Dark Fall (3rd Book)

Chapter 24: Shadow and Steel

What is this place? Althalos asked himself. It's all so... He broke his train of thought. "Dead" might have been the right word, he decided, but then changed his mind. The word itself was a stark understatement to the scene before him.

The red moon's gaze joined with the demon of shadow's own as he surveyed the corpses, fresh and maggot-ridden. Wretched creatures. He curled his lips in disgust as the smell of rotting flesh was carried by air that seemed dead and frozen.

Cold had no effect on him, but he could see the fires that swayed against the palms of many a witch and warlock, and the rattling bones of both undead and dead. Is this this the mirror of the Shadow Realm? For truly, the land was, in every way and more, dead. 

Everything was dead, rotting, or frozen. Slithering snake-women of the stone hissed past statues frozen in fear. His sensitive ears picked up the frightened heartbeats of those statues, fast and going faster still, as if it were preparing to burst any moment.

The heartbeats intrigued him in a grim way. His ears registered the terror they, himself included, imposed upon the few remaining mortals on this Magnus, but he could not even hear his own. It had so long ago stopped its methodical thuds that even the strangers' owns have become an alien sound echoing in his head. Has my transformation killed my humanity?

He knew very well the answer to that one, but did not dare say it loud.

He heard growls, and suspected his kin---demon-kin, that is--to be hungry and needing a meal.

"This land is dead," One of the Nine GIfters announced. "These bodies are unworthy for our hands. We have decided.'

And what exactly have you decided, lich? He found himself thinking that there were many things he had dared not do or speak of under this guise. But he knew that this was no normal guise. This was the garb of a demon, the skin of shadows, and he held a blade tempered with inhuman frost.

Is this what a slave is?

You will become one if you do not still your words, boy. 

He took a step back as the all-too-familiar pain returned with a vengeance. It was all so quick that he could not even see what was before

Merec! He unsheathed his blade, and swung it around in a maddening frenzy. What...! He caught the mistake, but it was already too late. Blood splattered around him, both red and black as demons and mortals, and halfbreed bastards died around him in tens and hundreds. No one stood against his blade, nor his strength.

A roar rose our as one of those black giants fell, a wicked cut on its heel. No blood came, but liquid fire.

I have grown tired of your words, boy. You have disrespected me long enough! He felt that the voice was not inside his head, but thought no better of it as now, instead of those blinding red spots, his vision was engulfed in complete blackness.

"Restrain the Summoner!" He heard one of the Nine Gifters---at least, that's what he thought---say. "He must not escape the Lord Master's wrath!'

What... how did he... The voice returned, no longer a whisper like before, no longer cold death. it was now black fire, and it seemed as if oblivion itself, the Shadow Realm, opened its gates, for his skin stung with the fires of it.

He could not see, his other senses were afire with wildness, and pain invaded him like an army through a petty hovel. He held his arms out, and grasped at nothing but thinning air and desperation.

A stunned silence went like wildfire, and he found his blade pried from his hands with strong force.

"You will know the meaning of fear, wretch." 

"That voice..." A whisper, and it turned into a scream within a moment's pass. "Merec!"

He was flung backwards as a foot hit his stomach. He looked, but could not see, and he strained to hear, but the silence was enough to return him to madness. He felt himself picked up, and marvelled for a moment at this mysterious and unseen thing before he was thrown to a nearby wall.

It broke to pieces, and the few cracks he heard, and the crushing pain reverberating in his torso said something else quite related to breaking. 

His throat began to be raw as his screams died away. He spat out globules of blood, and his voice was hoarse and weak as he bowed his head, feeling the rocky earth watered by his own blood. "Ma... master."

"You've troubled me long enough, boy. I have given you too many chances already, and still you fail, and still you disrespect your Lord Master." He heard Merec slam something down on the ground. He thought it was Merec. No other being alive would dare interrupt the lord of all shadow and its denizens. "You deserve nothing short of death."

"If that is so," He dared speak, no, whisper, for his was the will of an ant before the man's foot, and it could so easily crush him as it can spare him,''then be quick about it, Merec. I have no time to go begging. The demon of shadow does not beg, even if the one who shall strike is his Lord Master."

He laughed, and it was a terrible, terrible laugh, full of scorn and hate, and mockery. "I am no fool, boy. You wish for me to strike to end your suffering. I am your mind, your rage, and your thoughts. You seek freedom.

"What you lack is what you want, and what you lack is freedom." He laughed again, and he opened his eyes.

He looked up at the demon lord, cloaked in a blanket of shadow and smoke, red eyes gleaming from beneath it, obvious and shining, malevolence at its worst. His own was but a paltry mirror from which it copied its rightful master.

The glows from the crevices of his own skin seemed to fail against the shadows that swam about in perfection. "You'll regret crossing with me, boy, and that is what you are going to do right here."

"What are you talking about?" He sighed.  Truth be told, he did not like his own courage, and it seemed as if the demon lord heard his thoughts, for he laughed out loud once more.

"There is a nigh-on unseeable line between the boundaries of being brave, and being a worthless idiot."

"I'm an idiot. He already said he was my thoughts, and this one does not lie in this situation," He hissed to himself, shaking his head, looking down. 

"Yes, you are."

He looked up again, seeing the shadow-form handing him the Lich Blade back, wisps of blue as familiar as his fate. Doom. Maybe his blade is fit. Doombringer, and my doom will come now.

He thought it true, he thought it to be an unerring fact. None stand before the Demon Lord of Shadowy Death, face him in single combat, and hope to ever escape alive, or even whole.

But he stood up, and he straightened himself with a few spells, a few black limbs of healing, a few groans and grunts of pain, and he looked the demon lord dead in the eye, red against red, shadows against their master.

He charged, blade held high, spirits uncrushable, and in his mind....

A fate unchangeable.