Ozriel held out a hand. “Return that to me before I take it.”
Even that one attack with the Scythe had sent cracks crawling up Makiel’s armor. If not for the Hound’s personal skill and power, he’d have died swinging it once.
Makiel still didn’t glance at him, but he did respond. “Would you do better, with no armor and no Mantle?”
“I could do better than that if I was missing both arms and an eye.”
The Mad King wasn’t idly letting them speak. Workings of energy and chaos crawled around the Iteration, in the form of golden script-circles and stomach-churning creatures respectively.
As expected, Daruman intended to take them along with him. If he could remove even one Judge, he would die happy. And there were four—no, Zakariel had already scampered away—three Judges here.
Makiel snorted at Ozriel’s words. “You can see the result yourself.”
Yes, Ozriel would most likely die using the Scythe. Not just from the burden of using the weapon at the ebb of his power but from the Mad King’s suicidal gambits.
But Suriel would walk away for sure, while Daruman would not.
“Can you?” Ozriel challenged the Hound.
He knew where Makiel was looking. If Makiel used the Scythe, the most likely outcome was all four of them walking away.
And then nothing would change.
The Mad King would still be out there, after having reduced the Abidan worlds to disconnected rubble. This new status quo would continue, the root cause unsolved.
Ozriel would not allow that.
The man had brought death to Cradle. He would not be permitted to live.
Makiel’s grip on the Scythe tightened and the weapon’s darkness flared in protest. He turned to face Ozriel squarely, and a new branch of Fate shone as it became more likely. Makiel could banish the Scythe and draw his own Sword.
Unarmed, Ozriel would stand no chance. He’d have to take over the Scythe while he had the chance, but that meant acting first. A standoff.
Over the same old debate. Let things stagnate or pay the cost for change.
As chaos crawled across the sky of Vesper, icy determination leaked up from Ozriel’s soul. Nothing had changed. Nothing would, as long as Makiel was in charge.
Maybe his primary target shouldn’t be the Mad King after all. If Suriel were the only survivor, that would be for the best. He found that Fate, with her as the only survivor, and began tracing back the path to that future.
Across from him, Makiel was doing something similar.
Then blue fire filled Ozriel’s vision.
A pair of wings filled with the same fire he’d seen in Lindon’s marble.
“I’ll persuade him,” Suriel said to Makiel. “We’re out of time.”
Sure enough, Vesper had been surrounded by the Mad King’s working. Now, there was no way out of here without losing at least one of them.
Ozriel was about to throw out a remark just to needle Makiel, but Suriel spun on him.
“Ozmanthus wouldn’t back down,” she said.
Ozriel felt like he’d slammed into a wall.
He didn’t want to be Ozmanthus. He’d worked so hard not to be.
He wanted to be Eithan.
“I didn’t know you were going to say that,” Eithan muttered.
Suriel didn’t give him a smug expression, but he could tell she wanted to. “I can at least hide that much.”
“I will use the Scythe,” Makiel said.
And, though it twisted everything inside him, Ozriel nodded. “Take it.”
With that permission, the energy of the weapon suddenly flowed more smoothly. It still wouldn’t be easy for the Hound to use, but better than before.
Of course, they were still trapped.
“Die,” the Mad King commanded.
The ensuing attack was beyond anything he’d used against Ozriel in their most recent battle. No surprise, considering how much time they’d given him to prepare.
Rather than the slash of a sword stretching across the gulf of space, it was more like the entire Iteration collapsing in on them.
Makiel wielded the Reaper’s Scythe in both hands, bending all his will to reducing the attack to nothing. Suriel reinforced him, setting up Titan barriers that disappeared almost as soon as they were formed.
Well, it wasn’t as though Eithan wanted to sit back and do nothing.
Without his Mantle, he couldn’t work on the same scope as before, but that didn’t mean he was useless. Shells of Way-power appeared around Makiel, sturdy enough to resist planet-crushing force. Ozriel threw up shield after shield, as well as stranger barriers. He reached deep into reality with the powers of the Ghost, reinforcing the reality of Iteration Three Hundred.
He worked on so many levels at once that he struggled to keep up with it all, and the other two Judges did the same.
Finally, the Scythe swept away the Mad King’s working.
But a golden light from Tal’gullour struck Suriel like a hammer-blow.
She was launched out of the world, into the Void, where Fiends set upon her. Ozriel had seen this coming; it was the best of all possible outcomes.
Even so, that didn’t mean he intended to let it stand.
He leaped through space, sending a message to Makiel as he did so. “I need—”
The message was cut off when he saw what was waiting for him when he re-materialized behind the Mad King: a two-handed sword hovering in front of him hilt-first. The veins of purple light crawling over its steel hissed with displeasure as it radiated contempt for him.
Nonetheless, the Sword of Makiel tolerated his touch.
There was no moment of hesitation. The instant Ozriel appeared, he seized the Sword and swept it toward the fortress of Tal’gullour.
Though the weapon had inherited its master’s distaste for Ozriel, it still felt right in his hands. He had been considered a potential successor to Makiel, once.
And the key to this weapon was that its strikes were absolute. It hit multiple possibilities at once, closing out branches of Fate that involved its attacks failing.
There were countermeasures, of course, and the Mad King knew them.
Chaos twisted for Ozriel, warping destiny and causality in a working that would stop Makiel’s Sword and possibly kill Ozriel as well.
Except for the colorless light that swallowed up the working, reducing it to nothing. The Reaper’s Scythe.
The Sword of Makiel swept across, shattering the golden circles that defended Tal’gullour and leaving a scratch across its surface that stretched for thousands of miles. Ozriel gave a brief sigh of disappointment. With his Mantle, he would have cleaved through the entire planet-sized fortress.
But this time it was his turn to play support.
In the future, he saw the Mad King hitting Makiel, and he launched an attack of his own to close off that possibility.
Makiel reacted perfectly, since he’d known exactly what Ozriel would do.
To Ozriel’s frustration, they made a great team.
Though they were trapped and cornered, missing weapons, and not in their best condition, they were still the two most talented Abidan alive. And for the first time ever, they willingly fought in sync with one another.
Ozriel was still irritated. At his full strength, he wouldn’t need this. And Makiel was getting the center-stage role, leaving Ozriel to play cleanup.
Then again, wasn’t that where an Arelius shone the brightest?
Ozriel could feel the shift when the Mad King realized he couldn’t beat them. Once again, he redirected his attacks to the unarmored Ozriel.
There were several options available. And this time, Eithan picked the one that Ozmanthus would never consider.
“Tell Suriel I’m counting on her,” Ozriel sent.
Instead of evading, he slashed out with the Sword of Makiel. His blow cracked the Mad King’s bone helmet in half.
“Gotcha!” Eithan said.
Just as the Mad King’s return strike erased him from the universe.