David Dalglish - Wrath of Lions

Karak laughed. “There is no spell, Prophet. What these hands created, these hands can bring back once more.”

Velixar stepped back, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Ashhur lied,” he whispered.

“My brother is incapable of lying, Prophet.”

“He told me resurrection is impossible. He would not bring Brienna back to…would not bring the elf girl back for Jacob.”

“The elf was not his creation.”

“But if I were to perish, he could have brought me back? You could do the same?”

The god pursed his lips and squinted. After a few moments of silence, he replied, “It depends.”

“On what?”

“Think on it, Prophet. The demons were cast away from this dimension by Celestia, their bodies destroyed while their essences were trapped in nothingness. Yet there was one demon who perished in the great war with the elves, was there not?”

“Yes. Sluggoth.”

“You brought back the other two. Why not him?”

Velixar closed his eyes, thinking back to the moment when his entire life had been obliterated into something new.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “I reached for it, but it just wasn’t…there.”

“It was killed, not banished,” Karak said. “And as time passes, the essence continues on to its final resting place. It populates the abyss below Afram, a ghost among ghosts. The longer it is there, undisturbed, the greater the difficulty. To bring it back to mortality? A soul can be separated from a body, but it must immediately be trapped or placed within another. The moment the soul transcends the barriers between this world and Afram, bringing it back becomes near impossible. Perhaps Ashhur could have brought back this Brienna, but it would have only been a shadowed form of her, disjointed and in a body doomed to rot and break. Either that, or she could have been brought back as a ghost, barely able to hear or understand the sight and sound of you. I am surprised that you did not realize this in all your wisdom.”

“I am sorry to have disappointed you,” Velixar said, dropping to one knee. Again, he’d been shown that he was lesser than he thought himself to be, yet instead of letting it frustrate him, he let it remind him why he had sworn his life to Karak. Better to think on that than to relent to thoughts of Brienna.

The god dismissed his apology with a wave. “Enough. Stand up.”

With that, Karak stepped up to the two corpses and placed his hands on them. Both burst into layers of raging black flames. Their dead flesh charred and melted off their bones, and then their bones caught fire as well, succumbing to the flames’ hunger until the slabs contained nothing but two human-shaped outlines in ash. Velixar drew back from the scene, remembering a similar one that had taken place many months before, when the lifeless form of that beautiful elf had been handed the same fate by Ashhur.

Velixar cringed, his heart sinking once more.

“Do not be dismayed,” the god told him, misreading his expression. “Fret not about Darakken, Prophet. If what I plan comes to pass, we will have no more need for the creature. But I need you , Velixar, the swallower of demons. No matter what your failings, you are still my greatest disciple. I handed you the medallion and named you High Prophet for a reason.”

Velixar bowed, taken aback by the uncommon espousal, but the taint of his failure was still like a festering boil on his soul. No matter what his god told him, no matter how strongly the pendant pulsed on his chest, he could not let it go. He wanted to discuss these matters with someone other than his deity, wanted to talk with someone like Roland, a receptive ear with a desire to learn, only one who would not turn away from him.

That man exists, he reminded himself. I will seek him out tomorrow, and perhaps I will ride with him all the way to Mordeina.

“Now go get your rest, High Prophet,” Karak said. “Tomorrow we march, and victory will not be very far behind.”

Come high noon the following day, after fifteen thousand men packed up their belongings, donned their armor and weapons, and joined their formations, the new Lord Commander gave the order to advance. Line by line they marched over the bridge, armor clattering, horses plodding, banners floating limply in the stifling summer air.

Velixar remained at the side, watching man after man clomp onto the Wooden Bridge. Nearly six hours had passed by the time the wagons that took up the rear, including the one that had housed Lanike Crestwell, bounded onto the bridge’s sturdy slats. Velixar sat tall on his charger, fingers tapping Lionsbane’s hilt, his lips tightening into a thin white line of concern, before he finally shook his horse’s reins and guided the beast to follow the rest.

He had spent the morning searching for Boris Marchant, questioning the young soldier’s superiors and even those who served in his platoon. None of them knew Boris’s whereabouts, so Velixar had resigned himself to carefully examining every soldier who crossed the bridge. Still, he had never once seen Boris’s face. He concluded that the young man must have fallen prey to one of the wolf-men’s claws. He shook his head, feeling foolish for his sorrow. There were other capable students here, young men who would serve him just as well. When all was said and done, he would find another.

The dark became a living thing, pressing in on Laurel, wrapping her in its ethereal arms, suffocating her. In the blackness she had no concept of the passage of time: she might have been down in the dungeons for a day, a week, or perhaps even a lifetime.

With no outside stimulus, her mind retreated inward. Whenever she rubbed her eyes, the bright flashes that lit her vision became faceless loved ones calling out to her from a distance. She saw her mother and father, her sisters and dead brothers-even Mite and Giant, their wrappings glimmering with the phosphorescent light of inner space. The stinking corpse beside her became a dozen different monsters and hateful people, and she cowered in the corner, as far away from it as possible.

Formless voices stalked her in the darkness, growing ever closer with each passing moment. You are as worthless as a whore.…You have turned your back on your god.…You deserve your fate.…There is no more hope. She screamed in protest against them, but they did not stop their assault. Day and night, through the indistinguishable margin between sleep and awareness, their accusations stabbed at her, driving her further from sanity.

She almost wished for the Final Judges, the new rulers of Veldaren, to come for her and end her suffering. Almost.

It was Guster, her father figure in Veldaren, who helped her hold onto the final threads of sanity. As she lay suffering, the old man’s calming words, imagined though they were, echoed throughout her skull, pleading with her to uphold her end of the bargain. I put my faith in you, his voice said. You are the key-you who were not a slave to blind belief…you who learned the errors of your ways…you who love Karak despite the Divinity’s obvious lack of love for you…

Laurel began laughing.

“I am mighty!” she shouted, sobs wracking her every other word. “I am strong!”

The blackness closed in on her yet again, and she felt the ground shift beneath her. Creaking noises pierced her ears, as well as the scrape of stone ground against stone. It wasn’t only the darkness that was alive, but the dungeon itself. She sat up, pressed the heels of her palms against her ears, and rocked back and forth. She pictured her god in the months after the creation of man, long before her birth. In her mind’s eye, she saw him pounding the earth with his fists, digging deep into the land, and shaping the walls of this very dungeon. He lifted his glowing eyes, smiling wickedly at his children as they gathered around the rim of the crater he had created, Laurel among them. If you turn away from me, his voice said in her mind as his stare burned through her, you have turned against the light of order. Let the shadows of chaos embrace you hereafter.