'This-this is not a trick… Athumrani. Wh-what has he done?'
Slowly kneeling to retrieve the sword, Thaena paused as the prince's body wavered, a double image flickering in and out around him. The double's mouth was silently screaming, its face contorted in pain before falling away and disappearing. It left Serevan staggering, dropping to one knee. The pale light from outside, that first dim glow of dawn, faded away, overtaken by a renewed darkness. Night returned as all wind stopped, the air frozen, and Thaena felt herself stilled.
She had never in her life experienced such a profound quiet and sickening dread, as if all creation would topple at the resounding echo of a single heartbeat. She started as the first cries came from beyond the walls, growing into a chorus of wailing and weeping voices. The last remaining torches guttered out. Panic rose in her chest, overcoming reason as she took up the sword and rushed the incapacitated prince.
He looked up, eyes clear, seeing her plainly for the first time. The thrust of her strike forced itself through air thickened by a pervasive and malevolent chill. The blade met his outstretched hand, stabbing through his palm, grating against the metal guard on the edge of his gaundet. She sobbed as she pushed, grief and anger powering the tip of the sword into his breastplate. It screeched to a stop, half a hand's length through the armor. Serevan made no sound, gave no indication of pain as he stood and regarded her.
The open fingers of his pierced hand closed tightly on the blade. Crystals of ice formed on the steel, rushing down to her hands and feeding at what felt like her last reserves of energy. She tried to scream, to give voice to the chaos of emotion that had replaced her insides. Naught escaped her save a raspy whisper of choking breath.
'No,' was all that he said as she felt her legs grow weak.
He shoved on the blade. The pommel struck her chin and she swooned, the sword pulling free as she fell back in a daze. SyrolPs arms caught her, pulling her away from the bleakborn.
Serevan stared thoughtfully at the pair, then at the closing wound in his palm. 'The Word opens again, and death does not come for his pittance.'
He turned on his heel and strode for the open doors, tattered cloak billowing behind him.
Thaena lunged, sword in hand, after the prince, but Syrolf held her back.
'Forgive me, ethran,' he said weakly, 'but we have done all we can. The Shield will not let him die easily… and we are in no condition to explore the limits of that strength.'
She did not struggle long against his grip, slumping on her knees as the voices of the dead sang a distant dirge of despair. Her half-lidded gaze sought some spark of light from the world outside, a link to the natural order of things. She found nothing but the dying embers of a steaming torch. She lost herself in its glow, alone at the end of all things.
Chapter Twenty-five
'The floor fell away, stone fracturing and splitting to reveal an expanse of indiscernible shapes and infinite pits. Otherworldly winds blasted Bastun's body, a forceful gale in contrast to the stillness of the Breath and the feel of solid ground beneath him. He crashed through glassy barriers, plummeting, shattering the veils between reality and those realms that lay in wait on the other side. Glimpses of passing things caught his eye, shifting and scurrying through dark corridors, seeking holes through which they might crawl into mortal worlds and minds. Other visions came as well, more immediate to his concerns, fleeting and misleading, showing him times that were and those that could be.
He saw Thaena, beaten and weak, her eyes dull and lifeless, as Syrolf held her amidst the remnants of her fang. She looked upon the retreating form of Serevan and the darkness that had taken hold of the world outside the Word. The prince gazed out with awakened eyes upon the ruins of Shandaular and the quieted walls of the Shield. In a blink these visions were replaced, over and over again, each more horrible than the last as Bastun descended further into a deeper cold. Every muscle in his body tensed at the growing power that pulsed through the Breath, yet he fought to hang on to the only solid object that existed.
Legions of beasts populated the blurring places and corridors that flew by. Some turned, catching his eye, watching him disinterestedly before returning to tasks of flame and iron. Fiends of horns and leather wings, claws and needlelike teeth, thrashed against the transparent walls of the tower. He could still feel the Shield around him, the enclosed space, the smell of stale ait, and the magic of ancient runes humming in his ears.
The monsters, appearing and disappearing with a scratch of hungry claws, did not disturb him so much as those few that looked as human as himself. Something in their flashing eyes made him look away, afraid to see the corrupted souls behind their cruel and dispassionate stares.
Bursts of lightning surrounded him as he was engulfed by a blanket of swiftly moving clouds. He closed his eyes against the brightness, thunder pounding and shaking his bones with each strike. Motes of pain danced across his knuckles, and it seemed as though they might split, such was his hold on the Breath. The unnatural storm grew more intense. There were no breaks between the lightning and thunder, both existing as one in the wind and stinging rain of ice that stung his flesh and tapped against the surface of his mask. The chaos threatened to tear him away from his anchor, send him spinning into a nowhere that had no place for sentient beings or coherent thoughts. He screamed, trying to force one small note of something into the maelstrom of nothing.
At the end of his breath he inhaled, and everything stopped. Silence slammed into being, leaving a deafening ringing in his ears. Cracking open his eyes, he found himself kneeling. The Breath was before him, still in his unceasing grip, yet now its blade lay buried in ice, not stone. A twilit sky lay at the distant horizon of a vast ocean of ice and jagged peaks. Lightning danced across the sky, so high above that its thunder no longer had a voice with which to reach him. He exhaled a long breath of steam, eyes widening, hands aching, as he prepared for what was to come next.
This was the end. The destination that had been a hair's breadth away from everything he knew, yet all the forces of reality and nature kept them apart. One of many planes of existence, it had waited for him in that narrowing space between the Breath and the Word-a frozen hell known as Stygia.
The very air felt alive, circling him and studying this mortal that dared tread upon unhallowed ground. The ground shook as the mystic nature of Stygia began to gather around the Breath. The sword trembled, and ice formed within its ancient runes, crawling up to his hands. It began as a slight tingle in his fingers, cold and volatile, searching and almost curious. The sudden flood of power that followed nearly broke his determined grasp.
It pooled in his gut, rose, and sloshed through his chest in icy waves of pure energy. His skull filled with burning, he bore down on the Breath. The pain electrified every fiber of his being, but he kept control.
The spirit of Athumrani, so long bound to the ancient sword, fell away in that first jolt of power.
The memory of the Magewarden's death, swift and violent, tore him open, releasing the gathered power of Stygia across the whole of Shandaular. The fires had snuffed out. Soldiers and commoners alike had been slain. The Word had opened and, in the instant before closing, it consumed Athumrani's life and laid waste to the city it was meant to defend.
The memory of the grieving father's death left a taste of ashes and copper in Bastun's mouth, but unlike Athumrani he did not bring sorrow with him to place upon a frozen altar in an uncaring hell. Stygia devoured sorrow, ripped away love and compassion.
Bastun imagined himself a vessel. He allowed the power to tear through his body and spirit. Long jagged wounds opened and closed in his skin as he pulled the power into himself, denying it entrance to the world. Each rip brought tears to his eyes, yet focused them, sharpening his vision as he spent his rage. Slowly, the cold reseating of his skin became less painful and more numb. Stygia accepted the currency he had brought, though he wondered what he had purchased in return.
Several strides away, on the edge of the ice, the durthan stirred beside the black waters of the Stygian ocean. From the limitless depths of that dark sea, he sensed the attention of an ancient mind and felt its touch flow through the rush of power in his body. Malicious thoughts marched along his arms like an army of needles.
The reasonless tempest of Stygia's power became a living thing as evil caressed and crushed all at once. It whispered loving words in his ears, crooning and cajoling him to release his control, to open the doors of his willpower and loose hell upon a world that had no use for him. It shouted and screamed, the thunderous voice echoing as if submerged, tearing at the insides of his flesh in frustration to free itself.
He could see it, buried somewhere in the ocean's dark-a glacier bearing a dark blot of the prisoner within:
