The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (31 page)

“
This may look easy, healer,” Bellimar gasped through clenched teeth. “But I pray you will hurry, nonetheless.”

Halthak scrambled into the chamber, dragging
his charge behind him. Amric groaned and began to stir. The Half-Ork looked under the wall to where Valkarr and Syth were still locked in combat with the Wyrgens, and he shouted to them, beckoning them on with repeated, frantic gestures.

He saw Valkarr risk a look back and then shout to Syth,
“I will turn them back one last time while you run for the wall!”

“I’ll not leave you to die in my stead,” Syth snarled back, his gauntleted fist smashing out
with a cracking report to cave in a grizzled skull.

“There is no time
to debate it!” the Sil’ath returned. “Go now, and I will be on your heels.”

The warriors locked gazes for a split second, and Halthak witnessed some grim understanding pass between them
. Then Valkarr plunged forward in a blinding whirlwind of steel, uttering a battle roar. The horde swayed back from the savagery of his assault.

Syth lashed out to send another
Wyrgen reeling, and then hesitated as he watched the swarm close around the frenzied Sil’ath. Then he wheeled and bolted up the stairs. He dove under the massive wall in a rush of air, rolling smoothly to his feet inside the chamber.

The glass wall made a dull
grinding sound and dropped another half a foot before Bellimar caught it with a grunt. A violent trembling rocked his slender frame, but the wall hung suspended once more. Syth and Halthak turned their anxious stares to the fight raging below on the stairs.

Valkarr cut his way free in a bloody swath
, and for a fleeting instant, he was clear. He leapt up the stairs, grim resolve written in every hard line of his face. A claw raked at his leg, leaving the flesh ragged and blackened in its wake, and he swept away the offending appendage with a terse stroke. A brutish Wyrgen bounded through the air to crash into his back, and he twisted, spinning into a sweeping cut that laid the creature open even as it was thrown from him. Talons caught at his leather baldric, slinging him to the side, and he crossed his arms to thrust behind him, impaling his assailant with both blades.

Halthak’s mouth fell open, his breath caught in his throat
. The effort was incredible, stunning in its display of swordsmanship and determination, but the speed and power and endless numbers of the corrupted Wyrgens made the conclusion inevitable. More and more claws snaked through to catch at the fleeing Sil’ath, slowing him, staggering him, tearing into his scaly flesh. He went to one knee, still hammering lethal blows all about him, and finally pitched forward beneath the weight as the swarm enveloped him.

Within the chamber, Halthak watched aghast as Valkarr disappeared from sight beneath a surging mass of rending claws and fangs
. Bellimar sagged forward, groaning in agony as his grip failed at last.

The massive wall slammed to the ground with a
shuddering boom of thunder.

Amric blinked, trying to clear the haze from his vision. Everything swam before his eyes, blurred and washed out, as if he viewed the world through a swirling white mist. Several figures stood above him, their outlines muddled and indistinct, but he could see they were all facing away from him.

He clenched his teeth in pain
. His insides burned as if afire, and some dim part of him wondered if the Fount had corrupted him at last. Or perhaps the vicious Wyrgens had torn into him, and he was simply too obstinate to die.

His hand
s remembered sword hilts, and he groped for them, but his fingers met only cold stone. Something unfamiliar clawed at his clouded awareness; he felt a rush of alien sensations thrust upon him, as if the conflicting emotions of some other being were somehow bursting inside him. It was mercurial, seeming at once insistent, fearful, eager, ashamed and restrained. It raged with fury and clamored for his attention, and then shrank from his scrutiny as he tried to focus upon it.

He pushed himself up
to one elbow and concentrated on the strident forms around him. They wavered into focus. Halthak, white-faced and rigid, pressed against the glass wall. Bellimar, slouching exhausted against the wall, one pale hand spread against its clear surface as if trying to touch someone or something on the other side. Syth, shouting and hammering his fist against the wall as his robes whipped violently about his taut frame. Amric squinted past them and through the glass wall, searching for the cause of their distress.

He saw Valkarr, beyond the glass wall, thrashing on the ground beneath the mass of savage
Wyrgens. He saw gleaming fangs flecked with crimson froth, and smoldering claws stained with blood as they raked repeatedly at the Sil’ath’s body. He saw the mindless fiends ravaging the body of his dying friend, and for Amric, in that instant, everything else ceased to exist.

A scream of anguish was torn from his throat, and all the fire churning inside him rose with it
. The thing within him came gibbering to the fore, flaring with power that scorched through his veins and threatened to burn him to ash. Amric sensed a kindred rage in the thing to match his own, and a wild desire to help. Beyond reason, he embraced it, and felt its fierce exultation even as he was filled with the rush of power. Then everything dissolved before his eyes in a blaze of white fire.

Bellimar’s hand slid down the glass wall and fell to his lap. He had revealed himself and worse, broken the strictures imposed upon him. He would pay dearly for it, he knew. Already the need worked at the edges of his will, and still it had not been enough. Perhaps if he had acted sooner, he thought; but nay, there were limits he could no longer ignore, no matter how grave the circumstances.

A scream from Amric brought him sharply about
. There was an unnatural quality in the timber of the swordsman’s voice that sent a chill coursing through him, and he had not thought anything in this world could still have that effect on him. The shout parted the air with a razor edge, beginning as a cry of grief and loss and becoming something else entirely, infused with rage and thrumming with intensity.

Amric rose to his feet, blazing with power
. His eyes radiated dazzling white fire like miniature suns, and that terrible gaze was fixed upon the grisly scene outside the chamber. He stretched out one hand toward the glass wall with fingers spread wide, and Bellimar’s hair lifted from his head as a strange pressure built there. Sudden instinct warned him to dive aside, and he shouted a warning to the others. Syth grabbed the gaping Halthak and yanked him out of the way.

Seeming unaware of their presence, Amric
strode forward. He clenched his hand into a fist, and the wall exploded outward with an ear-splitting report. Massive shards tore ragged swaths through the Wyrgens crowded without, sweeping scores from the terrace. Deafened and taken aback for a moment, the creatures crouched frozen as he approached. Their baleful, unblinking stares were fixed upon him, and their glowing eyes against the sea of hulking forms were like a constellation against a velvet midnight sky. Then they surged forward as one with a throaty roar, hurling themselves at their bold prey.

Amric never broke stride
. Crossing his arms before him, he then whipped them apart in a vicious cutting motion, as if he held his swords in both hands and was cleaving into a foe.

The ripple of power tore at Bellimar’s robes, even behind the swordsman as he was, but it was nothing compared to the devastation before him
. Scything forces swept through the Wyrgens, peeling them from the stairs and hurling them back by the hundreds. Twisting and clawing madly for purchase, the Wyrgens were scattered like dry leaves over the edge of the terrace, where the creatures tumbled through the empty air toward the amphitheater floor far below.

In the blink of an eye, the
broad steps before the viewing chamber were clear but for the broken figure of Valkarr, lying in a spreading pool of his own blood, untouched by the reaping forces that had cut through the Wyrgens.

Amric knelt at Valkarr’s side, gathered him into his arms, and stood
. Those flaming eyes swung back to the viewing chamber.

“He still clings to life,” he said, his voice
cracking with grief and yet carrying an eerie resonance at the same time. “Help him,” he pleaded.

Behind him, in the cavernous amphitheater, one of the great columns burst with a crack of thunder, spewing granite
fragments in every direction. Halthak swallowed, his gaze flitting between Amric and the burden he carried.

“I
––I do not know if I can heal injuries so severe,” he stammered. “I do not even know how he still draws breath. He––or he and I both––may not be strong enough to withstand the process.”

Amric
climbed the steps, carrying Valkarr. He strode through the shattered portal and into the chamber. Bellimar’s eyes narrowed. A faint nimbus of light surrounded both of them. Amric halted before the healer, and Halthak shrank before his fiery scrutiny, but the swordsman’s next words were solemn and surprisingly gentle.

“All I ask is that you try, Halthak,” he said
. “I think that you will find the strength here, in this place.” He laid Valkarr on the floor at the Half-Ork’s feet.

“Come, Halthak,” Bellimar
urged. “I have some medical knowledge, and I will assist you however I can. We have very little time, if we are to perform a miracle.”

As the two bent over the ravaged form of the Sil’ath, the forgotten Grelthus found his voice from the corner of the viewing chamber.

“What have you done?” he moaned, shuffling out onto the steps and casting his stricken gaze all about. “What have you done to my people?”

He whirled toward Amric, hunching over and spreading his claws wide
. Hatred and madness twisted his features as he spat his words through bared fangs. “You have slain them all, human!”

“Not all, Grelthus,” Amric
said. “Not yet.”

The incensed
Wyrgen dropped forward into a crouch, bristling and bunching to leap.

“Your traitorous ways have cost the lives of many, Grelthus,” Amric continued
, his voice a ringing pronouncement of doom. “The time has come for you to join your people.”

The
Wyrgen sprang at him, launching his powerful form through the air with jaws frothing and curved talons outstretched. Amric lashed out with one hand, palm forward. The brutish creature was struck in midair by some invisible force and swatted aside like an insect. Spinning and twisting, Grelthus was hurled across the terrace edge and out of sight, his howl of rage dwindling away.

The swordsman strode over to where the glass wall had been
. He bowed his head and spread his arms. As if in response, the Essence Fount leapt skyward, surging and swelling until it nearly filled the amphitheater. It thrashed violently, spinning like a cyclone of flame and sending tendrils of blazing energy curling about the colossal stone columns in the vast circular chamber.

One by one, the pillars
shattered and exploded, crumbling into ruin. As the last of them fell, Stronghold itself shook in protest, quivering in the throes of its agony. With a rumbling roar, the great domed ceiling of the chamber split and fell. Ton after ton of rock poured into the chamber. The Fount was obscured as the avalanche continued and the very heart of Stronghold collapsed in on itself.

Bellimar, still kneeling over Valkarr, gaped in awe
. On impulse he brought up his Sight and tried to look upon Amric’s aura. His vision filled with intense, flaring white light, and he fell back with a startled cry as his eyes were nearly seared from his head. He dropped his Sight, flinging up one arm to shield his tightly shut eyes.

Long seconds later, when he could see once more, the deluge of rock had ceased
. The Essence Fount was lost to sight, and the vast chamber housing the experiment that was the demise of the Wyrgens was filled with stone. A rippling cloud of grit and dust carpeted the viewing chamber, causing everyone to cough, and fragments of stone skittered and danced upon the partially exposed stairway outside as the mighty fortress still trembled.

Syth stood over
the men attending to Valkarr, shifting from one foot to the other as his wide-eyed gaze bounced from Amric to the now solid core of Stronghold.

“Remember all that talk of wanting to fight you, swordsman?” he said fervently
. “Forget every last word of it.”

Amric stepped
into the courtyard under a star-speckled sky. He inhaled deeply, savoring his first breaths of truly clean air in over two days.

Syth brushed past and hurled himself to the grass, rolling back and forth with a gleeful howl
. Amric looked back at the brooding fortress out of reflex at the man’s careless commotion, but the darkened apertures in the sheer stone face remained as empty and lifeless as the eye sockets of a skull.

In fact, t
he entirety of the flight from Stronghold had been a study in contrast to their frenzied arrival. On the way in they had been harried and hunted and at the mercy of their deranged guide. On the way out, no other living creature had stirred to obstruct their exit. Before, the hush of the fortress had been like the bated breath of a crouching predator. Now it was instead the cavernous silence of the crypt. Amric did not know whether the Wyrgens had all perished in the collapse of the Fount chamber and the innermost core of Stronghold, or if the survivors had fled to remote corners of the place in the aftermath. In the end, he did not care much which was the case, as long as the foul creatures kept their distance.