Lords Of Existence (Book 8) (11 page)

Leaxis flowed on a trail that burned with the sickly sweet smell of sugar on fire. The rest of the planewalker council, Lar, Valpu-nof, Wadanti, and others arrived just behind.

Garrick saw no need to speak.

Both he and Leaxis understood that the planewalkers could not afford to leave any champion standing, and that the champions had come to Existence specifically to rid the Thousand Worlds of their planewalker oversight.

Both understood this would be a battle to the death.

Garrick flared a red and blue symbol.

They turned to him then, the champions—a force greater than any before seen in any one of the Thousand Worlds alone.

“To your gates,” Garrick said, reaching into the flow and ripping energy together to form a sword of flaming power. “It is time to rid ourselves of these parasites.”

The champions jettisoned themselves from the node and spread across Existence, each taking positions between the planewalkers and the gate that led to their own home worlds.

Leaxis wrapped herself around Garrick, hoping to snuff him with one quick burst, but he was no longer a simple mage. He used Hezarin’s spite against her own kinsfolk, and cut into the lord council with the sword.

Leaxis retreated, licking her wounds.

Garrick flowed forward, part man, part planewalker, striding through the vast pit of magestuff and life force and the other fledgling flanges of power he had never before felt. It was as if All of Existence wrapped around him, as if he could reach out and touch any part of it.

The battle engaged everywhere at once.

Champions screamed. Planewalkers threw energy through multi-space with prismatic flashes in spectrums that Garrick had never before seen.

As he waded on, he felt a new ripple in the flow, a green bubble of darkness that raced across a hemisphere of his thought. Braxidane. It was Braxidane. And it was Amanda, and … he sensed a third essence, a thin yellow presence that tasted of mint and beat with a power that grew stronger as each segment of time passed.

Will?

His sword flared.

What was Will doing here?

Leaxis sent a crackling wall of thunder and lightning screeching through the distance between them.

Garrick shielded himself, then cut into Leaxis. All of Existence shook with rage.

She responded by tossing greater flows of power at him. The fabric of time tore with the sound of banshees on fire. The council came forward to fight beside her, while other
talla
suddenly appeared nearby, peeling off toward gates of the Thousand Worlds in numbers too great to count.

Three of the planewalkers underestimated the champions and died immediately, and two others fled. But more stood and fought their bloody battles, bringing cries from the champions.

Garrick caught Valpu-nof distracted, and All of Existence shuddered as the planewalker’s essence imploded into many-space. Garrick reached into the core of the explosion and mixed Valpu-nof’s energy with Hezarin’s. He absorbed Lar next, but left Leaxis an opening. Only nimble reaction saved him from the lord council’s attack.

More planewalkers appeared, some skimming off to battle the champions, others staying to join the struggle against Garrick.

And some, Garrick saw, had turned on others.

The planewalkers were fighting each other, turning the melee from a pure rebellion to some odd mixture of prison break and civil war. It made him laugh as he fought. It buoyed his spirit to see these “gods” in their most insane forms.

He blocked spell work and fended off attacks.

He waved his sword in wide swaths of destruction.

He cried and screamed as around him explosions ripped the very fabric of Existence.

Understanding dawned slowly.

He was stronger than any one of them.

His humanity had built upon the
talla
essence he had taken from Hezarin to create something different, something unique—and that uniqueness was something the planewalkers had never had to deal with before.

They adjusted and learned, though. And in tactics that reminded him of Adruin’s mages of the orders, some began to gather together and fight as one.

Still, the battle raged.

Braxidane watched as the melee became a whirling mass of chaos between groups that shifted with every moment. It was a maelstrom of power, a conglomeration of magic, weaponry, blood, and death unlike anything he could have imagined.

Evading the whole tangled mess, Braxidane flowed into Garrick’s node.

This was not what he had wanted.

It wasn’t right. And worse, it was going to ruin his entire plan. What value was leading All of Existence if All of Existence was nothing but a hollow shadow of its former self? Why were his brothers and sisters ruining everything? What had the champions done?

“Stop it!” Braxidane screamed as he stepped into the void.

But the flash of his voice and the taste of his tone were lost in the masses. Braxidane pulsed green and orange and yellow, and he reeked of pure honey. He took on the form of a flaming eagle, talons outstretched to lean into an onrushing wave of energy as he landed.

“Stop this!” he called again. “Brothers! Sisters! You’re ruining everything!”

“Now you choose to see the truth, brother?” Agar said from his place at Adruin’s gate.

“These are my champions!” Braxidane called. “If you leave them be, I will bring this to an end!”

Agar laughed. “You don’t see the truth even now?”

“I can control them.”

“No, Braxidane. “That time is long past.”

Agar ripped the seal away from Adruin, then, and he tossed it aside in a bloody haze of mist and gore. He laughed at Braxidane again. “You are done brother,” he said. “It is time for your consequence.”

Agar launched himself like a missile into the middle of Braxidane’s being.

The blast pulsed with power. A moment later, particles of Braxidane’s life force scattered across the expanse of Existence.

It was as if everything inside him had been ripped from its place—Garrick’s heart tore, his liver shredded, his lungs… He wanted to scream, but the pain was so intense there was nothing left to scream with. He froze in pain, his back arched, his fists clenched around the pommel of his flaming sword.

Leaxis whipped him then, too.

She spun in a whirling cloud that sent streams from her hair to sear his ribs, and raise welts that burned like salted wounds.

It was a pain like none other.

But when it ended Garrick felt a freedom he had never known could exist.

Braxidane was gone.

He was free. Truly free.

He was free of Braxidane. Free of Alistair, and Hersha Padiglio. Free of Elman and the orders. Free of Darien and Ellesadil. Free of Sunathri. Free of his mother, and of Baron Fahid and every other man who had ever owned him. He was past them, now.

This was his life. The idea tasted true and pure.

Leaxis cried out then.

She had Amanda crushed in a power vise. The Freeborn mage fought valiantly, but she was losing. The truth of her fate registered as raw fear in the deepness of her eyes.

But Will came behind Leaxis and cut into her grasp.

Her hold on Amanda broke, but the planewalker stunned the boy so that he hung there, suspended in mid-space, spinning away in silence, arms and legs trailing away into nothingness.

Garrick cried out and raced toward them, lobbing great handfuls of energy at her. Three lords died in his attack, but Leaxis shied away and survived.

She let go of Will, though.

Garrick poured himself into the boy, and was encouraged when his life force surged. It felt like summer, he thought. Will’s essence felt like summer. The boy was pure of heart. He would have grown to a good man if Garrick had not conspired with the planewalkers to destroy his future.

There was no time to dwell, though. The lords pressed in on him, their combined presence like a net closing over him. He pressed against that curtain and felt the lack of trust at its seams.

That was it.

The planewalkers held no love for each other. They could not trust. At their core, they lived lives of fear. They wanted only control, only power. And since ultimate power corrupts, they would never be able to give trust.

But they were like insects, too.

Or, to use Braxidane’s more apt analogy, they planewalkers were weeds, simple shells for power, conduits that could lie fallow for centuries, for millennia, for eons, and still would come back as soon as the energy of Existence were to filter through them. He felt this in the planewalker life force that he held inside his body. The foundation of a planewalker was undying, and as Braxidane had once suggested of a plane, they would always come back.

Unless.

Garrick gave a grim expression as he cast magic.

Unless they were truly obliterated.

Unless every trace of them was removed from the world as one, single, whole.

“Amanda!” Garrick called as he threw more energy at the council “Recover Will! Protect him!”

Amanda moved toward the boy, and Garrick turned back to the battle.

He saw devastation.

And he saw, also, the truth of the struggle. The supply of planewalkers seemed endless, but his champions were not. They were dying, and would not last much longer, no matter how you counted time.

His champions were going to be destroyed.

He pushed himself throughout All of Existence then. The movement was instinctive and simple. He spread himself into a vaporous energy that filled the full extent of everywhere at once.

“Run,” he flashed at the champions. “Take to your planes!”

And they did.

He covered their retreats, spreading himself farther. He grasped for anything he could touch, and dragged himself further into every open space throughout All of Existence. He reached into dimensions to set gates. He pulled energy from Talin, and drank directly from Existence itself, mixing it all with power that came from his own life force. He was the air. He was the smoke that filled every space in that air. Time bent. Infinite existence came as a vision that was crystalline and clear. Land collapsed below him. He felt Amanda and Will. He felt planewalkers and nodes. The champions were retreating, and the essence of the dead swirled in the reaches of this many-space. A siren called from a place he could not determine. A low rumble filled the void.

Did he exist anymore?

Did he have a body?

Yes. No. He had no words for this existence. No framework for this consciousness. All he knew was that he was there. Ubiquitous. And that he was ready.

Leaxis cast a flame into the framework of his node then.

Garrick latched onto it.

He clenched every part of himself, grabbed every planewalker he came into contact with and pulled them tight against him. He condensed, and a vacuum throughout All of Existence ripped into the very essence of each of them. He swallowed it all into himself. Power crammed into his gates, crushing them, stretching them, rending them.

He wrapped himself tightly around the Lord Council.

The planewalker’s fire flared bright. She screamed, but her voice was drowned by a rasping torrent of power that collapsed into itself faster than Garrick could control. Space drew down, condensing, compressing into heat and energy.

There was an explosion.

A thousand bitter-sharp knives bore into him.

His brain collapsed. Gates tore and crumbled like the wall around Dorfort. Was this his mind cracking? Was it his body? Pain centered on a single point. Exquisite pain. Intense pain. Pain that drew into a scream that echoed throughout all of Existence.

Then it was done, and there was nothing but a dark and solid silence.

Chapter 17

Zutrian Esta was reviewing supply plans with his counselors when his link to the plane of magic returned. It came with such a jolt that he nearly dropped the parchment he had been reading.

The others felt it, too.

The link was fresh and pure. It filled his senses with joyous excitement.

He set a gate and cast a faint breeze over the page before him, smiling as the force cooled his skin and the page turned to a new table of figures.

He looked into the beaming faces of his compatriots.

“Does this mean what I think it does?” said Haffee.

“Yes.” It was Cara who replied. “The link has returned, just as I expected it would.”

Zutrian nodded.

The scars that crossed Cara’s face and neck spoke for her understanding of how things could work throughout the planes, and she had been the strongest voice on his panel. She had argued long that the power would return. She said she understood the creatures who controlled magic, and that they would not withhold it for long.

Zutrian demurred to her in this case because he agreed with her. He had dealt with powerful entities across planes before. They understood business did not work well when lines of commerce were cut.

But inside, Zutrian admitted he was relieved. He had not been as sure of himself as he let on, and this event meant he could relax. It meant their advantage was real.

He turned to Cara.

“You were right to take such a position, Cara, and I think it is time you step further into a role that guides this order. If you would, please go gather the council together for a session this evening. It is time to launch our attack on Dorfort, and I would like you to lead it.”

She did a poor job of fighting a grin.

“I would be honored to take such a role, High Superior.”

“Then go gather the order. We must ride soon.”

Existence

“Gather them up,” a champion said to Amanda.

Amanda started. She had been in a fog of thought.

The champion was female, dressed in black armor and carrying a mace that glowed with a muted flare.

“What?” Amanda finally managed to reply.

“We are returning to our planes,” another champion replied—a male this time, a man with pale orange skin and who was slight of bearing. He had multiple eye sockets ringing the half circle around the ridge of his forehead. “You need to take Garrick and your other partner to your plane.”