Chapter Nine

Shadow Winter’s Ascent

Marcus Vogel

Northern Ishkartaan Mountain Range

Vogel steps through his Shadow portal and out onto a cavernous ledge, the flat surface cut right into the heathen-gold stone of the Northern Ishkartaan Mountain Range’s highest peak. Vogel tightens his eyes, brushing away visions his multi-eyed ravens are sending him of the fortified shielding the Dryad Witch’s allies have cast over the Zonor and Vo Rivers and Dyoi Forest, all of it an insignificant setback.

Because Commander Fallon Bane stands on the torchlit ledge before him.

Fallon is washed in the overcast light streaming in from the cavern’s opening. She’s bracketed by ten Level Four and Five Earth Mages, her beautiful face lit up with excitement as her gray-rimmed eyes meet Vogel’s, silver gray flame racing through his lines.

Pulling his gaze from hers, Vogel takes in the panoramic view of Southern Ishkartaan in the distance, the peninsula surrounded by the deep-blue waters of the Southern and Salish Oceans.

The last heathen nation of the Central Desert to hold out against the Ancient One’s might.

Vogel surveys the Shadow dragons Fallon and her Level Five lieutenants flew in on. The beasts are hunched down near the ledge’s long edge, each dragon watching them through multiple gray-glowing eyes. They’ve sprouted an extra set of legs, many of their dragons becoming more and more insectile as the Magedom’s Shadow power grows. Thousands more multilegged dragons and Mage soldiers are perched on countless ledges they’ve blasted into the surrounding mountain range, Northern Ishkartaan’s mountains rapidly being transformed into a huge Mage military base, its creation overseen by Vogel’s Black Witch.

Vogel’s gaze swings appreciatively back to Fallon. He can sense her excited response to his presence through her quickening heartbeat and the invisible ice crystals crackling to life through her lines as he steps toward her.

Good, Vogel thinks, his gaze sliding over Fallon’s curvaceous form. You’ve finally let go of your fury over the death of that staen’en bastard, Lukas Grey.

“Your Excellency,”

Fallon drawls, her eyes bright and unintimidated, her aura churning into a hungry storm. Hunger so palpable Vogel can taste it on the back of his tongue.

How could I have ever imagined that Elloren Gardner Grey was the Magedom’s Black Witch? he wonders as he breathes in Fallon’s ruthless aura. How could I have ever entertained for one second that the Dryad Whore would be the one to bring the Prophecy to fruition and slay the Great Icaral?

It’s been ever-faithful Fallon all along.

And luckily, the Ancient One has finally given him eyes to see it.

“Are you ready, my Black Witch?”

Vogel asks as he unsheathes his Shadow Wand and extends its tip toward her, silver fire churning through his lines toward the Wand in his hand, the Mages surrounding them silently looking on.

Fallon’s mouth twitches up as she unsheathes her own wand and touches its tip to his.

Tendrils of Shadow flow from Vogel’s Wand to twine around hers before winding clear up her arm. A shudder passes through Fallon, and she goes half-lidded, her lips parting.

She tenses, visibly gathering herself before opening her eyes, coolly ferocious once more. “I’m ready, Marcus.”

Hot spite sears through Vogel in response to Fallon’s daring use of his first name. His fingers twitch, Shadow claws straining to form on their tips, but he holds the power back, excitement chasing his flare of spite. Excitement over her lack of fear of him.

Yes, you always were my Black Witch, he muses, his internal fire simmering.

“Southern Ishkartaan has sent their terms of surrender,”

Fallon informs Vogel with a sneer.

Vogel can’t help but smile at this, bemused. “They imagine there’s room for negotiation?”

he inquires. They exchange brief lethal smiles before Vogel’s expression hardens. “Destroy the country and everyone in it,”

he orders.

Excitement flashes through Fallon’s power, and through the power of every Mage surrounding them, the momentousness shivering through them all.

Fallon gestures toward a dense, dark line edging the Salish coast that extends east from the Ishkartaan peninsula. “Refugees,”

she informs Vogel. “Huge numbers of them. Shall we mow them down, as well?”

“No,”

Vogel calmly answers, the Ancient One’s Glorious Plan unfolding before them all. “Let them flood the East. It will further destabilize Noilaan and make it all the easier for us to invade.”

Fallon’s smile widens as she nods and then pulls in a deep breath, tugging on the Shadow tether she’s welcomed, drawing the Shadow Wand’s gray power into her dominant icelines and windlines.

Vogel shivers in response to her power’s connection to his, thrills to the feel of Fallon consuming as much Shadow as she can, the frosty mountaintop air chilling even further.

Raising her wand, Fallon begins to murmur a series of spells.

A compact, icy wind kicks up, whipping around her lower legs before consolidating into thick gray mist. And then, Fallon simply steps up onto the mist and effortlessly glides through the air toward one of the multi-eyed, multilegged dragons.

Fire races through Vogel’s lines at the sight of Fallon’s magic coming into its own as she and her lieutenants mount dragons, and she sends out a shock wave of mental commands through all the dragons’ Shadow tethers.

The Shadow beasts fan out their powerful wings and throw them down, taking flight with Fallon in the lead. Hundreds of Mages on dragonback positioned on the surrounding ledges take to the air as well and converge around her, all of them soaring toward Southern Ishkartaan.

Fallon thrusts her wand forward, and a thick bolt of ice spears toward the ocean-surrounded peninsula, landing in Southern Ishkartaan’s distant center in a small explosion of gray.

Vogel’s pulse quickens as huge trees made of ice burst upward from the huge peninsula’s middle, an icy gray spreading out from the trees’ bases and rapidly overtaking the land’s every gold or green expanse as Vogel lifts his Shadow Wand and aims it toward the distant Salish Ocean.

His Shadow sea rolls toward the country’s eastern coast, the dark mass riding the water’s surface like a floating tidal wave. A roaring sound rises from the peninsula, and a deeper thrill shoots through Vogel’s fire power. It’s a sound he feels the urge to bite his teeth into and devour whole as his Shadow sea crashes over Ishkartaan’s coast and Fallon’s giant ice trees throw their branches down, detonating explosions of ice that can’t completely cut out the thrilling sound.

The soul-expanding sound of thousands upon thousands of heathens . . . screaming.

Vogel is there when Fallon returns to the torchlit ledge, a steely twilight descending. She dismounts from her multilegged dragon, strides up to Vogel and stills before him, a wild, victorious look in her Shadow-rimmed eyes.

A cleansed country lies in the distance, even the mountain range’s stone stripped of its heathen gold. Vogel’s Shadow sea has overtaken the coast, gray-black waters now encompassing the huge peninsula, the coastline submerged. Dark clouds roil in the sky above Southern Ishkartaan, silver-black lightning arcing through them with muffled boom after boom. Every speck of natural Forest has been frozen to death, Fallon’s mountain-high Shadow ice trees spread out over Ishkartaan’s expanse. Vogel sets his sights East with burning anticipation, only Noilaan and Zhilaan left to be cleansed to bring the Ancient One’s Reaping Times to their fullest fruition.

Fallon strides up to Vogel and holds her Shadowed wand out to him.

Curious, Vogel’s hand closes around it. He moves to draw it away from her, but Fallon doesn’t let go. Instead, she moves closer, her Shadow-tinged ice power flowing through her wand to coil around Vogel’s hand then crackle through his internal fire in icy tendrils that emit steam against his fire, his breath hitching in response to the intimate collision of their powers.

“It was you all along,”

he breathes, silver sparks igniting in his vision. His fire rears against her ice, the skin of his back twitching, the hot steam breaking out to encircle them.

Fallon draws nearer and tilts her head up, her full lips so close . . .

Vogel is swept up in a remembrance of how it felt to devour Elloren Gardner’s mouth. How it felt to burn that Wyvernbond straight through her body. He heatedly wonders what it would feel like to set down the same type of binding in Fallon Bane. What it would feel like to devour his new Black Witch’s mouth instead.

And sink his teeth into her.

“It was always you as well, Marcus,”

she whispers, waiting, lips tilted, her breath chilly against his heat.

He can sense it, how his fire could so easily dominate her ice. And oh, how he would enjoy that exercise in domination. But he needs to wait. Needs to bring the Reaping Times to their completion before he takes hold of her in that way. Needs the purification of his body and soul that the Reaping Times will bring. His eyes flick toward the cleansed country. Toward the dark line of refugee filth moving slowly and relentlessly east.

“My Black Witch,”

he croons, meeting her excited gaze, clear that the coming Mage world is theirs. “You were always the one destined to kill the Icaral and bring the Prophecy to fruition.”

Fallon reaches up and dares to run her fingertips along the edge of his cheek before threading them through his hair.

Vogel’s fire rears, Shadow claws threatening to break through, his teeth stinging as his neck arches and silver fire flashes across his vision. He wants to spring at her. To bite into her and bring her to heel. She has no idea what she’s toying with.

“Careful, witch,”

he croons, flashing teeth.

Fallon’s lips curve into a sultry smile, the hand she’s threaded through his hair tightening to a fist, his scalp stinging. A shock of fiery lust bolts through Vogel, and he lets go of her wand and grabs her wrist, nails digging into her skin. Fallon’s breath hitches, her pupils dilating.

“Come with me, Black Witch,”

he snarls as he draws his Wand.

Vogel sweeps his Wand’s tip out in a wide arc. A thin bolt of Shadow jets from it to form an arc of misty gray portal runes. The air inside the arc turns silvery as it blurs and wavers, like translucent water.

Vogel takes hold of Fallon’s arm and guides her through it.

The world flashes silver before they emerge on the apex of one of the Eastern Dyoi Desert’s huge stone arches.

Fallon glances over her shoulder at the Magedom’s towering Shadow storm band to their rear, spread out over the night-darkened Shadowed lands as far as the eye can see, north to south. She turns her gaze back east and takes in the huge dome-shield cast over the entire Dyoi Mountain Range, multicolored lightning and a cacophony of runes marked all over it, Vogel’s imprisoning Shadow net clinging to the dome-shield like a second skin.

Fallon’s piercing gaze snaps to Vogel’s, a restless tension crackling into being between them. “This waiting is a gamble,”

she challenges, glancing pointedly toward his Shadow storm band. “We should attack the Dryad and her Icaral right now.”

“Their shielding is too strong,”

Vogel responds, meeting her knifing ice aura with simmering patience. “And I don’t yet hold enough power to portal through it.”

Fallon’s expression edges toward the explosive. “So, we simply wait while the Dryad Witch and her allies take hold of the entire East?”

Vogel gives her a lethal glare, but Fallon meets it fully, her brazen ire undeterred. Careful, witch, Vogel thinks, suppressing a snarl.

“This is not a taking hold of,”

he counters. “The Dryad Witch and her allies have sent one shield up over the Dyoi Mountain Range and Forest, another over the Zonor River and yet another over the Vo, no plan or unity fueling these actions. Because there is no unity in the East.”

The temperature dips, ice-pick anger in Fallon’s eyes. “So we leave them all be until they can find a way to unite and rise against us?”

“No,”

Vogel responds. “We leave them be as they tear each other to shreds. The Dryad Witch and her allies are drawing on foliage light magic that is nearing its height. When foliage season peaks, the light magic running through the trees reaches its pinnacle.”

A patient smile forms on Vogel’s lips. “But after that, as color is swept from the trees, Dryad power will go dormant. And peak foliage’s surge in magic will be blunted by our razing of the Northern Forest and the rest of the Central Continent’s wilds.”

A calculating glint forms in Fallon’s eyes. “So, quite soon, they’re about to see a huge drop in their pooled magic. Enough for us to break through their shielding?”

Vogel’s expression turns serpentine. “Enough for us to break through their eastern shielding and their Subland shielding, as well. Opening up paths for us to level the East, wrest hold of the Heathen Wand of Power, and bring the Prophecy to fruition.”

Excitement overtakes Fallon’s expression, her icy magic kicking up steam as it shivers against Vogel’s fire power.

He leans in, close, thrilling to the feel of his fire against her ice. “Patience, my Black Witch.”

“I’ll tear the Icaral demon’s wings right from his body,”

Fallon promises, her breathing uneven, the rise of her desire for him ferally intense, and Vogel knows—he knows in that moment—that possessing her was always the Ancient One’s will for them both as she crackles her power against his with more insistent force.

Territorial force.

Which sparks a hard dart of Vogel’s anger.

He steps back, angles his Wand at her and murmurs a spell. A look of curiosity flashes through Fallon’s eyes as Shadow vines fly out of the Shadow Wand’s tip to encircle her arms, her wrist, her body, dragging her onto her knees so fast she barely has time to react.

Rage and alarm shock through Fallon’s lines, frost breaking out on the grayed stone surrounding them before Vogel abruptly dissolves her binding. Fallon’s expression of fury morphs to a look of rattled reappraisal tinged with an almost reverential awe as she rubs her wrist.

He waits, staring her down, testing her. But she remains on her knees.

Good.

“I am naming you commanding witch of the Magedom’s entire military forces,”

he tells her, satisfied by her display of submission. “Rise, Black Witch of the Magedom.”

Fallon pushes herself back to her feet, her eyes steady on Vogel’s as their power batters and steams against each other’s, silver-dark fire against Shadow ice.

“Bring your forces north to our new Issani military base,”

Vogel orders, “and prepare them for invasion of the East.”

“Yes, your Excellency,”

Fallon demurs, just as a line of glowing purple moons blast into being in front of the Dyoi Mountain Range’s shielding, low to the ground, like a line of Xishlon moons walling off the East.

A firebolt of surprise scorches through both Vogel and Fallon.

“More taunting from the Dryad Witch’s abomination of a cousin,”

Vogel hisses, fury searing through his lines that he swiftly reins in.

“Be wary of Or’myr Syll’vir,”

Fallon warns. “I’ve been told he has a Strafeling level of geopower mingled with the Mage might of his Black Witch lineage.”

“He’s a nuisance, to be sure,”

Vogel returns as he takes in the heretical moons.

“He’s sending a message,”

Fallon bites out. “Perhaps not just to us, but to his whore of a cousin, as well.”

Vogel’s gaze slides back to Fallon. “Let him send his heathen messages, my beautiful Black Witch,”

he croons. “We’ll soon turn every moon Or’myr Syll’vir can conjure into spheres filled with Shadowfire and send them hurtling down onto the entire East.”

His focus on her intensifies, silvery hot. “And you can speed that day by sending your power into my Shadow net over the Dyoi, to hasten winter’s descent.”