Paul Kemp: Shadowrealm

The archfiend bent at the waist, put his hands on his knees, and began to gag, heave. Presently he vomited a gout of steaming blood and other unidentified lumps of gore onto the ice, turning it into a soup of carnage that smelled of tenday-old corpses.

Cale gagged and swallowed bile. The gelugons clicked in amusement.

In the center of the gore, slick with blood, lay the translucent remnant of Magadon's soul. It did not move.

"What did you do?" Cale said and took a step forward. The shadows around him whirled, ice cracked.

Mephistopheles eyed Cale sidelong, exhaled a breath of power on the soul. The delicate form quickened, stirred, turned, opened its eyes. When it saw the archfiend, its face twisted in despair, terror.

Cale ached for the suffering of his friend. He thought Magadon could be repaired, but never made whole. He would always have a crack, scars.

"But he is not broken," Cale said, and smiled.

Mephistopheles took the soul by the throat, lifted it high, and eyed Cale, the threat implicit. The soul squirmed and writhed, reaching desperately for Cale.

The power in Cale allowed him to see for the first time the power in the human soul, a power that transcended the trivial conventions of men, gods, and planes. Its beauty, its light, caused tears to well.

The archfiend sneered at his tears, spit, and wiped the gore from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"He is freed when I get what is mine."

Cale shook his head, let power leak from his form. "No. Free him first."

The gelugons crept closer but Cale had eyes only for Mephistopheles. Magadon's soul twisted in the archdevil's grasp, opened its mouth in silent pleading.

The devil's eyes flared. Power danced on the pointed tips of his polearm.

"Simultaneously."

Cale considered, nodded. There was no other way.

"There will be a moment after I release the half-breed's soul when I can snatch it back still," the archfiend said. "Should you renege, I will draw him back and destroy him utterly. Devour him before your eyes. Then I will find the rest of my son and cause him to suffer."

Cale was unmoved. "Should you attempt to take payment without releasing him, I will have a moment before it is done. I will fight you."

"You would lose."

"Perhaps," Cale acknowledged, "but you and everything in this plane would suffer a long while for the battle. Your rivals would know of it and come for you."

Mephistopheles smiled at Cale's point, though he showed no teeth, and there was nothing in it but malice.

"When I have what I want, my son will be of no matter to me ever again."

Cale believed him. "Let us conclude this business, then."

"Yes, let us."

The archfiend raised a hand in dismissal and the gelugons blinked out, teleporting away.

Cale held his hands at his side and let the power within him go dormant. The shadows subsided. Cale stood before the archfiend, alone, vulnerable.

"Do it," he said.

Riven calmed his heart, balanced his blades, and let the full scope of the power he had received manifest in his form. Darkness clotted the small room, as cold and unforgiving as his intentions. He stood in its midst, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands fixed like vices around the hilts of his steel. He could not slow his heart, could not stop the clouds of shadow pulsing from his flesh.

Mephistopheles released Magadon's soul and it began immediately to disincorporate into sparkling motes of silver. The archfiend whirled on Cale, his weapon raised for a killing strike.

Shadows leaked from Riven's flesh, from his sabers, and coiled around him. He heard the exchange between Cale and the archfiend, sensed when Mephistopheles released Magadon's soul, knew when the archfiend raised his weapon to claim Cale's payment.

Riven released the time stop spell and reached out his consciousness for Magadon's mind.

Magadon? he projected.

Riven? Magadon answered in the groggy tone of a man who has just awakened. Riven, what have I done?

Riven heard gratitude in the tone, shame, and above all, grief.

He understood the feelings.

Stop Sakkors's descent and get clear of there. That is the deal.

What deal? What are you saying? Where is Erevis?

Do it, Mags. Then get away from the Source.

Cale stood his ground before Mephistopheles, eyes open, shadows swirling around him. He saw the hunger in the archfiend's eyes, knew it would blind him to everything else.

Like Magadon's soul, he, too, disincorporated, watched it all from afar. He felt light, free. For the first time in a long while he thought that he had done something out of love. For the first time since Jak's death, he felt like the hero he had promised he would be.

He felt a tickling under his scalp, behind his eyes-Magadon.

Erevis, do not!

I must, Mags. Know that you saved me. You and Jak.

Magadon's mental voice hit Riven like a punch. Riven, don't let him do it. Riven! Don't let him! But it was already done.

Mephistopheles's vicious weapon descended in a killing arc, the full force of an archfiend's power on its blades. Cale felt nothing as the first blow tore into his flesh. Instead, he smelled the welcome, familiar scent of pipeweed, Jak's pipeweed.

He fell to the ice, fell into his past, and realized that he had been mistaken.

He was not all darkness. There was light in him after all.

"Cale," said a voice.

"Jak?"

"There are so many things I want to show you…"

Riven winced, felt each blow of the archfiend's weapon, felt Cale's pain, thankfully distant, and counted them all.

One, two, three.

He shouted his rage as the blows fell. Darkness poured from him, covered Faerun for a mile. His girls darted into the temple.

Riven would exact payment for each blow. He owed Cale as much. He owed Mephistopheles as much.

The shadows carried Riven between worlds. He materialized in Cania, a curtain around his new power, invisible to even the Lord of the Eighth. He felt but was untroubled by the blistering wind, the swirl of ice flakes as sharp as knives, the biting cold. The frigidity of the Eighth Hell could not diminish the heat of his rage. The wails of the damned burning in Cania's fiery rivers mingled with the howl of the wind but Riven paid them no heed. He focused only on the back of the archfiend who stood before him, the archfiend who had murdered his friend, perhaps the only friend he'd ever had.

Cale's bloody, crumpled form lay on the ice at the archdevil's feet. A few stray ribbons of shadow lingered over his body before surrendering to the wind. Ice was already covering him, entombing him in the stuff of Cania. His eyes were closed, his arms thrown wide, his body torn open by the power of the archfiend's three-tined polearm. Cale's blood had turned the snow and ice near him to crimson slush. A few strings of shadow clung to the blood as if reluctant to abandon their maker, and held on despite the wind.

Mephistopheles slammed his polearm into the ice, impaling the plane itself. He shouted in ecstasy and held out his arms as a glistening, vaguely man-shaped cloud of black power exploded upward from Cale's ruined body-a portion of Mask's divine essence. It swirled around the archfiend, wrapping him in a shadowy helix. One end of the helix drove into his chest, eliciting a grunt, and the power of the rest poured in behind it.

"Yes!" Mephistopheles boomed, his voice a thunderhead.

He grew in size as the power merged with him. The red of his flesh darkened, the halo of unholy power shrouding him churned wildly. He roared with ecstasy and Cania trembled. The added power in his voice shattered glaciers, sent avalanches of ancient snow and ice sliding down the side of mountains as old as the cosmos, caused devils and doomed souls alike to wonder and cower. All of the Nine Hells rang with his victory.