Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Dangerous Echoes from the Past

Hearing the panicked cry over the connection between the weapons, Shawn immediately turned and began summoning a full portal. Only to find that there was something blocking it.

<<Frost me!>> he tautly growled in frustration as he threw more willpower into forcing the portal rune to do its job.

<<Don't bother,>> a low, sinuous voice sliced through the air to claw at his ears. <<I have already cut you off from the energies of the universe. You cannot use your Wielder magic to escape!>>

Shiana's rune sword came up with a shimmer of light.

"Who said that?" she hoarsely whispered as she went back to back with her brother who, suddenly without access to the immense power of the cosmos, was forced instead to draw the Star Sword and use it as an actual weapon.

"Oh, your brother won't be able to answer you, princess," the voice replied, smoothly switching to Taren, its tone enough to send a chill down both of their spines. "For as brilliant as he undoubtedly is, he doesn't know."

The young Wielder risked a quick glance over his shoulder at his twin. And he found her as puzzled and concerned as he felt.

From what they had sensed about the fortress and the Shadow forces that had garrisoned it, the only creature of any power had been the sorcerer, Osteon. A sorcerer that Master Charon had no trouble pinning into place, and certainly not in possession of any magic that would've cut him off from tapping into the cosmos. Only the Abysslords once had that power and he doubted even their master, the one that Lawrence said named itself Calandris, possessed that power over them now.

"Still haven't determined who, or what I am?" the voice, now harsher and colder, taunted. "I must admit to some disappointment. How far your kind have fallen since I was sired in the fires of Earthforge! Very well. Since I cannot have my prey not knowing what is about to befall them, I will reveal myself."

The room around them shimmered then disappeared in a wash of reddish, smoke-obscured light. Then the two Ironstorm royals found themselves standing on the edge of a massive volcano.

<<Abysslord filth!>> a hard voice barked from somewhere to their left. <<You and your demonic lackeys will go no further!>>

<<Fool of a sa'an!>> an equally hard voice replied from the other direction. <<Your arrogance has blinded you. We've already conquered your keystone world. You just don't know it yet!>>

Then the familiar form of a man in Wielder armor, the plate tinged red and black in harmony with the Earth Sword that was ablaze on his back, strode out of the billowing smoke from the left. And for the briefest of moments, the twins thought it was their younger brother Patrik, somehow thrust into this nightmarish scene. But, as they looked closer, they could see that it was someone completely different, their body proportions not even approximating that of the powerful human.

No, this being was something entirely else, a 'sa'an', if the second voice was to be believed. From what Shawn could remember from his studies amongst the elves of Aquila, the Sa'an were the race from which the Elves sprung, Masters of the silvery world of Rimnor that hung in Ramnor's sky, dominating both day and night in certain places on the continent. Elvish legends, fragmented and incomplete, described Rimnor as a paradise possessing breath-taking beauty and grace like no place on Ramnor could. And the Sa'an, puissant wielders of all powers Arcane, were its gatekeepers. And its tyrannical rulers; rebellion against that oppressive rule resulted in the Elves being exiled to Ramnor millennia ago, never to return to the world that gave them existence.