Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

Joe hid behind the chimney. “Good plan, except for the not-killing-him part.”

He plunged feetfirst down on my hands. On reflex from the pain, I let go and landed several feet below on the roof of a wide bay window. A stream of elf-shot destroyed the rest of the parapet, showering stone dust down on me. Joe dodged over a valley between two gables. “Hmph. He’s not a bad shot for an elf.”

“Thanks for the save,” I said.

Joe rotated in the air, sniffing. “The barrier’s completely down. I say let the big guns up there take the Elven King out, and we go get beers.”

“I don’t care about the Elven King,” I said.

The last of the Guildhouse barrier shield collapsed. A roof slumped on the neighboring gable. The building was shedding years’ worth of additions like dead barnacles off a boat. The window bay lurched under my feet as if it had risen a few inches, then resettled itself.

I grabbed the edge of the wall and swung myself over. Donor faced away from me, holding the faith stone above his head. Green light revolved around him in ribbons, wrapping him and Vize in a sphere of bright light. On a gust of essence, they lifted into the air, white light flashing around the sphere, swirling the green ribbons faster. They hovered in place, below the main aerial fighting, essence building around him.

“What the hell is he doing?” I said.

“Oh, that looks bad,” Joe said from behind me.

A volley of essence burst from the sphere, streaking like ball lightning across the sky. The streaks homed in on Guild agents, hit with concussive force, and threw them out of the sky. They weren’t stun shots. Appalled, I staggered back as bodies fell limply into the flames below. The remaining agents wheeled away, struggling to regroup.

The air crackled with a sound like thunder. Donor tapped essence as only the most powerful fey can, pulling directly from the air and anything around him. A sustained burst of energy from the bottom of his sphere struck the Guildhouse. The roof exploded, slate and stone flying into the air. I ducked as more debris hurtled toward me. Another tower fell, smashing into the one next to it, and both collapsed into the floors below. Donor’s sphere grew, solidified into a mass of burning white heat. It expanded, incinerating the building wherever it touched.

Elf-shot came at me and snagged on the tip of the spear. The streamer of essence lashed like a whip slicing through the air. The spear jerked in my hands, and I grappled with it. The streamer flared brighter and spun around me. Joe screamed, and I whirled. The elf-shot wrapped around his legs and flung him about. He struggled against it, his essence flashing as he tried to teleport away. The spear convulsed in my hand, sucking in the streamer of elf-shot. Still bound to it, Joe’s body twisted and elongated, then vanished into the spear. Dumbfounded, I stared at the weapon in my hand.

“Joe?” I shouted. I shook the spear, feeling like a fool. It undulated in my hand. Intermittent touches of Joe’s body signature danced along its length, then faded into the spear’s burning brightness.

Fury raced through me. The darkness leaped within, feeding off my anger. I let it. I let the darkness rise, let it break through my body essence. Streams of black shadow shot from my face and chest, lunging across the fractured roof as they sought the most powerful source of essence nearby. They burrowed into Donor’s sphere with ravenous greed. They sucked at the essence, funneling back into me, back into the source of the darkness. I gasped as it coursed through me, through my chest, my face, draining inside me to the nameless dark place. I was a conduit, meaningless in the transaction, as the darkness pulsed and sucked. My feet lifted off the ground as the roof crumbled away beneath them.

The sphere paled, its essence leeching away. Donor realized what was happening and dropped Vize, concerned now for his own safety. Vize plummeted and hit a pitched roof. He flailed as he went over the edge. He fell hard against the remains of a turret and didn’t move.

Donor reinforced his body shield, shrugging off the smaller tributaries of my darkness feeding on him. He wasn’t strong enough. One of the most powerful fey in the world wasn’t strong enough to fight off the darkness. It broke through— I broke through. I fed the darkness with all my anger and fury. Shadows coiled around Donor’s chest. He fought me as I hauled him toward me. We revolved around each other in a halo of green light and dark shadow. Donor grinned, his teeth framed red with blood. “You think I’ve never fought this darkness before, Grey? Give in to its desire, let it draw you in close, then strike its vulnerability.”

With his fist clutched around the faith stone, he swung at me. I blocked him with the spear in a shower of white sparks. Sensing another source of essence, the darkness coiled around the spear. I was losing control—no—I never had it. The darkness did what it wanted. Donor seemed to sense it and laughed. I didn’t have control of the darkness, but I had the spear. I spun my wrist, brought the sharp tip of the spear forward, and shoved it through Donor’s shield.

A jumbled kaleidoscope of essence flared as the spear fought against the Elven King’s power. Donor swung his fist again. I brought the spear down on his arm, and essence exploded around us. He tumbled away as the darkness snapped free. I fell onto the remains of the roof. Donor landed on his feet, crouching to absorb the shock of the fall. He came up screaming, emerald light bursting from his face in a searing blast.

I threw the spear. It struck the Elven King, the concussive force from the blow flinging me into the air, on a shock wave of essence. I flipped end over end as I rose higher and higher, nothing below but thirty stories of empty air. I rolled in the sky, the explosion expanding into a cloud of wild essence over the Guildhouse. Out of the fireball, a fierce blue light rocketed toward me and slammed into my forehead and

everything

went

white

White.

Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. Above me, the white simply was, as if the air itself was color. Or no color. As if nothing else existed except the white. I hung limp in the air, as if there were no air, no gravity. My head burned, like a cold fire in my mind, blazing against a blanket of night.

Everything is white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which. Everything around me is white. I stared into a nothingness of white. I am here again. Around me, I see shadows of light flickering in the depths of the white. They spin and whirl, roll and stop, taunting me with patterns that disintegrate as they take shape.

Bursts of color flare in my vision, fireworks against the white, fading to darkness. More, then more, the darkness closing on me, like the slow closing of my eyes. My mind, like my eyes, closing, like my eyes blinking. Like my mind blinking.

My mind blinked.

I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.

My mind blinked.

Rand stands defiant before me, his clothes in tatters, his face a mix of hurt and hope. “You have to trust me,” he says.

“Why? You didn’t trust me,” I answer.

My mind blinked.

Silhouettes in lavender surround me like shadows in the mist. They do not move. I cannot see their faces, but I know they are waiting, waiting for answers that I do not have, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for . . .

My mind blinked.

Eorla looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over the body.