Victor of Tucson-Chapter 41Book 12: : Rules for Vengeance

41 – Rules of Vengeance

Cora listened to the thunderous explosions, the bone-shaking peals of thunder, the roars, the screams, and the cyclone-like gusts of wind as they buffeted the citadel. When the battle began, the noises had been distant, so much so that she’d stood on the balcony of the suite Victor had given her, watching as the magic lit up the sky. As the fighting came close to the high citadel walls, though, and the concussions had become so forceful that they rattled her teeth and made her heart skip a beat, she’d retreated inside.

The din was terrifying on an instinctual level, but Cora knew Victor was out there; she knew Tes and the other heroes were defending the keep. What chance did an army of undead have, no matter how many, against a fortress like the citadel when it was defended by the likes of them? She knew that most of those awful noises were, in fact, the result of the defenders’ magic. She’d seen with her own eyes the blast of lightning Tes had unleashed when she dove toward the undead dragon. When she closed her eyes, she still saw the imprint.

Her room was dark, and a pool of yellow light spilled through beneath the door. Two black shadows marred the pool of light, and she knew they were thrown by the feet of the soldier watching over her. She didn’t understand the point of a guardian. He was a steel seeker from Ruhn, some backwater champion who’d been impressed by Victor enough that he’d sworn his sword to him. Those were Victor’s words; Cora wouldn’t know a backwater from the capital. Even so, the point stood—what would he do if the undead managed to get by Tes? By Ronkerz and his Big Ones?

She sighed heavily, trying to release some of the tension, but the trembling in her hands returned as soon as another boom rattled the glass in her windows. No matter how she tried to rationalize her fear, to explain to herself that it was normal, she couldn’t shake the feeling deep down in her gut that something was wrong.

As she closed her eyes against a flash of blue lightning that illuminated her quarters, she heard a great clamor from out near the battlements. Soldiers screamed commands, and the thunderous report of repeated pops and booms told her they’d just unloaded everything they had against something.

Cora’s mouth went dry as her hands grew clammy. She stood and rushed to her balcony door, peering out over the expansive courtyard toward the gate. To her stunned disbelief, she saw the inner gates being pulled open. She watched, breath caught in her chest, as soldiers by the hundreds rushed through the high, arched gatehouse tunnel. Had the undead breached the outer gates already? She glanced at her door. The shadows were still there; her guardian hadn’t moved.

She stared at the tunnel, at the thousands of soldiers atop the gatehouse and the hundreds down by the inner gate. They didn’t look as if they were bracing for an attack. In fact, the displays of magical power had lulled after that latest onslaught. Still holding her breath, she watched, and then a great, blue-scaled claw stretched out of the tunnel. Claws hooked into the cobbles and pulled, revealing the bulk of a massive blue dragon—Tes—as she dragged herself into the courtyard.

Tears sprang into Cora’s eyes when she saw the state of her idol. She had patches of missing scales, long, jagged rends in her flesh that oozed crimson blood, one of her wings was torn half off, and she was missing one of her forelimbs—severed near the elbow. Tes couldn’t seem to stand; she dragged herself over the cold stones, pushing with her hind legs until her enormous tail finally cleared the gatehouse and the soldiers slammed the gates shut.

Of course, Victor’s words rang through Cora’s mind: Listen to me: if Tes should fall, you have to get away. Run to the gateway. Don’t stop to talk to anyone, not even Arona. Get through that gate and back to Ruhn, no matter what. The soldiers guarding the chamber know they aren’t to stop you.

She looked down at the dragon lying prone, filling half the citadel’s expansive courtyard. Her chest heaved for breath, and blood oozed from the hundreds of wounds. In that moment, something changed in Cora. Victor’s words gave her an excuse to listen to the fear gnawing at her guts, but she knew—from Victor himself—how dangerous it was to give fear a foothold in one’s heart. Steeling herself, she made a decision. Pulling the balcony door open, she summoned her Blood Wings. There were healers aplenty in Victor’s army, but she had a gift for regeneration; all her teachers said so.

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Victor hacked Lifedrinker in an overhead, one-handed downward slash, splitting the Quinametzin titan from skull to groin. The bones crunched and split satisfyingly, especially as Lifedrinker’s edge sliced down through the spine. At the same time, he swung his fist, clad in the Gauntlets of the Mountain’s Might, smashing his knuckles into another skeleton’s sternum with enough concussive force to shatter hundreds of bones, reducing it to a pile of fragments.

The slaughter of the two skeletons was one split-second snapshot of a battle that had been raging for, as far as Victor could tell, days. It was impossible to be certain; time didn’t flow normally in Xelhuan’s universe. There were no stars, there was no sun—no heavenly bodies of any sort. It was as if the Death Caster’s ritual had been only the first step; the hatching of a seed to create a nascent universe.

Victor’s battle with the skeletal titan army had become a tedious exercise in brute power and weapon skill, and he had the Quinametzin badly outmatched. That said, his mind had drifted for hours and days, and he’d had plenty of time to contemplate Xelhuan’s efforts. In Victor’s opinion, the Death Caster had been preparing the ritual he’d triggered for centuries. Even when he’d been inactive, his disciples had been hard at work, sacrificing souls in his great pyramid, gathering a pool of death-attuned Energy great enough to breach the fabric of the universe.

Through that rift, Xelhuan had planned to draw Dark Ember in its entirety as a seed for a new reality—one in which he was truly a god. Victor had seriously damaged that plan. Xelhuan’s island was here; at least a huge part of it, but all of his subjects were dead. None of the other great masters had come through; their cities filled with souls ripe for the reaping had been left behind. Xelhuan must be aware of his predicament. He had to understand that the longer he continued to fight Victor, the more he’d deplete his limited supply of Energy.

The Death Caster had stopped taunting Victor as he wore his skeletons down. Now that there were fewer than a thousand left, the world was eerily silent. Victor imagined it was like the universe the ivid had created—at first. They’d begun with an aperture, an opening into an empty plane of existence, and created their first world. Had they done it in pieces like Xelhuan’s island, or had they made a world all at once? Of course, their greatest achievement, according to Crystal, their queen, had been to spark their sun into existence. Looking around Xelhuan’s universe with its anemic Energy flows, Victor wondered if that was essential for the self-perpetuating Energy cycle.

He could only speculate, but one thing was certain: Xelhuan didn’t have the resources to do what the ivid had done. He’d made himself the impotent god of an empty place. Perhaps there was enough life left on the island for him to work with—nurtured for a million years. Perhaps there were even some thralls alive out in the wilderness. He could allow them to thrive in peace for a dozen or a hundred generations. Eventually, given a long enough timeline, perhaps he’d store up enough Energy to pull off what the Ivid had done.

As Victor cleaved Lifedrinker through three more of the undead titans, his grin was almost cruel. Looking inward, he saw the brilliant furnace of his Core—nearly full once again. Xelhuan had made a terrible mistake bringing him into his universe. “Call yourself a god,” he growled, punching another skeleton into fragments. “I don’t care. It only means you’ll have to call me god-slayer.”

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Edeya drifted through the gusting winds. Her powerful wings, enriched by a dozen bloodline treasures, effortlessly carried her straight toward her goal. Lesh and Bryn had launched their attacks; they were smashing the undead from the north and south, driving them toward the citadel’s walls where the defenders rained down hell. Not long after the horns had begun to blare, and the legions charged forth from their magically obscured valleys and forests, Edeya’s enchanted pearl had guided her to her quarry.

She flew high, far above the paths of the spirits and haunts that roamed the night. Looking down, she saw her nemesis. Catalina hung back, ever the coward, whipping the undead minions of whatever lord she served into a frenzy. She moved from throngs of hellish hounds to packs of nightmare ghouls, worked her strange spectral magic, and sent them howling and screaming toward the front lines. Edeya bided her time.

She drifted, her Core tucked tightly away, hidden by her Aura Veil, just the way Victor had taught her. How many undead had she stalked that way in the last few years? Too many to count. She’d put so many “Bloodcloaks” into the fire, their spirits released from eternal servitude, that she’d lost count.

As Catalina moved toward the pack of dire wolves, some of Edeya’s nervous anticipation must have bled through her grip into Roselance. “Is the time upon us? Will we visit vengeance upon the vile creature that haunts your dreams?”

“Soon,” Edeya whispered. “She’s drifting about in her mist form. Do you think—”

“Such trickery will not save her from my bite! What an ignoble way to conduct oneself; a battle of honor—forthright and open for all to see—is the pathway to glory!”

Edeya knew the spear wasn’t boasting; she’d destroyed hundreds of wraiths during their conquest of Dark Ember. Still, her words made Edeya feel a twinge of guilt. “I was going to strike from the shadows—lance her through before she even saw me coming.”

“That is your prerogative as the wronged party; however, the second rule of vengeance is that the recipient must know that it was you who delivered it. If not, your satisfaction will be greatly dulled.”

Edeya wanted to ask the spear what the other “rules” of vengeance were, but decided it was a discussion best saved for a quieter time. The point Rose had made was enough; Edeya already agreed. If she killed Catalina in one fell blow, and the Death Caster never knew it was she who’d delivered justice… Edeya shook her head. “That won’t do.”

As the pack of dire wolves howled and brayed at the moon, tearing over the grassy slope toward the distant battle, Edeya sent some Energy into her wings and streaked down out of the sky. She wanted to catch Catalina before she returned to the command tent across the field. She was silent, her Night Mist’s Embrace muffling the thrum of her wings and also obscuring the brilliant blue motes they poured into the air. Even so, Catalina’s misty figure slowed, and her ghost-like hair, drifting on a hidden breeze, turned as she scanned the surrounding field. She felt something, but she didn’t know where Edeya was.

Edeya couched Rose, aiming her gleaming point at the small of the spirit’s back. She purposefully shifted the point away from the center; she wanted to wound the witch, not kill her. Not yet. “Don’t bite too hard,” she whispered, and Rose thrummed her agreement; she wouldn’t let her deadly Energy pour out…much.

At the very last second, when Roselance was just a heartbeat from piercing that misty form, Catalina sensed something and expanded her misty form, sending out tendrils in every direction, grasping. One of them snaked around Rose; another found Edeya’s wrist. Just as before, Edeya felt that awful draining sensation, but unlike that other time, back in the shadow of the volcano, she was much stronger. She’d taken Victor’s guidance and honed her will; she’d trained her aura, and most-importantly, she’d more than doubled her level and built up her Core.

This time, when Catalina tried to draw her Energy, Edeya resisted. Rather than freeze or crumple, she drove Rose forward and felt the wondrous weapon puncture flesh that should have been incorporeal. Catalina screamed, and her mist recoiled, pulling back into her.

“Did you recognize me? Did you feel my familiar flesh, witch? That’s all you’ll feel. My spirit is mine now!” Edeya drove Rose forward, pushing the misty figure toward the ground. Catalina wailed and whimpered, her mist solidifying into pale, gauze-clad flesh.

“D-darling girl, you-you’ve come home! Why do you hurt me so?”

Edeya jerked Rose out, black blood dripping, and watched as Catalina writhed onto her back, clawing at the damp grass, trying to worm away from her. She pursued, thrusting Rose forward, so her needle-sharp tip pierced the Death Caster’s lower lip. “Still your tongue, lying witch!” she hissed. “Make your final words ring with truth, and I’ll make your death quick.”

“Truth?” Catalina crooned. “The simple truth is that I broke you utterly. You loved me before you were pulled from my—” Rose slid forward, piercing the roof of Catalina’s mouth and effortlessly gliding into her brain.

Catalina convulsed, her body jerking in a paroxysm of undead flesh refusing to die. Still, Roselance was a wickedly deadly weapon, and she poured her potent Energy into the wound. It was a kind of disintegration Energy; it found the weak points between the tiny building blocks of flesh and broke them. The result was never pretty—gray, oozing sludge where flesh and bone had been.

When Edeya saw the blue-limned spirit start to lift free of the corpse, she cast the first spell she’d learned upon gaining her moonlight affinity: Moonlight’s Blessing. While she couched Rose under her right arm, she held out her left, and droplets of liquid moonlight fell upon the body, diffusing into the spirit that was, even then, trying to flee. “No you don’t, Catalina. This one is final.” The Moonlight’s Blessing tore all death-attuned bonds from the woman’s spirit, severing her ties to her phylactery, and then it was over. She dissolved into faint wisps of white smoke—gone through the veil into the spirit plane.

“A death too easy for a viper-tongued wretch such as she,” Rose whispered, thrumming with affection in Edeya’s hands.

Edeya pulled her from the corpse, and the black blood sizzled away from her beautiful blade. “You were right,” she said, her wings buzzing with Energy as she flitted up into the night sky.

“Such a beautiful, wonderful mistress. Thank you for the praise.”

Edeya chuckled, shaking her head. “Don’t you want to know what you were right about?”

“Oh, of course!”

“It was good that she looked into my eyes before I killed her. It was good that I heard her lying voice one last time. I feel good about what we did. I might not have if I’d taken her fully by surprise.”

“And now, my clever mistress?”

Edeya smiled. “Now we find Lam and help finish this war.”

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As the last of the skeletons crumpled before Lifedrinker’s blade, Victor stood over a field littered with bones, staring toward the distant pyramid. The fires had largely died down—the lava flows ceased. It didn’t matter; he could feel the magma-attuned Energy beneath his feet. There was enough. He summoned his wings and leaped aloft, gliding toward the mountain.

“So, that is how you treat your elders, is it?” Xelhuan’s voice was mocking, but there was something else behind the words, something like bitterness. Had he begun to recognize his doomed fate?

Victor ignored him, gliding through the still air toward the faintly smoking top of the pyramid. He wondered if Xelhuan would face him or if he’d have to dig through that mountain and drag him, kicking and screaming, to his death. Lifedrinker thrummed in his hands, too gorged on death Energy to speak. “Save some room, chica,” he muttered, twisting his hands on her warm haft.

“You think to challenge me? Truly? I have ascended. You live at my whim. How can the termite comprehend the designs of the man who built the house upon which it feeds?”

When he reached the apex of the pyramid, Victor spread his wings and hovered in the air, maybe a quarter of a mile from the stones at the peak. A hungry smile spread across his lips when he saw Xelhuan there, resplendent in his colorful feathered robes. He clutched his macuahuitl, but the point was down, and he looked relaxed. His seeming confidence bothered Victor more than he wanted to admit.

The Death Caster watched him as he drifted closer and slowly descended toward the edge of the courtyard at the pyramid’s top. “So,” Xelhuan said, his voice raspy but deep, echoing over the stones, “you’ve conquered an army of our kin—not in their prime, admittedly, but still something to be proud of. It almost takes the sting out of your purpose. At least my mother chose a worthy champion of our people to send against me.”

Victor let Lifedrinker fall from his shoulder, whooshing through the air in a loop and then back to his shoulder. He strode toward the ancient Death Caster. “If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, it’s not going to work. You’ve had a hundred lifetimes to change your ways—to do something good with yourself.”

“So you’ll put the mad dog down, will you?” Xelhuan chuckled, and his macahuitl crackled with red Energy. “We’ll see, but supposing you do, cousin? What will you have accomplished? Rather than being trapped here with me, you’ll be trapped alone.” Maybe a shadow of doubt crossed Victor’s eyes because Xelhuan smirked. “Didn’t think that far ahead, did you?” He lifted his massive weapon off the stones and thumped it down again. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”