Chapter Eleven

V’yexwraith

Marcus Vogel

Shadowed stump of III

Marcus Vogel speeds west through the overtaken Vu Trin sky portal then emerges to soar over the destroyed Northern Forest, righteous fury running silver-hot through his lines. Damion Bane and his forces fly in just behind him. A forest of charred, Shadowed trees speeds by beneath them all, the trees reaching spectral limbs toward the steely sky.

The Shadow-smoking stump of III comes into sharper view. The heathen tree’s stump is wider than the base of the sprawling Valgard Cathedral, a dark abyss now swirling in its center.

The Shadow Wand gripped in Vogel’s fist gives a firm pull toward the stump, and Vogel sends a mental order out to the multi-eyed dragon beneath him. The Shadow-tethered creature immediately obeys, angling its trajectory down toward III’s corpse, Damion and his forces following.

Vogel takes in the additional Mage forces already encircling the colossal, hollowed-out stump, several of his high-level commanders and Mage priests standing in an arc just before it. Vogel glowers at the huge, destroyed Tree that broke his Shadow fasting to Elloren Gardner Grey, stripping the gray lines from both his hands and hers.

Breaking his control over the Dryad Witch.

But in the end, your might was no match for the Magedom, was it? he sneers at III’s stump, struggling to tamp down his rage over both the Tree’s countermove and the Dryad Witch’s betrayal. And how Elloren bested him with her tree and Icaral-linked power.

He huffs out a contemptuous breath, clear that her corrupted magic will be obliterated soon enough.

“Excellency,”

Damion Bane says as he and Vogel land, side by side, “why did you order us to retreat from the Black Witch and her allies?”

Vogel narrows his eyes at the young commander as he dismounts and Damion does the same. Damion’s visage and tone are martially contained, but Vogel can sense the chaotic fury pulsing through Damion’s Level Five power. Fury that’s been well stoked by the slaying of his brother, Sylus, by the Amaz whore Valasca Xanthrir. And Vogel is well aware Damion has another axe to grind, bested as he was by his staen’en bitch of a fastmate, Aislinn Greer.

“Elloren Gardner Grey is lost to us,”

Vogel informs Damion, acutely aware of his fastmark-stripped hands. “The Fae Witch was never the Ancient One’s intended Black Witch.”

“Yet you chose not to smite her?”

Damion challenges, the surly edge in his tone eliciting alarmed looks from the priests and commanders surrounding them and sending a surge of heat through Vogel’s lines.

Vogel tamps down his fiery anger, choosing to ignore Damion’s insubordination. “There will be no smiting the Fae Witch at the moment,”

he says, voice dangerously clipped. “Her power has been linked to the Fae wilds by the dead Tree before us. She allowed the heathen Tree to turn her into a Fae Dryad. As such, her power, combined with that of her heathen allies, is currently an even match for ours.”

A faint smile edges Vogel’s lips. “But her Tree Fae magic will soon begin to shrivel, along with the elemental magic of her allies.”

The insubordination in Damion’s eyes shifts to a full-on glare. “How can you be so certain?”

he demands.

Vogel’s smile takes fuller form as he points the Shadow Wand’s tip at one of the charred trees encircling the clearing.

Damion turns and takes in the unconscious Dryad female hanging limply from the tree. The Dryad bitch’s grayed face is marked by steely lightning-bolt patterns, the mushrooms growing from her Fae head shriveled, her body pierced by multiple Shadow branches. Dark tendrils of power encircle her, one of the tendrils flowing from the Dryad’s unconscious body to the tip of the Shadow Wand.

Vogel breathes deeply, the hidden workings of Dryad power shivering through his mind via his Shadow tether. Vogel lifts the Wand. “The Magedom’s Holy Tool can read the secrets of Dryad magic,”

he explains to Damion. “Through it, I have learned that Tree Fae power is amplified in the autumn by the explosion of light power in fall foliage.”

Confusion overtakes Damion’s expression. “Then why not strike against the Dryad Witch and her allies now, before autumn grips hold?”

“Because,”

Vogel slyly answers, “autumn in the Eastern Realm is swift. And when the foliage color withers and winter descends, the Tree Fae go into a state of semidormancy until spring. Their power plummets.”

“Excellency,”

tall, bald Priest Alfex ventures, “is it wise to allow the witch’s power to increase even for a short span of time?”

“We shall not be idle,”

Vogel answers. “While the witch and her allies are trapped under the shield of their own making, we will kill off every stretch of wilds we have access to. And we will absorb all that elemental power into our Shadow might as we wait for winter’s descent.”

A cold breeze gusts in from the northeast, drawing everyone’s attention. Vogel looks at the sky, thrilling to the feel of the cold chilling his firelines as Commander Fallon Bane soars in from the Issani front lines on dragonback, a portion of her forces trailing her. Fallon’s frigid green gaze meets Vogel’s as she lands, dismounts, and strides toward him, briefly tossing a contemptuous gaze toward the impaled Dryad. She sets her gaze back on Vogel, and he suppresses a shiver, sensing an ice storm of rage crackling through her lines.

“You summoned me, Excellency?”

Fallon says, her tone a demand as Vogel’s fire aura surges toward her, sparked into wildfire by the satisfying lack of mercy in her compelling gaze.

He stiffens his lines, forcing his killing Level Five powers and boundless flame into a contained ball as the Erthia-shifting realization ignites—it was righteous Fallon Bane all this time.

She is the Magedom’s true Black Witch.

Destined to slay the Great Icaral Demon, Yvan Guryev.

His fire turning white-hot, Vogel curses himself for being blinded by Elloren Gardner Grey’s lineage, her Black Witch face, when before him all along was the Ancient One’s True, Anointed Witch. A ripple of want sears through Vogel’s power, a new target for his fire forming.

“We have annexed Issaan for the Holy Magedom,”

Fallon announces. “And we have reissued the Magedom’s warning to Ishkartaan. But the heathens there are defying us. They have sent word that they refuse to cede their lands to the Holy Magedom.”

Vogel nods, having expected this. “Refresh your forces at our Caledonian encampment then deploy south for Northern Ishkartaan,”

he charges. “Await my order to strike. I will soon join you there.”

Fallon nods, her internal ice storm whipping into a violent frenzy. Vogel’s power surges toward hers once more, and he fights the draw as she turns and strides back to her multi-eyed dragon, mounts it, and growls out an order. The beast throws out its wings and takes to the skies along with the soldiers who accompanied her, all of them soaring back through the gray toward the Caledonian base.

“There’s your winter,”

Damion carefully suggests.

Vogel smiles at Damion’s boldness as they watch Fallon wing away, part of her dragon-borne forces rising and closing in around her. The Ancient One’s winter, indeed, Vogel considers, a hot hunger licking though his power.

“Have faith, Mages,”

Vogel commands everyone surrounding him, a zealous warmth overtaking his lines as the Shadow Wand gives a harder pull toward III’s smoking stump. Vogel points its tip at it, his gaze narrowing in on the swirling Shadow abyss in the stump’s center. “This heathen tree was the central source of Fae power,”

Vogel says. “Its rootline network is linked to all the continent’s wilds. And now, we will siphon that power and transform it into sanctified Shadow might using the Wand’s own manifestation—a V’yexwraith weapon.”

Vogel points the Wand at the very center of the swirling abyss while sending out a mental order through his branching Shadow tether to his glamoured pyrr-demons. The four demons step forward and surround III’s corpse, one at every directional point—north, south, west, and east. They turn as one and set their sulfuric gazes on Vogel, their Shadow horns twining up from their Mage-black hair, horns only Vogel and his Shadow-tethered soldiers can see.

Vogel considers how well they’ve served him, these foul demons of flame that the Wand drew to him. But it is time to summon a stronger creature to the Ancient One’s cause.

“Your Excellency . . .”

Priest Alfex ventures, and Vogel turns to him. There’s an uncharacteristic glint of concern in the priest’s gray-rimmed eyes as they flick toward the Wand in Vogel’s hand, then to the four pyrr-demons. “Are you sure of this path?”

Priest Alfex cautions. “The V’yexwraith . . . it’s the primordial demon, not a weapon, spoken about in texts from the Ancient Elfin Wars. This creature the Shadow Wand can manifest—it has a history of snapping its leash.”

Vogel’s internal fire surges, straining to burn the doubting priest, but he keeps careful control of it. “The Ancient One on High holds every leash,”

Vogel states as his gaze sears into Alfex. “Would you deprive the Magedom of any weapon?”

The four pyrr-demons and every last soldier in sight turn their attention to Priest Alfex, censure in their gazes. Vogel notes, with a fresh sear of satisfaction, how Priest Alfex’s Level Five earth-magic aura instantly withers, deferring to Vogel’s dominance.

“I would never deprive the Holy Magedom of anything,”

Priest Alfex demurs with a chastened dip of his head. “You have my complete and undying allegiance, Excellency.”

Vogel’s nostrils flare as he empathically roots through the priest’s power, sensing the wariness still shivering there.

“Let the Dryad Witch have her moment,”

Vogel says, his gaze fixing once more on the stump’s swirling Void. “And let the Icaral bitch, Wynter Eirllyn, have her shielded Sublands and weakening Heathen Wand.”

Vogel sharpens his Wand’s aim once more toward the abyss and murmurs a series of primordial spells—Shadow spells purified and cleansed by the Ancient One’s own hand.

He thrusts the Wand forward.

The swirling center of the abyss darkens, and Vogel smiles, sensing monumental power rising.

Without warning, a huge gray figure claws its way out of the abyss and slowly rises, unfolding itself, its form cathedral tall and ferally slender, like a living Wand.

The primordial demon angles its eyeless head down toward Vogel. Huge steely horns spike up like gray lightning from the Wand-beast’s temples, its claw-tipped fingers long and spindly. Its horrifying face is eggshell smooth, except for a dark slash of a mouth. Gray spikes angle back from the sides of its head and body like windswept shards, frozen in time.

Gasps rise all around, Priest Alfex taking a stumbling step back. Even normally unshockable Damion Bane’s power is shot through with surprise as Vogel drinks in the swirling, siphoning power of the Shadow Wand’s V’yexwraith manifestation.

The V’yexwraith sways before Vogel like a tree in an invisible wind. It lets out a low hiss that quickly morphs into a multitoned, bone-shuddering shriek as it gives a violent yank against the Shadow Wand’s tether and sends pain knifing through Vogel’s wand arm.

Vogel holds fast and smiles, thrilling to the parasite-beast’s vicious testing of its bonds, as well as its magic-siphoning aura. Ah yes, Vogel gloats, here is the tool needed to take down the Dryad Witch and her forces.

“Elloren and her allies aren’t as safe and shielded as they would imagine,”

Vogel murmurs to Damion and Priest Alfex before closing his eyes and tugging on the Wand’s Shadow tethers.

Multi-eyed ravens burst from the surrounding Shadowed trees, their unearthly caws resonating through the air. One lands on Vogel’s shoulder, the rest darting down the trunk’s central, gaping Void and disappearing into its swirling mist.

“My runic eyes are everywhere,”

Vogel croons as he opens his own eyes and fixes them on the swaying V’yexwraith demon. “And my sanctified Shadow power is strengthening. The V’yexwraith’s siphoning power will hasten the Magedom’s triumph over all.”

He holds the demon’s terrifying attention. “The Dryad Witch and her allies think they have closed off the East from us with their shielding, but there remains a way to destroy its forests.”

“How?”

Priest Alfex inquires, his wide eyes focused on the V’yexwraith.

Vogel turns and waits for the priest’s rattled gaze to meet his. “The Wand’s V’yexwraith can manifest wherever Shadow-tethering runes have been marked. And we have marked those runes at the headwaters of the East’s largest river.”

An awed look of comprehension washes over Priest’s Alfex’s face. “The Vo,”

he murmurs.

“The V’yexwraith will have a fight on its hands,”

Damion counters. “The Selkie abomination Gareth Keeler has managed to cast an incredibly strong dome-shield over the Vo River’s southern spillway. Our Shadow sea hasn’t yet penetrated it.”

Vogel calmly listens to Damion’s warnings as the V’yexwraith hovers over them, a swaying presence.

Vogel flicks his Wand’s tip toward the V’yexwraith, and the beast’s huge mouth opens wide. In a split second, another fanged jaw accordions from its mouth, then another from inside that one, one after the other, straight toward a now shrieking Priest Alfex, until the terminal long-toothed mouth chomps down around the priest’s head.

Shocked sounds rise all around as Alfex convulses then falls to the ground in a heap, a bloodied grotesquerie where the back of his head once was, his green hue rapidly fading to gray as his elemental energy is consumed, a line of gray mist flowing from the traitorous priest’s corpse into the maw of the Wand-beast. The V’yexwraith draws in its multiple mouths and bares its teeth, grayed blood streaming down its jaw as it consumes the last of the mist, one bulbous, gray eye bubbling to life on its eggshell head.

A shocked silence reigns.

“My Shadow sea is a diversion,”

Vogel states before angling his Wand toward the huge, swaying demon and murmuring a primordial spell.

The V’yexwraith lets out an Erthia-shuddering shriek, and its form begins to spin and blur, the Mages surrounding Vogel flinching back as the V’yexwraith is sucked down into III’s Void abyss, the swirling mist taking on a paler gray hue before morphing back to steel.

Vogel turns to Damion and gives him a tight smile. “We’re going to infiltrate the East from the North,”

he smoothly clarifies. “And bring down the entire East and the Dryad Witch via its largest river—the Vo.”

Vogel’s smile inches wider. “We’ll invade the water supply of the forests of Noilaan and strangle the trees at their very roots.”