Chapter Eleven

Shadow Storm

Marcus Vogel

Agolith Desert

Twelve days after Xishlon

Marcus Vogel holds his Shadow Wand aloft, grayed wind power rotating outward from its tip like a dark hurricane. Hawk-focused, Vogel watches as the roiling spirals radiate over the Agolith Desert’s huge expanse of graying land and sky.

The view is sweepingly panoramic from the apex of this highest of stone arcs he’s flown onto, one of the multitudes of giant, graying stone formations adorning the Agolith. Vogel’s elevated position allows him an unimpeded view of his black-lightning-lit Shadow storm bands moving toward him from every horizon.

Storm bands newly overtaken by the Magedom’s sanctified Shadow power.

Vengeful excitement swells against Vogel’s chest and sears fire through his lines as he murmurs spell after spell, pulsing radiating bands of Shadow magery toward the Wyverncrafted storm bands. Linking them to his power.

And drawing them in like Shadow-tethered wraith bats.

His storm bands now.

Storm bands that will soon hold enough power to smash through the Northern Forest’s Dryad warding, so he can take back his Black Witch fastmate—who belongs to him.

Vogel glances at his fastmarked hand. He’s linked a Shadow tracking rune to his fastlines, and he can feel the trajectory of his fastmate through the stretch on his lines. The desire for domination over Elloren lashes hot through his power, the Black Witch caught up in a days-long lag as she streams toward the Dryads’ Northern Forest.

Giving him time to close in.

Oh, he’ll be ready to regain hold of Elloren as soon as she touches down in that forest. And then he’ll use her to bind the Icaral demon and strike down the Dryad Fae surrounding her, along with the Subland filth converging on her with their Heathen Wand.

Wind lashing through his dark hair, Vogel continues to hold the Wand aloft. His multi-eyed Shadow dragon is preternaturally still beneath him as the Shadow Wand’s power courses outward and the storm bands rumble in from all directions, enveloping every crimson stone arc in their path, instantly graying them, the arcs’ highest curves jutting up from the storm-sea like forlorn, color-stripped islands lost to the churning chaos.

A simmer of holy purpose burns through Vogel as he surveys the huge swarm of Mage soldiers on dragonback flying in from the West. Ready to join those already massing on the pinnacles of the giant, rocky arches—an unstoppable Mage force about to annex the entirety of the Central Continent to the Blessed Magedom.

A verse from The Book of the Ancients reverberates through Vogel’s mind. Nothing is beyond the Ancient One’s reach. Not the lashing storm nor the moon nor the tides.

Gnashing his teeth, Vogel sends another pulse of magic out toward the storms.

A returning wave of storming energy floods his body, his back arching in pained ecstasy. The silver gray fire he can sense blazing through his lines heats to darker flame as his Shadow power feeds on the elemental power in the desert trees and plants and wildlife being consumed then morphed into Shadow might.

The land increasingly purified of its vile Fae stain.

A Mage soldier on dragonback soaring over the consolidating storms catches Vogel’s eye, the Mage’s Shadowed water-and-wind aura breaking into hot steam against Vogel’s fiery lines. The Mage angles down toward the pinnacle of Vogel’s towering arch, his multi-eyed broken dragon touching down beside Vogel’s in a whoosh of powerful wingbeats.

“Excellency,”

Damion Bane greets Vogel, his green eyes glinting with a flash of awe as they sweep over the slowly rotating sea of storm surrounding them, dark lightning and thunder forking and crashing through it. Like a steely hurricane pulled down to hug the land.

Brought to heel.

A slash of vicious ire breaches the awe in Damion’s expression. “We’re unable to break through the shield of magery that’s been sent out over the desert Sublands,”

he admits. “Fallon and a squadron of our finest Level Five Mages are throwing everything they have at the shield-net, but she can’t blast through even a small section of it. The Level Five power at play is impervious to elemental attack as it contains all five affinities wrapped in an Issani twinning spell. The source of the twinned spell is just under us. Their Smaragdalfar army is under us, too, trapped to the south. The army was moving north before we blocked their route.”

Toward my Black Witch, Vogel seethes, lightning crackling through his lines.

“My runic crow spy sighted all this before it was cut down,”

Vogel murmurs as he peers north along with Damion, keeping his Wand aloft. “The Subland shielding is the work of Mavrik Glass and his whore, Gwynnifer Croft Sykes. It was cast using the corrupted Wand of Myth. They’ve escaped our attempt to cut them off from the Subland route to the north, as have the runic sorceress, Valasca Xanthrir, and the Icaral demon, Wynter Eirllyn.”

Damion’s mouth tightens, the unspoken filling the silence between them: the Heathen Wand headed straight toward Elloren Gardner.

Hatred spits through Vogel’s internal fire as he contemplates how he underestimated the winged Elf-bitch, Wynter Eirllyn. How she fooled not only him, but the entirety of Alfsigroth, all of them mistaking her for a weak little slip of a woman. Easily broken. Easily destroyed. And now, she’s wrested control of a Wand of Power and unleashed a Smaragdalfar army.

But their Resistance force has been fractured, as has the continent-wide Resistance, Vogel muses, the Icaral and her allies successfully cut off from their Subland army.

“Mavrik Glass and his whore’s twinned magic poses a serious threat,”

Damion warns.

“For the moment,”

Vogel responds as he lowers his Wand, a more controlled lash of fire burning through his lines now. Because he knows how he’ll eventually break through the Subland barrier. Knows how he can get through every defense Glass and his little whore and the Icaral demon can spell into being, even one cast by an evil Wand of Power.

And he knows how to keep them trapped underground until he’s ready to overtake them.

Vogel angles his Shadow Wand down and murmurs a spell.

Gray fog jets from the Wand’s tip and pierces through the mass of storms surrounding them. Vogel can sense his Shadow net fanning out over the Central Desert Sublands—a net that will trap the twinned Mages as well as Wynter Eirllyn and her allies underground.

Two can play at the shielding game.

Satisfied, Vogel lifts his Wand. “Prepare for our invasion of the Northern Forest,”

he orders Damion before pulsing out a hard flare of Shadow power toward his Shadow-tethered Mage forces.

Damion gives a stiff nod, his green eyes flashing with brutal excitement before he growls out a command to his dragon and the multi-eyed beast takes flight.

Vogel’s grip on his Wand firms, anticipation sizzling through his power, his path back to controlling the Black Witch imminent.

Elloren Vogel.

A remembrance of Elloren’s Black Witch majesty suffuses his mind, his beautiful, green-glimmering witch atop that immense Shadow tree of her own conjuring, ready to smite the entire Eastern Realm.

“My destiny,”

Vogel murmurs as he peers north. He can still feel the heated echo of the charge that detonated through both his fire and Elloren’s when his mouth pressed onto hers, binding them.

A flare of desire ignites, a firestorm searing through his lines.

Oh, yes, he’ll have her again, that one kiss triggering a ferocious, bottomless hunger. He wants her underneath him, under his complete control. Wants to furiously thrust his fire into her until he burns all resistance out of her, their joined inferno powerful enough to scorch the corruption from his own body and soul, as well.

Purifying and transforming them both into an unstoppable weapon for the Holy Magedom.

Elloren can’t win against his hold on her fastlines. He’ll subdue her once more and transform her into a pure and righteously submissive vessel. He’s rolled it over in his mind night after night, day after day—how she’ll get on her hands and knees and kiss the ground before him. Thank him for making her whole and pure again.

A hot shiver runs down Vogel’s spine at the thought of all that power bowing to him.

She was almost his.

His lips lift into a snarl as he inwardly curses that staen’en traitor Lukas Grey and the Icaral demon Yvan Guryev. It’s their fault that Elloren is hurtling toward the Dryad’s Northern Forest instead of standing here, by his side, under his complete control.

Tensing his shoulders, he draws in the storm bands’ power through his Wand, the desert’s sanctified gray magic filling his lines.

The imperfect vessel can be purified, Vogel silently recites before he mounts the dragon beside him and sends out a mental command to the tethered beast. As if hit by a shock of pain, the dragon tenses its neck then fans out its wings, beats them down against the air and rises along with Vogel’s army, all of them soaring above the spiraling sea of Shadow storm.

Vogel angles the Shadow Wand down and tugs on the storming mass beneath them.

Dragging it forward.

The sea of Shadow storm advances, moving toward the Northern Caledonian Mountains along with Vogel’s airborne forces. Vogel smiles, his spite igniting to battle lust.

I’m coming for you, Elloren.

He narrows his gaze on the Dryad-green mountain range lining the horizon, the Northern Forest just beyond.

And lo, the Holy Ones shall smash through the corruption of the wilds and redeem them.

Emboldened by the sacred verse, Vogel draws in Shadow power, his path forward clear—to wrest the Black Witch and the corrupted Wand of Myth from the grip of the heathen Northern Forest. As he razes it and siphons up its elemental power while he consumes the Fae wilds of the Eastern Realm via his Shadow attack on the East’s water.

The Central and Eastern Continent’s Natural World about to fall to the Magedom’s Shadow.

And the entirety of Dryad and Fae power about to fall with it.