The Black Tower (29 page)

Ijanna stood less than ten paces away.  He knew if he tried to go to her he’d be smothered. 

“Ijanna,” he said.  He heard the desperation in his voice.  “You don’t want this, I know you don’t.  You don’t want to kill everyone to set them free.  There has to be a better way.” 

I want to believe that
, he thought, hoping she’d hear him. 
I want so much to believe.

She watched him in silence.  He saw no recognition in her eyes. 

“Ijanna, please!” he shouted.  His voice echoed loud through the chamber.

Die
, the voice of the tree said. 
All die.

Ijanna started to back away and retreat into the shadows.  The black demons edged forward.  Steam cloaked the ground at their feet, and their ebon claws snapped into the stone.  Dane took a deep and shuddering breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wanted so much to save you.”

With a swift motion he leaned down, ripped the short sword free from the sheath on the dead woman’s back, took three steps forward and cast the weapon through the air.  It turned end over end, flashing in the bloody gloom, and carried straight into Ijanna’s chest.  She let out a short and guttural cry as the weapon cleaved through to her heart.  Blood spattered from her mouth and colored her pale face, and she sank to the ground, dead.

The demons were upon him.  Shadow claws glanced against his armor and tore chunks of skin from his arms and chest.  Everything was in continual motion now, an avalanche of edged noise.  His body felt too light, and as they descended on him and pain shot through his limbs he closed his eyes, and hoped he’d done the right thing.

Claws raked down his neck.  The cold odor of monsters consumed him.  Blood filled his mouth.  Before he could move, another blow struck.  Defenseless, Dane held out his arms and threw back his head, ready to meet his fate.

All this way, and in the end I had to kill the woman I’d wanted to save.

A blast of haunting white light splashed out of nowhere and burned through the dark.  Heat washed over him but somehow didn’t touch him, a searing flame that left him unscathed even though it pelted his body.  Shadow beings flew apart around him, their blood spraying everywhere as their dark flesh incinerated and melted like fat. 

The hollow world came alive with inhuman screams.  A rushing noise filled the chamber as the darkness was sucked out. 

Dane lost time.  The ashen remains of shadow-blooded fiends washed over him.  He tasted grime and cold ash.  Pale cinders exploded in a fog of dust. 

He pushed his way free, clawed through disintegrating corpses even as they screamed and writhed, and forced himself to move towards the source of the light. 

Dane saw Argus at the edge of the darkness, his body dripping with pale white energy.  The Veilwarden looked like some sort of lost and deranged madman with his shredded cloak and face and arms bloodied, and his eyes were wild and wide.  His breaths visibly steamed, frosted cold by the deathly power he shielded himself in as he slaughtered the demons with Veilfire.

“You did it!” Argus shouted, his voice desperate and exhausted.  “Now let’s go!”

A scream scoured the air like acid.  The voice of the tree filled the cavern with a thunderous din, a resonant burst of black noise which peeled in from the distance like a growing tide.  The shuddering bass assault swept over Dane and tore at his skull.

You killed her.  Only she could have destroyed me and ended my suffering. 

And even in pain and teetering at the edge of death, Dane saw the truth, played through his mind’s eye in a flood of crippling images.  Vlagoth hadn’t been the child of Corvinia’s rape, as Ijanna had believed – it was the tree.  The Janus Tree, born of that foul blending of power as brother raped sister, God raped Goddess.  Twisted energies soiled the earth and gave birth to a monstrous organic monument, a thing of enormous power and twisted intellect.  Nurturing its hatred of its long dead creators, its power leaked into the world, fueled it, gave it life.  All life derived from this lonely and bitter entity, a corrupt alien presence that only existed because of the most gruesome violation imaginable. 

It had no control over its own power, no way of ending its cursed existence, and an end was what it yearned for above all else.  For thousands of years it craved freedom, struggled to be free of the horrible cries which rang through its maddened consciousness.  Born of pain and powers never meant to converge, the Janus Tree was a being of madness and suffering. 

You made it so we could kill you,
Dane realized.  The tree had given the gift of the Veil to the world so humans could expend it, that life force, that energy taken straight from the source.  When that happened, it would die.

All die.

And everyone would go with it.

But even with all of the fighting and greed, the wars and cruel kingdoms and arcane despots, with Veilcrafted experimentation and thaumaturgic armies and the Rift War and the Voss and all of the dismal magic that had been expended over the centuries, the drain on its energies was happening far too slowly.  The Janus Tree wanted its death to come faster.

And that was why you created the Skullborn. 

They could drain the Tree of its power at an accelerated rate, suck the marrow from its black roots fast enough that it would finally be granted the release it so desperately sought.  Isolated and completely insane, all the Tree wanted was to die.  Vlagoth had been meant to fulfill that purpose, and the amount of magic her reign of terror expended had nearly been enough to tear the world asunder...but Corgan Bloodwine had put an end to it, and now his and his ally’s children had been saddled with the drive and power to carry out her work, believing they were trying to save Corvinia, and that killing the world was the only way they could secure its release from the clutches of Nazarathos.

Killing everyone to save a Goddess who no longer exists.  There is no rebirth.  Just death.

Dane struggled to his feet.  His eyes felt like they’d been punched back into his skull, and the unending screams pelted him like hot lead.

Die
, the Tree said. 
All die. 

He fell.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Argus do the same.  The pulsing wave of sound twisted him.  Blood seeped from his nose and mouth, and his vision ran red.  Each step was like moving through sand filled with broken glass. 

Dane reached out, not sure what he was reaching for.  The floor of the cavern felt like the wall, like he’d been stuck to the stone and hung there.  Everything tilted.  He saw Ijanna’s body come into view, poor Ijanna, the Dream Witch he’d so desperately wanted to help, a woman hunted her whole life for something she thought she was supposed to do, but she’d been misled from the start, just like all of them.

We both walked the wrong path
, he thought. 
We both did the wrong things for the right reasons. 
He felt tears in his eyes.  Sadness wracked his body. 
I’m sorry I took your son.  I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, or you.  I’m sorry for all of the pain I caused.

He clawed the floor.  His shaking limbs could barely grip the stone, but he bit down hard and grabbed onto the jagged rock, pulled his body forward, inch by painful inch, and dragged himself closer to Ijanna.  He very much wanted to reach her before he died.

Blood pooled from his mouth.  He thought of himself somewhere else, a far off and distant place, and for a moment it worked, and he forgot his pain.

It seemed fitting that he’d die in that place, that no one would understand how he’d tried to set things right.  His epitaph would be filled with tales of murder, and Ijanna’s would be forgotten, just another Bloodspeaker lost to the cruelty of the world.

She was close.  He pulled himself forward.  Hurt echoed across his flesh.  He could barely see through the blood, but he sensed the tree growing, stretching, its creaking limbs dripping gore, its monstrous intelligence cackling with glee even though its plans had been shattered.

Dane could see her.  Only it wasn’t her.  She had scaly green-grey skin and short dark hair. 

A Skinwarper.

The Tree saw the same thing he had, and its scream intensified.  Dane felt weight press against his brain, and he was sure his skull would crack.  He and Argus were both smothered by the liquid groan of the tree’s pain.

A beam of razor-sharp light split the air, cutting through the darkness like a flaming sawblade. 

Dane focused his strength to his feet in an effort to stand.  Tears ran from his eyes as he gazed on the source of the glaring sunbeam.

Ijanna stepped out of the shadows, the true Ijanna.  A blaze of platinum heat emanated from her body as wreaths of electricity danced across her fingers.  Her wheat blonde hair rippled in an icy wind.  Explosive charges in her wake ripped fist-sized chunks of sizzling stone from the ground.  Smoke and mist parted before her and revealed the charred bones and smoking husks of fallen
dra’aalthakmar
.  Her eyes shone solid white, and as she drew close the smell of burning ice peeled away from her body like a violent and churning wave. 

“You will not do this,” she said, her voice as redolent as a storm.  Destruction flew from her fingertips, crackling ice and fire that creased across the ground and lanced through the stone like knives.  She may have been diminutive compared to the tree, but her presence was just as strong, if not stronger.  Every word she spoke seemed to fracture the room.  “You wanted so badly to believe that Skinwarper was me it seemed real.  All of you.”  Dane felt her eyes fall on him, cold and calculating.  “You showed Dane the truth,” she said to the tree, “because you intended him to die.  And now I know what I was really born for.” 

She turned her palms upwards, and the spiraling blades of power ignited the far corners of the vast chamber.  Darkness melted away. 

Dane was suddenly aware of a tightness in his chest, a deep-seated pain that drove through his core like a blade...but his strength had returned.  He could move again, and that was all that mattered.

Bark peeled away from the tree like peels of skin flecking off bones.  The black and cankered shaft wept tar and pitch.  Sparks as dim as old coins fell from the limbs, and dark chunks of wood spattered to the ground in oily explosions. 

Ijanna passed Dane, moving so fast he didn’t have a chance to reach out, not that he could have – the sheer gravity surrounding her was immense, a dread weight that cracked the ground where she walked. 

“I will not,” she told the tree defiantly, “help you die.”

The light flared brighter.  Chunks of crumbling stone plummeted from the ceiling.  The tree limbs cleaved to the earth.  Perfect and unearthly coldness washed from the diseased edifice, and in that moment Dane felt the absolute singularity of its dark purpose.  A spasm shot down his arms and straight to his heart.

The wind howled, drowning out all sound, all thought.  But even in that maelstrom he heard the voice again – Ijanna’s voice, her true voice, crystal clear like she whispered in his ear.

“Go,” it said.

The air gleaned like steel.  Everything was coming apart. 

He didn’t want to, but he went.  His body was sore and beaten beyond exhaustion.  Blood spilled from his wounds and slicked the ground as he stumbled upon Argus, lying unconscious.  The Veilwarden was somehow in even worse shape than Dane, his body crumpled and his flesh clammy and pale. 

Dane hesitated.  It seemed wrong to just leave him there.

The light behind them grew, a solar flare filled with darkness and ice.  Dane heaved Argus over his shoulder, cursing the man’s weight as he nearly lost his footing.  The Veilwarden couldn’t have been that heavy – he was slight, with barely an ounce of muscle on his body – but hefting that load made it seem as though the bones in Dane’s knees were about to snap. 

He looked back and saw Ijanna at the nexus of the rising storm.  Electric fog and sickening white light scraped around her.  The tree had all but vanished, enveloped in the deathly brume.

His heart yearned to go back, but somehow he knew he shouldn’t.  He’d tried to save her, had given all he had, and it hadn’t been enough.  Now her fate was in her own hands, and he had to live with that.

Dane ran as fast as he could with the dying Veilwarden on his back.  Dull pain radiated down his body. 

Demons stood at the edge of the melting shadows, afraid to enter the light.  Dane ignored them, and pressed on as fast as his weary limbs would carry him.  He had no idea where he was running – the steps he’d taken to reach the chamber led back to the bottom of the shaft of chains.  He carried on towards the far edge of the room and made for a glittering wall of black glass and bleeding ice, hoping against hope there would be some means of escape. 

The power behind them surged.  His breaths were cold and ragged.  Sweat trickled between his shoulder-blades as he ran with Argus draped over his shoulders.

There
.

An iron throne.  It was a twisted and jagged thing, dark blades and bones fused to its core.  Much of the throne looked melted, and the dais around it was covered with rubble.  Skeletons of beasts lay strewn everywhere, many of them in pieces.  He kicked up mouldered bones and shuffled through drifts of rancid dust.