“You’re ashamed,” Sheraptus observed. “Afraid, perhaps. I felt the same way.” Now a grin began to creep across his face, as though whatever he were about to say he had been dying to say for ages. “The awareness of it all, how insignificant it all is, and then you realize it’s not insignificant by design, but by perspective. It is looking down upon the crab and marveling at how tiny it is without realizing just how very tall you are next to it.
“To summate: she died because you no longer felt it worthwhile to save her. Not with what else you could do with that crown.”
“Magic wasn’t meant to be used that way.” He cringed as another chorus of screams echoed through his skull. “This way.”
“This is where you fail to understand. Power, magic, nethra: all the same. It’s there to be used. As a concept, it’s worthless. Gods are the same way. They do not sit there and wait to be assailed with the whining of weaklings. They wait for worthiness. They wait for me, little moth. I am alive because I use their strength and the chances they gave me.”
Dreadaeleon hadn’t even noticed the lightning crackling on the longface’s fingers until they were raised and thrust in his face.
“Just as that power is not yours to wield.”
By the time the longface spoke the word and sent the forked lightning from his fingers, all Dreadaeleon could muster was a feeble hand raised in defense. But in the flash that it took, he needed nothing more. He could feel the electricity enter his skin as though it belonged there, snaking into his body and disappearing into his fingertips with a few stray sparks. It crackled inside him, settling into his body like a new home.
And the two shared a look of shock, neither having expected that. But neither had the opportunity to dwell upon it.
The distant rumble grew to a roar. They turned and saw the wall of water rushing down from the staircase, becoming a colossal wave unto itself. It swept away the living and the dead, the screaming and the silent, the faithful and the faithless alike in a pitiless rush.
“Ah.” Sheraptus sighed. “I see.” He clicked his tongue. “They really are fickle, aren’t they? It seems a little unfair.”
With that, the longface folded his hands behind his back and walked. Slowly. Toward the water.
“What are you doing?” Dreadaeleon demanded. “You can’t-”
“Enough with the limitations, little moth,” Sheraptus said, waving a hand over his shoulder. “They saw fit to give you the crown and give me. . this. I suspect you’ll find that limitations mean nothing to those willing to recognize their insignificance.”
“But where are you going?”
The water rushed up to meet him. Sheraptus had but enough time to look over his shoulder and smile.
“I suspect we’ll find out.”
And he disappeared beneath the flood.
Dreadaeleon should have dwelt on just how psychotic that was. Or on how he could have saved Greenhair. Or on the fate of his friends. But desperation lent clarity to thought. He drew in a breath, spoke the words, and released.
The wall of force formed nearly instantaneously. Nothing more than a flick of his wrist, a wave of his hand, and the air became rippling, solid, parting the colossal flood as easily as he would fold paper. And in brief, fleeting moments of clarity, he could but marvel at how effortless it all was. How easily the power flowed from him, how he felt nothing burning or breaking inside him to do it, how swiftly the water carried the blood and the bodies and the skeletons around him.
But only in brief, fleeting moments.
The rest of him was dedicated to trying not to listen to the screaming as he heard the Gonwa’s voices rise to shattering and fall silent, one by one, until their agony was a candle flame flickering in the wind.
THIRTY-FIVE
Waist-deep in water, Dreadaeleon waded among them, and the dead would not stop looking at him.
Bobbing in the water, their long faces still screwed up in a battle they had not stopped fighting, the netherlings scowled at him. Hollow and empty as they had been in life, the skeletons of the Abysmyths stared at him from fleshless eye sockets as they lay submerged beneath the crystalline water. The Shen. .
The Shen floated upon the lake that had been the ring. Face down. Motionless.
He paused and looked to the mountain. The clouds swirled overhead. Perhaps unable to bear giving the rest of the sky a look at what happened on the earth below. The water still vomited from the mountain’s face, though in a slow, steady stream that twisted down the shattered stone stairs and beneath the ribs of Daga-Mer’s colossal skeleton.
The fleshless titan froze in death, reaching out to the mountain with a bleached-white hand, as though still, in some small way, alive. As though, if he could but try a little harder, he could reach what he sought.
All in your mind, old man, he told himself. There’s no one left here but you.
He looked over the ring. The entirety of it was submerged, the bones and bodies bobbing along its surface like lilies of purple and white.
Somewhere in his mind, someone whimpered.
They’re still alive, he thought. Some of them, anyway. After all that. After all you did to them. . He paused, shook his head. Stop that. You didn’t know. And by the time you did, there was no choice. The power was there, you happened to have it, so you had to use it and. .
He paused and wondered if the Gonwa could hear him as he could hear them. He paused and wondered if they had heard this before from someone else.
Off to the side, he could hear the sound of splashing. He whirled about, hand extended, power leaping to his fingertips. The Gonwa could but groan.
Gariath didn’t even bother to look at him as he trudged through the waters. The dragonman moved slowly, limping. Stray bits of cloth and leather had been tied tightly around his middle, staunching a red stain. Over each shoulder and under one arm, he carried a body.
He paused as he came to Dreadaeleon and grunted. “Alive?”
The boy nodded; considering everything, it didn’t seem a stupid question. “You?” After Gariath nodded, he looked to the bodies. “And what about-” His eyes widened. “Is that Asper?”
“Yes and yes,” Gariath replied. “Alive. Not sure how.” He shook Denaos’s prone body under his arm. “This one either.”
Dreadaeleon looked to the limp, blackened figure of Mahalar and frowned. “And. .”
“You don’t need to ask and you know you don’t. Give me something to put them down on.”
A dull whimper in his mind as he breathed over the surface of the water and formed a small floe of ice from his breath. Gariath slumped the bodies upon it. Sure enough, Asper and Denaos drew in short, shallow breath.
“Anyone else?”
Dreadaeleon looked around the ring. The waters chopped gently.
“What of Lenk and the pointy-eared human?” Gariath grunted. “Did they-”
“I don’t. .” The boy’s eyes widened. “But maybe. .” He tapped his cheek. “Greenhair.”
“What?”
Dreadaeleon ran to where he saw her last and found her there. The icicle that had pinned her to the earth was but a sliver. Her body was torn and twisted where the waves had sought to take her and the frost had sought to keep her. Dreadaeleon reached down and plucked her from the water.
She seemed a fluid thing, then, head lolling in his arms and hair streaming down into the water. Without substance. Without weight. The gaping hole in her body was clean, as though the water had taken her blood with it when it cleaned this cursed place.
“Lorekeeper.”
She spoke. No melody. No song. Words. Crude and painful to hear.
“Lorekeeper,” she gasped.