Chaos Unleashed (35 page)

With a mere thought and a wave of her hand, she fully healed both Keegan and Scythe of their injuries. At the same time, she created a barrier between her mind and theirs, severing the bond that had linked them through the Crown for their own protection.

The Talismans were drawing their power directly from the Burning Sea—an infinite well of Chaos that could destroy a mortal mind. Despite this, she felt no sense of being overwhelmed. She had no fear of any backlash or losing control. The Ring, the Sword, and the Crown were in perfect, harmonious balance.

Her body spontaneously combusted, but she felt no pain. She began to grow and change, transforming from an ordinary young woman into a living pillar of fire, twenty feet tall.

On the battlefield, Daemron had cast off the last of the hapless underlings Cassandra had thrown against him. He turned as if about to charge, then hesitated when he saw the flaming figure standing defiantly on the beach.

He roared out his fury and unleashed a powerful blast of Chaos. But instead of targeting Cassandra, he directed it at the Keystone. The obsidian monolith exploded into dust, and the Legacy dissolved completely. The twenty black spheres became a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand. As one, the rest of his army crossed into the mortal world.

Calling on the Ring, Cassandra cast a spell that froze the entire horde dead in its tracks. Enraged, Daemron threw back his head and roared, summoning Chaos to use against her.

He’s feeding off the power of the Talismans, too,
Cassandra realized.
They were bound to him once, and he can still draw on them.

Despite the realization, she felt no fear. Daemron could only touch a fraction of the Talisman’s potential. Her power was that of the Old Gods themselves.

Like Cassandra, the Slayer’s form was suddenly covered in flames, and he grew until they were of equal size, two twenty-foot-tall titans engulfed in fire, standing face-to-face. He threw himself at her, but to Cassandra he seemed to be moving in slow motion.

Without even thinking about it, she stepped to her left and brought the Sword up in a wide diagonal arc. Daemron feinted as if he were going to her right, then suddenly changed direction, charging headlong right into the upstroke of the blade.

The Crown lets me see the future,
Cassandra thought.
I know what he’s going to do even before he does.

As the Sword struck him, Daemron exploded into a trillion crystals of blue light. They fell over the battlefield like flakes of glittering snow, winking out of existence a few seconds after they touched the ground.

With a wave of her hand, Cassandra released his army from their paralysis. Seeing their leader obliterated and facing a giant made of Chaos fire, they turned and fled back through the dark spheres, running back to their blighted netherworld.

The Slayer was defeated, his army driven back. But Cassandra knew her work wasn’t done.

With several massive strides she crossed the island to the spot where the Keystone had stood only moments before. Throwing her head back, she thrust the Sword up to the heavens, calling on the power of Chaos to once more do her bidding.

Keegan and Scythe watched Daemron’s fall with awestruck wonder, amazed by what Cassandra had become.

When the Slayer fell, neither dared to speak or look away. As Cassandra released the Chaos horde and sent it scurrying in terror from the mortal world, they remained rapt. And when she went over to where the Keystone had stood and thrust her magnificent flaming sword to the sky, they could only stare, enthralled by the sight of a God walking upon the earth.

The thousands of black spheres began to wink out of existence, disappearing with tiny pops amplified by their sheer numbers. When the last one vanished, Cassandra spoke to them.

As before, they heard her in their heads. But this time she sounded different—hollow and far away, as if calling to them from a great distance.

You must go. Return through the portal before it closes.

“What about you?” Scythe asked. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

The True Gods sacrificed themselves to create the Legacy. How can I restore it without doing the same?

“Daemron is destroyed,” Keegan argued. “His army routed. You don’t have to do this.”

The Chaos hordes still live. They will still seek to return to this world if they are not banished. I must see that will never happen. But I must work quickly.

My power comes with a price. I am not an Immortal; omnipotence is too great a burden for me to bear for long. Already I can feel it beginning to devour me. Soon I will cease to exist. I must restore the Legacy before that happens.

“Then we stay until you are finished,” Keegan declared. “Whatever you create using the Talismans, someone else might try to destroy.

“We will gather up the Talismans after you are gone and keep them safe to honor your sacrifice.”

“That’s what the Order tried to do,” Scythe reminded him.

The Talismans will not survive this ritual,
Cassandra said
.

“If the Old Gods couldn’t destroy them,” Scythe asked, surprised, “then how will you?”

The Talismans were created by the Immortals, but they were forged in our world. Bound to it. The True Gods could not destroy them because, unlike the Talismans, they were not of the mortal world.

Born from Chaos, the True Gods could not break the connection between our world and the
Burning
Sea. But I can.

Though they were no longer linked directly to Cassandra’s mind, Keegan had a sudden glimpse into the true nature of what she was doing.

“You’re not just destroying the Talismans,” he said, horrified. “You’re going to make the Legacy so strong that Chaos will not be able to enter the mortal world at all!”

The essence of Chaos is death and destruction.

“You’re going to create a world without magic!”

Magic is the offspring of Chaos. Inevitably it leads to pain and suffering.

“You can’t do this!” Keegan shouted. “I won’t let you!”

You can’t stop me.

Scythe reached out and grabbed Keegan’s arm.

“Would that really be so bad? A world without any magic at all? No wizards. No Seers. No more dreams or prophecies.”

“If I’m not a wizard,” Keegan said, holding up his stump, “then I’m nothing!”

“You’re not nothing, Keegan,” Scythe told him.

“Without magic,” he continued, “what do I have?”

For a second she didn’t answer. If Methodis were here, he’d know exactly what to say. He always did. But words weren’t her style. Instead, she grabbed Keegan by the neck and pulled him in close for a long, passionate kiss. After a second of stunned confusion, Keegan wrapped his arms around her and responded.

“Well?” she said when they finally broke it off. “What do you think? Are you ready to live in a world without magic after all?”

“I guess it has a few things to offer,” he said with a wide grin.

You have to go now,
Cassandra told them.
When the Legacy is restored and magic is no more, the portal to take you back to Callastan will cease to exist!

“How long do we have?”

I can feel the pull of the
Burning
Sea, calling me to become one with the Chaos. I must start my ritual now or I will cease to exist before it is done.

Scythe pulled at his hand and they broke into a run.

“She didn’t really answer my question,” Keegan panted as they raced from the beach toward the tall, burning figure and the shimmering blue circle on the ground at her feet.

Suddenly, Cassandra was bathed in bright white light that shot up in a beam toward the clouds. It rose until it disappeared somewhere high above. A second later the sky was filled with a million rays of light—red, yellow, green, and blue—shooting off in all directions.

Keegan slowed, dumbfounded by the spectacle above them. Scythe yanked hard enough to almost jerk him off his feet and he picked up his pace again. By the time they reached the spot where the Keystone had once stood, Cassandra had disappeared, engulfed by the blinding white beam rising up to the heavens.

“Hurry!” Scythe shouted, as he stopped to look in wonder yet again.

Together they crowded into the portal. Keegan closed his eyes and pictured them whisked away back to Callastan.

Nothing happened.

“Come on!” Scythe shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’m trying!” he shouted. “Something’s wrong!

“Cassandra!” he called out. “What’s happening?”

When there was no response, he knew she was already gone, consumed by the ritual she had set in motion—a ritual that might just have trapped him and Scythe on an empty island on the farthest edge of the world.

“Look down,” Scythe gasped.

Below their feet the blue circle was flickering like a flame in the wind, phasing in and out of existence. Keegan watched as it vanished completely, then faded back in, growing steadily brighter.

“Hold on,” he said to Scythe, pulling her close. “This could get ugly.”

As the pulsing blue light reached maximum intensity Keegan closed his eyes and imagined Callastan, with Vaaler and the others all gathered together waiting for them.

Go now!
he thought. The island suddenly vanished, and everything around them turned to black.

This time there was no sensation of flying across a living map of the world. Instead, it felt like they were falling straight down into a deep, dark hole. Keegan had no idea if this was how the return journey normally worked, or if something had gone wrong because of Cassandra’s ritual to restore the Legacy.

One way or another we’ll know soon enough.

He suddenly felt cold wind rushing over his face, and he caught the outline of tall buildings and high city walls rushing up toward them through the darkness.

It’s night,
his bemused mind noticed even as they plummeted toward the sleeping city.
The journey must have taken longer this time.

With horror he realized they weren’t slowing down. He reached out, trying to summon Chaos to slow their fall, but he felt absolutely nothing.

It’s done. The Legacy is restored. There is no magic left. It happened while we were going through the portal, interrupting the spell. And now we are going to die.

All of this—from feeling the wind on his face to the stark realization that they were plummeting to their doom—took less than a second for his mind to process. And then they hit the cold water of Callastan’s harbor, sending up a splash so high it crested above the city wall.

Still clinging to each other, they plunged far below the surface. Keegan panicked as the water closed in around him, clawing and clutching at Scythe and dragging them both down. Then he felt a hard smack on his jaw and he went limp.

A few seconds later he was gasping and flailing on the surface though he had no idea how he’d gotten there. A strong, wiry arm had wrapped itself under his chin in some kind of choke hold.

“Settle down or I’ll smack you again,” Scythe warned.

It took another second before he realized she was the one with her arm around his neck, holding his head above the water.

“Not much of a swimmer, are you?” she grumbled.

Thankfully, Scythe was a strong enough swimmer for the two of them, and she managed to keep them afloat on the dark waters.

Vaaler stared through the bedroom’s tiny window at the night sky, unable to sleep. Shalana lay in the bed, snoring softly despite her insistence that she preferred to sleep out under the stars rather than cooped up inside a building within the city.

What happened to you, Keegan?
he wondered.

The Blood Moon no longer hung in the sky; hopefully, that was a good sign. For weeks it had shined its ghastly light down upon them, and the sky looked strange with an ordinary moon. But that was far from the strangest change in the night sky.

As part of his royal upbringing, Vaaler had learned to use navigational star charts. Like everything else he studied, he still remembered them in near-perfect detail. And as he stared upward, he realized there was a new constellation in the heavens. A brilliant cluster of four very large, very bright stars had appeared on the night sky’s western horizon.

Is that your doing, Keegan? Is that why magic has disappeared?

Jerrod had been one of the first to realize what had happened, the white veil that covered his eyes vanishing without any warning whatsoever. Vaaler had been standing beside him when it happened, both of them keeping vigil over the ritual grounds in the courtyard as they waited for Keegan and Scythe to return.

To his credit, the monk hadn’t panicked when his Sight vanished. Instead, he’d simply stated, “Chaos has been banished from the mortal world.”

Andar had confirmed his assessment a short while later; none of the Danaan wizards could feel its touch or summon it in any measure or form.

It was impossible to say for sure if the effect was localized to the area around Callastan or if it encompassed the entire world. But Vaaler suspected the latter.

For the most part, the city had reacted with curiosity and confusion rather than panic as realization spread. Most of the population were like Vaaler: completely blind to Chaos in all its forms. But there were enough magicians and hex witches working in the city—either independently or in the service of various nobles or gangs—for the news to spread quickly.

Despite having his extrasensory awareness stripped away, Jerrod had taken it as a good sign.

“If the Legacy fell, Chaos would grow stronger, not weaker,” he’d declared. “Keegan and Scythe must have succeeded in their mission.”

But at what price?
Vaaler wondered.
If magic had vanished, how would they return?

His musings were cut short by someone’s pounding hard on their door. Roused by the sound, Shalana sprang from the bed, grabbing her spear from where she had propped it against the wall in easy reach.