With a snarl, the Chaos Legionnaire swung his two-handed sword in a wild arc. Zyriel extended her tattered wings as she dropped into a crouch and spun. The massive blade whistled through the air inches above her head. One of her wings caught the legionnaire behind the knees and swept his legs out from under him. He cried out and landed on his back with a dull thud of armor. His sword clattered across the stony earth. He struggled to rise, but Zyriel was faster. She lashed out with her foot, driving her heel into his armored breastplate. The legionnaire flew backward, over the edge of the cliff and into empty space. He plummeted to the ground and into the horde swarming up the slopes.
The sun shone in the sky above Zyriel, while shadows stretched across the valley below, where the legions of Chaos trudged forth. There were so many of them. It looked as if the land itself were alive and writhing. All that stood between them and Oshuur Constantia and her runemancers was a handful of Riftwatchers and their allies. And Zyriel, of course. She should never have gotten mixed up in all this. It wasn’t her fight.
A scream pierced the air. Farther along the ridge, amid the defending Riftwatchers, the elven druid Hedera clutched at a dagger in her belly. Three hobgoblins loomed over her, sneering. The one holding the dagger twisted its hilt. Hedera screamed again. The water elemental that fought at her side sagged, its features melting together as it began to liquesce into a puddle on the rocky earth.
Zyriel charged across the ridge. She gritted her teeth, lowered her shoulder, and slammed into the hobgoblin holding the dagger, sending him flying. In the same motion, she turned toward the two remaining hobgoblins and touched each upon the forehead, whispering a curse.
Black veins spread across their faces, and they clawed at their cheeks and eyes and throats as they dropped to their knees, choking on their own breath. Their eyes clouded, and they toppled to the ground, dead.
Zyriel whirled toward the hobgoblin she’d slammed into, ready for a fight, but he lay at the base of a boulder a short distance away, his head bent at an awkward angle.
Hedera moaned, and her knees buckled. Zyriel leaped toward her and wrapped an arm around the elf’s waist, keeping her from falling.
“I’m done,” the druid said. She coughed, and blood spattered her chin and robes.
Zyriel slowly lowered Hedera to the ground, propping her against a craggy outcropping of rock that was damp from the remnants of the water elemental. “I won’t let you die,” she said.
Hedera smiled. “I’m not sure that’s up to you.” Another fit of coughing wracked her body. More blood fell from her lips. “Save the others,” she said. Her gaze bore into Zyriel’s.
“You can’t die,” Zyriel said. “Not you.”
But Hedera was already dead, her lifeless eyes staring at something not even Zyriel could see.
Zyriel ground her teeth and rose to her feet. The first wave of Chaos Legion attackers had fallen, but more were coming. All around her, the Riftwatchers tended to their wounds and their wounded allies.
Zyriel spread her broken wings wide, casting a shadow over the Chaos Legion’s forces clambering up the steep wall of the valley toward her.
She clenched her fists and waited for them to come.
Zyriel traced the worn leather of the book’s cover with the fingertips of her left hand, and a shiver ran through her body. She glanced over her shoulder. The white, stone door remained closed. The misty walls around her glowed with a soft halo of light. So, too, did the floor and ceiling. Even the pedestal upon which the book rested was crafted of an ivory-hued stone. But the book… the book was as dark as pitch.
The creak of its binding broke the hallowed silence. Its pages seemed to thrum with the unholy power of the words written upon them. It reverberated in Zyriel’s bones and in her soul. Her heart quickened its pace as she licked her lips and leaned over the book and began to read.
She was a third of the way through it when a distant bell began to toll. She glanced around the room. She was still alone, but time was running out. Her hands shook as she turned the pages and continued reading the runes inscribed upon them. They seemed to dance and writhe, the ink bleeding tiny tendrils of smoke into the air.
She was so close. As she continued reading, the power contained within the book coursed into her being, filling her with its unholy power. Soon, it wouldn’t matter if they came. She would be unstoppable.
A gasp from behind her, and the book slammed shut of its own volition. She jerked in surprise and took an involuntary step backward.
“Sister,” a voice said, “what have you done?”
All around Zyriel, the battle raged. For every Chaos Legion loyalist slain, two more ascended to take their place. But if the Riftwatchers and their allies fell, there would be no one to fight in their stead.
As the sun descended on that long and bloody day, Zyriel and the others were slowly yet inexorably pushed backward, up the mountain, toward Constantia and her runemancers. If they fell, the Riftwatchers would be scattered, and the rebellion would be over before it had even begun.
The Chaos Legion surged forward. The front line of the Rifwatchers stumbled and fell. Some did not rise. Those that did retreated higher up the mountain.
Zyriel cursed and fired her bow as she danced across the rocky slope, ascending along with them.
Beside her, the dragonborn whelp herder Drisin let out a cry as the blade of a Legion hyaenan slashed across his thigh. He pitched forward. Zyriel reached for him but found only empty air. The dragonborn fell. It wasn’t far, maybe a meter and a half, but he landed on a ledge amid a throng of armored legionnaires below. Their weapons rose and fell, flashing in the sunlight.
“No!” Zyriel cried. She extended her useless wings and leaped off the cliff. The cool air whipped around her as she fell and landed among the legionnaires. They stumbled back in surprise.
Ever since arriving in this accursed realm, these Chaos scum had been nothing but a thorn in her side. Everything she’d fought for—the unfettered power, her ascension, all of it—they had stood in her way. It was because of them that she found herself upon this pile of rock alongside the Riftwatchers, fighting for a cause that she never meant to make her own.
Damn them all.
Her face contorted in fury as she swung her bow like a club. Those that didn’t fall to her fury were struck by her skeletal wings and shoved off the ledge as she whirled in a lethal dance. Their screams were interrupted by the crunch of armor on stone.
At last, only Zyriel remained standing. The corpses of her enemies lay scattered around her like trees or buildings felled by a violent tempest. She hurried toward Drisin, who lay on his back in a pool of blood, and dropped to her knees beside him.
He peered up at her. He was bleeding from countless wounds, some of them very deep, but he smiled all the same. “Thought you didn’t have time for friends?” His breath was faint, ragged, and wet.
“I told you,” Zyriel said. “We’re not friends. We just happen to have a—”
“—Yeah, yeah. A common enemy,” Drisin finished for her. He wheezed as he exhaled. “So you’ve said.”
“Shut up and let me tend your wounds.”
The dragonborn closed his eyes. “Too late for that.”
She shook her head in denial and tugged his pack open. There had to be some bandages in here somewhere. She searched frantically, yanking and digging, until she found a wrap of cloth.
“Here,” she said. “Hold this against your chest.”
But Drisin’s arms lay limp at his sides. His eyes remained closed. He might have been sleeping, except his breath no longer wheezed, and his chest had fallen still.
Zyriel’s shoulders slumped. The bandages slipped from her fingers and unraveled across the earth. It was all coming undone around her.
The landscape was a pure, shining light save for the portal that rose before her. It was filled with smokey colors of purple and orange that spun in a counterclockwise whirl. It fizzed and hissed as the wind whipped around it.
“What will you do?” came a voice from behind her.
Zyriel didn’t turn. She gathered her robes around her and stared into the portal. “I’ll find another way to get what I want.”
“You won’t seek redemption, Zyriel the Fallen?” the voice asked.
“Is that what they’re calling me now?”
“Some call you the Betrayer.”
Zyriel snorted. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t read from the book if you thought none would know, sister?” Zyriel waited, but no reply came. “That’s what I thought.”
The squall howled around them. It tugged at Zyriel’s hair and broken wings. She remembered what it was like to soar through the skies. Now, her wings were useless. Anger raged inside her like a storm. They’d taken so much from her.
“You can still find redemption.”
Zyriel let out a bitter laugh. “You think I want to be redeemed?” She spread her tattered wings. Several of the remaining feathers were ripped away by the wind and drifted into the ether. “I accept the consequences of my sins. In fact, I welcome them. They’re a reminder of the hypocrisy that blinds us. Well, guess what? I’m blind no more. And I promise you this: I’ll be back. Then we’ll see who bows to who.”
The portal spun faster. It tugged first at Zyriel’s robe, then at her body. She staggered forward a step.
“Power isn’t everything,” the voice said.
“It is to me.”
The gravitational force of the portal pulled Zyriel off her feet and sucked her inside of it, and she was gone, swept away to whatever destiny may come.
Destiny.
As she kneeled beside Drisin’s lifeless body, she wondered: had he been destined to die here? Is that why she hadn’t been able to catch hold of him, to save him? Would this be the end of the Riftwatchers as well?
She peered down the mountain’s slope and out across the valley below. Considering the Chaos Legion’s sheer numbers, Constantia would never get her portal open before the Riftwatchers and their allies were overrun. And little chance of the runemancers fleeing to safety and leaving their brothers and sisters behind. No, they were too honorable for that. The fools.
Barring divine intervention, this would be the end of the Riftwatchers, and Silus of the Rift’s domination of the Splinterlands—and all the realms that surrounded it—would be absolute.
It wasn’t her concern. She stared at Drisin. Damn it! It was not her concern.
A hand on her shoulder. Zyriel glanced up to find the dwarven rune crafter Bhaluk at her side.
“We’re falling back,” he said. “Regrouping on higher ground. We’ll make another stand there.”
She struggled to her feet. “You’ll lose.”
“We’ll keep fighting.”
Zyriel didn’t reply for a long time. She watched the legionnaires surging up the side of the mountain. She watched the defiled beasts soaring through the sky over them. She watched the inevitability of destiny bearing down on them all.
She could have left them to their fates. Just turned and walked away and continued her pursuit of the power that had nearly been hers those many centuries ago. Instead, she said, “Go. I’ll handle them.” She nodded her chin at the approaching legions of chaos. “Don’t stop until you reach Constantia. You won’t want to be anywhere near here when I do what I have to do.”
Bhaluk blinked at her. “What are you planning?”
She shrugged and grinned a crooked grin. “Let’s just call it divine intervention.”
The dwarf started up the slope toward the other Riftwatchers. He glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll wait for you.”
Zyriel shook her head. “I won’t be joining you.”
Bhaluk stared at her. He started to say something but stopped. Tried again and bit his lip.
Zyriel flexed her wings. “I’ll see you in another life.”
“Thank you.”
“Go, damn it.”
The dwarf glanced at Drisin’s body one last time. Then he was gone, scrambling up the steep slope of the mountain and shouting orders to the other Riftwatchers and their allies.
Zyriel watched them go. The clouds drifted across the sky. The wind blew around her. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and smiled. Somewhere, a bird cried out, and another answered its call.
She turned to face the Chaos Legion. Gone was her smile. Her eyes flashed crimson. She clenched her fists and drew the power of the elements into herself until they filled her, churning like a cyclone.
The battle cries of the Chaos Legion echoed toward her as they scrambled up the mountain. They were close. Almost upon her now. She could see the bloodlust in their eyes and the spittle that flew from their lips as they shouted themselves hoarse.
She’d never before spoken the words she read in the book. She spoke them now.
The sky blackened. The winds gusted harder and became a howling gale. The legions of chaos leaned into the storm and forged on.
Zyriel turned her gaze to the heavens. Her voice rose above the tumult. The ground shook beneath her feet. Then it was sliding.
The entire lower half of the mountain’s face tore free and descended upon the Chaos Legion, carrying Zyriel along with it. All around her, cries for battle and blood became the screams of the dying.
In those final moments, Zyriel the Fallen, Zyriel the Betrayer, saw a tiny pinprick of light pierce the darkness in the sky.
Redemption, she thought and smiled.
