Paul Kemp - Shadowrealm

Kesson saw it coming, and deflected it with a casual wave of his right hand. Rivalen knew then that Riven was correct, that his spells would be useless against Kesson. He would have to engage the heretic face to face.

Irritated, he directed another blast of the implosive energy across the battle at one of the giants charging toward the Lathanderians. The wave of force hit the huge creature and it screamed as bones shattered and blood sprayed, the magic causing its body to fold in on itself again, again, again, again…

Cale started to run toward Regg and the company, but Riven grabbed him by the arm.

"Let the shadowwalkers help them," the assassin said. "Kesson is our goal. Get us up there."

Cale nodded, looked through the storm of wraiths and shadows wheeling through the sky to Kesson, who had already begun another spell, and drew the shadows around him.

As he did, a huge form loomed out of the dark sky behind Kesson, a black cloud of teeth, claws, wings, and black scales. Hundreds of shadows flitted about Furlinastis's form but the dragon seemed not to care. The empty harness on Furlinastis caused Cale to think of Abelar. Cale hoped he had died at peace.

Furlinastis opened his mouth in a roar and Kesson whirled to face him.

Cale saw his opportunity. Gathering Riven within his shroud of shadows, he stepped through the darkness and into the sky behind Kesson.

Nayan would have preferred to have stood beside the Right and Left Hands but they had instructed him to do otherwise and he and his initiates would obey.

As one, they sprinted toward the line of the Lathanderians, their strides preternaturally fast. They kept their feet as the ground shook, and shadowstepped away from the chasms that opened in the earth to swallow the Lathanderians by the dozen. He was not even certain the Lathanderians had noticed him and his men.

"Free them," he shouted to his men in their language.

A roar went up from the line of charging shadow giants and the shouted orders from the Lathanderians leader had most of them rushing to meet the onslaught.

The chasms started to close, the ground groaning, screeching, rumbling. The men and women trapped underground screamed in panicked terror.

"Quickly," he said, and stepped through the shadows to the bottom of a closing chasm. He materialized in the darkness of the hole, behind a Lathanderian shouting and trying to scramble up closing walls that offered scant purchase. Nayan's eyes, blessed by the Shadowlord, saw in darkness as though it were noon.

"Be still," he said to the woman.

The woman turned to face him and her brown eyes went wide. Sweat and rain smoothed her black hair to her scalp.

"Are you… Erevis Cale?"

Nayan shook his head and started to draw the darkness around them as the walls continued to groan closed. "His servant."

He shadowstepped back to the surface with the woman in tow. His fellows appeared at the same time, each beside a Lathanderian they had pulled from a chasm.

"Look!" said Trewe, and pulled Regg around.

Behind them, the shadowwalkers in service to Erevis Cale appeared on the torn, vibrating earth, each of them with one of the company in tow. Immediately they disappeared again into the shadows, reappeared in a heartbeat with another of Regg's company. They repeated the process again and again, appearing and disappearing as the chasms sealed, pulling dozens of the company from the closing mouths of the hungry earth.

Regg raised his blade in triumph. "There are no ordinary men on this field!"

Trewe sounded a blast as the line cheered and formed up.

The ground vibrated under the thudding tread of hundreds of giants. They loomed ever larger in Regg's sight. Their blades were as long as Regg was tall, their arms as thick as his legs, their legs like the trunks of oaks. But at least he would feel the bite of his blade into their flesh, and its edge would draw blood instead of shadows.

"At the ready!" he shouted as the creatures bore down on them.

Nayan repeated the process again and again, as did his fellow shadowwalkers. They pulled many from the closing chasms, but not all, and the grinding earth swallowed the screams of some. He winced as the screams died.

He did a quick headcount of his men, and realized that he was missing Vyrhas.

Vyrhas pulls shadows around us and I feel the lurch in my stomach that accompanies magical travel. The moment we reappear I notice the warm, rhythmic mental pulses of the Source's power, the gentle surf of my addiction.

The shadows dissipate from around us. We stand in the huge vault at Sakkors's core, the magical heart of the city. Light the color of blood bathes the chamber. No doors or archways offer ingress or egress. I remember that the Source's chamber is a cyst in the floating mountain, an abscess accessible only by magical transport.

The Source, its facets humming with power, hangs unsupported in the air, perpendicular to the floor, suspended only by its own power. It flares and pulses with the regularity of a heartbeat. I hold out my arms and let the power wash over me, into me, through me. My power is doubled in a moment. I find it hard to breathe, as if the air is too thick to squeeze into my lungs.

The polished planes fashioned into the walls and ceiling reflect the image of the Source a thousand times over, amplifying its power. The facets show my image over and over again, too, and I am struck with the thought that I do not look more numerous; I look shattered.

The shadows around Vyrhas coil protectively about him. He winces, as if the room itself were about to strike him. He clutches his brow, staggers. When he looks up at me, I see a trickle of blood leaking from his nose. He does not have the capacity to shield his mind from the incidental onslaught of the Source's mental energies.

"What is this place?" he says, and his speech is slurred.

"Go," I say to him, and my control over his will makes it an order. "There is nothing more for you to do here. Go to your comrades. Tell no one where you took me."

"Are you certain, my friend?" he says, as his other nostril starts to leak blood. "I could remain."

I admire his loyalty. "Leave. I will be all right."

Like many addicts, I prefer to engage in my vice in private.

Vyrhas nods, the shadows around him swirl, and he disappears into the black. I am alone with the Source.

The moment Cale and Riven materialized in the air behind Kesson, both drove their empowered blades through the shadows that shrouded him and into his flesh. Cale felt as if he were driving Weaveshear through dwarven plate armor, but the enspelled blade penetrated somewhat. Riven's blades, too, sank into Kesson's flesh.

Shadows boiled from all three men, intermingled, churned, the battle of Elgrin Fau's wraiths and Ordulin's shadows in miniature. Furlinastis's roar filled their ears. His body, streaking toward them, mouth open, filled their field of vision.

Kesson arched his back in pain, flapped his wings, but completed the final words of his incantation through gritted teeth.

His body turned incorporeal as Furlinastis closed his jaws over him, narrowly missing Cale and Riven with his teeth. But the dragon's momentum carried him forward and he plowed into Cale and Riven like a falling wall of rock.

Cale managed to get a hold of Riven's cloak as the impact shattered bone and sent them both careening through the air.

7 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

The Source's power starts to fill the hole in my mind, rounds the sharp edges of my jagged mindscape, bridges the cognitive chasms. The jolt of power sends a thrill of pleasure through me.