A slash appeared in the air again. Behind it, what was left of the winery still smoked, timber, stone, and brick black to match the ground for thousands of feet. As before, the slash formed into an eye that opened onto a void.
The netherling stepped through, the armored plates on its back chiming with his movement, and the portal closed.
Ryne stood outside what remained of Castere Keep. Below, most of the fires were petering out and smoke rose in the air. The twin statues of Aeoli and Hyzenki still stood tall in the great lakes. For reasons, he couldn’t quite place, he felt no elation at having destroyed Bertram and the threat from the shade’s army. The victory seemed hollow, incomplete. The innocents slain in Carnas and elsewhere were still dead. Nothing would change that. Not even if he swept the land with the rest of the allied Granadian and Ostanian forces to hunt down what remained of the army. He looked northwest to where he felt his new link out across the sea in Granadia.
“So what now?” Irmina asked. Her Ashishin uniform was torn in too many places to count, but at least she’d been mended.
“I must seek him out as Halvor said. He needs me.”
“Who?”
“The one who provided me with the power I needed. He will need you also. After all, you saved me. I cannot thank you enough for that,” Ryne said. A shadow crept across Irmina’s face. Ryne assumed it was from the pain.
“I just did as was needed.” Her shoulders drooped, and with a sigh she asked, “So who is this person?”
“A youth named Ancel.”
Black rain fell around Sakari. He reached for the barrier, wincing, expecting the normal pain that would have prevented his passage. None came. The Kassite had already thinned here. Untouched by the torrential downpour of inky rain, or the storming winds, he drew from the abundance of shade coursing around him. Forging a rift at the thinnest point of the Kassite, he stepped through. He Materialized, already kneeling, in the absolute black of several shadelamps. The near blinding umbra forced him to bow his head and close his eyes. He took a moment and gathered himself. He still hadn’t fully adapted to his ability to see within the dark as clear as a bright, sunlit day.
Sakari remained on his knees in the middle of a red-carpeted, marble walkway. At first, the malefic form seated upon the throne didn’t react to his presence. A gray haired woman with wild, silver-blue eyes lay at the form’s feet. Normally, Sakari wouldn’t have ventured this far in, but the Master had demanded he come directly to him as soon as the battle concluded. He kept his head down.
Something cold brushed against his skin, and he forced the thudding beat of his heart to a tenuous vibration. Freezing tendrils of Kahkon’s shade touched him, probing, begging for him to flinch away in fear. Bumps crept along his skin where it touched, but he didn’t budge. To do so meant death. He had no intention of feeding his Master’s hunger.
“You bring news?” asked Kahkon’s disembodied voice in a near chuckle. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
“Yes, my Lord,” answered Sakari. “It has happened as you prophesied, sire. Prima Materium has been released. Eztezian Bertram perished in the undertaking. The first seal is broken.”
A soft laugh issued from the roiling darkness on the throne. “He lost control when she wounded you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, my lord,” Sakari said, maintaining a neutral tone.
“And the sword?”
“The young man still possesses it.” Why would a sword be of any concern to one such as his Master? Sakari dared not ask. Instead, he made a mental note of it.
“Good. Take a contingent of Vasumbral with you to establish our reign here. Scour the land until you find the boy and his ilk. Kill them all. Bring this pitiful world to its knees. Feed the advent of Amuni.” The malevolent cackle of Kahkon’s voice echoed within Sakari’s head before dwindling away just as the darkness sitting on the throne faded and the tendrils of shade and the woman with it.
Sakari stood as the blackness congealed, somehow making an even darker blotch within the umbra.
A sound drifted through the air like a dry rasp of metal on leather mixed with the crackle of a fire. Tentacles stretched out, followed by a long, slithering body as broad across as a wagon. The form writhed and coiled and stretched, at times appearing to be joined by vertebrae, but no beginning or end came into sight. Hundreds of miniscule feelers fluttered under the bellies of the beasts, some touching the ground to drag, while others appeared to sample the air. Sakari spat. He didn’t like them, but like any other tool, the Vasumbrals would be used.