The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 58
Dante patched him up with a wave of his hand, then hurried to Gladdic. The old man was unconscious and badly torn up and likely would have been dead in another minute. Yet he still breathed, and Dante sent himself into the nether, mending flesh, restoring blood, unbreaking bones.
Gladdic coughed, spitting blood down his chin. "I am still here."
"Glad to see it," Dante said. "Because we're about to need you."
"Get me to him!" Blays yelled, swinging his spear through the air. "We can kill him!"
Dante swung about and made way toward Blays. The lich reached Nolost, grabbing hold of one of the tatters at the stump of its neck and pulling himself to the body. He swiveled his head side to side, hunting for something.
Come no closer! Nolost said. You don't know what you seek!
"I seek that which will end you," said the lich. "And I have just seen where it is."
He wrapped his hand in light and plunged it into the stump of Nolost's head. The entity tried to shake himself loose, but the lich clung to him like a limpet. Vapor boiled away from the lich's hand as he groped within the stump.
Dante reached Blays and grabbed hold of him, then began the somewhat awkward process of turning back around. The lich pushed his arm into the black mass of the entity until it was up past his elbow.
You reach too deeply, the entity said. Release me while you still can!
The lich laughed in triumph. "There you are. Now let us see what foulness animates you."
His shoulder tensed as he took hold of something inside of Nolost. Yet a look of puzzlement fell over the lich's face. He tugged back, but his arm didn't budge. He braced his feet against the entity, pushing with them, but couldn't extract so much as an inch of his arm.
I warned you this was coming, Nolost said.
The lich set himself and pulled again to no avail. He snarled at the entity. "It is no matter. I will merely destroy you from within."
Light throbbed beneath the surface of the entity, illuminating the churning darkness. Nolost whipped at the lich with his tentacles, their thorns drawing beads of blue-white blood, as the lich poured more ether into the entity. The dark surface began to boil.
The lich's whole body went taut; he yelled out in pain and surprise. He shot more ether into Nolost with his trapped arm while beating against the entity with his free hand.
"Let me free!" the lich said. "I'll tear you apart!"
You don't believe your own words. I can feel the fear within you. You are right to be afraid.
Gladdic had been watching groggily, but he straightened, produced the ether, and launched it at the entity. The light splashed into its surface in a series of craters.
The lich gasped, sagging backward, and would have floated away from the entity if his arm hadn't been clasped tight. Dante had been moving them forward all the while and was still some ways away, but was close enough to see black tendrils working their way up the lich's trapped upper arm. The lich awoke from his swoon, yelling out in wrath as he fired so much light into the entity that plumes of black liquid spewed from its surface.
Heart drumming against his ribs, unwilling to speak his fears out loud, Dante reached further out into the nether, trying to deliver Blays and his spear to the scene faster than their sluggish pace, but he wound up shuddering and almost stalling instead. Across from him, the lich shuddered as well.
"This is impossible," the lich said. "I cannot be corrupted!"
The entity made a rustling sound that might have been laughter. You have spent too much time among small mortals. It's made you think too much of yourself. That you can contend with the uncontendable.
The lich stared at the black veins creeping across his shoulder, eyes going as blue as the middle of the sea. Without looking away, he filled his free hand with ether, bending it into a crescent moon-shaped blade. Teeth bared, the lich sliced the light into his own arm—and severed it at the shoulder.
At last he fell away from the entity. Breathing hard, he gazed upon his shoulder, sending ether to it to salve the bleeding wound where his arm used to be. He closed his eyes in relief.
Black threads worked their way up the veins of his shoulder.
His eyes shot open. The entity rustled again. It extended a new limb from its own stump, more of a pseudopod than a tentacle, and reached for the White Lich. The lich wrenched himself back from it in retreat. After traveling less than ten feet, he yelled out and came to a stop.
"To hell with you!" he said. "To hell with those who set you upon my world! I curse you both with the last of my blood!"
He drove forward, swathing his remaining hand with ether. The pseudopod came to meet him. The lich drove his hand forward and speared it into the black mass, releasing a huge burst of light, his skin turning nearly as bright, so bright that Dante could somehow see it beneath his clothes, including the black tendrils spreading from his shoulder to his neck and chest.
The pseudopod blew apart, obscuring everything in mist. Once it cleared enough to see, the lich had closed on the entity, and was slashing into him with wild strikes of light, peeling away whole slabs of what might be called Nolost's flesh. He was concentrating on the same area he'd sunk his arm into, and while Nolost kept trying to pull that part of himself away from the lich, or roll over to put a less vulnerable part in front of him instead, the lich stayed locked on to the nether of his target, matching all of its movements, harrowing into the body of the entity.
Yet the corruption in the lich's veins was still spreading. Down his chest, to his heart, and up his neck, to his head. When it reached both, he went as stiff as a post.
You were an actual challenge, Nolost spoke into their minds. Don't feel ashamed of your defeat.
A prehensile arm tipped by a wicked stinger jabbed out from his body and pierced the lich's chest. The lich yelled in pain, voice made strange by the paralysis the corruption had overtaken him with.
It will take you now. The darkness will spread to the ends of your limbs—the three you have left—and inward through your viscera, until it has taken all of you. Then, you will become a part of me, to replace what you have taken.
The lich's whole body trembled. The darkness had already spread from his veins into his skin, making a patchwork of him, with less and less of the blue-white glow by the moment. Dante fired a volley of nether at the entity, joined by Gladdic, but what could such a thing do to change what they were watching unfold?
With another shout of pain, the lich swung his arm forward, breaking free of his paralysis. He held his hand above his solar plexus and withdrew the remaining light from within himself.
"You may not die from my hand," he said. "But when the day comes that you are torn down into nothing, still weakened by the wounds given to you on this day, remember that I was the one who gave them to you."
Gripping the ether like a knife, he screamed and lunged at Nolost, stabbing the shining blade as deeply as he could.
With a pulse of light, the lich was gone.
34
The blast seared Dante's eyes. Yet the image of it floated across his vision: both the white lich and the entity disintegrating as the knife of light released its energy in one withering blast. He blinked and blinked, washing the nether across his eyes, groping out blindly though the shadows to try to confirm that what he'd thought he'd seen was real.
The sparks and ashes faded from his vision. Clouds of black smoke hung everywhere, but it wasn't enough to obscure the massive form of the entity. The lich had blown another chunk out of Nolost, but the entity wasn't dead, even if it was hanging in the air like it was. Smoke was still pouring from it like a house on fire even though the attack had ended some time ago, but a few of its tentacles were starting to twitch.
There was no trace of the lich except for a few stray embers of ether. As Dante watched, these dwindled away, and were gone.
"He's…" Dante said.
"Dead." Blays' spear hung from his hand. "It's just us now."
"But he might have bought us just enough time to finish Wessen." After a quick check that Gladdic was all right, Dante took hold of Blays and wheeled around to face Wessen, whose face was slack with horror.
An incredible experience, to destroy such a power. Nolost's voice dripped with satisfaction. His words were sluggish, almost slurred, as if he'd imbibed a drug. What it must feel like to destroy a whole world…I will need to prepare myself.
With no desire to arouse his spirits, Dante said nothing, steering them toward Wessen, who was now some ways in the distance. Gladdic pursued them, face stoic.
After a thing such as that, killing you will bring little satisfaction. But what must be done must be done.
Dante glanced behind him. Nolost was gathering himself, lumbering into motion, still spewing smoke behind him, bits and pieces of himself floating away. He had been badly mutilated by the Eiden Rane's pair of attacks, but Dante was not the slightest bit tempted to believe they might be able to kill him. He could only hope that all the damage would slow him down—or, even better, to have addled his mind—enough to allow them to reach the Chained God.
Yet the entity kept gathering speed. They were less than a quarter of the way to Wessen when it became clear the enemy would overtake them. Dante heard Gladdic whispering a prayer. The old man swung around to face Nolost, holding his place in the air.
Dante glanced at Blays, who nodded. Dante turned them around and moved to join the old man.
"What are you doing?" Gladdic said. "Get you to the god!"
"It would take minutes for us to kill him," Dante said. "You aren't going to hold that thing off for more than a few seconds."
The old man looked up, then back at Dante. He brought the ether to his hand and launched it at the entity. Beside him, Dante shaped the nether. He tried to find the place the lich had been attacking, but the front of Nolost had been so savaged that it was just a bunch of craters and scraps with nothing recognizable to target. So he simply chose the place of the entity that looked worst of all, on the thought that might mark the place where the lich had been focusing. If nothing else, it looked to be the weakest.
Blays leveled his spear. "Let's at least make him hurt. We may not be able to kill him. But if we beat him up enough, maybe someone else can finish the job."
Dante nodded. He didn't believe it, though. Even fighting alongside the Eiden Rane, it hadn't been enough to stand against Nolost. No one else on Rale could bring the lich's level of power to the field. At most, the injuries they inflicted on the entity might slow down his work a little.
In the end, though, it would make no difference at all.
Tentacles snapped toward them. Dante diverted some nether to them, dispersing a few, but continued to concentrate on the entity's body, counting on Blays to deal with the remainder. The spear blinked as he stabbed it into a cluster of limbs. A few reached through the mist produced by the destruction of the others, but Dante severed them just before they could grab Blays' arm.
I think I will take you as well, Nolost said. Absorb you into me and carry what little is left of your being with me as I unravel the last threads of your world.
He groped toward them again. Not just with his tentacles, but also with a wrinkled, soggy-looking thing that looked more like an extruded vital organ than a limb. Dante shot some nether past the tentacles and into whatever this new object was, but the shadows sank into it without a trace.
Dozens of limbs stretched toward them. For each one that Dante and Gladdic cut down another appeared behind it. Once they came within the reach of the spear, Blays held them at bay with wide but quick sweeps of its tip until one dived past his guard and snarled his arm. Others grabbed hold of Gladdic, replacements ensnaring him when he looked like he might free himself. Dante tried to draw himself away from them, but he couldn't turn around in time. They closed around him, biting and stinging.
They dragged him toward the damp, organ-like thing, which had stayed close to the main mass of Nolost. A seam opened on its top side, jetting vapor into the air. It cleared, revealing steaming yellow liquid. The entity was going to digest them.
Dante lashed out at the organ, hoping to puncture it before they were fed to it, but Nolost just lifted a wall of his own matter in front of it, absorbing Dante's efforts. The tentacles gripping him were wounding him in a score of different places as they reeled him in like a fish but he couldn't spare a drop of shadows to heal himself. He just managed to slash through all of the arms hanging onto him, but he had no time to turn himself around before another set snagged him.
It did delay his trip to the organ, however. Blays, though, had no way to fight loose, and was getting pulled steadily closer. Dante hacked through Blays' bonds, buying him several seconds, but that just meant Dante got dragged nearer to the organ in the meantime. He could smell it now, a tang both foully organic and sharply acidic, something that made his stomach want to empty itself even as his nostrils burned.
The pain was starting to cloud Dante's mind and he swept the nether over his skin and through his veins. Yellow liquid seeped over the rim of the organ and dribbled down its folds. Blays was getting close to it again and Dante cut him loose a second time. As he was finishing this, though, another batch of tentacles shot out from Nolost's torn-up body to assist those already grabbing Dante. He skidded forward several yards through the air.
Say goodbye to your gods, Nolost said. And remember that they are the reason you are here.
The limbs adjusted their path, pulling him higher, so that he would be held above the organ before being hauled or thrown down into it. The stench of it stung his throat and made his eyes water. All at once it overwhelmed him and he felt his head loll back as darkness swept over his eyes.
"Dante!"
Blays. Dante blinked. His head swam with vertigo as he realized he was directly above the organ. Gray lumps bobbed in the yellow filth. He chopped into the tentacles grasping at him, trying not to wail in despair.
A mote of light passed in front of him. It was likely no more than a stray bit of ether cast off by Gladdic, yet his eye felt drawn to it. He followed its course as it neared the black mass of Nolost, then blinked out.
Just beneath where the light had been, a white node the size of his fist sat embedded in the side of the entity.
Just a few minutes ago, before Dante had learned from the lich how to pull himself to the nether, it would have remained out of reach forever, and he would have been unable to do more than gaze at it in despair as he was pitched into the rancid, steaming pool. Now, though, he ripped the nether into the dark matter surrounding the white object, freeing it—and then reached into the ether within it, drawing it toward him.
"Light!" he shouted. "Link me to it!"
"This will be the last time I can do so," the light said from his pocket. "Then I will be gone."
"Do it!"
"Then it is done."
These were the last words the light of life would ever say. A bridge of beautiful light arced between Dante and the stone that now floated in the air before him. He had no time to waste: he brought the light within the lichstone to him, not in a trickle, but in a great flood. One moment, he was suspended there in Pholos, about to be cast down into the open stomach of the entity.
The next moment, he was somewhere else altogether.
Ether danced in the air. His surroundings were indistinct and white. Hazy objects drifted to all sides—some or all of them might even have been alive—but he only had eyes for the light in front of him. Unlike the others, it was as sharp as a dagger. It appeared like the frame of some incredible building, perhaps a cathedral designed by a god itself, but it was ever-shifting, with one set of patterns flowing into another as smoothly as water down a sluice.
There was no ground underfoot, but Dante found himself moving toward the ethereal frame the second he thought of doing so. As he approached it, a shimmer ran across it. Vaguely threatening.
"Come no closer." The voice was that of the lich, but clearer and purer, without the metallic ring that accompanied his physical form. "What is your purpose here?"
"Have you forgotten me already?" Dante said.
The flow of patterns slowed to a crawl. "Little sorcerer. Why are you here?"
"To make use of your power."
"Then restore me to it."
"I am not here to restore it to you," Dante said. "I am here to take it from you."
Another shimmer crossed over the framework of patterns. "But I fought for you."
"You fought for something else entirely. It matters not either way." He stepped closer.
Light glared from within the frame. "You failed once and if you try it again you will fail again. You lack the strength of will. If you had it, you would already be me."
The light rushed toward Dante. Though he'd been expecting it, it bulled into him, knocking him from his feet. It was almost past him already but he flung out his hand and grabbed hold of it. Its edges were harder than iron, cutting into his fingers, but he held fast even as it dragged him forward. He tried to climb onto it, but could do no more than cling to it as it soared through the haze of it.
It came to a total stop. The sudden death of its momentum should have thrown Dante like a doll, but he stopped without so much as rocking forward. The light he was gripping softened until his hand fell right through it. It leaped into the sky, looming above him like a falling tree—and then he was inside it.
Glowing bars surrounded him on all sides. The presence of the lich fell upon him like a boulder, driving him downward through the haze of light, threatening to crush him altogether.
"Return me to the world!" said the lich.
"But you won't help us," Dante said. "You'll take the portal. That's the only choice your will will let you make now."
