Bane of the Dead (Seraphim Revival Book 1) (30 page)

Seth sped through the last of Imayirot’s defenders and dropped altitude until his orbit came level with the shell fragment. He checked the Bane’s position, now dropping towards Imayirot. Whatever misdeeds the Bane might commit down there, it was still
down there
.

Jack was alone.

Seth received a hypercast signal and acknowledged it.

“I regret it must end this way between us,” Jack said.

“What’s your friend doing?”

“Going on ahead. This fight is between you and me.”

“At least you have that much right. Too bad about everything else.”

“I cannot let you stop me, Seth, and I will kill you if you approach.”

“You can try!”

Seth lunged, his twin swords burning with purple light. Jack spread out his wings and flew up to meet Seth. Their blades met with terrible force. A sharp flash of energy exploded from the contact point.

They fought against each other, splinters of light cascading off their blades. Seth pushed in, driving Jack’s sword back. He sensed the edge the Grendeni swords gave him, and readied his other sword for a killing strike.

But as much as the Grendeni swords leveled the field of battle, that was all they did. Jack bashed in with his shield. Seth spun around the attack and arced a sword towards Jack’s side. Jack angled his wings and flew back, leaving nothing but dead space for Seth to slice through.

The two seraphs flew across the mirror shell, drive wakes pulling the shell’s skin loose. Seth stabbed in, and Jack met him. A shockwave blasted out from their blades and rippled across the shell fragment. Shards of silver blew off the support lattice.

Jack brought his sword crashing down with such force that he threw Seth off balance. Seth broke through the mirror shell in a rain of splinters. Jack rushed in, but Seth crossed his swords into a rising block.

Jack smashed into the block, raised his sword, and struck again. The fiery edges of Seth’s swords wavered like turbulent water.

“You’re still no match for me,” Jack said, pressing in.

“Then finish me, if you can!”

Seth willed his swords to hold. He pulled one back and brought it around in a glowing arc. Jack raised his shield, and the two met with a blast of energy.

“Damn, that hurt!” Jack exclaimed.

Jack kicked Seth in the stomach and flung them apart.

Seth fell back and spread his wings to regain control. Jack rushed in and the two clashed again. They broke apart and flew like two comets locked in a tight orbit, spinning about each other as they attacked and retreated.

No longer was this a match of unequal opponents. Once, Jack Donolon held the upper hand, but Seth’s weapons and determination granted him the edge he needed. The two opponents darted in and out, testing defenses and resolve, neither possessing a significant advantage. Seth held the advantage in speed and agility, but Jack remained the undisputed powerhouse.

Seth pulled away from his opponent and regained his bearings.

Their battle had led them across the tattered mirror shell to a large structure in orbit: a fat disc with a bowled center. Machines the size of cities rose along the edge of the bowl, and a long spike protruded from the center, aimed away from Imayirot.

Seth recognized the silhouette. Once encased in accelerated time, Imayirot’s people had united in an attempt to drill outside the temporal axis. The spatial drill had failed and now orbited in silent testament to the Bane’s power.

Jack hovered in front of him, blade ready at his side, the huge drill behind him.

“Come at me, Seth. I know you haven’t had enough.”

“Not nearly.”

Seth threw himself forward, and their blades collided in a momentary flash of light. But Jack didn’t offer his usual resistance and instead let Seth’s momentum carry him forward.

Jack slashed in with the edge of his shield. Seth pulled away, but the edge of the shield cut up across his arm.

The shunts in Seth’s arm flickered, and the edge of his sword wavered like turbulent water. Bright purple fluid gushed from the wound. Pain burned up his arm and through his mind. Within a small pearl of understanding, he saw red medical indicators blossom across his real forearm. The i-suit went to work, extruding nano-cilia into his scorched flesh.

Likewise, the seraph’s repair systems engaged. Programming for the mnemonic skin altered and sealed the breach. Valves along the arterial lines closed and bypasses opened. The wavering shunt flared back to life, and the edge of his sword reformed.

“That was nothing!” Seth brought a sword down onto Jack’s shield. The impact sent pain ringing up his arm.

The edges of the shield wavered and dissolved into a bluish fog. Seth fired his drive shunts and tried to force his way through, but Jack’s moment of weakness passed. The edges of the shield regained sharpness and straightened.

Jack threw him back. Seth crashed into the spatial drill’s bowl, his wings carving long grooves in the surface. He pulled up and righted himself, ready for Jack’s follow up.

But it didn’t come. Jack broke away and descended towards Imayirot.

“Don’t you dare run from me!” Seth flew after him. The surface rushed towards them. Directly below, a city-sized dome rose like a diseased blister from the planet surface.

Jack spun around just before reaching the dome. Their swords clashed, and destruction blasted out from them. A wave of chaos energy peeled away the top of the dome, leaving nothing but frail girders to protect the desiccated city within.

The two seraphs fell past the opening and crashed into the city’s highest tower. They plummeted through, shattering the tower floor by floor. Ashen debris blasted out, punching through nearby buildings.

Jack accelerated out of the dust cloud and headed towards the Bane’s seraph. Seth exited the dome and pursued him across the ravaged landscape. They flew across empty riverbeds, dried oceans, and ancient battlefields choked with the blasted husks of ground vehicles and crashed aircraft.

“You see this, Jack? Is this legacy of death what you want to be a part of?”

Jack turned around and held his ground. Seth shot in and swung. Their blades met, scraping against each other in sharp crackles of energy. Jack shoved him away, and they hovered above the blasted landscape.

“I know this legacy all too well,” Jack said. “But I will not turn away now.”

“Being like the Bane does not justify siding with that monster.”

“Is that why you think I do this? You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“And I don’t want to!”

Seth charged in. Their blades slammed together and locked. The two seraphs faced off, weapons grinding against each other with snaps of blue and purple light.

“You’re too late, Seth. We’ve found the Gate.”

“And you will die before you reach it!”

“You won’t stop me!”

Jack fired his drive shunts and threw both of them into the ground. Their impact sundered the frozen earth and released a shockwave of dust and ash. Jack pushed off, spun around, and headed for the Bane. Seth burst free of the debris and followed him past domed cities and great chasms that plunged deep into the planet.

Ahead, a great circular tunnel opened, and above the entrance hovered the Bane’s black seraph.

But instead of standing and fighting, the Bane and Jack descended quickly into the tunnel.

Seth hesitated at the entrance. Above him, the battle in space continued to rage on. The Renseki and epsilon squadron were nowhere near his position. The same was true for all other Alliance forces.

“Zo, report,” Seth said.

“We’re trying to reach you, Seth, but these archangels just don’t stop coming!”

“Keep at it.”

He was alone.

With or without support, his path was clear. He dropped down the tunnel and fell into darkness. Only the glow of his shunts lit the walls.

Seth descended for several kilometers, keeping an eye on Jack’s position with his chaos scanner. The tunnel thinned until Seth’s seraph could barely fit through, then it turned at a sharp angle and ran horizontally.

Seth entered a rectangular cavern several kilometers long, partially natural, but mostly cut out by human technology. The ruins of its city lay heaped amongst the rubble of a forgotten war. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, apparently not by natural means. The broken remains of strange fighting vehicles dotted the ruins.

He gave the sight little thought and dropped down a small hole at the far end.

The passage tightened and soon began zigzagging back and forth at random. Every turn was littered with broken turrets and wrecked vehicles. He hurried on through the twisting passages, came to another wide vertical tunnel, and followed it down to a huge spherical chamber.

Seth was hundreds of kilometers underneath Imayirot’s surface now, yet the civilizations of this era were almost as advanced as those on the surface. He detected layers of sophisticated insulators packed around the sphere’s outer shell. A spiked globe floated in the center, still hovering after all this time.

The entire inner surface of the sphere was densely packed with buildings, all reaching towards the sphere’s center. Over half the stalactite towers had fallen on the buildings below, filling the bottom of the sphere with rubble.

Two seraphs stood on a peak of rubble, apparently confused about their next direction. No less than seventeen passages intersected the sphere-city from various angles.

Seth dove at them.

Jack spun around, but the speed of Seth’s attack caught him off guard. Their swords met, and the force sent Jack crashing backwards through the rubble at the sphere-city’s bottom.

The Bane lunged at him from the side. Seth dodged back and swung in with one of his blades. He sank the chaos sword into the Bane’s side, and its black barrier vibrated like the surface of a beaten drum, then broke apart.

Seth could see the machine underneath, still mostly black, but with long ovals of silver across the limbs and wings, each with a cross-hatch of black shunts.

Its barrier snapped violently back into place, throwing Seth across the sphere-city. But Seth knew he had a chance. The Bane’s defenses had weakened, if only for a moment. It could be killed!

Seth charged in again.

The Bane raised an open hand. Black light blossomed in front of Seth, growing and billowing outwards until it wrapped completely around him.

Seth stopped and floated within a bubble of absolute darkness. The Bane had trapped him within a pocket of different time.

He flew up to the barrier and pressed in with a fist. The bubble’s surface gave easily to the pressure. He kicked the barrier. It bulged outwards and rippled around him like disturbed water.

Seth raised his swords. “Enough of this.”

He slashed down, crossing his blades in the form of a large X-cut. Strangely, in his mind he thought he heard a young woman scream. He shook the thought away, docked his swords, and jammed his hands into the breach. With a grunt of effort, he ripped the bubble open.

Tattered strands of darkness disintegrated around him. He flew out and swept his view across the sphere-city.

Jack and the Bane darted down a narrow passage near the sphere’s equator.

Seth accelerated towards the passage but stopped as black light filled it. The dark film expanded outwards and halted at the entrance. When it faded, the tunnel was a solid mass of cold rock ten kilometers thick. The sight of it made him wonder just how precisely the Bane could control its talent.

“Commander! Hold up!” Jared said.

Seth checked the sphere-city’s upper portal. Seraphs exited one at a time until eight floated down to meet him. All six Renseki along with Jared and Yonu had made it to the sphere-city.

“Glad to see you broke through the Grendeni lines,” Seth said.

“No thanks to you,” Zo said sharply. “But at least we didn’t slow you down.”

“You know what we’re facing as well as I,” Seth said. “If I’d died delaying that creature, it would have been worth the price. As such—”

“As such, it’s a shame Quennin isn’t here,” Zo said. “You at least listen to her.”

“This is no time for half-measures, Zo.”

“Look, as fascinating as this conversation is,” Yonu said, “don’t we have a job to do?”

“Yeah, what are we waiting for?” Jared said. “Let’s go kill the Bane!”

Chapter 20

One Will Fall

Jack and Vierj descended through the twisting passages and gaping city-caverns underneath Imayirot.

“How much further?” he asked.

“I am… not sure. We are getting closer, though.”

“Do you feel that? It’s like my seraph is becoming sluggish.”

“Yes, I feel it, too. The Gate is interfering with my talent.”

“Are you at risk?”

“No. The barrier around this machine is failing, but those weaklings will not be able to harm my body.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Jack wondered if Vierj was downplaying her vulnerability.
She might even be killable this close to the Gate.

The seraph did not respond.

Yeah, you’re probably right,
Jack thought.
Best to be absolutely certain. I only get one chance at this.

They dropped down a sloped connecting tunnel between two large rectangular caverns. Each settlement was more primitive than the last.

Jack’s runic shunts flickered. “The interference is getting
much
stronger.”

“I know. We are getting close.” Vierj’s opaque barrier fizzled into snaps of black energy.

“If those seraphs find us, they might use conventional weapons. Our barriers won’t take much punishment in this condition.”

“I’ll protect us. This machine is failing, but my talent remains strong.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. This fake seraph appears to be more vulnerable to the Gate’s disruptions than I am.”

“Could be the influx amplifier,” Jack said. “It might be boosting the interference, too.”

“Perhaps.”

The tunnel widened below them, revealing a vast artificial cavern shaped like an upright cylinder. The chamber was two kilometers across and more than twenty kilometers deep.

Tiers ringed the chasm every few hundred meters, and along each tier sat the remains of a vast city. Some of the tier-cities jutted out, with wide bridges spanning the middle. Others huddled against the walls or retreated back into them. Some of the cities appeared almost as advanced as those on the surface, while others were appallingly primitive, as if built from the rubble of a greater society.