The Divided Knight - Chapter Thirty-Three

Thaddeus opened his eyes. Above him, gray clouds scudded across a dark sky, and, all around him, a bone-chillingly cold wind wailed. The sound of the wind reminded him of something – another sound he'd heard recently – but he couldn't quite put his finger on exactly what. Turning his head, Thaddeus saw his sword, and also saw that the stone surface he was laying on had an enormous crack running through it that would soon cause half of the platform to break off and crumble down the side of the mountain. Platform? Mountain? Why were his thoughts so muddled, and how come his chest ached?

With a groan, Thaddeus turned on his side and reached for his sword. And then he paused. Where were Zoe and Aylander? And what about the wyvern they'd been fighting? The wyvern hit me, Thaddeus suddenly remembered. That was why his chest ached, and why he'd lost his grip on his sword. The wyvern had been able to hit him because Thaddeus had tripped something during one of his attacks – a trap that Thaddeus had only recognized when it had been too late to do anything about it. The wyvern had been the trap's bait, and, ultimately, also one of its victims, being pulled out of reality and back into the Abyss not long after the trap had sprung. But what about Zoe and Aylander? Had they taken hits like Thaddeus's? Were theirs worse?

Taking a hold of his sword, Thaddeus used it to help push himself back to his feet. The platform cracked and shifted under him, but – for the moment, at least – continued to hold. Looking up at the side of the mountain, Thaddeus saw the iron doors of the Gates of Eclipse had swung closed. Reopening them would be fairly easy – all it would take was the right amount of magic, enhanced by the properties of Thaddeus's sword. It would be too late, though, when he got them back open as, by then, Atraxos would have already obtained the Amulet. But would it be? Hadn't Adarion told him that, in the larger scheme of things, Atraxos was ultimately irrelevant? I have to get to him before he uses it, though. I have to.

Raising his sword and leveling it at the Gates, Thaddeus began to summon his magic, and that was when he remembered why the wail of the wind sounded so familiar. Zoe had screamed when the trap containing the wyvern had sprung. Her scream hadn't been one of pain, however – it had been one of terror. She'd been caught in the trap along with the wyvern. So had Aylander. And, like the wyvern, they both had been pulled into the Abyss, a condition that had only become possible once Thaddeus had lost his grip on his sword. That had broken the link they'd shared, making Zoe and Aylander vulnerable to both the wyvern, and to anything affecting it.

All at once, reopening the Gates of Eclipse no longer mattered. Zoe and Aylander – who, when they had all started out, had been little more than good friends, but who had, over the course of just the few days they had been together, become his family – were gone, lost in a place that, even as powerful as Thaddeus had become, he could never hope to reach. What was he supposed to do, now? How could he go on without them? Did he even have a choice? Of course I do. I could walk away right now, but, if I do that, I doom everyone. And what if, should I go on, I'm able to find a way to bring Zoe and Aylander back? Didn't Adarion imply that me making the choice to go on would allow me to be able to save the ones I love? Can I really turn my back on a possibility like that?

His mind made up, Thaddeus refocused his attention on the Gates, summoning his magic and sending it forth from his sword in a blast of blue light. When Atraxos had closed the Gates, he had locked them with an additional spell on top of that which already sealed them, and when Thaddeus's magic touched it, it tried to fight back, nearly causing Thaddeus's magic to be reflected back at him. Thaddeus staggered but, with the help of his sword, he was able to keep the magic from springing back, slapping Atraxos's spell against the Gates, which caused it to scatter. From that point, reopening the Gates was child's play, and, with a groan of iron hinges, the doors sprang apart, flinging themselves back against the mountain. The impact of the doors against the mountain caused the platform Thaddeus was on to splinter and begin to crumble, but he hardly noticed as he used a further burst of his magic to leap up toward and through the now open Gates of Eclipse.

Thaddeus raced down the tunnels that burrowed into and under the mountain. Magic – more than he had ever felt before, and of a type so old that to call it ancient would still have been an understatement – boiled around him, calling to him, wanting him to lose himself inside the heady flow of it, but Thaddeus ignored it, his only goal, now, to take up the mantle of the Nightslayer in the hope that doing so would give him a away to bring his family back. Stopping Atraxos and the Demon Lords had become secondary concerns – if Thaddeus could, he would, but saving Zoe and Aylander came first. And what if Zoe and Aylander had been killed by being pulled into the Abyss? If it came to that, Thaddeus would deal with it, then. Worrying about it, now, was counterproductive, and would only slow him down.

Thaddeus found Atraxos waiting for him in a curiously spartan room that, based on what his magical senses told him, was the source of the growing power that had surrounded him since passing through the Gates of Eclipse and into the mountain. Atraxos was sitting with his back to a glowing, marble archway, a small, black, metal cube on the floor before him. When Thaddeus entered the room, Atraxos looked up and grinned. “Hello, Thaddeus,” he said. “I've been expecting you.” He indicated the cube. “There's something, here, I need your help opening.”

The cube was obviously a box, and the box apparently contained the Amulet of Adarion. Why did Atraxos need Thaddeus to help him open it, however? Thaddeus probed the box with his magic, which, he found, was sealed by a spell that made it impossible for one person to open. “So I see,” Thaddeus said. “What makes you think I'll help you?”

“Because we both want the same thing. The Amulet is in this box. Help me open it, and all you will need to do is overpower me in order for the Amulet's power to be yours.” The fires in Atraxos's eyes flared. “If you think you can, that is.”

Thaddeus had to help Atraxos open the box, of course. Once the box was opened, it no longer mattered which one of them used the Amulet – the Sundered Halls would open and the Demon Lords would be free. And so would Adarion, who had somehow escaped the fate of the rest of the Divine Council and sealed himself away, waiting for the moment when the right person – the person who would be able to make the impossible decision, and, therefore, be worthy of the title of Nightslayer – came along. It amused Thaddeus that Atraxos still dared to think he had the upper hand, but then, after all, Atraxos – who was a fool, just as, it seemed, he always had been – had no way of understanding the truth of the situation.

“Let's open it, then,” Thaddeus said.

For a moment, Atraxos looked puzzled – why had Thaddeus agreed to help so readily? – but then, his attention shifted to the box. Thaddeus focused his attention on it, as well, and there was an audible click as the spell which had sealed it was undone. A seam appeared in the box's surface, and then the top slid soundlessly aside, exposing a white glow within. The glow was mesmerizing, and it took an effort of will for Thaddeus to pull his eyes away from it. Atraxos took a few seconds longer to look away, and, when he finally did, the flames in his eyes seemed a little dimmer, almost as if the glow had leached some of his power away. For a long moment, Thaddeus and Atraxos stared at one another, and it was all Thaddeus could do to keep himself from smiling.

“What, no move? No brazen attempt to seize the Amulet?” Atraxos asked.

Thaddeus said nothing.

“The key to godhood itself lies before you! Don't you want it?”

Thaddeus said nothing, and did not move.

“Perhaps the glow of the Amulet has addled your mind? It nearly did that to mine. A pity if you succumbed to it. I had hoped you would offer me more of a challenge.”

Atraxos reached into the box, taking the Amulet into his hand and drawing it out. To Thaddeus, the Amulet resembled a glowing pearl. It was beautiful, and, again, he had to force himself to keep from being mesmerized by its light. Atraxos made no such effort, and stared at it with an expression of rapt awe. And then the light of Amulet went out, leaving an object in Atraxos's hand roughly the same size as a marble, and which no longer gave off any kind of magical sense whatsoever. Thaddeus smiled, then.

“I don't understand,” Atraxos said. He shook the Amulet. The Amulet remained dark. “I don't understand!”

The archway Atraxos had his back to stopped glowing. The darkness within it began to contract in on itself, smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than a black pinprick, and then there was a brilliant flash of blue light. Deafening thunder followed the flash, and then there were figures emerging from the archway. The figures were black silhouettes wreathed in flame, each of the silhouettes largely human in appearance, and when they had all emerged, there were seven of them. Wrongness – similar to, but also somehow different, from that which had radiated from the drakes and the wyvern – seeped from these figures like a rank miasma. There could be no doubt who the figures were – the Demon Lords – and the one who approached Atraxos, now, the one whose silhouette was taller than the others and whose eyes blazed like twin furnaces, had to be none other than the Hidden King, himself.

“You have served your purpose well, Atraxos,” the Hidden King said.

“Purpose, Great One?” Atraxos asked.

“Yes. You freed us. And, for that, you have my eternal gratitude.”

“It . . . it was an honor, Great One.”

“Oh, I know. Our tools are always honored to serve their purposes.” The Hidden King raised a hand toward Atraxos. He clenched the hand into a fist and made a sudden, twisting motion to one side. Atraxos gasped – Thaddeus couldn't tell if it was in surprise or pain – and collapsed to the floor in a heap. “And they never seem to understand when their usefulness has come to an end.” The Hidden King looked over at Thaddeus, flashing him an infernal, burning grin. “Your turn, now, I think.”

“Unlike your tool, Magnus, Thaddeus Alvarem's time has not yet come.”

An eighth figure had emerged from the archway. This figure was that of an elderly man surrounded by a faint, blue glow. He wore a long, black robe and carried a staff with an odd, blade-like crook on one end. Walking with a slight limp, and using the staff like a cane, the man crossed the room to stand beside Thaddeus.

“So you do still live, Old Man,” the Hidden King said. “I knew I should have gone after you, myself.”

“Yes, very foolish of you not to. But then, weren't you always a foolish one, Magnus?”

“Why must you insist on calling me that?”

“It's your name, isn't it?”

“Not any longer.” The Hidden King stepped toward them and raised his hands. “And this time, I won't be so foolish.”

Adarion – for that was who the eighth figure had to have been – tapped Thaddeus on the shoulder with his staff. All at once, time seemed to stand still, and then everything went dark. The darkness lasted only a few moments before Thaddeus found himself standing inside a circle of white light. Outside the circle, the darkness lingered, but out of that darkness, images began to emerge, images that rushed toward Thaddeus and then broke around him like water breaking around a boulder in the middle of a river. The images showed Thaddeus the march of time – he saw the dawn of creation, the formation of the Divine Council, the naming of the first Nightslayers, and the rise of the Demon Lords. For a normal person, the torrent of images would have been overwhelming, and more than likely would have driven them mad. Thaddeus was able to weather it better – he was even able to process most of it, and understand why he had to see it – but knew that, without Adarion's presence and aid, he would have eventually lost his grip on sanity, as well.

The last thing Thaddeus saw was the most shocking of all. Toward the end, the Divine Council had been betrayed by the Nightslayers, and the resulting conflict had nearly torn the cosmos apart. Rifts – one of which had opened here, inside the Mountains of the Moon, and had allowed the people who would later be known as Eltarans to cross into this world from another plane of reality – were torn open in the dimensional fabric, so many that the only way to stabilize things had been to connect them all by creating a series of pathways called the Halls of Twilight. The Halls of Twilight were soon found to be the perfect trap for both the Demon Lords, and the Nightslayers who followed them – Nightslayers who, by that point, had become Demon Lords of their own. Those parts of the Halls of Twilight that became prisons were soon renamed the Sundered Halls, and it began to seem that, through them, the Divine Council would finally be able to restore at least a semblance of peace.

The final sealing of the Sundered Halls never happened, however – a last push by the Demon Lords had left all the Divine Council save Adarion dead, and Adarion had only escaped at the cost of his own Divinity. Giving up his Divinity, which had unleashed an incredible amount of magical energy, had placed a barrier between the Halls of Twilight and the rifts they connected, and had also placed in the minds of people the impetus and will to maintain those barriers until someone worthy of being named Nightslayer again emerged. Through this act, both the True and the Order of Catharzen had come into being, and it had been their actions – both direct, and otherwise – which had, at last, brought Thaddeus here.

The flood of images ended. Adarion stood before Thaddeus, now, regarding him with eyes the glowed an icy blue. “You have come far, Thaddeus Alvarem,” he said. “You have made the decisions that others could not and proven yourself worthy. However, one further decision – perhaps the most difficult of all – now lies before you. Will you, to the sacrifice of all else, take up this burden?”

“To the sacrifice of all else?” Thaddeus asked.

“Yes. All else.”

I will not give up on the ones I love. “I will,” Thaddeus said.

For a long moment, Adarion said nothing, his expression unreadable. And then, “Very well. I name you Nightslayer.”

And then Thaddeus was back in the room, with the Hidden King standing before him and ready to strike. Beside him, Adarion collapsed, dead, to the floor, the last of his strength – of his Divinity – sacrificed to naming Thaddeus the Nightslayer. At first, Thaddeus felt no different, but then the Hidden King struck, hurling a blast of magic at him that should have incinerated him. Raising his hand, Thaddeus caught the blast, and then sent it hurtling back. The Hidden King almost wasn't fast enough when he flung himself out of the way.

“Flee!” the Hidden King bellowed. “FLEE!”

There was a flash of light and a clap of thunder, and when both had passed, the Demon Lords were gone.

Now that the immediate threat had passed, Thaddeus was finally able to take stock of everything that had changed. Largely, he still felt as he had before, but there were differences – such as his sense of how much magic he could draw on, which had increased exponentially. And it wasn't just Arcane magic he could draw on, anymore – Life magic, it seemed, had been opened to him, as well, and, without any training of any kind, he could already see ways in which it and Arcane magic could be blended together. Looking down at himself, Thaddeus saw his clothing was different – he was now dressed from head to toe in black, his tabbard replaced by a knee-length coat with shimmering silver embroidery winding its way around the sleeves in subtle but intricate patterns that Thaddeus somehow knew only he – or someone very much like him – would be able to understand.

Unsheathing his sword – which he had no memory of returning to its scabbard – Thaddeus examined the blade. Nothing had changed about the sword, but Thaddeus found he could now read the runes on its surface, runes which spelled out the word Lightgiver. Thaddeus also became aware of a new bond he now shared with the sword – it had become well and truly his. Anyone else who tried to use it – unless they had Thaddeus's permission, or if they were bound to him by ties of blood or love – would find their souls taken from them and cast into the Abyss. Death, Thaddeus sensed, was the only way this bond could be broken, and there was even something – something elusive that he could just barely touch, and which reminded him of the tap Adarion had placed on his shoulder with his staff – that could make it stronger.

Returning his sword to its scabbard, Thaddeus took turns examining the bodies of both Atraxos the Black, and Adarion. Atraxos's body looked like it had been burned, his clothes reduced to ash, his bones scorched and blackened. No sense of magic came from the corpse, and with a quick probe of Life magic, Thaddeus understood that Atraxos's soul had become the Hidden King's thrall – which meant that, as long as it remained whole, the Hidden King could draw on it to fuel his magic without having to tap into his own personal reserves. This was how all of the Demon Lords fueled their powers, and the more thralls each of them had, the stronger they were. The Hidden King was the strongest of all, and all of the souls that were his lived in torment, begging to be released.

Adarion's body no longer looked like that of an elderly man. All of the years had gone from it, and the expression on its youthful face was serene and peaceful. As Thaddeus watched, Adarion's body began to glow, the glow growing brighter and brighter until, just when the glow should have become blinding, it faded away. When the glow faded was gone, the body was, as well. Taken by magic, Thaddeus realized. “May your slumber be restful and your days peaceful, Great One,” he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper, the blessing one that was almost as old, he realized, as time, itself.

Rising, Thaddeus turned to look at the archway the Demon Lords and Adarion had emerged from. The archway had become a tunnel that stretched back and back, further and further away until it no longer looked like a tunnel, at all. That tunnel was one of the Halls of Twilight, and, if he'd wanted to, Thaddeus could have walked down it and come out in any other plane of existence connected to it. He wouldn't have been able to use it to rescue Zoe and Aylander, however – they were in the Abyss, the emptiness between the planes, and it was possible that they weren't even alive at all, any longer. By becoming the Nightslayer, Thaddeus had sworn to forsake all else, but he was sure that not even Adarion had expected him to live up to the letter of that oath. He would find Zoe and Aylander, but he would also fight the renewed threat of the Demon Lords. Neither task was, in his mind, mutually exclusive of the other. They couldn't be, because Thaddeus understood that, alone, his chances of fighting the Demon Lords without becoming one himself were all but non-existent.

And so Thaddeus Alvarem got to work.