Thomas Harlan - The storm of Heaven

Get up, boy, get up now! A furious voice echoed in his mind and he felt his arms push him up from the ground. We're all dead if you don't put that pain aside!

Frightened, Maxian felt himself lurched up, most of his weight on one foot. His other ankle was like a red-hot ember shoved under the flesh, burning at his nerves.

Heal yourself, you bastard! You're a fucking priest of Asklepius!

Shadows crowded around, seeping through the remains of his shield. Maxian tried to breathe, but the air had frozen again. He gasped, choking. One of the shadows spilled through a crack in the pattern, touching his wounded foot. The skin froze, cracking away from the bone in thin, shell-like sheets. Maxian stared down in horror, watching black corruption creep up his leg.

Do it! The voice had a strange accent, and Maxian felt his arms twitch, wrenched from his control. Columella! Show me how to do this! He's lost his fucking mind. A babble of other voices answered, filling Maxian's head with chaos. He trembled, unable to move, his feet frozen to the ground.

Lord Prince, an urgent voice, elderly, Roman, with unmistakable traces of a patrician Latin accent, penetrated. You must open yourself to the healing power. Now!

Maxian responded to the snap of command in the elderly voice, his mind finding the pattern that restored flesh and bone and the vital humors. Health suddenly blossomed in his flesh and the pain stopped, cut off like a joint split by the butcher's cleaver. His mind was clear, even the strange voices fading away. The air warmed within his compressed, almost destroyed shield. Ice melted away from his feet. The crawling skin of shadow cracked, then hissed to vapor. Bone knit in his shattered ankle, flesh regrew at a phenomenal rate, strength returned to arm and leg.

A sharp shout of command focused his mind, and pure white light flooded from his upraised hand. The shadows fled, shrieking, dissolving as the light touched them. Maxian stood, hale, upright, on the blocky flagstones of the plaza, his shields restored, burning blue and white in the darkness.

– |A scene of devastation greeted him. The column of Constantine had been shattered, leaving a concrete stump jutting into the air. The statue itself lay broken in pieces on the far side of the plaza. Most of the buildings surrounding the Forum were burning furiously, their marble facades hissing with blue-white flame as the lime in the stone cooked away. Great smoking pits belched flame, clouding the air.

The Dark Queen was on the attack, her staff spinning in the air, a flicker of standing lightning describing a wheel of power. Her voice was roaring like a storm, calling words of power, breaking the air with staggering bolts of crimson lightning. The dark thing was wreathed in its own brittle shell, horrific images flashing around it, describing a faceted pattern. As Maxian watched, lightning licked down from the sky, shaking the reptilian figure, burning through two, three, four layers of its defense. It howled, touched by the Queen's rage.

Maxian leapt into the air, wind rushing around him. He crossed half of the massive plaza in a single bound, alighting on the ruined stump of the great column. Movement caught his eye, something crawling in the ruins. It was the iron dog, head low, still smoking with heat, but it crawled, bloody fingers dragging the ruined body through the tumbled brick and concrete. Grimacing, the Prince focused his will, feeling the reverberations of the Queen's attack shake the world. He chopped his hand down.

An ultramarine-blue flame leapt from his hand, tracing a sizzling arc through the air. It touched the iron dog, flinging it to the ground in a violent blast. Concrete piers, revealed under the shattered cobblestones, collapsed. A plume of dust and rock flew up, lit from within by flickering lightning. The iron dog gave a wail and vanished, smashed into the earth. Smoke billowed out of the collapsed area. Maxian grinned, his face feral, and turned away.

The thing in darkness had withstood the Queen's attack, shrugging off the hail of blasts and lightning strikes. Now the shadows scattered in the air swarmed around her, shrieking and dying in a blaze of crimson bolts. As fast as she struck them down, more flooded out of the night sky. Burning red motes joined them, hurling themselves against her pattern, destroying themselves in a mad rush to overwhelm her. Maxian saw his enemy clearly, for the first time.

It bore a human guise, tall and lean, with long dark hair falling over bony shoulders. Once the face had been noble and handsome, striking, with a powerful brow and sharp nose. Now a mottled darkness was on the skin, curling around the flat ears and deep-set eyes. Though the skin was pale, there was a rippling shimmer that made it seem dark. Maxian felt an instant and powerful revulsion. Here was a thing that was the enemy of Man. Something primordial in him howled in defiance, urging him to kill.

Maxian's hands blurred in a pattern, making the air around him groan. Power wicked up out of the earth, causing stone, concrete, marble, brick to quiver to dust all around him. There were hidden ways and adits under the city. They shook, roofs collapsing, supports crumbling away. Water poured from broken cisterns, flooding the tunnels before it froze. The nearest building, a four-story temple adorned with friezes of the ancient gods at the harvest and a dozen lithe statues of nymphs, shook and then fell, toppling into the square with a roar.

He struck, everything focused into a shining cyan mote that hissed across the space between the column and the dark man. The figure spun, feeling the world shift. Its thin red eyes widened in surprise, then it soared away, flashing into the sky. Maxian's orb ripped in pursuit, accelerating to enormous speed. The enemy twisted, flashing a clawlike hand in a matching pattern. A black lattice congealed out of the air. The cyan orb plowed into the center of the matrix.

Maxian was thrown down, smashing against the rubble-strewn ground. The sky split, filled with a ravening blue-black flare. All across the city, buildings crumpled, crushed by the blast of superheated air. Maxian rolled away, feeling his shields buckle, compressed down to within a finger's breadth of his skin by the shocking roar and burst of power. The remaining stump of the column shattered, flinging chunks of concrete, marble and brick across him.

Debris rained down, making his shield flare with each blow, but the Prince gritted his teeth and rode it out. An enormous thunderclap followed, blowing a fine rain of grit into his face. Shadows and clouds alike were blown back, leaving a great still space over the heart of the city.

Maxian scrambled to his feet, feeling his skin burning. He wiped a hand the length of his body and the dead, ruined flesh firmed, filling with life. His eyes, half seared away, quivered and vision was restored. The dark thing was gone. The sky empty, save for a distant boil of clouds.

But it is not dead. Maxian could feel the presence at a distance. The power had withdrawn, stymied for the moment. The Prince looked around, suddenly sick. He could feel thousands of people, dead and dying, within his immediate vicinity. They had been hiding in the buildings, cowering in basements or inner rooms. The blast had thrown down every standing building within blocks, leaving only stray single pillars, jagged shells of houses, perhaps a lone wall standing alone, pierced by a window.

The Queen was gone. Maxian climbed across the wreckage, searching for her. He could not feel her anywhere. He hoped that she was not dead. The iron dog was gone, too, the collapsed section of plaza now filled with new rubble. The Prince felt desolate, alone. After a moment, he gave up the search.

It will be a long walk home, he thought, disheartened, if the telecast is closed.