expect you to walk through.”
“You sure he’s here?”
“He arrived this morning. I spotted him near the gate. He’s alone.”
“I have to kill him before I can destroy the Red Gate,” Silas said.
“Well, it’s just him.”
Silas snorted. “Just him? The evil Stühoc king who has tried to rule over Marenon for thousands of years? Just him? You think killing him will be easy?”
“No, I don’t suppose it would be. Do you have a plan?”
“No. We’ve only met once, and that was before I had any useful magical ability. I haven’t exactly had the chance to see how he is in a fair fight.”
“You’ll do well, son.”
Silas felt a little uneasy about Will calling him son. All of this seemed too crazy to be real, but Will had not given Silas one reason to believe that he was anything other than what he claimed. He felt like he had no choice but to trust him.
Silas followed his father into the mountains. There, he would meet Anithistor. There he would destroy the Red Gate. And there he would die.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After the fifth blast of light from the Sphere at the top of the Pyramid, Nalani knew they had to move. The ones that had been hit by the soul-sucking beams now attacked their previous allies.
“We’ll have to move quickly,” Alric told her.
Nalani could see the sarians huddled together in a small alcove. Dink and Emma had taken shelter with them. She couldn’t see Coffman or Darius. Daewyn lay silently behind a mound of dead bodies, but his eyes revealed that he was very much alive.
She peeked her head above the rock, and instead of seeing a large fighting army in front of her, she was overshadowed by a giant Anwyn who snarled sharply at her appearance. She let out a gasp and fell onto her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs in the process.
Alric tried to help her up, but the Anwyn leapt over the rock and smacked him away like an annoying fly. Nalani rolled to her right when the green warrior slammed his fists against the ground. The savage’s attempt to crush her had nearly succeeded. The Anwyn forced her to maneuver several times before she was able to reach for her sword.
In a last attempt to end her life, the Anwyn went for her throat with his sharp teeth. Nalani held her sword sideways and caught his mouth with the blade. The Anwyn didn’t even seem to notice that the sword was killing him.
Nalani was finally able to roll to her feet, and with a swipe, she carved a large gash into the Anwyn’s side and he fell to the ground. She turned the sword downward and stabbed him through one more time to make sure he wouldn’t be going after anyone else again.
Alric made his way to her. “Are you alright?”
She nodded. “Go get Daewyn.”
Alric nodded and took off. Nalani hunkered against the rock one more time. She peered over this time to see Darius a hundred feet in front of her, commanding his soldiers to push forward and take down anyone hit by the bolt. To the left she could see Coffman fighting off three crazed Erellens.
She was about to run and help him, but before she even moved, the man had all three of them crushed on the ground, lifeless.
“Coffman!” she yelled.
He looked up, searching for the voice until he spotted Nalani waving her arms.
“Grab Darius and get to the sarians!”
He nodded an affirmative and took off. Nalani charged toward the sarians. First an Erellen attacked her, then an Anwyn. They seemed to chase her with a ravenous hunger. She was glad that most of their minds were gone, because in a normal state, they would have been much more skilled opponents.
She cut through the first and spun to meet the second. Both were on the ground in seconds. Thankfully, she encountered no more enemies the rest of the way to the sarians. Dink and Emma waved her in behind Skarret, and she ducked low and scanned the area for Alric and Daewyn. At first she didn’t see them, but then noticed that Soldiers of the Dead had surrounded them. Though the numbers of the undead army could quickly escalate into an overwhelming force, they lacked the ability to think in terms of fighting strategy so Alric and Daewyn were able to easily cut through them.
Both of them finally made it to the group of sarians, and within a minute, Coffman and Darius had also