Visyna fell into step, watching Chayii gently take her husband’s arm and rest her head on his shoulder. Jurwan still wasn’t talking, but it was clear from his tactic with Tyul he was regaining his elfness.
A forlorn shako, a broken musket, and other bits of uniform and equipment surrounded several black marks in the snow where Iron Elves had perished. Yimt took the time to quickly sift through each one, muttering under his breath as he did so. In each case he picked up something and put the object in a haversack he’d found and slung over his shoulder.
“What’s he doing?” Visyna asked Hrem.
“Collecting something from each soldier, hopefully something personal their family back home might know and appreciate receiving, especially when there won’t be any body.”
“Damn,” Yimt said, standing up from the last spot. He was holding a small white book in his hand with a torn cover.
“Inkermon’s holy book,” Hrem said, his voice low and rough.
Visyna waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. She thought about it, and realized that for soldiers like Hrem and Yimt and Konowa, the squad, the regiment, was another way of saying family.
“Everyone stay sharp, we’re coming up on the main battle,” Yimt said, pointing with his steel bar toward the front.
Visyna had been feeling the pull of the energy in the air for some time and her head began to swim.
“I see a rakke!” Scolly shouted, harkening Yimt’s advice.
“Pointing would help,” Yimt growled, trying to follow Scolly’s eye line.
“It’s standing over there by the major.”
Everyone looked. Up ahead in a rockier area that hadn’t received the heavier snowfall, Konowa sat limply in the snow, looking up at the creature. He wasn’t defending himself.
“Help him!” Visyna cried, not knowing who or what could.
“My son, my son,” Chayii said, her voice trembling.
The rakke stepped forward, ready to kill him when it disappeared in a violent flash of frost fire. The shade of an Iron Elf stood over its body.
“The Darkly Departed are handy to have around, I’ll give them that,” Yimt said, starting to chuckle. His laughter died as the form of the shade sharpened.
Visyna screamed.
Kritton raised his ethereal blade and swung.
THIRTY
The swirling mass that had once been Her Emissary tore itself into ever tinier pieces, scattering its rage and influence among the shades of the dead rakkes. Alwyn had expected to fight the creature as he had before at the canyon, but he realized now that was impossible. It had devolved into a burning black core of hatred no bigger than Alwyn’s fist, but around it swirled an ever-growing maelstrom of shadowy death, each element a fearful particle of what Faltinald Gwyn had become.
Worse, the tear opened into the realm of the dead was expanding, and the creature’s manic anger was drawing more and larger monsters through into this world. Alwyn leaned forward, pushing the wall of frost fire that surrounded him into the path of the shrieking vortex. The pain in his stump flared and he winced. Tears welled in his eyes. His wooden leg creaked with the stress, its many interwoven limbs splintering as he moved through the magical storm.
The storm reacted with fury to his presence, its howling winds buffeting Alwyn as he closed the distance to its center. Screams from the living and dead mingled in a chaotic thunder. Alwyn tried to draw in a breath, but as soon as he opened his mouth he felt ice form on his tongue. The cold dug into him like metal forks, twisting and stabbing into his flesh as each step brought him closer to the creature.
“I am the master now!” the creature screamed, focusing its attention on Alwyn.
“Then why do you fear me?” Alwyn replied, standing up to his full height and fixing the pulsing black core with his gray eyes. He had its full attention, which meant the others would have a chance. The thought struck him as oddly comforting. He did still care about others, and he knew they still cared about him.
He stepped forward, leading with his wooden leg. The wood chipped and cracked as it was flayed by the storm. Black frost crystallized along the length of the wood, extinguishing the last trace of the more wholesome power once placed there by Miss Red Owl and Miss Tekoy. So be it. With the wood now sheathed in protective black ice, he leaned forward and kept walking.
He’d expected pain, and he got it. It was a new kind of agony, like thousands of knives nicking his flesh one sliver at a time, but it wasn’t the pain that hurt him. He wasn’t just being eroded away by the force of the spinning storm. Bits of who he was, what he believed, what he desired, were being frayed and blown away by the grinding, howling wind.
He caught fleeting visions of thoughts that were once part of the thing at the center of the storm. Pain, horror, misery, and death dominated, but there were other, kinder thoughts. He saw a beautiful jeweled map and an intricately carved table that looked like a dragon. Alwyn began to sift through the storm as he strode toward its center, collecting what pieces he could, however small, containing joy and hope. He let his own fears and angers get torn away as he did his best to replace them with the bits of goodness he found. The task was an uneven one, but he only needed to sustain himself a little longer. The seething core was now just yards away.
Here, near the center, the storm spun slower, but the madness grew denser, making it difficult for Alwyn to focus. Insane laughter filled his lungs.
He stopped a yard away from the black core. It hung in the air in front of his eyes, an infinite blackness so crazed it repeatedly shattered and re-formed under the pressure of its own insanity. He tried to remember why he’d come and couldn’t. The blackness deepened and his understanding of this world and the next blurred. He shuddered, his body and his being slowly disintegrating in the storm. The fabric of his uniform melted away, leaving him naked and exposed.
Something small and white flew past, just at the edge of his vision. It came around again and stuck into his arm. He felt a hot fire begin to burn, its heat spreading out from the point of impact. As it spread, it redefined his shape, his form, and he understood who and what he was again. He looked down and saw Rallie’s quill sticking out of his arm, dead center in the acorn tattoo:
He smiled and looked up at the blackness before him.
“Your pain is at an end,” he said, reaching out with both hands and grabbing the blackness between them.
The fury of the storm spiked, the wind screamed, and the very air fractured as the madness that was Faltinald Gwyn began to collapse. Alwyn squeezed, crushing time and space into an ever-dwindling point of nothingness. Everything Alwyn ever knew and loved was ripped away as all his energy focused on destroying the creature and closing the tear. Claws and fangs lashed and cut him, gouging flesh and bone and memory. Obsidian- like blades of frost fire cauterized and healed the wounds, replacing flesh and blood with icy flame.
Tears rolled down his face forming icicles on his cheeks. He closed his eyes and squeezed harder, taking the pain from the creature, amplifying it with his own, and building a wall in the tear between this world and the next. Everything dead became caught up in the whirlwind as Alwyn focused all his might. The monsters broke apart and flew back into the darkness, followed by the shades of the rakkes. Still, the maelstrom did not weaken.
He slipped, as the branches of his wooden leg broke. He dropped down to his one knee and his grip on the creature faltered. The wall began to crack as the dead on the other side saw an opportunity to be free again.
“Help me,” he cried, though he couldn’t be sure his voice had made any sound at all.
Shades of the Iron Elves appeared at his side. He opened his eyes as they moved to the wall to buttress it, but even they were not enough. The creature sensed this, and the storm began to spin even faster. Alwyn cried out and would have let go, but a voice came to him from a distance.
“Kick him in the arse and be done with it, Ally. I know damn sure I never taught you to give up!”
Alwyn turned, blinking tears out of his eyes.
