The HaRT Knight Decaverse

Heir of Magic

Chapter 43

Celestial Rain

The velvety black of the night sky gave way to a pink hue as the sun began to rise, bringing with it the last day the city needed to repel the invading force. Alexander and Merrick had spent most of the night with the unconscious Jared, the two friends always keeping the conversation alive in an attempt to drive out the sound of the battle raging a few miles away. The young blacksmith only awoke an hour before sunrise and was very groggy and confused. The medico who treated him said that Jared showed no signs of lasting injury and that he should be better after a few hours’ sleep. After hearing the diagnosis, Alexander and Merrick made their way up to the top of the wall again.
“Commander Alexander!” General Darras exclaimed. “I have no idea how you did it, lad, but bloody Tartos, it was impressive.”
“How are we holding up, General?” Alexander asked, ignoring the compliment and its subtle question.
“No more towers have broken through our defenses. The archers have shot down piles of those things down there, and the three generals have been stagnant so far,” Darras reported.
“Well, that’s good news,” Alexander said.
“What’s wrong, brother?” Merrick asked.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” Alexander stared toward the three generals who stood still on their end of the battlefield.
“Nonsense,” Darras said smugly. “We’re winning. We have proven to be their superiors.” He opened his arms to the opposing force in a mocking gesture before adding, “Is that all Cain has for us? Pathetic! The forces of Cain will never set foot in this city.”
As often happens to those who challenged fate, Darras’s smug smile was abruptly wiped off his face as the Shepherd King claimed him. Something long and pink shot up from behind the gloating general and wrapped itself around his foot. Before anyone could react, the long pink thing retracted back down the wall, pulling the general with it.
“Darras!” Alexander shouted as he and Merrick ran to the edge of the wall.
Yells of horror sounded as the same thing that had claimed Darras claimed more lives across the lines of soldiers. Horse-sized gray-green lizards were crawling up the side of the wall, rope ladders tied to their tails.
Darras’ limp arm still protruded from the fanged mouth of the creature that appeared before Alexander and Merrick. The creature swallowed it and snarled at its two new opponents.
“Celecarta,” Merrick yelled and drew his swords.
Alexander sent a blast of aeroturgy at the lizard and its abomination rider and blew them both off the wall, but a second later a new celecarta crawled up to take the other’s place. Merrick disposed of this one. With his werewolf strength he lifted the creature off its feet, over his head, and threw it over the side of the wall, the abomination rider still strapped in to the celecarta’s special saddle.
Alexander and Merrick shared a look, nodded at one another, then set to work, each with their weapons in hand, ready to attack any enemy creature who would dare to come close to them. The number of celecarta and their riders seemed infinite as they slowly made their way through the climbing mount’s numbers.
These giant lizards might have been frightening and deadly, but the warriors on the wall kept them at bay for several hours. The day stretched on as the battle raged without pause, and by midday, rain finally started to fall from the thick black clouds above. The cold water was refreshing on Alexander’s skin and he indulged in a weary second of rest as he just stood there allowing the rain to cool his tired and sleepless body. It was a mistake. In that second of inattention, something soft and sticky struck the back of his left hand. The tongue retracted with lightning-fast speed, pulling him ever closer to the fanged mouth of a celecarta.
As his hand vanished into the darkness of the creature’s mouth, Alexander whispered, “Shadow.” The sword in his right split into two, and the black blade formed in his left hand. The creature gave a small groan and fell to its side, Shadow’s blade sticking out the top of its skull. The abomination rider quickly unstrapped himself from his saddle and jumped forward, his war hammer held above his head, ready to strike.
Alexander struggled to pull the blade free from the celecarta’s skull but he knew he would be too slow to stop the incoming blow. The hammer was already coming down when a celecarta thrown through the air by Merrick hit the abomination from the side and sent it over the wall.
“You all right?” Merrick shouted from nearby.
Alexander finally freed Shadow from the celecarta skull and said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention—” Merrick cut off as something caught his attention. Alexander followed his gaze and immediately dropped both his swords. Using both hands, he sent a blast of air at Merrick. The aeroturgic attack lifted the other man off his feet and launched him over to the second wall where he landed with a thud.
The spot where Merrick had been standing a second ago exploded and threw Alexander to one side. His tired body screamed in protest but he forced himself to roll back to his feet. He stared at the source of the danger. The White General had opened a dimensional gate from which a bolt of explosive energy had launched at Merrick. He moved the bright white pentacle key as he altered his aim at Alexander instead. The pretty wizard opened and shut the dimensional gate rapidly and another bolt of energy flew across the battlefield.
Alexander leaped to the side and the bolt once again sent stone flying everywhere. The White General launched three more bolts of energy and Alexander quickly opened his own dimensional gate. The pane of opaque black energy with ruby cracks appeared before him and deflected the three magic bolts.
“Okay, pretty boy, my turn,” Alexander said under his breath. The two Trinity Fire spells he had conjured earlier had cost him far too much thaumaturgic energy, and he still hadn’t recovered enough for any spells of such a high level, but there was one thing he could try. He had been thinking about how to make the spell work all night while sitting beside Jared’s bed. It would require a great deal of skill and luck—if it is even possible.
He knelt down on one knee and searched for a piece of stone that felt just right. Once he found one, he got back up and levitated the stone above the palm of his hand using aeroturgy. Delicately, Alexander poured his thaumaturgic energy into the stone, weaving it in his mind as if knitting a sweater. It took a full minute of absolute concentration, but he managed it.
With his left, Alexander wiped away the protective barrier around him and with his right he took aim. He created a small but powerful aeroturgic explosion that launched the stone clear across the battlefield, straight at the White General.
Just as Alexander had expected, the White General deflected the stone with a flick of the wrist, sending it into the ground next to him.
A grin spread on Alexander’s face.
The ground beneath the White General shook, and the next second, a giant tree exploded out of the ground. Its vines and roots gripped at anything or anyone who came close to it. The White General escaped it just in time, but a nearby abomination was not so lucky. A pair of vines wrapped around the abomination’s body, lifting it into the air. A mist of blood rained down as the vines crushed the life from it, and then the tree began to sag suddenly. The color drained from the bark and leaves, and the branches hung limply as the Black General stepped out from behind the dying tree.
“Poison,” Alexander whispered to himself. He watched as the three generals spoke for a moment and felt a sense of satisfaction at the way the White General seemed astonished at what had just happened.
A sudden sense of dread abruptly replaced Alexander’s satisfaction as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He spun around as he sensed the appearance of an enormous amount of thaumaturgic energy coming from the army camp. Arcs of red-brown energy reached into the air like spasming spider legs. The next second, a teardrop-shaped mass of thaumaturgic energy shot into the sky and through the clouds. The silent second that followed felt eternal, as if everyone on both sides of the battle were holding their breath in anticipation of what would happen next.
With a dull crack and thud the spell behind the clouds exploded into a city-sized pentacle key. The obscured pentacle turned the clouds red and illuminated the world below, painting everything a reddish-brow.
Dante had cast his spell. They had done it. This battle was over.

“What in the name of He Who Slumbers was that?” Fabien asked as he strode around the decaying mass of the magically conjured tree.
“One of the most impressive feats of magic I’ve seen in recent memory,” Peramier said.
“What do you mean? What sort of magic was this?” Guerra asked, breaking a dried vine that had tried to wrap itself around his weak arm.
Peramier shook his head, “The type of magic he just used isn’t what’s so impressive. It’s how he used it. This took talent.” He placed a hand on the side of the dead tree, his eyes glittering. “In all the centuries I’ve been alive, I’ve only seen talent like this three, maybe four times.”
“Let me guess, Cain is one,” Fabien said.
Peramier laughed. “Cain is a brute. He may be magnitudes more powerful than anyone else on the continent, but he does not possess the skill to pull off a spell of this subtlety and delicate precision.”
“So what does that mean?” Fabien asked.
“It means that your demigod might be even more dangerous than—” Peramier cut off and spun to face the demigod. He had felt the massive surge of magic and had suspected it to be the young warrior’s doing, but he was wrong. There’s someone else in the city with an impressive amount of power, he thought as a mass of thaumaturgic energy launched into the sky and through the clouds above.
“What’s that?” Fabien asked hesitantly.
“It’s a spell.” Peramier grinned as the gigantic pentacle key formed in the sky. “A very naughty spell.”
From behind the clouds came a rumbling like the growl of an enormous dragon stirred from its sleep. Peramier’s intellectual curiosity shattered like glass as the reality of what was about to happen set in.
“Get back!” he yelled. His first instinct and reaction was to grab Fabien and force the dhaesí behind him as he cast a protective barrier around them.
The clouds above broke apart and hundreds upon hundreds of enormous flaming boulders rained down on the battlefield. The speeding stones smashed into the ranks of the abominations, causing the ground to quake and give off a blinding flare fire that raced away from the impact area in a ring of death.
Abominations scatter in all directions, shock and awe causing them to throw caution to the wind and just run for their lives. None got very far as the flaming stones stuck down hundred at a time, leaving nothing more than flaming ashes behind in smoldering craters.
“Is this barrier going to help against one of those?” asked Guerra who had also taken refuge behind Peramier.
“No. This is only to protect us from the fallout of those that don’t hit us,” Peramier said, nodding at the storm of scorching wind and dust that raged around them.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Guerra asked.
“There might be one thing but I’ll need you to be quiet so I can concentrate,” Peramier snapped. I’ll also need one of these things to come at us, he thought.
It took a few interminable long moments, but eventually one of the magic projectiles raced right at them.
“Prepare to move your men into the city, General,” Peramier said, keeping his eyes fixed on the meteor coming at them.
“And how do you propose I do that?” Guerra asked, his anger clear.
“Trust me. The spell affects the area outside the walls, so our only way of defeating it is by going to the other side.”
Peramier stepped forward as he saw a rather large boulder making its way towards him. He held up both hands, one pointing at the meteor, the other at the wall in their way. He would have to cast the two spells at exactly the same time; if he were even slightly off, he and the other two generals would be smashed and incinerated. It would be a nigh impossible task for most septims, but Peramier had had millennia of experience.
The meteor was so close that he could feel the heat coming off it even through his barrier when he twisted both wrists. The two interconnected dimensional portals formed in a split second.
The flaming stone sped into the first gate and instantly flew out of the other, its trajectory now altered. It raced horizontally with the ground, right at the tall wall of the city, directly below the point where the young demigod stood, staring at the carnage.