The sunrise came like an ashen star crossing the horizon, its light coming pale and grey across the cloudless sky.
“Two thirty-seven,” Lorelei said, checking her phone.
“If it follows recent patterns, we’ll only have three hours of light,” Will said.
“If you can call this light,” Gwen said.
The three stood on the edge of the cliffs overlooking Grimson Bay, the frigid winter wind biting as it blew over them.
“I just hope this theory ends up being right,” Lorelei said.
“Waiting to attack a Son of Night when it’s light out,” Gwen said. “It makes sense. And we can use every advantage we can get.” She gazed at the sun, as did Lorelei. “It shouldn’t look that way.”
“No,” Lorelei said, not even having to shield her eyes though she looked directly at the sun. “But it’s the best we’ve got. Is this part of the Prophecy of the Endless Night?”
“Yes,” Gwen said, her mouth set in a grim line. “ ‘An ashen star rises in the east’ is the only line I remember from that section, but it comes near the end. One of the last heralds of night covering all things.”
“How did this happen?” Lorelei asked. “Alice and Delilah destroyed the darkness beneath Grimoire… and we saved the Library of Solitude from darkness… how can things turn so terribly, so suddenly, after victories like that?”
“There’s too much we don’t know,” Gwen said. “All we can do… is hope.”
Lorelei placed a gentle hand on Gwen’s shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “Hope keeps the darkness away,” she said. “For all of us.” Gwen nodded, and Lorelei turned away, starting towards the Rose Mounds. “Let’s go.”
Three hours of sunlight. I hope it’s enough for us to win.
I hope I’m right about sunlight helping us against Kaohlad. None of us could touch Valgwyn, not until Chelsea did… whatever it was she did. Alice and Rabanastre managed to injure Kaohlad, too. So maybe he’s weaker than the others, maybe…
Lorelei went over dozens of theories and plans, ideas and thoughts she’d come up with ever since her team had started on the trail of Kaohlad. She had a lot of ideas and theories, but there wasn’t any real way to test them until they were confronting the monster himself.
All I’m hoping right now is that he’s down there like we thought.
“Will?” Lorelei asked.
Will nodded, pushing up his glasses. His pen Talisman was in his hand, glowing softly. “All the trails still lead there,” he said.
Energy was being sucked away from Grimoire and the surrounding countryside. Crops were dying, even with magical enhancement to help them grow in the winter. Food, even frozen, was going rotten far before its expiration date. People — so far mostly non-mages — were sluggish, and some had even lost so much strength that they’d slipped into comas.
Kaohlad was causing widespread famine, not just of food, but of energy, of life. He’d slipped away from Alice before she could kill him, and they’d all thought him too injured to be any trouble for a long time.
Not to mention all that we had to deal with in the aftermath of the battle for Grimoire. So many to bury, so many missing to search for, so many names to check and make sure we hadn’t lost track of anyone. So many loose ends to tie up.
He took advantage of that, working from the shadows.
If we can stop him here…
Then maybe we can finally rest easy. At least for a little while. At least here.
Chelsea and everyone else out there in the Dominion… you’ve got your work cut out for you. I hope you’re succeeding.
They reached the Rose Mounds, and Lorelei knelt before the Moon-Rose stone. The secret lever that opened the secret entrance Chelsea had found to Duo’s house still worked, and a hidden hatch popped up. Will pulled it open, and Lorelei led the way down into darkness.
She tried not to cough as dust flew all around her. This shaft and its ladder leading down was still intact, but there was rubble and ruin below. Kaohlad probably hadn’t fixed much because it would draw too much attention to him.
Or he just doesn’t care about his living conditions.
She reached the ground earlier than she expected, and found it loose and uneven beneath her feet. Forming a small amount of magical light, she turned and surveyed the scene.
Rubble and wreckage was piled up several stories high, sloping steadily downward toward a small path that had been haphazardly cleared away. Lorelei stepped aside to allow Gwen and Will to join her, and then they slowly made their way down, following the path. Soot and dirt stained the ground and walls, and the smell of ash was in the air. Their path weaved this way and that between mountains of detritus. Lorelei and Will kept their lights small, hoping to go undetected as long as they could. After a while, the path forked.
“Left,” Will said softly.
Left they went, coming to a crumbling set of stairs that just held, allowing them to descend to a tall, cylindrical room. Its walls were still half-standing, and a doorway on the far side showed a clear path for them to follow.
“He’s not much farther, now,” Will said.
Lorelei tugged her glove Talisman snug on her hand and led the way. Gwen held her silver needle sword at the ready. A left turn, then a right. Did the shadows seem longer now? There was a darkness here, a darkness familiar to Lorelei, and yet…
It’s different. It’s like a facsimile of the living darkness, a pretender’s attempt at creating it themselves.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.
The path sloped downward, down into a mist of dust, ash… and shadow. Lorelei called her glowing orb of light forward, and the dark mist retreated from it, but only ever so slightly.
Down, down, down they went, inky tendrils of shadow swirling around them. Their footsteps sounded faint, their breathing distant. Something inside of Lorelei told her they had left Grimoire behind. They were somewhere else, some shadowland far from their home, a foreboding elsewhere that mocked their attempted heroics.
Lorelei stopped, and Gwen and Will with her. She glanced back at Will, who nodded.
“Here,” he said in the barest whisper.
Lorelei took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Before her stretched an emptiness, full of darkness and evil intent.
She raised her hand, pressed her middle finger against her thumb.
Cold Snap.
She snapped her fingers, and glowing blue ice filled the emptiness. Winter wind blasted through the stale dust and ash. Light blossomed in the darkness.
There, in the center of a circular chamber several hundred feet wide, was Kaohlad, encased in ice, unmoving. There were no signs of his injuries from the fight with Rabanastre, but Lorelei and Will had expected that.
He’s been stealing Grimoire’s life energy to fill himself.
“Destroy him before he breaks free!” Lorelei called out in a loud voice, her breath misting the air with snowflakes.
Gwen’s needle sword shot through the air, a streak of silver trailing silver thread. Lorelei’s ice gleamed with new light, Will’s Energy Magic at work converting cold to an even deeper, more vicious freeze than Lorelei could ever craft alone.
Gwen’s sword flew true, pierced the ice and shot straight through Kaohlad’s chest, surging out the other side. It arced to the right, continuing to trail thread. Shot through the ice again, through and out Kaohlad’s side. Another turn, now through and out his neck. His lower back, then one arm, the other, one leg, the other. All the while, the ice glowed brighter and brighter, whining with pressure.
“Now!” Lorelei said.
Gwen flicked her wrist, and her sword flew back to her. At the same time, all the thread she’d been sewing through Kaohlad’s body suddenly drew taut, snapping inwards, slicing thinly, noiselessly through the ice and then —
A sudden explosion of light and sound. Will had contained heat within the freeze, building and building the pressure until it was too much. Now, he let it go, and Kaohlad, trapped in Gwen’s thread, was blown into oblivion with the explosion of light and heat. The winter wind from Lorelei’s Cold Snap that had frosted the walls and floors abated for a moment, as heat singed Lorelei’s eyebrows, scorched her face dry.
And then, suddenly, the heat vanished. Cold returned, and smoke and dust slowly cleared.
There, in the center of the room…
Was Kaohlad’s head.
Nothing else remained of his body except for small fragments that Lorelei didn’t want to think about. And even his severed head was scorched, the hair gone from his head, his face warped and deformed.
Gwen threw her sword, and it struck through Kaohlad’s forehead, sticking out the other side and into the stone floor with a soft, sudden chk!
“Your time is ended, monster,” Gwen said venomously, glaring at all that remained of the Son of Night.
Lorelei let out a sigh, the tension going out of her. She’d been so worried, despite their planning, that it wouldn’t work. That Kaohlad would survive, that nothing would touch him, just like Valgwyn.
We did it. We really did it.
It seems I was worried for no—
A low, chilling laugh filled the room, reverberated off the walls.
“Ah, you really had me worried there, for a moment,” came the low, smooth voice of Kaohlad. “Such a powerful attack, so well-planned and even more well-executed. But it seems this body has become stronger than I ever thought possible. Grimoire’s life energy truly is something marvelous, like nothing else in all the world…”
The head, pierced by Gwen’s sword, suddenly began to contort and writhe, like it was liquid rather than solid. Gwen’s sword fell from the morphing blob, clattering on the floor.
Lorelei overcame her shock and raised her hand, blasting an icy spear towards the head.
Out from the warping head came a slicing blade of darkness, shattering the projectile. The head rose up, gathering mass, spreading and changing. Gwen threw her sword again, Lorelei blasted ice, Will brought forth a surge of energy.
A veil of darkness rose up, blocking the warping flesh from view, defending it against the attacks of the trio that had come so close to victory.
The veil fell.
Kaohlad stood restored, bent over like an old man, but slowly straightened, a smile on his face, not a drop of blood or smudge of dirt on his pitch-black suit. His head suddenly jerked to the side with a sickening snap-snap of bone, then straightened back up.
“Ah, there we go,” Kaohlad said with a smile. “To think I could come back from such an attack so quickly… ah, if only I’d feasted on all this energy before facing that girl and her vicious rabbit. But, no matter.” He held out his hands, and darkness materialized into a pair of wicked sickles. A grin spread wide on his face. “Thank you for coming straight to me. Your power, your energy… it will serve me well.”
Lorelei, Will, and Gwen dropped back into fighting stances, as Kaohlad lunged for them.