Miguil and Ōbhin reached the ramp, debris choking the world behind them. The groaning slowed and stopped. Miguil sank Ōbhin down. He stared back at the devastation. A mix of broken stone and dark soil separated them from Avena and Fingers.
A chill swept through Ōbhin as he gazed out at the terrifying sight. Fingers was the impostor. Dajouth broke his arm and didn’t heal. Bran was dead. That left only the older man. He was alone with Avena. He had her.
What would he do with her when he didn’t have to pretend?
How could Ōbhin find her and protect her now?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Beings of light stood around Avena as she dreamed.
They all glowed with a pure, white radiance. They were human-shaped, men and women both, with hair of liquid starlight. She stood amid them, her body vibrating with Honesty. It soared out of her and fed into the beings around her.
They must be devas, she thought.
Across from them, they faced nightmarish horrors. Insectoid demons, their bodies covered in waxy carapaces. They scuttled like ants but stood taller than Ōbhin. They held swords of hardened black, the air thick with an acrid reek. They writhed out of torn rents in reality and crashed into her army of light.
And hers weren’t the only armies fighting. They battled on a great plane. The sky overhead looked murky. No clouds, but the sun didn’t shine as bright. Falling stars burned across the gloom in flares of orange-red, always streaking from the east and south and flashing towards the west and north.
She cried out in a language Avena didn’t understand, giving orders, marshaling her troops. She was giving them power. It flowed out of her and gave them the strength to drive back the demonic ants. These foul insects.
Darklings? These are nothing like the lizard things we found in Koilon.
The demons crashed into her lines. They tore at her army of devas with scything mandibles. Hacked with jagged blades. Blood spurted golden-bright. She felt each one of them die, a tiny shifting in the harmonics singing through her body.
To her right, humans of midnight black fought. They swept out shadows that splashed like acid on the demons. They were led by the man from her dreams. Her lover in this past life. He stood among them, wearing armor of glassy obsidian. No, he didn’t wear it. The obsidian had melted around him, almost like a prison.
He glanced over at her and, despite the distance, the smile on his lips for her heartened her resolve.
Her truth resounded greater than the distance separating them.
She smiled back at him, forgetting about those who died connected to her power for a moment.
A vast, chittering screech broke through the barrier. A dozen of those connected to her, the devas, snuffed out. Their contribution to the symphony resounding through Avena’s bones vanished. Her head whipped around, pale-white hair flying. She witnessed the ant-like demons surging out in a coordinated action. They all chittered at the same time, moving with the same precision, striking and attacking in communal harmony.
Up and down the line, they attacked. The demons met the flaming people led by the blonde woman. Beyond her forces, watery figures sent waves crashing into the attacking demons. Their leader was also a woman, the one who’d been channeling the Sapphire during the Shattering. Waves of amethyst force slammed from the purple-glowing beings beyond the dark warriors, their commander radiating strength and power. He stood strong.
Like Ōbhin. A warrior. A defender.
Avena pulled something from a pocket. It was a device made of shiny metal with an obsidian shaft thrusting out the tip. She depressed a button and it crackled. She shouted into it, a cry of urgent need as more of her beings of light lost their harmony.
A humming noise thrummed from behind her. Then metal insects, like massive dragonflies, swooped overhead. Their wings were fixed, thrusting out from the side and had blurring circles whirling above them. Air slammed down at her, whipping at her hair. They banked over sharply, cutting their forward speed and turning. Some of the demons with swollen abdomens spat sizzling ichor that splattered along the hulls of the metal dragonflies. One, soaring before the amethyst fighters, spun in a smoking circle and crashed in a burst of red and yellow light.
Doors slid open along the sides of the dragonflies. Crystalmen stepped out of them. They dropped fifty cubits to the ground, bright heliodors glowing in their bodies to slow their fall. But not enough that their landing didn’t crush the demons. Crystalline hailstones hammered into the monsters. The automatons then battered into the enemy with mighty sweeps of amethyst arms. Broken chitin burst through the air. The ground shook from each impact while her devas cheered and surged forward, unleashing their light on the black insects.
Their attack drove back the demons towards the huge rift, the fracture of Black rising into the air. More fiery streaks shot overhead. One was brighter than the others. It burned across the sky. Its massive trail blazed behind it as it vanished over the horizon. A heartbeat later, a bright glow exploded, a sun dawning to the northwest.
She shouted and pressed her devas forward while her lover and his shadowy army surged towards the enemy with ferocity. Avena just knew they had to drive the enemy back into the rift before the world was completely shattered.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ōbhin hardly felt the throbbing pain in his ankle as he stared at the collapsed debris. Avena lay on the other
