POWER GAINED

Darwin gazed long at the Stair of Despair. The great stairway rose from behind and climbed above the massive black wall barring entrance to the southwestern plateau. For all of his twenty-four seasons of life, he’d heard of the dangers inherent to the place, a dark place rumored to hold the power to consume souls.

From the overwhelming sense of dread leeching his resolve the longer he stared at the stairway, he suspected the rumors had some truth. Darwin waved his companion forward.

The bloodstain on Malkor’s red robe looked as fresh as it had two days ago when he had pried the crossbow bolt from the back of his servant’s ribcage. Pulling it from Malkor’s lung and out the front had been easier since the cruel steel bolt had ripped a wide hole through two of the bones. The healing had drained Darwin, but his well of knowledge lived. “I do not see a way through. How much is known of the stairs and the Black Wall?”

Malkor kept the hood of his stained robe lowered, refusing to look at either subject of Darwin’s question. “Are you certain this is wise, Master? Access to the red pit might be less of a danger if we go by way of the Dark Citadel. We can always return to Gray Dust. Surely the symbol wench will not have followed us there.”

“We have had this discussion, do not call her that. The chance of someone identifying us once we enter the Dark Gate is too great, so is the likelihood the betrayer now has the gray gateway I took from Guail is great. I have little doubt she is in Gray Dust. Now, let us move forward with what we came here to do. You have the lore infusion. I ask one final time. What is known of the obstacles barring my way?”

The red hood rose slowly to the wall. As he peered from under it, Malkor’s jaw trembled and then grew slack. After a time, he looked away, lowering his head quickly. “There is no passage through the wall, hidden or otherwise.”

“What? Why would the Black Wall have no door?”

Malkor’s hood snapped up, a stunned look upon his narrow face. “There is no wall. What stands before us is a seal.”

“Why would a wall be a seal?”

Malkor gripped him by the arms, his brown eyes wild. “The seal is there to keep something inside from getting out, something dark. To get inside we may have to break the seal. Please, Master, there has to be another way.”

Using the butt of the Shimmer Spear, Darwin prodded his companion away from him, roughly. “You forget your place, servant. You would do well to remember you are here to accomplish what I command, only as I command. We shall get past the seal with the knowledge of its making. As a lore master, sift through the wisdom streaming into your mind soundly; concentrate on anything pertaining to the construction of the wall.”

“As you command, My Lord,” Malkor hissed. “Sorting through eras of material, searching for oblique references, may take some time. Judging from my brief scan to locate the seal, not much knowledge has been passed down from the Ancients.”

“Nevertheless, you shall put all you have into the effort.”

Malkor gave a brief nod. Then he stiffened. The red flecks racing across his corneas expanded and grew pronounced. Soon they covered his orbs completely, turning them a glowing blood red as he accessed the library of countless tomes streaming into his mind, infused into memory.

Darwin had seen the process before, though not from Malkor. A Servant of Eons in the southern land of Shimmer had provided a demonstration. The woman had given up stable sanity to retain the lore, became a living Flow-powered knowledge base. That person had given him the idea for discovering the Shimmer Spear’s location.

Darwin returned to his contemplation of the Black Wall. They had found no other cover near the wall. Someone had cleared a wide swath in front of the wall making it a barren place, devoid of even so much as a weed. Standing out in the open in front of the Black Wall was foolish beyond measure. Dark things guarded it. Darwin could attest to a dozen winged shapes as he sat waiting for Malkor to sift through the lore.

Someone had also exerted immense energy not long ago, perhaps a season. Filled with timber, topsoil, and rock, the path to the Citadel that used to wind around a series of waterfalls, called the Plunging Chasms, stood tall and forbidding now as terraced cliff faces.

Malkor’s recent infusion—his sacrifice—had been the deciding factor that brought them both to such an ominous place as fast as the gates could bring them and before his companion’s insanity set in fully. Darwin had already seen the first sign of it with his frequent pauses during conversation.

A tinge of regret for requiring his lifelong manservant to undergo the infusion crept upon him, but he quelled it ruthlessly. Malkor’s place in life was to comply with his decrees. Having a lore master to command would substantially decrease the time it took to dominate the whole of Astura.

Darwin napped and ate, waiting without impatience as the morning wore into early evening before Malkor stirred. Abruptly stumbling forward, Malkor fell. Darwin caught him in his arms. Supporting his older servant friend, he walked him around the little clearing tucked inside the heavy foliage bordering Fetid Fern Swamp.

A dozen passes around the small clearing allowed Malkor’s leg muscles to loosen while storing the memory of walking inherent to them. Darwin released him afterward, letting the man continue twice more on his own. When his red-robed servant made it without mishap, he stopped him by extending the double-tipped spear in front of his chest. Malkor had to stop or risk a gash across his chest. “What have you learned?”

“The risk is high, but you have the power to make the attempt… with assistance.”

“Whose help do I need?”

“Mine.”

Darwin was annoyed yet jubilant at the same time. “Why did you not just say that? What is required?”

A flash of something unidentifiable flitted across Malkor’s narrow face, vanishing in an instant. Perhaps fear. “The cost is high and we shall only have the power to attempt it once. Should we fail, we die.”

“Then we die. Get on with it. Tell me what it is I am to do.” Again, something flitted across his manservant’s face, but now Darwin knew it for what it was, glee. Why would Malkor be happy with his choice to gamble both their lives?

Darwin dismissed the thought. What his manservant believed did not matter. By the time his friend discovered his fate, it would be far too late. “Did I not command you to get on with it? No cost is too high.”

Malkor smiled, as oily and obsequious as the merchant Guail. “As you wish, Master,” he said, extending a hand. “First, you must give me the Spear.”

Darwin drew back, gaping at the hand. “What could you possibly want with it?”

Malkor’s smile faded, and his swarthy features smoothed. He kept his arm extended. “You must trust me if it is truly your desire to slip quietly beyond the Stair of Despair.”

A great reluctance to part with the Shimmer Spear gusted through Darwin. Glaring at his manservant, Darwin dropped the Spear’s center grip in Malkor’s hand. “Whatever you have to do, make it fast, the spear belongs with its master.”

Malkor pulled the spear close and then jabbed it forward, the tip pointed down. “As you wish, Master, the Spear shall return to the master.”

A sharp pain to his groin caused Darwin to bend over where his confused sight fell upon the Spear embedded in him, its golden glow growing red. The red haze of his pain fell away, enveloped by a fog of blackness, darkness he knew as final. He grew weak, his mind lethargic. Strength bled from him.

Then Malkor’s comforting healing settled inside him, adding strength without the pain. The darkness grew lighter.

But it was wrong. The red tint of his friend’s healing light had changed, turned black. The blackness was somehow lighter and felt different from the final darkness of the storm. Flickering with the promise of pain’s end and power gained, it waited for him to accept it, to draw it within, and drink deep from its dark supremacy. Tasting the surprising influence of the Flow inside the dark heart of omnipotence, Darwin drank.

*****

Clutching the Spear in his maimed hand, Darwin strode to the Black Wall, maintaining a tight grip on the dark aura that surrounded him and his manservant. The key to their survival lay with his ability to exude the Dark power of a great master, a soul saturated with Flow corruption.

As they neared the base, four maimwrights dropped in front of them, two at a time, the thump of their landing echoing dully from the hard granite construct of the Black Wall. The way forward blocked, Darwin halted. When the four monstrosities stood side by side, their multifaceted eyes glistening silvery and motionless under the midday sun, he raised both arms. “Lift us to the stairway of darkness, the path of bleak and utter despair,” he commanded.

The tallest, most brutish-looking wright with the largest pinchers taking the place of a right hand cocked its head to one side. The gesture would have been human-like if not for the beak of a mouth and bee-like orbs where the eyes should reside.

Screeching something unintelligible, the maimwright, along with the creature next to it, stomped to his side bringing the strong smell of rotting carrion. Gripping him under the pit of his arms by their pincher members, the wrights lifted him from the flattened rocky ground. Then, four powerful wings flapped, raising him and their own heavy bodies upward.

As he rose, Darwin had time to reflect on his current situation. He tried to ignore the uncomfortable awareness that one closure of their pinchers—accidental or not—would result in him falling armless to his death. Such thoughts lowered his mental grip on the aura, and the smaller beast swiveled a thick human neck to scan it with both sets of its silver foiled eyes.

Deigning not to dwell on the beastie, Darwin concentrated on the aura, drawing more of the Flow into his infused body from the Spear through the undetectable blood pathway Malkor had created. Such a path was an ingenious way to infuse one to an artifact, requiring a direct route to a main artery to function at the fullest, though at a high cost as his servant had promised. Emanating the arrogance of power absolute while ignoring the ghost pain, the emptiness of one side of his testicle, was difficult, but he would prevail.

As they neared the top, Darwin thought about his next move beyond the Black Wall; one mistake there and both he and his manservant would burn in darkness. Worse, they could become a mindless shell, made that way by the Dark guardian of the stair. Darwin had heard such tales from scholars his entire life, stories he expected held much truth.

With the Spear, he should be able to bypass the guardian, if Malkor’s information held true. Everything hinged on the great artifact’s ability to store the Flow for him to draw upon and maintain the façade of a great master, one with true immense power.

Infused to him now, he felt the Flow resonating in the Spear with an undeniable acuteness. The black Flow throbbed through his body like an icy dark entity seeking release upon any that irritated it, all instantly at his command. No longer did he have to ground himself before drawing upon the Flow, nor did he need to use and discard an Interrupter to augment his power. Darwin could take from the artifact until it emptied. Precisely what he required, for his feet no longer touched the ground, the one great limitation of the Flow.

The beasts carried him over a wall one could stretch out upon with room to spare. The descent into an ancient courtyard, kept dark by the looming cliff above, took half as long. Dropping him roughly in the center, the maimwrights trod into the shadows.

Darwin waited for his servant, trying, and failing, to ignore the palpable sense of great power moving around him with uncanny speed, an alien intelligence that harbored an almost uncontainable rage at his invasion into its domain. Yet for all its power, it had an uneasy caution. Darwin carried something it was wary of, and the power he and Malkor projected stemmed from it. It knew.

Wary now, Darwin gripped Malkor by a shoulder and then covered his mouth with his free hand as soon as his two carriers withdrew. His manservant nodded, signaling his understanding.

Satisfied he would maintain silence for the duration of the climb, Darwin wasted little time setting out for the deeper shadows of the stair. Unseen, the dark presence paced them, a dark stain of malice against a shadowy background.

Narrow and steep—nearly a ladder—the ancient stairway climbed a vertical thirty stories, which took well over a bell to reach the first landing. From the start, Darwin found it prudent to maintain a grip on the stair above though it made for a slow awkward climb with the spear scraping against the granite now and then. A fall would be fatal for both of them.

Darwin released his hold on the top stair and crawled upon the first ledge, his breath burning in his lungs.

Flickering with darkness deeper than shadows, the large black spot of malice slipped up the cliffside beside the stairs. Pausing on the ledge, it waited and watched. The rage the dark thing exuded bombarded Darwin’s senses along with the intimations of what its baser instincts were—it wanted to control, to rend, and to tear. But the false auras powered by the Shimmer Spear kept it at bay, made it uneasy. The dark thing could not have mastery over them.

For ages, the alien intelligence had skirted the dark power under the rock mountain, a natural evil born of this world. Now, such power invaded its realm, breaking the eons-unspoken truce born from the respect of equal supremacy. The dark thing now considered testing the strength it had so long avoided.

Alarmed by the revelation, Darwin drew from the Spear intending to shore up his façade, make them appear even stronger, but the reserves had depleted within it, drained by the necessity of maintaining two auras as he struggled with the climb. A glance upward raised his alarm to something bordering fear. A full day of ascension lay ahead.

The malice grew noticeably greater. The large flickering spot of blackness shifted closer.

Malkor gripped his shoulder. “Do not let your fear rise,” he whispered.

The darkness paused, the flickers of darkness slowing.

“It is uncertain. We attack now, if we are to survive,” Darwin said quietly though he had little hope the two of them would prevail—even if they had twenty of the most powerful Dark Users at their disposal. The creature’s power was beyond any he had experienced. With every word, the flickering inside the shadow slowed, increasing as soon as he stopped talking.

Malkor’s grip grew painfully tight on his shoulder as he whispered in his ear. The bony index finger of his free hand jabbed toward a dark opening in the cliff wall behind the flickering blackness. “No, Master, we cannot win, but we may surprise it enough to make it to that cave.”

Seeing little choice, Darwin drew deeply upon the Flow, filling the spear and his reserves with the radiant glow of blackness surrounding the light of the catalyst. Malkor followed his example, drawing likewise. Instinctively, he knew their combined might would fall short, but if they were to die—or worse, become some sort of monster—he wanted the thing to feel their sting. “Stay close,” Darwin whispered.

Striding forward with a boldness he wished he truly had inside his traitorous gut and weak knees, Darwin held the Spear out before him, brightening the way with thoughts of luminosity. Surrounding the blackness of the Flow filling the Spear to the tips on each end, a brilliant white radiance lit the way forward, this time.

The blackness recoiled.

Darwin strode ahead. The blackness moved away, skittering to the side, dropping back as he passed. Keeping the Shimmer Spear pointed at it, Darwin twisted around, walking backward, the cave not far away.

Darwin froze. Malkor hadn’t moved. Flickering faster, like a sputtering candle, the creature slipped up on his servant. “Malkor,” Darwin croaked, his mouth suddenly dry.

The darkness enveloped his friend; Malkor’s form flickered inside, seeming to rise inches from the ground. Then, incredibly, Malkor flew from within, running toward him as fast as his ruined leg allowed. “Make for the cave, Master! Run!” Malkor shouted, running past him.

Darwin ran.

.