“Don’t listen to a word it says, Calen.” Therin didn’t look at Calen. His bow was slung over his back, but Calen felt him touching the Spark. He felt that familiar shiver at this back of his neck.
Aeson stood there, a grim expression on his face, each hand fastened tightly around the hilts of his swords. Fear was etched into Dann’s face, but still, he held his bow, and his hands did not shake.
Ellisar stepped closer to Calen, both hands wrapped around the handle of his sword. “Stay behind me, Draleid. Do not let it goad you.”
“Quiet, elf!” The Fade’s voice seemed to rise and fall like the wind, booming throughout the hall on demand. “I grow bored of talking. Which of you is to die first?”
Calen felt the anger rolling over inside him as he looked towards Arthur’s lifeless body. He was done letting the Fade decide everything. He bounded forward, swinging his sword over his head in a downward arc. It came to a jarring halt as the creature spun and reacted with inhuman speed, a sword wrought of black, pulsing fire held in his grasp.
Calen felt it. It was the same type of weapon that Asius used, a níthral. It looked different though. Asius’s axe was smooth, more controlled, as if forged like steel. The Fade’s blade was chaos incarnate. The flickers of black flame seemed to blow in a non-existent wind, twisting and spiralling of their own volition.
The creature’s brittle lips twisted into a grin. Calen had to fight himself to drag his gaze away from its eyes. Those cavernous wells of black seemed intent on pulling his soul from his body.
Calen felt the Fade pull on threads of Air as he was hit by an invisible battering ram, thrown backwards in the air, then hammered into the ground. A roaring pain erupted through his body. He shook the stars from his eyes just in time to see Valerys launch himself at the Fade.
A single swipe of the Fade’s hand, sent Valerys crashing through a nearby pillar. Pain shot through Calen’s head.
“No!” He couldn’t stop the scream. It was part his own, part Valerys’s. He felt it; Valerys was alive, but his body ached in pain.
Before Calen could get to his feet, Aeson and Ellisar flashed past him. They charged straight towards the Fade. The creature moved like a snake in long grass, its flickering blade snapping at them in a maelstrom of ferocious blows. Aeson and Ellisar were two of the most incredible swordsmen that Calen had ever seen – and even they did not have the time to consider going on the offensive. It was all they could do to keep the creature at bay.
Dann dropped to one knee, nocked an arrow, and sent it soaring through the air, where it plunged into the Fade’s chest. Two more arrows followed, sinking into the Fade’s belly and neck. But they didn’t slow the creature; they only irritated it. While deflecting a strike from Therin, it pulled the arrows from its body with threads of Air, then it reached out its hand. Arcs of purple lightning shot from its fingertips, crashing into Dann and launching him into the air. Fragments of stone flew in all directions as the lightning ripped through the ground.
“Go, help them!” roared Therin as he ran to where Dann’s body had been thrown.
Calen dragged himself to his feet. His head and his heart pulled him in two directions. His heart urged him to run to Dann, but his head commanded him to help the others. He felt Valerys at the back of his mind, his pain and his anger. He felt his own heart beating – not racing, like it had been, but slow, purposeful. Calen steeled himself and charged at the Fade.
Even with the three of them throwing everything at it, the Fade continued to toy with them, striking them with hammer blows of Air and whips of Fire, turning their bodies into canvases of cuts and gashes. For every two strikes Calen deflected, three fresh cuts appeared on his arms or legs. Each one burned as well as sliced. He didn’t want to give the Fade the satisfaction of his pain. But his body held no such grudge. He howled out more than once when the fiery black blade sliced through his skin like molten steel. Ellisar and Aeson did not fare any better. Numerous times, their blades sank into what should have been flesh, only to emerge without a drop of blood on their edge.
How?
Calen tried to strike back. He tried to draw from the Spark, but his mind could not focus. When it could, the Fade sliced at his threads with something unseen, cutting him off as if snipping the strings from a puppet. How is that possible?
Without warning, the Fade drew on thick threads of Air and sent both Aeson and Ellisar hurtling in different directions. The creature snapped its neck around, its gaze fixed on Calen. “Fane wants you alive.” The Fade’s voice slithered off its tongue as it circled Calen. Its blade trailed along the ground, smoke rising where it cut into the stone. “But I think I would prefer you dead. It is cleaner. I have not yet decided.”
I need to do something. I can’t keep going like this.
Calen took a breath in, focusing his mind. He moved into the svidarya, dropping his legs into the wide stance of the Crouching Bear. As the Fade swung at him with his black-fire blade, Calen pounced. The creature was taken aback by the aggression. It immediately took a back step, sweeping its blade across its chest to block Calen’s strikes. Calen moved fluidly through the forms, losing himself in them.
“Keep pushing!” Ellisar leapt
