The air sparkled with red and silver lights that dazzled my eyes until we stood in a white void, the same sort I’d visited while with Jeven. Theht stood with me. I’d seen her before on several occasions, but it had always been in visions. Other times, she had appeared ghostlike, her form almost too hard to discern. Now, I saw her with perfect clarity. She had a humanlike body, though her skin was covered in orange scales. Her red armor conformed to her body, and long, raven-colored hair flowed down her back.
As we stood facing one another, I got the overwhelming feeling that I stood before a goddess, someone incomprehensibly greater than me, a creature I could barely fathom in the scope of things. I wanted to speak, but my tongue refused to move. I had the overpowering urge to kneel, and before I could second guess my decision, and not being in full control of my own actions, I bent on one knee and dipped my head.
She walked slowly toward me, placed a clawed finger beneath my chin, and raised my head so that our eyes met.
Smiling, she revealed a row of serrated teeth behind black, reptilian lips.
“Deathbringer, today is a great day that will bring my return to your world. I am pleased you have come.”
My mouth still refused to cooperate.
“I have watched for so long. I have inhabited your mind so that now, at this time, I will be able to use your body as my vessel in order to bring about the rebirth of the worlds. Together, we shall travel to the cosmos and take the piece of star for our own. We will use it to ignite the world in flame and in ash, and then its power will propel us into the realm where I long to be.”
“No.” I finally managed to gasp out the word. When I did, a flood of relief washed over me as I felt my mind returning. She knelt in front of me, her eyes narrowed.
“No?” she asked.
“I won’t do it. I won’t let you use me.”
“You have no choice.”
“You’re lying. Everyone has a choice—that’s the beauty of the world I live in. I get to make my own choices. I will not be coerced.”
She grabbed my hand. Power surged through her fingers and into mine, an electrical intensity that set my nerve endings on fire. I gasped as the pain took over, then fell to the ground, my body unresponsive.
Tears leaked from my eyes, but she wouldn’t win this, not while my mind managed to stay my own. “You can’t… do anything… without using fear. Or pain.”
She ignored me. “Do you know why I chose you?” she asked, standing over me.
I wanted to answer, to make some kind of reply, but couldn’t talk past the pain.
“You may have wondered why, out of all the people in the world—in the universe—I chose you. I will tell you, though the answer may not be as you expect.”
The pain relented a little as she spoke, replaced with a feeling of numbness, like a drug that was trying to dull my mind. I lay motionless in the white void, listening as Theht spoke—her soft voice like a spell that would soon control me.
“I did not choose you because you controlled the magic of both worlds, although you may believe otherwise. I did not choose you because I thought you were powerful, you had a strong mind, or because you were predestined or special in some way—a hero who would one day become the champion of this world.
“No, those are not the reasons why. When I looked out over this world, scanning the many faces of the vessels I could have taken, it never once occurred to me that you were special in some extraordinary way. In fact, my choice had nothing to do with you. It had everything to do with him.”
“Him?” I whispered, confused.
“The prophecy of the son of the Viking gods, of the one person foreordained to kill me, was a divination uttered long ago, in a time long past. He was chosen to end my existence, but I would not let the old ways determine my time here, so I did the only thing I could do to stop the foretelling from becoming reality. I took the vessel of the only person on the planet I knew he could not kill.
“That is why you become the Deathbringer. It is why I used your body for my own, and it is why I will use you to destroy this world, because he will not stop me as long as I possess your body.”
My mind tried to grasp the truth of her words, but it was too much. The prophecy had nothing to do with me. The only reason she’d chosen me was because of Kull. I was the one person he couldn’t kill. But she was wrong.
“You’ll never take my body for your own. You’ll never cross into this world.”
Her face loomed in my vision. “Yes. At this moment, I don’t have that power yet, but I will.”
She stepped away from me and held out her hands where a gray mist gathered. Atop her palms, a sword took shape. Tarnished silver blade, ordinary pommel with the dragon claw clutching a sapphire crystal—the sword of Dracon—the real weapon.
“Take it,” she said. “Use it to conjure me. I will come to your world in flame and bring destruction with me, and then your world will be reborn, and we shall rule together.”
She placed the sword beside me, then backed away. Her image slowly faded until I lay alone in the white void, the sword of Dracon at my side.
The pain slowly subsided. I got to my hands and knees, then sat up and stared at the sword.
I debated on leaving it. Theht wanted me to have it. She must have known I wouldn’t be able to
