one more casualty

Bleh. My creative processes are dysfunctional at the moment. I have a bunch of writing prompts to finish, and they're going nowhere fast. (Three of them are about Nick, and I'm really not in the mood to write for him.)

Well, that's kind of a lie. It's just that most of the things I want to write for Nick involve Aya. And I do want to write their final battle, but that's amazingly, incredibly depressing and involves Liall getting raped, or at the very least severely assaulted, and the fallout from that nearly leads to their divorce. And then, you know, she and Nick die, and they don't even die together. Nick's horse also dies. Aya has her fourth and final miscarriage, and loses her eye. It's really depressing.

So instead I'll write bits of the actual story...like the part where Blaine dies! Because that's not depressing, either.

--

The rifthorror crawled closer.

The elves had fled, seeking higher ground. Their order was meant to fight, but nothing mortal could stand before this. It was a nothingness older than the universe, so old and empty it could not contain even a proper name.

Blaine could barely remember his own name- he was too human for this, too mortal- and so he'd become something else, not human nor god but something in between. His god was busy elsewhere, distracted by a war on the aetherial plane. The only one listening was Natasha, who could not touch him. "Who am I supposed to pray to if this doesn't work?"

She laughed, her voice faint over the sound of rushing water in his head. If this didn't work, there would be nothing left to pray to, except perhaps the undead gods of Radrezaria with their strange, opaque magicks.

Venani might be ignoring him, but the Avatar's death had opened a doorway in his soul, and he drank in aether with abandon. His skin grew scales, and his soul swelled, stretching to the bursting point, like a balloon overfilled. There was water everywhere, and it answered his call, rising up from the stones beneath his feet.

The rifthorror crawled closer.

The water rose higher.

It had swallowed pieces of the city, devouring the soul of the earth itself. It was no bigger than a man to the naked eye, but to those with aethersight, it expanded beyond the limits of what could be measured. And where it walked, life simply...ceased.

The water rose higher.

He began to choke. He could breathe water as easily as air, but it choked him now, filling his lungs. The horror was looking at him, and they were both drowning and it wasn't fair. The power he was using came from Venani, and Venani had marked him from the moment of his birth. Do no harm. Not even to this thing of nothingness and death that came to devour the world- and he could see it in perfect detail, and he knew exactly how to destroy it and he knew- knew- exactly what it would cost him.

There was no one to hear him scream but Natasha- and where she walked, so too did her brother.

The rifthorror stood before him, close enough to touch.

(you are so small, so young) it said. (and I am so old) (this world used to be mine) it said (it was mine)

He could see the outlines of the souls it had swallowed sparkling along the edges of his consciousness. He could see its eyes, like stars, and he could see its hunger. He could feel its sadness.

His hands- still rippling with scales- plunged into the center of it. He couldn't feel anything anymore. His world became the soft echo of its voice and the rush of water as the waves crashed over them both and he became, for a single moment, a perfect conduit of power.

The last thing he thought was that it was terribly ironic- and then the sound of Natasha's dice, her brother's footsteps and-

(you are so young)

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Silverlock was running on adrenaline and aether- his senses were in overdrive, leading him to the tower. All around him, he could feel the tiny lives of the vermin in the catacombs, and those few larger creatures that hadn't fled. Above, he could feel the rifthorror like a pulsing wave of rot- and then it disappeared in a wave of pure, distilled aether.

His left arm burned with sudden, exquisite pain. He stopped short, clawing at the source of the pain, and then tearing at his skin with his knife when he realized the cause.

The talisman was a match for the one he'd kept in his right arm, woven with the same spells and protections, and keyed to Blaine the way its twin was keyed to Foxbird. Her talisman was now around his neck, still whole. If he needed to, he could use it to find her; if not, as long as it was whole, he knew she was alive, and well.

The small crystal disc burned white hot, cauterizing the wound even as he ripped it out of his arm, and it shattered when it hit the ground.

He stared at the broken talisman for a full minute, blood rushing in his ears, unable to feel anything but numb.

And then he could feel nothing but rage, and rage was good because rage was power- and may all the gods help anything that stood in his way.
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The rifthorrors are made of anti-aether, for lack of a better word; they're the stuff that was left over at the creation of the universe, and they're keyed to certain elements the same way the aetherial plane deities are. The seven horrors weren't shattered in the sundering at the start of the Fourth Era; this one is one of the lesser six, the one representing Fire.

Basically, Blaine got lucky, otherwise he'd never have been able to touch the thing. If he'd been elementally aligned to anything but water (technically water, earth, and life are Venani's elements, but Blaine naturally takes to water far better than to the other elements), the thing would've eaten him.

Silverlock likes keeping tabs on the people he cares about; he made locator talismans for Foxbird and Blaine (he has them for a few other people as well), and kept them embedded in his arms. (Yeah, okay, it's a little gross, but it means that no one's going to find them unless they know where to look; talismans of that nature are dangerous in the wrong hands.) They explode when the person they're keyed to dies.

Blaine gets better, of course, much to Silverlock's vague consternation and relief. ("I'm, um, sorry. For, you know, dying..." "Don't worry, I intend to take full advantage of your guilt for the next, oh, ten years or so." "You could try to not look so gleeful when you say that.")