all he could do just to keep his mind coherent.
“Nononononononononooooo!” Shade was screaming. Rocking back and forth, he clawed at his own face, trying to remove what could not be removed. Portions of the chamber ceiling collapsed, but none so much as struck within two yards of the warlock. Somehow, his own defenses were still intact.
He cannot contain the power and the more he releases, the more destruction! It was worse than Darkhorse had feared. Vraad sorcery had destroyed one world already. It tore at the laws of nature rather than worked with them. As with the sorcery of the Dragonrealm, it was oft times an almost unconscious, automatic thing and the more it was used, the more chaos it caused. Shade, trapped in his own horror, was allowing it to run rampant. Darkhorse wondered if there might have been some other way.
The warlock was on his knees and facing the ground, unmindful of what havoc he was unleashing. Darkhorse had wondered what this new spell would do; the answer seemed to be create more destruction. It was as if the intensity of the original curse had been doubled in scope.
“Shade!” he called out, his voice booming above all else. “You must listen to me! A part of you must know the chaos you have invited into this world! I know from the past few days that there is, within you, a desire to end this madness peacefully! If you would hear me-”
Surprisingly, the warlock did look up. There was a tenseness in his movements. He had heard Darkhorse’s voice, but not the shadow steed’s warning. A fierce presence rose about the warlock as his tortured mind mixed facts and suppositions until they no longer had any true meaning. From that came one final, insane conclusion.
“You!” Shade rose, all fury. His mind, the stallion noted, was shifting from one extreme emotion to another- and with this particular emotion, he needed a focal point. “You did this to me!”
It would have been one of the most absurd things that Darkhorse had ever heard, save that he could have predicted it would be so. Shade could not accept that the grand spell had failed again or that he had not even recovered from the first attempt. He needed a scapegoat in order to preserve what little remained of his sanity-if there was anything left. The warlock needed something to lash out at.
What he does next could level settled areas, the eternal realized. And being in the Tybers, one of those places might be Talak! How ironic it would be if the Dragon King captured Melicard’s kingdom, only to have it sink beneath the earth or simply cease to be.
That image in mind, Darkhorse vanished-
— and reentered the world in the desolate, blistering cold of the Northern Wastes.
Before him, almost as if he had known where the shadow steed had intended fleeing, was Shade. Despite the wind, his cloak remained still, covering him like a shroud. Darkhorse had wondered what death would look like when it finally claimed him. He now knew. There would be no escaping Shade, then. Whatever it took, the warlock would track him down, laying waste to whatever happened to cross his path in the meantime. Perhaps, letting the axe fall here would at least save the Dragonrealm, thought Darkhorse somewhat fatalistically, though he suspected that the tortured figure before him would not completely spend his madness here.
“For our friendship,” the spectral figure said, his calm words more chilling than his angered ones, “I would have left you in peace. I would have. Then, you did this to me! Now, I have only-”
“Shade, if you would just listen to me!”
“-one question to ask of you before I treat you as you’ve chosen to treat me. Why do it? Tell me that.”
There was no correct response and Darkhorse knew that. The best he could do was give no answer at all. Shade’s twisted thought had condemned him already.
“Goodbye, then, my comrade of old.”
Despite the distance now separating them, Darkhorse still maintained the shell protecting the helpless Erini, although it sapped almost all of what remained of his strength. He prepared himself now for the worst. Death or, at the very least, the absence of life. Having never died, he could not say what awaited him, if anything. Certainly, he did not fall within the realms of human afterlife.
Scattered thoughts touched him. Curiosity concerning the eventual fate of Talak. Questions as to where the Bedlams had gone. He wondered what their children would grow up to be like. Most of all, Darkhorse wondered what fate awaited the world of the Dragonrealm, with or without the interference and chaos created by its new, blur-visaged demigod.
He would protect Erini with the last vestiges of his power. When Shade finally took him, the shadow steed would give his essence to her. Perhaps it would buy her time enough for Cabe to find her. Likely not.
I have erred every step of the way, Darkhorse decided. Most of all, I erred in thinking of this one as still human-when all he truly was, was a Vraad!
Shade moved, but slowly, as if unwell. Darkhorse saw little of consequence in that at the moment, instead concerned with bracing himself against what would surely be the warlock’s final blow. His own nature would protect him briefly, but hardly long enough to matter. He only hoped, a foolish hope, that the warlock would feel regret afterward. It might stave off some of the coming devastation.
If only there was some way to take from the warlock the powers he had usurped…
There was. There WAS.
The answer came to him too late. Something darted around Darkhorse like a mad horsefly, something that grew as it circled him. He tried fending it off, but his power was too weak. It expanded as it moved, rapidly wrapping him within a shell whose very presence chilled his form, froze lifelessly his very essence. Given time, it would make of him a monument to his own futility. Given time, there would be nothing more than a shell shaped like a huge, writhing steed.
Given a little more time, there would not even be that.
Darkhorse struggled to maintain his senses. The key was his. He had controlled it all this time, but his own foolish sense of “noble sacrifice” had left him blind to the potential before him. Now, it might be too late.
Entangled in the warlock’s death trap, Darkhorse tumbled into the snow and ice. The link with Erini, the one that still kept her alive, was his only chance. Summoning up his will and foregoing his own defense, he called out to her in his mind. Erini!
If he was wrong, it hardly mattered. Neither he nor she had more than a few minutes left either way.
A dim shadow fell over him. Through partially obscured vision, he saw a spectral Shade loom over him, likely come to gloat over his throes. To the eternal’s confusion, the hooded figure sighed and reached out to touch his foe on the head. Briefly, Darkhorse entertained the thought of absorbing his adversary and trapping him within the emptiness that was his inner self, but he knew that the power of Shade was more than capable of withstanding even that. True enough, the Vraad’s hand pulsated with energy.
The fiendish thing-did it live? — had sealed his mouth and Darkhorse found himself unable to form another. He lay there, silent and nearly mummified, as the warlock continued to move his hand along the shadow steed’s neck and to his head.
For the first time, he felt the probe of Shade’s mind. It was the final defeat. Darkhorse no longer even had the will with which to combat his longtime nemesis and companion.
“Soooo, that’s why you fell so easily,” the shadow lurking above him whispered. He had discovered the stallion’s refusal to abandon Erini. Darkhorse shook, but was no longer able to do anything else… unless…
The shadow steed opened his mind completely and let his captor see everything, but, most especially, what he knew about Shade’s condition.
The warlock shook and pulled his hand away as if touching something unclean. He remained stooped over his defeated adversary for some time, muttering things that Darkhorse could not make out save that Shade seemed to be arguing with himself adamantly. Finally, however, he came to some fateful decision and wrapped himself in his cloak, staring at the point somewhere beyond Darkhorse’s limited range of vision.
“I’ll need the girl again,” he whispered to himself as he rose to a standing position. With an almost careless dismissal of the muffled figure at his feet, Shade stepped over Darkhorse and vanished into the tundra.
The eternal cursed himself. Of course Shade’s first thought would be to recapture Erini! Darkhorse had let him see what was happening: instead of becoming a near-perfect demigod, the warlock was threatened with an existence even less real than in his prior incarnations. As powerful as he had become, Shade was still at the mercy of his self-made curse. The shadow steed had hoped that, knowing this, Shade might come to his senses.
Forgive me, Erini! Oddly, Darkhorse’s error gave him the glimmer of hope. He had been abandoned and the deadly spell that had almost ended his existence had stopped, apparently dormant without its master’s guidance. Given time, he would be able to free himself.
