The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 54
He'd lingered a little, allowing Dante and the lich to throw forth a preemptive blast of ether and nether and get started on a second volley. But the reason for Wessen's delay was that he'd been cultivating more than any of his previous assaults.
A great wave of blue and red exploded from his hands and gushed toward them. Dante intercepted it with his nether, vision going gray as he struggled to maintain control of the first batch even as he sent another forward. It was so much to keep hold of that he had to wait until his initial counter had almost been wiped out before he regained enough focus to summon a third.
The god's great wave rolled on, losing a few shreds of itself with each impact of shadow and light. Blays swung his spear, releasing everything stored in the purestone, and the soma rampaged through the god's sorcery. But this was short-lived. The wave was still coming.
"What do we do?" Blays said. "Make a jump for the portal?"
By the time he'd asked the question, it was already too late. Dante scrambled to launch what scraps of nether he was able to gather in the last second. Blays swiped the spear through the incoming mass of light, leaping back in the same motion, trying to buy himself enough time for a second stab at the enemy attack.
The lich strode directly between him and the god. Soma and neuma pummeled into his body. Dante had just got some more nether in hand, but he had no idea how to heal a lich, and could only watch as he stumbled backward, absorbing dozens of blows. Icy chips fell from his torso. Dante couldn't tell if they were pieces of his chainmail or his flesh.
The lich fell to his knee as the last of them struck him. Yet he kept his head upright.
"A good effort," he said. "But I've leaned exactly how much it takes to kill me, and that is not enough."
He rose to his feet, torso shining from a score of wounds that were already beginning to heal. Wessen had either been expecting victory or had just gotten lost in the spectacle of his grand attack, for he hadn't followed it up with another.
It wouldn't have mattered anyway: while the lich was still in the process of healing himself, the onas lifted from around the side of the boulder, with Kelen at its version of the tiller.
"You almost died there," he said disapprovingly.
Blays vaulted over the gunwale. "What took you so long?"
"If you'd seen what I had to do to get to this thing, you'd be mortified with yourself right now."
"Then it's a good thing I missed it."
There wasn't room for all five of them, so the White Lich clung to the side of the vessel as Kelen started it toward the Chained God. By then Wessen had built and launched another attack, but it was visibly smaller than the previous one. Kelen's duties with the onas weren't so grueling that he couldn't also command the soma. With his help, they broke up the assault before it could even get within range of Blays and his spear.
Having to contribute to their defense did leave him with less attention for piloting the onas, however, meaning they were advancing at no more than a stroll.
"What part are we aiming for?" Kelen said.
"His heart," Dante replied.
Kelen made a minor adjustment. Pholos had been almost deadly quiet since the end of the storm, presumably because the detritus that unbalanced the place had all been burned away, but dry, metallic thunder rolled across the darkness. Wessen sent a hasty attack at them, then gritted his teeth. His chains tugged and bounced, bouncing him like a doll, leaving him helpless to do more than watch as the boatload of his enemies sailed toward him.
The attack on him wasn't a long one; he was motionless and hanging from his chains within a few seconds. He fought to lift his head. "Get away from me!"
"Your life was a cruel one," the lich said. "But the truth is you were made to be sacrificed. First for your fellow gods, and now for the mortals you helped make."
"I said get away! You've all gone crazy! If you kill me, you kill what I sustain. All the elements of creation will be isolated from each other forever!"
Dante had fought more than his fair share of enormous creatures. But they'd still been creatures, not people, and as Wessen loomed before them the sheer scale of him made Dante feel like he was just as crazy as Wessen accused them of being.
"What's the plan here?" Blays said. "Wait until we're in stabbing range, and then do that?"
"It's going to be a lot more dangerous up close," Dante said. "But luckily his sorcery will be coming from his hands, which are a ways from his heart. That will give us more time to react. But you and the lich won't be able to do as much defending while you're trying to kill him. Lich, do you think you can put one of those shields around the onas?"
"It will be more efficient for me to deflect his attacks as they come in than to maintain a barrier of that size," the lich said. "But a smaller one around Blays will be of more use."
Still hanging from the side of the vessel, he called to the ether, constructing a cave-like shield of light around Blays in the bow, with an opening facing forward for Blays to stab through, with his sides well-protected from the attacks that would come from Wessen's hands. Seeing this activity, Wessen conjured up another huge spray of his two lights and launched them at the approaching humans. It occurred to Dante that they weren't in water, and probably had no way to really sink, but he wondered how much damage the onas could absorb before it quit working. Even if the answer was "a lot," if Wessen hit them hard enough to break apart its hull, they'd get scattered, hanging there like fruits for the plucking.
He didn't much feel like getting plucked just then. His last cut had scabbed over, so he bit his lip to renew his source of blood, drew fresh nether, and divided it into a swarm, sending it forth to counter. Despite having used a fair amount of it already, they really hadn't been fighting that long, and his command still felt steady and easy.
Kelen slowed the onas to join the defense. For as big as the attack was, Wessen wasn't trying any feints or tricks with it. Maybe his mind was too addled for that, or maybe it had been so long since he'd battled a sorcerer (or group of them) who he couldn't simply just overwhelm that he'd never had to bother with tricks before.
Whatever the cause, it meant that Dante and the others didn't have to adjust their tactics much. They just met force with force, hitting it back as hard as they could, and with Kelen there to counter the soma and neuma with soma of his own, Blays found it perfectly manageable to handle the little that made it through, sucking it into the purestone.
"You are vile!" Wessen's voice sounded like it was about to break. "We never should have made such loathsome little beings!"
"We are beyond your judgment." The White Lich shaped the ether into a spear almost as bright as Blays'. "For we are not mere mortals, but a historical process here to complete itself."
He threw his missile straight at Wessen's heart. They were closer to it than his hands were, and he could do nothing to defend himself from it. It struck him true. It would have obliterated a man into nothing but mist. For all Wessen's resilience, it still drew blood.
Kelen slowed the onas as they came before the god's heart. Wessen screamed in rage and lashed at them with neuma, bathing everything in burning red. Nether, ether, and soma flew to meet it, harrowing it down as Blays diverted the last of it into the Spear of Stars.
"I'm sorry," he said to the god. "But we have no other choice."
Blays drew back the spear, then stabbed it forward as hard as he could. Its tip sank just a few inches into Wessen's flesh. Blays gave the spear a quarter twist and disgorged the neuma he'd gathered in it. Wessen's skin glowed red from beneath. He shouted in pain, but when the light faded and Blays pulled back the spear, the wound was barely bleeding.
With a grimace, Blays punched the spear forward again. The lich drove a spike of ether in beside it. A ripple seemed to pass through the void. Dante glanced up, but it was as empty as ever. It certainly didn't look to be on the brink of collapsing. Wessen had been writhing on his chains, but he drew himself together and came at them with another blend of soma and neuma. They were much closer than at the beginning of the battle and even though Dante had been waiting for it he still felt as though his reaction to it was much too slow. For that was the other thing about being this close to the enemy: to fend off Wessen's attacks, they'd learned they needed to hit them with two waves of counterattacks. And to get off two waves of counterattacks at that range, they needed to react all but flawlessly, every time.
They knocked down all of it they could. But Gladdic was just a little slow with his second counter, and the lich had to pull himself up the gunwale and throw his body in front of the last bolts of Wessen's neuma. The force of the blows knocked him backwards and tore his hand free from the gunwale, sending him floating toward the bow. Dante reached up and grabbed hold of his cape. Even in the reduced weight of Pholos, he was incredibly heavy, threatening to yank Dante loose. But he hooked his right foot under the bench seat and held tight, dragging the lich down alongside the boat, where he could once more take hold of the gunwale.
"Time to put an end to this." Blays had absorbed more of the neuma with his spear and he stabbed it into the god's chest again, the blade sinking a couple of inches further. When he was sure he couldn't drive it any deeper, he pulsed the neuma into the wound.
Wessen yelled out, arching his back. He was so enormous that his motion was enough to push back the entire onas, which pulled the spear free of his chest. Kelen maneuvered them back into place and Blays stabbed Wessen again before he had the chance to recover. Dante checked to make sure the god wasn't holding any neuma, waited for Blays to withdraw the spear, then drove a spike of nether as long as he was tall into the wound. Blood was now leaking steadily from his skin, but Dante didn't think they'd even reached Wessen's heart itself yet.
"It feels wrong to kill a thing so mighty," said the lich. "But I will soon surpass it, and add a new star to the Celeset."
Wessen's shoulders shook. He was sobbing again. A deep sense of pity and revulsion climbed up Dante's throat. They were doing something terrible, weren't they? Something he wasn't sure he'd want to tell the truth of once it was done.
He shot another black spike into Wessen's chest.
Blue and red light flickered in the god's hands. He sent it at them, but it was his weakest attempt yet, and Dante, Kelen, and the lich broke it all apart with little trouble. Hanging from the side of the boat, the lich spent several seconds hammering the ether into a curved blade that was impossibly sharp and thin. He pierced it into the growing wound atop Wessen's heart.
The god thrashed on his chains, knocking them back again. Thunder boomed from nowhere while Kelen brought them back into place. Wessen pulled more neuma to his hands but it fizzled away between his fingers. When he'd been able to fight back, and it had looked like he might even kill them, it had been a grim affair, but sporting enough. Now, though, it had passed well beyond grim. Dante prayed to the gods to let it be over soon.
Wessen was still writhing on his chains, making it hard for Blays to hit the wound. All he could do was stab over and over while the four sorcerers guided their strikes into the gash they were slowly deepening into Wessen's flesh. The god continued to sob, trying multiple times to speak, but unable to get out any words.
Bloody white bone glinted from his chest. The raw flesh beside it throbbed with the beat of his heart. Layer by layer, Blays and the White Lich carved this away until at last the heart itself lay exposed to the void. It was shiny and beautiful and looked big enough for Dante to crawl inside.
"You may stop now," the lich said to Blays. Another ripple passed through the void. Blays looked to the lich in puzzlement, then withdrew the spear and stood back.
The lich drew together a great column of ether. In a single movement, he ordered it into a skein whose patterns were too complex to make full sense of, and from there into a sphere whose surface was ever-shifting, almost like the light of life itself.
He watched it change until, at a signal only he could see, the time was right. Then he slashed his hand through the air. The sphere snapped into an ethereal blade. The weapon was twelve feet long and the full design of the Celeset scrolled along its side. Its edge was so sharp it almost hurt to look at.
"Keep that away from me!" Wessen moaned.
"So you recognize it." The White Lich reached out for the weapon. Though the whole thing was made of ether, he grasped its handle just as readily as he would the sword hanging at Dante's side. The lich lifted the blade, turning it from side to side to inspect it. "Some see cruelty when a cat eats a mouse or a wolf brings down a deer. This seems to reveal a base ugliness to life when it requires so much death to sustain itself. Yet the rightness of a thing is revealed when it is reflected in both the smallest and grandest of ways. As above, so below: those parts of mortal life that reflect the ways of the heavens can only be good. In the smallest of ways, a predator takes meat so that it might live. Now, in the grandest of ways, one world dies so that another might live."
Wessen rolled his head forward. He had been in a delirium of pain for some time but at once his eyes snapped into focus. "Do you know the clearest sign that a thing is wrong? When the gods themselves reach down from above to crush that thing in their own hands. In your blasphemy, you've summoned your own destruction."
Wessen looked past the lich. Dante felt the ripple for a third time, a sensation like passing from light into darkness. Feeling like he was underwater, he turned his head to follow Wessen's gaze.
A shadow moved across the darkness. It was almost as long as Wessen was tall but it was hard to make out any details. It was coming toward them from the direction of the portal, and though Dante still couldn't make out any particular part of it, this was enough for him to know at once what it was.
Nolost.
32
"It's him," Dante said. "The entity!"
Gladdic's eyes filled with horror. "Bade! Strike down the god! Strike him down now!"
The lich glanced around in confusion. But this was as short-lived as an ember of deflected ether. He drew back his arm, the ethereal blade shining like the eye of a goddess, then threw the weapon at Wessen's exposed beating heart.
He was close enough to the target that the sword only had time to spin end-over-end a single time. Yet Wessen was still able to jerk himself to the side, so that the blade pierced not his heart, but the raw flesh right beside it.
The god screamed out in pain. Blays stabbed at him frantically, looking to end it before the entity was upon them. Dante wanted to scream alongside Wessen. How had it even found them? But he knew the answer to that already, didn't he? Their journey to the mines had attracted the attention of some distant part of Nolost's consciousness. That in turn had provoked the entity to manifest eyes to search for whoever was alive in the area. Especially anyone who was clever or powerful enough to escape the Eye of Rathar.
The bird Dante had killed near the portal hadn't been a bird, it had been an agent of Nolost. Even then, Nolost almost surely hadn't had the attention to spare to actually look through its eyes—all that mattered was that it had found people in need of killing, it didn't matter who those people were. But when Dante had used the nether to kill the bird, that had confirmed to Nolost that there was a sorcerer in the area. That must have drawn another spy to follow them. One that Dante never saw or felt. But once Nolost had seen just who his agents had stumbled over, he'd kept an eye on them—and once he'd seen them come to a portal, he must have come running.
I know why you're here, the entity spoke into their minds. Very cunning, undoing the pathways. But I won't be trapped like that. The thought of it provokes me to fury.
The entity flowed forth across the emptiness. Each time they'd seen it it had taken on a different form—or perhaps they'd been seeing different parts of it manifest—and this time it appeared roughly squid-like, with no discernible head, just a long body dangling many limbs behind it. One of these snapped forward like a whip, though it was still too far away to reach them.
"Kill the god!" Dante drove a wedge of nether into Wessen's heart. "That's all that matters!"
White and blue light raced to join the shadows in assaulting the god. Wessen jerked his body in pain, but he was laughing now, the sound of it almost indistinguishable from his sobbing. Blood spurted from his heart, the droplets losing speed and drifting apart to hang in the air.
"He's almost here," Blays said. "We have to fight him."
"We have never come close to killing him," Gladdic said. "Even with the strength of the Eiden Rane, we are doomed."
"Then we have to think of something," Dante said. "We can't run away from him. Not this time."
The lich heaved himself up over the side of the onas, rocking it, and bulled his way to the stern, forcing Gladdic and Kelen to squeeze out of the way or risk getting trampled.
He stood straight to the enemy. "Is it true? You are the entity? The one known as Nolost?"
Yes.
"You killed my brother."
So? I have killed millions. By the end, I will kill all.
"Unfortunately for you, I wouldn't be here if you had killed all of them but that one."
The lich punched his hand forward. A beam of ether erupted from it, spiraling outward, countless glyphs patterning its walls. It bored into the entity with a clap of light. Slate gray steam boiled away from its body as the ether sank within it. The entity's many tentacles flicked about its body.
The entity came to a stop. You are something new.
"I am the one who was meant to remake Rale," the lich said. "Your mind is too shallow to conceive of anything but destruction."
To destroy a thing is to give it its ultimate freedom. The destruction of a full world is the most beautiful act that can be imagined. Especially when it's endured for so long that it looked like it always would.
The entity had gathered itself as they spoke, the hole in his top side closing over with the smoky matter he was made of. He swam forward again, but the White Lich spread his hand and shot a new pillar of light directly into the top of Nolost's "head." The entity pulled to a hard stop, tentacles billowing around it.
