Nate Kenyon - The Order

Two more flew at him, and he used one arm to slash them both in two, his other arm hanging useless at his side. An unburied lumbered through the midst of the fallen imps, roaring with its multiple heads and raising its arms like rock-studded anvils ready to crush anything in its path. Mikulov ducked under its killing blow and delivered a series of lethal slashes to the creature’s back and legs, bringing it toppling to its knees. But as he moved to cut off its stinking, dead skull, it swung wildly backward with one arm and caught him in the side.

The blow was like a wagon colliding with a tree. It lifted Mikulov in the air and sent him sprawling. The monk’s skin, thickened through years of training and physical punishment, was tough enough to withstand almost anything, but his bones beneath were not. He felt a rib snap as he landed upon the backs of more scavengers, their sharp fangs nipping at him as they flung him to the ground.

Mikulov lashed out at them, making the creatures scatter, then lay on his back, gasping for air. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, not anymore. The stinger’s poison continued to work its way deeper; he felt it racing through his veins, each pump of his heart pushing it along. He looked up into the sky as rain fell on his face, burning his parched throat with a sour, metallic taste. Even the rain was tainted here.

The small space around him was closing quickly, feeders advancing on all sides. There was a moment of calm when the gods all became silent within his head and everything slowed down to a crawl. Time ceased to matter. He was a small boy, running through the mountains, ducking under the cool shade of trees, and splashing across brooks filled with trout. Something was chasing him: a man, playing a game of tag. But the man changed as Mikulov ran, and Mikulov changed too, growing taller, stronger, his body thickening with the weight of years, and the thing chasing him wasn’t a man at all, but a beast with a black hood and the wings of a crow.

Mikulov closed his eyes against the advancing demon army, shutting out the brutal, ravaged faces. He called to the gods and drew their energy from the air around him. He held it deep within himself, as if taking a huge, deep breath; a warmth began in his chest, soothing at first, and then it grew into the heat of a raging fire. Still he held on, feeling the power filling him up, spreading through his limbs as the gods accepted his gift and returned it to him tenfold.

The monk opened his eyes, the fire alive and writhing like a dragon within his chest. The creatures were upon him now.

He smiled, and let it all go.

Deckard Cain was halfway to the Black Tower when the world exploded.

It began with a soft pop, and then a ripple of blue fire burst outward from where Mikulov had fallen, a wave of light. The pop was followed by a thump that Cain felt deep within his core as the ring of fire expanded, taking down everything in its path. A whisper of heat washed over him, and then the shock wave hit, knocking him off his feet and taking the breath from his lungs.

Cain drifted for a moment, as if a wall of water had collapsed over him and sent him tumbling through the deep, before he came back to himself. His head ringing, he sat up as the wave passed, looking around in shock and horror. A cold shiver ran down his spine, a sense of doom overwhelming him. Nobody could have survived such a blast.

But he had already known that would happen, hadn’t he? He had known it as soon as the monk had met his gaze, back at the tunnel hole. Cain had seen it in his eyes, a quiet, steady purpose, as if he had met his fate already and come to terms with it, and the rest was simply a matter of time.

Most of the creatures standing within one hundred yards of the explosion had simply vanished, turned to ash; those farther away were either dead or mortally wounded. But at the edges of the blast zone, others were regaining their feet. An overseer threw back his head and roared into the leaden sky, and his minions howled in return.

Mikulov had given Cain’s party an opening, but he had not stopped all of the demons. A new resolve gripped Cain, an almost frantic determination, a need to hurtle himself forward. He pointed at the Black Tower and shouted at the remaining First Ones to hurry. Then he stood and stepped over the scattered bodies as quickly as he dared.

His staff seemed to hum under his fingers as he went, the ruby top glowing softly. He had recited no spell, called nothing into life. Yet it had been activated in some way, like a lightning rod in a storm. In fact, the air around him had begun to vibrate.

He had no time to puzzle over that. The noise of the demon horde had begun to grow once again. He glanced to his right and left, and saw feeders coming fast on all sides like giant white crabs, moving forward in packs. They would be upon him in seconds.

As one leaped at him, a whistling arrow caught it in the side of the neck, and it went down without a sound. Cain glanced back to see Thomas with another arrow notched and ready, Cullen at his side with his pitchfork.

“Go!” Thomas shouted, waving at him. “We’ll hold them off!” Then he turned and shot at another feeder as it rushed at him, taking it down with the thwack of an arrow through the chest.

Cain turned toward the Black Tower, running the final few feet to the open archway at its base and disappearing inside.

The archway led to an inner wall and a huge wooden door with the symbol of the Horadrim engraved in it. But the symbol had been altered. Demonic runes had been added that foretold the end of the world: the fall of humanity and the age of demons, a foul corruption of the sign of goodness and light, and a clear warning to all who entered.

The door swung open with a low whine, revealing a dark and empty hall. He ducked through and shut the door against the raging creatures outside.

Whatever happened now, he was alone. His friends were sacrificing their lives to give him precious time. They had turned out to be true heroes, after all. The urge to rush forward came over him again. All his life, he had stood on the sidelines as others fought, choosing to remain in the background. At first his excuses had to do with his scholarly pursuits and, later, his advancing age, but all had had the same result. He was a coward at heart, was he not?

This was the time to act. Yet an inner voice began to question all of that once again, seeds of doubt creeping back in. He was an old man, and not prepared for a fight like this. He had never wielded a sword. What would he do, once he reached the enemy? What kind of skills did he possess to face such a horror?

Leah. He was the little girl’s only hope. And that, more than anything else, was what finally got him moving again.

The staff’s light illuminated a set of stairs. The stairs were circular and ran around the edges of a dizzying open shaft that reached up far beyond the edges of his light, with a column of stone at its center. From somewhere above, he could see a faint gray glow.

His heart pounding in his throat, Cain began the climb. The stairs went up forever, and his breath began to labor, his chest burning, knees protesting, the familiar ache in his back unbearable. He felt his mind enter an entirely new state, as if he were hovering just outside himself and watching the progress, and it seemed his entire life was playing itself out once again through this final act: his mother, watching from beyond the edges of the fire, her eyes filled with sorrow mixed with hope; his days as a young schoolteacher in Tristram, more absorbed by scholarly texts than anything the children did; his wife and child walking hand in hand into the distance, leaving him forever; and finally, alone with his books at the End of Days, old and broken, waiting to rejoin his family in a place of peace and hope, a place beyond all imagining.