CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE

  As innumerable shadow creatures spilled from the breach like ink through a faucet, a lone wraith ranged farther than any other of its kind.

  It flit between the trees in hot pursuit of what could only have been a sudden migration. The violent stampede of only moments before evident in the trampled earth, slanted trees, and scattered bodies.

  Resembling a cloaked man with no visible head or extremities, the wraith paused in its pursuit to inspect one of the corpses—a scorpion made entirely of gumdrops and rock candy. The wraith quickly swept down to get a closer look. Whereupon it prodded the beast’s long stinger with the corner of its hem.

  The stinger attacked. Lightning quick, it speared upward to impale the renegade wraith through the chest. Only to pass harmlessly through—the wraith’s shadowy form having gone illusive and intangible for just the briefest second.

  Nevertheless, the wraith shot backward a few dozen meters, suddenly wary. After more seconds had passed, however, and the candied scorpion remained still, the wraith dared to approach once more. Another prod was met with a similarly violent reaction, and an identically negligible result. Although, most notably, there was no life to be found in the beast’s eyes. Instinct then? Reflex?

  The wraith left its stinger alone for now. Instead surveying the beast in its entirety—flying a few slow circuits around the body. After nearly a minute of this, the wraith froze. Its body began to inflate. Change. In seconds, a nearly identical scorpion stood over the oddly responsive corpse. Well, identical if you ignored the purplish charcoal of its candied carapace.

  The wraith, now scorpion, took a few exploratory steps, stumbled, then righted itself almost immediately. Stamping its feet a few times experimentally, it found itself content with the change. Feeling like a brand new wraith, it made to scuttle off in hot pursuit of the stampede once more, when, yet again, it paused. Without turning back to the corpse, the scorpion shaped wraith plunged its stinger into a nearby shadow. Through it. Where upon it came out the other side directly beneath the bestial corpse.

  Swiftly impaling the beast through the abdomen and lifting it six feet off the ground. The wraith flexed an invisible muscle, and, suddenly, nine more stingers branched out from the first—punching through carapace and spilling rainbow ichor to splatter across the forest floor. One last effort, and all ten of its stingers quite literally tore the poor creature apart. The eviscerated remains raining down with sickening wet plops.

  The wraith’s stinger reverted back to normal, whereupon it retrieved the color drenched thing from the closer pool of shadow. Without another backwards glance, the wraith continued on its way.

  +++

  The moon cast its silver-lit gaze across the craggy rock floor of the wide ravine. Its bluish tint growing increasingly dull and lifeless the closer to the looming pillar of shadow wraiths Richard got. Tens of thousands of them all told, they wound around one another like a corkscrew. A drill bit which sought to pierce the very heavens themselves. Their skyward procession having reached nearly half a kilometer by now.

  While, for hundreds of meters around the shifting pillar, a defuse cloud of flitting figures filled the air like an enormous swarm of insects.

  And at the heart of their loose formation, hovered a medium sized portal. A shifting tear in space—or was it reality?—partially obscured by overlapping bodies. Each creature half cloak, half artistic brushstroke.

  And Richard intended to run headlong into that deathtrap? That monochrome meat grinder of epic proportions? Well, it wasn’t that he intended to, so much as he very much already was. Feet pounding away against uneven ground, he practically flew across the intervening space. Patchwork cape billowing behind him—as long as he was tall, if you multiplied his height by a couple dozen or more. The talismans which made up the massive tarpaulin as numerous as they were expensive.

  Not in currency so much as blood, sweat, and tears. And soul. And mana. Oh! And did he mention blood? Because there’d been a lot of it.

  Amassing all these Mark 4 talismans had taken a great deal out of him, and he meant that quite literally. Considering his size, he didn’t exactly have a great deal of it to spare. Not that he regretted the months worth of bloodletting. Far from it. It was because of his borderline draconian procedures, that each and every one of his special talismans could be supercharged with life energy at a moments notice.

  And that spoke nothing of the edicts which he’d spent nearly as long painstakingly imparting onto each and every one.

  More and more of the wraiths were taking notice of him now. Pausing in their random meandering to swivel their heads in his direction. One after another, they stopped what they were doing. Tens became hundreds, became thousands in short order. The eerie silence of the creatures only adding to the sense of unease.

  Richard didn’t even break his stride. Instead he tugged on a corner of his cape. Sweeping it forward in a subtle homage to Dracula.

  Without an unlimited amount of soul energy and will, edicts, he was finding, were all a matter of perspective. It didn’t matter that something was factually true, or even realistically possible, so long as, conceptually, there was still a case to be made.

  The patchwork cape swept forward like a crimson tide. Unnaturally responsive to his touch, it moved as if it weighed nothing at all. And yet, despite the insane speeds he himself was moving at, it remained strangely unaffected by silly things like wind resistance. Richard pushed ever onward, and the patchwork, meanwhile, gently rippled before him. Floated there. As if it alone existed in zero gravity.

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  When searching for the girls, he’d taken the figurative connection, unseen but innately present, between communication talismans, and had given it a visual manifestation that only he could see. A solution both elegant and far less costly than simply willing himself by their side. Something which would have obliterated his soul for sure.

  With his next step, Richard spun, and the weightless cape spun with him. Twirling around his body in a whirlwind of crimson.

  The edicts he’d spent nearly a year imparting, meanwhile, served a similarly elegant purpose.

  It hadn’t taken long for him to notice how oddly clingy his impure mana was. When outside of his body, it moved as if possessed of a will of its own. A will that was far more receptive to him than it was hostile. Like a stripped down version of noble authority, seeing as it only applied to his mana.

  Most shockingly was the revelation that, when saturating something, like a slip of paper for instance, that degree of external mana control remained. Something that most certainly had not been the case, where his regular ole mana was concerned.

  The edict, “we are one and the same,” greatly expanded upon that aspect of control. So that working the crimson cape came to him as naturally as breathing. An additional limb he could operate just as surely as he did any of the others.

  As he spun, the wealth of bound talismans abruptly detached from one another. Twirling cyclone became swirling blood red blizzard—an isolated ticker-tape parade completely obscuring him from view.

  While “The whole is made up of smaller pieces,” represented a minuscule change, that nevertheless allowed him to shift, reorganize, and activate the many individual talismans in tandem, without needing to focus on each and every cog in the overarching machine. It was enough to simply will them into the shape he most desired. And, so long as the details of its construction were on the forefront of his mind, the transition, as it so happened, was practically seamless.

  A swelling screen of paper talismans which abruptly reversed course. Drawn inward. Inexorably closer, as if magnets to a load stone. Whereupon they settled into place, the pieces of a complex puzzle. The long hilt coalesced in his outstretched hands. With the rest following shortly thereafter—extending further as more and more talismans were hastily tacked on. Cross guard leading into the impressive length of blade—as wide as he was tall and six times as long.

  Talismans flashing all the while, as binding, hardening, and sharpening runes went off simultaneously.

  Richard completed his three sixty spin just as the last slip of paper settled into place. His gathered momentum became a sweeping horizontal slash—a flash of sanguine fire engulfing the very edge of the blade. In the next instant, a wide crescent of sharpened force leapt from the wild swing. Crossing the distance between Richard and the rattled penumbral beehive in the time it took to blink.

  A bisecting line neatly drawn across their ranks. Those few unlucky enough to have found themselves at eye level swiftly bisected down the middle. Some recovered—halves inexplicably drawn back together. Many did not. Their bodies torn apart, before the remains faded away. His costly attack killing maybe a hundred or so in one go.

  Nearly a dozen talismans exhausted to kill barely a hundred wraiths? Yeah, this definitely calls for a change in tactics.

  Richard waved away the wall of notifications, even as he continued his forward charge. The only sounds or signs of movement the pounding of his feet, as, by now, even the winding pillar had gone eerily still. Richard grimaced.

  Make a splash, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Granted, I really do need to make a good first impression here. If the void gods already know what I am, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the pantheon catches on.

  The pregnant pause lasted for several interminable seconds, before, with a silent scream which positively reeked of bloodlust, the entire pillar, and all those in the periphery, plunged earthward like a spectral avalanche.

  When that time comes, I’ll be royally screwed, unless I can somehow give them a reason to keep me around.

  Setting aside his aspirations of blade mastery for now, Richard clawed at the air. His talismans were quick to respond. The sword swiftly broke apart in his hands. Transformed into a raging blizzard of red notes. Whereupon they swirled around to alight on his shoulder blades. A pair of wings settling into place with graceful ease.

  I’m a wrench in the gears. I know it. They know it. And yet, if personal experience is anything to go by, something trumps logistical concerns almost every time. Personal self interest! I just need to catch the eye of someone important. Someone whose umbrella of influence might protect me from the possible reprisals. Which means, so long as I’m really doing this, it’s for the best I go all out.

  Aiming skyward, Richard flapped his wings once, twice. Not with the goal of lift off, necessarily, but, instead, of retaliating against the jet black tsunami currently trying to bury him alive. His momentum was arrested quite suddenly—feet kicking at open air. A trail of talismans rocketed upward. Unpowered, their momentum was quick to stall. Falling limp, before beginning their inexorable descent back to the ground.

  The second Richard’s feet touched back down, he leapt. And none too soon either. An eruption of grasping tendrils gushed from his cast shadow in that very same instant. An unformed collection of shadowy appendages which rushed skyward like a waterfall, if played in reverse. So close, he could practically feel the cool grasp of shadow as it sought to choke the life from him. Even the memory of it, from his previous encounters with those who thrived in shadow, enough to send shivers down his spine.

  The forest of tendrils neared. The nearest close enough to paw at his Achilles tendon.

  Richard planted his foot on the nearest talisman—mana control allowing him to perfectly position it face down. The talisman suddenly flashed with sanguine light, and, for the briefest moment, the paper slip held his weight easily. Impetus and acceleration runes making a stepping-stone out of a simple scrap of paper.

  Richard leapt from the red note just before it was consumed by crimson fire—evading the noose trying to wrap around his ankle by mere centimeters.

  The added oomph of burning life energy helped push him to even greater heights. Right into the path of the next talisman in line. And from there, onto the next. And the next. And the next.

  Effectively leapfrogging his way through the skies. The wind whipped through his hair as Richard climbed onward and upward. In no time, he left the grasping shadows behind. The occasional flap of his wings sending another trail of potential stepping-stones sky high.

  Paving the way as the two sides neared.

  The avalanche of shadow soldiers silently baying for blood, and Richard, with a few more secrets set in store, grinning ear to ear.

  Goddess be praised, he’d actually fought these infuriating spectral things before, and so thought he knew the best way to deal with them. He’d just have to hope the tools he’d brought with him were up to the task.

  One last step propelled him within spitting distance of the creatures. So close he could clearly see up into the featureless void beneath the nearest one’s hood. Smell the fetid breath of stale, stagnant air. His wings suddenly broke apart to form a massive folding fan several times his size. With relish, Richard swept the fan across his body, sending a shotgun spread of various talismans pelting into the swarm at point blank range.