to slash with his dagger at the tendril that held his neck. It relinquished its hold and he dangled from his ankles again, gasping for air.
“Why do you struggle?” Kri mused. His voice had grown larger-deeper and stronger, and with a resonance that defied the acoustics of the stone chamber, as if he were speaking in some other space. “Do you not see the power I wield? I am the exarch of Tharizdun, the extension of his reach into this pathetic world. You cannot resist me.”
“And yet I do,” Albanon said, slashing at the tentacles that held his feet. Other tendrils batted at his arms, deflecting his blows.
“Because all mortals are born to futility. Mortal life itself is a futile exercise, a vain struggle against an inevitable doom.”
Albanon stretched out the fingers of one hand and engulfed Kri in a roaring blast of fire even as more tendrils coiled around his legs and arms. Kri roared in pain, but this time his grip didn’t falter. A thick tentacle wrapped around Albanon’s waist and squeezed, forcing the breath from his lungs.
A distant sound like the baying of many hounds wafted through the Vast Gate. Albanon roared with the last breath in his chest, and a clap of thunder erupted between him and Kri, drowning out the sound from the gate. The force of the blast pushed Kri backward and knocked away the tendrils that held Albanon, sending him sprawling onto the floor near the gate.
Please hurry, Albanon thought, willing his thoughts to travel through the gate.
“What are you doing?” Kri said. “You’re waiting for something, trying to buy time. What feeble hope are you clinging to?”
“I can beat you,” Albanon said through gritted teeth, climbing slowly to his feet.
Kri laughed. “I admit that your power has grown since you left that fool Moorin’s tutelage,” he said. “And the shattering of your mind seems to have expanded your power even more. But you have no idea what you’re facing.”
“Moorin was no fool,” Albanon said.
“He held you back, kept you from the full extent of your power.”
“He trained me in the responsible use of my power. He gave me all the tools I needed to make use of it, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Oh, you’ve found it in your heart to forgive the old man, have you? How touching, in the last moments before your own death. And in the same room where he met his grisly end, no less.”
That gave Albanon an idea. He glanced around the room again, his eyes darting over the arcane pattern formed by Moorin’s blood.
“What are you doing?” Kri demanded. A thick tendril of inky blackness darted at his head, but Albanon ducked it and slid a few steps to his right.
Formulas danced through his mind and lightning shot from his fingertips. He saw Kri recoil, but the lightning coursed all around him, tracing the eldritch lines in the chamber, forming a net of deadly power that surrounded him.
“No!” Kri screamed. His flesh seared and some of the inky substance that formed his lower body burned away to greasy smoke as the lightning net closed around him. But he raised his arm and swept it in a wide arc, trailing darkness behind it. As the darkness spread it stifled Albanon’s lightning and extinguished the fire.
“I will not suffer any further indignity at your hands, whelp,” Kri growled, surging closer to Albanon on his liquid mass of tentacles. He raised his arms over his head-and paused.
The baying of hounds had grown much louder, and Kri hesitated as he looked around to find its source. His eyes settled on the Vast Gate and he frowned.