Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (68 page)

“You are the prick of a pin to a titan,” Malpravus said, pouring more energy into the ball growing in the center of the room. “I am become greater than all of you combined, with all your weapons and artifacts and spells …”

“He’s too strong right now!” Quinneria called over the roar of the energy, which was starting to burst loose in great rolling blasts that scoured the room the way it had in the tower. “He’s absorbed too many souls and too recently!”

“Perhaps a cessation spell?” Mendicant called quietly, biding his time at the floor, yet to cast a single attack in Malpravus’s direction.

Quinneria shook her head, doing a little sweating herself, her hair frizzy and tangled again like when she had played Larana. “It would just leave him with godlike strength and abilities—and it wouldn’t do a damned thing to stop the flow of his army, because they’re already reanimated and likely to kill us if left unchecked.”

“I love hopeless fights!” Vaste called. “I try to get into at least one per year! I really upped the quotient this year, though, and seriously, to do it here, in this ugly, frightening, ominous place—”

Quinneria’s eyes widened in the light of the coruscating magic. “That’s it.”

“If she got an idea to save us from Vaste, I’m going to have to veto its use,” Terian called, still holding his place on the other side of Malpravus, axe at the ready.

“No, it’s brilliant,” Quinneria breathed.

“Of course it is, it came from me,” Vaste said.

“The seal!” Quinneria said over the crackling energies, the hole in the ceiling widening by the moment.

“NO!” Vaste called. “That’s not brilliant at all! This situation will not be made better by Yartraak or Mortus’s avatars being let loose!”

“Mortus and Yartraak are dead, fool,” Vara said.

“They have no more avatars!” Quinneria shouted, her hands shaking in front of her. “But the seal—”

Cyrus looked down at the seal in the center of the floor, lit by the magic before him, a strange carving of two faces—he recognized them as Mortus’s and Yartraak’s, in side profile, with skeletons and dead bodies beneath them in the circle. “Is it … what? Made to hold him?”

“It’s a channel point for the energy that runs through this place!” Quinneria shouted, wavering. “And it can be blocked—stoppered—with him on the other side!”

“This is all foolishness,” Malpravus said tauntingly, “grasping at the threads of life as I take them away from you. Power is all there is, and you have little of it remaining. I see you, Sorceress, yes, pouring out your stores to stop me, but you were already weakened, your stock depleted before you even came to me … and I am fresh as a newly made corpse.”

“So, putrid and rotting, then,” Vaste said. “Okay, I like the plan better than simply being overwhelmed and dying. What do we do to make that stoppering business happen?”

“He needs to bleed on the seal,” Quinneria said, straining under the attack. Her skin was wavering with light, and Cyrus would have sworn he saw a wrinkle appear on her forehead that had not been there before.

“He’s a skeleton,” Terian said. “They’re not known for bleeding!”

“It’s a—it’s not an illusion, but it’s a form change,” Quinneria said. “Trust me, he can bleed … and you’re going to have to make that happen now.”

Cyrus looked to Vara and then Terian, with a quick glance spared at the entry to the temple, which was completely engulfed in a furious melee, the line growing ever closer all the time. “Okay,” Cyrus said, nodding at the two of them. “This one’s on us.” And he let the fire fade from his sword as he leapt forward.

Cyrus swept in to attack and Malpravus shed his cloak in an instant, his rib bones splitting from his breastbone and swinging loose. They morphed and grew before Cyrus’s eyes, skeletal phalanges sprouting from the tips to form additional hands.

“Holy shite! I thought he was ugly before!” Vaste screamed.

Terian came around the back as three arms swung out for him and the dark elf threw his axe up to meet them. The blade struck bone and the bone shattered, splintering and showering Terian as Malpravus screamed with laughter.

“Fools … all fools!”

Vara came at him from the side and Malpravus caught her strike with a punch of his free hand, stopping her attack mid-slice. The blade came right back at Vara and she staggered away.

The rib cage on Malpravus’s right side came apart and angled six arms toward Cyrus. He saw them coming, growing digits and hands the way the bones that had gone after Terian a moment earlier had. Cyrus took it as a personal challenge.
You want to send six my way? I’ll show you I’m worth it.

With swords in hand, Cyrus could feel the effect of both working for him. The world moved slower than ever it had with only one, and he felt stronger, more sure-footed. The hands were moving at normal speed in a world that was not normal, and now he knew the truth of the matter—Malpravus was strong, but he was not invincible.

Cyrus came at the lowest arm first and cleaved it whole from the growing wrist with Praelior, the sound of bones splintering under his assault like a drumbeat in his ears. The next he caught with Rodanthar in the middle of a grasping hand and split cleanly down the middle, shearing it off and rendering it useless. He swept up with Praelior and caught two at the nubs, ripping them off before they had a chance to reach for him, and the last he got with Rodanthar, cutting them cleanly off and sending them rattling across the floor toward the altar behind Malpravus.

He stepped in to deal another blow, this one to the solid spine now exposed, but something yanked at his ankle, and he lost his footing as his leg was ripped from beneath him.

He looked down as he stumbled, and saw a disconnected, bony hand tearing at him, another climbing along on fingers behind it, scrambling for him. He started to shout to Terian but then caught a glimpse of the dark elf beset by the three hands he’d cut loose, climbing up him as he swung his axe ineffectually at them, trying to sweep them from his body—

He turned to Vara, only to see a bony, disembodied hand wrapped around her neck, her face red and her fingers tugging at the choking fingers. The veins in her temple were bulging, blood running from between the ivory fingers. Her eyelids were squeezed, only a slit of blue and white visible between them. She was dying. The panic on her face sent a frosty chill through Cyrus as the severed hands pulled him down, ripping at his armor, climbing him—as behind him, the dam burst at the door and the army of Goliath’s dead flooded into the chamber.

The ball of magical energy where Quinneria, Vaste and Ryin’s spell had met Malpravus’s was turning black and glowing, the necromancer’s dark magic winning yet another fight, at least as Cyrus saw it from the floor where he lay, cheek pressed against the cold seal in the floor of the temple, defeat all around him.

Dead members of the Army of Goliath were coming into the chamber now, flowing in on both sides, even as Aisling moved around trying to destroy them and Longwell tried his best to press them away with his lance. A burst flew off the magical energy flashing in the middle of the room and put an accidental end to three of the dead, missing Longwell by mere inches as he threw himself down a set of steps to the left of the entry, disappearing over the edge.

Terian was still staggering, smashing bones with the flat side of his axe, turning them to dust while flailing wildly at his own breastplate. He was shouting but Cyrus could not hear him over the sound of the spells mingling in the middle of the room, another peal of energy bursting off and sizzling past Vara’s ears—

Vara was still choking, now upon her knees, her eyes rolled back in her head and fingers wet with her own blood as the disembodied, skeleton hand sunk its fingers into her neck. She went limp and fell, her armor making a soundless crash to the stone floor as she landed.

“NOOOOOO!” Cyrus shouted, and Malpravus’s skull-face snapped to look right at him, the eyes glowing red.

“And now you see your end,” Malpravus said, glaring right at him, the grin leering in the flickering spell-light as the impossibly strong skeleton hands dragged Cyrus down, pressing him against the stone, “your friends cannot save you, nor can you save them. In the end, the only thing that would save you … is power.”

“Or perhaps a friend with power?” came the soft voice of Mendicant.

“What was that?” Malpravus asked, the skeletal face puckered with curiosity.

Cyrus looked over to see the goblin holding out his clawed fingers. Circular blasts of red no larger than the diameter of a mead horn shot from his fingers with perfect precision and blasted the bony hands clear of Cyrus’s chest and legs.

Cyrus vaulted to his feet, the horrifying pressure of the grasping hands gone, and stared right into the face of Malpravus, who was glaring back at him with a surprising amount of fury given he had no mouth with which to make expressions. “He said you’re dead wrong,” Cyrus said, and he leapt forward.

Malpravus was down to a snakelike spine wavering above his pelvis and legs, and he hissed as his backbone started to extend. The necromancer’s speed was slower than Cyrus’s now that both blades were in hand.
My strength doesn’t match his, but if I do this right, I won’t need it to …

Malpravus met him with his free hand and Cyrus clashed against it as it elongated into a bone sword. Cyrus hit it high with Rodanthar and it cracked, then in the exact same spot a second later with Praelior and it shattered.

Malpravus’s red eyes glowed brighter, looked wider. “You can’t—”

Cyrus leapt in under the hand and struck at the one channeling the magic toward the center of the room. With two solid blows he sheared it off, but the magic poured out of the stump and he narrowly dodged the reprisal from the other stump, the bone whistling over his head as he ducked below Malpravus’s empty, skeletal pelvis.

“I possess none of the weaknesses of your flesh,” Malpravus leered down at him, and Cyrus struck at the left knee joint. He severed the leg and kicked it free and was rewarded by a kick from the other bone-foot, twisting around to rattle him through his armor with a glancing blow. “I need not stand as you pathetic mortals do …”

Cyrus spun and smashed the leg as it kicked at him again. Now the broken thighbones spun like wheels in their sockets. Malpravus had no legs to stand on, yet showed no sign of falling. “Dammit,” Cyrus muttered.

“The head, you idiot!” Vaste screamed from behind him. “It’s talking to you! Put a sword through it!”

“If only it were that easy,” Malpravus said tauntingly, his spine elongating again as he stretched toward the ceiling, the glowing red eyes receding as he drew away.

That’s where he’s weak
, Cyrus realized.
He’s been bobbing that damned head away this whole battle!

With a whispered breath, Cyrus cast Falcon’s Essence and surged into the air, running. He slapped Malpravus’s spine and sent a hard rattle up and down the body. Malpravus let out a bellow of outrage that shook the walls and brought down more rock from the ceiling. Cyrus dodged, a piece of stone the size of a bench clobbering him in the arm as he continued his run upward, ignoring the pain surging through him.

“Now you see me,” Malpravus said, “and I see you. You see my weakness, but I have seen yours all along.” The skeleton’s teeth grinned. “Tell me, dear boy … while you’re chasing me, whatever is happening to that wife of yours?”

Cyrus could not help himself. His spine chilling in terror, he spun in the air and looked back down.

“GO!” Vaste screamed. “YOU HAVE TO STOP HIM FIRST OR WE’LL ALL DIE, INCLUDING VARA!”

Cyrus closed his eyes and looked away from the battle below, not daring to think, not courageous enough to look for fear he would see something that would take the heart out of him. The magic pooling in the middle of the room was cracking even harder now, black as the darkest night, and it lashed out in front of him as Cyrus jerked hard down, ducking just beneath it as it filled his nose with a singeing smell.

“This is why you will not win,” Malpravus said, “why you cannot. This is your fault, your failing. You have always sought to add weakness unto yourself while I have sought to eliminate it from me. You seek softness, the touch and caress of warm humanity, of mortality, while I eschew it for the cold embrace of immortality.”

Cyrus ran as the head snaked in a steady circle, drawn away on the neck like a toy on a string. It whipped around, avoiding the solid column of magic bursting up from the crackling orb of magic in the center of the room, and hit its limit.

Nowhere left to run
, Cyrus thought as he charged it down.

But it did not run. Malpravus’s glinting skull snapped as it hit its full extension, and then it whipped right back at him.

Cyrus saw it coming, just a hair slower than himself. He saw the small jerks that told him that Malpravus was not going to meet him squarely, was not going to crash into him with those cold red eyes, and he drew a deep breath of the dank temple air, taking in a lungful of the energy crackling through it—

And he flung his swords out to either side and charged forward into destiny.

The head of the snake realized its mistake at the last, but it was too late. Malpravus bobbed to the left, desperately dodging, and struck Praelior. The blade carved an inch-long indentation into the white plate of bone, the sound of sword meeting skull like a scream piercing the night. A hard shudder ran down Cyrus’s arm from the site of the impact, and he smelled acrid stinking death as he struck, tasted bile running up his throat, and it gagged him even as the force spun him around from the hit.

He saw the blood, though, black and viscous, oozing out of the wound he’d made as the skull dodged away again, trying to escape further injury. The black ooze dripped to the ground—

And hit the lines between the stones in the middle of the room—

And trickled toward the seal, just barely making it, a thimble-sized drop that seeped barely a quarter-inch into the symbol before halting, spent, too thin to carry on any farther.

“Got it!” Cyrus shouted as the skull raced away from him, red eyes watching him in fear.