Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Striking a Terrible Blow

Ciradaan winced as the late afternoon sky abruptly paled against the brilliant explosions of light that lifted from the southern and northern walls, one silver-blue the other golden red. A shade later he was nearly driven from his feet by a powerful surge of force that buffeted him and the other defenders around him.

"Everybody DOWN!" Charon roared, his voice magically enhanced as he threw himself prostrate where he had been holding position. Then the world turned itself upside down.

It began with a dome of light, translucent and shimmering with powerful energies, one growing around each Wielder as the runic spells began to unfold. Larger and larger the domes grew, reaching across the courtyard and over the walls to sear to ash any dark soldiers they brushed against until they themselves touched. There was a dance of light at the interface then the domes smoothly and easily began to integrate, their union forming a single dome of golden light that continued to grow. Grow taller and broader until it was higher than the Dagger's tallest towers and wide enough to encapsulate the entire mass of the ancient First Alliance fortress.

For a long, heart-stopping moment it quivered there like some monstrous soap bubble, growing brighter and brighter with each passing shade. Then, in a rush that pulled strong men from their feet and made the very walls of the reinforced castle groan with strain, the dome imploded in on itself. In the space of a heartbeat, it collapsed into a tight ball of diamond-like brilliance standing in a chamber within the main keep that was the castle's exact center point.

The diamond winked then disappeared, sending a visible wall of translucent force surging out from its point of disappearance in a concentric circle, the wave as tall as the walls themselves. The point was a stone tossed into the vast pool that was the universe, and the resulting ripple a shift in the very fabric of Reality itself. Again the reinforced stone moaned with the strain as the wave passed through it and into the jungle beyond. As the wave, moving equally in every direction, passed out over the bay, its force nearly swamped the four Mamran galleys at anchor there, rocking them hard at anchor as it washed over them.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the wave was gone and the world hung in a strange silence in its wake. Swallowing hard to make his ears pop against the painful pressure that filled them in the midst of that silence, the white-haired Aquilan monarch carefully rolled to his feet from where the wave had knocked him when the ground, the very walls themselves reeled like a drunkard. Heart in his throat, he dared to look over the edge of the parapet.

<<Blessed Maker,>> he managed to husk before his voice failed him at the sight that greeted his astounded eyes.

The Easterling, that fetid mass of unwholesome sickness that stretched over the ancient forest of beauty it replaced at the fall of Gorgon's Dagger in the time of the First Alliance, was gone. As far as the Aquilan's keen eye could see, every tree was removed, every stinking fen seared dry, and every blade of swamp grass burnt to ash. And in its place clean, dry soil, dark with fertility, smooth, rolling hills, visible with their clothing of green removed, the odd natural animal that somehow wandered into the swamp by accident and fairies. Thousands, upon thousands of fairies, dancing in vast clouds of light in joy at the evil swamp's abrupt departure.

More noticeable than the fairies, however, was the very lack of dark soldiers whose horde had surrounded the castle with a tide of evil intent. Nowhere to be seen was the Shadow army that laid siege to Gorgon's Dagger. No modified tjor'riin, or standard tjor'riin anywhere; not those that stood on the walls, or those that thronged in the jungle. They were gone, swept away by the wave of translucent force generated by the Wielders and their magic.

Several regular rectangles of ground suddenly shifted, the movement capturing the Aquilan king's attention. Swinging his eyes to the moving shapes, he watched as Ashengar and his Ben'havid emerged from their hidden ambush holes to stare in astonishment at the space suddenly open all around them. They were untouched by the cleansing surge, as were the fairies. Only the swamp, tainted by the Kaal Eran's demonic touch, and any creature bending the knee to the Deceiver had been destroyed by the wave.