Manifestation: the Coming Dark/Chapter 9

For three days Tralin stayed in K'eld Ner. On the fourth day, he left with Nel and Kithia and half of the Frogzard Knights. The other half were to remain in the K'eld and assist Jano as he took over rule of the K'eld. I felt for Jano, who was thrust once again into ruling over a people. He was an adept diplomat, but governorship was nevertheless not Jano's skill. He had volunteered to go with Xander himself, but Jano was relatively incapable of magic, whereas I was a communicant of the Water Lord. So as quickly as my governorship had begun, it was on hiatus, while Sigarin, Xander, and I prepared to pass through the portal to the next world and seek to rescue Myr before he was lost entirely to the foul magic that claimed him and to thwart the Uncreator's plan to use him as a vessel of destruction.

I was of entirely mixed emotion: there was something terrifying and at once thrilling in leaving my very reality to take the battle to the stronghold of the enemy. On the other hand, I was keenly aware that the Ice Lord's festival was beginning and, rather than celebrating Frostval and the start of winter with friends and family, I was instead venturing into what no one could be sure would not be my death. Though Myr and Delnar had been to the world and Sigarin and several of the citizens of K'eld Alorin had ventured to the world and survived, it was under different circumstances. I would be entering the world with the purpose of taking the aggressive and reclaiming Myr, who, even as he was being rescued, would remain in the thrall of his captors. Xander, Sigarin, and I stood a good chance of dying and joining the very army we sought to fight. We knew this fact with a dull certainty. For all of us to survive the process was virtually unthinkable. The best we could hope for was a major disruption in the Devourer's plans for Deren and the world.

The possibility remained that, despite our best plans, we would actually serve the Uncreator's purposes by seeking to rescue Myr. It was clear that he knew that we would take this course. We had little reasonable alternative. The only other possibility was to let him make the first move and it was already quite late to be attempting to undo the late dark dragon's damage. By the time he took his own action, Myr would undoubtedly be lost to us and the Uncreator would have gained a strong foothold in our world.

"You seem distracted, Lord Governor," Sigarin said, polishing his battleaxe with a wicked smile. This last was first act I had seen Sigarin do that assured me that more than his frame was dwarven. While Sigarin might be a communicant and T'palo from K'eld Alorin, he was still a dwarf, and for our purposes his skill with that axe may yet prove a deciding factor.

"We likely go to our deaths," I said matter-of-factly. "Your axe? How is it endowed?"

"It is a duality blade."

"A duality blade." I whistled appreciatively. "K'eld Alorin truly is the master of cooperative magic, then. I take it that the duality is light and dark?"

"Yes," he said simply. A duality blade was, to my previous experience, a weapon of legend rather than actually an axe that balanced contradictory elements. I had heard, of course, of Alevand's duality longsword, which had balanced fire and ice and was used in the first elemental wars hundreds of years ago. In the far world, we would fight undead and light demons. A duality weapon balancing light and dark would perhaps be the only effective single answer to their forms.

"Aren't they risky?"

"Very risky," he said, and I considered again the legend. So tightly balanced between opposite forces, duality blades were said to have unstable personalities of their own and, in the heat of battle, the weapons could even control their wielder, seeking their own purposes. "But the Lady and I have an understanding of many years, and what we face is even riskier."

I wondered why Sigarin had thought to bring the weapon in the first place, but I didn't ask. Delving into his personal thoughts would be an invasion and I could almost answer this question myself. The Brilhado and undead still abounded in the distant corners. It could be expected that they would arrive and attack at any time. Time was running out. If we had not thwarted their plans and if Myr had succeeded, even worse things could have happened.

I merely nodded and looked then to Xander, who was dressed in the armor of a shadow knight and spinning an Aurora Blade with deft swordplay. "A shadow knight using a light weapon?"

"You know as well as I that a light weapon is a natural weapon for a shadow knight to use. Without light, there is no shadow. I have a Wartexx too, but I don't think it will see much use. The Aurora Blade's light form will put a major hurt on the undead, and when it's ignited, the fire damage will hurt the Brilhado too. Not as much as the Wartexx, maybe, but I don't necessarily have time to change weapons in mid-fight."

"The two of you seem to plan on fighting. I for one don't. By the time they have us engaged in combat, we are most assuredly not going to escape."

"That's true, but if we are going to fail, I intend to make as much of a mess as possible before i join the enemy."

"Are we ready?" Sigarin asked, strapping his axe to his back and taking out a small mechanical device that was clearly of Drakel technology. He attached the intake to a steam pump and lights began to glow on the outside. The device emitted a clicking and whirring sound and the misty steam began to coalesce like a dense fog. The thickening continued until it was like a small window of water suspending in the air, only the other side of the watery window was different. Darker somehow.

"Well?" Sigarin asked. "The portal is ready. The Brilhado stronghold will be about 20 miles from our point of arrival. This will give us enough distance that they should not detect our arrival, but it means we may need to deal with greater numbers of undead and potentially some Kresh on the way through the Dead Forest."

"The Dead Forest?" Xander asked quizzically, placing the Aurora Blade in its sheath.

"A particularly unpleasant necromancer's wildest dream. Even the trees in the dark forest are undead. They are not mobile and, in and of themselves, are not a threat, unless you get caught in a bramble or try to light one of their logs to start a fire, but we cannot be sure the necromancers cannot extend their senses through them. Everything we see in that forest will be undead, from the smallest insect to the largest redwood."

I tried unsuccessfully to imagine what an undead tree would be like. Dead yet in a state of suspended decay or pretending to be living yet being a parody of life. Or looking for all the world like deadfall rather than unliving trees.

"We had better go," Xander said with a shudder.

"Yes, let's go," I said then and, with a shiver, passed through the wall of water.