The Champions (12 page)

No scream split the air, no howl of defiance. Instead a
deep, rumbling, mournful battle hymn issued out of his father’s mouth singing
of the glory of Valdadore.

Another wave of magical blasts split the air roaring,
snapping, and crackling. The battle hymn ended abruptly. James staggered, his
body obliterated. Blood ran from him like water from a bucket without a bottom.
Bones were visible where flesh had been blasted away. Organs smoldered within
the giant where the attack had penetrated him. James opened and closed his
mouth and eyes, lost to the world. He staggered again and began to lean
backwards, his shadow falling upon the very troops of Valdadore he had just
saved. His toes began to rise off the ground.

From above, Borrik swooped out of the air and struck the
giant between the shoulder blades. James rocked forward. His eyes focused a
moment and he staggered forward. Snagging a rut in the ground with his toe his
center of gravity changed, and over the giant toppled.

Seth watched his father’s massive body crash down upon the
ground as if in slow motion. His body seemed to bounce once before settling.
For an instant James was lost from sight as a cloud of dust filled the air
where he fell. The dust clearing, Seth watched as his father’s mouth moved and
came open. Copious amounts of blood spilled from it, drenching the ground. His
father worked his four arms as if to rise, but only managed to lift one
shoulder off the ground. Both armies stood enthralled.

With his chest off the ground, twisting to one side, James
turned his face towards the heavens.

There upon the field of battle, James spoke his last words.
So loud were they and with such force, they echoed off the Rancor Mountains
over three hundred miles away to be heard again four hours later. James made
sure the gods would hear him.

“Gorandor, spare my sons this burden; let them live in
peace.”

Slumping to the ground again, his body gave out. The man who
had raised the two most powerful men in Valdadore had fallen.

Seth fought for breath. The world closed in upon him.
Suffocating, he blacked out.

The army led by King Sigrant charged. Champions, mages, and
common men clashed. Valdadore replied in kind, singing the battle hymn James
had begun. They would honor him by finishing it for him.

Ishanya had felt the shift, and looking into the future she
could see how things had changed. Her plan had veered off track. Worse than
that, whatever the event had been that altered the collective possibilities of
the future, if she did not correct it soon, it could take ages to set right
again. If that were not enough already, the shift was not going to go unnoticed
in the plane of the immortals. If her brethren had not yet realized she walked
among them again, they surely would now.

Ishanya, an immortal being living beyond the confines of
flesh and bone, would have trembled were it possible. She was not yet ready to
face her peers. The thought of returning to her miserable existence frightened
her. The others, together, could silence her once and for all. Her plan would
have to change. Ishanya decided to take a risk.

*****

For three long hours Zorbin followed his lifelong friend
down the stone corridors leading to Boulder Gate. Though he knew the passages
just as well as Gumbi, it was required that he was escorted. He was now
considered an outsider to his race. In an event that was virtually unheard of,
Zorbin Ironfist, a dwarf born of a family with high station, had left his home
and sworn his life and his honor to a human king. More or less he was considered
a traitor. Not to his king, but to his race.

Even so, Zorbin was here as an emissary from the human
kingdom, and as such had been allowed entry. Dwarves were a race with honor
engraved in their bones, and as such he knew he would be treated with the respect
due his station. He doubted seriously, however, that this trip would be
successful. The king was old and weary of ruling. He was not a man who would be
gathering up the citizens of his realm and marching them out to a war they had
no business in.

Rounding a turn in the corridor Gumbi stopped abruptly, and
waiting for Linaya and Zorbin to join him, he turned and spread his arms.

“Welcome, Lady Linaya, to Boulder Gate, our humble home,”
Gumbi smiled.

*****

Linaya stared ahead, her jaw falling slack. She had not
known what to expect, but it certainly was not this. Where they stood could
only be described as a balcony. Before them a vast chamber, miles in
circumference, had been carved out of the mountain’s core. Together Linaya
stood with her two dwarven companions looking down upon a huge city of pillars
and spires. It was magnificent, a view unrivaled anywhere else in the world.

Carved entirely of the very stone they stood upon, the whole
city appeared as an artist’s masterpiece. The giant chamber that contained the
city alone was a feat that Linaya imagined had to have been generations in the
making. Great ribs of stone started at the base of the outer wall of the city,
and, narrowing as they rose, they connected at the pinnacle of the chamber in a
large circle. Inside the circle a flawless vein of quartz was cut into millions
of facets. Light shone out of the quartz in every color of the rainbow, sending
millions of rays of colored light to dance among the thousands of masterpieces
below.

Every façade of every building and spire was a carved scene
of past dwarven glories. Buttresses and bridges were held upon the shoulders of
massive statues, and fountains made of carved creatures foreign to Linaya were
a frequent spectacle between and even atop the buildings. How a city could
exist below the ground was a marvel to Linaya. She knew the dwarves had lived
here for as long as human histories were told, but she imagined them living in
caves, in the dark. Here there was neither dark nor cave, and without even a
momentary pause to make comparison she knew that Boulder Gate put Valdadore to
shame.

The city of Valdadore was built out of military need for
defensibility. Boulder Gate had been born of love. The very buildings spoke of
dwarven pride. Linaya was ashamed. In her home she was the most beautiful
feature, but here she was but another blemish. Dwarves, it seemed, had learned
how to become a part of their home, whereas humans simply took from theirs.

No wonder the dwarves did not care to mingle with humans.

*****

Screams of dismay mixed with grunts of exertion as
blood-curdling howls and shouts attempted to drown out the ancient battle hymn
of Valdadore. The two armies clashed, sparing neither champion nor common
soldier. Both were out for blood, though only one was defending its home.

Garret’s world had altered in a moment, growing smaller,
insubstantial, and dark. Though moving, and striking, and dodging blows, his
mind had shut itself down and was blank. There was nothing but killing and
moving on to kill some more. Action fed reaction and thought was not an option.
Garret mindlessly killed anything that entered his path.

Sweeping low with his blade, Garret separated seven torsos
from their legs and chuckled as blood was slung through the air off the
trailing edge of his sword. Moving forward, as if to keep up his momentum, he
smashed the men he had just killed beneath his feet, their blood and entrails
squeezing up between his great metallic toes. He located his next target.

Rolling in the gore before Garret, a champion of Sigrant
sprang to his feet before the King of Valdadore. He was large, though a full
head shorter than Garret, and his skin glowed from an inner light. The corpses
beneath his body steamed as he trod upon them. Stepping closer to Garret, closing
the distance between them, the man raised his fists. Upon his hands and wrists
were what appeared to be polished copper gloves. Each of them hummed
unnaturally, and Garret could not suppress yet another chuckle. Garret raised
his huge sword to attack the man who came to war wearing gauntlets. Fool.
Garret, letting his rage lead him, swung his massive blade in an overhead arc
intending to cleave his opponent in two. Nothing could have prepared him for
his blessed foe’s reaction.

Reaching up to deflect the blow with one of his armored
hands, the blessed man caught it in his grasp. As the metal of Garret’s blade
touched the gauntlet of his opponent, a loud ringing sang down the length of
his blade as an electric charge raced down the metal. Garret, in his blessed
form, was helpless against the magic. His steel flesh was instantly overcome by
the jolting power. Twitching uncontrollably, Garret was rendered immobile.

Inwardly panicking, Garret watched as his blade flared to
life, becoming engulfed in magical fire. Even his brother’s enchantment seemed
to have no effect against his enemy. Ignoring the fire, the electrically
charged warrior closed the distance between himself and the King of Valdadore,
careful not to release his sword.

Unable to turn his head, Garret hoped someone would see his
predicament and come to his aid. From his vantage point, however, only common
troops surrounded the two giants. His body locked into position by the
electricity passing through him, Garret was sure that his predicament could not
get any worse. Sadly he realized quickly that he was mistaken.

As his opponent closed in on him, the man pulled back his
free, copper-gloved hand as if to punch Garret. Hesitating a moment, the
electrical warrior seemed to focus his power as his hand began to pulse and his
natural humming increased in volume. Then he attacked. Swinging with all his
might, the warrior drove his fist into Garret’s ribcage. Though his flesh was
that of steel, as fist met flesh and the enemy released his charge, Garret’s flesh
became molten at the same instant he was thrown backwards by the blow.

His muscles relaxing as he careened backwards, Garret knew
without even seeing the wound that he needed a healer. The air itself caused
immeasurable pain, and when he landed upon his back amongst the screams of
those he crushed beneath him, he could smell the burnt flesh of the wound.
Reality claimed the king once again, awakening his mind from the rage.

Twisting to see the extent of the damage, Garret was
immediately appalled by what he saw. His flesh, like heated steel, had become
molten and run down off his ribs to cool again further down his torso. His
entire ribcage now lay exposed beneath one arm, and between the ribs the muscle
and flesh was charred or burned away altogether. From the gaps between his ribs
small plumes of smoke escaped the void within his body with each breath. His
organs themselves had become burned and still smoldered. Garret retched. If he
did not retreat back to the healers quickly, he would die upon the field as his
injured organs began to shut down. The sound of humming began to grow and
Garret turned and raised his head to see his opponent making his way towards
him.

Garret climbed to his feet as the copper-clad brawler neared
once again. The closer the enemy came, the louder his inner humming sounded as
the pitch of the sound rose incrementally. Getting his bearings, the King of
Valdadore realized he was now surrounded by common enemy troops. Grinning
wickedly, Garret raised his large broadsword in one hand and gripped the shield
Seth had enchanted for him tightly. The injured king began chuckling as he
began to stride towards his foe. Sigrant’s troops cleared a wide path for him.
They were wise, for even injured as he was, Garret was a formidable foe who
still had a surprise in his arsenal.

Watching his opponent come into range Garret swung his blade
in a wide arc, expecting at the very least to remove his arm. Instead, before
the blow landed the brawler reached out again and grasped at the blade with his
copper hand. The steel bit deep into the copper and blood sprayed out from
around the conductive glove, and Garret was sure the brawler’s hand had
shattered within its metallic cocoon. Unfortunately for Garret, the injury to
his enemy mattered little, for the King of Valdadore would forever be changed
after the brawler’s next assault.

*****

Seth watched as his remaining creations did their best to
take the brunt of the battle to spare Valdadore’s common troops. His champions
were the only reason Valdadore was even still in the fight. Time and again Seth
wiped out hundreds of human beings, feeling the guilt of each death. It could
not be helped. Seth needed the power to feed into his champions. He needed it
to use his abilities. He needed it to know the world was real and he was still
alive. With the tremendous strain upon his soul of the burdens he had chosen or
been chosen to bear, the magic inside him was all that kept him afloat. The
thrill of stolen life within his veins kept him alert when his mind would have
otherwise been numb. Seth had no choice but to stay sharp; everyone he loved
was upon the battlefield. Some had already fallen. It was his fault they had,
and Seth could not withstand the thought of losing another.

Focusing himself upon his surroundings he watched as his
werewolf troops bounded through the enemy, their blessed sizes making them
readily visible. Hacking and clawing they worked with precision, killing as a
pack, driven by one consciousness. From above Borrik commanded the werewolves,
swooping low again and again to cleave men in two by the dozens. Rising he
would throw fireballs into the massive armies controlled by the fallen King
Sigrant.

Seth saw Sara leap above the enemy troops, her twin blades
spraying fountains of blood with each bound. Again and again she fell amongst
the enemy to rise into the air once more bearing blood or parts of enemy troops
with her. From her blades death was administered to all that stood before her.
Seth wondered if Sara would ever want to go back to what she had been once,
seeing the warrior she had become. He knew she had worries of her own as of
late but so filled with his own burdens, he had not bothered to ask her what it
was that was causing her pain. He promised himself to ask her as soon as they
had the chance to speak, if they would find that chance again. Seth closed his
eyes for a moment and exhaled loudly.