In Avalon and Pallendara, and high in the air on the back of a rushing Pegasus, the other three experienced wizards of Ynis Aielle felt the Black Warlock’s pull against the fabric of their magic, bending the cord of the universal energies to his misguided commands.
“Too much,” Ardaz gasped, feeling as if the very bonds of natural harmony would split apart, throwing all the world into chaos. In their distant seats of power, Brielle and Istaahl echoed the Silver Mage’s grim words.
Thalasi cackled with delirious delight, literally drunk with the excess of energies pouring into him. “I am the god!” he proclaimed, his unearthly voice rolling out over the plain, across the river and across all Aielle, reverberating in every ear in the world.
Then the Black Warlock let loose.
He threw his arms upward, his fingers reaching for the sky, and out of his limbs came crackling bolts of black energy, hissing and sizzling as they rushed up to lend power to the gray clouds of the conjured overcast. Thunder rumbled to the Black Warlock’s call, the clouds rolled in whipped fury, and a driving rain rushed out, bent by great western winds into the blank faces of the stunned Calvan army.
Still more black bolts exploded from the warlock’s fingers into the sky, and two particularly dark clouds rushed off, one to the north and one to the east.
Brielle and Istaahl braced themselves, sensing the approach of the mighty storms, for they knew, as did all who witnessed the release of the storms, that the Black Warlock’s targets once again were Avalon and the White Tower.
And this time he meant to have them.
The rain beat down on the soldiers defending the bridges, and the wind remained strong and urging at the backs of Mitchell and the talons. But the wraith knew that Thalasi had otherwise left the battlefield to his command.
“You have heard the master!” Mitchell roared at his lead talon forces. “Take the world for him! Let all the humans run from our fell blades!”
The charge of thirty thousand talons whipped into a killing frenzy by the spectacle of their god-figure and his dark general was on.
They hit the bridges running, heedless of the crossed stakes erected by the Calvans. Those in front willingly impaled themselves that their ugly kin could run over their bodies headlong into the next lines of defense.
The leaders of the defending forces could not have expected such unbridled fury, but King Benador took strength from the aged wisdom of his commanders, from the calm responses of Arien Silverleaf and Bellerian, and from the unfaltering courage of Belexus. The mighty ranger prince and his comrades from Avalon charged the length of the defensive line, rallying the soldiers with promises of victory.
And the value of their efforts could not be underestimated, for the terror on each Calvan soldier’s face changed to grim determination as the rangers passed, and when the talons finally clawed their way through the defensive barriers, they were met head-on by a Calvan charge that rivaled their own in intensity. The Calvans fought for all of those who had died, and for all of those helpless multitudes who would surely die if they could not stop the black tide here and now.
Then all the bridges were thrown into chaos, a clawing, hacking swirl of talon and man. No quarter was asked and none was given; to lose was to die. For the talons, to lose was to face the fury of Morgan Thalasi. For the Calvans, to lose was to realize the destruction of all the world.
Black bile wetted Rhiannon’s throat, sheer horror and disgust at the sight of the conflict. The screams of agony and rage rolled across the distance to her ears. Even Bryan, familiar with smaller-scale and more choreographed skirmishes, felt his knees go weak at the sheer viciousness of the battle, and he winced each time one death scream wailed above all the others.
But Bryan soon steeled himself against his revulsion, reminding himself of the importance of the scene before him. He turned to Rhiannon for counsel, but found the young witch fully entranced by the continuing spectacle of Morgan Thalasi, as if Rhiannon could better understand the deadly implications of his dark efforts.
Now the black bolts ripping upward into the sky from the arms of the Black Warlock came as one unending stream, one reaching north and the other east, fueling the frenzy of the storms as they raced to their destinations.
Bolt after bolt of lightning blasted into the defensive shell over Avalon, a bubble of energy that Brielle had created to protect her forest. The initial blasts were dispersed into showers of multicolored sparks. But each ensuing bolt jolted the Emerald Witch, strained her powers to their very limits, and she knew that soon her shell would collapse.
“Too much!” she yelled, echoing her brother’s words and sending the thought through the connection of their magical energies to the mind of the Black Warlock. “Ye’ll break it all, ye fool!”
Thalasi’s answer came as another blast of lightning, a furious bolt that split the earth around the perimeter of Brielle’s fortress forest.
Hurricane winds buffeted Istaahl’s tower, swaying the tall structure far to the side and then back again. The desperate wizard evoked magical arms to engulf the structure, holding it together in its wild ride.
“Damn you, Thalasi!” Istaahl growled, for he, too, understood that the Black Warlock had broken all bounds of sensibility, had grabbed at the powers of the universe and pulled them to his evil will with such blatant ferocity that it all could unravel at his feet. All the world would feel the destruction.
But if the Black Warlock had any concern for such possibilities, he did not show it. The winds around the White Tower slammed into the stone and swirled about it, and bolts of lightning scorched its sides and split the ground around its base.
And Istaahl, though he feared the consequences, could only respond by pushing his own magic further, by tugging back on the universal powers with an intensity that rivaled Thalasi’s.
“I am the god!” Thalasi roared, his voice shaking the ground for miles around. “And all the world is mine! Behold Morgan Thalasi and know you are doomed!”
The power continued its twisted flow through the Staff of Death and through Thalasi’s limbs, conductors that bent the natural strength of the world to suit the Black Warlock’s foul purposes. Thalasi was drunk with it, fully enraptured in the ecstasy of unbelievable might. He had outdone his own expectation, had grabbed at the core of the world and pulled it to his hands. His black globe cracked and crumbled the ground below it into pockets of broken, barren rubble. And then Thalasi moved on to another spot, for the Staff of Death demanded more.
“I am the god!” Thalasi yelled again. One group of talons rushed by, spurred by the proclamations of their unholy leader.
Too close.
The black sphere of Thalasi sucked them into its vortex, and the unfortunate creatures came out as mere pulses in the black bolts the warlock aimed at the sky.
“What is it?” Bryan demanded. He shook Rhiannon violently, but the young witch showed no signs of consciousness. Her thoughts were fully turned inward as the evil spectacle of Thalasi continued its roar in her ears. Still the magic grew in the young witch despite her efforts, born of sheer instinctual terror, to drive it out.
Bryan understood his companion’s dilemma. He had seen her hesitation at calling forth the most destructive uses of her power, and he understood that the power now demanded more of her than ever before, more even than Rhiannon had used when she and he had routed the talon caravan back in the mountains two days before.
And that effort had nearly destroyed the young witch.
“Let it in!” Bryan implored Rhiannon. “Accept the power for the sake of all the world!”