As Sulachan made his way toward Regula, Richard casually moved away, staying out of his reach. On his way by the candles, he pulled off a small blob of soft, warm candle wax, playing with it in his fingers as he kept an eye on the spirit king.
As Sulachan went to the omen machine, Richard casually circled around toward the opening at the alcove to the stairwell.
“Thinking of running away after all?” Sulachan asked, his back to Richard as he gazed at the boxes of Orden.
Richard reached up and gave a tug on the small string dangling down. As he pulled it taut, untying the knot, the cloth with the wards on it was released, unfurling to drop down and cover the doorway.
“No, I’m not going anywhere,” Richard said. “And neither are you.”
Intrigued by Richard’s casual tone of voice, Sulachan turned with a frown. But when he saw the cloth behind Richard, his expression turned from startled to venomous.
“What do you think you are doing?”
As he played with the soft wax between his finger and thumb, rolling it back and forth, Richard used the same hand to gesture at the cloth panel. “I’m sure you recognize the wards. Wards left by those people you were trying to defeat so long ago. Wards specifically created to keep spirits from crossing.”
Sulachan swept an arm out, at the same time letting out a chuckle. “Why would I need to worry about such things?”
As Sulachan circled around to the cloth panel, Richard did the dance with him, circling around with him, matching him step for step, keeping his distance, as he moved back around to the omen machine.
Sulachan, glaring at the wards, at first moved toward the cloth hanging like a bull charging a flag, lifting a hand out as if he intended to swipe the cloth aside or rip it down, but as his hand reached out it paused before he could touch the cloth. He snatched back the hand and instead backed up a step.
He spun around to Richard. “You may be smart and you may be dangerous, but this time, you have done something useless.” He lashed a hand out toward the cloth. “I am confused as to why you would bother with such trivialities as this.” He straightened, gathering his composure. “But it doesn’t matter because I am here to end it.”
“Me too. You see, the wards on that cloth are meant to make sure you can’t leave. I want to make sure that you don’t run.” Richard showed the emperor an insincere smile. “I wouldn’t want to have to chase you down and pull you out of some dark little hidey-hole.”
Sulachan glared but made no argument that he could leave if he wanted to. They both knew that he couldn’t, at least, not as long as that cloth with the ancient wards barred the door.
Richard turned and laid his hands on Regula. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Emperor Sulachan lift his own hands to conjure his occult powers.
“Time to go home,” Richard said with a smile to Regula.
At that he stuffed the plugs of soft wax into his ears, jammed them both in hard with his thumbs, then swiftly pulled the baldric of his sword off over his head and laid the sword, still in its gleaming scabbard engraved with ancient symbols keyed to the power, across the top of the three black-as-death boxes of Orden.
Sulachan’s occult power was making the room shudder. Dust came down in little streams from the ceiling. Richard felt that power clawing at him, trying to pull him apart.
Before it was too late, Richard drew a deep breath as he tilted his head back.
His turn.
With all his might, all his strength, Richard let out a powerful scream, releasing the call of death from deep down inside. With the mighty force of his gift lurking below the poison he had layered over the top of it all the way down in the core of his being, he pushed that poisonous call of death out with all his might.
In his own head, because of the wax plugs, he heard only dead silence. But he knew that the scream of death was filling the room. He unleashed the fury of his gift, along with the anger of the sword, from deep in the core of his being, at last giving it the liberty it needed to drive the call of death upward and out.
Sulachan pressed the palms of his hands against his ears.
Arms stiff, Richard fisted his hands as he screamed. Darkness began swirling around the room, picking up dirt and dust with it. Everything shook. The floor shuddered. The neatly stacked metal strips against the walls toppled, spilling the strips out across the floor. As the speed of the spinning darkness increased, it began lifting up metal strips, sucking them into the vortex.
The omen machine itself began to shudder.
The three boxes of Orden atop the omen machine and beneath his sword slammed together into one and exploded with sudden, blinding light erupting from the pit of darkness that was the world of the dead within Regula. The light shot upward, blowing the ceiling open, carrying blocks of stone up and outward. The light from Orden, freed from the Regula room, exploded up through the Garden of Life, shattering the glass roof high overhead as it blasted upward into the night sky toward the stars. Glass and debris were thrown clear of the blast of light as night was turned to day.
In the rotating maelstrom of darkness swirling around the jet of blinding light from Orden, Regula began breaking apart under the power of the forces that had been unleashed. Metal plates ripped off and swirled around in the spinning storm as if they were bits of paper and debris snatched up in a gale. As Richard continued to scream with all his might, letting death escape from fuer grissa ost drauka, the machine was torn apart and drawn upward into the spiraling storm of light. The pieces disintegrated into dust as they were drawn upward in the blinding conflagration.
In Richard’s head, as he used all his strength to power the scream, it was all totally silent.
Across the room, Sulachan frantically tried to conjure power to save himself, but as soon as he took his hands off his ears to try to direct his occult powers, the call of death instantly ripped into him. The glow of his spirit crackled and flashed in bright colors for an instant before going as dark as a night stone. At the same time his worldly body imploded inward and then came apart in tattered bits that themselves came apart, crumbling to dust as it was all sucked into the whorl of blinding light at the center of the swirling darkness of the void between worlds.
When at last Richard had let his gift expel every last bit of the poison of death from inside him, and it had been sucked up into the light and carried away, Richard could finally stop screaming.
He collapsed to his knees, getting his breath, hardly believing that he had actually done it. As he recovered, he pulled the wax plugs from his ears. They had protected him from hearing death’s call while he expelled it.
For the first time in ages, he no longer felt the weight of the poison inside him. He was finally free of it.
He looked over at the collapsed hole where Regula had been. There was nothing left of it. Not so much as a scrap of metal remained. Everything that had been a part of it, all the gears, shafts, levers, and all the bits that made it work, were gone. It was as if it had never been there. Everything that had housed the power and given it the ability to communicate was no more.
Regula had gone home, and it had taken prophecy with it. He felt a twinge of happiness for Regula, going home to where it belonged among the expanse of souls spread out like a field of stars on the darkest night. It would be where it could no longer harm the world of life, or even influence it.
Richard had done it. He had ended prophecy.