The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 37
There was no expression to be read from the ball of light, and thus no way to tell if it approved of this process, or if it also thought Gladdic had gone as insane as he appeared. With the nether an unholy mess of tangles, Gladdic snapped his hand to the side. The entire thing sprung outward like a divine revelation, transforming in a single movement into a beautiful and perfect interlacing of black threads, as if an angelic spider had spun a web not in two dimensions, but three.
As the ball of light glowed a little brighter—approval?—Gladdic floated the design toward himself and sank it into his chest. "I am ready."
The ball unfurled a tendril of ether. Rather than the cold purity the light normally shined with, this was warm and bewitching. As it spiraled through the air toward Gladdic, he fetched the lichstone from a pocket of his robes and held it in his palm.
Gladdic took a long breath as the light of life approached him. It came to a stop in the air between the lichstone and Gladdic's chest. With a flash, it disappeared.
Gladdic gasped, spine stiffening like a post. The lichstone flared violently. Gladdic's knuckles whitened around it. A beam of perfect light arose from the surface of the stone, then bent toward Gladdic—and pierced his chest.
He gave a muffled cry, then steeled himself, shuddering as the light passed from the lichstone to him. He scowled. Dante felt the nether moving within him.
"That was well done," the ball of light said. "It had almost found a way past you."
"It acted even more quickly than I expected," Gladdic said. "But I believe I have thwarted it."
His breathing evened out as he took on more light. He appeared to be right about having thwarted its efforts to replace his trace, too, for a full minute passed without any apparent troubles.
"I've been dying to ask," Blays said quietly to the ball of light. "What exactly are you?"
"I am the light of life," it answered.
"I'd put together that much. But are you alive? Like a person?"
"I don't know what it's like to be a person."
"Most of us have a pretty hard time with it, too. But you were created? By Arawn?"
"Humans were also created by the gods."
"A really, really long time ago. Enough that I'm starting to wonder if we're the same creatures as we were back then, or if we've wandered away from the gods' vision as much as the Mists have. Anyway, I just get the sense that you're different. You could say my first clue was that you're a talking ball of light."
"I have a mind," it said. "I can think, and speak, and act. There are some things you've said that are very strange to me, but I think I've understood most of it. But I can't tell you what I am, or how much I am like or unlike humans. Outside of Bade and Wate, you are the only humans I've ever met."
"A fratricide, his victim, and the three of us. That's some rough company."
Dante had been keeping both eyes on Gladdic, but nothing had changed other than the lichstone getting a little dimmer.
"So you know Arawn," Dante said.
"I knew him once," the light said. "I haven't seen or spoken to him since the lich was first locked away."
"What is he like?"
It made a chiming noise. "Mostly, he is removed. He is a man who likes to create forms of order that can sustain themselves, and then step away from them. That is his favorite thing of all: when a system attains enough internal order that it requires no tinkering or correction from outside."
"Then what does he think of Rale?"
"He thinks enough of it to have wanted to save it."
"In the days of the lich, maybe," Dante said. "But the end is much closer now than it ever was then, and I don't see him doing anything to stop it."
The ball of light pulsed slowly. "I wouldn't be so sure of that. If the gods are working against you, yet you are still here, it seems certain that other gods are working for you as well. Possibly in ways you'll never know about."
"Let us hope."
The lichstone was now so dim it would barely be enough to read by. Gladdic remained focused—intensely so—but the few movements he made weren't panicked. He was whispering to himself as he worked. Or maybe he was whispering to the stone.
The lichstone went dark. Gladdic lurched forward, grasping his hand out for balance. Dante took one long step toward him, nether in hand, but Gladdic had already righted himself.
"Did it work?" Dante said.
Breathing deeply, Gladdic turned about. His face and hand glowed with a pale blue-tinged light. He worked his throat, but the sounds that came out were unintelligible.
"Are you all right?"
"I…am." Breathing hard, Gladdic lifted his head. His eyes were two different shades of blue: one as pale as a spring sky, the other as deep as the open sea. "I am…alive."
"Something's wrong," the light said. "The lichstone—it should stay dark."
The last time Dante had looked at it, it had been dark, as dead as any other lump of stone. Now, though, a sharp white light shined within it.
"What does that mean?" he said.
"He's turned," the light buzzed. "You have to kill him. You have to kill him now!"
"Gladdic?" Dante edged back and brought the nether to hand. "Gladdic, do you know who I am?"
"I know who you are, Galand."
"Are you still you?"
The old man laughed. "I have become more than I have ever imagined."
He stood, smiling coldly, and took a step toward Dante. His eyes were as blank as frosted panes of glass. Dante shaped the nether into a score of bolts and prepared to let them loose.
22
"Stay right there," Dante said. "Do you hear me, Gladdic?"
"He might wear your friend's face, and claim his name," the light said. "But that is not Gladdic!"
"Blays?" Dante said.
"He's acting strange for sure." Blays held the Spear of Stars, but hadn't yet pointed it at Gladdic. "But what's he supposed to be acting like?"
"You must listen to me!" the light said. "You must destroy him!"
Gladdic advanced another step toward Dante. Dante lifted his hand, sending the bolts of nether swarming around it. "Gladdic! Stay where you are! Stay right where you are or—"
Gladdic began to take another stride, then rocked backwards like he'd just bounced into a wall. Dante backed away. The blue-white light seeping from Gladdic's skin brightened and his form grew blurry, as though ensconced in thick mist. He seemed to leap to both the left and the right, then slowly recohered. As the two images became one, the lichstone flashed brighter than the sun.
Dante reeled away blind, trying not to fall over. He sent the nether to his eyes, but even with its help, it was a few seconds before he could see again. When his vision cleared, Gladdic was lying on the ground, motionless.
A node of ether hung in the air beside the old man. It stretched upward and downward, touching the floor as it climbed above their heads. Both the upper and lower ends forked into two branches. With a surge, the X-shaped light became a skeleton. A ripple passed down it, clothing it in flesh. A second ripple covered flesh in skin. The next ripple sheathed skin in armor and clothes.
These were ripped and tattered. As were his skin and flesh: a third of his face was bare bone, as was his left hand, and his lower back was nothing more than exposed spine. His body was emaciated, and as tall as he was, it looked like he could snap in half at any moment.
Still, despite all of this, Dante knew at once what he was looking at.
"Bade!" the light of life wailed.
Dante slung the nether at the enemy. The White Lich grimaced and knocked it aside with a wave of his hand.
"You tried to take my power for yourself," he said. "But such power is mine alone." He conjured a great cloud of ether and sent it scorching toward Dante.
The Spear of Stars crackled with light as Blays leaped between them. The ether bent toward him, spinning in tight circles around the spear before getting sucked into the purestone.
"Maybe it slipped your mind that we already killed you once," Blays said. "And you look a lot less sprightly than the last time we did it."
He swung the spear at the lich, unleashing the ether he'd just absorbed. The lich had been concocting a second attack but was forced to divert it into countering the one Blays had just sent at him. The air filled with a blizzard of disintegrating ether.
"Bade," the ball of light called. "You don't understand what you're doing! You mustn't fight them!"
"I must kill that which would kill me," the lich answered. "And I must have my revenge."
He burst through the storm of ether. Blays was waiting for him, and jabbed at an exposed patch of his chest. The lich had found a stout blade for himself, though—it appeared to be the head of his glaive, meaning that it was only short in comparison to his own towering height—and he swung it in the path of the spear.
The two weapons met with the clang of steel on ice. The lich's blade bounced backward, but stayed intact. With his left hand, he shot a blast of ether past Blays at Dante. Blays sprung at him, driving the spear forward, and the lich leaped backward, bending out of the way of the attack.
They were right upon each other. Close enough that when the Eiden Rane fired off a quick volley of ether at Blays, one of the white bolts was able to slip past the spear. It clipped Blays on the shoulder. He grunted and fell back.
Dante was still fighting off the lich's attack on him: though he was clearly diminished from the heights of his power, he was still a terrifyingly adept sorcerer, stronger than anyone Dante had ever seen outside of the actual gods, and it took all Dante's talent to snuff out all of the ether. Blays, in the meantime, had had to scuttle back several steps, taking simple jabs at the lich to keep him at bay as blood soaked his shoulder.
"Bade, you were chosen by Arawn!" the light spoke to the Eiden Rane. "This was supposed to be his temple—and yours. The man who would save humanity!"
"I saved humanity from the demons just as I was asked to," said the White Lich. His voice still had its coppery, crystalline quality, but it was much hoarser, as ragged as his clothes. "But Arawn did not see far enough. I meant to reforge his mortals into something greater than the flawed and weak beings they had become."
He unleashed another hellish blaze of ether on Blays, who had to dance backwards, twirling the spear's tip in tight circles, practically one-handed, to gather up the attack and redirect it to the purestone. Before the lich could hammer at Dante again, Dante send a smudge of shadows skimming over the ground toward Blays. He feared the spear would swallow them up as well, but either it somehow could tell they weren't hostile, or it was too busy protecting Blays from the front to do anything about them. He sent them to Blays' shoulder and smoothed over the wound.
The purestone pulsed with captured ether. With a yell, Blays slung all of it at the lich, then charged forward and leaped into the air. The lich had just thrown more ether at the light that Blays had launched at him, but as Blays fell toward him, he shifted the ether to an assault on Blays instead, hoping to disable or kill him before he could land his blow. Bolts of unblocked ether tore into the lich's already-shredded body. It swirled madly around the spear, too, but none was able to slip past. Blays slammed the spear into the lich's chest.
The lich staggered backward, assaulting Blays with so much ether Blays had to retreat to allow the Spear of Stars to absorb it all. The lich pressed a hand to his wound, reeling to the side. The glow of his skin flickered.
Dante jogged forward, hurling nether at the lich's ethereal attack while keeping one eye on Blays. He had recovered somewhat from the raising of the temple, but his strength was still depleted. They would have to press the advantage and end this now. As soon as Blays had absorbed enough ether to whip it back at the lich, Dante rerouted his nether to the enemy.
Black and white light popped through the room as the White Lich fought frantically to defend himself. A handful of strikes made it through, punching into his ghoulish body.
"I don't know how you got out here," Blays said. "But we're going to put you right back into that stone."
He edged forward, spear ready for another strike. The lich continued to reel to his right, toward the first of the two streams. Well before he reached the first of them, he surged forward, rushing ahead with impossibly long, fast strides. Before Dante could make sense of what he was doing, the lich fell upon the ball of light, snatching it up in his hand.
"Bade!" yelled the light. "Release me!"
"You were created to serve me," said the Eiden Rane. "And I will see that you do."
The light strobed erratically. Ether streamed from it and up the lich's skeletal hand, spiraling along his arm. Spectral steam wafted from him as the light sank into his body. The wound Blays had punched into his chest began to close, along with several of the smaller perforations opened by bolts of ether and nether.
"I was not created to serve you," the light spat. "I was created to serve what you should have been. You are not a god!"
Blays had ran to catch up to the lich, but as he got near enough to slow down and take on his guard, the lich stopped him in his tracks with a blast of ether.
"I may not yet be a god," the lich said. "But I was on the brink of becoming one. After all, the gods themselves were not always gods."
He tore apart Dante's barrage of shadows with one hand while squeezing more ether from the light of life with the other. The last of his wounds webbed over with ether.
"But I will not become a god of the old order," the lich continued. "Instead I will become something new. Something with the clarity to see where my designs have gone wrong, and the will to correct them no matter the cost."
Dante had been bludgeoning him with nether, but the lich shredded it apart as easily as Dante would walk through a cobweb. The light of life flickered, crushed in the lich's hand, which had regrown the flesh but not yet the skin on two fingers. The lich began to laugh.
"We have to stop him!" Dante called. "Before he recovers his strength!"
He jogged forward, cutting the time the lich would have to react to his attacks—and in turn cutting the time he would have to react to the lich. As he launched his assault, ether flared from behind him. Gladdic lay on the ground propped up on the stump of his arm, his hand outstretched toward the lich. As the last of the light flew from his palm, he collapsed unconscious.
Blays drew back the spear like a fishing rod, then whipped it forward, discharging all the ether he'd caught in the purestone. He sprinted in directly behind it. The lich grunted, falling back as he fought to knock down all three assaults at once. Stray bolts peppered his body. Overwhelmed, all but lost in the spray of colliding sorcery, he couldn't spare any nether to drive Blays back with.
As Blays slashed at him with the spear, he struck out with his blade. With a crisp ping, Blays knocked the weapon from his hand; stung, the lich pivoted away. As he turned his other side toward Blays, Blays gave the spear a backhanded twitch. It sliced into the lich's hand, severing two fingers, one skeletal and one fleshed. The light of life fell from the lich's grasp and fluttered toward the nethereal stream.
"Time to die," Blays said.
The lich turned and fled.
Blays yelled out in surprise and chased after him. Fearing a trap, Dante bolted forward, throwing nether at the White Lich's back. The shadows came reluctantly. He forced more into his hands anyway. The lich disappeared into the doorway to the stairs before Dante could aim them at him.
Blays slowed, letting Dante catch up some before passing through the doorway. Dante swore and tried to run even faster. The stairwell flashed with ether as he entered. Blays said nothing, so he'd either been saved by the spear, or struck dead on the spot. Dante leaped up the steps, catching sight of Blays unleashing a wave of stolen ether from his weapon.
The lich smashed apart the side of the stairwell, sending hunks of rock hurtling down at them. Dante swept his hand to the side and softened them to mud. He ducked his head as it spattered down on his back. As they reached the landing to the next floor, the lich tore down the doorway in front of them, damming it with rubble. But Dante dissolved this just as easily, slipping a couple of times as he rushed after the lich.
"I'm not sure what you think you're going to find out there," Blays yelled. "You already murdered everyone in the whole damn swamp!"
The lich was faster than them, but he'd forgotten where the next door was and had to change course, letting them gain enough ground for Dante to harass the enemy with nether. He didn't waste much—there was no hope of killing him until Blays was in spear range—but it was just enough to slow the lich as he defended himself.
The lich didn't bother to smash down the next doorway when he passed through it, but he did spray some ether down the stairs at Blays.
"My power was never yours or your frail friend's to wield." The lich's icy, cracking voice echoed through the stairwell. "It was crafted by Arawn to fit me. Only my hands can command it!"
He leaped up the steps three at a time, gaining ground on them. He burst into the room of the painted pillars and bounded toward the far doorway.
"I'm not sure if you've noticed," Blays said. "But he's going to get away!"
Dante thought about knocking a pillar down in front of him, but he feared that might drop the ceiling on all of them. But he could do something with the floor. He cast his mind ahead of him. As the lich's right foot touched down, Dante softened the stone beneath it into mud. The lich's foot plunged into it and Dante hardened it back into rock.
The lich swung forward like a hammer. This would have shattered a normal man's leg, but though he grunted in pain, the lich's bones held firm. He righted himself, planted his left leg, and pushed. Dante tried to liquefy the ground under that foot as well, but the lich was ready for him. He shoved Dante out of the nether there and then shoved his way from of the trap, stone cracking as he pulled his leg free.
