Bloodsword: War of the Leaf

War's End

For a long moment Tev simply knelt there, pierced on all sides by the tendrils, his mouth open in a silent scream as pain seared every nerve of his body.  It was the S’ia box all over again, with tendrils of blood replacing the dragonets that had torn his flesh into ribbons.  From its place on his arm, the dragonet there danced wildly, blood spurting from its nostrils and eyes.

From deep within it came: a burning anger that could no longer be restrained.  Anger at the arrogance of the Mardish, the ignorance of the Solavar, at their attempt to destroy him and his people, as well as his world.  Hotter and hotter that anger burned, until it rivaled the pain that coursed through him.

At that instant in time, Tev howled in mortal agony, making the buildings around him shake with its fury.  As he screamed, great motes of light, each the size of his eye, oozed out of his body, passing through the tendrils as they did.  Then they began to spin; round and round, going faster and faster with each quickening heartbeat in Tev’s chest, until they whirled around in a twisting vortex of reddish-gold light.

Slowly Tev’s hands, clenched into fists so tight that his fingernails cut into his flesh to leak blood down his arms, rose out of his lap towards his face.  As they did, his eyes opened, blood filled orbs that stared sightlessly into space, blood trickling from his nostrils, ears and mouth.  It was as if he had been filled to overflowing with the fluids of life and now it came out of him, his body not enough to hold it all.

“Dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!” he howled and thrust his clenched hands away from him in a spray of blood.

The air literally gelled around him, becoming a shimmering wall that stretched to the heavens and to the horizon in both directions.  And then it was traveling away from him, moving at the speed of thought as the two halves raced in opposite directions from each other, born of anger, of prophecy and of the most ancient magic of all.

The Solavar and Mardish in the town were the first to fall, instantly eaten to nothingness by the wall of magic as it passed over them in a thought.  From there the wall streaked over the face of Quelaezaun, dashing over Lasis’Nar to go over the oceans and beyond, touching every last place, covered or uncovered on the face of the world, before the two walls met on the opposite side of the world.

As it passed over Mardish and Solavar cities, their inhabitants were vaporized, destroyed as if they had never existed, their buildings reduced to rubble, their ships seared to ash and their magic leached to vapor.  In the blink of an eye, opposing armies were shattered, their Mardish and Solavar backbones obliterated, leaving only scattered clumps of Freeholder conscripts holder their weapons in stunned shock.

In that instant, two ancient civilizations died.  And the T’sar, the War of the Leaf, was over.

As the walls of magic met each other on the opposite side of the world, they touched and simply vanished.  And, as they did, Tev toppled over, every ounce of strength gone.

The next thing he knew, gentle hands were lifting Tev up, a cool cloth touching his brow.  His eyes flickered open to find Nerith’s face gazing down on him.  Gone was the perfection; she was battered, cut and bruised, looking as if she had faced the opposing armies by herself.  Her leather garb was torn and stained and she bled from not a few wounds.

Yet she ignored those as she tenderly cradled his head, soothing away the hurt from his brow with a cool cloth.

“I am cursed,” he husked with a desert dry mouth, the words shards of glass in his throat.

“Why?” Nerith asked softly, wiping away the blood from Tev’s battered and bruised face.  Somehow the surge of blood magic at the end had sealed up his body, healing his wounds.  But it had left him just on this side of death.

“Because after that I still live.”  He managed, closing his eyes as his head began to pound wildly with pain.

Despite her own pain, Nerith gently laughed.

“You live because you were meant to,” she said after a pause.  Tev’s eyes flickered open at that.

“What?” he began before she shushed him with a light finger on his parched and cracked lips.

“Do you think only you mortals have prophecies?” she asked, a mysterious look on her face.

“You ... you mean ...” Tev stammered, his mind reeling.  Nerith again shushed him.

“Worry not about it, Sword of Blood.  Just be content that it is.  And, although I am not Jena Brin, I hope you will love me as you did her, deep in your heart.”

Not understanding what Nerith meant, Tev looked at her for a moment, astonished beyond words.  Then exhaustion, deep and deadly, took him and, with a final howl at the world that had almost destroyed him, Tev fell unconscious.  One thought passed through his mind, however, before the darkness took him:

‘It is finished.’