Eve of Destruction (45 page)

Another surge of energy flashed from the darkness of the forest, and again Shaedra couldn’t evade it in time. Her muscles froze and she dropped to her knees, but it wasn’t the electricity crackling through her body that worried her—it was the subtle magic hidden underneath.

She cried out as the spell struck at her one and only true weakness—the hunger raging in her soul. The magic teased it, tempted it, as if it were dangling a fresh meal right in front of her. It suddenly felt as if she hadn’t fed in weeks or months, and she knew that within moments she would no longer be able to control it.

“I don’t even need to stay here,” Aram said. “I could just walk away and let you finish the job. You’re an animal, a beast ruled by a primal instinct you cannot control. You’ll kill them all just to sate yourself, but it won’t work. Nothing will.”

Shaedra clawed at her temples, at the madness stirring in her mind. If she could just focus enough, if she could just remember all of her old spells, perhaps she could dispel his magic before it was too late…

But no, already her thoughts had twisted into an indecipherable blur. The spells would flash in her mind but then disappear just as quickly, and the magic died at her fingertips. She was lost, feral, consumed by madness and hunger.

And she would destroy them all.

***

Eve crept through the forest, praying the entire time she didn’t step in one of the traps Aram had supposedly set out here. Perhaps he’d been lying about that—after all, what purpose would they have served? He knew full well the Enclave wouldn’t be sending anyone after them. Their agent had apparently been with them this entire time, lying in wait to strike when she finally demonstrated her powers.

She had countless questions about the entire thing, but for now she’d buried them away in the recesses of her mind. She was amassing quite an impressive collection back there, and perhaps soon she could finally get some answers.

If they survived.

The moonlight, though pale, proved sufficient for them to navigate through the sparse trees, but they hadn’t seen any signs of battle ahead since the second flash of magic at least a minute ago. Eventually Danev signaled with his hand for them to stop, and he squinted out towards a tree perhaps thirty meters away.

“Stay…back,” a hoarse voice croaked from up ahead. The accent clearly marked it as Shaedra, but it sounded deeper, almost…bestial.

Danev’s brow furrowed. They were supposed to have been nearly invisible—he said he had wrapped them in an illusion to deepen the shadows around the forest wherever they went. Apparently that wasn’t enough to slip past the Vakari.

After a few seconds of silence, the illusionist shuffled over to the side and held out his hand for them to remain where they were. Once he was about ten meters away, he stood up and leaned on his cane.

“Shaedra?” he asked. “Where’s Aram?”

“Here…hiding,” she rasped back. “You need to leave. Now.”

“We already know about him. There was a hidden message in the journal that said—”

“Run!” the Vakari screamed. “Now!”

Eve forced herself to swallow and take a deep breath. Being out here at all was dangerous enough—she fully expected Aram to leap from a bush and strangle her at any moment. But something in Shaedra’s voice caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand. What had happened to her? What could a single man, even one as skilled as Aram, have possibly done to a Vakari?

And then, with a savage roar that shook the entire forest, Shaedra leapt to her feet and lunged towards Danev.

He was quicker than he had any business being for a man of his size. Within an instant he’d dropped into a crouch and summoned a shimmering ball of blue fire into his palm. The sphere streaked out and smashed into the charging Vakari, but she didn’t even break stride. The wisps of magic dissipated almost instantly, and now she was halfway to him. Zach managed to swing up his pistol and fire several shots of his own, but those had even less effect.

And then Shaedra was on top of Danev, flattening him to the ground and growling as she clutched at his throat. He screamed—the sharp, piercing cry from a man seconds away from death.

Eve brought herself to her feet and extended her arm. Magic flashed at her fingertips, and a crackling beam of scintillating violet light lanced from her outstretched fingers and burned into Shaedra’s chest. Now it was the Vakari’s turn to scream. The blast hurled her from Danev’s body like a spectral finger flicking away an insect. Her body smashed through a willowy tree and split it cleanly in half before disappearing into the darkness.

Eve released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She glanced down to Zach, but his eyes were madly scouring the forest…

 “Impossible…” Aram’s voice whispered into the air.

Eve spun and tried to track the sound, but it seemed as if it was coming from everywhere at once. She crouched down on a knee, and Zach put an arm protectively in front of her.

“The Avenshal,” the omnipresent voice breathed. “I should never have doubted it, not from that first moment in the
Calio
.”

“Aram?” Danev coughed as he leaned upwards. His face seemed especially pale even in the moonlight. “What are you doing?”

“My job. The Dark Messiah walks amongst us, and she must be stopped.”

Danev took a deep breath and waved his hand. A faint gray mist sprayed across the forest, and the air itself seemed to ripple—and then suddenly Aram was standing there, not twenty meters from them, protected behind a glowing shield of Fane energy.

“Is that all you’ve been doing the past two years?” Danev asked. “Staying close to me to try and steal my tricks?”

“I was there to make sure you didn’t betray your own people,” Aram said. His cheek was quivering ever-so-slightly; the first pangs of the Flensing must have been gnawing at him.

Danev frowned. “And it took you two years to figure out that I wasn’t working for Chaval? The Council doesn’t waste resources like that, especially not Eclipseans.”

“You command considerable resources—or did, once. The Enclave could not afford to have you turn against them, to create a second Industrialist bastion in Vaschberg. They sent me to make sure it didn’t happen.”

“No,” Danev murmured. “No, there are a dozen other ways they could have done that. They knew that Eve would eventually seek me out, didn’t they? Tara warned us about you in her journal—did she warn them too, years ago? Was she baiting them somehow?”

“They never told me if she did,” Aram said. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m here now, and I have an opportunity to end this—to end her.”

“By turning Shaedra against us? That’s a fancy trick.”

“I had no intention of harming you, Gregori,” Aram told him almost defensively. “I needed to deal with two problems at once—the abomination, and now the Avenshal.” He turned to Eve, and at the same moment Zach lifted his pistol towards him.

“Another step and you die,” Zach warned.

The Eclipsean cocked a curious eyebrow. “I understand your loyalty, as misguided as it is. You’re young and foolish, and you think protecting her will win her heart or some rubbish.” He swiveled his gaze to Danev. “But you—I would have expected more from you, Gregori. You understand the threat she poses. You’ve seen it clearly for yourself twice now. She killed those men on the train, and now she harmed a Vakari. No krata could possibly do that. Why do you protect her?”

“She deserves a chance,” Danev said. “She deserves answers and honesty, neither of which your masters are particularly fond of.”

“
Answers
? You have all the answers you need! Look around you, for Edeh’s sake. She is an abomination against the Goddess! She will destroy us all!”

“Maybe,” the illusionist whispered, “but that’s not for your masters to decide. You can’t kill her for something she may or may not even do. The Enclave is more than willing to pass judgment on others, but for some reason they never find time to judge themselves. Who do you think drove Chaval to where he is today? Who do you think created the poverty and waste that has caused so many to flock to his banner?”

“This has nothing to do with Chaval or the Dusties,” Aram growled.

Danev glanced to Eve, then back to Aram. “It has
everything
to do with them. It has to do with the Enclave and their inability to accept their mistakes. They created the Vakari, and instead of helping them find some sort of peace, they forged them into weapons—into killers. They created Chaval, and instead of realizing the potential of his technology, they condemned all of it along with him.” He took a step forward and picked up his cane. “They ignored Tara, they refused to see her potential and her power…and yet now they’re willing to sentence her only child to death based upon one of her visions.”

“This is about the future of the Fane—the future of the world,” Aram said, his body nearly shaking. It was more emotion that Eve had ever seen from him—more than she ever thought possible. “This girl will destroy us if we don’t stop her. You believed in Tara’s power, so do something about it!”

“I do believe in her power,” Danev murmured. “I believe the Goddess granted it to her to change things for the better. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Aram shook his head. “Then you are a fool. And for that, you will die along with her.”

The explosion of magic was so fast, so intense, that Eve barely had time to blink before the entire world exploded in light. An invisible shockwave hurled her backwards and she tumbled across the grass, wincing as rocks and broken branches cut through the back of her dress. She shielded her eyes and glanced up to see Aram and Danev still twenty meters apart, glowing like twin stars set against the night sky. They exchanged volley after volley of magic, from brilliant bolts of light to scintillating spheres of orange-white flame, but every assault deflected harmlessly off their protective shells and dissipated a moment later.

Eve had long wondered what a battle between two archmagi would look like. Fictional tales of battles between stalwart Enclave magisters and desperate Defilers had always seemed too grandiose, too exaggerated, to be real. Their battles would rage for hours and scorch the landscape black around them, and only through a superhuman feat of endurance would one of them ultimately prevail. It wasn’t unlike the swashbuckling tales Zach had always enjoyed as a kid, where a duel between fencers would last for pages and pages before someone finally struck the killing blow.

She had always assumed that in the real world, a duel between powerful magi would be just like an actual fencing duel—a few thrusts and parries at best, quickly followed by a killing blow. No drama, no witty repartees, just a quick and dirty exchange of steel and blood.

Apparently, she had been wrong. It was almost mesmerizing to watch these two men command such awesome power, and she could appreciate more than ever why the torbos feared them so much. These men weren’t even Defiling, and yet they exchanged spells that could have razed an entire village.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Zach scouring the grass trying to find his fallen pistol, and it shook her from her reverie. She had no idea what she could do, but she needed to try something. Sooner or later the Flensing was going to cripple both men, and judging by the strained looked on Danev’s face, it was probably going to be him.

Eve pulled herself to her feet, and just as she did so Aram spun to face her. He extended a hand towards her, and another searing flash of light nearly blinded her as a crackling torrent of electricity erupted from his palm. She instinctively brought her hands up in front of her, fully expecting to keel over in pain…

“Stay down!” Danev called, and a whip-like cord of energy lashed out from his arm and intercepted Aram’s spell. A wave of heat washed over Eve’s skin, and she dropped to a knee and tried to squint past the brilliance.

Next to her, Zach had found his gun. He took aim quickly and fired—but suddenly Aram was no longer there. He had vanished completely, and Zach took a deep breath as he madly swept his eyes around to track the Eclipsean—