Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (73 page)

A victory cry escaped the harvester’s lips.  Twin
streams of raw power burst from his hands.  Hard as Marik jerked, he could not
pull free.  The power scorched his senses until it felt as if his face must be
blistering.  Xenos’ hands disappeared within the fantastic energy streams,
making it appear as if torrents of power burst from his wrists.

Even Dietrik seemed to sense the massive power
churning so close to him.  The mercenary renewed his squirming attempts to free
his arm.

Down through the etheric not-ground did the power
streams plunge.  They twisted around each other in eel-like fashion, endlessly
corkscrewing, never touching.  Both picked up speed until they slammed into the
spherical seal faster than a stampeding horse.

The seal bowed before the streams.  Its shaped changed
as a clay ball squeezed in the palm, bulging outward at the sides…but holding
under the assault.  White energy forming the seal darkened slowly where the
power streams raged against it.

Xenos barked a laugh.  The torrents flooding from his
hands doubled in power.  Each stream thickened with it, the power inside
flowing indescribably fast.

The sphere deformed terribly when the increased power
struck it.  Xenos intended to crush the seal through sheer force.  He would
channel power greater than any ten mages could produce until the barrier
collapsed.  Slowly the bulges grew until it seemed impossible the seal
refrained from popping like a soap bubble.

A fiery explosion ripped through the deck behind
them.  Flaming shrapnel flashed past.  The deck rose in an ocean wave.  Xenos’
hands finally released the two men when they each fell in different directions,
the platform boards tossing them through the air.

Marik landed with a crash.  His legs were in the water
up to his knees over the platform’s edge.  His head rang from an invisible
toller mistaking his skull for a cathedral’s massive bell.  On the other edge
he saw Dietrik crawling on hands and knees.  He scrambled through smoking wood
fragments searching for something.

The gonging between his ears slowly dulled to a mere
throb.  He shakily regained his feet.  Back where they had been standing,
Mendell was climbing out of the pool onto the platform.  Xenos had moved to the
flaming rear and scanned the forest with hostile intensity rather than the
shattered decking.

Pay attention, fool!  Xenos has his back to you!  What
about the seal?

Far below the seal still held.  Xenos had cut off his
streams…yet the assault continued.  The raw energy had coalesced, forming into
vaguely arrowhead-shaped masses.  Both arrowheads ground forward on their own,
forcing the seal to deform.  A moment later the seal would fight back and
regain terrain.  Etheric sparks burst ceaselessly while both energy forms
fought the other, the seal wavering, the arrowheads flaring wildly as bonfires
in a windstorm.

If they could kill Xenos, whatever control he exerted
over the arrowheads would vanish.  Damn it all, why didn’t Dietrik attack with
his dagger?

He watched Dietrik digging madly through the scattered
debris, and understood.  Dietrik had dropped the gods damned dagger.

Mendell rose from his knees with water flooding off
him.  The crunch of splintering wood alerted him only an instant before Marik
slammed into him with his full body weight.  Marik shoved hard at the same
time, his strength working in full play.  Colonel Mendell flew backward off the
platform fifteen feet with a startled shout cut short by a splash.

Marik crouched alongside Dietrik and frantically
hurled refuse left and right.

*        *        *        *        *

Xenos shouted his rage into the forest.  Challenging
the
eul’kkandr
to a final duel.  It had persisted in interfering from
the beginning!  Nothing it did could stop god’s divine will.  He refused to
allow it to escape one single additional time.

With a flourish he withdrew his obsidian knife.  What
strong and sweet life force the
eul’kkandr
possessed.  From Secunda’s
reports he had expected the four women to provide energy enough to collapse the
seal immediately.  Smashing it would be only a matter of moments, yet here,
now, he had the obstructing
eul’kkandr
who had warred against god’s plan.

It would be heavenly justice to open the way with the
eul’kkandr’s
life force.

“This will be the last meeting between you and I! 
Your actions have led you to this juncture!  Accept your fate, and face me!”

The
eul’kkandr
stepped into view from around
the smoking ruins where once had stood the Taurs and their controllers.  “My
fate I decided on the day I accepted Otos Trine as comrade.  Unwavering is my
course.  Clear is my duty.”

Xenos paused to consider his adversary.  “It comes
clear at the last.  No one knew that despicable man had befriended the
eul’kkandr
race.  It is not in any memory passed to me from that time period.”

“Otis Trine befriended
me
.  And never once have
I felt cause to regret returning that sacred bond!”  The Red Man’s glove glowed
as he concentrated his power into the strongest blast he could form.

“Then it is with considerable pleasure that I destroy
you for all time.  Your soul will burn for eternity alongside that godless
desecrator’s!”

Xenos hurled a gigantic blast at the Red Man.  The Red
Man met it with his own.

Air between them turned to liquid fire.  The moisture
in the air evaporated in an instant, becoming a concussion wave that expanded
across the platform.  For a single instant the ball of mingled fire and etheric
energy contracted.

Then it exploded outward as if it would never end. 
Lightning arced in feelers across the decking boards and left burnt scars in
their wake.  Black etheric rings contracted inward through the nova ball at the
same time flaming mushrooms flashed everywhere.  Sound smashed through the
surrounding forest as forcefully as the explosion itself.

Within the incandescent white fire at the core, two
dark shadows strove to overcome the other.

*        *        *        *        *

“Screaming
shit
!” Marik howled.  He grabbed
Dietrik at the same instant the two were lifted easily as leaves on a gust of
wind.  Both were thrown into the water.

Dietrik coughed when water invaded his nose.  It went
into his mouth and gagged him until his feet found the bottom.  He pushed hard
until he broke the surface.

The deep breath he took made his throat seize worse
than it had underwater.  Smoke choked the air.  In fact, the bloody air was so
hot Dietrik marveled it did not burn.  Oversized leaves and small branches
rained from above where the sound wave had battered the Euvea canopy.

He jumped in comical steps through the pool until he
reached the platform.  Behind him, Marik fought his own way back.  Dietrik
hoped the lad had a plan for pulling their hides off the tanning rack.  Because
he certainly didn’t see how they would get out of this forest alive.  The
unhealthy atmosphere had grown worse by the moment.  And now it did so in truth
as well.

Some metaphors were too bloody apt, he thought sourly.

Shouts from the water forcibly recalled Mendell to
Dietrik’s mind.  He searched until he located the colonel.  The man had chosen
to climb atop a root rather than back onto the platform after Marik had hurled
him off.  His angry shouts were directed at the four wading soldiers.

Whatever he wanted of them he would not be getting
soon.  Most had dove under the surface at the last explosion.  The one who
could hear his superior looked confused by the shouts.

Dietrik pulled himself onto the platform.  The damned
explosion had completely redistributed the debris.  And the dagger could have
been snaffled by the wind, too.  It could be anywhere!

“Mate, we had better look for our swords if can find
them,” he said.

“Can’t.”  Marik set to throwing aside smoking boards
anew.  “They were next to the first explosion.  If they aren’t slag, they could
be anywhere.”

“Hells in a bloody hand basket.”  He felt no urge to
argue with his foremost mate.  Not any longer.  They were going to die, and he
knew it.  The only thing left was to fight to the last.  It would look better
when their souls were judged in the afterlife.  Can’t be labeled a coward who
gives up.  That would seriously effect their eventual destination.

Still, he reflected as his fingers dug through
shattered deck fragments, it would have been nice if Marik had paid attention
to his advice earlier.  It would have kept them both out of trouble.  He was a
decent lad but he lacked a good dose of common sense.

That was the whole reason a man made friends in the
first place.  So they could look out for each other.

Marik abruptly stood to his feet triumphantly at the
same moment Xenos emerged from the raging fire.  He was at Marik’s back.  The
lad never saw him.  In Marik’s raised hand was the dagger.

Xenos saw it.  His robes were burnt through in several
places, his hair in disarray.  Smoke rose from his skin.  Wildest of all were
his eyes.  Dietrik saw them widen in outrage.

“God tolerates
no
disobedience!”  He raised a
hand.

No!
Dietrik
screamed silently. 
No one takes my mate’s back while I am there!

He launched himself at Marik.  His reaching hand
shoved his friend off his feet at the same moment Dietrik saw a flash of light.

Pain seared through him.  Terrible pain unlike any he
had ever felt.  He briefly wondered if this was what Marik had endured during
those times his body had been nearly destroyed by magic.

The pain grew to a scale beyond words.  Bright white
filled his vision…before everything faded to an endless black.

*        *        *        *        *

Marik raised the dagger in victory.  This was what
they needed to bring down Xenos!  He had felt the blood mage’s raw physical
strength.  Even his own strength working would be insufficient to overpower
that monster.

Also his pitiful magic would be a joke to Xenos.  His
etheric orbs had failed to kill the beast at the Citadel’s fall.  So much raw
power flowed through his body that, should he ever manage to hit Xenos unaware
with it, it probably would do no damage anyway.  It would be as throwing
pebbles against a brick wall.

A hard blow struck him in the back.  It was unexpected
and made him stumble forward.  The dagger tumbled from his hand.  At the same
moment, a light flash cut through the trees accompanied by the characteristic
buzzing of a saw blade orb.  He heard the sound growing, saw it from the corner
of one eye.

It would miss.  It would pass behind him.  What was
more important was the
dagger
.  It was arcing out over the pool, which
had grown black with soot.

The buzz’s pitch changed behind him for a single eye
blink before the orb arrowed out over the water.  Marik felt a wet mass
splatter across his back.

It covered him in an instant.  From his neck down to
his waist.  On his bare skin it felt hot.  And sticky.  A bit peeled off his
neck to roll down his shoulder.  He saw it was a gory shred of flesh, leaving
behind a trail of pink sludge that resembled pudding.

His muscles felt rusty as he turned.  Knowing what he
would see before he did.  Feeling a portion of his soul remaining behind where
he had been.  A piece that could never be replaced.

“
Dietrik
!”

*        *        *        *        *

Adrian waited beyond the screen of smoke.  He and Jide
had been creeping closer since the red stranger’s initial attack, which had
killed every Taur present and the traitorous white-robes who had joined leagues
with Councilor Xenos.  Only a thin veil of smoke separated them from their
quarry.

He had already seen enough to confirm the red
stranger’s tale.  The translations of the shouts provided by the Galemaran Rail
Drakkson had been unnecessary.  Four women, and pregnant women at that,
murdered for no reason…

No.  For a reason.  A twisted and blasphemous reason. 
So that Xenos could gain additional power with which to fuel his resurrection
of an anathema religion.  A cursed cult.

The two strangers had ordered,
ordered!
, him
and Jide to stay out of sight.  They had seen enough, they were told, to
convince them.  Their duty from there on was to return to Arronath.  To begin
the process of purging the court and the underground caverns of the vile
vermin.

That was laughable.  The kingdom of Arronath had been
forged from the ruins of seven lands that had nearly been annihilated by the
green-robed Earth God’s followers.  Their people had united into a single
whole, bonded together by their determination to never again allow the Earth
God’s followers to walk the world.  It was a duty they would pass to their
descendants for eternity.