Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

Tavis dragged himself up the great stairs as though he were climbing a cliff, his lungs burning with exertion and his muscles aching with fatigue. The stones jumped beneath his body as the titan pounded down the shattered colonnade to meet him. The scout tried to climb faster, but his aged body simply would not move as quickly as he wanted to. His liver-spotted skin had turned slightly translucent with his last use of the cleaving power, and he did not know whether to attribute his quivering muscles to his racing age or to the general weakness he had suffered since Wynn Castle. It did not matter; the battle would be over soon enough, and as long as he had the axe, Lanaxis could not harm him.

When Tavis clambered atop the last stair, he found himself staring at the titan’s ancient knee. He raised Sky Cleaver to attack. Lanaxis backed out of range, stepping over a toppled pillar as thick as Tavis was tall.

“You have done well, but Sky Cleaver is not for mortals,” the titan rumbled. “I shall take my father’s axe.”

“Never!” Tavis could not tell whether concern for Brianna or love of Sky Cleaver inspired his anger, but at least he was sure of its target. “I am the One Wielder!”

Tavis charged, leaping onto a column pedestal and from there to the toppled pillar over which Lanaxis had retreated. This time, the titan did not withdraw. He lowered his hand and called to Sky Cleaver in the same ancient language that Basil had taught Tavis.

“In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones, Your Maker-”

Tavis felt Sky Cleaver’s handle slipping. “No!” The One Wielder’s fury became a fiery red curtain, so brilliant and hot he could barely see. He began his own chant. “In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones-”

“-O Sky Cleaver-” boomed Lanaxis.

So fierce was the titan’s angry voice that it knocked Tavis backward off the pillar. He felt a cold surge rise from the axe’s handle, then landed on his feet amidst the jumbled rubble. Sky Cleaver slipped another inch through his fingers.

“-Your Maker-!” Tavis yelled, but he could tell that his voice was no match-and never would be-for the titan’s.

“-do I summon you into the service-”

Tavis grasped the shaft with all his strength and leapt toward the titan. “Cleave!”

“-of my hand,” Lanaxis finished.

A fiery surge of pain shot through the One Wielder’s body, then he felt himself being pulled through the air as Sky Cleaver answered the titan’s call.

Tavis held on to the axe’s ivory handle with all his strength. He slammed into Lanaxis’s palm, and the titan’s fingers closed to crush him. Another wave of cold energy surged from the axe handle. The scout found himself falling, holding on to Sky Cleaver by no more than its pommel.

It was enough. The blade bit Lanaxis’s leg above the knee, then sliced through the great limb as cleanly as it had cleaved Othea Tor. A thundering cry of pain pealed across the steam-shrouded skies, then Tavis dropped, once more cushioned by Sky Cleaver’s defenses, onto the bloody, rubble-strewn floor.

Lanaxis tumbled from the portico and slammed into the shattered ground below. The entire building bucked beneath the force of his fall, bringing the remains of the colonnade tumbling down about Tavis’s head. Another cold surge rose from Sky Cleaver’s shaft. Two pillars smashed down beside the One Wielder, then a section of entablature landed across them. Tavis found himself buried in a sheltering cave of rubble, sitting in a pond of the titan’s hot blood.

The portico continued to shake and tremble for several moments, until at last all of the massive debris had finally fallen. Even before the quake subsided, Tavis was already working to dig his way out, pushing cornices and capitals away as fast as his exhausted body would allow. He had no idea how old he had grown in the past few moments, but the wheezing that he heard in his ears did not sound as if it came from the chest of a young firbolg.

At last, Tavis reached the surface and clambered over the rubble to the front of the portico. To his surprise, he did not find Lanaxis waiting to attack, or even lying helpless at the foot of the palace stairs. Instead, a river of blood led across the broken plain to the single boulder that was all that remained of Othea Tor. There was no sign of the titan himself, but Basil and Galgadayle were kneeling atop the stone, staring down at its purple shadow with their faces twisted into expressions of utter astonishment.

The battle roar continued to ring in Brianna’s ears long after the portico had come crashing down, so she did not hear the scuttling boots until the walker had already crossed most of the fume-choked antechamber. The steps were ponderous and slow, not loud enough to be the titan’s, but too heavy to be man or ’kin.

Brianna slipped off the plinth where she had been sitting and rushed to place herself between the entrance and Kaedlaw, who remained wailing upon the floor. She did not try to take her child into her arms. It would have been easier to grab a cloud. No matter how closely she approached before kneeling beside her son, the queen always found herself beyond arm’s length. She removed Hiatea’s talisman from her neck and pulled a sliver of broken mirror from her cloak pocket, determined that if she could not touch the child, neither would anyone else.

While the battle raged outside, Brianna had stayed in the throne hall with Kaedlaw, so she could only guess who, or what, was coming after her son now. By the sound of his shuffling gait, he was large, patient, and either wounded or exhausted-possibly both. He also had to be someone of incredible power; no one else could have survived the harrowing battle that had shaken Bleak Palace for the last ten minutes. The queen half-expected to see a god’s avatar stepping out of the fumes to claim her son.

It hardly mattered to Brianna. She would attack, and without fear. The queen had long since worried herself into such an emotional frenzy that she could no longer feel anything except a seething, mindless anger: at Lanaxis for leaving her unable to defend her child, at Tavis for failing to stop the titan at Wynn Castle, and, most of all, at herself for drinking a spy’s drug and allowing an ettin to get a child on her. Whoever was coming did not realize it, but he was doing her a favor. She would fight him to the end. She could no longer bear to watch her child suffer, and death was the only escape left to either of them.

A large, stooped shape shambled into the smoky doorway, the silhouette of a great axe clutched in his hands. Brianna silently called upon her goddess’s magic and felt the talisman growing warm. When she uttered her spell incantation, the sliver vanished. A silvery light flashed from her hand and bounced off the throne room walls, returning in the form of a thousand long, gleaming needles. The queen pointed at the gray figure, and the silvery darts hissed toward him in a deadly stream.

A weary groan rose from the newcomer’s throat. The torrent of needles suddenly parted and tinkled off the floor around him, changing into harmless sparkles of light. Brianna cursed and reached for her knife.

“Brianna?”

The voice was a reasonable imitation of Tavis’s, save that it quivered like an old man’s and was far too deep. She hurled her dagger at the doorway. The weapon flew as level and true as any throwing blade, for she had enchanted it with a feather from the shadowroc’s wing.

Again, the stranger groaned. The knife veered off course and shattered against an unseen pillar. The fellow let the axe head drop to the floor, and he leaned on the heft.

“Stop that.” He sounded even older than before. “I can’t stand more of this.”