Chris Evans - The Light of Burning Shadows

Every emotion inside Konowa poured out of him in a flurry of saber strikes. Limbs from sarka har snaked toward him. He turned and cut them with vicious strokes of his blade. The trees screamed and writhed. Konowa slashed and burned until no memory and no feeling was left.

For a time, he was only death.

His shoulder muscles screamed as he hacked through more sarka har, but it only drove him harder. All the lies and deceptions were vanquished with every slash of the blade and every burst of frost fire. Mountains would have crumbled and seas parted in the face of his fury.

More skeletons marched toward him, and Konowa leaped forward, grabbing the closest grinning skull. White flame brightened in the skull’s eyes, then was blown out as black frost shattered it into hundreds of pieces. The rest of the bones clattered to the ground. All around him the shades of the dead scythed through the skeletons, extinguishing their unholy light with cold efficiency.

Konowa ran forward and almost stopped when he saw Rallie with her sketchbook, but he felt the power that surrounded her and knew she was in no immediate danger, so he kept going.

Everything before Konowa became a blur, and he cut things down he barely saw or understood. Nothing was going to stop him. Nothing.

And then no more creatures stood before him. Konowa knew without looking that the regiment was behind him, and he slowed to a walk, his eyes bulging and his lips twisted into a sneer. Frost fire licked between the fingers of his left hand and bathed the saber in his right.

At that moment, Konowa was a god.

His was the only power. Nothing could stop him.

Blue light from the Jewel of the Desert bathed him-he knew he had won. He walked around the outcropping of rock and looked up into the burning eyes of a dragon.

“Oh, sh-”

The flame in Konowa went out. He stared with his mouth wide open.

It was a dragon made of bones.

The dragon opened its jaws wide. Instead of teeth, white flames arced between its upper and lower jaw. More flame burned in the eye sockets of its skull. Deep within its chest a fire of white and black flame twisted and burned, but Konowa had no time to puzzle about that as the dragon stretched out its wings, then stumbled and righted itself as it moved toward him. The bones that made up its body twisted, and several clattered to the ground. Sand swirled around its frame as if helping to keep its hideous form together.

Its jaws opened wider and a blistering torch of white flame issued forth. Konowa rolled out of the way, but some of the soldiers behind him were not so lucky. Konowa turned and saw only ash where several Iron Elves had once stood.

He looked at the drake again and saw that the wings were not yet complete. As Konowa got over his shock he realized that much of the skeleton was incomplete. He looked closer. He recognized partial skeletons of camels and even humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs. But that wasn’t the worst of it-the skulls of the dead had flickering white flames in their eye sockets, and their jaws were open.

They were screaming.

Konowa recoiled from the sight. Were some of his elves part of this monstrosity? It then dawned on him that this wasn’t Kaman Rhal’s work at all. This was the she-drake married to Kaman Rhal. She had always been the power behind the throne. The Suljak hadn’t called back Kaman Rhal’s power at all-he had called back hers.

And now it was rebuilding itself as best it could, with the bones of the dead.

As Konowa watched, more skeletons scrambled over the dragon. They were tearing themselves and other bodies apart to construct her wings. Konowa looked up where the Star hovered in the sky above the canyon. If the dragon was able to fly, it would easily seize the Star.

Konowa called on the frost fire and let it course through him. He still had no idea how to attack a creature such as this.

The regiment grouped around him, the staccato fire of muskets chipping away at its bones, but it would take a thousand muskets days before they could whittle it down to nothing. Without cannons they could never shoot it apart.

The night sky blazed with the light of the Star. The metal of the muskets gleamed with it as they fired. Smoke gushed forth from the muzzles, adding red and orange flame to the night. Musket balls flew forth, scything through the bones of the dragon. It made no difference.

There had to be another way.

The dragon lurched forward, the fire in its chest turning whiter as it came on. Konowa felt something, but the air was awash in energy and there was no way to pinpoint anything.

The shades of the dead moved toward the dragon, tearing through its skeleton army. The dragon shook its skull and opened its jaws even wider. Flame poured out like a molten river. Frost fire burst like sparks wherever the river of flame touched a shade. Screaming filled Konowa’s head. The shades could not go forward. They began to retreat.

“Attack!” Konowa shouted. Black flame climbed higher around the shades and they moved forward again, but again the white flame pushed them back.

“I command you to kill it!”

The shades of the dead hesitated, even as white flame scoured their ranks. Konowa felt their pain, but there was no choice. They were already dead.

A black fissure opened up in the chest bone of the drake, and out stumbled the figure of a man. Before Konowa could determine if this was indeed Kaman Rhal, the figure raised its hands and pointed them at the drake. Black frost fire of a magnitude to rival the white fire of the drake blasted every skeleton crawling over the bone dragon to dust.

The drake staggered on her claws, then righted herself and directed her massive head down at the figure standing below it. It opened its maw wide and white flame gushed forth. The figure disappeared within the column of flame.

When the flame subsided, the dark figure no longer stood before the drake alone. Now there were two. Konowa recognized Her Emissary at once.

“Gwyn?!”

Her Emissary and the figure both raised their hands and throbbing, twisting coils of black flame began to build around them. The air in the canyon reeked with its energy.

Konowa was driven to his knees as the power grew. It pulsed deep inside him until he thought his ribs would surely break. The acorn against his chest became pure, black frost, drawing the last vestiges of heat from his body. His vision began to gray, and he had opened his mouth to speak when the world tore apart in front of his eyes.

The drake reared up on its legs and flapped its now-rebuilt wings once in preparation to seize the Star that hung in the sky, waiting.

Her Emissary and the figure thrust their hands forward, sending a maelstrom of frost fire at the creature.

It blew apart into thousands of shards as the roiling jet of black frost fire seared it to the core.

Konowa was knocked to his back as the blast rolled over him. For a moment he lost all sense of sight and sound. Images flashed before his eyes.

His mother. Yimt. Visyna. The Shadow Monarch. The Star.

His elves.

Sound roared back into his ears, and he realized it was screaming. His vision cleared. The wall of approaching sarka har was incinerated by a sheet of obsidian flame. Drakarri and the drake’s skeleton army of the dead burned with the same black flame. Frost fire was cleansing everything in and around the canyon. Konowa got to his feet. Only the regiment remained, surrounded by frost fire. Among them Konowa spied the survivors of the 3rd Spears. Nearby, the Prince and the Viceroy stood looking in the same direction, their eyes wide. The shades of the dead were gone.

Konowa looked back to where the dragon had stood. Two pillars of frost fire now occupied the space. They reached up into the sky and enveloped the Star, and brought it back down to earth. The flame guttered and went out, revealing the figure of a soldier wearing a caerna and Her Emissary both holding the Star in their hands.