Shadowborn Read online

  Another barrage from the cannons blasted the shadowborn. The Seraphim were joining the knights in another attack run. Kael flew among them, taking bitter satisfaction at the cavern his light carved into L’adim’s form. The shadowborn rocked backward, more and more of the sprawling river below him lifting to reinforce the damaged parts of his being. His arms crossed over his blank face, enduring another barrage. His legs churned. He pushed into the space between the two defensive walls, leaving a wide field of death behind. Kael thought he might attack the walls but instead he crouched closer, his entire body sinking deeper into the earth. The shadow’s outer layer of skin bubbled, breaking, loosening.

  L’adim rose to his full height, and his shadow blasted out of him as a billowing fog. It spread like a dome, widening in all directions, even into the sky. It would retract for a brief moment before pulsing outward hundreds of yards farther. Kael shot heavenward, Bree and Clara at his heels. Knights and Seraphim fled every which way in complete panic. Kael remembered the sickening feeling of L’adim’s presence back in the throne room, and he knew what tore at the hundreds in the sky as they weaved and hovered in wild directions. Every pleasant thought corrupted. Every dream and hope filled with sickness. He pushed his wings harder, outracing the fog. Bree and Clara lagged farther and farther behind, unable to keep up with his blood-blessed wings. Kael continually glanced their way, terror clawing at his throat. The fog was near, so near.

  One last pulse before the shadow retreated back into L’adim’s form. Bree escaped. Clara did not. The shadow washed over her from head to toe. Immediately her wings went dark. She let out a soft cry before pitching forward, her body going limp.

  “Clara!” Kael screamed. He turned about and dove for her. His wings easily closed the distance, and he wrapped his arms about her before she could fall. He saw her face, saw her closed eyes, and begged for fate not to make him suffer so. She was alive. She had to be alive. He held her with his right arm, his left taking her wrist and thumbing her throttle back on. Just a gentle glow, enough to slow their descent as Kael guided them to the ground away from the battle. They landed in the field of grass just off the road leading into Heavenstone. Bodies of dead Seraphim lay all about, slaughtered by L’adim’s initial assault. Kael hated putting Clara among them, but there wasn’t much choice.

  Bree landed beside him and shut off her wings.

  “Will Clara be all right?” she asked.

  Kael knelt over her body, his ear to her chest. Tears ran down his face.

  “I think so,” he said. Her heart beat weakly in her chest, but her lungs breathed in and out of their own accord. “She just needs time.”

  The shadowborn’s touch was vile and sickening, but Clara had only been overwhelmed for a second. She might still live. Kael wished he could feel more relief, but what did it matter if Clara survived just to fall into the ocean when Center crashed? Already hundreds of miles of Center’s landscape withered and rotted. Everything the shadowborn touched turned to dust, and now he reached for the very heart of humanity’s greatest sanctuary.

  It seemed Bree felt that same doom. She stood facing L’adim as the vile thing brought down a dozen knights with a single swipe of his arms. The cannons were yet to resume, the theotechs no doubt suffering as terribly as Clara, if not worse.

  “Maybe L’adim is right,” Bree whispered. “Maybe we aren’t special. We’ll vanish from this world, and no animals or angels will weep for our passing.”

  Kael rose to a stand. He could barely control his actions. He closed the distance between them with two quick steps and backhanded his sister across the face. Bree clutched her cheek.

  “Don’t,” Kael seethed. “We mean more than that. All of us, our lives, our deaths, our pain and suffering and joy, it fucking means something. Maybe to God, maybe to the angels, maybe just to ourselves, but don’t you dare try to tell me that murderous monster was right. We are better than that. Better than him.”

  He hated himself for doing it but couldn’t see another way. The terror of losing his sister the same way he lost his father was too much to bear.

  “You’re right,” Bree said. A spark of her old fire kindled in her eyes. “So what can we do? It’s just us two, Kael, so what can we possibly do?”

  Kael bit his lip. His mind scrambled for ideas, running the battle against L’adim through his mind. The way the shadow recoiled against light and fire. The way any damage against his gargantuan form was quickly erased by a flood of shadow curling up from the veritable lake of it at his feet.

  “You said L’adim’s inside that monster somewhere, right?” Kael asked.

  “Somewhere,” Bree said. “But we can’t get to him. The shadow always reinforces itself.”

  Kael opened the compartment to his gauntlet and stared at the mostly full prism within. Wincing against the pain, he cut into a different part of his hand and allowed his blood to refuel the prism.

  “It does reinforce,” Kael said as he popped it back in. “But maybe we just need to attack even harder. I … I’ll do what you do. I’ll let it all out at once, every bit of my light prism. Maybe … maybe it’ll overwhelm him. Maybe we’ll push it all back and find the devil deep inside.”

  “You don’t know you can do that,” Bree argued. “And what happens if it doesn’t work? You’ll die.”

  “Then I die, damn it,” he shouted back at her. He felt his words growing harsher, more desperate. “How’s that make me different from the thousands of others L’adim has slain today?”

  She stared at him, her own mind racing.

  “Fine,” she said. “Wait for me, though. I have an idea, too.”

  His sister dashed among the bodies, checking their compartments and removing any fire elements she found. Kael checked on Clara as he waited, listening to her breathing as a reminder of all he would sacrifice his life for.

  “What are you doing?” Kael asked when Bree slid a third prism into her left palm.

  “You’re right,” Bree said, finding two more in a pouch on a dead knight’s belt. “It’s not sustained damage that’ll take L’adim down, but one sudden, overwhelming attack.”

  She hurried back to him. His eyes narrowed as she drew her sword in her free hand.

  “That’s not your specialty, Kael. It’s mine.”

  Flame wreathed her sword. She sliced through the top half of his right wing, curled her blade about, and then did the same to his left. The heavy pieces of metal thudded to the grass. Kael stared at them, momentarily shocked, but he yanked at the buckles of his disabled harness, flailing to remove it so he might don another.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he shouted to her.

  “I love you, Kael,” she said, her wings flaring to life.

  “No, don’t!” he cried. One of his buckles caught and he desperately yanked it again and again. His sister left him. He knew what she planned. He begged her return. He screamed his frustration. His last protest. His horror manifest in a lone word.

  “Bree!”

  CHAPTER

  34

  Bree raced through a sky full of death and shadow, closing in on L’adim her only goal. His back was to her but it seemed the shadowborn needed no eyes to sense her presence. Spears launched upward from the blanket of black spread before Heavenstone’s gates, thin little ropes of smoke keeping the spears connected to the shadow below. Bree dodged and weaved through them, her wings at three-fourths power to ensure she could both slow down or burst ahead as the dodge required.

  The prisms in her left hand ached, their sharp edges digging into her skin. Fire flickered from their surface, licking the flesh of her bare skin.

  Just a little bit longer, she thought.

  The spears were merely the outer defenses. The monstrosity that was L’adim raged before her, his arms slamming down upon the walls of Heavenstone. Each strike dwarfed the power of the cannons firing at him, his curled fists blasting apart stone and mortar. It would not be long before all of Heavenstone lay in ruin. Seraphim and
knights filled the air around L’adim like little bees buzzing about a raging boar. Their stings did nothing but anger him.

  Free of the spears, Bree pushed her wings harder, her gaze locked on the faceless creature. Once the shadowborn turned his attention to her, that speed would be her only hope. She watched the defense of Heavenstone, such as it was. What few cannons remained thundered shooting elements into the shadow, making temporary indents into L’adim’s towering humanoid form. Several struck his formless face, coupled with the attacks of a dozen Seraphim. Fire and lightning swirled across the black, consuming the crawling darkness. Bree prayed the concentrated attack would harm him despite having seen L’adim endure worse during the initial defense.

  L’adim’s head sank into its body and reemerged fully healed. He took another step, his foot sinking into his own shadow as if it were a deep pool. His hand stretched out, those seven fingers slowly spreading wide. With a sudden jerk, the fingers spiked forward like javelins of impossible length. Each finger ripped through a cannon before tearing open a hole across the top of Heavenstone. L’adim stretched his other hand, the number of digits increasing, nine fingers piercing the heavy stone as if it were straw. Cannons fired their elements into his arms, sheeting them over with ice and slamming through with stone. The fingers retracted, L’adim sparing no attention to the futile attacks. Instead he focused on the flying knights and Seraphim, his body bubbling like a volcano about to erupt.

  Erupt it did. Shadowy spikes ripped into the air all around him, piercing out of his body in strange angles and unpredictable directions. Center’s defenders immediately retreated, attacking from farther out to maintain some measure of safety. L’adim shifted and moved so that no space remained safe for long, though his overall trajectory continued toward the fortress of Heavenstone.

  Despite every reasonable piece of sanity in her screaming that she do otherwise, Bree soared right into that chaos with the rest of them. Her eyes peeled wide, her instincts taking over. A spear of shadow sailed overhead, just barely missing her wings. Bree rolled to her right, dodging two more, and then rolled left. A dark boulder flew through the air where she’d been only a moment ago, puffing into smoke upon missing. The distance shrank, her goal in sight. A dozen spears rose up from L’adim’s chest, launching one by one for her. Bree abandoned the attack, all her skill devoted to surviving the next few seconds.

  A weave, a dive, up and around, curling and twisting with every screaming muscle in her body. The world was a maze, each wall a danger, every turn potentially her last. Bree kept her fists clenched tight, releasing no flame and drawing neither of her swords. She had to get closer. If she were to have any chance, she needed to be so near she could reach out to touch his vile form.

  There was no pretense to formations among the survivors. Seraphim of all islands flew among one another, momentary allies before separating again when the lashes of shadow whipped after them. Knights kept close to Heavenstone, but they too flitted about in a mad fight for survival. Nothing had slowed L’adim’s trek across Center’s surface. Nothing seemed to cause permanent harm. His essence pulsed with hatred and hopelessness, infecting everyone close enough with feelings of dread.

  Bree twisted sideways, a spear of shadow passing inches from her chest. She continued the roll, pulling up at the last second as two more spears skewered her path. Bree lifted higher, needing a momentary pause. Something was wrong. The shadowborn was gathering his essence into himself, drawing in the wide swath of crawling darkness that covered the grass. Cannon fire thudded into his chest. Knights burned his knees and sank ice into his arms. It didn’t even slow him. Bree’s eyes widened as she realized his next attack. Heavenstone’s defenders were but a nuisance, and it was time for L’adim to crush the building itself.

  L’adim seemed to grow taller. Such massive size, yet he moved in silence as he rolled forth, transforming himself into a huge wave. That silence ended the moment the shadowborn crashed down on Heavenstone. The air itself shook with the noise, a blast surpassed only by the sound of Galen striking the Endless Ocean. Nothing withstood the shadowborn’s weight. The supports cracked, the towers collapsing, the building tumbling in on itself. Scores of theotechs died instantly, their bodies crushed and mangled. The two outer defense walls shuddered, the shadow spreading like roots across the ground to rip into the foundations. L’adim re-formed amid the destruction, a crouched figure on hands and knees. Shadow pooled beneath him like a lake. He did not stand, nor did he respond to the first of many barrages from knights and Seraphs alike.

  A sense of wrongness immediately washed over Bree. She had to flee. Now. The air itself darkened about them. Her hairs stood on end as if she were touched by lightning. Sickness grew in her stomach. Bree aimed straight upward and pushed her wings to their limits, yanking her away from the pulsing shadow. Yet Bree was the only one. She watched the others, confused by their stay. How could they not sense it? The gathering energy. The smoldering disgust. Instead it seemed the knights and Seraphs misunderstood the shadowborn’s reaction, confusing it for weakness. They pressed harder, bathing his form with their elements. Fire licked across his forehead. Ice encased his entire left leg from the concerted effort of more than a dozen Seraphim. Lightning struck from all sides, swirling into his form.

  “Get away,” Bree whispered, for shouting would mean nothing to the roar of battle. “See the trap, see it, see it …”

  L’adim sank deeper into the ground, a great lake of shadow pooled up to his waist. His head bowed low, his arms sinking into his chest. Elements bombarded his neck and spine, nothing held back by anyone below. The knights and Seraphs gathered together, the combined forces of humanity, for one last barrage. It reeked of desperation. Perhaps they knew the danger they faced. Perhaps they sensed the trap. But they would not pull away.

  The shadowborn rose into the air, legs forming beneath him as he stood. His arms swung wide, as did another pair of arms beneath, long fingers sweeping through the air. L’adim spun once, lashing the battlefield around him. Tendrils snapped out from the four arms like vicious snakes, latching on to any knight or Seraph unfortunate enough to fly nearby, which were many. They could not evade fast enough, not with the sheer size and reach L’adim possessed. Bree hovered in place, too shocked to feel anything as wings fell from the sky in droves.

  The remaining Seraphim retreated, their numbers thoroughly devastated. The few with prisms still charged lobbed long, arcing orbs of stone, fire, and ice, little pinpricks that did nothing. Knights flew past the rubble. Bree couldn’t imagine where they thought to retreat to, but retreat they did. Dust and smoke blew in all directions from Heavenstone’s collapsing rubble. L’adim stepped over it, his shadow swallowing the corpses of the dead and smothering any survivors. Bree watched with ice building in her throat. Without the defenses or the other knights and Seraphim to distract him, all of his attention would now be on her. More than a hundred had battled against him and yet he’d slowly crushed them one by one. How could she possibly hope to close the distance she needed?

  L’adim stood in the heart of the broken building, the lower pair of arms sinking back into his form. His head tilted to the sky, hands open and raised in celebration. His face bore no eyes but Bree still felt his focus upon her. The shadowborn rose higher. A crease stretched from side to side of his face. It opened with a grating crack, like an unsealing tomb. Thin black mist dripped down like drool from his lips.

  “Breanna,” he spoke. The sound of his voice was of worlds grinding together, deep and frightening and louder than the battle itself. “Embrace this end. This peace is inevitable.”

  His arm reached up for her, hand open. Tendrils shot from his wrists and fingers, dozens closing the distance. Seeking her. Beckoning her.

  “You need not suffer. Some may be spared. Create a new world. My world.”

  A world led by the shadowborn? Such a ghastly thought.

  “Beyond the ocean the land thrives,” L’adim continued. “Life. Tranquility. We will
build upon the bones of the old. A new society. A new faith.”

  “With you as their God,” she whispered.

  Somehow L’adim heard.

  “Yes,” he spoke. The pronouncement shook the land. “As it must. Humanity cannot save itself. I am the way.”

  More tendrils swooping in from his shoulders, curling far to either side of her. Penning her in, she knew. Still came the beckoning hands. Bree saw no escape, but perhaps she didn’t need one. Swallowing down her fear, she let the shadow touch her. A tendril wrapped around each of her ankles, the contact filling her with a need to vomit. Another circled her waist twice, then pulled. Bree reduced the power to her wings, allowing herself to drift toward the waiting monster. A single careful cut opened a shallow groove along her wrist, allowing her blood to flow across the five glowing prisms held in her grasp. Fire started to erupt about them but she suppressed it within her mind. She didn’t need it, not yet.

  L’adim guided her closer, smoothly, gracefully, with care that belied his vicious presence.

  “Embrace me,” he spoke. His voice was soft now, not the thundering of a demigod for all of Center to hear. A careful whisper, just for her. “Lead my chosen few to paradise.”

  “Paradise?” Bree asked. She stretched her right hand toward him. His chest was before her, so close to her touch. His aura of disgust and hatred clawed at her mind and sapped strength from her limbs. She used her rage to fight it. “I will give our people paradise.”

  A guttural scream building in her throat, she spread her palm wide and gave the shadowborn the only embrace he deserved.