Demiourgos (44 page)

Her only memory of the council chambers was one that made her cringe. Between her role as a blood guard and her confrontation with the head councilman she never thought she would be so happy to see the marble floors and wooden walls with their decorative tapestries. All of them breathed a sigh of relief and Rose fell to her knees with tears in her eyes. “It feels good to be home.”

The large room was almost unoccupied. Merek, the queen and former king were sitting near the throne on a few high-backed intricately carved chairs that looked like a series of vines choking a plush fabric cushion. Several guards looked startled at their sudden presence but one stood out from them all. From the back of the room Barius was striding toward them with a grin plastered across his features.

“Rose, Liostro, Nina, our wayward adventurers!” Barius embraced Rose tight for a moment then bowed to Nina and clasped hands with a weary-looking Liostro. “There were bets whether you’d return or not.”

“Oh?” Liostro said with an amused look on his face. “How much did you just win?”

“Enough to buy you all a round of honey mead once you’ve rested.”

“Seize them!” Leonidus cried at the top of his lungs, indicating the four with an outstretched finger. “They are traitors to the throne and to the elven people.”

The silence in the room was near deafening as the guards all looked around between themselves and the gathered trio of ranking officers and royalty. Merek and Miralastra did not look as surprised as everyone else in the room. Even Barius looked perplexed. Rose arched a brow and strode around them all walking toward Leonidus without making any threatening gestures. “I demand to know why.”

“I know you have been corrupted; I know you have betrayed us!” Leonidus accused as he turned back to the queen and Merek to address them directly using only a finger to point accusingly at Rose. “Remember what we all saw with our eyes. The gathered army that even now marches toward us is their doing!”

“Why?” Rose asked with only enough volume for those around her to hear. She had been holding on to the question and the emotion behind it for long enough. “Why did you betray us? Why did you send us on this doomed mission? The demons who took me were under your employ. They captured me and tortured me mentally. They tried to break my will to gain some knowledge or hidden secret that I cannot name. I broke free and ran.”

Rose paused for a moment and sniffed hard trying to fight the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I was taken in by the people of the stone and cared for. But when it came time to leave the kurenai Namia betrayed many of her people and even her own brother to put me into the hands of the infernis elves.”

“The infernis attempted to chain me and dissect me like some sort of experiment. I broke their magic and laid waste to the house of those who kept me. The kurenai who had shown me nothing but kindness died by your hands.” She felt her chest rising and falling rapidly and in the back of her thoughts the Spellrage threatened to well up within her. Subsequently Talisbane jumped from her to Avreel then to Nina and hid behind the elf’s back, clasping her shoulder and growling. “Then the death eater, the fallen primordial god that we killed and I absorbed. I overcame that challenge as well.”

“I could have thought it all coincidence but for one thing.” Rose pulled a small shard of crystal out of her pouch and laid it in her open palm for all to see. It was the crystal Kestrel had given her just before granting her the last divine spark she had. “I met the goddess Kestrel while in the astral fade. She told me that these prophecies were engineered by a false seer. Though fabricated, he was a powerful man with designs on the world and a seat of godhood. He penned the books in secret and destroyed all other records of his existence. Then he set out to destroy my people. He killed them for the sheer pleasure of watching them die, to hear the sound of their bones crackling under his feet.”

Rose indicated Leonidus with a single digit never taking her eyes off of him. “Once my people were all but destroyed he set about putting things in motion by hiding the books among his allies just before they all began draining the planet of its life.”

“All of this and more you have done Leonidus, the Death’s Head of the sorcerer lords.” Rose heard several people gasp and she saw the look on both the queen and Merek’s face.

“We all have suffered but none more than me.” Rose shouted, clenching her fists tight at her sides. “I will not have your lies! Tell me the truth I demand it.”

“The truth?” Leonidus scoffed. “The truth is that I tire of your mouth little girl. Indeed, as you have said this I have done and so much more all to see my prophecies come true. I am living in my legacy, mine, my own! I may not have invented the original Spellrage but I perfected it and took it from its creators and made it into a god-slaying tool of destruction.”

“I ask again, why Leonidus?” Rose pleaded with him and felt the sting of treachery deep within her chest.

“The gods were petty and cruel; they hoarded their power and refused to share it. So they told the dragons to share their power instead. The taste of magic we got was intoxicating but not enough. The naarabi were the first to learn and they took to it the easiest. When the dragons finally got around to teaching the rest of us they expected the same results so they barely instructed us on how to touch the fabric of magic and bend it to our will.” Leonidus was standing stone still with his eyes narrowed and still on Rose. “We struggled, the first sages. That was all until the nypthians collaborated with us and created the Spellrage. Several of us died in the initial test run but oh the power we felt. It was the might of the gods at our fingertips.”

Rose was taken by surprise. The Spellrage she had been using unwittingly was the same tool that had sundered the world once and she could initiate it by herself. Her mind worked quickly and she met his eyes again. “You did this to me.”

“I did. Time and time again I attempted to create the perfect naarabian puppet to exploit. So many died in the process that I began to think it was impossible. Then you passed the test Rose, you of all people.” Leonidus frowned and shook a clenched fist at her. “Then your mother took you away before you were born and hid you. She put you right into the lion’s den in the last place I would ever think to look. But no matter I killed her and every one of your relatives I could find. My master’s armies are massing even as we speak. This forest will fuel his ascent to godhood and he will make me his right hand man!”

“You would kill your own people? Murder and destroy lives just for this ridiculous quest?” Rose put her hand on her blade and grimaced. “I’ll not let you leave to start this process again.”

The old sage laughed loudly, more cackled madly. His hands fell to his gut and he bent in half as if attempting to quell a pain from the hilarity of her statement. After he was done laughing he flung his arms upward and sent his hands sprawling out to his sides. One blade of pure energy rocketed toward Rose and another toward Liostro and her friends. The spell flew past her as she barely dodged out of the way but her eyes fell on Liostro as he jumped in front of the blast to save Avreel and Nina who were too wrapped in the story to react. A spray of blood erupted from his chest and Rose felt a keen sense of loss as he hit the ground in a thud, his body limp; and at the same time Nina gasped and she and Talisbane disappeared from sight. “No!”

“You will trade this land for the life of your precious princess. You have an hour to decide and send word to the sorcerer in the ranks of the army by the mountain.” Leonidus began to disappear from sight.

Rose growled audibly and used some of her stored magical power to grab onto his spell, tailing him to his destination. She found herself standing in his tower and he was obviously surprised.

The fire in her eyes could not match the festering feeling of betrayal and pain that sat in the center of her chest where her heart was. Her anger was all she knew the hatred was all she could feel regardless of what she had been through with this elf. Standing before her was the man who had sent her to the ends of her world on a crusade that he himself had created so long ago that no one living knew any better. He had known the entire time that she would be made to suffer at the hands of those who wanted what she had, a ‘gift’ that felt more like a curse. She had made the best of it, never complaining or making more than a frustrated fuss even in the hardest of times.

Her destiny had been laid out before her and every sentence of it was a lie fabricated by Leonidus. Her mother had been murdered along with the rest of her family. Her entire race had almost been wiped from the face of their great empire because one man felt that he could change the world. All of these thoughts swirled in her head, penetrated her brain, but of everything that she knew the greatest hole in her heart was the fact that this man had endangered not only the lives of everyone he supposedly cared for but his own daughter and grandchild. After everything he had done he had taken away the love of her life to top it off. Liostro had been the last thing in her miserable existence that had made any semblance of sense.

A white-hot golden fire sprang into being around her body as the Spellrage began to take hold. Though she felt the need for vengeance she tried to fight it and subdue the beast that was even now clawing at her body. A scream of pain and unbridled rage escaped her lips as she sank down to her knees and dug her fingers into the melting stone that was beginning to pool around her feet. She was able to direct it at least; the artifacts and tomes in Leonidus’s workshop began throbbing and pulsing in protest as she tapped them all for their strength. Nearby she could feel the betrayer’s wards fighting back against her. She knew this elf, one of the oldest beings alive on any of the known continents, would be an opponent of titanic proportions. The rage did not care.

Rose stood up tall and terrible before one of the mightiest wizards of all time and did not flinch as he sent a killing spell her way with just a flick of his wrist. The magical energy was added to her store instantly, much to his surprise.

“Impossible! You cannot defeat me using a technique I invented!” Leonidus screamed at the top of his lungs as he began shaping the energies of another spell even as the first syllable escaped his lips. “I will not let you alter the path of this world’s destiny.”

“Betrayer, slayer of your own kind, destroyer of worlds, murderer, you will pay for all of these titles with your own blood!” Rose clenched her fists tight and dropped them down to her sides, bringing them back up in an arch that formed two void-black lashes magically attached to her. The dark energy collided with Leo’s shield and she felt it unravel just a little. She reached out to those magical strands of energy that had frayed just a little and tugged on them, causing a layer of his defense to unravel like a ball of thread. The black energy solidified before her into a shield blocking a ball of crackling blue electricity summoned by his unbroken spell.

Rose lifted up into the air and rocketed toward the black wall before her, bending it into a shell of protective magic that she used to slam into him. Though she did not score a physical hit she knew she was weakening him with each blow. Her hands closed in around his arms and she pinned him against the wall as they both crashed heavily into the dense stone. The entire tower shook slightly and dust choked her for a second too long. She was flung backward underneath a wave of invisible force and she slid back against the floor and clawed her way to a halt. Dropping the negative energy around her body the flames that surrounded her once again wavered freely in a non-existent wind. Not wasting time she chopped her arm and hand in a downward gesture and let those same flames fly forth, burning a molten hole into the ground. It carved a path toward her target but he merely dodged out of the way and rolled back to his feet. “You’re spry for a thousand year old prophet.”

“Oh I’m much older than that my dear.” He replied with a menacing smile creeping across his features. He spread his arms and legs out wide and opened his palms. A series of pulsing orbs streaked toward Rose from each of his fingers.

Her first instinct was to dodge them but she could read the spell even before it reached her. Her Spellrage was getting more powerful and the information it provided more in depth each time she used it. Rose quickly slammed her palms together and left her hands out to each side with her fingers curled to face the other wizard. She blew out a breath from her lips and enhanced it as it passed by her outstretched digits. The cold whirlwind disrupted the magic for just a moment as she sucked in a breath and reversed its direction, focusing them all into a single point of magic so she could absorb it easier. She realized her error just as her triumphant smile began creeping across her lips. She had been preoccupied too long and another barrage of golden missiles followed the second and every one slammed home into her body. The force of the impact staggered her to her knees.

Leonidus walked forward toward her and swept his hand across his chest then back out, conjuring two blue fiery scythes of energy that swept across her unprotected body causing her to cry out in pain. “As I told you, I created the Rage and I will not be defeated by it.”

Lurching forward Rose grabbed him by the tunic, bypassing all of his wards and protective spells with but a gesture. She smiled broadly displaying her teeth for him like a predator would just before she flung him back against the wall with a blow of telekinetic force. “I’ve made some improvements.”

Rose used that same telekinetic power to draw the stones around him inward and push down on his frail body. She did not need pure magic to defeat him. The ancient mortar crumbled as though it were as soft as bread and the stone blocks that had been the foundation of his tower pressed down on his wiggling form. She was satisfied to hear his bones popping and a cry of pain from beneath them. “You will die this day and all your sins will be known to those who trusted you. Your people will know that you created this hell.”