John Fultz - Seven Princes

Giant-girl and sorcerer came down gently, guided by the currents of Iardu’s power. Elhathym raised his hands and shouted at the darkness. A host of shadows, the ravenous Vakai, soared up from the bloodied earth, a torrent of inky blackness rising toward the Feathered Serpent. Khama swirled above the ruins, twisting his great coils in a spherical pattern, growing ever faster, casting brightness from his tri-toned feathers until he blazed like a second sun in the sky. The Vakai swarmed up to smother his light, a deluge of darkness brimming with ten thousand claws and fangs. Rays of illumination shot through cracks in the writhing black cocoon.

“The shadows are weakened in daylight,” said Iardu, “Khama will handle them.”

Now that Sharadza stood in her Giantess form, the Shaper looked so very small.

So much death in these first few seconds. We must finish this soon

…

The black lion sped toward them, and Elhathym’s grinning skull-face hovered above the chariot wall behind it. His eyes were twin voids, pathways to nothingness. Iardu tossed a bolt of lightning from his quiver. The chariot exploded into a shower of bone fragments. Now the black lion roared, and a thick tongue came spilling from its fanged maw. The tongue was a hissing cobra, spitting venom. Elhathym stood unfazed, watching the battle of light and darkness in the sky. The thunderbolt had not harmed him.

The Feathered Serpent spun faster in the sky, and its light grew hotter and brighter, until its colors merged into a single white flame round as the moon and hot as the sun. The Vakai shrieked and shriveled, and were annihilated. They dripped from the tiny sun, falling like a black rain that evaporated before it touched the earth. The sky itself turned to a blazing vault of whiteness.

The black lion shrugged off a second thunderbolt from Iardu. Sharadza grabbed its poisonous tongue in her fist, which was sheathed in a gauntlet of sunfire, and ripped it from the beast’s mouth. Now the beast fell upon her with fury, stamping her to the ground and gnashing at her helm with fangs black as ebony. She kicked it off her, stabbing at it with the golden spear, but it was quick and she missed. Its scorpion tail struck forward, clanging off her fiery breastplate. She thrust the point of the sun-spear into its flank. It howled more like a wounded wolf than a lion. The great white light dimmed in the sky, and she looked up to see the last of the Vakai fading like smoke. Yet now another shadow blotted out the true sun. A far greater shadow.

Elhathym’s laughter filled the vault of blue sky. He was a black mountain rising toward the clouds. One massive foot stood upon the ruins of the fortress, crushing it to dust, while the other stamped the ruined town into a flatter desolation. His mighty head wore a second crown now, a wreath of clouds, and his hands were gargantuan spiders that might tear whole islands from their homes in the sea. Khama was only a glowing ball of fire before the God-sized sorcerer.

An icy terror froze Sharadza’s heart. She was so very small. Miniscule. They all were.

Iardu lay on the ground struggling against a mass of black tentacles that strangled and constricted his limbs. They rose from cracks in the earth, like living roots, but their substance was pure darkness. The Shaper screamed. His flesh withered where the dark vines curled about it.

All this Sharadza took in with a moment’s glance, then the black lion clamped its jaws about her leg. The scorpion tail lunged at her again. She sliced it in two with the blade of her spear. The grip of the lion’s fangs would not break. It shook her, slammed her against the ground. Its fangs sank through the solid light and pierced her skin. She grabbed a pebble from the grass and became a thing of stone. The lion-beast pulled away, growling at the granite obelisk that no longer bled or offered resistance. It turned luminous moon-eyes toward the divine bulk of Elhathym, recognizing his earth-shaking laughter.

In a flash, she became flesh again, shed of the golden armor now, and raised the sun-spear. The black lion lunged and she rammed the blade into its maw, shoving with all the strength of Uduri limbs. She forced it backward and vaulted atop it, impaling and pinning it to the earth.

Now colossal Elhathym stomped his right foot, and an earthquake struck. Sharadza fell to the ground beside the dying demon lion. Ocean waves leaped skyward along the beach. The earth cracked like green glass, and a fissure spread east and west from Elhathym’s monolithic foot. She could not stand, but lay on her belly as the earth split wide, the fissure yawning, becoming a vast chasm. The scattered debris of town and castle fell into the abyss, and a cataract of seawater rushed into its steaming depths. She watched, buffeted and shaken, as Iardu wailed inside the tangle of black vines that stole his life. Elhathym reached out to grab the spinning ball of flame that was the Feathered Serpent. His hand took it as a man might grasp a firefly. Now it was the Serpent again, a squirming, burning cinder between his clawed fingers.

Elhathym raised his fist toward the clouds, then hurled Khama into the great chasm. The coastline moaned, ocean heaved, and his laughter boomed. The Feathered Serpent plummeted into the abyss like a discarded olive pit.

He is a Creature of the Air. Surely he will fly out again…

Elhathym clapped his hands. They sparked with dark flames and the earth-fissure groaned, closing as fast as it had opened. The walls of the crevasse collided with a bone-rattling crunch. Somewhere deep below, the Feathered Serpent was caught and crushed.

Iardu had told her in the cave that earth was the nemesis of air, as water was to fire. Of course Elhathym had known this, and used the earth itself to destroy Khama.

The world grew still for a moment, but Iardu’s shout broke the stillness. The killing vines shattered like kindling about his blackened limbs. His mouth and eyes blazed with white flame, and the Shaper grew. He grew beyond the ability of her eyes to follow. Rivers of white flame danced along his carmine robes… and now he stood as tall as Elhathym.

The two sorcerers filled the sky.

Taller than the Gods themselves…

She lay there, stifling a scream, a prisoner of awe, as they wrestled above her, their feet stamping hills into prairies and hurling quakes along the coastline. The ocean crashed about their ankles. She imagined herself a gnat caught between the feet of feuding Uduru. The black lion had melted to a pitchy sludge, and she pulled loose her golden sun-spear. She stumbled toward the western hills, dragging the weapon behind her as the soil trembled and trees uprooted themselves.

Iardu spewed gouts of white fire from his mouth, but Elhathym only laughed as his face melted and reformed. His serpentine tongue wound about Iardu’s neck, a flame of darkness, and his huge claws locked between Iardu’s fingers. They shouted indecipherable words of power that split the earth and sky worse than any thunder. Sharadza fell among the grass of an open field, transfixed by the spectacle of warring titans.

If they should fall…

Instinct demanded that she run… flee this terrible sight before she went mad… or watch the sky-tall sorcerers fall into the sea and set loose typhoons to swallow half the earth. But she could not tear herself away from their struggle. Iardu did this impossible thing because of her. She witnessed the summit of his powers now, and she knew that he was not the equal of Elhathym. Not in strength, ferocity, or sorcery.

What could she do? What could a speck of dust do to aid a mountain?

She clutched her spear of sunlight and watched the wrestling of immortals.

Elhathym opened his great mouth hideously wide. Stars and nebulae swirled inside. It yawned wider and wider, beyond the confines of his godly head. The stars fell away, swallowed by a sea of infinite darkness, and the maw grew wider and taller than Iardu, who struggled to pull away from its celestial gravity. Elhathym was a vast black gullet now, large enough to swallow the ocean, sucking clouds and wind into the void at its center.