Richard Baker: Final Gate

“Araevin! Do something!” Maresa called.

He took the wand in his hand and threw it to her. “Here! The command is dalsien.”

Maresa snatched the wand out of the air and turned it against the foes stalking her with a malicious grin. “Dalsien!” she shouted, and the bright blue bolt of disrupting energy hammered one of her foes against the opposite wall.

Araevin started to speak a spell against the daemonfey prince, but a sudden flurry of wing beats descended behind him. “You have upset my plans for the last time, Araevin Teshurr!” snarled Sarya.

He turned to defend himself, but not before she reached out and grasped him with a fist that glowed blue-green with arcane power. Icy lightning hammered through Araevin, hurling him off his feet. He sprawled to the ground, thrashing uncontrollably as Sarya’s spell burned and stabbed at him. He could not even scream.

Sarya smiled, and flicked her tail. “Now that is what pleases me, Xhalph! My enemies prostrate before me, helpless! How shall I repay this one for all the trouble he has caused me?”

“Get away from him, you foul harpy!” Starbrow commanded as he hurled into the fray, Keryvian burning like a white brand in his hands.

The moon elf roared a challenge and raced to Araevin’s side, brandishing his sword. Beside him, the wood elf Jerreda raised her bow and with one skillful shot dropped the fey’ri dueling Jorin. Two more wood elves behind her met with fey’ri warriors and began furious duels of their own.

Sarya whirled with a hiss of surprise. She threw herself into the air just in time to avoid Starbrow’s deadly blade, and beat her wings furiously for a margin of safety.

“Xhalph!” she cried. “Deal with this one!”

Starbrow looked down at Araevin, who was still wracked by the furious blue-green energy of Sarya’s spell. With one quick motion he dipped Keryvian’s blade down to touch Araevin’s chest. The baneblade gleamed once, and the ancient counter-magic that Demron had forged into his mightiest weapon scattered the daemonfey spell into dissipating tendrils of fog.

“Keep Sarya off my back,” he said, and he threw himself forward to meet Xhalph.

Araevin rolled to one side, trying to shake off the effects of Sarya’s spell. He heard Maresa shout out “Dalsien! Dalsien!” expending the power of his disruption wand with lavish lack of regard for the work he’d put into the device. Blue bolts of power scored the air, and peals of thunder rocked the damaged Waymeet. Well, I can’t think of a better way to empty a wand, he decided. Meanwhile Donnor bludgeoned the fey’ri mage with a glowing hammer of force and blasted at his foe with brilliant sunbeams.

He looked around for Sarya, and found her shaping a spell of abyssal fire between her hands. Desperately he threw out a counterspell and negated the blast before she could incinerate Starbrow or the rest of his companions. Sarya snarled in pure anger, and blasted at him with a hail of magical darts that he parried with a quick shielding spell. He replied by hurling a deadly green disintegrating ray at the daemonfey queen, but she simply spun away from it with a quick twist of her wings. The ray chewed through a spar of the Waymeet behind her, and with a screech of outrage the daemonfey queen fluttered away to avoid being crushed beneath the falling column. Araevin lost sight of her and took a moment to push himself upright.

Only ten feet from him Starbrow and Xhalph battled each other in a furious display of swordsmanship. Keryvian sliced the air with streaks of white fire, and Xhalph snarled a foul curse and gave ground under Starbrow’s attack. Keryvian scored him once across the thigh and a second time along the ribs, leaving seared black wounds in its wake. The daemonfey roared in anger and struck back. Parrying Starbrow’s one sword with the two in his lower arms, he lunged out in a scissors-cut with both upper blades.

“I will kill you!” Xhalph screamed.

Starbrow ducked beneath the strokes and stepped up under the towering swordsman’s guard. It was too close for Keryvian, but instead of trying to hack or stab with the blade the moon elf set its edge to Xhalph’s ruby flesh and whirled away, drawing a long, deep cut with Keryvian’s razor edge. Xhalph stabbed at his back with his two left-hand blades, and Starbrow parried one behind his back with the baneblade and jumped away from the other, finishing his turn just as Xhalph drew back his left hands and lashed out with his right.

“Not this day, demonspawn!” Starbrow snarled, and he brought Keryvian whistling up in a vicious uppercut that took off Xhalph’s lower right arm above the elbow and his upper arm a little above the wrist. Two of the daemonfey’s swords went spinning through the air, and Xhalph’s roar of rage changed pitch into a shriek of pain.

“Mother!” he cried. Blood splattering from the stumps, he spread his wings for balance and backed away from Starbrow. The moon elf swordsman threw himself forward and buried Keryvian in Xhalph’s belly before the daemonfey could get out of reach. Xhalph let out another awful cry as Keryvian flashed into white incandescence deep in his flesh. Smoke pouring from his mouth, the daemonfey prince crumpled to the ground and fell still.

Sarya Dlardrageth appeared above Starbrow, eyes blazing in fury. She threw out her hand and sent the moon elf warrior flying head-over-heels into a wall of jagged glass.

“You will die for that, paleblood!” she screeched.

She started to incant a fearsome necromancy, summoning a black aura that crawled over her hands like something hungry and aware. Starbrow shook his head and started to pick himself up out of the rubble.

Araevin saw his chance.

Quick as thought, he wove a spell shield and threw it over Starbrow. Sarya finished her deadly incantation and hurled the crawling black fire at the moon elf-but Araevin’s defense flared bright blue, and reflected the black fire back at the daemonfey queen. Sarya hissed once in surprise, and her own spell took her full in the center of her body. Avid flames of dancing obsidian sprang up all over her body, guttering from her very flesh, streaming from eyes, mouth, and even her ears and the joinings of her armor.

The daemonfey queen shrieked in pain and anger. “ I-will-kill you-for that! ” she cried. She arched over in agony, then started to sink, no longer able to stay aloft. Fluttering awkwardly, she crashed into the ground in a corona of ebon flame.

Starbrow rolled to his feet and started toward Sarya, but another fey’ri warrior leaped down to intervene. In the space of the blink of an eye, the moon elf and the demon-tainted warrior were engaged in a furious duel, blades flashing almost too fast for Araevin to follow. Meanwhile, Sarya managed to extinguish herself with a potent counterspell. Her ruby flesh still smoked, but she was no longer being consumed by her own spell.

Araevin took a deep breath, and evoked the Word of Power, the ondreier ysele. Sarya flinched away and quickly raised a spell-shield of her own, guarding herself beneath a mantle of golden spheres that shimmered and whirled about her. Araevin recognized the spell; it was a potent abjuration, a defense against almost any spell. The daemonfey queen grinned maliciously, and started to shape another spell to fling at him.

Framing his spell in the Word of Power, Araevin hammered at her spell-shield with a reciprocal spell of his own. He seized her golden spheres, channeling all the energy of Sarya’s own defense against her. With the strength of the ondreier ysele behind his reciprocal magic, Sarya’s defense doubled and doubled again in strength. The golden spheres froze in their orbits, quavered once, and plunged into the daemonfey queen’s body.

“No! No! ” Sarya screamed.