Beyond the Pale (27 page)
Ryan said nothing.
“Dunkelzahn chose you well,” the drake continued. “Yet you are still more than you think you are. You must keep your mind open to possibility. It may save you in the end.”
Then the dweller was gone and Ryan stood on a blasted, cracked plane of rock. A landscape darkened with black blood, and a sky of gray static.
The bridge.
Dread slicked through Ryan as he looked around at the corpses scattered across the tongue of rock. Harlequin and Aina stood next to him in the icy wind. Talon’s hair whipped behind him as he gaped at the scene, shock and terror gripping the weary mage.
Lethe appeared, bringing Billy’s body across with him. The cold and the dead seemed to have no effect on them. There was a sad expression on the cyberzombie’s face. “It’s so silent,” he said, and now his voice was different. It was as if both Billy and Lethe spoke in unison. “So dark without Thayla.”
Ryan saw that the Dragon Heart had made it across as well; he reached down to where it lay on the rock and lifted it. “Here,” he said, and handed the artifact to Lethe.
“We’re too late,” Harlequin said.
Ryan looked out across the bridge—a hair-thin arc of rock that spanned the gap between cliffs. Dread threatened to overwhelm him as he realized that the structure had been completed, the connection made between the two worlds. Over the bridge poured armies of terrible creatures. Multitudes of hideous monsters the like of which Ryan had never dreamed existed.
They’re coming straight for us.
He steeled himself. He would not succumb to fear. Despite their numbers and the obvious ferocity, Ryan knew he would stand and fight. He would fight for the things he loved—Nadja and the promise of a future of hope. Ryan vowed to resist until the very end. Until death or victory.
Ryan advanced onto the bridge, moving toward the oncoming horde. Harlequin and Aina joined him on his right. Lethe and Talon came up on his left.
It was the most powerful group of individuals Ryan had ever been a part of, and yet they seemed insignificant—a tiny resistance in a standoff against overwhelming force.
No one flinched; no one yielded to fear.
Lethe lifted the Dragon Heart in one huge cybernetic hand, holding it up over his head as they walked out onto the bridge.
Mana swirled around Aina, deep blue and forest green, mingling with the energies that flowed bright white and sun yellow into Harlequin.
Ryan gathered his own magic in preparation for the attack, and Talon beside him made a valiant effort to fight off the terror as he began casting.
They were as ready as they would ever be.
The wave of horror rushed up to meet them, faster and more ultimately terrifying than anything in Ryan’s imagination. One thought raced around and around in his head as he braced himself.
This is the end.
Lethe straightened Billy’s body and stood tall on the cracked earth as he watched the oncoming rush of vile creatures. They came like a stampede, trampling each other in their insane rush to cross the bridge. Soon they would reach this side.
Oh, Thayla,
he thought.
My beloved goddess. Look what they have done to your beauty.
Lethe held the Dragon Heart over his head. He and Billy worked in unison now, almost as though the journey to the metaplanes had fused their spirits.
Lethe felt the power mount inside him. There were no barriers to him here in the metaplanes. The suffocating restrictions that flesh and physical machinery had imposed upon him for the past days since he had tried to possess Burnout in Hells Canyon were gone now.
Lethe still couldn’t leave the body of the cyberzombie, but he could control it completely, and he could move with it as he had moved before he’d tried to possess Burnout. Now, he could fly as before, traveling anywhere with a thought.
Lethe felt the familiar power that had been part of him what now seemed so long ago. And that power grew immeasurably as he touched the Dragon Heart with his mind,
as he probed it for answers.
It’s now or too late. Exactly how can I use the artifact to destroy the bridge?
Beside him, Ryan and the others fought the first wave of the Enemy. Harlequin and Aina unleashed a wash of such sheer intensity that it carved up the creatures like a monomolecular line. Each of them propelled a cool beam of mana like a scalpel, and the Enemy fell before it.
Aina seemed particularly vicious; she knew something of these creatures and wanted vengeance. As Lethe watched, she worked herself into a frenzy, the power coming from her on a level far above any that Lethe had seen from a mage. The front line of slugs and bulbous creatures burst into oozing black bags under her attack.
Harlequin was more precise, but no less effective. His strikes landed on the second line, tentacled creatures with luminescent green and burgundy bodies, the white fire of his magic charring them. Igniting their foul-smelling flesh.
Peripherally, Lethe was aware of Ryan and Talon, fighting those of the Enemy who escaped the elves’ magic. Ryan moved with blinding speed, his blows striking with precision and perfect accuracy. And the human mage, Talon, despite his fatigue at bringing them across, held his own.
Still, the horde came on unrelenting. In a matter of moments, they would all be overrun. Lost under a bludgeoning of stench and razor-sharp bone spurs.
“Come on, Lethe!” Ryan yelled. “We could use some help here!”
Focus came to Lethe as he used all of his senses to examine the Dragon Heart. He saw millions of mana tendrils flowing toward and into it. As his mind touched the Heart, clarity came to Lethe. He felt the currents of mana around him like extensions of himself. He sensed the where and the why and the how of astral power.
It was a level of awareness that had been out of his reach
without the Dragon Heart. A gift of sight that came as his spirit and the Heart connected.
Lethe understood that such a magnificent gift came with a price. He had been given the ability to comprehend. The ability to control. With such knowledge came a choice between self and selflessness.
Even as he knew the possibility existed for taking the Heart and its power for himself, it flashed through his mind and was instantly discarded. The Heart must be used to destroy the forces of darkness. Lethe knew it as surely as he knew that Thayla had named him.
The answer came to him: the Dragon Heart was a lens of sorts for channeling mana. A tool for moving around magical energy. If it could handle a huge amount, perhaps. . .
Perhaps the bridge
can
be destroyed with it.
This place was a mana spike—a pinnacle of magic that had resulted initially from the Great Ghost Dance. And recently that pinnacle had been extended by the Locus sacrifices, the life energy of metahuman blood used to increase the mana at this point.
If I can move the mana out of the bridge, it should buckle.
Lethe exerted his will, channeling the mana flow. He focused the Dragon Heart at the apex of the bridge, and tried to draw the power out of the structure.
A few seconds went by. Nothing happened.
Perhaps I’m not using it
—
Abruptly the bridge split, sending a loud crack through the air. The center crumbled and fell into the Chasm.
“Yes!” yelled Ryan, and he seemed to draw strength from the victory.
Lethe drew more and more mana from the bridge as he extended his will through the Dragon Heart. It was like a new limb, an additional part of himself, an extension of his mind that he wielded like a weapon. Mana tendrils of smoky black and rust red unraveled from between the stones of the bridge and flowed across the distance to disappear into the Dragon Heart.
The structure collapsed, this side of the span falling away from the center. The destruction moved back toward the cliff face. And as it fell, the Enemy followed the crumbling stone, swallowed up in the abyss.
As Lethe decimated the bridge, the mana built inside the Dragon Heart. Inside him. Giving him power and understanding. Images came to him as he enacted his destructive force. He saw the portal of swirling rainbows that had recurred in his mind. He knew now that it was the window through which he came to be.
He relived the burning fire that had plagued his waking mind, experiencing the agony of the fountain of lava. He screamed as he had once before, in a lifetime past. He saw things in the sharp relief created by the explosion. Rows of trees and cars scattered and burned, a façade of windows shattered from the blast.
A split second of agony pulsed through him. Then it was gone, and with it went the memories.
As the bridge crashed down in a thunderous avalanche of rock, taking the startled corpses of the Enemy with it, mana built and built inside the Dragon Heart. Lethe realized that he had to focus it somewhere, had to move it into the physical world. He knew only one way.
Lethe channeled the mana into Ryan and Talon, into Harlequin and Aina. The life energy of thousands and thousands of people passed out of the bridge, through the Dragon Heart, and into the four metahumans. Mana flooded them.
Lethe didn’t know what it would do to them, but he had no choice. They were the only links to the physical world, the only way the mana could be diverted away from this place.
He just hoped the surge in power didn’t kill them.
Ryan shifted his feet on the dusty rock of the bridge and buried his fist into the soft flesh of a blood-veined blob, killing it with one blow. He felt power building inside. His magic came stronger and faster than it ever had before. He fought at the limit of his magical ability, yet it all came easily to him.
He dodged an arcing tentacle and used his distance strike to pummel the chitinous skull of the attacking creature. The strike was like an extension of his aura, a magical pseudopod that landed with more force than Ryan had ever delivered. He felt the creature’s head crush like an egg under the impact.
Ryan could feel more and more mana flowing into him.
What is Lethe doing to me?
Beside Ryan, Lethe wielded the Dragon Heart, using it to rip up the foundations of the bridge and destroy the connection to the plane of the Enemy. It was a glorious thing to see, and it made Ryan wonder why he had ever considered keeping the Heart for himself.
The cracked earth quaked under his feet as the bridge crumbled in toward them. Huge chunks of rock fell away, massive boulders and crude pavement ripped off the main
structure and vanished into the maw of the Chasm.
Hope and joy built inside Ryan as he watched the Enemy die as the bridge gave way under them. They slid down broken and cracking spans of the shattered bridge and fell into the abyss. Millions of the hideous monsters plummeted, screaming their vehemence as they dropped away, lost forever between worlds.
Still, there were thousands still alive. Trapped on this side of the expanse, they came rushing toward Ryan and the others, trying to outrun the collapsing bridge behind them.
With razor-sharp filaments of magical energy, Harlequin and Aina cut the creatures down in broad swaths as they came. Like two masters of monowire, the two elves created a barrier with their magic. They amazed Ryan with their ferocity, wielding magic on a scale far above anything he’d ever imagined. Intent that not one of the Enemy make it through alive.
Thousands of the Enemy died, hurling themselves with horrifying abandon into the vice of Harlequin and Aina. Burned to a bubbling goo or sliced into leaking black flesh or maimed and screaming. The shrieks of agony and terror grated against Ryan’s ears, and it took all his will to block it out. This was a battlefield, a war arena. Atrocity had to be accepted. Ignored.
Talon was having a harder time. He fought well and his magic was stronger than Ryan expected it to be, most likely because Lethe was funneling mana into him as well. But Ryan could tell that the human was on the verge of succumbing to his fear, to his horror at the smell of death, the screams of the wounded and the visions of leaking guts.
“Hold yourself together, Talon,” Ryan yelled. “Lethe’s taking down the bridge. Soon this’ll all be over.” He tried
to project sincerity in his voice, but the words came out
hollow. Empty.
Talon could assess the situation just as well as Ryan. Even if Lethe destroyed the entire bridge, thousands of the Enemy would make it to this side of the expanse. Harlequin and Aina would kill as many as they could, but some would get through.
Abruptly, one of the creatures burst through the lines of fire. It was a powerful one, a unique creature with a head like a hundred barbs of bone jutting from translucent blue flesh. Yellow, slitted eyes bobbing on tendinous stalks. It went directly for Lethe, and it was incredibly fast despite the wounds it had taken from Aina and Harlequin.
Ryan moved to intercept. He couldn’t allow anything to distract Lethe until the bridge had been completely destroyed.
The creature turned its head on a neck of sharp bony ridges, quickly glancing toward Ryan. “Do not interfere,” it said, the words materializing in Ryan’s mind through telepathy.
Ryan responded with a vicious telekinetic attack, throwing all his power against the creature.
