Paul Kemp - The Godborn

He channeled divine power into the cloud of shadows around him, turned it acidic to non-divine beings. Caustic shadows left him unharmed but melted flesh from the shrieking shock troop devils. They beat their wings frantically, but the cloud had already reduced their wings to shreds. In mere heartbeats, they’d been reduced to bones, and a shower of gore fell on the waiting devils below.

Riven rode the darkness back to the Citadel of Shadow, just inside the open double doors. The shadowstuff in his flesh reknit his nose, healed the other minor wounds he’d received during the battle.

Mephistopheles wheeled over the battlefield, his own wounds already healed, black energy firing from his fists, annihilating undead by the score. He was searching for Riven.

“Show yourself, man-god!” the archfiend shouted. “I’ll rip your godhood from a hole in your throat!”

Riven thought himself a match for Mephistopheles, at least in the Shadowfell, but the archdevil’s legions were slaughtering Riven’s undead forces. None of the lesser devils presented a threat to Riven individually, but thousands of them, in combination with Mephistopheles, posed a threat. And Mephistopheles was immortal, and had lived for ages. He knew how to draw on his sliver of divine power in ways Riven did not.

Of course, Riven didn’t need to defeat Mephistopheles. He just needed to hold him and his army off long enough for Vasen to rescue his father.

“Hurry up, Cale the Younger,” Riven said, and darted back out into battle.

Cania hit them before the shadows lifted. A wind so cold it felt like knives sent Vasen’s teeth to chattering. Screams filled the air, the stink of burning flesh, the smell of brimstone. Distant cracks boomed, the sound so loud it seemed as though the bones of titans might be breaking. Bestial grunts and growls carried on the biting gusts.

When the shadows that transported them dissipated, they all three stared in horror at the terrain. They stood on an icy promontory, exposed to the wind. A sky the color of blood glowed above them, the sun that lit it little more than a distant torch. Ice extended in all directions, huge jagged shards jutting from the cracked, windswept landscape.

Thick rivers of magma cut through the ice, glowing veins of flame in which tortured souls writhed. Devils stalked the river banks, stabbing at the damned with their polearms, pulling impaled souls from the magma. Huge, malformed devils blotted the sky in distant flocks. Vasen could not make out their forms at such a distance, but their squirming, awkward flight made him vaguely nauseated.

Vasen had seen it before in dreams, but still it sickened him. “Don’t look,” he said, but Gerak and Orsin seemed transfixed, overwhelmed by what they saw. Vasen grabbed each of them by the arm and shook them harshly. “Look at me. Look at me.”

They did, and he saw from the look in their eyes that what they’d seen had marked their souls. They’d never unsee it. If they lived, it would haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives.

It would fall to him to keep his companions grounded. His dreams and his faith had armored him against Cania’s horror. The fire in his spirit could not be quenched, not even by the Eighth Hell. He held his shield forth and uttered a prayer to the Dawnfather.

“Strength to our spirit, Dawnfather. And resolve to our purpose.”

He channeled his faith through his shield, and it glowed with a rosy light that touched each of them, warmed them, comforted them. Immediately Vasen felt his spirit lighten, felt the darkness and cold retreat. Gerak and Orsin, too, seemed less haunted.

“Stay strong,” he said to them, as he drew Weaveshear. Both nodded. “It’s an awful place, but it’s just a place.”

“Just a place,” Gerak said, clutching his bow, his voice higher than usual.

A line of shadows poured out of Weaveshear and flowed down the side of the promontory, toward the plains below. Vasen followed its path with his eyes and saw where it was headed.

A mound of snow and ice rose out of the frigid plain. Dark lines swirled around the mound, ropes of shadow that were unmoved by Cania’s wind.

“There,” he said, and pointed with Weaveshear.

He tried to feel the correspondence between the shadows where they stood and the shadows near the mound, but he couldn’t quite feel it. Perhaps he needed to practice the skill more, or perhaps the wards around the mound prevented the connection. Either way, they’d have to move on foot.

“Let’s go,” he said.

A bellow sounded from above and behind them, so loud it nearly knocked them from their feet. Ice cracked in answer to the sound. A huge shadow darkened the earth.

Vasen turned, looked up, and gasped.

A huge form blotted out the sky behind them, a flat, undulating carpet of doughy, black-veined gray flesh a bowshot across. Tiny eyes stared dumbly out of a ridge of flesh in its front. A mouth like a cave hung slackly open, showing a diseased, malformed tongue and rotting, pointed teeth each as tall as a grown man. Vasen had no idea what kept the creature afloat, but each tremulous beat of the fleshy folds that served as its wings sent a wind groundward that smelled of corpses.

The three men gagged, pulled cloaks over their mouths.

Forms moved atop the creature, red-scaled devils, a score or more. If they saw the three companions. .

“Down!” Vasen said. “Down!”

But it was too late. The huge beast bellowed again, the sound dislodging a shower of ice and snow from the earth, and angled downward. Dozens of the muscular, red-skinned devils leaped off the creature’s back, falling through the sky like a red rain. Each of them bore a vicious looking glaive. A squirming nest of short tentacles grew from their faces and jaws like a grotesque beard. They whooped as they hit the ice and pelted toward the companions.

“They saw us!” Vasen said. “Run! Now!”

While his two companions leaped over the edge of the promontory and slid down the side, Vasen aimed his shield at the oncoming wave of devils and intoned a prayer to the Dawnfather. His shield flared white and a wave of holy energy shot forth from it in a wide line. It struck the leading devils and knocked them off their feet. Of those coming behind, some leaped over their fallen brethren, while others tripped on them and fell in a tangle of limbs and claws.

Vasen turned and jumped down the edge after his comrades. He’d misjudged its steepness and hung for a terrifying second in open air before he slammed back down on the edge and skidded down the slope on his backside. He tried to slow himself with his shield and blade but could not get purchase in the ice. Hitting the plain below sent a painful shock through his legs. Orsin pulled him to his feet. Gerak had two arrows nocked and sighted back up the ledge.

“Move!” Vasen said. “Move, Gerak!”

From above came the whoops and hollers of the pursuing devils. One of them leaped high over the lip of the promontory, glaive glittering in the red light of the plane. Gerak loosed both arrows at once and the devil’s whoop turned to a pained squeal.

Vasen grabbed Gerak and Orsin and ran for the cairn of his father as the body of the devil Gerak had shot crashed to the ice beside them.

Hollers, growls, and snarls sounded from behind them. Vasen spared a look back to see a score of devils pouring over the ledge, scrabbling down its side, reaching the plain and pelting after the companions.

“Don’t look back!” he said. “Just run! Run!”

They careened over the ice, slipping as they ran, their breath pouring out of them in frozen clouds. Gerak fell once, as did Vasen, and both times Orsin, surefooted even on the ice, helped them rise and keep running.

The growls grew louder behind them, the sound of their fiendish claws digging into the ice. They closed on the mound, the shadows from Weaveshear mixing with those emanating from the mound.