He knew he was dying because the water felt not cold but warm, pulling him rapidly down, drinking him in, swallowing him whole. In his rush to escape he’d killed not only himself but Gerak and Orsin. They’d all drown, lost in the shadowed tarn forever.
Darkness swirled around him, a manifestation of his regrets, his pain, his failure. He was falling, falling forever into the deep.
“See you soon,” Rivalen said to Vasen, and flew to the edge of the tarn. He saw only the ghost of his reflection on the deep water, his golden eyes staring back at him like stars.
The tarn must have been a latent portal, activated by Weaveshear. He knew in that moment Drasek Riven must have put it there. It amused Rivalen to think of Riven, a small minded fool with his plots and counterplots, trying to foil Rivalen’s own. Riven was just another pawn in Rivalen’s game.
Brennus’s chuckle pulled him around. “Not even a godling gets what he wants all the time. You failed, Rivalen. You wanted Vasen Cale and you failed to get him.”
Rivalen laughed, loud and long. “I wasn’t here to capture him, Brennus. He has a role yet to play. I was here to make sure that you didn’t capture him. It’s you who’ve failed. You’ve who’ve done nothing but further my ends. You see nothing, little brother, and at every turn do as I wish.”
Shadows swirled around Brennus “You lie!”
Rivalen laughed more. “Your bitterness is sweet to the lady.”
Brennus’s steel eyes blazed with anger.
“I don’t have to kill you to hurt you, Brennus. Remember that. Now run back to Sakkors, obsess about mother and revenge, and watch, helpless, as my plans end this world.”
Brennus visibly bit back whatever words he might have said. His shoulders sagged as shadows gathered around him, deepened, and transported him back to whatever hidey-hole he had prepared for himself.
Rivalen smiled after his brother left. Brennus had once more had his hopes crushed. He was almost ripe for the picking, ready to serve as Rivalen’s tool in translating The Leaves of One Night. Brennus’s despair and bitterness ran deep.
Rivalen rose into the air on a column of darkness and power, surveying the valley. He had one more matter to which he must attend.
The Shadovar who served his brother had vanished, presumably following Brennus in flight. A handful of spined devils ran amok in the wood, burning everything flammable, torturing what animals they could find and catch. The valley was ablaze in fire and torment, a miniature version of the Hells. A bone devil prowled the pines among its smaller kin, aimless in its strides.
Rivalen saw Mephistopheles’s hand in it. As always, the Lord of Cania sought the divine power that Drasek Riven and Rivalen had taken from Kesson Rel. The archfiend, too, must have guessed that Vasen Cale was the key to unlocking the divinity from its three holders.
Of course, Mephistopheles wanted the power only to give him the upper hand in his war against Asmodeus. Rivalen didn’t want it at all. He wanted to use it, feed his goddess with it, and in so doing, restart the Cycle of Night and end everything.
Rivalen rode the shadows to the abbey. Much of it was ablaze, but fire and smoke could not harm Rivalen. He walked among the flames, amused that the home of the sun god finally radiated light, but only in its immolation. Tapestries curled as they burned. Roof timbers gave way in a shower of sparks. Stone cracked, fell in a hail of rubble.
Amid the ruins Rivalen found the corpses of two spined devils and the body of an old man, beaten beyond recognition. No other bodies.
That gave Rivalen pause.
The Oracle must have known an attack was coming. So he’d sent everyone away.
What else had he known?
His feet carried him through the fires to what appeared to be a shrine. The room included two burned biers, one knocked from its pedestal, the lid defaced and burned, the body that had been within burned to an unrecognizable cinder. He wondered who had been interred there, then reminded himself that it didn’t matter. The world and everyone in it, including him, would soon end in nothingness.
He pointed a finger at the ceiling and discharged a ray of energy that disintegrated a perfect circle through it, revealing the dark sky above. Through that he flew up and out into the night.
He rose high into the sky, one with the darkness, and looked down on the narrow gash of the flaming valley, the burned-out abbey.
Below, the devils continued to burn the woods and kill whatever creatures they could find.
“Mephistopheles’s creatures,” he said, irritated at their presence.
He moved from the darkness in the sky to the darkness under the canopy of the woods, a few paces from two of the spined devils. His sudden appearance halted their loping strides through the undergrowth. They crouched low, spines raised, teeth bare. He gestured, let power flow from his hand, and ripped every spine from their hides in a shower of flames and ichor. They yelped with agony and fell rolling to the ground, their raw, exposed flesh accreting pine needles and dirt. The cloud spines hung over them. He reversed all of them, pointed the barbed tips downward, and drove all of them back into the devils’ flesh. They shrieked and died.
He felt the darkness around him, the velvet of its touch across the entire valley. He sensed the location of another devil, stepped through the shadows to it, and, with a flick of his finger and a minor exercise of power, turned it inside out.
He moved to another, another, methodically destroying each of the creatures in ever more grotesque fashion.
“Stay in your hole in Cania, Archfiend,” he said, as a blast of life-draining energy left another spined devil a lifeless bag of hide and bones. “When the time is right, we’ll meet in Ordulin. All of us will.”
He saved the bone devil for last. The thin, lumbering creature stalked through the pines, its mouth open in a pained scream. It thrashed about wildly with its overlong arms and clawed hands, the long, curling tail that ended in a sharp spade of bone.
“Freedom!” it shouted, the word nonsensical, the tone tinged with madness.
Rivalen stepped from the shadows before it, let it see him. It halted, crouched, and flexed its claws. Its lower jaw dropped open, the fangs dripping with foul saliva. Stupidly, it pelted toward Rivalen, shrieking for blood.
Rivalen raised a hand, palm outward, and immobilized the creature in mid-stride. Dark energy whirled around it, holding it fast, keeping it silent. Rivalen stalked forward, contemplating suitable ends.
He felt a presence in the trees behind the devil, and an armored man burst out of the tree line. He was as tall as Rivalen but built as thickly as a barrel. He bore a large single-edge sword and a square shield in his hands. Dark, dead eyes stared out of a face barely visible for the thick beard he wore. Rivalen sensed the minor enchantments on the man’s shield, sword, and armor, but it was the twisting, odd signature of the magic affecting the man himself that kept Rivalen from annihilating him where he stood.
“Get away, Shadovar!” the man said, pointing his sword at Rivalen. “Back, I said.”
He advanced on Rivalen with blade and shield at the ready.
Curious, Rivalen retreated a step, hands held up in a gesture of harmlessness.
Rivalen tried to mask his power but the man seemed to pick up on it as he neared. He stopped his advance, a stride or two before the immobilized devil.
“Just leave us,” the man said.
“Us?”
The man’s eyes moved to the bound bone devil, back to Rivalen.
“Leave, Shadovar.”
Rivalen took a step forward, let more of his power manifest. Perhaps sensing what Rivalen was, the man fell back a step, eyes wide. “You’ve a fondness for devils? Who’s this creature to you?”
The man found his nerve and looked up sharply, as if Rivalen had slapped him. “He’s no creature, shade. He was-is-my brother.”