He Shimmered.
One moment he was falling, and the next he reappeared at the shield’s edge without crossing it. He stepped directly into the glow, his skin tingling slightly as he did so. Light essences raced up into him, his Etchings gobbling them up greedily. Ryne’s body replicated the barrier’s blue luminance. The prickling sensation increased to a burn. Energy filled him to near busting. He threw his back.
“SAKARI!” he bellowed, using the wind to increase and carry the sound.
Everything stopped as if the entire world had come to a halt. The vasumbrals and shadelings alike turned slowly to him as if of one mind.
A blur of motion announced Sakari’s presence. “You called, master?” The smirk on Sakari’s face was as out of sorts as his appearance in the form of a typical milk-skinned Granadian.
The essences Ryne held brimmed, leaking from him like blood. “You won’t get what you want. Not now. Not ever.”
“And what is to stop me and mine?”
Ryne gave the netherling a ghost of a smile. “Yourself. We pose no threat to you.”
“Smart, but not smart enough,” Sakari said. “I could have sworn a certain someone shot me with an arrow, and another someone stabbed me. Their actions give me the right to breach any contract to defend myself.”
The breath Ryne wanted to suck in remained between his clenched teeth. Sakari had deliberately goaded people close to Ancel into attacking him.
“I see you understand. I do not need to fight you to get what I require.” Sakari’s eyes changed color, going through several hues of blue to gray to black. “As has always happened, you, like the other Eztezians before you, will lose.”
“Why are you doing this? The people of this world have done nothing to you or your kind.”
“Come now, Ryne.” Sakari shrugged. “What drives the world? What drives man? Power. Freedom. Love. A combination of all three or a lack of one or the other. In our case, we simply would love the freedom to use our power.”
“So the Nine will destroy an entire people to have something as meager as that?”
“They will destroy whoever stands in our way. Is that not what you and your brethren have done for millennia?” Sakari cocked his head marginally. “We gave you Eztezians the means to deliver the world to us, and not your so-called gods, but too many of you became smarter than was good.”
“Trading one slave master for another was never an option,” Ryne said.
Sakari chuckled. “You cannot fight the inevitable. We can give you the same choice we gave the others though. Join us. Enough of humanity will survive. We do need them, and people to rule, to keep them providing us with what we require.”
“Never.”
“Then I wish you the best of luck, and may your gods help you.” Sakari’s form Blurred away. “But not even they can save you.”
Netherlings. Forever arrogant. Ryne smiled. As always, the chance to gloat, to declare superiority had proved impossible for the netherling. The weakness gave him exactly what he needed.
Coiled in the air from where Sakari had blurred was a concentration of Mater. Stronger than normal, the essences combined to form primal elements almost as potent as those within an Entosis. Ryne delved into the Shunyata, reaching out to the elements before him as he did so. The voices screamed promises of power into his head, and he obliged.
He fed the essences Sakari’s Mater.
The glow around his body grew to a blinding incandescence. The heat built to an inferno raging within him. Ryne’s body trembled with the strain of holding the power in. Allowing the Etchings to help stabilize all he held, he drew in more until he had gained the last bit of residue left by Sakari’s own Forging.
Then he released it all at once.
Light and energy shot into the sky in a cylindrical cone a dozen feet wide. If he had not rooted himself to the earth beneath his feet, the explosion would have thrown him back. Instead, it blew away snow, dirt, debris and everything else before him. Unable to bypass the protective barrier, the power expanded in a semicircle with him at the center. The ground steamed. It smelled of char and wet earth after a rainstorm. Tiny fires fluttered on grass once frozen solid.
“No!” Sakari’s voice bellowed in the distance.
But it was too late. The release of that much Mater had already gained the vasumbrals’ attention. They screeched as one. In response to the issued commands, the shadelings howled and wailed. The ground churned toward Ryne.
Body still aglow, he Shimmered toward the location of the opening portals. When he reappeared, he began sprinting. The snowfall had become a squall now, but through the winter white, he made out the rolling earth of the vasumbrals snaking to follow him. They ate up the distance between them within seconds until swaths of earth and snow twenty feet tall swept behind him like an ocean heaving in angry throes.
He whipped his head around. Rank upon rank of Dagodin spread before him, armor crimson like fresh blood. Ashishin and High Ashishin stood behind them, portals opening and closing to allow in more of the Tribunal’s troops.
Someone yelled a command. In a synchronized dance, the army formed into columns. Gleaming lances pointed toward Ryne and the creatures behind him.
Another command bellowed. Lightning split the sky, striking near Ryne, sending earth and snow showering up. Debris peppered him. Undaunted, he pressed on.
Links bloomed between the Ashishin, spanning from one to the next in continual concentration. They grew until the air itself hummed with their power. He imagined what the scene must look like to them. Some terrible wraith glowing in slivery-blue followed by creatures of the purest black that they had never seen and could not begin to fathom. Not to mention the thousands of howling and wailing shadelings charging in their wake. His lips curled into a smile. The timing needed to be perfect.
The release of Mater from the Shin came in an ear-splitting roar. Whatever Forging they unleashed surged toward him in an overheated torrent from straight ahead and above. The air blazed, the clouds in the heavens lit up, and the ground heaved. Snow and rock melted. Despite the miniature shield around him, his hair began to sizzle, the scent of its burning becoming stronger and stronger.
At the precise moment when the Forging would strike him, and the vasumbrals reach him, he Shimmered. He reappeared among the Ashishin, next to a portal, and stepped through.
He stood in a humongous city square with glowing structures all around and streets that crisscrossed between them while rising in the air. The surprised expressions of troops massing to depart greeted him. The Iluminus, he thought as he severed the power he held, his luinance diminishing to nothing.
Chest heaving with exertion, he drew on what reserves he had left before the soldiers reacted. He Materialized and shut the portal behind him so none could follow. The freezing cold that he hardly noticed before sent his body into a spasm of shivers.
Something wasn’t right.
He glanced down at his body. His aura spilled about him. Tiny fissures ran up his arm where it leaked. One of the vasumbrals had touched him and eaten into his Mater.
Sela, his lifeblood, was leaking away.
Chapter 26
Huddled deep within his cloak, head down, Ancel held his reins steady. Snow fell like white rain, before swirling as if it wanted to smother him. The wind’s teeth threatened to penetrate even his furs. From near the middle of what moments before had been the slow rush of the Kelvore River, and was now water frozen to the consistency of solid stone, he glanced back toward the glow of the barrier, picturing Eldanhill’s lights beyond. At present, he couldn’t pick them out; the unnatural winter storm blotted out his home. Under his breath, he muttered a prayer for Ilumni to keep his father, Irmina, and the rest of the council safe. Whatever it took, he promised to see them alive again.