Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

NATE GARRETT

Realm of Atlantis

The ground beneath my feet tore apart and threw me back, my shield of air keeping me from any serious damage as I smashed into the wall of a nearby building. I tore my way through the rubble that fell onto me and saw that the building was completely empty inside. I noticed the elven runes that Dethian had mentioned but didn't have time to investigate anything further, and I sprinted back into the fray, wrapping dense lightning and air around my fist and driving it into the helmeted face of the closest Horseman, sending it flying back into its brethren.

Mordred had a few cuts on his arms as he avoided a spear by grabbing the shaft, stepping into the attacker's space, and driving a blade of ice up into the Horseman's throat. He twisted his hand, and a second later a dozen spikes shot out of the inside of the Horseman's helmet, killing it, and he stepped over the body to face the next one.

I avoided a blast of fire from one of the Horsemen, and the shadows leaped up from the ground, wrapping around him, and dragged him down into the shadows.

Merlin stood back, watching with his arms folded over his chest as Mordred and I carved through his Horsemen. We were bloody and bruised, and more than once we were punched down to the ground, but we kept getting back up, kept fighting. I was damned if I was going to let anyone stop me from what I needed to do.

After an unknown amount of time, Mordred and I regrouped. Both of us were breathing hard, sweat and blood on our faces.

"This is not how I wanted to spend my afternoon," I said, spitting blood onto the ground.

Mordred drew Excalibur, and I saw the look of amusement on Merlin's exceptionally punchable face.

Dark smoke circled my hands, and I thought I heard Mordred shout "No!" just as I poured my pure magic out in a stream of power that smashed into the Horsemen and Merlin with no stopping it. The power engulfed them, tearing into the citadel's lowest floor behind them and ripping through it.

I took a step back as my pure magic died down, and I saw that the Horsemen and Merlin, who should both have been turned into hunks of molten goo, were standing exactly where they'd been only a moment ago. A shield of purple matter magic lifted up off the ground, controlled by the Horsemen, and Merlin brushed off the tops of his shoulders, as if removing some dust from them.

"I'm going to take a guess that pure magic doesn't work on the Horsemen or Merlin," I said with a sigh.

"Do you feel stupid yet?" Merlin asked. "You can't win here."

"I beg to differ," I said.

"Kill them all," Merlin commanded.

I picked up from the ground a longsword that had belonged to one of the Horsemen. It would have to do for now.

The attacks came fast and unrelenting as I dodged and parried weapon attacks while throwing magic at those close enough. Fighting against a never-tiring mass of armored psychopaths was not a fun experience.

The bodies of the Horsemen littered the ground, but for every one Mordred and I killed, two more arrived to fill the void, leaving us both constantly on the back foot.

I parried an ax attack, but a Horseman appeared out of the shadows beside me and drove its fist into my jaw before I could stop it. The axman twisted the sword out of my grip and kicked me in the chest hard enough to send me back a dozen feet. I crashed to the ground near Mordred, who removed the hand of one Horseman who was reaching for me.

"This sucks," I said, getting back to my feet. I'd been taking Horsemen into my shadow realm when possible to continue to feed my power, but it wasn't going to be a long-term solution to fighting dozens of well-trained, heavily armed monsters.

"When it happens, catch it," Mordred said, swinging Excalibur down into the neck of the closest Horseman. Dodging the next attack, he drove the sword up into the Horseman's chest before blasting it away with his air magic.

Mordred spun and tossed Excalibur toward me, and I used my air magic to guide it to me before catching it in one hand and driving it up into the head of my closest attacker. I swapped hands, pulled the sword free, parried another strike, and stabbed the Horseman in the heart. A whip of lightning in one hand and Excalibur in the other, I killed two more Horsemen before I threw the sword back to Mordred, who caught it without looking and impaled a Horseman by his side before spinning under a second attack and removing the leg of the assailant.

We carried on like that for a while, each killing several Horsemen with Excalibur before bouncing it over to the other one and repeating the process. Excalibur didn't dull; it didn't get stuck—it drove home true, and nothing stopped it. Every time I held the sword, I felt my power increase, I felt the overwhelming need to use that power to destroy, and giving it up was incredibly difficult, but I did it nonetheless.

We'd killed a few dozen before the Horsemen stopped coming, and Mordred and I stood back to back, exhausted.

"These assholes just don't know when to quit," Mordred said.

"Are you both done?" Merlin asked.

I took a deep breath. "Nah, just getting a second wind," I said.

Merlin laughed. "I would have enjoyed working with you, Nate. It's a shame things didn't work out."

"You murdered people," I said.

"Yeah, that's less ‘not working out' and more down to you being a psychopath," Mordred said.

While Merlin was engaged with Mordred, my shadows crept around the dead Horsemen, stretching out until they were under the feet of everyone standing before us.

"You done?" I asked.

Mordred nodded.

The shadows leaped up off the ground, engulfing everyone within reach. They had dragged half a dozen down into the shadow realm before they were stopped, and while the pain of having my shadows severed or burned was less than pleasant, the power that those dead Horsemen gave me more than made up for it.

"You play video games?" Mordred asked.

Merlin's expression was the picture of rage. "Of course not. I'm a grown man."

"Well, this will be new to you, then," Mordred said.

Lightning tore out of my hands, smashed into the first Horseman, and exploded. It bounced from Horseman to Horseman, exploding with every new one it touched. Charring armor, breaking inside, and obliterating the living being.

One of the explosions bounced to Merlin, who wrapped himself in fire as the lightning detonated, throwing him twenty feet back across the face of the citadel. He impacted with a nearby building and vanished from view.

Mordred raised his hands high above his head and created a huge sphere of light magic.

The lightning died down, and I took a step back as Mordred unleashed the light magic. It turned into hundreds of daggers of light, which smashed into the remaining Horsemen with frightening speed and power.

"Chain lightning, bitch," Mordred shouted to his father, who still hadn't emerged from the hole he'd created in the wall of the building.

"There a name for the light-dagger thing?" I asked as the remains of most of the Horsemen steamed on the ground.

"Light-death-dagger thing," Mordred said. "I'm thinking of copyrighting it."

I offered Mordred a fist, which he bumped while smiling.

"You guys want to run away or what?" I asked the remaining few dozen Horsemen, who all had pieces of their brethren on them.

The building beside us was torn apart, the stone thrown at us with such incredible force that I only just managed to create a shield of lightning to stop it. A shield of air wouldn't have been enough, and even the lightning shield faltered. I was thrown back several feet, landed on my knees, and rolled back to my feet.

"You mock me," Merlin said as he hovered out of the building. "You dare mock me."

I spotted Mordred a few feet away from me, his ice shield almost completely destroyed.

Merlin continued to hover toward us until he stopped by the remaining Horsemen. "Go; do what you need to do."

The Horsemen ran off into the city without pause, leaving an exceptionally pissed-off Merlin to face Mordred and me.

Merlin didn't pause and started throwing huge chunks of rock at Mordred, who managed to dodge most of them. Two of the head-size rocks hit his shield, the first one obliterating it and the second catching him in the chest, which, judging from the sound, broke his ribs and/or sternum. He went down hard, and Merlin threw another rock at his kneeling son, but I blasted it away with air magic and walked over to Mordred, keeping my eyes on his father.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Broken. Hard. Breathing," Mordred managed. "Be okay."

"It's so touching that you came to his aid," Merlin said, rocks spinning around his hand like moons around a planet.

"He's your son," I snapped.

"So?" Merlin asked. "He never had the guts to do what needs to be done here. He was never going to be the one to stand up against everything that needed to be stopped. He didn't have the backbone to do it."

"You loved him," I said.

"I did," Merlin said. "That was my mistake. One of many."

"Another being that you aided a genocidal maniac?" I kept Mordred behind me and walked steadily toward Merlin, hoping that the time spent keeping him talking would let Mordred heal up.

"One man's genocidal maniac is another man's hero ..." Merlin threw a tendril of air at me, but I sank into my shadow realm and came out behind him, a blade of lightning in my hand.

Without Merlin even turning around, spikes of rock broke out from the ground, and I had to throw myself aside to keep from being impaled.

"Why are you holding back?" Merlin asked me. "You can't hope to kill me like this. Is it because you care what Mordred thinks of you? Is it because you hope I'll see the devastation wrought by Arthur's desires and suddenly change my mind? This is not a fairy tale, Nathaniel. This is not one of those ridiculous films about good versus evil. You make decisions and deal with the consequences. I made my decisions, and I made my peace with what had to happen because of them. I am not going to suddenly believe that you're right. I am not going to suddenly think that Arthur should be killed.

"You think of me as a villain, but you're shortsighted. I am not a villain; I am a visionary. I know what needs to be done to keep the Earth realm and all those connected to it safe. I know the power it requires. If only you'd seen that instead of thinking in such black-and-white terms. If only you'd considered that maybe you were wrong here. That Arthur as king is what's best for everyone. No war. No need for anyone to die of famine, disease; no need for pain and suffering. We would have made it a paradise."

"And all it takes is the murder of everyone who wants free will," I said.

"It's a small price to pay," Merlin told me. "An infinitesimal price. Millions die so billions can live in peace."

"That's not peace," I said fiercely. "That's slavery! I saw in America when you sent me there, all those years ago, how damaging that was."

Merlin laughed. "I honestly thought that when you went to America after your wife's death and started butchering people who deserved it, you'd finally realized what needed to be done. I sent you away to remove that moral code you were so goddamn fond of, and instead you met people who just helped you make it stronger."

The realization that Merlin had been against me and everything I thought he'd stood for was like a punch to the gut.

"I was wrong about you," I said. "I thought you were a good person who was dragged into something he'd wanted no part of, made to be the villain in a story that wasn't even his. I was wrong. You were always the villain; I just didn't want to see it."

"Grow up, Nathaniel," Merlin snapped.

"Yes," I said. "I think I should."

I created a sphere of magical lightning in one hand and sprinted toward Merlin, who reached out with his matter magic to shield himself from the blast.

I drove the sphere into the ground a few feet in front of Merlin and detonated the magic. It flung him up into the air, where he was met by a sphere of light magic that Mordred had thrown.

Merlin couldn't move the shield he'd created in time to stop the sphere of light from hitting him in the side. Mordred snapped his fingers, and for a moment I was blinded as the sphere detonated.

I blinked several times but couldn't find either Mordred or Merlin. The building where Merlin had been was collapsing, and then I saw a blast of light from further away as Merlin and Mordred continued to fight.

I paused, not wanting to leave my friend.

"He's got it," Zamek told me as he joined me, pointing to several figures in the distance sprinting over to help Mordred.

I nodded as part of the citadel exploded high above us, raining down huge chunks of stone between where we were standing and the battle being waged between Mordred and his father.

"Judgement isn't the only one up there in the citadel fighting Arthur," Zamek said. "One of the soldiers saw your mother and Lucifer head in after her. They need help more than Mordred."

I didn't disagree. I sprinted into the citadel. I tried the lifts, but the doors were completely destroyed, so I made my way up the first few flights of stairs, using my air magic to make me faster and more agile, jumping the stairs three or four at a time as I bounded up toward whatever I was going to find above.

There were dozens of bodies that had, judging from the mess they were in, met Judgement on her way up, and I hoped that when I reached them, Arthur would already be dead. Job done.

I kept running until I reached the tenth floor. I stopped momentarily by a large window at the end of the floor and looked out over the city as the buildings crumpled all around, as if they were being flattened by some invisible hand.

"What the hell is going on now?" I wondered aloud.

I continued up the stairs at a lightning pace, just in time to reach a hole in the wall, beyond which I saw Arthur drive a blade of fire into my mother's stomach. Lucifer was on the floor, bleeding from a wound, and Judgement was barely moving in the corner.

A whip of fire trailed from Arthur's hand, and he was two feet away from the wall when I vaporized it with my magic, throwing Arthur across the far end of what appeared to be his throne room.

I stepped inside, magical power crackling all around me, lightning moving up over my hands and arms. I cracked my knuckles. "My turn, motherfucker."