AUTHOR'S NOTE: Good God, this took me a long time! And I don't have much to show for it, either ... but at least I finally got off my arse to finish it. There will be one, or at absolute most, two more chapters to this story. I can make no promises about when I will have completed them. Is this my triumphant return from a long and uneventful absence? Hardly.

Part Eleven: Torn Visage

Black skies boiled and seethed above, clouds dark as pitch surging in an ominous spiral. Occasionally, flares of lightning would streak across in sheets, casting the roiling firmament in a lurid illumination of pale green. More often, dark red patches glowed balefully with trapped cinders, fed to flame by cyclic winds.

Everything on the field was stricken with gloom, rising dark and indistinct out of a sea of death. There was no place not littered with charnel and carrion—the bodies of fine and brave men, heroes in life, lay unburied where they fell, alongside the ghastly remains of Northern beasts; or perhaps broken and trampled into the churned mud, thick with blood and filth. Where the battle had raged with particular ferocity, little remained but bone, gore and viscera, strewn about like grotesque decorations to mark some loathsome occasion.

In the end, both armies had broken. The Isaad had withdrawn with the greatest swiftness and order, after a token contribution to the battle, and were largely unscathed. The Ilien had been all but annihilated, fighting nobly for their cause to the last. The Haladrim had broken, and in dreadful disarray had suffered horrendous casualties before they could effect their escape over the southern bluffs. The Karu had fared worst of all, though victory was theirs in the end. The surviving demon-spawn now prowled the aftermath, scavenging over the carrion and dispatching those unfortunate enough to have fallen and yet lived.

Towards the east of the field, under the looming darkness of the Northwall, and watched from afar by every power of Vaul, two figures stood where flames rose and lightning flared, in a ghostly and surreal ambience. The one was haloed in a corona of silver light, shining with righteousness and bearing a great blade that shone as the noonday sun. The other was menacing and dreadful, girded in darkling iron and wreathed in blackest shadows of the Void.

Peerless’ noble visage had fallen from arrogance and beauty, into the most abysmal depths of malice and spite. Vengeful, torrid fury had possessed him; his destructive passions were now insatiable, and his attention consumed utterly by the defiant figure before him. Ilantar Telthurin, the War Dancer. An impossibility. There was no power in this world that could defy Asharadoth, that could resist his sorcery and his might—and yet, here it stood. Undying.

“Very well,” he intoned with utmost savagery, all pretence of civility long since abandoned. “I will show you the depths of your folly. No mortal or god has ever witnessed this and lived!”

Raising his left hand, taloned in iron gauntlet, to his face, he tore into the skin, while Ilantar looked on in stunned amazement.

Another power tore out from the Devourer, greater still than the last, if such a thing was even possible. Ilantar raised his arms before his face, shielding his eyes. There was a monstrous darkness gathering, as blinding in its magnitude as if he stared into the sun. Asharadoth’s form was changing, shifting and writhing visibly, swelling and deforming. Fused with the metal of his gauntlets, his hands and fingers elongated into nightmarish, needle-like claws. His skin tore away, unfurling into a grotesque, ghoulish cloak, and revealing the black horror of his body beneath.

The shape ceased its growth, and the horrendous form of the Lord of Nightmares achieved a semblance of reality. Half as tall again as Ilantar, Asharadoth was now a towering monster of black, armoured flesh and long, severing claws. A great, writhing mass of woven shadow hung about him, twisting and undulating, grasping for flesh to corrupt and souls to taint. Infernally elegant and utterly frightening, Asharadoth rose to stand tall, piercing Ilantar with his horrid scarlet gaze.

“Behold the second veil, War Dancer,” the Lord of Nightmares maligned. Part dreadful voice, and part sibilant telepathy, it was a wish and an invocation of purest malevolence. “There is one other, but that has never been seen by any who dwell within Creation. I will destroy you here and now, beyond anything that can be repaired by any agent, mortal or divine.”

Ilantar scoffed. “I am unimpressed by words, Devourer. How many times already have you tried to slay me, and failed? It is clear to me that you cannot contest with the boon I was granted.”

“Boon?” Peerless reviled. “The taint on your blood? It is a sword of two edges; though its nature is hidden to you, mortal, and it has served you, you shall feel its bite ere long.”

“Do not pretend to know whereof you speak, Asharadoth!” the War Dancer rebuked, incensed. “The power I wield is ancient – more even than you. It was ancient before you even were dreamed!”

With a soul-numbing howl, the Lord of Nightmares surged forward. He did not move as natural creatures do, but rather as the shadow of a moving thing passes across the ground, swift as sin, a horror of death and madness. Sweeping out the golden blade of Ezalior, the elven-lord danced with him, silver flame beneath the curtain of the night, a clashing and intertwining of terrible powers. Where Ezalior touched, the darkness was seared away, and burning ichor rained. Where midnight claws lashed, silver was sundered and blood flowed red. Striving might against might, the pair fought with the fury of the greatest storm. Fire and lightning rained from the sky; winds scoured about them with terrible ferocity; the earth trembled in their wake, from every blow of claws or blade.

And from every blow, recovery was swift and absolute: Peerless’ now amorphous body reshaped itself endlessly into ever more taloned and murderous forms, and Ilantar’s flesh knit itself anew after each cruel blow, as smooth and clean as it had ever been. Long they fought, after the dying sun had fallen from the sky, into the endless darkness of the long night. Again and again, the Devourer struck Ilantar down, and every time he rose once more; for he had the deathlessness of the ancient and eternal archons, and this was his Gift.

At last, in the darkest hour of night, Asharadoth withdrew, to stand once more in likeness of a man. Warily he cast his eye over Ilantar, who stood firm without injury or fatigue. The Devourer’s strength was great, greater than the elven-lord’s, but if he used it all he would surely be spent, while this accursed Gift brought against him seemed to be inexhaustible—immortality in truth. How, then, to deal with such a being, whom death should never take? There was only one way, and even that might fail to extinguish utterly a true archon, though he could not say how it would fare against Ilantar, who was archon by virtue and not by right.

“Come, Peerless!” called Ilantar. “Or have you such fear of me that you must flee back to your master?”

Asharadoth’s face gave a little spasm of loathing. “I have no master,” he replied. “There is only the coward who had a hand in my greatness, and who fears now to look upon me, for the memory of his deeds.”

“Fell and terrible you are, Devourer,” the elven-lord retorted, “but not so fell as to inspire fear in the Dread Titan! What colossal arrogance could move you to such a belief?”

“Be silent, you who know nothing!” Peerless howled. “I have moved beyond the gifts of petty archons; I carry blessings of the Void Eternal!”

“There is only emptiness in the Void Beyond; not the thousandth part of even the most wretched hovel in the whole of Vaul! It has no blessings to spare, only wrath and greed insatiable!”

“Then I invoke its wrath upon you, accursed mortal!” the Lord of Nightmares roared. “I will tear down this place, and cast you with it into the blackest depths beyond the walls of Time!”

A rippling wave of distortion passed out from Asharadoth, warping the landscape. There was a dreadful screaming and shuddering, which Ilantar likened to metal being tortured, though it carried such a dreadful wrongness that he felt the urge to retch. Something tore, though what he could not tell; it was not a part of him, nor anything visible, though he felt it resonate within himself and across the whole landscape like the burst string of a harp. It was ethereal, transcendent … some essential chord or fabric laid down by the Creator, now rent apart.

“No being of this realm has ever beheld the power I am about to unleash, elven-lord!” Asharadoth snarled. “You will be its sole witness. Look upon the final veil, and despair!”

And at once, there was nothing, and Ilantar stood alone in the midst of the Void.