The Key Quest
Raxe and company finally arrive at Mar-dah's mountain, but their efforts to this point will be for naught if they can't find their way into the keep and out again with the Hell Key.
Head Mage Rionn Lorr continues to search for a cure to the plague of walking dead. If he doesn't find it soon, King William will have to give the command to slaughter them all, including infected civilian men, women and children. If they fail to stop them one way or another, the victims will continue to spread the plague and fulfill the demon's unknown purpose.
Meanwhile, on this side of the WorldGate, the Dierglyorr's forces close in on Dan and Lisa as they come full circle in their flight and fight for survival.
Prologue
Middle East, Gulf of Oman
Captain Saint-Germaine grew more worried with the passing of every nautical mile. His crew did not share his concern, but then again, his crew was not privy to the knowledge weighing on him and his first mate like one of the forty-foot containers of crude oil they ferried across the gulf.
The demeanor of the two other men on the bridge, the first mate and the radio operator, were a study in opposites. The first mate was as anxious as the captain, and the younger man did not do nearly as good a job of hiding it. The radio operator, on the other hand, was almost giddy. He went about his normally tedious job with enthusiasm because he knew, as did the rest of the thirteen-man crew, that this was the most lucrative contract they had ever been assigned. That was all they needed to know.
The captain and the first mate - also the captain’s son - knew their client had not hired them through normal means. The company that usually contracted them had been bypassed. P.T.&A. Logistics did not have an exclusive arrangement with the Königin Saint-Germaine inland oil tanker, but as a matter of courtesy the captain coordinated his schedule with them on the few outside contracts they accepted.
This time was different. The time between their client’s offer and the date to take sail was so short that Saint-Germaine did not get a chance to contact P.T.&A. He barely had enough time to get his crew together and ready the Königin Saint-Germaine. The incredibly short time frame gave the captain pause. In most cases, such short notice would have made him refuse the contract. But when the client offered them almost three times the normal price for a job like this and then wired two-thirds of the commission up front, how could the captain refuse?
With the exception of the ever-present beeping of various instruments and intermittent buzzing of the communication systems, which had long since faded to background noise to the veteran seafarer’s ears, all was quiet. The waters were calm. This close to the equator the weather even on a winter night like this was temperate and pleasant. From inside the bridge the captain marveled at the light of the half moon and countless stars bathing the night sky in silvery light and shimmering softly off of the glassy surface of the gulf waters. He never grew tired of the sea’s beauty.
All of this should have been more than enough to ease the hard-to-define concern of the captain and his son. The captain taught his son many of the things he had learned from his own father. One of the most important and useful lessons was that when something seemed too good to be true, it was usually because it was. So both men were on edge, and they would be until they completed this voyage and collected the remainder of their generous commission.
“First mate,” the captain beckoned to his son. “Take the bridge. I’m stepping out onto the deck.”
Before his son could reply, both men were struck dumb by another strange occurrence. The ambient silver glow shining through the fore bridge windows from the full moon and stars blinked out as if a light switch had been flicked to the “off” position.
Father and son and radio operator looked to the front of the vessel and gasped in unison at the phenomenon before them.
A massive oval of blackness emerged from the depths of the gulf ahead of them. It was less than half of the ship’s length and half again as wide and tall as the inland tanker. The bottom third of it was submerged beneath the calm waves as it greedily swallowed the water and even the light shining from the night sky and reflecting off of the water’s surface. They could literally see the light being sucked into the vacuum.
Any order the captain wanted to yell was choked off by fear and awe. In any event, there was nothing he could do and no order he could give that would stop the vessel’s momentum from carrying it into what he could only describe as a hole in the very fabric of existence. The captain could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, the goose bumps pop up on his skin, and his blood run cold.
That was when the screaming started.
Joel's Control
A shadow, barely discernable in the waning light, fell over Raxe. He stepped aside just as a huge figure slammed to the ground beside him, throwing a cloud of dirt, pebbles and even Raxe into the air. Raxe landed awkwardly but kept his feet. The charging Ken slowed to a walk and proceeded much more cautiously to appraise the new arrival. Raxe looked upon a creature that, while humanoid in form, was as fearsome as any demon he had ever encountered.
Its head and face, both sparsely covered with matted, kinky, dark brown hair, were of a normal size, which was shockingly too small for its colossal body. The dull, light-brown skin that covered the beast was so taut that Raxe thought it would tear.
Jagged, bony protrusions of various sizes jutted out haphazardly from multiple places on the creature’s body, including its skull and cheekbones. Instead of hands, the disproportionately long arms ended in wide, flat, razor-edged sickles of bone.
Those appendages, along with the familiar shape of the creature’s brow that shrouded the pale glow of its milky white eyes, revealed to Raxe exactly who this creature was.
“Joel?” Raxe asked in disbelief.
The creature’s mouth stretched open into what Raxe could only assume was a smirk. Teeth, like small ivory stalactites and stalagmites, jutted up and down from black gums. It was the most gruesome grin Raxe had seen since he last saw the King of the Dragon’s foul rictus.
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping you keep your oath,” Joel answered.
“By killing all of them for me?”
“I don’t have to kill them,” Joel explained. “I can control it now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” Joel insisted.
In response to Raxe’s incredulous gaze, the bone spikes in Joel’s body receded back into his flesh with wet snapping sounds. The scythe-like appendages that emerged from his wrists shrank back into big hands with blunt fingers. Even his teeth squared off and appeared more human. Although the razor edges and points were now gone, he was still a menacing behemoth that looked as if he was capable of nothing but lethal carnage. Raxe only shrugged.
Joel literally tossed Raxe to safety, throwing him completely out of the canyon, and stood his ground defiantly as the warriors resumed their charge. The strength he felt pulsing through his ropy veins and taut muscles made him shiver with anticipation. There was a tingling sensation of energy that made him almost giddy. He had not blacked out at all this time and that was fine with him.
The pain of his transformation had passed and he could control his power. That knowledge brought on confidence he had never felt.
A wave of Ken d’Zanir swarmed him from his right in what to him seemed like slow motion. The sharp tips of their pikes and the razor edges of their various blades came at him. Joel waved a massive right hand in a backhand stroke that snapped the weapons like twigs. The attackers’ momentum continued to carry them forward while Joel’s left hand followed closely behind his right in a roundhouse punch.
He intended to beat them back with just enough force to disable them or knock them unconscious or both. Just before his fist struck the nearest warrior, however, it involuntarily morphed back into the dreaded bone scythe.
Even though everything seemed to move at a quarter of the speed of reality, Joel could neither reverse the transformation nor stop the inertia of his blow. He watched with terror and loathing as the fist-turned-bone-scythe cut through leather armor, cloth, skin, muscle and bone as if they were air.
Wrath Of Azh
The thrumming of the magic grew stronger, threatening to shatter Raxe’s defenses and blast him into incoherence. Quick, in the form of a gryphon, began to shudder nervously. The raft started to tremor. The bird cat had to struggle to retain its four-legged balance. The water around the wooden raft began to seethe.
Raxe suddenly knew why he sensed the first surge of magic before Quick felt it. It was his magic that he felt. It was the magic of the Old Ones, passed to Azh from her father, to him from his mother and grandfather, and originally from The Gatekeeper himself, the Blacksmith to the Old Ones and the Guardian of the WorldGate.
Azh was using her divine magic to bolster her considerable elemental faerie magic. The combination was at once terrible and fantastic, and Azhju’lestra was just starting to bring it to bear.
“Father…” Azh began, suddenly sounding much more serious and much older than he had ever heard.
The churning water rippled more fiercely in time to each syllable she uttered. Her tiny, beautiful face contorted into a mask of anger and agony. Her wide eyes grew impossibly wider. The beautiful, light-brown eyes with their prism of varying colors turned into pure, shimmering white light. Her long, aqua hued locks of hair did the same.
“Leave here. Now.”
Raxe started to speak but before any sound could escape, a blinding flash of silver and cyan burst from his daughter’s body. A shockwave exploded from the light and blew Raxe from the gryphon’s back and made Quick rear up uncontrollably. Raxe fell into the churning water and in his panic he thought the weight of his armor would drag him to the bottom of Lake Onyx.
Fortunately for Raxe, his impenetrable armor, forged by the Gatekeeper for his progeny and his progeny alone, was impossibly light for all of its invulnerability. Raxe regained his senses and kicked to the surface to grasp the edge of the raft. The blast of magical energy echoed in his ears like the tolling of a church bell and left him trembling.
“Azh!” he coughed. His eyes quickly found hers. His daughter’s reply was another blast of light and another shockwave even more forceful than the first one. Before he was blinded by the second explosion, he watched his daughter’s body seem to dissolve into the energy that blasted him out of the water and into the air. When the light faded, his daughter was gone.
“Azh is gone!” Raxe cried. “We have to find her!”
Even as he said the words he knew any attempt to find her would be fruitless. The stark emptiness in the place where he once felt his daughter left no doubt about her fate.
There was a faint roar in his ears that gradually grew louder as the thrumming magic intensified. Quick screeched and grunted to let Raxe know that they had better heed Azh’s command and leave with all haste. His long feathered neck craned around to look behind them. Raxe turned to look at the northern horizon and his jaw dropped.
Quick turned and flew as fast as he could in a straight line toward the western shore of Lake Onyx.
Raxe could not take his eyes off of the awesome sight. A giant wave stretched from the western coast of the lake and swept across the horizon. Raxe was certain the wave spanned the entire latitudinal width of the great lake. The wave was far too large to have occurred naturally in a landlocked body of water, but there it was, coming right for them.
The wave grew in pulses that surged in time with the thrumming in his bones and the roaring in his ears and left no question about the wave’s origin. His daughter, Azhju’lestra, Child of the Old Ones and the last living water faerie, had called forth a monstrous tsunami.
Quick snapped his gaze forward and kept it riveted in that direction as if he was wearing blinders. Raxe tried to do the same but he could not. As much as he wanted to, he could not look away from the approaching phenomena for more than a few seconds at a time. The wave grew impossibly fast while the shore grew closer in what seemed like slow motion.
Quick was high enough to avoid the massive breakers that heralded the arrival of the primary tidal wave but he struggled to maintain control. The mighty wave pushed away the air in its path. The strong swirling wind that preceded it pummeled Quick as it rolled across the Great Lake Onyx.
Raxe glanced at it again and regretted it. He was afraid to gauge the approximate height of the tsunami and knew it was irrelevant. The apex of the wave seemed to brush the underside of low-hanging clouds.
The wave grew close enough to block out the suns and cast a cloak of deep shadow over the fleeing duo. The shadow raced ahead of them, taking with it any hope of escape. It thundered in like a giant speeding train in a dark tunnel. Quick found yet another gear but it was simply not enough. Raxe closed his eyes, gulped in a lungful of air, and held it just before the furious wall of water reached them.