Greetings! (Free toy inside!)

[Thayer]

Hello all! I only just found about this site, and let me say it rocks!

Since this is my first post, I thought I'd do it with style and give you a free-peak at the first chapter of my first fantasy novel, called "The Shadow's Edge". If you have any comments, please let me know. Hope you enjoy!

Three soldiers fled through the night. Since nightfall they had stumbled through the murky undergrowth of the dark swamp, weary beyond anything they had experienced before. For five hours the only noises had been feet splashing in mud and the ragged gasps of tortured breath. To those monotonous sounds they had measured their pace, ignoring the burning aches that ran through every sinew of their limbs.

None of them doubted that fate was closing in. Only their newfound knowledge kept them moving—knowledge that transcended mere fatigue.

But there are limits that no mortal flesh can surpass.

‘Val…’ one of the soldiers sobbed, his voice wracked with pain. Though young and strong, he could run no further. He was scarcely more than a boy. The mingled fear and exhaustion in his voice told that much. Reluctantly his two companions drew to a halt. A woman clasped in chipped and heavily dented armour, shrouded in a heavy green cloak now black with blood and festering marsh-water, moved towards the boy. A once-gleaming blade shivered in her hand as she gripped it until her knuckles were bone-white. Val’s crystal blue eyes glittered through a tangle of mud-black hair.

‘You can make it,’ Val commanded.

‘I can’t,’ Eris whispered back. ‘I can’t.’

Val took a step towards Eris with a steady gaze. He could not have been older than seventeen, and his armour hung from his body like the carapace of a long starved swamp-crab. In the emerald light of the swamp his ashen skin looked ripe with rot, as though he had been dead for days already. Slowly he lifted his eyes to meet her look.

‘Listen, Eris,’ said Val. ‘I know you’re in pain. We all are. But we’re not going to leave you here. We’ve been through too much for you to give up on us now. We need you.’

Eris squeezed his eyes shut, warding off a dark vision that only he could see. With a violent shudder he fell to his knees. Val was at his side in an instant, grasping his shoulders before he could collapse face down in the mud, and she and the other soldier laid him against a stunted tree trunk. Eris breathed heavily for a moment. His eyes were closed. The mangled wreckage of his left arm was slung across his chest and the black-feathered tail of an arrow protruded from a ragged wound just beneath his collarbone.

Val’s other companion, Jonathan, was a man in his mid-twenties, though he looked much older. A red maze of burst capillaries laced his dull eyes, and his sickly black locks of hair were flecked with more than a little grey. Though Jonathan was Val’s second in command, he had been more like a brother than a subordinate, and over the years they had come to understand much of one another without the need for spoken words. They exchanged a sad and meaningful glance.

Eris opened his eyes and looked up. ‘I’m sorry Val. I tried. I swear I tried. But I’ve got nothing left. It’s just… too much.’

Still kneeling, Val shifted uneasily as though engaged in an unseen conflict.
‘We can’t leave you here for the enemy. You know that.’

‘Val,’ Jonathan interrupted. Something about his voice made Eris and Val turn towards him. ‘The Message is coming back.’

‘Eas,’ Eris whimpered, shivering uncontrollably and fighting against Val’s hold on him. ‘Eas, no! It’s coming back. It’s coming back!’

Val felt it coming too. They all did. The twisted trees of the great swamp began to writhe apprehensively while the pools of water rippled as corrupted fish thrashed in fear and torment. Even here, a hundred miles from the Dark Leviathan—fortress and abode of the Queen Senithite herself—the soldiers could feel the approach of the Message.

At the peak of Leviathan lay Senithite’s Beacon, and once every hour it would pulse and send her Message streaming over the land like a shockwave of madness and horror to proclaim her hellish dominion. Val glanced around urgently, instinctively looking for a place to hide, though she knew that in the lands of Senithite there was no such thing as reprieve.

The ghostly green lights of the forest-swamp began to fade. ‘Prepare yourselves,’ said Jonathan, his voice devoid of any emotion. ‘Here it comes.’

‘Stay with me, Eris,’ Val virtually whimpered, holding Eris by the shoulders and forcing him to look into her eyes. ‘Stay with me.’

In the dimness of the distant west, far beyond the sight of Val or her companions, at the very apex of the Dark Leviathan, there was a flash of ebony power as deep as the void; a single toll of agony and despair.

A wall of midnight power rushed outwards.

Val shrunk down. The trees shivered and the stones rumbled and groaned until the sound was overwhelming; louder than mountains sliding into ruin; a soul’s wail from the earth itself. Eris began to convulse.

‘Stay with me!’ Val shouted, squeezing her eyes shut, but she did not know if she yelled to Eris or herself, and her shout came only as a whisper as the thundering darkness slammed over them.

The wave of dark energy hit with the force of a tsunami, but Senithite’s Message left no physical trace of its passing. In Val’s mind, reality splintered apart like a pane of glass annihilated by a falling boulder. Countless images of pain and death rushed through her, for a moment or an eternity, until she thought she must surely die or go mad.

And the sound was gone. The wave passed onwards, leaving them in complete silence. The bliss of peaceful oblivion wrapped Val with the warmth and solace of a cocoon, and she floated in the darkness of a dream. Yet deep within herself she felt an incomprehensible incandescence; heat that rose in her lungs until it was unbearable. A single thought entered her mind and ripped her back into consciousness.

I’m not breathing.

With a tortured inward-scream Val tore air into her lungs and fell back into the mud. When her eyes had adjusted, she staggered to her feet. The emerald light of the swamp was returning. Jonathan leaned against a nearby tree. Eris only stared straight ahead.

‘We’re back,’ she whispered, shivering. ‘We’re back.’

Eris slid further down the tree trunk and sunk into the mud as though he was melting. He coughed wetly into a fist, and when he drew his hand away, it was smeared with blood.

Val rubbed sticky strands of hair from her face with the back of her filthy glove, unaware that she too left dark stains across her skin. She had never been a beautiful woman, but here in the unearthly radiance of the swamp she looked almost as demonic as the things that hunted her.

Reluctantly she forced herself to meet the dying man’s eyes.

But it was Eris that spoke first.

‘You need to keep moving, Commander. Azrin hasn’t given up our trail.’

‘I’m not leaving you behind, Eris,’ Val replied. ‘I won’t. You know we can’t let them take you alive.’

Eris nodded. ‘Salisin,’ he said.

‘I’m not giving you Salisin. I’ve never given that to one of my men before and I’m not starting today. We’re soldiers. We don’t kill ourselves the moment things get tough. We fight on. You have to fight on. Pain is irrelevant.’

Eris’ head lolled on his thin neck. ‘It’s not about pain, Val. Look at me. I’m dying. Let it end.’ Val looked away with unaccustomed tears in her eyes. ‘We both know I’m already dead. I’m sorry I couldn’t go on. It’s just,’ he repeated his litany, ‘too much.’

Val Silarion, the once-commander of the Fourth Legion of Amournith, nodded slowly. Despite the torrid air she drew her ragged green cloak more tightly around the dented armour on her shoulders, and looked at her two remaining warriors. Jonathan saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, and for a moment he thought she was going to weep. Then he remembered who she was. And what she had to do.

Val opened a small pouch from Eris’ belt and removed a tiny crystal vial that glowed darkly from within. Gently she placed it in his hand, but before she released it she met his gaze.

‘You fought well. I want you to know that. You will be remembered,’ she said.

Eris snapped open the vial and drank.

‘You’ve got about half an hour,’ said Val.

Eris nodded. Abruptly he tightened his grip on the arrow protruding from his chest and snapped it in one swift movement. Tears squeezed between his clamped eyelids as he cried out in pain. The broken wood slipped from his bloody grasp and disappeared in the swirling mud and water that lapped hungrily at his legs.

‘Go,’ he said in a level tone, still trying to prove his worth as a soldier to Val despite their hopeless situation. ‘I’ll lead them away. You said our mission was important… the most important thing we’d ever done. Don’t let me die for nothing.’

‘I won’t,’ said Val, refusing to mention that their ultimate goal, the hidden outpost of the Cararn, was still two day’s march.

Jonathan spoke at last, his voice shaken by thoughts more pressing than Eris’ imminent death. ‘Eris is right, Commander. We have to go. The enemy hasn’t abandoned our trail.’

‘I know.’ Val met Eris’ eyes one last time and laid a firm grip on his shoulder. ‘Eas guide you, Eris. I swear to you I will not fail!’ She knew it was a lie, but she would not admit despair to those that had followed her.

In silence Val and Jonathan rose and turned away, never looking back at the doomed warrior.

And the race was on again. They ran as they could manage—a swift pace considering the untold dangers that infested the marshy forest—but their speed seemed unbearably slow when they considered the surging army of nightmares that the Leviathan had sent to pursue them. The Dark Leviathan was the heart of dread in this land; a mountainous pyramid rising above the swamp and an obsidian hell that made even the nightmarish marshlands seem like a place of paradise. When roused to anger, its armies were not weak. Val cringed every time she thought of the beasts that must surely be drawing closer upon their heels. Death could take a thousand forms in the swamp, but death was certain if they faltered now. Death if they were lucky.

Dark thorny shrubs and stunted trees seemed to gather before them at every turn, their drooping branches sharp as claws. Many of the larger trees had gaping wounds that looked suspiciously like contorted faces, filled with flickering lights. Val wondered if the holes had really been carved or if the trees had simply grown that way. Slick foliage hung like rotten flesh from the outstretched limbs, and long trails of moss clung to the bark like suckling leeches.

Above the canopy it was midnight, yet the two soldiers had no trouble seeing. Suffocating crimson and green glows haunted the marshlands; rose from the depths of still and clear pools of water, emanated from shadowy hollows in the trees or shone from the hearts of horrid flowers. The Black Swamp, as the people of Amournith sometimes called Senithite’s domain, was only a euphemism for those who did not realise darkness had only too many colours. It was a wonderland of horrors, and Val’s eyes stung from the mere sight of it.

The only purity in the swamp was the moonlight that flowed down like unheeded forgiveness from above. Whenever they found a break in the canopy the fugitives would stand in the moonlight and stare up into the sky. Like whales rising to the surface of freezing waters, they would take in the pure light and commit it to memory. And then, after a moment’s rest, they would plunge back into the icy depths. Back into the swamp.

As Val looked up she wondered if the swamp’s madness stemmed as much from the moonlight’s touch itself as from Senithite’s Message. Like all of Senithite’s minions, the creatures of the swamp were not willing servants but slaves.

No, she thought as they ran. Best not to think on such things, not here, so close to the heart of pain itself. The Ancients could sense fear and despair as a hound could smell fresh blood. Movement. Defiance. That’s all that matters now.

They pitched on through knee-deep water and fields of spear-like reeds, clambering across what little dry land they could find, yelling and hacking at any of the twisted animals that came too close. Yet the further they went the more treacherous the swamp became. Deeper pools began to block their path, forcing them gradually north in a curving arc that took them back towards Leviathan and further from their destination, as though the very swamp itself was conspiring to foil their escape. Val swore violently as her cloak was caught on a thorn-covered bush.

She stopped to try and free herself. Jonathan stood by with almost preternatural patience and gazed westward with his bow held lightly in his left hand. Val wondered how he had protected the weapon throughout all her company’s skirmishes.

"Company", she thought bitterly as she plucked the thorns free of the muddy material. She had led two hundred men and women into the swamp in search of the legendary Lock of Merin. Now she and Jonathan might be all that remained.

But she had found what she was looking for. At the centre of a ruined city that had fallen to Senithite millennia ago, she had stood beneath the Lock—a great ebony tree formed from the living shadow—and had marveled that held against the very breast of the Dark Queen herself was humanity’s last hope.

For a time, nothing had been able to quell the fire in Val’s heart. She had taken a seed from the tree as proof of its existence.

Then three days ago, Azrin had found her. Ancients swarmed out of Leviathan thicker than marching ants, and she had been forced into a breakneck retreat. Despite everything she had done to keep the company together, her soldiers had fallen to their pursuers one by one.

Azrin Lastalay, one of Senithite’s most dreaded generals, was personally leading the hunt.

Val wondered if anyone else from her company was still alive. In a way she hoped her soldiers were dead. To be captured and taken to Leviathan was a fate worse than death. Worse, by far.

She cursed silently, still trying to disentangle her cloak, but even as she did so she felt a familiar cold feeling sink into her. Not the return of the Message. Something else, she knew. The swamp’s gone silent.

Before she could shout a warning to Jonathan, the light around them began to fade. A hundred red sparks were suddenly kindled through the trees to the west.

The marsh came alive with movement. Trees and plants shuddered in glee or fear, and the faces in the trees stretched and writhed as deep moans issued from the fire-lit mouths.

Dozens of Shael—Senithite’s corrupted slave-warriors—came pouring from the trees.

‘Run!’ Jonathan screamed. Val seized her cloak in her fist and ripped it away, tearing the hem to shreds. Jonathan raised his bow and loosed, smooth as silk. An arrow shot out through the trees and hammered into the chest of his target. Shael blood exploded from the wound and caught fire in the air as the demon fell hissing into the water. The other Shael slackened their pace, their irises glowing with flickering demon-fire. They shouted and cried to one another, and behind them other demons crept forward from the trees.

Val and Jonathan turned and fled, praying that there might still be a chance to escape. Water surged and splashed wildly as they forced their way through the rank liquid. Not far ahead, a dry bank rose from the muck.

‘There,’ yelled Val. ‘We’ll make a stand there!’ Perhaps they could teach their stalkers to fear them.

But the enemy had little to fear. The Shael knew now that Val’s company was scattered and broken; that she and her companions were few in number. Their master’s ambush was all but complete.

As fatal as the rise of an executioner’s axe, burning crimson eyes appeared from all around.

We’re trapped, thought Val.

She did not wait for the axe to fall.

The two soldiers charged. There was a dull flash of light as Val’s sword swept from its sheath, and as she leapt up onto the embankment the glittering steel whirled in her grasp like a windmill gaining speed before a driving wind.

With a shout Val brought the blade down upon the closest Shael’s head; flesh and bone parted like silk before the edge of the enchanted weapon. The two halves of her divided opponent were still falling as she sped past and beheaded the next in a fountain of flames, and the emerald light flared red the Shael’s blood-fire scorched up into the night.

Shael were twisted creatures in any light, but here in the Black Swamp they were nightmares clothed in flesh. Every aspect of their bodies was warped and contorted. Many of the creatures ran awkwardly backwards with their arms and heads reversed and their joints bending and creaking in ways that no creature born of the earth had any natural claim to move. Arcane, tattered black robes surrounded them and blood and fire filled their veins. Black steel hooks and plates, which might have served as ornamentation or armour or both, had been drilled, nailed and melted directly onto their bodies, and their wildly misshapen mouths were lined with razor-edged teeth. Their skin was smoking charcoal, burned and cracked from the heat of the demonic spirits that possessed them. And with the Shael went a swirling miasma of shadow that fed upon the light and blurred the true nature of their forms. Only the furnace-light of their irises escaped the aura unscathed.

Val and Jonathan charged further up the bank. A dozen Shael ran down to meet them, stabbing and slashing wildly with insanely shaped weapons. The Shael blades would have been vastly impractical by any professional soldiers’ standards; the cruelly hooked and serrated-shrapnel weapons were designed to inflict slow and painful deaths. Val hacked sideways and lifted a Shael’s torso from the sternum down, her return blow cleanly decapitating another. Her own blade could not have been more different than the Shael’s; light and infinitely keener, Caethen steel a thousand times folded, worked and etched and bound with demon-killing enchantments over thirteen months. The Shael weapons shattered like glass at its touch.

Val spun and sawed between ill-aimed weapons, deft as a bird flitting between branches, lashing out and killing a third, fourth, a fifth. Jonathan cast his bow aside and set about him with his own sword, hacking with the mechanical strength and precision of a woodsman, hewing Shael bodies, weapons and armour alike with every blow.

But the Shael were only a shield to herald and protect the real killers. The combat slowed as an eight foot tall, atrociously-muscled Shael warlord stomped forward from the trees. Several of the intervening Shael screamed and fled at the sight, but the beast seized one of them by the neck before it had gone three strides. The captured Shael shrieked in its horned master’s grasp as its throat was crushed, and with a roar the bigger creature hurled the dying Shael at Jonathan like a living projectile. Jonathan sidestepped and slashed across flying enemy, staggering as it clipped his shoulder, but before he could recover the warlord charged him like a maddened bull. He lunged wildly and his sword passed clean through the beast’s stomach, but the twisted monstrosity of muscle and steel barely even noticed.

Jonathan and the beast crashed down hard onto the muddy earth with a heavy crunch of collision. In a blink the beast was atop Jonathan, and with a roar of pain and anger the warlord ripped the sword out of its own stomach and raised the blade, its eyes wide with glee and hatred, while Jonathan’s desperate gaze flared blue against white.

Jonathan’s sword exploded into shards as Sarwin’s blade sang through the air.

The beast’s arms and head came apart in a bloody deflagration. Val heaved the dead weight off Jonathan and lashed out left and right with two-handed strokes while the fallen man shook the cobwebs from his head. Almost immediately he was back on his feet, a notched, dark-edged Shael-sword in each hand, ready to kill again.

The Shael were shaken by the death of their leader. Hissing and clawing, they retreated a few awkward paces, unwilling to face Val’s blistering wrath.

‘Kill the Witch. Kill her,’ a hundred voices hissed and screamed, though none dared to attack. They had learnt, if not to fear, then at least to respect the slender girl and her blade.

‘Come on!’ Val shouted. Knotted blonde hair flailed against her armour as she spun. They sped east through the trees. Groans and cries at the foiled trap followed them, but Val did not slow her pace until the Shael had disappeared from view. She sent Jonathan scouting on ahead while she turned to assess the situation. Each breath came painfully now. Despite her skill and endurance, such exertions took a heavy toll. Her gaze flickered back and forth through the marsh as her chest rose and fell.

When she turned back towards Jonathan she almost cried out in despair. Jonathan had not run far, perhaps a hundred paces to the east. Six twisted enemies surrounded the young warrior and he was fighting for his life, but it was not the Shael that dismayed Val the most. Jonathan was standing shin-deep in the water of a murky, stagnant lake that stretched away to the north and south.

Val fell upon the Shael like a star from the firmament, flinging them aside with massive, wild strokes, killing them all in seconds. But even as familiar bloodlust filled her heart, cold dread settled on her skin again.

‘Azrin,’ she breathed.

Desperately she surveyed the lake, absorbed its breadth and depth at a glance and prayed it was uninhabited. As though in answer, an enormous set of teeth rose from the depths and rolled forward, and behind them trailed the bloated and elongated head and body of a cruelly corrupted fish. The head alone reached six feet into the air and twenty in length.

‘Dredge!’ Jonathan whispered in horror, squeezing his eyes shut in defeat.
They turned back to the trees.
There was no way out.

Silently Val and Jonathan moved closer together. The perfect edge of Val’s sword gleamed in her shaking hands—two shadowy iron blades glimmered in Jonathan’s.

To the east, the moon appeared in final supplication through a thinning of the clouds, and dim light glimmered off the surface of the lake in a silver glow.

But against that light a hundred crimson fires were kindled.
The vanguard of the Shael army emerged from the undergrowth.

I found the Lock of Merin, thought Val. I found it and now I’ve failed everyone.
Absently Val touched the leather bag that hung from her belt. She would not let Azrin put the Lock to evil use. As the cordon of enemies tightened around the warriors, the last vestiges of hope died in her companion.

‘Goodbye, Commander,’ Jonathan said simply. ‘Eas guide us.’

‘For trusting me, I thank you,’ Val replied. ‘May you find the peace in death that I couldn’t bring you in life.’ She centered the blade before her. ‘Eas guide us.’

Her words admitted defeat, but at that moment an unfathomable sense of new life broke free in Val’s heart, like a sapling bursting up from beneath the dark earth. The pouch at her side glowed warmly, and world around her—the trees, the water, even the Shael—suddenly seemed to shine from within as though she was looking upon the world for the first time.

The light dissipated until only a dull, pale glow shone through the leather pouch.

A thousand Shael heaved towards her, and the darkness that swept forward with them devoured the moonlight.

‘Amournith,’ Val howled, crying the name of her homeland as she lashed out. Back and forth she swept her blade in a frenzied dance of death, slicing red paths of fire through her enemies’ flesh. Shael weapons, armour and limbs leaped into the air seemingly of their own accord, and in seconds Val became the heart of a fiery whirlwind as her foes fell like burning leaves. Bodies piled at her feet by the dozen as she sent them one after another dead into the water. Swords, shields, arms, legs, heads and mutilated chunks of charred meat piled at her feet like offerings. Again and again her sword crushed skulls and broke through bone, sheared through flesh and steel alike until the water was aflame with burning blood and she was surrounded by a small wall of corpses. Yet for all her ferocity she was pushed back, step by step, knee deep, thigh deep, then waist deep, into the water.

It was no use. Even unarmed the Shael could have buried her beneath the mountain of their weight. And they were not unarmed. As she was overwhelmed, the warrior-trained part of Val’s mind refused to give up, though she could barely lift her sword.

I’m dead, she knew. It’s over.

Yet at those unspoken words, a part of her mind that she had never known existed suddenly opened.

As the Shael weapons came raking in past her parries to shriek against her armour, Val mind kindled a blaze in her mind and fanned it with forbidden power, no longer heeding self-preservation, until an enchantment the likes of which she had never contemplated rose within her. Her chest burned and seared like compressed magma trapped in a volcano. And still she drove the power on.
For twenty years Val had trained to control the unseen energies that flowed through the Spirit World, beneath the surface of reality.
Now she let the power run wild.

Dimly she felt Jonathan die beneath a rain of axes. Demons leapt in from every side, hungering for Val’s flesh, and she was overcome. There was no room to swing her sword. Knives and daggers flashed as the Shael stabbed and stabbed, driving the knives into the links and joints of her steel plate armour.

Some of those blades snapped or were turned aside. Others were not. Yet none of the knives penetrated deeply enough to kill her.

The mental tornado of Witch-fire rose to terrifying new heights. The agony of the mental-fire blinded her even to the torture of the Shael blades, and as the inferno threatened to consume her completely, a whisper entered her mind as though the universe itself had beheld hope or absolute horror and had given answer.

Starfall.

The enchantment collapsed upon itself like a dying star.

Flame rushed from Val as though her body had become a doorway into the sun. Unbearable heat and light lanced through everything and everyone around her. Jonathan and the Shael alike were incinerated in the space of a second. A vast rush of steam engulfed her as the surface of the river was superheated. Every tree for a quarter mile went up in flames like so many torches.

For long moments Val could think of nothing; nothing except that she should not have survived what she had done. Seconds passed.

The only sounds she could hear were the crackling of burning wood and the groans of the dying.

Gradually the smoke and steam began to dissipate. She straightened painfully and waded back to dry land as blood trickled from wounds on every part of her body. In confusion, she looked around. Corpses were burning everywhere, but the demonic bodies of the Shael frosted unnaturally and became cold as ice, cracking and shattering as the fire licked at them. Here and there, wounded Shael writhed away like worms. The scene of devastation was almost silent but for the burning of the trees.

Almost silent. As Val brushed wet strands of hair from her face, a mirthless laugh reverberated through the air.

I know that laugh, she thought. No one could forget that laugh.

Through the smoke, another creature emerged—a creature vastly more powerful than any Shael. Azrin Lastalay, demon-heart and vessel of the Dark Realm, floated towards her through the burning trees, drifting a foot above the ground and laughing grimly with a voice that might have come from the ruinous throat of a corpse. Even the flames bent and cringed aside as though desperate to get away from him.

Azrin’s hands hung limply at his sides, and around his shoulders fell oily black hair. The skin of his face was deathly white, and his once-pristine white robes were now as tattered as any Shael’s, soaked through with blood. Val was distantly thankful for the robes that hid most of Azrin’s living cadaver, but even through the thick material she could sense the hellish enchantments he had inflicted on himself.

From neck to toe Azrin was drenched in his own blood, and he had driven a metal spike through each palm and foot. Blood dripped constantly from wounds that never healed. So much blood dripped from Azrin that Val would have guessed he was dying, if she was not so familiar with the unholy power of the Ancients.
The blades of two gleaming, silver daggers protruded from the dark and ruined cavities of Azrin’s eye sockets. Senithite was well known for taking the eyes of her favoured warriors and replacing them with daggers. Azrin, like so many others, saw the world only as part of a nightmare now; a nightmare that he ruled, but from which he would never wake.

Slowly his head swung from side to side, and the horror of his blind gaze passed over Val like a wave of cold nausea. Dizzily she tried to move, but the dread and revulsion that radiated from Azrin’s form impaled her and held her frozen with the immutable weight of a glacier.

‘I am fortunate,’ Azrin growled, and his voice was so deep and penetrating that she would not have understood except for the lacerating comprehension the voice inflicted upon her. ‘Fortunate—Lady Silarion, that you do not understand what you carry. If you had the courage to embrace that power, you could have achieved true greatness. That such a small thing should grant such energy…’ his voice shivered in hungry awe as he surveyed the devastation about him. ‘Yet your achievements are ultimately insignificant. The Shael are easily made. I was going to merely kill you… yet I must confess you show a modicum of promise. In time, Commander Silarion… In time I could teach you to embrace the power you have just now begun to grasp, as mortals of old embraced it. In time I could teach you many things.’ His voice washed across her mind like acid, searing itself into every thought.

Val struggled to fight the gaze behind the knives. When she opened her mouth to speak, the only sound to issue forth was a dry croak. She swallowed hard. At last she found her voice. ‘You are a fool if you think I would ever serve you.’
‘Truly? Without you I might never have found the Lock. You are the fool. No mortal can defy Senithite. Already you are the Great Queen’s servant. Will you not bow to her now, and serve her willingly?’ His lips drew back across razor-pointed teeth. ‘The rewards for such service are… most gratifying.’

Hope drained from Val like blood from a gaping wound. She could find no words to counter her foe. A drop of red liquid trickled from between her lips, warm and sickly. Her left hand twitched, tightening inadvertently around the leather cord of her pouch.

‘The Lock of Merin belongs to the Ancients,’ said Azrin. ‘Your defiance of the Great Queen has been valiant, but for you there is no escape. Senithite has laid her eyes upon you. Not even death can save you now.’

‘You think I want to escape?’ she hissed.

‘We all seek to escape what we cannot accept. Embrace your destiny, as I did. Become what you cannot defeat.’

‘Amournith isn’t defeated yet, Azrin. You may have found the Lock, but every lock needs a key.’

‘Ah.’ Again Azrin smiled, momentarily glancing upwards. ‘So you’ve heard it too, then.’

‘Heard what?’ Val breathed tremulously.

‘The voice that guides us to the key. To this… Starfall.’

Starfall, Val heard a distant voice calling. Starfall…

‘It’s not possible,’ she whispered.

‘We all know what we are,’ Azrin went on, his voice quiet, ‘deep down. One does not master the blade without knowing one’s capabilities. But victory requires more than self-knowledge. You must also know your enemy—and the meaning of that enemy. The enemy that we both face. The enemy of flesh.’ Azrin tensed as a shiver of pain or pleasure rippled through him. ‘The enemy that blinds us to the truth… That there is no meaning.’

‘No…’

Forget the world you knew. Accept Senithite. Accept hell.’
Val made no answer, but stood silently, her chest rising and falling as she fought an inner battle.

Azrin paused fleetingly, and hovered a step closer. His voice gained impetus and irritation, sliding through her soul like a freezing knife. ‘Your courage serves you well, Witch’, he sneered. ‘Far better than it served your sister. She screamed your name before the end. Does it please you to hear it? Her soul awaits you in the Dark Leviathan. Forget her. Surrender, and I will set you free.’ He grinned, relishing his power over her.

That was the wrong thing to say. She remembered few things more keenly than the fact that Azrin had spent the past ten years hunting her family. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, regaining their focus.

‘I remember,’ Val hissed in reply. ‘And I remember something else as well. I remember that you are a slave, more arrogant, yet no greater than the slaves that lie dead around me. You are nothing but a messenger without a message. You are the one that has failed to understand, demon!’

Only when she spoke those words did she herself understand. The voice was calling her again, but this time it filled her with hope rather than despair. Abruptly she broke into a shout. ‘You are nothing more than a weapon to be cast aside when its usefulness wanes!’

She hardly even noticed as more Shael crowded in to encircle her, only clenched her sword. From her pouch she drew a crystal sphere with a tiny black seed set inside of it.

Azrin went suddenly still, his attention drawn to a needlepoint on the globe.

The Ancient’s lips moved soundlessly as he sent ravening waves of arcane supremacy at Val, and she reeled as her perceptions were assaulted by mental commands. But Azrin was too late. The instant Val’s skin had touched the crystal sphere, the damage had been done.

Even as Azrin watched, the dark seed began to glow.

‘You will never conquer Amournith,’ Val shouted with all her frail strength, fighting the dominating will that raged from Azrin’s steel eyes. Tears ran down her face, and though everything around her was wreathed in smoke and ruin, the moonlight seemed to flare brighter for the briefest moment. ‘Tell Senithite that her doom is coming for her, and the doom of all the Three. And it comes from this!’

Val pivoted and hurled the sphere out across the onyx lake, and the weight of the glass ball took it far over the dark surface. Azrin roared with rage as it disappeared with a splash and detonated underwater. There was a staggering noise of thunder as a white spear of light flashed upwards and a black wave rushed out in every direction.

Val whirled and charged her enemy. With a cry the Shael surged towards her, but they never reached her. Wraith-light and ghosts of crimson energy wormed up from the ground and hissed across Azrin’s body until his flesh burned and glowed red from within. Then he grinned.

Lightning exploded from Azrin’s blade-eyes with enough force to shred steel.

Before Val had covered half the distance towards him her smoking body crashed to the ground.

[Adina]

I'm too tired to read this right now, but welcome to TFF.

[Taria]

Welcome!

[LyannaWolfBlood]

Nice....

Welcome!

[charlie6078]

that was alot of reading, welcome to tff and hope you have fun

[lewy]

wow.. you posted once and has already given us a handful to read...

[~Elladan~]

Welcome Thayer ~ read your mega post through quickly. Only critiscms would be that it's a bit over-descriptive and too much happens! That said what do I know, it's a lot better than I could write

[I. R. Shogun]

I liked the story, but I'm still waiting for my free to.

[Borael]

Welcome, I haven't read to much yet but I will don't worry. So far the characters look good. Just keep writing!