Though at the very limit of his own power, Ethan could feel his advantage slowly taking hold. For several minutes the two forces raged against each other for supremacy in the space between them, vomiting bits of fire into the molten pit below that exploded on impact. But as the seconds ticked by, Ethan’s magic gradually started to push the black fire inch by inch back toward its source. In the heat of battle, all the pain in his body was temporarily gone. His focus was absolute.
Veins bulged from Shinzan’s brow; his face and hair soaked in sweat. Realizing that he was on the brink of defeat, he renewed his efforts, summoning every last drop of power at his disposal. This only delayed the inevitable for a moment. As the last few inches separating him from his demise was lost, a shrill scream escaped and he threw his arms around his chest.
Almost in an anti-climax, with a final sharp crackle of energy, it was over. Ethan’s power had totally consumed Shinzan's body...his father's body...searing away every last trace of flesh and bone in an instant. Nothing remained but a scorch mark and a tiny stump of what had once been the greatest power ever to defile Lumnia. A thin stream of black smoke issued forth from the spot.
Ethan fell to his knees, unable to tear his eyes away. It was over. He had won. The plan had worked. He continued to stare at the line of smoke for another minute or so, still unable to grasp what had just happened. During his contact with Shinzan’s power, he had felt the origin of its source. It was pure malevolence, so sick and depraved it was virtually beyond comprehension.
The smoke gradually thickened, calling him back into the moment. This wasn’t quite over yet. Reaching into the satchel attached to his belt, he removed the dwarf device. Shinzan was still alive. He was trying to escape. Ethan held up the crystal, causing the smoke to freeze completely still.
In response to this, a low rumble resonated deep within the earth. The tiny stump - all that remained of Shinzan’s body - then formed into a ball of black flames and abruptly surged away in the direction of the Emperor's palace. Without panic, Ethan concentrated and whispered an incantation. A blue light within the crystal began to pulse in time with his own heart. The essence of Shinzan was already more than a mile away, but it didn’t matter. There was nowhere he could hide from what was about to happen.
As Ethan knew they would, the flames halted in their flight and then went into reverse as the devise pulled them inexorably back. A hollow cry carrying on the air was filled with terror and desperation. He could not help but feel a measure of satisfaction that the being who had caused so much fear and pain was now experiencing the same dread that his countless victims had suffered for more than five-hundred years.
When the essence reached the far end of the pit, Ethan set the crystal on the ground by his feet. As the black flames continued to be pulled in, they scattered into nothingness, leaving behind only a fist-sized orb of rapidly fading pale white light. Then, in a final flurry of movement, the orb entered the crystal and was gone completely from sight. For a moment Ethan did nothing. That all Shinzan’s colossal power could be reduced to a tiny light barely bright enough to outshine a candle was incomprehensible. How could anyone believe that this was the virtually unstoppable force that had come so close to destroying their world?
He picked up the crystal now containing his foe and released a long breath. It was almost over. He knew precisely where to go next. The moment their powers had met he had felt the location of Shinzan's source. Moreover, he knew how to destroy it.
Raising a hand, he let fly a ball of flame that exploded just below the cloud cover. His injured ribs protested immediately at the movement by sending a sharp pain stabbing through his entire upper body. Even so, the moment was still sweet. He tried to imagine the smile on Kat’s face when seeing the signal that he had been victorious. He longed to go to her, but there was one final task to accomplish first.
He would need to use caution when using the traveling spell. He was weak, and had no intention of fighting his way through Shinzan’s palace. Not that he could really see this as being necessary. Without the Emperor’s power, he felt sure the building would already be turning to dust. Shinzan's power had built it. And without him, it could not endure.
After stuffing the crystal back inside his satchel, Ethan turned his attention to the eastern horizon. He was about to cast the traveling spell when he felt an intense vibration around his waist. This was quickly followed by a high-pitched squeaking sound coming from within his satchel. Before he knew it, the bag was bursting into flames. Without thinking, he reached inside to pull out the dwarf device. It burned both his hands, causing him to toss it to the ground. The crystal was now glowing red and pulsing wildly.
His mind searched frantically for some way of containing it. In a desperate effort, he cast the same spell that had been used to entomb Lylinora. For a moment there was hope as a green layer of magic began to solidify around the crystal. But this was shattered as the device cracked straight down the center, splitting apart in two equal pieces. Black flames flew straight up from this opening, ascending and spreading until the sky was blanketed with blazing streaks of Shinzan’s essence.
Ethan could feel the malevolence descending upon him – pure hate and malice. Fear gripped him. He knew what was coming. Shinzan would take another body. For a terrifying moment he imagined it would be his own. That like his father, he would become the instrument of doom hell bent on the death of Lumnia and all who lived upon her.
But the flames did not fall any further. Rather, they began to pull together until they had become a single mass roughly one-hundred feet across. Once fully formed, this then shot westward at tremendous velocity…straight toward where he had left Kat and the others.
Fighting back the ever growing pain in his ribs, he cast a traveling spell that used up virtually all of his remaining strength. Even at the fastest speed he could muster, it still took close to an hour to make it across the wasteland – though in his impatient mind it felt like twenty times as long. The others would not be ready for what was coming. Shinzan needed a body. Why he had not attempted to take his was impossible to know. But the next closest opportunity he'd have of finding one was with his friends.
Ethan returned to earth only a few yards away from where they were gathered. He saw immediately that someone was missing.
“He took my brother!” screamed Val. “That son of a bitch took him from me!”
She was clutching desperately onto Kat, sobbing uncontrollably. Lylinora was standing alongside a stone-faced David just behind her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, running to Kat’s side.
She nodded. “I'm fine. But like Val said, Shinzan took Jake’s body.”
Lylinora added: “A great ball of black fire came down. I tried to repel it, but it was way too powerful for me. We tried to outrun it, but was too fast.”
In spite of Val’s pain, Ethan could not help but be relieved that it was her brother and not Kat who Shinzan had possessed. He placed a hand on Val’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
He wanted to say that they would save him, but he could not bring himself to tell such an obvious lie.
“Can you do anything at all to get him back?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” Ethan answered. “If I can, I will.”
“This is all your fault!” snapped Val. “You brought us here. He should have taken
you
. Not Jake.”
“I am truly sorry,” Ethan repeated. “There was nothing I could do. The crystal wasn’t strong enough to contain him.”
A long and very uncomfortable moment of silence descended over the group. Lylinora then beckoned him to follow her a short distance away from the others.
When they were out of earshot, she stopped to face him. “You’re hurt,” she said. “I can tell.”
“A bit,” Ethan admitted. “It could have been a whole lot worse though.”
She placed her hands on his chest. In just a few seconds the pain subsided and he could feel his shoulder and ribs mending.
After thanking her, he said: “Now I need you to tell me everything that happened in detail.”
She gave a nod and drew a breath before beginning. “When the fire struck Jake, we had no idea what had happened. A few seconds later the flames vanished and he was left lying flat on his back. I reached him first, just as he opened his eyes.”
Her voice grew quieter and she gave a shudder. “I felt him stare straight into my spirit. It was…horrible...almost like I'd been raped. Then he pushed himself up just as Val reached us. Jake looked at her for a second, then spat right in her face. After that he rose from the ground and hovered just above our heads with a disgusting smile on his face. He said to tell you that you've lost, and that he wanted you to live long enough to see all that you love perish.” She lowered her head. “Then, in a flash, he was gone.”
“He didn’t say anything else?” Ethan pressed. “Nothing at all?”
“No. He just vanished.” She looked up, tears welling. “What are we going to do now?”
Ethan shut his eyes. A good question, if ever he had heard one. What
were
they going to do now? They had fought and lost. And he knew of no other way to defeat Shinzan. But in truth, what did it matter? The only choices available were to fight or surrender.
He opened his eyes again and squared his shoulders. “We’re going to find a way to kill him. That’s what we’re going to do. But first I need you to stay here with Val and David.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To free Renald’s son. We’re going to need him now.”
The effort required was enormous. Sweat poured freely from Ethan’s brow, running down and stinging his eyes. And all the time, the ghostly figure of Lynial Dragonvein's spectral guardian continued to thrash around maniacally, its mouth gaping wide in a silent scream. There was no doubting the strength of Renald’s ward. He must have spent a great deal of time constructing it, though this was hardly surprising seeing as how it was there to protect his only son.
Even now, Ethan was not entirely convinced of the wisdom of what he was doing. Lynial was safe here. Not even Shinzan could breach these wards without killing the person they guarded. Not on his own, anyway. That Renald had ultimately relented and passed over the method he used to cast them was at least making the task a bit easier. Even so, maintaining the fine balance required to ease apart the wards so that Kat could enter safely, while at the same time not shattering them completely and so dooming Lynial, was still taking a big toll on his strength.
Lylinora had offered her assistance. But he needed her to take care of Val, who right now was becoming increasingly unraveled. At one point he had almost been forced to put her into a spell of holding in order to keep her from rushing off to Shinzan’s palace.
David had become oddly stoic throughout it all. He did his best to comfort Val, even though his mind was clearly focused on different matters. There was something raging inside that thin frame that Ethan had seen before in others. The quiet rage of a man with deadly intent in his heart. Men who had been pushed to a place that removed all compassion from their being and had it replaced solely with vengeance. It was actually surprising that David had come to feel so strongly for Val. Ethan recalled the fear and desperation he had exhibited when first brought to Lumnia, raising the question whether he would be of any use to them at all.
He breathed a huge sigh of relief when he at last saw Kat emerge with the arm of a half unconscious man draped over her shoulder. Once she was clear of the wards, he released his hold on the guardian. It tried to chase after Kat - its screams no longer silent. But Ethan was easily able to push it back with a simple protection spell. Once down the corridor, he positioned himself on the other side of Lynial to help Kat carry him. Up until then she had been using a weak levitation charm to ease the burden.
Upon reaching the surface, he examined Lynial carefully. As in Lylinora's case, such a long time sealed within the crystal had sapped him of all strength. Perhaps that was just as well, Ethan considered. This was not the place he would have chosen to explain what had happened.
“Take him and join the others,” he told Kat.
This would be the first time that Kat had used the traveling spell. In spite of the danger they were still in, and the tragedy which had befallen their friend, she could not help but look excited by the prospect.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Not far,” he replied, giving her a reassuring smile. “Just to the edge of Shinzan’s domain. There is something I need to see.”
She frowned. “I don’t like the idea of you being so close. What if he comes back?”
“He won’t.” He shut his eyes and took a long breath. “He’ll stay close to his palace for a while now.”
The surge of magic coming from the east was massive. If he was right about the cause, then Shinzan would be untouchable. This also meant that he had other plans in mind. Ethan had only destroyed the physical form of his foe. The sinister mind and vile nature of the Emperor still existed and would now be inflamed. The pressure he was applying to the dragons had already increased dramatically. Soon they would be unable to keep him at bay any longer; much sooner than Ethan had expected.
After kissing Kat goodbye and promising to flee at the first sign of his enemy, he waited around just long enough to be certain she was able to handle the traveling spell. Not that he ever really doubted her ability to do so. Satisfied, he then set off in a different direction, flying toward the desert, wrapped in a cloak of swirling air.
After rising several hundred feet, he could see the enormous expanse of desert in the distance ahead. Just beyond the range of his visibility would be the city of Noel. Unless he was wrong in his assumption about what Shinzan had done, the city had already become a lifeless husk.
The moment his feet touched the desert sands he knew his fears had been correct. Though invisible to the eye, Shinzan had erected a barrier that completely surrounded his lands. A barrier that only the Emperor himself could cross. All others would be stripped of magic completely.
There was another way, but Ethan would need to take
that
path alone. And he would be facing Shinzan’s full power. Though they could win the fight against his armies, in the end the rebellion was sure to fail. But of course, a small part of him had known this from the very moment he retook his body from Martok.
Everything up until now had been nothing more than a game: one that Shinzan had been playing for five-hundred years.
He could feel that his enemy was aware of his presence. He could hear him laughing at his foolishness. Not even with all of Martok’s vast knowledge at his disposal would he be able to save this world. The feeling of frustration was overwhelming.
But then, quite suddenly, the mocking laughter was joined by another voice. One that he did not recognize and was at first confusing.
“You know what you must do,” it told him emphatically. “There has only ever been one path for you. But you
must
have the courage to take it.”