Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (84 page)

In the same instant that Des’Ra’El released
the maelstrom at the enemy, it made one last desperate move. It
moved. I don’t know if it was just pure luck on my part that I
wasn’t watching him at that moment or if Des’Ra’El intended for me
to watch her, but that’s why I saw what happened—I was watching her
while she watched him. It appeared behind her on the balcony and it
took her life as the maelstrom hit. Des’Ra’El snapped his attention
back over the legions facing him and he jerked the power back, but
it didn’t matter. She was already gone and the enemy was shredded.
In that instant, Des’Ra’El’s world collapsed to a single point:
her. The problem was, he was connected to every point in the
universe, so this was more than a conceptual issue. Up and down,
left and right ceased to have meaning.

Chicken Little was right—the sky did
fall.

The energy had to go somewhere. The energy
from all those crushed nuclei and electrons collapsed into a single
point. The loss of everything was the only concept I could hold
during that incredibly bright and timeless instant.

“We have no idea what occurred around the
asymptote,” said Ethan, suddenly at my side again. I was suddenly
me again, which was shocking enough.

“Asymptote?” I said, stuttering the word out.
We were on the boulder again at the site of the Folly.

“Whatever the battle was, it created an
energy spike strong enough to kill every living thing in the
universe, including Des’Ra’El,” said Ethan. “He is interred there,
beneath the stone.”

I turned and drove my senses down into the
rock. What I found there bore little resemblance to either form of
the Des’Ra’El I’d seen. It wouldn’t even qualify as a burned out
husk or even a deflated, moldy tire. I had to look away.

“This was the first lesson for Walker of
Words,” Ethan said, meaning Kieran. “The universe was much poorer
for his passing.”

I looked at Ethan as he stared at the rock
face in despair. That’s when I realized he didn’t know what
happened at the Folly and why. They were a force of nature,
re-purposed for a cause. But I did remember. I went through it
while he was a part of it. Kieran went through it, too, I think.
And Ethan didn’t know what I experienced.

“There’s something different here,” I
murmured, looking around. The boulders were in the same place. The
plains stretched out in to the distance in their purple haze. The
mountain rose into the sky as majestically as before. Still, there
was a difference.

“Something’s different everywhere now,” Ethan
said, grimacing. “But you see my point about the enemy, right? You
understand how powerful this creature is?”

“Yes, Ethan,” I admitted facing him, meeting
his eyes. “What’s your point? That this thing is still around? That
it alone survived what Des’Ra’El did?”

“It did,” he said. “The third encounter with
the enemy. This will be fast.”

Ethan shifted us again through his memories
to a mountainous area with a stream running nearby. The thick
liquid masquerading as water didn’t quite burble so much as glug as
it passed us. This plane’s versions of trees and bushes began to
appear in ghostly form then take on more solid form before Kieran
and Des’Ra’El strolled by casually on the other bank. This was the
Kieran I knew, the first Kieran, tall, muscular, broad-shouldered,
and alert with thick auburn hair and bright emerald eyes. Not the
frail and thin boy barely breathing that’d given up on life. And
Des’Ra’El, too, looked much better than my last vision of him, but
nothing close to the un Ethan-filtered version. Still, he
didn’t look dead at the moment.

Something nagged at the edge of my
perceptions. I couldn’t quite put tongue to groove on what. Kieran
had an aura about him, not his aura, but one of Des’Ra’El’s making.
It was subtle, coating him, anointing him, I guess. Okay, I admit I
had no idea what he was doing to Kieran. Waves of nausea hit me as
that nagging feeling turned into severe claustrophobia emanating
from Ethan.

Ethan shot skyward as his memory focused on
his singular purpose of stopping a breach. There was a breach in
progress. I could only imagine that this is what it felt like to be
an angel, to have such power and such single-mindedness of
purpose.

Stay, Little Brother.

Again, he picked me out?

For the first time, I saw Ethan as he was
meant to be as he rocketed skyward. He was amazing just to watch
him move as he somehow wriggled his mass between different
dimensional planes to propel himself. And he was fast! He
intercepted the intruder high in the sky in a collision of white
light. One of his Brothers hit the intruder again, knocking him
eastward. What was Ethan hit the ground about fifty yards upstream
in an amorphous blob, the impact kicking up a small cloud of debris
into the air.

I really gotta learn to be faster on the
uptake. I knew this side of the story already. The old man was
pulling up carpet and saying “Good Night” for the last time. He
wanted me here to see something. All I had to do was find the
elephant in the room. That and stop mixing metaphors.

The enemy popped into existence ten feet
behind Des’Ra’El. I tried to yell, to get the Stone to throw a
shield between them, to raise my own shield even, but I was
impotent. A harsh word, impotent. I shouldn’t have worried, though.
They knew it was there.

The enemy had changed since the last
encounter. It had become less than it was, damaged and hurt. It
still hated Des’Ra’El to the core of its being, but its core was
smaller now. It would never recover what it was. It stood only
three feet tall, now, a cylindrical tripod. Its eyestalks were
sheered away to one but it still had all three antennae sets waving
erratically near its maw at the top of its “head,” and only one
appendage left, a tentacle really, that hung limply at its
side.

It was still adept at handling the various
energies of the universe. I felt it thrill as it began siphoning
Des’Ra’El’s life away from him. This was only odd in that I hadn’t
felt anything from it before, so why now? The thrill turned
abruptly to pain when Kieran appeared between the enemy and
Des’Ra’El, wielding the sword I’d seen only twice. I recognized the
sword’s composition now as Kieran severed the bindings the enemy
made to Des’Ra’El to make its siphon. It was made of Des’Ra’El’s
magic, the primal force, and the first magic. It was the magic that
built the universe.

That’s what was missing, before, I realized.
That spark, that drive that was life, to go on, to continue. It had
changed when the universe was destroyed and he hadn’t been able to
change it back. Or willing, I didn’t know which. My eyes flew to
Des’Ra’El to see him still talking calmly to Kieran, ignoring the
heated battle behind him. That shocked me back to the battle to see
Kieran attacking the enemy at action-movie speeds, cutting away
energy shields like rice paper and deflecting the enemy’s violent
attacks with a flick of his wrist. Two Kierans at the same time,
neither of them was ghostly at all.

Claustrophobia struck at me hard again and my
perceptions started closing in on me. I felt Ethan’s Brothers close
and I finally knew why as Des’Ra’El gave up his Realm to entropy.
Sending my senses out I found I didn’t have to go that far to find
the Brothers anymore. The Battling Kieran was closing on the enemy
and Communing Kieran was busy repressing his sadness at his
upcoming loss. It was going to be close to see who was going to
finish first.

Communing Kieran shot skyward as Des’Ra’El
committed the final word of power to his spell, sending Kieran
home. In the same instant, the second Kieran brought his dull yet
gleaming sword down and cleaved the enemy in two with an explosion
of power. Kieran was tossed back hard into Des’Ra’El’s back.
Unfazed he simply reached around and in an underhanded toss threw
Kieran after his first self.

Des’Ra’El looked at me again then. All those
rings centered on me, his mind and soul and power on me.
Incomprehensible again. Impossibly strong. He imbued the Brother
that would be Ethan with all of the Brothers’ energy, strength, and
knowledge and sent him on Kieran’s trail. Ethan’s scream of denial
at not wanting to leave his purpose was a banshee’s scream heard
over a hurricane’s wind. But it was blessedly brief as the Brothers
failed in their task as immovable objects. Entropy was an
irresistible force. A universal decree.

Des’Ra’El held my rapt attention the entire
time as his realm dissoluted into chaos, even when his body and
mine began to ebb away into nothingness. It wasn’t painful, sort of
like falling asleep. I didn’t want to die here, but this didn’t
feel like dying. As if I knew.

As the last two rings of color in Des’Ra’El’s
eyes began to fade into the blackness, I heard the first noise from
the background. It was a word. His last word. The one he said to
Kieran that sent him flying off through the universe somewhere. It
was a simple word, filled with ideas of warmth and comfort, safety
and companionship, love. Devastating when lost, but possible to
have more than one. Ehran had found it here and had found Kir
du’Ahn through it. And as I faded into nothing, I thought about
that word.

Home.

Chapter 48

I rolled over in my bed, pulling the sheet up
a little further. The air conditioning had the room a little chilly
in the morning. Hugging my pillow closer, I snuggled in a little
deeper to doze. I’d forgotten how good my bed felt after so long
traveling. Traveling.

I bolted upright, finally taking in the
problem. I wasn’t supposed to be at home. We were in Ireland, not
Alabama. Those were two different continents, thousands of miles
away. I linked into the ward and searched the property for any hint
of problems, but it looked just like we’d left it. That left me
safe and sound at the moment, but in a predicament. There was money
here, but all of my identification was in Ireland, along with bank
account numbers, phones, and phone numbers. Peter had put them in
our phones for us. He was on his third backup phone and I had no
idea what that number was or what Kieran’s second backup number
was.

Throwing back the sheets to get up, I
realized I would need clothes before I did much of anything. This
was why I didn’t sleep buck naked—you never knew when you might
have to leave the house in a hurry. Throwing on a shirt and shorts,
I took stock of my internals. The Pact still stood proudly glowing
on the Stone, surrounded by the Swords with the Quiver and the
Crossbow lying at the base. The Pacthome stood there as the iron
gate. The tiny black dot that represented Ethan’s anchor was still
wedged in between the Pact and the Stone. The three batteries were
still lined up nearby. Everything looked normal and right.

“Ethan? You all right in there?” I asked out
loud, poking the spot on the Pact lightly. I wasn’t expecting the
reaction I got from him.

He erupted out of me. From every pore in my
skin, I felt him pass. Every hair on my body stood on end from the
excitement he held in finding me. He erupted, the only word for it.
Then he crushed the breath out of me as he took form, squeezing and
hugging me, his arms tight around me.

“Where the hell have you been? They’ve been
searching for two days!” he said, his voice muffled in my shoulder
still. I felt a few tears fall on my neck and hugged him back.

“It’s good to have you back on this side,
too,” I said. “Wait, what? Two days?”

“Kir du’Ahn, I have him,” Ethan said, putting
power behind the words. He wasn’t talking to me. He looked around
the room, barely pulling away from me but not releasing me. “We are
in his bedroom at home.”

“What happened? Why have I been gone for two
days?” I demanded to know.

“You’d have to tell me where you went first?”
he said. “One second we were talking and the next you were gone! I
had nothing to do with it.”

I gawked at him. It’s all I could do at that
moment. I tried to say it was because of his trip down memory lane
that I got me yanked out of his mind by a Twice-Dead god. When I
tried to speak, though, I forgot. Not what I was going to say, but
how to speak. That was interesting. I changed tracks after a
moment, never having this kind of problem before.

“I was in your memories,” I said, blankly.
Words came out, that was a start.

I felt a huge influx of energy coming, aiming
for us along the ley lines. It veered off the nearest one,
triggering the ward’s proximity alarms then relaxing them as the
ward recognized Kieran. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised
that a jump of several thousand miles was possible. After all, I’d
just jumped a few cosmological distances in two days.

“Little Brother!” he called from the living
room. I was already moving in that direction, disentangling from
Ethan. He kept a hand on my shoulder, walking quickly behind me to
not lose distance. Kieran met me in the hallway with a crushing
bear hug, reminding me once again of how big he was.

“…can’t… breathe…” I gasped. Barely.

“Where have you been?” he asked me angrily,
holding me up by the shoulders. Off the ground by at least three
inches, my feet dangled in the air. “Are you hurt?”

“You’re hurting me!” I griped at him. It took
him a second but he came to his senses and set me on the floor and
hugged me close again, briefly and not as hard this time.

“Now where have you been? We’ve been
searching for two days for you!” he asked angrily. At least he
tried to sound angry. It just wasn’t in him right then. The relief
in finding me was too great and his aura showed it.

“I don’t really know,” I said. “One minute I
was talking to Ethan like you asked, and the next…” I forgot how to
talk again. “I don’t know. I guess I got lost in his memory
somehow.”

“Physically?” Kieran asked, eyes squinted and
brows knitted together, staring into me deeply and suspiciously.
“You did not start your discussion with him physically, but I had
no sense of when your body left the Cahill castle. I did however
feel the magic around the binding spell you used to call
Eth’anok’avel. For someone unschooled, you show an adept hand at
some fairly complex principles.”