<u>20</u>


    At the heart of reality, in the dead center of all the planes of existence, there stood a great, ever-living machine.  Tended by Fate, its output was manna and consequence.  Its input, past races, dead worlds and their gods.  A thing utterly outside of time yet touching all realms.


    Ill-met by moonlight, crankshaft and flesh-tearing gears, three living axels were present there, now.  The demi-god wizard Sherazedan, his heart-friend Arvendahl and a sliver of eldritch dark goddess, the Mother.  More than required, straining probability… but no one tells Fate how to weave.


    They were inside there; three embers of hatred and Chaos, just as… out in the planes… there labored three flickers of Order and peace.  A single thrust from a fated blade could eliminate either triad, depending upon who rose up to wield it.


    There were no legends and precious few hints regarding all this.  Even the wise only guessed what was happening, and even their gods were in danger.


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    In a dark, shrinking world (not very meanwhile) a staticky light-wall slowly advanced.  It consumed whatever it touched, then stored, cloned and transferred the data, sending it on to be used in the creation of assets on another plane of reality.  This one was dying.


    The Fallen One rarely recalled his full past or his name.  Only the fury and hatred that drove him.  He’d brought it all down. Not just one sneering elf, but each of them.  More than that. All of their works, he’d cursed, corrupted, destroyed.  In life, Trask had hidden a secret, disguising his own part-elvish… never quite good enough… blood.  He had risen to greatness, climbing up through the ranks without the help of a noble surname or patron.  He’d led armies, once manna was choked by the world’s strengthened field.  He had struck then to slaughter, enslave and devour.


    His great deadly weapon had been an insidious kill-code.  Triggered just as that wretched, offline escape ship took flight, his code shut down systems all over the planet.  Watercraft sank without trace.  Airships crashed to the ground in fiery arcs.  Battle-tanks locked up tight, condemning their crews to a dark, tomb-like death.  Cyborgs collapsed as their augmented parts ceased to function, now just helpless meat cores attached to immobile dead weight.


    War Marshall Trask had brought it all down, dooming himself, for he could not prevent the kill-code from striking his forces, too. Unfortunate collateral damage.  There had been terrible slaughter.  A horrific stench all over that fly-blown land.  But as for Trask…


    He wasn’t an old one, to be brought down by goblins or hunters.  He had no cyborg parts to seize up or be hacked.  His surviving troops had battled those of cursed Lord Erron of Summerdale, the opposing general.  Battled, overcome and finally captured.


    There’d been some satisfaction in tormenting the old one, drinking its terror-manna like wine.  Only, Trask was a prisoner, also; a thing that he’d grasped too late.  That kill-code brought down the Traveler’s Rest network and triggered a purge.  The light-wall began its steady, consuming advance.  Erron was only a broken husk by the time Trask realized all this.  The badly mutilated elf could not be used to power an escape attempt.  Then its mate tried to rescue it, nearly providing the Fallen One with an alternate source of manna.


    It was only the mind and data he snared, though, striking too soon to seize the elf-woman’s body, as well.  Blocked, Trask drained the manna and life force from his own loyal troops to push back that oncoming light-wall.  Killed them all, then summoned waves of darklings to hold it off, after that.


    Worse luck, Erron managed to die, using a last-magic curse to defend its mate and doom Trask.  Now he was monarch of ashes and bones and a dying world.  Locked to a throne of wreckage… unless he could capture that wandering elf-child along with its feeble spark of a god.  They would yield power enough to free Trask, if sacrificed outright rather than toyed with.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Only, the wretch had somehow acquired Erron’s data and was proving surprisingly tough to capture.  This lone old one was Trask’s uttermost chance, and so far, it had evaded all his attacks.  Trask was in a grim, savage mood, now.  Went to the end of his curse-tether over and over to stare out the window, stirring great clouds of sullen dark flies.


    His assets were cleverness, the mate’s fading data, a captured shrine-hostess and his own fierce need to escape.  Also, the witch; a servant of darkness whose damaged arm Trask had replaced with the she-orc’s.


    The hag was unbalanced in mind and appearance, but that muscular arm worked well enough, providing a link to the orc it had come from.  More recently, his stratagem with the light-wall was only a partial success.  Yes, the elf-child had driven away its followers.  No, it hadn’t been caught nor completely corrupted.


    Trask heaved a sigh from lungs that no longer needed to struggle for breath.  He was a corpse-lord, with no appetites left but terror, life-force, manna and pain.  King of a dying realm.


    “I will go fetch him, my lord,” rasped the witch, trying to pin her restless green orc-limb with the withered but natural other.  “Send me forth at him.”


    The Fallen One turned from his useless lure of a window to gaze at Ulnag.  She was trying to smile, which only served to irritate Trask.


    “You have failed twice to capture and hold this infant, hag.  I doubt your success would be greater a third time.  Also, you seek its life and its manna for your own use.  You would drain and kill it to raise yourself up as a mighty sorceress.  I see your mind, witch.  I know your treacherous thoughts.”


    Ulnag did not deny his accusation.  How could she?  Just shuffled her bare, chilly feet in the bones and the bodies and scuttling beetles.  Hungry and thirsty, because it amused her lord to keep her so.  Not without courage, though.


    “You cannot leave this place,” she muttered, not quite daring to look at that prince of ghouls.  “I can.  Should the old one succeed in reaching your lair, he will have gained much power.  Memory, too, perhaps.  He will be able to deal you the final death.”  True, every word of it, but her lord remained scornful.


    The Fallen One gestured back at his throne, where a kneeling goddess and a flickering swirl of pale symbols were pinned.


    “I have hostages,” he snarled, his eyes gone ember- bright in that papery skull of a face.  “For the child and its phantom ally, both.”


    Ulnag snorted, raising her head just a bit.  Not quite a laugh, but close.


    “That child resisted your possession.  Drove you back into the night like a whipped hound.  And Erron it was who cursed and imprisoned you.  Everyone knows how the Last General shall someday…”


    “Speak not that title, hag!” raged the Fallen One, lashing at her with whips of dark and crackling force.  “I am the Last General!  I was victorious!  I reign here!”


    Ulnag dropped to the crumbling mat of dried flesh, splintered bone and dead flies, shrieking.  Her terror and agony fed him, but not enough.  Soon, he would have to kill her and summon another wave.  Or else…


    “Very well,” decided the Fallen One, releasing his plaything just short of unconsciousness.  He wiped his mouth and withdrew those black tendrils. Then, placing a spell on the hag to shift any manna she drained back to him, he told her, “You may go.  Succeed or fail… but soften and weaken the elf-child.  Take the shape of a possible ally, something to throw off its balance.”


    Trask could make many things, but none of them beautiful.  He could, however, access bits of drifting chaff from the light-wall.  Now, the Fallen One used such a trace to alter the shape of his crouched and weeping servant.  Altered her beyond recognition, except for her eyes.  Those, and the soul that they mirrored, he could not disguise.  Next, the Fallen One opened a gate in his tower chamber, watching as Ulnag climbed from her hands and knees to a wobbly stand.


    “Go to the Rainbow Bridge,” he ordered.  “Wait for your quarry there… and may both of you perish in horror.”


    Cold air and a few flakes of snow blew in through the gate, stirring the fetid miasma of Trask’s rusty prison.


    “Out of my sight!” he barked, as the beautiful creature threw herself at his portal, straining for freedom.  True, he amused himself by twitching it out of her reach a few times, watching her stagger and fall… But the war marshal did finally let her depart.


    Use one problem to solve or weaken another.  Simple battlefield tactics, and nearly always successful.  He could no longer stay at his window.  Felt Erron’s vile curse hauling him back to a burning seat on that trap of a throne.  But there was a chance for him still, in blood and terror, in anguish and sacrifice.  A way for Trask to be freed, no matter the cost to everyone else… and curse all the gods, he would take it.