He had him. Schneider finally had Angelo within his sights and the damned murdering coward dove into the clouds to cover his escape. Vengeance marred the clarity of his thoughts. It made his vision tunnel and his head pound for the wanting of it. All he could think of was Angelo's death screams. Angelo's total destruction and even that wouldn't be enough to satisfy the churning need for retaliation eating at Schneider's soul.
A sizzling wash of destructive power crashed down on him from above. His shields ate up the majority of it, but some of it got through. He felt the shock along the right side of his body, felt clothing char and skin burn. He did not waste the time in a healing, just fired back a damned powerful Strike spell he'd been building the entire flight up here. The clouds lit up with the scattered energy. For a brief moment he saw his foe, shields blazing with the power Angelo sought to deflect. Then it was dark again; the Prophet concealed by the clouds.
"You can't hide forever!" he screamed into the swirling mists. The clouds opened up above him. A humming aura of light came into being over his head. He recognized the scent of the spell. Angelo had used it on the battlefield at the foot of the western mountains months ago. He put effort into strengthening his shields, since there was no time to escape the thing and it slammed down like the avenging fist of Angelo's god. It hammered him down into the side of a mountain. Trees splintered and earth exploded outwards at the impact. Half the mountain side was razed from the backlash of power.
Fine. Fine, he thought, half buried in dirt and savaged trees. If this was too easy it would not hold as much satisfaction. He let his shields falter, using that energy to repair the damage the fall had done him. Something came out of the darkness of the shattered forest at him. A great, lumbering beast that seemed to have been constructed of earth and trees and rock. It opened its maw and roared soundlessly at him. It reminded him vaguely of the giant in the great forest, with the height and the mindless expression on what passed for its face. But it was bigger and not hampered with the weakness of mortal flesh.
Still lying on his back in the crater his shield had made of the mountain side he lifted a hand, fingers splayed and hissed a word. Exodus. The thing exploded backwards, shards of it flying in every direction. Rock pelted his body. He didn't bother with a shield, just held up an arm to protect his face from the shrapnel. Then with a grunt of effort he stood up, shaking dirt from his hair; staring up into the night sky.
"Is that the best you can do? After subsuming the powers of how many wizards? You're pitiful. Its a wonder your god can even stand to tolerate your existence."
A wisp of wind and Angelo hovered at the tree tops. An Exodus spell with every bit as much power as the one Schneider had just employed smashed into him. He was pummeled back into the earth he'd just risen from. Flesh and clothing was torn. His hair was singed. He felt a copious stream of blood running down from his scalp, and blinked it out of his eyes. That was two in a row. Angelo's luck was getting damned annoying.
"Don't you dare defile the name of my god with your serpent's lips."
"Which god is that, Angelino? The One God you're pushing down people's throats here; the Christian one you worshipped in the old world; or Ansasla? Do you even know anymore?"
"Shut up, Demon!!" A blast of fire based energy scoured the earth where Schneider had been. He leapt out of the path, taking to the air and firing back a blast of his own. In the Prophet's frenzy it caught him with shields down and blew him backwards, ripping through robes and skin. The trees caught at his body. He righted himself, holding a hand to a gash in his stomach that leaked blood and the glistening roll of intestines. His eyes bled red, but his face still held that half mad, fanatical indignation. But it seemed older now than it had the last time Schneider had seen him. As if all the power he used was eating up at the mortal flesh he wore, draining it of vitality. It might very well be the case. If a mortal body, designed to contain only so much power was overfilled, then the vessel would eventually break. The power of umpteen wizards could not be contained in one mortal shell, which was why Angelo was so desperate to find a host that was not mortal. That could contain the powers he had stolen. But it was too late, because this body was already failing.
Schneider threw back his head and laughed, hovering fifty feet from Angelo. "You're falling to pieces, old man. You couldn't get me and you didn't get Kall-Su and now your mortal body is betraying you. This is so perfect. Payback is hell, isn't it? I don't even need to kill you. It'd almost be more fun to watch your own power eat you up. Almost."
"Your depraved rantings do not effect me." Angelo hissed. The flesh between his fingers sealed itself. He closed his eyes, then screamed an inarticulate string of words. The ground exploded upwards to engulf the both of them. Schneider threw up a shield, but he was still blinded and buffeted by the use of earth magic. When it was over and the last bit of debris settled back to the ground, Angelo was gone.
Gara took a cut to the back of his arm. He launched into the air when Sinakha fired a spray of energy at him, connected with a column and rebounded off it, curling his body into a tight ball to avoid the deadly blasts coming his way. Even as he landed he was calling upon the Murasume's power. He hit ground and let the blade release it's destructive force. Unfortunately Sinakha leapt out of the way and the wave of power sailed uselessly past and hit the wall on the other side of the chamber. A strange thing happened. Instead of shattering stone with the impact, the magic seemed to spread out, skittering along the joints of mortar that held the stones in place before it harmlessly dispersed.
Odd. Very odd. He stared a half second too long and Sinakha was upon him. Clang. Spark. Clash. Blades met and danced off one another.
He took a slice along the upper thigh. He grunted, the leg giving out and went down. Sinakha kicked at his sword hand. His boot connected with Gara's wrist and the Murasume went flying. He cried out in rage. Sinakha's lips turned up in a parody of a smile. He drove forward and the tip of his blade pierced flesh. It would have driven through Gara's heart if he hadn't twisted. It went through his shoulder instead and he let it slide in, pushed himself forward to meet the thrust and trap the blade as he triggered the release of a dagger in his sleeve and rammed it up under Sinakha's ribcage. With a wrench of his hand he twisted the blade, driving it deeper. Hot blood spilled over his fingers. Sinakha's grin faltered, gave out entirely as blood filled his mouth. Those expressionless green eyes widened and suddenly filled with earnest surprise.
He staggered, stumbled forward onto Gara. The fall forced the blade embedded in Gara's shoulder to slice upwards, grating against bone. Gara screamed, falling backwards, Sinakha's dead weight pinning him down. His vision turned gray and for a moment he couldn't see.
"Wake up!" Lily's scream was dwarfed by a shuddering burst of magic from across the pillion where the two men fought. She didn't expect to see his lashes flutter. Didn't expect to see those incredibly blue eyes hazily focus on her. She leaned across the alter, grateful and frightened all at once.
"I can't get you free. How do I get you free of these?" she cried. She tugged frantically at the band on his left wrist. His gaze lazily drifted down his arm to where her fingers grasped the magic band. She had seen his eyes only a few times, not nearly enough to know the range of his expression, but she knew -- she knew in her heart that something was missing from them now. There was deadness behind his gaze. An emptiness that she was not even certain her voice or her panic pierced. Whatever he had been -- he was not the same now.
She wailed in dismay, in frustration and tugged backwards with all her strength on the bond. Something gave. Something tingled through her arms and fingers and enveloped the thin black restraint. It dissolved as if it had been nothing but sand to begin with, scattering about his wrist on the alter top. She gasped in amazement. She was too fearful to question what she had done, if she did, she might not be able to do it again. But she did. Twice more. Then she dragged him off of the alter. He was mostly dead weight in her arms and she went down under him, the both of them sprawled in the rubble at the base of the alter. She struggled to get from under him. How was she to ever get him out of here and down those narrow stairs if he would not support himself?
"Please, please." She pulled him up into her arms and pleaded against his ear. "You've got to help me with this. I can't do it by myself."
A cry of profound pain echoed from the other side of the alter. She shuddered, tightening her arms around Kall-Su. He shifted against her. A hand moved weakly to clutch at her shoulder. She did not hesitate and waste the moment. A shoulder under his arm and all her strength to hoist him upright. He had no balance. His head drooped, brushing against hers. I can't hold him. I'm going to fall, she thought.
Then something flashed down before her eyes, like a veil being lowered. A bloody, white veil, shredded beyond recognition that shrouded the figure of the Master. She caught one brief glance of his eyes. Bleeding and mad, before he swiped an arm at them and she was flung aside with no more thought than if he had flicked a mosquito off of his arm. She tumbled towards the edge of the pillion and went over the side. In her frantic mind she pictured herself falling to her death on the floor below. But her body hit much sooner than expected. Glanced off stairs and rolled a few painful yards down, before she managed to break the fall. Her nails bled from clutching at stone. Her head swam from too many impacts. She rolled to her back and felt ribs shift. As her vision swam out of focus, she thought she saw something flare in the gaping hole that had been made of the ceiling. She blinked back tears -- or blood to better see. An angel, she thought dizzily. A silver haired, glowing angel. But not one of the benevolent kinds she mused. This one had more the look of brimstone and fire. Then she passed out.
The Prophet, even in his madness was a creature of cunning and machination. He had not been prepared for this. In no way had he expected this encounter so soon. He had known his mortal body was failing him. He had hoped to have a new immortal one before he faced his enemy. And he had been so close. So fatefully close to that end.
His enemy was infused with the power of the hell that spawned him. He wouldn't succumb to the spells that would have devastated any other sorcerer. As much stubbornness as hell gifted power, but it spelled the same thing regardless. The Prophet could not best him taken unawares and unprepared. He needed time and he needed his chosen host.
Bloody and in more pain than he could easily recall enduring, he fled back to the place without windows. There were, hidden deep within its bowels places that magic would not dare. Places that even his own powers would not function. Not his magical ones at any rate. He needed to go to ground and lick his wounds, but not without his prize.
He saw an amazing thing. His little slavegirl struggling to support a listing Kall-Su towards the stairs. He did not even waste the breath to condemn her for her sins. Just batted her aside and swept Kall-Su into his embrace when his knees started to buckle. He took a moment to delve into his mind, making certain the defenses were still down, all his carefully crafted fears still in place. Anything could happen now. Angelo was no fool, having survived as long as he had, to assume fate would swing his way merely because he wished it so. He needed to know that even if he lost possession of the Ice Lord now, that he could reclaim him later.
Winds howled down through the hole in the roof. He looked up, eyes narrowing as his enemy descended, hair and clothing whipping about him in the tumult of his making. Angelo tightened his hold on Kall-Su, a living shield that he could not afford to lose now.
"Let him go." His enemy did not quite touch feet to ground, but hovered a foot or so off the floor, power radiating from him in heat waves that made the very air shimmer. Angelo did not bother to waste his power constructing a shield, because any blow Schneider threw at him would hit what he cherished.
"I don't think so. I've gone to so much trouble to make him mine, to abandon him now would be sacrilegious." He trailed a hand up Kall-Su's chest, across his throat to tilt his head backwards. It rested against his shoulder with no resistance. Thick, dark lashes lay against pale cheeks. Angelo pressed his lips against his temple.
"He's so very lovely. I don't recall ever taking a body so beautiful. If his soul was not so tainted by evil, I might have felt sinful in the breaking of it." His eyes glittered as he saw the rage build on his enemy's face. He knew what would drive Schneider to irrationality. And with irrationality he would make mistakes.
"Get your hands off him." Power gathered in a pulsing, blinding orb before Schneider. He formed it with his hands, threatening. But Angelo knew he wouldn't hurl it. Not yet.
"Would you kill the both of us? I promise you he'll go first. I can make certain of that. I can make certain no power of yours will ever resurrect him. You know I'm capable of that."
"You're going to die and when you do you're going to find out just what place hell has for pretenders of faith."
Angelo lifted a brow, felt blood dripping down into his eye and wiped it off against Kall-Su's hair, bright red against palest gold. He reached sinuous mental fingers out to weave among the wards of this place. Wards he had meticulously built and layered and crafted over the centuries. Wards that he had constructed to rebuff any magic but his own, to prison any wizard other than himself. And being a creature that planed for every eventuality, he had made them wards that would destroy this place and all within it, if the need ever arose. Only what rested below, the heart of his warren, would survive. That place had survived even the destruction of the old world, that place had been his haven while the rest of humanity suffered and died.
He sparked something within them, sent them out of their dormancy. Schneider sensed it. His head tilted to the side, like a dog on the scent.
"He screams so very well." Angelo ran a thumb down to the hollow of Kall-Su's throat. "He pleaded for redemption at the last. The god might very well have heard."
It distracted Schneider enough to get his attention away from the wards.
"Get -- your -- hands -- off." He ground out.
"He's not yours anymore." Angelo smiled his most benevolent smile. His leader of the flock smile that won the hearts and souls of thousands. It had blood in it now. He tasted it in his mouth. He felt the magic gathering. Schneider was going to cast the spell regardless of the threat to Kall-Su. Wonderful.
"He damned well is." Schneider snarled even as he released the orb of energy.
Several things happened at once. The wards, active now and sensitive to the use of magic flared out to engulf the energy that had been released in the room as well as its caster. Angelo started to laugh, started to lift himself and his burden skyward while Schneider was distracted. While the whole of the building began to shudder with the screaming of wards.
Then he was hit from the side. A glancing blow really, but unexpected in its pure lack of magic. Kall-Su's weight was wrenched out of his arms, encircled by the broad, sword bearing back of what could only be the Ninja Master, who Angelo had not even been aware was here. He cursed, extended a hand to blast Gara in the back, but the assassin dove for the edge of the pillion, taking himself and Kall-Su out of easy range.
Angelo screamed in rage. The chamber erupted in a backlash of
power as Schneider threw all his considerable power against the
wards, against Angelo. And he actually made headway. A wall blasted
outwards, a section of warding destroyed. The webwork of it had been
damaged when the ceiling had fallen in. He never would have been able
to overcome them otherwise. He came up at Angelo even as the wards
were grasping after him. Angelo felt fingers of pressure engulf his
body. He screamed, focusing his
The Place Without Windows began to collapse behind him, magic and wards devouring themselves. If Schneider stayed on his tail he'd loose what he came here to find in the destruction. Angelo's prayers were devout and desperate wishing against that. The night air swallowed him, but he didn't know how long he could go, his body hurting as it did. His power fluctuating and wailing, threatening to fail him. He wove spells of invisibility about himself, spells of silence to muffle the scent of his magic. And no blast came to shake his trembling shields.
Failure. Failure. It screamed in his mind. The ocean was a dark void before him. His magic faltered, his consciousness threatened to depart.
The Prophet fell towards the sea.
Gara hit the floor and took the brunt of the impact. There was no graceful way to direct a fall with a hundred seventy pounds of dead weight in one's arms, so he just fell and hit and figured if he survived it, Schneider could repair the damage done. It hurt like hell. Shoulder dislocated, hip smashed, left leg broken in several places from the impact. He ground his teeth and felt his mouth filling with blood. Hoped it was from biting his tongue. It felt like it.
The walls flared alive with a greenish webwork of energy that fluxed upwards towards the top of the pillion he had just sailed off of. The walls pulsed with enough static energy to make his hair stand on end. He tightened his good arm around Kall-Su as pieces of masonry began to fall, shattering on the floor around them. He couldn't do more than that. Couldn't even at the moment shift to shield him as more of the wall crumbled. He felt the trembling of the building in his bones.
Goddamnit, Schneider, he thought, finish up and get down here.
A figure ran out of the smoke towards them. Gara groaned, knowing he was in no shape to fight off an attack. But it was a girl, and she threw herself to her knees beside them, throwing her body over both their heads when a fall of debris showered down from above. He heard her grunt in pain as she was hit. But she pushed herself up and looked down at him -- or maybe she was looking at Kall, it was hard to tell behind the curtain of her dark hair. All he could really see of her face was a slice of pale skin and trembling lips above a sharp little chin. Her hands where they rested on Kall's shoulder and arm were small. One of them was marked with a slave tattoo. Not one of Angelo's minions then, but one of his servants.
"Have you come to take him away from here?" Her voice was soft, melodious even in its desperation.
"That was the plan." He grunted. It hurt to talk.
"You must hurry." She cast her gaze at the walls around them. "This place wails its deathsong."
"No shit." He muttered.
The floor beneath them shuddered. About fifty feet away a section of it just collapsed. Stone after stone was sucked down widening the hole, bringing its edge closer and closer to them. The girl gasped and grabbed at Gara's arm desperately.
"We've got to move."
"I don't think I can." He said, eyes on the growing pit, at the dust and the stray curls of greenish energy rising up from it. Then with a tremor the floor gave out beneath them. The girl didn't scream. Gara thought he might have in shock as the sudden sensation of falling made his gut clench. Then they weren't. They hovered in the gloom and pieces of masonry rebounded away from them off an invisible shield. Tendrils of energy also streaked towards that shield, feeding upon it, sucking at its energies. Up. They began to sail upwards, and the walls of the place tried to fall in and crush them. The girl hugged herself to both him and Kall-Su. Past the gaping ceiling and into the night sky and then with a sickening lurch they began to drop, only this time they landed on the slope of a mountain and not so hard that bones were broken. The three of them sprawled, skidding a little ways down slope.
"Goddamnit Schneider." Gara cursed. "That hurt."
Schneider hit the ground beside them. His knees buckled and he went down, out of breath and shaking, head bowed so that all one could see was a tangled fall of hair. "You're lucky --" he gasped after a moment. "--That I got you at all. That place sucks magic like a sponge."
Gara twisted his head to look upslope at the dark silhouette of the fortress. Explosions illuminated the tiers. A great piece of it separated from the main mass of the building and began a lumbering roll down the mountain side.
"Uh, Schneider --" Gara would have nudged him if he'd been able. "Think you can levitate us out of here now."
"Give me a minute."
"We don't have one."
Schneider's head snapped up. His eyes widened and he almost got the chance to curse before the darkness around them changed and Gara felt the same pull he had felt when the counter-summons had originally transported them here take effect. Then they weren't there at all.