He Who Crosses Death Read online

  He turned back toward Lyra and the others, who were still waiting beyond the net of appendages. “I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing here.”

  “But what about the sparks?” Gia said.

  “What about them?” Tane said. “There’s obviously power here. And maybe I can use it. But I don’t know how. And there’s no one to teach me. There’s no point. Not anymore. Not to anything.”

  He felt the grief threatening to overwhelm him again, and he lost his balance and fell back against the bone. He bounced away, and landed sideways on the net. He rotated to lie flat, looking up at the bone, and the sky beyond.

  This was all pointless.

  As he lay there, his thoughts began to darken, moving from sorrow to vengeance. S’Wraathar was out there. The being that had killed Sinive. Tane would destroy that creature. Giving it a slow, painful death, if he could help it.

  And then when he was done, he would move on to all the other dwellers. The TSN had been right to destroy their homeworld. The only mistake had been in not destroying them all.

  “Doomwielder, rise,” G’allanthamas was saying over the comm.

  Tane felt a flash of rage. G’allanthamas was a hated dweller, too.

  Tane sat up, and shot an angry glare in the alien’s direction.

  He realized as he did so that there had been an urgent undertone to the dweller’s voice. And now he knew why.

  There were several dark smears floating above Tane. They were slowly inching their way toward him.

  “I can’t deflect them,” G’allanthamas said. “I don’t know why. Only slow them. It’s some property of this place. You have to move out of the way.”

  Tane rolled aside, and the works of Fingers of Ruin sped up, as if G’allanthamas had released whatever work of Deflect he had created, and the dark smears slammed into the bone. No dark veins appeared, nor any cracks: the gray object simply absorbed them.

  Tane scrambled upright on the uneven net of vines beneath him and drew his beam hilt; he ran his gaze across the plant-covered spires that surrounded the clearing, searching for the source of the attack.

  A black distortion tunnel opened immediately behind G’allanthamas, and S’Wraathar stepped through, covered in a protective sphere of Dark Essence, fiery black pole-ax exploding from the Dark beam hilt equivalent the alien held in one tentacle. The dweller was just as translucent as Tane and the others.

  The Graaz’dhen Amaranth struck outward with two powerful forelegs and promptly rolled G’allanthamas over.

  S’Wraathar swung the unnatural pole-ax down to finish the job.

  Tane was too far away to save his friend. He was going to watch G’allanthamas die.

  9

  Tane watched helplessly as time seemed to slow, and that blade inched ever close to his alien friend’s environmental suit.

  But then Lyra was there, and she intercepted S’Wraathar’s Dark haft with her own made of White. Time snapped back to its original pace as the two fought in a blur of Dark and White, with Lyra employing intricate ax forms he had never before seen. She carried her scepter in her right hand, and occasionally unleashed Essence Missiles at the dweller, as well as Persistent Flame fanned by Air Current. It would have been breathtaking to watch, if it weren’t for the fact that Tane was consumed by anger. Most was directed at S’Wraathar, of course, but a good portion was also reserved for Lyra.

  How dare she take away my vengeance!

  If she was struck down in that moment by the alien, he wouldn’t have shed any tears.

  “World Bender, we need you!” Gia said.

  Tane realized then that other Amaranth had been pouring through the distortion tunnel while Lyra and S’Wraathar fought.

  But Tane didn’t care. He had eyes only for the two of them.

  More smears of unreality were homing in on him, but Chase must have slowed them with Deflect. Tane dodged between those, and leaped nimbly between the different vine appendages composing the net below him, until he reached the edge and leaped off.

  He froze in place as a dweller placed a work of Dark Hand upon him, but it dissipated a moment later, thanks to a Deflect work from either Chase or G’allanthamas.

  Jed materialized at intervals as his Chrysalium sword hacked through the protective environments of different dwellers, and he managed to take down two of them before he was caught in an invisible vice and pounded into the ground. Neither Chase nor G’allanthamas could help him, since all of their efforts were evidently directed at Tane, who was drawing the brunt of the enemy Essence attacks. Lyra couldn’t help either, seeing as she was currently occupied by S’Wraathar.

  Tane leaped to her side and added his blade to hers. Together they fended off the big dweller and forced it back. Though Tane didn’t know any of the fancy blade forms that Lyra employed, he made up for it with the sheer ferocity of his attack. Hatred, when properly harnessed, could grant one great strength.

  Unfortunately, brute force wasn’t the best approach against a foe like this, and Tane nearly lost his arm when that black pole ax slipped through his defenses. If Lyra hadn’t diverted her attack to save him, he would have certainly been maimed.

  Lyra’s diverted attack gave the dweller an opening, and he punched outward with several tentacles, striking her spacesuit in the chest assembly. Lyra was sent flying across the clearing, landing on the vine net. She didn’t get up.

  Tane was left to face the dweller alone.

  S’Wraathar focused on him. If Tane didn’t know better, he would have thought that sideways-oriented maw was grinning.

  The black pole-ax came swinging down on Tane, who narrowly deflected it. One of the dweller’s forelegs shot out, catching him in the same manner as Lyra a moment ago, and Tane was flung backward. He landed on the bouncing net. His chest flared with pain: the wind had been literally knocked out of him.

  He started to rise, but S’Wraathar had leaped in an arc to follow Tane’s backward motion, and was already on him.

  Tane deactivated his beam hilt so that he could roll to the side without maiming himself. He kept his arms wrapped closed to his chest, so that they wouldn’t catch in any of the gaps in the net. He felt the surface underneath him bounce up and down as S’Wraathar landed.

  Tane scrambled to his feet and backed away, setting his feet carefully on the elevated latticework of vines.

  S’Wraathar stepped forward menacingly; the dweller placed his big legs right through the gaps in the net, and thus didn’t have to worry about balancing at all.

  Tane reactivated his Essence ax, but continued backing away. A plan had come to him.

  Gia, Nebb and Positron fired at those among the dwellers that were in environmental suits, and thus not Amaranth. Meanwhile Lyra was back on her feet, as was Jed, and with Chase and G’allanthamas they concentrated their attacks against the Amaranth.

  S’Wraathar disturbed the net with one foot, attempting to make Tane lose his balance, but Tane hurried to the bone at the center of the vines and propped himself against it. There he waited.

  Up until that point, S’Wraathar hadn’t yet placed all of his legs inside the gaps. His first four legs were within those gaps, but the last four remained beyond.

  Come on. Get closer.

  S’Wraathar put his next two legs into gaps between the net’s latticework.

  That was good enough for Tane’s purposes.

  He released two large Essence Missiles.

  S’Wraathar tried to dodge, but the net ensnared him and the alien succeeded only in tripping. The Essence Missiles struck his protective environment, but the dweller stopped them in time with Deflect. The slowed Missiles quickly dissipated before striking any tentacles or the carapace beyond.

  It was only a matter of time until S’Wraathar exhausted all the Deflect works placed in reserve, so Tane released two more Essence Missiles, these ones slightly weaker so that he wouldn’t exhaust himself too quickly.

  The first one dissipated like the previous, but the second one manage
d to penetrate deep enough to singe one of the tentacles.

  He launched more Missiles, but these slowed and disappeared before touching the outer Dark Essence shell: evidently one of S’Wraathar’s minions must have paused in the battle against the others to use Deflect, saving his master.

  This time Tane unleashed Persistent Flame, allowing it to flare out in front of him. But the fire didn’t penetrate the protective shell of Dark Essence—lucky for the dweller, because it would have ignited the liquid hydrocarbon environment inside. Fueled by the surrounding atmosphere, the explosion wouldn’t have been pretty.

  S’Wraathar cut down with his pole ax, frantically trying to free himself of the ensnaring vines.

  Tane Siphoned the Dark to mitigate the exhaustion he felt creeping up his bones, and then prepared two more Essence Missiles, allowing these to grow as big as he was capable of handling before releasing them. They were large, level four works, thanks to the Feral Necklace he wore.

  S’Wraathar was able to dodge one of them, since he had cut through half the vines, but the other penetrated the Dark Essence sphere and struck him squarely in the carapace. A huge, black gaping wound appeared, and S’Wraathar collapsed amid the vines. He dropped the C’Havar beam hilt, but somehow managed to maintain his protective environment.

  Wanting S’Wraathar to suffer, Tane walked forward casually. Now that the alien had ceased struggling, Tane was able to readily navigate the vines forming the net’s latticework. He approached his foe, and waved the Essence ax menacingly in his hand.

  He launched another Essence Missile. S’Wraathar thrust out with his legs at the last moment, lifting up half of his trapped body, but the Missile still singed the right half of his carapace, and scorched the top outer halves of the four legs there.

  That’s right. Suffer. As Sinive did.

  The others continued to fight around him, but he didn’t pay attention. All of his being was focused on the alien who had killed his woman.

  The protective environment burst before Tane reached S’Wraathar, and all the petrol-smelling yellow liquid it contained flowed out onto the ground. S’Wraathar’s sideways-oriented maw opened and closed in seeming agony as the gills on the right sides of his head clenched tight.

  Tane smirked as he looked down at his hated enemy. Was it time to end it?

  No. Let him suffer more. Let him choke. The same death he had planned for me.

  Hideous laughter abruptly emitted from the voice box at the base of the alien’s maw. It sounded part gargle.

  The black Essence blade exploded from underneath the dweller: S’Wraathar had surreptitiously retrieved it, and swung it upward in a death blow.

  Tane barely lowered his own White ax in time, and the force of the impact sent him backward so that he was lying on his back on the vine net.

  The protective environment returned around S’Wraathar, replete with liquid hydrocarbons inside. The alien had evidently lowered the protective environment to lull Tane into a sense of complacency, to make him think the dweller was done.

  Should have killed him quickly when I had the chance.

  S’Wraathar swept the blade down in a wide sweep in front of his body. Tane launched another final Essence Missile, but with that last sweep S’Wraathar had freed himself completely from the vines that snared him, and he leaped to the side. The alien was still badly injured—that much was obvious from the odd limping crab-walk the dweller exhibited.

  S’Wraathar produced a dark rock and threw it directly at Tane, who scrambled out of the way.

  Tane’s leg slipped through the net and snagged him in the process.

  The rock became bright red as it struck the ground just in front of Tane.

  He pulled himself from the net and scrambled backward, toward the far side of the elevated vines as molten creatures emerged from the ground, between the vine net. They quickly solidified into solid gray masses, humanoid in shape, twice the size of an ordinary man. There were eight of them, with molten red eyes all fixed on Tane.

  They began to walk forward, breaking through the vines.

  Tane lowered his Essence ax and fired a bolt from the tip at the closest. It left a dark blast crater in the surface, but otherwise didn’t stop the creature.

  Jed leaped into one of them from the side, bashing it with his Chrysalium sword, but it beat him away.

  Tane tried an Essence Missile, and that allowed him to melt away the whole right side of one of the creatures, stopping it. But that last Missile put Tane over the edge, and he was close to stepping out of the Essence entirely. He could maintain the Essence ax, but no more.

  It would have to do. He found himself unable to continue holding onto the Dark Essence, however, and though he’d feel even more tired when he let go, he had no choice.

  He staggered as the Dark left him, keeping his gaze upon the big rock creatures that were bearing toward him. Still retreating, he reached the far side of the clearing, and stepped off the elevated net of vines and onto the ground proper—which was sheathed in more of the glowing plants, of course. His companions were trapped on the opposite side of the clearing, separated from Tane by the creatures.

  Actually scratch that: one of his companions was at his side.

  Jed.

  “Are you ready, World Bender?” Jed said.

  “No,” Tane said.

  “Good, because neither am I.”

  The two watched the rock creatures cut through the vines in their approach. Tane still had Essence Sight active, and he cast out with it to make sure he wouldn’t be attacked from behind. Good thing he did that, because he spotted more rock creatures stepping between the spires that bordered the clearing at their backs. S’Wraathar had likely created them before the battle began.

  Well, either way, Tane and Jed were surrounded.

  “We’re going to have to fight back to back,” Tane said.

  “As I prefer,” Jed said. “Try not to get in the way.”

  “You too,” Tane said.

  In moments the creatures were upon them. Tane inflicted big red slashes into those gray chests, melting through the rock with his Essence ax. Jed meanwhile shattered the gray stone with impacts from his Chrysalium sword. The two of them flowed forward and backward, left and right, playing off of one another. Tane occasionally had to roll to the ground or step aside to dodge a blow, but Jed was always there to make sure he wasn’t struck from behind. When Jed dodged in turn, Tane paid him back in kind. It helped that the rock entities were essentially defenseless—if they wielded their own Essence ax variants, the battle wouldn’t have gone so smoothly, given Tane’s relative inexperience with ax forms.

  Together they made short work of the creatures, so that in under thirty seconds, Tane and Jed were surrounded by piles of shapeless rock, some of it with molten edges.

  Tane glanced across the clearing. All of the rock creatures had concentrated their attacks upon Tane and Jed, leaving his companions to defend against the aliens. He saw that his friends had taken cover behind different features of the square: some hid within rocks covered in vines, others behind the spires themselves.

  Most of the Amaranth had retreated to the far side of the clearing, where they sheltered beyond the spires, and peered past to launch energy launchers. Both sides had given up on Essence weapons—the Amaranth had exhausted their reserves, as had G’allanthamas, while Lyra and Chance had exhausted themselves, period.

  Positron was still in the clearing, crouched behind the stasis pod, using it for cover.

  The sight filled Tane with a sudden rage.

  How dare he use her body for cover!

  He leaped forward.

  “Tane!” Jed said.

  But Tane ignored him, and raced through the path the rock creatures had carved through the vines. An energy launcher struck his autogating shield.

  Shield strength, 50%.

  His companions launched suppressive fire from pistols and rifles to keep the enemies at bay.

  S’Wraathar emerged from
where he was hiding near the stasis pod and leaped upon Positron, bashing the robot into a nearby spire. Positron slid to the ground, unmoving. There was a large dent in the scepter’s chest area.

  The wounded dweller activated his pole-ax and cut it across the top of the stasis pod, exposing Sinive.

  Tane watched in horror as S’Wraathar reached inside with his tentacles and hauled out her dead body.

  “Pathetic!” S’Wraathar said via his voice box.

  Despite the fact that several dwellers were still out there, ready to unleash their energy launchers the moment the suppressive fire laid down by his companions let up, Tane ran forward.

  He wasn’t going to watch idly as Sinive was desecrated yet again. Wasn’t going to watch as further indignities were inflicted upon her body. S’Wraathar had already killed her. Wasn’t that enough?

  Tane cranked up his servomotors to the highest setting and came at S’Wraathar with his White ax swinging.

  The dweller dropped Sinive to parry the attack. The creature seemed taken aback by the ferocity of his assault, and actually retreated under the onslaught.

  Tane moved his arms in a blur, feeding on the anger. He let the rage flow through his being, accompanying the Essence that scraped across his bones, and allowed it to suffuse his limbs with energy and speed.

  S’Wraathar continued to retreat under the blows, backing toward one of the spires that bordered the clearing. It probably helped that the alien was already severely wounded from Tane’s earlier Essence Missiles.

  And then Tane managed to break through S’Wraathar’s guard, and he sliced away the limb that wielded the beam hilt. It was either due to luck, Tane’s rage, or S’Wraathar’s diminished condition, or perhaps a combination of all three. But he disarmed the creature.

  The sheath of Dark Essence that surrounded the dweller shut off once more, and the liquid hydrocarbons splashed onto the ground.

  S’Wraathar’s eight legs immediately buckled and he fell before Tane as if kneeling. A dark, foul-smelling liquid oozed from his rear section—the equivalent of voiding his bowels. Black blood oozed from his legs, his severed tentacle, and the craters the Essence Missiles had carved into his carapace.