Chapter 50: The Price of Becoming

  The sea of dead answered Aeor's command.

  Violet fire blazed in their hollow eyes as they surged upward, a storm of twisted wings and shattered bone. They climbed toward their former master with a fury that shook the air.

  Vaelkar roared.

  Black death gathered around him, spilling from his ribs in torrents of seething flame. The sound rolled across the sky like a funeral bell, deep enough to rattle the broken stones of Aurel'Tharan. His massive frame dipped as he prepared to meet the oncoming horde head on.

  Then the chains struck.

  Zorvaketh called the chains through the air like spears of molten onyx, driving them around Vaelkar's limbs until the Empyrean Wyrmkin lurched mid-descent under their tightening pull.

  For a heartbeat, the sky held its breath.

  Naeysar answered first.

  The undead host parted before her as she tore through their ranks, violet flame wreathing her wings. Her kin followed in her wake, a formation of risen dragons streaking through the sky with predatory precision.

  Essence beams rained down the moment they closed in.

  Dozens of searing lances hammered Vaelkar's frame, burning across scorched hide and cracking exposed bone. The Ancient writhed beneath the barrage.

  Then Vaelkar pulled.

  The first chain cracked, a sharp report in the burning sky.

  The second snapped, shards of onyx spinning away like embers.

  The third drew so tight its runes guttered, then went dark.

  Vaelkar's wings unfurled in a wide, ruinous sweep as he dragged the breaking chains behind him, turning his fury toward the violet host surging to meet him.

  Vaelkar twisted. His tail whipped through the air like a living guillotine, striking two dragons and sending their bodies spiraling into the ruins below. His claws closed around a third, crushing rib and spine in a single brutal squeeze. His jaws caught another mid-flight, teeth grinding through bone as the dragon's scream dissolved into dust.

  Naeysar answered in kind.

  A colossal projection of her visage flared into being above her, a towering spectral wyrm wrought of blinding light threaded with the violet fury of primeval death. Its maw opened, and a cascade of radiance poured forth, sweeping across Vaelkar's back in a devastating torrent.

  Light and death fused into one unbearable burn.

  Scales blistered and split. Blackened bone sizzled. The projected blaze carved molten channels across Vaelkar's spine.

  Then the rest of the dead arrived.

  The violet legion surged upward in a single, rising tide, wings beating in furious unison as they crashed against Vaelkar with the weight of a storm. Essence beams lanced through the sky in relentless volleys. Claws raked along his flanks. Bone and spectral flame hammered against his wings, throat, and ribs in a ceaseless barrage.

  Vaelkar did not yield.

  Every impact that shook his colossal frame only drew forth another roar, another pulse of black death that rippled outward like a shockwave. Wyrmkin, avians, and lesser dead were hurled back, only to right themselves mid-air and dive again with renewed ferocity.

  The air trembled beneath the crimson sky, each strike echoing through the ruins below as light, death, and bone collided in a chaos of roaring wings and shattering essence. The battle hung suspended, an ancient god against an army of the dead that no longer answered to him.

  Aeor tore his gaze from the raging sky and looked down at himself.

  Violet essence flaked from his skin, drifting away like burning ash. Each fragment dissolved the instant it left him, silent and weightless. The unraveling spread across his body, every passing second shedding another sliver of who he was into the dying air.

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  He was burning away.

  Not his armor. Not a shell of power. Him.

  He did not know what this would cost him or what would be left when the fire was done, but in this moment he did not care.

  Aeor lifted his eyes toward the distant peaks. He could still make out the surviving few disappearing into the shelter of the mountains, their silhouettes flickering like memories against the crimson horizon.

  Whatever price he had to pay was worth it.

  He turned back to the sky.

  Vaelkar towered above the battle, wreathed in storming death, tearing through the violet host with primal fury. Aeor steadied his breath, feeling the heat of his own unraveling pulse through his veins.

  I only have one chance.

  This has to end now.

  Aeor launched himself into the air.

  The ground vanished beneath him as he shot upward with blistering speed, violet fire streaking behind him in a burning arc. Essence surged into his arms until they shimmered with fissures of raw power, each pulse threatening to tear them apart. He ignored the pain and cut through the chaos above, weaving between the raging dead as they continued their relentless assault on Vaelkar.

  Then he saw it.

  Lodged deep between the Ancient's cracked ribs, his lance.

  Aeor forced every shred of strength into his ascent, weaving through snapping jaws and thrashing wings until the handle came within reach. He seized it, momentum carrying him as he drove the weapon deeper into Vaelkar's rib. The fractures groaned and spread at once, racing across the bone in jagged lines.

  He gathered everything he had.

  Primeval death roared through the lance until its entire length shone like a column of violet fire. Around him, the flames blanketing the battlefield flickered. Aeor felt his hold on the dead slipping as the violet sheen drained from their eyes, one by one, and they dropped from the sky like extinguished embers.

  He held nothing back.

  Even as the bond frayed, even as the host he commanded faltered, Aeor poured the last of himself into the lance.

  Vaelkar moved.

  A colossal claw, sheathed in blackened death, swept toward Aeor with annihilating force.

  The few remaining dead still bound to Aeor answered faster than thought.

  They hurled themselves toward Vaelkar's claw in a single, desperate rush, dragons and twisted beasts throwing their bodies into the path of the strike. Zorvaketh led them, chains rattling, spectral fire spilling from his jaws as he drove headlong into the sweeping limb.

  The collision split the sky.

  A thunderous crack rolled across the horizon as bone slammed against the risen host, shockwaves rippling through the air like the shudder of a dying world.

  "Enough!" Aeor roared.

  He released everything.

  The essence he had been forcing into the lance detonated outward. A violent surge of primeval death tore through Vaelkar's ribcage, racing along every exposed bone with merciless hunger. Vaelkar howled, an earth-rending, sky-splitting sound as fractures erupted across his frame. Violet fire gushed from the splintering wounds, devouring corrupted death as it spread.

  Aeor's control collapsed.

  The remaining dead faltered mid-air, their violet eyes dimming as they fell lifelessly from the sky. Every scrap of power he had held over them had been poured into the single catastrophic strike.

  Vaelkar's flight faltered. The black death sustaining him flickered and withdrew, forced down beneath the overwhelming purity of Aeor's power.

  Then Vaelkar fell.

  Aeor felt parts of himself slipping away.

  Not burning, but fading, as if pieces of his being were dissolving into the nothing that lay beyond death itself. It was a sensation far worse than dying, a hollowing pull that scraped at the edges of who he was. His essence pool had run dry long ago, yet the flames around him burned brighter, fiercer, fed by something deeper than life or power.

  This has to work, Aeor thought.

  The ground rushed up to meet him, the shattered stones of Aurel'Tharan swelling in his vision. Every breath felt like it might be his last. Every heartbeat echoed fainter than the one before.

  He gathered the last remnant of strength clinging to his unraveling form and drove it outward in a final, impossible command.

  "RISE, VAELKAR!"

  Aeor poured out everything he had left.

  Everything he was.

  His senses drowned beneath a tide of darkness, an endless void swallowing him whole. In that formless expanse, something stirred. Eyes opened across the horizon, vast and ancient, burning with a crimson splendor that felt like the weight of a dying world.

  Vaelkar.

  Aeor faced the enormity of that gaze, his own eyes blazing violet in defiance. Against the calamitous death before him, he was a single spark, yet in that moment both forces understood each other.

  Time stretched into something without measure.

  Then the crimson began to shift.

  Slowly, inexorably, the crimson glow yielded as violet fire seeped in from its edges, overtaking it like dawn swallowing a fading star.

  Aeor's vision snapped back.

  His body felt hollow, emptied, exhausted beyond anything he had ever known. Darkness swayed at the edges of his sight, threatening to claim him at last.

  But before he slipped under, he saw them.

  Vaelkar's eyes.

  They burned violet.

  Kalvaxus

  Kalvaxus hovered far beyond the city, suspended in a pocket of stillness carved into the raging sky. From this vantage, he watched the battle unfold. The air trembled as Vaelkar plummeted toward the ground, and there he saw it.

  A flicker. A glint of violet burning in Vaelkar's eyes.

  His pulse quickened.

  He had nearly forgotten the sensation, the thrill that only a true deviation from fate could stir within him.

  The collision came a heartbeat later.

  A gargantuan boom rolled across the horizon, a sound like collapsing mountains and continents grinding beneath their own weight. The entire landscape buckled. Aurel'Tharan shook to its foundations as Vaelkar hit the ground.

  But no crater formed.

  Instead, the earth fractured like brittle glass. Massive plates of stone sheared apart and sank, revealing a vast hollow beneath the city, a chamber of impossible scale, wide enough, deep enough, ancient enough to cradle even Vaelkar's titanic form.

  The Cradle of Ancients.

  Dust surged upward in a towering plume, spilling over the broken spires and shattered battlements until the ruined city lay swallowed beneath a shroud of drifting gray.

  A presence arrived behind him, quiet yet immense, bending the air as reality itself seemed to shift to make room. Kalvaxus did not turn. There was only one being who approached him like that.

  "Will you abandon your Ancients so easily?" the newcomer asked. His tone was regal, almost gentle, yet carried the weight of a commandment.

  Kalvaxus exhaled, more thought than breath.

  "Even if I wished for that, you would bar my path. Besides, it matters little who claims them. Once they are unbound, I will have Time. And perhaps..."

  Kalvaxus allowed the faintest curve of irony into his voice.

  "Something resembling hope."

  A beat of silence passed.

  "I misjudged you," Kalvaxus continued. "I never believed the threads would twist this far. Yet you have proven me wrong. Twice."

  "And still," the newcomer replied, "you hesitate to trust the path you set in motion. Why?"

  Kalvaxus's lips twitched.

  "It is a woven trial, Cyrus. One that has not yet begun."

  He let the horizon settle into silence before he spoke again, voice low.

  "The Primordial of Existence has yet to rise."

  Only then did Kalvaxus turn to face him.

  No matter how many times he looked into those eyes, they unsettled him, terrifying in their depth, sovereign in their bearing, yet holding a glimmer of the salvation that he sought.

  "Come," Kalvaxus said at last. "Let us leave. There is much to discuss... Cyrus Calder."

  This is the halfway point of Book 1. It just happens to land on Chapter 50, which was a happy coincidence.

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