78. THE RITUAL OF UNMAKING

Relos Var’s story

The Raenena Mountains

That afternoon

“Revas? Revas, you need to see this!”

Relos Var raised his head from where he was carefully inscribing glyphs into the granite rock face. He’d hollowed out the cavern by hand (or rather by magic), and precision was vital. He wasn’t even close to being finished. An earthquake earlier had wrecked hours of work.1

He’d also left orders that he was not, under any circumstances, to be disturbed. If it were anyone else doing the disturbing, he’d have made an example of them, but this was Drehemia.

The woman who entered the cave was strange and beautiful. People were always fond of describing beautiful skin as “poreless,” but it was more literally true for the dreth than any other race. This particular woman did indeed have “alabaster skin”—less soft than like something carved from rock and made animate. She had no hair anywhere on her body, which made for a very odd appearance to anyone who wasn’t dreth.

He’d missed her.

Var sighed and straightened up. “What is it, Drehemia?”

“You need to see this,” she repeated. “The sun just fixed itself.”

“What?” He dropped his tools and dove back into the tunnel, heading toward the entrance. He exited at the base of one of the Dragonspires into a wide, shallow valley filled with trees and a broad, meandering river. Scenic. Beautiful. Irrelevant. A crowd of wizards had left their tents to gather in a clearing, eyes focused skyward.

He shaded his eyes as he followed the direction of their stares.

Relos Var started to laugh.

“I thought you said Vol Karoth permanently messed up the sun,” Drehemia said, almost an accusation. There was a great deal she didn’t remember about her time as an insane dragon. Relos Var sympathized. There was a great deal that he didn’t remember from his time as an insane dragon either.

“How in heaven did someone manage that?” Relos Var said.

Then he blinked. There was only one explanation. “They cured S’arric. They must have cured S’arric.”

“What? But you said—”

Relos Var raised a hand for her to be silent. “They cured S’arric. Vol Karoth’s the only person—the only entity—who could have fixed what he caused in the first place. But Vol Karoth, either before he was fractured or afterward, wouldn’t have. He would never give back the energy he’d absorbed. That fool D’Mon boy must have sacrificed himself—I should have known what was going on when I saw the state of Kharas Gulgoth.”

Drehemia frowned. “I haven’t even had a chance to tell you about Karolaen.”²

Relos Var stopped. He turned back to her. “What about Karolaen?”

The dreth woman rocked back on her heels, hands on hips, looking like she was about to convey an invitation to a surprise party. “It’s been destroyed. Ompher’s work, as far as I can tell. He chucked something at the basin. An asteroid or comet, probably.³ I’m sure you felt the earthquake earlier. I don’t know who he was fighting, but he wasn’t playing around.”

Relos Var could only stand there, staring. One didn’t casually slam a stellar object into a planet, not just morally but logistically. Asteroids never appreciated spontaneity. That implied that Ompher had either gotten impossibly lucky or he’d been able to predict Vol Karoth’s location. He probably wouldn’t have just thrown a giant rock at the place for old times’ sake. Was it possible that Ompher had managed to destroy Vol Karoth?

No, impossible. Relos Var had designed that to be impossible.

He allowed himself the barest, tiniest fraction of a second to check the link. It was a thread that he would’ve severed the moment he learned of its existence, but it stubbornly defied any such attempts. He had to guard the link constantly, not just to keep Vol Karoth out of his head but also the hysterics of eight dragons screaming into the void.

The link was still there. Vol Karoth was alive.

The moment he had that realization, he also knew something was wrong. It was too much energy. Fixing the sun would have taken all the energy Vol Karoth had, forcing him into a state that would have been—to Relos Var’s senses, at least—almost indistinguishable from death until Vol Karoth recovered. That hadn’t happened.

“Something’s gone wrong,” he murmured.

“Or gone right,” Anlyr said. “We just need to figure out which one it is.”

Relos Var didn’t bother debating the difference. He pulled Worldhearth out of his robe and held it up. Immediately, a pulsing globe of cool blue energy exploded into the air in front of him. Many of those points were particularly bright, some almost blinding in their intensity. There were a number of brilliant lights that hadn’t been there the last time he checked, but then again, god-kings were always coming and going.⁴ It wasn’t enough information to determine location, but he’d practiced enough—long before he’d given the Cornerstone to Qown—to be able to determine identity.

“Ompher’s dead,” Relos Var said.

“I guess the comet didn’t help,” Drehemia said.

But that was just an interesting bit of trivia. One less obstacle in Relos Var’s path. Whoever had killed Ompher had done him a favor. But also …

His pulse quickened. Khored, Tya, and yes, even Vol Karoth were still there, still adding their energy signatures (or stark lack of one, in Vol Karoth’s case) to the accumulated heat of the planet. But Ompher’s energy signature wasn’t the only one missing.

Where was Xaltorath?

He’d checked once before, just after he’d taken back the Cornerstone. Xaltorath had been the brightest thing on the whole planet. And now? Gone.

Relos Var glanced up at the sky. Yes. That would do it.

The wizard chuckled. “Thank you, dear brother. You have made my job so much easier.” Dealing with Xaltorath had always been an inconvenience that he dreaded. Now it didn’t matter. And better still, his dear heroic, stupid little brother hadn’t even kept that power for himself.

Relos Var was glad he’d fixed the sun. It meant he didn’t have to worry about maintaining the Veil after he killed Tya.

“Xaltorath’s dead too,” Relos Var declared. “So I suppose it’s time to finish what I started, isn’t it?”