Paul Kemp - Shadowrealm

He couldn't do that to his family, to his people. He would bear the knowledge of Rivalen's deed alone, just as he would bear his mother's necklace.

But he would not do nothing.

6 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Abelar gripped the makeshift harness and steadied himself atop Furlinastis's back. Shadows poured from the dragon's purple and black scales. A cloud of ink stained the air around them and left a path of smeared black in their wake. The rain felt like sling bullets against his exposed face. The roar of the wind filled his ears, pierced only by the keening of the undead.

Living shadows thronged the air, swirled around him, a colony of red-eyed bats on the wing. They swooped and dived at him and the dragon. Furlinastis wheeled, pulled up, bit at the undead within reach of his jaws. His teeth closed on three of the creatures and they boiled away into oblivion. His claws shredded several more into gossamer ribbons carried off in the wind.

Holding the rope harness with one hand, Abelar tried to anticipate the dragon's movements while he slashed and stabbed with his enchanted blade. A shadow darted in from his right, arms outstretched, and his blade tore through the space between its head and body. Its red eyes winked out as Furlinastis beat his wings rapidly and wheeled right to avoid a throng of the undead. A shadow swooped in and passed a hand through Abelar's chest. His heart rebelled, constricted. Cold sank into him. Grunting, he stabbed the shadow through the back as it streaked away. He felt the slight, tell-tale resistance that indicated the magic of his blade had found purchase in the incorporeal flesh. Whipping around, he saw another shadow streaking for him from the right. A reverse cross-cut slashed it into a dissipating cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

The dragon roared, reared, and slashed at a score of shadows congregating around his head and neck. His jaws killed several, but more streaked in to replace the dead.

"Down!" Abelar shouted at the dragon.

Furlinastis dived, leaving the shadows and their keening behind. Abelar bent low and held on.

On the plain below he saw his company between the breaks in the cloud of shadows, a circle of white light holding their ground against a swirling army of shadows. He saw flashes of rose colored brilliance, holy power channeled through priests and those given over to Lathander, saw shadows turned to vapor before it.

In the pauses between thunder, lightning, and the dragon's roars, he heard the shouts and chants of his company, the men and women who stood in the light. He raised his blade, hacked at a shadow that came within reach, and watched some of its form boil away into the darkness.

Furlinastis pulled up and wheeled, sending Abelar's stomach into his throat. The dragon swooped through a group of shadows.

Claws, teeth, and Abelar's sword destroyed half a dozen of the undead as the dragon streaked through and past.

Thunder boomed, rolled, and lightning ripped the sky and struck the earth near the battlefield. Abelar turned to look and saw several trees burning on the plain.

From the right, a throng of shadows, a hundred or more, flew like arrows at Furlinastis. More streaked toward them from the other side.

The dragon roared, beat his wings, and angled upward.

Nearly unseated, Abelar held on, feeling the tendons in his forearm stretch. He cursed and kept his wits enough to wave his blade at a nearby shadow, but missed. Another appeared from nowhere, passed through htm. Cold settled in his bones, but Furlinastis's speed carried Abelar away from the creature.

The dragon veered again, swooped downward, and Abelar caught another glimpse of his company, of their light. Had he still stood in Lathander's light himself, he could have healed himself, could have turned his blade into a beacon, could have channeled the Morninglord's power through his body and soul and used its light to sear the shadows out of existence, could have rallied his company against even the Shadowstorm. But he had fallen, descended so far into shadow that he rode them into battle.

He shouted, slashed, stabbed, and killed. Shadows whirled around him, around the dragon. The sky was filled with them. They reached through his armor, tried to still his heart, tried to steal his life. He thought of his son, of his friends, and roared defiance. He slashed, cross-cut, and stabbed.

Furlinastis answered his shouts with roars of his own, the sound as loud as the thunder. The dragon wheeled through the sky, a Gondsman's engine of destruction. Great claws swept shadows from the sky like so many stinging insects. Teeth snapped up the undead by the half-dozen.

But the shadows were numberless, and Abelar knew that another would rise from the body of each man and woman of his company that fell to their life-draining touch. And as the storm moved across Sembia, it would add still more to its numbers.

He feared he was looking at the end of the world.

Furlinastis dived low, swooping over the company of Lathanderians. Abelar couldn't make out faces. He noted only the rise and fall of blades, shouts of pain and anger. Some had fallen. He saw their bodies flat on the black earth, spattered with mud and shadows.

Above the wind, above Furlinastis's roars, Abelar heard several of the men shout the battle cry of his company.

"We stand in the light!"

Growing despair made the words at first seem silly to Abelar, trivial in the face of a darkness that could not be slowed, a darkness that ate its victims and vomited them back up in a new form to serve it. But he found a kernel of hope in the words and grabbed at it. He realized that the only thing to do in the face of darkness was stand and fight beside like-minded men and women. He had fallen into shadow, true, but there was light in him still.

Shouting, he slashed a shadow, stabbed another, another. One of the creatures struck him in the chest and arm, turned his sword arm numb. He waved his blade ineffectually as the shadow reached into his chest. His breath left him. His heart lurched.

Another abrupt dive by Furlinastis left the shadow behind and saved Abelar's life.

He gathered himself and looked back, expecting to see the shadow army in pursuit. Instead, he saw them peeling off, streaking in the opposite direction.

Below and behind, a cheer went up from the battlefield. Trewe's trumpet blew a victorious note. The dragon, too, roared.

Abelar watched the shadows wheel away, gather some distance away, and felt only dread. The shadows swarmed around a point perhaps two long bowshots away from the company. Their numbers stunned him. The swirling column of their forms seemed to reach from the ground to the clouds.

"So many," he said, marveling at their numbers.

Without warning the rain and thunder stopped. Trewe's horn and the cheers of the company went quiet. For a moment, all was silent, pensive.

Cold seeped across the battlefield, a deeper cold than that of the shadows. Supernatural fear accompanied it. It reached into Abelar, sent his teeth to chattering, stole his nerve. The dragon growled his discomfort. Abelar heard inarticulate whispers in his mind. He discerned no words he could understand but the sibilant tone touched something primal in him, set his heart to racing, lit his mind afire with terror.

A moan went up from his comrades below. He heard Regg shouting to the company, his old friend's voice on the verge of panic. "Hold! Hold!"

Abelar fought through the terror as best he could and scanned the darkness for the source of the cold and fear. He could see little through the impenetrable cloud of living shadows. He sensed something at the fringe of his vision, something large, dark, remorseless, terror given form and set loose in the world.