The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 57
The lich had chopped off another segment of the stinging limb. As Nolost withdrew it, the lich grabbed hold of it, following it toward the entity. As he drew near, he cocked back his arm and slashed his blade into Nolost's body.
"His name was Wate!" the lich roared. A plume of dark steam enveloped him, rendering him little more than an outline as he laid into the entity with his sword over and over again. Tentacles snapped at him, but seemed to do little to hurt him, and they pulled back as stumps more often than not.
"Why don't you kill him already?" Wessen yelled at the entity. "Get him out of here! Get him out!"
The lich twirled his blade through the air, erasing the steam around him. He had managed to carve a wide hole in Nolost's size. One that wasn't healing itself. He soared forward, sweeping his sword back and forth. The entity bent its body to pull the wounded section away from him, but the lich pursued it, striking at a few tentacles as they whipped at him.
"Lich, stop!" Dante called: for as the entity pulled back that part of its body, and the lich chased after it, that left him enfolded by the entity on both sides. "You're being surrounded—"
The entity jolted as it struck at the lich with dozens of tentacles, most of which had been hidden within its body. The lich vanished within a scrum of wriggling limbs that were so many in number they blocked out the blazing light of his sword.
Dante shaped the nether into a heap of bolts and threw them across the void. They punched into the mass, sending black steam shooting everywhere, but didn't seem to destroy so much as a single one of the limbs. For a moment he was paralyzed, uncertain whether to hold off on another attack, knowing that its effects appeared minimal and that he might need to save all of his strength to use against Wessen, or to press on with it anyway, as the lich looked to need all the help he could get. But surely this was absolutely not the time to be playing it safe, was it? Dante summoned more nether to him.
Before he could start shaping it, the tentacles tossed about. Light peeped from widening cracks. With a spray of light, the White Lich broke free, cleaving one arm after another. His blue-white blood glowed from many wounds and floated in the air around him like an icy halo. But when he raised his sword, it was with a savage grin, and in a matter of seconds, he'd reduced the tentacles by so many that the rest pulled away from him.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "I have only come to deliver the same blessing you wished to give to us."
He hacked into the side of Nolost's body, which was almost as large as some of the city-trees in Weslee had been. Nolost bent away. This time, Dante didn't think that it was part of any kind of trap.
It was going better than he could have hoped. But he still had to get Blays to Wessen. He sent his mind into the nether in front of him and pulled himself toward it. That part of things was now straightforward enough that he could start that process at will. It was keeping it going that was the problem. When he felt his grip on it start to falter after just a few feet, he cast his mind several more feet forward, into a new curtain of nether, and attempted to pull himself to that instead. He carried onward across the empty air. When his command went shaky once more, he reached out further yet into the shadows—and sailed on. It was as simple as that, reaching from one area of nether to the next like a monkey swinging from branch to branch.
Gladdic, who had been watching him the whole time, moved his mind into the ether and drifted forward. He shuddered to a stop after a couple of yards, but on his second attempt, he was able to leap his mind into a new section of ether and continue smoothly.
"Is it really so simple?" he said.
"In a straight line, at least," Dante said. "Now we just need to figure out how to turn."
This had an obvious potential answer—reach out into the nether or ether in whichever direction you wanted to turn—and as Dante gave it a shot, this turned out to be almost but not quite the case: he actually had to reach further in the desired direction than felt right, possibly to correct for whatever forward momentum he already had going. Whatever the case, he picked up the knack for it in under a minute.
Across the sky from them, the lich had continued to chop holes into Nolost's flank while Nolost grabbed and nipped at him with tentacles. Red lightning had started to flash from the entity as well, stabbing at the lich. He was able to knock many of the bolts away with his sword, but some made it through, scorching his skin and exposed bones.
"Is this really happening?" Blays said. "Nolost is…running away?"
Dante had just turned away to confirm he could maneuver to both right and left and glanced back to see the entity streaming away from the White Lich, trailing vapor behind it. It was moving faster than the lich could float about, but the lich reached out his hand and suddenly jolted like he'd grabbed a rope trailing behind a ship. Which was, in a sense, just what Dante guessed he'd done: he'd seized hold of some nether within the entity, and it was now towing him along behind it. This was all but confirmed when the lich went from matching speeds with Nolost to drifting closer to him.
"Let's hope," Dante said. "But we can't count on it. Time to see if the spear can finish this off."
He swung about and headed toward Blays, using the short bit of travel to see if he could get himself going any faster. He could, a little, by reaching further ahead than he'd been doing, but found this only worked to an extent: if he reached too far, his hold was too weak to produce peak velocity until he got closer to the spot he was holding onto.
He aligned himself with Blays, coasted to a stop beside him, and grabbed him by the arm. "Your carriage has arrived."
"At least no one is around to see how ridiculous this is," Blays said. "Besides Gladdic, and everyone already thinks he's crazy anyway."
Dante had tried to get going as Blays spoke, but they'd done no more than sway forward a bit, and for a heart-stopping moment he was afraid their combined weight was too much to move. They then began to stutter forward, however, eventually attaining a smooth but unremarkable speed.
"What is this, a turtle ride?" Blays said. "You really can't go any faster?"
"Only if we remove several parts of you. Starting with the ones most irrelevant to our current job."
"I don't see how you need your legs right now."
"Who was talking about legs?"
Dante propelled them onward, trying and failing to gain any more speed. He took a quick look around them. Kelen was still hanging limply in the air, though still alive and seemingly stable. Gladdic was draped in a sheen of ether, moving in fits and starts as he taught himself to move. The White Lich had caught up to Nolost and was fending off a mob of arms whose lunges and bites were starting to get frantic. The entity was venting black mist everywhere. It was still flying across the void as fast as it could but the lich had wrapped one of its tentacles around his left arm and was using that to brace himself as he swept his sword back and forth through any part of the entity he could reach.
At some point Wessen had slumped forward on his chains, chin on his chest. He looked very dead—not only was his heart exposed, but he was still covered in the wounds inflicted by the storm—but as soon as Dante and Blays moved a few feet toward him, he looked up sharply.
"Come any closer and I'll strike you dead!" He glared at them, eyes getting wet with tears. "Entity! Nolost! Stop them!"
Dante brought them level with Wessen's heart and sailed straight ahead. Nolost was still being battered by the lich and didn't seem to be able to do much about that. Yet he rolled his body and heaved about—making way toward Blays and Dante.
"He's coming for us," Dante said dully.
"Should we go somewhere else?" Blays said.
"We can't outrun him. We just have to hope you can finish off Wessen before Nolost gets to us."
Nolost had flown some ways away in his efforts to elude the lich. There was a chance they'd have enough time. But the entity was already completing its turn, gliding toward them like the shadow of death.
Gladdic launched a swell of ether in Nolost's path. The light ripped into the front of the entity, leaving ribbons of vapor trailing behind it, but did nothing to slow it down.
As Dante and Blays came before Wessen's heart, the god tried to squirm away from them as he'd done before. He'd been so thoroughly weakened and worn-out, though, that he could barely pull away from them, and after a few seconds of struggling, he hung from his chains, too exhausted to do more than swear at and curse them.
"Kill him!" Dante said. "Kill him now!"
Blays drew back the spear and stabbed it forward. He struck Wessen's heart squarely, but the impact pushed them back out of range. Dante pulled them toward the nether, and tried to reach ahead to keep them in place, or even to lend some forward momentum to Blays' strike, but he lost his grasp, and they were pushed away again.
Ether lit up the darkness behind them, racing away from Gladdic. Nolost took it head-on. The entity had already crossed a disheartening amount of the distance between them.
I've suffered you for too long, it said. I come to snuff your candles.
Swearing to himself, Blays slammed the spear into Wessen's heart. It gave off just a dim flash. He was starting to carve a groove into the organ but it was still a shallow one. Were all the gods so strong? Or had he been toughened that much first by his transformation into a giant, and then by the eons of physical strife he'd endured since then?
Dante got them back in place and shot a look over his shoulder. The entity was trailing smoke behind it like a funeral pyre during a plague. But Dante couldn't see the lich. He propelled them forward and after Blays stabbed with his spear Dante stabbed at the heart with his nether. Gladdic's strobing ethereal attacks were almost constant now, centered around Nolost's head, going off in large bright bursts, as if, knowing he couldn't hurt the entity enough to matter, he might at least be able to distract or confuse it.
"I'm not going to have enough time," Blays said. "If you've got any last tricks up your sleeve, there's no sense holding back."
Dante shook his head. But he did, he suppose, have an old trick, one that might work now that Wessen had been so weakened. He moved into the nether inside the god's bleeding heart and bound it tight. Wessen jerked up his head, gasping, face reddening as he pulled against his chains. The god wouldn't have the strength to stand on his own two feet, yet he fought through the bonds, pulling them loose, heaving as his heart kicked back into action. If anything, the attempt had been less effective than Dante's first try.
With a sudden spike of rage—one he knew in his own heart would soon convert to despair—he drove a thunderbolt of nether into the wound. Gladdic, who had gotten the hang of pulling himself around through the ether, moved, a little wobbly, into the direct path of the entity. He spewed vast torrents of light from his hands into the entity's leading edge, kicking up so much vapor that it looked like they were being confronted by a stormcloud.
Even as it drew near, Gladdic held his ground, as it were. Still streaming ether from his hand, the old man began to sing, the sound of it rich and deep. After a couple of lines, Dante recognized the song, though he hadn't heard it since he was a child: a Mallish hymn, a very old one, about how nice it is to go to bed after a very long day of work in the fields.
A tentacle snaked forth from the cloud. Gladdic diverted the light to it, reducing it to hissing smoke. Others shot out to lash at him but he refused to retreat, vaporizing one after another even as they advanced to within a few feet of him. Dante turned from Wessen to throw some nether at the assault, but he was too late. Three limbs grabbed hold of Gladdic, squeezing and biting him. His hand flashed with light but then sputtered away.
The tentacles grasped at him, pulling him back toward Nolost. Dante sliced into them with the nether, dispersing them, and gathered more shadows. Gladdic hung unmoving. Nolost's squid-like head emerged from the steam like the prow of a ship from a foggy sea. Light blinked from his side where the White Lich continued to hack and slash at him. But it had become clear that for whatever damage the lich might be doing to him, it wasn't going to be enough to stop him.
Dante could do nothing more than put them in position for Blays to make another stab at the heart. He sent his mind into the organ's nether but they still had several inches to cut through.
"You were right," Dante said. "We didn't have enough time."
"Ah," Blays said. "Damn."
"All that's left to decide now is whether to keep trying anyway, or turn and fight."
"I always swore to myself that when the moment came, I would die fighting."
Dante nodded numbly. "Then that's what we'll do."
He pulled himself through the nether, turning them to face Nolost, a process that require a boat-like heaving about rather than just pivoting in place. The entity wasn't close enough to reach them yet, yet it extended a fan of tentacles before it anyway, hungry for their deaths, and to watch them watch themselves die.
"Here it comes," Wessen said. "I don't think I've seen anything so beautiful in all my time here."
Dante lobbed some nether at it, more to probe at it than to damage it, hunting for any advantages or weaknesses that might have been created by the efforts of the lich. But Nolost seemed as impervious to this as a mountain to the rain. The entity cruised onward. Blays leveled the point of his spear. As Nolost drew closer, Dante slowed his attacks to a trickle.
Without word or warning, the entity thrust at them with a score of its long thin limbs. It was what Dante had been waiting for, and he scythed into them with a whirlwind of shadows, reducing most to mist before they could get close enough for Blays to swing his spear through them. A few managed to grab hold of the both of them, but Dante scooped up a second round of shadows and severed them.
Yet the entity formed more around the base of its head, drifting nearer yet, bringing more of its arms into range, looming over them like a cliff. A second round of tentacles came for them, squiggling across the open air. Dante had worked out the minimum amount of nether it took to destroy one and he spread his shadows as thinly as he dared. He cut down many of them.
But not most. He rushed to scoop up more nether as Blays yelled out in defiance and swiped the Spear of Stars through those reaching for him. Some slipped through, slithering around Blays' arms, restraining him. Dante only managed to grab another handful of nether before the first of the limbs took hold of him, too. He cut apart the ones on his arm and neck but others wrapped around his ankle and waist. And dragged him forward.
He reached into the nether behind him, trying to pull himself toward it, but the tentacles were far stronger, and his mind was plucked away from the shadows. He chopped away the ones holding onto him but others had already replaced them and were carrying him steadily toward the entity.
A seam formed across Nolost's head. With a groan, it split apart into an enormous mouth, filled not with orderly rows of teeth, but with a chaotic arrangement of long black spikes, pointed, twitching tongues, and smaller mouths bristling with teeth.
Dante forced himself not to scream. He shot nether straight down the mouth, aiming for its throat—though it was too dark to see if it had one—but the entity swallowed the shadows without a trace. As Dante neared it, he expected it to stink, like sewage or death or something beyond all depths of his imagination. But all it smelled like was emptiness and cold.
Tentacles lifted him up, ready to toss him into the maw. He tried to brace his arms over his head but they were caught fast by the entity, who had bound him tight, like a tiny version of the Chained God now laughing behind him.
A beacon of light appeared atop the entity's head. The lich lifted his blade high and slammed it down into Nolost. The tentacles went still; Dante cut a few of them and raced to summon more nether.
The lich raised his sword again. "Let us see where you keep what you call a soul."
Instead of cleaving into the entity's head, the lich released the blade. It remained in the air. The lich spread his hand before it—and it shattered into thousands of shards, each one as bright as the sword itself. He lifted his hand high above his head, then cast it downward.
A storm of light—the shards perfect, more beautiful than the stars in their glory—tore through the entity's head. Huge clouds of vapor blew forth, surrounding Dante in darkness, yet the light was so intense he could still see its many motes stabbing downward, piercing all the way through the top half of the head and upper jaw. Dante barely had the presence of mind to shape more nether and cut through the remaining tentacles clinging to him.
He pulled himself back through the nether as more dark vapor blasted past him. He couldn't see Blays, and yelled to him, but the mist was too thick to see through.
Except where the light was still slicing through the entity. It had entered the lower jaw, smashing teeth, cutting through tongues, splitting the little mouths. The next moment it punched through the bottom of the entity's head, thousands of points of light all streaming dark smoke behind them.
Nolost widened his mouth, as if preparing to roar. The ether exploded from below it. Dante blinked against the stars in his eyes; there was no heat but he could feel the shine of the light on his face. There was smoke everywhere. He could see through it but what he saw made no sense.
The entity's head was gone.
There was nothing where it used to be except for a few flapping tatters and enough mist to blanket a forest. Perhaps there had been some vital part of Nolost's mind within his head, or perhaps it was just a shock to his system, for despite how grievous the injury appeared to be, it took a second before the entity responded to it. Then it lurched back, listing like a sinking ship, its tentacles thrashing madly.
"Show it to me," said the White Lich. "If you make me search for it I promise the pain will be even worse."
The entity tried to retreat from him, but the lich hitched himself to its nether, first matching course with the entity, then reeling himself closer to it. The mist was starting to disperse—not to return to Nolost, and reconstitute itself, but to vanish—and Dante could make out both Blays and Gladdic. The tentacles that had been ensnaring Blays had been obliterated along with Nolost's head, but he was bleeding all over the place.
