Storm Holt (The Prophecies of Zanufey Book 3) (44 page)

Issa blinked into the darkness and shivered. She lay curled up and naked on a freezing stone floor. With leaden arms she pushed herself to sitting and hugged her knees. She had given herself to Baelthrom, the one she hated. It was a simple fact. She had surrendered and he had found her in the Storm Holt. It was over now, or would be soon. She began to cry.
 

Heavy magic draped around her in chains, sucking the strength from her body and the clarity from her mind so that she felt drugged. The memories of the recent events mingled so completely with her past that she no longer knew which ones were real. All she knew was that there was a huge presence before her and powerful alien magic moved.

‘Yes,’ she croaked, her throat was parched and bruised from the iron collar she wore. She wanted to face what was before her without fear, without trembling, but she could not even stand up. She could barely breathe, and sweat rolled down her temples despite the deathly cold.

‘I knew you would come to me in the end.’ The words wrapped themselves around her.

A giant moved in the blackness and two eyes flared into life, bright green and triangular in shape such as no human should have. Baelthrom, her heart shivered. A gauntleted hand gripped her chin and lifted her face up to look at him, she was too weak to lift it herself. Light fell upon his hideous form revealing a hideous mixture of creatures moulded together to contain his consciousness. Massive demon wings folded down against his human back, reptilian tail and legs bulged with muscles, but his face was forever hidden in his three-peaked black metal helmet.

This was the one who hunted her, this was the one who had destroyed everyone she had ever known and taken away her life. She lived only to destroy this being, but now she was here before him, she was as she never imagined being - naked, weak, powerless.

‘What shall I make of you…’ he murmured thoughtfully. His eyes changed to blue as they locked onto hers, flooding her brain with their painful light.

‘Just kill me,’ she shuddered. She tried to move her eyes but they were locked onto his.

He laughed low and deep. ‘I do not like death, it is… wrong. No, I shall not let you suffer it. I need your power. I need to know you fully within and without. But I need you pure, I need you before the Elixir of Immortality changes you forever.’
 

He pulled her up and crushed her against his bare chest. She could feel his human heart thudding, though the life force that animated it was far from holy. He pulled her head back and looked into her eyes. She felt his mind probe hers and had no strength to stop him.
 

‘Show me what you are,’ he breathed.
 

He crushed her chest harder against his, the feel of his bare skin against hers made her shudder, she had no strength at all to resist. She realised he was relishing the beat of her own heart, that somehow he was drawing the strength of it into his own. Her heart pounded harder, aware of the life that was leaving it. Frantically she felt for the Flow, but it was not there.
Zanufey!
She screamed in her mind but there came no answer other than Baelthrom’s laugh.

‘Is that your goddess? A goddess that has never and
can
never help you? I will be your god.’

Heat began to leave her as he drew it into himself. In its place his coldness seeped into her. The cold was deathly. It entered her mouth, her chest and her abdomen, his black alienness filling her body and soul. Pressure started in her head, which grew to excruciating levels. Black spots danced in her eyes. Pain exploded in her ears, she felt a hot trickle come from them. She was aware of moaning senselessly.
 

‘Let go, give yourself fully to me.’ His words whispered through the pain.
 

She was paralysed in his grip as he drew her essence, her life force, into himself to become one with him. She felt her body and soul dissolving in his grasp until she could no longer feel where she ended and he began.

‘You are afraid of death. Are you not tired of seeing all those you love taken from you? I can free you from death. I can free them all from death. I alone can give you immortality,’ he crooned.

Even though she had chosen to surrender, she began to struggle, her body and soul sensing the death that was coming. She fought to keep the pieces of herself together, to prevent her and Baelthrom from becoming one. For a moment he let her struggle, as if he enjoyed it, and then he pushed harder, forcing himself into her, letting her know she could not be free.

I cannot fight, I am lost. I am so far away from the light.
 

She stopped fighting. She surrendered. He filled her completely. Everything that she was, had been, and wanted to be, was sucked away. Her whole being was turning dark. Pitifully she began to sob as she gave up her soul to the darkness.

In their hideous melding of minds, bodies and souls she caught a glimpse of his design, caught an image of the complete jigsaw. She saw that the undead Maphraxies were nothing more than the empty soulless bodies of the living, willingly serving Baelthrom’s vast army in exchange for the immortality of the physical self. An endless life in chains. Through the Black Drink he trapped and consumed souls to feed his power. That was his strength. Their bodies he took for his army. His gift of immortality was a lie, even for those who willingly took the Black Drink. It chained their soul to Baelthrom forever and it could never be undone.

Unfettered, Baelthrom would consume all, the energy of everything would be drawn into his being. Soon he would be too powerful for anything to stop him. And then she realised he knew all of this, he had planned it. All the life of the world would become one in him, a life that was no life, a mindless existence of servitude. She saw the blackness of the dark rift that he always looked to rolling in Maioria’s sky. He wanted to take Maioria and the whole galaxy into the place from which he had come.

As the blackness swallowed her she saw the end of worlds, the end of days.

‘Issy, go to the light,’ a small voice called out, one she vaguely recognised.

There is no light, there is only nothing. I am nothing.

A faint green light glowed from far away, showing her that there was darkness and she was in it. At this moment in time she knew only three things; that there was a light, there was her consciousness, and there was the darkness. The voice she only half believed was real until it came again.

‘Go to the light of Zorock,’ a deeper voice boomed.

She reached for the light and it engulfed her, driving back the darkness. A being moved, bigger than a Dread Dragon. It had all-black eyes and green hairless skin. Black horns twisted high above its elongated skull. Its face was long as was its nose, and its teeth were many fangs. Wings lay folded on its back and it crouched on thick-muscled arms and legs. The beast stared straight through her into her soul. It did something there that made her soul shiver, letting her know it could take it if it wanted to, but that it chose not to.
 

She felt something in her soul shaken free, and when it was gone she felt clean, as if something dirty had attached to her. The being watched her unblinking with those all seeing black eyes. It held up a hand, each finger had long black claws, and motioned her towards him. She moved fast towards the beast. She screamed.

The world came rushing back to her. In the next instant she was coughing and shaking on a stone floor. She blinked and looked up. Everything was bathed in green light, the same light she had seen in the darkness, the same green as the light that came from the moon Zorock. It came from a large crystal set in a pedestal made of rock. Beyond the crystal red demon eyes with slitted pupils glowed.

‘No more, please, no more. Just kill me, kill me,’ she begged, and laid a sweaty cheek down on the cold stone.

Several feet shuffled close and the strange murmurs of voices not wholly human came from nearby. She was too spent to look at them.

‘Are you sure she’s the one?’ a wheezy voice said. ‘She seems a bit small and weak.’

‘She was not supposed to go beyond the Pit. No wizard goes that far. Karhlusus has done more than just open the gates,’ another deeper voice replied. ‘She should have died, but she has not. She is the one. Look at the mark on her chest. The mark of the raven.’

A tiny finger prodded her. She groaned in response. ‘It’s all ugly, skinny and white,’ a familiar voice said.

‘Leave it alone, Maggot.’ The wheezy voice scolded.

‘Maggot…’ she repeated the name, some memory forming in her mind.

‘I told you not to enter the Storm Holt. The greater demons have done something,’ Maggot huffed.

‘Storm Holt…’ she breathed and struggled to lift herself up. She could only manage propping herself onto her elbows. ‘I’m in the Storm Holt.’ She blinked, trying to see, but her vision kept blurring and everything was out of focus.

‘You left the Storm Holt, now you are in the Murk,’ the deep voice said.

‘Maybe she needs wursel blood,’ the wheezy voice said.

‘They don’t drink wursel up there, stupid,’ the deep voice said. ‘Find some water. Maybe there’s some left in the lower caverns.’

Feet shuffled away and she closed her eyes and slumped back down, trying to breathe the thick warm air that managed to make her feel weaker than she already was.
 

Sometime later a blanket was draped over her and something was shoved against her lips. She involuntarily drank the old warm water that was poured down her throat. She choked and swallowed and blinked. The water was helping, despite being foul. She rubbed her eyes. She was wrapped in a rough stinking blanket, the smell of which she could not place and decided not to try, and in a very large room carved out of rock. It was lit by only the green crystal, so she could not tell how big the room actually was, but it felt big.
 

She blinked up into the faces of three very different looking demons that, if she had not been so exhausted, she would have been afraid of. She instantly recognised the tiny ugly demon with the protruding tooth and potbelly.
 

‘Maggot?’
 

The little demon looked up at the other two towering above him. One demon was skinny and bent over and hung on to a gnarly staff. He seemed old, but they all looked similar with grey hairless skin and wide round heads, clawed feet and hands, large ears and long tails. The last demon was the most frightening. He had huge muscles and was big and wide, maybe ten feet tall. His wings were partially folded over his back. He watched her with a permanent distrusting scowl.

‘You should not have entered the Storm Holt,’ the big demon said. ‘I sent Maggot to bring you a different way. That gate now leads straight to the Pit and beyond.’

She nodded and closed her eyes. ‘It goes on and on and never stops. I had no idea it would be like that. I would never have gone. You saved me…’ she suddenly realised. ‘Why?’

The demon’s scowl deepened. He looked away. ‘We need help,’ he said it quietly, as if it shamed him. ‘And so will you if you do not help us. The greater demons are coming. The only way to stop them destroying us, and to stop them entering your world where they will destroy you too, is to find the spear and kill Karhlusus. The Demon Slayer knows how to kill him, he also knows how to close the gates.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know who or where this Demon Slayer is…’

‘We need you to find him.’ The demon talked over her. ‘We need an intermediary. He’ll kill us on sight. Do not forget that we hate your kind and the world you inhabit, but we will help you find the spear and fight the greater demons. We will help you close the gates to the Pit and to the Murk if you destroy Karhlusus. Our only hope is to work together. ’

She nodded. She was so exhausted and confused she could think of nothing to say except to agree. They had, after all, saved her. ‘All right. I’ll try. Why is the spear so important? Why can’t you get the spear yourself?’

The demons looked at each. The big one spoke.

‘In your world the spear was turned into a weapon to kill demons. Demons cannot touch the spear without being destroyed.’