The Godborn

Chapter Thirteen

The shadows blanketed Sayeed and he heard, or maybe felt, a rushing sound. When the darkness lifted, it revealed a ruined city shrouded in night. “Ordulin,” Rivalen said.

“The maelstrom,” Sayeed said. “I was here when it was still a city.” “It’s something else now,” Rivalen said.

Shattered, half-collapsed buildings dotted the area, jagged and crooked, like rotten teeth poking from the earth. Swirling shadows darkened the air. The wind blew in fierce gusts. Green lightning split the sky again and again. The ruins smelled like a graveyard, an entire city murdered and left on the face of the world to rot. Chunks of stone and statuary littered broken roads once filled with carriages and wagons and commerce. A hundred years ago, Sayeed had walked Ordulin’s streets under the sun. Now he walked its ruins in darkness, himself ruined.

As they went Sayeed wiped his hands on his trousers, again and again, but whatever stained them would not come off to his satisfaction. He’d killed his own brother. He had no one, nothing for which to live. He had only a single desire, powerful and true, and that was to die. He was a hole. There’d be no filling him ever again.

“It’s dark here,” he observed.

Rivalen, half-merged with the shadows, his golden eyes like stars, said, “Always.”

Thunder rumbled.

“I want to die,” Sayeed blurted. The words sounded limp, dead as they exited his mouth. “You promised me that. I need to die.”

“I know,” Rivalen said, and lightning lit the sky in veins of green. “I can oblige. Come.”

Undead prowled the ruined city: wraiths, specters, living shadows. There were hundreds, thousands perhaps. They broke on Rivalen’s presence like water on stone, flowing around and over him, never approaching too closely. Rivalen said, “Many thousands of years ago I murdered my mother to show the Lady the truth of my faith.”

Sayeed said nothing.

“As she died, she asked for my hand.”

They came to a wide flagged plaza. Building-sized chunks of dark stone littered it here and there, as if they’d rained from the sky. Hovering over the center of the plaza was a void, an emptiness. The sight of it made him dizzy and mildly nauseated. Paper flitted around it, into it, out of it, as if it were chewing on them and spitting them out.

Sayeed could not keep his eyes on the void, not entirely. It seemed to slip away and he never quite saw it squarely. But he saw enough, he felt its emptiness, felt the bitterness that poured from it, the spite. It was a mirror.

In it he saw himself.

“Give me your hand,” Rivalen said.

Sayeed turned, looked into Rivalen’s golden eyes, at his extended hand, the flesh swathed in shifting lines of shadow.

“Give me your hand, Sayeed. You’ll have what you wish. I’d thought to have my brother’s. . aid in this, but you will do better.”

Sayeed extended his hand.

Rivalen took it, his flesh cold and dry, his grip like a vise.

“Come. You must stand before Shar’s eye. She must see you.” Rivalen pulled him along toward the void, the eye, the mouth, the hole. As he drew closer, he realized that the emptiness he’d felt, the pit in the center of his being, the hopeless feeling of loss, of solitude, was a trivial reflection of what he felt emanating from Shar’s eye.

“Wait,” he said, and tried to stop, to pull away from Rivalen. Rivalen’s grip tightened, a vise. “It’s too late for that.”

“No!” Sayeed said and tried frantically to pull away. “No, wait!” Rivalen pulled him along as if Sayeed were a child, the Shadovar’s strength preternatural. Another step, another.

“Stop! Stop!”

Shadows boiled around Rivalen. His golden eyes flashed. “You wanted death, Sayeed! You’ll have it! But first I need you to translate!” “No! No!”

For the first time in a hundred years Sayeed felt something. Shar’s eye put a seed of fear in him, and it soon blossomed into terror. He felt her regard emanating from the hole-the hate, the spite, the hopelessness, the unadulterated contempt for everything and anything. He screamed, his sanity slipping from him. Rivalen drove him to his knees before the eye. The wind rushed around him. The papers orbiting the eye, moving in and out of it, gathering in a cloud before him. Her eye bore down on him like all the weight in the world.

It pinioned him to the earth, tiny before it. He felt himself wither under her regard. He was an insignificant, trivial thing. He’d been such a fool, such a ridiculous fool. The Spellplague had changed him into something other than a man. .

“Feast on her words,” Rivalen said, putting his hands on either side of Sayeed’s head.

But Sayeed had changed himself into something other than human, killed his own brother. Tears fell.

“Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady,” Rivalen said, and his fingers burrowed into Sayeed’s head, squeezing.

Pain lanced through Sayeed’s skull. He felt as if his eyes would pop from his head. His mouth opened wide in a scream that went unuttered, for the pages of the book floating in the air before him flew into his open mouth, one after another, rushing down his throat, filling his mouth, stuffing him.

He gagged, grunted, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, and through it all he felt Shar watching him, her eyes freighted with contempt.

Rivalen was holding little more than a rag doll in his hands, a hollow man useful now only as a vessel by which to translate the divine language of The Leaves of One Night. Not quite a corpse, not quite alive.

“Light is blinding,” Rivalen said, stating one of Shar’s Thirteen Truths as he forced dark, unholy energy into Sayeed’s limp form. “Only in darkness do we see clearly.”

Sayeed’s body spasmed, charged with baleful energy. Rivalen released him and Sayeed slumped to the ground, an empty penitent with his back to the sky and his eyes to the ground, suspended forever between life and death, able to participate in neither.

Sayeed’s bitterness and hopelessness, the essential core of his being, were the reagents that would transform Shar’s words into something her nightseer could understand.

Impatient for revelation, Rivalen tore Sayeed’s cloak and tunic from his back, ripped his armor from his torso and cast it aside, exposing the bare skin of Sayeed’s back. Small black lines squirmed under his skin, causing it to bubble and warp, the ink of Shar’s malice. The lines twisted and curled, formed themselves into tiny characters, and then into words, and words into promises.

Riven read them eagerly, the holy word of his goddess written in darkness on the skin of a man trapped in perpetual despair. He vacillated between elation and apprehension. The transfigured words of The Leaves of One Night were said to state the moment of Shar’s greatest triumph and the moment of her greatest weakness.

He leaned forward, traced a trembling finger along Sayeed’s back as he read. Shadows poured from Rivalen’s flesh, knowledge from Sayeed’s.

As Rivalen read, he began to understand. And as he began to understand, he began to laugh.

Rain fell. Thunder rumbled. Shadows swirled.

He looked up into Shar’s eye and wept.

“All is meaningless,” he said, intoning Shar’s fourteenth, secret Truth. “And nothing endures.”

He stood, the wind whipping his cloak and hair, and looked over his shoulder to the west.

They’d be coming, and their bitterness would be sweet to the Lady.

“Run to your father, little Cale,” Rivalen said. “Then bring everyone to me.”

Surprised silence greeted Riven’s words. Gerak broke it.

“This is madness. You can’t, Vasen. This is a fight for gods, not men.” “He must,” Riven said, and his one eye bored into Vasen. “You must.” “I’ll do it,” Vasen said without any hesitation. “When?”

“Now,” Riven said.

“I’ll come, too, of course,” said Orsin.

“Of course you will,” Riven said. “After a hundred years, you shadowalkers are still the same. All balls and no sense.”

Orsin grinned. “A compliment from a god?”

“Take it as you wish,” Riven said, but his tone indicated that he had, indeed, meant it as a compliment.

“Gerak, you can stay here,” Vasen said, then looked to Riven. “He can stay here, yes?”

Riven shrugged. “He can, but I won’t be able to look out for him. We have to move. Come on.”

He headed off through a door and down a hall, and the three men fell in behind him.

“I don’t need looking out for,” Gerak snapped.

“If you stay here you might,” Riven said.

Ten steps later, Gerak said, “I’ll come.”

“Gerak. .” Vasen began.

Gerak cut him off. “Where else would I go?”

“So we’re all madmen. Well enough.”

As they hurried through the shadowed, stone corridors and staircases of the Citadel of Shadow, two fat dogs fell in beside Riven, trotting and puffing along. Like Riven, they seemed clothed in shadows.

“My girls,” Riven explained with a father’s pride. The dogs took a liking to Gerak, and despite the woodsman’s dark mood, he made a point to pet them as he walked.

“Good dogs,” Gerak said.

Riven descended a stairway, picking up his pace. Outside, the drums and horns of the host of the Hells continued to thump and bray.

“They’ll be attacking soon,” Riven said. “You need to be gone before that.” “You going to hold them off alone?” Gerak asked. “Where are your forces?”

“They’re around,” Riven said.

“You’ll send us to the Hells?” Vasen asked Riven.

Riven nodded. “I’d free Cale myself but the moment I showed, Mephistopheles would sense me there. Everything would fall apart.” “What’s everything?” Orsin asked.

“Wish I knew,” Riven said.

“How will we get back?” Orsin asked.

“Cale,” Riven said.

“Cale?” Vasen asked. “What if he can’t?”

“He can. He must. Vasen, you can free the divinity in me, in Rivalen, and in Mephistopheles. When you do that, Mask will return. And when he returns, the Cycle of Night will be stopped.

“What’s the Cycle of Night?” Gerak asked.

“I don’t have time for all of this!” Riven snapped. He inhaled to calm himself and looked at Vasen. “You say you don’t know how to do it. I believe you. So Cale must. He must, Vasen. Mask kept him alive and in stasis for a reason. He’ll be able to get you out of there.”

“And if he can’t?” Vasen asked.

“Then we all die. And eventually Shar gets her way, restarts the Cycle of Night, and all of Toril dies, too. That’s the shape of it. Well enough? Vasen nodded, trying not to show how overwhelmed he felt. “Well enough.” Riven held out a hand. On his palm sat an opalescent black sphere, about the size of a sparrow’s egg. “This is a sending. Use it when you have your father out. Break it and speak and I’ll hear. Clear?”

Vasen secreted the small gemstone in one of his belt pouches. “Clear.” They stood before a pair of large doors that Vasen assumed must open out onto the plain. The sound of the army outside caused the doors to vibrate.

Dust floated in the air.

“Question,” Orsin said to Riven.

Riven raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“It’s personal.”

Riven tapped a foot impatiently. “You want a kiss?”

Orsin laughed.

“Come on, man,” Riven said. “Ask it.”

Orsin said, “You want the divinity out? That’s what you said. But why would you go back to being a man after being a god? How can you go back?” Riven stared at Orsin a long time. “I never did like you shadowalkers much.” Orsin stared at him, but said nothing.

Riven eyed each of them in turn. “When I open those doors, you just wait here, no matter what happens out there. When the time is right, I’ll send you to Cania. Move fast, free your father, and get out. He’s trapped under a cairn of ice and shadow.”

The three men nodded. Shadows swirled rapidly around Vasen. His heart hammered his ribs.

“After you free him,” Riven said. “Tell him to take you to the plaza in Ordulin where he and I faced Kesson Rel. He’ll know where I mean.” Gerak said, “Ordulin’s in ruins, haunted.”

“What’s that to you now?” Riven said. “You’re standing in the Shadowfell.

Soon you’ll stand in the Eighth Hell. How’s that for a daytrip, woodsman?” He thumped Gerak on the shoulder and the bowman, despite himself, grinned. Riven said, “Ordulin is where this ends. One way or another.” Shadows leaked from Vasen’s flesh. He thought of the Oracle, his father, Derreg, his mother. “What’ll happen in Ordulin?”

“The end happens in Ordulin,” Riven said. Then, to Vasen, “Use Weaveshear to cut through Mephistopheles’s wards around your father’s cairn. You tell Cale. . it all comes down to him.”

“I will,” Vasen said.

“I’ll send you to Cania when the time is right. Be ready.”

“When will the time be right?” Orsin asked.

“When I get Mephistopheles to show,” Riven said. He winked. “Shouldn’t take long.”

He touched the double doors and they swung open and the blast of sound from the army almost knocked them over. The stink of brimstone flowed in, filled the air.

Riven had his sabers in hand. “Good luck,” he said to the three companions, then darted out the doors in the cloud of shadow. He shouted as he went, his voice a match for the drums of Cania’s legions.

“To me, dead of Elgrin Fau! Once more to me!”

A great moan went up. It seemed to come from everywhere, from below Vasen’s feet, from the walls of the Citadel of Shadow, from the air itself. The three men stared, awestruck, and thousands upon thousands of living shadows, human-shaped but dark and cold, emerged from the earth, from the walls of the Citadel, from the shadowed air. Their red eyes glowed in the darkness, a constellation of coals and hate, as they swarmed forth behind Riven. “Those are the guardians of the pass,” Vasen breathed, his flesh growing goose pimples. “The Oracle knew all along. He must have sent them.” A keening and more moans sounded from the left and right, from above.

Out of the mountains from which the Citadel was carved swooped a black tide of more undead-towering nightwalkers, clouds of shadows, keening banshees, wraiths, specters, and ghosts. It was as though the entire Shadowfell had vomited forth its denizens, tens of thousands of them to face the legions of Mephistopheles. The air was black with undead, and leading them all, swathed in shadows, bounding across the plains, was Drasek Riven, the God of Shadows.

“Gods,” Gerak said, wide-eyed, his bow slack in his hands. Orsin had his holy symbol in hand and he prayed softly over it, watching his god in the flesh.

Vasen looked away from the battle, took his tarnished silver holy symbol in hand, the rose given him by the Oracle, and intoned his own prayer. “Light, wisdom, and strength, Dawnfather,” he said. “Light, wisdom, and much strength.”

Riven sprinted out to face thousands of devils, the dead of Elgrin Fau flew behind him like a black fog, rose out of the earth in the thousands. Riven picked up the mind link left in his consciousness by Magadon. Meet me in Ordulin, Mags, he projected. The plaza in the center of the maelstrom. I don’t know how this is going to end. Cale will be there. Just be ready.

Riven’s mental voice reverberated through Magadon’s consciousness like a gong. His adrenaline spiked. He stood.

“Cale,” Magadon said, and grinned.

I need you now, Magadon projected to the Source. Will you help me?

From the cold embers where the last flickers of the Source’s consciousness still glowed, he received an affirmative answer.

I’m coming to you, Magadon said.

He pictured the huge chamber in the center of the inverted mountain in which the Source floated. He’d been there before, when he’d lost himself. Now he’d go there again, now that he’d found himself. He pictured it in his mind, as clearly as if he were looking right at it. He drew on his mental energy, orange light haloed his head, and he moved himself there.

The Source, a huge, perfectly symmetrical red crystal, hung unsupported in the air, perpendicular to the smooth stone floor. Its facets hummed with power, power that kept an entire city afloat.

The hemispherical chamber in which the Source had lived and dreamed and felt and hoped for thousands of years had no doors. The Source’s home was a cyst in the core of the mountain on which Sakkors floated, an abscess, with no means of non-magical ingress or egress. The Source glowed red, bathing the large chamber in light the color of blood. The fading but still regular waves of its mental emanations struck Magadon with the regularity of a heartbeat.

The semicircular ceiling of Source’s chamber was crafted into polished rectangular plates that reflected the image of the Source over and over again, reflected Magadon’s image over and over again, a reminder of the thousand lives they’d lived together in the Source’s dreams.

Magadon did not draw on the Source’s power, not yet, but the air was so rich with it that some diffused into him without his intent. His mind expanded. His thoughts sharpened. His power doubled, tripled. He smiled at the rush, but held onto himself, held onto his purpose.

Please take Sakkors toward Ordulin. As fast as you can.

The Source did not respond. Its consciousness was floating deep in its dying dreams.

Magadon drew on some of the power suffusing the air around him, used it to burrow his thoughts deep into the Source’s mindscape.

Can you hear me, my lovely? There’s nothing to fear. Can you take Sakkors toward Ordulin? As fast as you can? Can you do that?

He smiled with relief when the Source answered him.

The entire city lurched as it suddenly slowed, stopped, changed direction, and flew toward the Ordulin maelstrom at speed.

He hoped Sakkors’s citizens would realize that something had gone wrong and start leaving the city. If he had to, he could use the Source’s power to augment his own and send everyone on Sakkors a powerful mental compulsion to leave. Whether they would be able to get off a floating city zooming through the sky was, of course, another matter.

Brennus cursed in frustration. Even with the rose holy symbol in his hand, his scrying spells could not pick up Vasen Cale.

He was about to start another divination when Sakkors lurched to a stop, causing him to stagger. His scrying cube shifted position, its weight causing it to score the stone floor as it slid, the sound of its movement like a scream. Through his windows, he heard stone crack outside, the rumble of a collapsing building, the shouts of citizens. His homunculi, sent skittering across the polished stone floor, loosed a string of expletives.

“What just happened?” he asked, but there was no one in the room to answer him.

Without warning, the city started moving again, to the southeast, and fast, faster than it had ever moved before.

More cracking and rumbling from outside, more shouts. The city’s structures were not built to withstand such movement.

Brennus ran to a window, trailed by his homunculi. He saw nothing to indicate an attack, nothing to. .

And then he realized what must have happened. Something was wrong with the mythallar that powered the city. He knew it was sentient, unlike the mythallar that powered Thultanthar. Had it gone mad? Was it being controlled?

And then he realized something else.

Sakkors was moving directly toward Ordulin, toward Rivalen. He cursed, hurriedly composed a sending to his father.

Something is wrong with Sakkors’s mythallar. The city is speeding toward Ordulin. Rivalen may have control. Come if you can.

“Stay here,” Brennus said to his homunculi. He renewed the various magical wards that protected him, drew the shadows about him, pictured in his mind’s eye the chamber in which the Source floated, and moved himself there.

The moment he arrived in the chamber, a knife stab of pain in his skull sent him to his knees. He groaned and the shadows around him whirled.

“Rivalen!” he said through gritted teeth. Somehow his brother must have. .

He felt a consciousness sifting through his brains, sorting through his thoughts. Not Rivalen, then.

“Prince Brennus,” said a voice. “I wonder if you remember me.”

The voice sounded familiar to Brennus, but he could not quite place it.

“You and your brother took me prisoner and tortured me. Long ago. Forced me to awaken the Source.”

“The Source?” At first Brennus did not understand the reference. “You mean the mythallar?” Realization dawned. “You’re the mindmage. Magadon Kest.”

A spike of pain in his temples made him wince. His head felt as if a hot poker had been driven through his skull. He could not organize his thoughts enough to raise a defense. His wards were useless against mind magic.

“The mindmage,” Magadon said. “Yes.”

Shadows roiled angrily around Brennus. He tried to section off a part of his mind to give him a moment to raise a mental screen or shadow step from the room, then. .

“I can’t allow that,” Magadon said.

“Get. . out. . of. . my. . head,” Brennus said.

“I can’t do that, either,” Magadon said.

“Why are you. . here?” Brennus said. Blood dripped from his nose, spattered the floor. He lifted his head. “What are you doing?”

The mindmage sat cross-legged in the center of the chamber, directly under the mythallar. Long horns jutted from his head. He regarded Brennus with his unusual eyes, the dots of his black pupils floating on otherwise colorless orbs. His face looked entirely at peace. Above him, the huge, glowing crystal pulsed with power, tremulous lines of energy moving along its length at regular intervals.

“I’m here to stop you and your brother.”

The words sounded sincere but made little sense. Brennus endured the pain in his head and slowly climbed to his feet. “My. . brother? Rivalen?”

“Of course, Rivalen,” Magadon answered, and another stab of pain drove Brennus back to his knees. He felt warmth in his ears. Blood.

“Stop. . us. . from. . what? I want. . Rivalen. . dead!” Brennus said.

“Liar.”

“Look for yourself! See if I’m lying! Look!”

Magadon’s brow creased in a question.

Brennus felt mental hands moving through his mind, examining, probing. He did not resist. He let Magadon see everything, feel the depths of Brennus’s hate.

“He murdered your mother,” Magadon said softly.

“I saw him do it,” Brennus said.

“I know,” said Magadon, his voice surprisingly sympathetic.

The polished reflective planes in the chamber showed the meadow where Rivalen had murdered Alashar. She lay among the flowers, a hand outstretched.

“Hold my hand,” she gasped.

Brennus averted his gaze. “Please, I don’t want to see it!”

The images vanished.

“He showed that to you, your brother. And you showed it to me.”

The pain in Brennus’s head subsided. He could only nod.

“I’m sorry,” Magadon said. “You have to leave now, Prince Brennus. . ”

Hope lodged in Brennus’s chest. “No, let me help-”

The shadows deepened to Brennus’s right and the Most High stepped through them, his platinum eyes ablaze, darkness swirling around him. Magical wards sheathed him, so powerful they distorted the air around him. He took in the scene at a glance, leveled his staff at Magadon, and loosed a bolt of black energy that would have withered an archangel.

The energy slammed into Magadon’s chest and drove him across the chamber. He hit the far wall with enough force to audibly drive the breath from his lungs. But it didn’t kill him. His eyes focused on the Most High and a violet light glowed around his head.

The Most High groaned, staggered, put a finger to his temple. The shadows around him spun rapidly. Lines of blood trickled from his nose. He leveled his staff once more at the mindmage.

“Stop!” Brennus said, stepping between them and holding up his arms. He stood directly under the Source. The polished panels showed their reflections over and over again, the three of them repeated to infinity.

Magadon stood, wobbly. The Most High held his ground, keeping his staff at the ready.

“What is this, Brennus?” the Most High asked.

“Show him,” Brennus said to Magadon. “Show him what you saw in my head. Show him.”

And the mindmage did. The walls of the mythallar’s chamber showed Brennus’s memory of the image Rivalen had shown him: Rivalen’s murder of his mother amid a field of flowers, her extended hand, his refusal to take it even as she died, her final wish, that she be the instrument of his downfall.

Telemont watched it unfold in silence, the shadows roiling around him the only indicator of his inner turmoil. When it was done, Telemont looked to Brennus, and the light in his platinum eyes had dimmed.

“That is what you accepted all these years. That is what you were willing to compromise over. Your wife, Most High. My mother. Rivalen did that. Rivalen. He must pay for it, whatever the cost to us, to the empire.”

“How?” Telemont said.

He sounded so strange to Brennus, his voice less commanding, more like the father Brennus remembered before Alashar had died.

“The how is already in progress,” Magadon said.

Brennus had almost forgotten he was in the room. “Rivalen is mad, Most High. You know this. He wants only to die and take the world with him. He must be stopped and he must pay.”

“I can’t kill my own son,” Telemont said.

“Father-”

“Just leave,” Magadon said. “Take your people from Sakkors and go. You don’t have to kill anyone. We’ll stop him.”

Telemont stood to his full height and his voice recaptured its typical imperiousness.

“You ask me to abandon a city of the empire.”

“Sakkors is already dead,” Magadon said. “The Source-the mythallar-is dying. When it does, its power will go out. The city will fall from the sky. It has hours.”

For a moment, Telemont said nothing, then, “You lie.”

“No,” Magadon said, simply, and sadness filled his voice. “I wish I did. But it’s dying. Check if you wish.”

Telemont’s eyes narrowed. His fingers traced arcane symbols in the air as he cast a divination. When he sensed the spell’s result, he gasped.

“You see?” Brennus said.

“You can’t save it,” Magadon said. “There’s nothing to be done. Sakkors will fall.”

Still Telemont said nothing, and Brennus imagined the thoughts roiling in his father’s mind.

“Father?” Brennus said.

Staring at Magadon, the Most High said, “We’ll get everyone off of Sakkors. But I won’t help you kill my son.”

“Even after what you saw?” Brennus asked, incredulous.

The Most High hung his head. “Even after that.”

Shadows swirled around Brennus, mirroring his anger.

Magadon said, “Go. You have little time.”

After they’d gone, Magadon returned to his place under the Source and kept deathwatch. He reached out first to Riven, through the mind link between them.

If you can perceive this, I’m on my way, and I’m bringing Sakkors with me.

With the power of the Source at his command, he’d be near a godling himself.

Assuming, of course, that the Source stayed alive long enough for him to make use of it.

He reached out with his mind from time to time to check on the progress of Brennus and Telemont. Augmented by the power of the Source, he was able to feel it as Sakkors emptied. Shadovar soldiers fled on veserabs. Those who had them fled on magical transport or via spell. Those who had no other way were transported to earth by Brennus and Telemont, by way of spell, by way of the shadows. They moved rapidly, efficiently, and within an hour the entire populace of Sakkors was gone. All but one.

Brennus Tanthul remained, a solitary figure standing at the edge of the plateau on which the abandoned city stood, the figurehead affixed to the prow of the ship-city. Magadon imagined Brennus looking east toward Ordulin, toward the maelstrom of shadows that darkened the sky, all the while sharpening his anger on the whetstone of his hate.

Magadon reached out for Brennus’s mind. You’ll remain, then?

I can’t leave, Brennus said. I must see him pay.

Magadon had felt the depths of Brennus’s hate for his brother. He did not feel like he could deny the Shadovar what he asked.

Don’t interfere with anything, Magadon said.

To that, Brennus said nothing.

The wraiths and specters of lost Elgrin Fau blanketed the battlefield in a cloud of darkness. The undead native to the Shadowfell joined them, flowing forward like a dark tide around the towers and walls of the Citadel of Shadow.

Cania’s armies stood arranged in precise formations, units of scaled and hulking horned devils, lithe, crouching bearded devils clutching glaives, buzzing wasp devils, a horde of spined devils, their bodies covered in a thick coat of long quills, and all the larger, more powerful armed and armored devils who commanded them. Pennons and oriflammes announced the units and their pedigree, and tens of thousands of weapons and horns and scales and fangs made a forest of sharp edges and points against which the cloud of incorporeal undead and Riven threw themselves.

As the forces collided, the moans of the undead vied with the roar of the devils, the beat of their drums, and the blare of hundreds of horns. Columns of hellfire flew in all directions, beams of baleful energy, clouds of poison. Missiles of bone and steel and magic from fiendish archers rose in shimmering clouds and fell in a dark rain on the undead army.

With each step Riven moved through the shadows, covering a spear cast of distance with each stride, appearing and disappearing with the rapidity and rhythm of a heartbeat. He appeared amid a squad of horned devils, a whirlwind of steel and darkness, beheaded six of them, and stepped through the dark. He materialized behind a towering, insectoid gelugon, and drove his sabers into the crease in its white carapace between its neck and the base of its skull. Dark ichor flowed as the devil spasmed, fell, and died. He stepped through the shadows and into the center of a horned devil regiment. With a thought he covered all of them in a cloud of swirling, deep darkness in which not even their fiendish blood allowed them to see. But he could. And he dashed up and down their ranks slashing, cutting, stabbing, leaving scores of dead devils in his wake.

He rode a column of shadow into the sky and from there took a moment to assess the battlefield.

Undead vied with devils for as far as he could see, their lifeless touch pulling the otherwise immortal life from the fiends. But the devils, powerful, organized, and well-led, held ranks and responded with barrages of hellfire, beams of magical energy, and organized charges of their ranks. The undead fell by the score, dissipating with a moan into dark, stinking mist. A nightwalker, a faceless undead, humanoid in shape, as black as a moonless night and taller than a castle tower, strode among a regiment of horned devils, crushing the devils in pairs and trios with the weight of its tread. Wasp devils swarmed it from above while a unit of flaming, armored devils on burning horses charged it from below. It fell, moaning, and the fiends cut it to pieces before it dissipated to nothingness. But still the undead came on, fearless, heedless, their numbers beyond count, and fiends fell to the dark earth, their bodies withering as the undead pulled out their life force. Thousands of fiendish corpses dotted the field.

A flight of shock troop devils-huge, blocky winged devils covered in red scales and dull iron armor, wheeled toward him. Each bore a huge sword and shield in its muscular arms. Riven hung there on his column of shadows and let them close in.

When they drew near he extended a hand and a wide net of sticky shadows shot from his fingers. The devils, too big to maneuver deftly, could not avoid the dark strands. It caught up all of them, wrapping their bodies and wings in sticky fibers of reified shadow.

Wings fouled, the devils roared and fell out of the sky. As they plummeted, Riven stepped through the darkness and onto one of the devil’s backs. He drove his sabers into the base of the devil’s skull, silencing its roars, then stepped to another, did the same, stepped to another, killed again. He killed six and stepped away before they hit the ground, their huge forms crushing lesser devils and throwing up clods of soil and grass.

Around him the battle raged. Devils and the dark hordes of the Shadowfell moaned, shouted, and died. Shadows spun around Riven. A green beam of energy and a column of hellfire shot out at him from his left, struck the shadows that shrouded him, and died in their darkness. He pointed a hand, loosed a line of life-draining energy from his palm, and withered an entire line of flaming devils and their mounts. They squirmed and shrieked and slowly imploded as his power stripped them of animus.

He’d killed dozens of devils and done nothing to cloak his power, but still Mephistopheles had not shown.

“Let’s try this, then,” Riven said.

Spinning and whirling his way through a score of gelugons, his sabers leaving a flotsam of insectoid limbs and heads behind him, he scanned the field for his target. He spotted him in moments, a pit fiend named Belagon, one of Mephistopheles’s most powerful generals. Flames and smoke sheathed the heavily armored pit fiend the same way shadows shrouded Riven. The devil stood several times the height of a man, and his blazing sword and flaming whip slew undead by twos and threes with each blow.

Riven stepped through the shadows to stand before him.

“Godling,” said the fiend. He beat his huge wings and they shed enough smoke and flame to engulf a village. Riven stood in their midst, unharmed.

“Dead thing,” Riven answered, and launched himself at the fiend.

His sabers moved so fast they hummed, as he ducked, stabbed, slashed, and spun. Despite its size, the fiend answered in kind, its huge blade spitting flames as it parried, stabbed, and slashed. The two of them fought in a cloud of shadows and smoke and flame and power, and any devils or undead caught up in the cloud died screaming.

Belagon’s whip cracked as the fiend tried to wrap Riven’s legs in its flaming lines, but Riven leaped the attempt and slashed down with both sabers, severing the whip. He sidestepped a stab from Belagon’s sword, pointed both sabers at the fiend’s chest, and loosed a spiraling column of divine power. It slammed into the fiend, driving him backward several strides, tore through his breastplate, and tore a gory divot in the exposed flesh of his chest.

The fiend shouted with rage, the flames that surrounded him igniting into a conflagration. He charged Riven, blazing sword held high. Riven sidestepped the downward slash-the blade put a furrow in the earth-slid to the fiend’s side and drove both blades through his armor and into his abdomen.

The devil squealed and collapsed, writhing in pain, ichor spurting from his gut. Riven rode the shadows to his side and drove both his blades into his throat. The pit fiend gurgled and his flames died, as did the fiend. Riven crouched atop the dead pit fiend’s chest, an ichor-stained saber gripped in each fist, a cloud of shadows and smoke roiling around him.

“Come out, come out, whither you hide,” he said to Mephistopheles.

Vasen, Gerak, and Orsin watched the battle in awed silence. Magical energy and fire lit the otherwise dark air of the Shadowfell, criss-crossed the field in blazing lines and pillars and columns and streaks of killing force. The undead blanketed the diabolical forces, so many and so thick that it looked as if a black fog had settled on the fiendish legions. The sound of shouts and screams and drums and moans was surreal. Vasen tried to keep his eyes on Riven, but Riven moved from shadow to shadow so quickly, covering as much as a bowshot in a single stride, that it was impossible to keep up. But wherever he appeared, the one-eyed man-god left dead devils in his wake.

They watched Riven fight a pit fiend in a fog of shadows and smoke and fire, watched him fell the devil with as much effort as it would have taken a skilled warrior to disarm a child.

Orsin held his holy symbol in hand and muttered prayers under his breath.

Gerak and Vasen stood with their mouths hanging open, waiting for words to fly in and give them something to say.

A boom sounded, so loud it shook the doors of the Citadel of Shadow, and for a moment stilled the battle. A line of fire formed in the sky above the battlefield, a slit in the fabric of the planes. Smoke and heat and power poured from it, the screams of the damned. The line extended laterally, then vertically, until it looked as if a flaming door hung suspended in the air over the slaughter.

A shadow filled the door, a towering dark figure of muscle and wings and horns and power.

“Mephistopheles,” Vasen breathed.

Across the battlefield, Vasen saw Riven’s face turned not toward the archdevil but toward the Citadel, toward them. Riven gestured and the darkness around the three companions intensified, fat ropes of shadow swirling around them. Vasen, sweating shadows of his own, closed his eyes, offered a hasty prayer to Amaunator, then snapped them open.

“Ready yourselves,” he said. “We go.”

The shadows engulfed them entirely. Not even Vasen’s shade-born vision could pierce them. He felt a tingle in his stomach and a lurch as of rapid motion.