Unleashed: Book One of the Saga of Ruination

Epilogue

“T

hat was interesting.”

Hands clasped behind his back, Devrin stared across the distance from his place atop the volcano at the unlikely group. A Khatala, a tatamble, and two Marailanders traveling together. Three members of three groups that have no love for each other, yet they enter the lair of Layik’s lavakhan and not only kill it, but kill him as well.

“So many years it took to groom him,” Devrin said, though he hardly cared. Training a droughtlord did take work and a good amount of time. Sometimes more than a century. He shrugged. It mattered little, for what was a century or two when one lived forever?

Devrin looked to the southeast. He could feel Shurza even from this distance. Of all the Fallen, he had been the sole voice of uncertainty with creating the thing. Millennia after millennia they had suffered humiliating defeat to the hated Illuminarians until Mordayne had devised the idea.

A good option at the time

.

A mistake for the future.

Devrin had always been the one to see things more clearly. He’d warned of the potential for disaster at creating a being of absolute hatred, a void of light and life itself.

He’d been overruled to a person. Not a single one of the other Fallen had so much as entertained his words, so focused were they on their hatred of the Illuminarians.

Devrin narrowed his glowing red eyes. They rarely listened, and when Shurza had so decisively beaten the Illuminarians and trapped them in a void of absolute darkness, they’d believed their victory complete.

But somehow, one last Illuminarian had escaped their attention, and managed to trap Shurza and defeat every last one of them.

A tiny bubble of anger rose in Devrin, and the ground beneath him cracked and died. How he hated Malkiem, the most powerful of the Illuminarians. The coward had hidden himself while Devrin and the other Fallen had defeated his brethren, then come with his trickery and beaten them when they had finally achieved victory after so long.

Devrin released his anger. This time was different. There were no longer any Illuminarians to in the way, only a bunch of children playing at wielding the

essences

. The fact that Shurza was free again was a sword that cut both ways. It was unpredictable and wanted nothing more than to destroy everything. But it was now the source of power for the Fallen, and their ability to walk this world in their whole form. Another unforeseen and unfortunate side effect of creating the thing.

“You were a fool, Mordayne,” Devrin said under his breath. “But once we finally have this world in hand, I’ll clean up your mess, as always.”

He turned away and descended back into the volcano. The others would have awakened by now, and soon a council would be called. Until the call came, Devrin would plan. He’d tried to instruct Layik against unleashing the drauk and other creatures of the underworld, but the fool had been too hungry to show his power; too eager.

Devrin wrinkled his lips at the thought of a droughtlord,

his

droughtlord, falling at the hands of three little girls and a Khatala man.

He sank into the pool of lava and closed his eyes, enjoying the soothing warmth of the thick magma flowing around him.

Dan Petrie sifted through his notes, then pulled a stack of books closer. He grabbed a thin book and thumbed through it, then referred back to a tome that must have weighed as much as he did.

He was close, he knew it.

No better place for this research than the Kingdom of Jietar.

The library was older than anyone could remember, and had survived two wars, and the gentrification of an entire section of the city. Some of the books in this library were older than man of the cities of Marai.

“There has to be something.” Dan ran a hand through his silky black hair as he sifted through the pages. “Something.”

A librarian came by with a pitcher of water and refilled his mug. Dan smiled in thanks and returned to the book.

“Hmm. The War of the Immortals.” It was only reference he’d found to any type of ancient conflict that resulted in the casting down of the Fallen by the Illuminarians. Every book he’d found on the subject had detailed the war with armies of men from every region fighting against the minions of the Fallen, while the immortals fought the great battle to determine the fate of every living thing in the world.

Though each book’s description varied, the end was essentially the same; the Fallen were defeated and cast into a lifeless void where they remained for time eternal until the hearts of men grew too dark.

Dan carefully turned the delicate pages of the tome, then stopped on a faded page. “Never seen this before.” He skimmed the typical depictions of the War of the Immortals until he came to a section where the war was covered in more detail. Names were even given to certain events of note. Dan wiped his sweating palms on his pants and read on. The Light. The Song. The Sundering. The Incursion. The War of the Immortals. The Dark Creation. Unleashed.

Dan felt a great weight pressing down on him as he read the last two words. He repeated the words over and over again, hoping to find some other way to interpret them, but there wasn’t. Jack and Mick were dead, but he had to find a way to right the wrong they had created; the wrong they had let loose on the world.

Dan read those two words again, his heart sinking each time. He had to find a way to stop this. He had to find some way to stop The Ruination.