52
From within, that smoky dark goddess seemed endless; filled with nothing but hatred and roiling greed that shrank away from a newly created star. The first of many, perhaps, for gravitational forces and spin were beginning to pepper that nightmarish gas-cloud with shining-bright dots.
Pilot’s interest lay elsewhere, though. He’d reached through her hand to grasp the hilt of a sword at OVR-Lord’s order. It was a mighty but terribly fragile weapon. According to Val, destined to strike only once, across the realities. The blade flickered like lightning in response to his sudden grip.
Pilot reached around with his right hand, as well, taking firm hold of a sword that could strike either way. Nor did he act alone. V47 poured through him like fire or head-hooch, rushing to bolster his strength. OVR-Lord’s circuits formed a luminous digital gauntlet, adding the might of OS1012 and Flight Command.
Together, Pilot, his AI and OVR-Lord wrested the sword from the Mother. As one, they lifted Destroyer and swung it around in a powerful, full-circle arc. Shredded that invading goddess like sun-battered plastic as…
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Up in a floating shrine, in the final spasm and gasp of a dying world, Arvendahl used his earth-moving powers. Yanked block after block from the walls to hurl at Lord Erron, stalking that fleet, dodging elf in the meantime. Finally, one of his hurtling stones got through the general’s magical shields from behind. Struck hard, denting the elf-lord’s helmet and cracking his skull. That crashing blow sent Erron sprawling. He skidded through ashes and litter, hitting the opposite wall with a rattling CRUNCH!
Arvendahl ported across to stand over the stunned, bloodied general.
“How very familiar,” he mocked, placing a booted foot on Erron’s throat and then stamping down. “My worthless son Orrin has had some sport with you, hasn’t he, exile?” Then, shrugging negligently, the cadaver sneered, “Very well. Let that and this,” (He trod harder, half-crushing Erron’s windpipe.) “Be your last memory, General... And give my regards to your cowardly friend.”
Smiling, Arvendahl lifted the fated sword overhead, intending to cleave Lord Erron in half. Destroyer came whistling down, but Erron gathered his strength to twist out of under his enemy’s foot. Arvendahl lost his balance. He stumbled and windmilled, missing the strike.
Erron scrambled aside and shot to his feet, hardly able to breathe. Lirrilan sprang from her hiding place in his armor, then. First, she healed Erron, afterward flying like a staticky cloud at Arvendahl’s face, blinding him momentarily. The brown-and-green goddess poured herself into her shrine after that, but a moment’s respite was all that Erron needed. That, and some help from his friends.
Gildyr leapt onto Arvendahl’s back, wrapping his arms and legs choking-tight round the neck and waist of that reeking cadaver; not punching or kicking. Just being heavy, dead weight. Erron sprang, pivoted and lashed out with Grassfire, which burned like a torch in his grasp. Sliced Arvendahl’s sword-hand off at the wrist. The moldering corpse-lord roared, whirling to smash Gildyr against the nearest stone wall.
The druid fell, and so did Destroyer, point-first, but Erron used a spell to halt both their dives. Arvendahl’s severed hand let go of the hilt and dropped to the floor, where it skittered away on its fingers like a shriveled spider, seeking its battered and cursing owner. Then the witch’s stolen green arm left off choking her to lash out and pluck Destroyer out of the air.
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Outside, three escape pods dropped from the last patch of sky like thunderbolts, nearly burying themselves in fused, glassy sand. They boomed, thudded and hissed, flaring with manna and terrible heat. Their passengers boiled out of the smoldering capsules like ants, having no time to wait for cooling or decontamination. The data-wall was closing in fast behind them, lighting that dangling shrine with its staticky glare.
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Inside of the hovering chamber, Ulnag’s body was dragged in the wake of that wretched, stolen green arm, step by unwilling step. She managed to stamp on Arvendahl’s skittering hand as her arm brought the fated sword to Lord Erron. It was not for anyone else to strike the last blow. Not with Miche gone.
“My thanks, Warrior,” grunted Erron. He spoke not to the witch, who glared twelve sorts of bloody and awful death at him. To Marget (most of whose body was bounding up a magical staircase created by Hana and Zak).
Lord Erron took up Destroyer, then turned to face the Fallen One. Arvendahl’s host form surged from its tattered knees to its feet, stump clamped in one armpit, snarling curses.
Erron stood perfectly straight. Met his enemy’s glare without flinching and said,
“This has been a long time coming, monster,”
Then he plunged Destroyer up to its hilt in that ghoul’s shriveled heart. His enemy bared its teeth at him, laughing and spitting dark blood.
“Idiot! You cannot kill m….”
But the words were cut off. Grassfire flicked like a serpent’s tongue, wielded by Erron’s other hand, and that shared decayed head went flying.
XX
There was much strife between Sherazedan’s flailing pit-storm of limbs and Valerian’s allies, but the young elf paid little attention. He slowed time instead, holding the fated sword in one hand while gathering magical force with the other. There was just one thing left for him to do, this side of eternity.
Spreading clawed bat wings, Valerian dodged and wove his way through a tangled web of rigid tendrils and people. Sometimes blasted a limb that seemed to be winning, helping Mandor and Alfea (whom he kissed and spoke to in passing, spear and feathery serpent tail, or no).
Motion and sound ceased entirely, each noise becoming no more than a denser layer of air. Only Sherazedan resisted his spell, for even the banshee was frozen in time. The wizard continued to move at a normal pace, tracking Valerian’s flight through that spherical chamber. Laughing, Val's former master launched a hailstorm of shrieking black darts. These halted in midair once away from Sherazedan, creating a minefield that Valerian sidestepped by crossing into another dimension, taking the sideways path.
He got through that halo of toxic black darts to confront his withered and hate-filled attacker… but it wasn’t Sherazedan who faced him. Not quite. The elven lich began changing with bone-snapping speed, becoming a towering, hideous serpent. The creature was dark as the void between stars, hooded like a cobra, and it swatted the time-locked banshee aside with contemptuous ease.
“You have not won, boy,” hissed the snake, in a voice that was more than Sherazedan’s. “Chaos is never defeated. The serpent swallows its tail to smash Order… and finish one minor impediment.”
All of the wizard’s tentacles and jointed limbs trickled like sewage back into that vast and scaly new body. Filimar would have made some kind of off-color joke, comparing his own length and size… which Cinda would have punched him for. That thought made Valerian smile, as though the pair of them were somehow still right there with him.
V47 Pilot acted next, taking over to launch a cascade of missiles, with manna and guidance provided by Firelord. Strike after strike caused the serpent’s scales to flare gem-blue and ice white. But it was Miche, Sherazedan’s rebellious apprentice, who said,
“I don’t have to defeat Chaos, old lich… I only have to stop you.”
He swooped low, dodging the serpent’s fanged jaws. Giant teeth clashed and snapped down on nothing, striking and missing a dozen times over. In this form, Sherazedan was an enormous target, his vitals too far inside to be reached by a sword-thrust. Val needed a better plan, so the elf moved kata-ward, causing the snake to fan out in layers like a deck of scaled cards. Score another for sideways dimensional travel…
And there, enmeshed in one of those micro-thin layers, he saw what he wanted. The spot where Chaos had entered Sherazedan. Where its fanged and barbed head was lodged deep.
“Got you,” he whispered. “And it may not be very heroic to say so, but I’m not very good, and I hope that it hurts like all seven hells on a fork. This is for Filno and Cinda!”
He lashed out with Destroyer, then. Used the sword’s point to sever the grip of Chaos, as a trio of worlds came apart and a mighty weapon shattered like glass.
XX
