Onslaught

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE SAVED AND THE DAMNED

Kamahl knelt before Jeska. She lay limp in his arms, panting miserably. She was dying once again, dying of the old, unhealing wound. An identical injury crossed his own belly and made him weak. It would kill him too, if he and Jeska and Otaria somehow survived the third laceration-a wound on the world.

Like giant black maggots, deathwurms galloped across the nightmare lands. They had already scoured the battlefield of all living things and left the soil itself riddled with holes. The infection spread. Many wurms had plunged onto the desert, pursuing the routed troops. No one would survive this battle-not warriors, not countryfolk, not anything on Otaria.

A deathwurm bounded straight toward Kamahl and Jeska, its mucousy muzzle homing on their scent.

"Go, Brother," Jeska said faintly. "They cannot kill me."

Clenching his jaw, Kamahl stood, a bulwark of flesh between his sister and the monster that thundered down on them. "They will not."

Jeska shook her head fiercely. "They cannot. They did not kill me from the inside, and they cannot kill me from the outside."

Kamahl turned away and said to himself, "Delirious." He faced down the wurm.

It was lunacy. The thing's head was the size of a house, and its body was a league long. Kamahl did not even have a weapon. Still, rage and desperation had been Kamahl's greatest weapons in the past. He smiled. Of all the deaths that he and his sister could suffer, at least this one could be punched in the face.

The wurm pounded the ground, almost flinging Kamahl off his feet. One more leap and it would be upon them.

Kamahl clenched his hand into a fist, and he reared it back. "Good-bye, Sister."

He swung. His fist crashed into the black nose of the beast, but it in turn smashed into him, hurling him back. Kamahl flew over Jeska. The wurm plunged atop her, its mouth agape.

Tumbling, Kamahl realized he had done it again-had survived the death that would take her. He hit the ground just as the wurm did and rolled miserably, knowing his sister was gone. Kamahl spread his arms, heels digging in, and flopped to a stop on his back. He flipped over, a shout of grief erupting from him.

Jeska yet lay there, trembling. The wurm was nowhere to be seen.

Staggering to his feet, Kamahl scrambled toward her. "What happened? What did you do?"

Jeska smiled wanly up at him. She seemed somehow stronger, her skin less pale. "I told you it could not kill me."

Falling to his knees at her side, Kamahl saw the dark glint in her eyes, the gray tinge to her flesh. "It is within you, isn't it? You absorbed it back into yourself."

"I once held thousands. There is room enough in me for all of them."

"What are you talking about?" Kamahl blurted.

"I have made these deathwurms. I made them by killing-"

"You didn't kill. It was Phage."

"I am Phage. She is the dark side of me."

The ground thundered with impacts coming straight toward them.

Clenching his fists, Kamahl rose to meet the new menace.

It wasn't a menace at all, though. Eight hooves pounded the ground-a giant centaur galloping beside a giant mule and its rider.

"Stonebrow!" Kamahl gasped in relief. "And… and "Zagorka," Jeska said softly.

The centaur and mule galloped up and skidded to a halt. Dust rose in clouds around them and continued on over the desert sands.

Stonebrow extended his hand to Kamahl. "We must flee! It is death to remain."

"Yes!" Kamahl said. "Carry me away, and Zaborra can take Jeska."

"Zagorka," the old woman corrected.

"She cannot take me," Jeska said. "I'm staying."

Kamahl's mouth hung open. "There isn't time for this!"

"If I flee," Jeska said, breathing slowly, "we all will die. There is one way for Otaria to survive this day… There is only one way for me to survive."

Kamahl shook his head. "You can't do it, Jeska. You can't take them back into you."

"They didn't kill me before. I can bear it again."

"That's not you speaking," Kamahl said. He gripped her arm and felt the first tingle of hostility beneath her skin. "That's Phage. She doesn't want you to live, Jeska. She wants herself to live again."

Her eyes met his, and for a moment the darkness retreated. She was Jeska again. "There is only one way, Kamahl."

His brow beetled. "But all of this-I did this to save you."

Jeska shook her head and stroked his jaw. "No. You did this to save yourself."

He could only stare in amazement at her.

"You have saved yourself. You killed the man you once were and saved the woman I once was. Your journey is done, but mine only begins. These deathwurms arise from the murders I have committed, starting with Seton-"

"Seton!"

"Braids killed him, but I took his life force into me. I took his life! That's where all the blackness began. You cannot destroy these wurms. Only I can. You cannot save me. I must save myself, and to do so, I must take these things back into me."

"No, Jeska."

"I will find my way out again," Jeska said, "or die trying. Better that than to die without trying."

Stonebrow's eyes glinted with fear. "We must go now!"

"Last chance," Zagorka said, reining in her champing mule.

Kamahl drew a deep breath. He looked about. Wurms vaulted everywhere.

"Go, Kamahl," Jeska said. "I will stay. It's the only way to save Otaria."

Kamahl's nostrils flared. "Stonebrow," he said, his voice a low growl. "Get out of here. That's an order."

Nodding his noble head, Stonebrow said, "As you wish."

"I could use an order here, myself," Zagorka broke in.

"Go," Jeska said simply.

It was all the old woman needed. She dug her heels into Chester, and they dashed away. Stonebrow galloped beside her. In moments, they were lost behind twin clouds of dust and sand.

"What are we going to do, then," Kamahl wondered incredulously, "lie here and wait for a thousand beasts to attack, and then absorb them one by one?" He stared out across the desert, where hundreds of wurms already charged. "It will be too late."

Jeska blinked. "We need Ixidor. To reach him, we must reach her."

"Who?"

"Akroma," Jeska said, pointing toward the sky.

Kamahl sat back on his heels, stunned. Above the thundering wurms hung a single point of light, a star beaming down on an abandoned world. "She is sworn to kill you."

"She does not fight me, but the deathwurms. She will help us," Jeska said. "Call her."

Standing, Kamahl lifted his arms and his voice. "Akroma! Protector! We call you. Come to us!" Above the battling beasts, the angel hovered. No longer did she fight. She only hung there. "We wish to ally, to save your land and ours! Akroma! Come to us!"

His summons did not bring the angel but only another wurm. It roared toward them across the same path of compression left by the last beast.

Kamahl turned desperate eyes toward Jeska.

"Step aside," she hissed. "I'll take this one in as well. Call her!"

"Akroma! Come to us!" Kamahl shouted into the literal teeth of the deathwurm. At the last moment, he hurled himself aside.

The black beast pounded down upon Jeska, its mouth wide. Instead of swallowing her, it was swallowed by her. The head was gone, and then the lashing neck of the thing. A half mile of wurm sank into her body as if she herself were a pit. A mile.

At first, Kamahl could only gape at the strange spectacle, but then he lifted his hands again. "Akroma! Help us! Akroma!"

Above the roar of black wurms came a tiny keen: gnat song. It broke through the lethargy of Akroma's mind.

Someone called her. It was not the creator-Ixidor was gone- but it was someone like the creator.

"Akroma! Come to us!"

She stared down toward the sound and saw a strange thing: a deathwurm disappearing. It seemed to plunge down one of the sucking pits. It tail flipped once, and it was gone. Instead of leaving behind a round hole, though, it vanished through the shape of a woman.

Not just a woman. The woman. Phage. She had been the bringer of all this evil. She lay on the desert, and her brother stood above her, calling out in his minuscule voice. Akroma cared nothing for the man, but the woman she wanted dead.

Akroma gathered her wings and dived. It felt good to move again. It felt good to have something to fight. She brought her lightning lance out before her and prepared to kill Phage.

How like the coliseum battle this was-Akroma stooping down from the air, Kamahl guarding his evil sister, and Phage lying, near-slain, on the sands. Only the deathwurms were different, ravaging all the world.

One wurm veered toward them. In two more bounds, it reached Kamahl. He leaped aside, allowing the monster to devour his sister. Its jaws never snapped closed, though. The monster plunged into her, slipping to nothingness. Phage was destroying the deathwurms. She was fighting the same battle that the creator had assigned to Akroma.

It didn't matter. Akroma was made to destroy Phage. With her lightning lance foremost, she plunged from the sky upon her greatest foe. In moments, she was there.

It was so easy. Phage didn't even flinch. The avenging angel rammed her staff down into the unmoving form Except that something hit Akroma and knocked her aside. The lance missed Phage. It pierced the ground deeply enough that the weapon was ripped from Akroma's hands. Careening out of control, the angel crashed down, along with the thing that had hit her: Kamahl. The two of them rolled together in the desert sands.

Snarling, Akroma raked his chest with her claws. Kamahl shouted and tumbled free. Akroma spun once more and rose from the sands.

Already, the barbarian had scrambled to his feet. Deep gouges crossed his chest, and blood poured across a wound on his belly. He crouched at the ready for attack, but his hands were empty as he lifted them. "You cannot kill her."

"You are not my creator," she said, stalking toward her lightning shaft, which shuddered in the ground.

Kamahl shifted before her. "Only Jes-only Phage can stop the deathwurms."

Growling angrily, Akroma backhanded the barbarian, knocking him aside. She grasped her lightning lance and strode toward Phage.

The woman placidly watched her approach. "Unless the wurms return into me, all of us will die. Tell your creator-"

Akroma's eyes grew flinty. "The creator is gone."

"Gone…" Phage echoed incredulously.

Akroma lifted the lightning lance. "He sent me to fight the wurms, and now he is gone."

The lance glinted in Phage's eyes. "It was his last command, that you fight the wurms," she said. "Then why do you disobey him? Why are you destroying your one chance to kill the wurms?"

The staff trembled in Akroma's hand. Her angelic features were as hard as granite. "I am sworn to kill you."

"Once the wurms are gone, you can kill me," Phage said serenely.

"First, I must seek my master."

"Whatever. Finish the wurms, find your master, and then finish me," Phage replied. "Do it however you want-but first, help me defeat the wurms."

Akroma's eyes blazed, but she lowered the staff. "What must I do to shunt these wurms into you?"

"The blue sparks," Phage said, struggling to sit up. "They brought the wurms out. They can gather them in again."

"I will summon them," Akroma said. A new resolve straightened her back. "Until the creator returns, I will command his disciples. I will protect his creation."

Her wings spread and surged. The blast of air threw Kamahl to the ground and whipped up a stinging cloud of sand. Plumes beat again, and Akroma's feet lifted into the air. A third surge, and she was flying away above their heads.

"For the creator," Akroma said to herself as she vaulted into the sky.

With each stroke of her massive wings, she climbed higher above the sullen world. She was ascending, and not simply in body. Until Akroma could find the creator, she had to assume his mantle. Ixidor had brought this dream into being, and Akroma would keep dreaming it lest it disappear. Such was her destiny.

Piercing the endless blue, Akroma reached the apex of the sky. She held the lightning lance high overhead and sang.

Never before had a star sung above the world. It drew the ear of every creature below. In their pell-mell flight, the routed armies looked back. The creatures of the jungle poked heads from their lairs. Even deathwurms paused to crane oozy necks skyward. It was right that they should witness the ascension of this new god over Topos.

Akroma sang again. Her wordless tone was filled with longing for the creator. All of Ixidor's creatures heard and yearned skyward, though most were land-bound and could not rise. The birds in their chromatic choruses flashed above the treetops, but their wings were insufficient in the vast blue. Only quintessential creatures could join the singer, only beings that were kin to the stars.

The disciples came. They seemed faerie fire emerging from the windows of Locus and scintillating along rails and pilasters. The sparks gathered above onion domes and swarmed together into the sky. Following paths through the air, they soared toward the angel.

Akroma's song resonated in them, and the skies sang with dread and longing.

Motes reached her and coursed about her. They traced her face, lingered along her wings, and pierced her mind. In moments, they knew what distressed her and what they must do.

Stars slowly peeled from their angel-god. At first, they came away as one, a glittering veil of energy that retained her shape, but then the gossamer sheet spread. Disciples tumbled down blue stairways of sky, out across the nightmare lands, and toward the deathwurms.

Flickering like candle flames, Ixidor's disciples dropped into the brows of the beasts. Their radiance was snuffed in black folds of flesh, but their spirits reached on through lightless innards. There, the disciples encountered hunger, hatred, and rage, but they continued on, seeking the essence of the beasts. It would be the darkest comer, the most heartless desire.

One by one, the sparks found it: the death wish. They sank their hooks in that horrible desire and streamed backward.

From the snapping mouths of the beasts, the disciples emerged, drawing black strands behind them. They soared into the sky and converged, weaving together their webs of power. En masse, the disciples turned and plunged toward a single target.

Jeska.

"Here they come," Kamahl said quietly.

Blue points of light traced lines across his eyes. He knelt, holding his sister despite the virulent poison beneath her skin. He could only just bear to hold her, with three wurms within. In moments, when the blue sparks arrived, her touch would be death.

"You're getting your wish," he said.

Jeska's eyes were hard, but her voice pleaded. "Remember me, Kamahl. Remember what I do today, even if I never emerge again."

"Don't say that. You'll-"

A blue light soared in, smacked her forehead, and disappeared, dragging a black filament after it.

Jeska shuddered as the darkness drilled into her mind. A spark fled from between her lips.

Kamahl gaped, watching the line sink deeper. "No, Jeska… no!"

With a shriek of tortured air, the slender thread widened into a huge beast. It poured itself into Jeska. She convulsed and grew pale, and her flesh stung like nettles in Kamahl's hands.

He did not let her go. He would cling to her as long as she was Jeska.

Another blue spark impacted, and a third.

She thrashed her head, as if to break the black threads. They only plunged faster into her. Her limbs trembled, and her eyes glowed with evil flame. Two more sparks fled from her howling mouth.

Swallowing, she gasped out, "One more… and I will be gone, Kamahl… One more…"

The tails of the two wurms slipped into her brow.

Kamahl leaned over Jeska, tears streaming down his face. He embraced her one last time and kissed her pale cheek. "Good-bye, Sister." Laying her gently on the ground, Kamahl backed away.

A fourth spark struck, and a fifth, a sixth. Glowing creatures cascaded from the sky. They made Jeska bounce, writhe, and kick. The wurms were filling her, possessing her, but also healing her wound.

Jeska stood, her hands open wide to the influx of the monsters. She seemed a worshiper invoking a god.

Kamahl could not bear the sight. He turned away.

No wurms remained on the corpse-strewn battlefield. Few fought on in jungle and desert. All those that were left were connected by black threads to Jeska… to Phage. They drained across astral channels into her.

She was doing it. She was saving Otaria and damning herself.

In a flash of blue and white and black, it was done.

The wurms were gone.

Jeska was gone.

Only Phage remained.

Akroma saw it all. How she wished to kill that witch, and yet, Phage had saved Topos and Locus and Otaria.

Turning in the sky, Akroma winged toward Topos. If Ixidor was anywhere, he was there. She would seek him, find him, and turn her wrath on the one named Phage.

Kamahl sat in that sandy waste, the birthplace of a goddess.

Phage stood with her back to him. Her hands were yet lifted to the heavens, though they had poured out all their damnation already.

"Phage," Kamahl said reverently.

She turned. Her eyes were dark, no longer the eyes of Jeska. Without saying a word, she walked away.

"Don't waste yourself on the fights, on the Cabal," said Kamahl. "I won your freedom from all that. You can do anything you want, wander free. Why don't you come with me to Krosan? We can make a home for you there."

"We are enemies," she replied over her shoulder, "the saved and the damned."