Paul Kemp - Shadowrealm

"What new evil is this, dragon? I cannot see!"

Furlinastis extended his neck to look behind them, hissed, and veered left.

"A nightwalker," the dragon said. "But I have never seen nor heard of one so large. Terror lives in its eyes, and death in its hands. This foe is beyond your companions, perhaps beyond even me. They are lost, human, as is the battle."

The cloud of shadows parted like a stage curtain and the nightwalker stepped between them. It towered as tall as ten men, looming over the field like a siege engine. It had the shape of a man, but hairless, featureless, its entire form smooth and black, like an idol carved from onyx by the jungle savages of Chult. The shadows broke ranks and darted around its massive form like flies around a corpse.

It regarded the battlefield, Abelar's company, and another wave of terror went forth from it. Thousands of shadows keened.

Abelar's company answered not with another moan, not with shouts of terror, but with the clarion of Trewe's trumpet.

"Back, dragon!" Abelar shouted. "Turn back!"

Furlinastis shook his head as he flew, completing his turn. "It is over, human. I will take you to-"

"Turn back! Now!"

"My service to the Maskarran does not extend to self-sacrifice. It is over."

From behind and below, Abelar heard Trewe's trumpet issue the order to form up.

Desperate, Abelar took his sword in both hands, turned as best he could in his makeshift harness, and put it in the divot on the dragon's back between his beating wings. He made sure Furlinastis felt the point.

"You will turn back or I will sink this to its hilt! They will not stand alone!"

The dragon's head whirled around, jaws open, streams of shadow leaking from his nose and throat.

Abelar pressed down on the blade. "Do not test me, wyrm!"

Furlinastis hissed in rage.

"Try to dislodge me or use your killing breath on me and I'll do it. It will take but a moment. You may not die, but you will not be able to fly and you will face the nightwalker on foot."

Anger stoked the fire in the slits of Furlinastis's eyes

"How will you have it?" Abelar said, and pushed the point of his blade harder against the scales. "How? Decide!"

The dragon roared with rage, snapped his head forward, and started to wheel about.

"You are no servant of the Morninglord," Furlinastis shouted above the wind.

Abelar considered what he had done, knew that he would do it again if necessary.

"Perhaps not," he said softly.

Abelar looked over the dragon's wing as they came around and saw his company assembling not for a last stand but for a charge. Trewe's clarion rang out again, sounding the ready. Illuminated blades at intervals held the darkness of the Shadowstorm at bay. Dead men and women lay scattered about the field. Abelar presumed their souls, raised by the Shadowstorm, had already joined the army of shadows. He hoped that Jiiris was not among them.

The dragon continued its slow turn.

Regg stood at the forefront of the company. Abelar heard his voice but couldn't make out his words. He saw Roen and another priest moving quickly from soldier to soldier, healing with a prayer and a touch. The company answered Regg's words with raised blades and a shout.

The nightwalker held its ground, dark, ominous, surrounded by an army of shadows.

Trewe blew another blast, and Regg shouted, turned, raised his blade and lowered it. The company lurched into motion.

The shadows keened at their approach. The nightwalker watched them for a moment, then met their charge with one of his own.

Abelar cursed.

Each of the creature's strides covered a spearcast. The impact of its feet on the soft earth left deep pits in its wake, open graves waiting to be filled with Lathanderians.

"Turn, damn you!" Abelar said, striking the dragon with the hilt of his sword. "Faster, wyrm!"

The Lathanderians, a small island of light in the night of the Shadowstorm, charged to their doom. Regg led them, shield and blade blazing.

Trewe's trumpet sang. The nightwalker closed, hit the company's formation like a battering ram. Men and women screamed in pain, shouted in rage, light flared, winked out. The nightwalker crushed men and women under its feet or with its fists. Weapons slashed its huge form but seemed to do little. The company swirled around the nightwalker, surrounding it. The creature stood heedless in their midst, the black center of a whirlpool that drew into itself the light of the Lathanderians.

The dragon wheeled around at last and straightened. He roared and the beat of his wings propelled him toward the battle. The wind almost peeled Abelar from his harness.

He watched his companions, side-by-side, fighting, dying, aglow with Lathander's light. The nightwalker reaped a life with each blow of its maul-like fists, yet none of the company around it broke, none ran-not one-and their courage chased the despair lurking around the edges of Abelar's soul.

He understood them, then, in a way he had not before. They served Lathander, but fought and died for one another, for the men and women standing beside them. Abelar knew well the strength of feeling that bonded warrior to warrior, man to woman, father to son.

He thought or Elden, of Endren, recalled his father's words to him-the light is in you-and realized, with perfect clarity, that his father was right.

The men and women of his company did not stand in the light. The light was in them. Lathander was merely the reagent that allowed them to shine. They were the light, not their god. And they, and he, had not burned as brightly as they might.

The shadows saw the dragons approach and a massive cluster of the undead peeled off from the assembled mass and streaked toward Abelar and Furlinastis.

Abelar readied his blade, and gasped when he saw the faint illumination that tinged its edges. Fallen from service, he should not have been able to light his blade. And yet he had. And he knew why. He knew, too, what he would do, what he must do, for Elden, for Jiiris, for Endren, for all those he loved.

"Ignore them, Furlinastis!" he shouted to the dragon. "Take me over the nightwalker."

The dragon looked back, eyed him sidelong, but obeyed. With each beat of Furlinastis's wings, the light in Abelar's blade grew, the light in Abelar shone brighter. Abelar's soul burned, fueled by epiphany.

He was the light. They all were the light.

Below, he saw more of his company fall, saw the nightwalker's darkness growing, devouring Lathander's light. The cloud of shadows, red eyes blazing, flew toward him.

Abelar watched the light in his blade spread to his hands, his forearms, his torso. It grew ever brighter in intensity. His light penetrated the shroud of shadows that wrapped the dragon.

The dragon turned to regard him, winced in the light, hissed with pain. "What are you doing, human?"

"Endure it for a time. We are soon to part ways."

The dragon roared as Abelar's luminescence flared and haloed them both in blazing, pure white light.

The shadows, heedless, swooped toward them, drawn to Abelar's radiance. Darkness and light sped toward each other, collided, and the darkness of the shadows' fallen souls was no match for the light of Abelar's reborn spirit. In the fullness of his light he saw the fallen souls for the pathetic creatures they were, saw on some the wheel of Ordulin, and smiled that he had avenged Saerb.

His light consumed the shadows utterly, dissolved them, shrieking, into a formless cloud or vile smoke through which Furlinastis streaked, roaring.

Abelar looked down, saw the upturned faces and raised blades of his comrades, saw hundreds more shadows take wing from their foul mass and fly toward him, and saw the nightstalker's featureless face turn its regard to the light in the sky.