Roar, page 38
Still as the battle raged and whoever it was that had used the war spell kept unleashing it, he enjoyed the sight of so many imps turning to dust. It gave him something to be happy about as the lamaia continued to burn.
And then in time, one thing more brought him some unexpected cheer. Dawn.
Thorm smiled as he saw the first hints of deep blue lighten the blackness all around. For a while he hadn't known if he would ever get to see a dawn again. If he would just die in the darkness and fire. It seemed though that he had survived the night.
Dawn though brought him more than that. It brought him the chance to finally see the true battle all around. Finally he could see more than just the immense chasm of fire in front of him in which demons by their thousands were burning. He could see this new city that had somehow arrived in the Eternal City. Actually he supposed, it was now the Eternal City, since the rest of it was gone.
The city appeared to be a mismatched collection of broken buildings that had all been somehow cobbled together into one structure. It also looked to be in imminent danger of collapse. No doubt however the city had been brought here, it had been unduly harsh on its foundations. How it was still standing he didn't know. Still, that was a small price he supposed when the end result was that there were now thousands if not tens of thousands of wizards and casters of all sorts ranged around the crater; standing and fighting. From being one of only two defenders he was now part of an army.
The other thing he noticed was how the battlefield was arranged. He was standing right in the middle of it, beside the crater that had once been the Tri-consular Orb, near to where the giant wall had been that had divided the Eternal City from the Palace of the Sun. Meanwhile the chasm spread out to both sides. One side reached all the way to the actual palace from which the imps were still streaming. The other reached out through what had been the other half of the Eternal City and ran almost to the door of this new city of wizards. Somehow the area had turned into a recognisable battlefield with enemy forces facing off against one another.
Then the sun finally rose over the distant mountains behind him and he forget everything else as he felt its glory shining down on him once more. As he felt strength flooding back into his tired flesh. It might not last, but while it was there he welcomed it. And he let it add strength to his attacks. Burning ever more demons with it.
For a while he knew, he could carry on. But not forever.
So he fought. He pushed on and hoped that someone had an idea. A way of shutting down this damned tear between the worlds. Or that the underworld would run out of demons. And as the long hours passed, he thought about nothing else but the battle.
By mid-morning however, his new found strength was beginning to desert him. They were all tired – except Mara who was screaming like a mad woman as she launched blast after blast at the escaping demons. But even if she wasn't tired, he couldn't help but notice that her bag of ammunition was more than half empty.
“Thorm!”
A woman shouted at him, jarring Thorm out of his concentration. Jarring him a little more when he realised who it was. Camille. She was standing in front of him, larger than a house, and he knew immediately he saw that, that he had to be dreaming. Except that he was dreaming while he was awake and fighting. How was that possible?
Or was he just dreaming that he was awake? He panicked when the thought came to him and tried desperately to shake himself out of his slumber. But he couldn't. He couldn't wake up when he was already awake.
“Easy. I'm not going to attack you again.” She misunderstood his alarm. “But I need you to do something.”
“What?” He asked before he even thought about it and then discovered that he could speak. Properly.
“Listen to the oracles.”
In the blink of an eye she was gone and he was staring at seven eyeless people. Four women and three men. All were wearing robes and were staring at him eyelessly. They looked deadly serious. But even as he stared at them he found himself looking at a chasm of fire and pushing all the magic he had into keeping it burning. Seeing one transposed over the other was decidedly weird.
“Yes?” He was too tired to ask what was happening. Too desperate too.
“We know how to close the tear. But only you can do it.”
Thorm perked up at that. He had already tried a number of times to do that and had failed. If they had the answer then he was only too eager to hear it.
“Grab Aston, and push him through the tear.”
“What?”
“He's the reason the tear's still open.” Potaine stepped forward. “He's the Eternal King. He built the Tri-consular Orb. And then he made a deal with the lamaia. He wanted to live forever in perfect health. To heal from anything. To always be young. And he wanted power. And so he made a deal.”
“They gave him what he wanted in exchange for him providing them with their meal of choice. Which in their case was souls. Magical souls.”
“Aston built his part of the Tri-consular Orb. That’s the part that we see here. The part that you've turned into a chasm of flames. The lamaia built the other side of it in their realm. Together the two sides form the entrance ways to and exits from the two worlds. And then together they built the third part of it. The bridge between the two. A bridge that can't exist in either world since it lies between them. Instead it actually exists in the Great Dream. But it's so mighty that we can still see it in the real world. The Eternal King calls it his home. You see it as the actual palace within the Palace of the Sun. In reality it is the bridge between the two gateways. And because the Palace doesn't exist in the real world it can't be destroyed. It's part of the Great Dream.”
“Once it was completed Aston started sending people with magic through the gate for the lamaia to feed on. And they sent him a demon to act as his personal servant and grant him all the power he demanded. Aston pretended that the demon was in fact the actual Eternal King as a way of protecting himself from the wrath of the people. And so the cycle was created.”
“Every time someone is sent through the Tri-consular Orb, they enter the Orb, pass through the Great Dream and exit the Orb in the underworld. And some of their soul is stolen from them on the way. That portion is shared between the demon servant and Aston. It’s why they are both unkillable. He has the lives of thousands or tens of thousands of people to sustain him. The rest of the person’s soul goes to the underworld so that the lamaia may feed.”
“The High Temples were destroyed to sever the connection between us and our Mistresses, so that we could not see the truth of what was done. It is only now, this close to the end, that we finally understand what it is. That we know.”
“But this will be –.”
Thorm shook his head vigorously to wake himself fully to stop her words from reaching him. He didn't need to know what she was going to say. He'd heard enough. He guessed this would be bad for him. But it didn't matter. He understood what was needed. He had to push the Eternal King through the tear. Push him right into the chasm, then he would pass through the great dream and arrive in the underworld. And at that point the deal would be broken. That was all he needed to know.
He leapt into the air, swooped down on the Eternal King encased in ice as he was, and then leapt into the chasm with the King in his grasp.
Instantly he hit a wall of something. A force that resisted him. Held him back. And as he struggled against it the flames burnt at him, tearing through him as nothing else could. Thorm screamed in agony – and surprise. He'd thought he was immune to fire. He breathed it after all. But it seemed he wasn't. It felt like he was being burnt alive. Maybe he was. Or maybe it was just pain, since he seemed to be able to keep pushing against whatever force was holding him back. He didn't know. Regardless he had a mission to complete. So he carried on, Aston in his grasp, screaming with him as he too burnt as the ice encasing him melted. It seemed he didn't like fire either. And step by step he forced his way down that blackened slope of flames and lava, to the hole right at the bottom of it. And when the pain became too great he roared with fury and forged on.
What was fighting him? What was holding him back? He didn't know. It should be easy to go down. But the closer he got to the heart of that chasm, the more it fought him. The more it tried to stop him. But he would not yield. He put one paw in front of the other, screamed his pain and fury out for the entire world to hear, and carried on.
“Please!” Aston screamed at him as his skin blackened and healed. As the last of the ice encasing him melted away leaving more of his skin exposed to the fire.
Thorm ignored him and continued on down the crater, desperate to do this before he no longer could. Because it was obvious that he would not survive this. But then he had a family somewhere out there in his world. He needed for them to live. And he needed to end his own struggle anyway.
At least, he thought to himself, when he died he would no longer have to see the thousands upon thousands of burnt lamaia corpses or thousands more lamaia still alive and in flames. It was a terrible sight even though he knew that they deserved their fate. The lamaia were truly horrible creatures. But not because of their slug like skin or their shape. It was because of what they were. Beings of pure hunger who stole away the life of others. Even now he could feel them trying to steal the life from him. Trying to eat his very soul.
Thorm wouldn't let them. He roared in anger and marched on while they disintegrated in the fire.
“Don’t do this!” Aston begged him once again as he saw his doom approaching. You know it will kill you just as surely as it will kill me!”
Thorm ignored him, digging his claws deeper into the middle of the wretch he now wore like a shoe as he continued. That way even if Aston healed, he would still have Thorm's claws through his middle, holding him securely. And when he came upon the armoured demon that he had believed for years to be the actual Eternal King, he puncture its armour with his claws and wore it like a shoe as well as he marched toward the centre of the crater.
The fire burnt ever hotter as he continued, and the pain grew worse. At some point he realised it was so terrible that it had transcended pain. It had become something that didn't even have a name. But though he was being consumed by fire, he carried on. There was no choice.
After what seemed like years though it might have been less than a minute, he saw the hole in the very base of the crater just ahead of him. A region of pure blackness that he guessed was the actual Orb. His destination.
He roared and pushed the armour clad demon into it. It didn't struggle and disappeared quickly into the blackness. Aston meanwhile screamed in terror. He tried to resist, struggling against Thorm, and pummelling with his fists that were now free of the ice. But there was nothing he could do. Thorm's leg had by then ripped a hole right through his middle and he couldn't get free.
Then Thorm stood on the edge of the tear on his hind legs while stretching his wings out wide. He raised his front leg with the Eternal King worn on it like a ring on a finger and hurled him into the blackness with all the strength he had.
There was one final terrible scream as the Eternal King entered the blackness, which was abruptly cut short as he too vanished. And then Thorm roared, giving vent to all his pain and fury and in triumph.
Then the world exploded.
For a heartbeat or an eternity there was pain and destruction. Thorm felt himself being torn apart and the burnt to ashes. It was agony and yet strangely it was also ecstasy. And after it was over there was only darkness. Merciful darkness.
Chapter Forty Two
Camille sat on the edge of the chasm, staring down into the mass of charred soil and melted rock, rising steam and smoke, and wondered about that final flight and the Eternal King’s demise. Even now, four long days after Thorm had closed the tear between worlds and everything had come to an explosive end, she didn't know what had truly happened. No one did. She doubted even the oracles had any true idea.
There were only a few things that she knew for certain. That it was over. The chasm was closed and the Palace of the Sun had disappeared. It no longer existed in either this world or in the Great Dream. That Thorm had willingly died a horrific death without even a moment's hesitation. And that for the first time in years she was holding her mother's hand in her own.
It wasn't right. None of it. But then it hadn't been right for a very long time. At least they could now say that it had ended.
Her mother was finally free of the Eternal King's grasp, but was still only recovering slowly. In her mind anyway. Physically, Camille wasn't sure she was recovering at all. She still sat in her wheeled chair and despite the best efforts of the healers, Camille doubted she would ever get out of it. She would not live to be an old woman either. But at least she would heal and know some time as a free woman. Camille would still have some time with her.
Mara was a mess, her moods all over the place as she dealt with her own pain. She had had her revenge, but the price she had paid for it had turned out to be too high. The only man she had ever loved had given his life for it, and it was only now that it was all over and done with that she understood that.
Strongheart was a mess. Many of the people – too many to count – had been killed in battle or in the final explosion. Many more had been badly injured. Their home was all but destroyed. They were going to have to pack up their bags and head slowly back to Erisen and then rebuild their home. Unless as some were suggesting, they decided to stay, and make what had been the Eternal City their new city of Strongheart in the heart of the Plains. It would be a long time before they recovered.
As for the Plainsmen, they were now leaderless. Their King for all that he was a monster, had ruled them for a thousand years. They had no history of ever being ruled by anyone else. Now he was gone, his armies were directionless and the people were panicking. The chances were that the Volden Plains would fall into anarchy in time. There would likely be revolutions in their future and breakaway kingdoms formed which in turn would engage in wars. Their King might have been bad but this was a disaster. The only good thing they could say was that the explosion had killed all of the lamaia. None had managed to escape the chasm before the end. The imps and the palace had gone too.
Then there was her own nightmare. Not only had her magic faded until she was barely an untrained dreamer, and while her mother had been freed was likely not going to be long for the world, she had to live with the knowledge that she had caused unbearable suffering to the man who had sacrificed himself to save her mother. The guilt and shame gnawed at her every day.
They had not won this war. She was beginning to understand that there were no winners in war. They had at best survived it. And not all of them had done that.
“Why so down in the mouth, Child?”
Camille looked around to see her aunt standing in front of her with a small gaggle of friends.
“The sun's shining and the fires are out, even if the ground is still smoking.”
“I'm not so sure that's a good thing,” Camille replied. The risk of fire breaking out again was always present which was why every hour or so a few of the wizards with the right spells took it in turns to drench the entire area with rain. Every time they did it steam rose above the chasm, temporarily blanketing everything in fog as though they were inside a cloud. The wizards had said that they would have to keep doing that for another couple of weeks before they could be sure that there was no further danger.
“Ah but it is when we have news.” Matilde smiled a little crookedly at her.
“News?”
“Guess who this is?” She indicated a young, tall and somewhat handsome man beside her.
Camille shrugged. She'd never seen him before.
“This is Gabe Aston – though he's looking for a new family name I believe.”
“Gabe?” It took her a second to place the name. But then when she did it finally did bring a smile to her face. “Elspeth's Gabe!”
“One and the same, my good Lady Wizard.” He managed a small bow to her. “And when I have been reunited with her I look forwards to asking her to marry me. That is, if she still wants me,” he added diffidently. “I am after all now a man with no prospects and no family name. Although even that’s probably better than having my father still alive.”
“Huh!” Mara nudged him in the side with her elbow. “Just try and stop her! The fool girl's besotted with you.” She managed a smile. An expression that hadn't appeared on her face in a very long time. “Just make sure you're good to her.”
“That I truly will be good Lady. I am not my father. You may be certain of that. I did not know he was the Eternal King. Nor that he had hurt my Elspeth. I did not know him at all it seems. But then I was raised by my mother.”
Camille hoped the young man was telling the truth, but she couldn't be certain. She was beginning to realise that she was a poor judge of character. But if Mara was smiling then that was surely a good sign. And since Potaine was with them as well, it would surely be difficult for him to get away with a lie.
