high, its spiked taiL aNgLed tO
pierCe veNethrax’s Chest aNd
piNiON him tO the earth .
69
For hours, she had been leading Venethrax and his forces on a chase. She struck and withdrew, then curved around his army to pick at their flanks. Using her superior maneuverability, she slowly drew them away from the path of Everblight’s other warlocks. She proceeded carefully, for Everblight’s voice in her mind told her Venethrax was a canny foe, one who wouldn’t easily be misled. Her strikes had to look convincing, and each one cost her dearly. Dozens of spawn and countless blighted Nyss and ogrun lay dismembered and broken in the miles of moor behind them. Absylonia had lost most of her spawn in the various skirmishes, leaving her with only a bare handful.
She had avoided engaging Venethrax directly, knowing that to do so would make another withdrawal almost impossible. Then she had seen him carve her ravagore apart as methodically as a hunter cleaning a rabbit. She had lost spawn in other battles, of course, but never had she seen anyone or anything capable of slaying them as effortlessly as Venethrax. It was as if his massive sword Wyrmbane knew exactly where to strike, for it seemed to leap of its own accord to weak points, to joints and arteries. Each blow was crippling, and Venethrax hadn’t yet struck a creature that didn’t soon die.
Now, she knew, the time for avoidance had passed. Her force was too diminished for another running assault, and they were far enough away from the rest of the warlocks to guarantee their safe passage. Even if she fell here, it would be difficult for Venethrax to catch them.
She called out to a nearby nephilim soldier. In spite of its wounds, she used its animus to spur it toward the Desecrator, its two-handed sword held high. Before the spawn could close the distance, though, the ’jack turned and fired a greenish gout from the cannon on its arm that struck the nephilim and exploded in a burst of flesh-eating fire, searing and eating away at the blighted flesh like a ravenous disease. In seconds, flesh was stripped from bone and the nephilim’s corroded sword sank into the bog. Absylonia had seen this before. The hideous biles and corrosive liquids the Cryxian army deployed were especially potent in proximity to Venethrax, who seemed to corrode the very air by his presence. It was a sensation almost like the blight but totally alien to her.
Fortunately she hadn’t been counting on the nephilim as a fighter, just as a distraction to slow her enemies, keeping their attention while she sent Proteus around the cloud of choking flame and into the side of the Desecrator. She had seen him dash the heaviest of warjacks to the ground, but the spidery legs of the Desecrator gave it superior balance, and the attack simply drove it backward, digging its legs into the muddy ground.
Proteus wrapped his thrashing tentacles around the helljack’s chassis, while his talons ripped the cannon arm from its side and hurled it into the swamp. The Desecrator dug its buzz saw arm into the warbeast’s side, and Absylonia saw black blood spatter into the water at their feet. She could not afford to focus her attention on this confrontation, though; she had to trust her beast’s combat instincts and prowess to deal with this foe. The Reaper was wheeling around, aiming its harpoon cannon into the thrashing melee between Proteus and the helljack. Absylonia called the angelius and her remaining neraph from the skies. The neraph crashed into the Reaper, toppling it into the moor in a mass of beating wings and scything tails as the angelius struck at Venethrax.
Absylonia had always admired the grace of the angelius, its form an expression of the draconic perfection of Everblight himself. Now it fell from the heavens like a sword dropped from on high, its spiked tail angled to pierce Venethrax’s chest and pinion him to the earth. As it fell, so fast it almost couldn’t be seen, Venethrax was already turning, swinging Wyrmbane just as fast and with a finesse that belied its size, and Absylonia knew even the grace of the angelius wouldn’t be enough for it to evade the strike.
Wyrmbane sliced through the angelius’ tail, sending the spike flying. It grazed harmlessly off Venethrax’s power field and landed in the mud like an arrow fired from afar. The angelius shrieked, and Absylonia drew on its animus to create a blast of energy that hurled Venethrax backward, his taloned feet carving trenches in the earth.
As the angelius beat its wings to rise back into the air, the Reaper pushed itself from beneath the body of the neraph. The spawn’s attack had rendered the helljack mostly defunct—one arm was a mass of twisted metal, and its engine was ruptured and leaking black smoke—but its harpoon was still intact. The barbed missile sank into the angelius at the base of one of its wings and dragged the spawn back down into the reach of Venethrax’s blade, which was enough to sentence it to death.
With one sweep of Wyrmbane, the lich lord sheared the wings from one side of the angelius. It fell thrashing in the mud at his feet. Before Absylonia could react, he placed one metal foot on its neck and chopped downward to sever its head and send it tumbling. She tried to pull the blighted energy from the expiring spawn but found she could not. That energy was no longer hers, having already been siphoned away in long green streamers flowing from the slain beast to Venethrax, empowering him instead.
As he looked up from his grisly work, his skull seemed to smile at her. “By all means,” he called, his metallic voice ancient and echoing, “send more of your pets for me to kill.”
He pointed with Wyrmbane at Proteus, who was nearly finished with the Desecrator, but Absylonia had no intention of sacrificing more spawn to Venethrax if she could help it. She leapt into the air, her hands forming into wings to glide her toward her foe. As she dropped to the ground they changed again, bones disjointing with a series of sickening pops to transform her claws into brutal talons that raked at Venethrax. He stepped aside, and she carved furrows in his black armor. He brought Wyrmbane around, but she was already moving, her protean flesh already changing, reshaping itself to bend her out of the path of his blade.
Her blighted vision showed other ’jacks approaching from the fog, while she had no more spawn in range save Proteus. Dodging another swing from Wyrmbane, one that cut so close she could feel the breath of its passing along her skin, she reached within herself and released a cloud of blighted energy to temporarily disrupt Venethrax’s connection to his ’jacks—and prepared to sell her life as dearly as possible.
Through Absylonia’s eyes, Everblight saw her brave last stand, employing all her powers to hinder Venethrax right up until the end. Venethrax confronted her personally, lashing out with spell and blade. Her mutable body evaded him and absorbed his blows with the resiliency and tenacity she alone of his warlocks possessed, but the lich lord was tireless and ruthless, entirely within his element and focused on a goal that could not be denied. Through her nerves, the dragon felt the pain of the heavy blow that finally crippled her. The battle had been fierce. Absylonia was slicked with blood, and Proteus was crippled from transferred injuries. Venethrax’s armor was rent apart, but still the lich lord stood strong, while Absylonia lay beaten in the mud at his feet.
The other warlocks were distant to Everblight now, their thoughts and emotions muffled as he focused his full attention on the battle. He was inhabiting Absylonia as he had seldom inhabited any of his warlocks, the sensation
different even than his joining with Thagrosh. He felt her death throes, and the agony that poured from her spread like a ripple through all the athanc shards. Each of his warlocks staggered for a moment as the shards in their chests burned with sympathetic pain.
The pain itself, the physical sensation, meant nothing to Everblight. He had been completely unmade by the Iosans centuries before, and damage to his flesh was inconsequential next to the humiliation of defeat by a tide of mortals. The excruciation felt by living things as they died was foreign to him, a distraction he had deliberately avoided replicating in his dragonspawn. It wasn’t sharing Absylonia’s pain that kept him rooted in her consciousness. It wasn’t even the loyalty that he felt from her. She faced death with no fear for herself, only a crushing sense that she had failed him. What fixated his attention was Venethrax, towering over her. Gazing through her eyes into the blazing sockets of the lich lord’s skull, Everblight could almost imagine Venethrax saw him.
If Absylonia fell now, here, like this, Venethrax would claim her athanc shard. There was no possibility this foe would simply leave her corpse, as the study of draconic minions was his obsession. He would take her back to Cryx and dismember her—if he even waited that long. The athanc shard would be immediately apparent to him, unmistakable in its substance and import. If any creature on Caen had the knowledge to understand what Everblight had done, to puzzle out how he had spread himself among his warlocks to create a composite greater than the sum of its parts, it was Venethrax.
Should Absylonia’s athanc shard fall into Venethrax’s possession he would study it; he would see inside it and learn its secrets, Everblight’s secrets. And when he had wrung from it every last drop of knowledge that he could, he would offer it personally to Toruk, who would devour it. When that happened, Everblight knew Toruk would absorb a part of him. He was not willing to allow Toruk even a portion of himself. He felt compelled to act, though he knew it would cost him.
Absylonia knew she was dying. Her mouth was full of blood, and she could feel her lifeblood pooling on the ground beneath her. She reached out through her body and tried to will her flesh to change, but her normally fluid tissues were unresponsive. She was losing the feeling in her arms and legs. She couldn’t lift them, couldn’t fight. The light was beginning to go out, and through the haze she could see Venethrax approaching with one of his spidery necrotechs at his side.