Déhath. Maker of all that Light repelled.
They quivered beneath their cloaks as the grating, icy chill forced them down in cherished supplication, and they stammered up a hiss from dreadful, hidden maws —
“Father!”
The noise that answered wound and wormed its sickly way behind Kai’s eyes then wrapped its black around his nerves and scratched his sinews taut as piercing, raw perceptions smothered him apart with a blunt, serrated edge —
“Lúez. Sílb. Abhorrent strays. The One?”
“He...he,” stammered Lúez past his tightening gullet, “was not here.”
Déhath convulsed in wrath and choler and spewed His murk upon His servile brood; they wailed in loving torment.
wreathing gash of filth
Shen collapsed beside Kai in colourless spasms.
“It is!!! It’s Déhath! Ephaïl, deliver us from evil!”
But Kai did not hear — Déhath’s snarling rasp dug in, engulfing him in blackened bile, his senses drowning into one behind his burning eyes the void and light stained all with slender arms outstretched to One alone as mists descend between two suns...
One light
“...One dark...”
together coursing seven celestial orbs about the spectral diamond dust
aligning all
“...revealing ancient Ways...”
the Tree
“...of Light...”
and Ephaïl
His dimming prime and gleaming birth within the towering peaks betwixt the golden seas and crimson flush above a secret body streaking silent twisting threads to split the clouds
It’s here
“...N’van...”
a fiery dawn
I see
an incandescent disc
“The Shield!”
I feel
“The end!”
I know
“He’s here!”
The final shriek ripped Kai from the vision. His spine froze and cracked as he saw, below, three shapeless visages of deathly null staring coldly up at him, as wisps of scarlet, spiralling threads dispersed between them.
“Can...can they see?!” whimpered Shen palely beside Kai, peering down through the portal.
Déhath’s edgeless, endless shadow washed away as parting words stabbed through Kai’s brain —
“Now prepare the end!”
Immediately Lúez leapt straight up at Kai, who wrenched himself back in fear. The pool of light began to shrink and turn opaque, as Lúez’s claws hooked into the stone of the ceiling on the other side and two more talons thrust and whirled into a shrieking blur of scraping grinding through towards him. Sílb bowed before Déhath below as He disappeared into a veil of grime, then turned and darted from the chamber into the shadowy corridor. As the light bled away, Lúez’s terrible screeching scrapes faded too, until only distant echoes trickled through the dark space around them.
Then, from the tense, lightless hush, came, gradually, a distant, growing rustle — claws clicking rapidly over stone!
“Salvator! They...they’re coming!”
Next chapter — The Plan
Sunday 24 April 2011
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